Official movie thread.

[Ringsgold]

Indiana Jones Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

1/10

Agreed, watched it tonight and I can't think of a thing they could've done worse. When you see the skull drawing on the cell wall you just go "oh lol thats an alien (from the Alien movies)"... and then it gets worse.


Eulogy (2004)
Comedy
7.5

I'm not very good at writing reviews, especially at 3:30 am, so if you want something decent go to the imdb link (clik the film title). The movie is defenitely worth watching for some good laughs, and especially for Zooey Deschanel fans. Some guy(I think the main character) from everybody loves raymond also plays in it, I hate that show but still liked the movie btw.

plot: A dysfunctional family comes together to bury the patriarch. They didn't really like or know him very well.

Failure to Launch (2006)
Comedy
6.5

Random feel good movie. 30-something year old guy lives with his parents and uses them to dump girls (nothing says GTFO like Hi I live with my parents) whenever they get serious, but then falls in love with the woman they hire to get him to move out(aka predictable plot). It has some funny scenes, like this one (youtube).

V for Vendetta (2005)
not sure what genre, thriller I guess?
10

Probably the best movie I've seen, even better than Fight Club. I love the setting, the atmosphere, the dialogue, the acting, umm, whatever else is in it. Apparently it's made after a graphic novel by Alan Moore, which I haven't read yet.

Plot: A shadowy freedom fighter known only as "V" uses terrorist tactics to fight against his totalitarian society. Upon rescuing a girl from the secret police, he also finds his best chance at having an ally. Read imdb if you want to know more.

So I lowered my ratings of the other movies because of V for Vendetta, but then I see people rating Transformers 9 (seriously, for explosions play any version of CoD or maybe HAWX, you won't miss any of the plot or dialogue though the hawt girls are a sad loss) which relatively would have to put VfV somewhere up in the 9000's.

[JoeKnowMo]

Goodfellas (1990)
Gangsters/Crime/Drama
8.5

This biographical tale of the mob lifestyle has aged incredibly well. It has gritty moments, funny moments, and dramatic ones that are still captivating. The movie follows Henry Hill as he rises up through the ranks of the Italian mob in New York during the 60s and 70s. Imo, it sits in the middle-ground between Scarface and the Godfather movies. Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro, and Joe Pesci are superb in their roles.

I won't say much more for fear of spoiling the movie. I highly recommend it. 8.5 might seem a little low, but that's only because I tend to rank movies more conservatively.

[Tender Wolf]

To all those Transformers haters out there, again this is a matter of opinion. Me, I never grew up watching the show and had never even heard of it until I watched that movie. What I saw, being first introduced to the show, was good. I don't give a crap who's in the movie, I don't base it off that - I base it off the story. Megan Fox could have been Britney Spears and it wouldn't have changed my opinion of the movie overall. And who cares if she's hot, that doesn't make a movie. Besides, she came out of the closet apparantly so you boys are out of luck anyway.

But while we're on the subject of childhood shows made into movies, how about this:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Comedy/Animated
6/10

Let's get warmed up by talking about the difference between the old and new TV series that inspired this new movie.

Old Series: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the "it" cartoon of the 80's and 90's depicting four turtles turned into crime-fighting, martial arts students, each with a unique personality. You've got Leonardo the leader in blue, Donatello the inventor/brains in purple, Raphael the joker in red, and Michaelangelo the wise guy in orange. Add to this their sensei Splinter (a mutant rat), a TV news reporter (April O'Neil) constantly getting in over her head, not to mention her news station, and a main villain named after a kitchen utensil (yes, Shredder) with his two mutant kronies (Bebop and Rocksteady), and a talking brain (Krang), and you've got a great and interesting series. The plot? Pretty simple - Krang and Shredder are trying to take over Earth and only the turtles can stop him from doing so. This is, of course, the old series.

New Series: The new series featured most of the original characters, but major graphic and personality changes. For instance, Raphael was the joker in the old series - the new one he's a major hot head. April isn't, and wasn't ever, a TV news reporter, but worked for Baxter Stockman (who makes routine appearances in various body forms due to constantly getting his head cut off, literally) until she opened up her father's antique shop. Oh, and she and the vigilante Casey Jones actually end up as a couple. Shredder isn't even human in this series, but a jelly-like robot (Utrom), who not only doesn't have mutant henchmen and a talking brain following him around, but he has a daughter! Not biological of course; he basically adopted her. The foot soldiers are ninjas of the Foot Clan (which can be recalled from the live-action movies made in the early 90's); as in they're humans, not robots. But the biggest thing that's different regarding this series - it's still going without Shredder. He's basically dead (banished is the correct term) but the creators decided to keep going with the series, throwing our green heroes into space and the future with April and Casey's great-grandson Cody. The first season of this new series was great, similar to the original and with all the things we used to love. After the Utrom story showed up, the show just kind of went downhill. In the end, it somewhat butchered a classic.

Those are the TV series, what the movie simply called TMNT was based off of. It's a computer generated movie, so not quite a cartoon and not live-action. Sarah Michelle Gellar voices April and Patrick Stewart voices the main villain, Max Winters. Yes, you read that right - the main villain is Max Winters, not Shredder. Let's have the plot already!

Plot: In this CGI movie based off the classic children's cartoon, the movie starts out flat out saying the turtles defeated their arch-enemy, Shredder. So right at the beginning you know the main villain that made the series won't even be in the movie. The turtles are all pretty much separated; Leonardo is in South America while his brothers are doing their own things but still living with Splinter in the sewer. Eventually Leo comes back and the brothers are faced with monsters showing up and destroying the city. They were released 300 years ago by Max Winters, who found a portal to another dimension. His fellow warriors were cursed and turned to stone while he received eternal life. But of course that isn't all it was cracked up to be, so Winters wants to collect all 13 monsters that escaped and use them to open the portal back up to their dimension. That will send them home and break the curse on his fellow warriors and his eternal life.

My Review: Not a bad movie, but certainly not the best. I mean, Shredder wasn't in it - how can it be Ninja Turtles without Shredder? The graphics weren't bad and the turtles kept their distinct personalities and the movie had its share of funny moments combined with drama and action, but all in all it would have been a lot better with Shredder and not some random dude.

[Feannag]

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
(trailer in link)

It's bad. It's really bad. It's the kind of bad that has to be deliberate. From the title, you should expect that.

Starring Lorenzo Lamas and former teen pop idol Debbie Gibson, it was originally titled "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 3D", but "3D" was stricken from the title when the studio failed to acquire adequate funding for 3-D film(says something there, doesn't it).

Synopsis:

Spoiler

See title. There really isn't much more to it than that.

High point of the film: Megashark jumps 15000 (yes, fifteen thousand) feet up and eats a passing airliner.

Did I say this is a bad movie? This is an unbelievably bad movie. And yet, I have yet to see an actual comedy that made me laugh this hard.

[Tender Wolf]

Well I've got an old series of computer games I've been playing again, and they were based on an old series of books I read when I was younger. There have been several old TV series based on the books as well, and some movies. The series? Nancy Drew. The movie? Here's my review (hey that rhymes!):

Nancy Drew
Adventure/Mystery
5.5/10

Starring: Emma Roberts

Plot: Based on the classic book series, the movie follows a teenage girl who loves to solve mysteries as a hobby. She grows up in River Heights but then her father gets a good job opportunity in California. So they end up moving there and they live in a house with, of course, a mystery behind it. The mystery? A movie star mysteriously disappeared several years ago on her way to a party. So Nancy begins investigating the case.

My Review: But this movie doesn't follow the original storyline of the books at all. For starters, the only characters that are in the movie that are the same are her father and boyfriend. Everyone else is new. In the books, Nancy's best friends were always with her even if it was just by a phone call; in this movie they're in about 5 minutes worth of the beginning of the film and that's it. Emma Roberts seems to "immature" for the part; she seems too much like a little girl. Nancy Drew is supposed to be 18 years old and very mature with like strawberry blonde hair. That doesn't match Emma at all. Nothing against her personally, I just don't think she was good for the part. Even her personality (not hers but the character's they made for this movie) doesn't fit with the original story line - she loves vintage clothes and is kind of a goody-two-shoes. Hard to explain but it's just...not it.

So while the movie itself is okay, it just didn't say the classic Nancy Drew for me.

NEXT!

Might as well review another movie based on a book, but this one is more well-known I'm sure. You guessed it!

Twilight
Action/Romance
2008
8/10

Starring: Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Plot: A girl from Arizona moves to Washington to live with her father after her mother remarries and her new husband travels to a lot of places. Bella lives in Forks with her father, the chief of police, and when she gets to school her new friends tell her all about the Cullen family - but the biggest thing is they keep to themselves. Of course, Bella has handsome Edward in her biology class, but he begins acting strange as soon as she walks in the door. He doesn't speak to her at all and then he misses several more days of school. When he returns, he finally talks and before long the two's paths cross again and again, from Edward saving Bella from being crushed by a van to being attacked by teens who have a little more on their mind than being friendly. But there are so many things about Edward that don't seem right. After Bella's friend Jacob, a member of the Indian Quilete tribe, explains his heritage and adds how the Cullens tie in, Bella does some research and discovers the truth - Edward and his family are vampires. But that doesn't stop her from falling in love with him. Unfortunately, not all vampires are as welcoming as the Cullens are to her; another group wishes to make her their meal.

My Review: I saw the movie before I read the book. I'd heard so much about the series and how everyone went gaga over it, but I'd never read it. So I said I'd like to see the movie. I did, and I loved it. Then I bought the entire book series and have read through it, and I love it as well. Too bad what was gonig to be the last book got leaked and will not be continued. :( But anyway, I strongly recommend this movie to anyone who likes the book series, vampires, or a good mythical romance. Why is it an 8 out of 10? Well it's not a "perfect" movie; there are some slow parts but not very many to make a difference. And if you've read the books and have seen the trailer for part 2, New Moon, this movie seems slow because you're dying to know what's going to happen next. But overall a great movie.

[Black]

District 9

7/10

District 9 is a 2009 science-fiction film directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson. The film stars Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope and Robert Hobbs. Copley plays the role of Wikus van de Merwe, a bureaucrat assigned to evict and move an alien species stranded on Earth from one government refugee camp to another in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Viewer Review

Somewhat labeled as a controversial film due to the graphic nature and a vulgar display of human nature. This film is definitely a love or hate relationship, either you love it or hate it. Though being a sci fi film in nature, this film deals heavily with the issue of racism. Filmed on location in South Africa, they could not have chosen a better place to tell a tale of alien mistreatment, I say this because of the history of South Africa regarding human rights and open racism.

The title and premise of the film are inspired by historical events that took place in District Six, an inner-city residential area in Cape Town in South Africa under apartheid. In 1966, District 6 was declared a "whites only" area by the apartheid government and for the next several decades, 60,000 people were forcibly removed and relocated to Cape Flats, 25 kilometres away. The film also seems to refer to contemporary evictions and forced removals to new ghettos in post-apartheid South Africa.

CAST

The film mainly features a cast of virtually unknowns, however; the acting seems convincing and raw. The nature of the film sets it off as a documentary than turning into an action pack film. There are no difficult or dramatic lines to contend with, so the raw acting seems appropiate in this case.

PLOT

The plotline to this film really is comparable to a first person shooter turning into a third person game midway through a game. It has a very simple premise, with no long and complex twist and turns. You'll either love or hate the way this film starts off, mainly its attempt to make it a semi documentary. There are alot of unexplained scenarios in the storyline, and the viewer is simply toss into the film without any notion of who or what these aliens are all about.

The plot mainly revolves around bureaucrat Wikus van de Merwe and his role in the alien evictions, and his struggles afterwards. Though the storyline could be considered very shallow, it is thought provoking in regards to the human nature and treatment of others. There is plenty of action later in the film, and for a low budget film (30mil to make) it delivers some entertainment.

The issues this film deals with are:

Racism, Government corruption, Infection, Weapon Technology, occultism, welfare, money & power, human rights violation, exploitation, & cover up

Final Comments

Is it a Titanic type blockbuster? No. This is not a film that children should even see, let alone anyone who hates to see abuse. It is neither Star Wars or Alien nation, and what you see in the trailers is basically what you get for action. Though not a terrible movie (I've seen worst), it leaves you guessing with many of its unexplained plotlines. However; for a low budget film it does deliver some entertainment.

[The Boz]

Wait, an 8/10 for Twilight!?
...
I am disappoint.

[Saetre]

Wait, an 8/10 for Twilight!?
...
I am disappoint.

This guy Transformers 2 9/10 (which makes me wanna kill myself) and now he's giving Twilight 8/10?

I am VERY disappoint.

[Feannag]

If I remember right, Tender Wolf isn't a guy (correct me if I'm wrong please). And you know how it is with opinions.

[The Boz]

If TW was a guy, an 8/10 would be more than disappoint.