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

Barnes is right tho. grud doesn't know him. That's nowhere near the dumbest thing he's ever said.

Heck, that's not even the dumbest thing he's said today.

Black Barney wrote: Barnes is right tho. grud doesn't know him. That's nowhere near the dumbest thing he's ever said.

Heck, that's not even the dumbest thing he's said today.

He's not even wrong about the comparison there are definitely parallels between Bride of Frankenstein and Ex Machina. Although there are plenty of differences too and Ex Machina still has plenty to offer.

Aside from a scientist creating a female, what does Ex Machina have to do with Bride of Frankenstein at all?
Isn't it more an homage to Frankenstein...... Not Bride?

Interestingly.... Nathan uses Captain Kink in an analogy. The plot more closely resembles Star Trek: Requiem for Methusalah. Where a scientist creates an android and tests its emotions, such as love, with Kirk as the target.

But please clue me in to what I have missed in similarity to Bride of Frankenstein.

Watched Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films on Netflix last night.



If you spent any time watching b-movies in the 80's you should check this film out. I know I saw plenty so this was a joy to watch..well, most of it. I had forgotten how graphic some of those late 70s-early 80's films where. Sure I recalled a little T&A, but some of those rape scenes...

Star Wars.
It owned.
Fury Road? LOL get the fuck out
The End.

Watched Bone Tomahawk. I'm not into the torture porn or exploitive films, so haven't seen Saw, Cannibal Holocaust, or any of that crap, so keep that in mind when I say that one death may be the most disturbing I've seen on film. Great western in the vein of The Searchers though. Good to see Kurt Russell get a lot of work in 2015. I think he did, what, three?

Also watched Ex Machina. This was fantastic. I guess for some reason I thought it was a horror flick, so watched it on my own. I'll have to rewatch it with my wife. sure there may have been a similar theme to the Frankensteins, but they did a great job updating the concept particularly with some scientific circles actually looking to move towards super AI. I have no idea how some can see this as mediocre, yet give TFA high praise. Again, I thought Ex Machina updated a concept while TFA just redid a film.

Anyway, on the trailer front, I guess I'm behind, but I caught the Captain America: Civil War trailer. I think this is the nail in the coffin for me and the Marvel films. Age of Ultron was forgettable. Guardians wasn't all that. Ant Man was pretty good, but I would have been fine catching it at home. I'm fine stepping off this train. Where Civil War pushes me over the line is how boring and inappropriate I find the whole superhero v superhero storyline. Ideally superheroes are high powered vigilantes (or police) and there's plenty of room there to explore how appropriate they are given all the damage they do, dubious morales, etc. However, once you start having heroes fighting heroes the genre has basically moved into little more than gang warfare. Two groups slugging it out over some perceived offense.

Yeah, Ex Machina is the best sci-fi film to come out in some time. Maybe since Her? Something like that anyway. It's a very interesting picture and even though, as Barnes says, it has some parallels with Bride of Frankenstein (love, creation, moral implications) it really is a completely different treatment and exists on it's own merits just fine - it's a much more sophisticated look at some similar issues but done through a modern (and much needed) perspective. At the time that Bride came out the issues we are currently having with AI were a pipe dream, simply speculative fiction territory and not at all a possibility. Now they feel real, the movie plays that way too, the film takes them seriously and believes in them as real issues, which they are. These are things that Bride could not accomplish because it was all fantasy in that film. There was no fear. All the actors do a great job but especially Oscar Isaac really shines. That guy is on fire these days. His performance in the last Cohen Brothers flick was incredible as well.

Besides there aren't really any new stories the best we can do is update them and give them a modern perspective, a setting tailor made to tell our versions of that tale. Which is why I am not interested in SW as a film property right now, or Mad Max to be honest - I haven't seen either and feel no urge to do so. I want a new world tailor made to discuss the issues we have now. I'm curious about Avatar 2, I liked the first one and felt that it was that world. The story, like original SW, was a simple story we've heard thousands of times before. Making the planet itself the main character was a cool switch from the norm though. That film puts corporate ideals, new age BS, environmentalism, the notion of escaping your own reality to live in a different one through an avatar... all these things get mashed up and discussed in there in a very pop fashion that is accessible for kids. So they can be entertained by the dragons and the cool giant mech with a giant knife vs alien panther stuff and still have a little something in it to think about.

Avatar is very under rated and is more interesting to me than any re-boot right now.

As for the Marvel movies, I still find them entertaining enough but I have a hard time getting through one in a single sitting. Which is far from a glowing review.

Ha, I warned you about that Bone Tomahawk kill. Wish I could erase that from my memory. Yikes.

The Revenant is, as you might imagine, a very intense survival/revenge epic. Tom Hardy once again rocks it as the bad guy. What a year for him, and also Domhnall Gleason (I had no idea he was even in this one). I especially liked one moment involving blinking, but there are quite a few nice character moments. Amazing camera work and cinematography. Not something I'd be eager to see again, but worth seeing once, for sure.

After watching the Hateful Eight, I wanted to catch up on the Tarantino films I hadn't seen, which were Kill Bill and Death Proof. For some reason, I thought he had only produced Death Proof, or wrote the screenplay or something. Anyway, Death Proof was as average as the consensus seems to be, and the long dialogue stretches did nothing for me like in his other films. But from the moment Kurt Russell enters the bar, that is all pretty great, as far as the first half, and that chase seen at the end of the second part is really cool, too. Otherwise, meh.

Kill Bill I loved, though. I'd heard that many didn't like Vol. 2 as much, but seeing them both together (well, a day apart), I thought the whole thing worked great. Of course, nothing in Vol. 2 could match the Crazy 88 fight, so I'm kind of glad he didn't try to equal that and went for a more cerebral direction, like with the Pai Mei scenes (which also had some cool action). I do think it could have had some kind of a bigger boss fight, but regardless, I liked the way it ended.

I hadn't seen Jackie Brown since it came out, so I gave that a spin again. A smaller scale story, but Pam Grier and Robert Forster together make that a great one, and DeNiro is fun as a dopey sidekick. I really like that one in a lot of ways. It feels quieter and maybe less significant than a lot of his films, but also nice for that.

U should treat yourself to Mad Max

JJ, in the realm of potential sci-fi scenarios...I wouldn't write off Fury Road so easily. With the Middle East still as volitale as ever, questionable states getting h bombs, and the planet continuing to warm, there still seems plenty of opportunity for a Mad Max type scenario at some point down the line. Granted, Fury Road doesn't deal with the events leading up to the situation, but another tale on how a group approaches survival. In this case, hope for a better place or fix what they got.

The themes of Ex Machina and Terminator are still very potentially viable as well, so they continue to interest.

I feel the window is closing on Avatar's message though. I don't anticipate us colonizing a habitable planet anytime soon, and we seem to have already made the decision on how we're going to treat the resources and people on this one.

Star Wars, while fun like Flash Gordon or Big Trouble in Little China (two flicks I love), is a great time at the cinema, but doesn't really have anything to say besides pleasant escapism.