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FEBRUARY 2017 MOVIE DISCUSSION


RIPPA

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The GOAT Poll really kicked started me to start watching movies again as crazy as that sounds.

In January I first watched

  • Rogue One
  • The 39 Steps
  • Citizen Kane
  • M
  • Dr. Strangelove
  • The Raid: Redemption
  • Treasure of the Sierra Madre
  • L.A. Confidential
  • Glengarry Glen Ross

Plus I rewatched All the President's Men for the first time since college and Jaws since probably high school

I am sure I am forgetting stuff too. (Or the stuff I watched at the very end of December like Zootopia, Wall-E and Rashomon)

But yeah - I love movies again and plan on busting out a few other things on the board to, if nothing else, keep motivating myself to not be lazy.

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Last night I watched Hits on recommendation from my mom (we got her a blu-ray player for Christmas so that she can run Netflix in now and she LOVES it) and it was pretty great.  It's directed by David Cross and stars Matt Walsh as Dave, an angry smalltown guy who is constantly fighting with his town council, while his young daughter wants to be famous.  Eventually a group of hipsters discovers Dave's videos and travel to his town to be an advocacy group for him, while his daughter has her own whole problem with a local producer and wannabe rapper.  Cross can barely contain his seething contempt for hipsters, constitutionalists, vapid teenagers, and internet "stars" which makes this a lot of fun.  Great cast, too, with James Adomian, David Koechner, Amy Sedaris, Michael Cera etc. etc.  Funny but dark.

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After having watched the first three Jurassic Park movies again, I am still surprised that the second movie was pretty bad whereas the third one was really good again. The better special effects helped and the overall story was also much better. I'd forgotten that the little girl defended Goldblum's character by doing an Olympic uneven bars exercise that ended in her Dropkicking a Velociraptor through a wall. Christ, that was ridiculous.

Although the second movie, bad as it was, was still preferable to the utter shitfest that was Jurassic World.

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I think I've finally figured out why movies in series have names instead of numbers now. It's a stealthy way of double dipping the DVD market. If you're the sort of person who buys Resident Evil movies on DVD, there's every chance you're the sort of person who'd buy Resident Evil 2 twice, because you thought the second copy was Resident Evil 4. Because who knows whether Afterlife or Extinction comes first?

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Soooo... 

Manchester By the Sea - Terrible. Can't even describe how disappointed I was. 

Hidden Figures - Kinda paint by numbers for this genre but still very entertaining. Great story that few knew about a year ago. 

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I watched PRINCESS MONONOKE for the first time in probably 15 years last weekend, and I'd completely forgotten how violent it was.  Like, obviously I remembered there was a lot of action...but not so much all the dismemberments.

I also forgot it featured Billy Bob Thornton giving one of the all-time worst voice acting performances.

Still an amazing movie, though.

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On 2/4/2017 at 5:49 PM, Tabe said:

Soooo... 

Manchester By the Sea - Terrible. Can't even describe how disappointed I was. 

Couldn't agree more. Krustywhatthehellwasthat.jpg

Just an awful ending. Some great performances in there, but total waste of time. Possibly the worst field for Best Picture I can recall in a long time. I really hope Lion or Fences win. 

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4 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

I have not. Picked up the trilogy for ten bucks at Walmart.

Funny because I grabbed the $5 Director's Cut at Walmart myself, and saw the trilogy there as well when I bought it. I'd already seen the Director's Cut (and I had Beyond the Mat in my cart) so I went for that instead. It's worth trying to find/rent for sure; I still need to finish rewatching it myself

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29 minutes ago, J.T. said:

John Wick: Chapter 2 is currently tracking at 93% Fresh on RT.

The LEGO Batman movie is currently tracking at 98% Fresh on RT.

Poor Fifty Shades Darker...

It's Valentine's weekend. When Mom rounds up a babysitter for her and Pops to go to the movies Saturday night, it's not going to be for John Wick 2.

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I still count convincing my significant other to see Still Alice rather than the first Fifty Shades as one of my greatest personal successes, even if it did indirectly lead to "You always pick the movie!" later in the year and having to sit through Magic Mike XXL.

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16 hours ago, Isaacduke said:

It's Valentine's weekend. When Mom rounds up a babysitter for her and Pops to go to the movies Saturday night, it's not going to be for John Wick 2.

Normally I would agree if it weren't for the fact that Fifty Shades was arguably the most un-erotic erotic movie I was ever forced to watch and thank God that was during Free HBO GO Week on FiOS instead of having to go to an actual movie theater.

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25 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

So does this mean you're trying to get her to go see John Wick 2?

Sadly I have graveyard shift until the end of the month.  I'm going to miss Valentine's Day and JW2 release weekend.

I won't get a chance to watch it until March and now we're talking Mass Effect Andromeda release month and I'll be busy saving the galaxy.

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The first time I played Mass Effect 3, Petrol kept sending me invites to do heists in GTA. And I'm like 'Bank robbery can wait. The galaxy won't save itself'.

I watched Lone Survivor a couple of weeks ago, part one of Peter Berg's 'Mark Wahlberg is a real American hero' trilogy (and I'd already seen Deepwater Horizon... don't really fancy the Boston Bombing one though). It's one of those war films where a handful of guys wipe out dozens of enemies each with seemingly little effort. But unlike most war films, you don't mind so much because it opens with a training montage that establishes that these are unbreakable people (because anyone who is breakable can't complete the training, it's designed to be unendurable), and because unlike in most movies where they come out without a scratch, here they get hurt. And being hurt makes them less effective as combatants,so in the next engagement they get hurt more... it gives away the ending in the title (and at the start of the movie, in a flash forward). It doesn't really go too deep into the politics of the situation, other than saying these soldiers died because they followed the Geneva Convention, and if they'd broken it and killed innocent-ish non combatants, they'd still be alive. Which might be an argument for not following the Geneva Convention if you're of a certain political perspective, but the movie isn't saying that per se. It's saying they had a choice between being dead heroes or living murderers, and they chose heroism. Yeah, it's a good movie.

30 Minutes or Less is a Bank Robbery comedy with Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Michael Pena, and every Danny McBride character ever. It's alright, there just wasn't anything really memorable about it.

I also watched the first The Purge movie last night. Interesting premise, odd that they chose to make a dark corridors home invasion movie about it (interesting that it's set in a suburban gated community and literally everyone in the movie (except the token*) is upper-middle class or richer). But I guess that's why the sequels. Does make you wonder why, if all crime is legal,everyone just goes straight to murder (well, it's implied that a few are thinking about rape too). Like nobody wants to just vandalise or steal, everyone wants to kill and kill and kill again? And it's never mentioned that people would go on vacation (out of the country ) for the one day in America all crime is legal, even though that makes a shitload more sense than just buying a security system and staying at home?

* He's not the only Black guy in the movie, but the fact that the only non-rich guy is both black and homeless, is a bit... well, maybe they would argue they're reflecting society as it is. About him:

Spoiler

In the course of the story, he's attacked sufficient to bleed heavily, but kills one of his attackers and escapes. He is then shot, stabbed, knocked out, tied to a chair, and he's still able to escape and do the dramatic final rescue, and walk away at the end. So, he's a badass. And although he's a homeless guy, his costume does feature an Army jacket and dogtags, so most likely he's ex-military, and probably a combat veteran (hence homeless, from the PTSD and that). Why, when the heels showed up at his door demanding he be handed over, did Ethan Hawke not just hand the guy a weapon and hire him as private security? Makes a lot more sense than the manhunt he tried.

 

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(SPOILERS) I just got back from Rings. It was good…I think.

-You could tell they had paid attention to the movies and even the original Japanese ones.

-The opening scene was terrific.

-I liked the idea that the video itself is now a science experiment for college professors. Ringu 2 had a similar plot. These people are too stupid to even be scared: It’s all intellectual curiosity at this point. Gabriel was crazy.

-You see the twist coming in the first 20 minutes but that seems to make the whole thing a lot more more ominous. 

-The actors were, eh, fine. Not terrible, but, well, sorta there. The lead actress was not Naomi Watts, putting it nicely. 

-Julia liked exposition way too much. Stop talking to yourself, girl!

-”You think you’re the first Good Samaritan to try and help her? No. You’re the twelfth.” The best line of the film because it summed up the whole franchise. Everyone keeps trying to help this girl but, well, they just can’t. Julia ends up with a fate worse than death because she tried to love and understand her. Rachel got it in The Ring Two: She survived and saved her son because she finally understood something about Samara.  

-Those weird two minutes when you found yourself rooting for Samara for standing up to the creepy rapist priest dude.

-More intriguing a film than a scary one, though. Only Julia glimpsing Samara‘s shadow at the door and the cemetery scene creeped me out. 

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11 hours ago, J.T. said:

Normally I would agree if it weren't for the fact that Fifty Shades was arguably the most un-erotic erotic movie I was ever forced to watch and thank God that was during Free HBO GO Week on FiOS instead of having to go to an actual movie theater.

My wife cajoled me into going to see it with her and it was the most boring fucking movie I've ever seen. They somehow managed to make a movie about a bondage loving millionaire excruciatingly tedious and boring. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman saw Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan and said, "wow, those two just aren't into each other. Their love is like sand, coarse, rough, irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like ours. Soft and smooth."

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13 hours ago, cwoy2j said:

My wife cajoled me into going to see it with her and it was the most boring fucking movie I've ever seen. They somehow managed to make a movie about a bondage loving millionaire excruciatingly tedious and boring. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman saw Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan and said, "wow, those two just aren't into each other. Their love is like sand, coarse, rough, irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like ours. Soft and smooth."

Precisely.

If you get home after your date night movie and you both say to each other, "Okay, I'm going to get some sleep," instead of, "Hey, you're not tired yet, are you?" you went to see the wrong fucking movie.

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19 hours ago, AxB said:

NEVER MIND.

 

Ignore the above.  Love that the message board software won't let me delete the quote.

A couple movies for me:

 

Nocturnal Animals - Another massive disappointment for me.  Amy Adams plays a snobby art dealer whose ex-husband sends her a manuscript for his just-completed novel and tells her she inspired it.  So she reads it and we see its violent premise carried out.  Along the way, we see Adams do a lot of nothing - staring blankly, sitting in a bathtub, standing in a shower, etc.  And we get bored.  This movie sucked.  Not even 2 hours of Amy Adams could save it.

Fences - Liked this, wanted to like it more.  Denzel Washington plays a bitter ex-baseball player in 1950s Pittsburgh.  He's a difficult man who doesn't treat his family all that well.  There's lots of conflict with his teenage son whom he treats like dirt.  You can see the movie's roots as a play in its confined setting.  Like I said, I liked it but felt the movie was hurt by its massive amount of dialogue.  Denzel is CONSTANTLY talking and it just didn't work for me.  It doesn't help that he's completely unlikable.  

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