Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[BrawlMan]

Haven't seen the second movie, but I didn't hate the first Michael Bay movie (Even though he was Producer)

I highly recommend OTS. I like TMNT (2014), but the sequel is a huge improvement and a step in the right direction. Too bad their won't be a third. Box office was average, but Paramount blew it in marketing. The DVD/Blu-Ray sales were insanely better and recouped the losses, but with the exec's go big or go home attitude, there won' be another one in that continuity. This film has the best version of Bebop and Rocksteady too.

​

BTW: When you get the Blu Ray version, check the deleted scenes. One of them has a special surprise that I wish made it in to the theatrical cut.

 

[Gordon_4]

Watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990.

And now I feel old because this was my childhood movie.

A movie from the pre-CGI/Greenscreen/Digital era. And everything had this dark and gritty and real look to it.

In Turtles’ case it was mainly an artefact of the indie budget, something like $8million, that it was made on. It helps with the urban fantasy flavour in a big way. It also helps that the movie has decent but low stakes: Shredder doesn’t want to take over the world - I mean shit who got time for that? - he just wants to get his thieving and fencing done and keep his profitable criminal concerns going. The ninjitsu and costumes coupled with a Pleasure Island home life is enough to get most of the homeless boys on New York’s streets in on the action. His methods take straight from the playbooks of cults and terrorist recruitment: offer direction and purpose, structure and cultivation of base impulses into disciplined force through martial arts with a thin veneer of familial bonds to keep everyone in line.

In fact the whole movie has a really strong theme of fathers and sons and the raising thereof; every word that comes out of Splinter’s mouth is worth listening to if you are a parent and the deliberate contrast between Shredder and Tatsu’s way of being ‘fathers’ to the Foot and Splinter’s to the Turtles is delivered with the subtly of a fuel air explosive but relying on subtext is for suckers.

And man do the fight scenes fucking KICK ALL THE ASS. I did ten years of JiuJutsu and it amazes me some of the more acrobatic shit these guys were able to do in those costumes. Soundtrack ain’t bad either.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Contracted

A woman gets roofie'd and raped by a necrophile, contracts zombie STD, proceeds to rot away through a melange of icky symptoms. This is pretty low budget but the grossness is efficiently conveyed through makeup and prosthetics. Cool premise, sort of in the same ballpark as It Follows, and that's as many nice things I can say about it.

The movie is horribly written and horribly acted. The lead lady is good at panicking but her character comes across as whiny and unlikeable. The supporting cast is bordering on The Room dreadful and nobody conveys a convincing relation with the protag or the ongoing events. Feels like everybody got cast simply because they were available. I don't believe the mother as her mother, or the doctor as her doctor. Nobody behaves the way the story pretends they should be behaving.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

D-Tox

Stallone's laughable attempt at a psychological thriller, in the form of a whodunit set in a remote, snowed-up rehab center for cops. I imagine the elevator pitch went something like "Seven meets The Shining". Basically it looks like a parody of what it's trying to accomplish. It's rushed, heavy-handed, doesn't know what to do with half its cast and peters out in the most forgettable way. It's not especially gory but feels morbid and tasteless. No wonder the studio shelved it for 3 years.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

City of Ember

Scientists built a city deep into the earth so humanity could survive the calamities befalling the earth and give time for the world to recover. 200 years later the box containing instructions to leave ember unlocks but due to various events the box was never fully passed on when one of the rulers of the city died while in office. The great generator that powers the city is failing and some of the citizens believe the builders will return to save them. It's up to a teen boy and girl to try and figure out the mystery and find the exit to the city before the generator fails and plunges the city into darkness using the tattered remains of the instructions that the girl has found as her family are descended from the mayor who died. Meanwhile they have to content with the present mayor being potentially corrupt as he hoards food in his secret vault.

Enjoyable enough film though I feel like the Mayor being corrupt kind of needed to be fleshed out more and have better explanation to it such as him just wanting to stay in power and not wanting people to leave because he wanted that control.

CGI is just about starting to show it's age as the film is about 12+ years old at this point.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The Cured

Another LGBT minded zombie movie to follow Contracted, albeit infinitely more capable and effective as drama/social commentary. For a change, the story is set after the zombie apocalypse has been dealt with, and what's more, most of the zombies themselves have been rehabilitated. There remains a 25% of infected who cannot be cured though, and the pressure of whether to put them down or risk another outbreak. Meanwhile those cured are shunned and discriminated by society, which results in a terrorist faction. Etc. The world keeps getting fleshed out in an engaging way.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The Cured

Another LGBT minded zombie movie to follow Contracted, albeit infinitely more capable and effective as drama/social commentary. For a change, the story is set after the zombie apocalypse has been dealt with, and what's more, most of the zombies themselves have been rehabilitated. There remains a 25% of infected who cannot be cured though, and the pressure of whether to put them down or risk another outbreak. Meanwhile those cured are shunned and discriminated by society, which results in a terrorist faction. Etc. The world keeps getting fleshed out in an engaging way.

LGBT minded? Beyond casting Elliott Page and having 1 or 2 lesbian characters (depending on whether or not one of them actually counts as a character), what's LGBT about it?

The first half or so was alright, but they get really stupid in the second half with, for example, the zombie facility, the existential threat to Ireland, being guarded by half a dozen untrained reservist, and not 90% of the available military.

 

[Trunkage]

City of Ember

Scientists built a city deep into the earth so humanity could survive the calamities befalling the earth and give time for the world to recover. 200 years later the box containing instructions to leave ember unlocks but due to various events the box was never fully passed on when one of the rulers of the city died while in office. The great generator that powers the city is failing and some of the citizens believe the builders will return to save them. It's up to a teen boy and girl to try and figure out the mystery and find the exit to the city before the generator fails and plunges the city into darkness using the tattered remains of the instructions that the girl has found as her family are descended from the mayor who died. Meanwhile they have to content with the present mayor being potentially corrupt as he hoards food in his secret vault.

Enjoyable enough film though I feel like the Mayor being corrupt kind of needed to be fleshed out more and have better explanation to it such as him just wanting to stay in power and not wanting people to leave because he wanted that control.

CGI is just about starting to show it's age as the film is about 12+ years old at this point.

Was this the YA movie from years ago? It was underground or something. I remember this being pretty good for teens. Little bit more complex than a kids movie but not as complex as an adult

 

[Trunkage]

LGBT minded? Beyond casting Elliott Page and having 1 or 2 lesbian characters (depending on whether or not one of them actually counts as a character), what's LGBT about it?

The first half or so was alright, but they get really stupid in the second half with, for example, the zombie facility, the existential threat to Ireland, being guarded by half a dozen untrained reservist, and not 90% of the available military.

If you have LBGT in your movie, you're making a political statement

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

LGBT minded? Beyond casting Elliott Page and having 1 or 2 lesbian characters (depending on whether or not one of them actually counts as a character), what's LGBT about it?

The first half or so was alright, but they get really stupid in the second half with, for example, the zombie facility, the existential threat to Ireland, being guarded by half a dozen untrained reservist, and not 90% of the available military.

Well, Page didn't just star in it, but produced it as well. Doesn't mean much in of itself but coincidentally every movie produced by Page has a lesbian romance at the center. Also that one about the sisters.

As to the plot, the only two women in it are a lesbian couple (Ellen Page notwithstanding), and I got homoerotic vibes from Senan's relationship with Conor. A lot of that alpha/beta dynamic felt like it was borrowed from a crappy fanfic about sexy vampires, only with zombies. The whole society-shames-this-group always lends itself to LGBT parallels - like the X-Men movies, and that coming out scene with Iceman in X2.

And yeah, I wasn't very convinced by the outbreak at the end. I'm willing to accept the military being overrun by zombies, but the way it was shot it didn't look all that unmanageable.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'm not convinced, but ok, you have a point there.

Though I thought the society-shames-this-group was more about sectarian issues in Ireland, as it can apply to any oppressed group, the X-Men originally standing in for the US civil rights movement, and later moving on to LGBT.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Was this the YA movie from years ago? It was underground or something. I remember this being pretty good for teens. Little bit more complex than a kids movie but not as complex as an adult

yeh that's the one.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm not convinced, but ok, you have a point there.

Though I thought the society-shames-this-group was more about sectarian issues in Ireland, as it can apply to any oppressed group, the X-Men originally standing in for the US civil rights movement, and later moving on to LGBT.

Every country has their own local brew of sectarian discriminatory bullshit and I'm sure I'm missing something about the specific Irish context. But I got the impression the movie was more than a little oriented towards an LGBT angle, which would make the message about tolerance more universal.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Shaun of the Dead.

it was alright. I don't think it was as good as Hot Fuzz, or even as good as Scott Pilgrim, but it's amusing and occasionally outright funny.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Break

Russian movie, four skiers stuck in a gondola. Similar to that one about the three friends stuck in a ski lift, but nowhere near as tense or believable. The gondola is frozen in place because the operator dies in a freak accident; that they remain trapped and unnoticed depends entirely on the other ski resort workers not noticing the dead colleague downstairs, and not fixing a minor tech issue, which I simply don't buy. This isn't The Shining territory, it's a bustling resort in high season. Also the biggest threat in the movie is dealt with around the halfway point, so that's that for tension.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Nobody starring Bob Odenkirk. Everyone said it would be a John Wick ripoff. It's really not. Its a much more traditional action movie, aka not quite as good and with more comedy in it.

Genuinely confusing movie. Odenkirk is charming enough in the role, but his character motivations make his killing sprees seem childish. Slow burn at the start, and the action was very visceral. Then towards the end it became a cartoon, the finale feels like it came from a different movie. This movie commits my all time most hated "cinema sin" of having guns with silencers that still have regular muzzle flashes.

But it was still entertaining enough. Oh, and it's weird that this movie has an aftercredits scene. I hope this doesn't become too common. I know they existed before the MCU, but now it seems people feel that they need to do them.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Upgrade

This was hella fun. Catchy concept, cool action, funny buddy humor, just dark/gory enough and with a twist that kinda saves it from the more obvious, predictable turns towards the end. Only real pet peeve is I would've liked a bit more action in it. Other than that I'd love a sequel, for a change.

 

[McElroy]

Come True

Y'know, dreams and nightmares and stuff. A Canadian horror movie about a 18-year-old Sarah who has trouble sleeping and gets into a sleep study that gets weird. Beautiful music and positively haunting atmosphere, dream and non-dream alike. The plot isn't much to write home about. There is one good tense scene and another really nice one and the concept all in all gives some food for creative thought. I like that it keeps its own identity while you can see it draws inspiration from classics like Blade Runner and Terry Gilliam movies. And Seven Nation Army, funny enough. The movie also has an ending. Yes. The credits will roll at one point. Also the editing gets in the way sometimes, but I can forgive some of that due to the limited budget. 6/10

 

[BrawlMan]

Upgrade

This was hella fun. Catchy concept, cool action, funny buddy humor, just dark/gory enough and with a twist that kinda saves it from the more obvious, predictable turns towards the end. Only real pet peeve is I would've liked a bit more action in it. Other than that I'd love a sequel, for a change.

I highly doubt that's gonna happen considering the ending. At best, you get a sequel that is stand alone.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I highly doubt that's gonna happen considering the ending. At best, you get a sequel that is stand alone.

It's a good enough ending if they never continue the story but they could easily sci-fi their way into a sequel if they wanted to. They made over five times their budget, too.