Review the last movie you saw!

[freaknr1]

I really enjoyed this thread back in the old forum, as I love to discuss movies with people, and hope that no-one minds me starting this thread.

I just came home from watching Spliced, a sci-fi horror-movie by Vincenzo Natali (the guy whomade Cubes) and starring Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley and Delphine Chanéac

Spliced tells the story about two scientists (Brody and Polley), who have made groundbreaking discoveries in splicing genes from different animals and thus create new creatures. After their latest sucess, two hybrids called Fred and Ginger (who look like something Franken Fran would sew together on a day off), they wish to go even further and add human DNA into the mix. Due to the public reaction to a move like that, their employer won't allow them to do so, but naturally they do it anyway. The result is Dren, a strange female creature who has her share of suprises.

Unlike most Sci-Fi films these days, Splice dosen't focus that much at action, but at the story and characters, which is a good thing. Brody and Polley both do a great job and they have good chemistry. But the one who steals the show is without a doubt Delphine as Dren. The effects that create Dren are great and it's really interesting to see how she goes through her various stages of maturity. But when Dren is grown up, Delphine is able to give her a wonderfull mix of childlike innocence, animal-like cuteness and creepyness. Truly some excelent acting.

Also, unlike most movies where scientists play God, Splice never says anything about wether science like this is right or wrong. Shure, it puts up the ethical and moral questions surrounding such science, but never points any fingers. Instead, the reasons things go wrong is basicly because the two scientists are lousy parents. Science itself isn't good or evil, but it all boils down to the human factor.

As for now, all you need to know is that Splice is a great sci-fi film that you should go see. It has some problems and the ending is weak compared to the rest of the movie, but other than that it's truly interesting and something you won't forget in a while.
I give it an 8(-)/10.

Next week I plan to see a movie that I've been waiting on for a long time, strangly also starring Adrian Brody, Predators. Finally it's comming to this rock that I live on.

[Markus1985]

It's gonna be tough to review this one.

Yesterday i saw Christopher Nolan's Inception and i really liked it.
The movie features Leonardo Di Caprio playing the role of a man with the knowledge and equipment to enter peoples subconsious while they sleep.

That's all im gonna say about the plot, because it's really a plot best unfolded as it happens.

It's also a very imaginative and briliant film in the way that no matter what happens (even when it's relatively calm and quiet) it always keeps you in a state of thrill and excitement (especially by the second half). And the way how Nolan builds up a world around the dreamworld, and how they play around with those parameters while dreaming, while still being believable and understandable ads to the brilliance.

Alot of people (especially those into anime) will probably draw many paralells to Paprika and Paranoia Agent by Satoshi Kon. But they are in no way related other than the way to enter and use dreams or psychology for your own gain.

I give it a solid 9 / 10, and can almost garanty that you've never seen something like this done this way before.

[freaknr1]

I saw Inception 2-3 weeks ago and totally agree with Markus. Awesome movie.

Now, the other day I saw Predators, a sequel to one of my favourite action-movies ever. My expectations where pretty high, as the Alien vs Predator-movies dissapointed me to put it nicely. I was really looking foreward to see one of my favourite movie-monsters back in shape.

And I wasn't dissapointed. Predators follows a group of soldiers, mercenaries, psychoes and the like, who wake up in a strange jungle with no idea how they got there. They soon discover that they are hunted by our old friends, the Predators, and must work together to survive against these "ugly motherfuckers".

Predators manages to what the AvP-movies didn't, to have cool and interesting action combined with good characters. While Adrian Brody and his friends are an interesting lot, they lack the chemistry that Arnold and his team had in the original. But that was because that was a team of veterans who had done dozens og jobs together and you really got a feeling that was true. Here there are a bunch of random people thrown together, but that dosen't mean we don't get some funny character-moments. Each person of the miss-matched gang have their own quircks and the actors do a decent job.

The predators look great. It's fantastic to see such great use of costumes in this time of gc and computer-effects. Of course, there are such effects as well, but they are rarely thrown in your face. Now, the movie tries to create the same feeling of suspence that the first movie had, but dosen't to as good a job as the original. That dosen't mean that it fails, it's just not as good in the suspence-department.

All in all, Predators is a great action-movie, especially if you are a fan of the series. It's not as great as the original (but without Arnold, who expected it to be), but at least as good (actually a bit better) than Predator 2. And a thousand times better than the tragic AvP-movies. Plenty of refferences to the original also helps. 7+/10


I've also finally seen the original Frankenstein from 1931. I really can't judge it the same way as a modern movie, but I will say that it's a classic and deserves all the praise it gets. It's an iconic movie that every horror-fan, movie-geek or geek in general should see. So many memorable scenes. My favourties must be the lab when the monster is born and when the monster plays with the girl by the lake.

Yesterday I got hold of the original, uncut Godzilla on dvd. I can hardly wait to see it.

[Hoborginc]

The last movie I saw in theaters was Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

I haven't read the comic, so I can't comment on that, but it's based on a comic.

Essentially it's a romantic/action/music comedy with significant video game elements. Michael Cera plays an indie band member, who has to fight his girlfriend's seven evil exes in a series of boss battles in various forms, complete with various powers, extra lives, and bad guys exploding into coins. Lots of funny characters, lots of music, and a very surreal feel to everything.

While a lot of the humor consists of non-sequitors, simple caricatures, and cheesy puns that are so bad they're good again, everything was very well delivered and solidly put together. Visually, the movie was excellent, as everything had comic-style and video game effects carefully inserted into it, which I thought would be annoying, but they were integrated too well to get in the way. Whenever the bands were playing, the overall result was gorgeous.

Character-wise, everyone is annoying in one way or another, but together they results in a fun combination. Everyone goes between scenes of awkwardness and humiliation and ridiculous badassery alternately, and it's always enjoyable. The scenes go by very fast, which, I understand, is a result of squishing a significant amount of the comic's content into a small package, so the pacing does seem a little weird at times, and things seem cut short, but it's not too big of a problem.

While you can interpret it on various levels, like saying that the video game veneer that everything is seen through represents this or that, I don't particularly care. Overall, the movie was presented in a very playful manner, but was simultaneously meticulously detailed. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but it was both unique and a very enjoyable ride, so I'll give it an 8/10.



Inception, by the way, was amazing.

To a certain extent, it's also interesting because it's spoiler-immune. Even if you tell someone what happens, they'll never understand it anyway unless they've already seen it.

[freaknr1]

Sadly, Scott Pilgrim won't come to my neck of the woods until October, so I'll have to wait a while.

Last night I finally was able to see The Expendables, the new actionfest from Sylvester Stallone, starring himself and pretty much every action-star from the 80's except Van Damme and Segal. Being a hugh fan of good old action-movies, where one guy or a small group take down tons of badguys with lots of guns and pure testosteron-driven manliness, I've been waiting for this movie for a looooooong time. The Expendables is about a group of mercenaries called The Expendables (duh), who specialize in jobs to difficult for your avrage badass. The group consists of Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews and Randy Couture. They are hired by non other than Bruce Willis to assasinate a dictator of a small island-nation (David Zayas) and also run into a rouge CIA-agent (Eric Roberts) and his massive bodyguard ("Stone Cold" Steve Austin). And then there is the usual legions of henchmen who all have graduated from the Stormtrooper-Academy of Aiming and who only serve as canonfodder.

So, what do I think now that I've finally seen it? I saw it together with 4 friends and we all had a great time. I'll say right now that The Expendables has much of the awesomly badass action and bad acting that makes 80's action so fun. There were moments where the entire cinema roared with laughter or cheered loudly on Sly and the boys. So the movie is good then? Or at least so bad that it's good? Well...

While I did have a great time, the movie had some major flaws that kept it from being truly awesome. While what we see is all good and well, there still are lots of unused potential. The Expendables are all rather interesting characters, even if they are all stereotypical tough-guys. But the only ones we really get to know are Stallone, Statham and maybe Li and Rourke. Everyone else are in terrible need of more screentime, especially Crews and Lundgren. I won't spoil anything, but I though Lundgren would get a much bigger role than he actually got, which is sad, because he is awesome. The villian also does something rather strange and stupid at the end which didn't make much sense until the very end. And even then it didn't make much sense.

I also didn't like some of the technical things in the movie. Some of the explitions looked really fake and there should have been more blood. I was hopeing for something like the final battle in Rambo 4. There are some scenes with such carnage, but many times there is almost nothing at all. Also, much of the blood is obvious CG, which is really dissapointing. But my biggets problem is with the camera. Sometimes it so close to the characters that you can almost count their nosehairs and it's really distracting. The same problem happens often during the action-scenes, where the camera should be panned out so that we could see everything. The camera is also incredibly shakey during many of the actionscenes. The camera alone detracts almost 2 grades from this movie imo. Say what you will about the 80's action-classic, but at least you could see what was going on.

Before I saw this movie, I had heared incredibly different opinions on it from reviewers I respect. Moviebob and Spoony hated it, while AVGN, the Nostalgia Critic and Angry Joe loved it. After seeing it myself I must say that I have mixed feelings. It's not as good as some say, but not as terrible as other say either. It's a fun action-movie, but it could have been so much better if they at least had used the camera differently. But I did have a fun time, and seeing all those awesome action-veterans kicking ass was awesome.
So all in all, I'll have to settle for 6/10 or 7/10.

SPOILER!
I just had to mention this. As a hugh Arnold Schwarzenegger-fan, my favourite scene in the entire movie is the scene where Stallone, Willis and Arnold are all in the same room. They make some lame jokes and don't do that much, but it was awesome nd everyone in the theater laughed.

[makezury]

I think I'll makes this short.

So, last night I saw "The A-Team" revamp, which, after seeing the trailer a year or so ago, had me pretty convinced that my childhood heroes for up for slaughter. Most luckily that was not the case, as, despite being all soaked and cover in Hollywood scented cologne and trading off realistic representations of physics for flashier special effects scenes( like most movies do nowadays anyway, but it annoys me nonetheless), turned out to be a surprisingly fun and enjoyable experience.

Most of the team's characters did their parts justice - Face and Murdock were just the way I could have hoped them to be, very close to their TV series's counterparts. B.A. was ever so slightly disappointing, while Hannibal, though he remained the teams main strategist, I would have liked him to do more disguise related trickeries.

Things I thought the movie lacked include: more chase scenes, more of The Van, more welding and more of the original The A-Team's theme song. The movie did have some references to the original materiel thought, even sporting cameos form some of the original crew!

8/10

Also, something I found funny is that it seems that Tom Morello( formerly of Rage Against The Machine) seems to be passing his days now by fixing up a track or two for major Hollywood films - his name can be found in the credits for this movie as well as Iron Man 2. Tisk, tisk tisk...

P.s. Saw "Inception" in the theatre a month or so ago and, I might get some bad remarks for this, I did't really like it all that much. I found to be a good movie, but not in any point during that movie did my mind get blown. Please let me know what is the supposedly epic part of it that I am missing, since, well, it's held in pretty high regard at the moment and I would like to give it the credit, if I saw it fit( which at moment, I don't). 7/10

[Timmo]

Last night I saw "The Town".
It had good critics and although I'm not a big fan of Ben Afflec
(who also directed the movie) I watched it because
it has been compared to "Heat" in a good way.
At least I have to say I really liked the movie,
altough I wasn't as good as 'Heat'.
(Nothing beats the street-gunfight with the cops!)
The movie had some nice Action sequences and great dialogues.
On my opinion the Lovestory was a little bit too cheesy,
but Ben's best friend compensated this.
Great cast (Ben is a bit too handsome for a Gangster),
characters, Chase- and Action sequences.
Altogether a solid 7-8 out of 10.

[freaknr1]

Wow. Ben Affleck is good in a movie? That sounds pretty interesting.

[Markus1985]

P.s. Saw "Inception" in the theatre a month or so ago and, I might get some bad remarks for this, I did't really like it all that much. I found to be a good movie, but not in any point during that movie did my mind get blown. Please let me know what is the supposedly epic part of it that I am missing, since, well, it's held in pretty high regard at the moment and I would like to give it the credit, if I saw it fit( which at moment, I don't). 7/10

Well my mind wasn't really blown away in that sense either. What did impress me was how easy it was too follow, yet also being exciting and thrilling at times. And even if stuff sometimes seems to happen at random you still accept it in the context of the dreams in the story.
Like a rollercoaster you just have to sit down and enjoy the ride, even if there are alot of Issac Newton going on in the bakground.


Yesterday i watched The book of Eli, a story about a world destroyed by a nuclearwar where everything got burnt, and civilization as we know it is gone. All that's left is an wild-west world where only the fittest or smartest survive.

The story centers around the main character (Denzel Washington) who's on a mission, heading west with a book that can change everything, and the bad guy (Gary Oldman) who wants it for himself. And both of them show why they are considered such splendid actors, with their awesome performances giving nuance to these characters.

The movie is beautifully shot and has a western look over it mixed in with a bit of the grittyness of madmax and Fallout. Another big plus is that even if it's an actionfilm, with passages of gritty and "realistic" action scenes, it also has a tender message to back it up. It's a thrilling action film with a heart and soul.

8-9/10

People had more than they needed. We had no idea what was precious and what wasn't.
We threw away things people kill each other for now. - The Book of Eli

[freaknr1]

I just spent the last 10-20 minutes writing a long review of the newest Disney-movie, Tangled, that I saw yesterday. When I tried to post it, turned out that my inactivity had logged me out of the forum, and my post was lost. This has happened me before and I was going to copy and paste my post in case such a thing happened. But because it is late and I am tired, I naturally forgot. Now, I really want to explain my opinion on this movie, but I just don't want to write my post all over again right now. So I'll just sum up my opinion here and now and write my review again later.

Ok, so Tangled.

Pros:
+ Fantastic animation. Some of the best I've seen. Easily on par with Pixar. Maybe even better at points. Especially Rapunzels hair looks great. (Which it kind of needed to considering it's such a big part of her charatcer).
+ Good and fun characters, especially the heroinne Rapunzel. A strong female lead. The hero, Flynn Ryder, is also good and strikes a good balance between being a little bit of an asshole and a good guy. Rapunzels kameleon pet is also full of charm. And the movie has the most badass horse I've seen in a movie in a long time.
+ Good jokes and humor. Some scenes really had me laughing.
+ Entertaining action.
+ Cute romance that dosen't feel too forced.
+ Has that classic Disney-charm.

Cons:
- While I did like the villian and her Lady Tremaine-like style of manipulative mostly subtile evil, she isn't that memorable compared to other Disney-villians. This is both positive and negative, as usually the villians steal the show. Here the heroinne gets to shine. But at the same time you expect more from a Disney-villian.
- The songs are good and nice, but not very memorable. I didn't have any of them stuck in my brain after leaving the theater like I usually do. Like with "Friends on the other side" from The Princess and the Frog. This is a big problem considering Disney-movies are known for their memorable songs.
- Clichè-filled final act. Up to the final 15-20 minutes, the movie had been rather traditional, but fun and well executed. But the finaly just felt like they threw every clichè in the book at me and I ended up rolling my eyes. I was hoping for a more creative, or at least better executed finaly. It just felt weak compared to the rest of the movie.

But despite these problems, Tangled was still a solid and fun movie with a great, strong female lead. And it shows that Disney still can do more than make more than crappy sitcoms and live-action tv-movies and promote terrible tween-bands. When they try, they can still make some of that good old Disney-magic. 8-/10