The last movie you've seen thread 2016

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My wife finally convinced me to see Guardians of the Galaxy last night. It was ok, not great, but an improvement on Thor 2 and Captain America 2, both of which I hated, and Iron Man 3 which was pretty forgettable. GotG was horribly clichéd, with terrible dialogue and a laughably pathetic villain (oh God that ending), but it was reasonable funny (though about a third of the jokes were groan-worthy and overused) and had a fair amount of heart. The movie gave me little reason to care about Nova, but the main characters were generally likable and the settings were cool. The soundtrack was hit-and-miss with an overload of 70s and 80s nostalgia that I didn't care for, though it had its moments.

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Seeing as I liked TDKR better than its predecessor, there's a good chance I'll like Interstellar when I see it this weekend.

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Loved Interstellar. It was just an experience. I don't know how else to put it.

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Finally got around to seeing Mockingjay Part One. What an incredibly mediocre movie. It had enough cool parts to make it not terrible, but it's hard to say that much of anything really happened. The "twist" was super obvious, and I just completely hated Katniss the entire movie. All she does is whine about Peeta not being rescued instead of her despite being objectively far more important than him. I couldn't care less about Peeta. Everyone just makes incredibly stupid decisions throughout (e.g. the damn cat) that create fake tension.

Oh, and there was virtually no Woody Harrelson in the entire movie.

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Finally got around to watching The Grand Budapest Hotel, as everyone seems to love it, and it seemed more palatable than Boyhood or the generic biopic crap that got nominated for Best Picture.

TGBH was my first Wes Anderson movie. His movies have never particularly interested me, though I've thought about watching Moonrise Kingdom. I have very mixed feelings about TGBH: while I found the characters charming and endearing and the story interesting enough if a bit bizarre, Anderson's cinematograhic style was incredibly oppressive. With every character always moving at right angles to the camera, everything symmetric, and the environment flat, I felt like everyone was a puppet being forced through some overbearing maze. I think that's kind of the point, what with his "dollhouse" style and all, but I just couldn't stand it. I felt claustrophobic and confined, just praying that someone would do something different or we'd get some other camera angle, but there was no relief to be had. Between that and the ridiculously bad effects at times (e.g. the ski chase), I can't say that it was an experience I'd want to have very many times.

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Saw Jupiter Ascending today. I'll preface this by saying I'm a huge Wachowski fan, having both Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer in my top five favorite movies I've seen. JA has received exceedingly bad reviews, currently at 22% on RT, with some comparing it to Battlefield Earth as one of the worst sci-fi movies ever.

Honestly, I wonder what movie they were watching. Jupiter Ascending is a fun, self-aware movie that delivers some of the most incredible action sequences I've ever seen. I was very skeptical of the castings of Kunis and Tatum, but they both played their characters quite well, though they weren't particularly hard characters to play. While Mila has her share of typical damsel-in-distress moments, she really steps up in the final third of the movie, taking matters into her own hands. Redmayne plays a very hammy villain with mommy issues, but the performance isn't anywhere near as bad as people suggest.

The plot is so-so, standard space opera fare in the vein of The Fifth Element or the 2009 Star Trek, but the universe it inhabits is a beautiful and well-developed construction that I wanted much more than barely over two hours to explore. What surprised me most was that the movie was actually quite funny, moreso than I ever thought it would be, and not in a bad way. The tone was actually not that much more serious than Guardians of the Galaxy, though it was more serious (I strongly question how a movie like this bombs with critics while Guardians, which is quite similar, does so well). I was also surprised that when we get the much-derided line from the trailer ("I love dogs!") actually works really well in context; in fact, both the love story and the "chosen one" story actually play out in ways quite different than you might expect coming in.

I think the key to the movie is this: it's fundamentally a quite ridiculous movie, and it knows it. If you can be okay with that, it's a great ride. If not, then it's probably not for you.

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I saw Jupiter Ascending and agree with realisticidealist almost entirely, which I think might actually be a first for our respective tastes in big-budget action-and-heroics movies. (Except for having Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas among his favorite movies. I...really, really don't agree with that part.) I particularly enjoyed that the conflict was, technically, 'resolved' about halfway through in a sequence of bureaucratic comedy featuring a Terry Gilliam cameo, and the rest of the movie was basically just the heroes forcing the villains to abide by the relevant inheritance laws.

I don't want to say that it's getting such bad reviews largely because it has a female lead, but...

One of the reviews I read panning it actually made the point that the female lead was so lame and dependent on others that it couldn't give it any feminism points. I haven't seen it though.

Jupiter has lots of agency.

SPOILERS: She chooses to sacrifice herself and even her family to save the Earth, then she proceeds to beat the hell out of the main bad guy, getting some great one-liners in there as well. Not to mention that she doesn't go along with everyone else's plan several times, most notably that she doesn't become Queen of the Universe just because everyone wants her to. She chooses to go back home and live out a (mostly) normal life at the end. Heck, half the movie is her trying to get out of this thing everyone else is forcing on her while trying at the same time to not let a corrupt industrial empire destroy everything she values.

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I checked out The Last Temptation of Christ from my university's library. Despite a couple of pacing issues and a few odd narrative choices, it was absolutely fantastic. One of the most powerful endings to a film I've ever seen; I don't know if a movie could capture the spirit of the crucifixion better that Scorsese did. Easily my favorite "Christian" movie I've ever seen.

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I saw Tomorrowland today. Really conflicted with this one. I loved a lot about it, but hated almost as much.

Pros:
1) Hugh Laurie was great and a solid anti-villain. I really like it when movies make the antagonist have a point and be good intentioned in their own right.

2) The Paris/Tomorrowland entry scene was beautifully shot and rendered. A clear example of CGI helping the movie along. In general, the cinematography was above average.

3) I actually really liked the message of the movie and wish more people would internalize it. However...

Cons:
1) This may be the most preachy movie I've seen outside of bad Christian movies. Talk about beating a dead horse. I generally liked the message, but virtually everything in the movie was in service to that message. Every conversation in the first third of the movie was based on "positivity" and "hope" and "dreaming" and etc. and so forth. (Anyone who thought Interstellar was on the nose would die watching this)

2) This movie was essentially two hours of Disney fellating itself. Gratuitous Star Wars references, It's a Small World being a portal, Disney itself serving to inspire Frank, etc. Add in the ridiculous physics, laughable mooks, and a cliché Disney finale, and I really start to wonder if this movie couldn't have been so much more if it had been made by a different studio.

3) Gov. Nix's death. Ugh. Just ugh.

4) Every jetpack scene was a horrible CGI-fest of awful.

5) I'm pretty sure the second-fifth or so of this movie was directly copied from Jupiter Ascending

6) Young Frank's acting was pretty bad.

It's probably a 2.5/5, maybe a 3/5. Could have been great, but it really failed to live up to that potential.

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Jurassic World was a lot of fun and had a couple great moments, but between the god-awful writing (at least in the first half), the almost complete disposal of animatronics in favor of CGI and unnecessarily blue color grading, and the overall fan fiction-y tone, it feels like a massive hollowing of the franchise (though you could argue the other sequels already did that) that left me cringing more often than not.

I did appreciate the film's fairly self-aware tone and Chris Pratt's performance, though. The acting was solid enough and the cinematography did a fair facsimile of Spielberg's mise en scene but added little to it. Similarly, the score was essentially slightly new arrangements of Williams' 1993 score plus a bunch of generic tracks. There were times when the music really jarred with what was on screen, but that may have been intentional (maybe?).

Well, at least it looks like it's going to dethrone The Avengers for top grossing opening weekend both domestically and internationally. It's a better movie than either of those films, though that's not saying much. I'd give it a 3/5 or so.

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Saw The Martian today.

It was pretty decent, but not nearly as good as its 92% rating on RT. It's the epitome of a movie that tells instead of shows, and the characters aren't really characters as much as chess pieces that exist to make the plot move (more so than in any Nolan film). There's very little tension in a film that should have tension, but the relentlessly jocular tone robs it of any hint that everything will turn out anything but hunky-dory. The movie never slows for introspection or to delve into the internal feelings of any character, even the protagonist. As far as I can tell, there were zero ill psychological effects of being stranded on Mars for nearly two years. The movie is fun, humorous, etc., but it's just so incredibly hollow. Essentially a 2.5 hour talky-montage. I'd rate it about a 6.5/10.

On a side note, I was surprised at just how much this film pushed the PG-13 rating. Not that I'm complaining, but I'm it was interesting to see just how much they got away with. 2+ f-bombs, a scene with lots of blood and profuse bleeding, male nudity, etc.

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Went to Bridge of Spies last night. Great movie. Classic Spielberg. Probably his best since Catch Me If You Can.

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I really wasn't impressed by The Revenant. It was nice to look at, mostly, but I didn't feel like it tried to say anything beyond the immediate. For such an "epic" film, it felt really small and meaningless.

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I really wasn't impressed by The Revenant. It was nice to look at, mostly, but I didn't feel like it tried to say anything beyond the immediate. For such an "epic" film, it felt really small and meaningless.

I agree, although Tom Hardy (the guy who played FitzGerald) was great!

Definitely. I thought Hardy stood out far more than DiCaprio, and Gleeson was solid as well.

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Rather enjoyed Star Trek Beyond. First of the reboot trilogy to feel like Star Trek and far better than Into Darkness, possibly better than the 2009 film.

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Hacksaw Ridge is easily my favorite film of the year so far.

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Saw Arrival today. I thought it was was okay, not great. The pacing was really wonky; it starts slow and contemplative, but then randomly skips time through montage and voice-over in the middle. Maybe it was the theater I saw it in, but the whole film was really dark, making me feel like Mark Kermode yelling at them to "turn on the lights." The whole circular causality stuff was tenuous at best and relied on a lot of suspension of disbelief. I don't know... I guess I just didn't really connect with it emotionally like a lot of others did. As far as emotional sci-fi goes, I greatly prefer both Contact and Interstellar. Among recent releases, I vastly preferred Hacksaw Ridge.

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Watched Brooklyn on HBO. Great performances and craft, but holy moly is that a contrived, aggravating plot based on an extremely forced love triangle with its only conflict based on lack of communication. Those are the absolute worst.

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I'm really conflicted about Rogue One (note that I absolutely hate The Force Awakens). It has a lot going for it: easily the best visuals of any Star Wars film, guts to make some decisions other Disney/Marvel movies would never make, some incredible scenes in the last third, less fan service than TFA, a gritty and tactile feel (for a Star Wars film anyway)... but holy cow does it have issues. The pacing in the first third-to-half is atrocious (bordering on schizophrenic), most characters are really flat and have shallow-to-non-existent arcs and make bizarre decisions, plus some horrific CGI characters, more forced Marvel-esque humor (although not as much as TFA), more rehashed original trilogy plot elements...

I dunno. I definitely liked it more than TFA... but I'm not sure if I like it or not on balance.

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Thought Passengers was a perfectly decent (if not great) mainstream sci-fi film. Not sure what the critics were watching.

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Gods of Egypt made me feel like I was watching a big-budget Saturday morning anime or something. It's complete rubbish, but I kinda loved it.

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Managed to finally see Silence. It's a beast of a film that really delves into some quite interesting theological questions. I generally liked it, but it's going to take time to sink in. As a Catholic, I really identified with Yōsuke Kubozuka's character, even if I'd rather be Shinya Tsukamoto's character.

I preferred Hacksaw Ridge, but other than having Andrew Garfield and religious characters, they're so different that it's hard to compare. The former's much more uplifting and fast-paced compared to Silence, but it's not nearly as hard-hitting on a personal level.