Pretty nice movie night this evening. Watched both "Heavenly Creatures" and "Taxi Driver" in what amounted to 4 hours of studying troubled characters. Really recommend both. "Heavenly Creatures" in particular starts off a bit off-kilter tone-wise, but once you get into it and the story progresses I really fell into it quite nicely.

Taxi Driver is, in a general sense, the slow-jazz version of Nightcrawler with De Niro substituted for Gyllenhaal. Also very recommended. Martin Scorsese has a very memorable and well-acted cameo that I wasn't expecting.

Squiggly: Am going to watch Predestination soon. Will remember to read your thoughts after I've watched it.

My week of watching new releases was kind of depressing. Here goes.

Terminator Genisys (2015) - 3/10 (7.1)

My god. I felt like I need to watch both T1 and T2 to wash my mouth after all the watered down, overwritten material that was in this film. I'd probably rate both Salvation and T3 higher than this film. So many things wrong. This is one of those films where you can pause it every minute of runtime and find 4 things to tear apart in-depth, either editorially, directorially, script, acting, or otherwise.
This isn't just mediocre "Fan Fiction" like I'd categorize T3 and Salvation. No, Genisys just goes straight into hilariously bad, and doesn't look back.

The Red Letter Media video is perfect, it really sums up how worthy of ridicule this series has become, and this is only from the aspect of the pure mechanics of the plot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXJiSZhA5cg)

The aged T800 in the film makes a point of stating a few times how he's "old, not obsolete".
Then at the end, this theme comes full circle when the torso of him lands in a vat of the mimetic poly-alloy that makes up T1000s. A few minutes later the T800 shows up, now sporting a T-1000 body and saying "upgrade!". In other words, his torso landed in the goo, and he just took control over it and made himself a new body with the mimetic poly-alloy.

God damn I cannot cringe any harder.

As a Terminator film it is a 2/10 (they spelled the names of some people correctly so that's a point I guess), and as a pure action film it is on Paul W.S Anderson level, so a 4/10.

Jurassic World (2015) - 4/10 (7.4)

Maybe I was still sore after Genisys, but I also watched JW. I did not care for it at all.
As a brainless, slightly cringe-worthy dinosaur romp, it will probably satisfy.

If judged in context with JP1, this is terrible. So little continuity with the logic of the world of JP1, The characters are so boring, energyless. Hammond is replaced with some CEO dude who lacks all of Hammonds charm and giddyness, and has no additional traits.
Music felt like someone playing imitations of John Williams JP1 music (lacking the refined performance of his scores) out of context behind the new film. The first act of the film has poor mixing, where the music is playing loudly over dialogue scenes where one would expect the music to not steal focus.

This was just so lazy. The mode of transport in the film is transparent glass balls with gyros. Why? Because WE HAVE TO ONE UP THE ORIGINAL STUPID. Also the balls surely would become completely dirty and greasy after just minutes of rolling through dinosaur muck and dirt and goo and crushing bugs and etc etc. But screw logic, shut up and turn your brain off, it's just a fun movie!

Maybe I missed something, I was expecting more after seeing the general reception of the film. Almost none of the details of direction, acting and plotting amount to anything. There's not really even a theme in the film.
The first film had Hammond be visibly defeated after shit went wrong. His dream was ruined, and he and Ellie had a conversation over Ice Cream.

JW has none of those scenes, at all. There's no pondering by anyone about what is going on. No character in the film has any real purpose. The finale of the film is just dinosaurs fighting. JP1 had the T-Rex deliver the final blow in the film as a perfect send-off. JW has some fan-service "you like dinosaurs, have 5 of them!" and then just ends. The humans are standing there like "well... that happened".

We follow the kids in the film for a quite large percentage. They have no personality at all. Literally. They are young brother and older brother. What are their characters? They have none. None. The filmmakers didn't even provide them with an adult to play off of like the 2 kids and Sam Neill in JP1. And JP1 atleast realized that the kids would have moderate possibility for character, so they made the fact that they were kids play off of Sam Neill's dislike of children.

I just can't see how anyone could find this beyond passable. The plot is more disaster movie than thriller, and yet they feel they can shove in forced humor at odd times. In JP1 a handful of people were in peril, and there were enough lulls in the action to allow for some wonderment.
In JW, we have 20.000 people running for their lives at large sections of the film, and yet in all of this the filmmakers expect us to forgive corny comedy moments. Hahaha, no but seriously, if you shut up you can literally hear the screaming of people dying a stones throw away. This plot does not allow the same dynamics as JP1, stop shoving it in, it's completely inappropriate.

The dinosaurs in this film, collectively, are about 50% as scary as the T-Rex in the car attack scene in JP1. so much money burning on screen, and the dinosaurs still don't look "there" at all. I counted one instance where it looked like they used an animatronic, i.e. something was actually there. Everything else looked really detailed, and very fake.

There was literally 1 moment where I thought "oh, that was clever". Like I was so happy to see something I felt was creative amid all this incoherent character work and plotting.

Underneath the dress-up of John Williams themes and kids in peril, this had barely any soul, and in the instances where the movie stops and allows for some kind of character interaction, I was just questioning why they would stop when there are fucking dinosaurs loose, get in the car you raving lunatic, the plot should not allow for you to do this unpunished. This thing took out a team of military guys like 30 minutes ago. I know you know because you watched it happen. I would stay in the god damn car.

But whatever, we need an imitation of the scene in JP1 where they come across a sick/injured dinosaur so the movie can pretend to have meaning because one character just started crying because the fake CG dinosaur looks so cute because like 5 animators worked on just the eyes on that one so you know it's meaningful, the time and money spent and all.

I apologize for the rants. I feel this is a safe place to vent, feel free to tell me how wrong I am!

I had no idea who the director was, but I just got out of the movie and it did indeed feel like a mediocre two-part episode of a television series. And such an ugly thing to look at, too.

A big problem is that small-to-mid-range genre movies don't exist anymore for the most part, which means up-and-coming filmmakers don't have a chance to hone their craft and develop a voice.

James Cameron didn't jump straight into mega-budget filmmaking, people forget he started on Piranha 2, then Terminator, then Aliens. It wasn't until the Abyss he was really working at a scale comparable to a modern-day blockbuster (even that was only 70 mil, so about 140 mil today, not even on the higher end of a lot of these movies).

If he jumped straight from Terminator to T2, or Titanic, it probably wouldn't have been nearly as good

Edit: For BDA, just in case

Last edited by fireproof78 (2015-07-14 02:26:52)

Guys. Not to be the asshole, but spoiler tag that shit or move it to the spoiler thread for JW please.

It must be an expectations thing. I saw it in theaters, and thought it was horrid. That was even without ever playing the games, just taking it at face value. Maybe I could watch it now and enjoy the badness.

They're mostly absent as well. The visual effects didn't quite work for them, so that's probably why they are hidden or sir not appearing in this film. I warm to the movie with each viewing, perhaps because I'm just a sucker for space combat movies. There are a few great scenes that I picture in my mind when I think of the movie - there's a great bit at the end I always like for instance. I like the cocky pilots bantering stuff too.

Shutter Island (2010) - 9/10

Being a fan of both Scorcese and DiCaprio, I really enjoyed this flick. I've put it off for far too long, and regret doing so. Every scene and shot feels deliberate, every sound effect and angle feels like it's there for a reason, even though the editing and sound design can feel stuttered and annoying at times. The story works, mostly, and DiCaprio's apparent descent to madness feels like it's working really well. The ending works, too. It's a bit of a twister, but you start seeing whats coming about 10 minutes before it's revealed.

All in all, I enjoyed it, and I'm also fairly happy I decided to watch this instead of the third Hobbit film, which I'll probably putt off indefinitely.

That's pretty accurate! (Though for me, a lot of the jokes did land, somehow).

I'd recommend it regardless, 'cause it really is a "how on earth did they manage to get this made?" movie. It is so, so full of bizarre creativity and goes to places "kids" movies never go, that it's worth watching at least once. I think it's rewatchable, too. Actually, thinking about how much is packed in there makes me want to watch it tonight!

The first one is odd, 'cause there's really no plot, just a series of scenes connected together that somehow have enough charm to keep you from noticing how little is happening. Also, I still have a crush on their Joan of Arc. Gosh, she's so cute.

Disclaimer: if you dislike the tone of a post I make, re-read it in a North/East London accent until it sounds sufficiently playful

Doesn't reach the dizzy heights of Ghost Protocol, but a solidly entertaining entry. Some truly death-defying stuff from Cruise yet again (the diving sequence from the trailer is incredibly impressive, and the huge car chase set-piece is deftly handled as well), and the cast are all likable and engaging (this is the first movie I've actually liked Jeremy Renner in). There's a great sense of humor throughout, which is much appreciated. The only major complaints I have are both technical—first, while this isn't color-graded within an inch of its life like most similar movies these days, the orange sheen to everyone's skin is rather offputting. Second, the strobe cutting early on is extremely irritating; one early sequence in particular was bloody impossible to decipher due to the number of cuts per second. This got better as the movie went on, but I was bothered enough by its early appearances to be taken out of the experience.

Last edited by Abbie (2015-08-01 22:36:21)