Official Movie Review Thread

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Shroom Man 777
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Hey Malchus, did you ever make it to the Russian Film Festival? Cause I did, and I spent the last two days (yesterday and today) watching a grand total of five Russian movies. I went by myself, part of de-stressing from a week of shitty graduation requirements and paperwork, and I totally didn't regret it. In fact, I think we should have Russian film festivals everyday! Da, tovarisch! Hah!

The five movies were: The Star (Zvezda), a war movie made in 2002; The Mirror (Zerkalo), a surreal stream-of-consciousness thinggy made in 1975; Vanished Empire (Ischeznuvshaya Imperiya), a 2007 movie about Soviet youth; Ward No. 6 (Palata N°6), a modern take on a Chekov story about a doctor in a mental hospital made in 2009; and Agony (Agoniya), a 1974 film about RASPUTIIIIN!

Before I go on reviewing these films one-by-one, I'd like to note that of all these films, NONE, not one of 'em, has a traditionally happy ending and all of them are pretty much downers. The ones that can be understood, at least. I guess this is a pretty Russian thing? Oh, and it turns out that the movies filmed in actual Soviet era (The Mirror and Agony, both in 1974) are the least comprehensible - or, at least, the weirder - of the whole bunch of films. The Mirror, especially so. Is this an example of artsier Russian movies, or was this normal in Soviet cinema? I don't know, I'll go ask Stas or something.

Be that as it may, save for Ward No. 6, all of the movies dealt with all sorts of time periods in the Soviet/Russian past. Which, to me, was a treat. Despite the movies' differing genres and styles, seeing all sorts of bygone eras in such a curious and interesting land as Russia was a total treat - from the Great Patriotic War, to post-beatnik post-apparachnik youthful vigor of the 1970s, we get a rare glimpse of what Russia actually is, or at least what the Russians themselves (and not American action movies) depict Russia to be.

All of the films too have very strong themes and messages, unlike American movies that tend to go all over the place, the Russian films are focused and stick on topic and do not digress of bullshit - which is pretty Russian, I'd think. It makes the viewing experience an engrossing experience, and the performances are very convincing and the films succeed in taking us into the world they portray. The acting was rock-solid, and those performers were damned good ones.

The directing, man. I'm no professional reviewer or movie buff, but to me it seemed that the way the Russian movies were filmed kinda go back to old-fashioned styles. I don't think I noticed American-style shakey cam, not even in the war movie, and the way the film is colored is also different - it doesn't use stupid color filters or saturation whatevers, unlike lots of American movies. The subtle presentation, and the way they captured the environment with all its light and colors, and how it was all framed, seemed kind of different somehow from the normal movies. The Russians do their jobs damn well, and overall this experience was no cheap indie crapfest but was a professional job - worthy of any Western production, and even better in quite a few respects. Oh, man, I'd love to see more of Russian cinema. I'd love to see more of Russia, period.

So, tovarisches, I'll get on to reviewing these films one by one later on, because now it's late and I spent the whole day - from noon to night - watching four movies. The film festival actually started yesterday, with The Star screening during the night, and the remaining four showed today one after the other. I'm glad to have been part of the first-ever Russian Film Festival here in Cebu, and I hope we get a whole lot more - an entire Red Army's worth of film festivalskis! Totally worth my time, and worth the price too - since it was absolutely free for all, first come first served! Aside from watching movies, I also treated myself to some tasty food, so it turns out that the day wasn't so free after all and I actually had to spend some cash. But, oh well, you gotta treat yourself once in a while. All of this, I have to thank Russia - Rodina, the Mother Motherland! Da, comradeskis! BABOOSHKA!

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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Malchus »

I only had enough free time to catch Zvezda. And, I must say, it was well worth the watch. I did notice that the camera quality really was, as you mentioned, old fashioned. Had I not known the date it was made, I would've thought it was something from the late 80s or early 90s due to the color saturation. However, that only added to the "war chronicle" feel for me.

As for the movie itself, well, it was a damn good movie. It wasn't some ultra-stunning, special effects fest most war movies try to be. It was just about a small unit, with a really bit part in the war overall. With orders to stay out of direct contact as they would be annihilated. The characters themselves aren't all overly heroic archetypes. For the most part, they just came across as regular guys exhausted by the war but doing their jobs nonetheless. The token green rookie character also came a cross as rather wide-eyed yet realistically so. Even the love interest wasn't some bombshell beauty but, rather, more plain in appearance. The token romance was also low key, and never goes anywhere.

The movie had a lot of pretty tense sneaking around moments overall, and I was on the edge of my seat for many parts. Sure, the use of the music was rather clunky the whole movie (excessively dramatic in some moments which would've been fine without them), and some of the acting seemed a little to over-acted. And while those clumsy moments did get a laugh out of me (and much of the audience), by the end of the movie there was nothing to laugh about. That was a damn heartbreaking ending, even if I saw it coming.

Yeah, a good film. I wonder if it's available on DVD anywhere.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Here is my long, arduous and rambling review of...


Zvezda

The First Russian Film Festival in the Philippines began with this movie, and I dare say that they couldn't have chosen better - it was a great movie, a glorious movie, a Russian movie! Da, comrades! Da!

So the Film Festival started on a slightly odd, note. After the pansy Philippine national anthem, and the bombastic anthem of Mother Russia, played one after the other, we were treated to the sight of the big Russian consulate man of Cebu making a grand speech relaying the messages of two head honchos from Russia with love. The Russian had an amazing accent, thick and so very Russian! I didn't really care what he was saying, but man, the accent. Man! Vy govorite po Russki, tovarisch!

When the Russki was done, another more surprising thing happened. The opening remarks before the movie were to be done by a priest, a Catholic friar, a Padre! He was eloquent and gesticulative, and he spoiled the whole goddamn movie for us by giving away endings and all sorts of scenes. Gee, thanks, Padre. He also prattled on about God's place in the movie, a movie about friggin' Soviet Russia. Heh. Anyway, aside from God Spoilers, he also fawned about the movie's cinematography and stuff - and, oddly, these were pretty good observations. He also quoted some reviews and some people, saying how Zvezda will show how Russians aren't just a nation of drunkards and hired guns, and how the Russians - not the Americans - won WW2. These are both very good points. But still, the Padre's probably going to a special level of Hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the movies. In this, I think he probably fits both categories.

*ba-dum tish!*

Now, comrades, on to the great glourious movie itself!

I've seen quite a few WW2 movies. Not as much as some people, but I've had my fair share. But this one, this wasn't like other WW2 movies I've seen. Definitely not American ones, and nothing like Enemy at the Gates. Indeed, Zvezda could be considered an anti-thesis to a whole crapload of these movies and the fact that it was made by Russia for Russians made the movie very fundamentally different from your stereotypical American affair. This was very welcomed, since after seeing so many American war flicks you kinda want to see something more, something new - and Zvezda delivers. It was great.

It gives us a rare sight into the Soviet Army in WW2, a rare non-bullshit sight so unlike the ridiculous crap in Enemy at the Gates that has pissed off quite a few Russians, or so I've heard (and read). While it doesn't deal in snipers, it does deal with Soviet scout soldiers and their exploits in infiltrating enemy territory and "dealing" with the fascist pigs, the goddamn Germans, the Nazis.

The portrayal of the Scout soldiers was very realistic. They weren't big action war movie heroes talking shit and doing crap. They were very plain people, very human, and the way they carried about their mission was something I don't think I've seen very often at all. They didn't go around guns blazing, shooting the enemy in the face. No, instead they hide - used the terrain, the trees and the grass, as camouflage. The way they crawled in the mud, ducked and went prone or crouched, and the way they maneuvered despite being mere meters right next to the goddamn Nazis made for some very thrilling watching. The direction and cinematography of the film was great in making the experience very immersive, as if we were right next to the Scouts, and I actually liked the use of thrilling music - to the extent where it goes loud when there's a big surprise, or when an unexpected Nazi pops up or comes too close to the scouts - in adding to the suspense.

It was very cat and mouse, and instead of an over abundance of ridiculous action we instead got a lot of tight thrills and suspense. For a movie about scouts and sneaking, it really did work well.

I swear, I think Hideo Kojima saw this movie and used it as the basis for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

The cinematography didn't use stupid American color filters to add dumb bluish or yellowish tinges to make the whole thing look "cool". The saturation and coloring looked more like an old movie, and during the day scenes the movie gave us a glimpse of lush and verdant green European landscapes - as opposed to the usual grim and grey American war scenes. The scenery was very beautifully shot, and the lack of shakey cam was also appreciated. The only shakey was when we focused on the face/upper body of a Scout who was desperately distracting the chasing Nazis, and it worked to actually emphasize what was going on in the movie - as opposed to obscuring the happenings by way of including headaches and motion sickness to the viewers, as in most shakey cam-happy movies.

One of the nice things in the movie's camerawork were the long cuts, like how we followed the protagonist when he makes his first appearance riding a horse, and how the camera just followed a pair of scout soldiers running under a rail station platform while everything exploded around them. I also liked how in one scene, the camera just panned upward and moved away from the barn and swept over the grasslands until it stopped and then we saw a whole bunch of Nazis coming in on our heroes.

I also previously mentioned how the movie was devoid of standard American action movie bullshit, and it really was. It was pretty much devoid of glamor. The drama was understated, as was the romance - which wasn't really necessary, but at least didn't take too much screen time and didn't make the movie digress. But the main thing about the movie that struck me was how, unlike a war movie that focuses on saving some private named Ryan or else Mommy Ryan's going to be sad cause all her sons are now dead, or a movie about killing all the enemies and winning Hamburglar Hill or something, Zvezda instead focused on a very unglamorous but also very practical and very real goal - of simple reconnaissance. The scout soldiers aren't risking their lives to save someone, or to blow away a bunch of Nazis. Instead, they're risking death just to obtain information on the enemy - information that can be used by the rest of the Red Army to fight and win the battle. That was a very significant departure from conventional war movie cliches.

And in the face of this, the characters don't angst or do drama or break down or anything. No. They're Russians, they don't DO that sort of thing! They steel themselves and do their goddamn jobs! For the Motherland!

I'll quote myself from elsewhere, when I said that:
in that movie, Zvezda (The Star), they see infantry - even special forces operators - as a tool used to attain an objective, and when the cost/benefit ratio is good enough, they're willing to use them as an expendable asset to reach and complete an objective. Often, these objectives aren't even glorious, and just involve information on the enemy's forces and disposition. Yet this information is crucial, worth enough for the HQ to sacrifice special forces on in order to gain information that will give the conventional forces of the army a greater strategic advantage over that of the enemy's.

Really, special forces aren't an end-all-be-all war-winning battle-busting badass force, they're just another facet of combined arms tactics, another chess piece in the game of war. I love how Russian cinema portrayed them, so unlike dramatized American depictions. Heh.
The way they carried out this objective, with the sneaking and the hiding and the being chased by Nazis was a joy to watch. Rarely do you see a supposed action war movie take this route in its presentation. And, one of the best parts was how they kidnapped the Nazis, interrogated them for info, and then got rid of them. It reminded me of a less bullshit version of Inglourious Basterds, and just showed how grim the job of the scouts is - and yet they do it, anyway. The way that soldier told them what he knew, and then begged for mercy, told them that he wasn't SS and that he had a family, and that he didn't want to die - and how the new recruit Scout soldier translated that, and how the leader instructed another scout soldier to get rid of the Nazi, man. The scout led the Nazi into the woods, and though the camera didn't show us how he got rid of the Nazi, the reaction of that new recruit Scout soldier was just amazing.

The Nazi reactions to these kidnappings upon finding the dead bodies or realizing so-and-so is missing, is also priceless. The voiceover in German, before being translated to a voiceover in Russian, before being translated to English subtitles, describing the exploits of the so-called "Green Ghosts" and how the Nazis were now allocating ten thousand troopers and assigning them to patrol at so-and-so hours, how roadblocks and stuff were being set, and how just pissed they were at the scouts was great. The way the scouts managed to elude these, and how they unexpectedly get into all sorts of places, and bury knives into people's heads, was damn enjoyable. The Scouts push deeper and deeper into Nazi territory and gain more information, and the Germans get increasingly infuriated.

Until it comes down to a couple more close calls, and the Scouts themselves become desperate. They find the jackpot that they needed, information on Nazi force movements and disposition, yet they wreck their radio and time is running out. The Nazi attack is imminent and they must report their information to HQ so that the Red Army can gain the advantage and defeat the fascists. So they have to take risks, because though what they're doing might be dangerous, the goal of reporting the important info to HQ far outweighs any risk to their lives.

They steal a radio from a Nazi outpost, but in doing so are found out and a proverbial horde of Nazis begin swarming them. Some of the scouts die, giving their lives to stall for time. The Scout leader begins to transmit to home base - where there is a girl waiting for him by the radio. His callsign is "Star", the HQ is "Earth". He calls, Star to Earth, do you copy? Come on Earth. Do you read me? The Nazis begin firing on the barn that they are hiding on. More come, and the remaining Scouts put on a desperate defense.

They are under no illusions. Their defense is only meant to buy enough time for the message to get through, for their mission to succeed and for the Red Army to get the necessary information. They are expendable, and when the deed is done, the mission is completed and finished - and so are they.

The message finally gets through, but only so few of the Scouts are left. The Scout leader puts his radio down and goes to his wounded friend - though by now, they are all wounded. They meet their end together, when the Nazis bring a fucking flamethrower and set the whole barn on fire.

They sacrificed themselves for the Motherland. They died so that the Red Army could win the war. The movie ends showing us a nigh-endless procession of Soviet soldiers, and with a voice over telling us that though the Scouts died - it was not in vain, and the ultimate victory is had by the Soviet Union. For Mother Russia!

Zvezda was a movie about a mission, and about those brave men and women who undertake that mission at all costs - even their own lives - for the ultimate objective of victory. Not their own victory, but for a greater victory in war, where they are only a contributor to the success of their own side, and where their sacrifice is an acceptable loss for a much greater cause. Zvezda is about the brave people who accept these realities, and who do the great, unglamorous and difficult tasks and ordeals in the name of that much greater cause. Zvezda is, in itself, about these causes themselves - worthy causes, not in saving an individual soldier's life at the expense of other soldiers', not in an individual or group of individual's winning a battle, but about a greater victory that entails much sacrifice, even self-sacrifice, to attain.

That is what makes Zvezda a true war movie. That's what makes Zvezda a great movie. Though the ending is sad, its message is a firm and clear one - and perhaps that is characteristic of many Russian movies. The subject matter too is something not flippantly taken lightly by Russia. Why? For the subject matter is not just any war, but it is the People's War. A Patriotic War. The Great Patriotic War!

Da, tovarisch kapitan! For Mother Motherland!
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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NCIS Los Angeles

Alright so I know it's not a movie, it's a TV-series... But I really feel like ranting about this. As you can probably imagine NCIS Los Angeles is a spin-off of, well, NCIS. Introduced in what's called a 'backdoor pilot' in the 6th season of NCIS the new series is set in LA unlike the original (which is based out of Washington D.C.), and features an all-new cast of characters. Now, I really quite like NCIS. Sure it's a pretty formulaic CSI-style 'solve the crime riddle' show but it's got an interesting set of characters, the writing holds a good balance between serious and funny and, well, let's face it: Mark Harmon is fricking awesome. So yeah, I confess, I like to waste time watching NCIS, and I was really hoping the spin-off would be equally entertaining.

It isn't.

In fact, it's pretty fucking horrible. I managed to make it through the first episode, if barely, but halfway through the second I found myself switching to other channels and, eventually, simply turning the TV off. That doesn't happen to me very often, so it's pretty indicative of a bad showing as far as I'm concerned. Apparently the message the writers of NCIS: LA took home from the original is that you gotta have quirky characters, so they amped that aspect up to 11. Unfortunately, the result is god-awful and I hate the cast. For some unfathomable reason they've got some stupid woman in charge that I can't for the life of me figure out what she's doing; the team leader is called 'G' (yes, that's actually his name) and he's presumably supposed to be mysterious-like... But in reality he's just dreadfully dull; we've got LL Cool J as a former Navy SEAL and his lines particularly in the second episode are a never-ceasing barrage of macho bullshit about how awesome the SEALs are and how they would never do this or that. Yawn. There's a rookie whose job is presumably to mirror McGee from the original NCIS but who's, unlike McGee, got about as much character as a cardboard cutout and a token girl-with-a-gun who's about as interesting as drying paint. There are a few other characters I think but I don't even recall what they're supposed to be fucking doing. I think one of them is like a modern day male Uhura whose sole job is to talk (or rather, drone on) whilst the visual effects department produces pretty pictures on a set of oversized LCD screens. But since I can't seem to give a shit about him, I could be mistaken.

Seriously, I watch quite a bit of television and as Shroom can attest my bullshit threshold is pretty high, but I can't for the life of me recall a series more dreadfully boring than this. I would seriously prefer CSI Miami over NCIS: LA, and that show is the incarnation of style over substance. At least I can laugh about Horatio Cane and rest assured that the writers probably know exactly how fucking cheesy their lines are. Not so with this show. So please, give me that "yeaaaaah!" and those sunglasses, it's fine by me as long as I don't have to stare at the dumb face of LL fucking Cool J regurgitating stupid lines about stupid SEALs, please, I'll take just about anything over that. What a horrible failure. Honestly, maybe it gets better later on, I don't know, but I'm giving up on this shit right now. Please just give me Gibbs back.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Seriously, I watch quite a bit of television and as Shroom can attest my bullshit threshold is pretty high
they won't believe me even if i say it :P

AXN, a TV channel, is hyping this NCIS: LA as some hot shit, like the biggest most-watched awesomest show in America. Why? I don't know. None of the adverts struck me as entertaining. I prefer Shield, since those adverts with Vic Mackey brutalizing someone with a fucking phonebook really got my attention.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Artemis »

Ah. So it's police drama, eh?

Southland. Best cop show on American TV today. Maybe ever. No, I'm not exaggerating.

No reasoning, to elaboration, nothing at all to back that claim up. But if you love me at all (more importantly, if you love cop shows at all) you'll start watching it right now.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

KICKASS is an awesome movie. If you enjoyed films like Wanted, or Jumper, then you'll totally love this. The plot premise is similar, in that an unremarkable (adolescent) shmuck goes out to try and do something badass, and turns out ending up actually doing something badass and making something great happen in his life - after a couple of hard hits to the head and some adolescent hijinks, and lots of people getting the fuck killed out of them, and stuff. But unlike Wanted or Jumper, KICKASS has way more GRATUTITOUS AMOUNTS OF ULTRA-FUCKING-VIOLENCE! Holy shit! Blood and guts galore! OH-FUCKING-YEAAAAHHH!!!! It's the best superhero movie I've seen in a while. Yeah! KICKASS
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Booted Vulture »

Don't mess with Liam Neeson. Just.... don't. Really, it would be a tremendously bad idea Based on Siege's recommendation in this very thread, I got and watched Taken All I can say is:

Holy shit. 'Liam Neeson kills half of France' indeed.

Ok, I've a lot more to say than that. It's amazing how visceral this Movie gets without ever focusing on the gore. There's Liam killing people with his bare hands, point blank gun fire and a broken bottle but although there are blood squibs going off the film doesn't really dwell much on this. There is a real sort of suddenness to the film, the fight starts a second later Neeson's standing over a bunch of corpses.

Up until maybe the last scene when the bad guys aim starts to get real sloppy there's a merciful lack of akshun cliché. OR at least they are averted as TVTropes might say, for example while chasing down a lead, The guy jumps from a bridge on to a passing truck and then onto a road to escape Liam... and then is promptly hit by a truck going the other way.

So yeah its an hour and a half of Laim being real grumpy, determined and killing frenchmen. I can hardly recommend it enough.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I liked it. The only minor detraction was that they DID do a whole LOT of stuff the movie was pretty good, but storywise not as concise and tight as the first one. You had SHIELD doing shit, you had Tony having to find his heart, his dad's legacy, Angry Evil Russian, and slimey Exec, Nick Fury talking too much (I mean, eh? Meh), Tony STRAK dealing with his personal issues, Rhodes popping up here and there to chastise STRAK for fucking up, some stuff with Pepper Potts though I think the first movie's interplay between them two was way better and now it got pushed aside (along with character interactions) for "more" stuff, and basically it seemed to have a whole lot of features whereas the first one was direct to the point and involved fewer but more focused storylines and fewer but more developed characters and fewer but more concentrated divergent plot points. I mean, what the hell was up with Tony's daddy making his City of the Future mockup a hidden blueprint for some new element that would make the original Arc Reactor obsolete - the whole hidden secret stuff was, like, segueing into National Treasure/Da Vinci code territory?

Nonetheless, Ironmang 2 it pulled it off entertainingly and pretty well, and man, he built a fucking particle accelerator in his goddamn basement! Not with a box of scraps though, but with mail ordered nuclear technology! But still, the movie dealt with a lot of stuff in a not-bullshit manner, and while again I think the movie had a lot of stuff in it, the actors' acting was nonetheless good and Downey is fun to watch as usual, and the super robot fight was totally cool. Vanko was a pretty good villain, though I don't get how they tried to portray him as having a legitimate grievance with STRAK but then it turns out - oooh, Strak's daddy is a goody-two-shoes and Vanko's pappy was the prick who, gasp, did things "for money!" and thus got deported to a fucking Siberian gulag. I think after Daddy Vanko helped Howard Stark build the Arc reactor, Stark just deported the guy to Russia so he wouldn't have to pay the damn dirty Russian. Whiplash was a good villain, Rourke did a good job there, though I think they could've done a little bit *more* with the character - he was, after all, within Stark's intellectual caliber and he did build his own fucking Whiplash thinggy in a basement with a box of scraps. Except I think his Whiplash thinggy was less shit than the Mk. I Ironmang suit.

Basically, that's it. Good, fun movie with great effects, decent non-shit storyline, and good acting on part of a pretty nice cast. Only gripe is that they shoehorned a lot of crap, thus diminishing the character interactions that made Iron Mang 1 so fun, so we get to see less of Stark and Pepper and Rhodes is just an occasional appearance or two when action scenes are not called for - and this Rhodes apparently spent too much time riding the Hum-Drum-Vee. :P

Also, I was not impressed with Warmachine's firepower. The other Hammeroid bots have shitloads of missiles and shit, and what does this guy have? A fucking FN F2000, an SMG, and a bunch of other small-arms bolted on plus a generic action movie minigun? LAME. The minigun wasn't bad, but those other stuff were just a bunch of bog standard whatevers. Eh. And a wrist-mounted F2000 is apparently enough to tear a Hammeroid to pieces? Eh? Well, whatever. I guess Hammer didn't use the specific awesome armor composition of Stark, and those things WERE just prototypes and WERE fabricated before Hammer acquired the Warmachine suit. Sure, why not.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Siege »

Today, I saw Clash of the Titans, an oddly named movie because despite being set in Mythological Greece there are no Titans in it. Who are in it, however, are Jake Sully of Avatar fame and Strawberry Fields of Quantum of Solace fame--as well, to make this even more Bond-ish, Le Chiffre as a bad-ass sword-wielding captain of the Legion (wait, shouldn't tbat be Phalanx?) of Argos. Anyway, we find ourselves in Mythological Greece like I said, where there is some ado about gods and Hades (once again misinterpreted by Hollywood as Satan-lite... Seriously Hades gets worse PR than OJ) trying to usurp the throne of Zeus, yada yada, and Perseus has to stop him by running from one place to the next before an eclipse ten days later when the Kraken (no, indeed nowhere to be found in Greek mythology, which might have something to do with the fact that they're supposedly found off the coasts of Norway and Iceland, which as you might imagine is quite a distance away from Greece) will destroy Argos.

And of course all this happens because of... Man, I dunno. I think it had something to do with humans flipping the gods off or something. They sure as hell have a good reason to do so though, because the gods are a bunch of schizo nutjobs. Zeus in particular goes from 'humans should love me!' to 'I shall wipe them all out!' to 'man, but Perseus is ok', to 'but I'll still whoop their asses--release the Kraken!' to 'oh, maybe they ain't so bad after all'. Yeah, uh, whatever man. Make up your mind.

This brings me to the biggest issue with this movie: It's disjointed as all fuck! It hops from set-piece to set-piece, the pacing is awful (seriously it takes like over half a movie to get to those damned Stygian witches, and then when they're there they leave after like 30 seconds), the CGI is just not as good as it should be, and a whole bunch of stuff that could potentially be awesome is simply glossed over. I mean, they cross the Styx right? On the boat of bloody Charon, right? That's pretty awesome, right? So why is that boat just some stupid drifting hulk, and why is Charon a lame mute emaciated skeleton who looks like the Iron Maiden mascot? And then they get to the Underworld, and it's just a random beach with some dead trees on it. Not even any spectres or anything. Lame!

Also: you're trying to screw over the gods, right? And you need the help of Medusa, right? And she was dicked over by the gods too, right? So why go in there to cut off her head? Couldn't you just ask her if she felt like getting even? And there was a whole bunch of stuff like that. I don't mind Djinni and the Kraken even though they're not strictly from Greek mythology but please, if you're going to introduce such things could you at least try to devote some attention to them? Instead of just, you know, having them around for a bit and then totally glossing over them? Also, what the hell was up with that stupid 'Perseus doesn't want to go questing (and is thrown in prison)' shit? It's like the "I am the blacksmith" scene at the end of Kingdom of Heaven but in reverse, and it doesn't work at all. It wastes pointless time--just have the king go "ya wanna avenge your family, demi-god boy? Then tag along with these guys"; Perseus can simply go "ok" and that's that. No need to waste five more minutes with pointless exposition about Io when you coulda done that, I dunno, during the whole 'riding the Scorpions' scene.

Speaking of Io, there is the whole Io/Perseus v Andromeda/Perseus thing going on. I'm not much of a shipper, but I'm just confused by the way they resolved this. If you ask me the relation between Io and Perseus, both demi-gods or at least both characters with a history of divine dickery, is more like brother and sister. Whereas Andromeda and Perseus have the whole 'queen needs a knight' thing going--which if you ask me works far better as a romantic foil. And yet, at the 11th hour Perseus has to turn down Andromeda for some bullshit reason and Zeus resurrects Io in the last minute of the film? Ressurrect Io is supposed to be a good ending when Io herself described her eternal life as a cruse earlier on in the film? What the Christ kind of horrid movie-making is this?!

And there's more! The Olympian palace intrigue just seemed bizarrely off to me, like there were things cut or ordered around. Apollo has only one sentence? Athena just kinda looks worried in one scene and then disappears? Why does Zeus help out Perseus when Perseus' quest is to kick the asses of the gods, including Zeus? And what is up with the attempts to turn Zeus from a huge asshole into a somewhat-sympathetic dad character? For god's sake, he raped Perseus' mother! Just to make a point no less! Yet we're supposed to be sympathetic to him? Uh, why is that again? And on a non-God related note, we're constantly shown this prick of a priest who wants to sacrifice Andromeda to save his own hide... And he just kinda disappears at the end. What the hell happened? Did that bit of stone-ified Kraken fall on him? If so, why aren't we shown? And how does Perseus know the King of Argos is dead when he wasn't anywhere near the King when the priest stabbed him? And why the fuck did the priest stab the King anyway? Did he really thing that was a good idea? Maybe to set this awful movie up for an awful sequel? By Zeus, I bloody hope not.

Also and at a final note (because I keep editing this post to add in more things I thought were crap--seriously this is like the 5th time I edited what used to be a small three-paragraph post), am I the only one who found the fight scenes completely lacklustre and boring? I know there's only so many ways to show guys fighting with round shields and swords (by the way, will someone please tell the people making these movies that the xiphos was a secondary weapon, not a primary? Get these guys a javelin!), but man, the whole 'jump and stab in slow-motion' thing was done to death in Troy so much I was already bored the fourth time Brad Pitt used it. And that was in 2004. Can you please show a little more creativity in your choreography?

Man, Clash of the Titans was a major disappointment. I was hoping for some epic spectacles, but it's just a lame CGI fest with a whole bunch of elements in it that just didn't make sense. And the CGI is not very good either. 1.5 out of 5 tanks.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Is it sad that a dramatized account of the Battle of Thermopylae ends up having MORE spectacles and inhuman feats of masculinity, with all manners of naked nudery and the vanquishment of freakish obscenities, than a supposed totally made up story that's supposed to be brimming with giant monsters who get their shit ruined by guys with swords who're out to fuck the gods themselves up and ruin shit? :D

(I refer to 300, of course)
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Today, I also saw Largo Winch. Who? This guy:

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And oh man was it awesome. It's a French movie, based on the Belgian graphic novel of the same name. Largo Winch an orphan who was adopted by Nerio Winch, a ridiculously wealthy industrialist. At the start of the movie Nerio is assassinated, leaving Largo the heir to the 5th largest fortune in the world and "the largest group of multinational companies ever held by one man". Largo himself doesn't know it though, because he's travelling the Brazilian outback (where, this being a European movie, we're no ten minutes in before Largo gets laid--and quite graphically so. What a suave motherfucker :D).

Anyway, I guess judging by their backstories you could say he's sort of like a French version of Batman then... But whereas Bruce Wayne dons a silly costume and fights crime on the backstreets of Gotham, Largo Winch has to fight off all kinds of corporate intrigue by a Russian arms trafficking billionaire who has launched a hostile take-over as well as members of his own board who don't want to see him take up the sixty-five percent ownership he has in the mega-multi-billion Winch Group (with 375,000 employees). His own chief of security has been bribed and tries to whack him; there's a girl hitwoman after him; Russian mobsters are involved; until the last minute it remains to be seen who can be trusted and who is in on the backstabbery (and who is actually pulling the strings) and oh man, if you didn't think corporate intrigue could be cool, you were wrong!

Man, Bruce Wayne, you ain't got shit on Largo Winch. He is awesome. Just look at the guy. What a smooth operator. Another great thing about this movie is that it's set in real locations: mostly Croatia (where Winch is from), New York and Hong Kong (where the French CGI artists outdid themselves by planting a huge Winch skyscraper right in the middle of the skyline). It has a real cosmopolitan feel too: the movie switches seamlessly from board rooms to yachts in Victoria Harbour, to Croatian countrysides and back to New York. Meanwhile the characters switch between French, English and Croatian (yeah, so you'll probably need subtitles)--it really makes the story feel real; these aren't just Lucius Foxes hanging out in some dusty basement, these are people who fly all over the world because they feel like it and reach a decision to spend three billion dollars on a hostile take-over bid in five minutes (and the only reaction of Mr. Winch when he hears the amount is "well... I don't have it on me...").

And all the while the characters are actually believable. They aren't just handsome or suave, they've got like issues and shit, but not to the point where that stops them from being awesome! Also, it has Kirsten Scott Thomas, by itself a good reason to watch it. Dude. I love this movie. Everyone who loves a good old-fashioned game of treachery and backstabbery between people with way too much money should see this. Four out of five little tanks! And you know the best thing? They're making a sequel! And it should be coming out this year! HELL YEAH!
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Being a man who loves a good old-fashioned game of treachery and backstabbery, I will have to see this movie. I of course won't need subtitles for the Croatian language parts. :D
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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What the fuck?



"... and finish him!" :lol:
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Watched James Cameron's Avatar, and to make things simple, my feelings about it are complex.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I watched an anime film called Sword of the Stranger recently. It wasn't any particular brilliant piece of storytelling, being about a boy and his dog and his ronin and the evil chinamen Asian Americans trying to sacrifice him in a quest for immortality, but it was quite well done. It has some of the best fight scenes in any movie I've seen, live action or animated, backed up by an excellent yet non-intrusive score. I highly recommend it if you like samurai action movies, even if you don't like anime.

Also saw Prince of Persia. Nothing brilliant, but reliably entertaining.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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These past few days I saw a couple of movies. Namely Toy Story and PREDATORS.

Toy Story was a very nice, cute and adorable and very entertaining and funny piece of Pixar work. I really liked it, good stuff, and I really dug the whole growing up bit with the toys' owner Andy heading out for college and, really, the toys having to deal with life and how it goes on, how people grow up, and everything. How the toys need to be there for their owner, and how the kids also value their toys and treasure and cherish them. Man. The story's message was very 'awwwww!' and, man, it was very sweet. :)

Now PREDATORS was a good movie, an action movie through and through. A bunch of murderous dangerous badasses get abducted and thrown into a jungle world to be hunted down by a bunch of evil space aliens, and the badasses decide that enough's enough and go try and ruin the aliens' pussy-faced shit. It reminded me of Pitch Black and other 2000s attempts at sci-fi action badassery (and none of these limp-dicked lilly-livered more modern attempts at 'action' involving weak-wristed girly men). It succeeded in being a good action movie, people shoot shit and ruin shit, but still I don't know why, but the film still can't match the greatness that was RUTHLESS 80s ACTION! The original PREDATOR still outshines it by a longshot! PREDATORS just wasn't 80s enough, nor AHNULD enough!

I mean, seriously, the cast and crew of the first PREDATOR were goddamn IRONBEEFS, what did they feed them? No one, not even the Predators, were as manly or as muscular or as goddamn ripped as anyone in the original PREDATOR (except the girl). Damn!

Toy Story gets an 8/10.

PREDATORS gets a 7/10.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Saw The A-Team today. Not quite sure what to think; I liked the interplay between the various characters, but the story was pretty vacuous. I didn't mind the ridiculous tacticool action, but near the end it became apparent that the main characters remain alive purely by blind luck alone, which sorta ruined it for me. I like the A-Team better when they're guys who can think six steps ahead of you instead of simply as the luckiest people alive. In the end I guess it was a pretty average movie, and I had really hoped for a little more. Here's to hoping the adaption of The Losers will be better.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Snyder has described the film as "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns", including dragons, B-52 bombers and brothels.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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So you and FROD got together and made a movie, then? :) The girls was his part and the sudden addition of dragons and brothels was all you going WHORES and DRAGONS and then thought WHOREDRAGONS!
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Yes. Clearly FROD was in charge of casting. :D
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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So, it's TITANIC 2: SINK HARDER

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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I technically saw this after Inception, but putting Inception into words is difficult - which must mean it's fantastic (it is!)! But anyway, here is my slightly inflammatory and highly excited review, as posted in SDnet, of...

IP MAN

Goddamn that was an awesome movie. Where Donnie Yen basically beats the living fuck out of the Imperial Japanese Army and, like those WW2-era propaganda posters, actually slaps the shit out of a whole bunch of goddamn Imperial Japanese soldiers! Except the Chinese don't buy no goddamn war bonds! Man, what an awesome movie. I mean, man, with all these slow-mo CGI bullshit so prevalent nowadays, it's good to see good old fashioned Chinese/Hong Kong style kung fu movies. Hah, they even directly referenced Wong Fei Hong in the movie! Man, Wong Fei Hong.

Anyway, shit, watching Donnie Yen get pissed at seeing his buddy get killed by some fuck ugly Japanese guy who totally looked like a propaganda poster caricature (I swear this movie is basically the Chinese giving a big "fuck you!" to those Japanese and their shitty little history revisionist textbooks), and then seeing Donnie Yen get pissed and proceeding to challenge ten pussy-ass karate kids, and then going all out on them and snapping their arms and breaking legs and slapping the taste out of their lips, oh man, that was totally awesome. See, previously Donnie Yen was all so polite and well-mannered and gracious, and even when he fights other rude Chinese guys, you see him handing them their asses so delicately with minimal effort (he barely moves when he's ruining people's shit), but now he's pissed and holy shit he's bruising his fists 'cause now he's pissed and he's smashing those fucking Imperial Japanese shits' shitty Imperial Japanese faces right into their fucking Imperial Japanese skulls! Fuck yeah!

That's what you get for putting your shitty little rising sun flag fucks on goddamn China, you bunch of fucks!

Goddamn, Ip Man. Nationalist, communist, Maoist or Chaing Kai Shek holed up in Taiwan, it don't matter. This is a call for national unity!

Then Donnie Yen goes to Hong Kong and establishes a school and teaches a whole bunch of people, including Bruce Lee! Then Bruce Lee, lacking Imperial Japanese assholes to shit-ruin (because the Japanese Empire's now extinct, like a bunch of dumbshit brontosauruses), proceeds to beat the everloving fuck out of Chuck Norris. Think about that. He kicks the shit out of that bearded shitpiece even before he sprouts some shitty tired full of fuck internet meme that nobody gives a fuck about, just like the Japanese Empire. Fuck you Hirohito, here's my kung fu dragon fist smashing your face in!

IP MAN
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I have an addiction for Thai movies now. They're so awesome and while they shower me with cliched action movies that rip off Star Wars and Spiderman, they do so in an awesome way. Hell, it starting to look like Thai action movies fit in with me perfectly.

I saw Chocolate, a movie created by the director of Ong Back, about a mentally retarded girl (the type who has OCD and rocks around when in stress. Think of the cliched ones) born from a Yakuza father and Thai organized crime woman. The girl lives in bliss as her mother retires from organized crime (after losing a little toe), until her childhood friend (a fat dude the mother took in when he was bullied bad) found the mother's extortion book, thinking it was a reminder for innocent debts people took from her. Because the mother needed hospital treatment and thus money, the two decided to collect the debts. The girl saves the boy when the butcher shop tortured him. Just so you know, all the actors and actresses did their own stunts, so there were alot of accidents and stuff. The plot is basically autistic girl beating up criminals to save her mom. With real stunts. Awesome

The next movie I saw was the Legend of the Tsunami Warrior. I'm too darn lazy to review this Star Wars inspired movie, but I want to put in a few key points. It's weird to have the quest object be a cannon. It's weird that they portrayed Japanese as awesome (albeit dying in the first few minutes), and it's weird how the Obi Won is also Darth Vader. Awesome movie. Very fresh and I didn't get bored of it despite being another fantasy epic.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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These Bollywood guys probably watched Die Hard 4.0 one too many times.

Ha-ha-haaaaa! *throws machete*
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