Movie Review Thread

[naut]

Iron Man, another fun Marvel adoptation, what you would and should expect, lots of humour, fun characters, great over the top action. It might be by the numbers but by the numbers is a great formula.

It's decent. Very lame in parts. Paltrow is a classy lady.

[Hooahguy]

i saw Red Cliff last night.
one word:
epic.

[naut]

The Darwin Awards. Quirky. Pretty funny.

[Scienter]

A Serious Man was very funny at parts. It may be confusing to people unfamiliar with Jewish culture/religion. Ending was meh and made me feel like the writers were super lazy. I would have liked it more if it weren't for the ending, though.

[naut]

Taken. Okay. Seemed like a lesser version of Man on Fire.

[Strike For The South]

Taken. Okay. Seemed like a lesser version of Man on Fire.

A lesser version?

[Hooahguy]

This is Spinal Tap
it goes to 11.

[naut]

A lesser version?

Yes. Same sort of plot as Man on Fire, but nowhere near as good.

[Jolt]

A lesser version?

Its one of those movies where you already know everything its going to happen from its 1 minute trailer.

I got a friend who said "OMG OMG OMG, Taken is like teh best movie ever, none other can compare to it, you must see it! You'll love it, CMON DO IT!"

So I went and saw the one minute trailer. That's a trailer basically like to any average suspense movie trailer I ever saw. And so I proceeded to tell (more or less) the entire story based on the trailer, which went something like this: "There's this daughter who happens to be the daughter of a ninja, and while travelling in Paris, his daughter is kidnapped by some stupid Russian or Ukrainian East European gang for women's trafficking, and when that happens, the ninja snaps out goes to Paris and basically kills everyone in his way, rescuing his daughter in the end."

The only thing he said in the end: "...Ninja?"

Me: "Isn't he some American agent?"

Friend: "Yeah, ex-CIA."

Me: "See? Predictable."

Then he went on to rant at me as I didn't like movies. Eventually I went to see it and I smirked as 98% what I predicted was correct, minus the Eastern European group, which was Albanian. Other than the fight scenes, the plot has holes the size of the ozone and is significantly rushed and curiously everything happens in the right time to fit the purpose of the desperate father. Just another average suspense movie with good fight scenes.

i saw Red Cliff last night.
one word:
epic.

I saw the Asian version (Both movies totalling 4 hours or so)

And as a RTK fan, I was overwhelmingly disapointed. While the plot build was pretty good (The part in the second movie where Zhuge Liang steals the arrows and Cao Cao kills Cai Mao and Zhang Yun was indeed epic), the fighting was SO ridiculous I was switching between laughing out loud and opening my mouth in bewilderment. In the first movie the whole formation was ridiculous beyond measure. What the hell is wrong with those horses? If they went against the shields, it'd be a rout. Instead their just running in circles like they are in some track. (:O) And then the shield ranks mysteriously reform to have some ad-hoc duels between Shu Generals and random Cao Cao's soldiers. I was facepalming so heavily.
Then battlescenes in the second movie like the disembark in the attack against Cao Cao. I was with my mouth opened in amazement on how the film basically ripped off "Saving Private Ryan's" Omaha Beach scene and pasted it in Ancient Chinese settings with flaming catapults (OMG ROFL) to do the work of artillery.

Then things like Xiao Qiao doing something to Cao Cao which nobody could very well figure out what it was, but which made Cao Cao unable to simply tell his Generals to sally out and attack without him (Quite honestly I'm still trying to figure how what happened to Cao Cao there).

Things like Sun Quan and Zhou Yu being in the middle of the battle (And actually killing dozens of soldiers!). That's like seeing Roosevelt and Patton grabbing a Thompson SMG and disembarking with the troops in Omaha Beach and single-handedly wiping out half a platoon of Germans.

Things like Wu troops doing Roman formations (Omg...)

Things like Zhao Yun being the all-time world champion of pole vault. Using a spear to go over the large wall of the fort.

Worst of all is the fate they give to Cao Cao in the end. That is SO UNREALISTIC I wanted to roundhouse kick John Wu and toss him into a pool of acid and lava. NEVER in any alternate dimension would Cao Cao be captured by Sun Quan, Zhou Yu and Liu Bei and happen what it did. I would have broken the DVD to a thousand pieces if I had just a DVD.


Though, to be fair, I do understand that people who are not familliar with the time period like it. They are pretty epic battle scenes. They are just so unrealistic and over the top for a person that takes interest in the time period and was expecting to see a realistic portrayal of the battles that, it ruined the entire movie.