Your unorthodox views.

TERMINATOR 3 almost redeems itself with its excellent ending.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

TERMINATOR 3 almost redeems itself with its excellent ending.

I found it to be an almost servicable action flick in the vein of the first movie. It just needed some script tweaks, but my memory is fuzzy on exactly what. I do recall the main heroes just waltzing into SKYNET HQ as if there was no security to be a WTF? moment.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Loomis wrote:

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN is vastly better than its reputation and indeed may be the last of the good old-fashioned James Bond films that attempted to be nothing more than terrific entertainments - and succeeded superbly in that aim.

The story of its production in The Battle for Bond is fascinating.

Yep. A good book, that one.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

Quite enjoyed The Star Trek reboot and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

That ain't out of the ordinary.

It is on this board Others don't seem to like it...

Python wrote:

Mission: Impossible II is better and more entertaining than Abrams' clusterfuck.

I'd add that the first Mission Impossible was a total bore and seems to only be remembered for the bit where a dangling Tom Cruise almost makes love to the floor.

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

The White Tuxedo wrote:

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

Quite enjoyed The Star Trek reboot and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

That ain't out of the ordinary.

It is on this board Others don't seem to like it...

Fae liked it. Not sure where she's buried.

Jack Wade wrote:

Batman Begins is the best of Nolan's Batman trilogy.

I think the problem with RISES in particular is that it was too concerned with ending everything, and so came down to a ticking time-bomb scenario. I get that Nolan wanted to protect his creation and prevent another Joel Schumacher from coming along and pissing all over his trilogy, but there was just too much going on in RISES, and it ultimately hurt THE DARK KNIGHT.

I think BEGINS worked because Nolan was smart enough to keep the big guns - like the Joker - out of it. That was the problem with the original Tim Burton film: it was an origin story, so it had to go through the motions of establishing who Bruce Wayne was and why he dressed up as a giant bat to fight crime. That took up half the film, and then the Joker was used as the primary villain, so Jack Nicholson only got the other half of the film to work with. I know this was done deliberately, because comic book films were new at the time, but the problem was fully realised when it came time to make RETURNS: having used and killed the Joker, Burton had already played his best hand. Nolan was smart enough to know that the Joker was such an iconic and interesting character that the best way to handle him was to keep him out of things until the character of Batman was already established, and he could put his full attention on the Joker.

Personally, I love THE DARK KNIGHT, even if does feel like Batman and the Joker are able to not only anticipate the other having a convoluted plan, but working that plan into their own scheme (that said, I also got the feeling that the Joker had a lot of half-realised plans that he simply followed through on when the opportunity arose). I think the film explores some interesting and very scary territory, and found the Joker utterly engrossing. I remember seeing it for the first time and hating it because I knew that when he stopped talking, something horrible was going to happen; on subsequent views, I was less anxious about what was about to come, and came away loving the way the film had managed to pull me in each of those directions. But then we got to RISES, and the problem presented itself: RISES backed down from something that it should have done. The Joker claimed to be the first of many crazy villains, but Bane didn't live up to this, and instead simply did a retread of BEGINS with the League of Shadows wanting to destroy Gotham. All of that, I think, came about because Nolan wanted a definitive end to his trilogy.

Nevertheless, I think there are a few things that could have been done in RISES that would have made both it and the trilogy better for it:
- Bruce Wayne should have maintained the lie that Harvey Dent died honourably, at least to begin with. The conspiracy of silence should have fallen apart on its own, and that would have been the catalyst for his retirement.
- Talia al Ghul should have been a secondary villain, planning to ruin and humiliate Bruce Wayne entirely. This is something that I think SKYFALL actually did perfectly: instead of just killing M, Silva wanted to discredit and humiliate her first so that her memory would always be tarnished; I think Talia would have worked better if she did this instead.
- Bane should have been an extremist that Bruce inadvertently created: a prisoner locked up under the Dent Act, who fought back when the conspiracy surrounding Dent was revealed. He would have wanted to kill Batman to prove himself the stronger of the two, the ultimate triumph over his wwrongful imprisonment.
- I think the idea of a violent uprising by the oppressed and downtrodden worked quite well, but wasn't fully explored.
- Selina Kyle and John Blake weren't necessary.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Oh, and The Experience of Love is one of the finest Bond songs ever written.

:)

It's so beautifully 90s that I look forward to it every time GE finishes.

EDIT: Am getting goosebumps just listening to it again...

South Park is, more often than not, neither funny nor clever.

Keanu Reeves actually can act.

Josh Wheedon and J J Abrahams can deliver decent scripts but their direction is lifeless and uninvolved.

Samuel L Jackson is not the highlight of everything he appears in.

Largo's Shark wrote:

I despise CARLITO'S WAY. An example of purely commercial De Palma if there ever was one.

CARLITO'S WAY is one of De Palma's masterpieces. Cahiers du Cinema made a smart decision in naming it the best film of the '90s.

Harmsway wrote:

CARLITO'S WAY is one of De Palma's masterpieces.

Didn't you describe De Palma as mediocre not so long ago? I continue to find your about-turn mildly Orwellian.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

CARLITO'S WAY is one of De Palma's masterpieces.

Didn't you describe De Palma as mediocre not so long ago? I continue to find your about-turn mildly Orwellian.

I called De Palma worse things than that.

So what has caused this road to Florence conversion? Blu-ray? ;)

Erica Ambler wrote:

So what has caused this road to Florence conversion? Blu-ray? ;)

With OBSESSION, that's actually the case.

But it's really a two-year journey that began with a viewing of FEMME FATALE. Chris Dumas' UN-AMERICAN PSYCHO cemented my conversion.

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

Quite enjoyed The Star Trek reboot and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

They understood that they needed to go for a campy, tongue in cheek tone with that one.
It's also why the ultra-serious Christian Bale sequel is so terrible.

Harmsway wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

So what has caused this road to Florence conversion? Blu-ray? ;)

With OBSESSION, that's actually the case.

But it's really a two-year journey that began with a viewing of FEMME FATALE. Chris Dumas' UN-AMERICAN PSYCHO cemented my conversion.

With me it was randomly watching CARLITO'S WAY on Netflix Instant back in 2011. I had only seen that film (ten years before), plus SCARFACE, THE UNTOUCHABLES, and his two mission movies. So I wasn't exposed to the other side of De Palma. But I watched CARLITO'S WAY and was completely blown away by it. So much so that I went out and bought the Blu-ray and watched it again.

As I've said, though... OBSESSION strangely doesn't engage me. I have a lot of admiration for it, but it just doesn't click with me. I've long felt the way about VERTIGO as well.

Okay, on De Palma... I like SNAKE EYES. Not a masterpiece, but I enjoy it. I don't admire it like OBSESSION, but I enjoy it. For some reason it makes me think of Billy Wilder's KISS ME STUPID, another maligned movie by a filmmaker I greatly admire that I simply like despite it not being top level in their list of films.

FieldsMan wrote:

Largo's Shark wrote:

Oh, and The Experience of Love is one of the finest Bond songs ever written.

:)

It's so beautifully 90s that I look forward to it every time GE finishes.

I'm being pedantic, but isn't "The Experience of Love" much more eighties in flavour? I think it would have slotted into the NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN soundtrack very nicely.

Harmsway wrote:

Largo's Shark wrote:

I despise CARLITO'S WAY. An example of purely commercial De Palma if there ever was one.

CARLITO'S WAY is one of De Palma's masterpieces. Cahiers du Cinema made a smart decision in naming it the best film of the '90s.

The best? :shock:

One of my favourite scenes where the chick gets the upper cock hand. Almost all her dialog is repeating what was said to her before she was raped.

Payback is a bitch...

And...I have a fetish for straight-to-DVD Steven Seagal and own all his films. Some of the hand-to-hand combat in these type of films are better than the shit seen on the big screen. This scene with the hammer is awesome.

I have not seen the "I spit..." remake. I was actually surprised it was remade at all.

The following all have an annoying on-screen manner and it's miraculous how they have managed to reachthe status of acting icons in the wider world (which is clearly populated by idiots :)
Clint Eastwood
Audrey Hepburn
Kirk Douglas
Cary Grant

Granted, I'm not Hepburn's biggest fan.... but how can you not like Cary Grant? Unless you're a communist.

Santa should be stripped naked and paraded in front of the forum for that thought crime.

Problem is she might enjoy it.

Cary Grant is probably the best of a very bad bunch. I'll admit he's less annoying than the others, I simply don't get him as a leading man. At all. He's like a creepy uncle.