[Movies] Talk about the last movie you saw 2: Electric Threadaloo

Enjoyed Jack Reacher. Decent enough action flick with a nice understated, violent sense of humor.
Didn't like it. Bored me out of my mind. They promised one type of movie, delivered another.
Even that one scene where he's in the car chase and he just walks out and over to the crowd where they allow him to blend in, you're thinking "Man. He must have really done something awesome to get a bunch of strangers to just hide him like that". But nope. They just let a potential rapist and murderer get away with it for all they knew.
 
Riddick

In some ways, it felt like three different movies: a continuation of Chronicles of Riddick (blech), a sci-fi version of Castaway, and more or less a retread of Pitch Black.

The continuation of Chronicles stuff went on way too long and was overall pretty dull. The survival stuff was okay and did set up quite a bit for the second half the flick. And the retread stuff, while yeah was pretty much a retread, kicked all kinds of ass.

In terms of overall quality, I'd put it between Pitch Black and Chronicles. It's not as bad or trying too hard like Chronicles, but it's not as overall solid as Pitch Black. It's worth it if only for the second half of the movie when the rest of the characters start showing up.
 
Riddick

In some ways, it felt like three different movies: a continuation of Chronicles of Riddick (blech), a sci-fi version of Castaway, and more or less a retread of Pitch Black.

The continuation of Chronicles stuff went on way too long and was overall pretty dull. The survival stuff was okay and did set up quite a bit for the second half the flick. And the retread stuff, while yeah was pretty much a retread, kicked all kinds of ass.

In terms of overall quality, I'd put it between Pitch Black and Chronicles. It's not as bad or trying too hard like Chronicles, but it's not as overall solid as Pitch Black. It's worth it if only for the second half of the movie when the rest of the characters start showing up.
My biggest issue with Chronicles was that they tried so hard to make Riddick into a prophecized hero.
 
I actually liked Chronicles, too. I think it's underrated and not the piece of crap that most seem to believe.

I also wouldn't say it's anything in the range of great, but I still don't mind watching it once in a blue moon. Either way, I'd still say Riddick is the better of the two.
 

Necronic

Staff member
Finally watched "The Raid". Fun movie. Didn't match the hallway fight scene in Old Boy at any point, but still a good flick.
 
The hallway fight in Oldboy is just something special. Not going to get something better than that for a while.

Loved the Raid, it was 90 straight minutes of just pure mayhem.
 
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Wow, I didn't think it was possible to make a worse movie than the first Ghost Rider. I literally fell asleep in the middle of the second act.
 
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Wow, I didn't think it was possible to make a worse movie than the first Ghost Rider. I literally fell asleep in the middle of the second act.
The first one was the best comedy I saw that year. Especially every time Cage did an Elvis-like stance for that fingerpoint of doom thing.
 
Spirit of Vengeance owned, neveldine/taylor owns, idris elba as a drunk mystic monk or whatever he was owned,
Idris Elba was the best part of the movie, but then again, he's usually the best part of everything he's in. On the plus side, it didn't have Eva Mendez sleepwalking through it. I think that's what makes it an infinitely worse movie than the first one. It had potential that was just squandered.

And why the hell don't they call Mephisto Mephisto?
 
I hate knowing too much about a character, especially when a fact that is supposed to give you a better understanding of a character is taken, reworked, and expanded upon. In Pitch Black we know that Riddick was left for dead after being born. It's that fact that gives us an idea of who Riddick is: A victim of society who took the reigns of his hellish ride and deals with shit in his own way. My knowledge of Chronicles is limited as I haven't seen it since it was in theaters, but I recall that they took that one little fact and expanded on it and gave an explanation as to why he was left for dead. Suddenly what you think about him has changed. And not for the better in my opinion. Now we know he's some sort of special being of prophecy. Now he's the most important person in the entire galaxy.
But in the first one he's just a cunning thug who does whatever he can to survive, and ends up actually trying to help others in the process during his character growth.
Knowing that he's so amazingly important in the second film, completely changes his character in an abrupt and unpleasing way.
In Pitch Black, Riddick is awesome because he's just a man. Suddenly he's not just a man. He's a superman. Now his feats are less than impressive.

For an example take Star Wars and Midicholrians. In the first trilogy you attributed The Force to basically a magical energy that could be manipulated by those with the inborn talent. Science could not explain it, but it did exist. In the prequels we find out that ...yeah. Science can fucking explain it, and it's bacteria shitting out magic.

Now imagine one of your favorite characters. Let's say Indiana Jones. Suddenly you find out he's actually Hercules with amnesia. Bam. Fucked Indiana Jones up for you.
 
So, watched Justice League War.

Man, DC is REEEEEALLY into Superman breaking necks lately. It was only slightly over an hour long and about 55 minutes of that time was an extended action scene. The voice acting was generally bad. The animation was really nice in some places and barely passable in others. It felt more like the pilot to a Justice League cartoon, where they're going to have a season of episodes to flesh out these characters, because there was NONE in this movie.
 
Justice League: War

Well, despite my apprehensions, I tried watching this. Couldn't finish it, though. Not after seeing

Superman break Desaad's neck and the League's plan to beat Darkseid was STABBING HIS FUCKING EYES OUT.
I just have to face facts that WB and DC are not telling stories with the same characters I grew up on. Not any more. Those heroes - the good ones - exist in some forgotten parallel universe now. Between this, NuDC, and Man of Steel, it's clear that they want darker, "more mature" superheroes and I want no part of it. This is more like The Authority than The Justice League.

What's ironic is that these are the sorts of actions that my DC heroes fought against in Kingdom Come.
 
I somehow missed that. Yeah, I didn't care for it much either. The action sequences went on so long that I got bored.

The part where I wondered if the movie even knew what it wanted to be was when Batman says Superman doesn't kill, then the immediate next scene has Superman beheading Parademons with his heat vision.

Is every character an asshole in Nu52? The only character who wasn't an insufferable dick was Flash.
 
Given that they showed how a Parademon is created (which I believe is from their original explanation as well), I don't mind them "killing" parademons. They're not alive anymore at that point. Just mindless drones. Of course, the League and Batman didn't know that, but still. We've seen them kill parademons multiple times before but it didn't bother me because as I said, they're not really alive.
 
The whole thing was unpleasant.

Oh, one thing that stuck in my craw.

After Batman sort of frees Superman and he's trying to avoid being killed by a berserking Superman, it cuts back to the rest of the crew fighting Darkseid. They fight DS for a while and Cyborg's super convenient vacuum cleaner portal (that only sucks in bad guys) plan goes into action. Suddenly Superman shows up wearing some sort of chest piece. What the fuck happened offscreen? Was shit cut that would make that make any sort of sense?
 
Watched Prisoners and Elysium tonight.

Elysium was good stuff, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Prisoners was good, but a bit slow to start. Hugh Jackman is great in it, though, as is the rest of the cast.
 
Well... in some ways it's even more heavy handed. However, it's a far better movie, and the heavy handed messages are integral to the story.

Seriously, what was up with Jodi Foster in Elysium?
 
Well... in some ways it's even more heavy handed. However, it's a far better movie, and the heavy handed messages are integral to the story.
It's probably too heavy handed if you are a racist. It's like saying, "Is that movie about slavery really heavy handed about how bad slavery is?" :p

It's not a "message" movie and I think thats what most people mean when they say "heavy handed", where they are so concerned about slapping you in the face with their message that they forget that the message has to serve the film and no the other way around. District 9 is a very solid sci-fi/speculative fiction movie that does a good job of presenting real world problems in a "fantastic" setting without being preachy. I haven't seen Elysium so I don't know if it veers to far from that path.
 
It's probably too heavy handed if you are a racist. It's like saying, "Is that movie about slavery really heavy handed about how bad slavery is?" :p

It's not a "message" movie and I think thats what most people mean when they say "heavy handed", where they are so concerned about slapping you in the face with their message that they forget that the message has to serve the film and no the other way around. District 9 is a very solid sci-fi/speculative fiction movie that does a good job of presenting real world problems in a "fantastic" setting without being preachy. I haven't seen Elysium so I don't know if it veers to far from that path.
Elysium screams through the entire movie: THE RICH ARE BAD AND KEEPING THE POOR DOWN.... DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU GET IT YET????? HOW BOUT NOW?
 
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