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Thread: Movie Critics Thread

  1. #221
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    Watched GI Joe today and while it was ok, it could have been A LOT better.
    Dovie'andi se tovya sagain

  2. #222
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    Written for the website of my gaming clan, but I'll put it here too

    A Good Day to Die Hard

    Or, a lesson how to make a quick buck while missing the point

    (note: this has a spoiler in it. The spoiler is that the bad guy dies at the end of the film. Now that you know that, it isn't a spoiler. With that out of the way...)

    One of life's great tribulations is trying to decide how much a sequel should be judged against the body of work from which it sprang as opposed to on its own merits. I call this the Max Payne 3 problem. In the years after the release of the original Die Hard a particular subgenre of action films became known as 'Die Hard clones', or 'Die Hard on a _______'. For example, Air Force One, for my money the best of these clones, was Die Hard on a Plane. There are certain elements involved in Die Hard that were aped not only by the Die Hard sequels but this subgenre of film - a tense, slow build up as the (invariably cash motivated) antagonists position themselves to spring into action, a sophisticated bad guy, a vulnerable, trapped hero who gets beaten within an inch of his life by the end of the film. A Good Day to Die Hard, which I'm just going to call Die Hard 5 from now on guys, ignores basically all of this. That doesn't in itself make it a terrible film, but basically everything else about it does.

    So we start the film with John McClane's son Jack, now a CIA agent, getting arrested for trying to assassinate someone in a Russian club. He gets put on trial and basically says he will give false testimony against some dude named Komarov in exchange for a lesser sentence. Meanwhile John McClane boards a plane to Russia more or less just so he can watch, because his son doesn't like him or really want his help. He rocks up at the court room just as a bunch of bombs go off because some nasty men want to kill both Jack and this Komarov guy, but all it does is allow them to escape. It turns out that Komarov (who about 45 seconds before Jack had been willing to sell down the river more or less) has a file that incriminates someone else in whatever scandal was going on there, so they now need to run around town being shot at by European stereotypes while they try to find it. This is all established in the first 25 minutes or so, and to be honest there's not much else except for a final twist. This is a short film, thankfully.

    So there's no slow buildup, with the explosions starting about 10 minutes in and not really stopping, and the climactic car chase that so much fuss was made about is about 15 minutes in. This lack of pacing reflects what is my biggest problem with the film - it tries to be 1988's Die Hard in all the really unimportant aesthetic ways and misses the point entirely. The bad guy doesn't get any character development, he's an eloquent well dressed European who dislikes "American cowboys" and is after a payday, and that's basically all the audience needs to know because hey, that character was developed in 20-25 years ago in Die Hard 1 and 3, so why bother devoting time to that in 2013, right? Hey you know what else was cool? That bit at the end of Die Hard where a subdued and disarmed Bruce Willis just started laughing, and then all the bad guys were instantly off guard and laughing with him so he could take them by surprise. I liked that, lets have a bit of that, but not at the end of the film as an absurd punchline to horrible beating that Bruce Willis has taken over the last few hours, lets just drop it randomly in the middle. Oh, and wouldn't it be cool if the bad guy in this died basically the exact same way as the bad guy in Die Hard, with the same camera angle, facial expression and musical score? It is basically like it was written as Die Hard fan fiction by a fan too immature to understand the themes and key conventions underpinning the series, but aware enough to steal some of the unimportant aesthetic fluff which would usually represent a nod to the fans but here seems to be the basis for the entirety of the connection with the rest of the series.

    The problems are worsened by the tangibly bad acting, especially by Willis. As with every other aspect of this film except the important ones, Die Hard 5 tries to directly copy Die Hard by having Bruce Willis popping off a series of one liners as the film goes on. I love one liners - a bad pun or two is usually all the emotional fuel I need to get through the day.Here however their delivery is so unbelievably poor that it changes not only your perception of the directing abilities of John Moore (as if the Max Payne film didn't make you think he was shit already, am I right?), but your perception of the character of John McClane himself. An early car chase in the film is punctuated by Willis dropping father-son themed one liners, as if to suggest that tearing up Moscow in a three way van - APC - truck chase is normal father-son fare. However, as with all of the 'witty' 'dialogue' in this film they are delivered under the breath, muttered and barely intelligible, leaving the viewer with the impression not that this is an adrenaline pumping car chase but the actions of a senile old man who doesn't really know what he's doing. Basically Bruce Willis spends most of this film walking around Moscow talking to himself under his breath while perpetrating violence against a variety of Russians, some of whom don't even deserve it. Like a socio-path Mr Magoo.

    So there's basically an hour and a half of running through Russia while John tries to rebuild his relationship with his son, the outcome of which is basically his son just accepting that he's a shit dad but is good at "killing scumbags", which is the kind of heart warming character development that I had been hoping would be there, and makes me feel that John McClane is a human character and not basically a walking aimbot/one liner machine. Fortunately this film did not cause me to have to think about the Max Payne 3 problem (see the first paragraph if you've forgotten what that is already). As a Die Hard sequel, disappointing. More importantly, as a film, very very poor. It's just shit across the board.

    Score: I told you it's shit, I don't need to put a number here. Don't see this. If you want to see this then watch the trailers a bunch of times, they're a lot more fun than the film.
    I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.

  3. #223
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    I've read some really scathing reviews about the new Die Hard. To say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement
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  4. #224
    morg176 is offline Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by ILikeSoundwave View Post
    Just watched The Croods 9/10, sooooo funny. Everyone in the cinema was laughing as well.
    saw that late last week, good friday I think.
    Thought it was very funny. Animation was flawless. Character design very good. 9/10 could have done with more for the grown ups... and more animals

  5. #225
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    Watched GI Joe as there is nothing else worth spending money on.

    Never watched the cartoon or had the toys, so had no attachment to it. It was silly, cheesey, illogical, almost every character and member of the world it is based in must be morons, there are time gaps and seems like scenes and sequences missing.

    I loved it. Wouldn't go see it again in the cinema, but as a popcorn summer action flick, it was fun and enjoyable as long you don't think about it much.
    Looking For: Wreckers Saga TPB Collection (with Requiem)

  6. #226
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    Yeah. While GI Joe: Retaliation isn't the clown car Rise of Cobra was it had the stupidest twists of logic behind it's plot advancements. But it's your classic 80's dumb action flick and thus does all the textbook examples from "How to not take over the world". I won't spoil everything detail but the parts that I found that killed the most brain cells were *Spoilers in white text* Storm Shadow's sudden and unconvincing defection, japanese ninja clans without any japanese and SELF DESTRUCT DEVICES IN YOUR ULTIMATE WEAPON!!
    I don't recommend it (watch Oz, Excape from Planet Earth or Jurassic Park 3D instead) but I can see others enjoying it.

  7. #227
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    I found Oz really lacking in.... Something. Not too sure what.

    Jurrasic Park 3d was well, interesting. Most of the dinos are in the back ground, so a lot of the 3d is a bit lost on them. Having said that though, the 3d conversion was relly well done and it looked a billion times better than the carppy examples of Clash of the Titans and Star Wars ep 1.

  8. #228
    morg176 is offline Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
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    Saw ' warm bodies' today. It was a good movie. I think it has to be the first comedy romance zombie flick. it was very well made, i liked it. go see it

  9. #229
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    Quote Originally Posted by morg176 View Post
    Saw ' warm bodies' today. It was a good movie. I think it has to be the first comedy romance zombie flick. it was very well made, i liked it. go see it
    I want to see it as well but in no rush, maybe on Blu-Ray when it comes out.

  10. #230
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    Saw the GIJoe movie the weekend before last, and it wasn't too bad.
    I was really disappointed that the two leading ladies weren't in it from the first movie (Baroness & Scarlet), as well as a lot of other major classic characters from the first one as well. (I looked up the cast before I went to see it, just to know who to look out for)

    One thing I was surprised about, and kinda in a good way, was the writer following the original comic version of events relating to StormShadow's turn to Cobra, in that his Master was killed by Zartan, leading him to re-evaluate his loyalty to that evil organisation.
    Usually I would be rather negative towards copying existing story elements, but after the first movie suggested that StormShadow was the murderer (and very evil himself), I was not expecting the second movie to twist it back around to copy the comic. I was so surprised, which is weird - being surprised to see something I should have been expecting. (and it was funnier that I was telling Christalcase while watching the first movie, all about the comic version of StormShadow and Zartan, and why SS was part of Cobra to start with, and why he then left)

    If they make a third one, I really hope they bring back Destro, Dr Mindbender, Baroness and Scarlett... with emphasis on Scarlett & Snake-Eyes being a couple (it just didn't feel right seeing her getting cosy with that black guy in the first movie).
    I'd also like to see more focus on the vehicles and gadgets in a third movie... which, I think would have to introduce Serpentor. Maybe the "classic" Cobra Civil War, with the GIJoe team having to contain the mess.
    There's so much history there to draw from, to homage. (something that Bay could have done with Transformers more than a few names and objects homages)

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