Last OK Movie You Saw

[Mister Jack]

I can only assume they're setting up a sequel where THE DINOSAURS WERE BRED TO BE WEAPONS BUT THEY LOST CONTROL or some dumb shit like that.

[deanb]

The I-Rex only ripped its tracker out after it escaped the enclosure. Sure it was smart, but it wasn't strong enough to break out the enclosure on its own, the only way it could have gotten out was with the aid of someone else. In this case Owen for being all "well the machines can't see it, let's go into a dino pen with three other guys, despite not long rescuing a guy from another dino pen". I dunno something like

 

 

Jurassic World Park Staff Manual

Dealing with Carnivorous Assets

1. Only enter pens when all Assets are subdued and accounted for (see Dosage Manual for guide)
2. Until all assets are accounted for do not enter pen
3. All Assets are equipped with GPS trackers which can be used to locate assets within the pen and the Island
4. Please keep a low iron diet as this will destabilise the assets metabolism when they eat you for not reading the above

 

A fair chunk of past park staff and vistors were eaten, making sure that there's a crap ton of H&S and crossed t's and dotted i's is going to be a big thing for them. The big boss guy even says they had to cover ever eventuality for the park to be open.

 

The Parks admin not knowing what's in it is sorta fair given it's not like a regular theme park manager will know the exact compositional structure of all their rollercoasters. (you know I get there's dinosaurs n all there, but no rollercoasters n such too?).

[TheMightyEthan]

I didn't mean that he didn't already know (which he didn't, but that was fine for the reasons you stated), what I meant was that when he went to the genetics lab and specifically asked the scientist dude was basically like "not telling, it's classified".

[TheMightyEthan]

It's never mentioned in the movie, but Chris Pratt has mentioned it in interviews. It would have taken like a seconds to cover and be like "oh he's a dolphin sea mine trainer guy".

 

I want to go back to this: are we sure it's not mentioned in the movie?  The reason I ask is because I had it in my head that he was a dolphin trainer for the military, and I never read any interviews or saw any prerelease media other than the trailers.  Though it is possible I just heard that he was a SEAL, saw that they had him training the raptors, and assumed for myself that he had trained dolphins.

[deanb]

I'm pretty sure someone on here mentioned it. There's also places like Twitter too. Either way I'm pretty certain with regards to the film it's never mentioned beyond him "being in the navy".

[Mr. GOH!]

I am certain it was not in the movie because I was waiting to hear the justification for his expertise the entire time. I even speculated to my wife that they cut out a justification because it would be silly and along the lines of that Owen had been SEAL training dolphins.

 

Personally, I think it makes it a better movie if you just assume Owen is the SEAL Pratt played in Blackhawk down; he's taken out Osama, so of course he's the only man with the gumption to train prehistoric genetically-engineered monsters.

[Hot Heart]

The other thing with that bit in Jurassic World is...

 

Owen could've checked the footage and seen what happened.

 

"That's impossible! It can't have climbed out of here! We probably would've noticed on our way in, what with it killing everything in sight."

"Well, I'm just going to assume it has escaped, and instead of watching the camera footage and actually getting a look at this thing, I will go inside the enclosure and see if I can learn something from a bunch of claw marks while saying some stupid line for the trailer..."

 

[Mister Jack]

Hold up, Chris Pratt was in Black Hawk Down?

[Hot Heart]

I believe he means Zero Dark Thirty.

Edited July 9, 2015 by Hot Heart

[CorgiShinobi]

Benefit of the doubt the characters were thinking the big carnivore was more interested in freeeeedooooooom than being a Murdersaurus, though we know different. Speaking of, one thing that didn't bother me that seems to be a complaint...

 

 

When the T-Rex and Blue, a.k.a. the last raptor, part ways. I hear how the T-Rex was suppose to up and eat Blue, but after nearly dying, I can't say I'm surprised the T-Rex wouldn't bother itself to chase after Blue. I get it's suppose to be a "mutual respect" thing too, but sometimes you just gotta walk it off.

 

[Mister Jack]

I didn't really have a problem with that part outside of how corny it was.

 

 

Who's gonna have the energy to chase after a dinky little raptor after a brawl like that?

 

[Mister Jack]

Speak of the devil.

 

[Mr. GOH!]

Ant-Man. It was an ok superhero movie, a bland heist movie, and an anemic comedy, but it was good-natured and competent enough to keep it from being bad. It does *not* feel like an Edgar Wright movie at all. Paul Rudd was not really able to shine, sadly, and his Scott Lang was inconsistent; if he saw himself as a Robin Hood whistleblower, why did he so easily agree to burgle Pym's house? Why did Pym set it up so that Lang would burgle him rather than approach him directly? 

 

I'm also not a big fan of how Hydra was involved and how, in the MCU, it's became a sort of monolithic evil force that stands for nothing other than being generally nefarious, yet it somehow attracts a huge following of die-hard believers from all levels of society. Ultimately, Hydra just isn't a very interesting villain,at least in the recent Marvel movies.

 

I thought some of the action was fun and clever, but the great Thomas the Tank Engine visual joke was ruined by the trailers. 

 

I also feel bad for the always-great Bobby Cannavale and Judy Greer being relegated to such bland roles. Especially since Greer played a similarly powerless mother role int he terrible Jurassic World.

 

What puzzles me is that the themes of Ant-Man should have yielded a much more coherent movie with real heart, since all the characters' arcs are about family and finding one's place in a family. Hell, it could have remedied the Hydra bit if it showed that Hydra made Cross feel like he belonged to a family after Pym's rejection. Instead, Coss's deal with Hydra just looked spiteful.

[deanb]

It does *not* feel like an Edgar Wright movie at all.

To be fair he hasn't worked on it for well over a year, and at best his hand is in some parts of the script, but most of shooting was done after he left and certainly no hand in the editing which is where a lot of his stuff shines.

[Mr. GOH!]

I'm not saying it should feel like an Edgar Wright movie; I was responding to the hopes of some fans that a lot of Edgar Wright would remain in the movie after his departure as director.

[deanb]

Oh I'm pretty sure his leaving was like flame-thrower to the bridges on the way out and some C4 for good measure. I don't think he was keen on Marvel meddling with trying to put MCU in the film.

[TheRevanchist]

Paul Rudd was not really able to shine

 

I'm not saying he is incapable of creating such, but...

[Mal]

Roar and Ant Man.

 

A friend showed me Roar. Shit is terrible but got redeemed for its premise... big cats everywhere. The movie is in ways hilarious but on the other hand it is scary.

 

Ant Man, if I can get into traditional mecha and magical girl tropes then I guess I can get into Marvel movies and their tropes.

[TheRevanchist]

Pixels.  I was going into the theater with dread, but my son was hell bent on seeing it.  So, I took him and we watched it in 3D.

 

Much better than I expected.  There were even a few scenes where I laughed quite loudly.  The theater wasn't packed, so I tried to stifle my laughs, but couldn't.  There are some plot holes, but every movie has them, some more glaring than others.

 

I did stick around through the credits.  I noticed something about the actors in the movie.  A good portion of the cast had the last names "Sandler" and "James".  A fun fact about the movie that should tell you the movie isn't going to win awards.

[TheMightyEthan]

^ That comment is the most glowingly positive thing I've seen someone say about that movie.

[Mr. GOH!]

Trainwreck. Saw it with my wife, who is a huge Amy Schumer fan. The movie is just your middle-of-the-road Apatovian Rom-Com with Schumer playing the typical male role of a person in their early 30's who covers up their loneliness and depression with a chaotic and sexually free life when really they just want to have a conventional monogamous relationship with marriage and kids. There are some funny moments, but it was way too shaggy and inconsistent, like the vast majority of Apatow's work. Also like the rest of Apatow's work, it uses weakly transgressive elements (drug use that is not presented as particularly damaging, a female protagonist who enjoys casual sex) to tell a very conventional love story. 

[TheRevanchist]

^ That comment is the most glowingly positive thing I've seen someone say about that movie.

 

Right!  I heard it was worse than The Net.

 

A lot of the complaints I have been hearing have been from people going "Oh, no, not another Adam Sandler movie!".  But, few people I have talked to actually watched Pixels.  I'd give it a 5 or 6 out of 10.  It's no where near as bad as a Disney Channel original movie, but it's not going to win any award for best gaffer or best person-holding-sound-mic either.

[SomTervo]

Speaking of Edgar Wright, I watched The World's End on Sunday night.

 

That was after a friend and I tried watching it on Saturday night, and literally turned it off during the scene where the aliens/automatons are revealed. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to reveal the 'villains' that way?

 

Unlike Shaun of the Dead, and to a lesser extent Hot Fuzz, there is no foreshadowing about what is going to happen or why in this film. Up until that scene, half an hour in, where the film's plot utterly shits the bed, it could literally just be a film about five childhood friends going back to their home town, and it probably would have been pretty great. Shaun of the Dead makes sure to use parallel panning shots and classic Edgar Wright focus-cuts to show how things are gradually falling apart, and Hot Fuzz had the 'murder mystery' plot style to gradually build up the 'polite small-town killer cult' angle.

 

That scene kills the pace and kills the plot. It is completely impossible to suspend your disbelief when it happens, because up until then there was no indication anything remotely supernatural could happen in the story.

 

The worst thing is that the following 45 minutes is pretty good. It becomes a quirky Invasion of the Body Snatchers/The Thing sort of joke sci-fi jam, and the writing gets a bit funnier. The fight scenes are brilliantly choreographed, even if they're completely unbelievable. The concept behind the aliens is really enjoyable, too, especially in contrast with the human's nihilistic worldview. The aliens are in many ways the good guys, and we're the shit-up animals struggling agonisingly through existence.

 

There are more plot holes than in Shaun or Fuzz combined. Quick examples: someone says at some point it all relates to their original pub crawl – but it doesn't and this is never mentioned again; how the hell did Considine's character escape the car and meet them underground; the crazy guy's crazy straw would not save him from DNA scraping; they throw down the 'automated people are recycled' jargon in one short scene but never elaborate on it and the characters barely seem bothered that half their friends are dead.

 

The ending sequence is phenomenal in concept and I was loving the brave 'the world really is ending' message it left us with, but then to climax with a confusing, meaningless scene where Simon Pegg has become some sort of travelling BNP-killer, when he also has no reason to protect the 'Blanks' throughout the story and suddenly decides to after the apocalypse, with a terrible action-cut for the very end...

 

I just couldn't believe it. A heinous end to the Cornetto Trilogy, made all the worse by how it clearly has a heart of gold, it's just executed like shit.

 

I wanted to put it in the Crap Movie thread, but I couldn't. There are slightly too many redeeming features here.

Edited August 4, 2015 by kenshi_ryden

[deanb]

Equilibrium

 

It was alright, though I'd been led to believe it was some major film I'd missed out on (which I guess costs it some points). Quite a strong influence from the Matrix (I had to check which came first, was surprised to find this was the newer film since some parts are kinda dated). Bale mostly carried in the film, there was some kind of weird direction, especially with some of the "gun katana" thing in it that crops up. It's I guess trying to be bullet time without being bullet time. I guess I appreciate the effort, but it doesn't work too well.

I guess I also appreciate it tried to have a bit of a message n what not with the whole emotions side of things, but it was ...yeah just really weirdly directed I guess is how it felt. And like spent a lot of time over the whole him coming off the drugs, and wayyy too many times did it let him slip up in an obvious way and folks for most part just let it slide. I get that his partner was "in on it" to get him into the underground, but there was all the grunts too.

 

It was an okay film. I've watched it, I can cross it off the list.

[deanb]

After watching all these films looks like I'm going to have to return some video tapes.

 

Probably a controversial placement, but American Psycho just didn't quite click with me. I guess cos it's purely focused around Bateman just felt kind of empty to a degree. Probably the point, and helps build the "unreliable narrator" they're going with, but just didn't do it for me.

Good film, I see a lot of what it's going for (usual "curtains are blue cos he's upset" stuff), but...probably not a repeat viewing.

I do appreciate that despite the fact it's got a lot of murders it wasn't really "gory" or really revel in it too much, not keen on that.

 

 

(Also I think this ends my recent stint of Christian Bale films for now)