My Movie Watching Project

[Planet-man]

Re: All About Movies Thread: 8 Tweets & a Funeral.

Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese was good, and the movie would be better if it had been focused entirely on him.

Yes, 100% true.

 

[thee great one]

Re: All About Movies Thread: 8 Tweets & a Funeral.

Terminator Salvation was good until the end. Then it got dumb.

 

[Captain Canuck]

Re: All About Movies Thread: 8 Tweets & a Funeral.

his heart is so strong!

he's got a heart like a horse

that's the strongest heartbeat I've ever seen!

wow, you're heart is off the charts!

Ohz no! Conner's heart is failing, what are we going to do????!!?

The rest of it was pretty cool. No T2, but I liked it

 

[E]

Re: All About Movies Thread: 8 Tweets & a Funeral.

Terminator Salvation is terrible!

Hated it. Pointlessly ignored the distinctive way all the future wars stuff was set up in earlier films to do a generic Mad Max-looking headache-inducer. Took Christian Bale down a big peg in my books.

I like it even though it has its faults. And I thought Christian Bale was great in it, so any departure in whatever storyline happened (I don't see it because there was a lot of stuff left very open-ended) is offset by this. I do think that the personality of John Connor was changed somewhat for the worst, but given the times, it's pretty understandable.

Terminator Salvation was good until the end. Then it got dumb.

Would you have preferred this ending?

Okay, now back to McG's big, juicy secret. A secret, by the way, that Bale will back up as you read on.

"There was talk on the Internet about an alternate ending where Connor dies and they take Connor's likeness and put it on top of Marcus Wright's machine body. So that it's actually a machine that's leading the resistance! And the Internet caught wind of that and people went, 'That's bulls—! We don't want that!'"

McG grins. "Well, that's not really what the ending was."

Actually, the bloggers were on the right track. Except, McG adds, the original ending actually went even further.

"Connor dies, okay? He's dead," McG continues. "And Marcus offers his physical body, so Connor's exterior is put on top of his machine body. It looks like Connor, but it's really Marcus underneath. And all of the characters we care about (Kyle Reese, Connor's wife Kate, etc.) are brought into the room to see him and they think it's Connor. And Connor gets up and then there's a small flicker of red in his eyes and he shoots Kate, he shoots Kyle, he shoots everybody in the room. Fade to black. End of movie. Skynet wins. F— you!"

F— you, indeed.

We tell the director that this would be the darkest, bleakest summer blockbuster ending of all time. He agrees.

"It's the most nihilistic thing of all time. And Christian went f—ing crazy, of course. He was insistent that it be done that way! He wanted the bad guys to win! Can you imagine the oxygen going out of the theater?! What just happened! It would piss you off! But maybe two years from now, you'd think it was ballsy. But in the end, it just felt like too much of a bummer."

He pauses, thinking about the alternate ending that wasn't. "Maybe we blew it." McG says the studio had signed off on this original dark-as-night ending. But something about it didn't smell right to him in the end. How could a movie with a reported budget of $200 million and a possible future of sequels possibly end that way?

i know a lot of people feel that way about LOTR, but I love them. I was probably one of the few people who was upset with Return of the King b/c they left so much out of the ending. (War of the Shire mostly)

I just meant that it made it hard to accomplish watching time-wise. As far as story and everything I thought it was fine.


Just finished True Grit (5/5) and The King's Speech (5/5). True Grit felt so authentic; maybe the most of any Western-type movie I've ever seen. The King's Speech almost had me a misty-eyed. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush were amazing.

Next up: Jackie Brown.

 

[Bass]

I loved both TRUE GRIT and THE KING'S SPEECH. Beautiful films both.

 

[Planet-man]

Re: All About Movies Thread: 8 Tweets & a Funeral.

I like it even though it has its faults. And I thought Christian Bale was great in it, so any departure in whatever storyline happened (I don't see it because there was a lot of stuff left very open-ended) is offset by this. I do think that the personality of John Connor was changed somewhat for the worst, but given the times, it's pretty understandable.

It's not so much departures in the plot(although as a separate issue, I thought the plot with Marcus and all that was awkward and didn't do anything for me), it's the whole look and style of the film. None of the ashen, purply deathscapes we see in the older films where the dust from the nuclear attack makes it permanently night. Everything just looked like Nevada. It made it dry and boring to me, and nothing like the terrifying Terminator film they could've made. That combined with a plot I just didn't care, and it just feels like there are a hundred other teams that would've given us something far better.

And with stuff like....

Would you have preferred this ending?

....like I said at the time, the idea that they were all so gung-ho about that ending - which they literally describe as "**** you" - proves they were idiots who had no business doing this film. And now it's even been "two years" and I still don't think they had balls. Desire to kick them in 'em remains the same.

 

[E]

Jackie Brown - 3.75/5
One of the few Quentin Tarantino movies I haven't seen. I liked it and thought Samuel Jackson was great, but I just didn't care about the characters as much as with his other films. Not enough of a connection or something like that.

Battle: Los Angeles - 4.5/5
I was expecting the worst based on the reviews, but I loved it. It was like an intelligent version of Independence Day. I don't care anything about betraying genres or whatever other stupid reasons reviewers gave for hating this - the story was good, the characters were good, and the aliens were cool. Screw you, Roger Ebert!

Machete - 5/5
One of my new favorite movies ever. I LOVE genre spoofs, and this one was perfect.

Hobo With A Shotgun - 3.5/5
Like I said, I love genre spoofs but even this was a little too over the top for me. Specifically Drake and his sons. But it was funny.

Tons of stuff lined up and ready to go, including From Dusk Till Dawn, Hellboy, Hellboy 2, The Wall, Animal House, and a few others that I've already seen.

 

[E]

Batman Begins - 5/5
I've seen this already, but with all of the Dark Knight Rises hype the last few days I decided to rewatch. I'd only seen it once before, unlike Dark Knight which I've seen many times. I'm just so glad for what this movie did for comic book movies, washing the bad taste in our mouths after Batman & Robin.

From Dusk Till Dawn - 3/5
SPOILERS -- If I knew this was a vampire movie I completely forgot, so the reveal at the bar was a total surprise. I don't think I've ever seen a film completely switch genres like that before. I was impressed. But overall it was just OK. The guy that plays Scott is such a noticeably terrible actor that it completely took me out of the movie several times.

Up next: The Social Network and Romeo+Juliet.

 

[thee great one]

I wish I didn't know it was a vampire movie when I watched it.

 

[E]

The Social Network - 5/5
I wasn't going to watch this because my wife wants to see it and usually I will wait off and watch movies she wants to see with her, but after Proj recommended it I went ahead and put it in the queue. It was amazing. The score was phenomenal; after it came out I listened to it and it didn't really do anything for me, but in the context of the film it was great. Everything about it was great - the story, the execution, the acting, everything.

Red Riding Hood - 2/5
Not sure why I bothered with this; it was there so I watched it. Not horrible, but so generic and cheap-looking that I felt like I was watching high school theater. The musical score was crap. Even Gary Oldman was disappointing.

Romeo+Juliet - no score
I've been kind of wanting to see this for a long time because I thought the idea of using the original words of Shakespeare was an interesting one. I got about 20 minutes in and gave up. Just too much work to follow and not interesting enough to continue trying. Maybe I was too tired; I'll give this one another shot some other time.

 

[Captain Canuck]

King's Speech was such a great movie. I liked the Social Network and True Grit too, but The King's Speech is one of the best made and acted movies I've seen in ages.

 

[Bass]

I didn't notice the score of THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Next time I watch it, I'll pay special attention.

 

[ProjectX2]

The score is the best part.

Romeo + Juliet is an interesting experiment but a pretty bad film. It's irritating to watch.

Fun fact: Red Riding Hood is one of TOG's favourites.

 

[E]

The score is the best part.

It really is one of the best-scored films I've ever seen.

Romeo + Juliet is an interesting experiment but a pretty bad film. It's irritating to watch.

Irritated is a good word - that's exactly how I felt.

Fun fact: Red Riding Hood is one of TOG's favourites.

Oh, TOG.

The Passion Of The Christ - 4/5
Sad and beautiful. My only complaint with it was that it seemed every "bad guy", particularly the Roman soldiers, cackled maniacally nonstop and it was kind of ridiculous. James Caviezel was really good.

Public Enemies - 4.5/5
Someone here (Doc Stragefate?) complained about the camera movement of this film - I didn't notice it being bad or different from any other film. Johnny Depp was great and the score/music was very good.

 

[E]

Punisher - 0/5
The most important thing this movie taught me is that IMDB user ratings are completely worthless and wrong. It is a 6.3 - not great, obviously, but that should indicate that a movie is not so terrible that I am forced to turn it off after 1/2 hour. This might have been the worst 1/3 movie I've ever seen. Full of horrible 80s movie cliches, the worst acting of just about any movie I've ever seen...I was grossly misled. Screw you, IMDB.

The part that did it for me was when Maria and Will (?!) were run over by a truck (?!?!?!?!) and there was absolutely zero blood. There was nothing redeeming about anything up to that point, but for some reason that was my breaking point.

I'm mad. Now it's too late to start (what I hope will be) a decent movie tonight.

 

[ProjectX2]

Now I want you to watch Punisher: War Zone.

 

[E]

Now I want you to watch Punisher: War Zone.

I seriously can't believe they could make a movie worse than that.

I must see it.

 

[ProjectX2]

No one knows how to make a good Punisher movie.

 

[E]

No one knows how to make a good Punisher movie.

"Fueled by revenge and aided by his trusted weapons expert, Microchip (Wayne Knight)..."

 

[ProjectX2]

Newman as Microchip sums up that whole movie.