Unfriended was better than it looked from the trailers. I think it was one of the few movies that was actually better watched on my computer than if I had seen it in the theater.
Fantastic Four is a gigantic mess if there ever was one. Dull, lifeless, surprisingly stiff and bad acting, and just tons of really bad mismanaged decisions to creating a new interpretations of the Four + Dr. Doom. Worst of all, the editing cuts out major amounts of plot progression and storytelling. Scenes will suddenly end and "1 year later" cards will suggest the passage of time, cutting out any sense of personality or development.
This is easily the worst case of studio interference in a film I have ever seen. The movie has had nonstop behind the scene problems from issues to the director to sudden budget cuts, rewrites, re-shoots, and intense editing. So many scenes in the trailers and commercials are not in the film. Easily one of the most incompetently made films with a terribly rushed ending. This is going down as one of the worst superhero movies ever.
Fantastic Four is a gigantic mess if there ever was one. Dull, lifeless, surprisingly stiff and bad acting, and just tons of really bad mismanaged decisions to creating a new interpretations of the Four + Dr. Doom. Worst of all, the editing cuts out major amounts of plot progression and storytelling. Scenes will suddenly end and "1 year later" cards will suggest the passage of time, cutting out any sense of personality or development.
This is easily the worst case of studio interference in a film I have ever seen. The movie has had nonstop behind the scene problems from issues to the director to sudden budget cuts, rewrites, re-shoots, and intense editing. So many scenes in the trailers and commercials are not in the film. Easily one of the most incompetently made films with a terribly rushed ending. This is going down as one of the worst superhero movies ever.
In addition the 1 year later cuts out the best bit of having characters learn how to use their abilities. It's worse than the X-men movies.
The most effective scene in the new Fantastic Four was the scene after they wake up on the operating tables in horror at their new bodies, which is fitting because I think Josh Trank's original idea had a lot more to do with re-imagining the group's origin as a The Fly-style body horror story. That could have been interesting! Not true to the comics Fantastic Four but still an interesting concept.
But I can see why Fox would have gotten cold feet on actually carrying that idea through to fruition, especially if Trank was being difficult with them. As it stands now, watching the movie just made me sad. Not angry, but sad. You can see glimpses of where the film really could have been a cool departure from most superhero films. But there's just no way it could achieve that through all the wooden acting, non-sensical edits, studio-mandated story changes, and goofy, goofy reshoot wigs.
Tomorrowland was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be based on some of the reviews I've heard/read. It was very clunky in parts, too long, and had one too many action set pieces (Paris), and I disagree with the politics, but overall it was decent enough.
Sometimes it's hard not to view a lot of super-hero types, especially the mutants as body-horror characters. I mean, if you think about it, some of the mutants are basically spewing out what to them would be pretty much body fluids/functions - kinda like Iceman, Firestar, or that one character who can fling off bits of her skeleton - they just extrude ice or flames or skeleton bits like a normal person would sweat. The main difference being that they can do it voluntarily. Especially the bone-slinger - if she actually hit you with a piece of bone she flung off of herself, it would be just like a normal person hocking a lugee at you.
I can never watch a Mad max movie without wondering, if gas is so rare and so precious, why are they burning up so much of it in this pointless car chase? I'd like to see a Mad Max movie that was based solely on a tribe's gasoline rationing system and how they would always ask themselves before driving anywhere, "Is this trip really necessary?", then, if upon careful consideration, they reasonably believed that their trip was worth taking, they would slowly and carefully drive along well-maintained roads in an attempt to conserve as much gasoline as possible.
I did like the random stilt-person walking through the foreground in the swamp-like scene. That made that scene look like something out of a Bosch painting. I saw those stilt-deals recently on a PBS show about prosthetic limbs and transhumanism - the stilt-dealies were used in an interpretive dance. It was pretty interesting, but I don't remember the name of the show. It was pretty generic, like Beyond Human or something like that.
I think part of the deal with Fury Road isn't that guzzoline is essentially gone, but that there is not enough left for industrial civilization, and what they have is wildly unequally distributed. So the car chases, flamethrowers, etc. are just big shows of ostentatious wealth. The equivalent of a huge jeweled crown or a golden palace.
The gasoline is very precious, that's why the have to kill for it. Kill the competition, more to go around for the survivors. But when ll you do is battle for a living competition is tough, so you the have to maintain their fighting edge, by whatever means.
Music, blood, fire.....whatever keeps that adrenaline pumping. Every fight is a necessary risk-all. If they lose, they've spent all their resources, denying the competition. If they win, they continue surviving by gaining more resources.
They had an accountant even....
If gasoline wasn't so precious, there wouldn't be a need to fight for it. Unless, greed...
I just think it would be refreshing to see a Mad Max movie in which Mad Max drafted a fair, just, and equitable rationing system which, after much debate, was subsequently established as the law of the land. The climax of the movie would be a scene showing everyone enjoying their fair share of gasoline and happily leaving the remainder for everyone else.
The sequel might have Mad Max appointed as a Chancery Judge so that he could equitably settle any disputes regarding his system . . .
Also, don't forget the conflict in MMFR is not over gasoline, but over women who could bear children without deformities. Clearly, those are rarer and more valuable to Immortan Joe than gasoline (after all, they had a whole town to produce gasoline).
Weren't there plenty of people in that movie with no deformities?
. . . and were they a bunch of anti-deformites or something? Maybe after Max drafted his gasoline conservation plan, he could teach them all a valuable lesson in tolerance of the differently abled.
Also, how could that town "produce" gasoline? I didn't see any oil rigs or refineries.
The name of one of the major settlements in Fury Road was "gastown", and you see through a telescope at one point flares from oil rigs. There might be some non-deformed extras in the water scene, but all of Immortan Joe's children have some deformity or another (Rictus Erectus appears to have the mind of a child, Corpus Colossus has osteogenesis imperfecta).
I think there is sufficient difference to not consider Fury Road & Road Warrior in the same universe (his car is destroyed in both films, for example).
I think there is sufficient difference to not consider Fury Road & Road Warrior in the same universe (his car is destroyed in both films, for example).
Nope. They're both in the same universe - Miller has pretty explicitly said as such. It's not destroyed in Fury Road, either - it returns later on as "Razor Cola", one of Immortan Joe's fleet.
Also, I'm told(haven't read it myself yet) one of the comics explicitly shows him rebuilding it - apparently, he was in the area in the first place(some time before the movie, obviously) because he was heading to Gastown to get a new engine to finish rebuilding it. Which makes sense, if you consider some other details - for example, if you remember the camel wagon from Thunderdome, the cab of the Camel Wagon is the body of a Ford XB Sedan.
Also consider - the only film narrated by Max is Fury Road. The first has no narration, and the other two are strongly implied to be stories told by other people. Could be some unreliable narrator shit going on there.
200 Cigarettes is worth seeing. It's worth seeing not so much for the story which though not bad, is not great. The thing I like so much about this movie is that it so successfully recreates the feeling of a time period, specifically 1981. The movie just gets everything right about the fashions, music, cars, slang, and so forth. Also, it does a terrific job of evoking that early-20s thing about how everyplace you went was slightly grungy and not kept up very well, but you didn't care.
Also, everyone was smoking all of the time, so that brought up the warm fuzzies. God, I miss that.
I'm not certain if it's a requirement to have actually lived through 1981 to like this movie so much, and I'm not really certain if I want to know. If any punk kids watch this and hate it because it's not about something that happened five minutes ago, please don't tell me.
The Machinist Interesting movie but the main spoiler is something I guessed in the first 30 minutes of the movie. I don't think it would hold up for a second watch. It's pretty dedicated (or crazy) of Christian Bale to lose that much weight to play the role.
So we just watched the de-specialisedStar Wars. This is supposed to be as close to the original theatrical release as is possible.
And, I'm gonna say it.
Guys, Star Wars is actually really kind of shitty.
I mean, it's glorious and all, but it's really just extremely not good. I remember it being good when I was a kid, and this version was exactly what I remembered Episode IV to be. And with nostalgia glasses off, I can much more fairly assess the movie.
It's bad. Really really bad.
Never in my life did I think I would look back on Episode I and think "Wow, I guess the writing could've been worse." Y'know what? Episode IV has awful fucking writing. Really. It does. The worst. Like, please stab me awful.
I love this shit to death, but it's super awful.
We all agree, right? I mean, I don't know how often we say these things out loud, but seriously, that was some bad shit.
No, you are out of your gourd. It's one thing to not like it, but saying it is fucking awful compared to the prequels which are infamous for their godawful direction and screenwriting? Absolutely not. I guarentee if you have most older people to rewatch it, it holds up. The only one that doesn't hold up from the original trilogy is Return of the Jedi primarily because of the second half.
Comments
Sums up Ex Machina more or less.
This is easily the worst case of studio interference in a film I have ever seen. The movie has had nonstop behind the scene problems from issues to the director to sudden budget cuts, rewrites, re-shoots, and intense editing. So many scenes in the trailers and commercials are not in the film. Easily one of the most incompetently made films with a terribly rushed ending. This is going down as one of the worst superhero movies ever.
Maybe it's time to watch it again and see if it holds up.
But I can see why Fox would have gotten cold feet on actually carrying that idea through to fruition, especially if Trank was being difficult with them. As it stands now, watching the movie just made me sad. Not angry, but sad. You can see glimpses of where the film really could have been a cool departure from most superhero films. But there's just no way it could achieve that through all the wooden acting, non-sensical edits, studio-mandated story changes, and goofy, goofy reshoot wigs.
I'll take T2 and JP as nostalgia bombs.
I can never watch a Mad max movie without wondering, if gas is so rare and so precious, why are they burning up so much of it in this pointless car chase? I'd like to see a Mad Max movie that was based solely on a tribe's gasoline rationing system and how they would always ask themselves before driving anywhere, "Is this trip really necessary?", then, if upon careful consideration, they reasonably believed that their trip was worth taking, they would slowly and carefully drive along well-maintained roads in an attempt to conserve as much gasoline as possible.
I did like the random stilt-person walking through the foreground in the swamp-like scene. That made that scene look like something out of a Bosch painting. I saw those stilt-deals recently on a PBS show about prosthetic limbs and transhumanism - the stilt-dealies were used in an interpretive dance. It was pretty interesting, but I don't remember the name of the show. It was pretty generic, like Beyond Human or something like that.
Music, blood, fire.....whatever keeps that adrenaline pumping. Every fight is a necessary risk-all. If they lose, they've spent all their resources, denying the competition. If they win, they continue surviving by gaining more resources.
They had an accountant even....
If gasoline wasn't so precious, there wouldn't be a need to fight for it. Unless, greed...
The sequel might have Mad Max appointed as a Chancery Judge so that he could equitably settle any disputes regarding his system . . .
. . . and were they a bunch of anti-deformites or something? Maybe after Max drafted his gasoline conservation plan, he could teach them all a valuable lesson in tolerance of the differently abled.
Also, how could that town "produce" gasoline? I didn't see any oil rigs or refineries.
I think there is sufficient difference to not consider Fury Road & Road Warrior in the same universe (his car is destroyed in both films, for example).
Also, I'm told(haven't read it myself yet) one of the comics explicitly shows him rebuilding it - apparently, he was in the area in the first place(some time before the movie, obviously) because he was heading to Gastown to get a new engine to finish rebuilding it. Which makes sense, if you consider some other details - for example, if you remember the camel wagon from Thunderdome, the cab of the Camel Wagon is the body of a Ford XB Sedan.
Also consider - the only film narrated by Max is Fury Road. The first has no narration, and the other two are strongly implied to be stories told by other people. Could be some unreliable narrator shit going on there.
Also, everyone was smoking all of the time, so that brought up the warm fuzzies. God, I miss that.
I'm not certain if it's a requirement to have actually lived through 1981 to like this movie so much, and I'm not really certain if I want to know. If any punk kids watch this and hate it because it's not about something that happened five minutes ago, please don't tell me.
Interesting movie but the main spoiler is something I guessed in the first 30 minutes of the movie. I don't think it would hold up for a second watch. It's pretty dedicated (or crazy) of Christian Bale to lose that much weight to play the role.
And, I'm gonna say it.
Guys, Star Wars is actually really kind of shitty.
I mean, it's glorious and all, but it's really just extremely not good. I remember it being good when I was a kid, and this version was exactly what I remembered Episode IV to be. And with nostalgia glasses off, I can much more fairly assess the movie.
It's bad. Really really bad.
Never in my life did I think I would look back on Episode I and think "Wow, I guess the writing could've been worse." Y'know what? Episode IV has awful fucking writing. Really. It does. The worst. Like, please stab me awful.
I love this shit to death, but it's super awful.
We all agree, right? I mean, I don't know how often we say these things out loud, but seriously, that was some bad shit.