Amph What was the last movie you saw?

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

 

Sensitive and appropriate.

 

Just watched Schindler's List again, it's still one of my favorite movies and the two lead casts are my favorite actors.

Which one is a greater film Nazi villain? Ralph Fiennes' Amon Goeth or Christopher Waltz' Hans Landa?

 

Oskar Schindler should be listed for being a slave-driving, philandering drunk who's been given a massive halo polish by history, Slowpoke.

 

I'm happy you're feeling better, Rogue1-and-a-half, and I'm looking forward to more of your reviews. I don't post often here, but I got to watch a lot of stuff that was new to me thanks to this thread and especially thanks to you

 

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

 

Goodbye World with Gaby Hoffmann. A lame admixture of Return of the Secaucus Seven and Red Dawn, or of Big Chill and The Quiet Earth.

something like that.

 

Dodge City. Errol Flynn is a cattle drover who's forced to become sheriff when a crooked "businessman" with a grudge against him starts running rampant in town; also he manages to make Olivia de Havilland stop hating him and love him instead. It's a pretty formulaic early Western, but it looks good in Technicolor, Michael Curtiz's direction is snappy, and the performances are a ton of fun; Alan Hale gets some good business as Flynn's sidekick. Also it has the best barfight in history. It's just a massive, roiling, gleefully insane scene of two rival mobs completely tearing a huge saloon apart. Good, solid fun.

 

Blade 2 (2002) - I still feel that the original is a much better made film despite the fact that Guillermo del Toro > Stephen Norrington. Never a great movie, it really hasn't aged well IMO. - 5.5/10

There were rumors a couple of months back about Snipes returning for Blade 4. Despite the diminishing returns for the this franchise, I'd like to see it happen. I know some people have floated the idea of a reboot, but to me Snipes IS Blade.

 

Terminator Salvation

 

Innerspace (1987)

One of those “beloved” 80’s flicks that really is nothing to write home about besides the impressive visual effects. All it does is display how irritating Martin Short is, Robert Picardo and Dennis Quaid have terrifyingly not aged since the release of this film, and Meg Ryan looked like a human being.

 

Gran Torino

 

I know how some people feel about the "R" word, but Innerspace is a prime candidate for a remake. The original was directed by Joe Dante, who is kind of like a Bizarro Spielberg, so give me an Edgar Wright or James Gunn for the remake. Maybe Bradley Cooper, Idris Elba or Chris Pratt in the Quaid role and Simon Pegg in the Short role.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - For some reason I pull this out every few years thinking that this time it won't be as bad as I remember. Unfortunately, it always is. There are a few decent moments in the first act, but it keeps getting progressively worse until you're watching it with a full body cringe. You really wanna exacerbate the experience of watching KotCS? Pop in Raiders and watch a few minutes right afterwards. - 5/10

 

Draft Day. Would have enjoyed it more if I understood how the whole draft system works in the NFL.

 

If you understood how the NFL draft works, you'd have a leg up on the people who made the movie . I still enjoyed it, but it's not even kind-sorta close to reality.

 

Frank (2014)



In this movie, Michael Fassbender plays the eccentric leader of an avant-garde musical group and he wears a giant papier-mache head all the time. And I do mean all the time, as a hilarious shower scene demonstrates. Unfortunately, I felt the film as a whole was a real disappointment, though it certainly had moments. Domnhall Gleason, an actor I like quite a bit, is the audience surrogate, a keyboardist who gets roped in to join the band when their regular keyboardist . . . well, attempts suicide via walking into the ocean. Right, I’m not sure I’d take that job then, but whatever. The film really works pretty well as an absurdist comedy for about the first half as the band holes up in a cabin in the woods to create their new album. Then the film attempts a switch to a more serious storyline where the band has to deal with genuine fame (at least “fame,” of the online variety, you know). There are still moments, including the most hilariously inappropriate and genuinely shocking usage of the phrase, “Let’s ****,” that I have ever seen in my life. But ultimately, as occasionally funny and genuinely odd as the film is, it fails at establishing its characters as anything but cartoons: the aspiring songwriter, the angry, sociopathic female, the weirdo, erratic band leader. At the end of the film, and especially at the strange climax, we’re supposed to be emotionally involved with these characters as real people; but, as much as Fassbender tries, Frank is too broadly written for the bulk of the film; he’s essentially a one-joke character. Gleason’s character is a blank; we never really understand what makes him tick in any but the most rudimentary ways. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s turn as the female lead of the band is equally cartoonish; she gets some laughs, but it’s hard to buy her as having any real angst when she’s spent most of the movie snarling clichéd “angry artist” lines, though she gives it a fine try in the climactic scene. The film attempts a bold shift there, especially in the last third and, had it worked, it would have been a phenomenal twist on what had seemed like an eccentric indie comedy. But unfortunately, it doesn’t and I found myself wishing the movie had just maintained the more comedic, cartoonish, absurdist tone. I had high expectations for this film, as I kind of do for anything featuring Michael Fassbender, one of the most exciting and interesting actors of his generation, but I was really very disappointed. A shame. Distinctly average. Recommended against. 2 stars.

tl;dr – intriguing premise and excellent cast are unfortunately wasted in this tonally incoherent failure. 2 stars.

 

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

 

Female Agents: It was a decent movie but the acting was awesome, and it's so sad/touched to see the young girls sacrifice themselves to help eliminate the Nazi and win the war.

 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - It's not Raiders--nothing is Raiders--but I do believe this is the most fun of the four Indy films. It also has the most heart. And it has a secret weapon; Connery. - 9/10

 

Gone Girl: I thought it was mostly great. Lots of interesting little twist, some were easy to call. Liked the journal entry, backstory ,scenes. The score there and the way they were shot were very dream like. Which ended up being the point. Little long, um, but I can't say it was ever boring. I think that at some point I was just really interested in seeing how it was going to be resolved, and wanted to get there as fast as possible.

Ending was little bit of a "meh." I think it worked for that story, but it was such a long journey to get to "That." Probably one of those where if you watched it again it would work perfectly since you now know where the film is going. Don't think I could sit through it again though.

Great performances. Girl definitly has some award nods coming. Little early to tell if the film will make the award rounds, but it certainly is possible.

 

The Equalizer. Awful. It's a humorless, joyless slog that takes itself much too seriously. Most offputtingly, it just wallows in its own nastiness without having any kind of depth or resonance to make the nastiness meaningful. It's got a good cast (Marton Csokas is really effective as a psychopathic enforcer with a sheen of sophistication, and David Harbour was quite good as the much more business-as-usual crooked-cop muscle forced to work as Csokas's lieutenant), but Washington's character is only there to be an inscrutable sad-sack before he turns into an inscrutable killing machine and there's just nothing for him to do but pose heroically. The movie also obnoxiously drops Chloe Grace Moretz's character completely out of the movie as soon as she gets beaten up to start the plot into motion. The action is aggressively vicious without being particularly entertaining, and the film never gives you anything else to latch onto but grim action. The finale is wonderfully ridiculous; it appears to be the result of a bet to see how gruesomely someone could be killed in a Home Depot, but at least it's an interesting location, something different from the usual run of abandoned warehouses and whatever. The end showdown is just hilarious, though, as the writers appear to have decided that being inside a big box store just wasn't dramatic enough, so they have the sprinklers go off so that Washington can stride through the indoor rain in slow motion, slowly blowing away the bad guy with an absurdly powerful nail gun.

There were a few little enjoyable sequences, but overall it's just an ugly, mean-spirited mess. I don't know why Washington makes such mediocre film choices, but he deserves better than this.

 

*sighs* That's not what I wanted to hear since The Equalizer was probably the one remake I was actually curious to see, if only because of Denzel.

 

The aptly named "Horns" sits with the first "Hellboy" near the top of the short list of great movies about characters with horns growing out of their heads.

 

The Duchess (2008)

Keira Knightley is annoying. Dominic Cooper is evil looking. Ralph Fiennes is the only good thing about this film.

 

I Are The Internets, I'll have you know that this very forum was once home to the KKIH Society, or something to that effect--KKIH: "Keira Knightley Is Hot". A page as black as night itself.