Amph What was the last movie you saw?

Just finished watching The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension with The Bigger Fish. I loved it and he hated it.

 

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation [2015] - I liked it. The opera scene was fun, the water sequence was a stretch, the knife fight wasn't needed, and of course the movie wouldn't be complete without the obligatory car chase. I would say that I liked Ant-man slightly more as it had more humor and less predictability. I do have to praise Cruise. He doesn't phone it in and he continues to be a pleasure to watch, at least in this franchise.

 

Finally saw Birdman. Considering all the nominations, awards, and recognition it earned, I expected...something better, I guess. The film was all right. It just wasn't great imo.

 

The Book of Life

The kids liked it. I liked it. I guess that's all that matters.

 

The Maze Runner- It's like a poor man's Hunger Games. It was ok, not great. I would watch the sequels, yeah. It entertained me.

 

Explorers (1985) - Director Joe Dante always gave us Spielbergian with a hint of subversion, but for most of its runtime Explorers just feels like someone trying to imitate the 'berg, and doing it quite well. It's the third act where it (in)famously falls apart. I sorta like it in theory, but the execution isn't very satisfying, and it never reconciles itself with the first two acts. - 6.5/10

 

I mean, I'm on board with Lawrence's performance and the first hour of Catching Fire is excellent, but taking every movie as a whole I though The Maze Runner was actually far better than the Hunger Games movies.

 

Agreed. I think one of the biggest factors working in its (The Maze Runner) favor is the sense of mystery. But with that now largely removed, I kinda fear it going in more of a HG youth in revolt direction.

 

Alien. I'm 26 and have never seen it before. It was kinda....boring. I know, I know. The xenomorph is a gorgeous monster, but I was more creeped out by the spiders in Desolation of Smaug. None of the characters were all that interesting. Ash and Mother were seriously underdeveloped and THAT CAT. Seriously, the CAT! I'm naming it Bella, for reasons. Ridley Scott seems to have a background fetish with all the never-ending shots of ship walls. I'm sorry Ridley, walls are not that interesting. Oh well, guess I saw this too late. It just didn't live up to all the hype I've heard over the years.

 

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

What a strange franchise this has been. The first one is a nifty Hitchcockian thriller that has a superb climax on a train. It's more similar to the TV show than any of the other movies are so far. And wasn't Jim Phelps the hero of the show?

The second one is a hilariously awful attempt to cash in on the Matrix craze and was John Woo's downfall in American Cinema along with that Thandy Newton is ****ing annoying in almost everything she's in and Dougray Scott made such a terrible decision by being the villain in this one and what the hell is Anthony Hopkins doing here, he isn't doing jack ****?

Yeah, I really don't like the second one.

The third is still my favorite. Its relentlessly menacing, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic in every single scene that he's in. The helicopter chase scene through the windmills is heartpounding as is the climactic fistfight with Hunt and Owen.

This one, I guess, could work as a companion piece to Ghost Protocol. They're basically the same film though GP's villain is so horribly underused. I did love the callback to the original film.

The Descendants (2011)

This one or Hugo should've won Best Picture at the Oscars. Clooney is fantastic, it's Shailene Woodley's best performance thus far, and Robert Forster (always been a fan of him) is great in the few scenes he's in. The Artist sucks guys. When is everyone going to accept that?

 

My feelings on it exactly. While I liked some individual performances, the movie was kinda 'eh'. I'm glad I watched it, but I wouldn't watch it again.

 

I'm not going to scold you, but I'm going to tell you why it seemed boring. The reason is that since Alien, so much of that movie has been copied by other movies that its style is hard-baked into more than one genre. Familiarity breeds boredom, and you've probably already seen Alien through the filter of countless other movies.

 

Blazing Saddles (1974)
Dir. Mel Brooks

No matter how many times I see that horse get punched, it never fails to get me.

Not as good as The Producers and Brooks really has no eye for a good shot (I understand totally why Mankeiwicz called him the death of cinema), and its second 45 minutes is less funny than the first, but still a borderline classic.

 

I thought the acting in Maze Runner was very good from all the kids, but the Hunger Games story is just much more compelling, IMHO.

 

The Artist is indeed modest but the travesty is Tinker Tailor getting overlooked even for a nomination. That thar's 2011's masterpiece.

 

The Godfather Pt. 2 What else is there to say? Hollywood simply will never produce a movie the likes of this ever again.

 

The overarching HG story is a really good one, but, man, there is just no sense of pacing. Like once they get in the Arena in Catching Fire, that damn movie just grinds to a halt. There's like nothing of any interest. And Mockingjay was like that too. You look at Maze Runner and it knew how to do one thing extremely well: really intense action scenes. I mean, some of the stuff in the maze in that movie was just incredibly pulse pounding. HG could learn a thing or two about how to stage action to make it compelling.


Gremlins (1984) – Joe Dante



Well, this will no doubt be very shocking, but I had managed to reach my thirty-third year on Earth without ever seeing Gremlins in its entirety. That was remedied at a classics screening at a local theater and I’m glad it was. There’s no need to bother with a plot summary, so let me just get into it. The film gets a lot of stuff absolutely right. Gizmo the Mogwai in particular is just a really wonderful creation; I bought into him as a living being absolutely and Mandel’s vocal performance is just phenomenal. The gremlins themselves, particularly Stripe, are also quite wonderfully and vividly realized. The filmmakers manage to make Stripe into a real character; moments like his dive-bomb into the swimming pool or the way he just freezes, his arms filled with candy bars, as the theater blows up are moments where you really can hardly believe that he’s just a prop. The human characters fare less well. Zach Galligan is an affable enough blank to be, not likable exactly, but kind of goofy. Phoebe Cates compensates for a really quite bad performance (that Santa Claus speech! Yikes!) by being really gorgeous. The only really interesting human character is, interestingly enough, Mrs. Peltzer who, when faced with an invasion of gremlins, grabs a pair of knives and goes to town. That scene. Right? That’s probably the best scene in the film, shockingly violent and hilarious at the same time.

But this is definitely Dante’s film; it’s got a strange mixture of Spielbergian nostalgia and pitch-black violent humor. Really, this film is weirder than I think most people remember it or think of it as being, so weird that I’m kind of surprised that it was as popular as it was. Dante keeps up a fast pace, but the film is often just bizarre in a way I can’t really think of another hit movie being. The scene at the bar, where Cates’ character is, inexplicably, just still hanging around serving the gremlins instead of running out screaming, is the foremost example. Gremlins breakdancing? Gremlins wearing fedoras being screamed at by sockpuppets? Gremlins crossdressing? This scene is like something out of a fever dream; it’s so weird that I had a kind of out-of-body experience, like I literally felt like I was dreaming or something. The climax of the film is everything it needs to be, weirdly funny and yet progressively more and more violent. Visuals like Stripe violently peddling a tricycle or Gizmo zipping past a dog in a tiny, tiny car, shrieking like a banshee . . . these are film moments for all time. Anyway, the film has held up beyond well for such a special effects driven picture; all credit to the creators, puppeteers and voices behind Gizmo & the gremlins for that – thirty years on, these creatures still seem imbued with magical life. The film has stumbles, mostly with the human side of the acting, and occasionally with the writing (Spielberg was right; that Santa Claus speech should have been cut), which just doesn’t characterize the humans at all, really. But, on the whole, a really great movie-watching experience. Oh, God, did I forget that score? I knew the theme, of course, but it’s just even better than I had remembered. One of Goldsmith’s best scores, no question. Recommended. 3 ½ stars.

tl;dr – special effects create unbelievably realistic creatures and Dante’s pitch black sense of humor remains bracing; human characters are unfortunately bland and forgettable. 3 ½ stars.

More Movie Reviews!

 

Who the hell watches Gremlins for compelling human characters, anyway?

 

Hey R1.5, have you seen Gremlins 2: The Next Batch? I don't know if I can say it was a better film than the original, but I thought it was more fun than the first one.

 

Gremlins 2 is a near masterpiece. The second best film of 1990.

 

Have you seen Aliens? If not, don't let your disappointment with Alien discourage you. If Alien is somewhat comparable to a slasher movie, Aliens is a slasher movie where the camp councilors are replaced by green berets.

Keep in mind, though, it's been copied at least as much as Alien over the years and could have that "I've seen this a hundred times before" feel that Jabbadabbado mentioned. Just remember that 1.) It originated a lot of what have now become genre clichés and 2.) It does them much, much better than the films that have copied it.

The first, of course, being Back to the Future III

Other than a few minutes here and there, I've never seen Gremlins 2. There's just something about it that never appealed to me. I say this as a kid who in 1984 was obsessed with the original. 1984 was a inarguably the best movie Summer of my childhood (Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Karate Kid, Last Starfighter, Star Trek III) and Gremlins stood above the rest, even Ghostbusters. I had the trading cards (which I still have), t-shirts, a stuffed Gizmo doll. It was a brief obsession, but that Summer it owned my 10 year old soul.

 

Gremlins 2 was all kinds of ****ed up, often 4th-wall-breaking-insanity. I can't say it was better than the original but it did its job well.

 

It's a minor flaw, but it is a flaw. It's worth mentioning because the film is so close to being a full-on masterpiece. I mean, would Jaws be worse if the main characters were less developed? Yeah, it would.

 

just saw Diary of a Teenage Girl .

1976 Sanfrancisco , 15 year old girl's diary of her sexual 'odyssey' . It's very much like a 70s film too , totally non-judgemental , she actually enjoys sex . features animation of her imagination in the style of Aline Kominsky , who's in the film as an inspirational animated figure .

it's quite a brave film , hard to like the main character , she's very selfish , then again aren't all teens .

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