What movie are you watching right now?

[OL]

Hornet's Nest.
Old 1970 WWII flick about Rock Hudson being sent to blow up a dam in Italy, but his whole squad gets killed, and he has to rely on a gang of little Italian kids who have their own vendetta against the Nazis.
I mostly just decided to watch it because I saw that it has Sylva Koscina in it. Now, Sylva Koscina is one of those old-timey actresses that I developed a crush on back in high school when I saw her in a 60s spy flick called Deadlier Than the Male, and that's the kind of crush that never goes away. I still just haven't seen enough with her in it though, so I had to give this one a watch.
And good lord, you want to talk about misogyny? Videogames ain't got nothing on this movie.
It's not a bad flick overall, but some of it feels totally pointless. Koscina is literally the only female character in it, playing a German doctor, and one of the first things that happens to her is that, after refusing to help them, the gang of little Italian kids tries to rape compliance out of her. They all hold her down while their little adolescent leader threatens to make a baby with her (seriously, the dialogue is right along those lines). It's only broken up because Rock Hudson wakes up and smacks the little adolescent away.
So yay! The hero of the movie says no to rape! Just like a good movie hero should!
Except, oh wait, he totally rapes Koscina later in the movie after she tries to escape. He even ups the cruelty by taunting her about it just before ripping her shirt open ("You want to heal someone? Maybe you can heal me for a while!").
Christ. And there's absolutely nothing to be gained by it. There's nothing that happens later in the movie as a result of it. It's not even like 70s exploitation/titillation kind of stuff, as there's no nudity; the movie just lets you know it's gonna happen, then cuts to a different scene. And this is something the hero of the movie does. Sheezus.
Otherwise the movie would be pretty cool; it's got an awesome scene of little kids weilding machineguns, doing a driveby on a bunch of German soldiers while Rock Hudson chucks grenades everywhere. So that was cool. And the main villain is actually really good; I quite liked the actor playing him, and even though he's a cold motherfucker, there are some parts where he makes so much sense you almost side with him a bit.
But goddamn, all this completely unnecessary rape business drags it down.

[Kenny]

Jupiter Ascending.

I felt like this was a bet they made to see if they can make a completely nonsensical storyline and mask it with special effects and have the audience NOT notice. And the bet was the budget for this film.

Man, the studio is really hoping the Chinese don't notice.

[Thief]

Jupiter Ascending.

I felt like this was a bet they made to see if they can make a completely nonsensical storyline and mask it with special effects and have the audience NOT notice. And the bet was the budget for this film.

Man, the studio is really hoping the Chinese don't notice.

It was a bad movie but I was entertained by the costume and make-up work, also some pretty (unintentional) funny lines that had me and my buds laughing pretty hard. I've certainly seen worse.

On the plot side though

does Mila Kunis's character just not care about any of the other however many humans out there (on the planets she doesn't own) that are still getting harvested and are still being used to make rich space people live longer? I thought she wanted to stop it. I guess she's happy as long as she has space-roller-blades and an awkward sudden romance with wolf-boy.

[Kenny]

I dunno man, that shit was pretty bad. Battlefield Earth was better than that shit (and I kinda like that movie too despite knowing how stupid it is).

And people laughed alot too at the unintentional parts. It was mesmerizing. This movie is the kind of shit that STRENGTHENS the position of studios to keep making reboots and remakes.

[OL]

Moving on to the subject of GOOD sci-fi flicks, I just saw Edge of Tomorrow. Shocked as hell to be saying I loved it. I normally avoid anything with Tom Cruise like the plague. He's one of those actors I usually just can't watch because I know about him outside of his films too well.
But I caught it in the middle last night while flipping channels, and actually found the ten minutes I watched to be pretty good.
So I watched the whole thing today and was miraculously able to forget all about Tom Cruise and just get caught up in a great story. Really entertaining flick. And I already liked Emily Blunt, but good god, I think I'm in love now.
There was one giant plot hole that I spotted that I don't think gets explained, but the rest of the movie was good enough that it didn't affect my enjoyment in the least. Fun stuff.

[Henry Spencer]

^Eh, it was okay. The script/story was a bit laughably bad to me and the acting wooden, the action was pretty good, but if Hollywood is going to keep making sci-fi films [which they are doing a lot of lately], they could at least try and make a good one, instead of all of these mediocre ones that have good visuals and shit writing/acting (and yes, I am including Interstellar there, easily the weakest Nolan film I've seen).

I dunno man, that shit was pretty bad. Battlefield Earth was better than that shit (and I kinda like that movie too despite knowing how stupid it is).

And people laughed alot too at the unintentional parts. It was mesmerizing. This movie is the kind of shit that STRENGTHENS the position of studios to keep making reboots and remakes.

I think the problem with Hollywood doing is that they are sometimes doing it with properties that are too recent or really didn't need it since the original is still very good (Total Recall, Robocop). I could pretty much tell with Jupiter Ascending's constant delays and really awful trailers that it was going to suck. Same exact thing with John Carter. I like the project you've got lined up since it's not been in ages and it's quite surprising that it hasn't been, plus in this day of $10000000 budgets, it'll be nice to see an old school movie like you guys are wanting to make.

Oh, and yeah at least Battlefield Earth had John Travolta hamming it up hilariously, another peeve I have with these big budget Hollywood action films now is the villains are so boring now. Step it up, Hollywood, I want my scenery chewing villains back.

[Chaos]

Just finished John Wick. I wasn't expecting much but it was a pretty fun mindless action movie.

[OL]

^^I loved it exactly for that reason. Just big dumb action. It revels in it, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else.
I got the bluray from my brother for my birthday, and just the little bit of the extras I watched made it seem like they really did just let the stuntmen go to work and choreograph a bunch of great action, then figured out how to fit it all in within the script after. I love that.

[KiBa]

Kwaidan 怪談 'Ghost Stories' (1964)

Remarkable film in every way. The set backgrounds are painted. Genuinely creepy and wondrous.

[OL]

^^My go-to Halloween movie. I honestly find it difficult to find 50s or 60s horror movies that I actually think are creepy, but Kwaidan succeeds in that respect wonderfully, all the while showing off some serious artistic legitimacy.
Hard to say whether I like Yuki-Onna or Hoichi the Earless better.

[Crimson Ryan]

Blackhat

We'll get out the way that you probably haven't heard of this film. After a disappointing opening weekend, the studio reined in all promotional material and release schedule outside of the U.S. I actually saw this Saturday night at the 11pm late showing as it was the only screening that whole day. And I was the only person in there.

I'm a big fan of Michael Mann films. His style of intelligent, calculated action film really resonate with me. I first discovered him through Collateral, then worked my way through his other works such as Heat, Manhunter and The Insider.

The film focuses on Chris Hemsworth's character serving fifteen years for hacking and cyber-related crimes. The Chinese government discover a strain of malware written by Hemsworth used against them in an attack against a nuclear power plant and launch a joint investigation with the United States to find the culprit.

When a second attack is launched on the New York Stock Exchange, it's a race to discover where and when the big finale strike will occur, made more difficult when suspects are quickly discovered dead in their wake.

What follows is a global scale thriller with the usual tricks and familiar traits from Mann. It's very well researched as you'd expect. Anyone familiar with computers enough to recognise codes will appreciate there aren't any 'magic' computers with no limits and superficial screens for plot convenience.

With such a fast pace some details may be lost on the audience until a second viewing. Hemsworth coming from a major Hollywood background may also be too unbelievable for some people trying to act as a computer geek, but any effort to use him as a selling point alone clearly haven't worked with the small scale release this film received.

I'd recommend to any fan of Michael Mann or suspenseful thrillers.

[Calshot]

Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno and Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends.

The two movies cover the Shishio arc from the anime/manga. Overall I thought they were pretty well done, though not without a few snags. The fight scenes were top-notch. Each character fought with their own style, the choreography was excellent, and they did a good job of using the environment around them.

The only non-story related complaints I have were that it can get a bit too melodramatic at times and the pacing could have been better. While I think two movies were justified, they probably could have trimmed the fat some.

I get that you can't make a straight film adaptation of the anime/manga, but I still thought some of their choices weren't ideal, if not bad IMO.

The movies have to spend a lot of developing and advancing Kenshin's storyline while simultaneously introducing a ton of characters. Consequently, most of the side characters end up getting shafted.

They really hype up the Ten Swords, but you barely get to see any of them. Cho gets a lot of screentime by virtue of being a part of Kenshin's plotline. Anji gets a decent, but short fight scene with Sano. Usui's fight scene lasts one move. Everybody else only gets a brief cameo and a small fight scene at the end of the second where they gang up on Kenshin (but you don't see any of their skills featured).

Aoshi was hit hardest by this. Because they don't have time to do the whole Oniwabanshu arc, his entire background is condensed into a single flashback and most of his lines are "WHERE'S THE BATTOSAI?" I feel like they could have cut him out entirely, but that wasn't going to happen because of how popular he is. At least we got some good fight scenes out of him.

My only complaint about Saito is that he didn't get enough one on one fight scenes. He gets to kill a bunch of mooks, but his best fight scene is him getting outclassed by Shishio. His fight with Usui literally lasts the span of a single Gatotsu, which is the only time he ever actually lands the move on a person in all 3 movies.

[Axm]

I'm rewatching all the fast and furious movies to prepare for the fast and furious 7

Shit on em if you want but they're fun action movies

[Axm]

With Baseball season approaching im watching 42. Love this movie.

[Kenny]

citizenfour.

Massively fucked up. Even worse are people who don't realize the extent of the damage done by the US government, legitimizing a totalitarian regime while masquerading as a democracy. And anyone who threatens to even expose them can be censored (best case scenario, of course).