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

Watched Pacific Rim for the first time last night and it was dumb, but somewhat fun. I feel like Guillermo Del Toro though is massively overrated at this point. I used to really look forward to whatever he was involved in but I feel like he has a poor command of dialogue and can't help but inject a sense of cheese into everything he touches. I wonder if it has to do with English not being his first language, but the Strain is just awful (or at least was when I watched it) and the dialogue in Pacific Rim was pretty cringe-worthy at times as well. Charlie Day's character was difficult to watch, and Idris Elba came off as restrained and muted. Charlie Hunnam's not a great actor so I didn't expect much there.

Restrained and muted? "We are cancelling the apocalypse!"

THANK YOU for saying exactly what I was thinking while watching Hellboy 2 last night- GDT, as a filmmaker, is hugely overrated. I'm fact, I would go so far as to say that I've been disappointed in every one of his films after Kronos. I like them all to some degree, with Crimson Peak and Blade 2 being the ones I like the most. Pan's Labyrinth has some amazing production design but I don't connect with the story at all. Devil's Backbone has an amazing ghost but it's _boring_. Pacific Rim is goofy and fun but it feels like it's only half realized. Mimic was awful except for the one scene where the hobo is actually giant roach.

He's very much like Tim Burton- great visual sense, excellent taste, cool concepts. But the films don't deliver. I feel like Pan's Labyrinth was so successful only because it was a SERIOUS movie about the Spanish civil war that just happened to have a Minotaur dude and fantasy elements. I would almost rather have seen him go full on monster mash.

But then he did that in Hellboy 2 and it kind of sucked.

The thing is that I like _him_. I like his personality, I like his passion, I like a lot of the same things he likes. If he and I ever got together for coffee, it'd be an all day and night thing. God help us if Frank Branham and Zev Shlesinger were invited- it'd be a 4 man genre movie convention.

I am still really looking forward to The Shape of Water and I will watch anything he does. But I don't feel he's really stuck the landing yet in any of his movies.

I would probably say that barring Kronos, Crimson Peak is his best film...but it is also in some ways his least accessible film. It is HIGH GOTHIC all the way, full throttle, to the point where it threatens to collapse in a pile of baroqueness and overheated melodrama. It is more Du Maurier or Walpole than Stoker or Shelley. It's very old fashioned, a horror movie for the Jane Austen crowd. Watching it, I don't know that it has anything to offer a modern audience that doesn't get Victorian horror. I _almost_ love it, but t still doesn't quite make it to the finish line. Some elements, like the costuming, are just a touch too overwrought.

Yes, Idris Elba came alive in that one speech and the ensuing fight, but that's it. Stringer Bell deserved better.

Hellboy 2 is the same type of situation as War of the Planet of the Apes for me. A really really good movie that I just didn't like at all. To Barnes' point, i think "not connecting with the story at all" is a good way to describe it. Pan's Labyrinth was an incredible experience for me, though. Really pushed me to places I haven't been since seeing Alice in Wonderland as a kid. I was so mad it lost the Oscar to The Lives of Others.... until i saw it and yeah, that made sense.

charlest wrote: Yes, Idris Elba came alive in that one speech and the ensuing fight, but that's it. Stringer Bell deserved better.

But the idea of the movie is dumb. I could not suspend my disbelief. It was neat and all, but giant robots, that you have to be in? Why would we do that? It makes no sense. Mind you, I liked THE LOBSTER, which makes no sense on purpose, but I couldn't get into PACIFIC RIM at all.

But HELLBOY 2? You motherfuckers are dissing HELLBOY 2?! That is one of the best superhero movies ever made. Compelling bad guy, some light touch scenes, a cool sense of dread around the protagonist and his inevitable (?) fate. I fucking loved HELLBOY 2. Goddamn.

My favorite del Toro movies are Hellboy and Crimson Peak. I actually enjoyed the first Hellboy movie even more than the Hellboy comics. The opening sequence in WWII was amazing, and the rest of the movie had an odd but very distinctive sense of style. Hellboy 2 was okay, but fell far short of the first one. Crimson Peak wasn't quite my kind of movie, but del Toro's complete commitment to the the gothic romance/horror won me over.

Hellboy 2 sucked. Plain and simple. The first one is great.

I never understood the love for Hellboy 2 either.
del Torro...didn't he sort of bork the Hobbit films as well?

Mr. White wrote: I never understood the love for Hellboy 2 either.
del Torro...didn't he sort of bork the Hobbit films as well?

Yeah, he wrote the badly padded out scripts for the Hobbit trilogy.

I didn't realize he wrote the script, but I was thinking about how he was months/years into proceeding with his vision...then just walked away.
From that "Sad Case of the Hobbit" featurette, it sounded like Jackson had to pick up right where del Torro stepped away with no room to make any adjustments.

I thought he left the movies in an unfinished state and Jackson had to step in at the last-minute and make it up as he went along, essentially.

We've been watching horror films at our house the last several weeks to celebrate Halloween:

Friday the 13th Part 3 - I just can't get into these movies, at all. Random murders aren't scary and I nodded off during the last 15-20 minutes of Part 3. I woke up in time to see the Final Girl being wheeled out on a stretcher and I still don't know, nor care, how it ended. The best part of the movie was identifying the parts where the 3D gimmick was exploited: the yo-yo!, the popcorn!, etc.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil - I really like this movie and I didn't tell my sons what it was about so it was funny to see their reactions when the plot swerved and they realized that the movie wasn't about murderous hillbillies. I have a low tolerance for movies that are based on mistaken-identity or similar farcical elements, but I thought TaDvE handled it cleverly. Also, the relationships between Tucker and Dale, and Dale and the co-ed had a surprising amount of heart for a movie that's essentially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by way of Three's Company (I mean that in the best possible way).

Slither - This one went down in my estimation after the latest rewatch. It's not bad by any means, just a little more average than I'd remembered. Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks are all great and the gore is fun, but I think it's just a movie that I need to really be in the mood to see before I watch it.

Halloween 2 - AKA The Dull Halloween Sequel that Apes the Friday the 13th Movies. My sons insisted that we watch it so I acquiesced and spent most of the movie playing Marvel Puzzle Quest on my phone to stay awake. There are some fun bits but for the most part is a straightforward killer-in-a-hospital movie. I prefer the lunacy of Halloween 3 and we'll see if my sons agree.

Trick 'R Treat - One of my favorite horror movie genres is the anthology film. It is also the genre that consistently disappoints me. Creepshow is the gold standard and everything else always seems to come up short. The Amicus anthologies' production values can't overcome how stodgy they are, and they usually have an obvious sub-Twilight Zone twist thrown in for good measure. V/H/S and V/H/S2 each had a good story or two but also had their share of clunkers. I was really looking forward to watching Southbound last year (it has David Yow!) but the stories were lackluster and squandered the really creepy and cool floating wraith-like creatures they designed for the film. Which brings us to Trick 'R Treat. Yes, it's exploitive and nasty but it's well-shot and evocative of the season while also having enough clever twists and interesting ideas to keep it from feeling like a run-of-the-mill anthology. It's better-crafted than 90% of the anthologies out there and I think it's going into the yearly rotation with Creepshow.

XX - This is surprise, a horror anthology. The first story, based on a Jack Ketchum short story, was the best. It was very creepy in a low-key, existential way with a nice downbeat ending. The second one was supposed to be funny but didn't really live up to that billing, the third one was a pretty straightforward creature feature, and the last was an above-average riff on The Omen. Overall it was fairly unmemorable with nothing to entice me to watch it again.

edit:

Holy shit I can't believe I forgot Dark Night of the Scarecrow. It's a made-for-TV slasher from 1981 where Larry Drake plays a mentally-challenged man who is executed by four rednecks, who in turn start getting offed in revenge slayings. The movie is anchored by the excellent Charles Durning as the postman/ringleader and it's a well-written, well-paced little film that builds to a great ending. My sons liked it and I'd watch it any day of the week over a Friday the 13th movie.

SebastianBludd wrote: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil - I really like this movie and I didn't tell my sons what it was about so it was funny to see their reactions when the plot swerved and they realized that the movie wasn't about murderous hillbillies. I have a low tolerance for movies that are based on mistaken-identity or similar farcical elements, but I thought TaDvE handled it cleverly. Also, the relationships between Tucker and Dale, and Dale and the co-ed had a surprising amount of heart for a movie that's essentially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by way of Three's Company (I mean that in the best possible way).

Some love for Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. I liked it very much. It's just a shame that the leading lady wasn't very attractive.

I actually posted just a couple of weeks ago here about Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. I liked the idea of the movie, but it just wasn't funny enough to make me laugh. Judging by the outtakes, they should have made Alan Tudyk the star and let him ad-lib all his lines.

Shellhead wrote: I actually posted just a couple of weeks ago here about Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. I liked the idea of the movie, but it just wasn't funny enough to make me laugh. Judging by the outtakes, they should have made Alan Tudyk the star and let him ad-lib all his lines.

You could say that about every Alan Tudyk film. He's this generation's Sid Caesar.

I really want to watch those VHS movies but the clips I've seen scared me too much I think.