Pure supposition but could Dredd have ignored the other Judges ammo as he didn't have time/thought he had enough ammo to carry on.
I just love that they got Dredd down perfectly, Urban does such a good job of getting what makes Dredd Dredd. I really hope that there is a sequall it would be brilliant if this was a follow on for this film. Like Slow-mo was planned by Judge Death or something like that.
TENSE AS SHIT. Awesome, well-written story of human survival (in more than one sense) that's held together by a great performance from Sandra Bullock. Super good. Believe the hype.
Also HOLY FUCK THAT CAMERA WORK OMG how did they even do some of that shit? I mean my god, there's CGI, sure, but that's not enough to account for everything they did. That is a motherload of hard work up on that screen, holy man.
TENSE AS SHIT. Awesome, well-written story of human survival (in more than one sense) that's held together by a great performance from Sandra Bullock. Super good. Believe the hype.
Also HOLY FUCK THAT CAMERA WORK OMG how did they even do some of that shit? I mean my god, there's CGI, sure, but that's not enough to account for everything they did. That is a motherload of hard work up on that screen, holy man.
Did you see this in IMAX or on a standard scene? I want to know if IMAX is the way to go?
I didn't see it in IMAX, but I want to. The 3D was great, and I suspected from where I was sitting that a bigger screen would have made it even more immersive. Then again, more immersion could also have the double-edged sword of being more nauseating (lots of free-floating and spinning). Depends on how strong you think your stomach is, maybe.
After watching Dredd yesterday, I watched the Raid today since Luke Burrage said they are very similar films. It definitely has some of the best choreographed fight scenes I've seen but structurally the movie is all over the place. It goes from mostly realistic firefight fights, to everyone using machetes and blades, to fistfights. The difficulty of the climb up the tower seemed to decrease as they moved up instead of increasing as it should. The audience is barely introduced to any of the characters so both the brothers caught on opposite sides of the law plot and the corrupt cop pulling the strings plot both seem very out of place and tacked on. I really enjoyed the fight scenes on their own but they dissolved any tension left in the film because of how much those scenes clash with the wholesale slaughter in the beginning of the film. A lot of the little details that Dredd had could have helped The Raid be more effective story, like telling the audience how many people are in the squad, telling how many floors there are in this building earlier to give a sense of scope, and a better setup for the brothers plot which emotionally fell flat.
Over the weekend I saw two films that both disappointed me, as I'd heard pretty good things about both.
The first was The Usual Suspects. I don't know what to say other than I saw the twist coming, and large stretches of the movie were really uninteresting. Superb acting from Kevin Spacey and a few others aside, this film felt like a lot of wasted potential.
I also saw The Adjustment Bureau. When you have a weird premise, you either need to explain very little and keep it open, or explain it immensely and well. This film was caught somewhere in the middle, and so I couldn't focus on the story and got caught up in silly logic errors. The ending was also a stupid cop-out ending that resolved the plot in the stupidest way. Pissed me off.
I always am curious about what its like to come to films like The Usual Suspects so far away from the initial release of the film. I don't think many films can stand the test of being aped and parodied endlessly. A friend of mine is convinced he can recreate Citizen Kane from just clips of The Simpsons because they've parodied so much of the film. When ever we talk about he wonders aloud what kind of feeling of deja vu people must feel watching it after seeing so many cultural references to it.
The Usual Suspects is a movie I use quite often as an example of a one that is almost great on so many levels, but falls short at all of them. Most reviewers seem to forgive those shortcomings, but I can't. In the end I give this test to people who insist it is a good movie but haven't seen it for a while:
"Name a single scene or plot point from anywhere in the movie except for the first five and last five minutes."
So far, 90% of those asked simply can't. And you know what? I can't either! It turns out that, once you get to the end, 90% of the movie isn't worth spending any thought on at all.
I can, but only because it's fresh in my mind and I have a good memory. I imagine I will forget it in time.
It just feels like most of the movie is wasted. It relies entirely on its twist to make the viewer care. A movie can not be solely based on a reveal unless that reveal is amazing and well-crafted (The Sixth Sense, for instance). Even then, it often makes the movie a one-trick pony.
I actually watched Rush and Senna back-to-back over the weekend.
Rush is good movie, but muddled in so many ways. The rivalry is completely overstated in the film, because while it never comes off like Lauda and Hunt hate each other, the movie (and everyone else in the movie) cannot stop talking about it. I think there's issues with the pacing too, because there's strange lapses in times and a very overwrought score that tells you how to feel. But the acting, cinematography, and makeup are so effective that it made for an enjoyable film.
Senna is easily 10 times better than Rush. I think that's because it's much more immersive into the world of Formula One by giving every subject the proper amount of focus. They talk about how cars continue to advance and have technical problems, how people felt about Senna, and his impact was on such a grander scale than Hunt/Lauda. It has a very eloquent way in explaining why Formula 1 is so engaging through the eyes of Senna who is just an incredible person.
Senna isn't just one of my favourite documentaries from the past three or four years, but my favourite movie of any kind. It'll take a lot for Rush to top it or come close. I'll wait for it to come out on Blu Ray.
I plan to see Gravity and Hobbit part 2 in the cinema though, and Juliane is dropping strong hints about going to see Ender's Game too. We only go to the cinema a few times per year, so we might as well save it for big movies that are also going to be good.
I watched Source Code again, due to Juliane wanting to catch up with it. It holds up remarkably well on second viewing, remaining a very solid and very enjoyable movie. I look forward to seeing what Duncan Jones is up to next.
A Warcraft movie? Oh... well... I look forward to seeing what he's up to after that then.
Name a single scene or plot point from anywhere in the movie except for the first five and last five minutes.
The scene where the hungarian wakes up and the FBI agent learns the name Kaizer Soze and presses Verbal Kint about who Kaizer Soze is, causing Verbal to have to rework the mountain of BS that he's been working on for the previous 40 minutes to actually include him in the story so he can get the hell out off there?
That's a bit closer to the end, but definitely not in the last 5 minutes.
I think the idea was more that all of the "action" scenes (the flashbacks) seem inconsequential and pointless, with no one but Kint and Keaton actually having a notable character. Additionally, for a crime/heist movie, it's incredibly lackluster.
Isn't that the point? Kint is making it up out of whole cloth! Those characters are inconsequential because Kint is making it all up, he wants them to be inconsequential. He wants the FBI agent to come to the conclusion that Kint wants, that Keaton was the mastermind, but without Kint having to say out right who he wants to blame it on. He wants Keaton to be the chopping block, and with him dead then Kint gets away scott free. That's the only reason why Keaton seems to be fully fleshed out. If The Usual Suspects is a crime/heist film then yes, it fails horribly. But that's not what the film is about. It's about one man trying to pull the wool over the eyes of a FBI agent by serving up his "Usual Suspect", meanwhile the real mastermind walks out on his own, never to be seen again.
While that's interesting, the film really fails to captivate you beyond that point. While the conclusions you drew are certainly interesting enough, there's nothing more to think of beyond that. If the point of a film can be summed in a paragraph and doesn't require much more thinking, I don't know how interesting I can say it is.
And all that aside, the act of watching the film is not entertaining and in many ways predictable. Again, I figured out Kint was Soze shortly after the reveal of Soze as a character. It just seemed like the easiest thing the filmmakers could do, the most obvious answer that explained why Kint was what he was.
I should say I'm not trying to be antagonistic. You imply in your answer that you didn't come to the same conclusions that I did while I was watching the film and as such seem to have taken the film as just a poorly laid out crime/heist film.
I don't understand your, what I take to be, overly broad dismissal of film in general. Couldn't that be applied to every film?
I'm not saying that if a film can have its plot summed up in a paragraph, it's bad. I'm saying if its "deeper meaning" can, then it's not actually a particularly deep movie. I did come to the same conclusion as you about the film, because the film spells exactly that out. It says, "Here you go, he made up the entire story because he's Soze. Here's proof that it was all fake, because he stole the details." After that, what more is there? There's nothing more to think about, nothing deeper to it. While that idea is interesting enough, does the rest of the movie really warrant reaching that point? It's not something you're gonna keep thinking about or take with you.
Not all movies need to be like that, but it's clearly trying to be more than a popcorn/action/heist movie, and I say that it fails to accomplish that.
Sadly, I think The Usual Suspects will be one of those movies for me that I won't watch because I knew the spoiler/twist way before I was even interested in the movie.
For me, The Usual Suspects doesn't work because it breaks the rules of the mystery genre by not giving the audience a fair chance at guessing the twist by looking at the evidence. The random crap around the room == names of Kaiser's characters angle is only revealed at the end without any setup. If you rewatched the movie, you wouldn't go "oh how did I miss this clue the first time." The only way to guess who Kaiser was, is to be genre savvy and realize the movie hasn't gone anywhere in 90 minutes while focusing mostly on the Kevin Spacey character who's the biggest name in the movie.
Axel: Fun fact, The Adjustment Bureau was actually filmed in the building I used to work at (10 Madison Ave). Also, in real life the building was left half-completed in the stock market crash of '29, so it looks slightly stunted (it was going to be the tallest building in the world if it had been finished). In the movie, they actually added a bunch of CGI and completed the building to what I assume were its original designs, so it was pretty cool seeing it all finished and majestic.
Also, I might be the only person on the forums that genuinely enjoys The Usual Suspects. It's not the best movie, but none of the scenes dragged for me. (Also, the introduction of Kobayashi was great).
Comments
Dredd was very good bit I still think the the Raid did the whole "megahab fight to the top" story better.
I just love that they got Dredd down perfectly, Urban does such a good job of getting what makes Dredd Dredd. I really hope that there is a sequall it would be brilliant if this was a follow on for this film. Like Slow-mo was planned by Judge Death or something like that.
TENSE AS SHIT. Awesome, well-written story of human survival (in more than one sense) that's held together by a great performance from Sandra Bullock. Super good. Believe the hype.
Also HOLY FUCK THAT CAMERA WORK OMG how did they even do some of that shit? I mean my god, there's CGI, sure, but that's not enough to account for everything they did. That is a motherload of hard work up on that screen, holy man.
I'm leaning towards seeing Gravity, but wondered what was the perspective of someone that has seen both.
The first was The Usual Suspects. I don't know what to say other than I saw the twist coming, and large stretches of the movie were really uninteresting. Superb acting from Kevin Spacey and a few others aside, this film felt like a lot of wasted potential.
I also saw The Adjustment Bureau. When you have a weird premise, you either need to explain very little and keep it open, or explain it immensely and well. This film was caught somewhere in the middle, and so I couldn't focus on the story and got caught up in silly logic errors. The ending was also a stupid cop-out ending that resolved the plot in the stupidest way. Pissed me off.
I'm just rambling and wondering aloud myself!
"Name a single scene or plot point from anywhere in the movie except for the first five and last five minutes."
So far, 90% of those asked simply can't. And you know what? I can't either! It turns out that, once you get to the end, 90% of the movie isn't worth spending any thought on at all.
It just feels like most of the movie is wasted. It relies entirely on its twist to make the viewer care. A movie can not be solely based on a reveal unless that reveal is amazing and well-crafted (The Sixth Sense, for instance). Even then, it often makes the movie a one-trick pony.
Rush is good movie, but muddled in so many ways. The rivalry is completely overstated in the film, because while it never comes off like Lauda and Hunt hate each other, the movie (and everyone else in the movie) cannot stop talking about it. I think there's issues with the pacing too, because there's strange lapses in times and a very overwrought score that tells you how to feel. But the acting, cinematography, and makeup are so effective that it made for an enjoyable film.
Senna is easily 10 times better than Rush. I think that's because it's much more immersive into the world of Formula One by giving every subject the proper amount of focus. They talk about how cars continue to advance and have technical problems, how people felt about Senna, and his impact was on such a grander scale than Hunt/Lauda. It has a very eloquent way in explaining why Formula 1 is so engaging through the eyes of Senna who is just an incredible person.
I plan to see Gravity and Hobbit part 2 in the cinema though, and Juliane is dropping strong hints about going to see Ender's Game too. We only go to the cinema a few times per year, so we might as well save it for big movies that are also going to be good.
A Warcraft movie? Oh... well... I look forward to seeing what he's up to after that then.
That's a bit closer to the end, but definitely not in the last 5 minutes.
And all that aside, the act of watching the film is not entertaining and in many ways predictable. Again, I figured out Kint was Soze shortly after the reveal of Soze as a character. It just seemed like the easiest thing the filmmakers could do, the most obvious answer that explained why Kint was what he was.
A ragtag group seven misfits/warriors are beseeched by a local village for help against the local bandits who threaten their crops and lives.
I could probably sum up hundreds of films like that if we really wanted to get reductionist.
Why watch films then?
I don't understand your, what I take to be, overly broad dismissal of film in general. Couldn't that be applied to every film?
Not all movies need to be like that, but it's clearly trying to be more than a popcorn/action/heist movie, and I say that it fails to accomplish that.
Also the movie is deadly boring in the middle.
Also, I might be the only person on the forums that genuinely enjoys The Usual Suspects. It's not the best movie, but none of the scenes dragged for me. (Also, the introduction of Kobayashi was great).