I've actually heard a lot of positive word of mouth around this one. Apparently it's a really solid martial arts flick.

What'd be way cooler is if Kaufman left specific instructions before his death for 30 years in the future, about how to prank the people of the future into thinking he was still alive.

I just think what you're describing isn't as interesting for a story set in Space. Space is this giant landscape that makes it ripe for metaphor and larger statements about humanity. Particularly with a movie taking place around the orbit of the entire planet. If you're purely going to use the setting for just a minimalist survival thriller with no larger context or statement, there's no real reason to set it in space in the first place, aside from challenging yourself technically. It becomes just another Open Water or Buried, with just the gimmick of Space being the hostile force around the character instead of water or dirt. I think it's a waste of time to spend 4 years making a photo-real space drama like that with no larger human context and nothing to say.

I think I was the reverse of you, where the 1st trailer made me think it was just gonna what you describe, and then I was pleasantly surprised that the movie was much more humanist and layered than it originally looked.

In fact, that's my favorite scene in the movie, and elevates it over just being a genre disaster movie.

Also, just an observation, but between Gravity and Europa Report, I'm really loving the resurgence of secular scientists as movie protagonists.

I'm totally sitting out this debate, but I wanna high-five Fireproof for taking all this rigorous heat. Dorkman's been sitting on like 10 years worth of pent-up arguments for why religion is BS, which are being unleashed here. Not that I disagree with him, but I'd rather see it directed at someone who isn't a super-cool member of the community. Carry on though, I like reading these.

I was going to say the same thing, it was huge for about 10 years, and now it's almost completely died out.

So I wouldn't worry about it as any sign of cultural decline or anything, every decade horror jumps on another fad until it drives it into the ground. 80s it was slasher movies, 90s it was the self-referential post-modern slasher movies (Scream 1/2/3, I Know What You Did Last Summer), 2000s was torture porn, 2010s it seems to be PG-13 ghost movies.

Hard Boiled is a staggeringly amazing piece of action film-making. The opening shootout is better than the climax of pretty much any American action film, and then the movie manages to escalate from there multiple times into the insane hospital battle. You know a movie is kicking ass when it's making greats like John McTiernan and James Cameron look weak and lazy by comparison. John Woo's mastery of continuity, editing, and choreography is second to none.

And for those people who say he "lost it", go watch Red Cliff and come back to me. He hasn't lost anything, Hollywood just had no idea what to do with him.

Europa Report is on Netflix now. You guys should watch it. It doesn't pull a Sunshine in the 3rd act.
I'd been curious about this one for a while, a found footage hard-sci-fi movie about a fictional trip to Jupiter to investigate Europa. The verdict? It's really good, but not perfect.

The biggest issue is the movie embraces a non-linear story structure through sections of it, for seemingly no reason. It's a really weird choice that hurts the movie (especially the first 10 minutes, which feel really off-balance as a result), because it under-cuts the tension of a key character moment, for no real benefit. It doesn't kill the movie or anything, but I think if they told it strictly linearly, it could've been great instead of merely really good.

With that out of the way, this is one of the strongest examples of a hard sci-fi space movie I've seen in awhile. For the most part, characters consistently make smart decisions, and behave like scientists. Also, despite what the trailers may suggest, the movie stays pretty cerebral throughout, and doesn't actually ever really turn into a horror movie. It basically just sticks with the fictional mission and them trying to fix problems that happen along the way, which is much appreciated. Actors are all good too, with solid performances all around.

If anything holds the movie back, it's just that it doesn't really end up being ABOUT anything greater than itself. It's a well told found-footage space movie, but nothing more than that. I also kinda wished at times it wasn't restricted by the found footage format, but this is clearly a limitation of the budget, and they make the most of it. Still, it's really admirable to see a movie like this about intelligent scientists who put their lives on the line for the betterment of mankind. It may be kind of Gravity's low-budget cousin this year, but I hope people give it a chance.

Rambo calling out the bad guy on his side, before proceeding to kick the ass of the bad guys on the Russian/Vietnamese side.

I could come up with a solid dozen right now, but let's start with a more obscure one from one of my favorites, from the great Charles Bronson in the Elmore Leonard-written Mr.Majestyk.

"You make sounds like you're a mean little ass-kicker. Only I ain't convinced. You keep talking I'm gonna take your head off"

http://youtu.be/hTx_jDEnvxs?t=55s

The thing with Battleship is that the last 30 minutes is actually super awesome, it's just too little, and way too damn late. That's the annoying mis-calculation the movie makes. Old war veterans having to power up an old battleship and battle aliens because it's the only functioning piece of technology left is an Excellent premise for an Independence Day-style goofy fun blockbuster, I wish someone would make a movie about that. As it is, it's like you're watching this really shitty Michael Bay wannabe for 2 hours, and then suddenly a completely different, actual good movie comes on for half an hour.

Ya, I get what he's doing, but I think his trend-setting has been some of the worst things to ever happen to film music. As a fan of film scores, I would hate the shit out of him, if it wasn't for his amazing 90s stuff (or the occasional bright spot like his "Rango" score) there to show me he's capable of writing awesome stuff, but has just decided to do boring-ass "minimalist" rising strings. You know what, ya, if you whittle your music down to where there's practically nothing to it and it's just 2 notes, it's really easy to do thematic things with them because your theme is almost non-existent. That doesn't impress me, and I'll go one further and say that does not automatically make it fit better for his movies. Some movies, like Dark Knight, that stuff works great, but when I'm watching my sweeping action adventure, I want to FEEL something instead of generic low-strings. I'll always love Zimmer for his 90s stuff, but much like Michael Mann and his recent "shutter crime" phase, I wish he'd get over it already.

Part of this is me still bitter over his Man of Steel score, which I pretty much hate, but ya, when I look to the future of film-scoring, I look at guys like Alexandre Desplat and John Powell over Zimmer at this point.