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I'm almost tempted to suggest something like Xanadu, though. It was considered a horrible failure at release, and in this post-Glee, post American Idol atmosphere, it might be up for a revisit. What about something like "Teaching Mrs. Tingle." There was a lot of hype for the film while it was in production, then there was a was a lot of the negative reaction to the film due to backlash from Columbine? Taken out of the post-Columbine mindset, is it a better film than critics said?
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Sep 21, 2011 13:07
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sean10mm posted:That's an insult to both ABBA videos and very thin plots. Xanadu is just a painfully lovely movie. I don't even know if I have enough vodka in my freezer to make it watchable, which is a pretty good indicator that humans in general should avoid it. I sort of liked the soundtrack, though, and the animated sequence was nice looking. What sort of kills the film, though, I think is the Disco era in which its set in that dates it and destroys it with the era's fashion and design sense. I do get the feeling that there is a better film that could have been made with the same plot, though. Oddly enough, it's one of those things were a modern stage production of the show seems to have had a much more favorable public/critical opinion and reception of it than the original film. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 19:40
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I was in a Big Lots a few years ago and they had a Stephen King Collection DVD set for something like $10 with 3 movies. Shining: I would probably pay $10 for this on it's own. Shawshank: Wow! I'd gladly pay $10 for this AND The Shining! What's the third mo-- Dreamcatcher: *sigh* Putting it back on the shelf...
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Sep 25, 2011 12:46
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I'm sort of glad to see Hudson Hawk on that list. I haven't seen it in about 8 years, but I do recall that it was pretty fun and light and it really came across as a sort of precursor to the fun spy camp of the Austin Powers films. I still remember for most of the 90s, though, how the film was REALLY unpopular. It only seemed like recent years that some of the perception towards it has softened. I think I need to actually watch the whole thing through, again, something I haven't done since the year it came out. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Sep 28, 2011 |
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Sep 28, 2011 06:27
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I've only ever seen the first Poltergeist, but that was years ago. This thread through reminded me that not only was there a second film, but a horribly reviewed THIRD, as well. I THINK I saw them on Netflix Streaming, so I'm curious if the third film is really as bad as it was or if it was just a kneejerk reaction to the death of the actress who played the little girl in the films.
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Oct 18, 2011 19:46
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That period of time in animation was also sort of marked by the increasing popularity of anime, so just about any non-song-and-dance animated movie was getting instant comparisons to anime, as well, for better or worse. Even Ebert's review for Titan AE ends not so much with a comment on the film itself, but just him saying that he's hoping it will allow more anime movies to get big screen releases in the US. But, in any case, there was an eroding away of the song/dance animated movie around that time and maybe part of the problem: The mainstream Disney audience had come to expect that sort of thing and didn't like that these newer films were lacking in it. But, by that same token, I can't see how any of the turn of the millenium Disney animated fare would actually benefit too much from a musical number. However, on the subject, part of me is wanting to revisit an animated movie from that era that I REALLY hated, though: Heavy Metal 2000. It was like a recipe to take a potentially good film franchise with a lot of cult good will built up and just turn it to poo poo.
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Nov 8, 2011 09:45
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:DO THIS. Then write a review. Come on. Do it. That pressure you are sensing is your peers. It's like you're asking me to be punished twice over: Watch the film, again! Write about the film! It's abuse! I last saw it about 4 years ago. I'd missed it upon it's original release and eventually got bored one night and thought that maybe it wasn't as bad as people said it was. From some of my recollections of that viewing and some youtube highlights, it was just charmless and frustrating that with all those years, all that anticipation and advances in technology and greater acceptance of cartoons for mature audiences, they couldn't have come up with anything better. The lead female character fell into the 90s trap of, "the always-pissed-off warrior princess". You could tell they were really trying to recapture the Taarna segment of the first film, but they did so by creating a female lead that seemed lifeless and unsympathetic, at times even loathsome, in an attempt to create a 'cool' and sexy memorable character, but it didn't work at all. The blending of CG and cel animation didn't work, the rock guy stuff was just unpleasant, it came from that 90s Spawn/Batman/Gargoyles character design for everyone which left it looking like a 90s TV production rather than a movie. That sort of blocky character design worked with a lot of 90s animated TV shows, but even those shows seemed to have a better sense of pacing and direction to tell stories in a way that seemed larger than the confines of their 4:3 boxes in a way this movie never seems to.
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Nov 8, 2011 12:53
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Nutsngum posted:Siskel and Erbert strike me as some of the most inconsistent reviewers ive come across. Some of their decisions on what makes a good movie or bad movie is so incredibly biased to their own world view that youre just left thinking "huh?". Very little objectivity comes through. I really do almost wish Ebert would go back and an sort of take another look at films that he reviewed poorly in the past and give them another go, too. He and Roeper, post 9/11, really had a lot of very hateful and disgusted reviews of films based on their content. Take Zoolander, where a lot of Ebert's hate comes from the fact that he accuses films like it for making the rest of the world hate America. Or the Powerpuff Girls Movie, where he says the movie is tasteless post-9/11. I can't find his PPG review, but I do find his Zoolander one: Ebert's Zoolander JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Nov 8, 2011 |
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Nov 8, 2011 21:03
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Young Freud posted:However, "Den", "Captain Stern", and "So Beautiful and So Dangerous" are still my favorites. I think this is one of the great things about the first film, too: No segment feels like it drags on too long or outlasts its welcome. Even if you dislike a certain chapter, you can still put up with watching it. It's sort of funny that so many people complain still about rotoscoped animation, but I still sort of like it and REALLY works well with the Heavy Metal movie. It adds what I can only call a dreamlike quality to everything. I wish I still had it, but back in the 90s I had a 6-hour tape with Vampire Hunter D, Heavy Metal and Robot Carnival recorded off of TBS or TNT during one of their Friday night, with all the edits and cuts. It was fun even in that form. I think I said this earlier, but I grabbed a DVD copy of the movie a while back at a pawn shop for a few bucks that came with Carl Macek narrating a workprint of the film that was fascinating to watch even in that state. I didn't get through the whole thing but he talks about the techniques for the film, a lot of the design decisions, the creators, etc. I still hear talk now and then of a third movie being done more as an anthology like the first film with pretty well-known people attached and I'm still hoping/praying that it will eventually come out and be pretty good.
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Nov 9, 2011 05:40
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I finally found it, but years ago there was a description about the plot for Freddy Got Fingered months before it came out that was wildly different from the finished film. From AICN, circa: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/6220
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Nov 21, 2011 03:02
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I need to find the 90s Psycho remake and watch it as someone who never really ever watched the original film in its entirety, but I don't think a single video store in my town actually has it. To remind people and help remember them this movie from about a dozen years ago: It was a shot-for-shot remake of the original Hitchcock film that was a box office flop and savaged by critics for daring to remake the classic film. It was notorious for about a year, then people just never spoke about it again. But, given that we're in the midst of a decade of films where remakes are a LOT more common and accepted by audiences/critics, does it stand on its own merits if you divorce it from the previous film and go into it without any preconceived ideas?
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Nov 23, 2011 05:48
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You know what makes that Catwoman scene worse? Watch it without any audio. At least with the audio you can pretend its a goofy MTV music video. Without the audio all the camera stuff just becomes more jarringly unpleasant to watch. We need to get this scene and the playground fight from Daredevil together on a date or something, I think they'd appreciate each other.
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Nov 23, 2011 10:44
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I was getting Entertainment Weekly at the time, and remember getting the issue in the mail where they put Halle Berry in full Catwoman getup on the cover. It was one of those rare times that you can see a giant bomb coming from just a production still, and EW had deemed it worthy of going front and center on the cover. I remember back on Ain't It Cool when someone sent in picture of the same costume and people were decrying it as a fake and a photoshop; that is how bad the final product looked. The worst thing about the Halle Berry Catwoman costume? The most horribly DISTURBING thing? They made a kids' Halloween costume out of it. http://www.costumecraze.com/CTWN05.html And a Catwoman Barbie: http://www.amazon.com/Barbie-As-Catwoman/dp/B0000E39PE
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Nov 23, 2011 17:57
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I've long thought that with only relatively minor changes to X3 that it could have been a better movie. Warren: Cast him older and a contemporary of the Cyclops/Jean/etc. He's secretly funding the development of a cure because his powers and wealth haven't allowed him to walk freely down the streets. He's personally unwilling to take the cure, himself, because he's also fond of what his mutation allows him to do. Ultimate fate of the character? During the final conflict, mutants looking to attack him finally see he's a mutant, too, and realize he's not just an enemy, but a traitor. They break his wings and toss him from a window with his body never being found. For the fans, this would give them hope that he'd return as a Horseman in a never-made later movie. Everyone else: Mystique should have stayed around after being cured. She's more powerful to the mutants as an example of WHAT the cure can do. However, bring her into conflict with Phoenix who is quickly taking her place at Erik's side. Ultimately, Phoenix makes it look like Raven attempted to use a sample of the cure on her out of jealousy, resulting in Magneto abandoning her. This gives her some additional motivation for going to the government. One, she's angry at Magneto about what happened, but she's also concerned that the Phoenix is using him. Have the movie end on a down note: Storm? Depowered. Hank? Forced to resign from the Cabinet after the PR from the film's climax takes a turn for the worse. Scott and Logan? Force Scott to be the one to have to kill Jean to stop the Phoenix, resulting in he and Logan finally having a throwdown over Jean. They both leave the school out of anger at the death of Jean and mutual animosity and not wanting to lose any more. The school? We see the first glimpses of the death of the Xavier dream. Mutant students start openly defying Storm because of her lack of powers, etc. All this leads the door to open up to other films if they'd want to continue. Logan gets a solo movie set post X3. Scott gets a solo movie to give him some room to grow that gets to show his origins, leading him to discover some secrets of his past he'd forgotten about. Both these films could dovetail into the an X4 that features things like a Riot at Xaviers, the Hellfire Club, The Mass Academy, etc. X3 isn't a horrible/bad film as people make it out to be. It's flawed, in some ways seriously, but it's still about average for a Summer popcorn comic movie, about on par with the first film. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Nov 28, 2011 |
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Nov 28, 2011 08:14
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I finally got around to watching Dylan Dog: Dead of Night -- RT Score: 6%/28% I'd been interested in it before it came out, thought it could be sort of fun, saw the horrible reviews and sort of never got around to seeing it the few weeks it was out around here. It's not horrible, but it's really not that good, either. In this case, the RT score feels sort of low, but accurate at the same time. It's a film that's really ruined by not having a strong sense of what they wanted these characters to be or what they wanted them to do; in fact, the entire film comes across as completely disorganized. I can't tell if Routh is just REALLY bad in the role or if the direction/script just mistook brooding and tortured for dull, lifeless and disengaged. He, like much of the film, comes off as bland and inspired in a movie that almost demands to be more quirky and stylish than it is, but instead just feels more like a rough cut of the film than a finished product. For every comment that was made about the film describing the character as witty, edgy and dangerous, but none of that comes through in the film. For as much of a point that they make that the setting is New Orleans, at almost no point do I actually feel anything in the movie that sort of makes me think of NOLA in any way. In addition, there are some small elements once you get past the 20 minute mark that make you almost think that the movie is about to start getting more interesting, with some of the retro tech emphasis, that goes nowhere. As it stands, the only part of the film that really stands out is all the Zombie stuff. Ironic, in a way, that the liveliest moments are dominated by the most undead characters. HOWEVER, and I must point this out, it does feel a LOT like a mid-late 90s horror-action film in terms of just about everything from the set design, action scenes, costumes, etc. If you're in the mood for something that reminds you a bit of Spawn or the like from that era, you might be more entertained than I was.
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Dec 7, 2011 08:41
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doctor 7 posted:Dylan Dog, to me, just felt like a really lovely episode of Buffy or Angel. Probably. I never really watched Buffy/Angel except for a few episodes. It really does feel a lot more like a mess than other movies of this sort. Characters don't really seem to be solving a mystery more than just taking directions to go from point-A to point-B and be given more information. The mystery plot is such a mess that I still can't quite figure it out. This could have been a much better movie, but I can't figure out really how. Honestly, getting rid of the Matrix/Blade vampire dance club that has been done to death for the last decade would be a start. You know, I might have enjoyed the movie more if the Dylan character sat around and said poo poo about how pretty much all the undead are ripping off what they think is cool from Hollywood movies showing what being a vampire or a werewolf is like. Making fun of them trying to emulate things from Blade, or Anne Rice, etc.
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Dec 7, 2011 09:30
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I'll sort of defend The Postman: When it came out it had to deal with a LOT of pre-release criticism due to the memory of Waterworld still being fresh in peoples' minds. It had a pretty high budget for a mid-90s movie, too. People were looking at some of the early stuff and already calling it, "Waterworld, in a desert!", "Waterworld, in a forest!" People wanted to hate this movie before it even came out. Finally, it came out in a winter season the same time that Titanic and a Bond movie were in theaters. It wasn't going to win any contests that season except maybe a Razzie**. **Really, in a year that produced Batman and Robin, The POSTMAN gets all the Razzies?!
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Jan 6, 2012 19:34
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What are the overall feelings from anyone who has seen Wilder Napalm? It's a movie I've always wanted to see, but never got a chance to and I don't think any of the local video stores even have it, anymore. It has a low IMDb score, a low RT score, it was a massive flop at the box office and it never seemed to even emerge as a cult classic. Despite that, it has Dennis Quaid, Debra Winger, a quirky premise about two brothers with firestarting superpowers, etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL81qiFVs4E
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Jan 18, 2012 05:56
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Rogue1-and-a-half posted:I'm kind of bemusedly interested in Bill Murray playing a gangster. Didn't he do that in a movie called Mad Dog and Glory from the 90s?
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Jan 25, 2012 04:04
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Lost in Space felt like half a really good escapist SF movie, and the other half felt like it was ruined by trying to cram in a bunch of family stuff like the CG monkey and so on. Visually, though, I liked the film. None of the kids felt like they were written well, though. Matt LeBlanc wasn't that bad in it for the type of film that it was. Also, I think it has the distinction of being the first film to actually boot Titanic out of the #1 spot since its release. However, to counterpoint all of this: The John Woo remake of LiS, "The Robinsons." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAT4tjjzOCk I watched this about 2 or 3 years ago and I'm not surprised it wasn't picked up, since it really doesn't work. -They add another Robinson kid who appears to exist only to die and have daddy issues -There is no Dr. Smith -The Robot is pretty much non-existent and nothing like any previous incarnation -The youngest is just a baby. -The enemies look crap, but that doesn't work when you're trying to push this show as big-budget modern SF. It's worth a watch, along with the unaired Time Tunnel remake pilot, though. They seem to be sort of the last-gasps of the old 80s/90s-styled TV SF.
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Jan 30, 2012 05:27
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Ever since the Redlettermedia prequel reviews came out, I have spent a lot more time looking at how things look on film while I'm watching them. The sort of worst thing is that going back and watching clips of something like Lost in Space, even for its flaws, that I then compare them to something like Episode One and realize that they sort of remind me more of how Star Wars should 'feel' than actual Star Wars movies did. Maybe because there's more tangible sets and props and less invasive CG everywhere. As to the LiS novelization, I'm pretty sure they did some youth-based continuing-adventure novels, too, that were supposed to be set in the same universe right about the time the movie came out. So, apparently the Robinsons ended up somewhere with more adventures, I guess. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Jan 30, 2012 |
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Jan 30, 2012 09:51
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Heavy Metal 2000 I found myself writing a whole lot of meaningless drivel about a movie I didn't even like that much. I could actually probably type up even more stuff if I wanted to rant or toss in a bunch of spoilers, too. I ended up watching Heavy Metal 2000 again a few nights ago. I know I've probably talked about this movie a bit before, but after giving it another half-assed attempted watch, I feel the need to comment on it again. IMDB Score: 5.2 (Too HIGH). RT Critic Score: 0% (A little low.) First, it's the late 90s and the original Heavy Metal has undergone a major cult resurgence for a lot of reasons: Increased TV airings, the rerelease of the soundtrack, the release of the film on VHS for the first time. We're also smack dab in the middle of early days of the anime boom in the US getting some real pop culture traction, too. The idea that cartoons for big kids has gotten some acceptance, and into this world there's some big news in geek circles that a NEW Heavy Metal animated film is in production. That's great! I'm not going to start preaching of the 'superiority' of the anime genre, but I will say that after a few decades of anime carrying the baton for animation for adults, I had some hope that perhaps Western animators were going to pick up on some of the techniques and queues from of the medium, combine them with the western style and maximize it's effects. We've got about 20 years of new animation techniques and talents to draw from, a greater expectation from fans, an in-built audience and greater potential from the product. So what happened? First, it's hard to talk about HM2000 too much without comparing it to the original film, and I don't want to do that. I don't want to compare these two movies too much, because that's not a fair fight. The original is one of my favorite movies for a lot of reasons that I won't go into here and I want to judge HM2000 on its own merits. That's made a little more difficult when HM2000 makes a lot of decisions to mimick and homage the original film to varying degrees, but none of them tend to actually be executed very well. In other ways, it diverges quite a bit, too, to the point as to not even seem if it belongs on the same shelf as the previous film. As it stands, though, the film comes off as such a slapdash mess that it's hard to even know where to begin to voice my issues with it. I guess I should start with some compliments, though. The background art, the spaceship CG models, and Michael Ironside are probably the best things in this movie to the point that they deserve to be part of a much better film than this one. Ironside alone makes the movie almost worth watching, despite the horrible dialogue and character design they give his character. It's sort of sad that the character that is SUPPOSED to be the most unlikeable is actually just about the only one in the movie I DO like, but that's solely because of Ironside actually giving a rather flat character some believable moments of personality. When his character gets so furious at someone that he wants to make them immortal for the purpose of spending the rest of eternity killing them over and over without end, I buy it, because that's Ironside selling it to me. The plot of the film seems like it should be more or less easy to follow. Apparently, main baddie Tyler starts out the film infected by evil, destroys a hidden paradise planet called Eden invoking the wrath of a survivor who spends the film tracking him across space for revenge and to prevent him from gaining immortality. It's movie filled with a stupid rock baby, forgettable 90s nuMetal, nudity and sex scenes that are unintentionally unpleasant to watch, and almost zero fun. A few things that struck me on this viewing of this film is how in the first film the movie opted to connect a series of unrelated stories with a single element tying them all together: The glowing green evil of the Lochnar. In this film, it's a long, continuous story about warrior queen Julie as she traverses from one wildly different environment to another, each of which seems to be an homage to something from the original film, to fight the evil Tyler. In fact, the backbone of this movie seems to be just a very extended Taarna homage: A peaceful, progressive and advanced people exterminated by a force fueled by otherworldly evil, avenged by a warrior maiden of superhuman resolve and skill. I hardly ever feel that this is a theatrical-grade production, either. Even the pacing and way the tone and environments change in the film made me feel this way. As an experiment I decided to go back and check something which makes me wonder something else about the film. Were the producers crafting this film as something that could have been released in 30 minute episodic chunks rather than single film? This leads to a major derail in my review that I'm italicizing so you can skip and don't miss anything about the film, itself. Coming in at just about 80 minutes (sans credits) that would break down into about four 20-minute segments. Sure enough, there is ripe material for episode transitions during 20-23 minute mark, there is a sudden flash of the film's sometimes subtitle "FAKK2", a couple of characters are left in a hopeless situation, and the screen even goes dark, ultimately leading to our lead emerging to start up a new 'episode'. As a side note, the film seems to make a point to reference the relatively meaningless FAKK2 term a lot. At various times, Julie uses it to refer to herself, the term is used to refer to the official status of her home planet of Eden, the lead villain shoots it word dramatically into a wall and there was the above mentioned subtitle I've heard of in some releases and it was also used as subtitle to a PC game based on the film. I heard that the FAKK2 concept is part of a HM comic series that the film was inspired by, but I don't more than that. It seems like the film is trying to make it come off as more important than it does come off. Going ahead another 20-23 minutes, and we find the end of the space section of the film, culminating in an impending crash to a whole new world that seems like it'd be a good cliffhanger as well as a scene that would serve as a transition to episode 3. Again, at just about the before the 1:03 hour mark, most of characters make major discoveries, the tension ramps up, and the screen fades to black again just in time for the film's final act to begin. The movie's story comes to an end right at 1:22 before the credits start rolling. Now this might just be an issue of me overanalyzing something that anyone could find examples of in any film, but the given my overall feeling about the movie it does sort of lend a sense to me that part of this movie's problem is that they were editing this film to be presented in some episodic fashion to fit in a with some buffer room for a recap intros and credits for each one. Now, I don't know if this the case or not. In the 90s HBO had some success with the animated Spawn series, and various cable stations were starting to experiment with animation aimed at an adult audience. USA was doing Duckman, Comedy Central was having a hit with South Park, HBO had Spawn also tried running the adult animated Spicy City from Ralph Bakshi. It's possible that HM2000 was never really intended to be a real theatrical or even home video release, but to serve as a sort of pilot miniseries for a longer-term premium cable animated series: It could be aired as a whole movie, or if a HM series was picked up it could be easily broken down into 4 separate episodes. But like I said before, this is just a theory on my part. If this is the case, then maybe that explains some of my issues with the film when to the decisions in the pacing and progression. I have no proof that this was the intention either way. On the other hand, the animation style and character design used in the film has a LOT more in common with the 90s animated television trends than theatrical ones. This leads me into another complaint about the movie, the designs of all the characters. Everything comes off as very generic, flat and dull when animated except for a few moments here and there. The character models seem off all the time, too, in terms of character scale and proportions. These are things I'd likely ignore in a better production, or if the atmosphere of the film was much better, but I can't help but be distracted by here. I think there there is literally one extremely well animated scene near the end of the film involving Julie's character that is so short and fluid that I swear it must have been rotoscoped. I honestly feel that given the big promotional push that was given that Julie Strain was the model used for the lead character of Julie, they might have well have gone the rotoscoped route. A rotoscoped Julie Strain could hardly be more awkwardly busty and scantly-clad as her hand-drawn counterpart. Personally, I rather like rotoscoping. I admit it. I tend to feel that on some projects, if done the right way, rotoscoping adds a dreamy quality to the finished product. Julie, herself, is rather unlikeable as a protagonist. She's falls into the standard sexy female action lead that has become norm for the last several years. If you can't make the character interesting, just make her violent, mean, rude, overly sexualized but also repulsed by anything sexual that occurs around her. Her enemies are the most generic bunch of loathesome and chauvenistic baddies the film can dig up for her because they simply excuse her character's horrible personality and methods. When I think of a strong female action lead, I'm thinking Trinity, Ripley, Sarah Connor, The Bride, Xena, not to mention other animated and comic book female characters out there. Sure, they have their moments of self-righteousness and anger, but there's a degree of depth, character and humanity in them that just isn't present in Julie. If I believed Julie's character arc, it'd be different... But I don't. Even the animated Aeon Flux was excessively sexualized and violent at times, maybe even more so than Julie in this film, too, but in both her silent and speaking shows she had an interesting (if sometimes confusing) story, motives and environment to operate in and some charm to her character that made her much more likeable than the protagonist we have here. The soundtrack, I felt, was really forgettable. I know the movie is called Heavy Metal, but even the first film knew that the music had to fit the mood of the movie. Some of the lighter and more soothing songs of the film tended to lend itself to moments that helped the film have a greater sense of wonder and awe that this film was desperately lacking. There was no moment in Heavy Metal 2000 that I can even think of that gave you the chance or desire to drink in some really great or majestic combination of music and picture. It just wasn't there. In the end, though, it's as if someone sat down and looked at the original film and tried to figure out the formula for what made that film work, but only got something that emulated parts of it, instead. It's something that deserved to be and should have been a lot better than it was, but it wasn't. There may be a lot of reasons for this. Maybe budget reasons, or time constraints, too many writer, uncertainty on the audience, etc. I don't see this movie getting rediscovered a dozen years after its release like the original was. Then again, I might be prejudice. Against my better wishes to not compare it to the first film, when I think back to that movie I'm hit with a nostalgic wave. By comparison, Heavy Metal 2000 is just some movie that was made with the same name. tl;dr: Disappointed JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 08:51 on May 13, 2012 |
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May 13, 2012 08:43
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Madkal posted:This kind of makes me wishy that there was some kind of Predator series where predators have appeared throughout history during every major war. I think in the Dark Horse comics it was stated that a lot of high-ranking humans know all about the Predators and their hunts, but really refuse to act against them like they would with most other enemies. The assumption is that it's much safer to just let them kill a few hundred trophies every now and then because if humans actually tried to go into a REAL war with them out of self-defense, we'd be completely wiped out. It might be sort of interesting to see a Predator series where wars are started, manipulated and extended for the sole purpose of giving the Predators a good hunt and keep them contained to certain locales rather than randomly hunting all over the Earth.
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May 29, 2012 06:57
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Despite the near universal damnation for the AvP films, I almost would like to see a GOOD Predator/Terminator comic or movie to turn the whole thing on its head: A group of Preds arrive at Earth for a hunt, get royally messed up right off the bat because they pop in right in the middle of the war against Skynet and had zero idea they'd be facing a sentient non-human enemy, too. Another option could be a 'present-day' story that has a Predator stalking a T-800 that is stalking Resistance members in the past and it leads to a battle of man vs. alien vs. machine.
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May 30, 2012 00:24
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nocal posted:Watched Orgazmo last night, knowing little about it except that it was an NC-17 90s comedy by the guys from Southpark that centers around a "porn superhero." Little did I know it's got a fairly well-deserved 47% on RT. I watched this a few years ago and I felt that it was really just worthy on an R. I know this gets probably quoted a lot in these forums, but here's an interview with them that talk about their MPAA experiences that is pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzblNKjsO0 But you're right, the film wasn't anywhere near NC17 levels of content, especially given the subject matter, unless you want to talk about the sex toys that are visible through a lot of the movie. On the same token though, I almost suspect if the Rocky Horror Picture Show were given just rereleased today, it'd probably get an easy PG-13.
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Jun 20, 2012 20:20
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Soldier is one of those movies that seemed to just invite harsh criticism, maybe in part due to the sudden influx of popularity of the AICN style of film criticism that was beginning to emerge. I remember one of the criticisms of the film was, "Kurt Russell was paid $XXXX per word of dialogue his character has!" in reponse to how much he was paid and how little he spoke in the film. I'll be honest, I can understand a review that makes legit complaints about a movie, but the AICN boards would spend MONTHS tearing a film down before anyone saw anything. Harry really seemed to take personal offense at Soldier, it seemed, and after that every film by that Paul WS Anderson, only made worse with PWSA got to direct the first Resident Evil movie.
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Jul 6, 2012 01:19
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Surprisingly, AICN and the whole net review stuff had garnered a LOT of mainstream attention in the late 90s. There were several newspaper articles, magazines articles and even TV interviews done about the site. You were getting Harry guest-hosting with Ebert, appearing on panels, etc. Also, it helped that it was surrounded by huge debacles like Speed 2, Batman and Robin on one side and the growing hype for films like Episode One.
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Jul 6, 2012 01:46
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timeandtide posted:I think it was the novelty of the idea that got the attention. That, and it appeals to a "take the power back!" mentality. True enough. The 90s was really the era of the geeks coming into their own. I even recall Harry talking about that cohosting gig, I think, and mentioning stuff that didn't fit in too well, either, like the fact that the cut a scene of him doing an imitation of Matthew Lillard. That being said, I think there are times that when Harry is on the ball, he's been REALLY good with things and reviews and commentary. Other times, though, he let's a hyper fanboyism determine his review rather than being more objective and fair with it.
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Jul 6, 2012 09:01
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With Wet Hot American Summer, I have to admit I was never really too into the camp/resort film craze of the late 70s-early 80s so I think some of the film was sort of lost on me. I mean, I loved various parts of it, like the stand up comic guy, the talking can, Meloni, Showalter, Marino and Rudd, and the commentary track was pretty interesting to listen to, too. I guess I sort of 'liked' it, but I wasn't in love with it as a whole because it felt very uneven. I still think that the movie needed to suddenly take a dark turn (more than the drug trip scene) and have a summer camp slasher plotline, too, just to capture every aspect of the camper/resort films of the 80s. However, I just saw these clips from an 1980s camp movie called Gorp that makes me think that anything WHAS could have done seems sane in comparison... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8HT90d2Y5o
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Sep 12, 2012 05:03
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For years I thought Batman Returns was the best of the Batman movies, but a few years ago I tried to give it another watch and found myself feeling it was overrated and wasn't really all that good. I can't really put my finger on a specific thing that bothered me, but I do think it wasn't the peak of the Burton-series as I often thought, but probably the start of the decline. A lot of the things that the Schumacher-directed films did might almost be a result of where Burton had already put the series by Returns: Multiple villains camping and vamping it up, Bat-branding all over the place, Batman being more visible, even more stylized look, etc. However, the sad thing is that it also has probably what I feel to be my favorite moment in any of the live-action Batman movies: The Bruce/Selina dance. Out of this movie with so much style, it feels like the one thing that feels like it could have been part of a more serious Batman movie. All that being said, I wonder how much the Burton-series would have been different if he'd stayed in the director's chair for the next 2 films. One popular rumor had been that Burton initially wanted to do his films as a trilogy where Bruce would decide at the end of the third movie he didn't need to be Batman, anymore. However, that arc really feels like it fits more with the story to the unproduced Sam Hamm script for Batman 2, where Bruce is starting to lean towards the fact that he, as Bruce, can actually do something to help Gotham more and in a way that Batman can't.
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Apr 9, 2013 07:31
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Madkal posted:The weirdest part of Batman Forever was Tommy Lee Jones completely misreading the character of Two-Face. It was like Jones saw what Carey was doing and wanted to do it too. He was supposed to be a tragic character but he was just a second rate Joker ripoff. It probably doesn't help that the film went about sort of making Two-Face all evil, all the time, too. I know the comic has even played a bit loose with Two-Face justifying even a 'good' flip towards doing something evil, but this movie seemed to make him do that all the time. Was there actually any of his coin flips in the movie that he didn't try to use as an excuse to do evil? Heck, I think there was even a scene where he was unhappy with the result he got so he kept flipping the coin until he got the one he wanted, which sort of betrayed the tone of what his schtick was. You can keep the cartoony vibe of the film AND have the coin flips stick to something that hints more and more at Harvey's decent nature and Two-Face's evil one. Take the early bank hostage scene. Harvey could have had several hostages, flipping his coin at each one, telling them what he was flipping for on each on. Even with the tone of Forever, it could have added a lot of suspense to it. "Heads, I let you go. Tails, I kill you." One by one, as he moves down the hostages, every one comes up heads. Subtly, more and more of Harvey's nice guy personality comes out with each flip. He's increasingly gentle and polite, helps a woman to her feet like a gentleman, etc. Finally, getting to the last person, he's almost sympathetic and caring, even apologetic towards his victim about having to put them through this formality. Tails... And Evil Harvey jumps back in charge with a vengeance.
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Apr 10, 2013 05:50
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Once the Burton era was done, and given the villains that were used, I wonder if they just used the wrong pairings, or perhaps to say if 'better' pairings would have been possible. I think Two-Face would have likely worked better with a costar-level female foil/coconspirator. The animated series seemed to do some pretty good work with tying Dent into Ivy's origin, and I could imagine he'd be similarly good paired with Catwoman in a film considering Selina's dual personalities of meek and mild and Catwoman's wild and dominating. Robin Williams apparently was teased to be Riddler for a LONG time until Jim Carrey's star went on the rise and he was scooped up to take the role. I wonder how the franchise would have fared in film three had Williams actually been able to negotiate a contract to be in the film. I think it would have been around the time he was trying to branch out into more serious work, so it's possible he wouldn't have played his Riddler like the Joker as Carrey ended up doing, which might have also affected how his costars performance would have been in response. Heck, even though he was never used but rumored to have been in Batman 5, putting Scarecrow together with Ivy in a film seems like it would have been better film team-up than Freeze/Ivy.
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Apr 10, 2013 09:13
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It's been years since I saw it, but Lawnmower Man 2 was one of the worst movies I saw in a theater, with only Matt Frewer saving some of it. It's late 1995, I see this trailer, and for some reason I'm all stoked about seeing that movie. Dear God... This was released to theaters, I paid money. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bRH_dVye7A It was just me and about 8 other people in the theater on opening night, and 2-3 of them came with me. However, it only served to remind me that Frewer would have been really well cast as the Riddler.
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Apr 26, 2013 06:53
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sean10mm posted:To be fair, it was pretty funny when Padme dressed in black leather and stood in a room romantically lit by a roaring fireplace to tell Anakin that she was ENDING their romance, though. I know it might have been unpopular and even caused a lot of outrage, but it might have actually been better to have had Padme as less an innocent girl and more a wily woman who didn't really care about stringing men along or using her looks, power and personality to her personal advantage; because it doesn't harm her, she sees it as harmless. While she's wining and dining with the elites, she's bragging about, imagining and pretending she's got a few Jedi Knights (Kenobi and Anakin) wrapped around her finger at her beckon call, something that affects Anakin in several different emotional directions. Once the end of the trilogy arrives, she sees how her actions contributed to Anakin's downfall, she spends the rest of her life saddened by her choices, decisions and actions.
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May 2, 2013 21:45
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Which that could work, too. A while back I proposed that she could have been portrayed as an entitled, wealthy member of the nobility who has little real power or authority but a lot of status. She's not trying to be an intentional seductress, but more a bit of a flirt who doesn't have to worry about consequences of anything. Anakin totally misreads all her affections for him as something deeper. However, I'd like to think that Kenobi is the only one in their collective relationship that would actually be mature enough to pick up on the fact that it wasn't real and would be able to mostly ignore it or try to tell her to be more mindful of her actions. Anakin, on the other hand, might see any relationship with Padme and anyone else with a sense of envy and jealously, not really being able to correctly read what what going on between people. Padme at a social function where she's expected to entertain other heads of state, be charming, etc. might drive Anakin crazy despite how innocent and normal it would be. "Why's she not dancing with me?! Why is she talking about art and music with him?!" Palpatine is in the scene as the mentor Anakin wants: Who's quietly acting as if he's trying to give Anakin the means into Padme's social circles: Expanding his horizons beyond just Jedi philosophies and introducing him to ideas of arts, politics, commerce, social structures, etc. that are part of her world that the Jedi don't concern themselves with. I've said also in the past, Anakin's whole drive shouldn't have simply been for Padme, power or control, it's a quest for complete respect and greatness for a boy that used to be a slave. Obtaining Padme, power, privilege and control are just the means that he feels he'll get that respect and greatness. He wants to walk amongst the great elites as an equal, to be thought of highly by all, etc. He sees nothing wrong with it because he feels it is only natural to want to rise as high as he can and make his past forgotten. In the long run, he's not truly in love with Padme, he's in love with what she represents with her wealth, power and status. Winning Padme, he could feel, would bring him closer to being like her in his own eyes and the eyes of others. His need to always want to be more leads him down to the darkside. This helps him further embrace becoming Vader, he emerges into existence as the right hand of the most powerful man in the galaxy, with power, respect and control. There are none who look upon him that can even suspect his true origins as anything else. You want to keep him away from setting foot on Tattooine, why Kenobi felt safe taking Luke there, you make it that part of the reason: That was the world where he was dirt, a slave. He refuses to ever be reminded in any way of that part of his life.. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 01:24 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 2, 2013 22:37
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James Woods Fan posted:I thought Big Trouble was hilarious. If I had to pick my favorite motif it would Dennis Farina's displeasure with the seatbelt of his rental. Shame that it never got popular, but those promotional materials were awful. I seem to recall one of the issues with Big Trouble was that it was one of the many films that likely was overly criticized due to subject matter that came out relatively soon after 9/11. I think in someone's review they went off about how awful and unfunny any movie, at any time, of any quality was to make the idea of a 'bomb in an airport' part of their plot. Sort of like Roger Ebert's review of Zoolander that, "this is why the world hates us!" and things like 9/11 happen, and the Powerpuff Girls movie being torn to shreds that next Summer because they felt "Destruction is not cute or funny! This is disgusting!" (paraphrasing) Oddly enough, a while after Ebert's death, Stiller said that a number of years after Zoolander came out Ebert apologized for his scathing review of the film and chalked it up to letting the events of 9/11 making him overly critical.
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May 16, 2013 03:55
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DrVenkman posted:I remember liking The Faculty quite a bit. It's a fun film and I can't understand why it never got a better home release. Someone doesn't seem to like it. Any teen film in which the only way to figure out who's who is by snorting drugs can't be all bad. I seem to recall it was hyped up a lot prior to its theatrical release, though, but didn't seem to perform as well as expected. Looking up a quick wiki to see when it came out on video and I think I found the answer: June 1999. Any movie where teenagers were depicted as doing violence in a school setting, post-Columbine, was probably under a lot of scrutiny and it was maybe given a low-key release. Also, coming out on video in 1999 put it in the middle of massive theatrical releases like Episode 1, Austin Powers 2, American Pie, Blair Witch, and the Sixth Sense. that likely drew a lot of attention away from the home video market. Also, I've always been a sort of supporter of a theory of some sort of pop culture distraction between two similar properties that come out around the same time, where one will elevate to a major popularity and drown out any interest in another or confuse audiences by having a look/feel of being too similar. Around the time that movies like The Faculty was coming out in theaters and on video, I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer was probably rising to its peak of pop-culture popularity and was also a product about teenagers vs. monsters in a high school, so it probably was getting all the positive buzz. Also, about 5 months before The Faculty, the similar teen-horror-SF high school film Disturbing Behavior came out, too, to poor box office and might have preemptively made audiences less interested in another film along those lines.
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May 28, 2013 22:26
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In the Z Channel documentary I think they specifically mention their showing of the director's cut of Heaven's Gate being sort of popular in terms of reception and number of viewers because it was so notorious in its unpopularity people really wanted to see it to see how bad it was.Original_Z posted:I like how Heaven's Gate was so poorly reviewed that it made people dislike Deer Hunter more in the aftermath. I think the same thing happened to ID4 when Godzilla came out. I knew a lot of people whose opinion on the former changed once they saw Godzilla or read the reviews. I think the opposite happened with X-Men 1, too. X2 was such a better picture in comparison to X1 that I think it lead to a lot of people to elevate their opinions of X1 much higher than it had been and forgive a lot of complaints with that movie. Once X3 came out, I think that only served to further elevate the previous two films and create this perception that the third film, under Singer, would have only naturally followed the same arc of increasing quality.
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Jul 2, 2013 08:46
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I sort of liked Lockout. It wasn't 'great', or even really all that good, it was full of everyone making the dumbest decisions possible, but I thought it was at least a fun Netflix watch. If nothing else, the whole scenario and tone of the thing felt like an 80s/early 90s anime-type action sci-fi, for some reason, like something USMC or Streamline would have released on VHS.
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Jul 26, 2013 01:21
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davidspackage posted:I'm thinking Nemesis could've been infinitely more interesting had Hardy been Picard's son by stolen DNA, rather than his rapidly deteriorating clone. Generations established Picard's regret at never having a family (in what I felt was a great scene - it was touching and shocking to see the unshakeable Picard break down like that), there'd be some drama in him being forced to fight and kill his own irredeemable son. TNG sort of played with that on an episode where some kid had his DNA altered so that Picard thought it was his son, I think. I know I've said this before, but I honestly think they could have worked out a better with it being a story of a crew that has finally grown beyond being together start to stand on their own. Make the movie more like The Undiscovered Country and less like you're trying to remake First Contact (which I DID like, though.) Still set the whole thing with a Romulan peace summit. Picard is there in his role as Captain of the Enterprise and assisting in the summit, trying to decide where he wants to go in his life past this. Worf is there, too, as an ambassador, which creates a new dynamic between Worf and Picard. Still have a main story that allows Data to get his own storyline and arc, too. Meanwhile, sprinkle the film with a lot of little developments for the other characters that help push a final theme. As the film concludes, give us the notion that the crew, his 'family', have all grown up and are finally leaving 'home' to create the rest of their own lives. It allows everyone to close out the franchise on a bittersweet note, where we see all the paths the characters find themselves taking has been heavily influenced by having Picard as their captain, mentor and father-figure for all these years.
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Aug 9, 2013 08:08
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