[Movies] Talk about the last movie you saw 2: Electric Threadaloo

[Hailey Knight]

Yeah it was pretty fun, I mean when he fought the Big One-MARVELOUS!

That moment when

Spoiler

He finally untangles himself from the anchor chains, yanks at what he's stuck on, turns away from the submarine propeller, then does a double-take like "Saaaayyyy" . I hope he uses weapons in the future movies too.

I would've liked to see more of what went on with Ramarak (the big one) in the past, if the Kongs just managed to keep killing the other skullcrawlers, but this one asshole got away and kept growing, or if Ramarak was like the queen skullcrawler that spawns the rest.

 

[Yoshimickster]

That moment when

Spoiler

He finally untangles himself from the anchor chains, yanks at what he's stuck on, turns away from the submarine propeller, then does a double-take like "Saaaayyyy" . I hope he uses weapons in the future movies too.

GRAH-I know, that was like straight outta God of War I LOVED it!

 

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Archer Lite

I mean Lego Batman

Eh it was okay, but not as good as the Lego Movie. There was kind of a boring stretch in middle, and it was pretty much played by the numbers.

 

[Yoshimickster]

How to Train Your Dragon

...I know most people want a Night Fury, but I want either a Nightmare or a Grunkle. The former is bad-ass and ferocious, the latter is basically the bulldog of dragons, all fat and cute I just LOVE THEM!

 

[Yoshimickster]

Adulthood is realizing the black characters in Dodgeball had PRETTY MUCH the worst lines.

 

[Ravenpoe]

Adulthood is realizing the black characters in Dodgeball had PRETTY MUCH the worst lines.

How much of your adulthood is spent analyzing Ben Stiller movies?

 

[Yoshimickster]

How much of your adulthood is spent analyzing Ben Stiller movies?

Quite a bit, quite a bit. I mean I still like the film, but *looks up on IMDB* Dwight, felt like he was there to just be there. Hell, even Me-Shell outside of acting imposing was kinda dull. Hell, pretty sure Dwight was the only one to not have his own personal arc.

 

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Look who's back

Borat style half scripted, half unscripted mockumentary of Hitler waking up in 2014. It's ostensibly a comedy, but also very scary. The actor portraying Hitler was very good at drawing out the inner Nazi in too many German citizens. He sounded a lot like someone else we all know. Good watch. It's in German if you dislike foreign language films or subtitles.

 

[Null]

The Town

It's like a blue collar, Boston version of Michael Mann's opus, HEAT. I mean, instead of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro it has to make due with Jon Hamm and Ben Affleck, but it's still an excellent movie. The masks the crooks use are also fucking creepy. Jeremy Renner is full tilt psycho in this one, a furious engine that Affleck has to constantly throttle back to avoid leaving a trail of bodies. Extremely bittersweet ending.

I can see why this movie basically resurrected Ben Affleck's career and earned him props as a director. It's a tight production.

 

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Doctor Strange

I felt like this was the weakest of the Marvel movies. I never read the comic, so I don't have anything to say on authenticity. It was far more comedic than I expected, and Bendywood Cumbersnatch did a pretty bad American accent. It was okay, though, and worth a watch. I do want those doors in the NY Sanctum. And the beer mug that refills.

 

[Hailey Knight]

I'm halfway through The Neon Demon, will have to watch the second half later tonight, but really hoping this evolves beyond "look how L.A. takes fame-hungry innocents and eats them alive" story.

 

[Hailey Knight]

That kinda sucked. Getting sick of these movies where nothing much happens throughout most of the running time until the "shocking" finale. It was surprising, but it felt like the movie took most of its time to get to the end of Act 1, and then suddenly it's the climax.

 

[fade]

Starship troopers

What the hell is this crap?! This has so little to do with the book. Who the hell. Are these characters? Where did all this high school stuff come from? Why'd they change Mr Dubois name to Racheck? So many questions...

 

[Yoshimickster]

Not to mention a distinct lack of power armor, due to budget restraints.

 

[Frank]

Starship troopers

What the hell is this crap?! This has so little to do with the book. Who the hell. Are these characters? Where did all this high school stuff come from? Why'd they change Mr Dubois name to Racheck? So many questions...

It's a mockery of the fascistic nonsense from the original book. The whole thing is Verhoeven mocking Heinlein.

AKA, it's such a rad movie.

I know a lot of folks don't like them, but the Red Letter Media ReView series goes into pretty good detail how and why.

 

[fade]

But...i always got the impression the book was inviting you to take all that with a grain of salt, and to decide for yourself. Especially given Heinlein's other works.

 

[Frank]

But...i always got the impression the book was inviting you to take all that with a grain of salt, and to decide for yourself. Especially given Heinlein's other works.

Yeah, it does forget a lot of the stuff from the book, like how the gubment discourages people from joining the army and such and how the bugs are little bit more space faring Zerg than in the movie. The movie just latches on to the more fascist element and mocks it.

They're two different animals. Verhoeven does satire like a God damn boss though and this is no different.

PS: Robocop is the greatest movie ever made.

"Rico....YOUKNOWWHATDADOOOO!" is a running gag that has existed amongst some friends and I for 20 years.

 

[PatrThom]

But...i always got the impression the book was inviting you to take all that with a grain of salt, and to decide for yourself. Especially given Heinlein's other works.

The movie ... is not the book.
And I believe that to be a deliberate choice.

--Patrick

 

[Gruebeard]

Starship troopers

What the hell is this crap?! This has so little to do with the book. Who the hell. Are these characters? Where did all this high school stuff come from? Why'd they change Mr Dubois name to Racheck? So many questions...

It's actually one of my favorite movies. Dizzy, Zim, all those extra characters are in the book, they just don't get much page time (and Dizzy was really just some random guy who buys it) The high school stuff was in the book, at least the fundamental Dubois bits and Dubois was simply combined with Rasczak (probably to reduce characters after focising on those others 9 and for the movie that works).


But of course the biggest difference between the book and the movie (ignoring the armor) is that instead of being Heinlein's fucked up fantasy of being a Man, the movie was made to be a satire of war movies.


I liked the book, I like Heinlein's early worrks, but after reading his later stuff even those early works are tainted by his ridiculous idiocy for me.[DOUBLEPOST=1490560294,1490560126][/DOUBLEPOST][

PS: Robocop is the greatest movie ever made.

Preach it, brother![DOUBLEPOST=1490560714][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, I think Starship Troopers requires at least a second viewing, because it is oddly subtle in its approach. It looks so much like a cheesy action movie that it just comes across as schlocky spectacle

 

[GasBandit]

Early Heinlein: libertarianism is pretty keen. And maybe military service should be mandatory for anyone who wants to wield political power.

Later Heinlein: literally everything that lives is for fucking, and even a few things that don't. Especially teenage gender-swapped clones of yourself. And you can't get raped if you change the rape into you raping your rapist!

 

[AshburnerX]

Early Heinlein: libertarianism is pretty keen. And maybe military service should be mandatory for anyone who wants to wield political power.

Later Heinlein: literally everything that lives is for fucking, and even a few things that don't. Especially teenage gender-swapped clones of yourself. And you can't get raped if you change the rape into you raping your rapist!

And let's not forget "All You Zombies", where-in the protagonist...

- goes back in time
- brings his past self further back in time
- in order to meet himself
- have sex with himself, in order to impregnate his twice time displaced self
- take his non-pregnate past self back to the future in order to start his career as a time cop (yes, he recruited himself)
- give birth to himself, then take his infant self back in time, leaving her at the foot of an orphanage
- goes back to his original time and gets fucking hammered

They made this into a pretty great Australian movie called Predestination. Totally worth checking out. And yes... this is where the whole "Fry is his own grandfather" thing came from in Futurama.

 

[Gruebeard]

So yeah, I prefer Asimov. If only Verhoeven had done I, Robot.

 

[Null]

So yeah, I prefer Asimov. If only Verhoeven had done I, Robot.

That would have been weird.

 

[Hailey Knight]

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: It was fine. Vampire in a slum, and all that entails. I think it was more interesting that it took place in Iran than anything other element of it, but the lead was effective in the few vampire bits, ethereal and eerie as needed. The movie knew how to best use sound or lack thereof in certain scenes. It didn't feel like there was much of a story, though, or that it's really even going anywhere until maybe the last 10 minutes.

 

[Dave]

These Final Hours: An apocalypse movie from Australia. A meteor has hit the Earth in the Atlantic and it's the end of the world. The people in Perth, Australia are some of the last to go and they have 12 hours of life left before everyone dies. The story is about a guy named James who is trying to make his way to "the party to end all parties". I know that sounds like a comedy but man is it not a comedy.

Great movie and it's available on Netflix right now.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Starship troopers

What the hell is this crap?! This has so little to do with the book. Who the hell. Are these characters? Where did all this high school stuff come from? Why'd they change Mr Dubois name to Racheck? So many questions...

The director was making a movie called Bug Hunt. Someone told him that it was a lot like Starship Troopers, so he bought the rights, and changed the name of the characters to fit.

 

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I think I saw a different movie than you guys. This thing was filled with terrible acting, bad FX, and a silly plot. Maybe it's because it's dated, I don't know. I re-read the book just before watching it, so maybe that taints my view, too. I mean, the HS stuff is in the book, but it's really brief, and nothing like the length it gets in the movie, and most of it focuses on the History and Moral Philosophy class. Carmen isn't even Rico's girlfriend. She's an interest he has occasionally dated (and so has Carl).

I'm having a hard time seeing the satire, to be honest. Robocop is clearly a satire. But if I wanted to satirize Heinlein, I would at least follow the basic structure of the book. I mean, the bugs aren't even sentient in the movie. They were hive-minded in the book, but they had starships, and the warrior caste fought with rifles, etc. Cutting that out cuts out Rico's self-examination, and his conclusion that the bugs actually have the same rights to these planets as they do. All of Rico's introspection is cut out. Satirize that if you want to call out Heinlein.

I don't know...I always read the book itself as a satire. The way it presents Rico as blindly playing a cog in a machine seems to call out the fascism, not support it. Rico accepts it in the end, but only after being hammered into it.

 

[Gruebeard]

Gas is wrong about it satirizing Heinlein. At least according to Verhoeven. The director has said it's a satire of war movies (I think especially the WW2 stuff).

And I would have called the book a satire, too, except that too much of what Rico thinks and feels - about what it means to be a man, and about society - that would be satire is also in his earlier books like Rocket Ship Galileo and Space Cadet (among others) with no appearance of satire.

And then his later works seem to show that he's just fucked up crazy, writing his own fantasies, and so I figure he really was doing it in Starship Troopers, too.

 

[GasBandit]

Gas is wrong about it satirizing Heinlein. At least according to Verhoeven. The director has said it's a satire of war movies (I think especially the WW2 stuff).

I haven't said anything about satire. That was other posters. Frankly I think the term is being thrown around too lightly. I wouldn't consider the book OR the movie satire. At least not compared to, say, Bill the Galactic Hero. Robocop has satirical elements, but it is not a satire. Life of Brian is satire. Airplane! is satire. Office Space is satire. Robocop is an action sci-fi cop movie played straight, beyond things like "I'D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR"

 

[ThatNickGuy]

This thing was filled with terrible acting, bad FX, and a silly plot.

I know, right!? That's what makes it so great!

 

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I haven't said anything about satire. That was other posters. Frankly I think the term is being thrown around too lightly. I wouldn't consider the book OR the movie satire. At least not compared to, say, Bill the Galactic Hero. Robocop has satirical elements, but it is not a satire. Life of Brian is satire. Airplane! is satire. Office Space is satire. Robocop is an action sci-fi cop movie played straight, beyond things like "I'D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR"

I disagree. The whole thing is satire about commercialization and oligarchy. The police have become a product. Literally with the introduction of Robocop. His humanity is completely wiped so that he becomes yet another OCP product.[DOUBLEPOST=1490635189,1490634925][/DOUBLEPOST]Conversely, I wouldn't call Airplane! a satire. The satirical parts it has are coincidental as it plays on those aspects purely for the humor. Life of Brian, yes.

 

[GasBandit]

I disagree. The whole thing is satire about commercialization and oligarchy. The police have become a product. Literally with the introduction of Robocop. His humanity is completely wiped so that he becomes yet another OCP product.[DOUBLEPOST=1490635189,1490634925][/DOUBLEPOST]Conversely, I wouldn't call Airplane! a satire. The satirical parts it has are coincidental as it plays on those aspects purely for the humor. Life of Brian, yes.

Airplane! is the purest form of satire: a Parody. It's a shot-for-shot parody remake of "Zero Hour!" specifically and all the other 60s/70s disaster movies in general.

Robocop is not satire because it displays the corporatization of the police force seriously and unironically. Satire requires the use of humor to ridicule.

I think you're saying "satire" when you mean "commentary." Satire is a form of commentary, but not all commentary is satire - just as not all satire is parody.

 

[Yoshimickster]

I honestly felt the satire of Starship Troopers was...confusing. See, they try to play up their military as this insane propagandizing organization that just shoves people through a meat grinder, but ultimately their military is so bat-shit insane because there are ACTUAL monsters that want to get them and can't be reasoned with. This isn't some "You're Russian neighbor may be a spy" thing, its ACTUALLY true that the enemy shows no mercy and will kill you easy. Maybe if they were to like, humanize the bugs a bit, showing propaganda from their side of the war it'd work better. There was one scene that always bothered me, when a newsman infers that maybe the war is what it is because Earth nuked part of the bugs planet, now THAT would be interesting-BUT NO-they skip that scene and they are just monsters who conquer things and that is that. There was that one scene with the vagina-face brain-bug being afraid, but that felt too late to me.It leaves me with a conflict, wanting to know more about what is ACTUALLY happening but doesn't deliver, as well mixing with what feels like a pretty regular sci-fi war plot.

Also that scene where the guy's helmet malfunctioned was the dumbest movie death of all TIME!

 

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Satire in not required to be comedy. It can simply be an exaggerated viewpoint. Which Robocop is, whether straightforward or not.[DOUBLEPOST=1490637091,1490637019][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, if we're being pedantic, Airplane is a combo of Zero Hour and Airport 75.

 

[sixpackshaker]

I don't think I'll ever be over Macho Grande.