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Last Good Movie You Saw


Gyaruson
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Avengers 2! It was great. I think they tried to do a bit too much as the movie just felt busy the entire time. I almost wish they had set up the idea and possibly the creation of Ultron in another movie and then I feel the movie would actually have a small amount of room to breathe. Still good though

 

I also saw Mad Max... Wow. That might be one of the best action movies to have come out in a very long time. The story was straight forward, but the character progression was so well done and the action sequences were just fun to watch. This movie goes to show you don't need an overly complicated plot to create a fantastic movie.

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I'm going to see it this weekend. Very hyped by the reviews, but all I really needed to know is that somewhere in the movie there's a vehicle with gigantic speaker set and dude who's blasting metal with flamethrowing guitar. That sounds so awesome I'm having a boner just thinking about it.

 

Also, does anybody remember Tom Hardy from that one Star Trek movie?

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I know I'm late to the party, but Mad Max was a brilliant film. I have never seen such a kickass and exciting scathing indictment of male power fantasies. Beautiful photography, great editing, masterful filmmaking all-around with gleefully insane elements that are nonetheless coherent when taken as a whole. A few wonky special effects here and there, and Tom Hardy's ever-present weird voice (he has a weird voice in every movie he's been in that I have seen since Inception, for some odd reason; even the independent movie that consists entirely of him making phone calls from his car).

 

I cannot really believe that Hollywood allowed Miller to make the film the way he did, but I guess the man who made Babe 2: Pig in the City gets whatever he wants.

 

Edit: Oh, and your girlfriend is completely incorrect, Nexus; the story, while not convoluted, was excellent. Only Max's character arc was kind of meh.

 

Edit 2: Upon reflection, even Max's arc was good.

Edited by Mr. GOH!
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The second and third are totally watchable. The first is not apocalyptic in the same way as the later three, as it takes place before any nuclear war. The original cut of the first one is hard for us USAns to understand because everyone in the movie has a thick as hell Aussie accent. The redub is kinda lame, though.

 

But the continuity isn't important, really. Mad Max movies are like the the Man With No Name Westerns. The first always does take place first, as the central event that shapes Max's approach to the Wasteland and its people  occurs in it, which I put in spoiler tags below, but the initial voiceover to any of the other films tells you what you need to know.

 

 

His wife and young son are murdered by a biker gang and Max is helpless to stop it.

 

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Well, the first three can also be watched independently without any issues, too, though they definitely have an order. The second one is great, and still watchable. Keep in mind that Miller has always used tons of practical effects, so the films really, really, really feel like they're made by the same person and, excepting the first, set in the same world. One of the amazing things about Fury Road is that it feels like a late 70's/early 80's grindhouse action movie, just with a big budget and a great production team. I mean, there are filmmaking techniques he uses in all four films that are not used in any other blockbusters today that make Fury Road really feel like it's of a piece with the earlier movies. Lots of quick zooms to characters' faces for reaction shots, and speeding up the film while dropping frames to make everything feel frenetic.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Jurassic World. Its great in that it is self aware. It pokes fun at the franchise as a whole, and how it lost its way and went over the top by the time 3 came out.

 

Jurassic Park is one of my all time favorite movies, and this movie is a great follow up to the first film. It doesn't ignore the sequels, but it doesn't really acknowledge them either.

 

For those of you worried about the trained raptors, the movie handles the subject very well.

 

A few issues I had with the film, one being the bad guy is your typical bad guy with typical bad guy motives that you see in almost every movie:

 

 

InGen's security team wants to militarize the raptors and also the I-Rex. This doesn't need to be a part of every badguy's story.

 

 

I also had a few issues with the way everybody's attitude towards the dinosaurs, it was so black and white. You had those who would say "these are animals not attractions" and the others who would constantly refer to them as "assets". It was a theme that I felt showed no shades of grey.

 

I watched it in D-box, and moving seats weren't as good as I had hoped. I may D-box another movie in the future but it didn't add anything to the movie.

 

The final scenes:

 

The final scene was so ridiculous, but in a good way. T-rex and a single velociraptor team up to fight the I-rex. It was just silly, but a damn good fight sequence.

The final sequence with the T-Rex roaring over Jurassic World was bit cheesy.

 

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Regarding the final scene and what is bound to be an iconic image in it:

 

 

There's an interview on io9 that addresses her heels. I was in the "wtf is she really wearing heels?" camp but it wasn't senseless according to the interview.

 

 

Anyways, the self-awareness really helped this movie. Enjoyable summer flick.

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Not long back from Jurassic World.

 

It does what it says on the tin.

 

  • Theme park with dinosaurs
  • Man does what man is not meant to do!!
  • Dinosaurs escape
  • Dinosaurs eat people
  • People try to stop dinosaurs eating people
  • Dinosaurs eat more people.
  • T-Rex Roar.
  • Soaring John Williams soundtrack.

(as if your inner kid doesn't step out for a peek at the film while this is playing:

 

My main complaints would be that since it was pointed out, yeah it's pretty heavy on the Samsungasaur and Tyrannosaurus Benz. Also it tries to fit stupid family drama into a film about dinosaurs. Divorce lawyers didn't exist 65million years ago. Lawyers are for t-rex fodder. Like that whole segment could have been left out.

 

It was a bit heavy on the "man cannot control nature" and "GMO is bad" n "corporations/number crunchers are bad" (which is weird given the product placement). I think there was another one in their. I guess "biological weapons are bad" but I'd kind of hope we had other things to tell us that.

 

Oh yeah I quite enjoyed the

 

Bird in the snow at the start. Nice touch

 

Oh also enjoyed the kid near the front shitting himself when the first Dino popped up. I think everyone in the cinema did. :P It's the reaction you want.

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Jurassic World. Did have a few niggles, but overall really liked it.

 

 

Everyone just standing around watching the T-rex and I-rex fight instead of RUNNING AWAY WHILE THE FUCKER IS DISTRACTED.

 

Also, did Mr. Military ever consider the fact that the enemy his trained raptors would be fighting would presumably have guns, and that this would significantly reduce the raptors' effectiveness?

 

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I saw Inside Out today, and I'm happy to say that it was a much needed return to form for Pixar after a rather worrying streak of underwhelming movies that began with Cars 2.  While I don't think anything is ever going to top Wall-e and The Incredibles for me, I would still put this one in the top tier of Pixar's film list.

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Love and Mercy. An interesting movie about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. One half is set in the 60's and focuses on the making the legendary Pet Sounds album and Brian's concurrent/subsequent slump into depression, The other half (told concurrently) takes place in the 80's and is about Melinda Ledbetter encountering Brian Wilson when he was essentially a drugged-up prisoner of his psychiatrist, who dominated his life and siphoned his money while overprescribing Wilson drugs that made Wilson into, essentially, a zombie. All the performances were fantastic; Paul Dano plays the 60's-era Wilson while John Cusack plays the broken 80's version, which works much better than it has any right to. Elizabeth Banks is good as Ledbetter and Paul Giamatti is great as the awful and manipulative psychiatrist. There are a few 'trippy' sequences late in the movie that detract from its overall quality in an attempt to resolve the 60's storyline by tying it explicitly to the 80's storyline when the thematic ties present throughout the early movie were connection enough, but otherwise it was very good.

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Two this week. Firstly Calvary. Brendan Gleeson knocks it out of the park once again. A fantastically dark tale about an Irish priest who is told he'll be murdered by one of his parishioners on the coming Sunday. Second viewing for me, and I think all the better for it. 

 

Secondly, Kingsmen. Words cannot describe my love for this movie. 

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Whiplash

I had a teacher in school who was intense like that. Nowhere near as bad, granted. But he'd push you. One second he was your best friend the next he's screaming at you for something small. So the whole movie gave me a lot of anxiety like I was in college again. Terrific performances though, fantastic ending too. Hopefully Reed Richards does a drum solo in Fantastic Four. 

But seriously...

 

How did he rent a car at 19??

 

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Whiplash

I had a teacher in school who was intense like that. Nowhere near as bad, granted. But he'd push you. One second he was your best friend the next he's screaming at you for something small. So the whole movie gave me a lot of anxiety like I was in college again. Terrific performances though, fantastic ending too. Hopefully Reed Richards does a drum solo in Fantastic Four. 

But seriously...

 

How did he rent a car at 19??

 

 

I had massive problems after the big event in the middle of the film.

The scene involving the car is laughable. There's just no way they'd allow him to play in that state. 

 

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Jurassic World

 

Easily right behind the first film. It has those summertime blockbuster flaws, which I mostly anticipated going into the film. I'm late to the party, so not much to bring to the table. I like the raptors, though the final moments made it uneasy on how to feel about what just went down. I have to comment on a few things:

 

 

So that secretary/attendant gal's death. I know the Jurassic movies usually have one brutal death, but I felt her death was over the top. Like, leave it at her falling to her death to illustrate what is happening to the other park goers being picked off. Having her dropped, picked up, dropped, drowning in the water, floating in the water, as a flying dinosaur struggles to pick her up from the water just for it to end with the water dinosaur.

 

Yeah, really should have left it at her falling to the pavement.

 

Oh, the random rocket that killed a raptor (probably Echo, the low tier raptor). Like, who the hell had a rocket left, caught a glimpse of the raptor, and hit it with dead-on precision? Also, I get the first film said raptors could open doors, but I find it hard to think Blue might have really made it all her way into the lab.

 

I also like to think at the end, when the T-Rex roars, it's actually complaining about how the I-Rex ate all the food and trashed the place.

 

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