Movie/film thread: resurrected

Because 300 Rise of an Empire is such crap, I watched the original 300 again last night to see if my memory was working or not, because I didn't remember it being as awful. And it's not. 300 is kinda cool. It has a story with people doing things and something at stake. It has about the same level of nearly nudes but where Rise has gleaming white skin like searchlights in the night, 300 is, if anything, understated. The fellows appear bronzed and the fact they have their shirts of literally all the time isn't even noticeable. I mention this because Rise pretty much really is all about the shiny white chest (and some growly chick). Also, in 300, there's only one plummy accent, the story-teller dude's. (I don't know why he was playing up the roundness of his vowels - he's Australian in real life, maybe that's it.) Rise is all accent, all the time.

300 was not awful. Ok, certain parts were, like all the historical incorrectness but then again, it is impossible for Hollywood to make any movie about ancient Greece or ancient Rome without screwing it up. At least 300 had a decent plot and cool fights...the sequel had none of those.

(Maybe this should be in the "What's in the news" thread?)

Yes, men do have boobs. My wife tells me mine taste faintly of beer. Never thought anyone would want to make a movie about them though.

"THE FAULT IN OUR STARS" was an interesting tearjerker movie.  Teenagers will love it . The story is based on the New York Times best selling novel by John Green. My older neighbour cried her eyes out and I heard an old bloke behind me blowing his nose quite frequently. I guess it depends on your life experiences as to how much this will affect you. My neighbour thinks that I'm a hard old fart because I don't cry (unless I'm punched in the face).  Hazel (Shaileen Woodley) is a teen with stage 4 thyroid cancer. She meets Gus (Ansel Elgort) at a support group and their friendship blossoms. Hazel is reluctant at first to get involved,because she knows that she will die.  I thought it was nice that two young people found some happiness on top of the underlying sadness. The movie is getting good ratings here in Australia.

The Raid 2: Berandal

Iko Uwais reprising his role as Rama, an undercover cop reluctantly on the trail of corrupt police. On this trail he must join a criminal organization and wade through many, many men like so many planks of balsa wood that sometimes fight back. Many, many high speed fist fights are had. So many, in fact, that they become banal. As a martial arts boxer, Iko Uwais is really, really fast. The fisticuffs are so fast it's sometimes difficult to get a sense of the physical power behind them (except maybe when he takes his shirt off - for a little guy, he has a giant's shoulders). In any case, he beats up lots of people (because reasons), but it's only really the last third of the movie where they turn on the ultraviolence, right about where the car chase begins. I maybe liked the first movie better.

Bad Words

A grown man enters a national spelling bee competition because reasons. Some laugh-out-loud, tears-in-the-eyes funny moments. Some moments that could have been funny but really weren't. Jason Bateman's character was great though. Perhaps not carried through to proper fruition.

Transcendence

Lame.

Johnny Depp becomes an AI that takes over the internet prompting They^TM to turn off the internet. Roll credits. I have the impression this was supposed to be a love story. It, however, wasn't. It was some kind of mechanical throwback to I don't know which decade of boring scifi movie making. I mean, for most of the movie the AI is an image on a flat screen tv. How is that even scifi anymore?

"The Wolf of Wall Street"...what an utter piece of self-indulgent crap. This movie had no redeeming qualities. It was bilge...bad bilge...bilge that had gone rotten, been crapped by other bilge and then left to simmer in the sunshine in South China in July....

Sabotage

Unusual movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger very nearly presents an actual character, and an interesting one too. But there's a lot of shallow violence porn and aggression that in the end makes the movie kind of hateful. Which is a pity because the supporting characters are super, weird accents aside. (I looked em up: Investigator Caroline Brentwood (Olivia Williams) and her partner Darius Jackson (Harold Perrineau).)

Spring Breakers

Art.

Really, really horrible art.

Unpleasant to watch, and an assault by banality. I skimmed.

Sabotage

Unusual movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger very nearly presents an actual character, and an interesting one too. But there's a lot of shallow violence porn and aggression that in the end makes the movie kind of hateful. Which is a pity because the supporting characters are super, weird accents aside. (I looked em up: Investigator Caroline Brentwood (Olivia Williams) and her partner Darius Jackson (Harold Perrineau).)

I liked it.

It also has Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard, Mireille Enos and Josh Holloway in it.

The number 23, starring Jim Carrey
Don't read about it, just watch it, faintly sin city style film noir storytelling in parts, psychological thriller/suspense, I liked it very much.

Godzilla (2014)

They decided to not bother with any kind of plot and just go for action, action, action.

It was boring, boring, boring.

They wasted some good actors and the female characters especially were just brutally written.

Looked like a lot of money spent but none of it on a script.

So many movies now are just made for 14 year old boys, it seems that anything good is now on cable TV.

All Cheerleaders Die (2013)

Outstanding.

A genre film, obviously - cheerleaders, high school, horror/comedy - but at several points it amps right up to 11 in splendid and effective fashion and is modestly subversive of genre expectations.

 

Starred Up

A 19-year-old violent offender gets "starred up", counted as too violent for juvenile detention so moved early to adult prison, where he meets his father.

I was puzzled by this movie. It's violent and realistic, but it's also set up as Greek tragedy, and I think probably the story payoff is in the former rather than the latter, which is possibly not all the movie could have been. (You could also say Ben Mendelssohn was not quite as scary as he should have been.) Meanwhile, still a compelling movie.