Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread (Page 13 of 29)

I just watched Unstoppable with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. I think Trey had said that he liked it pretty well, given that it's a Tony Scott piece about a couple of guys trying to stop a runaway train.

I liked it myself quite a bit, altho the family drama stuff and privileged-rookie-vs-underappreciated-veteran stuff was a bit heavy handed. In fact, I thought it would have been better if Chris Pine's character had a happy marriage, since that would have made his decision to risk his life tougher.

The film has gotten really mixed reactions on IMDb. There's even more vitriol than usual about Scott's shooting style (shake and noise), and it IS distracting sometimes, but I didn't hate it. There IS one point that is a pretty serious plot screw-up (the helicopter insertion attempt), but it was exciting enough to watch that it didn't bother me.

I liked the fact that it is basically a railroad procedural—like a police procedural but with train jargon in place of cop jargon. And the technical aspects (borrowed mostly from a real runaway train incident) are much better than most movies of its type.

I love Sanjuro. Hidden Fortress is one of the few Kurosawa flicks I've seen that I didn't really like. Not that it's a bad movie, it just takes a long time for the plot to start moving. That and the fact that Mifune's outfit looks pretty ridiculous. He's dressed like a prostitute.

As for Tony Scott, I have to admit that I kinda like most of his movies. I think Spy Game is the only one you can point to and say "that is actually a good movie". A lot of his other movies would be right there, but then he gets all Tony Scott on them. Man On Fire is a perfect example. You could cut about 15 minutes out of that flick and the only thing you'd lose are the weird NIN music video montages. It's not a bad movie tho. It's fucking great, really. But every ten minutes or so you have to watch a minute of hyperactive cutting and speed ramping and multi-shot crossfading montage. And then the movie just continues. It's like those were the days when he forgot to take his medication or something and he managed to edit a minute of the movie before the editor walked in and said "Oh shit, you're off your balls today, aren't you? Go lie on the couch, Tony."

As for me, Netflix kept telling me to watch Midnight Cowboy. I watched about half of it. You can tell there was a lot of drug use going on in the 60's. I couldn't get more than about 20 minutes into Easy Rider, either.

The Dark Night Returns 

Let's hope they won't screw this up. Also, no Kevin Conroy

Tony Scott is on my personal black-list after what he did to Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. That is one of my all time favorite 70s movies, and he managed to completely fuck up every aspect of it, while also making it borderline unwatchable with his editing, stupid stop-motion over-crank bullshit, and ugly-ass color-grading.

Crimson Tide is still great though, I feel like after that movie something just happened to the man, like he started taking lots of drugs, or just flat out lost his mind or something. Everything of his before Crimson Tide tends to be watchable, with Crimson Tide as the peak before a sharp nosedive in quality.

Kevin is in his late 50's, I'm sure older Batman wouldn't be too hard for him. I liked his take on the old Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond and that was over 10 years ago.

I watched Donnie Darko (theatrical cut) for the first time last night and was very pleasantly surprised. It was like John Hughes flipped out and wrote a movie while running a high fever. It was a little vague and left some loose ends (the mysterious old lady in particular), but I really liked the pacing, moodiness, and music.

I'm tempted to get the director's cut, but apparently it kind of ruins the pacing and mood in the course of cramming in a bunch of slightly-less-vague nonsense about how Donnie's universe works.

Any opinions?

Southland Tales is crazy genius at times. Well, one time,lol. The best clip can be seen online though. In fact, it's here-

I just saved you two and a half hours of shite. 

Huh?

What's with the grammar thing?

Last edited by Jimmy B (2012-08-05 20:22:22)

It appears that one of us has wandered into the wrong thread......

Are you saying you need context of the clip above or that I have poor grammar?

Last edited by Jimmy B (2012-08-05 20:35:32)

So, you were just being a bit of a smartarse then? Ok, there is no real context, it is just a random scene in a film that doesn't make any real sense. That is why I called that particular scene crazy genius. The fact it has no context to the overall film is hi-lighted by the fact that that clip was actually used to advertise the film. The picture you posted was completely unnecessary, all you had to do was ask me what the context was rather than simply trying to be a smartarse.

Clear?

Ugh, that guy was drinking Budweiser. Poor man

The only thing I genuinely hated about Southland Tales was Cheri Oteri, who is one of the worst things humanity has ever created. The rest of the movie is actually not that bad. Seann Scott gives a surprisingly good performance(s), Dwayne Johnson does pretty damn well himself and there are a lot of little bits in the movie that made me go "huh, that was odd, but interesting / clever OMFG CHERI OTERI GO TO HELL YOU RUIN EVERYTHING!"

The third act is a complete fustercluck, but I found it to be a fun yet often nonsensical ride.