Recently watched movies!

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Sun Dec 01, 2013 8:14 pm

Rear Window - At long last I finally got to see what hundreds of movies and tv episodes have been based off and it was worth it. For being a one scene movie it was well done, it played on your paranoia and even got me thinking that the whole thing was indeed going to be false, only for it to end up being true. Like North by Northwest, it was a little slow, but it was still a great movie nonetheless. I give this one an 8/10 body parts.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby lhb412 » Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:33 pm

^Rear Window might be my favorite Hitchcock movie - and our own Raymond Burr plays the suspect!

Zatoichi on the Road

... I think this is one of the few that I never saw back in the day.

As a gang war brews, one side tries to hire Ichi while the other thinks he's already been hired - in truth Ichi doesn't care and is more concerned with helping a young woman in trouble get to Edo. Naturally, these plots collide, there are a few twists, a bunch of cool sword fights, and a big showdown with everything at stake in the end.

This is a really great one. I think the infectious sense of fun here would make it a good entry point for a newbie.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby jellydonut25 » Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:54 pm

Inglourious Basterds - picked up the blu from Blockbuster for $8...it's scratched. 99% of the movie plays fine, but it skips over the Cat People montage, and the beginning of the theater, coming in right where Brad Pitt says "Gorlomi" over and over. 8 and a half minutes of the movie...

Outlander - this one is a little long in the tooth...there are definitely scenes that could be excised completely and others that could be shortened, leading to a much more fun overall experience. It's an okay monster movie though.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby XvGojira » Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:58 pm

Thor: The Dark World - I liked it. Not sure if I like the first more or not. It really upped the ante compared to the first. A more epic fights, expanded the universe, and more varied locations. The movie did pick up a lot when Loki joined in and I kind of dislike that Erik has become sort of a joke. While it was funny, it's just sort of weird turning this respected scientist into a buffoon, like how Marcus Body became a joke character in The Last Crusade. I liked both bumps at the end, although I think the first one that sets up Guardians of the Galaxy confused most of my theater.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Mon Dec 02, 2013 1:35 pm

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby jellydonut25 » Mon Dec 02, 2013 1:40 pm

Gills.

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Mon Dec 02, 2013 5:29 pm

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Mon Dec 02, 2013 8:18 pm

King Kong vs Godzilla: What is there to say about the idea behind this movie that isn’t brilliant? Back in 1933, the world was amazed with the monstrous gigantic ape known as King Kong with ground breaking effects at that time due to stop motion. It was amazing. Toho repeated a similar situation when they first created Godzilla. As such, what better way to show off these two colossal titans than to have them battle each other? It sounds great in theory, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

That is not to say this movie is bad by any means, as it is pretty good. Unfortunately, the plot behind it is weird to say the least, some of the characters are useless, and the monster designs themselves are less than stellar. First, the plot. Two Japanese men are sent to an island to collect berries when they come across islanders who worship a god named Kong. There, they find a way to knock him out and take him back to Japan to have him fight Godzilla, who has been freed from the ice he buried in in the previous movie. This plot idea just sounds better on paper than it does in action because using the berry juice to knock Kong out and then drag him across the ocean on a giant raft is just so goofy. And then to have Kong powered up by electricity while Godzilla is now weak against is also weird. To be fair, from what I have gathered, this movie was originally supposed to be Frankenstein vs. Godzilla, so the electricity powering Kong makes sense from that perspective, but having a giant gorilla randomly be powered by electricity out of the blue without any previous knowledge of it just comes off as random and be a sudden way to extend the fight beyond just Kong getting his butt whooped. For what it is worth, it does make the battle interesting and adds another layer, so I’ll stop nit picking against it.

My second gripe comes from the monster suits as I just do not care for their designs. Kong’s body looks fine but his face looks like it was beaten with a shovel as he eyes always look messed up and sleepy at every camera angle. As for Godzilla, I really do not care for this look. Yes, his head does look more reptilian than it did in the movie before it, but the costume looks more like a blow up doll than an actual monster. There does not seem to be any lining between the arms and shoulders, so it just appears as if the arms are just sticking out of the sides of the body rather than being actual arms. It also does not help when the costume seems to fold and crease when Godzilla is movie his arms about. Lastly, gone is his fourth toe and ears, which became an unfortunate trend throughout the remainder of the Showa saga. Nevertheless, as I said, these costumes just do not work for me all that well.

Moving on to the characters, some of them are good, some are fun, but some are absolutely useless. Osamu is fine as the main character, but it is like everyone else around him is a moron, especially his sister Fumiko. She is completely helpless. She has to be rescued from Godzilla’s attack only to then have to be rescued from Kong’s clutches fifteen minutes later. On the other hand, Osamu’s boss is a very fun character (see below).

Despite my issues with the costumes and plot, the effects are quite good in the movie. Kong’s face turning blue is really well done when he is struck by lightning, as are the crumbling buildings when he and Godzilla face off. The one that shines for me the most is the way they do the giant octopus monster. It is obvious they super imposed an octopus on a screen to make him look huge (which does take away from the scene, as you can see the shadows of the spears and stuff being thrown at the screen), but the execution of this scene is extremely well done. Lastly, the paint job they did on the islanders is actually pretty well done despite it being obvious that they are Japanese. It does what it is supposed to well enough, so there is no reason to nitpick it.

Overall, King Kong vs Godzilla is a missed bag of a movie in terms of execution, but for what it is, it is highly enjoyable and fun. I wouldn’t say it is anywhere near the best of Godzilla’s movies, but if you want a nice simple movie where you just see two popular behemoths go eat each other’s throats, you can do a lot worse. I give this movie a 6/10.

And here is not only what makes the boss man fun, but I can also see die hard fans making this reaction after they saw my score:

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby lhb412 » Tue Dec 03, 2013 1:10 am

Clash of the Titans

You know, the common beef with these Harryhausen films is: "if only the actors were as a good as Harryhausen's animation! Har! har! har!" That's unfair, because 1) what is as cool as Harryhausen animation? 2) The actors and story are almost always completely fine as what they are intended to be: fun, storybook adventure stories. I think people just hate fun, and there are actually some really great actors in the supporting roles in this one.

Everyone talks about the Kraken and Medusa, but I want to speak up for a personal favorite creature: the giant vulture. Vultures already have this monstrous look, so they kinda already resemble Harryhausen monsters!
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Tue Dec 03, 2013 1:32 am

That's because Perseus is nothing more than a wooden one dimensional character in the movie. His hair has more acting skills than he does.

Vertigo - To be quite honest, I'm not sure what I think of this movie. On one hand, it was a really good movie. It told a good story with some great characters, and had some nice plot twists. On the other hand, the movie was slow moving and not at all what I was anticipating. Of course, that is a good thing, but I guess I was expecting too much in terms of suspense since this movie is said to be Hitchcock's best movie. It was very good, but still not as good as Psycho. To be fair though, it is definitely a movie I need to rewatch in the near future, as I have a feeling it is one of those movies I will enjoy a whole lot more the second time around. And what that means is that the movie probably did what it was intended to do, so I'm giving this thing a nice 8/10 spinning stars.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby lhb412 » Tue Dec 03, 2013 1:45 am

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Tue Dec 03, 2013 2:18 am

You mean you do not cringe every time he opens his mouth up during the scene when he wakes up in the ampitheater and is given his weapons?
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby lhb412 » Tue Dec 03, 2013 8:22 pm

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby jellydonut25 » Tue Dec 03, 2013 9:37 pm

Brave - it was okay. Seemed a little simple. But it was a neat little fantasy story/fairy tale.

Monsters Inc - this is my favorite Pixar film, personally. I find it absolutely hilarious, and during a recent re-watch of a lot of these Pixar films, this was the only one where I was CONSISTENTLY laughing throughout. Not that the other films are bad or anything, but this one has me in stitches.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby XvGojira » Tue Dec 03, 2013 9:53 pm

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Tue Dec 03, 2013 10:47 pm

My only problem with Brave was the lack of a true antagonist. It just needed something truly threatening or something consequential to the tale to really have a huge impact.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby XvGojira » Tue Dec 03, 2013 10:54 pm

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby lhb412 » Tue Dec 03, 2013 11:36 pm

Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold

Hot damn, these movies are so good! In this one Zatoichi comes to a town to pay respects to someone he accidentally killed years ago, then he becomes a suspect when the villagers tax money is stolen. Naturally, Ichi's got to clear his name and (also naturally) it's the crooked government officials who are actually behind the theft. Tomisaburo Wakayama (Katsu's real life brother and star of Lone Wolf and Cub) returns to the series for the second time as a whip-wielding mercenary who poses the biggest challenge to Ichi on the fighting front.

Beautiful visuals, wonderful fights, and just an enormously entertaining film all around.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby DannyBeane » Wed Dec 04, 2013 12:45 am

Gunhed
What's right.
The spfx and mise-en-scene of this film are fantastic. The score is also really well done. This movie feels and sounds like an 80s anime come to life and I really love that.
What's wrong.
Literally everything else. The characters are terrible. I can't empathize with any of them. The story is convoluted. The pacing is dreadful. The acting? Wooden. Only George Lucas has used worse scene transitions than the ones used in this movie. This movie is garbage. If MST3k were to come back, this film should go to the front of the line to be torn apart.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby jellydonut25 » Wed Dec 04, 2013 2:34 am

Much ado about Nothing (2012/2013) - Joss Whedon takes the Shakespearian script, sets the movie in modern day, uses his usual cast, and sees what happens...

the result is a hit-and-miss film that for me is essentially an admirable failure. At times, it's funny to see people speaking with such eloquence while acting like such prototypical American self-involved trash heaps with zero personality and completely self-involved personalities, and the Olde English makes the physical comedy pop...but can we just be honest and admit nobody talks like that and to really GET half the jokes in Shakespeare you need to actually study it? All of that stuff falls flat. It breezes by so fast at times that the actors may as well be speaking a non-subtitled foreign language, and unfortunately, Whedon doesn't always seem to know when those moments occur to break up the inane chatter and hundreds of years old speech up with some of the physical comedy that he does at other times.

I alternated between loving and hating this. I mean, I was laughing when Benedick is rolling around outside the house, trying to eavesdrop while Claudio, Leonato and Pedro are talking about Beatrice, because of the juxtaposition of ironically awful physical comedy with the speech....or when the Shakespearian text was used to subvert the pitfalls of that very same text (at one point, Claudio says something about how silence is the only true reaction to a certain event but then goes on for a solid minute or two about his feelings and the greatness of silence)...but then I hated pretty much everything with Nathan Fillion's dialogue. His acting performance was fine, but the character's dialogue and the humor in it comes from his malapropisms and they are rushed through so quickly and frequently that they become unintelligible nonsense and for entire stretches while his character is onscreen I sat there staring at people jabber at each other nonsensically.

Not to mention: the whole "use the Shakespearian dialogue in a modern setting" thing isn't as inventive as all the Whedon fanboys want you to believe. It's been done before. So, you can't judge the film on its inventiveness in that regard, only by its boldness and then the performances, none of which really work for me...as though (gasp) modern day actors don't understand what the hell is being said in dialogue that was written over 400 years ago, and so aren't sure exactly how to act, emote, and portray their characters.

I can't help but feel the use of Shakespeare's dialogue is a cop-out. You just have everyone spout off lines that "the best playwright ever" already wrote, dress it up in some modern setting, and every up-their-own-ass critic and wannabe high-handed intellectual eats it up like you've just woven a complete masterpiece. More challenging, IMHO, would be taking this same rather simplistic story, with all its trappings wherein a modern day audience would think "Who cares?" (I mean, the main point of conflict is that someone lies about a girl being a virgin...and then they are ready to kill each other over this bit of 'dishonor', a notion that's actually laughable here in the 21st century where I live and apparently nobody who likes this movie does), and present it in intelligible, modern-day English, and still manage to make it funny and work.

I give it a 2/5 for trying, and having an undeniable manic energy.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:44 pm

Godzilla vs Gigan: What do you get when cockroaches from outer space want to take over the Earth? You get Godzilla vs. Gigan. Yes, seriously, cockroaches from outer space.

That statement alone describes why this movie is bad as a whole. However, that is not the only reason this movie is bad, it is more for the fact that it is just a poorly made movie in everything it does. First off, the plot in and of itself is already dumb, so why not add to it by having it feature some of the most uninteresting characters found in the entire franchise. In fact, I have finished the movie not even ten minutes ago and the only character name I can give you is Shima, which belongs to the last name of the two siblings of the movie, and they are not even the main character. That is quite bad. The only positive I can say in the plot department is that I admire Toho connecting this movie to its previous entry.

Moving away from the bad plot and bland characters, even everything surrounding the monsters is not even good. For one thing, this movie does not make sense in that Ghidorah was killed in Destroy All Monsters, yet, he is present here. Some have said that this movie could take place before the events of Destroy since that was meant to be in the future, but if that were the case, why is Monster Island in existence when it was first completed in that movie? Not to mention all of the stock footage used when on the island. Of course, that is minor compared to the biggest atrocity this movie pulls off, the monsters themselves. First off, they are using the same Godzilla costume that has been in use since 1968, and it shows. The costume is deteriorating on screen as the movie unfolds. You can see pieces of the costume falling off the arms and legs in battle and the costume even has tears in it (which is probably why they had Gigan “cut” Godzilla). It just looks awful all around. Of course, that is one of three problems surrounding the monsters.

Next up is Ghidorah, who is pretty much just standing still the entire movie unless he is shown in stock footage. I did not know that Tokyo was actually in two different time zones of the world and that only some of it is night while other parts are day. I guess you learn something every day. Seriously though, they used a massive amount of stock footage from all of his previous appearances and it just looks bad. Godzilla’s costume will change sporadically as well as there are times when he is fight Ghidorah with the footage from the monster’s namesake movie, so we see the 64 Godzilla costume being attacked, only to have it move on to a scene from Destroy All Monsters, which brings us back to the same costume in this movie, but when it was fresh. There are also times when Ghidorah is fighting Godzilla, but the camera focuses on buildings being blown up by his electric ray with just sound effects signifying that the two are battling each other. This happens several times throughout the movie.

Then there is Anguirus, who just barely does more than Ghidorah when he is not shown in stock footage, as he too has a tendency to just stand there, staring into nothingness. Anguirus is so pathetic in this movie that he is actually warded off by the army. Yes, THE ARMY!!! This is like the first for any Kaiju movie. You would think the military would hold some sort of celebration for finally achieving a victory on their own.

The only praise I can give this movie is for Gigan himself. His design is extremely well done and unique. He is a cyborg, so one would think there is a great deal of backstory Toho could be telling about this monster. Instead, they chose to just keep on moving with their abhorrent plot without putting any effort into it to make the viewer care about anything going on on the screen. It is a shame because Gigan is one of the most wasted monsters ever because in the forty years he has been around, Toho has never bothered to explore this monster at all. In fact, all three of the movies he is featured him are some of the worst Godzilla movies out there, making me wonder if Gigan is cursed.

Overall, there is not much I can positive about this movie outside of Gigan, and even he is treated like a rubber doll than a monster. As such, I have no choice but to give this movie a poor rating of 3/10 stars. Maybe in the next era of Godzilla moves, Toho will finally do something to give Gigan a respectable movie with a tale to tell behind the creature’s mechanical origins.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby jellydonut25 » Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:49 pm

The characters in Godzilla vs. Gigan are among the most colorful, most fun, and most delightful of the ENTIRE SERIES and they are essentially the only reason I revisit this film as often as I do. Calling them bland and uninteresting just because they don't throw each other's names around every five minutes is just...wrong. Besides which, aside from many of the characters in Gojira, and Miki Segusa, I'm hard-pressed to remember the name of ANY character from ANY Godzilla film. The Controller? There's one.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Wed Dec 04, 2013 7:14 pm

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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby jellydonut25 » Wed Dec 04, 2013 8:36 pm

GMK has one human character worth caring about: Commander Sourpuss.
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Re: Recently watched movies!

Postby Dr Kain » Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:03 pm

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