Topic: The Movie Thread

Not a whole lot, maybe 10 minutes? He's only in the airport battle scene plus another scene before that. Even so, personally I think he's version of Spider-man's the best live-action depiction so far.

Saw Civil War today, and it pains me to say it but it was pretty average. There were some good parts - the trio of Captain America, Falcon, and Bucky were great (Falcon in particular) and Robert Downey Jr was great as usual, but this movie is nothing to get excited about. Ant Man was easily the best part of the film in my opinion, but then again I'm a Paul Rudd fanboy. There were a couple of major gripes I had with this film though:

1) The jokes. I usually like Marvel films for their witty humour, but this one seemed to be less funny. Falcon and Bucky had some good jokes together, Ant-Man was great, and RDJ was funny as always, but too many of the jokes seemed dull, and the constant one-liners just got annoying.

2) Spider Man. Really not a fan of Tom Holland as him. He overplays the "awkward teenage nerd" stereotype to the nth degree, and half of his lines are "That was awesome!" or "I'm just trying to impress Mr Stark!" Just really, really annoying.

3) The runtime. Almost 2 and a half hours long. If you make the film interesting enough, then I'm fine with a long time, but the opening act seemed to slog on forever. I get that they had so many heroes to introduce - hell, I forgot Hawkeye even existed before he appeared midway through the film - but the film dwelled quite a bit on boring parts.

I thought civil war was decent, they've all been good the marvel films, I'd say the first avengers film was the best of the lot. The new film is more of the same. I'll never understand complaints about long movies, if you like it then surely you'll want more, if not then so what. I think all the casting for marvel has been spot on, I'd say the winter soldier casting is a bit rubbish though.

I've seen a couple of films since my last post.

Disney/Pixar's Inside Out (DVD) - Pixar films aren't usually my cup of tea, but fittingly so, this one was quite emotional. I quite liked it.

Adventures in Babysitting (Netflix) - Watched this for some 80's cheese. It was pretty average for this type of thing, but it had a good laugh or two.

I've seen a couple of movies since my last post.

Star Trek III: the Search for Spock (Netflix) - "Great Scott, Marty! What has Biff done to the space time continuum this time!? I'm a Klingon!" (I found that casting to be seriously amusing). Anyhow, as for the film itself, I didn't like it as much as Wrath of Khan, but it was still much better than the first film.

Pleasantville (Netflix) - This one was pretty good. Two teenagers get sucked into a 50's "Leave it to Beaver" like sitcom, and their modern, real world values start transforming the show's universe. Of course, at it's core it's a critique of the kind of values those old shows perpetrated, but it's also quite amusing.

Watched X-Men: Apocalypse today and it was a pretty average movie and my least favorite Bryan Singer X-Men movie. To be honest, I wasn't really surprised since the trailers didn't really got me excited for the film. The CGI in certain scenes were't that good and I thought Apocalypse was a pretty underwhelming villain as well.:/ On the plus side, (like Days of Future Past) Quicksilver's scenes were amazing.

@mrobinson91 yes it is a great movie and yes its foreign but it all depends where you come from I watch quite a few non-english films so if you want some recomendations just let me know.

Watched Martian interesting movie but Matt Damon had way too much hope and optimism for someone who was trapped on Mars, alone and millions of miles and years away from rescue. The movie was not as good as I was expecting it to be.

@dryrain: Astronauts are pretty strong mentally. Have you seen how they react when things go wrong on space walks? Cool as can be. By the way, what's a really good foreign film you've watched recently?

@shadowofSparta into korean movies at the moment two good ones are Spring Summer Autumn Winter Spring (amazing setting) and Welcome to Dongmakgol (korean war/comedy)

@SkanetWasTaken: Timbuktu was pretty good and I've been meaning to get to Ida.
@dryrain: Spring Summer Autumn Winter is an excellent film! Caught it on Film4 a few years ago (they actually have very decent foreign film selections sometimes). Dongmakgol is on my list though and I'm a massive Korean cinema fan. So underrated. Recently watched Attack the Gas Station (classic cult film), The Quiet Family (very amusing) and The Foul King (anything with Kang-ho Song is good). All of those have that very distinct Korean dry and dark humour.

@shadowofSparta I agree Korean fim is underated they have been producing a lot of good movies. You will have probbaly seen a lot of the Korean films I am about to list if not check them these out. Vengence Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr Vengence, Old Boy, Sympathy for Lady Vengence), Three Iron, Christmas in August, A Tale of Two Sisters, Thirst, The Chaser, A Bitter Sweet Life (personal favourite of mine) Mother, Bedeviled, Memories of Murder.

I will add more to the list once check through my ex-rentals I am bad with film names.

Your right Film 4 does have some decent films on and they tend to do seasons covering different topics or directors. You just have to keep an eye out as often they are on at silly times early in the morning. There are also some good foreign dramas on the channel 4 website under the title Walter presents they only have them online though but I have watched a few and they have been decent. Also BBC4 tends to have a good drama on saturday night from 9pm onwards. Normally French/Swedish etc.

@dryrain: Added Three Iron, Christmas in August and Bedeviled (skipped it before after reading some mixed reviews). Watched the others and they are really excellent. Vengeance trilogy firmly established Chan-wook Park as one of my favourite directors, Jee-woon Kim is also brilliant, made The Good, The Bad, the Weird and I Saw the Devil in addition to Bittersweet Life, Tale of Two Sisters (he's got amazing range haha) and any film by Joon-ho Bong is certified good. I used to keep up with Film4 and the excellent tv series they have on BB4 but I don't watch as much tv as I used to. Still always up for Scandi-noir. I recently came across a really odd, yet amusing revenge thriller from Israel called Big Bad Wolves. Humour was kinda Korean and it's a twisted but great film.

I watch quite a lot of Korean movies as well and definitely prefer them over HK or JPN movies over past 10 years. HK movies during 80's and 90's were pretty good but now I don't really watch them since most of them are awful.

Here are some of the ones that I like (with the lead actor's name):

• The Chaser - Kim Yeon-sook
• The Good, The Bad and The Weird - Jung Woo-sung, Song Kang-ho
• A Moment to Remember - Jung Woo-sung, Son Ye-jin
• Taegukgi (Brotherhood) - Won-bin
• The Man From Nowhere - Won-bin
• The Thieves - Kim Yeon-sook
• Tazza - Kim Yeon-sook
• The Host - Song Kang-ho
• War of the Arrows - dunno actor's name

I haven't seen too many Korean films, but I've liked the two I've seen (War of the Arrows & the Admiral).

I'm still a bigger fan of Japanese film, though. I particularly enjoy what Samurai films I've seen (13 Assassins, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, & Zatoichi: the Blind Swordsman), as well as some Yakuza flicks (Sonatine, Outrage, & Beyond Outrage), and a few other films (Battle Royale, Shall we Dance?, & Like Father, Like Son).

I've seen a ton of Hong Kong/Chinese cinema, and while there are a few films I really liked (like Red Cliff, Ip Man, & 1911), everything else I've seen really just blends together in my mind, because they all seem to use an over abundance of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style "floaty" special effects (where you can tell that everything is gratuitously being tossed around on wires).

@RR529: Japan has been good for drama. Anything by Sion Sono or Tetsuya Nakashima and you can always find some really good, either dark or emotional dramas (e.g. Confessions). Those are some pretty bad-ass films and of course they'd do samurai's justice. I love some thier cheesy Crow-style flicks too. Korean has a good mix of everything, and probably the best revenge thrillers around. Also do surprising comedies. I literally (as in metaphysically, rather than metaphorically) fell off my chair whilst watching Going by the Book. I've yet to test Chinese cinema much but Kar-Wai Wong is one of my favourite directors. Chungking Express is a must for a Hong Kong cinema enthusiast, followed by Fallen Angels and In the Mood for Love

Well, in terms of Japanese cinema, I've pretty much seen everything Netflix has, and they don't seem too interested in licensing anything new (which I thought would have changed once Netflix launched in Japan last autumn, but nope). In fact, they've only lost things (last summer they had almost 50 Japanese films in their catalogue, but by the end of the year they were down to a little over 20, and the situation hasn't budged since).

They have a plethora of Hong Kong/Chinese films (well over 100), and while they keep up with constant new releases, a few years ago I was at a point where I was watching 2 films multiple nights a week, and that experience has indefinitely burned me out on them.

As for Korean films, while not as prevalent as Chinese/HK films, they still have a lot of them (much more so than Japanese films), as well as a ton of Korean TV dramas. For some reason though, they just never really "speak" to me for whatever reason.

It didn't bother me when I was young but now the dubbing in HK/CHN bugs me - quite often they'll have actors that don't speak Cantonese or Chinese so they have someone else dub over their acting.:/ Or sometimes they'll have for example one guy speaking in English/Japanese and another in Cantonese but they both seem to understand each other clearly.

I have a few but my favorite Japanese movies are the Samurai X trilogy.

I actually quite like the lead actor from the Admiral: Roaring Seas but I don't really enjoy his films cause most of them are too dark for me. Both Old Boy and I saw the Devil were too disturbing .

Oh yeah, if you guys like buddy cop movies - you should try watching Curry & Pepper (HK) starring Stephen Chow (of Kung Fu Hustle) and Jackie Cheung.

I've actually seen quite a few films over the past couple weeks, though.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action (Netflix) - Realized it'd been years since I last saw any Looney Tunes related media, so I gave this a go. No masterpiece, but it was worth a few chuckles.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (DVD) - My father was getting ready to watch this a few days ago, so I sat down to watch too. First one of these I really watched, and it was actually pretty fun, in that popcorn flick kinda way.

Ted 2 (DVD) - Watched this with the family as well (don't worry, we're all old enough). Humor wise, it's pretty much just an extended episode of Family Guy in a live action skin, and while it may be the very definition of low brow, I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me laugh.

Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher (Netflix) - Animated Marvel flick, which I really quite enjoyed. The two titular heroes are roped into working together despite their differing methods, when they find themselves up against the same evil organisation (other prominent heroes make appearances too, of course). While the CGI used for certain humanoid characters was stiff, other than that the animation was very well done, and the level of detail in particular in both the character & environmental design was quite a few notches above anything I've seen from the animated DC flicks.

I saw mad max fury road.

Great action, but the story was the worst. Max was a plonker.