Article ITT I attempt to review every movie I've seen.

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Title: Trainspotting
Year: 1996
Country of Origin: UK
Director: Danny Boyle

Plot: The film follows the lives of a group of heroin addicts in Edinburgh in the late 1980s.

Review: Trainspotting is a weird film for me, partially because it is one that I have fallen out of love with. Not because it is by any means a bad film, but probably due to over exposure. I first saw this film like a decade ago and the years have dulled my feelings towards it...well that, and I might have come across one too many 'choose life' posters adorning the otherwise barren walls of too many dorm rooms and apartments. So, I am going to resist my innate urge to shrug my shoulders and say that it was 'just ok' and see if I can actually write a decent review for this film or an unfocused rant...whichever comes first.

Since I last saw Trainspotting, I have quit smoking, picked it back up, quit again, started again, and now (hopefully finally) quite again. I bring this up, because Trainspotting actually does a remarkable job delving into the mindset of addiction, where quitting is easy...it just staying quit that is the problem. Which sounds simple enough, but for an addict it reads a little more like:

"The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams, In: Life, the Universe and Everything
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Or to put it another way; it seems obviously simple to everyone but you. With that in mind, the actions of our main character makes sense as he goes from recovery to relapse, continuing a near endless cycle of addiction. All that, even in spite of the nearing sense of death and decay that his world seems to enter. Almost as if the Universe is going through entropy and closing around our main character head. So, in that aspect, the film is fantastic.

From a production standpoint, is well put together, Boyle does a fantastic job here and basically established himself as one of great directors of his generation with this film. The plot flows easily with a zippy narrative, memorable dialog, and quick pacing. The cast is top notch with pretty much everyone cranking out top rate performances. Heck, this film was a breakout performance for most of the cast. This is one of those cultural touchstone films. A film that more likely than not you will see, so why not get it out of the way now.

[9/10]
 
Finally saw a few episodes of Mr. Robot last night. It's pretty awesome so far, kind feels like an amalgamation of The Matrix, Fight Club, and The Lookout.So, yeah if you get a chance check it out. It'll likely be on Amazon Prime video in the next few months.

Like look at that damn title card:

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Sexy Beast said:
Finally saw a few episodes of Mr. Robot last night. It's pretty awesome so far, kind feels like an amalgamation of The Matrix, Fight Club, and The Lookout.So, yeah if you get a chance check it out. It'll likely be on Amazon Prime video in the next few months.

Like look at that damn title card:

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I just binge watched the entire first season of Mr. Robot.

Ho-ly crap.

Love it, cannot wait for season 2.

You should check out "Suits" as well, if you haven't yet.
 
Aaron said:
I just binge watched the entire first season of Mr. Robot.

Ho-ly crap.

Love it, cannot wait for season 2.

You should check out "Suits" as well, if you haven't yet.
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I've seen a few episodes of Suits, it's pretty good...but never really grabbed me in a way that made me want to actively watch it.
 
Man I still need to watch Mr. Robot, I keep hearing great things about it. Currently hooked on the nostalgia train with the new X-Files. They brought back the cheese monster episodes! I know a lot of people hated those episodes but they had some of the best cheese moments in them.
 
Curious if you've been watching any of the CW's DC Stuff: Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow?
 
Dr.Compton said:
Curious if you've been watching any of the CW's DC Stuff: Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow?
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Yeah, I'm really enjoying both Arrow and The Flash. Haven't yet watched Legends of Tomorrow though...mostly because there is only so much time in a week and I honestly don't know if I can justify another CW show on top of those two and my long standing guilty pleasure Supernatural.
 
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Title: Blackhat
Year: 2015
Country of Origin: US
Director: Michael Mann

Plot: The biggest issue with Blackhat is that it ignores its own plot in order to build a romantic relationship between the film's two leads. Normally, this would be fine if there was chemistry between the actors...but here there isn't. So instead of a tense action packed techno-thriller, we are given a plodding film that doesn't seem particularly interested in the story it's telling. The film lurches from plot point to plot point, but in between we have doldrums of uninteresting romance. Of course, this utterly destroys the pacing and makes the film an utter drag to watch.

From a technical standpoint, the film looks great. Mann is still one of the best visual directors today, it's just unfortunate that he's lost the ability to marry his fantastic shot composition with compelling story telling. The cast itself is alright, Chris Hemsworth does a decent job in the role, though I have come across more than a few people who have decried him as not believable as a computer hacker. That's, of course, not Hemsworth's fault. I don't even know if he was miscast for the role since I honestly don't quite know what Mann envisioned the character to really be in the end. By the time we get to the climax of the film, Hemsworth's character is pretty much Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourn. Actually, now that I am thinking about it...this film is pretty much structured like a Mission Impossible film. Start off with a cyber terrorist attack, bring in protagonist, go on globetrotting adventure, bad guy is just a white guy looking to make money. Huh, wow. Well, I guess just watch a Mission Impossible film instead or heck try Live Free or Die Hard, sure the film is less believable...but at least it's fun to watch.


[5/10]
 
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ChocolateVillain said:
Man I still need to watch Mr. Robot, I keep hearing great things about it. Currently hooked on the nostalgia train with the new X-Files. They brought back the cheese monster episodes! I know a lot of people hated those episodes but they had some of the best cheese moments in them.
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Wow, completely missed this post. Honestly, for me at least, the monster of the week plot were always more interesting and entertaining than the mythology episodes. Especially near the end where we get to the alien civil war and super soldiers and the second syndicate. I mean so far the weakest episode of the miniseries was the first episode, all the others were fun in their own weird way. Heck, I think the episode, Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, is one of my favorites of the whole series.

Oh, also on a side note: Deadpool destroyed expectations. So get ready for at least two more Deadpool movies to come out
 
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Title: Vanishing Point
Year: 1971
Country of Origin: US
Director: Richard C. Sarafian

Plot: After completing a successful job in Denver, Kowalski, a delivery driver, makes a bet that he could complete his next job by 3 PM the next day. Of course, his next job is in San Francisco, which is a 1,200 miles away and he has 15 hours to make it there. So, it's only natural that he manages to piss off every cop between Denver and San Francisco.

Review: Vanishing Point is, in essence, one long car chase and it is a great car chase. But, of course, this being an underground counter-culture classic, there is a lot going on under the surface. Much like a lot of films from the era, Vanishing Point deals with the crushing sense of alienation that America was going through in the 70s; which was coupled with the existential nightmare that was born out of the on-going Vietnam War and the complete and utter failure of the counter-culture movements of the 60s. The film tackles these sentiments by painting its protagonist as an anti-authoritarian hero. As the film progresses he picks up a wide cross section of supporters who instinctively help him because he is challenging the status quo and the authority of the state.

Outside of the film's political undercurrent, it's an entertaining action film. Sure, it's a little dated at this point, but entirely watchable. The pacing does meander a bit as it dips into its politics and philosophy, but that's more of a by-product of the era than anything else. The acting is surprisingly solid, usually you get uneven performances in films like this one, but here the whole cast does a great job. All in all, Vanishing Point is a great car chase movie that doubles as a solid mediation of America's social malaise of the 70s.

[8.5/10]
 
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Title: Krampus
Year: 2015
Country of Origin: US/NZ
Director: Michael Dougherty

Plot: After a disastrous holiday family meal, a young kid tears up his letter to Santa in anger. This apparently calls down Krampus, the evil version of Santa who begins to terrify the family.

Review: I actually saw this film in theaters about two months ago and then promptly forgot all about it. Krampus is a Christmas themed horror-comedy that's neither scary nor funny. I guess, I would argue that this film isn't really geared towards me as I am ancient and this film seems to skew more towards people in their mid to early teens. This would be the ideal film to scare the snot out your kids or your nieces or nephews. I've seen some people compare this film to the first Gremlins, and yeah, it's pretty close tonally and in scale of violence. Krampus isn't bad, it's just a film that didn't strike me in a way that it would have if I were younger. So check it out, maybe it might have more of an effect on you.

[6.5/10]
 
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Title: Deadpool
Year: 2016
Country of Origin: US
Director: Tim Miller

Plot: Guy meets girl, falls in love with girl, gets diagnosed with cancer, gets turned into a horribly disfigured and near immortal killing machine. So yeah, basically your standard love story.

Review: So heads up, I do not like Deadpool as a character. I think the humor surrounding the character is a tad bit too forced and for the longest time I never really saw what people got out of the character. He just sort of spews pop cultural references and acknowledges that he's in a comic book...all the while killing people. I guess I kind of get it, but it's just not for me. Despite all of what I just said though, I really enjoyed Deadpool. For whatever reason, the 4th wall breaking irreverent pop-cultural laden humor worked here and I think it's almost entirely thanks to Ryan Reynolds.
Seriously, if you liked this movie thank Ryan Reynolds, he has been trying to get this thing made for over a decade...and no that is not a hyperbole, he's been attached to Deadpool since 2004 and is one of the main reasons why this film exists today. Hell, the creative team behind this project both has been together since 2011 and pushed for this film and pushed for the 'R' rating. If anything, Deadpool is a labor of love and I give the filmmakers mad props for what they had to go through to get this into production. Of course, I cannot help but think that the success of last year's Valentines Day counter programming, Kingsman: The Secret Service, had a lot to Deadpool's ability to maintain its hard 'R' rating.

Of course, the big question is: how is the film itself? It’s good. The writing is sharp, the characters are fun, and the film knows how to make fun of Fox’s X-men universe. The plot is pretty much a basic origins story and by basic I mean it’s exactly like Darkman. Like it’s stupidly close to Darkman, minus the love story and the X-men superhero stuff…but the overall arch is pretty much the same. So yeah, good movie. Not great, but all around solid.

[8/10]
 
Sexy Beast said:
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Title: Deadpool
Year: 2016
Country of Origin: US
Director: Tim Miller

Plot: Guy meets girl, falls in love with girl, gets diagnosed with cancer, gets turned into a horribly disfigured and near immortal killing machine. So yeah, basically your standard love story.

Review: So heads up, I do not like Deadpool as a character. I think the humor surrounding the character is a tad bit too forced and for the longest time I never really saw what people got out of the character. He just sort of spews pop cultural references and acknowledges that he's in a comic book...all the while killing people. I guess I kind of get it, but it's just not for me. Despite all of what I just said though, I really enjoyed Deadpool. For whatever reason, the 4th wall breaking irreverent pop-cultural laden humor worked here and I think it's almost entirely thanks to Ryan Reynolds.
Seriously, if you liked this movie thank Ryan Reynolds, he has been trying to get this thing made for over a decade...and no that is not a hyperbole, he's been attached to Deadpool since 2004 and is one of the main reasons why this film exists today. Hell, the creative team behind this project both has been together since 2011 and pushed for this film and pushed for the 'R' rating. If anything, Deadpool is a labor of love and I give the filmmakers mad props for what they had to go through to get this into production. Of course, I cannot help but think that the success of last year's Valentines Day counter programming, Kingsman: The Secret Service, had a lot to Deadpool's ability to maintain its hard 'R' rating.

Of course, the big question is: how is the film itself? It?s good. The writing is sharp, the characters are fun, and the film knows how to make fun of Fox?s X-men universe. The plot is pretty much a basic origins story and by basic I mean it?s exactly like Darkman. Like it?s stupidly close to Darkman, minus the love story and the X-men superhero stuff?but the overall arch is pretty much the same. So yeah, good movie. Not great, but all around solid.

[8/10]
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this movie was a good movie and you review was kind of spot on. But good review
 
MoTiVe said:
this movie was a good movie and you review was kind of spot on. But good review
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Thanks man.

On a side note. I have a stack or reviews that I still need to write, but this semester has kept me pretty distracted...so hopefully I'll get back to reviewing regularly again.

Also, watched JCVD last night for the first time. So instead of a review, here is the film's amazing opening one take to keep everyone insterested:

[ame]https://vimeo.com/118387114[/ame]
 
Man JCVD was such a gem of a movie.
Have you had time to see Gods of Egypt yet?

Hear it's so bad that it's amazing! Going to try and catch it this weekend.
 
ChocolateVillain said:
Man JCVD was such a gem of a movie.
Have you had time to see Gods of Egypt yet?

Hear it's so bad that it's amazing! Going to try and catch it this weekend.
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I haven't and I was planning on just waiting for it to show up on HBO or whatever, but given the reputation that its picked up...I just might try to see it his weekend
 
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Title: Gods of Egypt
Year: 2016
Country of Origin: US/Australia
Director: Alex Proyas

Plot: On the day that Horas, god of the air, is set to take the throne of Egypt his uncle Gerard Butler shows up...kills his father, takes his eyesight and crowns himself king of Egypt instead. Defeated and blind Horas goes into exile where he remains until a young thief turns up with one of his eyes and a proposition that he cannot possibly refuse.

Review: It's been almost 12 hours since I left the theater and I still haven't been able to wrap my mind around this film. I went to see it with a friend hoping that the film would turn out to be the good kind of bad, dumb and unintentionally funny. Instead we came across a mind-boggling misfire, one that went wrong in all that ways that you would hope a film with this size of a budget (140 million) would be able to iron out in post.

On a very basic level, the film is close to the 2010 Clash of the Titans remake. It's a modern reimaging of the classic sword and sandal fantasy films that Hollywood cranked out some 50 to 60 years ago. Clash of the Titans was middling at best, the plot was paint by numbers and the action was relatively unmemorable. I cannot help but feel that Gods of Egypt had bigger ambitions than Clash of the Titans. Outside of it's paint-by-numbers plot, Proyas manages to leverage some pretty nifty visual ideas out of this bastardization of Egyptian mythology. We get large gold blooded gods, a flat earth that looks particularly cool, and even ever shifting pyramid that is also on fire. So it is unfortunate that Proyas and company manage to botch just about everything. So let's break down piece by piece what is wrong with this film:

CGI: I can't really think of another film made in the last decade that has CG as bad as this one; or at least a film with this large of a budget. Everything looks fake and if that wasn't bad enough a lot of the assets used in this film look unfinished. Like 40% of the CG assets of the film look terrible and on par with what one would expect from a film from 1997. To me, this is confusing. We are talking about a film that cost $140,000,000 to make. To put this into perspective, Deadpool cost less than half of this film ($58 million) and looks significantly better. Like, I do not know what happened here. It's not like they had to pay a serious chunk of change to the actors...Gerard Butler is the biggest name in the film and he cannot be that expensive. Heck Clash of the Titans had a smaller budget and looked better. Actually, look at the trailer...these are the final assets:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0VDveYwbuU[/ame]

I honestly just want to know where that $140 million went. Did Lionsgate get scammed or something?

Plot/Characters: The plot is standard, evil guy takes over a kingdom and a rag-tag group is working to stop him. It's something we've all seen before and in better hands it could have turned into something watchable. I honestly cannot believe that I am going to say this...but Brett Ratner's Hercules is the perfect example of what this film should have been. The plot is as uninspired as Gods of Egypt, but it has enough character and charisma to make up for it and in the end. Hercules is a fun way to kill an hour and a half. Instead, we have a muddled plot where the the mission objectives are not clear and it's not clear where our characters are headed. Part of this is because the film's fantastical world is not well realized. We are never given a sense of place, it's just one scene to the next with a new location...but with no linear idea of where we're going. The characters themselves are not well realized either. Here is an example:

Our quasi-protagonist/narrator is a thief, and the film establishes this within the first two minutes by having him steal a dress of his lady friend. The shopkeeper notices him and yells thief, then film immediately cuts to him back at his lady friend's place. Now what I was expecting and what a normal film would do is after the shopkeeper yells thief, the film would transition into a chase sequence in which our main character uses his crazy thief parkour skills to avoid authorities. This would help establish that he is capable of this sort of thing and also would make a fun and exciting opening for the film. Instead...we get nothing. Sure later in the film we see him perform crazy acrobatic feats, but it wasn't established before hand. Overall, this is not a big deal, it just comes off as lazy and an odd choice.

Pacing/length: Somehow this film is two hours long and you will feel it's length. It's pacing can best be described as plodding and despite its quest style plot it lacks the sense of urgency that we need to stay interested...or at the very least awake.

Overall: When I first left the theater I seem to remember thinking that it was easily the worst film that I had actually paid money to see. Now, it's just seems like a dull muddled misfire and one that is oddly sure of itself. It's not a fun movie in either the traditional sense or in the campy 'it's so bad it's good' sense. It's simply forgettable in every sense of the word.

[3/10]
 
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Oh man that is a disappointment :/
Was hoping for some mindless laughs today. Still debating on going but man sad to hear it was that rough :(
 
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