eiyosus

I feel bad for saying this, but it should be clear to at least some of you that a certain poster * insert the PC and polite way to say what you all know what I’m trying to say about special needs here (I didn’t even want to write the s------ n---- thing)). *

If you would like his or her presence to diminish, please just ignore this person.

I’m surprised I had to say this.

[flukeskywalker said:]
if i didnt use a spacebar my words would looklikethis.you’re just a troll.and a bandwagoner.

That’s actually pretty fuckin’ funny and mega snarky.

I can’t think of a good movie I hate, but there are a million of them. I don’t like Stalker, I’m sorry to say.

Well, considering I have framed posters of Star Crash, Barbarella, Death Race 2000, A Boy and His Dog, and Zardoz (among the “proper” films Silent Running, Metropolis, and The Dark Crystal) hanging on my walls, I can safely say that I have a few.

I absolutely adore both Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World (which I consider part of a shared universe due to the same sets being used as a budget cut 😛 ). They’re some of my most watched blurays. GoT features great matte and model work (can’t say the same for the creatures), and FW has a great monster and FANTASTIC robot.

Star Crash is another favorite. It was my now six year old son’s first science fiction movie (and second was Battle Beyond the Stars (don’t worry, his favorite is now 2001)).

The other day…
Me: do you like old movies or new movies?
Son: I like new movies.
What about 2001? That’s an old movie.
Oh, okay. What about…hmmmmm…Star Crash?
That’s old.
What about Star Wars?

Yes folks the first movie that came to my son’s head was Star Crash.

Is Ice Pirates considered bad? I fuckin’ love that movie. So much robot porn.

And of course Barbarella is my favorite movie of all time.

Cujo - I think this movie is burdened with a terrible first half. The second half is fantastic and features a wonderful performance by that mom from ET.

I think The People Under the Stairs is great fun.

The Fly 2 is another underrated movie. It has quite a bit of heart for an 80’s monster movie sequel. Nice performance by Eric Stoltz and nice creature effects. It’s a nice twist making the monster a “good guy.” Nice. It’s nice.

And Zardoz, as mentioned above. People only remember this movie for the kitsch (which is great, dammit), but they overlook the actually very good science fiction story it presents. Give it another look once you’re over the initial weirdness.

TV’s Frink said:

This thread will not go the way I’m intending

Yeah, right. You knew this was gonna get into a discussion of differing sects of a religion the same as all of us.

Tobar said:
Ever seen FAQ About Time Travel (2009)?

Yeah, I saw that last year or the year before. It was cute in places, but I didn’t think it was very funny. Some of the time travel was interesting, but it was more Back to the Future than anything high concept. If you like time travel and haven’t seen it, do check out Predestination (and the others I listed).

Dek Rollins said:

I watched Watership Down (1978) for the first time about a day ago. It was fantastic, and watching the Criterion BD helped the experience a lot. That film is on my “favorite animations” mental list now. 10/10 😃

I’m a big fan of the book (I’ve got an El-Ahrairah shirt and wrote a song called Hazel-Rah 😛 ), but the movie is also pretty good. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE dig up a copy of the UNCUT version of The Plague Dogs and give that a watch. Same studio based on another Richard Adams novel, but I prefer both the novel and film to Watership Down. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Criterion will release it, so we’ll see. The uncut version is out there, but I’m not gonna say how to get it on this site, but you can figure it out. The quality suffers, as the original version never had wide release, but it’s so much better (let’s just say there was no intention to make this a kids movie (even less than Watership Down)). Really really good movie (and book!).

Ex Machina - saw it four times since last weekend. Hadn’t seen it before and knew nothing about it, so I was very surprised when it turned out to be the best science-fiction movie since Blade Runner, and may possibly be my personal favorite science-fiction film now (well, aside from Barbarella).

Predestination - under-the-radar Ethan Hawke time travel movie. I really wish it was better directed, because the story is the most complicated time travel story I’ve seen in a movie (even putting Primer to shame), but for whatever reason I wasn’t really drawn in. It felt a bit TVish. It’s a good movie, though. I’ll give it a rewatch soon. I’m picky about time travel movies, but this is one of the few I like (the other more modern ones being Primer, Triangle, Time Crimes, and The Jacket (not a fan of Looper))

Tomorrowland - I thought it was fun and reminded me of an old fashioned serial (or something like the 1936 version of Things to Come). The story felt like it was made up as it went along, but I liked that about it. Basically, I liked it for the reasons why everybody else hated it. Don’t think I’d watch it again though.

Edge of Tomorrow - A lot better than I expected (probably why it took me this long to get around to watching it), but nothing amazing. Again, I don’t think I’ll ever need to see it again, but I thought it was better than Minority Report (which I only saw once in the theaters, so I may need to see it again before judging). Certainly better than Oblivion.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - the recent one. I expected shit, but I kind of really liked the movie. Very cheesy, and I surprisingly liked the turtles (except Michelangelo). Probably my favorite depiction of Raphael, and I loved whoever they chose to do the voice of Donatello. I just wish the turtles weren’t so damn huge. It’s a mess, and objectively a pretty dire movie, but I had fun. This is coming from somebody who has a full run of the Mirage comic (up until volume 3, which I stopped collecting after around issue 15 or so) and has no fondness for the 80’s cartoon. No, I would never actually recommend this movie to anybody.

Honeymoon - pretty fun horror movie. Very 90’s in parts. If you’ve seen Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, it’s sort of a more mainstream version of that. Two people in the woods with weird crap going on. It has moments that are very satisfyingly icky.

Any other movie I’ve watched over the past week and have forgotten to write about means that it probably wasn’t very good. Oh yeah, The Martian. I wasn’t a fan and can’t really remember much about it only a few days later. EDIT: Just remembered I watched The Signal (the 2014 one, not the 2007 horror movie (which I like)), it was total shit.

Upcoming:

Hard to be a God - the three hour Russian movie you might have heard about. Looks pretty nuts, but one of my favorite movies is the nuts three hour Polish movie On the Silver Globe, so I’ll probably get some enjoyment from it.

Enemy - finally gonna watch this two years after it came out.

Goodnight Mommy - I’ve heard mixed things.

I Origins - another low key sci-fi film from the guy who made Another Earth, which I like.

Coherence - I know nothing about this movie other than it’s science fiction.

Time Lapse - another under the radar time travel movie which I know nothing about.

Womb - again, I know nothing about this other than I think it deals with somebody giving birth to their own clone, or something. I tend to be off in my preconceptions on story, because I thought Ex Machina was about a robot learning to be human (I guess in a way it is), and I thought Tomorrowland took place in a post-apocalyptic world and Tomorrowland was actually a broken down Disneyland (I’d still like to see that movie).

[ATMachine said:]> I second the request for a source on this.

Dang, I can’t believe I out-geeked you guys!

(as the link says, they printed some of his hand-written guidelines in the back of a book and there was mention of midicholorians.)

ZkinandBonez said:Although it has more of a PT feel to it (e.g. Midichlorians being needed to tap into the Force).

To be fair, midichlorians were something Lucas had in mind back when he wrote Star Wars (according to the guidelines he gave Marvel Comics to follow).

Empire was written while Williams was (in my opinion) at the very top of his game. Three years in a row we get Empire, Raiders, and ET (his best, again, in my opinion). The Imperial March, Yoda’s Theme, and the Love Theme are incredibly strong, but it might be because I like the movie so much.

But honestly…I think I’d still have to give it to the original. I think we take it for granted now, and we can never know for sure, but I think the film owes at least 50% of its success to the soundtrack. The main theme itself is worth ranking it first. That soundtrack is INCREDIBLE, especially considering it was made for a science fiction film in the 70’s (lots of great sci-fi scores from the 70’s, but there was nothing like SW). It’s mind-blowing. The dogfight after the escape from the Death Star is some of the most rousing action music you’ll ever hear. I still think Empire is more consistently great, though.

After those two I don’t really care about order. I dislike the prequels too much to objectively separate the music from the film in my head. Revenge of the Sith has the worst editing choices of the prequels, and there’s some really baffling decisions. You have Anakin walking up to the Jedi temple with a legion of stormtroopers prepared to carry out his first violent act as Darth Vader and…there’s no Imperial March. Instead we have the same music that was used for Kashyyyk (had to google that. Why three “y’s”? 😛 ), which is also a leftover track from Attack of the Clones, if I remember correctly. We witness the very birth of the Empire…and no Imperial March. Instead we get a choral piece. I’d love to have heard a choral rendition of the March if they wanted to go that rout. I guess it’s a good thing that movie isn’t any good.

I don’t remember anything from Attack of the Clones except for the melodramatic Across the Stars. Why do I think it’s worse than the Love Theme from Empire? I have no idea, but probably because I associate that music with the worst on-screen romance I’ve had the displeasure of suffering through.

Both Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace seem pretty inoffensive to me, but as much as it pains me to say it, I might have to give it to Phantom Menace, if only because it features more original music. Jedi uses a badly edited version of the dogfight sequence from the original, and it’s main new theme is the Ewok music, which fits well enough for those little guys, but is hardly anything to get excited about. Like the movie itself, it’s more of a callback to the first two, and much like the movie itself, is pretty solid when doing its own thing (I’m talking the Emperor material).

The Force Awakens is pretty nice to my ears when listening to it outside of the movie, but for whatever reason I thought it didn’t shine through. This might have to do with editing or how it was mixed, but I don’t know considering I saw the movie twice, and the last time was back in the beginning of January. I give it props for not having many callbacks, but I think it could have used more “hummable” themes. No, I’m not a fan of “catchy” music, but I don’t mind it when it’s written by a great film composer for a space adventure film.

So in short, I have no idea how I’d rank them. 😛

ZkinandBonez said:
(This picture also makes me wonder what the heck “Veg-meat” is supposed to mean. Is it fake meat like Tofu?)

Fun fact: Tofu’s association with being a food substitute is from the West. In Asia, it’s used as its own ingredient.

DominicCobb said:

precarious political position there’s a possibility

thubs up

Hey, cool. I saw it in St. Louis (I live pretty close to it), but just at a normal theater.

I felt this score was much more percussive than melodic. Much more so than the previous films. That was the first thing that struck me when skimming through the soundtrack the day before I saw the movie (didn’t want to hear too much, but couldn’t help myself). I don’t mean that there were more drums (although there were, I think), but that the other instruments also focused more on staccato rhythm.

Compare something like the asteroid chase in ESB to the Falcon chase in this and you can definitely hear the difference in approach. That’s probably why a lot of people thought it was less than stellar. Personally speaking, I also thought it was a bit of a let down, but I didn’t care all that much. It wasn’t an issue of the music being bad or uninspired, just that it’s hard to top the first two SW movies.

Ronster said:
Good Music just does not work in the way that you need to continually listen to something to have to appreciate it.

If it is very good you will get the hook put in to you. You’ll be hooked on it.

Most of my favorite albums were ones that took time to grow on me (and my all time favorite was one I outright hated the first time I heard it). The stuff I immediately like are usually shallower experiences that lack staying power over the years.

I haven’t seen the movie again since posting about it, but I thought I’d share some other thoughts. I’m warning you now that this post is probably not going to be written very well (much like the sentence preceding this one).

I found it pretty hard to “geek out” about the movie after seeing it, and I still can’t geek out about it now. I’m pretty laid back about the whole thing. “It’s good! I’m sure the next one will be fun too!” I don’t really care about any more than that. At first I thought it was because I was getting older (34), but I think it’s just because the movie focused more on being fun than original (not a bad thing (well, I wish it was more original, but I’m not gonna cry about it)). There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to talk about. Like…I can’t get into the “mythology” of the story. Does that make sense? I dunno…I thought I was going somewhere with this. 😛

Lord Haseo said:
In her defense has anyone been able to do that convincingly? Because whenever someone does that in a game/movie/show it always takes me out of the experience.

Regardless of what people think of the films, I thought Martin Freeman pulled it off reasonably well in the second Hobbit movie.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I wouldn’t take IMDb ratings all that seriously, either. They rate The Fly II 4.9/10 for crying out loud.

I like The Fly II. It’s nothing great, but it’s quite ambitious for a sequel nobody was asking for.

The Falcon’s targeting computer.

THE FALCON’S TARGETING COMPUTER!!!

Hi guys, I don’t post here often, but wanted to give some thoughts:

Saw it on the 17th with friends and we all enjoyed it (more on that later), and then again with my parents and we all enjoyed it.

My final say about the movie is this: “It’s SO good that it’s such a shame that it wasn’t more original.”

I wouldn’t have cared about the DS3 if they did something new with it. I was completely under the assumption that it would stick around for the other movies. I would have loved it if the rebels failed and it blew up the planet their base was on (sparing Leia, 3PO and R2 who would have been off planet for some reason) and the only survivors were those who survived the DS3 assault. Man, that would have been a nice twist and got me really excited for the next one.

Otherwise, I wish they would have just removed the DS3 and just focused on rescuing Rey as the last act (and bring Poe on the mission so he can get more screen time). But I didn’t care all that much, as the DS3 stuff seemed to be background noise anyway. Not sure why the rebels needed to be given something to do, as I thought their fight as Maz’s castle was good enough. It’s not like Empire Strikes Back was filled with the Rebellion.

I don’t have any other problems that aren’t nitpicks. I wish Rey had some moments of weakness, and I really wish they would have held off igniting that lightsaber until she pulls it from the snow. That would have been such a better reveal than Finn fighting a stormtrooper (although I loved that he was called a traitor. I like these new stormtroopers!)

I’m not gonna whine about what they MIGHT do in a sequel I know nothing about. I’ll just wait and see. All I know is that you don’t hire Andy Serkis so he can sit in a damn chair, so I have my fingers crossed there’s something else going on.

I understand why people like it, and I understand why people dislike it. When I was speculating about the movie back when it was announced, I admit I didn’t think it would be Empire vs Rebels all over again, and I don’t think this story has proven itself as something that NEEDED to be told, but I’m along for the ride. Good fun. Hope they address the backstory a tad in the next movie.

Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain, and those who don’t think so are nuts (joking). He was my biggest surprise, because I thought he looked very uninteresting in the trailers. Again, I’m not gonna cry about what they MIGHT do with him in a sequel, I just thought he was great. A pretty unnerving villain for a Star Wars movie.

My six year old son (who’s never seen the prequels) lives in Japan with my ex-wife, and I begged her to take him to it (“I don’t know…Episode 1 was on TV the other day and-” “Trust me, he’ll have a great time.”) so she did. He liked it, said it was a little scary, and said his favorite character was BB8. Even my ex didn’t hate it, which is the nicest thing I’ve ever heard her say about a Star Wars movie.

I went with my friend, who waited in line with me for nine hours to see a midnight screening of Phantom Menace. We weren’t sure if we were gonna get seats, a big fellow told me he was going to “Kick my fucking ass if I got a ticket and he didn’t” and other stuff like that…and the movie turned out to be The Phantom Menace (I don’t know what you guys are talking about when you say this film will be derided like the Prequels in five years, my friends and I hated Menace within 30 minutes (and it wasn’t some snobby reaction, we were really really sad)). Anyway, here’s a little then and now (and no, we did not wear these shirts to the actual screening of Awakens. And no, we are not lovers, nor are we virgins, despite what the commentators on Reddit would have you believe, but I admit this picture is pretty damn dorky out of context):

I’m on the right:

DuracellEnergizer said:

I remember the exact date when I first watched ROTJ – August 30, 1997. How can I remember it so exactly? That’s the day Princess Diana died.

I don’t know whether that should count as a bad omen or not.

I was watching Empire Strikes Back on VHS when I heard about it.

SilverWook said:

That’s not a John Wayne movie though. 😉

No, but neither is Star Wars, dangit!

Might as well edit this scene while we’re at it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AApIyQK-vEQ

I don't post here often, but I lurk every day.  One thing I've never seen brought up is what the trailer DIDN'T show, and my favorite thing about it:  no sprawling CG city landscapes.  The movie actually feels fairly small-scale (for Hollywood space opera) judging from the trailer.

It's Japanese. ;)

^Yeah, it's by far my favorite Star Wars material outside the original movies.  Read Classic Star Wars between issues 38 and 39, as 39 is the start of Empire Strikes Back and Classic Star Wars leads right up to it (while issue 38, Riders in the Void does not).

i got the Zardoz bluray, too!  It's a fantastic movie.

LexX said:

duds like Police Academy 7 and Gremlins 2. 

 Gremlins 2 is awesome.