Movie opinions thread (what have you seen, what did you think?)

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
10 Year Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2014
Posts
3,579
Particularly weird since a lot of streaming movies are getting limited theatrical releases these days.

I also watched Prey. Not sure if it's just because people have such low standards in regards to Predator movies (tough not to after Teh Predator and the AvP movies) but the outsized praise it's getting is kinda silly. It's competent but it's easily as milquetoast and forgettable as Predators and it's not even in the same zip code as the original. I guess what I'm saying is "it's almost as good as Predator 2!" shouldn't be something to get excited about but here we are. Setting it in a historical period and pitting the Predator against Native Americans accustomed to hunting (and actually casting Native Americans is a nice touch) at least makes it unique but it's tough to imagine that beings capable of faster than light travel and stealth cloaking haven't come up with the weapons the Predator had 300 years later. Plus the bog standard "you can't do it because you're a GIRL" shit is so fucking tired and insulting at this point to anyone with an above room temperature IQ. This is the Predator, not a Disney princess movie.

So yeah, it's cool that it doesn't actively insult your intelligence like "The Predator" (seriously, what the fuck Shane Black!?) or the garbage AvP movies but it's still chockful of unforced error plot holes, it ends with a 100 lb. woman taking on a Predator and winning (though at least she does it largely by being a clever hunter and not anything physical) and adds nothing meaningful beyond further making the Predator look like a race of incompetent morons (more like the rich big game hunter chodes that travel to Africa than actual hunters like... native Americans).

That might seem overly negative cuz there are things I liked about Prey (the setting, the casting, making the movie more about hunting). It just seems like so often, we just accept mediocrity as the best we can hope for.


Especially if they wanted to promote any girl power stuff.

When is the last time we saw a serious action movie led by a woman? (Have we ever?) They're usually action-comedy or there is some stupid plot device for why it's an all-women cast, rather than an exceptionally tough woman just happened to get in a crazy situation.

Atomic Blonde?
 

Lagduf

2>X
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 25, 2002
Posts
46,682
Mad Max: Fury Road...sort of?

Honestly the idea that the Predators are akin to big game African hunters make sense. Why does a species with faster than light travel, cloaking technology, and energy weapons travel to passant worlds and hunt their sentient beings? I don't want to think too hard about it because everything probably breaks down if you do lol.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
The Fog - only the second time I've watched it I think, and it holds up pretty well as usual for Carpenter stuff. Again, much appreciated restraint shown throughout, ending is a bit silly but works okay I guess. Odd note, but Jamie Lee Curtis had to be 30 years younger than the guy that played her boyfriend.

Assault On Precinct 13 - still awesome to this day, as has been noted recently in this thread. I had forgotten the ice cream truck scene. I've seen articles that point out just how similar AOP13 is to a zombie movie, and it really is uncanny in a lot of ways.

Probably going to go through Ghosts of Mars, They Live, and the Halloween series next, re-watching his stuff is making me realize just how amazing Carpenter's career and body of work really are. I also love how he made so much of the music for his movies himself, with the Halloween theme obviously being the standout, but even in Assault, for instance, that little percussion line is just perfect at adding to the atmosphere and tying the scenes together.
 

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
10 Year Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2014
Posts
3,579
If you want to keep your positive opinion of Carpenter, maybe skip Ghosts of Mars... ;)

Alamo's doing a career retrospective all summer for him and I've already got my tix for They Live. Never seen it on the big screen and can't wait to see Roddy Piper and Keith David throw down in 25 ft. high projected glory.

It's pretty obvious the Predators are supposed to just be big game hunters that do it for sport and glory but the original movie at least made them seem like competent fighters and hunters once they lost their competitive advantage. Now it just seems like a slasher villain that falls for every stupid trick and couldn't tie its own shoelaces without all of its high-tech toys.
 

fake

King of Spammers
15 Year Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Posts
10,976
Especially if they wanted to promote any girl power stuff.

When is the last time we saw a serious action movie led by a woman? (Have we ever?) They're usually action-comedy or there is some stupid plot device for why it's an all-women cast, rather than an exceptionally tough woman just happened to get in a crazy situation.
I wish Atomic Blonde was better than it was :(
 

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
10 Year Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2014
Posts
3,579
Ghosts of Mars is awful.

Even the soundtrack to that movie sucks. A John Carpenter movie with a crap soundtrack is like third sign of the apocalypse shit. And that's before you get to the nested flashbacks, the laughably bad CG and weirdly piss poor action directing. If someone told me John Carpenter just took the money and let someone else ghost-direct that movie, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. It's just so not like any of his other movies. Even Vampires, while a crap movie, still looked and sounded like a Carpenter film.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jro

@M

Vanessa's Drinking Buddy,
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 10, 2003
Posts
7,174
Why does a species with faster than light travel, cloaking technology, and energy weapons travel to passant worlds and hunt their sentient beings?
So they can make threads and post photos of their kills on Yautja-Geotja.com and troll each other.
 

terry.330

Time? Astonishing!
20 Year Member
Joined
May 4, 2004
Posts
11,792
Even the soundtrack to that movie sucks. A John Carpenter movie with a crap soundtrack is like third sign of the apocalypse shit. And that's before you get to the nested flashbacks, the laughably bad CG and weirdly piss poor action directing. If someone told me John Carpenter just took the money and let someone else ghost-direct that movie, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. It's just so not like any of his other movies. Even Vampires, while a crap movie, still looked and sounded like a Carpenter film.
The crazy thing is I always assumed the soundtrack was mandated by the studio but Carpenter picked all those guys himself and co-wrote with them. A real head scratcher.

The action in GOM makes even the laziest of the Resident Evil action scenes look like Hard Boiled.
 

Ralfakick

J. Max's Chauffeur,
20 Year Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2001
Posts
3,733
Particularly weird since a lot of streaming movies are getting limited theatrical releases these days.

I also watched Prey. Not sure if it's just because people have such low standards in regards to Predator movies (tough not to after Teh Predator and the AvP movies) but the outsized praise it's getting is kinda silly. It's competent but it's easily as milquetoast and forgettable as Predators and it's not even in the same zip code as the original. I guess what I'm saying is "it's almost as good as Predator 2!" shouldn't be something to get excited about but here we are. Setting it in a historical period and pitting the Predator against Native Americans accustomed to hunting (and actually casting Native Americans is a nice touch) at least makes it unique but it's tough to imagine that beings capable of faster than light travel and stealth cloaking haven't come up with the weapons the Predator had 300 years later. Plus the bog standard "you can't do it because you're a GIRL" shit is so fucking tired and insulting at this point to anyone with an above room temperature IQ. This is the Predator, not a Disney princess movie.

So yeah, it's cool that it doesn't actively insult your intelligence like "The Predator" (seriously, what the fuck Shane Black!?) or the garbage AvP movies but it's still chockful of unforced error plot holes, it ends with a 100 lb. woman taking on a Predator and winning (though at least she does it largely by being a clever hunter and not anything physical) and adds nothing meaningful beyond further making the Predator look like a race of incompetent morons (more like the rich big game hunter chodes that travel to Africa than actual hunters like... native Americans).

That might seem overly negative cuz there are things I liked about Prey (the setting, the casting, making the movie more about hunting). It just seems like so often, we just accept mediocrity as the best we can hope for.




Atomic Blonde?
I dunno I just watched Prey and really liked it. The last movie was super hokey and I had low expectations for this one , since I believe this one was straight to Hulu. I thought it was the closest to the original movie than all of the other ones, almost the same setting but a different time period. This new Predator reminded me of a horror movie slasher (with the whole hunting as you say) in the beginning and it kind of built it (him) up. The main character and the other characters were positioned as helpless of course, I didn’t really feel the whole “wahmen” vibe she was just smarter in the end, and her brother was there with her, and honestly that “super female” stuff does get old to me too, and I see right through the it. There really wasn’t anything feminine about the character, she could have just as well been a male character. I thought the French Canadian trappers were a good addition as well. They were bad characters, but human, in their actions.

I kinda felt it was Revenant meets Predator. Not the best comparison, but I didn’t feel it was any less silly than the new Top Gun for one, and people certainly have heaped a lot of praise on that one, which I did enjoy, so maybe my expectations are indeed low, but definitely the second best in the series to me. I think again since the last one was so lame (really the Batman and Robin of the series) it needed to go back to basics, and the original concept of outmatched humans being hunted.

I expected it to be super low budget, which it may have well been, but I believe it was handled well.
 
Last edited:

SouthtownKid

There are four lights
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Posts
26,896
When is the last time we saw a serious action movie led by a woman? (Have we ever?)
We've had them, but the fact you don't remember any says a lot about how these movies are perceived. Hanna, Nikita, Kill Bill, Atomic Blonde, the Tomb Raider reboot.
 

Lagduf

2>X
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 25, 2002
Posts
46,682
We've had them, but the fact you don't remember any says a lot about how these movies are perceived. Hanna, Nikita, Kill Bill, Atomic Blonde, the Tomb Raider reboot.
Of those, I've only seen Kill Bill :emb:

Nothing Tarantino comes to my mind when I think "action" - instead it's...a Tarantino film.

I'm not sure why they keep trying to make Tomb Raider a film franchise.
 

SouthtownKid

There are four lights
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Posts
26,896
If you want to keep your positive opinion of Carpenter, maybe skip Ghosts of Mars... ;)
You're wrong and looking at Ghosts of Mars in the wrong way. It's a fantastic pulp story in the style of something you'd haveread in All-Story or Weird Tales in the 1920s. It's drastically underrated.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jro

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
10 Year Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2014
Posts
3,579
You're wrong and looking at Ghosts of Mars in the wrong way. It's a fantastic pulp story in the style of something you'd haveread in All-Story or Weird Tales in the 1920s. It's drastically underrated.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one, Kid. Even if I granted you that it's a great pulp story, the technical execution of that movie is so piss poor (not to mention the B-movie acting from such master thespians as Natasha Henstridge and Ice Cube), it almost doesn't matter how good the idea is.
 

famicommander

Tak enabled this rank change
15 Year Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2007
Posts
13,381
Especially if they wanted to promote any girl power stuff.

When is the last time we saw a serious action movie led by a woman? (Have we ever?) They're usually action-comedy or there is some stupid plot device for why it's an all-women cast, rather than an exceptionally tough woman just happened to get in a crazy situation.
sarahconnor.jpg

ripley1.jpg
 

Lagduf

2>X
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 25, 2002
Posts
46,682
So more than 30 years. Noted. Linda Hamilton was such a badass in that film.
 

famicommander

Tak enabled this rank change
15 Year Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2007
Posts
13,381
Atomic Blonde isn't that good but the fight scenes are, and it's a serious movie:

Theron is doing most of the stunt work herself.
 

lithy

Most Prominent Member of Chat
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2002
Posts
22,031
Lightyear

It was ok. Sox was the best part. The "twist" they put on Zurg was lame. Had some good callbacks to the Allen voiced lines and all but.. average.

I thought this one was well below average. The 'I can't do it alone' theme was hammered home with the biggest ham fist I think I've ever seen.

The entire setup itself is bizarre, I wasn't even aware at the beginning that the Turnip ship was literally loaded with a thousand people or more. Why is Buzz, a hotshot space ranger along for a ride on an exploratory colonization ship?

The test flights worked for him and fit the character and that montage worked fine I liked it, but the stuff on either end of that was out of character. And with the Zurg twist, they took the idea of Buzz as rash and full of bravado to mean that he was actively antagonistic to others. I couldn't buy it.

Plus now my kids are gay! Fuck this movie!
 

SouthtownKid

There are four lights
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Posts
26,896
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one, Kid. Even if I granted you that it's a great pulp story, the technical execution of that movie is so piss poor (not to mention the B-movie acting from such master thespians as Natasha Henstridge and Ice Cube), it almost doesn't matter how good the idea is.
The B movie acting is part of the charm. Better acting arguably wouldn't have fit the style of the story. It's weird how people were able to accept B movie acting from earlier Carpenter, like Assault on Precinct 13, Prince of Darkness or They Live, or purposely B movie dialogue delivered hammily like in Big Trouble, but after a certain point in Carpenter's career, suddenly the same level of acting is a problem. I mean, I'm not going to argue like this in defense of Vampires, But Ghosts of Mars is a schlocky fun movie that relies largely on practical effects from an earlier era (other than a little admittedly poor CG blood).
 

terry.330

Time? Astonishing!
20 Year Member
Joined
May 4, 2004
Posts
11,792
You're wrong and looking at Ghosts of Mars in the wrong way. It's a fantastic pulp story in the style of something you'd haveread in All-Story or Weird Tales in the 1920s. It's drastically underrated.
I get all that I just don't think it works.

Predator 2- I absolutely loved this one as a kid. I still enjoy it but it's a mess, a sweaty, sweaty mess. As a Predator sequel it's not great but as an over the top action movie that turns into a Predator sequel halfway through it kind of works. The opening shootout is amazing shlock in it's purest form. Everything in taken to the Nth degree. The bad guys, the cops, nobody is aiming at anything just unloading guns every which way, Danny Glover just coming in like a renegade psycho. A Jamaican voodoo drug gang all wearing horrible wigs and smoking splits. Everybody's gun has a scope or laser sight for absolutely no reason other than they thought it looked cool. Fantastic garbage worthy of a Cannon film.

The atmosphere of the city and heat, everybody just sweating through their clothes and totally pissed off. Then you've got Gary Busey's crazy ass and his team trying to catch the Predator and failing in spectacular fashion. A crazy (albeit clunky to say the least) chase and we get to see some cool Predator tech when he's giving himself first aid. The ending on the ship with the other Predators and DG getting the flintlock pistol.

There's a lot of cool shit in the movie and a great cast but suffers from the same problem as Robocop 2, there's just too much and everything is so incredibly over the top it crosses the line.
 

LoneSage

A Broken Man
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2004
Posts
44,743
I thought this one was well below average. The 'I can't do it alone' theme was hammered home with the biggest ham fist I think I've ever seen.

The entire setup itself is bizarre, I wasn't even aware at the beginning that the Turnip ship was literally loaded with a thousand people or more. Why is Buzz, a hotshot space ranger along for a ride on an exploratory colonization ship?

The test flights worked for him and fit the character and that montage worked fine I liked it, but the stuff on either end of that was out of character. And with the Zurg twist, they took the idea of Buzz as rash and full of bravado to mean that he was actively antagonistic to others. I couldn't buy it.

Plus now my kids are gay! Fuck this movie!
Yeah. I don't understand why they chose to tell that story for Lightyear.
 

HornheaDD

Viewpoint Vigilante
Fagit of the Year
Joined
Mar 22, 2016
Posts
4,272
Yeah. I don't understand why they chose to tell that story for Lightyear.
I mean, I get it - it was the movie Andy watched and they released the the toy "after" this movie premiered in his universe. The preview looked great and I was down to watch but it was definitely underwhelming.
 
Top