Wot films are you watching?

[DiamondDog]

1977 film by Sam Peckinpah about the Eastern Front from the perspective of the German Army. Amazing film. Has James Coburn as a cynical vet that's won the Iron Cross and ends up under the command of a Prussian aristocrat looking to win himself the Iron Cross. Really it's the kind of story you've seen told about the British Army a million times. Posh guy gets command because of his status but doesn't know anything about war and sees it as a route to glory. Gets forced to deal with the reality by a guy that knows how horrific a real battle is.

Except it's from the perspective of Germans and it's a Peckinpah film, so there are more layers and lots of insanity.

I've not watched a huge amount of war films but there are some good stories told about different sides of the war. Stalingrad, Days of Glory and Sophie Scholl - The Final Days are all worth watching. If you've not already, of course.

[Kadayi]

Well with my forum downtime and lack of DXHR to play I ended up watching a few films over the weekend.

Super.

Kind of like Kick Ass without the jokes and on acid. Pretty disjointed overall. Also Ellen Page is just doomed to be a short woman trapped in a girls body.

Rango.

Brilliant from beginning to end. I didn't know anything about it, but that Johnny Depp was involved, but I have to say it was outstanding, and excellent animation. Worthwhile and kind of adult (but not in the way one might suspect).

Battle: Los Angeles

For an alien invasion movie no where near as terrible I'd heard, but saying that still an alien invasion movie. Better than Skyline by a country mile. Also Arron Echkart has the most insane chin ever.

[Similar]

Thor (2011)
From total douchebag to decent person in thirty minutes (they might base a self help book on this movie).
Also, Asgaard seems to have somehow ended up on Krypton.
Not a terrible movie, but I pretty much forgot about it two minutes after it had ended.

Blood - The Last Vampire (2009)
Not quite sure if this is based on a comic. I remember watching the anime and thinking I was missing some back story and it's much the same with the live action movie. Mostly okay, but after hurrying through what scraps of story they'd managed to come up with they suddenly run out and the movie ends rather anticlimatically (I seem to remember the anime did the same).

Priest (2011)
Another we-only-have-budget-for-x-number-of-minutes movie with a rushed storyboard style backstory that doesn't fit the movie at all (but at least it's there) and the bad guy is overplaying and doesn't fit very well either. That said, I still mostly enjoyed it. If they'd fleshed it out and taken some more time with it, it could have been rather nice.

The Eagle (2011) (also known as "The Eagle of the Ninth", it seems).
Pleasant surprise. Probably helps I have a thing for Roman infantry, but I thought the movie worked quite well (except perhaps for the two main characters' smirking in the final scene). Also, good soundtrack.

... Pretty sure I watched several others, but they must have been very forgettable.

[Rii]

Re: my comments re: Senna: turns out the version I saw ran a fair bit longer than the official version. Oops.

Thor (2011)
From total douchebag to decent person in thirty minutes (they might base a self help book on this movie).
Also, Asgaard seems to have somehow ended up on Krypton.
Not a terrible movie, but I pretty much forgot about it two minutes after it had ended.

How could you ignore the controversy of a black man in white man land??????

[Similar]

How could you ignore the controversy of a black man in white man land??????

oh, durn. I always miss stuff like that. I blame my upbringing (my mother should have put more points into Controversy, I think).


I just remembered that I also watched

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011).
The only thing I can remember of it is some water that flowed up instead of down and something about mermaids.
So it may not have made all that much of an impression.

Falling Skies, season 1.
The last episode shuffled too much between 'rather lame' and 'decent', but up until then, I thought it was okay. It's completely standard fare, no surprises at all, but if you don't expect much it's not the worst way to waste your time.

The Walking Dead, season 1.
I think the series might be better if you don't know the comics. I do, so I kind of miss the sense of dread and bleakness from it. Not that the series is all unicorns and rainbows, but ... where the comics are about people who only hope to survive another day, and barely even that, the series has more of a feeling that there's some greater hope to aim for. Which changes things quite a bit.
It's quite good, though.

[JohnnyK]

I just watched "Attack the Block", that was surprisingly entertaining.

Also, The Prestige (Bale, Jackman & Cain) a few weeks ago - excellent movie.

@Similar, I did not know the WD-comics and enjoyed the series, so you might be on to something.

[Similar]

Another one I just watched:

Ironclad (2011).
Rather enjoyable, though I suspect not knowing what Danish sounds like would improve it quite a lot; the 'Danish' the mercenaries speak is a tad jarring when you do know. And their leader is called "Tiberius", which I kind of doubt has ever been a very common Danish name (could be his father was just fond of Roman names, but...). Also several continuity errors.
The fighting scenes are pretty decent and it's nice that it's not just swords, but all kinds of weapons. Especially the battle hammer (the kind with a fairly normal sized hammer head on a long shaft) fights are convincing.

[Wooly Wugga Wugga]

Watched in the last month or so :

Priest - I really enjoyed this when I watched it. I thought it was a better Judge Dredd than Judge Dredd was.

Rango - Loved this as well. Loved the occasional surrealism. Left me feeling warm and fuzzy. All good.

Knight and Day - Made it through about 30 minutes but it felt like about an hour and a half. There is only so much smug Tom Cruise that I can handle these days and they even managed to make Cameron Diaz look ugly. Just painful.

[Similar]

I just watched "Attack the Block", that was surprisingly entertaining.

Thanks for the tip (I'd never heard about it). Excellent movie.

[Xercies]

Thor - Enjoyable nonsense. The main character wa great as the lead character, an asshole at the start and then became more likeble. Sir Anthony Hopkins was great, and the guy who played Loki brought a slimy snake like perfermonce which was great. Surprisingly this is more of a fish out of water comedy but it isn't to cliched and it works surprisingly well and is quite funny. The way Asgard is done is really well. Also very excited to see Captain America and that The Avengers is only going to be next year. Some part of me is a child who probably would have blown his head if it happened back then

[Drake Sigar]

I saw The Social Network (talk about being late to the party) and am prepared to call it our generation’s Network (1976), not necessarily because that’s what I believe, but because the statement just sent several readers into molar-exploding rages.

Seriously though, great (albiet entirely fictional) movie.

[Rii]

I saw The Social Network (talk about being late to the party) and am prepared to call it our generation’s Network (1976), not necessarily because that’s what I believe, but because the statement just sent several readers into molar-exploding rages.

Seriously though, great (albiet entirely fictional) movie.

/wince

I haven't actually seen it, although I've got as far as downloading it. It's not because I don't use Facebook, more that I'm afraid of the buttons the film might push for me. Even after so much acclimatisation the phrase 'social networking' still causes me to recoil on some level. And so the film has been easy to put off in favour of ... anything else.

[Xercies]

I really liked The Social Network actually, the main character is unlikeble throughout with a few touches of maybe likebility thrown in there but he still comes across like an asshole. Which I quite like to be honest. The story is pretty interesting, and its Directed By David Fincher! What more do you need?

[Drake Sigar]

It’s one of those rare movies that excels in every department. There’s this innocent little piano tune which repeats over the story to gradually transform into a chilling piece. The editing successfully makes hacking seem like the most exciting thing in the world without approaching CSI territory. The performances are superb all round - Justin Timberlake is a force of nature, Andrew Garfield makes me more hopeful towards the Spiderman reboot, and Jesse Eisenberg is able to convey the subtle emotional shifts in a socially inept character whose desire for acceptance eventually leads him to destroy what few meaningful (and extremely one-sided) relationships he had left.

[DigitalSignalX]

Watched Kevin Smith's latest, "Red State" last night. Very interesting film, starts off like a low budget horror/thriller and then evolves first into a portrayal on how religious zeal can be subverted into the complete antithesis of the tenants of Christianity. Then in the last half it evolves into this massive Waco shootout / post 9-11 government oppression of rights statement. It's definetly a left turn from Smiths usual style, including the superb "Dogma." Part of me wishes he could have focused the film on just one of these three elements instead of casting his net so wide. John Goodman surprises with a strong showing (and he looks like he's lost a lot of weight too) as the reluctant, methodical ATF agent who ends up in the end representing Christian values the most. Overall I liked it, and kind of wish he'd had a larger budget and more room to flesh it out because the premise is very solid, but the execution feels rushed.

[redox]

Just watched a clip of The Thing. Video and info - http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/...-of-the-thing/

[Xercies]

Chinatown - Pretty interesting Noir like thriller, it definitely had me hooked through the twists and turns of the story. The end reveal is pretty surprising and it ends on a really tragic note like most Noirs do. I kind of wanted it to solve itself and the hero to defeat the conspiracy it seemed, but it wasn't that type of movie and I liked it for that.

[cjlr]

"Now, we RIDE."
Rango's pretty fun. Some friends and I went to a free showing of that in the park during the summer, we were impressed and surprised. Well, I really liked it. They did too I guess. We left the 'must have EKSPLOSHUNS!!1!' guys at home.

Chinatown is great.

My roommate and I watched In Bruges a couple nights ago. Great movie. Beautiful, intelligent, funny... Even my roommate thought it was pretty good, even though he's one of the ones who tends towards the "I leik eksploshuns" school of film studies.

[Cable]

I would also like to say Chinatown is great. It's genre is technically neo-noir by the way. I also really liked In Bruges, was kind of just expecting it to be funny but there was a lot more too it than that in reality.

I just saw the Departed which was pretty awesome I thought. Great actors and plenty of twists and turns, a good action/thriller.

[Alex Bakke]

I watched Léon the other day, it was pretty excellent.