Movie log thread

[EvilJekyll]

It's funny you mention Silent House, as Redlettermedia put up their Half in the Bag review about that and John Carter today.

[jvcc]

It's funny you mention Redlettermedia's Half in the Bag review of Silent House and John Carter because I watched that today.

[quetzalcoatlus]

It's funny you mention EvilJekyll mentioning Redlettermedia's Half in the Bag review of Silent House and John Carter because I watched Dumb And Dumber yesterday.

[quetzalcoatlus]

I saw most of Rio, because for whatever reason I end up giving CGI films that aren't Shrek sequels at least a fair shake. It was okay, with some fairly funny bits, bu what's really important is that Jemaine Clement voiced an evil cockatoo and delivered a sort of FOTC-ish villain song.

I also watched Super, which sort of had a similar concept to Kick-Ass: Turns out it was actually in development before either the comic book or it's movie adaptation was around, but I still can't help but compare, and I think Kick-Ass overall did a better job tackling the same ideas. Still, there was a surprisingly good tragicomic performance by Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page was in the bizarre zone between cringingly funny and outright terrifying that I assume she was supposed to be. Oh, also Nathan Fillion had a small part as a Bibleman-esque Christian superhero.

[quetzalcoatlus]

I watched Friday the 13th Part II in honor of the date. For whatever reason, it took until the final 20 minutes or so for me to actually start feeling suspense, which wasn't really true of the original. Maybe because the original actually had a twist to it? Maybe because there were too many cat scares*? Maybe because Jason had a freakin' bag on his head? Regardless, I still enjoyed it, and those final 20 minutes were pretty good.


* edited because I said "jump scares" when I clearly meant "cat scares", and that bothered me for some reason. Notably, the two times the "cat scares" involve animals, they do the thing where they give you a cat scare first, then seconds later give you something to actually be scared about.

[jvcc]

I didn't find any of them particularly suspenseful or scary, but the fifth one is worth watching just for this scene. There is no context. It just happens and no one knows why.

[quetzalcoatlus]

Pet Semetary. Like with Friday The 13th Part 2, it didn't exactly scare me, but it still held my interest. The only real problem I had was that to buy into the plot, I needed to believe that the main character was bereaved/crazy enough to think it's a good idea to bury things or people on that undead-making Indian burial ground, and his acting was just way too flat to get that across. Maybe I'll go read the book sometime.

[Android Replica]

I saw "Rubber." Certainly one of the oddest things I've seen in several months, at least.

[sum yun gai]

Pet Semetary. Like with Friday The 13th Part 2, it didn't exactly scare me, but it still held my interest. The only real problem I had was that to buy into the plot, I needed to believe that the main character was bereaved/crazy enough to think it's a good idea to bury things or people on that undead-making Indian burial ground, and his acting was just way too flat to get that across. Maybe I'll go read the book sometime.

i saw it when it came out and i thought it was kind of cheesy until the cat that got all zombie-fied looked EXACTLY like my neighbor's cat and i got a bit freaked out. especially because the neighbor cat had one of those cat personalities where it was extremely friendly then in a one second turnaround decides that you're satan come back to earth and tries to rip your head off before sprinting away.

[sum yun gai]

so a few months ago my girlfriend said something about watching the movie version of hamlet because i don't know why. i told her i thought mel gibson did a great job with it and she had no idea mel gibson ever did shakespeare, much less hamlet. she meant the kenneth brannagh version, which apparently she had to watch for a high school class or something (although, so did i for mel gibson actually....).

anyway, since i can't just go buy a copy of each just anywhere, we downloaded both versions and watched mel gibson first. she didn't like the first 10-15 minutes but after that she was quite hooked. we put off the KB version for about a week because it's literally about 4 hours long, but once we started it, we only got about an hour in before realizing that his version is so over-acted and has such terrible special effects that there was no way we were going to be able to finish the movie. after i read the cast list on imdb it made me kind of sad to realize that they had 20x the celebrity star power in the KB version and seemingly 5x the budget but still couldn't make much of one of the greatest shakespeare plays ever written.

[EsBe]

I think it's only fitting you should continue to compare and contrast. You know. For science.

[quetzalcoatlus]

I just got done watching 12 Monkeys on TV, even though I own the DVD and thus could have watched it without commercials or censorship - it's cooler in the living room and we don't have a dvd player there. I forgot how funny Brad Pitt could be in that movie. Also, I remember the first time I saw it I was with a roommate who was stoned and missed half of the movie, so I had to sum up the entire plot for him as the credits rolled.

[quetzalcoatlus]

I went to see Ted with the manager of the club I intern at (while I was supposed to be interning and he was supposed to be managing no less - it can be kind of a laid back place like that). Not anything I would have seen on my own, and I'm not even much for Family Guy, but it was fairly entertaining. Also, it's occurred to me that the whole premise is kind of conducive to "Ferris Beuller Fight Club Theory" style reinterpretations.

[Zombie Protestor]

I took my nephew to see it for his 19th birthday today. It started out as a good comedy but very quickly became one long cliche accompanied by fart and fat kid jokes.

[quetzalcoatlus]

Yeah, I personally wasn't a fan of the ending, or the previous sequence where it got all chase-scene-ish.

Friday The 13th, Part 3. I'm making it a tradition to watch one of these I haven't seen yet every Friday the 13th until I run out, or until I don't have access to neflix anymore, whichever comes first. The goofiest entry in the series up to this point, but that's part of what makes it entertaining. It's 3-d, which gets used for a few actual startling moments, but mostly means you'll have one of the future victims dangling a yo-yo at you, or the perfunctory crazy harbinger-of-doom guy holding a detached eyeball in your face. Despite being impossible to take seriously, it does still manage to have a fairly riveting conclusion. Oh, and this is the one that gave Jason that iconic hockey mask - in the previous film he had a sack on his head with eye slits, and before that he didn't really have any such disguise at all.

[Skimba]

I recently purchased a movie that I very fondly remember from my childhood and is a classic in the eyes of my family. It's actually amusing to know that even my parents love it also. I can ask them or any of my siblings...."What's the best kung-fu movie?" And any one of us will answer FIVE DEADLY VENOMS!
Also, happy Saturday the 14th to y'all! (I cannot find this move for under $35...still searching though.)

[chrismachine]

I recently purchased a movie that I very fondly remember from my childhood

I did this yesterday... mine was called My Neighbour Totoro though... different memories I'd imagine

[jvcc]

I recently purchased a movie that I very fondly remember from my childhood

I did this yesterday... mine was called My Neighbour Totoro though... different memories I'd imagine

I recently had the strong urge to rewatch that after a conversation on Omegle where I convinced a person who had never heard of it to watch it with his or her toddler. I should act on that urge.

[Skimba]

Totoro

I have never actually seen any of the Totoro movies, etc. A bit surprising, as much as I love that kind of stuff.
Anyway, the very first I saw anything about it was at a video store many moons ago. Just based on the cover...well after looking it up, it must have been episodes or something I saw, because the image was different from the My neighbor... movie one. Ahhh, I knew the internet wouldn't let me down.

This one. Anyway, again, the first time I saw this, knowing NOTHING about it, I made up my own scenario/plot which was: Totoro! Everybody's friend! Free butt-plugs for all! Just catch him. <using a Spanish accent>

[quetzalcoatlus]

Leprechaun In The Hood: You ever end up watching something incredibly stupid on netflix just because it's there and you've got 90 minutes to kill? Yeah. Aside from the ending, which infamously involves Warwick Davis rapping, the best element of this is the fact that Ice T seems to actually be taking his part seriously. Oh, and there's a Coolio cameo that's literally just him showing up in a crowd scene and one of the main characters pointing and saying "That's Coolio!".

[EsBe]

Leprechaun In The Hood: You ever end up watching something incredibly stupid on netflix just because it's there and you've got 90 minutes to kill? Yeah. Aside from the ending, which infamously involves Warwick Davis rapping, the best element of this is the fact that Ice T seems to actually be taking his part seriously. Oh, and there's a Coolio cameo that's literally just him showing up in a crowd scene and one of the main characters pointing and saying "That's Coolio!".

Query: is this a sequel/spinoff/related to the Leprechaun series of "horror" movies? I remember seeing one on TV once many moons ago... it took place in space, which as we all know is where leprechauns come from.

[quetzalcoatlus]

Yeah, it was kind of an attempt at an "urban" revival of the series. It apparently did well enough to warrant a sequel, Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood. Warwick Davis played the leprechaun in all those movies, so yes, this movie ends with the leprechaun rapping.

[ntw3001]

Just saw Rocky! I liked it. BUT...

1: Why was 'The Italian Stallion' misspelled on the back of Rocky's gown for the big fight? I get that it was supposed to show that Rocky wasn't important enough for the promoters to care about, but that was already established in the shorts-are-the-wrong-colour scene, and the title 'The Italian Stallion' was literally every single reason they chose Rocky to fight. Making sure that name was on the gown should have been more important to the promoters than making sure it was actually Rocky wearing the gown.

2: Why did Apollo Creed behave the way he did in the fight? The whole schtick was that Creed agreed to fight an opponent way below his calibre as a publicity stunt. So what's all the taunting about? He's picked some random semi-pro off the street for an exhibition match and now he's ripping on him like a bona fide challenger? If that's the intention, give Rocky the resources to make a decent entrance too. The lead-in was 'Creed believes America is the land of opportunity and so he is willing to give an unknown fighter a shot at the title', but the event itself is 'Creed consents to descend from his throne to crush the presumptuous oaf who fancies himself a boxer'. This is not the image they were aiming for when they chose this fight!

3: Why did the crowd boo Rocky? He's an unknown. He's been good-natured enough in all his media appearances. No reason to hate him there. It's, what, because he's the underdog? Creed can go into matches with any random stranger and people will hate them for it?

4: When Rocky was interviewed in the meat locker, Creed and his entourage were discussing business. One insightful aide hints that Rocky may not be the pushover they expect, but he is offhandedly brushed aside! We see that Creed isn't taking Rocky seriously. But yeah, for the entire duration of that discussion, the TV is showing a single, continous shot of Rocky punching meat. Who edits these interviews?

[quetzalcoatlus]

Child's Play. As you might guess, I thought of watching this movie because of the Leprechaun one I watched earlier - because, you know, both are horror movie franchises with comically tiny villains. Thing is, the original actually does manage to make Chucky kind of creepy, at least some of the time anyway. I guess part of it is that in the beginning, even though the audience already know he's alive, you really only fleetingly see him moving on his own accord at first, and you never hear his "real" voice till halfway through the movie. And I'm somehow just able to buy the concept of evil lifelike dolls than evil leprechauns, I guess - plus there were toys that were pretty similar to this around the same time the first movie came out, most prominently My Buddy.

[ntw3001]

I saw The Social Network. Mark Zuckerberg came across as an arsehole pretty much from the start, so it was good of them to inform us all directly in the very final line that he wasn't. Thanks, otherwise-inconsequential lawyer girl, I almost completely misread those cues! But why film a whole scene to establish that when you could just have rolled the credits over a picture of Mark's face with 'HE WAS A NICE GUY THE WHOLE TIME' written underneath? That's character development.