list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

BroSpence wrote: Karate Kid fans in the MMA crowd

Such people exist?

Toaster Mantis wrote: BroSpence wrote: Karate Kid fans in the MMA crowd Such people exist?

Apparently. A fair amount of the reviews for the film were by people that said they 1. thought the movie was similar to karate kid 2. they were fans of MMA and the UFC 3. liked the film because of these elements.

BLEH!

I'm itching to watch John Carpenter's The Thing for the first time in more than ten years. Problem is, in a reversal of the general trend, I am getting more and more squeamish with age!

Anyway, if you haven't seen it already, go and watch it. Just don't eat anything before you do. Or maybe eat as much as you can, because you sure as heck won't be able to eat anything afterwards for a while. There are some scenes there that will WTF you forever. 

Toaster Mantis wrote: Hmmm. Last night I watched Ghost Dog, a really weird movie starring Forest Whitaker as a modern-day hit man who lives by a medieval code of honour. The plot is very much that of a typical action movie but instead it's done as a slow and deliberate existentialist drama... it kinda feels like a Quentin Tarantino movie without the ironic detachment and non-linear narrative. Okay, that's pretty much the two things that define QT's filmmaking style so it's probably not a good description at all . Anyway, I quite like Ghost Dog. It's the sort of movie that on paper shouldn't work at all but in practice it somehow mostly gels together.

Thats one of my top 10 favorite movies. Whitaker made a perfect urban samurai. The story was executed well, as Jim Jarmusch is able to mold such odd tales to his liking, and the soundtrack by RZA is a real keeper too (if you're into that kind of music). The relationships/battles between the different characters were also excellent. I was particularly fond of Whitaker and the ice cream man, and him and his pigeons.

If you ever have a chance, the Hagakure (Book of the Samurai). is a pretty interesting book to read too. Not a novel or really a historical account of the samurai, just a treatis.

Do you mean this one:



That's just nasty...

Jimbo wrote: Visitor13 wrote: I'm itching to watch John Carpenter's The Thing for the first time in more than ten years. Problem is, in a reversal of the general trend, I am getting more and more squeamish with age! Anyway, if you haven't seen it already, go and watch it. Just don't eat anything before you do. Or maybe eat as much as you can, because you sure as heck won't be able to eat anything afterwards for a while. There are some scenes there that will WTF you forever.  Yup. I first saw it when I was around 8-9 or so. Not such a smart move on my part. I'm not the type to get nightmares from these things, but the images stayed in my head for quite a while.

loved it when it came out ('82 I think), still do.. great build up of suspense, Carpenter at his best (the music too, find The Essential John Carpenter Film Music Collection)   ..the original is considered a classic but I think Carpenter's remake is far superior

Red Dragon
Say what you want about Hannibal, it might have been goofy as hell but it certainly wasn't as boring as this one. The cast is great but everyone except Anthony Hopkins and possibly Harvey Keitel is totally miscast, it looks like an episode of a TV series, the score feels like it belongs in a completely different movie and all the good elements never really come together. Everything that worked in The Silence of the Lambs did not work here. Even Anthony Hopkins, who usually can elevate an otherwise unremarkable movie above average (e. g. Fracture), is just going through the motions. Now, whose genius idea was it that Brett Ratner - of all people - would know how to make a horror movie? The only explanation I can think of is that the people at Universal Studios must have picked the director totally at random....

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
Now this is more like it! This has been my single most anticipated movie of the year, and boy did it not only not disappoint... it actually exceeded my expectations! The sort of monster fights that would have been the climax in a lesser fantasy movie happen early on (the actual climax is further evidence that Transformers would have been ten times better had Guillermo del Toro directed), there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it-cameo from the Elder Things, Selma Blair has never been better, the storyline outside the monster bash is actually fairly engaging even if a few scenes are handled a bit heavy-handedly, the sense of humour is great and somehow manages to not derail the seriousness. And there's a lot of bittersweet gravity to this movie, what with how its various victories are in the end won with even greater cost than those in the other great superhero sequel movie of the year, The Dark Knight even if it isn't anywhere as relentlessly bleak. My favourite part of the movie, though, was actually Luke Goss as Elric of Melniboné... I mean, Nuada of Bethmoora. Seriously, the characters are so similar that it basically turns the movie into crossover fanfiction especially when considering that the God of the Forest is what the Cloverfield monster should have looked like... but it's so good crossover fanfiction that I don't mind it at all. Anyway, Luke Goss makes Nuada that rare villain who manages to elicit sympathy from the viewer while still being frightening, probably because he's a pastiche of a tragically heroic character. This gives the movie some kind of tension that the first one didn't - Nuada does a much better job at convincingly making Hellboy doubt his loyalties than Rasputin ever did. Anyway, Hellboy 2 might now be perfect - there's a couple things in the script that don't make that much sense if you think about it, and the occasional moment of schmaltz - but I haven't been this entertained by a movie in a long, long time.

Visitor13 wrote: I'm itching to watch John Carpenter's The Thing for the first time in more than ten years. Problem is, in a reversal of the general trend, I am getting more and more squeamish with age! Anyway, if you haven't seen it already, go and watch it. Just don't eat anything before you do. Or maybe eat as much as you can, because you sure as heck won't be able to eat anything afterwards for a while. There are some scenes there that will WTF you forever.

We haven't made it out to see many new movies we would have liked to go see these days before they aren't running anymore.  Speaking of John Carpenter's movies, The Thing is pretty cool, I also like They Live and Prince Of Darkness and Dark Star.

Jim Garten wrote: Do you mean this one: That's just nasty...

That's the one. I wouldn't want to see a new version with that scene included, tbh.

There's a somewhat similar scene in Deep Rising, but as bad as it is, it still would not be that gross.

Drunken Wu Tang - got this gem on VHS for 95 cents. What a ridiculous movie. A Yuen brothers kung fu production. There was hardly a plot to determine what was happening and either the events were written as ridiculous as they were or it was just horribly mistranslated. To add to the list of many things that were surprising and...out of this world (a GIANT sword) it featured elements of racism and pedophilia. Granted the latter part wasn't detailed or that horrific (an old drunk racially stereo typed chinese man made 5 young boys drop their pants so he could put a broken basket around their waste so he could see whether they were "cherry virgins". Which had almost no context, and even so was disturbing in a light hearted WTF kind of way (the many absurd events before this make the scene...less shocking).

As the movie progressed the "cherry virgin" was supposed to be used for some wacky daoist ritual which still didn't make sense as the drunk stereotyped man was creepy. The movie also had a "Watermelon Monster" which attacked people that came into a large room containing some secret scroll. The monster was a ball, half the size of a man, that had two legs and chased the intruder(s) with its chomping teeth. This "watermelon monster" was all black and had big red lips. Aside from the creepy pedophile aspect and the two elements of racism this movie was entertaining for its completely absurd fight scenes and translation into English.

???/10

to give you a better idea of what I witnessed/own now, here is a review with picturesREVIEW with pics and a video on youtube featuring one of those crazy things that are part of the movie obviously.....BEWarrrreeeeeeee

Edited by BroSpence - September 17 2008 at 00:07