What movie are you watching right now?

[Axm]

Just saw Death Proof for the first time. What a dissapointment. The style was cool but just lacked substance and I can never really say I enjoyed any part of it.

[OL]

The Lego Movie.
Really, really inspired stuff. Really inventive, and I was surprised to find that the cast is so good. I kind of expected a bunch of teenybopper shit, but it was all more legitimate actors and people I actually like. And the movie is genuinely funny, all without resorting to anything objectionable in the least.
Shocking that something great like this seemed to just pass through theaters with only mild attention, while shit like Frozen remains an ultra-cash cow more than a year after its release.

Just saw Death Proof for the first time. What a dissapointment. The style was cool but just lacked substance and I can never really say I enjoyed any part of it.

Back when I saw it, I thought the first half of it was utter shit; the cast of girls in the beginning had no charisma whatsoever, and had no talent for delivering Tarantino dialogue.
Their car crash was great though (possibly even more so because I didn't like any of them).
The second cast of girls was far better though, and actually had some amount of appeal to them. I really liked the car chase as well (it's just so utterly old-school in its design), and Kurt Russel is fantastic throughout the entire movie.
It's weird; I pretty much hate the first half of the movie (barring Kurt Russel's parts), but love the second half.

[St. Elmo's Fire]

Yep, I rather enjoyed The Lego Movie, too. Genuine "smiler", I found..

[Kenny]

The Hobbit Trilogy.

Came back from a nine hour marathon of all the Hobbit movies which included the newest one, The Battle of the Five Armies. Peter Jackson even had a special message recorded just for this event basically telling us how crazy we were to sit through all three movies and to stay tuned for a "six movie marathon". I'm not sure if he was kidding about that or not, but it seems like a realistic possibility for a few people (which would be nearly a 24 hour run if you include the extended editions).

But here's my take on each one:

An Unexpected Journey - Definitely the worst one in the Hobbit trilogy and possibly the whole Middle Earth film series. Though it's not as bad as I remembered it, probably because I saw it in a proper 24 frame rate and not the absurd 48 frames. Still has some fun moments despite its short comings.

Desolation of Smaug - Apparently some people really didn't like this one. I liked it alot better than AUJ. The worst thing about it though is the abrupt ending, which I thought was completely unnecessary to end it there. But everything else is pretty good even that dwarf/elf love thing going on.

Battle of the Five Armies - Definitely without a doubt the best one in the Hobbit trilogy, but I'd say (going by memory) the 4th best in the Middle Earth series. LOTR is still miles better than this, but it's hardly surprising since Hobbit is extremely lightweight to begin with and the new material didn't do a whole lot to spruce it up. Still, it's a very fun movie with the actual Battle of the Five Armies being spectacular. I fondly remembered the event in the old '77 cartoon and they definitely amp it up here.


I enjoyed the experience so much I want to finish off the series proper with LOTR starting with Fellowship (which I've been wanting to do since the Hobbit was first announced). I have all extended trilogy DVD sets here so I'll start tomorrow.

[Rakim]

I just tried to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special for the first time. Jesus Christ. You know it's bad when the 40 year old commercials were the best part.

[elfshadowreaper]

The Hobbit Trilogy.

It was definitely the best of the Hobbit trilogy. I'm a HUGE Tolkien fan. I got into LOTR a few years before the movies came out, so this really feels like the end of a long journey to me. So much so that I shed a few tears last night when Billy Boyd sang the ending song.

I really want to cut the trilogy into one, maybe two movies. There SO much bloat to all of them, especially the second two. The first had a lot to it, but it was mostly all important. But the second two added characters that didn't need adding. Legolas has always been my favorite character in the books and movies, but he was unnecessary here. They could have had a small cameo because he is alive and it makes sense that he could appear. But Tauriel's character should have been dropped completely.

And in BOFA they should have also briefly shown what happened to the Master and Alfrid and then left it at that. Freaking Alfrid kept popping up throughout the first half of the movie. I. Don't. Care.

Gandalf was pretty useless throughout the entire movie. But I get that he's always served more of a purpose of prodding people to do what they need rather than him being a fighter.

This trilogy NEEDED to be two films.

But did you see that dog in the scene when the refugees of Laketown were on the mountain at the beginning of the movie? That dog made the movie for me. He was just wandering around while we got a wide shot of all of the refugees.

[Kenny]

The original intention was to make it two films, but then they decided to cram in new material to justify a third movie so they can advertise this as "the Hobbit Trilogy" alongside "the LOTR trilogy". Not to mention it makes for extra coin for Warner. Even before that, it was just going to be one movie.

Despite that, I liked Turiel and seeing Legolas in action again. I understood why she was added by the time I saw BOTFA:

It was to give more weight to Kili's inevitable death.

I also enjoyed seeing Sauroman, Galadriel, Elrond, and Gandalf together even though:

I wanted to see Sauroman meet Sauron and see how he became corrupted. I wasn't sure if he was already in on the plan or was about to having meeting him after that battle.

I don't remember a dog in the last film but I do remember pugs in the second when they enter the laketown.

[Sonikku]

Just got back from Hobbit 3. Going to be honest, it didn't knock my socks off. I mean it did have some good parts. I liked the scenes with Thorin and Bilbo. But I dunno. Maybe the magic of fantasy and big set pieces is something I just got out of my system with LoTR. Or maybe after watching the first two Hobbit films again on DVD this week as a refresher that by the time I had sat through an hour and a half battle of our heroes doing their grandstanding finishers on CGI orcs that I was just ready for it to be over.

But it felt like the whole ordeal dragged on a whole lot longer than it needed to be. I can't help but feel there's a really amazing movie in here somewhere. Here's to hoping some of hardcore fanbase will re-edit the trilogy into a slimmed down single feature with most of the clutter and the "Triple the Studio's dollar, Peter!!" padding cut out. Even without the padding, splitting it into all these parts just seems strange when you have things like all the build up for a guy like smaug as the villain in movie 2. They end it on a cliffhanger, then you wait a year, then they kill him off in the first ten minutes of 3 and move on. This thing just would have worked better as a single piece.

I just tried to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special for the first time. Jesus Christ. You know it's bad when the 40 year old commercials were the best part.

Are you kidding? It's awesome! Things like Chewbacca's Grand dad strapping himself into a futuristic hyper sex simulator machine was so outrageous I could hardly believe it got past censors. Mark Hamill with a mountain of makeup on is good for a chuckle and hearing Fisher try to sing is a cringe inducing guilty pleasure that has to be seen to be believed. The Boba Fett cartoon was probably the one part of it that wasn't "bad". I guess the Fett man man is so bad he makes the bad good.

[AnimeGamer183]

I just went and saw Hobbit 3. Man was this one missing something, its like there was a huge void, yet it still had some awesome parts. I am kind of on the fence about it, this movie just didnt quite feel like the first 2 hobbit films. Also the beginning of the movie started very strangely to me, it picked up right where it left off from the end of the second film and it started up a bit weird because of that. the music seemed different even, did they get a new composer for this one? I dont know why on earth they would.

I just didnt feel as much emotion and characters and depth with this one and there were just some strange parts in the movie. Also the laws of physics and mortality didnt seem to really play much of a part, as awesome as the battles were they were almost laughable at times from the sheer ridiculousness of them. There were some plot holes, some things left unfinished, but also some things that connected them well to the Lord of the Rings films.

All these movies need a watch in succession to really capture the entire essence, I dont think this movie brought down the whole experience by that much although it did some what. I left the film wanting alot more, I was some what disappointed, but there were cool parts, the story was a bit of a mess too.

[Rakim]

Are you kidding? It's awesome! Things like Chewbacca's Grand dad strapping himself into a futuristic hyper sex simulator machine was so outrageous I could hardly believe it got past censors. Mark Hamill with a mountain of makeup on is good for a chuckle and hearing Fisher try to sing is a cringe inducing guilty pleasure that has to be seen to be believed. The Boba Fett cartoon was probably the one part of it that wasn't "bad". I guess the Fett man man is so bad he makes the bad good.

It actually made me dislike wookies. I hated it that much. They seriously started it off with over 10 minutes of those hairy bastards screaming at each other without a second of proper dialogue.

The cartoon part was alright, though. It was the only part I could take in full without fast forwarding.

[AnimeGamer183]

^ it could have been worse, instead of 10 minutes of wookies screaming at each other, it could have been 10 minutes of sand people doing the same thing.

[Kenny]

Whiplash.

This is the most intense movie i've ever seen about jazz drumming. Yes, jazz drumming.


Don't You Forget About Me (2009).

A documentary about John Hughes. When they interview the actors from his movies, it was good. When they focus on the ultra creepy stalker group who obsessively talk about his films and track him down to his house to get an interview...man, that was cringe.

[Sailors?]

I too just saw the third part of The Hobbit trilogy. I agree it has many flaws but overall I enjoyed it I guess.

I found some parts completely laughable, including scenes where Legolas defies the laws of gravity and runs up some falling rocks. I know we've seen similar feats in LOTR but I feel the CGI in The Hobbit is what lets it down in this area. Some damn awful CGI that makes it completely unbelievable in parts for me.

Like I said think I enjoyed it though I'm not certain on that. I had a laugh anyways.

[Kenny]

The Theory of Everything.

Beautiful movie. Eddie Redmayne was the splitting image of Hawking, it was an amazing performance.

[Henry Spencer]

^He's the dark horse at the Oscars, isn't he? Always thought the guy had talent since seeing him in Black Death. Wonder what Hawking himself thinks of Redmayne's portrayal?