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

I saw Miami Vice the other day. I heard it was pretty good all things considered, but I just found it ok. It was by Michael Mann, a director with a reputation and quite a strong cult following with movies like Manhunter, Heat and Last of the Mohicans under his belt. But like all those movies, I couldn't really adjust comfortably to the pacing and found the movie to be too long and too over-padded, but with some great moments and moments in the movie when y'all ready to praise it to high heaven... at least until it wears off as the movie drags you out for half-hour after half-hour.

So like all of his movies I've seen, for me, they're ok. Not motivated to rewatch ever though.
 
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Watched last Terminator last night…god, this series should have ended with the second one (there is even a final scene for it, but removed it, perhaps so it would not obstruct any sequels).
If you have any love for the first two, avoid watching this.
Edit…ehe, here it is, courtesy of me…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv5omWKXTqE
Linda Hamilton still looks tough as nails, even at old age. :p
 
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Haha...thanks, Celtic...seriously this is actually more worth watching than his last movie.
 
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It should have ended with the first movie, and Cameron should have stopped directing after Aliens.
 
After Porn Ends - I find the backgrounds and lifestories of strippers, porn stars, sex workers, etc just fascinating to hear about. And no, it's not the lewd films or services they are associated with that draws me. It was interesting to hear the fates of some of the adult film stars from my teen and college years (Seka, Asia Carrera, Houston, et al). Definitely an interesting watch.
 
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Black Mass

5/10 and I might be being nice. Not sure why I am giving it such a high rating. Maybe it because, no that isn't right.

Anyways it is a rental.
 
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Martian

Pretty decent for a Hollywood space flick. Tries to stay somewhat close to realistic science (for the most part). 8/10
 
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Also saw the Martian. Decent enough, but not really what I was expecting based on the reviews. Had a kind of cheesy, not-so-serious vibe to it. Reminded me a bit of a Tony Scott popcorn film more than a Ridley Scott one.
 
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I watched The 13th Warrior the other day. A 1999 movie of the type that I used to pick-up as my buy two get one free back in my weekly Blockbusters days. I knew nothing about it but it's directed by the guy who directed Die Hard, comes from a Michael Crichton novel and stars Antonio Banderas with… omg… Omar Sharif, how bad can it be?

Well, it's that weird kind of low budget fantasy setting with pretensions to a serious big-budget audience. And it's virtually all unbearable crap. But not good crap like Conan or Flash Gordon, and not funny crap to compensate, but rather this almost unending link of cliches that leaves one more WTF'ed and yawning that anything else. There's tuns of light gore, but not a single flash of boobs or bums, for example, as if it was too good for that kind of thing, but not good enough for a decent script.

Its about 1000AD and an Arab diplomat, played by Bandares, gets banished to Europa for flirting with the Emperor of Baghdad's woman (first eyeroll) where he and his translator… omg… Omar Sharif, get lumbered with a Viking feast. Cue 20 yawning minutes of Viking cliches as Sharif translates things such as burping and hearty laughing. Eventually it's revealed by a mad old crone that 13 Warriors need to go north to defeat a great evil. And Banderas is to be the 13th.

So we get a movie supposedly all about the Banderas character when, in actuality, it's just the Magnificent Seven and Banderas just plays one of the tag-alongs to the primary cast of two 'real men' Vikings, played by some guys you might have heard of, but probably haven't. To which we get another 30 minutes of tired cliches as the Vikings learn to respect Banderas and perform such entertainment as belching and hearty laughing.

Finally the action kicks in around the two-thirds mark, but it turns out the great evil is just a horde of humans pretending to be generic Orcs. And this is no great spoiler… . Everything that takes place after this is ludicrously unbelievable horseshit as 1,000 Orc cavalry fail to take a small Viking village for no other reason than ex machina and our heroes have a 'big adventure' to kill a small, not even magical, woman in a cave.

Fantasy without magic, quite gorey but only good for saturday afternoon television, hearty laughing instead of dialogue. etc etc

No wonder Fantasy used to get such a bad cinema reputation. 6.6 on Metacritic… bwhahahaha, yeah… right…
 
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I watched The 13th Warrior the other day. A 1999 movie of the type that I used to pick-up as my buy two get one free back in my weekly Blockbusters days. I knew nothing about it but it's directed by the guy who directed Die Hard, comes from a Michael Crichton novel and stars Antonio Banderas with… omg… Omar Sharif, how bad can it be?

I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it before. It's known for being one of the biggest box office flops of all time. It only grossed $61 million worldwide after costing around $160 million to produce.
 
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I a stupid, I am Stupid….

I thought I would give Eli Roth one more try and watched his new movie Knock Knock.

I don't recommend this movie in any way, like the last XXX amount of movies he has directed since Hostel they have all been crap. Though some how I end up watching them. I either need to find a way to sleep more or not watch any more of his movies.

Two 20 year girls knock on some guys door played by Keanu Reeves in the rain. He invites them after listening to their story. No matter how many times he says no to their advances he ends up having sex with them.

Then blah blah blah blah ….
 
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The Martian

Best Ridley Scott movie in quite a while, though that's not saying much. Didn't care for the book enough to finish it, and the plot isn't really my thing.

I love sci-fi - but I'm not really enamored with hard science enough for that to sustain an entire story without the fun parts of fiction.

That said, I think the story worked better as a movie, because it kept the gist of the (very very familiar) survival of the smart concept - whilst being mercifully shorter. I think it would have been a bit better if they cut 20 minutes out.

Acting was nice, though I despised that token genius character who figured it all out whilst being Bioware-level in-your-face about it.

Looked good, too.

6.5/10
 
I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it before. It's known for being one of the biggest box office flops of all time. It only grossed $61 million worldwide after costing around $160 million to produce.

$160m???????? Was it all spend on cocaine? There's nothing on the screen to suggest anything more than a saturday afternoon tv movie... I'm dumbfounded!
 
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*The Intern*

Light and enjoyable, not 'great' - but nor was that the aim. For my wife and I it was exactly what we were looking for yesterday, and frankly was better than we'd expected.

A lot of it plays off the actors and the chemistry between Hathaway and DeNiro. I'm really glad that they didn't do anything creepy and kept the age-roles clear. I also appreciated that they played DeNiro and Rene Russo at their actual ages in a believable way - he is constantly at funerals as he is 71, she isn't so used to it being a decade younger.

Overall not something you will revisit, might catch on cable, definitely not a 'must see on big screen' type thing. But for us ... hit the right spot.
 
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Saw Sicario last night. Overall good, but the last half hour was a little far fetched as described below. 93% on Rotten Tomatoes seems too high.

The notion that former prosecutor Del Toro could somehow single handedly infiltrate the drug lord's manor and kill all in his path was ridiculous and demeaned a good thriller to some crappy 80's Bruce Willis action movie. Did I miss the part where they described how he had been trained as an elite assassin?
 
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Mr Holmes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3168230/

It has only taken 3/4 of this year to find a 2015 movie worth watching. The story of Mr.Holmes as an old man 30 years after his last case. Though sad at times, he is trying to remember and write about his last case. I won't say much more than that about, beside the fact I really enjoyed watching it 8.5/10.
 
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