NOW CLOSED ; List some movies you've watched recently. Theatre, rental, TV... and give a */10

[mikeymikec]

Who hates "the North Koreans?" Hate the leaders that enslave them and brainwash them.

"John Connor"'s post reminds me of something I read around Iraq II, some teenager on a forum going on about how the Americans are going to show those awful Iraqis.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) - I watched the series, then read the book, then watched this film. This film has a bit of quality and style, but a standard movie length just isn't enough to flesh out the plot properly IMO. I enjoyed it, as far as it went.

The Ugly Truth (2009) - I was looking for something that my wife might enjoy and I might be able to tolerate. This film is very tongue-in-cheek, quite amusing but I thought "Crazy, Stupid, Love" was a lot better.

Castle in the Sky (1986) - Since watching Spirited Away I've kept an eye out for Studio Ghibli stuff. SA is still the best in my book. This film is a lot more childish. It's for kids really. It was OK to watch but I certainly wouldn't get it on DVD.

Wonder Woman (2009) - animation. If you go after stuff like Batman: The Animated Series, you might like this. It has a 12 rating for a reason though. I enjoyed it, though it wasn't particularly remarkable.

The Help (2011) - my wife loves this and watched me to watch it. I hate watching movies of this sort, ie. the hypocrisy of supposedly faithful Christians who don't see any problem with treating other people as second-class citizens (and worse). I didn't enjoy this movie.

Mississippi Burning (1988) - I plan to watch this as a result of watching the previous film I liked films like In The Heat Of The Night (1967), so I'll probably enjoy this, I think.

My wife and I are about 4 episodes into the first season of Game of Thrones. I can't say I've got into it yet. I'm trying to get my head around all the characters and all the plots.

 

[Pheran]

can anyone recommend some good american revolution documentaries on netflix. The search brings up almost nothing. there's 100 ww2, Vietnam and even civil war but no AR

John Adams is good - it's a docudrama, though.

EDIT: There's also Liberty! The American Revolution, but I haven't seen that one.

 

[Dedpuhl]

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - 9/10

 

[MonKENy]

John Adams is good - it's a docudrama, though.

EDIT: There's also Liberty! The American Revolution, but I haven't seen that one.

Both DVD only

 

[KlokWyze]

Argo 9/10 - awesome movie, hard to be critical. Maybe a bit jumpy with the editing at times. But great acting all around, great story, visually very well put together as well.

Also between this and Zero Dark Thirty.. anyone else noticing the return of smoking in movies? It seems like we went through a phased where they stopped giving everyone cigarettes. Both of these movies everyone was a chain smoker (and smoking indoors.. I'm not sure if they actually do that in Pakistan much less the U.S. embassy)

Argo tooks place during the 70's right? Before indoor smoking ban was in place and smoking was much more common.

Edit:

Doctor Who
Just got through season 2. Like the first doctor better, but Tenant is pretty good. The season finale was great...

Spoiler

Loved the scene where the cyber men and dalicks met! LMAO!

Once Upon a Time
Pretty sappy, but still entertaining. The main girl is hot and a good actress. Robert Carlyle is in it.

Still need to watch Argo, Skyfall.

Walking Dead on tonight! WUT

 

[epidemis]

Les Miserables: 9,5/10

So Les Miserables finally came to Europe and holy shit it is awesome albeit slightly too long. Anne Hathaway goes from demure to an orgamisc explosion of expression in her "I dreamed a dream". Well-deserved oscar is all I can say

 

[mistercrabby]

Oz the great and powerful - 6.5 worth watching on DVD or matinee

 

[Ichinisan]

My wife and I are about 4 episodes into the first season of Game of Thrones. I can't say I've got into it yet. I'm trying to get my head around all the characters and all the plots.

Keep watching. Re-watch some episodes if you need to. Re-watch the first episode after you finish 7 or 8. It helps.

 

[KlokWyze]

Keep watching. Re-watch some episodes if you need to. Re-watch the first episode after you finish 7 or 8. It helps.

1st season was great, but I honestly just lost interest in season 2 about 2 episodes in. havent touched it since.

 

[mcurphy]

Doctor Who
Just got through season 2. Like the first doctor better, but Tenant is pretty good. The season finale was great...

I also liked Christopher Eccleston! I thought he was awesome, and it really took me awhile to accept Tennant. Both are great, but I too liked Eccleston better. I think we are in the minority though, as it seems everyone is in love with Tennant.

 

[Zeze]

Les Mis (2012) 7/10: WTF did I just watch? Fiancee and I were excited to watch it, but kept out expectations low because of the reviews. We were expecting the standard musical with dialogues in between. The whole fvcking movie is singing. You heard that right- 99.5% is singing. It's. constant. endless. singing. Every word, every sentence is sung in notes. We were quite thrown off. And the dubbing was too obvious, so was the lip syncing. That turned me off greatly as well. The plot and presentation was good, but obvious dubbing and continuous singing was terribly off-putting.

The Hobbit 7.5/10: Forgettable but good. Also watched it with low expectations, but we were pleasantly surprised. Beautiful scenery, same folklore-like plot, great 'guest' appearances from LOTR movies. Overall we enjoyed it.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower 8/10: I'm a huge sucker for nostalgia and coming-of-age films. The first half was rather underwhelming- typical teens going through typical awkwardness, dealing with HS, etc. But then the latter half but very interesting with the disturbing underbelly. It was very well done. I liked it.

 

[Meractik]

Life of Pi: movies have been pretty much lacking for me recently, I am a fan of good wholesome down to earth movies with good family values... I was skeptical at first but after watching the movie and having it all come together at the end with a good lesson I really enjoyed the artistic aspect of the movie and the lessons it preached. Very good flick in my opinion. I give it 9.5/10 b/c nothing can be perfect... actually looking to see what else might be in store for director Ang Lee.

The hobbit: absolutely HATED how un-authentic it was to the books, shame on you peter jackson. 3/10.

We need to talk about Kevin: Horrible movie, no idea what the author was trying to convey with this simple messed up little boy being raised by a mother who couldn't control him... 1/10.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Castle in the Sky (1986) - Since watching Spirited Away I've kept an eye out for Studio Ghibli stuff. SA is still the best in my book. This film is a lot more childish. It's for kids really. It was OK to watch but I certainly wouldn't get it on DVD.

Have you watched Princess Mononoke or Howl's Moving Castle yet? Both are excellent imo.

 

[Farang]

Anyone who hasn't seen Life of Pi yet (I have it sitting here but haven't watched yet). Read the book first. Awesome book. Can only help you enjoy what seems be an a great movie.

 

[KlokWyze]

I also liked Christopher Eccleston! I thought he was awesome, and it really took me awhile to accept Tennant. Both are great, but I too liked Eccleston better. I think we are in the minority though, as it seems everyone is in love with Tennant.

Good to hear I'm not alone. :biggrin: Eccleston is just far more "formidable" and more believable as a destroyer/creator of entire races of beings. You can definitely see that when he's berating the Dalicks. Basically, he's just more of a badass.

 

[mikeymikec]

Have you watched Princess Mononoke or Howl's Moving Castle yet? Both are excellent imo.

Yes. I preferred the former by far. I thought the latter was good until the conclusion, which seemed to me like "oh damn, we still have all of these unresolved plot lines, quick, tie them off, we've got five minutes!".

@ Ichinisan - Game of Thrones - one problem I have is that the only character I would root for is one that I know for a fact dies in possibly the next few episodes, and most of the rest of them are either semi-detestable or completely so Death by

Spoiler

gold smelting

was pretty satisfying though.

Dr Who - I preferred the first (2005) season, possibly simply because it was better written. S2 wasn't bad either, but IMO it tailed off after that and hasn't recovered since. There have been a few episodes along the way that were good or brilliant, but they're offset somewhat by the awful episodes.

 

[mikeymikec]

Les Mis (2012) 7/10: WTF did I just watch? Fiancee and I were excited to watch it, but kept out expectations low because of the reviews. We were expecting the standard musical with dialogues in between. The whole fvcking movie is singing. You heard that right- 99.5% is singing. It's. constant. endless. singing. Every word, every sentence is sung in notes. We were quite thrown off. And the dubbing was too obvious, so was the lip syncing. That turned me off greatly as well. The plot and presentation was good, but obvious dubbing and continuous singing was terribly off-putting.

As far as I'm aware, that movie was the first big budget film where the singing is recorded at the same time as the acting (usually for a musical film the singing is recorded in a studio then the actors lip-sync during the visual performance, whereas these actors had an earphone in with someone playing the piano to give them the rhythm). I think it's more likely that the sound was out of sync with the display wherever you were watching it. I watched it at the cinema (as well?), I think I would have noticed a mistake like that. My wife is really enthusiastic about Les Mis, she listens to older musical versions regularly. I was interested by the 'live performance' side of it. I thought the film was OK, I wasn't blown away by it.

 

[mikeymikec]

The hobbit: absolutely HATED how un-authentic it was to the books, shame on you peter jackson. 3/10.

I stopped watching LotR at the cinema after the first film. It utterly destroyed my enjoyment of the books. Occasionally in the years since I've thought "I'm surprised that they haven't done an LotR film trilogy", then I think "oh wait, they did, it was terrible". I found it really weird watching Ian McKellen on the Jonathan Ross show talking about how good a job was done on The Hobbit of getting three films out of one book, my thought was "did you read it? Because that isn't what they did.".

I don't think the LotR are the greatest books ever or anything like that, but they don't read like stereotypical Hollywood scripts, that's for sure. I don't think Tolkien would have written them if an exec was standing over his shoulder and saying "you know, we need more Arwen scenes and some cringe-worthy cliché lines" and "we need Frodo to moronically walk like a zombie along high and narrow places and for a nazgul almost to get him!" and "can we use the dwarf for some comic relief? That's what dwarfs are good for, right?" and "Aragorn can handle twenty orcs together single-handed can't he?".

 

[sandorski]

Seven Psychopaths 7/10: If it came out 10 years ago, I might have given it an 8 for originality, but most of it has already been done. Enjoyable movie with funny parts, gory violent parts, couple plot twists, couple teary parts. Worth a Rent at least.

 

[mikeymikec]

Oz the great and powerful - 6.5 worth watching on DVD or matinee

Seeing a poster for this movie made me wonder how much corset-wearing has increased in Hollywood movies in recent years. Not that I mind from a purely visual point of view I just wonder why say an action heroine or a wicked witch would take to wearing corsets, how does the impeded mobility or inability to breathe appeal to their ambitions?

 

[purbeast0]

argo - 5/5 - i REALLY liked this movie. from start to finish i just liked everything about the movie. i liked the feel of it and just the overall style. it was very well done and had for some suspenseful scenes. i didn't know the story prior to it and it's pretty cool that it is a true story.

zero dark thirty - 3.5/5 - this movie was alright. the first 80% of the movie was not what i was expecting really. i had also heard the torture scenes in the movie were brutal and hard to watch, but they were far from that. they did make you feel sorry for the terrorist but in the end screw that. i thought the actual mission scene was AWESOME though. i really liked how it was filmed and how it went down. very neat scene. i'd rate this higher if the earlier portion of the movie wasn't pretty meh.

seven psychopaths - 4/5 - enjoyed this movie a lot as well. it's extremely dialog driven and has some great dialog in general. i'm not a huge fan of colin farell for the most part but i liked his roll in this movie. woody harrelson and christopher walken owned as well. overall it was a really enjoyable, funny movie that definitely goes over the top at parts.

EDIT:

oh and at the beginning of seven psychopaths, i thought i was watching an episode of boardwalk empire with 2 major characters from the show. thought it was kinda cool seeing those 2 guys together in another movie. wonder if the guy who made the movie was a fan of the show or something.

 

[purbeast0]

Life of Pi: movies have been pretty much lacking for me recently, I am a fan of good wholesome down to earth movies with good family values... I was skeptical at first but after watching the movie and having it all come together at the end with a good lesson I really enjoyed the artistic aspect of the movie and the lessons it preached. Very good flick in my opinion. I give it 9.5/10 b/c nothing can be perfect... actually looking to see what else might be in store for director Ang Lee.

if you have the chance, watch the extras on the life of pi. they are really good and there is an hour long special about the whole journey of making the movie. it's really inspiring and just an awesome hour of extras to watch. it is crazy to think that the kid who played pi had never acted before and prior to casting for the movie starting, he had never even considered acting.

i watched it a 2nd time last night with all of my inlaws and enjoyed it again. except this time it was harder for me to understand because we put the spanish 5.1 soundtrack on. and speaking of that, the dubbing for this movie in spanish is incredible. nothing like the dubbing you see on old movies you see on tv. the person doing the dubbing for pi was actually indian too, you could hear the indian accent coming through.

 

[Agent11]

Just watched Inglourious Basterds.

Some parts of the movie I really love, then others I really hate.

Christoph Waltz was brilliant. Many of the scenes were shot with great style and had very interesting composition. I love the fact that the actors use french and german throughout.

I really did not like the entire scene where the surviving captured german related how the 'basterds' captured the german patrol and attempted to get information from them, it seemed forced and was further ruined by the hokey narration and text that would pop up, something that unfortunately plagued other parts of the movie as well.

I also felt that more could have been done to make it feel like an alternate time line, but ohwell.

There were more good and great parts than bad though so I would give 'Inglourious Basterds' 8 of 10

 

[Aikouka]

Olympus Has Fallen - 7/10: I decided to see this movie after I saw that it was getting decent reviews. The movie had a lot of good action in it, and to an extent, it certainly had a Die Hard feel. However, I think it would be doing a disservice to Die Hard to even compare the two as being on equal footing. The biggest draws to Die Hard are the story of the stoic hero being caught in the middle of a terrible situation and his wisecracking interactions with his enemies. Both of those weren't really met with this movie. I couldn't help but shake the fact that the dialog seemed to get much worse as the movie went on, and the little quips were becoming a bit groan-worthy.

Part of me was annoyed by the implausibility in the movie.

1) The C-130 never would have made it that far into DC.
2) If there was a missile defense system built into DC, it would most likely be radar-assisted, not heat-based, which means flares wouldn't work.
3)

Spoiler

At least from everything that I've learned, nuclear bombs don't magically go off just because you create an explosion. They create a nuclear reaction by the release of an ion (catalyst) into fissionable material, which starts the nuclear chain reaction. Without this nuclear catalyst, there will be no nuclear-based explosion. This makes the whole Cerberus plot line of the movie where the bad guy wants to irradiate the majority of the United States improbable.

Les Mis (2012) 7/10: WTF did I just watch? Fiancee and I were excited to watch it, but kept out expectations low because of the reviews. We were expecting the standard musical with dialogues in between. The whole fvcking movie is singing. You heard that right- 99.5% is singing. It's. constant. endless. singing. Every word, every sentence is sung in notes. We were quite thrown off. And the dubbing was too obvious, so was the lip syncing. That turned me off greatly as well. The plot and presentation was good, but obvious dubbing and continuous singing was terribly off-putting.

I'm pretty certain that your description of what a "standard musical" is actually matches the description of most plays. At least from what I've seen, musicals typically sing almost all of the dialog.

 

[purbeast0]

I'm pretty certain that your description of what a "standard musical" is actually matches the description of most plays. At least from what I've seen, musicals typically sing almost all of the dialog.

"classic" musicals as i know it are not 100% singing like he is describing. when i think musicals i think stuff like West Side Story or The Music Man, which is as he described, a lot of dialog with singing in between. almost like how most disney movies used to be, which i'm really glad they no longer are with all the singing.

i did also hear though that les mis did all live singing, no dubbing at all, and it was the first musical to do this. i actually heard a funny interview with wolverine where the interviewer was singing all of his questions to him, and all of the answers were being sung back by hugh jackman. pretty cool that he played along with that. but the whole point of them doing that in the interview was because they were talking about how the whole movie was sung "live" as they filmed it and not in a studio and dubbed over later.

i personally cannot stand singing in movies.