What movie are you watching right now?

[Thief]

Into the Woods: I enjoyed it quite a bit but it may be because I'm a fan of the musical and the performances were good. I can't really speak for the direction because I was too busy enjoying it.

Interstellar: It wasn't a perfect movie but I enjoyed it immensely either way. The visuals were breathtaking. The movie depressed me a little though, the relativity and those you leave behind really got to me, I'm still bothered by it.

Battle of the Five Armies: Probably one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time, and even, if I dare say it, worse than Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Hobbit 3 was just one extended battle scene, one extended poorly executed ridiculous emotionless battle scene. People die and you just don't care because you aren't emotionally attached to anything in this movie. It doesn't even really resolve but just sort of abruptly ends.

Plus all the things they added to the films in order to tie the Hobbit Trilogy don't even make much sense and just end up making characters like Gandalf and Gimly seem like idiots in the original trilogy.

Remember Gimly's line in LotR? "So he is dead!" (in reference to Thorin) -- that was 80 years ago or so, you'd think word would travel. Also, introducing Sauron at this early of a point just makes Gandalf, Elrond, Galandrial, and Saruman seem like idiots.

Also, I can't spell middle-earth names correctly so sorry.

Anyway, I thought it was an emotionless silly mess.

[Kenny]

Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods.

I absolutely despise the fact there's CGI and the fact the ink and colors are done digitally. It just doesn't look right compared to the old series.

Moreover, Lord Beerus is fucking pathetic as a new "super powerful villain of the universe". Honestly, you can't get any better than Cell. Buu was really pushing it but an Egyptian Cat god? Ugh. Luckily the film itself is watchable. At times it can be very funny and the action is still top notch.

Plus Super Saiyan GOD? Wow, I wonder how far they can go after that.

[AnimeGamer183]

I saw the new DBZ film in theaters earlier this year. Its not a bad entry into the DBZ story. I like how they brought back more stuff with the Kai's instead of going off the deep end with things like in DBGT. BUT just as long as the action is good and it has the DB quirky charm and goofy characters and humor, I cant nit pick too much.

[Sonikku]

I saw it too and it didn't strike me as something to be taken too seriously. I mean battle of the "gods"? ok. Basically it was more of a "Hang out one more time with your chums, have a few laughs and enjoy one last brawl over a beer for good measure." kind of movie. It was fun for what it was. DBZ just isn't the kind of thing you should ever expect much depth from.

[Kenny]

Ptth.

It's like telling Batman fans to not take a "guy in a bat costume chasing a clown" too seriously.

[OL]

Except that Batman actually does have moments of depth, dealing with mysteries and psychology on a regular basis, while DBZ is a bunch of similar-looking meatheads talking about their power levels and stretching out their syllables for episodes on end. Not that that can't be fun sometimes; Fist of the North Star is a bit like that, and I'm a nut for it.
Not saying it to get into a "mine is better than yours" internet debate, but there's a pretty easy difference between DBZ and Batman.

[south carmain]

All I can think of when DBZ comes to mind is "THE PLANET WILL EXPLODE IN EXACTLY 3 MINUTES" then 20 episodes later they still have one minute left.

[Kenny]

I never got the mindset of "DBZ is just yelling screaming powerball throwing nonsense". I does have depth from the Raddiz storyline all the way to the Cell storyline. I always thought of it as a character journey about a group of people training to stop the most powerful adversary from destroying their world, which sometimes means teaming up with former foes and pushing yourself to your absolute limits learning new techniques against a ticking time clock.

Then again, I am vehemently against writing anything off as "just for fun" which is basically telling me "there is no such thing as mediocre or bad material". Especially if the newest iterations fail to live up to the expectations of a proven series (seriously, Egyptian Cat? And Goku's God form is just him with red hair? Talk about laziness.)


anyways

The Lego Movie.

Still watching it but I absolutely love the style. I really thought it was a stop-motion film but apparently what they did was really study the texture of lego bricks under a microscope and painstakingly animated it all authentically in CGI to make it look like a "brickfilm". They definitely did something to the framerate too to make it look all jerky.

Very inventive and probably he first time i've seen CGI done CORRECTLY in a very long time.

[OL]

Then again, I am vehemently against writing anything off as "just for fun" which is basically telling me "there is no such thing as mediocre or bad material". Especially if the newest iterations fail to live up to the expectations of a proven series (seriously, Egyptian Cat? And Goku's God form is just him with red hair? Talk about laziness.)

Wasn't Goku's previous ultimate-whatever form basically just him with yellow hair?
I think we're facing the possibility that it may have been lazy to begin with.

But no, saying that something is "just for fun" isn't writing its detractors off and saying there's no such thing as bad material.
"Bad material" would be if something that's supposed to be just for fun ends up, y'know... not fun. "Just for fun" isn't a write-off, because it's not necessarily easy to make things fun to begin with. It still takes a good level of talent and ability.

[Kenny]

But it negates growth when something is written off as that. That's why I'm against that and prefer the standards to be higher as often as possible. If it's "just for fun" does that mean we cannot improve the quality of the storytelling? The character interactions? The visual aesthetics between doing a Kaio-ken and a Super Saiyan God (Super Saiyan was more than just "yellow hair")?

I like things to be more than just "fun". That's a level of standard for pre-school stuff like Veggie Tales or Teletubbies. But even Sesame Street has high standards for toddlers talking about death and shit.

[Rakim]

Has anyone seen Baymax or Big Hero 6 or whatever its called? I didn't even realize it had already come out.
I'm a little annoyed by how whitewashed the main character "Hiro Hamada" seems to have been. We'll see though. I still have hope that Disney will deliver.

[Calshot]

^
I saw it. I thought it was very well done. Better than Frozen IMO, but I also thought Frozen was really overrated, say take that as you will.

As for the white-washing, Hiro is mixed race and the comic the movie was based off of was as weeb as you can possibly get.

[AM2]

Kim Ki-Duk's Samaritan Girl.

[Kenny]

REC 4.

I honestly was expecting this to suck. Was pleasantly surprised instead. I think bringing back Manuela Velasco (from the first two REC movies) definitely helped. She's awesome. But it was also a very well shot, decently written film too.

Obviously, I prefer the Found Footage style from the first two movies as it's much more effective horror than this standard fare romp. But I commend the filmmakers for making something more watchable than fucking REC 3, which is still a complete waste of time (of course they tie it into this -_-).

[JMan]

^ REC 1 is amazing.

Exorcist 3. I really like this movie, probably more than the original.