Recently watched movies!

[jellydonut25]

Gangster Squad - Pretty terrible. Can't decide whether it wants to be a fun, hard-boiled almost spoofy movie, or a serious hard-hitting drama. It tries to do both. Which is a terrible idea.

The Conjuring - It's fine. Better than a lot of horror films these days. It does its scares effectively and without cheap tricks.

[Dr Kain]

Aliens - Just saw this at the Alamo Drafthouse and my god it was so great to finally see this movie on the big screen. Unfortunately, it was the theatrical version. On the positive side, this was my first time ever seen the theatrical cut, so it was a nice experience. The negative, however, is that it destroys part of Ripley's reasoning for wanting to save Newt because we love all things dealing with her daughter, we don't see Newt's family finding the ship, and the sentry guns scene is gun. Nevertheless, I do not regret it one bit. Not to mention the video quality looked even better than the Blu-Rays as it did not seem to have any teal filter over it. Overall, the movie is great despite not being as good as Alien, but it does its own thing and makes it work. I give it an 8/10 stars and is by far Cameron's best movie ever.

[jellydonut25]

Terminator is by far Cameron's best movie.


and The Bling Ring sucked something awful.

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

Gangster Squad vs. Great Gatsby....I dunno. I didn't like either, but I think I'd say Gatsby is the better movie. At least it knew what it wanted to do, and rolled with that. Gangster Squad has no idea what it wants to be and ends up failing at everything it attempts.

[Dr Kain]

[XvGojira]

Rewatched Man of Steel. Rather, napped through a bunch of it, cursed soul sucking couch. Still love it. But it seems like they brightened Superman up compared to what I remember in the theater. Also to anyone else who has it, do you also have a Hobbit feature about shooting in New Zealand in the special features on the first disc? It's inclusion is boggling my mind.

[jellydonut25]

Mama - I appreciate the way it's directed and the way they avoided cheap jump scares, but the script is AWFUL. This movie needed someone to go over the script just reading for common sense and plot holes.

Texas Chainsaw - Talk about plot holes...in 1974 a baby is taken from the Sawyer home during a raid/lynch mob in the wake of the events of the original film. Flash forward to present day and the girl is now 25 and when she finds out she's a Sawyer....wait she's 25 after 40 years of time? And the movie continues in similarly awful fashion.

Side Effects - Decided to do one more after two disappointments and I really liked this. A good thriller that might be a bit slow towards the middle/end of the second act, but throws a lot of well-crafted twist into the third act that have you thinking "damn! That's crazy!" consistently. Solid acting holds this together really well.

[Dr Kain]

[Benjamin Haines]

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

Blade Runner - This is such a great movie. It is a little confusing, and the love scene in the middle of the movie slows down the pacing, but in the long wrong, the story is good, the visuals are great, and the action is quite enjoyable. It isn't Scott's best, but there are things I am noticing in the movie I did not realize the previous times I have seen it. I do find it weird that after beating the crap out of Dekkard and then trying to kill him, Roy decides to save him, but whatever. I give the movie an 8/10.

[jellydonut25]

The Hangover III - eh. I was expecting to hate it and didn't, so it's got that going for it. but it wasn't good, just unterrible. I think one thing that REALLY could have helped (and this made me hate the second film even more) was if they set some of this up in the 2nd film. They have a couple callbacks to the first film that make storyline sense, but they really could have done a better job in the second one other than making a movie that just copies the first one. A couple setups in the second film would have prevented the LENGTHY (and boring) plot exposition dumps.

RIPD - Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. Wow. Rife with plotholes and logic gaps and horrible performances and obvious Men in Black ripoffs and blech. What an atrocious film.

The Purge - I'm not really sure why this got such a lukewarm reception other than people being disappointed that it wasn't more ambitious with a wider scope (oh and one GLARING plot hole that kinda made me irritated). It's a fine home-invasion type of movie and I found it mostly enjoyable

Antiviral - It's central conceit is neither terribly inventive, nor particularly subtle in its execution, but this is a solid body-horror film with something to say not just about celebrity obsession, but also the quality of humanity and profiteering off of the misfortunes of others. Its pacing alternates between a good slow burn and a little sluggish, and its characters aren't really fleshed out quite enough, but this is a solid first film from Brandon Cronenberg. I'd recommend checking it out if you can handle something with a bit of a slow pace.

[lhb412]

House of Frankenstein

From the cheapy, B-movie Universal era - but far more fun than The Ghost of Frankenstein. At least this one isn't boring and Karloff and Cheney Jr.'s presence really does help (as opposed to Lugosi in Ghost, who was sadly given almost nothing to do until he was a voiceover).

[Dr Kain]

Prometheus - This movie gets better every time I watch it. It is so damn good. Not to mention every time I watch it I start to notice something going on in the background whether it be something dealing with the Engineer ship or a piece of dialog I never caught before. I do think the movie is quite weak on the character side though, as outside of David and Elizabeth, everyone is there just to die, so we don't have any reason to give a **** about them, which is a shame as it seems like the commander could have been an interesting character. I also do not understand the thought process with Weyland. What was the point of casting Guy Pearce just to put him in butt ugly make up to make him look old? Why not just cast an old actor to play Weyland so it does not look so fake? Outside of those complaints, this movie rocks with a nicely told tale of mystery and a new take on old mythology. I give Prometheus an 8/10 and I do wish people had given it more of a chance instead of writing it off because it was not about a bunch of brainless military buffoons shooting things in space.

Pizza Man - Honestly, I have no idea how the **** I got into watching this. My g/f clicked on it and I stupidly sat through it. It is about some girl that summons the devil to apologize to her sister as she died short after an argument they had. THen some pizza boy arrives but nobody ordered pizza and the paranoia goes crazy as the girl thinks the pizza boy is the devil. Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, it was 40 minutes I will never get back and it looked so cheaply shot. I' going to give it a 1/10 and that is only because it was at least creative in the idea.

[jellydonut25]

[jellydonut25]

Byzantium - it's got some cool imagery and a neat idea or two, but it lacks any real narrative cohesion or characters fleshed-out enough for us to care. Ultimately, it's pretty boring. The final half-hour or so is alright, but the preceding 90 minutes are kinda dull.

[Hybrid Gojira]

[lhb412]

Seven Samurai

I don't think I have to say how great this is. Everyone knows.

High and Low

- But I'm not sure that people really know about this one from Kurosawa. It's one of his all-time greats, but I don't see it rattled off when people list his best. Sanjuro was the only sequel Kurosawa ever made, but I kinda wish we could've got another film following these police guys on another case.

[XvGojira]

Oblivion - I can see why this movie gets crapped on, but I enjoyed it. The pacing was a bit off and there wasn't much spectacle, as in no action set pieces like most summer sci-fi flicks, but the post-apocalyptic landscapes are pretty beautiful. In many ways it felt like something that would have been made in the 70's or 80's.

Dracula AD1972 - Hammer movies are just great. Cushing and Lee and always fantastic, even though you can totally tell they filled Lee's parts in like a day. And damn does Stephanie Beacham have a nice rack, Hammer seemed to excel with casting for that.

[jellydonut25]

I don't think Oblivion was crapped on, but it was here and gone and I'm okay with that. There's nothing spectacular about it, just as there's nothing terrible about it. It's a decent sci-fi film. I've certainly seen far, FAR worse.

And lhb, I just watched Seven Samurai for the second time ever the other day. Fantastic film.

[Dr Kain]

Catching Fire - Hot damn this movie was much much MUCH better than the first one. I do not know what happened, but it felt like they actually decided to get rid of the shaky cam and choose character development over pointless action. That is not to say the first one was bad by any means, it was a good movie, but until now, I couldn't care less if I ever saw it again. Now, I kind of want to rewatch the first one, but I'll wait until all four movies are out. Anyway, the characters were interesting this time around and they made them likable as I thought only Woody Harrelson's character was the only good one in the first movie. It was nice to see an after effect of how things progress from the events of the first movie. Unfortunately, the movie is not perfect, as my biggest gripe is its sudden ending. It felt like the ending to The Matrix Reloaded all over again as the movie just stops instead of concludes. Nevertheless, I give this movie a whooping 9/10 and is one of those few sequels to out do the original. Whether or not that stays the case over the test of time will be determined, but for right now, it definitely is. Oh, and there is nothing after the credits, so no need to stay.

[jellydonut25]

9/10 for Catching Fire is REALLY EXTREMELY generous.

But it WAS better than its predecessor in just about every possible way. And most of its flaws come from the shortcomings of its sorce material (which it ALSO outdoes as opposed to the first film where it fell short of the book)

[Dr Kain]

Seeing as how I gave Pacific Rim and Man of Steel a generous 8/10 for not sucking like other movies this year have, and I think Catching Fire is superior to both of those, I'd definitely say a 9 is a good score. It isn't better than Star Trek or The World's End, but it is right up there.

[canofhumdingers]

Iron Man 3 - I feel about the same on this as I did the first two. It was ok but nothing I'll ever feel a strong desire to see again. While I enjoyed RDJ's take on Stark the first time, he's just grown stale. I think it's largely b/c I can't stand people like that in real life. He's just a smug butthole. I identify MUCH more with classic heroism like Captain America or Superman. People who are just genuinely good from the surface all the way down to the core. I did think this had the best villain of the three films, but that's not saying a whole lot. The burning henchmen were a neat idea.

Silent Running - this was an interesting film. The story was a little weak and very 1970's hippy-save-mother-nature. But the really outstanding stuff was the art direction, production design and effects work. This beat Star Wars to the punch on the lived-in used universe look by 6 years. Really enjoyed the visuals in this. It clearly helped set the course for what we eventually saw in things like Star Wars, Alien, etc. But that music...oh man!...that music!!! There are at least 3 points in the film that breaks into this AWFUL early 70's high pitched hippy woman singing some ballad about saving the planet and it is TERRIBLE. Oh, and the drones also clearly influenced R2-D2. They were pretty awesome.