What movies have you seen recently?

[Levi-chan]

Saw Solid State Society. Talk about nerd porn.

No Country For Old Men was awesome, if a bit not-too-subtle about its message.

Narnia was fun, but I wanted to punch Caspian in the face.

Step Up 2 (YES I KNOW) was surprisingly decent viewing. Standard fare plot-wise, but goddamn the lead actress is fun to look at.

[Killbert-Robby]

Step Up 2 (YES I KNOW) was surprisingly decent viewing. Standard fare plot-wise, but goddamn the lead actress is fun to look at.

Who are you and what have you done with Levi!?

[Keffria]

I always watch French films... they're not a rare fare around here.

Naw, they're not especially rare around here, either -- French is one of our official languages, after all. Even the crappy chain video stores carry at least a few French films. (Although my only brush with actual French-Canadian cinema was the absolutely terrible Bon Cop, Bad Cop, in which a Quebecker replaces the wacky non-Caucasian in the buddy-cop formula. Also there is hockey.)

[Bustertheclown]

Went and saw Indy last night. I liked it! The story was... different, but it was still a vintage Indiana Jones movie. Also, as much as my mind rejects Shia LaBeouf as an action star, I still like him in everything he's in, including this one.

Indy 4 checklist:

- opening shot of Paramount mountain
- Opening sequence concluding a preceding adventure
- Indy gets slapped (by a girl)
- Indy rescues some broad
- Comedy sidekick
- Indy uses at least 4 different kinds of transport
- Indy travels over an animated map
- Indy swings across a gap with his whip
- Indy's hat rolls to his feet
- Indy's gun is empty! (Or missing)
- Indy outruns certain doom (rolling boulders, flooding water, destructing temples)
- Indy remarks on his hatred of snakes/nazis
- Indy remarks on artefacts belonging in museums
- A conveyor-belt fight with deadly end (tank track, ship propeller, rock smasher)
- Indy reads secret ancient writings
- Secret passageways
- Elaborate death-traps (wall spikes, descending ceilings, giant blades)
- Cheering ethnic locals
- Creepy animal infestation (snakes, bugs, rats)
- Indy gets the macguffin but it is taken away from him
- Villain gets really annoyed with Indy when he pops up out of nowhere AGAIN and is still not dead
- High speed vehicle chase where he takes out an entire convoy (or several minecarts)
- Big Guy fight
- Villain has a horrific death involving profound mystical things (face melting, burning stones, rapid ageing)
- Indy loses the macguffin altogether but wins anyway
- Indy starts out a cynic but by the end is a true believer

Humm I hope I didn't miss anything.

Of course you missed stuff! After a week-long Indy fest, capping off with last night, I can add:

- 1,000,000 bullets fired from automatic weapons, and none reach a target.
- Elaborate physical sets. (Yes, there's a lot of CGI in this one, but they still stuck with plenty of old-fashioned set design, too)
- Gross misrepresentations of indigenous cultures. (Temple of Doom had voodoo dolls. Voodoo! In India?!)
- Indy travels over an animated map that features countries, cities, or access points that no longer exist in current socio/political landscapes.
- The Double-cross!
- "I've heard that bedtime story before."
- The classroom scene, where plot points are lined out and foreshadowed in his lecture, via him "debunking" myths of archeology.
- The word "quickly!" in a foreign language, screamed constantly.
- HORRIBLE villain accents.

EDIT:
How could I have forgotten:

- The ILM scream!

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I didn't actually catch the Wilhelm scream in this one. I was listening for it too.

[TRI]

Haven't seen the movie yet, but according to the Wikipedia article you just linked, you can hear it when someone in the library is about to be hit by a motorcycle.



Hmm.... I guess, Mr Green, in the library, with the motorcycle.

[Garneta]

Saw Indiana Jones the other night. Pretty good.

<spoiler>The funniest part was listening to Richie's roommate for at least an hour afterward ranting about, "Aliens?! ALIENS?!! They couldn't come up with anything better than aliens!!?!!</spoiler>

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Haven't seen the movie yet, but according to the Wikipedia article you just linked, you can hear it when someone in the library is about to be hit by a motorcycle.



Hmm.... I guess, Mr Green, in the library, with the motorcycle.

I haven't actually read the article for several months. I just linked it because it has a sound clip on it.

And I must've missed that scream. I was too busy laughing at that part.

[Joel Fagin]

Boy do I need to vent.

My god but Indy was awful. The entire plot was Indy getting captured, escaping, leading the villain to the next bit, getting captured, escaping, leading the villain to the next bit, getting captured, escaping, leading the villain to the net bit and then... I think the climax was at that point. Maybe there was one other iteration in there somewhere.

The villainess herself had no point at all except to be more distinctive and noticable in the big action sequences than her Russian cohorts. She had no personlity at all. Then there were the random people who would show up without any explanation at all and try to kill Indy. The baddies were one thing but some random local who has nothing to do with anyone else?

And the climax... Well, here are some spoilers...

Great. So they turned Indiana Jones into the FREAKING X-FILES. Interdimensional psychic grey aliens from Roswell who built the Mayan pyramids, sculpted crystal skulls and scribbled on the ground so they'd know where to land their spaceships? That's a plot that the X Files didn't even stoop to. It's pathetic. It's a verbatim copy of cliched conspiracies from the tinfoil hat brigade. Verbatim. There's not a single original point to the daft, jammed together mish-mash of deluded "anything that can't be explained is connected by aliens" nonsense. It could have been written by a UFO spotter.

Oh, and hey, let's steal the end of the X File movie too. No one will notice.

I thought it would be bad but this beggars belief. It's a miserable, pathetic joke, saved only by the actors, all of whom are worth watching in their roles for the fun of seeing them in a new Indy movie.

Except Cate. The script just didn't have her doing anything.

- Joel Fagin

[Bustertheclown]

Haven't seen the movie yet, but according to the Wikipedia article you just linked, you can hear it when someone in the library is about to be hit by a motorcycle.



Hmm.... I guess, Mr Green, in the library, with the motorcycle.

I haven't actually read the article for several months. I just linked it because it has a sound clip on it.

And I must've missed that scream. I was too busy laughing at that part.

It was there. It was kinda subtle and muted this time, for some reason.

I thought it would be bad but this beggars belief. It's a miserable, pathetic joke, saved only by the actors, all of whom are worth watching in their roles for the fun of seeing them in a new Indy movie.

Except Cate. The script just didn't have her doing anything.

- Joel Fagin

Honestly, watching them in their roles for the fun of seeing them in a new Indy movie is the only reason why I watch Indy movies. For me, it's all about the formula, and the fun little details. If I wanted cohesive and believable plots, I'd watch something else. And, hell, seeing him fight Commies for alien artifacts is no more ridiculous than seeing him fight Nazis for fabled religious artifacts. I'll agree with you about Cate, though. Also, I hated her stupid accent. I know a lot of Ukranians. None of them have that stupid accent. She kept losing it, too, and letting British leak out. Ugh.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I was in the camp of not caring if it stuck to the formula because it was an Indy movie as well. And honestly, I wish it were more of the same, because this movie was pretty average. There never seemed to be any tension and it was too silly. I know Indiana Jones is rooted in the stylings of B-movies and is supposed to be cheesey at times, but it was a little too much for me. The movie kinda lost me when Mutt started swinging from vines with the mokeys to catch up with the chase. And the the ants were unnecessary, as were the Mayans coming out of the walls. Mac shoulda been killed right from the start too, because I didn't feel he was interesting enough. Also, too many one liners too and not enough dialog. And yeah, the villain was under-developed and reminded me of Rocky & Bullwinkle. I felt no real connection to her the way I did with Belloq and Elsa from the previous movies. The movie just felt somewhat lazy to me.

That scene with the fridge is golden, though.

[Jim North]

Man, Sir Fagin, that was a whole bunch of typing when all you needed to say was:

I watched an Indiana Jones movie and it pissed me off because it was an Indiana Jones movie.

[Grabmygoblin]

saw Blood Diamond last night and American Psycho earlier this week, both pretty good flicks. Blood Diamond had me crying and feeling guilty for things outside my ability to fix, and American Psycho made me rofl. I read a few articles complaining about the violence, particularly the violence against women, but the women and the other "outsider" characters were the only redeemable ones, and managed to actually survive Bateman! when Bateman returns to the scene of the massacre to clean up and finds the apartment sanitized and up for sale, the building owner/real estate agent trying to shuffle him out asap, I almost died

I thought Crystal Skull was better than Temple of Doom, but not as good as Last Crusade and definitely nowhere near as good as Raiders. it was fun, but just not the same quality of fun. I was fairly convinced there was going to be a twist! ending where it's revealed that Marion was the one dropping the signals... if that had been the ending, I would have hunted down Lucas and pulled out his molars with a rusty wire hanger. now that I think about it though, I kind of wish the kid had dropped the signals, and that he was just doing it to protect his mom. as it was, it was just idiotic. this is Indiana Jones, not The Mummy, and the merc wasn't Benny.

[Jesusabdullah]

Blood Diamond was a good movie.

[Joel Fagin]

Man, Sir Fagin, that was a whole bunch of typing when all you needed to say was:

I watched an Indiana Jones movie and it pissed me off because it was an Indiana Jones movie.

That's like saying I hated Star Wars Episode One because it was Star Wars. So not the whole story.

And, gee, what a coincidence, they're both by George Lucas. I wonder if there's a patteren...

- Joel Fagin

[CaptainClaude]

Gonna break away from the Indy stuff, ain't seen it yet...

Southland Tales is fun if you only watch it from the justin timberlake miming to the killers scene. That's about an hour in.

Then you spend the remaining hour of the film trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
if you watch the first half, you know what's going on, and its all very dull.

[Jim North]

So not the whole story.

Yeh, but the only thing you said that didn't seem to be in that vein was a spoiler that I didn't read 'cause I haven't seen the movie yet.

[Komiyan]

I liked Indy, it was fun. I wasn't expecting much more

[KWill]

I sat through the Anaconda evening one of the German channels pulled off, watching Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid followed by its prequel Anaconda. The first one was slightly more entertaining, probably because compared to the other it had something that could be called character development, with most of the characters realizing that the money they would gain from selling immortality wasn't worth their lives. It glossed over the fact that anacondas aren't native to Borneo. Anaconda, on the other hand, let me enjoy a giant CGI reptile chase a bunch of well known celebrities along a river, including Ice Cub (Ice Cube in the widescreen version) and then proceeding to kill or eat some of them, Owen Wilson and Tanya from Red Alert 2 being the most memorable.

Then I watched Sin City yesterday and I'm not finished being traumatized.

[Mr.Bob]

Hmm saw Indy. Didn't really like it. Far too cartoony for me... at least if you squinted for the first three they had some credible realism (it's really the action scenes I am referring too. The chase was way too OTT).

And oh god the ending I was sitting there swearing "Don't you DARE put that hat on DONT YOU DARE I swear IF YOU PUT THE HAT ON"
Thank god for small mercies, eh?

Oh and Joel you liked The Doctor's Daughter. Your credibility for scrutiny is SHATTERED