What was the last movie you watched?

[MightyJack]

12 Years a Slave
Director Steve McQueen’s film’s are marked by scenes that burn into your memory, but his characterizations can be thin, and in lieu of really saying something insightful, he will pull a Mel Gibson and just beat the hell out of his players, either psychologically or physically. And that’s the case here. Many characters are types rather than fully formed people: Brad Pitt plays the abolitionist, nothing more. Fassbender is there to show us how cruel and terrible slavery is (a point already made on the series Roots decades before and in many films thereafter), but I never felt like I got in any deeper than that.

I had a powerful emotional reaction to the picture; it’s painful to watch. And Chiwetel Ejiofor gives an amazing performance that traverses a wide emotional spectrum. On a visceral level I think it succeeds, and I’d number it among the best movies of the year… but not the best. It just doesn’t say anything really new (other than free men were kidnapped and sold as slaves) and lacks the layers and profundity I’d wish for. 

[Gandalf Lundgren]

Bernie (2011)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1704573/

A good movie

[Darth Geek]

     I watched Iron Man 3 again to see if I felt different about it, since I was so conflicted when I saw it in the theater. I still feel the same way. I liked it, but the problems are pretty huge. And unlike Iron Man 1 and 2, I don't see myself revisiting it again.
     The primary problem here is that the movie is overstuffed. It does the Mandarin, terrorists, Extremis, a subplot about Tony Stark having PTSD, Tony having to be out of the suit on his own for a while, and a kid that Tony befriends. I think it's odd that this movie was directed by Shane Black, who is known for good writing. And yet the primary problems here are structural script issues.
     Rebecca Hall may be attractive, but she is not the level of woman that Tony Stark would pursue as much as we see at the beginning of the movie.
     There is also the issue with the over the top nerdy performance by Guy Pierce in the 1999 segment. For fuck sake, Dr. Insano is less goofy than this, and this is a big budget serious blockbuster theatrical movie! Had they just up and hired Spoony instead for this part, it would have given it more credibility than Guy Pierce does here.
     I don't buy that he can't sleep. He could have any medication he wanted. He knows he doesn't think as clearly when tired. He's driven, but not stupid.
     He didn't get post-traumatic stress after the events in Afghanistan, which left him with a fucking HOLE IN HIS CHEST! Then I don't buy that he has post-traumatic stress over a situation (admittedly wierd as hell and unprecedented) that he WON!  That, and the PTSD is oddly enough both a major plot point, and then just dropped later in the movie. The only part of the "I must protect Pepper" aspect of that which I liked was that he had a preprogrammed option for the suit to go to protect Pepper. Which I thought was believable thing for Tony to do.
     The Mandarin's accent...what the hell is that supposed to be?! Watching it a second time and even knowing he's an actor, I still don't know what he's trying to go for.
     Aside from the stupid move of prodding the Mandarin directly and giving his home address...why doesn't Tony's house have a zillion onlookers around it the very next day? In fact now that I think of it...why does Tony have to give his address to anybody? His house is HUGE and out in the open on the coast. Doesn't everybody know where Tony Stark lives?
     While I am a fan of the comics and I should be offended at the changes to the Mandarin, I'm not. The movie tried something different, and I can appreciate that effort. But I'm not even sure exactly what they tried to do. It feels like it just fizzles out, and then the charater that we already knew was a villain...is the villain. And the one thing that is clever with the villain, is that Killian wanted us to think he was the bad guy, so he cast Ben Kingsley. That's kinda hilarious in a meta sort of way.
     For a villain that uses people as bombs to avoid detection, he sure chose a an obvious (and rather inefficient way of attacking Tony Stark's home. Also, SLOWEST MISSILE EVER.
     Also, at that point in the story, why would The Mandarin care about Tony's idle threats anyway? Yeah, later we know it's Killian and why he has a beef with Stark. But even in that case, the threat Tony made on TV wouldn't matter to him.
     By all rights, the middle part of the movie with the kid and TOny outside the suit SHOULDN'T work. Like how people complain about the lack of Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (and justifyably so). But it's amazing how well it works here. The child actor is pretty good. But more importantly, I actually like this kid character. He's pretty well written (within reason). But most importantly since we like seeing Robert Downey Jr. act as Tony Stark, it brings out more of that. Making this part of the film just as much fun as some of the action sequences.
     The sequence where he saves the people "barrel of monkey" style is stupid. While I like the idea of Tony having to solve problems he can't deal with brute force style...yeah, their arms should have been ripped out of their sockets.
     I liked the end fight where he is jumping in and out of various suits. There were only a few times when it was overly complicated and hard to tell what was going on. I liked seeing Pepper give a chance to be badass. Although it would have been a little more "empowering" had she not been wearing just a sports bra and shorts. And apparently her newfound powers are just handwaved away "oh, and I fixed her, she's normal now" in the surgery bit at the end.
     There is no excuse why he blows up MILLIONS of dollars worth of suits at the end, just so they can have pretty fireworks. Watching it again I think the idea was supposed to be that he is giving them up to concentrate on Pepper. But I don't buy he would ever do that in such a wasteful manner. Or that she is that shallow.
     I also find the end where he has surgery to take the shrapnel out of his chest. If they had even given a single sentence reason why he hadn't been able to do that before I might have given the movie some benefit of the doubt. But otherwise it's just really frustrating.

[Quantum Vagina]

Now I know what I'm doing with MY next 30 minutes: rebutting! Spoilered in case people don't care what I think. The short version: I loved Iron Man 3. LOVED it. I think it's far and away the best Iron Man movie, not counting the celebratory high five that is Avengers. I think pretty much everything in the movie works. I understand that most of what DG said is subjective, but whenever I see opinions about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I can't help but respond. That said, ON WITH THE REBUTTAL!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think don't quite agree on the overstuffed part. I think the movie has a lot going on in it, for sure, but I don't think it's too much, or that it handles it poorly. In fact, I think it handles the load quite admirably. Each bit gets a pretty decent section, and everything is intertwined really nicely. Each section does a good job of tying in with the other sections. PTSD gets flushed out by the kid, the Mandarin and terrorists obviously go hand in hand, and Extremis hangs over everything like a big, heavy cloud, just waiting to shower us in the "This is SO AWESOME, you're gonna LOVE this!". My only complaint is that I would've liked more of the Mandarin. We got just enough to want more of his menacing stature before we met Trevor Slattery. Don't get me wrong, it's a minor gripe, and didn't really detract from the movie, in my opinion. I just wanted more.

I thought the performance by Pierce at the beginning was good. Obviously, that's completely personal taste, but I felt that it gave a better line between the Aldrich Killian of then and today. Even if he just looked that way and spoke normally, I don't think it would have worked as well. It shows the amount of work he had to put in to go from the nerdy pasty dweeb at the beginning to the charismatic, smoothtalking businessman of the present. All that work made him who he is today, and shows that he'd work for his goals, no matter what they were.

Medication, barring sedatives, doesn't MAKE you sleep. They're sleep aids. Body chemistry>medicine, anyway. I don't recall it perfectly, but I don't see any evidence that he's NOT taking sleeping pills, either. In fact, I'd say, if we assume he is taking them, he's probably taking a higher than average dose, simply because he IS Tony Stark. He doesn't do things by halves.

I've never bought your arguments for the PTSD. Tony had spent his whole life around weaponry, for one thing. Not to mention he's smart. He KNOWS those things happen everyday, and so he's able to rationalize them. His PTSD isn't just from the New York scenario, either. He's met actual superhumans, now, not to mention GODS. He's seeing that this is a much bigger game than he previously thought, and all he is is a guy with a shiny suit. Without it, he's vulnerable, unlike every other member of the Avengers. Widow and Hawkeye are both trained in combat extensively. Steve Rogers is the pinnacle of human capability. Thor. Banner can't be stopped when he transforms. What does tony have? Yeah, he's smart, but since his suit is an external power, and if he's separated, that leaves him weak. That's why it kind of falls out of place after the scene when he takes on the Extremis agents; he realizes that he DOES have it in him to be a hero without the armor. It's not them abandoning a plot point, it's that plot point coming to it's conclusion.

His detonation of the suits makes perfect sense to me, as does the removal of the shrapnel and the magnet, and they go hand in hand. He's given up being Iron Man, which obviously means he won't need the suits anymore. The style of disposal is both in character and smart. Obliterating the suits in such a way prevents them from falling into the wrong hands, which has been a recurring problem throughout the films. The big explosions also suit Tony Stark as a character. He's a diva, and, like I said, doesn't do anything by halves. He'd want to put it on display. Removing the shrapnel also works here, as well. It was established that the suits used the power from his chest piece to fully function. Presumably, they have a back up power supply, otherwise Rhodes wouldn't be able to use Iron Patriot, but that one was also tooled for him to operate. The suits won't operate fully without Stark in them, which I THINK was a bit from the comics. I know Warmachine went insane from continued use of a suit made for Tony. Without the suits, he doesn't need the reactor any more, ergo, he can remove it. I'll be interested to see how they bring Iron Man back into the fold in Age of Ultron.

The rest of your complaints seem really nitpicky to me. They seem like minor squabbles with the movie physics, or things you didn't think were quite right, but you're entitled to those. I, however, firmly disagree, and think that this is one of the best movies in the MCU.

[MightyJack]

I loved Iron Man 3, but even I have to admit that some of the criticisms leveled at it are valid. In fact the Honest Trailer (posted below) hits the nail on the head on a few off my complaints. I don't agree with everything they said in that, but the armors falling apart and being destroyed so easily, the fact that after calling the Mandarin out, he has no defense systems set up at his home -- I mean gimme a break! Tony’s a genius, one of the smartest men in the Marvel universe, a brilliant tactician and strategist (he’s one of the Illuminati fer Christ sake!) not to mention a technical wizard, so that stuff was beyond idiocy.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/e3r4FklA4gI" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/e3r4FklA4gI</a>

So, now that I've killed any shot at getting likes after that comment.  I watched

Stoker
It’s a visual feast and worth watching for that alone. I like Park Chan-wook, but it does feel like he’s holding back a bit for his English language debut. In one way that’s good, because the ending isn’t overblown. If Park has a failing (for me) it’s that he never knows when to end a movie. Even his masterpiece Oldboy... Once the secret is revealed it should have been wrapped up, but Park pours on an excess of melodrama and OTT theatrics (it didn’t ruin the whole, but it did put a dent in what had been perfection). And don’t get me started on Lady Vengeance, which should have ended 30 minutes before it did. But Stoker doesn’t overstay its welcome, which was welcome.

Saying that, there are a few plot points I wish would have been addressed, but overall I liked it. It’s no Oldboy, but I did like it.

[BathTub]

Being Elmo

This was quite interesting, though it did feel a little shallow at times. Of course it's tainted a bit due to all the charges bought against Kevin Clash since this was made, so he's not Being Elmo any more. I see the charges against him have been dropped, but his career is still completely ruined. I was amazed at how much early footage they had, it was great to see. This is the second biography I have seen that has made extensive use of taking old photos and trying animate or give them depth. I guess this is a new trend?

I recommend it, but you're clearly not going to see it how it was intended to be seen anymore.

[MightyJack]

Philomena
I thought this was phenomenal -- thoughtful, funny and heartbreaking with some top notch performances from Coogan and especially Judi Dench. Is it anti-Catholic as some critics contend? I don't know, Coogan's character has a lot of anger there, and yes the main (bad) Nun is rather broadly rendered... but I wouldn't say it's anti Christian, as Philomena's final act embodies Christs teaching (I'm a lapsed Irish Catholic myself, much like the Coogan character).  In any case, I found it deeply moving.

[d00hickey]

Philomena
I thought this was phenomenal -- thoughtful, funny and heartbreaking with some top notch performances from Coogan and especially Judi Dench. Is it anti-Catholic as some critics contend? Perhaps, and yes the main (bad) Nun is rather broadly rendered, but I wouldn't say it's anti Christian, as Philomena's final act embodies Christs teaching (I'm a lapsed Irish Catholic myself, much like the Coogan character).  In any case, I found it deeply moving.

This movie struck a serious chord with me, one of the best films of 2013 without question. Judi Dench's performance blew me away.

[BathTub]

Yeah it's on my to rent list.

[ScottotD]

30 Days of Night

This is about 50/50 great to bad, there's a lot of fantastic things like the soundtrack, the way the vamps are introduced, etc and then there's a lot of inconsistency, the whole thing is much too brightly lit, etc.  Although being a fan of John Carpenter's genre Rio Bravo(s) I may be biased. 

[d00hickey]

30 Days of Night

This is about 50/50 great to bad, there's a lot of fantastic things like the soundtrack, the way the vamps are introduced, etc and then there's a lot of inconsistency, the whole thing is much too brightly lit, etc.  Although being a fan of John Carpenter's genre Rio Bravo(s) I may be biased.

The movie is pretty bad but it's also a guilty pleasure of mine.

[Relaxing Dragon]

Spirited Away. Hadn't seen it in a little while, and my Grandparents had never seen it at all, so it made for a good family movie night. Of course, no matter how many times I see this one (sub or dub), it still completely blows me away. The animation, the fantasy of it all, the character designs and personalities... it all comes together as something truly extraordinary. I described it to my Grandma as "basically a Japanese Alice in Wonderland" (not my line, I'm sure I stole that from somewhere), and that still fits. One young girl learning to grow up in a very peculiar world. So, yeah, it's still basically the same perfect movie we all know and love. If you don't already know and love it, what are you waiting for?

Also, when picking this movie from my shelf, I realized that it's actually the only Miyazaki I own. Clearly a problem I need to rectify soon. Helpfully, Princess Mononoke hits UK Blu-ray in a few weeks (Please be Region 0, please be Region 0...).

Gone in 60 Seconds. This is the original 1974 film here. It was part of a Double Feature last night with Speed (which I hadn't seen in a while, and is as enjoyable an action movie as ever. And was also ghost written by Joss Whedon, as I learned last night). A real no-budget amateur movie, it's essentially broken into two parts. The first part concerns a group of car thieves tasked with stealing several dozen very exclusive and exotic cars over the course of about a week. This section's pretty enjoyable (if very apparent in how little experience the cast and crew had), especially seeing both the crazy cars they dig up and the occasionally-lax ways they go about in stealing them all. It's the second half that really elevates this movie, though, since the picture winds up with a 40 minute car chase that's among the craziest I've ever seen. One single car fleeing from cops over the course of 5 cities and dozens upon dozens of car crashes, set pieces, stunts, near misses, and general crazy driving? It's a sight to behold, especially as it just keeps ramping up and going on and on and on. Definitely among the most flagrant abuse of police vehicles this side of The Blues Brothers, and what really makes this one a sure-fire classic in the "Old School Fast Cars" department.

[Quirk]

I watched Beast from 20,000 Fathoms last night for a couple reasons. Firstly, Ray Harryhausen kicks ass, and secondly, I planned to watch Gojira and knew that it was inspired by Beast. The whole genre is so predominantly campy and notoriously stupid that I'm always surprised when one is a legitimately decent film. Beast has a real plot and real characters much more interesting than I'm used to in this kind of thing. It's still a bit shallow but not bad at all. And of course the beast is just fantastic. Ray gave that thing a life of its own. I can only imagine what moviegoers at the time thought when they saw that thing. It had to be unbelievable.

Then this morning I watched Gojira with subs. Based on all the other Godzillas I've seen and all the crappy knock-offs, I never expected this to be so effective. There's real emotion and conflict, and it's about so much more than a guy in a rubber suit smashing buildings. The suit is obviously dated, but the context is strong enough to allow it to be believed, unlike other Godzillas. Of course, the suit is crap compared to the Beast.

Interestingly, I enjoyed Beast from 20,000 Fathoms more for the creature and Gojira for the human elements. Since the Godzilla franchise went the way of "look, monsters smashing stuff," I didn't expect the appeal of Gojira to be emotional resonance. If you combined the strengths of the two films, it would be a masterpiece. It's a little sad that that COULD have happened.

I plan to watch as much of the Godzilla movies as I can stand, but I doubt I'll make it too far. I do want to watch Final Wars to see Zilla get owned, though.

[lassieface]

Godzilla

I have mixed feelings here. I love this was a genuine attempt to make Godzilla modern and cool and badass. On the technical front this is a pretty amazing movie. It looks and sounds wonderful. I'm not just talking about the visual effects (which are great, and you can actually tell what's happening). The cinematography and art direction is also really beautiful. The score by Alexandre Desplat is pretty much perfect for this film. The acting is good. You have some standouts. Cranston is (obviously) terrific.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It kind of felt like they took away the best actor in the whole thing when he died near the beginning.

I thought everyone else did a fine job, but they weren't given much to work with. And herein lies the problem. The writing.

I should make it clear that as far a summer blockbusters go, the script is pretty good. However, it doesn't jive with the serious tone the movie's trying to convey. The story makes sense. It's just nothing special. And there are some moments where the writers just gave up. You get cliche references to man vs nature that add nothing new to the trope. Actually, there are tons of obvious tropes. Characters doing things that only happen to push the story forward. Convenient proximity.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yucca Mountain is not a mile away from Las Vegas

I guess for me it came down to this. The first 15 minutes and the last 30 minutes worked pretty well in my opinion. The rest of it was a mixed bag of things that worked and things that didn't.

[BathTub]

The Guard again, just for the commentary, it was amusing and entertaining, but wasn't informative. It's just Cheadle, Gleeson. & McDonagh having a joyful reminisce about production on the film, laughing at the best lines when they play again. Still completely recommend the film. It's great.

Rock of Ages. Somehow I had completely missed this was a musical, so that totally wasn't the movie I was expecting. Pretty much complete fluff, like cotton candy. Enjoyable at the time, but not filling or lasting. Ultimately forgettable.