MOVIES 2015

San Andreas is no different than Avengers, they both sell more soda, spicy Cheetos, and burrito’s to mind numbed fat people who want to turn off their minds while watching “movies”.

Pass the Mountain Dew…

@aequitas:

@Imperious:

San Andreas is no different than Avengers, they both sell more soda, spicy Cheetos, and burrito’s to mind numbed fat people who want to turn off their minds while watching “movies”.

Pass the Mountain Dew…

My wife and I had only popcorn and a coke zero. 8-)

:lol: Hahaha Bravo!

Coke Zero will destroy her Kidneys. The phosphorus should be avoided. No butter on Popcorn, no salt either

I went just to see the Golden Gate Bridge get destroyed since I work for the District, too cool. Now, the only movie I need to see other then Mad Max is the new NWA movie which should be amazing if you’re in your 40’s like me :-D

Saw Mad Max 4.

Meh…. very marginal thumbs up.

I think the screenplay needed a few more runs through the typewriter. Can anyone tell me what the Charlize Theron character’s motivation was? She wanted to get back to “green world” or whatever after she’s climbed the ranks to be a bad ass commander?  Really? What was going on with the “gas” town and some other town that were trading partners with the “water” town? Etc etc….  Not to mention for a world supposedly short on gas they seem to be using A LOT of gas. Plus the grannies on bikes was slapstick dumb. No reason for it. Also the ending was… well a non-ending. I guess it’s a set up for the next movie. But I don’t really care, for the fact is this movie is basically a reboot that negates all the other films but the first one narrative wise.

That all being said, I did like the action. No question it was well done. The bad guys were original if their motivations/originations were incomprehensible/unexplained.

I think George Miller flirted with the “George Lucas Syndrome” of losing control/sight of the underlying story when a director finally gets enough money to cram in every special effect/crazy character he’s always dreamed about.  Also one gets the impression he was reaching too far to try to out do his prior work.  The Road Warrior kicked ass from beginning to end–real people, real cars, real stunts. Thunderdome was a true mixed bag with the Barter Town stuff being great but the saving the kids stuff nose diving the film. The first film is a little more hard to quantify given it still had one foot in the civilized world.

I think this one ranks in between Thunderdome (the worst) and the first and second.

I enjoyed Jurassic World. Brought back some of those 1994 feelings as a 14 year old watching Dinosaurs eat park employees.

@ABWorsham:

I enjoyed Jurassic World. Brought back some of those 1994 feelings as a 14 year old watching Dinosaurs eat park employees.

I intend to see it at some point, but is it really as good as the record breaking indicates? My thought from tv spots and reviews is that it is a hollow facsimile of the original film. Both in content and novelty.

My cousin is trying to drag me to see JP, I’m sure I’ll see it soon.

It will never get close to the Original, however it surpassed the previous sequels. It has a little of the 1950 nuclear monsters theme.

Saw Mad Max yesterday. I found it quite enjoyable and oddly refreshing for an action movie. Much of the cinematography was very artistic and the environmental visuals were immensely appealing. I thought all the principal actors/actresses were great, particularly Theron and Hardy.

I have never watched any of the original Mad Max films, so I cannot compare them.

Just to allow you all to take the mick I thought I’d post that I enjoyed Far From The Madding Crowd! Go on, let your feminine side out! :roll:

If only they remade Tess.
I missed Madding Crowd. Would have gone to see it, if I could have.

Saw American Sniper this weekend. Thought it was a fine film. Had it been a while since Clint Eastwood had a commercial success? If so, good to have him back.

Terminator Genisys was sad more than anything for me since Arnold looks and sounds like a tired old man. There was zero chemistry between anyone, especially from Sarah Connor’s end. The new pretense for SkyNet taking over is a mildly amusing take on our slavish devotion to smartphones at least.

I, personally, do NOT like 3-D movies and do my best to avoid watching new movies in 3-D.  Sometimes that cannot be helped.  We saw “Avatar” in 3-D and enjoyed it but the 3-D technology Cameron used was new then.  Now it just causes headaches and is much too expensive.

I would rather enjoy movies in 2-D than in 3-D.

@yarickPa:

I, personally, do NOT like 3-D movies and do my best to avoid watching new movies in 3-D.  Sometimes that cannot be helped.  We saw “Avatar” in 3-D and enjoyed it but the 3-D technology Cameron used was new then.  Now it just causes headaches and is much too expensive.

I would rather enjoy movies in 2-D than in 3-D.

Agreed.

Saw Jurassic Park at the w/e. Fun I suppose, but forgettable with no surprises. You always know you are with a movie in which the heroine wears progressively less!

I saw Jurassic Park on Tuesday. It was pretty much exactly what I expected: same formula, rather unexciting. I found it interesting that the premise of the story in the movie essentially explained what the real world motivations were behind the writing/filming. An existing franchise needs to up the wow-factor to make dinosaurs interesting again, so instead of having something normal they imagine a super dinosaur and create it with utterly predictable results. It is more applicable to the Jurassic Park franchise than most others, but this film in particular can be viewed as a sort of mirrored irony; the masses in the film and the masses in the movie theater.

The overused and generally very poor digital work was disappointing. How is it that the first two Jurassic Park films, from 1993 and 1997, have far more realistic visuals than a movie that was in post-production in 2015? And it isn’t just the general effects I am talking about (i.e. the models, sets, and animatronics used in those films… because they will trump CGI every time), but the full blown digital dinosaurs… There is hardly a contest. There was only one scene in Jurassic World which I very distinctly recall as thinking, “Wow those dinosaurs actually look real”. It is pretty sad that it was so noticeable.

And the plot… it was unbelievably, or should I say very believably, trite. The character archetypes and roles were so pronounced that it was distracting. All the trotted out fan service elements and re-used plot devices only exacerbated the superficiality. I cannot fault people too much for this since there are a huge number of movies every year that are just as transparent with all the same elements and obviously it makes money. But this movie… Good God, I could not have imagined that it would make (DOMESTICALLY) $600 million. That is preposterous. This franchise obviously has some very deep and pent up nostalgia. Because Lost World was pretty good, but not great. JP III was pretty terrible. Jurassic World has to be somewhere between Lost World and III, but closer to III. The only saving grace was Chris Pratt.

The attempts at comedy was another thing I cringed at more than I laughed. The original Jurassic Park (and at least Lost World) were very serious movies (as serious as a movie about genetically engineered dinosaurs can be) with some realistic moral message. Neither one to my recollection, and I have seen them both many times, had nearly as many attempts at outright comedy or situational humor as Jurassic World did; especially in the tense moments. (Lost World has a couple of those when the T-Rex got loose in San Diego, but not more than a handful.) JWorld’s use of this humor was jarring and served to further distance itself from what the franchise always has been, to me at least. I thought of it as the latest in a line of films which use quick bits of actually funny dialogue or imagery juxtaposed with a serious conflict. As far as I can tell, this all started with The Avengers back in 2012. A great deal of its massive success was attributed to how witty, funny and relate-able the movie was for people of many age groups. Multiple films of late have seemed to copy this model in hopes of being the next super-hit (particularly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). It worked in Avengers, it fit their format. To me, it just rubs the wrong way for application in places it doesn’t belong… like Jurassic Park, or World.

As much as I love to bash this movie for its faults, and I do, the absolutely ridiculous ending was oddly very satisfying, if only for about 5 minutes. And even though I rail on the funny aspect, I have to commend Chris Pratt for simultaneously being hilarious, charming and a believable bad-ass. He was the best part of this film. While that is sad for what I consider the theme of the franchise, it was great for him and he pulled it off really well.

Oh, and for those who don’t care about spoilers, this article is both funny and accurate: http://io9.com/jurassic-world-the-spoiler-faq-1712042566
Figuring the movie was a known quantity, I read this a while before going to see it and I got the picture. And laughed.

Saw “Mr Holmes” a few days ago. Ian McKellen as an aged Sherlock succumbing to dementia and Laura Linney as his housekeeper.

Sherlock has been retired for decades due to a case that shook his belief in logic and deduction.

A thought provoking examination of the essence of the human condition. Wonderfully acted as you would expect with that cast.

A film that initially left me unsure as to just how much I had been entertained by its understated drama, but feel ever more warmly towards as I am still thinking about it days later.