What movie are you watching right now?

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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby OL » Thu Mar 20, 2014 11:32 pm

I tend to skip most of these newer cg animated films. Grand majority are just the same old attempt at tugging the heartstrings with goofy-ass minions and comic relief characters, or it's just a bunch of inspirational-for-kids shite (i.e. the girl power theme that Brave looked to have). I haven't seen it, but I was utterly uninterested in Frozen as soon as I saw the wacky moose-that-thinks-it's-a-dog in the trailers. Good god, that is such a played-out concept (not a moose in particular, just any animal in its place). The visual design seemed entirely aimless to begin with, but that particular aspect just looked so "seen it before."
I never thought I'd see the day where I'd be saying this, but these cartoons are just too "kiddy" for me. Used to be that they had really broad appeal (anyone can enjoy a Toy Story film), but now they just pander to the tastes of little kids.

When the fuck are we going to see a Brad Bird-helmed Incredibles 2? The first was absolutely excellent. It's a goddamn crime that Cars 2 exists, but we haven't gotten a sequel for the Incredibles.
On that note, Brad Bird should just make more animated films in general. The Iron Giant is another amazing one.
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Riku Rose » Thu Mar 20, 2014 11:46 pm

OL wrote: When the fuck are we going to see a Brad Bird-helmed Incredibles 2? The first was absolutely excellent. It's a goddamn crime that Cars 2 exists, but we haven't gotten a sequel for the Incredibles.
On that note, Brad Bird should just make more animated films in general. The Iron Giant is another amazing one.


Incredibles 2 with Brad Bird writing got announced about 2 days ago with Cars 3. No joke.

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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Thief » Fri Mar 21, 2014 3:09 am

Frozen spoilers

Kenny wrote:
Frozen was...a girl named Elsa has powers but then is told not to use them after hurting her sister and then is locked in a room in her house who never gets into contact with her sister Anna for years (what?), then Anna instantly falls in love with a guy...who later turns out to be evil, even though there was no indication of that before...then Elsa comes out into the limelight for the first time in a long time and becomes queen (?) then promptly turns shit into ice and get ostracized...then is content all of a sudden with being alone...then Anna goes off to find her sister by herself with no indication that she ever ventured outside the kingdom before...then there's a blonde guy and his moose...and the snow man....

And before you know it, I was 40 minutes into the movie and I still had a feeling of "when is it going to start?" So is Elsa just misunderstood? Then why does she all all aggressive with Anna to the point of violence when her whole thing was she was afraid to hurt her? Why are they trying to kill Elsa? Are they afraid of her? Is there a more sinister plan I totally missed, and if I missed it...why wasn't it mentioned in the plot earlier? Why was the blonde guy, who I presume from the kid from the start, introduced to the story that late? How can you be locked in a room for years and expect me to believe the sisters had little to no contact...? It's not like it was a hidden dungeon.


Your description makes the plot sound a lot more complicated than it actually is since it seems like you're trying to describe every little thing that happens.

Elsa has powers she can't control and is kept hidden as a result.
They grow and grow until she snaps -- creating an eternal winter.
They try to stop the winter and bring Elsa back.

Elsa is misunderstood and she unintentionally gets aggressive with Anna because she's frustrated with her situation, she never means to hurt her. Hans is trying to kill Elsa so Anna will end up being the Queen and he the King -- he uses the situation with Elsa to attempt to strengthen his original plan. Also -- I'd compare the characters like Olaf, Sven, and Christof to The Scarecrow, The Tinman, and The Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.

The movie had an incredible score -- wonderful wonderful music and really great art direction. There's one particular scene where Elsa is in the palace pacing and you see the Ice Palace spliced with red as she starts to panic... it's really cool visually and musically. The dialogue was actually funny and the characters likable -- the plot is easy to understand and it's never really boring. I can't imagine anyone going to see Frozen and saying it's awful... that seems a little ridiculous. It's not a bad movie.

I'll certainly agree with you that Tangled was a better film -- that movie has the tightest script in existence -- but Frozen was still really good and I really enjoyed it. Sorry but I just can't agree with you at all on this one. :|
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Kenny » Fri Mar 21, 2014 3:39 am

That's the problem I had, what I just said was exactly what happens. They should've simplified it much more. Even your take on it was still a little too complicated and doesn't really make sense especially when the character motivations are pretty whack.

Given the original story (based on the synopsis I read) was still shit and the fact Disney has a knack for re-writing the stories anyway, they should've just done something like this: the land was cast in an eternal bed of snow by sorcerers and the snow will be eternal until the last of the sorcerers have been eliminated. Cut to the story and you find out Elsa is the last sorcerer, but she is the daughter of Royalty and if the people find out there would be a revolt against the kingdom.

There. Much simpler. Much easier to see the conflict. Much easier to see the danger of being exposed. Much easier to have arguments between the two sisters (the whole "you're not my real sister" and "my people are gone because of your people" arguments). And with the evil prince angle, it would've been MUCH more believable for him to find out about Elsa and plan to eliminate her so he can overthrow the regime and take it as his own so the people would worship him for slaying the last of the sorcerers (and force Anna as his queen to boot). To top it off, if it was a case of changeling, it would've made more sense for Elsa to come to realize her royal parents where never her real parents and then go apeshit and build her new winter castle. Realizing she's different, and shit, and taking pride in her powers.

It would also make it more believable for the King and Queen to really try and suppress Elsa's abilities early on for fear of being exposed. Not only that, since they played the whole "power of love heals all" card, it's easy to assume that being sad/angry/depressed causes her to be unstable and lose control of her powers. She could've been depressed her entire life up to that climatic moment where she has to save her sister, causing her to feel the love that she hadn't felt before. You could've even hinted that in the beginning whenever she was playing with Anna her warmth caused the snow to melt which (coupled with the accidental spark) caused her to hurt Anna.


If the story played more like that, I would've enjoyed it alot more. You can add little details here and there to enrich the world, add to the mythology, have thrills, chills, spills and could've been easily better than Tangled. But that's just what I think, I agree the art direction but I only liked that one song. I think it could've been so much better, on that note we have to agree to disagree. I know i'm not alone with my opinion too.

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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Thief » Fri Mar 21, 2014 3:58 am

I'll be the first to admit that I don't particularly care too much about plot and am much more concerned with the Music. So while I understand why these things would bother you it just isn't something I'm all that concerned with.

For me the plot succeeded in being sufficient enough to support the songs -- which I thought we're great. But yeah -- I like you and you've obviously put plenty of thought into some of the reasons why you didn't like the plot (many of which I can agree with... to an extent), so agreeing to disagree is fine with me.

Except for that Brave being better bit -- that movie waaaaaaaaaaaaassss shit... :P
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Kenny » Fri Mar 21, 2014 7:18 pm

You know, I was probably being too brash saying that as I was fresh out of Frozen. Brave did piss me off after I saw it, Frozen just underwhelmed me.
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby OL » Thu Mar 27, 2014 3:08 am

Just caught the end of Gangster Squad on tv. Never seen the movie before.
Whatever the rest of the movie is like, I just have to say that the last big action scene is pretty fucking great. Been a helluva long time since I've seen a genuinely good shootout in a movie. Even though it has to do with the 40s and gangsters and whatnot, it gave me kind of a late-80s/early-90s John Woo vibe, what with the scenery getting torn to shreds by bullets the way it is. We need more action scenes like that in movies. It's usually all kung fu choreography and cg effects now, so this was a breath of fresh air.
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby OL » Fri Apr 04, 2014 7:43 pm

Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Really effing good. While the rest of Marvel's movies so far (even the first Captain America) have just been entertaining-as-hell popcorn flicks -- which ain't a bad thing, don't get me wrong -- The Winter Soldier is like a genuine spy thriller. Sort of a "Jason Bourne with superpowers" kind of deal (though it doesn't drag anywhere near as much as a Bourne flick).
It's a popcorn flick at the same time, sure, but it definitely feels a bit more intelligent than most other Marvel movies. Certain plot points are easy to see coming (and one in particular is a little hokey; should have been handled slightly differently), but it's a great ride anyway. And something about the action just kicks a lot harder. The Nick Fury car chase close to the beginning is genuinely tense, and the choreography in the various fight scenes is pretty hard-hitting. And any of the action with Falcon is a damn joy to watch.
So yeah, if you like any of Marvel's movies, go see it.
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Kenny » Fri Apr 04, 2014 8:54 pm

^Yeah, i'm watching that this weekend. I kept hearing its so good.

I'm gonna watch Afflicted once I get off work: http://www.amazon.com/Afflicted-Watch-N ... =afflicted
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby mue 26 » Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:57 pm

I recently watched Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Excellent films. I didn't realize there was a first one Before Sunrise, and I'm not sure I can go back now. Can anyone recommend me any other similarly well written talky movies like this?
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Kenny » Sun Apr 06, 2014 2:32 pm

Didn't get to watch Afflicted, but I did see Captain America: Winter Soldier and Moneyball.

Both are excellent movies.

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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby OL » Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:10 pm

Man of Steel.
I really wanted to like this one.
Spoilers abound:
Okay, first the good: I like Henry Cavill as Superman. Easily the best live-action Supes we've had, mainly due to the fact that he actually looks just right. And Kevin Costner was surprisingly good as Pa Kent. He gets a pretty bum rap as a bad actor so much of the time, but he's really good in this case. The dialogue isn't all that great, but he manages to say it in a way that really, really works. Russel Crowe, as well, managed to play Jor-El in a way that didn't keep knocking me in the face with the fact that it was Russel Crowe on screen. He pulls it off, and I was surprised that I actually liked him in it (I'm not generally the biggest Russel Crowe fan in the world). And in a few cases the action is really cool, such as when Superman and Zod are knocking each other around in the sky, sending each other flying for a mile with each hit. Every now and then the action would hit a moment where it just felt right, like this is how Superman action ought to be done. I can appreciate that kind of thing.

But I think the bad outweighed the good. First off, the script has absolutely no personality to it. The biggest complaint most people seem to have about Superman is that he's too much of a boyscout with little to no personality (a standpoint I disagree with wholeheartedly, having read the best of his comic stories and whatnot). This movie doesn't help things at all; they play him completely in the way most people wrongly perceive the character to be. He's boring. The movie takes that cliched misconception and runs with it for the entire goddamn movie. The most personality he shows is at the very end of the movie, when he smashes the surveillance drone and says "I know you're trying to find out where I hang my cape; it's not gonna happen." But that's at the absolute tail end of the movie, five minutes before the credits; they couldn't have made him more interesting for the rest of the two hours and twenty minutes he was around? It's just maddening that Marvel does such a brilliant job with making their characters really pop in the personality department, but for some reason filmmakers can't manage to do it with DC characters. Why is it that Superman seems so boring here, but Captain America (another character with a previously misconceived "boring" personality) seems so fucking great in his movies?
The dialogue, in most cases, is also pretty bad. Having Lois Lane start a sentence with "Okay, if we're done comparing dicks..." is just plain wrong. That's not the kind of dialogue you put into a movie like this. It doesn't jibe with the rest of the movie, it doesn't fit with Lois's character otherwise, and it's just plain crass for a movie based on an 80-year-old superhero property. Not to mention that Amy Adams just sounds completely unnatural saying it. I thought she was a bad casting choice to begin with, and it turned out I was right. She's completely not the Lois Lane type. Why do filmmakers have such a hard time casting the role of Lois? They never seem to get it right.
Funny thing is, I think Diane Lane is pretty good as Ma Kent, barring the fact that she's way too hot for the role (they give her gray hair and fake liver spots to try to make her look old, but she still looks too good). But if this were just a few years ago, I think she would have made an amazing Lois Lane. She would have been perfect. Just the right blend of personality and hotness. None of this "girl next door" bullshit; I've always thought Lois Lane ought to be a good mix of glamorous and sassy, and Diane Lane would have been just right for that. Nevermind the fact that they have the same last name.
But yeah, back to the bad shit: I also hate that filmmakers can't just forget about Zod. I've always thought that one of the most important aspects of Superman's personality is the fact that he is the last survivor of his planet. He might be surrounded by people, the world might love him for all that he does, but he's ultimately alone in the universe because he's the only one of his kind. But y'know, fuck all that. Apparently it's more important that we have characters that can take a punch from him, so yay! More Kryptonians!
And that's not even mentioning the silly detail that Jor-El implanted the genetic code of Krypton's entire society in Superman's cells. Yeah, okay, you beat Zod and sent everyone else back to the Phantom Zone; you've still got the capability to bring your entire home planet back to life if you want to. That kind of kicks the "alone in the universe" concept in the nuts.
I also thought the whole style of the Kryptonian technology just felt a little too out-there, and Krypton itself seemed a little silly, what with winged dinosaur creatures flying around and shit. Just a preference thing, but I didn't like it.

One of the biggest problems, though, was the size of the action in the movie. It's all just too big. An alien invasion, giant tentacled terraforming machines, an entire goddamn city gets decimated to the point of looking post-apocalyptic... they just tried to hit too many big things on the first outing. They may as well have brought Darkseid in to it.
This, I believe, is why they're trying so hard to introduce a whole team of superheroes in the next movie; they're trying desperately to one-up the action, but it's hard to do so when you already made everything so fucking colossal the first time around. Having knocked over so many buildings, I don't honestly know how they're going to manage making anything seem bigger with the next one. They should have limited themselves with this first one; make the invaders only a small handful of Kryptonians (Zod, the girl, the big tall guy, and maybe one or two others, rather than a freaking army) and only knock down one building, just as a shock and awe kind of thing. As it is, they just kind of exploded themselves into a corner, and now they don't know how to make the next movie seem even crazier.

But anyway, more than anything else, I just don't like the shaky-cam "realistic" take on Superman. It seems so unnecessary. For a movie with so much aerial photography and giant alien invasion action scenes, that kind of "ground level" style of filming just ends up negating itself.

There are a ton of other little gripes I could mention as well, but I'll leave it at that. I didn't think the Superman/Batman movie sounded all that bad before, even when everyone was complaining that they're trying to stuff too many characters in it all at the same time; I thought it could work if done right. But if they're making it in this style, with this same team of filmmakers (Zack Snyder, David Goyer, Chris Nolan)?
It ain't gonna work. Apparently none of them know how to make just a good, fun, personality-fueled, superhero popcorn flick. And if you're making a "team" movie, like the next one is supposed to be, that's what you really need.
So yeah, having seen Man of Steel now, I get the skepticism and I don't honestly have much hope for the next movie.

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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Henry Spencer » Mon Apr 07, 2014 2:26 pm

I am yet to meet a single person who thinks Man of Steel lived up to its potential/hype. The writing was so bad and the movie, so mediocre. I agree the action was just too much (too over the top) and Superman was exactly portrayed as I envisioned the character; boring, flat and one note.

Just a big disappointment overall, since I was really looking forward to the essential Superman movie.

And I'm also disappointed they're going for the "easy way out" with having Superman vs Batman instead of making a new movie each for both of them. And with Warner Bros. postponing the film production, it's pretty obvious they they are clueless on what to do.
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Riku Rose » Mon Apr 07, 2014 3:35 pm

I thought it should have tried to be it's own thing rather then Batman Begins with Superman. I thought the teaser trailers where amazing and that would mean we get a movie which show why he is Superman and why he chooses to protect people. Instead all we got for the first half of the movie was random flash backs which felt shoe horned in. I know barely anything about Superman so I was looking forward to an origin story about what events made him who he is. We've not really had a real origin story for him since the 70's movie so I'm not sure why they wanted to skip over it so quick. They really should have threw out the flashbacks and made the first hour about him growing up, learning his powers and getting the morale's he has as Superman.

I thought the fight in the town with Zod was pretty cool but the ending would have been good had they toned down what it did to the environment. Being a Superman movie I wanted to see times when he would punch things a bit earlier then about 2 hours in but then it get's to the point where it goes to far. Also the worst parts where the glasses and the woman soldier saying she finds him cut, geez they made me cringe.

I never got why everyone was so up in arms about Ben Affleck being in the new Batman the thing that made me concerned was it's a sequel to Man of Steel by the same director and I believe writer. Doesn't help that they're rushing the thing like crazy and still don't have a finished script. It's going to be interesting when Superman/Batman comes out the same day as Captain America 3.
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Re: What movie are you watching right now?

Postby Kenny » Mon Apr 07, 2014 6:11 pm

I disagree on Amy Adams being a bad Lois Lane choice and Zack Snyder being a detriment to any future films (especially Justice League). I think Snyder can pull it off, he just needs to get rid of Nolan and Goyer (especially Goyer). As much I don't like TDK trilogy, I can admit Nolan and Goyer were fine for it because Batman doesn't need to have any supernatural elements. But they're terrible for any other superhero that have supernatural elements.

Their thing is taking something unbelievable and trying to justify it in a real-world setting. I may not be too privy on JL or anything DC hero related, but I just think that's an absolutely terrible approach to those films. Man of Steel proved that. So I definitely agree with the rest of your assessment.

I think they really shot themselves in the foot by forgoing integrating TDK trilogy into Man of Steel and then not giving Wonder Woman and the other superheroes their own solo flick. The reason why Avengers was so successful is because it's a crossover movie. People LOVE crossover stuff. There's so much fan fiction, and intense fascination in general, about putting people who played a certain role all in the same movie together. Alien vs. Predator was a huge thing before they fucked it up.

So yeah. Unless a miracle can be pulled off, the JL movie is fucked. Plain and simple.
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