He constantly yells that he shot Michael six times throughout the movie, even though he very clearly shot him seven times.

I went into X-Men: Apocalypse with low expectations. They were met. God damn another boring X-Men movie with huge chunks devoted to telepathy scenes of characters closing their eyes, sweating, saying things like "I can feel your pain" and "Such an incredible power" really seriously. Then most of the supporting cast is so wooden and one dimensional. It's hard for me to even remember why I liked the cartoon and Sega games in the early 90s. Whatever the fuck these movies are do not strike any emotional chord.

But that's my negative rant. I also watched Interstellar for the first time last week and it was one of the coolest films I've ever seen.

Interstellar is as bad as the new X-Men in my opinion.

I should add that I loved the space stuff. All the earth stuff was pretty bland and clearly an afterthought for the writers.

Interstellar is one of my favorite recent films. Absolutely stunning in every way to me.

The issues you (Rainbow) have with Apocalypse are why I fucking loathe First Class. I'll take the idiocy of Last Stand over it because that at least has Sir Ian McKellen and a decent Mystique.

The older X-men movies didn't do anything for me, but the two first ones in the reboot was decent action/sci-fi/superhero stuff. Way better than Marvel at least.

Interstellar looked great, but was so dumb I can't believe it. "Love can cross time and space so because I love my daughter I can write messages from the future in the dust in her room".

Been watching some of the Dollars Trilogy for the first time and I really liked For A Few Dollars More.

That's why I liked it so much. Epic father-daughter love story crossed with brilliant sci fi about a possible fate of the world in the future that doesn't come off as some kind of dystopian scare tactic or something. I loved it.

Different strokes

Honestly I absolutely LOVED Interstellar..............except for the shit about the time-traveling message-leaving through watch-hand Morse code. It was implied it was aliens helping them with the time travel part, rather than just LOVE making it possible, but they could've found a way cooler way to make that happen, like some sort of 2001 tripped-out symbolic situation.

However, I did think the overall message of Interstellar was good and presented well - namely, when a person's survival is directly threatened over a period of time (rather than a "jump on a grenade to save a baby" kind of instant decision), animal survival instincts kick in to the point where we're willing to do just about anything to ensure our own survival, even at the expense of others. In terms of individual survival, that can be good in the short run, but as communal organisms, survival of the individual at the expense of the group is usually disastrous in the long run (see: Matt Damon's betrayal of the group, despite the fact that he still probably wouldn't survive very long). Logic isn't enough, because once those deep instincts kick in, your objectivity is completely lost and your logic can be twisted to justify anything. The solution has to be another, more powerful emotion - namely love, which can lead to people sacrificing themselves for the good of the group, rather than vice versa (see: Matthew Macghaueahoahay's willingness to abandon Earth and probably die in exchange for saving Earth, which he probably wouldn't have done if his daughter wasn't there).

Amazing visuals, great tech, great acting, great soundtrack, good cast of characters, but whew, that silly climax - the movie does enough things right that I can like it overall, but its flaws keep it from being an all-time sci-fi classic, imo. It's "merely" excellent.

That contrast between the small and the large and how they're ultimately interconnected was my favorite part, but they pulled it off much better visually and musically than they did trying to explain it. Ann Hathaway's line about love was just really clunky.

Speaking visually and musically...holy hell, that soundtrack. I honestly thought Zimmer had become a used-up one-trick pony over the last decade but he fucking delivered with Interstellar.

I dunno, see, it WAS clunky, but it seemed like something a real person might actually say - when you strip everything away and get right down to people's genuine, deeply-held core beliefs, even those of an intelligent person, they're usually based on some pretty childish-seeming and even embarrassing stuff. Hathaway's performance made it clear that she was really embarrassed to be saying what she said, that as a scientist she knew it was ridiculous, but in that situation, with so much on the line, she couldn't remain silent.

Yeah:..I just liked the space stuff and time bending. All the interpersonal stuff was ok but I enjoyed the visuals and scientific logic behind the plot and climax more. Could take or leave the family drama.

The space stuff was great and the family stuff could fuck right off. There was a much bigger emotional impact when they get back from Planet Waterworld and that black astronaut had been in orbit alone for 20 years or whatever because of the gravitational time bendy stuff than when he saw Muuuuuurph again. Love is quantifiable was shit, as discussed above, floating in darkest space all alone after going through a black hole interdimensional gate and then conveniently getting picked up by fucking space rangers was shit, McConaughey seeing MUUURPH for all of 2 minutes after her being in goddamn hypersleep at age-totally-decrepit and then sending him away so he shouldn't see her die was shit. Basically everything that wasn't desperate space measures was shit. There was a lot of that. So it's a shit movie. To me.

Nah, with only the space stuff it would've been really hollow and not nearly as interesting. I didn't have a problem with those aspects of the story at all, made the movie that much of a richer and fuller experience to me. I tend to like stuff that combines regular human drama with other, more fantastical elements too though.

See...everything is concept to me. Caring about "characters" is basically writing and actor selection - then you paste that into any movie plot. The crux of any film then become whatever 'concept' that is attached to. It could be sci-fi thriller. It could be Batman. If you took Robo Cop for example and made it a Count of Monte Cristo 'thought he was dead, now he's back' story set in feudal Japan but had the same human story beats, I couldn't care about it. A cyborg in dystopian Detroit was the selling point for me.

I'm not saying there should only be space stuff, I'm saying that I dislike most of the non-space stuff they put in. I agree with you that if there is no human connection, if it's just soulless concept, in this case sci-fi concept, it might be a cool movie but rarely a great movie. But take a movie like Europa Report, also a deep space slash human drama movie, and though it is very different in tone and setting and scope, the human drama there was touching and non-ridiculous in a way that I think Interstellar really lacked.

It probably would've actually been better than I said with a sole focus on the space shit, just for how mind-bending and visually gorgeous it was. But yeah, human drama is always good to have. Haven't seen Europa Report. Maybe I'll look into it.

Europa Report was good, but not as good as Interstellar. ER is one of those movies in which extremely realistic scientists (i.e. intelligent, levelheaded people) do science things in a realistic science-y environment. So there isn't a ton of drama, things never get turned up to 11 or whatever, but it's a well put-together and clever movie. I'm sure actual space travel with actual astronauts is going to look way more like it's portrayed in Europa Report than it is in Interstellar...but it didn't move me nearly as much.

Insidious: Chapter 3 - Unlike The Conjuring movies, where I thought the sequel was a slight improvement, the Insidious follow-ups feel pointless. Part 3 is a prequel, so no Rose Byrne - Patrick Wilson family, but it's mostly more of the same. Recommended only if you're dying to learn how Magda from Something About Mary ended up in business with those two goofballs.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House - A young nurse moves into an elderly novelist's home to care for her in the final years of her life. Didn't know much about this going in, except that some people found it too slow. I was hoping for the good kind of slow, where everything builds to a memorable finale like in The Witch or Starry Eyes. This ended up being watchable but underwhelming the whole way through for me. People who like subtle arty horror will probably enjoy it more than I did.

So Doctor Strange was really fucking cool. Won't go into any details but if you like this type of movie you'll love it. Not too super hero-y either which personally I enjoyed. Very pretty to look at as well.

You joke...but the humor they bring is more in line with Ghostbusters than any single joke from the 2016 reboot. I use their comic relief, dead pan delivery against a serious horror backdrop in the Insidious movies as my argument against the GB reboot's flaws.

I actually preferred the second Insidious over the first. The first felt like too much of a Poltergeist summary, but the second elaborated a little further and included some effective moments in the old house. This one can be summed up by how loud the collective laughter of the theater where I saw it reached when the ghost closed the girl's laptop.

I need to go see it. I'm stoked. Huge comic book nerd here. Have tons of the older Doctor Strange comics that i've been going through lately to pump me up.

I can't think of anything less scary than the Insidious sequels.

Dr. Strange - Best Marvel movie in a few years now. This was really fun and interesting, and Benedict Cumberbatch knocked it out of the park. Really intriguing backstory and I liked the way it developed. The action was super cool and I dug the mysticism and pseudo-spiritualism of it. Maybe it lost a bit in its final act with some generic twists, but I liked the final battle scene a lot. Visually, this has to be the most intriguing and vibrant film of the year so far.

With Cumberbatch, I was worried they would make him a generic pretty boy character or something. But like their recent TV shows, he was a flawed, interesting character and really owned most of his scenes. One of the best parts to my friend and I was how the moral of the movie was less "you can overcome your problems with magic" and more "sometimes you have to give up the shit you love, but you can still be OK." That's a lot better of a message.

What are you talking about? Insidious has no sequels. You're just imagining things. There's no such thing.

I'm being driven absolutely insane by the fact that Shin Godzilla still hasn't appeared online. That a new Godzilla movie has existed since July and I don't have the means to see it is just more than I can bare. To add insult to injury, it was playing for one single showing at a theater in Vancouver the night after a Demilich/Hooded Menace concert I went to a few weeks ago, but my girlfriend and I would have had to get the 7AM ferry back to Victoria the following morning, since she had to work, and we were far too hungover and exhausted to put ourselves through that, even for Godzilla. Plus my die-hard Godzilla fan of a best friend would have murdered me if he knew I saw it without him.

Anyway, has anyone managed to see it? I was enraged when I learned that it wasn't coming to any theaters in my town, and now all the screenings are over and, god forbid, I might actually have to wait for the DVD release which doesn't even have a date yet. If anyone's found it somewhere online, please PM me. I'm dying.

Welcome to the bitter agony we anime fans must face when a non-Miyazaki director releases a film.

Anyone stoked on Trainspotting 2?

I liked the second one, as well, but the third one fell really flat.

Yes, but I'm even MORE excited for Requiem for a Dream 2 and SPUN 2: The Spunnining. Hoping Blow will get the sequel treatment too!

I don't get why everyone's so salty about Trainspotting 2, the book 1 was based off had a direct sequel and the director has been interested in following it as a sequel movie for some time...? Like he specifically said he was waiting for the actors to age a bit; it's not like this was some idea whipped up two days before the screenplay was greenlit.

DD hates everything. Feel free to ignore him.

So, I'm hearing good things on Dr. Strange. What's the consensus here?

I mean I know sequelitis is a big thing these days and I don't really expect everyone to go on the wikipedia binges that lead to finding out obscure info like that but meh, hope it doesn't make people preemptively skip out on it.

Emp's review a few posts up more or less summarizes my feelings on Doctor Strange. It was the first time in a while I've actively wanted to see a new Marvel movie rather than just tagged along when someone else suggested it, and it totally lived up to my expectations.

I saw Shin Godzilla in theaters here when it came out. It's what you'd expect; a glorious B-rate movie with atrocious special effects, bad acting, terrible plot and subtitles. So basically it was perfect and I loved it.

It didn't look all that great, to be honest. I figured it would be a kinda bland origin story with really neat visuals, but it was super well written and entertaining compared to basically everything they did after Guardians of the Galaxy until now. Really cool flick.

The only reason I wanted to see Doctor Strange was because Mads Mikkelsen plays the villain. Now I'm hearing he's not in the movie that much. It's a rough life.

Gyuaahhh so jealous. When you say the special effects were "atrocious" do you mean that in an endearing, campy way? From the clips/trailers I've seen I really love the design of Godzilla. Looks like a cool combination of practical effects and suitimation with CGI. Of course it's still TOHO and the budget isn't Hollywood.

http://reviews.antagonyecstasy.com/2016 ... zilla.html Tim Brayton's review of it makes it sound immensely entertaining and fairly unique to boot.