Topic: Movie thread.

Yeah, I liked A Dame to Kill For (and stand by my comment that it's at least worth a watch if you liked the first one), but it wasn't quite as good.

I'll admit I was a bit thrown off by the girl's story too, though I more or less shrugged it off. Mostly, while it used the same art style which still looked cool, I think it lacked a certain pizazz that the first film had, if that makes any sense.

Went to see The Girl on the Train at the cinema last night.

The book is a lot better, and I know this may sound silly but for those of whom have read the book, Emily Blunt is too pretty for the role.

The main character, Rachel, is described as a 'Plain Jane' and is fairly unremarkable in terms of appearance (in the book), which kind of takes away some of the moments that works really well in the book that unfortunately doesn't come across quite as well in the film.

And they kind of made the ending 'too sweet', but that's Hollywood for you!

I also watched Nine Lives a few nights ago, which is about a workaholic billionaire who has little to no time for his wife and daughter. Basically, Kevin Spacey buys his daughter a cat for her Birthday and somehow becomes this cat and is told to spend a week with the family, or he becomes the cat for the rest of his life.

In short, it was crap. In more detail, it was crap.

It's a colossal waste of everybody's time who was involved, and has knocked Kevin Spacey down a bit in my estimation. Surely he must have known that it was a terrible film when he read the script?!

One was a fairly average book-to-movie adaptation and the other one was an excretable film altogether. Bleh.

an Officer and a Gentleman (Starz Encore) - An 80's film I caught a few days ago on TV. It follows a Naval pilot officer candidate as he tries to complete boot camp all while managing his love life with one of the locals. It was pretty decent.

Vacation (HBO) - It was a free HBO weekend, so I watched this sequel/reboot of the classic Vacation series last night. It certainly had it's moments, but I felt that it failed living up to the classics for two reasons. 1, in spots it tried too hard to follow up the original (the car is the perfect example of this. In the original the family got a no name car that was crappy, and many of the jokes stemmed from how crappy it was, but other than that it was normal. In this one, they felt like they had to up it, so the no name car was not only crappy, but also overall cartoony for the sake of being zany, which didn't come off as genuine). 2, when it wasn't trying too hard to up the original, it was just lazy in it's comedy. Too often the "jokes" just consisted of something zany happening to a character, followed by said character dropping the F-Bomb for the umpteenth time, oh, and penis jokes, because those are so original. This second issue with the lazy comedy is an issue with practically every modern raunchy comedy I've seen, and it feels like they're all being written by 14 year olds. The thing is, I'm not even nostalgic for older raunchy comedies (I wasn't even old enough to watch these kinds of movies until the late 00's), but I like the 80's era ones so much more. They're still raunchy, but they know the F-Bomb is something you build up to naturally & organically (if at all), with actual well written jokes, and even a heart that modern rauncy comedies lack. Back to this film, it's pretty average for a modern R-rated comedy, which if that's your thing then happy watching, but it's not saying much as far as I'm concerned. What really sucks is that the idea of Rusty being all grown up and taking his own family on a Wally World trip was a fantastic idea, it just had terrible execution.

The Bourne Identity (2002): The first in the series. Good action action scenes but the sound effects sound very generic (specially the punching ones).

The Marsian
while not a bad movie i can not understand the hype it produced when it was released. it was a fun movie to watch but nothing spectacular or something i wanna watch again. 75/100

2? did you see the original? that's the best

Saw Shin Godzilla today and it was simply amazing. For those who don't know it was directed by Hideaki Anno, director of Neon Genesis Evangelion. This definitely showed throughout the movie from shot choices, to writing and music (the composer of Evangelion also worked on the film's music)

Definitely a return to form to the original movie, being that this was produced by Toho instead of Legendary (which imo was highly disappointing) The pacing was slow in areas but overall even — it focused on Japanese government officials and their response to the monster for most of the movie, but this was key plot and there was enough action to keep it moving. I was slightly bored at times but it was interesting to see how the government handled the situation, you really got a sense of the difficulty of their decisions and it added to suspense of what would happen next.

However there wasn't too much focus on humans, unlike the 2014 Godzilla. The special effects weren't mindblowing but the amount of destruction and damage Godzilla caused really hit hard. Easy to tell this movie was inspired by the recent disasters that have hit Japan. The tone of the movie definitely seemed politically and culturally significant, so this was also interesting to see.

I was sceptical about this Godzilla's design initially but it is now my favorite. Very terrifying and seemed like an abomination which matches his origin. Like I said with the effects, they weren't perfect so he did look strange at times but overall he looked decent. The important thing is the emphasis was clearly not on effects but on writing.

Anyways, bit of a long rant, but tl;dr — I loved this film and was very satisfied with it as a Godzilla movie. I'm not sure if the limited release is over in certain areas of the US (no idea how it is distributed elsewhere like UK) but if you have the chance to see it in theaters — big speakers for the sound was awesome — I highly recommend it.

I recently saw the teaser for the 2017 Power Rangers movie, and It looks awesome. I take back anything I said earlier about how the film is going to be a cheaply made cash-in!

Well, it's October so I figured it's time for some seasonally relevant films.

Final Destination 3 (Netflix) - Typical teen horror flick, but I enjoyed it for what it was, which it did well (which was to create a series of increasingly outlandish scenarios in which a group of high school seniors meet their demise).

Corpse Bride (Netflix) - Decent Tim Burton animated flick that fits the season, in which a nervous groom unwittingly marries an undead bride while rehearsing for his upcoming wedding. While it wasn't bad (and in terms of technical prowess it was quite neat to see at times), it just never really clicked for me (Tim Burton's stuff rarely does, TBH).

Not exactly a movie, but I've finished watching season 2 of Samurai Jack. Only 2 left to go now.
One of my favorites cartoons as a kid, and it's so nice that there's gonna a new season next year!

Goosebumps (Netflix) - Movie based on the popular line of kid's horror books, where the books' monsters escape & terrorize a small town. Definitely a more family friendly Halloween option, which I thought was decent for what it was, though I don't think it's something I'd go back to (you'd probably like it more if you were/are a fan of the books as a kid).

Hotel Transylvania 2 (Netflix) - I thought the first one of these was actually pretty decent, and this one was too (certainly some of the more enjoyable things Adam Sandler has done in recent memory). I get a kick out of how all the classic movie monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Werewolf, etc) are facing the problems of middle age. This go around, Dracula & his crew are trying to get his half human grandson to embrace his vampiric side.

As you can tell from the two examples above, I'm not much into actual horror, lol.

Sausage Party (2016): It's a Seth Rogen animated film. Lots of sexual, drug and poop jokes, with no subtlety at all.
Some of it was funny, but I didn't like how they tried to make every line said by the characters a joke.

Doctor Strange.

Really enjoyed this one. I haven't read any of the comics, but I do know that Benedict Cumberbatch plays his part well by being an unlikeable, arrogant and stubborn person (to perfection), and some of the set pieces where buildings fold over at will is both disorientating and eye-popping at the same time.

It's Inception cranked (up) to eleven!

The side baddie played by the ever reliable Mads Mikkelsen was okay; did his job, I suppose! On the other hand, the climax was quite impressive (against Dormammu) and cleverly played out.

Only an hour and forty-five minutes long too, which is a welcome relief from the last superhero film I saw, Batman vs Superman, seeing as it waffled on and on for three hours.

Probably my favourite comic book film of the year, even in a year with the Avengers 3... or Captain America: Civil War for short.

8/10

Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Toonami) - What a beautiful film. The environments are highly detailed, with a vividly colored, nature-esque vibe, and the characters looked ripped straight out of a Ghibli production. It's an adventure in a strange yet wondrous world (with some equally strange creatures), with some swashbuckling action, light romantic elements, and an overarching theme that no matter how hard you try, there's no bringing back those who've passed on. It's a shame that films like these get passed over in the Oscars for whatever homogenized CGI flicks Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, & Sony Animation released in the past year (Not that those films can't be enjoyable, it's just that with the exception of maybe Disney/Pixar, they feel like there's no "art" to them, if that makes sense).

Fantastic Four [2005] (Netflix) - Haven't seen this in a long time, so I figured I'd give it a watch. It's not fantastic (no pun intended), and superhero films sure have came a long way, but I still enjoyed it for what it is ('dat aged CGI for Mr. Fantastic though...).

Had a few extra hours last night, so I finished up the animated flicks I had on my Netflix queue.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (Netflix) - While I've always casually enjoyed these films (probably the only Dreamworks films I like), this one went above & beyond. In fact, I may like it more than Zootopia. I really liked the cell shading thing they had going on in the spirit realm (and certain other action scenes), it was quite beautiful, and really shattered my expectations of what I'd be seeing in a CGI film. It also had a few laughs, and some enjoyable action, so I'd say it was a winner (it also had a few call backs to the first two films, tying things together).

the Little Prince (Netflix Original) - First Netflix produced film I've seen. Overall, it was decent, but not something I'd think I'd watch again. It had a nice contrast between the rigid, monochrome business world of adults, the bright, rustic/natural look of the old man's home, and the stop motion animation of the prince's story. However, I felt that the quality of the animation was a few years behind what Disney & Dreamworks put out, most notably the character models which looked a little blocky. Also, I felt that it dragged on a bit too much. It certainly wasn't that long, but near the end I found myself checking the time a lot (then again, I started it after 1:30 am, and I had gotten up at 8:00 am the morning before, so I was probably just tired).

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) Pretty okay movie. Has some fun action, some great banter between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy and Andrew Garfield was pretty good even if he never will be as good as Tobey Maguire.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) UGHHHH. The plot is incoherent nonsense, the films THREE new villains all collectively suck, the mystery of Peter's dead parents is as boring and uninteresting as it was in the first film (except now it's a third of the film!), they make killing off Gwen Stacy actually feel incredibly predictable and played out, and worst of all, It's just a giant 2-hour long setup for a bunch of sequels!

Oh also, Andrew Garfield isn't nearly as fun as he was in ASM1.

It's way better than 2015's Fant4stic.

yesterday i watched two "classics" for the first time:

American Psycho:
fun movie overall with a great performance from christian bale. interesting plottwist that i really didnt expect at all.

Trainspotting:
cool trip with an excellent soundtrack. while the ending did entertain me it felt kinda "unrealistic". like it was forced to come to and end with a big bang. but i enjoyed watching it and will probably watch it again someday.

U-571 (Netflix) - Excellent WWII film. A German U-Boat is damaged during battle & left in the open sea. Now an American sub crew must masquerade as Germans in order to obtain the Germans' Enigma coding machine on board and get it back to allied hands, all while making sure that the news of it's compromise doesn't reach the German homefront. This may be the most tense I've ever been watching a film (especially anytime when depth charges were coming), which kept me on the edge of my seat (plus, I like WWII era machinery, like tanks, planes, and in this case, subs & battleships). It's not based on one particular true story, but rather inspired by many different missions both British & American sailors underwent in order to get Enigma, and if you enjoy war films at all, give this a watch.

Judge Dredd (Netflix) - Hadn't seen this before, so I figured it was time (I'd already seen the new one, which I thought was decent). A bit aged now when it comes to the CG effects, but I thought it was a pretty decent action flick in a sci-fi setting (though Rob Schneider was a unique choice of sidekick I wasn't excpecting, lol). You can definitely tell Blade Runner was still the inspiration for the futurescape (as with many other sci-fi films from this era).

@Ralizah, I haven't yet seen the 2015 one (I'll probably give it a watch eventually, just to see how bad it is, lol).

Ghost in the shell
the original. saw it for the first time tonight and i really liked it. the movie looks spectacular and incredibly "realistic" for an anime. i think the movie should be a little longer to head more into the philosophical part of the story. the ending felt abrupt and just way too short. but i definetly recommend watching it!