Recently watched movies!

[Dr Kain]

[lhb412]

[Destroysall]

Godzilla Tokyo SOS - Saw it with a group of friends. I actually really like this movie and I forgot about it since I haven't seen it much. It's score is awesome, the story is pretty cool, and the acting was not so bad. Definitely the second best film in the Millennium series.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla - Some great character development, and some cool points and shots made. I now see why I prefer Tokyo SOS more, and its probably due to the fact that this movie took the time to explain Kiryu a lot more, which is fine. Some cool parts, but definitely not in my top 3 for the Millennium.

Frankenstein vs. Baragon - I forgot how great this movie is. The cinematography isn't too bad, I love the opening credits. There are some cool elements in it. Made me give confirmation that both this movie and War of the Gargantuas have to be part of Toho's "Golden Era". I love these movies!

Seeing Guardians of the Galaxy tonight, will report review later.

[Dr Kain]

Guardians of the Galaxy - If you want to see a movie about a bunch of comic heroes you have never heard of before, this is the movie for you and it is down right fantastic. The movie is just so fun and action packed with some great character development that is definitely one of the best movies of the year. It isn't as deep as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes or as original as The Grand Budapest Hotel, but this movie does Star Wars better than most Star Wars. It also does a great job of building the Marvel universe as a whole rather than just the universe on Earth. There is a scene after the credits, so do not leave as it is hilarious. Of course, it is a Marvel movie, so you already know the rules of the credits. The actors are all fantastic and you would never know how badass a raccoon could be until this movie. Overall, I give it a nice 8/10 stars as it is better than Avengers and about the same length as Captain America 2.

[lhb412]

Guardians of the Galaxy

This is my kind of movie. Swashbuckling adventure, awesome creatures, hilarious, great music, so many cool characters that you immediately want to watch the movie again to get a bit more of them...



Best Marvel movie, one of my favorite comic book movie of the last decade or so along with Hellboy I & II, Scott Pilgrim, and Speed Racer.

[Dr Kain]

I guess I'm the only one that did not find Hellboy II to be anything special. In fact, I really did not care for the movie at all.

[lhb412]

Behind the Planet of the Apes

This two hour TV documentary hosted by Roddy McDowall was really important to my childhood. It and the 5 Apes films were run constantly for some month back in '98, so I got the backstory and the entire series all at the same time. I was 10 years old and ate it all up!

Planet of the Apes

Wow! I forgot what a horrible misanthrope Taylor is! I haven't heard it mentioned, but this story must be at least partially inspired by Gulliver's Travels. It really seems in the style of Swift.

[jellydonut25]

[klen7]

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

[lhb412]

Beneath the Planet of the Apes

This movie was better than I remembered. Sure, nowhere near as good, but a fun adventure film. I think the mutants were disappointing, though. They're there to provide a shocking twist but they're not much fun beyond that. In their scenes I kept wanting the film to cut back to Dr. Zaius and General Ursus (a new character I really liked).

[jellydonut25]

[lhb412]

[lhb412]

Escape From the Planet of the Apes

First: this movie is awesome. Second: if this movie wasn't awesome we wouldn't be talking about PotA the series. We'd talk about PotA the original film and (had the sequels maintained the downward trajectory of the first sequel) some cheap follow ups that you don't really need to watch. It's one of those rare franchise saving installments. Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter crush it.

[XvGojira]

[jellydonut25]

How many movies show an infant (granted an ape infant, but an infant nonetheless) being mercilessly shot five times?

Escape is that rare sequel that breathes new life into a franchise and I love it.


Saw a few yesterday myself...
Sabotage - It sucked. The characters are all awful, the script is atrocious, and it's unnecessarily gory.
Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda - Plenty of sharktopus vs. pteracuda action and a Conan O'Brien cameo. It's fun enough.
Blue Ruin - I liked this. It's a little like a more taut, less up-its-own-butt A History of Violence.

[lhb412]

I really enjoyed the bleak, pessimistic, and smart Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and finished off the series with Battle for the Planet of the Apes, which had, I think, the right idea about how to end the series (setting up the events seen in the first two films while leaving open the possibility for changing the future) but just had no money or time to execute what was a rather ambitious story. What's left is a cheap muddle that only gives the impression of what it was the filmmakers were going for. Still, Paul Williams got to play an orangutang.

[jellydonut25]

^Battle's a mess because Paul Dehn, who wrote films 2-4 got sick while writing the script for Battle, and Fox hired a pair of writers who had never seen an apes movie. They took his rough outline, discarded a lot of it, and went with a Cain & Abel story.

Dehn's idea had been to make Caesar a much more despotic character. Someone drunk with power and unflinchingly cruel towards humans, only realizing his folly at the end, and upset that he put into motion the world of the first two apes movies.

[Dr Kain]

Battle makes no sense to me. At the end of Conquest, Ceasar says they are going to show no mercy to any of the humans in his speech. He says they will kill them all. Then Battle comes out and they are working together with the humans. I'm just like, "WHAT??!"

Honestly though, I think the original and Conquest are the only really good ones. Beneath is just down right boring while Battle is just utter crap. The third one is mediocre.

[lhb412]

[Psycho Soldier]

Just finished watching a different movie called Conquest, this one a sword and sorcery film by Italian horror director Lucio Fulci. Not as relentlessly violent as I might've expected, but what violence and gore is shown is certainly pretty gross at times. The gratuitous nudity is about what I expected. Some of the special effects are pretty hard to take, especially some animated black arrows that fly over the heads of the protagonists. Not much in the way of characterization or plot, but it's still not a bad movie if you're looking for something a bit odd. There's a surprising twist near the end that actually works pretty well.

[Dr Kain]

Dragonball Z Battle of Gods - We got to see this at the Alamo Drafthouse tonight and it was down right incredible. Akira Toriyama was definitely on his A game when he wrote this as it was well written, well paced, it focused more on character development than action, and Beers is probably his most original Dragonball villain ever. In face, Beers was just plain awesome because he was not your typical villain. He had a personality, he had humor, and when he did not get that pudding, you wanted to see him get his revenge. It was also nice to see the cast back after all this time, especially in something that erases that terrible GT from continuity. Of course, this movie also helped make me want Toei to just do an entirely brand new adaptation of the manga without any of the filler or the annoyingly long episodes of pointless banter (and by new adaptation I mean of the whole thing from when Goku and Bulma first met through the Buu saga. Overall, this movie gets a great big 8/10 from me. Not only is it the best Dragonball movie ever, but it is also one of the best Dragonball stories period.

[lhb412]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

See this movie, because it's so bad I can't adequately describe it to you.

[XvGojira]