[Slow Ben]

Act of Valor was awesome. Just flat friggin awesomely entertaining.

You can tell the guys in it weren't actors, but imo it just added to the type of film it was.

You know what it was like? If anyone here has ever played any of the Modern Warfare single player campaigns, it was like watching a movie of one of those. Where you do an op and it leads to another one and another leading to that final showdown.

Don't expect good acting or an overexciting story, but if you just want tense, exciting black ops type shit, you will love this movie.

8.5 sniper headshots out of 10.

[HoosierDaddy]

Take Shelter is about a man who starts dreaming of a storm to come, and the question of whether he is seeing the future or going crazy like his mother did. Bad summary, but this is a really good movie. Very atmospheric and well acted and does a great job of relating the man's growing panic to the viewer.

7.5

Moneyball: I just love Brad Pitt. Don't know why. Good movie especially if you love baseball.

7.5 out of 10.

[Slow Ben]

3 things.
1-glad to here take shelters is good, I was really interested.
2- HD, did u move to Chicago?
3- anyone watching the oscars? Angelina Jolie looks like she just stepped out of a meth lab and needs a fix.

[HoosierDaddy]

2. Just going along with the theme.

[MWKarsa]

I saw Underworld: Awakening today and it was fantastic- fantastically bad but Kate Beckinsale is so freaking hot in leather this movie is pure win. Plot sucks but Kate was wearing leather, the daughter looks like a mix of the girl from the Exorcist and an Oopa Loopa when she transforms to the hybrid and the movie has lots a action whether or not it actually makes sense is no problem because Beckinsale is wearing the leather outfit through out.

Movie gets 2 stars and Kate's body gets a "eleven" that Nigel Tufnel agrees with.

[McLovin]

About halfway through a re-watch of the JJ Abrams STAR TREK movie.

I had forgotten how good it was. I hope Abrams does more of these.

[QuickTidal]

McLovin, on 27 February 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

About halfway through a re-watch of the JJ Abrams STAR TREK movie.

I had forgotten how good it was. I hope Abrams does more of these.

Your wish is my command. (Pssst, JJ just started shooting the sequel) Here is the first set pic of Quinto's Spock and Benedict Cumberbatch's unknown villain.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 27 February 2012 - 03:28 PM

[Wanderer]

The Good , The Bad and The Weird.

Awesome Oriental Western.

[Aptorian]

Over the course of the last few days I've watched:

Predators - Not great but not bad either. Very reminiscent of old school action films from around the 90s. I have to say I prefer Predators in an urban environment and not in a jungle setting.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - An amazingly shitty film. Who ever wrote this manuscript deserves to be flogged. I liked all 3 of the first film but this one... oh my god it's bad.

Fast and Furious 5 - I've never really been a fan of this franchise but this was a good action film. Doesn't take itself too serious but has a decent enough story. Lots of explosions and shooting and girls in tight jeans. I like.

Jonah Hex - This movie was a surprise. It was "okay'ish". I was expecting absolute shit but it was passably entertaining. Like a less charming version of Wild West. It was a really generic action western/super hero film but I guess they did what they could with a mediochre plot and manuscript. I have no idea why John Malkowich or Megan Fox were in the film though.

Drive Angry - Nick Cage does bad films and awesome films. This was an awesome Nick Cage film. Really cheesy. Real B-movie vibe but with a good budget and some hilariously hammy acting. I really liked it. And the "Accountant" character was amazing. I could see them finding some excuse for making a sequel.

[McLovin]

Saw my favorite of the Alien quadrilogy, ALIENS.

[Morgoth]

Watched the Ideas of March with the gf, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Ryan Gosling has such a presence in every scene he manages to out-act Seymore Hoffman and Clooney, which is no mean feat.

[Otataral Toblakai]

Just watched Drive. Interesting movie. Different style/story. Not much talk. And dazzling smiles.

[McLovin]

And my Alien re-watch continues with...ALIEN 3.

I had forgotten just how muddled this movie is, in terms of story, direction, and editing. Total behind-the-lens failure.

I had also forgotten about the cringeworthy animated alien bits. On my HDTV that looked like SHIT. I hope the Blu-Ray edition cleaned that up with some CGI.

QT, how does the director's cut of this film come off? For me, this film makes the quadrilogy not worth the money.

[QuickTidal]

McLovin, on 05 March 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

And my Alien re-watch continues with...ALIEN 3.

I had forgotten just how muddled this movie is, in terms of story, direction, and editing. Total behind-the-lens failure.

I had also forgotten about the cringeworthy animated alien bits. On my HDTV that looked like SHIT. I hope the Blu-Ray edition cleaned that up with some CGI.

QT, how does the director's cut of this film come off? For me, this film makes the quadrilogy not worth the money.

The director's cut (called The Assembly Cut) is as much better as it can be actually. I do believe it adds about 30 minutes of additional footage, and changes major things.

The Assembly Cut has several key plot elements that differ from the theatrical release. The alien gestates in an ox rather than a dog, and one of the inmates discovers a dead facehugger. Ripley's body washes up on the shore of the planet in the special edition instead of being found in the ship's wreckage as in the theatrical cut. Some scenes are extended to focus more on the religious views of the inmates. The inmates succeed in their attempt to trap the alien, but it is later released by the disturbed inmate Golic. In this version, the alien Queen does not burst from Ripley's chest as she falls into the furnace. There is also a scene in the prison's assembly hall where one of the inmates suggests to Dillon that they lead the creature to the furnace so that they can incinerate it in the fire.

All in all, for the mishmash that ALIEN 3 is...the Assembly Cut cleans it up into a much better film that flows better and doesn't feel the choppyness of the theatrical cut (which is crapola). It's still not nearly as good a film as the first two, but with the Assembly Cut David Fincher made it work as best he could. It's not perfect, but it's alright.

TBH one of the best reasons to own the quadrilogy (other than having the BluRay cuts of ALIEN and ALIENS (which alone are worth it to me), are the supplemental discs with all the behind the scene's stuff...including the ALIEN 3 stuff that Fox cut from previous releases (up till now) where David Fincher essentially badmouths what happened with the film and how he had to shoot without a script and Fox rushed him ect. It's all very telling. But like I said above, it's a worthy set to me for ALIEN, ALIENS and to a certain extent even ALIEN RESURRECTION (since I did like what Jean Pierre Jeaunet tried to do) to have those on Blu Ray.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 05 March 2012 - 03:29 PM

[McLovin]

Speaking of ALIEN RESURRECTION...

Never mind the weird directorial moments.
Never mind the largely unlikeable characters.
Never mind that's it's hard to give a shit what happens to a clone of Ripley, especially one acting that weird.

Did anyone on the flimmaking team not notice the ginormous gaping hole in the plot?

Spoiler

If Ripley's queen has a human reproductive system that produced that ghastly human hybrid toward the end, where did all the other aliens and eggs come from?

[QuickTidal]

McLovin, on 07 March 2012 - 02:33 PM, said:

Speaking of ALIEN RESURRECTION...

Never mind the weird directorial moments.
Never mind the largely unlikeable characters.
Never mind that's it's hard to give a shit what happens to a clone of Ripley, especially one acting that weird.

Did anyone on the flimmaking team not notice the ginormous gaping hole in the plot?

Spoiler

If Ripley's queen has a human reproductive system that produced that ghastly human hybrid toward the end, where did all the other aliens and eggs come from?

Not a plot hole.

Ripley had sex with the Queen, thus producing the hybrid at the end.

The eggs before that were normal Alien Queen eggs. It wasn't until Ripley mixed her sex juices with the Alien Queen that the hybrid was produced.

and the directorial moments aren't odd, they are Jean Pierre-Jeunet through and through...it's just he was the wrong choice to direct an alien film since his quirky French classical style doesn't lend itself well to survival horror.

and yeah, Clone Ripley is not even a shadow of real Ripley. That said, I can look at ALIEN 4 through a different lens and enjoy it on that level...but yeah, they missed the boat by A. Killing Ripley in Alien 3, and B. setting the sequel to that one 200 years later with a clone.

IMHO they should have done the original stories for Alien 3 and 4 with Hicks and Ripley leading each film respectively. Sad they never did it.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 07 March 2012 - 02:53 PM

[McLovin]

QuickTidal, on 07 March 2012 - 02:46 PM, said:

Not a plot hole.

Ripley had sex with the Queen, thus producing the hybrid at the end.

I guess that was one of the weird moments where I didn't understand what was happening. On the other hand, given that I was watching a televised version, there may have been network editing interference. It's been so long since I saw the movie I can't remember enough to know.

So I guess I have to give Jeunet the benefit of the doubt there.

And I guess you do have to give the third and fourth movies credit for trying to do something different in their own ways. The execution just kinda left something to be desired. The first two movies were awesome, but if 3 and 4 had been more of the same we would have gotten tired of it.

This post has been edited by McLovin: 07 March 2012 - 04:52 PM

[QuickTidal]

McLovin, on 07 March 2012 - 04:51 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 07 March 2012 - 02:46 PM, said:

Not a plot hole.

Ripley had sex with the Queen, thus producing the hybrid at the end.

I guess that was one of the weird moments where I didn't understand what was happening. On the other hand, given that I was watching a televised version, there may have been network editing interference. It's been so long since I saw the movie I can't remember enough to know.

So I guess I have to give Jeunet the benefit of the doubt there.

And I guess you do have to give the third and fourth movies credit for trying to do something different in their own ways. The execution just kinda left something to be desired. The first two movies were awesome, but if 3 and 4 had been more of the same we would have gotten tired of it.

The original plan for Alien 3 and 4 was as follows (and I would have LOVED since it progresses the stories from 1 and 2):

Originally Brandywine Productions was approached by 20th Century Fox to create two more sequels. After going through several ideas, David Giler and Walter Hill, the film series producers, "settled upon a complex two-part story that offered the underhanded Weyland-Yutani Corporation facing off with a militarily aggressive culture of humans whose rigid socialist ideology has caused them to separate from Earth's society."[9] Sigourney Weaver (Ripley) would only make a cameo appearance in the third film, with the lead role going to Michael Biehn's Corporal Hicks from Aliens. Aliens 4 would see the return of Ripley "in an epic battle with alien warriors mass produced by the expatriated Earthlings." Weaver in particular liked the Cold War metaphor and agreed to the smaller role.

I think the above treatment was the IDEAL way to go about those two films, but the fact that they were scrapped just proves to me that sometimes Hollywood makes irredeemable, piss poor decisions...considering what Aline 3 and 4 became and how they couldn't hold a candle to the first two films.

[McLovin]

Yeah, the thing is, Alien 3 gives us Ripley going up against the Company, which is how the narrative should end. If they had just taken that thought, combined with extrapolating the stakes/fireworks from ALIENS, and gone from there, they could have made a genius movie (or two).

[worry]

Just watched The Interrupters, the new doc from Steve James who did Hoop Dreams and Stevie. It's just about as good as it gets. Follows a year in the life of a Chicago anti-violence organization called CeaseFire, and goes most in depth with three specific Violence Interrupters whose goal it is to pre-empt or defuse violent situations in the community through some pretty courageous means. Absolutely riveting.

H.D., you're from Chicago, did you get to see this?