i can understand if someone has problems with the casting or performances or directorial choices or whatever, but the songs are awful? that's just crazy to me. look, les mis is a completely sung-thru musical, so there's no spoken dialogue whatsoever: every word in the show, down to the most perfunctory conversation, is sung. most of it is, to borrow a term from opera, in recitative (so, indeed, not really "songs").

but many of the big "arias" are terrific: "i dreamed a dream" and "on my own" and "bring him home" are emotionally resonant and highly memorable melodies, while numbers such as "one day more" and "do you hear the people sing" are wonderfully rousing anthems. and i haven't even mentioned other great tunes like "red and black" or "empty chairs at empty tables" or "a little fall of rain."

so, yeah, the songs don't suck.

Little Fall of Rain was good, I liked that song.

I didn't like Les Miz as theater and I didn't like it as film. I know I'm in the minority when talking about how bad the songs are....I don't know, maybe it's not the songs...there's just something annoying and awful about the whole thing I can't quite put my finger on.

I mean, I love Phantom and Miss Saigon and A Chorus Line.

<shrug>

And I thought Russell Crow sang perfectly fine. He's not a signer, sure, but he carried every tune asked of him...not sure why he got such flack.

Les Mis songs are great. I know it's all subjective, but I'm right and you're wrong

Flash Gordon haven't seen this recently, but w/e.
I really liked this when it came out (I'm old) and it stands up. The music is awesome. I was thinking about the casting.

Max von Sydow and Ming the Merciless - I can't help but like anything he's in. He's one of my favorites.
Topol as the Scientist - also really good
Brian Blessed as the Hawkman - damn damn good
Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin - good actor imo, very good here
Ornella Muti as Ming's daughter - not famous in the US, but she was a leading actress in many Italian films, some pretty highly regarded

Which leaves me wondering if Sam Jones and Melody Anderson who were the leading man and lady were not intentionally picked as not very good actors to make the film more authentically campy. If so, that just adds the brilliance of this movie.

I tried listening to some of the other "arias" from Les Mis. From the recent film, I just couldn't take it. Way too awful. Choosing some singers whose voices I liked: better, but I still couldn't get through a full song.

It must just not be my cup of tea.

Holy **** you guys, Riddick is ****ing terrible. I deserve what I got. I wanted to walk out but I was with friends.

I rarely give up on film either, but lasted about 10mins of Les Mis. Don't know what it was, but couldn't sit through any more of it. I've always kind of wanted to see it in theater but I guess I won't bother now.

Iron Man 3 - was terrible

Great list. Have you seen Seven Psychopaths directed by Martin Mcdonagh who also directed In Bruges? If you haven't, it is a great great flick.

School Ties

Jewish kid gets accepted into an elite high school where rich kids tend to advance to Harvard, Yale, etc. One problem: everyone there is a raging anti-Semite.

I daresay the racism in this is more overt than Haggis's Crash. Someone actually says the words, "Yeah, I'm an anti-Semite."

It was neat to see uber-young Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'donnell, and always old father of John Locke.

yeh ive been hearing this , was hoping it was going to be on par w/ pitch black , ill prob still watch it this weekend .


Robocop trailer came out ,im pretty excited about it , , i really liked José Padilha's raw fast paced visual style w/ the elite squad movies .hopefully that style will translate w/ this .

Why the **** would they leave his hand unarmored?

Ah, now here's a film that could be a classic

I remember seeing this a long time ago. I don't think it was in the theater, but maybe HBO or something soon after. I only remembered Brendan Fraser being in it.

It was set in the 1950's, so racism was likely a little more overt during that time.

Sorry, I was unclear. My comment was a criticism of the film's storytelling. I have no problem with a compelling and accurate depiction of racism.

I for one am getting a little tired of future grunge... that shyte has been played out, specially when combined with Samuel Jackson.
throw into the mix post apocalyptic mayhem and I just have to roll my eyes.
give me some stories... not art direction and set design.

I will see this movie though... looks to be full of great actors.

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What I want to know is, when did Les Misérables become a musical... oh, 1985.

It's interesting, I've actually had this discussion with friends over some beers. What was the last movie with an optimistic view of the future? No dystopian government, no killer robots, etc. The best I could come up with was Back to the Future. Flying skateboards for the win.

Well, utopian society is pretty boring. You can't make a film about everything being perfect.

Star Trek shows a utopian development of mankind though. No racism, sexism. Benevolent world government and military. No money, hunger, poverty. Even a federation of cooperation with most alien races. (Plus the technology to travel faster than light, get transported, enjoy super realistic holograms for entertainment, and create food out of nothing.) Just a few rogue individuals and races cause most of the problems.

Minority report was a reasonably happy future, right?

Well except for the Big Brother-like authoritarian government, sure.

No need for utopian. My crazy low bar is "optimistic".

That works. But being based on a 50s idea of the future kind of serves to reinforce the underlying "at some point we lost hope for the future" thesis behind the question.

um, no.

Yep, it was good.

Strange list and I would never put any of those movies on if I wanted a good laugh.

Fair enough on Minority Report, couldn't remember that well exactly how it was governed.

Futuristic movies are usually going to be man versus society movies. They are often going to be based on some idea about a future society that has become screwed up in some way. If you are making a movie not about the society itself, then you'll probably just set it in the present. If you set it in the future, there has to be some conflict it that future that drives the story.

Try to come up with a story set it an optimistic society that couldn't be set in the present. You'll soon start looking for conflict within and from that future society. Even a benevolent society is initially envisioned, there will usually need to be a dark side to it for the sake of the story. I don't think it means that everyone's vision of the future is bleak, just that bleak futures allow the creation of better stories.

So it sounds like you'd subscribe to an idea I heard Patton Oswalt throw around in his book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. The basic jist was that lazy writers will often try to set their stories on a spaceship or apocalyptic wasteland so they can explore an aspect of society that they want to emphasize by throwing away a ton of more difficult aspects of real society that get in the way of their storytelling. He particularly attributed that to young writers who haven't yet gained enough experience with real society to be able to realistically fit their point into a story set today.

Fair enough. That actually makes something like Star Trek, Bill and Ted, Back to the Future, or The Jetsons more interesting if they are the outliers who don't fall into the cliche.