@Ex-Machina - Alex Garland,2015
Hey, nice (short) review Stanton! :)…Although, I had to modify a few words on my original. :
[quote=“Lone Gringo, post:1103, topic:2027”]@Ex-Machina - Alex Garland,2015
Hey, nice (short) review Stanton! :)…Although, I had to modify a few words on my original. ::)[/quote]
he he, I steal where I can …
Mad Max Fury Road - great cinematic experience, go see it in a theatre - gritty, noisy, quintessential postapo
Yes, the film was amazing. Everything I hoped for and little bit more. Really over-the-top in it’s craziness.
i was a bit unsure about some of the crazier stuff in the movie, but truth is i can’t wait for a rewatch
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
So this is the plot: they drive one way, then they drive the other way. That’s it. There is some basic premise that is somewhat similar to modern SF movies like Elysium or Snowpiercer, but it is less philosophical even than former. Max character is cartoonized to the maximum in the opening shots (we see him eating a live lizard) and talks too much in the beginning. Movie makes almost no references to previous installments, but Max is given no substantial background. There are actually two Maxes in this movie, the other one being Charlize Theron who stole the show from real Max in her role of Ripl…er, Furiosa. So they didn’t bother with the story and characters much, it’s all about the action. THE ACTION! It starts in the top gear from the first minute and never takes the foot from the gas. Stunt work was Miller’s trademark from the first Mad Max, and here he pushes everything over the top. All the crazy visuals and adrenaline pumping action makes the movie stay in front of your eyes for a long time after you leave the cinema. Along with Raid 2, this is the most thrilling action movie of modern day.
I am so stoked to see this movie. I had so many concerns prior to its release; that George Miller mightn’t be able to cut it anymore, that it might be too “Hollywood”, that Tom Hardy - as good as he is - wouldn’t be able to replace Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky. And yet EVERY review is coming back extraordinarily positive. It’s not the first time I’ve seen Mad Max: Fury Road mentioned in the same breath as The Raid 2 and I f*cking LOVED that movie.
Same here, can’t wait to see it. It looks gorgeous.
Hope its better than Raid 2 as thats a film for me that was a little over hyped.
Yeah, don’t think i’ve ever been so in awe at the cinema… best action movie i’ve ever seen maybe, in the top 5 at least
Ennio, Raid 2 is nothing - Max is the real deal 
sure, and best postapo flick since 1986
Crazy that I havent seen it in so long I don’t remember it, will watch again this week… but seen the other 2 multiple times, Road Warrior is one of my all time favourites… but there was also Wheels of Fire (1985) Equalizer 2000 (1987)
mine too - but i love also Beyond Thunderdome, it has some shortcomings, and moviegoers were probably expecting something more brutal and bloody back then :), but still, it’s a charming movie
had to check out, whether i saw those two Santiago films, but no, saw only Stryker and wasn’t impressed by it, so it ended there :), but i’ll watch them eventually
‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
-Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron
Plot:
Plot? What plot? Who needs a plot.
Phantom’s Review: Absolutely INSANE! The most intense, ball breaking, ass kicking action film I think I have ever seen. The plot is virtually non existent, but who cares! The acting is good, the lines of dialog (what little there is) aren’t laughable and the film delivers exactly what it promises, two solid hours of non stop action. Loved it.
[size=12pt]Hard to be a God - 2013 - Aleksey German [/size]
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Had the chance to go to the cinema with Mad Max in mind, but hey I’m the kind of guy who can’t resist a B/W soviet or Russian Sci-fi film, so at the last moment decided for this.
Great premise to start, a group of scientist is sent from Earth to planet Arkanar who just happens to be very similar to earth, but in a later stage of human evolution, their still in their middle ages. The scientist cannot interfere with the planet civilization normal evolution, they can’t teach or show the locals nothing that they can use to advance faster that they would normally do. However the scientists can protect a few persons that they think could be relevant in the normal advance of Arkadian society.
So forget about spaceships and Star Wars effects, the story happens in a mediaeval period plus filmed in Black and white, with people fighting, dying with no purpose, mud and piss all over the place, I really can’t imagine a film where despair and degradation is shown is such a flawless way, it’s very scatological stuff, but it’s impressive.
The script is based in a novel from the Strugatsky brothers (it’s extraordinary how many good movies where made from their novels), so something like Stalker comes to mind, but actually apart from the B/W, it’s a very different film, German contrary to Tarkwosky doesn’t what to transmit a message just tell a story, a great one.
From what I’ve read that seems to be the main problem with the film, the story or the lack of it, too much form and no substance. Well visually it’s a stunning film worth the ticket just for the images, of course any film needs a story, and there’s not something you can call a coherent plot, but the story is told in a non-conventional way. In a way what German is trying to tell, is that not even God gives a shit about humanity, and why he should, he already allowed us to live.
German creates a “new world” with his film, a dark one, but brilliantly filmed, the film length is almost three hours and I was absorbed in this world every second of it.
Not a surrealist film or a metaphor of something, it’s like a new form of making cinema based in several old forms.
It also remembered me the reason why I don’t like many of today’s film production, it’s simple because films nowadays aren’t made with the big screen in mind, I’ll watch this TV, but It’s hard to be a God was made for the cinema the big screen every camera angle every frame breeds pure cinema.
Of course my vision is a bit biased I love this stuff, but I understand that this may not be for everybody taste. In any case it’s an important film, because it’s different in a different way, and not just because it’s different.
Tomorrowland (Bird/15)
“Tomorrowland” (2015), directed by Brad Bird, is a science fiction film that tries to be bold, original and optimistic, to translate the hope for the future felt in the 1950s into 2015. It’s a brave attempt, but sadly Bird isn’t successful. Formerly the director of the animated films “The Iron Giant” (1999), “The Incredibles” (2004) and “Ratatouille” (2007), before making his live action film debut with “Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol” (2011), Bird has always been hailed as an unique filmmaker, someone who helped seal Pixar’s reputation as the finest animation studio in America, but here something has seriously gone askew.
It’s perhaps the script’s fault, authored by Damon Lindelof with Bird, which insists on a bright, cheery optimism as its rasion d’etre and then tells its audience this, repeatedly. Hugh Laurie as Nix, the principle villain, is presented as such a ridiculous, doom-mongering character that it is hard to take the character’s threat to the protagonists seriously. What is normally a thematic undercurrent to a movie becomes a hyperbolic statement, expanded upon by character’s being given speeches as clunky as the retro design of Tomorrowland itself is sleek and smooth. There’s no subtlety in the script at all and talented actors like George Clooney and Britt Robertson have an uphill task when their roles are defined in single, non-changing character traits. Only Raffey Cassidy as the android Athena manages to imbue her character with any nuance and depth.
This might be all the more easily forgivable if Bird handled the scenes with the wonder and awe the script continuously rhapsodises about, but the design of the future, in keeping with the 1950s roots of the film, is predictable and is more likely to inspire waves of familiarity rather than astonishment, even when Tomorrowland is introduced to Casey via a continuous six minute shot. The computer-generated effects here are frequently more banal than extraordinary; only two sequences, at the decommissioning of a NASA shuttle launch pad and a scene at the Eiffel Tower really work in terms of special effects. These highpoints contrast with the film as it nears its climax, which becomes rushed and unclear, with the editing of Craig Wood and Walter Murch (who cut many of Francis Ford Coppola’s films, including “Apocalypse Now” [1979]), becoming depressingly reminiscent of television commercials.
Many of these defects might have become mitigated in fact, if, like Bird’s finest films, it had been animated. With another script rewrite introducing much needed doses of humour, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine it as a successful Pixar film. As it is though, this is an extended misfire.
Mad Max: Fury Road - George Miller
When a film consists of permanent motion, which means here permanent action, it is not easy to still have something in the backhand when the film reaches its end, something which tops all that was before, and the ending of Fury Road is pretty ordinary. There is enough emotion in the motion to keep me interested, and Charlize Theron is particularly good, but there ain’t much in the film which could fascinate me. The action relies more on stunts then on filmic imagination, but iss till well filmed. 7/10
[size=12pt] JURASSIC WORLD [/size](2015, Colin Trevorrow)
I had the choice between a Max Reboot and a Dino Reboot and chose for the Dino, I also had the choice between 3D and 2D and chose 2D. I’m already fed up with 3D.
Basically a remake of the first movie, only with more dinos and higher heels. We’re 22 years after the events in the original Spielberg movie and the park on Isla Nuba has opened its gates again, but we’re told that dinosaurs have become so familiar, that the park must come up with a new, revolutionary dino at least once a year, in order to keep visitors entertained. Therefore Dr. Wu, chief geneticist of the park, has tampered a little with Dino DNA, making his last creation, an Indominus Rex, stronger, bigger, cooler and more voracious than any other dino in history. In the mean time one of the safety guards has trained a few velociraptors. There are also kids, teenagers, holograms (a nice idea) and gyrospheres (you’ll recognize them when you see them).
Well, I guess you know what happens first and happens next. Only the finale, the ultimate battle of dinosaurs, may hold a couple of (nice) surprises. Jurassic World offers excellent popcorn entertainment, but there are too many half-baked ideas to become more than just that, popcorn entertainment, and this whole thing about dinos chasing visitors has become so familiar that the only possibility to surprise moviegoers again, could be a version in 4D, with the raptors actually leaving the screen and attacking people in real life. The best thing of the entire movie (apart from Bryce Dallas Howard’s high heels) are the trained raptors; apparently John sayles already suggested the idea in the 90s, when Spielberg consulted him for one of the sequels, but for some reason it wasn’t used back then.