What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

Just watched the Bourne trilogy. It was better than I had expected, good but not truly great, with a conspiracy plot easy enough to understand while also not feeling completely stupid. But it was a shame with the constantly shaking cam in the last two.
 
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Mrs dte is all over it. She's done with #3, but she's been mixing in other books so she doesn't finish the series too quickly. She's trying real hard to get me to take her to the movie on opening night. I'm doing my best to shoot that down.

I love it when we all go to stuff together, and while I'm not all that into the books I'm good to go ...
 
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Just watched the Bourne trilogy. It was better than I had expected, good but not truly great, with a conspiracy plot easy enough to understand while also not feeling completely stupid. But it was a shame with the constantly shaking cam in the last two.

I know what you mean. When you sea this at the movies, it gets really annoying when you have to sit to close. (had that with nr 3) Still I like the trilogy.

The movie I saw recentely was Righteous Kill -> Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in one movie again. I liked Heat a lot, but this movie isn't worth your money. I could see the plot from miles away and it's not that I constantly watch movies nowadays. Watch it when it comes out on tv or rent it (much cheaper then the movies).
 
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Rented Tropic Thunder last night. What a dog. A couple very funny bits surrounded by about 85 minutes of crap.
 
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Movies watching soon are:
Lost Boys Pt. 2 (HA!)
Solaris (based on Stanislaw Lem's classic novel)
Superbad

Movie seen:

Long Way Round
An excellent documentary about Ewen McGregor and a friend of his as they motorbike around the world from starting and returning to LA. The ride gets really intersting once they enter Estonia/Latvia, Russia, Khazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia etc.
Up there with Two Lane Blacktop as the best car/bike movie ever. I like it better then Easy Rider as Easy Rider had too much Hippy commune junk in it.

Cross of Iron
Excellent WWII movie about the German troops in Stalingrad. Effects are not modern but the gore make Saving Private Ryan look like Disney.

When Trumpets Fade
Another excellent WWII movie.

Primer
Low budget sci fi movie about Time travel. One of the best movies using some cutting edge theories on non-singular timeline, and non-parallel universe time travel. Actually one of the best Sci Fi movies ever.

Sound of Thunder
Movie adaptation of a Ray Bradbury time travel novel. Also one of the best time travel movies I've seen. Not as cutting edge theories as Primer but close. Some really cool ideas and extrapolations shown when timelines are altered, as well as how the altered past timeline changes the present one midstream.

Also been watching not a movie but a TV series based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, its called "Legend of the Seeker". It has a good Lord of the RIngs feel to it, even filmed in New Zealand. Its on TV on Sundays during football usually, since my teams having quite a few unwatchably bad games, I've seen most of the series. Terry Goodkind is not my favorite fantasy author, I've read the first huge book. But the TV series is definitely good, and for me his work is much more watchable then readable, as in I think the TV series is quite better then the book though the book is still pretty good, not great, not a solid good, but pretty good haha.
There is another movie about a guy who rode al the way from Canada through South America for a year on his motorcycloe that is supposed to be good,been wanting to find it, don't remeber the name of it...
 
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Cross of Iron
Excellent WWII movie about the German troops in Stalingrad. Effects are not modern but the gore make Saving Private Ryan look like Disney.

Pretty strong meat there from Sam Peckinpah...
(bonus points for the reference)

Yeah, that is one of my fave WWII movies.

We watched last week:
- Wall*E - everyone enjoyed it quite a bit, since we're pretty much 'tree-huggers' anyway we didn't mind the heavy handed messages ...
- Closer - some good acting but otherwise a pretty crappy movie.
 
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I didn't feel overly abused by Wall*E's enviro-nut message. While plain as day, I didn't find it obtrusive or preachy. Great movie.

Saw Twilight over the weekend. This is a chick flick, folks. It's got enough action to keep the boyfriends/husbands from falling asleep, but don't for a moment think that it's not a romance first and foremost. Mrs dte, who's saving the fourth book like a kid saving the last M&M, looooooved the movie. I found it to be a huge helping of "meh", although the female lead's dad is very well done (I'm told he's even better in the book, but no complaints).
 
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Jeez ... I forgot to mention Twilight! We went to the 10:30AM show as that was the only possibility. I thought it was decent - and was the only one who hasn't read any of the books. Oldest son read all 4, wife is finishing #4, younger son is on #3 ...
 
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Three movies this weekend:
The inner circle, a surreal movie about Stalin's projectionist that really painted a bizarro world. 4/5
Die Welle, German movie about authoritanism as a school experiment. Decent but somehow it didnt feel quite tied together. 3/5
Corto Maltese - Ballad of the Salt Sea. French classical animated adventure. 3/5 for the movie, 1.5/5 for the dubbing to English (horrible casting), 2/5 for the Swedish subtitles (somehow subtitles are getting worse by the year, I guess I should be happy with a name that I believe should have been Grosvenor getting morphed into Groovesnore being the worst mistake).
 
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Caught Quarantine at the cheap theatre over the weekend. There's a fair bit of Blair Witch ripoff in the story and the cinematography, but they did a nice job with the show. Very good with building tension, and they let enough clues (probably too obvious to really call "clues") thru that the story makes sense. We had a family of talkers behind us that was bad enough to get us to move seats...right in front of a different set of talkers (although not as bad). *sigh*
 
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Caught Quarantine at the cheap theatre over the weekend. There's a fair bit of Blair Witch ripoff in the story and the cinematography, but they did a nice job with the show.

Yep, I saw that one at the theatre a when it came out. I had pretty much the same opinion, but I thought it really ripped off Cloverfield more than anything.
 
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Pretty strong meat there from Sam Peckinpah...
(bonus points for the reference)

Yeah, that is one of my fave WWII movies.

We watched last week:
- Wall*E - everyone enjoyed it quite a bit, since we're pretty much 'tree-huggers' anyway we didn't mind the heavy handed messages ...
- Closer - some good acting but otherwise a pretty crappy movie.

If you like Cross of Iron, definitely check out When Trumpets Fade, it is similar in its realism, emotion, and cinematography.

I finally saw Superbad. It is an excellent comedy in the spirit of Fast Times at Ridgemont High in that it chronicles a week of high school experience today. I think there are tons of people who can make a plot nearly as good to better then these tyoes of movies form their own experiences. As long as you were an adventurous, creative, exploring, fun kid in high school-college you probably have had enough funny situatuations to pack into a weeks worth of semi-docucomedy like Superbad, Fast Times at Ridgemont High etc. There are tons of semi-low budget funny coming of age movies out there just waiting to be made. I think movies like this in huge numbers are vastly better then the majority of shmuck thats out there.

Other movies I saw were:
Talledega Nights - what did you guys think of it? I thought it was ok, not nearly as good as Superbad, but ok when you've been drinking.
and
Ali G-I thought it was a good complement to Borat. I wish he would get going with is next project.
 
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Quarantine
"Quarantine" was base on Spanish horror film released last year called "[REC]". It was extremely well received by film critics (rotten tomatoes - 94%). I saw the remake couple days ago and definitely not for casual movie goers or a family film. After the last scene of the film, a granny sitting behind me uttered "Wha...what?!, what kind of rubbish film is this...".

IMO it is still pretty good horror film, but seriously not as good as the original one. If you already see the remake - then there is not much point to see the original as the plot is very similar.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
A very formulaic, below average sci-fi story, plus a rather bad plot development. Yes we have big stars like Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, and especially the later perform her role pretty well - the film already pretty much doomed with the uninspiring opening and overused story.

Bolt
A pretty entertaining animation. Still, i think it is one or two levels below than the better "Wall-E". I would preferred much complex story telling in these kind animation but at last - it's uncommon to find as most them are marketed to children.

Transporter 3
I am still impressed by the car chase, the numerous fights, the nice muscles or "six-packs" on Jason Statham's body. Beside that, everything else pretty much are in a gutter...
 
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Quantum of Solace:
Not as bad as expected. Very fast, very expensive. More action flic than Bond. Now the revenge story is over. I hope the next Bond gets a bit slower. C+

Indiana Jones 4:
Nice popcorn cinema. The charismatic actors heave it above average. It doesn't get more mainstream than this. Clearly weaker than the 3 old movies, but still quite decent. B-

Max Payne:
Surprisingly good film noir. Solid actors, beautiful visuals, convincing atmosphere, not much action. Maybe the best game movie so far. Just don't expect a great story. It's about the world according to Max. The rest doesn't matter. B

The Bank Job:
Old school heist movie until the middle, a bit Topkapi style. Then the usual new British cinema chaos kicks in. Recommended. A mainstream compatible B.

And a movie for little children and people who still feel young. If the child understands German it doesn't get any better than Das Sams (old TV version, not the cinema remake). Absolutely wonderful puppet work. Creative, really funny, harmless and easy to identify with, without being trivial. That's a clear A.
 
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Quantum of Solace:
Not as bad as expected. Very fast, very expensive. More action flic than Bond. Now the revenge story is over. I hope the next Bond gets a bit slower. C+

Agreed - took the kids to see it while my wife had a work party to attend just before Christmas. She didn't care to miss it, and I remember little from the experience other than the generic feel and lousy cinematography/

Marley & Me:
While I have little tolerance for Aniston and Wilson, find book movies generally lacking ... this was actually much better than expected! Definite romantic comedy / tear-jerker, but all of us enjoyed it, and my older son (on the cusp of being an angsty teen) even confessed to enjoying it and crying. B
 
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The Day the Earth Stood Still
A very formulaic, below average sci-fi story, plus a rather bad plot development. Yes we have big stars like Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, and especially the later perform her role pretty well - the film already pretty much doomed with the uninspiring opening and overused story.

Yes, below average. The first half is quite okay, but after that the movie completely collapses. It's a waste of time.

It's amazing how even mainstream disaster movies get so much worse when the focus moves from story to f/x.
 
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Got the latest Mummy movie for Xmas--Curse of the Chinese Shapeshifting 3-Headed Dragon Mummy (with Yetis) or something. Terrible, terrible movie--even worse than you would expect from the series, which was kind of fun in a campy way at first. I wouldn't even advise renting this one unless you're a student of computer animation, and then only if you want to know how special effects can't salvage something that's piss poor to begin with.
 
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@magerette- When they first animate the skeleton army, watch the ones in the background closely. Someone had some fun with their work. Nothing bad, they just did a lot more animation than was really necessary for background stuff. Outside of appreciating that, the movie was pretty much a dud.

Took the Wild Dogs to Bedtime Stories Saturday. Citizen Kane has nothing to worry about for serious cinema, but this was very good family entertainment. Surprisingly so. Adam Sandler does a nice job walking the line of a "simple guy" without falling into Waterboy/Gump territory. The story is fairly decent, even though it's pretty formulaic. Overall, more than the sum of its parts and I felt fine paying theatre prices for it (although there's really nothing there that would be missing on the "small screen").
 
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