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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Sweeny Todd is worth a watch, if for nothing else than the music. Burton is mostly style over substance (obviously) but he's managed to make a few movies that were good enough to make you ignore how much he's bashing you over the head with visual design. Sweeny Todd, Beetlejuice and maybe his two batman movies, tho his batman flicks are teetering on the brink of falling into that pit as well. I think Ed Wood is the closest he's ever come to making a normal movie, and Edward Scissorhands is a very self-aware movie which combines with the visuals and ends up feeling more like a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film. I think Jeunet actually pulls off what Burton keeps trying and failing to do.

Also, if you've not seen it, check out Micmacs. All of Jeunet's films, actually. Just go watch them all.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Mars Attacks >>> Independence Day.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Xtroid wrote:

Mars Attacks >>> Independence Day.

Really? Huh. I like Mars Attacks, but I'd put them closer to even than anything.

Sweeney Todd is great because all Tim Burton had to do was be Tim Burton. The music and everything were already there, he just had to goth it up (Although if you know anything about the actual show...not much more than what was there) and make it. I love Sweeney Todd (The musical, not Burtons specifically), and the only reason I'll watch Burtons version over a broadway one is Johnny Depp and HBC. And the fact that it's wrapped up in a nice little package of a movie.

Although Squiggly, you forgot Big Fish, which is probably even closer to normal movie than Ed Wood. And just to get it out of the way, I love Big Fish with a passion. Easily my favourite Burton movie.

And although it's not perfect by a long shot, I did enjoy Corpse Bride.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Xtroid wrote:

Mars Attacks >>> Independence Day.

Yeah, personally I'd agree with that. Not a fan of ID4 to be honest.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Weird I thought that's one of the ones we loved.

I guess I'll just have to sit over here and love it all by myself.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Nah never liked ID4. I think DiF like it for the most part, don't they? Can't remember, been a while since I listened to their comm of it.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I'm curious what your issue with it is.

And I think the guys like it...it's been a while for me too.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I just don't like it, it's not a big deal big_smile

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Independence Day (I refuse to call it ID4; that doesn't make any damn sense) has slowly grown on me. I didn't get why my friends like it at the time, but it has a kind of trashy, goofy charm that also makes me kind of like Starship Troopers and RoboCop, altho RoboCop is more solid.

I saw Battle: Los Angeles this weekend and also Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I agree with Trey that the former was not bad, considering that it's basically a first-person shooter video game about nameless, faceless aliens invading Los Angeles and needing a bad whipping by a squad of plucky Marines and professional streetwise tough gal Michelle Rodriguez.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was not what I was expecting. It was good, but I expected more of a thriller aspect, with some chases and a bit of action. Instead, it was kind of a straight up mystery and ended up leaving me with the feeling of an episode of Murder, She Wrote that had been rewritten for HBO and stylishly produced.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Zarban wrote:

Independence Day (I refuse to call it ID4; that doesn't make any damn sense) has slowly grown on me. I didn't get why my friends like it at the time, but it has a kind of trashy, goofy charm that also makes me kind of like Starship Troopers and RoboCop, altho RoboCop is more solid.

You see, I don't like Starship Troopers much either big_smile I get that it's a satire but the bad acting is just too out there for me. ID4 is just 'blah'.

Always loved Robocop, though. That's a much better satire than Starship Troopers, it's more subtle (surprising, I know).

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I can totally understand why people love ID4, but I can't. Almost every scene in that movie has something in it that makes me nerd rage so hard. The worst thing, for me, has to be the scene where they're looking for new pilots.

They're looking for pilots to go fight the aliens and doing impromptu interviews to see what everyone's flight experience is. They get to Russel K. (Kay?) and he's all "I flew in 'nam, but now I do crop dusting" and the guy's like "cool, that's useful I guess..." and he's about to ask the next guy when Russel says "Oh BTW I'm glad I'll get a chance to get some payback for the time they abducted me and did strange alien tests on me and shit".

Everyone in the group looks around at each other with these "Oh, this dude is fucking crazy" looks on their faces. The audience laughs and shit, cause Russel K's being oh so goofy right now. Problem:

YOU'RE RECRUITING GUYS TO GO FIGHT THE FUCKING ALIENS!

I saw that in the theater and even the audience was laughing like "LOL he's so stupid!" But he's not stupid. He totally got abducted. The roswell crash was real, aliens have been abducting people...  The president literally said that they were doing that a couple scenes ago. It's just a stupid joke in the movie, but their reaction should have been different. Maybe laughing at first, but then going "Oh...  wait..." and getting serious about it. Or have his kid literally say "why are you laughing at my dad? You're going to fight aliens!" That would have not only hung a lantern on it, but also been a little character relationship moment where you can see Miguel now has a totally different opinion of his dad, etc.

There's a thing like that in just about every scene for me. Some of the jokes work, some of the effects are amazing, but the little problems add up.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Zarban wrote:

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was not what I was expecting. It was good, but I expected more of a thriller aspect, with some chases and a bit of action. Instead, it was kind of a straight up mystery and ended up leaving me with the feeling of an episode of Murder, She Wrote that had been rewritten for HBO and stylishly produced.

Spoilers for TGWTDT

  Show
I very purposefully didn't watch the film until I had read the books. (I still havn't had a chance to watch the swedish version, so I can't compare there) But the film felt very brief, idk, the best way I can describe it is anorexic. The bones are all still there, but there's no flesh, no meat to it. The movie never really bothers or cares to show us what Lisbeths deal is outside of the whole rapey thing. Almost all of the romantic aspects of the characters are entirely excised; Berjer and Blomkvist are only really a thing mentioned in passing, and thats only so that the ending of the book could be shoehorned onto the end of the movie; and Cecilia is simply a non entity. Essentially everything of any real substance, character wise, was pared down to it's bare minimum needed to allow for the beats that needed to happen to solve the case.

At the end of the movie, I didn't actually feel anything, the movie had never really given me anything to care about. It had just sort of laid itself out in front of me like a case file, just a series of names, dates and pictures. And while it's a great metaphor, it's not great for a movie. And which is the complete opposite from how I felt when I finished the book.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

BigDamnArtist wrote:

Spoilers for TGWTDT

I was fine with Lisbeth being a cipher, so that didn't bother me. And I quite liked Mikael and Erika's relationship. I thought that was sketched out deftly; it just wasn't the main story.

My only problem was the twist.

  Show
Who dun it? The guy you least suspect but don't have any reason to like. How did the girl disappear? She sneaked away.

The whole point of the setup is that it's basically a locked-room mystery, and the solution to a locked-room mystery shouldn't be "the dude sneaked out of the room when no one was looking." I'm not saying it was bad; just that it ended up being more conventional than I was hoping.

In a way, it reminded me of Smilla's Sense of Snow...

  Show
...very smart, evocative of its locale, featuring a loaner character. But the ending is quite conventional.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Have you read the book Zarban? Just wondering.

  Show
I think one of the problems I had with the movie is how much they make the mystery the main story. In the book it's much more that Blomkvist is the main story, and the mystery just happens to be one of the main things that's happen to him for most of it. And the romantic entanglements and then eventual Lisbeth (Who is teamed up with Blomkvist super early in the movie, which I get from a story angle, it's just something that struck me watching it), and his whole rivalry with Wennerstrom play much stronger in the book than the movie, and I think the movie suffers for it.

The twist...yeah, another thing that when I was watching got a total...wtf?! Because it's...while not entirely different from the book, it is changed in a direction that made me go, "alright that makes no gods damned sense". In the book, Anita finds out about what her father was doing and her brother is doing to her, and sneaks Harriet out in her trunk the day after, Harriet assumes a copy of Anitas identity and movies to Australia. There she eventually marries into a large farming company and eventually ends up running it (I think I have that right, either way she ends up running a large farming company in Austrialia). So when Blomkvists figures out that Anita snuck her out, he enlists Lisbeth and her...freinds, to help uncover where Harriet is living now. So basically he confronts Anita saying "I know whats up" and Anita phones Harriet saying "Shits going down, stay cool.". They track the call and Blonkvists flies to Austrialia to meet her. We get her whole story there, and she agrees to fly back. And eventually ends up helping run Vanger corp, while also expanding the company with her company in austrailia.

The whole way it works in the movie just feels out of left field. Granted the general concept is still roughly the same, but the way it plays out in the books feels very natural, where as in the movie it feels almost like a Deus Ex Machina that he just happens to know where Harriet is after the whole spy thing fails

But I would still argue that the very conventional ending is the point. It wasn't any grand master plan of some amazing serial killer that smuggled her off the island. No it was her sister that loved her and wanted to see her safe from her brother and father, so she smuggled her out in the trunk of her car. In the end everything about this story is about family. Whether it's a family that rapes together, or a family that saves each other.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-05-14 21:29:54)

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I want Fincher to do a live-action remake of Perfect Blue.

The trailer does it no justice at all. It's a movie about a girl who goes from being in a mediocre group similar to the Spice Girls or something into acting. She ends up with a crazy stalker who basically terrorizes her for leaving the group. Meanwhile, in order to get noticed as an actor she decides to get her smallish role expanded to something much larger and darker and it fucks with her head. Then people start dying.

If you removed some of the weirder aspects of the film you could turn it into an amazing live-action flick. Rewrite it and focus on the themes of control (agents goals vs mima's goals, mima vs fans, self control, etc) and privacy (and rape...  literally and figuratively... kinda fits with the control theme) and you've got a bad-ass little thriller that would be pretty topical in today's cyber-stalky internet.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I went to the cinema and saw Safe today, the latest Jason Statham actioner. It was ok, quite enjoyable actually. Some great fight scenes (Statham can do this shit in his sleep by now) but some dodgy editing and a bad US accent by the big man dampened things a bit. I will say, though, there is a scene at the start where Jase shows a great bit of acting just by kneeling down. You expect him to take out everyone in the room that have just killed his wife but he just sits there as they taunt him. It's a wonderful turn that promises so much from him until it is evident as the film goes on that he is again just stuck in Staham-mode. The guy often shows signs of being a good actor but once he has to kick and punch all of that goes out the window. Just like some of the people he kicks and punches actually and it's a good job he kicks and punches so well. Oh, and the bit about the wife is not really a spoiler as it is right at the start. Oh, and  you never actually see the wife even when she's alive, which is an unusual and bold movie.

Next week.....I'm hoping to go see The Raid.......

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I think Statham is a great actor who needs to take more roles where he's not kicking the crap out of people. He was really good in both The Bank Heist and Snatch and there was nary a fist fight in either of those two flicks. Not with him, at least. If he does have to kick the crap out of people, it should be in a movie that is less martial arts and more brawl.

I have to mention The Horseman at this point because it's such a great friggin movie with good raw action scenes. Steven Kastrissios needs to write/direct more movies. Someone throw him some money, please.

Something like that with Statham in the lead role would be incredible.

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2012-05-15 03:15:43)

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

BigDamnArtist wrote:

Have you read the book Zarban? Just wondering.

No. The books I read are mostly non-fic and classic fic.

  Show

BigDamnArtist wrote:

...and then eventual Lisbeth (Who is teamed up with Blomkvist super early in the movie, which I get from a story angle, it's just something that struck me watching it)

It's funny that you say that, because from a cinematic point of view, they don't even meet for ages and their storylines hardly cross until then.

BigDamnArtist wrote:

But I would still argue that the very conventional ending is the point. In the end everything about this story is about family.

I can see that, but I would say to the author, "If it's not about the cleverness of the mystery, then don't make it a locked-room mystery. Make it an ordinary disappearance." Because the motivations are screwy. Why try to confide in the kindly uncle and then disappear and never contact him again and reassure him that you're okay? Why never expose Martin anonymously?

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Squiggly_P wrote:

I think Statham is a great actor who needs to take more roles where he's not kicking the crap out of people. He was really good in both The Bank Heist and Snatch and there was nary a fist fight in either of those two flicks. Not with him, at least. If he does have to kick the crap out of people, it should be in a movie that is less martial arts and more brawl.

Indeed. I forgot about The Bank Job, he was really good in that, he needs to do more stuff like that. I remembered things like Snatch and Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, I should have said he needs to get back to actual acting. It's easy to forget he didn't always do kicking and punching films as that is mostly what he's remembered for.

Another two films he doesn't do much fighting in (but still some) are Blitz and The Killer Elite. Blitz has very little fighting in it but it's such an unlikeable film and not really worthy of having The Stath as the lead. In Killer Elite, he has a good fight scene with Clive Owen that is more brawl than martial arts-

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

  Show

Zarban wrote:

It's funny that you say that, because from a cinematic point of view, they don't even meet for ages and their storylines hardly cross until then.

Yeah, in the book we get a huge amount (Relative to the movie) of back story for lisbeth, we meet her mother, we find out why she is as tortured as she is, which plays into the whole theme of the entire piece which is the abuse and hatred of women (In swedish the book is literally titled "men who hate women"), she has a lot more interaction with Armansky, and he has a whole thing with her. And then once Blomkvist does meet her, her skills are used more... effectively and more often, and like I said last time. And plus their relationship gets developed waaaay more than it does in the movie. The only reason Blomkvist actually solves the case is because of Lisbeths skills and contacts. And she is also the only reason wennerstrom gets taken down, but that point plays out pretty much the same as the book.


Zarban wrote:

I can see that, but I would say to the author, "If it's not about the cleverness of the mystery, then don't make it a locked-room mystery. Make it an ordinary disappearance." Because the motivations are screwy. Why try to confide in the kindly uncle and then disappear and never contact him again and reassure him that you're okay? Why never expose Martin anonymously?

I would argue that, while it's not about the cleverness of the mystery, it is about Vanger Corp, and meeting and exploring this warped and twisted family, and the paranoia that Vanger has had to live with because the only logically explanation for Harriets death is that one of the family members that was on the island did it.

And to the second half. I would say, she was a 15 year old girl. She was terrified and traumatized. The only reason she went to Vanger was to try and get out, but then Anita filled that role. I completely buy the idea that she thought the only way to be safe would be to completely and entirely disappear (And I'm sure Anita did nothing to dissuade that idea). And then when she was safe, all she wanted to do was to forget. So she did, and she left the Vangers behind and lived her life. If she had just outright contacted Vanger, Martin would eventually find out, and she would no longer be safe because Martin would make a point of finding her; so she sent the flowers thinking those would be the assurance he needed, but of course he read it the wrong way and assumed it was the killer taunting him.

As for exposing Martin anonymously? How? She has no proof. Martin is the head of Vanger corp, granted not nearly the empire it was, but he still has some clout. No one is going to go bust down his door and search the house because some anonymous tip said so. And there's no guarantee they would even find anything, Martin has been doing this entire life, he knows how to cover his tracks and clean up after himself. Hell, he has dinner guests over while he has victims in his torture room. The dude knows what he's doing.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

So I decided to finally check out The Pacific. I just finished the first episode...and I know it sounds bad to say this about something like this, but I assure you I mean it purely in a filmic way...I don't give a shit.

I have no clue who any of these people are, barely understand why I'm supposed to care, and I'm just generally disinterested in everything that's happening. And let be clear, I fucking love Band Of Brothers, I usually love everything about that era of war (Strictly...you know in a historical, and appropriate way) but somehow The Pacific has managed to over ride all that and make me not give a shit.

Is it just me? Can someone please assure me that it does at least get better? I'm just sitting here in a pool of my own disappointment trying to make sense of it all.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-05-19 05:18:30)

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I haven't seen The Pacific, but I know where you're coming from. As much as I liked Band of Brothers, I wasn't really interested in another story like it, and the reviews were kind of middling.

The reviews for Game of Thrones were great, but I'm only just getting into it with episode 4. The first two episodes had me wondering if I should resell the Blu-ray. Even so, I find it frustrating that the characters all constantly speak the subtext.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I came away from Pacific not quite liking it as well. A major problem was, well, it got so gory it became silly. It honestly felt like they had a flying severed limbs plugin and went crazy with it. Maybe it looked "real", haven't been in combat so don't know, but reality can look too silly to be taken seriously.

Also, I was disappointed the show only looked at the land war. I want to see the greatest sea battle ever dramatized, if only to see the Battleship Yamato run away like a bitch!

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

I just watched Raw Deal for the first time. This was one of the very few holes in my Arnold Schwarzenegger knowledge. It turns out that (surprise!) it's a terrible film, with dull characters and duller dialog, but the structure reminded my strongly of a Steven Seagal film. It's interesting (in a grasping-at-straws way, at least) to think that Schwarzenegger could have gone down the Seagal/Van Damme route, pumping out dull crime shoot-'em-ups year after year.

I think that the thing that separates them isn't acting ability or even star power so much as ability to pick scripts. I think that Arnie—like Stallone—knows a good story when he sees it, and that was what separated him from the lesser stars.

Last edited by Zarban (2012-05-20 16:46:08)

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

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Re: Random Movie Talk That Probably Doesn't Deserve Its Own Thread

Seagal doesn't only do crap films every so often, he produces, directs and acts in them do. See, not only does he not recognize a good script, he just shoots it with himself in the lead role anyway.

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