Last Movie You Watched

[Gendo'sPapa]

I'm greatly anticipating GREEN ROOM!

Last year, I had a few beers with director Jeremy Saulnier after I had helped set up a local theatrical screening of Blue Ruin & what little he told me of Green Room was inspiring!

[cyharding]

Rewatched the Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn for the first time in many years. I enjoyed it, but I couldn't help noticing that there was grain. Is that what happens when a blu-ray player upconverts it? I thought Technicolor films are nearly flawless.

[FriedlCore]

The Shawshank Redemption. Oh my god that movie is great.

[Logoguy]

I couldn't help noticing that there was grain. Is that what happens when a blu-ray player upconverts it?

Well, before the advent of digital cinematography, the medium used to record motion pictures was film stock. Coated on the film strips are tiny silver granules; which are basically analogous to pixels in digital media. That "grain" you see in the film is supposed to be there. No grain—no picture.

The noticeably of the grain will vary depending on the quality of the stock and the size of the frame. Today, DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) is used in digital transfers to reduce or remove film grain, but this can sometimes result in actors on film looking like wax figures (especially in the case of Predator 2010 Ultimate Hunter Edition .)

[pwhodges]

However, in reversal processing (as I recall), the image is formed of dye and the silver is removed, so far less grain may be apparent.

[Sachi]

Batman Begins is on Netflix, and I watched it for the first time since before The Dark Knight Rises came out. This never really bugged me before, but almost all the camera shots are too quick before cutting to something else, even during the non-action-y parts. There's also very little use of establishing shots which is noticeable for certain scenes. The entire film appears to be moving at a hurried pace, when many scenes would have benefited from slowing down a bit and giving a couple extra seconds for certain shots. The Dark Knight, IIRC, fixed most these mistakes, as I seem to remember there being some pretty good extended shots.

*crosses fingers Netflix will get The Dark Night next, even though it'll never happen*

[Gendo'sPapa]

I'm in the minority here but I am of the opinion that Batman Begins is Nolan's worst movie.
It's not a bad film but it's very sloppily made. The whole time you can tell it's the first real BIG budget film Nolan got a chance to direct. As an action film it's a failure - the climax takes place at night in a fog with men in black ninja outfits fighting a man in a black costume in darkly lit alleys with a brownish hue thrown on everything in only handheld close ups - and the logic of the movie never holds up for me. The Dark Knight Rises announces it's a goofy spectacle from the first scene when Bane literally destroys a plane in an awesome James Bond like sequence to get one guy. So when TDKR becomes a comic book-like epic with faulty logic in the third act I embrace it because the movie willingly goest that way. Batman Begins is so intent on being "the real & practical Batman story" that it just doesn't work for me when such an intentionally down to earth film for the first two acts suddenly morphs into the impractical blockbuster nonsense of the third act. Time for a run on sentence - "We've poured poison into the water system to make everyone kill each other from fear but the poison must be inhaled as a gas so we've stolen this super device that makes water explode into gas and we've now turned the thing on even though we're nowhere near the mains but we're hoping the people in one part of town killing each other will distract the cops so we can get to the mains and destroy the city even though no one knows we're doing this so we really could have started this at the mains and taken care of everything in one fell swoop."

[Trajan]

Had a Halloween movie marathon last night. I watched: Night of the Living Dead, The Invisible Man, and The Bride of Frankenstein. I've seen the latter two several times but this was the first time I'd seen Night. It's a very tense movie that manages to avoid or downplay most of the Zombie movie cliches that have made me disregard the genre. Still probably the only Zombie movie I've seen that I've liked to be honest. The Invisible Man and The Bride of Frankenstein are unimpeachable classics and you should see them if you haven't already. James Whale was a director well ahead of his time in terms of technical skills and pacing, both of those films are really a league ahead of their competition in terms of watchability.

[Chuckman]

The quick cuts in Begins are to hide that Bale can't really move in the Batsuit. They finally figured out how to make a bat suit that works in the sequel.

It seems they built on that for BvS, since Affleck says he can turn his head in the movie even though it looks like the Begins/Schumacker/Burton one piece head/neck rubber cowl that kept all the actors in those films from moving their heads in costume. Personally though I always liked the way Michael Keaton used the inability to turn his head to give Batman's movements a creepy uncanny valley effect.

I agree that Begin's plot was pretty lame in the third act, and overly simplistic.

This is what I mean when I say I want the Action Scientist aspect of Batman brought to the big screen. Rather than a nonsensical method of delivery, Batman should have simply been too late to stop the fear toxin spreading throughout the entire city and had to come up with some way to quickly and effectively distribute an antidote while Scarecrow tries to stop him. Keep Ra's alive for a sequel hook and be done with it. It's not like a Batman movie is going to flop so bad they never make another one.

Begins and TDK are obviously standalone movies about Batman. Among TDKR's many flaws is that it tries to force inject a trilogy into two standalone movies and bends logic in irritating ways to make it happen (Batman retired right after the Joker/Dent incident, and looked pretty spry, but somehow became an old man with a bad leg immediately, etc. etc.)

Also every adaptation has a hardon for taking Bane down a peg for some reason (he's either a dumb brute or the... weirdness of TDKR) when he could be an interesting character, and Goyer inserted a bunch of weirdly fascistic anti-Occupy themes that end up half-baked and improperly explored (could you make a Batman movie about how populist movements can be subverted by demagogues and become dangerous and make a point about opposing people without hate? Yes. Is this it? Fucking no, man)

[TehDonutKing]

Begins and TDK are obviously standalone movies about Batman.

No i'm not! You're the standalone movie about Batman! Nyeh!

[Gendo'sPapa]

So I just watched TOKYO TRIBE & loved every rap-filled, kung-fu fighting second of it! Sion Sono can really knock out amazing movies when he puts all his efforts into it! It's like someone channeled the spirit of Brian De Palma when he did "Phantom of the Opera", added excellent kung-fu fights, kicked reality to the curb & then started rapping like a grade-A gangsta! Sooooo much fun! It's on iTunes if anyone wants to check it out & it is worth it!

What other Sion Sono masterpieces should I check out? I ask because the guy WORKS - according to IMDB he's releasing 7 projects in 2015 alone - & I want to know what the highlights are.

I've seen the following:
Suicide Club
Noriko's Dinner Table
Love Exposure
Cold Fish
Himizu
Why Don't You Play in Hell?
and Tokyo Tribe.

What other projects would you say are "Essential"

[Mr. Tines]

I think you need to scour the archives for the heyday of the film-buffs -- Sion was one of the directors whose works they discussed.

[unz]

the beat that my heart skipped constantly reminded me of Shinji's arc without giant mecha mommies.

[Chuckman]

The Lego Movie is belatedly my top movie of 2014 and might be in my all time top ten.

[StarShaper7]

You obviously haven't seen Raid 2.

[robersora]

I've watched Still Alice. It's about a brilliant, happy, successful upper middle class American woman who gets Alzheimer's. It's pretty dramatic, especially since she has to stop the only thing that fulfilled her - work. There's the one problem kid, the doctor-husband and son and the judge daughter. All of them have a 50 percent chance to get the same form of early-access to brain-gooing. Kristen Steward does, what she does best - doing a botox-face impression pre botox; all the other characters do a pretty good job, though.

The movie has some nice shots and a nice red to green theme going on. It's a powerful drama movie.

[Ieyasu]

Escape From New York

Easy watchin' with some beers.

[robersora]

Today we've watched The Help, cute movie, maybe a little too Hollywood for this sensitive subject matter. Also we've watched We need to talk about Kevin. Such a powerful movie.

[Kazuki_Fuse]

After a weekend marathon of The Burning, all three Sleepaway Camps and the first two Friday the 13th's I'm completely burnt out on summer camp slashers.

[movieartman]

After a weekend marathon of The Burning, all three Sleepaway Camps and the first two Friday the 13th's I'm completely burnt out on summer camp slashers.

Heh, I just watched F13 P2 this past weekend also!

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 (1981)

PROS
- Entire cast, even the practical joker are likeable and fun. (I personally dislike when they make the majority of these films characters assholes like part 7 did)
- The build up on the relationship with Mark (crippled and in a wheelchair) and Vicki is adorable.
- Ginny is a fantastic final girl, not my favorite female of the series, but probably the series best in terms of depth, strength and realism. She is studying child psychology in school and effectively puts it to use against Jason in the finale, her chase scenes are very well done, she never as far as I noticed did anything dumb or illogical at all, she goes and checks every car left around the camp while evading Jason, she retraces her steps.
- Also she doesn't fall into the generic prude no sex puritan girl many final girls do, as its implied strongly she had sex with Holtz her first night.
- Bag over head is effective altho not as much as it was in The Town that dreaded Sundown.

CONS & NITPICKS
- A few Occasions especially the 2 times when he is fighting Holtz, Jason seems kinda short and so it Briefly takes some of his menace away.
- Altho it did make for a very good suspenseful opening, I personally don't particularly like

SPOILER: Show

that they killed off Alice, plus it brings up the question of how the hell did Jason track her down? I seriously doubt she was staying in the town right off the way from Crystal le altho that might go along with her telling her mother that this is the only way she can move on with her life.

- This is more just a general problem with the franchise but its never explained how/why Jason is alive if his Mother thought him dead because I seriously doubt we are suppose to think Jason rapidly aged after he jumped out of the water at the end of 1. My theory is Pamela did know and mabye she is the one that built that makeshift cabin for him, but when she found out the camp was going into operation her traumatic shock and madness left over from the drowning event itself took over canceling out the fact that he was alive.
- Mark should have

SPOILER: Show

been allowed to get laid before getting his.

- Sandra should have gotten naked on screen, by god!, Just her in her Bikini was better than some of the series other nude scenes.