Sometimes I'll go back and watch Joint Security Area by Park Chan-Wook. It's still good. I love it. Korean cinema continues to be strong.
I watched the newest remake of stephen king's "Carrie"(2013). I was not expecting that. Dare I say it, I liked it better than the original and I likeyoung travolta. This version felt like I was watching a movie about Magneto's love child/mutant. Juliane moore was fantastic. 6.5/10. High school cheese to be expected.
The Seven Five- documentary on netflix about a corrupt cop that made so much money in New York in the 80s. Really good watch and crazy how much money was being thrown around back in the day.
Watched Edge of 17. I'll give it an 8/10. Nice acting by everyone in the movie. Seemed realistic enough and yet still entertaining. Good stuff if your looking for modern teen films with a little bit of an underground indy feel to it.
Guardians (Russian movie) Pros- It had great special effects and Alina Lanina is nice eye candy. I laughed at the translations. Cons - The story made no sense. It was so bad, it was unintentionally funny. Overall: 3/10
Hobbit fans, please don't laugh. This is for people who know little or nothing about J. R. R. Tolkien. The Hobbit Trilogy: 9/10 I DVR'd all 3 movies from TNT and viewed them at my leisure over an 8-day period. Quality stuff all the way. Let me add that watching these as individual movies one year apart would probably change my rating to 5/10. Each of them is way too long for my attention span. Dividing up the whole 8.5 hours over 5-6 sittings where I determined when to stop made it not only palatable but very enjoyable. Ending the 2nd movie on a cliffhanger was bush league IMO, but I just continued on into the 3rd before taking a break. It was easy to keep things in context and remember what happened throughout.
I'd give it 9/10. One of the best zombie movie I've seen in recent history behind (DOTD 2004 & 28 days)
Ghost in a Shell - 7/10 The script needs more depth but Scarlett is just too damn fine Fate of the Furious/Fast 8 - 5/10 So these guys thought they could put a bunch of names in a movie and it would be a good movie? This, while being the most grown up fast and furious wasn't Tokyo Drift bad but it was bad. A lot of standing around, staring. Plot lines crossed that didn't make sense, character growth that was confusing (Are roman and Tej sharing Ramsey?). The Rock is clearly not a very good actor but when you put him with other not good actors it magnifies his deficiencies. The best actor in this movie is easily Statham which is for not because Vin Diesel put the kibosh on his spin off. Charlize does a wonderful bedroom voice that gave me a half charge but the rest of he character was dull. The movie was frustrating because they put together a great plot and then try to solve all the problems by crashing more and more cars. There was actually a cgi scene where like a thousand cars were crashed and it was visually underwhelming. I know this movie made a shitload of money but now that Paul Walker is gone they need to find someone with chops good enough to carry this franchise because this thing wasn't worth the matinee price
I pass. I'll just wait for the hollywood version "Get these M f'ing zombies out of my m'fing train m' fers" starring Keanu Reeves. I watched it because of this thread. Definitely a treat to that genre. 8/10.
Let me add to the Train to Busan love, and a couple others. Train to Busan - 9/10 If you like Zombie movies, then this is going to be right up your alley. The logic is established in a very similar fashion to World War Z, in that these zombies are fast, aggressive, use their bodies as battering rams, flow almost like water or ants, and turn very quickly, within seconds sometimes to maybe a couple minutes at most. It was an absolute thrill ride, a blast, and you should go watch it right now. The Girl With All the Gifts - 9/10 This one was also a great zombie movie, but with a very different flavor. Where Train to Busan was essentially the *beginning* of a 'zombies taking over the world' movie, TGWAtG is telling basically the end of that kind of story. Set in England, the story focuses on a young black girl, who seems very friendly and intelligent, confined in some kind of military prison. She helpfully straps herself into a wheelchair, as the guards come in every day with machine guns pointed at her, as though they are deathly afraid of her. We soon realize there are several other children in a similar situation, and they are all wheeled into what turns out to be a sort of school classroom, where teachers drill knowledge into them, and where a more empathetic teachers reads them stories. But we still don't know what this all is or why. I'm not going to spoil anything here, but let's just say that very soon we fully understand exactly what these children are, and why they are kept in this state. I will say this though: if you ever played The Last of Us, this movie really does seem as though it exists in that exact same 'world' as the one from Last of Us; many of the details of how the zombie-infested world functions are almost identical. I don't know if this was deliberate, but if you are familiar with the game, then you will understand what I am talking about here. And no it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. Last of Us was so highly regarded for a good reason. Very very good movie as well, totally different vibe, and very different approach to the philosophy of how such a movie should be concluded, almost polar opposites from Train to Busan. These made a pretty good 'double-feature' for us at home. Both are highly recommended. And lastly.. Independence Day: Resurgence 6/10 Finally decided to watch this on HBO last night, never saw it in theaters. Too much time has passed. That's really all I can say here. ID made a ton of money, and they really should have fired up a sequel soon after the success of the first one, so they could have brought back the stars and made a serious continuation of the story. Instead, it's been 20 years. A lot of the target audience for this movie probably hasn't even seen the first one, or if they have, they may have thought it was 'lame', I don't know for sure, but I have heard similar things from teenagers these days. Anyway, I was (and still am) a big fan of the original popcorn-fest movie. And I had thought for years that it would be very cool to explore the world of *after* the alien invasion, when the earth was suddenly given access to all this extremely advanced technology. What would happen? How would things change? How would they prepare for the next attack? All of these questions are sort of softballed at the audience, as we do in fact see the world has changed quite a bit from 20 years past, although none of this amounts to much more than background screen-filler. Anyway, we then get to spend time catching up either with the much older characters from the first film, or, in WillSmith's case, his character's son, who gets to play the hero role, since Smith wasn't interested in the sequel. There are a few twists I won't spoil, in case you haven't seen it yet, so I'll just end it with: it's basically silly. I can even see this as having maybe originally been written as a cartoon series or something. But it was decent fun, not *horrible*. Just forgettable fluff, harmless. It's just a shame they didn't do a real sequel when they had the chance.
Jingle All The Way 10/10 Arnold, Sinbad, Jim Belushi, Phil Hartman, AND Jake Lloyd all in the same movie???? Hard to go wrong. An absolute classic.
GoG 2 - 8/10 Plot was not as strong as GoG 1. The visuals were strong. Drax had the best lines. The series has lost a bit of momentum for me, but I am still in on the next one.
Guardians 2 - 9/10 I actually liked it better than the first. Saw it in 3d and want to go see it again.
skull island, Finally watched it. 5.7/10 mostly because of the visuals. King kong looked like a cloned jumbo cesar from planet of the apes. 2005 king kong looked like a king kong. Only memorable character was John C reilly and his chicago cubs. he had some good lines "A cold war? they take summers off?" ha. The ending was very anticlimactic.
I was really looking forward to finally watching The Founder, about the start of McDonald's, but despite some okay performances (particularly from the farmer brothers), it was disappointing. The actual businessman driving the franchise model and expansion was just really a dick, to everybody, but the movie played it as if he was a sort of hero. When you saw him struggling or thinking, they played the pensive bassoon music we all associate with sympathy. The soundtrack was so weird, so leave-it-to-beaver, for a kind of honestly demonic, driven guy who shat on everyone around him, it started to seem like some sort of art project, like a Matthew Barney film or something. The Founder: 5/10
Agreed. And give 'Train to Busan' a watch on Netflix. One of the better zombie movies to come along in a while, as well.
