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

fake

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I understand the book is not anti-war.
Yeesh - I thought the citizenship / suffrage / physical punishment thing was supposed to reflect a dystopia. But I Googled and, nope, he was genuinely into it.
 

LoneSage

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Stahship Troopiz, kid. It ain't good.

Srsly, though. Wasn't the book a parody / scathing take on the military industrial complex? And the movie is just "Yeah boys, let's kill the bugs. Also a boob."
The movie is brilliant because you can take it at face value or you can wonder more about what kind of society this one government controlling Earth is like.

High school sports stars become military heroes. Bugs from far, far away somehow attack Earth. Buenos Aires is full of white people. Jake Busey playing a future fiddle thing. Would you like to know more?
 
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terry.330

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It's a Verhoeven movie, it's a total piss take and it's awesome. I remember seeing a trailer for it and thinking "man this is so stupid, it's like 90210 meet the 3rd reich in space. Then I saw who the director was and was like "oh I get it", saw it in the theater and I was the only one laughing.

Doogie Howser dressed as a nazi, sticking a totrture machine in a giant space bugs face/anus should be a pretty big clue that it's a comedy. So should Denise Richards being an elite space Navy pilot. I don't give a shit about the source material.
 

SouthtownKid

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Watched Starship Troopers again last night (rifftrax version). God that movie is shit.

Still better than the book tho.
This is the worst opinion you've ever posted here. That movie is fantastic.

And the movie is just "Yeah boys, let's kill the bugs. Also a boob."
You should try watching it again, but this time with your eyes open. It went completely over your head. Directed by a guy who experienced fascism firsthand as a child and saw how seductive and how easily an entire people could be caught up in it.

"Let's kill the bugs"? The bugs are the good guys fighting (and losing) a defensive war against the invading fascist human state. That's plainly (though unintentionally, in-story) presented in one of the news reports in the middle of the movie. The story follows Rico, who starts as dumb but somewhat innocent and ends still just as dumb, but now an active participant in evil. The 90201 teen bubblegum shit was intentional camouflage to hide the swerve of what the movie's about.

You missed the point as much as the people who watched All in the Family and thought it was a show about Archie Bunker being the lone voice of reason in a sea of insanity. But you're far from alone. A lot of people never looked past the CG spectacle surface and rousing score, cheering when the characters get their tattoos, or when the brain bug is scared and whatnot, taking everything at face value. Verhoven drastically overestimated the intelligence of his audience.
 

LoneSage

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News: A murderer was captured this morning and tried today.

Judge: "Guilty."

News: Sentence: death. Execution tonight at 6, all net, all channels.

edit: wait wtf is The Kid doing up at 4AM.
 

fake

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This is the worst opinion you've ever posted here. That movie is fantastic.


You should try watching it again, but this time with your eyes open. It went completely over your head. Directed by a guy who experienced fascism firsthand as a child and saw how seductive and how easily an entire people could be caught up in it.

"Let's kill the bugs"? The bugs are the good guys fighting (and losing) a defensive war against the invading fascist human state. That's plainly (though unintentionally, in-story) presented in one of the news reports in the middle of the movie. The story follows Rico, who starts as dumb but somewhat innocent and ends still just as dumb, but now an active participant in evil. The 90201 teen bubblegum shit was intentional camouflage to hide the swerve of what the movie's about.

You missed the point as much as the people who watched All in the Family and thought it was a show about Archie Bunker being the lone voice of reason in a sea of insanity. But you're far from alone. A lot of people never looked past the CG spectacle surface and rousing score, cheering when the characters get their tattoos, or when the brain bug is scared and whatnot, taking everything at face value. Verhoven drastically overestimated the intelligence of his audience.

Relax, dude. I was like 15 when I saw it. Sorry I didn't like your movie.
 

SouthtownKid

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News: A murderer was captured this morning and tried today.

Judge: "Guilty."

News: Sentence: death. Execution tonight at 6, all net, all channels.

edit: wait wtf is The Kid doing up at 4AM.
Working.

Relax, dude. I was like 15 when I saw it. Sorry I didn't like your movie.
Who cares if you like it? It's just disheartening that you couldn't understand what you were watching, even at 15. But again, that wasn't just you. The majority of at least the American audience blanked out through it as well. Even some of the reviewers of the time missed it.
 

100proof

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I "get" Starship Troopers and still think it sucks. I totally get the joke/meta nature of the movie (mocking nationalism/propaganda/American exceptionalism/military industrial complex and even mocking the structure and vapid nature of action movies). It's not particularly subtle.

However, at some point, you still have to make a good movie and Starship Troopers is full of bad actors giving bad performances in front of boring CGI bugs in the middle of the desert. If you're going to tell me that all of that was intentional (Verhoeven was trying to make an intentionally bad movie to mock Americans and piss on Heinlein's face) then good for him for wasting the studio's money but I don't enjoy bad movies even if it's intentional.
 

terry.330

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If you're going to tell me that all of that was intentional (Verhoeven was trying to make an intentionally bad movie to mock Americans and piss on Heinlein's face) then good for him for wasting the studio's money

That's exactly what he did.

Chopping Mall- Love it, Just top shelf garbage.
 

jro

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Spiral: From the Book of Saw - inoffensive, fine-ish. Didn't feel like a Saw movie, which is intentional I suppose given the title. Rock and Jackson didn't really add much if anything, felt like stunt casting that didn't amount to much, though I doubt the movie would have been made without Rock pushing for it.
 

jro

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'Kay I'm like 25 minutes into Fear Street 1994 and I'm pretty sure the music licensing budget is comparable to at least the entire filming budget for Primer or Murder Party.
 
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terry.330

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Yeah, it's pretty obnoxious, been brought up in this thread a couple times.
 

LoneSage

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I'm the site autistic. A stenographer? That's a big word.

But HornheadD saying Starship Troopers is bad, that'll go down in the memory banks.
 

Syn

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Troopers is brain candy. I first watched it at a friend's house and enjoyed it for what it was. Over the top action and comedy.

I what horny thought of Robocop?
 

pixeljunkie

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I "get" Starship Troopers and still think it sucks. I totally get the joke/meta nature of the movie (mocking nationalism/propaganda/American exceptionalism/military industrial complex and even mocking the structure and vapid nature of action movies). It's not particularly subtle.

However, at some point, you still have to make a good movie and Starship Troopers is full of bad actors giving bad performances in front of boring CGI bugs in the middle of the desert. If you're going to tell me that all of that was intentional (Verhoeven was trying to make an intentionally bad movie to mock Americans and piss on Heinlein's face) then good for him for wasting the studio's money but I don't enjoy bad movies even if it's intentional.
So, you are judging it as an adaptation of the book? I've admittedly never read the novel - but as a film, it's definitely in my "Top 20" alongside films like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Holy Mountain, Eraserhead, etc. (to give context) - the "bad acting" (which is really similar to something like Lynch, in terms of controlling the dimensions/depth of a character) is intentional in my opinion, much in the same vein of Showgirls. The CGI is limited, as Phil Tippet did an amazing job of working in tons of practical...which I think has aged incredibly well. It's honestly an almost flawless film.
 

Syn

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Freaky

Vince Vaughn plays a killer who whose soul gets swapped with a teenage girl. Her friends help her change them back but not before more deaths occur. A funny update to Freaky Friday.
 

Taiso

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I "get" Starship Troopers and still think it sucks. I totally get the joke/meta nature of the movie (mocking nationalism/propaganda/American exceptionalism/military industrial complex and even mocking the structure and vapid nature of action movies). It's not particularly subtle.

However, at some point, you still have to make a good movie and Starship Troopers is full of bad actors giving bad performances in front of boring CGI bugs in the middle of the desert. If you're going to tell me that all of that was intentional (Verhoeven was trying to make an intentionally bad movie to mock Americans and piss on Heinlein's face) then good for him for wasting the studio's money but I don't enjoy bad movies even if it's intentional.

This is how I feel about this movie.

I might sacrifice a person to Heinlein's spirit if it meant Alfonso Cuaron directed a more faithful adaptation of the book.

In other news, I am gearing up for The Green Knight this Saturday. If it merits it, I might write a review.
 

SouthtownKid

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alongside films like Picnic at Hanging Rock,
Love that movie. I wish I'd brought the dvd with me.
In other news, I am gearing up for The Green Knight this Saturday.
That does look promising. But the only other movie of his I've seen, A Ghost Story, had a great central concept but was just okay.
 
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