It was straightforward and stupid. A great film ruined by a terrible ending.

Star Trek into darkness i liked this movie but dont think it was a strong as the last one , i like all the new actors but the plot seemed pretty razor thin . all the winks / nods to the older movies did make it fun ...the movie really made we want to watch wrath of khan again . which ill prob rewatch sometime this week... been awhile since ive seen it .

Importance of endings

http://www.jenniferdary.com/2010/12/...y-endings.html

Watched that one movie with Jennifer Aniston as a stripper. Made me feel kind of awkward -- like watching your mom do a strip tease or something. Girl is old.

given horror movies typically draw well I'm a bit surprised this one hasn't done so well at the box office...but anyways I saw YOU'RE NEXT this weekend. The movie is a bit of a twist on the "isolated family being randomly terrorized by mysterious assailants" theme. Decent acting and the film has a certain look/feel to it which I liked. The characters predictably did some really dumb things though which was annoying at times but overall an OK experience. 7 out of 10 stars.

Life of Pi was interesting...I enjoyed it.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was quite a lovely little film. Great cast. I'm a huge Judy Dench and Bill Nighy fan.

For my mainstream reviews:

Girl inPain and Gain is really hot. The Rock is funny as a devout christian gone bad. Other than that pretty damn bad imo.

Now You See Me was a pretty deese watch, I'd give it a C or B-, def not a D as someone did. (Lets not forget the caliber of movies these days in general) Def def not a good ending, but lets look at what it did have... easily one of the most catching 30-60 min intro/beginnings of any movie I've seen in a while. ("rule #1 of magic, always be the smartest guy in the room!") I am partial to magician movies, and michael paine is a crusher. Also posthumous freeman ftw.

Watching Iceman today. The documentaries freaked me out when I was a kid so it should be enjoyable.

I have it from a reliable source that reeves is extremely well hung and ****ed his way to the top.

Also, I can't believe I watched sweet november in its entirety. Point break and advocate make up for it though.

Affleck is a pretty damn good actor (albeit unflexible) and a world class director imo:

Watch school ties, mall rats, dazed and confused etc if you doubt him being a true pleasure on the screen.

The Rock made Pain and Gain O.K.

Started watching evil dead but was too scary so I had to turn it off.

It was me and I understand your point, but I'm not grading on a curve. If movies suck more today so be it. There's still the occasional good movie out there so I can't really inflate anything. It wasn't White Chicks bad but I really didn't like that movie at all, sounds like you did.

I like magic movies too, The Prestige is one of my favorites. Liked The Illusionist to a lesser extent. To me this was more like a bad heist flick, not a magician movie. And the ending doesn't make a lot of sense because the four magicians were totally unnecessary for the task at hand, and it turns out that was secondary to the complete wackness of the ending anyway. Not to mention the rules of world they were playing in.

For example, there's a scene where the four have these invitation cards they're inexplicably all carrying on them like a year after the meeting they were intended to invite them to, which jump out of their hands and combine to melt into each other and... WTF. I'm pretty sure that was actual magic.

Then there's like a 10 minute section where one character is tediously explaining how a heist was performed--a bad sign that it takes that much explanation for the benefit of the audience--where he springs a minor twist by explaining that



Ha ha! Audience never saw that coming! Fooled you!

The problem with doing this in movies is that they're cheap tricks. When twists depend on some new fact introduced of out thin air it's not satisfying. It would be like a murder mystery where the killer wasn't even in the movie to that point. It was the butler? Huh? I didn't even know there WAS a butler!

Good movies think these things through, and they earn reveals and twists by misdirection while the clues are in plain sight. That's hard; one one hand you have to give all the information to the audience, on the other you have to keep them from putting the pieces together so you can surprise them later. Or spend a lot of time developing the characters to make them trusted by the audience, then betray it later. The Sixth Sense was a great example, The Usual Suspects another.

What Now You See Me did was just not give the information, it cheated the audience on the clues. I can't even remember a single character's name much less trust any of them.

What they tried to do is give you a bunch of characters so that



LOL this is longer than the review was, but for me this is one of the worst-written movies I've seen this year. Very lazy writing. I've spent more time annoyed by it than I spent watching it though and was just discussing it with someone else. It's such a mess a rant seems more appropriate than a review.

Now You See Me was a fun watch imo. I was entertained and thought the characters were funny and interesting. The script was far from sharp, but for some reason it worked for me. Freeman acting like a total dbag was funny too.

Rundown of all movies originating from Philip K. Dick (mostly short) stories.

Well-known name to people who have read sci-fi. If you're not familiar with him, he died about 30 years ago. They haven't stopped making movies from his stuff. He had some drugs and more acid-trippy things happening in his work, but a lot of it is just straight sci-fi.

In no order, the Hollywood movies I've seen based on his work:

Blade Runner B+

Harrison Ford, considered a classic. I'm not as high on this as many people are as they have it very high in all-time lists, but it's good and I recommend watching it for sure. Ignore its age. I'll save you the synopsis other than to say Harrison Ford has to identify and chase down replicants which are these engineered humans who don't live long.

Screamers B

The original short story ("Second Variety") one of my favorites. The movie's okay, Peter Weller stars. It's kind of Terminator-ish in that deadly robots disguise themselves as people. They were initially created as war machines by the US, and left to create and improve themselves. Which they did. Actually Terminator must have borrowed heavily from this. The movie differs a little bit from the story, but it's got some classic sci-fi charm and Peter Weller's okay. Far from perfect but if you're hurting for a sci-fi movie and you're tapped out worth a pass.

Minority Report B

Tom Cruise is good I guess, and visually the movie is good. A little hammy though. Essentially Tom Cruise is part of a police division that prevents crimes just before they happen. Bigger budget Hollywood and looks pretty just didn't wow me.

Paycheck C

Lots of people hated it, I thought it was alright. Affleck, Uma Thurman, a couple other stars. Affleck took a secure job where your memories are wiped after you've done your tour, reverse-engineering stuff, and finds that during the job renegotiated his payment to be a bunch of knick-knacks. At first upset, they turn out to be helpful things that he planted to help himself after the memory wipe.

Imposter (2001) C- or B+

Gary Sinise, Vincent D'Onfrio

There's two versions of the same movie. The first was a 25 minute short which I'd give a B+ to. Nothing that special, but cool enough and you're in and out before you think too hard.

Once they made that, they decided to make it into a full-length feature and penned in a bunch of BS with Mekhi Phifer. Just added an hour right in the middle, pulled out of their ass. That's a C- because it's filler. Not needed, skip it.

Lt. Dan is a weapons designer for Earth, at war with aliens. Aliens are sending down clone imposters, who kill the original people and take their place. They also have these massive bombs inside them. Vincent D'Onfwhatever is like a detective to track them down and murder them with this gruesome machine. Lt. Dan is accused of being one of these imposters and you go from there.

A Scanner Darkly C+

Wasn't all that sci-fi like the above, drug heavy. It's the one that looks like a cartoon with Keanu Reeves, Wynona, Woody & Robert Downey Jr. Somewhat interesting but strange and doesn't seem to go anywhere. Can probably skip it unless it free.

Total Recall (original) B-

Classic Arnold movie. A little goofy and dated but still okayish. Liked it more as a kid.

You go into a place and they implant memories, so you can remember some awesome things you never did. Well he starts the process and things go to hell, are they his memories or fake ones? It's Arnold, but not Predator or Terminator.

Total Recall (remake) B-

Colin Farrell, same basic story, more a chase movie. Not sure why this was remade but it's watchable. The robots look cool.

The Adjustment Bureau B

Matt Damon, Emily Blunt. Matt Damon goes into work to discover there are people working literally behind the scenes to keep actions on a pre-determined path. They'll freeze time and adjust things when no one is looking. Kind of a chase movie here too. I thought it was ok, but forgettable. It moves though and is different.

Next C-

Nicholas Cage. Wasn't really like the story. He can see a couple minutes into the future, gambles and whatnot. Then he's being asked to prevent a nuke attack. This was torn apart by critics but like most of the PKD-inspired films it's closer to average. It is however a downgrade from the source material and make a lot of changes for the worse.

So The Adjustment Bureau is a B and Blade Runner is a B+?

This ratings system sounds like science fiction.

Amour

I was really looking forward to this, then read some bad reviews by people I respect, so was worried.

I should not read reviews. Amour is so good you can barely believe it. Haneke is so amazingly adept with the material, you simply cannot avoid being severely moved. If it is the task of a director to create a credible environment for a substantial subject, then this could be definitive. While I can understand why many Americans might not be able to properly identify with the main characters (as they are Parisian musicologist/bon vivant-types), it really should not be so hard to get past this and to immerse yourself in the experience.

Granted, the only "enjoyment" to be gained from the film is marveling at the art of it. I cannot help but admit that I almost invariably "enjoy" being altered in any way by a film.

The "almost" above is designed to exclude the uber-provocative offerings of the Lars von Trier or torture-porn variety, each of which I meet with nothing but revulsion.

If you love great films, Amour should be seen.

A

When Kevin Smith was asked to review this film, he said simply, "I think the title says it all."

He also gave both Total Recalls the same score. WTF.

+1 to Amour. There is a scene in the film that sucked the air out of the entire theatre.

Unfortunately I had the opening scene ruined because some dumb woman kept getting up and down, walking in and out of the theatre. She eventually met her daughter who took the seat she saved. The daughter spent a few moments texting before someone told her to shut it off.

I'd like to revisit it sometime, don't think that day will come anytime soon.

Screamers need to be remade... I have a fondness for that movie. much different than terminator?

He gave the Total Recall remake, one of the worst films of the year, the same score as the original.

lawl

Box Office Labor Day Weekend

1. One Direction: This Is Us $17M
2. Lee Daniels' The Butler $14.7M
3. We're the Millers $12.6M

Why would someone so moronic even go to see such a film by such a director? Couldn't she be summarily executed by others in the theater?

While it is true that the addition of my two children in the past three years has made me less misanthropic, there is still time to go back.

Voted an insta 1/10 on IMDB on that first title.Reasons are kinda obvious I guess
On the topic,recently watched No country for old men,pretty good movie ,watch it if u havent done it yet

I gave the two of them a piece of my mind after the film. Lectured them on basic etiquette. It was a packed festival screening so they couldn't escape quick enough. I don't think I've ever shouted/sworn more at someone in a theatre. The ppl rooting me on fueled my rant haha

LOL Cro. So alpha.