The London Film Club - A Chat about Films

What is to say that Scotty's incident in Star Trek V was not a copy of ANH considering it was made a number of years after it and many scenes from the OT are and have been widely copied since?

 

I liked Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. It did seem a little cluttered, with too many characters needing to take up screen time and some not getting a sufficient amount. The villain overload made most rather pointless. Nevertheless it had some very funny moments and great actions pieces. Hank Azaria was good as the evil KaMunRa, doing a Boris Karloff accent.
Darth Vader even got a brief cameo.

 

The boys thought that Terminator Salvation was really crap. I thought ILM did a wonderful job of the special effects but the whole of it felt like a b-movie. Not much story, not much acting, too many special effects. It wasn't bad but it left me wondering whether it was worth the ticket price.

 

Just watched Night at the Museum 2

Absolutely loved it. Far better than the original. Hank Azaria was great. There were several moments clearly lifted from other films. Jed in the hourglass from Aladdin. Kicking the hourglass around from Temple of Doom, and Custer being a coward is from Hot Shots 2 and another film I can't recall. But it didn't matter. Really really good fun.

 

Saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen today. I'm not sure whether I think it's better then the first movie or not, it certainly is bigger and louder and has more robots in it. Shia is mildly better and Megan Fox is still the same.

ILM have created awesome Transformers, and the fights are spectacular to say the least. The plot drags a bit and seems to change direction part way through, but it's easy enough to follow. Optimus Prime & Bumblebee are great as usual, although there are some extra rather annoying little twin Autobots who think if they speak "Gangsta" for the whole movie it will be an effective substitute for them not actually doing anything else, which is wrong. Better comedy moments in it, but Michael Bay has never been an actor's director, he likes big explosions and delivers on that in style.

The only major let downs for me were the much hyped Devastator & Soundwave who did very little at all. Probably better if seen in IMAX since the visuals are the main focus of it.

 

Saw the IMAX version last night and I'd have to agree with you SLDR. The fight sequences were great (although the first one was far too frentic for one to catch much), but the plot was all over the place. And there were so many explosions, I became numb/bored with some of the sequences because they were so overdone...

The TransFormers look great though Although, I was disappointed by the lack of character development.

Sometimes, too much is just too much. And others, it's not enough.

 

We can't espect too much from Michael Bay though really can we?
The best movie he's ever done is The Rock, other then that all he's known for is that awful World War 2 movie (we shall not name for fear of acknowledging it exists) and not allowing Scarlett Johansson to strip in The Island since he wanted it to achieve a PG rating.

 

Angels and Demons

Hacked the book to pieces, removed the best stuff, and completely changed one of the main points. Fun, but very disappointing. It's like a Cadbury's creme egg without the gooey white stuff. Nice, but hollow and unsatisfying

Strike (or 7-10 Split for the American audience)

A bog standard bowling comedy. Quite enjoyable and a nice cameo from Vinnie Jones.

 

PS I Love You

What is it with the latest trend to make the characters in RomComs to be fundamentally unlikeable. It happened the other day when I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall and it's certainly the case in this film. It was poorly written with any attempt at a "plot" seemingly thrown in at the end, or just tagged on.

Even Picture Perfect was better than this...

 

Gerard Bulter is in a new upcoming RomCom called The Ugly Truth, which looks like it could of the same breed as most of these rubbish unfunny RomComs.

Same with The Proposal starring Sandra Bullock.

I will be ignoring both of these films, I refuse to waste valuable hours of my life seeing them even if I get in free.

 

In one word, as a Phantom fan, what's your opinion of Butler's portrayal as Erik?

 

Going back to Angels and Demons I was vey disappointed that the movie was written as a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, when it's the other way around.

 

The Da Vinci Code was a rubbish movie anyway, they should've stopped with that, it was obvious adaptations were going to suck.

Gerard Butler as The Phantom = Untrained

The new habit of casting actors with little to no singing experience is damaging musical films. Gone are the days when Actors like David Tomlinson were cast in a musical film because of their singing ability, now it's about marketing (Mamma Mia being a prime example) rather then good performances. Plus they can all be well edited so it sounds like they're great, so most people overlook it when watching.

 

I watched 2 films today

Sphere

Pretty enjoyable. Dustin Hoffman proves yet again that he's a one trick pony though. As far as movie adaptations go, it's pretty faithful to the original, and nothing major was cut or altered. A few glaring plot holes, but nothing too disctracting. Recommended.

Fired Up

Typical teen comedy. 2 American Football players join the cheerleading team in the hope of "getting some". Completely predictable throughout, but who cares? It was very funny!

 

Watched The Hangover today. It is a suprisingly funny buddy comedy, with a decent cameo from Mike Tyson and lots of bizzarely random stuff in it.

 

I third that. I saw the IMAX version of Transformers today at the Greenwich cinema and it was much better. I love the clear visuals of Optimus' face and that you could see his expression change depending on his mood. Also, the forest battle was awesome and I felt like I was standing there among the trees.

I also found the explosions too much, especially at the end. It just felt like the fighting went on and on and on.

I also agree with SLDR about musical films, especially Gerad Butler in POTO. To have an untrained singer act the part of Erik/Phantom takes away a lot of the point with the character. He is supposed to be an amazing singer after all.

 

I could only muster an hour of Transformers 2. It nearly made me physically sick. It was so bad that I'm not even all that angry about it.

Ice Age 3 was almost just as bad. If Ice Age 2 was the death of narrative cinema, then this one is the total destruction of human story telling. This was just a collection of scenes with the faintest of story thread joining them together (invisible thread at that). Simon Pegg was the star of the show but even that wasn't overly great, thanks to his character essentially being a Weasel version of Jack Sparrow, which grew tiresome after the first Pirates film, let alone the other two.

At last though, a fairly decent film has arrived with Public Enemies. Maybe not the masterpiece some have tagged it with, it is however a classy crime drama with some great camera work, performances and production. The sound mix though was pretty bad.

 

I also liked Public Enemies. Well acted with fine location shooting and decent set pieces. The shoot outs were a little over the top and very loud, but well done. I expected it to be good as I am a fan of Michael Mann's work.
I do however think that it was a little bias in John Dillinger's favour. I know little about the guy but it seemed to me as if the film was trying to make him out to be the misunderstood hero who was being unfairly hounded by the BOI. The whole "stealing the bank's money" thing was a bit too Robin Hood for me and was a contradiction (he won't steal the people's money, yet all the money the bank has is their money anyway since they put it into accounts there).

This seems similar to the Ned Kelly film made a few years ago with Heath Ledger, which seemed to make Kelly out to be some sort of hero who was being prejudiced against (pardon me but wearing body armour and taking out police is hardly a good way of showing how innocent you are).
Films about real people need to be careful if they want to be seen as genuine biopics.


I didn't think Ice Age 3 was as good as the previous movies. The Dinosaurs looked good and Simon Pegg did well, but there was not much about the film. Plus once again it has the Jurassic Park 3 problem of assuming that because Spinosaurus is bigger then T-Rex it automatically makes it more dangerous and powerful, which simply is not true.

 

Hi guys, (I know I haven't been on for ages), just thought I'd pop in and say that I watched Star Wars Robot Chicken part 2 and it was excellente!
Ciao for now and hopefully see y'all soooooon. xx

 

I enjoyed G.I. Joe: The Rise of COBRA. I am a fan of Stephen Sommers' movies, especially the first two Mummy films. It was nice to see the self referencing in Joe, with many of the cast from the Mummy films having cameos or supporting roles.
It was also a good call to have the film balanced out with some old hand experienced acting veterans, with Christopher Ecclestone as the leader of the villains, Dennis Quaid as the leader of the Joes & Jonathan Pryce as the US President offering solid performances.

Ray "Darth Maul" Park displayed his fine martial arts skills as the Ninja Snake Eyes, having a great final fight with his evil Ninja brother Storm Shadow.

Not a fan of the young mumbling lead actors, and Rachel Nichols was only there to look good.

The action set pieces were well done and interspersed with humour in Sommers' usual style, the CGI was decent enough and the battle at the end was well done.

The end sets up a sequel nicely, and I look forward to it as I found this outing a lot of fun.

 

I've just come back from holiday in Hungary and we had a chance to watch Fanboys, which is a movie about some SW fans who decide to break into Skywalker Ranch to have a sneak preview of Episode I.

I'm not much into fan movies but this one was awesome; laugh-out-loud funny, left-us-in-stitches hilarious and simply moving. If anyone has not seen it, it's worth giving it a go.

 

I'd like to see Fanboys but have no idea if it's picked-up a distribution deal here in the UK. It does sound good though. Do they express their thoughts after seeing Episode I?? Assuming their break-in was successful too.

I've seen quite a few new releases but the highlight without a doubt was Inglourious Basterds. It's really good and Tarentino back, very nearly, on top form. It's too long and self-indulgent, but it deserves to be because this is different and refreshing cinema at its best.

Haven't seen G.I Joe and even though it goes against everything I stand for it does seem like an honest brainless flick that does exactly what Transformers should have done (but didn't because Michael Bay is a ****pot).

I really want to try and see Shorts too. It looks crazy

The Avatar trailer looks mighty impressive I must say and I'm looking forward to District-9 which shall be hitting our screens next week.

Star Wars Robot Chicken 2 was indeed excellent.

 

Not particularly impressed by The Final Destination. It is still just a re-hash of the other 3 movies, the only new novelty being that it is in 3D. OK they managed a few new deaths but it was pretty predictable. But if you like that sort of thing then I guess it's good no-brain stuff. I still prefer the 2nd film.

 

Dorian Gray. Erm, I found it boring but wasn't so bad. My boyfriend loves this sort of thing and he loved the movie too. Not much more to add really.

 

Dorian Gray was a little drawn out in the middle, and I'm informed the way it was done was not very much like the novel. It was nice to see an Ealing Studios film again and some of it was filmed in the Greenwich Tunnel which I found amusing.

Colin Firth was good, Ben Barnes didn't have to do much other then look handsome, I didn't think he portrayed the cursed character overly well.