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[Strife26]

I was hit and miss with John Wick 2. Parts of it were really compelling for me, but the plot really threw me out of it more than once. Gorgeous throughout, of course, but not the "tied for 2nd favorite action movie" level that John Wick is.

[Starver]

True story: I had to say "I never saw or heard about John Wick 1" to someone trying to recommend that I go and see it. Somehow slipped in under the radar.

(Another true story: I am somewhere in the background of the '90s Richard III. But I didn't previously get asked to feature in Richard I/II )

[TempAcc]

In regards to good late 70s awesome animated fantasy movie things, I greatly recommend Wizards.

Goofy voice acting, 70s soundtrack, mutant nazis, fairy boobs and elves being shot with rifles included.

[MoonyTheHuman]

In regards to good late 70s awesome animated fantasy movie things, I greatly recommend Wizards.

Goofy voice acting, 70s soundtrack, mutant nazis, fairy boobs and elves being shot with rifles included.

That reminds me.... 'No NSFW' please.

[MoonyTheHuman]

bump.
---- RULES LIGHTER FROM THIS POINT ON ----

[IronyOwl]

Disagree. Resurrection and 3 were both godawful, yes but they both had at least one redeeming feature. Resurrection had Sigourney Weaver genuinely making that over-the-shoulder-not-looking basketball thing on her first attempt. They had to cut immediately afterward because Ron Perlman or someone started freaking out over it, but it got in the movie.

And as for 3, Pete Postlethwaite was in it. Finest English actor in his generation.

Whereas Prometheus had nothing going for it, in my opinion. It was pretentious shite layered upon itself.

Come now:

Fassbender fucking killed it as the android. Holy shit, he was amazing.

Plus the Forerunners or whatever looked pretty cool, and the flute console was neat.

In regards to good late 70s awesome animated fantasy movie things, I greatly recommend Wizards.

Goofy voice acting, 70s soundtrack, mutant nazis, fairy boobs and elves being shot with rifles included.

Hated Wizards. Maybe it was revolutionary in the 70s or whatever, but it's just fucking hamfisted and pretentious as all hell.

[Telgin]

I did really like David.  He was a surprisingly well written character, and the unspoken resentment he had against the humans came across well and was effective, I thought.

And yes, many of the characters were literally too dumb to live, but that didn't really bother me all that much about the movie.  Funnily enough, the part that bothered me the most was the engineers and the whole plot contortions that they caused.

I don't want to turn this into the Alien thread and drag the conversation out too much, but I felt like Ridley Scott went way too George Lucas on his prequel with the engineers.  Before Prometheus, the "pilot" was a very enigmatic and haunting creature.  When the Nostromo crew found it, it had been dead for probably thousands of years, and there was substantial evidence that it was flying a warship containing biological weapons for some great conflict humans knew nothing about and was totally unrelated to them.  You didn't know whether to feel fear from it or pity for it.  The "pilots" / "space jockeys" had probably wiped themselves out in the conflict before humans ever got into space.

Furthermore, it's enhanced by the literally alien appearance of them and their technology.  While it's almost somewhat kind of believable that the pilot in Alien was just in a space suit, he's enormous compared to the Nostromo crew and appears to have an at least somewhat inhuman anatomy.

Then we get to Prometheus and find out that, no, these are the aliens that either created humanity or drove their evolution.  Oh, and they look just like us except they're tall (but not Alien levels of tall), blue and hairless.  And the xenomoprh was intended as a biological weapon to destroy us all along.  Convenient!

To me it just kind of destroys all of the mystery that Alien set up and repackages it in a nice, neat little package where everything is related and all comes together too conveniently.  It's like how the Star Wars prequels removed a lot of the feeling of depth and scale to the Star Wars universe.  Everybody, from Yoda to Chewbacca to Boba Fett have all been important characters forever and whose stories are all intertwined since the beginning.

I'm just glad they stopped short of having the engineer at the end of Prometheus crash on LV-426 and set up the beginning to Alien.  I could just feel it happening as the movie came to an end, but fortunately it didn't happen.

Oh, and as a small aside, did you know that originally Jesus Christ was supposed to be an engineer?  The explanation for why they suddenly hated us was because we crucified him.  Mercifully, the writers decided it wasn't a good idea to be quite that blunt, so they took it out.


To touch on Alien 3 and Resurrection, I won't try to defend Resurrection.  I'm not sure I can think of a single redeeming thing about it.  Call and the concepts of autons is kind of interesting, but not really substantially different from synthetics as a whole, so it doesn't really help the movie much.

But, oddly, even as a hard core Alien fan, I don't hate Alien 3.  I admit that it had a massive tonal shift from the ending of Aliens and probably shouldn't have just killed everyone off, but I appreciated the somewhat bleak and hopeless feeling it had.  I always felt like that was an important part of the Alien universe's tone.  Maybe Alien 3 took it too far.

Either way, I do give the movie points for showing the "DNA reflex" and how the xenomorphs do take on traits of other hosts.

And on that note, I'm kind of glad some of the other Alien 3 scripts didn't make it to production.  One had a farm of some kind become infected, to which we were treated to a sheep xenomorph complete with black wool.  There was also some other particularly wacky plot where the EEV is picked up by a giant floating space station made of wood, in which one of the monks living there literally punches the xenomoroph embryo out of Ripley.

[itisnotlogical]

I was a big fan of Ip Man the first time I saw it, but I've gotten into the very bad habit of viewing foreign live-action movies (i.e. not anime) as cute oddities or one-hit wonders.

I finally watched Ip Man 2 and 3 and my word. It just kept getting better and better. I haven't seen a sequel, let alone two, do so well at escalating the plot in quite a long time. All three films change course pretty abruptly midway through, but only in 3 does it lead to a serious flaw with the entire film IMHO.

Kenji Kawai's soundtrack is amazing.

I love how self-aware these films are, too. During the third film I was thinking "Wow, they didn't even try to make Donnie Yen look older..." and immediately, a side character compliments Ip Man on how he seems to get younger every year. He chalks it up to his wife's cooking.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

During the second film, when Wing Sing was giving birth to their second son, she didn't even summon Ip Man to tell him she was in labor, knowing that he couldn't be distracted from the final fight. I thought "Wow, she's really dedicated and supportive." Come the third movie, she's feeling overtaxed and underappreciated, and a major section of the third film is Ip repenting for his failures as a husband over the series. That's how you build a natural sequel, not just introducing a badder villain or setting it in space or something.

I also love all the references to the awesome ten-man fight from the first movie, which is often parodied. Somebody, upon recognizing Ip Man, will ask if he could really fight off ten guys. He modestly shrugs it off or denies it... shortly before beating dozens of armed thugs in a massive brawl.

Kent Cheng also reprises his role as "Fat" Po, an incompetent policeman from an old Jet Li movie called The Defender. A somewhat random connection, but an appreciated one.

Also, note to anybody who is watching/wants to watch these on Netflix: the one titled Ip Man: The Final Fight isn't a part of the real Ip Man series.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Just watched Tombstone, man what a film! In truth, I watched it only because I wanted to see Val Kilmer's performance as Doc Holliday behind the infamous GIF. I was not disappointed. Some parts of the film are better than others, both technically and story-wise, but the characters leap off the screen, and some shots are seriously beautiful!

[itisnotlogical]

Went and saw Ghost in the Shell. I can't really post about it in the anime thread, so here goes.

Good points:

They worked in Matoko's random nudity from the first film (USA!Major has Barbie anatomy but still), her tactical vest from Stand Alone Complex, and the red motorcycle suit from the Arise OVAs. I have to admit, I was kind of impressed by that level of fanservice.

They didn't play the fucking stupid dubstep remix of the original theme.

The few action scenes not ripped from the original film are alright. They're generic but entertaining.

Bad points:

It was a dumbed-down, chopped up, heavily Americanized retelling of the 1995 movie. I was expecting exactly that, but I'm still mad about it.

I expected things to be changed because of course they would be, but what they decided to change and leave in is baffling. Aramaki speaks Japanese for no reason at all given the new Americanized context. It's Department of Defense Section 9 (as opposed to Public Security) but they answer to a Prime Minister, not a President. An American CEO heads a Japanese-named tech company with employees that speak Japanese, in the one scene they're shown speaking. Also there's a dinner scene around a kotatsu served by geisha robots, yet the rest of the movie is written to a summer action-movie audience that would have no idea what a kotatsu or a geisha is. I know they might have been going for the Asian-American cultural hodgepodge that often happens in cyberpunk, but it doesn't feel intentional here. It's like they adapted a Japanese franchise for an American audience, and didn't have a care in the world about the property they were handling. Crazy theory, right?

Other minor points: They try to squeeze in the cast of Stand Alone Complex, and all that results is you're just left wondering who these apparently-major characters are.

The CGI is really boring. Of course it's technically competent, but it looks like any other sci-fi action movie in the last five or so years. I hope you enjoy the geisha robots because they're the coolest design in the film.

That apparent lesbian scene that was in all the trailers actually turns out to be the single dumbest moment in the entire film, bar none. You'd have to see it to believe it.

Spoiler: Spoiler territory (click to show/hide)

It's one thing to make changes for localization, or to cut things for a reasonable runtime. Nobody wanted to see all the times Harry Potter sat doodling in History class for hours, so they cut that out. It's not those changes that really irritated me about this film.

The changes that irritate me are when they directly contradict everything that the original story was. You know all those times in Star Trek where they just murder unique sentient life forms, despite Starfleet's supposed mission of exploration and diplomacy? That's kind of what this movie did to all the rest of the GitS franchise.

Ghost in the Shell is set in a high-tech world, and it explores dilemmas related to the fictional technologies therein. It doesn't have a message one way or another, it just uses the rules of the universe to create interesting sci-fi stories. The villains and the good guys are both high-tech forces.

USA!GITS is all about how Mara Killian AKA Motoko Kusanagi had her soul sucked by scientists and all this bad shit happens because evil technology and cyborgs are just sad broken people inside. You can only be happy if you're an organic human, according to USA!GITS. When Batou has his natural eyes replaced it's supposed to be this really tragic scene where he's forced by necessity to have these inhuman parts put in him, but I had to roll my eyes at how stupid and obvious the point was. It's a dumb technophobic movie for the kind of people that post on Facebook about how awful Facebook is.

Other stuff...

The villain is named Cutter. Fucking Cutter. Why not name him Commander Hitler von Evilton and have him kick an orphan puppy onto some train tracks? He could do with an eye scar and deep gravelly voice, as well.

Aramaki has like ten lines in the entire film, mostly delivered from behind a desk, but randomly turns into a gun-toting badass for the last act and takes out Cutter. Like many things, never explained.

TL;DR

A mediocre action film that will be swiftly forgotten, but it's extra insulting because they pretended it was Ghost in the Shell.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

That's disheartening. Thanks for the review, I was hoping against all hope that it would actually have something more to offer.

[itisnotlogical]

Yeah, it was pretty bad. I got some expectations about it myself, since the previews paraded the remade scenes instead of the original stuff which was almost all garbage.

I hate to talk about the politics surrounding a work as opposed to the work itself, but it really feels like they were halfway through rewriting when the whitewashing accusations came in, so they just stopped changing things and left it in a weird transition state.

Spoiler: More spoiler stuff that annoyed me (click to show/hide)

It's kind of funny that the climax amounts to "Hey, do you want to recreate the original ending?" "No thx lol"

Not that Paramount would have the balls to take on adapting Innocence anyway, after they lobotomized the first film to such a degree. I don't like Innocence a single bit, but even beyond all the infamous navel-gazing and philosophy there was some deep, dark stuff in that film.

So they show Motoko's grave at the end, with her real name on it after Major's been calling herself Mara Killian the entire film. They linger on the words Motoko Kusanagi... then during the dumb little end speech she says "My name is Major." I hate hate hate hate hate when reboots/remakes feel like they need to symbolically "kill off" the original.

[Jopax]

Seconding most of what Ispil said. It's a shiny movie but you should not come in with your brain, leave that shit outside because you'll just get annoyed at it.

I'd like to add that my biggest beef with it tho is Scarlett and her acting, or whatever the fuck that was. I think she was going for this awkward not quite human type of deal with her portrayal. But she missed majorly (HA) and it comes off as someone acting like they're not human. It's so bloody obvious that I rolled my eyes almost constantly at every scene. Kuze was spot on tho, that's how you do a broken almost human type of deal. She just felt out of place and combined with most of her lines being trite shit she becomes the weakest point that kills the deal for me.

[i2amroy]

That's disheartening. Thanks for the review, I was hoping against all hope that it would actually have something more to offer.

I mean if you take Ghost in the Shell on it's own (as opposed to looking at it as an adaptation of something older and all the baggage that implies), then it's still a decent movie. I think the common ratings of like 6.5/10 or 7/10 rates it pretty decently. There's stuff that falls flat, and it's not the sort of film that I'm going to be going "oh guys remember that awesome movie..." in five years, but it definitely was worth my $13 (I saw it in 3D).

For Scarlett's acting I think part of it was her but a large chunk was just that the plot was fairly straightforward and predictable (which is always a risk in adapting older material; the idea that lots of other things have cribbed ideas off of it already). The result was that a lot of the twists/etc. didn't really carry the emotional punch that you would expect them to carry, which is probably my biggest flaw with the film. The emotional lack just happens to echo more strongly with her because:
1) She's the main character, so she gets the most screen time
2) Her character is going for the emotionless introspective angle
3) She tends to suffer a bit in portraying emotion in her acting

TL;DR: It's a decent film that was worth my money, but not award winning great, and I think that while part of the emotional lack is Scarlett's fault, I think a lot of it just comes from more predictable writing that just happens to show through with her the most.

[itisnotlogical]

That's disheartening. Thanks for the review, I was hoping against all hope that it would actually have something more to offer.

I mean if you take Ghost in the Shell on it's own (as opposed to looking at it as an adaptation of something older and all the baggage that implies), then it's still a decent movie. I think the common ratings of like 6.5/10 or 7/10 rates it pretty decently. There's stuff that falls flat, and it's not the sort of film that I'm going to be going "oh guys remember that awesome movie..." in five years, but it definitely was worth my $13 (I saw it in 3D).

For Scarlett's acting I think part of it was her but a large chunk was just that the plot was fairly straightforward and predictable (which is always a risk in adapting older material; the idea that lots of other things have cribbed ideas off of it already). The result was that a lot of the twists/etc. didn't really carry the emotional punch that you would expect them to carry

The thing is that it's generic and uninteresting because of the changes, not because of the things it carried from the original.

Spoiler: Comparing GITS 2017, GITS 1995 and a certain third movie point-for-point (click to show/hide)

GITS 2017:
- Cyberpunk dystopia ruled by Hanka Robotics
- Major has body replaced by robotics
- Suffers lost memories, identity crises and questions her humanity
- Sympathetic sidekick in her workplace helps her overcome these
- Ordered destroyed by the people who created her once she gets too close to the corporate conspiracy, goes rogue
- The corporation that created Major ends up being the villains, and the CEO is the ultimate bad guy killed off at the end of the film
- Film ends with Major returning to her work at Section 9 once Hanka Robotics is cleaned out

GITS 1995:
- Cyberpunk dystopia littered with advertising but not necessarily dominated by any one factor
- Major is curious about her robotic/electronic nature, rather than distressed about losing her natural body. To paraphrase: "A certain voice, a certain face, seeing a certain hand when you wake up, these things are all me, but not only these. Information and a network I'm connected to. These things all define me, but at the same time they also impose certain limitations."
- Sympathetic sidekick doesn't really understand her plight, but goes along anyway
- Government organization's AI gone rogue turns out to have caused the plot. Major chases him down alone to answer her questions about the possibilities of cybernetic life
- Film ends with Major, presumed dead, disappearing into the city at night with her new companion/symbiote

Robocop 1987:
- Cyberpunk dystopia ruled by a corporation
- Murphy has body replaced by robotics
- Suffers lost memories, identity crises and questions his humanity
- Sympathetic sidekick on the force helps him overcome these
- Ordered destroyed once he gets too close to the corporate conspiracy, goes rogue
- OCP ends up being the villain and the CEO is the final bad guy taken out
- Film ends with Murphy returning to the police force once OCP is cleared out

So your thesis that it's a boring, paint-by-numbers action movie because it aped the original is mostly untrue. It's a paint-by-numbers action film because it aped another paint-by-numbers action film, except Robocop has lots of personality, 80's cheese, creative special effects and good old blood-n-guts that keep it enjoyable to watch today. So even if you don't compare it to the original film, it's still an uninspired, derivative popcorn film (spot the Blade Runner influences for bonus points!) without much original work, besides some funky cybernetics.

Besides, mainstream reviews are routinely far too kind to films anyway. It's like game reviews, except nobody's called them out on it that I know of.