What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Agreed with Grudunza on Fantastic Beasts, except with the part when he says it's OK (I mean, the rest of your post clearly contradicts that statement, man). We should have seen Moonlight instead. Biggest mistake ever made, or at least in the last week.

Funny thing, my wife fall asleep in the first hour, and woke up just when I was dozing off. We had some fun putting it back together afterwards. So you may say I can't judge the movie because I haven't seen it, but I haven't fallen asleep in the theater since Vidocq (ten points to anyone who gets it without googling), so that's something.

Di Caprio is definitely asleep in Inception and I daresay, in most of his other movies, too.

cranberries wrote: Rewatched Inception with the family. There's really no question that DiCaprio never made it out of the dream.

The top starts wobbling right before the cut.

It's his wife's totem, so it doesn't even work.

Vlad wrote: Agreed with Grudunza on Fantastic Beasts, except with the part when he says it's OK (I mean, the rest of your post clearly contradicts that statement, man).

Heh, yeah. I was trying to be generous. But after seeing Fantastic Beasts, it made me feel like I undersold Moana a bit the other day. By contrast, Moana was fantastic. I still think Zootopia is the animated film of the year, but Moana was good fun, throughout (which cannot be said of Fantastic Beasts).

Fantastic Beats for me was better than all of the Harry Potters except Azkaban. I just find the whole school thing doesn't quite work on film and is much better in the books. That being said, I can't see how 4 more films can come from that universe, maybe one at most. Eddie Redmayne was really dull and had no character, but the supporting cast are all great.

Last night the family was watching Free Willy and at the start the kid gets introduced to his new foster parents, one of which is Michael Madsen of Reservoir Dogs, so I jokingly said "I wouldn't trust that guy. I once saw him cut off a policeman's ear." Michael Madsen takes the kid to his new bedroom and offers him a small welcoming present and my daughter shouts out "Don't open the box. It's the policeman's ear."

Vidocq (ten points to anyone who gets it without googling), so that's something.

Give me 20 because I actually have a bootleg DVD. Terrible movie. It's directed by Pitof, who went on to give us...Catwoman.

Moana was great. Hit all the Disney notes that I wanted from it and it offered a fresh setting and it continues this sort of "princess reinvention" thing they are going through. It also continues the trend of Disney Animation Studios just completely smoking Pixar- pretty sad that there was a fucking Cars 3 trailer on it, it just shows how far behind that once-great studio is at this point.

Overall I thought it wasn't quite as good as Frozen, but that is almost not fair because Frozen is practically generation-defining at this point. But I liked it just about as much overall, which is to say a whole lot.

I remember some of the first reviews of Frozen saying that the songs weren't memorable, but look where that led. I loved the songs, but there really wasn't a pop showstopper like "Let it Go"...the kind of song you know every kid in chorus is going to be singing at some point.

The coconuts were weird, but awesome. My son couldn't stop talking about them.

The crab scene reminded me of the skeleton in Kubo.

Some of it was pretty reminiscent of Princess Mononoke in a roundabout way.

I cried. My daughter said that the ocean got water in her eyes, she was embarrassed about tearing up.

Definitely a great addition to the princess canon.

I actually own Vidocq. But my version is called 'Dark Portals: The chronicles of Vidocq'.

Not a great movie, but I got it because it is visually interesting. Another refugee from the days of Hollywood video rental.

The Matrix was superficially cool, but ultimately didn't make sense. Or it made sense to the writers but they couldn't make it work on screen. Inception was also visually cool and very ambitious in terms of story and ideas. Ultimately, both movies fell short with me, because the actors didn't bring the characters to life. Maybe they weren't supposed to because both movies were more about visuals and ideas than people. Anyway, I was thinking about both those movies today, after seeing Doctor Strange.

Doctor Strange is even more visually interesting than The Matrix and Inception put together. Despite negative comments earlier in this thread, I was extremely impressed with the casting choices and especially the acting. The characters mattered. The ideas were interesting, but the story of these characters really mattered. Based on my experience with the comics, I was expecting to see a boring clash between Strange and Mordo, but there was so much more. There was medical drama at several points in the movie, and at one point Strange even addresses a serious ethical issue by falling back on the Hippocratic Oath for guidance. Even the motivation of the bad guys was better than par for the course, and helped set up where the next movie will be heading.

Was Doctor Strange perfect? No. The visual effects were amazing, but at times I felt like I was watching the creative teams brush up against the limits of their imagination, when there was so much more in the comics that they could have used for certain cosmic scenes. I was somewhat disappointed with the way they depicted Dormammu. Midway through the movie, there was a solid sixty seconds of heavy exposition where I could actually hear people in the audience starting to fade a little, but then the pace picked up again. The humor wasn't greatly funny, but the actors nailed the timing and got this audience laughing anyway.

The cast deserves discussion. I would have never imagined Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, but he utterly nails the part, both visually and vocally. He has certainly played arrogant geniuses before, but this time he showed just enough humility and heart to really win me over. Tilda Swinton was a brilliant choice for the Ancient One, who she portrayed with an excellent mixture of dignity, humor, gravity, and wisdom. Chiwetel Ejiofor turned in a solid performance, though perhaps not his finest work, but somehow he looked even more Ditkoesque than anybody else in the cast, and he completely won me over as Mordo despite the difference in race. They might have done something subtle with his eyebrows to nail the resemblance to Ditko's Mordo. Rachel McAdams looks amazing for her age, and yet was not distractingly pretty as an surgeon. I confess that I haven't seen Mads Mikkelsen in anything before this, but he delivered so much more than his role required, and it was great.

Although you all probably know this from watching other Marvel movies, stick around for the credits. There is one bonus scene early on, and a second bonus scene after the credits. Both set up future movies, but the second one also is meaningful in the context of this movie.

I have heard some people compare the Doctor Strange movie to the first Iron Man movie. I see the parallels, aside from the obvious fact that they are both origin stories. But despite my great fondness for the Iron Man character, I actually enjoyed the Doctor Strange movie more than the Iron Man movie. Cumberbatch and Downey play similar characters (and also both played Sherlock Holmes), but Doctor Strange tells a richer story with better characters.

It was a cold, foggy morning when I went to the theater, which added an air of mystery to the day. When I left the theater, it was still chilly and grey, though the fog was gone. After the wonderful colors of magic that I had just witnessed, reality seemed so drab.

Tl;dr If you at least liked The Matrix or Inception, you need to see Doctor Strange on the big screen.

Michael Barnes wrote: Vidocq (ten points to anyone who gets it without googling), so that's something.

Give me 20 because I actually have a bootleg DVD. Terrible movie. It's directed by Pitof, who went on to give us...Catwoman.

I knew I should have specifically excluded you. If you weren't focused on boardgames, you'd be probably writing about eurotrash movies.

Colorcrayons wrote: I actually own Vidocq. But my version is called 'Dark Portals: The chronicles of Vidocq'.

Not a great movie, but I got it because it is visually interesting. Another refugee from the days of Hollywood video rental.

I'm starting to wonder if Vidocq had maybe gained some dignity in the face of the onslaught of almost indistinguishable marvel movies, with its french sensibilities and whatnot.

I also didn't think Moana was as strong as Frozen. Visually...Moana...hands-down. this is the best CGI ever put to screen. In fact, there were many times I'd look at bit objects such as necklaces, sails, etc...and they looked totally real. I assume we can do full featured, no actor films at this point, but the characters may need to stay cartoony to prevent that uncanny valley experience. Incredible visuals.

That said, I didn't think the story was that much more than standard "be who you want to be" message. Frozen brought a twist on "true love", and had a much better villain in the prince, but this was pretty straight forward with a sense of been there. Also, it was maybe a bit long with way too many wild action scenes. Lots of fast paced swinging and flying around. Frozen, though also fantastical, was a bit more grounded in its action.

The crab was clearly a Bowie tribute.

And about Cars 3...don't know if anyone caught it, but those visuals were not anywhere near as colorful and light as the first two. In fact, they were quite realistic. It was sort of jarring for me, so I read up a bit on it. Apparently some parents have complained that the trailer was too traumatic (whatevs) for their little ones. It seems the studio is going darker with this one and wants to inject some "realities of life". I'm expecting Lightning to either die or get critically injured and no longer able to compete. We'll see. the first one was ok...part 2 was garbage...

...as were all the other trailers. A bunch of sassy singing animals with butt jokes are going to appear in about 4-5 upcoming movies. I think every thing I saw (including Moana) minus that Cars 3 trailer had butt jokes...yay

Looking forward to seeing Moana.

Shellhead wrote:






It was a cold, foggy morning when I went to the theater, which added an air of mystery to the day. When I left the theater, it was still chilly and grey, though the fog was gone. After the wonderful colors of magic that I had just witnessed, reality seemed so drab.

Tl;dr If you at least liked The Matrix or Inception, you need to see Doctor Strange on the big screen.

When I saw The Matrix, I walked out into the afternoon sunshine then went next door to Office Depot, where everyone was wearing white shirts and ties, and it freaked me out.

tried rewatching Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country last night. That's a pretty bad movie. I mean it has good moments but so much of it is really crappy. Really badly directed is the main problem I think. I don't know how I once thought it was superior to Wrath of Khan, i must have seen it during my peak of being a trekker.

I have seen Vidocq twice, both several years ago. I agree that it was visually interesting but the pacing put me to sleep both times. It was like watching beautiful paintings that slowly moved.

I randomly chose to watch Girl, Interrupted last weekend. I was a fan of Winona Ryder when she was younger, and thought this might be an old enough movie to be from her prime acting years. It was okay, and also served as a period piece for the late '60s.. Winona Ryder does a great job of playing somebody crazy, with spooked eyes and nervous mannerisms. Whoopi Goldberg did a solid job in a standard wise, older person role. Kurtwood Smith (played Red Forman on The '70s Show) just has one scene, but blew me away with a convincing performance that was about as far from Red Forman as possible. Angelina Jolie steals every scene and probably won an award for her supporting role, but I think that it was a fun role that many other actresses could have played well.

While the movie may have gotten some of the psych stuff wrong, what I saw matched up reasonably well with my own experiences as a volunteer at a mental institution during my junior year of college, though that was during the '80s. However, the overall movie felt like it was pitched as a chick flick version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I give Girl, Interrupted a mild recommendation. See it if you are bored and have a couple of hours to spare, but don't go out of your way to find it.