Mondess122

their whole life meant absolutely

Ah, I see. 8.1 is still really good, although - correct me if I'm wrong - Frink thought it was 'low' compared to the non-stop praise it has been getting so far, especially on this site. Either that, or I'm bad at detecting sarcasm. Or neither.

And it's not that my relatively tiny review of it encapsulates all my thoughts on (i.e. problems with) the film, nor do I give films an automatic 10/10 solely based on entertainment value (if you've ever been on Letterboxd then you know what I mean). It's a great summer blockbuster, but it's far from perfect (...at least, y'know, that's like, my opinion, man).

With that said... RoboCop (1987) - Classic. Classic, classic, classic. It might even hold up better now than it did in the 80s, if you compare the technology in the film and the technology now. Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker is still one of my favorite villains of all time, and he's infinitely quotable. Very entertaining and pretty darn smart, too.

9.5 out of 10 breaking glass windows.

Odd, because it's a pacifist

However, it suddenly started talking

Sam Jackson, meanwhile, was bored

[Non-Story]

TV's Frink said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

"IgnoreallofFrink'spostsinthisthreadfromnowon"

 That's not one word, cheater.

 That's is not either.

blabbering, and it longed for

[Non-Story]

TV's Frink said:

Mondess122 said:

.

 I see what you did.

 "You catch on pretty quick!"

[Story]

DuracellEnergizer said:

street who loudly said: "IgnoreallofFrink'spostsinthisthreadfromnowon"

 another guy shouted back "okay,

. Luckily, in the building there

Yeah, I usually don't use killing metaphores for my ratings. Sorry.

Guardians 's genuinely great stuff, Hobbitboy.

Legend of Hell House - Pretty great haunted house flick. Basically the biggest inspiration for Edgar Wright's DON'T fake trailer in Grindhouse. Oozes with style and mood, brilliantly directed and shot. Characters are a bit iffy, but luckily the performances are pretty good. Roddy McDowall in particular is awesome. 

7.7 out of 10 possessed black cats. 

Darkman - A better title would've been Clicheman, because it is just that: cliched. Really, really cliched. Maybe its cliches weren't cliched yet when it was released, but that goes to show you how dated it is. The greenscreen effects don't hold up at all either. It's entertaining though, mostly thanks to Liam Neeson's performance and some of his lines ("Take the f*cking elephant!") and Sam Raimi's direction. 

6 out of 10 Bruce Campbell synthetic masks.

Guardians of the Galaxy - Just as good as last time...maybe even better. The villain didn't bother me as much anymore and its message seemed stronger than last time; it really is solid escapism. 

8.1 out of 10 'finger to the throat' metaphores.

, oh what an incredibly ridiculous

Uttered Frink uncontrollably, while he

Dictator starring Charlie Chaplin makes

DuracellEnergizer said:

Mondess122 said:

Black Christmas (1974)- Some people argue day and night about what the first slasher film is...and I think it's this one. It's not as well made as something like Halloween, but it's also much more stylish and moody than Friday the 13th.

I'd disagree with you in regards to Halloween. I think Black Christmas is a much more engaging film with more interesting characters and a far scarier murderer.

I do agree with your point on Friday the 13th, though. Of course, the entire Friday the 13th franchise is an exercise in derivative mediocrity, so it's hard not to.

If we're talking about the main character, then yes; the side characters are on the same level for me. The ones in Black Christmas are more realistic and generally less stupid, though. As for the killers, they're different kinds of scary. I was more talking about the films on a technical level; Halloween has the advantage in cinematography by having Dean Cundey behind the camera, and I think John Carpenter perfected the 'killer POV' introduced by Bob Clark. And let's not forget that pulsing theme; that scene where Loomis gets to the insane asylum and the music kicks in still gives me some shivers.

DrCrowTStarwars said:

Granted I don't watch a lot of slasher films so i am not an expert but I always thought psycho was the first slasher film since it was a horror film that was more bloody then anything made up to that point and Norman Bates killed woman with a knife.  Then again I am not an expert.  i will have to track down Black Christmas and give it a shot.

 A lot of people say that, but it doesn't really fit with the slashers of the 1980s. I think it was Black Christmas that got the ball rolling for the genre as we know it, considering that Carpenter was obviously inspired by that film's opening. Black Christmas does have a lot of the elements that later slasher films would imitate (except not from this film, but from Halloween, which was inspired by Black Christmas); POV shot from the killer, characters get killed one by one in usually one location, the killer uses a knife (or a sharp object) and the killer stalks his victims. Not that these elements weren't used before, but Black Christmas was the first to use them all together. James Rolfe made a pretty good video about it:

http://cinemassacre.com/2009/12/17/black-christmas/

DrCrowTStarwars said:

Dawn of the planet of the Apes

6.5/10.

I'd rate it similarly. My biggest problem with it was how predictable it was. Not just that, but they threw out the social and political commentary that makes the PotA films (aside from the Burton remake) so endearing to me, and instead replaced it with a cliched and tired plot that disguised itself as 'political'. Rise had the annoying references, but at least that film had a 'heart' to it , and it had some ideas of its own. I'm still kind of baffled that people ate this up, the same kind of people that criticized Avatar for being unoriginal, while this is almost as bad in that regard. And the less said about the bland characters, the better (...not that you can say a lot of things about bland characters, but whatever). 

Then again, I thought Boyhood was just okay, so maybe (i.e. clearly) I'm the crazy one.

Nightcrawler - A good film that becomes a not-quite-great film thanks to Gyllenhaal's performance. It's worth seeing just for his performance alone. Everything else - direction, screenplay, other characters - was fairly standard stuff, although not necessarily bad. Cinematography was really good. The score was really out of place, it sounded like it belonged in an inspirational sports film. Maybe it was the point to sound like that, but if it was, I thought it was a failed experiment. 

7.6 out of 10 Taxi Driver Diets.

Spider-Man 3 - Better than The Amazing Spider-Man...both of 'em. It has plenty of issues, but it's still pretty entertaining thanks to Raimi's direction. He nails the tone that a Spider-Man film should have. While it may have some of the same issues as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (too many subplots, too many villains, a nonsensical romance), at least you can tell that there went some care into this, whether you look at the Sandman introduction or the action scenes. It's not the bland commercial dreck that was The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The CGI also holds up really well, especially if compare it to the newest film.

6.1 out of 10 Sony products.

Black Christmas (1974)- Some people argue day and night about what the first slasher film is...and I think it's this one. It's not as well made as something like Halloween, but it's also much more stylish and moody than Friday the 13th. There's some hokey acting here and there, but overall, it's a slasher flick worth seeing. 

7.1 out of 10 glass unicorn figures.

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xhonzi said:

c1. Smaug dies in the pre-credit sequence.  Should have just been the ending of DoS.

r1. I think the cliffhanger ending of DoS was fine, and this movie really does tell the story of what happens when you take out a monger like Smaug.  It makes sense to have it be at the start of this movie.

I understand your point, but my problem with it isn't so much that the pre-credits scene should've been in the previous film, but rather how short it is. Because don't get me wrong, I do love DoS's cliffhanger, and ending it with the opening of the third film would have lessened the impact which that film had. However, if you build up with two films how dangerous Smaug is and with a cliffhanger that almost literally says "OH SH*T", only to have Smaug be killed within the first 10 minutes of the third film, then that just screams false advertising to me. Now I get the impression that Jackson got bored of the dragon and wanted to kill him off as soon as possible to get to the 'epic' battle. If it just had been part of the second film's climax, then I wouldn't have had that problem. The flipside of that is that you might indeed cause some confusion about what the armies in this film are fighting for, but I much rather have that than a misleadingly short opening battle. 

xhonzi said:

Mondess122 said:

I stopped noticing it was in 3D after a short while. Which is a bad thing. 

I disagree.  I think 3D is most effective when it's mostly operating at a subconscious level- like the musical score.  It might draw attention to itself sometimes more than others, but for the most part it should be operating on your emotions, and not be the subject of your focus.

I personally rather have 3D be obvious and in-your-face (in a good way; not when it's obviously a bad conversion and people blend into the background), otherwise I might as well see it in 2D. 

I saw it in unglorious three, and I stopped noticing it was in 3D after a short while. Which is a bad thing. Desolation of Smaug looked surprisingly much better in 3D, from what I can recall.

The reliance on CGI of this film was pretty shocking, especially considering Return of the King did a lot of the same things without it.

I think they took most of the scenes from what was originally intended to be the second film, stretched the hell out of it with boring action scenes and scenes saying "GREED IS BAAAAD", and released it as what it is now: hot air.

The opening just should've been part of the second film's climax. No need to wait another year for more Smaug (easily one of the best parts of these films) only to see him die in the first 10 minutes or so.

Also: Legolas showed that his skateboarding in The Two Towers and Fred Flintstone moment in Return of the King weren't the dumbest and most implausible things he did in these Middle Earth films. 

Kylo Ren is fine. At least it's not Darth Something.

Because, let's face it: there are too many Darths. 

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

As if the first two films weren't bloated enough...geez. It's the shortest yet most bloated film of the three. It also uses CGI to such a shockingly ridiculous amount that you start appreciating how much work (i.e. less use of CGI) went into the Gondor battle in Return of the King - which is very similar to the climax in this film. Smaug also disappears at a drop of a hat, which makes the cliffhanger of the last film lose all meaning. It does have some enjoyable moments here and there, but it's mostly an unengaging CGI blob of a film. Undoubtedly the worst of this trilogy.

Also: greed is bad, you guys. Really bad. Greed = bad. GREED IS BAD. Got it?

2.5 out of 5 armies too many.

Last year was a pretty notorious year for "copycat" films:

This Is The End and The World's End;

Springbreakers and The Bling Ring (Art films about teenage girls doing bad things);

Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down;

Elysium, After Earth and Oblivion ("Earth is sh*t" sci-fi films);

A Haunted House and Scary Movie 5.

And this year, we got Hercules and The Legend of Hercules. You could also argue that Guardians of the Galaxy and Interstellar are copycat films to a certain extent, because both want to recapture the magic of Star Wars (both Gunn and Nolan have said this in interviews). Besides that though, it's a safe guess that Interstellar will be radically different than Guardians.