I caught Ex Machina the week it came out. I found it ok to watch but it was like a gateway drug for my other half. She went on a binge of AI based media for a good couple of months. Also was I alone in thinking what Ava did at the end was a dick move?
What was the objectives that Ava are programmed with, we don't quite know other than be a manipulative social human being like any other human and mistaken for a human. To do this she can't have anyone who knows she is an AI along for the ride, get rid of the two who know you are anything but human, live your immortal life, plan to produce more AI and robots, recognise humans as incompetent and take over the world.
Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation - Pretty alright mission impossible film, but I burst out laughing when the Prime Minister turned out to played by the same guy who played Minister Foster from "In the Loop."
Mad Max: Fury Road Watched it again in a home theatre for the 4th time still picked up some new things that were paid attention to really tried to pay attention to the character Nux in this sitting. He was well acted and portrayed. He can drive quite well too!
I watched The Martian again recently, and it only just struck me - the computer voice of the Hab and Watney's suit sounded really familiar, but I couldn't place my finger on it, until I realized, it sounded exactly like the computer voice (SARA) in Interstellar Marines - who is played by none other than Terri Brosius, more famously known as the voice of SHODAN.
I could be wrong - it doesn't appear to be in the credits anywhere - but man if it doesn't sound almost exactly the same.
Terminator: Genisys. I heard it was bad, but when I started watching it, I was really into it. Up until about half way through, and then it turns REALLY bad. Oh my god, the second half is shit. And it started so well!
Then I watched Fury Road again, because I was on a transatlantic flight, and that's what I do. Now I just saw it was nominated for all the Oscars, so I guess it's not just me who thinks it's good.
Terminator: Genisys. I heard it was bad, but when I started watching it, I was really into it. Up until about half way through, and then it turns REALLY bad. Oh my god, the second half is shit. And it started so well!
I agree to a point, the movie definitely got worse in the second half, but I disagree with you on how bad it was. I still enjoyed it. Do you like Commando? That's what the second half felt like to me. It made little to no sense and was stupid, but entertaining nonetheless.
I beat the mad max video game, watched fury road again. That game gives you an amazing back story that adds to the movie upon future viewing. Plus it gives you the reason for those little girl moments in the film.
I've hit the Zatoichi halfway mark with the 13th movie, Zatoichi's Vengeance. This might be the second best one I've seen. The 7th one, Zatoichi's Flashing Sword, is still on top.
The 14th movie, "Zatoichi's Pilgrimage" may have just taken the #2 spot from Zatoichi's Vengeance. They both came out in '66, so maybe that was the golden age?
The cinematography is truly majestic. The pacing and plot was also super tight. What really stands out in this one is the acting. Zatoichi is his usual self, but the other three main actors gave great performances. The villain was so cool, and the female lead was great as well, but without a doubt the best character is the village leader. And who can forget the opening scene on the boat. One of the best pre-credit scenes I've seen in movies: period.
If you look at the list of who directed each movie you can see that Kazuo Ikehiro directed this one as well as number 7, which was the best so far. He didn't direct any others, so that's sad. I'm moving onto the three movies that were released in '67. One was directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda who has directed a few other good, but not great ones. One is by Satsuo Yamamoto who didn't direct any other film in the series. The last is directed by Kenji Misumi who directed the first one and many others that were also very good, but still not the very top tier. Still, I hope this late '60s burst of quality carries forward.
Finally saw John Wick after hearing about it for what seems like ages. The hype going into this movie was pretty, high, but John Wick meet my expectations and exceeding them tremendously. This was an amazing action movie paying homage to the great John Woo/Chow Yun Fat Hong Kong movies like the Killer and Hard Boiled. Surprisingly, Keanu Reeves was excellent as the man of few words.
Last night while talking to one of my roommates, he told me that he had never seen the Prestige. That situation was remedied almost immediately. I had forgotten just how good that movie is.
The Martian This was an incredibly enjoyable sci-fi film to watch. I wanted to see even more of the journey. The world watching bits seemed cheesy. I could easily watch this movie again, the cinematography was great. The end felt a little rushed but there wasn't much else I could imagine they wanted to do.
I felt as if I could root for the protagonist in this film compared to most all survival films which I find to be a chore.
Also weird that they cast an african american in Vincent Kapoor's role.
Tonight I watched The Martian again, as it was playing in the theatre here on the ship and it was mentioned in the forum. It remains a fun movie even on the second watch. I was wondering if it was the better science fiction movie of last year compared to Star Wars, and I think it is. The start of The Force Awakens is better than most of The Martian, but the end really lets it down, and The Martian continues to be a consistent movie experience throughout. I'm guessing this was because it was edited to a 140 minute movie in the script stage, not after it had been shot.
This afternoon I watched I'll Be Me, the documentary about Glenn Campbell being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. It follows him and his family through his farewell tour, and is utterly heartbreaking, yet uplifting at the same time. I downloaded this after seeing Campbell in the Wrecking Crew documentary, and he was a favourite of mine as a child when I listened to his greatest hits album over and over. Seeing him remain an amazing musician, even as he couldn't remember his wife's name, or recognize images of his younger self, is incredible.
Yesterday I watched Mad Max 2: Road Warrior for the first time in maybe 15 years. Before Juliane and I went to see Fury Road we watched the original Mad Max, as I thought it would be good for her to get a bit of the back story. I'm kinda glad we didn't watch the second because while I said Fury Road was more like Road Warrior, I didn't realize just how close they were! Having watched Fury Road six times now, I saw that it's not just major story points and vehicles that are similar, but loads of camera shots too.
While Mad Max 1 is my favourite of the early movies, and the one I've seen more often, Road Warrior is actually the better movie. But now Road Warrior has been supplanted by Fury Road, as it tells the same story far better, Mad Max 1 is now the one worth watching more.
Anyone who likes 20th century music needs to watch Tom Dowd and the Language of Music. Dude was the first to use things like multi-track recording and overdubbing. Worked with everyone from Ray Charles to John Coltrane to Eric Clapton. Watching that movie filled me with a sense of technical awe I haven't felt since The Hand Behind the Mouse, the Ub Iwerks documentary.
I don't know if this counts as three movies or as one mini-series, but I recently watched the Swedish version of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Girl Who Played With Fire, and Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest).
I've read all three books and loved them, and I've also liked David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo move, but the Swedish versions are better. Instead of breaking each book into one movie, each book is divided into two 90 minute episodes, so combined, each book is about three hours. This lets the show/movie go into much more depth than a typical movie adaptation. All three "books" were incredibly well done and both Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist were excellent in the main roles.
I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the books or in just excellent TV.
Kung Fu Panda 3 is the weakest of the trilogy, but still a good movie and actually works as a solid end to a trilogy if this is the last movie. Easily the best looking movie with tons of great fight choeography, 2D cutaways, and creative particle effects and color.
The Revenant is good, but not great. Astonishing cinematography and absolutely brutal from the depictions of violence and harshness of the wilderness. However, it could have easily been cut an hour for time and Hardy unforunately plays a really one-dimension, uninteresting villain the pushes the movie forward. I could easily see DiCaprio winning the Oscar for his performance here, but I will eat my hat if Hardy gets his for Best Supporting.
I had no plans tonight. I saw a tweet that said "Nowhere Girl" directed by Mamoru Oshii was being screened at the Museum of the Moving Image tonight. That's literally in my neighborhood. I got a ticket and went. Boy am I glad I did, because I learned a lot of very interesting things.
First, the movie. All I can say is, if you know Oshii, this is PEAK OSHII. Military fanboy gets to make a movie like whatever the fuck he wants. The only thing missing was dogs. No Basset Hounds, or dogs of any kind to be seen anywhere. Maybe they were hiding in the background? All I saw were schoolgirls, fucked up shit, and guns.
This series has been running at the museum monthly since 2011. The fact I hadn't discovered this earlier is a crime. I've missed some good shit.
I also learned that this series is curated by the Vice Chairman and Secretary of the museum's board. That person introduced the film to us, and his name is Warrington Hudlin. His introduction was very brief, but he talked about how when he was a kid he he liked to go see these movies in China Town, and how all those theaters have since closed. He created this series so that people still have a place to see some martial arts action in NYC. He seemed like one of those awesome old timers at the anime convention. Like the 50+ year old jolly guy with the same taste in movies as Daryl Surat.
The other thing he mentioned was how this movie was being shown because someone suggested it. It didn't have a US distributor, but he managed to get a print, with subtitles, from Japan. Because I guess when you're the Museum of the Moving Image, you can do that? He also asked people to send him suggestions for future showings. I might have a few.
I Googled this guy when I got home to try to find his contact info. What I learned is that this dude is secret awesome.
Warrington Hudlin and his brother Reginald Hudlin produced/directed both Boomerang AND House Party. He's also been president of the Black Filmmaker Foundation since 1978. His brother Reginald was also producer of Django Unchained.
And this guy loves the good movies with punching, kicking, shooting, and slicing. He earned himself a fan tonight.
I'll definitely be keeping my eye on the schedule in the future. If they keep screening things that are not easy to download/stream it might even become economical to get a museum membership.
After seeing it on some Oscar lists, I watched Room. My thoughts:
1. First part, very good. Middle bit, destroyed me (though they may have been "watching at 30,000 feet" tears). Last hour, not very good.
2. It's obvious why it has been nominated for Oscars.
3. The performance by the child actor is, on the surface, quite remarkable. And then I worked out how it was done. At no point does the child actor ever portray more than one emotion or action or reaction per shot. There is never a transition from one emotional moment to another without a cut. So they obviously kept rolling on the child until the single emotion was up to the right level, then cut, then moved on to the next one.
This is in contrast to all the adult performances, where they could control the transition from one thought/emotion/look to the next in a fluid manner. You know, actual acting.
Once I noticed what was going on with the child actor, I couldn't unsee it. While it diminished my opinion of the child actor's acting ability, it made me appreciate the directing and editing even more. This is a really good trick to get amazing levels of intensity out of an unskilled actor, something needed for the movie, and the price paid for it played into the stylistic editing choices so it didn't seem too out of place.
4. The mother and son actors look so much like mother and son it's almost creepy.
Bridge of Spies Wow this was an incredibly well directed and written film. It really highlighted how must dialogue and acting nuance has gone to shit. The content has an American slant which might put off some of the audience but the audience can't deny that dialogue and acting was done well. There wasn't excessive music or an overwhelming sound track.
Sure there are some historical inaccuracies but the movie states that it is based on true events.
At the end of the movie I was left thinking the creators wanted to remind the audience of when America was half decent in how it dealt with international affairs. While also considering that Governments can never be trusted to handle negotiation with any integrity (kind of obvious but well put).
Camera angles were particularly engaging, e.g. the audience was placed in the position of a "driver" in almost every "driver" scene.
I would definitely watch this again and probably buy it.
Deadpool was by far the most entertaining Marvel film I've seen in a long while. There wasn't even much of a showcase of special effects, yet there was a decent balance of drama and comedy. Tropey and slapstick, but still entertaining.
I don't expect they can do it any better for a sequel, there's not much to it.
Comments
Quantic Dream 2012, Ex Machina "... was shot over four weeks in 2013".
hmmmmmmmmm
Watched it again in a home theatre for the 4th time still picked up some new things that were paid attention to really tried to pay attention to the character Nux in this sitting. He was well acted and portrayed. He can drive quite well too!
I could be wrong - it doesn't appear to be in the credits anywhere - but man if it doesn't sound almost exactly the same.
Then I watched Fury Road again, because I was on a transatlantic flight, and that's what I do. Now I just saw it was nominated for all the Oscars, so I guess it's not just me who thinks it's good.
The cinematography is truly majestic. The pacing and plot was also super tight. What really stands out in this one is the acting. Zatoichi is his usual self, but the other three main actors gave great performances. The villain was so cool, and the female lead was great as well, but without a doubt the best character is the village leader. And who can forget the opening scene on the boat. One of the best pre-credit scenes I've seen in movies: period.
If you look at the list of who directed each movie you can see that Kazuo Ikehiro directed this one as well as number 7, which was the best so far. He didn't direct any others, so that's sad. I'm moving onto the three movies that were released in '67. One was directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda who has directed a few other good, but not great ones. One is by Satsuo Yamamoto who didn't direct any other film in the series. The last is directed by Kenji Misumi who directed the first one and many others that were also very good, but still not the very top tier. Still, I hope this late '60s burst of quality carries forward.
Highly recommended to fans of action movies.
This was an incredibly enjoyable sci-fi film to watch. I wanted to see even more of the journey. The world watching bits seemed cheesy.
I could easily watch this movie again, the cinematography was great.
The end felt a little rushed but there wasn't much else I could imagine they wanted to do.
I felt as if I could root for the protagonist in this film compared to most all survival films which I find to be a chore.
Also weird that they cast an african american in Vincent Kapoor's role.
It also reminded me that Ridley Scott can actually direct.
This afternoon I watched I'll Be Me, the documentary about Glenn Campbell being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. It follows him and his family through his farewell tour, and is utterly heartbreaking, yet uplifting at the same time. I downloaded this after seeing Campbell in the Wrecking Crew documentary, and he was a favourite of mine as a child when I listened to his greatest hits album over and over. Seeing him remain an amazing musician, even as he couldn't remember his wife's name, or recognize images of his younger self, is incredible.
While Mad Max 1 is my favourite of the early movies, and the one I've seen more often, Road Warrior is actually the better movie. But now Road Warrior has been supplanted by Fury Road, as it tells the same story far better, Mad Max 1 is now the one worth watching more.
Blink and you might miss it
I've read all three books and loved them, and I've also liked David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo move, but the Swedish versions are better. Instead of breaking each book into one movie, each book is divided into two 90 minute episodes, so combined, each book is about three hours. This lets the show/movie go into much more depth than a typical movie adaptation. All three "books" were incredibly well done and both Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist were excellent in the main roles.
I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the books or in just excellent TV.
The Revenant is good, but not great. Astonishing cinematography and absolutely brutal from the depictions of violence and harshness of the wilderness. However, it could have easily been cut an hour for time and Hardy unforunately plays a really one-dimension, uninteresting villain the pushes the movie forward. I could easily see DiCaprio winning the Oscar for his performance here, but I will eat my hat if Hardy gets his for Best Supporting.
First, the movie. All I can say is, if you know Oshii, this is PEAK OSHII. Military fanboy gets to make a movie like whatever the fuck he wants. The only thing missing was dogs. No Basset Hounds, or dogs of any kind to be seen anywhere. Maybe they were hiding in the background? All I saw were schoolgirls, fucked up shit, and guns.
http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2016/02/05/detail/nowhere-girl
The other thing I learned is that this was being screened as part of the "Fist and Sword" series.
http://www.movingimage.us/programs/2016/01/01/detail/fist-and-sword-2016/
This series has been running at the museum monthly since 2011. The fact I hadn't discovered this earlier is a crime. I've missed some good shit.
I also learned that this series is curated by the Vice Chairman and Secretary of the museum's board. That person introduced the film to us, and his name is Warrington Hudlin. His introduction was very brief, but he talked about how when he was a kid he he liked to go see these movies in China Town, and how all those theaters have since closed. He created this series so that people still have a place to see some martial arts action in NYC. He seemed like one of those awesome old timers at the anime convention. Like the 50+ year old jolly guy with the same taste in movies as Daryl Surat.
The other thing he mentioned was how this movie was being shown because someone suggested it. It didn't have a US distributor, but he managed to get a print, with subtitles, from Japan. Because I guess when you're the Museum of the Moving Image, you can do that? He also asked people to send him suggestions for future showings. I might have a few.
I Googled this guy when I got home to try to find his contact info. What I learned is that this dude is secret awesome.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0399738/
Warrington Hudlin and his brother Reginald Hudlin produced/directed both Boomerang AND House Party. He's also been president of the Black Filmmaker Foundation since 1978. His brother Reginald was also producer of Django Unchained.
And this guy loves the good movies with punching, kicking, shooting, and slicing. He earned himself a fan tonight.
I'll definitely be keeping my eye on the schedule in the future. If they keep screening things that are not easy to download/stream it might even become economical to get a museum membership.
1. First part, very good. Middle bit, destroyed me (though they may have been "watching at 30,000 feet" tears). Last hour, not very good.
2. It's obvious why it has been nominated for Oscars.
3. The performance by the child actor is, on the surface, quite remarkable. And then I worked out how it was done. At no point does the child actor ever portray more than one emotion or action or reaction per shot. There is never a transition from one emotional moment to another without a cut. So they obviously kept rolling on the child until the single emotion was up to the right level, then cut, then moved on to the next one.
This is in contrast to all the adult performances, where they could control the transition from one thought/emotion/look to the next in a fluid manner. You know, actual acting.
Once I noticed what was going on with the child actor, I couldn't unsee it. While it diminished my opinion of the child actor's acting ability, it made me appreciate the directing and editing even more. This is a really good trick to get amazing levels of intensity out of an unskilled actor, something needed for the movie, and the price paid for it played into the stylistic editing choices so it didn't seem too out of place.
4. The mother and son actors look so much like mother and son it's almost creepy.
Wow this was an incredibly well directed and written film. It really highlighted how must dialogue and acting nuance has gone to shit. The content has an American slant which might put off some of the audience but the audience can't deny that dialogue and acting was done well. There wasn't excessive music or an overwhelming sound track.
Sure there are some historical inaccuracies but the movie states that it is based on true events.
At the end of the movie I was left thinking the creators wanted to remind the audience of when America was half decent in how it dealt with international affairs. While also considering that Governments can never be trusted to handle negotiation with any integrity (kind of obvious but well put).
Camera angles were particularly engaging, e.g. the audience was placed in the position of a "driver" in almost every "driver" scene.
I would definitely watch this again and probably buy it.
I don't expect they can do it any better for a sequel, there's not much to it.