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

My wife said to me this morning that Fantastic Beasts is just one big unsubtle metaphor on masturbation.

you're gonna go blind if you keep watching that movie

I saw Arrival last night. It was pretty good.

It did two things that I really appreciated: it took the science seriously and it used the narrative to mess with your mind.

The film has a very melancholy tone to it, which I wasn't expecting. Many of the scenes were dim, but I couldn't tell if that was intentional by the cinematographer or accidental by the projectionist. It drags in a few places and by contrast the ending feels rushed, but overall I still really liked it.

One thing that really bothered me (this isn't a spoiler) was a brief voice-over that happened about a third of the way in. It was a little narration by the secondary main character that seemed completely out of place and never occurred again. It was very strange.

I watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter last night. It was exactly what I wanted, part biopic, part monster film, not taking itself seriously. However my wife thought it was terrible, and expects that she will forget that she has seen it in a few years. I suppose her main valid criticism was that too much of the good stuff was in the first half of the film, leaving the second half much weaker.

Last night I made one of the worst decisions of my life. It was late, I had a few drinks, you know how it goes.

I watched Batman V Superman.

It is quite literally one of the worst films I have seen in the past 20 years, at least. And that is without regarding the "Murder Batman",
Superman's eternally furrowing brow of conflicting emotions, and Doomsday- the worst CGI character I think I've ever seen in my life. I think the creature in Mac and Me was more convincing.

I don't think I've ever seen a more hateful, loveless movie. It's so utterly cynical that it comes across as inhumanly empty. Every single frame is so full of grit, woe or misery that it's impossible to feel joy. Even Amy Adams, a beautiful woman, looks bedraggled and drained of life.

The whole thing is like some kind of perverted death worship spectacle, apparently made by the kind of 15 year old that thinks that everything sucks, that hates their parents, and thinks that brutality and ruthlessness are "cool". I have never in my life wanted to hear Superman say "he'll have to die". Or watch Batman kill people.

Some folks liked Affleck as Batman, but I don't get it. I thought he was terrible and it felt like he wasn't very committed. The hard stare, the five o'clock shadow...compare this half assed performance to that scene in TDK where Batman goes into the interrogation room with Joker.

Superman...I don't know if I ever seen such a drastic misunderstanding of a character in a film adaptation. He is simply NOT Superman. He's really closer to The Plutonian in Irredeemable or Miracleman.

Technically, the film was hilariously inept as well. But the lowest point had to be any fight scene with Ben Affleck. I don't believe I have _ever_ seen an actor execute fight scenes so badly. That dream sequence fight scene looks almost as intentionally scripted and synchronized as the fight in A Clockwork Orange, but without purpose. It looked like a rehearsal.

Just like I expected from the previews, for some reason Jesse Eisenberg's direction appears to have been "act like Johnny Depp'a version of Willy Wonka." I'm not even sure that anyone involved with the film has ever seen Lex Luthor in anything else because it was not the same character.

The JLA stuff was fucking stupid. How is that characters like Wonder Woman and Aquaman are just suddenly discovered? Flash looked terrible. The Cyborg think looked like Joel Schumacher was called in to direct it. Gal Gadot might be able to carry a WW film/ she looks great and has a good sense of the character. I would regard her as the one good thing in the entire 2:30 film.

The Doomsday stuff...I can not believe studio executives let that get released. I was actually in shock that something that looked so terrible, so DATED came out of a 2016 film. It reminded me of bad CGI action from the late 1990s. The whole thing felt like watching a human meatball shooting lightning and making explosions.

The Darkseid tease made me sad. It's bad enough this film shit the bed without dragging Jack Kirby into its diarrheal abyss. Parademons, what was the point.

As for the "title fight" stuff...you can just feel Zack Snyder trying his darnedest to make The Dark Knight Returns. But from the perspective of a 15 year old hateful boy that thinks that the whole story is "about" Batman punching Superman. And the whole bit where they suddenly cast aside their differences because their moms have the same name...that is the kind of plot twist a FIVE YEAR OLD would come up with.

By the end, I had that awful "I can't believe I watched the whole thing" feeling. And I immediately wanted to watch the entire run of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

I am so tempted to watch this, because I cannot believe this is as bad as my mind pictures it. But of all possible things, I always stop when I remember that it has Jesse Eisenberg in it.

And, contrary to the common opinion, I don't hate Snyder. I will even publicly admit that I liked his Watchmen. Here you go, I said it. Watchmen is good. Release the hounds.

During my long stretch of unemployment in 2013-4, I supplemented my job search with a lot of tv show binge-watching, courtesy of the well-stocked public library near my house. That's when I went from being a fan of Firefly to a fan of Joss Whedon in general. I had watched some Buffy and Angel in the past, but never bothered following either show regularly. And I just ignored Dollhouse. But after watching them all, along with Cabin in the Woods and the original Buffy movie, I fell down the rabbit hole into fandom. And so I finally came to watch Much Ado About Nothing, a Joss Whedon production of a Shakespeare play.

I've never been a thespian, but I like Shakespeare, both his plays and his sonnets. Several times during school, an English teacher would make us read aloud a play, often Shakespeare. Each student would have a part, and would read those lines as they came up in the course of the play. That is a great way to study Shakespeare, because once you hear his olde english aloud, you can overcome the unfamiliar dialect and come to appreciate the musicality of his lines. As a college freshman, I even took a class in Shakespeare to satisfy my english lit requirement.

Years ago, Joss started up the thespian equivalent of a gaming group. He invited various actors that he had worked with (and some that he hadn't) over to his place for wine and cheese, and then would cast them in parts for a Shakespeare reading. People could play their parts straight, earnestly, or even with silly accents, just for the joy of interacting with each other through the wonderful Shakespearean wording. During the shooting of the first Avengers movie, Whedon was feeling burned out while working with the many "notes" from the studio about dailies. After wrapping production, one of his people persuaded him to make a small and personal movie out of Much Ado About Nothing. They used his house for all the locations. The cast wore suits and ties or nice dresses, and they filmed it in black and white.

The movie is a light romantic comedy with a bit of intrigue and manipulation. The cast is a variety of Whedon veterans, from Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse, as well as Reed Diamond and various other folks who haven't previously appeared in a Whedon production. As with subtitles, it took me a few minutes to adjust to the Shakespearean dialect, but then I was in and it was nice. Amy Acker did an especially fine job of making Shakespeare sound perfectly modern and conversational, as did most of the rest of the cast. A few, like Alexis Denisof, went a different rout and delivered the lines more like incantations. Overall, it worked as a movie and was moderately enjoyable for me, even though I greatly prefer action and horror movies to rom-coms.

One thing that struck me about the movie was the good but unfamiliar music. Turns out that Joss took a few Shakespearean and sonnets and set them to music of his own creation, which is pretty goddamn amazing for a director/producer. He did write the theme to Firefly many years ago, so I was aware that he had the ability.



I never read YouTube comments, but this time I did. One person wrote, "this song makes everything better." Another had the perfect summation of the movie: "It's as if all the Joss Whedon characters died, gone to heaven, and then had a fun time."

Michael Barnes wrote: Last night I made one of the worst decisions of my life. It was late, I had a few drinks, you know how it goes.

I watched Batman V Superman.

It is quite literally one of the worst films I have seen in the past 20 years, at least. And that is without regarding the "Murder Batman",
Superman's eternally furrowing brow of conflicting emotions, and Doomsday- the worst CGI character I think I've ever seen in my life. I think the creature in Mac and Me was more convincing.

I don't think I've ever seen a more hateful, loveless movie. It's so utterly cynical that it comes across as inhumanly empty. Every single frame is so full of grit, woe or misery that it's impossible to feel joy. Even Amy Adams, a beautiful woman, looks bedraggled and drained of life.

The whole thing is like some kind of perverted death worship spectacle, apparently made by the kind of 15 year old that thinks that everything sucks, that hates their parents, and thinks that brutality and ruthlessness are "cool". I have never in my life wanted to hear Superman say "he'll have to die". Or watch Batman kill people.

Some folks liked Affleck as Batman, but I don't get it. I thought he was terrible and it felt like he wasn't very committed. The hard stare, the five o'clock shadow...compare this half assed performance to that scene in TDK where Batman goes into the interrogation room with Joker.

Superman...I don't know if I ever seen such a drastic misunderstanding of a character in a film adaptation. He is simply NOT Superman. He's really closer to The Plutonian in Irredeemable or Miracleman.

Technically, the film was hilariously inept as well. But the lowest point had to be any fight scene with Ben Affleck. I don't believe I have _ever_ seen an actor execute fight scenes so badly. That dream sequence fight scene looks almost as intentionally scripted and synchronized as the fight in A Clockwork Orange, but without purpose. It looked like a rehearsal.

Just like I expected from the previews, for some reason Jesse Eisenberg's direction appears to have been "act like Johnny Depp'a version of Willy Wonka." I'm not even sure that anyone involved with the film has ever seen Lex Luthor in anything else because it was not the same character.

The JLA stuff was fucking stupid. How is that characters like Wonder Woman and Aquaman are just suddenly discovered? Flash looked terrible. The Cyborg think looked like Joel Schumacher was called in to direct it. Gal Gadot might be able to carry a WW film/ she looks great and has a good sense of the character. I would regard her as the one good thing in the entire 2:30 film.

The Doomsday stuff...I can not believe studio executives let that get released. I was actually in shock that something that looked so terrible, so DATED came out of a 2016 film. It reminded me of bad CGI action from the late 1990s. The whole thing felt like watching a human meatball shooting lightning and making explosions.

The Darkseid tease made me sad. It's bad enough this film shit the bed without dragging Jack Kirby into its diarrheal abyss. Parademons, what was the point.

As for the "title fight" stuff...you can just feel Zack Snyder trying his darnedest to make The Dark Knight Returns. But from the perspective of a 15 year old hateful boy that thinks that the whole story is "about" Batman punching Superman. And the whole bit where they suddenly cast aside their differences because their moms have the same name...that is the kind of plot twist a FIVE YEAR OLD would come up with.

By the end, I had that awful "I can't believe I watched the whole thing" feeling. And I immediately wanted to watch the entire run of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

YES. Yes to all of this. Batman vs. Superman is such a tediously terrible and long movie. And so completely devoid of humor. I have to say it but "why so serious?" But like you said, a 15-year-old's idea of serious. Saw the preview for Wonder Woman while at the movies for Fantastic Beasts, it can only be better than BvS, right? Right? My wife said she's so desperate for it to be good because there are no female superhero movies out there.

From the trailer I question whether Wonder Woman will be *great,* but it at least seems to have some sense of energy and levity and fun, which puts it far above BvS. And Gal Gadot is very watchable.

Barnes, did you see the last Divergent movie? I already forget the title. Anyway, it's actually WORSE than BvS on many levels. I hope you see it. I can't believe there's a worse movie this year than BvS but there is.

Saw Allied. It is eminently watchable. More so in cinemas, because it is quite beautiful. It is also a good date movie without being an overt date movie. Like, you're not sure if this is a love story or a movie about killing nazis until the end, and so both parties are satisfied.
But, this is definitely one of Zemeckis' "imitation" movies, with that uncanny feeling that everything you see - although competent and for most part engaging - is ripped out from somewhere else (kind of like Frighteners or What Lies Beneath). Particularly from Inglorious Basterds. There is one actor who reprises the same role from Basterds, with the same mannerisms and a very similar scene - including some cards, and I even think he had the same SS rank as in Basterds. And he's interacting with Brad Pitt. And Brad Pitt is talking a foreign language, with the point made that he's accent is no good (still, nothing beats Aldo Raine's "Arrivederci")
It was very awkward.
I found Cotillard was good - I kinda of can't stand her since Batman (the worst death scene ever), but her and Pitt were pretty good, and the chemistry is there (if Joey from Friends would watch this, he'd probably think those two are not having a real affair).

I liked Kagemusha and fancied another film with a Samurai aesthethic so I decided to watch Ran.

I'm not sure I liked it, sadly. It's very well-made, with great actors, great camera work and fantastic costumes and makeup but ultimately, there are several things that brought the experience down and generally made it rougher and less interesting than it should be.

Like Kagemusha, I felt that Ran is a bit too long and also in need of some editing. It's not a film that wants to be over two hours, yet it's 40 minutes longer than that, with several too many "crazy King Lear" scenes and a battle sequence that is repeated twice. There's also not a single ending, but a succession of them, which felt a bit awkard and sloppy.

I think this was most apparent at the beginning of the film, which is much less interesting than the second half, specially visually. I really missed all the beautiful small details of Kagemusha, like Kenshin opening a window to a snowy landscape or the samurais in a meeting. In Ran the camerawork is very static, specially when the characters are talking and they are already fairly stiff characters.

In fact, characters were what I liked the least about the film. The brothers, which are color-coded and whose banners read 1, 2, and 3 are simbolic husks with very little personality. Hidetori's crazeness gets repetitive too soon to be great and it doesn't help he's clearly a repeat from Kagemusha. My biggest peeve though, was Lady Kaede who is way too obviously evil to work as a villain. There's literally one scene in which she almost kills one of the brothers, who instead of having her executed proceeds to have sex with her, marry her, kill her previous wife and lead his clan to downfall. I couldn't help but feel that was overly forced.

The film is also a bit sentimentalistic at parts. When Sanjuro dies, the cries from the Jester were a bit exaggerated and broke my suspension of disbelief. In general that scene felt overdone, at least for me.

I don't know, I just wasn't very fond of the film. I actually expected a friend to roast me for this, but apparently he didn't like it as much as Kagemusha, either and ranked it fairly low in Kurosawa's film list.

Wow, Moana was fantastic. Loved the music. Beautiful. Will write review later. Emily didn't like it

I saw Fantastic Beasts recently. I thought it was just ok, but it didn't quite capture the whole Harry Potter wonder for me. Maybe it was because I had read the Harry Potter books before watching the movies, and I already had a supplementary image of what I imagined I was going to see in the movie, but Fantastic Beasts felt more like a quick tour through the Harry Potter world. There wasn't as much exposition I felt. For example, the reason why Newt was in the U.S. with that suitcase was explained quickly, the whole deal with what was happening with Grindelwald was also mostly background stuff, and the anti-witch cult was just kind of thrown in as well. It could be that I was out of it, but I felt a bit lost. I also had trouble understanding Eddie Redmayne. His mumbling didn't help my lost feeling.

Another movie we just saw was Storks. I expected this movie to be a mostly forgettable one, but it turned out to be really funny. The voice acting was great, and there were some nice layered jokes thrown in. I love it when kids movies have clever jokes that take on different meanings depending on your background or age. The interaction between Junior and Tulip was very well done. The wolfpack was also amazing. I'd put this up there with movies like How to Train a Dragon or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as far as movies that turn out to be way better than you might think.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Greg is not a scientist.
I also saw the arrival and it doesn't take the science seriously at all. In fact it pretty much shat all over the concept of what science and the scientific method is and involves. I loved how they took the concept of cognitive pathways being modified into solving an alien symbol language equaling allowing some bint the capacity to break the laws of the physical universe. Lots of lol hilarious moments though when they start 'communicating' one of my favorites when they'd got the text 'offer weapon' but needed to go down and have who other scenes before going back. To write offer weapon with a question mark? That's right they had the ability to phrase a question but had not thought to use it. Then she could just write with the iPad entire fucking discussions - yet they'd not actually just asked all th shit they'd been blabbing about in the few days or weeks they'd solved talking to aliens who speak in ink blot.

It was utterly retarded nonsense, and even had to use the tired ass cliche of a love story because what would any movie be without a man woman romantic angle even when aliens from another universe pop down for a chat. The guy even actually said at the end the most amazing thing he'd seen was not the alien race but the boring ass woman translator he was with. Yes he says this. For real. Take your sick bag as well as any notion of credibility as a science film, it's only for people who think science means 'advanced STUFF'

The central point which is actually not really about the aliens but about fore knowledge, choice and even the concept of free will was as clumsily handled as the rest of it despite the pitiful efforts to include little cues towards 2001, a film which is fifty gazifuckingtrillion times better ( and is also not about science or aliens but the awakening of people via the medium of film and is just a movie opening the fourth wall).

So in summary: utter bollocks