What movie are you watching right now?

[OL]

^^Really it's only the first two movies that matter. After that, the entire franchise is just a bad joke.

Finally got to see the animated Batman: Year One that came out some years back. It's always been one of my favorite Batman stories in the comics, but I'm always pretty apprehensive about bothering with these DC animated movies now; most that I've seen have been pretty weak. So I was happy to find that this was actually one of the few truly great ones. Excellent animation (such a stronger visual identity than the other DC animated flicks), great action, great acting (Brian Cranston is the perfect Jim Gordon; still think he should have been cast for the new movies).
It's funny, Batman Begins was supposed to be this gritty, "realistic" take on Batman, yet it ended with microwave weapons and ninjas. I always thought if they wanted to make a realistic version, they would have been much better off directly adapting Year One. And seeing this animated version, that opinion still feels dead-on. As "realistic" Batman stories go, this one is tops. Police corruption, petty crime, a cop trying to navigate it all, and some nutjob on the side running around in a costume and pissing off the higher-up society folk. We don't need no microwave emitters, supervillains, and city-wide disasters. We'll never see a live-action Batman flick like this, because it just isn't "big" enough (it ends with little more than a kidnapping and a fistfight on a bridge), but this is really my favorite kind of Batman yarn.

[Henry Spencer]

I thought you said the new Mad Max was great, Orange?

Yeah I read up about the Australian setting not British (you cant tell just from watching the films, or at least I didnt catch it) shortly after.

My god they look so similar. Which is which?

We don't have deserts in Britain.

[Calshot]

^^Really it's only the first two movies that matter. After that, the entire franchise is just a bad joke.

Finally got to see the animated Batman: Year One that came out some years back. It's always been one of my favorite Batman stories in the comics, but I'm always pretty apprehensive about bothering with these DC animated movies now; most that I've seen have been pretty weak.

Surprised you hadn't seen it since it came with one of the Arkham games.

Most of the newer DC movies are mediocre at best (at least the ones I've seen, I avoid watching anything with Damian), but the older ones have a better track record IMO.

Of the newer ones, I liked Gods and Monsters. It marks the return of Bruce Timm since he stepped down as creative director of the DC animated movies. Here are the short films he released before the movie came out to whet your appetite.

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[AnimeGamer183]

My god they look so similar. Which is which?

We don't have deserts in Britain.

Have you seen the original Mad Max with Mel Gibson? The movie is mostly shot on farm field back roads, a small town with a train station, the Enforcer station, and on a foresty lake property with a old country house and some run down barns and sheds. There isnt any desert at all in the original movie. I was also kind of surprised by this judging from the media I had seen of Fury Road, which was all desert. Maybe the setting changes a bit in the Mad Max 2 and 3, but I had hard time figuring out where they actually shot the first film, a couple times I even thought possibly it was in america. Also I wouldnt figure Britain had any deserts but I never really thought about it honestly.

I just finished watching Apocalypse Now Redux. Cappola really is a very thorough film maker, and Sheen and Brando put on some good performances in it. I also didnt realize how many well known actors are in the film and most of them in their younger days, like Harrison Ford and Lawrence Fishburne. The film definitely gives an interesting perspective into the mind set of the military and specifically during the vietnam war. The movie is a bit hard to figure out in some spots but its easy to get the general story of the film, its kind of like a game thats easy to pick up but hard to master. I think this is only the second time I have seen it and its been a good 8 years since my original watch, but this version of the film is also extended and 3 hours and 15 minutes long with 50 minutes of extra footage over the original, very worth the time to give it a watch.

[OL]

I thought you said the new Mad Max was great, Orange?

Yeah, it was. I meant the Terminator movies. Only the first two are any good.

[AnimeGamer183]

I watched Stand Up Guys with Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, it was an interesting movie that had its own little thing going on. It was more a less a gangster/crime film about old timers giving it one last go and while that doesnt sound particularly interesting, they made it about as good as that premise could possibly be so kudos on that front. But at the same time you could obviously tell parts were written basically to just have Pacino and Walken exclaim LOOK HOW OLD WE ARE lol they rob a pharmacy for viagra and old man pills at one point, have to figure out how to start up a push start Dodge Charger, break their remaining partner out of his nursing home to go do mini heists. so it doesnt take itself too seriously, but by the end you are kind of invested in what happens to these characters, so it is worth a watch.



I also just watched this documentary called The Mystery of Dark Matter, and basically... we dont know shit about the universe. We know 5% of it is made of atoms, 72% is made up of Dark Energy, and the remaining 23% is made up of Dark Matter, but we dont know what Dark Energy or Dark Matter actually is or what makes it up, all we know is dark energy is winning a battle with dark matter to make the universe expand at an accelerated rate. There are invisible forces at work in the universe that are constantly pushing and pulling each other, Dark Matter distorts and bends while Dark Energy is quickly expanding and ultimately over taking Dark Matter. So its kind of like watching a ping pong ball that is for some reason traveling like 100 times faster than the speed of light, while a mysterious paddle appears and just swats the ball at random in a different direction and we have no idea why either is doing what it is doing or what compounds make them up. And our best efforts to figure it out consist of huge particle simulation experiments that create different patterns and particle test results at random and all we can do is wait until the day it just happens to create the right combination of particles that MIGHT end up creating dark matter (and there is like a 1 in a billion chances of trial and error before the likely hood it actually happens), but we have ideas of what the results should look like if dark matter is created in these experiments, for example dark matter is invisible so big empty spaces in the test results could indicate dark matter MIGHT have been created...

Yeesh, that was kind of alot to take in, but fascinating at the same time. It was crazy to hear them say that the biggest discovery in this research is how much we dont know, and how ignorant of the universe we actually are.

[Riku Rose]

Yeah I read up about the Australian setting not British (you cant tell just from watching the films, or at least I didnt catch it) shortly after.

I'd say the fact that every person in it is Australian is the biggest giveaway...

Just so you know Game of Thrones isn't set in England despite the accents.

[AnimeGamer183]

Terminator 2: Judgement Day. I would say this film surpasses the original in every way and explains everything pretty nicely, also its been some 20 years since i have seen the movie, I think I was 11 or 12 when I first saw it. The beginning is nicely done, that opening sequence is deserving of its back ground music with Bad to the Bone and the movie basically holds your attention all the way through despite it being over 2 hours long. I would say its probably one of James Cameron's best all around films there was little to complain about with it, hats off to him. I bet the remaining films arent half of what the first 2 are, but im still gonna check them out just for continuities sake.

[OL]

You know what I want to see one day?
A movie where all of the characters that annoy the crap out of me get killed in unspeakably violent ways.
I just saw Jurassic World... and this is not that movie.
Oh my fucking SATAN, I wanted those stupid kids to die so badly. There isn't a single thing in their introductions that would actually make the audience give a shit about them, outside of maybe the thing about their parents getting divorced (which serves no purpose in the story otherwise, and would only mean anything to children of divorce in the audience... so it's a dumb, weak plot element either way). A cringy teenager who can't stop eye-fucking every girl he sees even though he's got a girlfriend at home who loves him, and an annoying little autistic (I think?) kid who cries over his parents' divorce one second, then excitedly rattles off dinosaur facts the next, like the most bipolar little shit the world has ever seen.
Even worse than any of that, when they finally get to see their superhot redhead aunt, and she's all showing interest in them and asking questions, they just stare at her with blank disappointment because "oh no, she's not gonna escort us around the island personally" (even though she fucking runs the place and has some serious work to do; I can't fault her character for that in any way shape or form, as much as the movie might want me to).
On that note, for some reason the movie seems to have it out for people that actually work for a living. First with trying to make the redhead out to be a bad aunt because she won't put off her job to go hang out with her dumb nephews, then with everything involving Vincent D'Onofrio's character (who of course is made out to be gleefully evil, even though he's really just doing the job he was given), then by joyfully executing the redhead's Irish assistant by having her be terrorized by pterodactyls for a full minute, then eaten by the giant alligator-dinosaur thing in the water. Seriously, why does the movie seem like it has so much fun killing that particular character? That was literally the one death in the entire thing that I just... felt bad about. Like it left a bad taste in my mouth. For one thing she's super hot just like her boss (which even the horny teenager doesn't take notice of for some goddamn reason), and secondly she's clearly busy working over the phone the entire time she's escorting those dumb kids around (which would be a bum gig to be given either way, yet she's still pulling her weight regardless). So she's a gorgeous working woman, and the movie seems to enjoy killing her off because... what, because she's not a barrel of laughs? Because she's a hard worker?
Ugh.

Whatever the case, aside from those complaints, I still enjoyed the movie (even if it may not sound like it ). It's easily better than any of the other Jurassic sequels by a fucking mile, though it can't touch the original.
The fight with the indominous, the raptor, and the t-rex at the end was fucking magical, and was the one place where the special effects really fell into place and felt convincing. And there are some nice highlights throughout, such as the scene with the dying brachiosaurus, the kids stumbling upon the original Jurassic Park facility (nice throwback), and just about anything involving the raptors (I like the idea of trying to train them, and then Chris Pratt leading them on a motorcycle as their alpha). There are some great ideas here, and occasionally the implementation is really effective, even if the thrill of seeing cg dinosaurs isn't quite as prevalent as with the original movie.
It is a good flick, definitely one of those that's just right for a friday night and a pizza. But the original is better. And that ain't just nostalgia speaking. The intensity of the original is hard to match.

Oh, and one other thing: for anyone that hates the movie, you can take solace in the fact that it clearly doesn't take place on the same timeline as the original. This is some alternate reality shit. The whole point of the original was that this park will never work, and John Hammond obviously agrees with that at the end of the original. Yet the Indian guy in this talks about "when Hammond entrusted me with this park..." and obviously that would never happen.
Not to mention that one of the major plot points of the second movie was that control of the company had been wrestled away from Hammond by hos son-in-law, so Hammond wouldn't have been able to entrust the island to anyone; he didn't own it anymore.
So Jurassic World may as well be an alternate timeline.

[Henry Spencer]

So since 'Pulse' was so good I decided to try out another of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's movies called 'Loft' which was another effective supernatural chiller. Had a weird part near the end but then gets back on track and produces some fine chills. Seen really mixed reception to it and don't understand why. It has an eerie quietness to its horror that the best Japanese horror tend to have and it's certainly better than most horror I've seen Hollywood produce in the past decade so yeah, weird. Anyway, a solid horror film that does a decent job of merging the psychological and supernatural horror genres together. Will be trying 'The Cure' next out of Kurosawa's filmography.

[AnimeGamer183]

Mad Max 2. This was more like what i was expecting, its VERY different from the first film. I feel like the first film more or less introduces Max's character and gives him a back ground and foundation for the franchise and the second takes him on a completely different journey. Mad Max 2 seems to lay down the artistic direction and aesthetic elements of the rest of the movies here on out, and looks alot more similar to what i have seen from Fury Road, finally the entire movie looks like a desert waste land and post apocalyptic australian setting where the first movie was still trying to transition into that. Also it has an incredibly well one art direction and aesthetically solid, thats probably half of what makes these movies well done, the attention to detail of character costumes and the vehicles and bases where the various tribes operate look great, it has that put together from a junk yard look. And I really like the vehicles designs, they had a very talented person who came up with those and also there is just more action and better stunts this time around so its better than the first film in lots of ways. I am really starting to enjoy this series of films now.

[OL]

So since 'Pulse' was so good I decided to try out another of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's movies called 'Loft' which was another effective supernatural chiller. Had a weird part near the end but then gets back on track and produces some fine chills. Seen really mixed reception to it and don't understand why. It has an eerie quietness to its horror that the best Japanese horror tend to have and it's certainly better than most horror I've seen Hollywood produce in the past decade so yeah, weird. Anyway, a solid horror film that does a decent job of merging the psychological and supernatural horror genres together. Will be trying 'The Cure' next out of Kurosawa's filmography.

Sweet. It's actually just 'Cure,' but y'know, all the same. Cure is less of a horror flick than much of Kurosawa's other work, nothing supernatural about it at all; it's a bit more of a detective thriller type of thing, yet it retains that same type of eerie quietness he's so good at.
I haven't seen Loft myself, but I'll have to get around to it one of these days. Pulse is definitely a favorite of mine.

Since I'm playing Alien: Isolation again, I got the urge to watch the original Alien. It's been so long since I last saw it that it kind of felt new to me, outside of a few scenes. Great flick, even if the xenomorph costume is a bit disappointing in hindsight (they didn't quite have its otherworldly, animalistic mannerisms down yet). It's definitely one of those movies you look back on and can easily understand why it left such a lasting impact; back in 1979, something like this was totally new and different, a very far cry from the other sci-fi ventures floating around at the time. And despite the less-than-convincing movement of the actor in the costume, the HR Giger design work for it must have been ridiculously striking back then. Hell, it's still striking to me, even after I've seen it a million times in so many different types of context. Just classic stuff all around.
And looking at the movie itself, I can definitely say I prefer this style of flick for the Alien franchise, rather than the more actionous ones that would follow. Put in a legitimate horror setting, that fucking xenomorph remains scary as hell, and I really can't say that about many other movie monsters. They're working on not one, but two new Alien movies at the moment, but I don't think either one is really set to be horror. But that's what we need another of: a legitimately scary Alien flick. Skip the James Cameron action bullshit.

[AnimeGamer183]

watched prometheus the other day for the second time, its actually a nice sci fi space thriller/horror flick. I needed to give it another watch before Alien Covenant (the sequel) comes out anyway, that movie should branch prometheus into the Alien series properly, but you can already see it coming via the end of Prometheus anyway. I am curious what the next story elements will be, prometheus left ALOT of things hanging that need answering so hopefully we get answers with A: C.

The Hunt for Red October. I started the Jack Ryan movies and this one was a cool military/espionage flick and the submarine sequences were cool. Nice little twisty story that reminded me a little bit of Metal Gear Solid but I feel like there was some slight character development that could have made Jack Ryan even better, luckily there are more movies to do that, so on the Harrison Ford ones some time soon.

[Bambi]

Lawrence of Arabia: restored version.

This is my first time watching a restored version of aby movie that is more than 30 years old and I have to say that it looks absolutely amazing. Also it really hits all the right places for me between focussing on amazing scenery shots, telling an incredible story and teaching about foreign culture and history at the same time.

Brilliant film, the running time put me off watching it for ages but I'm glad I finally got around to it. Sad to say but my attitude to these old classics can be quite juvenile, I always have reservations going into them but am rarely disappointed.

Cure is less of a horror flick than much of Kurosawa's other work, nothing supernatural about it at all; it's a bit more of a detective thriller type of thing, yet it retains that same type of eerie quietness he's so good at.

That eerie quieteness you're refering to is more scary to me than anything in a conventional horror, I'm quite sensitive to it for whatever reason and I actually couldn't sleep for a while after watching Cure.

You have piqued my curiousity regarding Kurosawa, I wasn't aware of his other works and wanted to check them out. There isn't a boxset or anything available here which has sadly become quite a common occurance for movies I want to buy these days, Wong Kar-Wai stuff for example

Since I'm playing Alien: Isolation again, I got the urge to watch the original Alien. It's been so long since I last saw it that it kind of felt new to me, outside of a few scenes. Great flick, even if the xenomorph costume is a bit disappointing in hindsight (they didn't quite have its otherworldly, animalistic mannerisms down yet). It's definitely one of those movies you look back on and can easily understand why it left such a lasting impact; back in 1979, something like this was totally new and different, a very far cry from the other sci-fi ventures floating around at the time. And despite the less-than-convincing movement of the actor in the costume, the HR Giger design work for it must have been ridiculously striking back then. Hell, it's still striking to me, even after I've seen it a million times in so many different types of context. Just classic stuff all around.
And looking at the movie itself, I can definitely say I prefer this style of flick for the Alien franchise, rather than the more actionous ones that would follow. Put in a legitimate horror setting, that fucking xenomorph remains scary as hell, and I really can't say that about many other movie monsters. They're working on not one, but two new Alien movies at the moment, but I don't think either one is really set to be horror. But that's what we need another of: a legitimately scary Alien flick. Skip the James Cameron action bullshit.

I know this is a bit of a random tangent but I'd watched Alien maybe a half dozen times before I picked up on all the rape (both literal and symbolic) going on in the film. It's not even subtle but for some reason it just never seemed to register with me what was happening in those scenes, I must have been a pretty dense teenager.

watched prometheus the other day for the second time, its actually a nice sci fi space thriller/horror flick. I needed to give it another watch before Alien Covenant (the sequel) comes out anyway, that movie should branch prometheus into the Alien series properly, but you can already see it coming via the end of Prometheus anyway. I am curious what the next story elements will be, prometheus left ALOT of things hanging that need answering so hopefully we get answers with A: C.

I always understood why people were frustrated with Prometheus but I liked it anyway, Fassbender is brilliant as David, it's worth watching for his character alone.

[redline]

i just saw suicide squad.

movie is ok but Cara Delevingne was terrible.