This. "Like yeah myan, why do I find Bill Murray funny? What is funny? Is it some tangible organic construct beneath the lungs or some metaphorical ghost animal that tickles my stomach?"

That sounds reasonable - I did think the VOs in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang were a bit overdone and "meta", would've been better toned-down a bit. The setting sounds cool too - dunno about the superior "buddy chemistry" though - again, I'm compared KKBB to a movie I haven't seen, but man...Downey and Kilmer were just fantastic together and interesting on their own - Downey as a wisecracking, smart-mouthed thief who is also completely inexperienced and stupid, Kilmer as a grizzled, muscular veteran PI/effeminate gay man. Inverting tropes can often end up being really lame once the "haha that's the opposite of what it normally is" gimmick wears off, but these characters worked great on their own, too.

Shit, now I want to watch The Nice Guys AND Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

I think it's obvious enough why Bill Murray is funny that most babies could see it.

I also enjoyed The Nice Guys heaps more than Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. There's this one gag involving an ankle pistol that made me laugh for a good 5 minutes straight.

Yeah The Nice Guys was a killer comedy. I didn't see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but Nice Guys was fun to look at, fun to listen to and Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling both knocked it out of the park. I thought it probably went on a bit long, but I was never bored.

So I like RoboCop (2014).. José Padilha did a top effort, it's not a home run and the origin story bogs down most of it's potential but it's certainly a decent sci fi actioner and I'd be keen for a sequel. Side note: Sam Jackson was really memorable as an aggressive tv host.

Keep in mind I can appreciate both movies existing even if I prefer the original.

That I read his comment and then actually thought for a second why I find him funny was, to me, a good point. Maybe I'm using the wrong semantics here (would you prefer "brought up a good point"?), but the idea of explaining why something works the way it does, especially something as subjective as humor, is always of interest to me.


If it was called anything but RoboCop it would be a fun little flick, but Sam Jackson is the only reason to watch it. Jose Padilha immediately set a negative tone when his early press interviews had him saying the original lacked symbolism.

Well, yeah. What else can we do? It's just a movie. I think my bigger qualm with Robo Cop and Ghostbusters 2016 is that the people putting together the new film - and I've worked many years in the film industry - clearly missed the point of what made the original movies so memorable. It's disheartening when something is so obvious to you and then the people in charge seem to gestate the most superficial recreations of the source material. As if their only point of reference was the front and back of a DVD case.

You would think that with so much money on the line, better care would be taken to make a quality product. I guess you don't get that attention to detail until you're up in Star Wars/Disney numbers.

I judge a movie based on what's presented, this was not and my opinion of the film is unswayed. Also kudos for him for having the balls to speak critically and not bullshit for pathetic fanservice like every other soulless director.

I don't think you're seeing the big picture. "The point" of the original Robocop and Ghostbusters isn't what makes money. What makes money is the superficial trappings of the franchises paired with exactly the same kind of action movies and comedies that make a shitload of money today. The Michael Bay Transformers movies are probably the best example of "missing the point," yet they also made incredible ass-tons of money.

Star Wars got a different treatment (sort of) because hardcore fans are a much bigger market. Even so, The Force Awakens absolutely missed some of "the point" of A New Hope - it aped a lot of the scenes and story beats, but did so in a much less coherent way. Luckily it did introduce some of its own quality ideas and original characters, but it was a very messy film.

Bottom line is, preserving "the point" of a franchise has very little impact on the bottom line.

Speaking of Star Wars, the newest Rogue One trailer:

It spoke to his not understanding the original movie and why it's remained so popular, and his vision of RoboCop being inferior to the original (and even other sci-fi/action movies released around the same time) is proof. The remake has its strengths (Sam Jackson playing the Bill O'Reilly role, Michael Keaton as a CEO, and I liked Jackie Earle Haley), but the original blows it entirely out of the water, and the reason why is obvious (if not filled with barely hidden nerd rage): Padilha didn't "get" it.


From a producer's standpoint, you're entirely right. The producer only cares about getting a return on their investment, be it through massive profit or tax breaks on a failure. However, and this touching on the bold part of Rainbow's quote and your next chunk...

The flaws in TFA lie with Abrams as a storyteller. He focuses on the big, memorable moments of a story - Vader's introduction, a big shoot-out, soundbites - and then forgets to fill the rest in with enough meat to make those moments shine their brightest. However, TFA didn't miss the point of a Star Wars movie at all, seeing as how it was a massive hit both financially ($936 million worldwide) and critically (92% critic/89% audience per RT with an average rating of 8.2/10) by delivering what a Star Wars movie needed to deliver: likable heroes (Finn and Rey), a cool-looking villain (Kylo), and an underdog story. The details are blurry and not fully developed, true, but it still achieved its goal of being a good movie and a worthy entry into an iconic franchise.

The funny thing about Disney is that, with rare exception, their business model for the past forever and a day has proven successful. You can give people a pile of shit with a shiny package around it for that quick buck (Sony's film division, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), or you can give them something of high quality and then milk the fuck out of it for decades after to keep that income flowing in (Disney's overall approach to their animated films and, now, the Star Wars series).

You stand to make more off of a good product than a bad product. That's why it's so frustrating to see bad movies that coast by on name affiliation only, especially when you know there's a chance it could have been better. That's Hollywood, though. It's mostly pretty lazy.

Exactly. Why bother change a formula that works (financially) for them?

It absolutely did partially miss the point of Star Wars movies - TFA aped a lot of specific elements that occurred in ANH, but completely lacked the solid plot foundations. Specific example: in ANH, EVERYTHING is about the Death Star right from the very beginning - the Empire is after R2D2 and the Princess because they have the plans, they chase them and find/kill Luke's aunt and uncle because of the plans, Obi-Wan is introduced because of the plans, then they get captured by the Death Star but are able to escape because of the Death Star plans they have, then the Death Star is going to blow up Yavin IV but the Rebels are able to destroy it because of...the plans. It's the plot point that directly drives just about every major event in the entire movie. In TFA, you've got the map to where Luke is that Poe found, you've got Finn wanting to escape the First Order entirely, there's Rey who's basically just along for the ride, you've got the Starkiller Base blowing up the Republic for mostly unrelated reasons, which they're able to blow up because of a pretty big last-second asspull, and finally Rey finds Luke which she only decided she wanted to do halfway through the film.

In short, everything is at best loosely tied together with a blatant MacGuffin (Luke map), whereas in ANH it's very tightly tied together by the Death Star plans, which not only set things into motion, but make many of the major events of the film possible. Why does this mean that ATF partially missed the point of Star Wars? It's because they imitated the specific plot points and scenes, but not the tight plotting that made them work so well. The point of Star Wars isn't having droids running away from the Empire, or having the Rebels blow up a big space base, or having an orphan of unknown heritage on a desert planet - that's just the packaging.

The point of Star Wars is lightsaber battles, we all know this.

I'm pretty sure the actual point of Star Wars was, "We really wanted to make a Flash Gordon film, but the rights are a bitch to obtain, so we made Schmash Schmordon instead."

Captain Fantastic was excellent. Really well done on every front from the acting to the writing. Lots of good character stuff going on and a healthy blend of drama and comedy. Good commentary on how society really is all relative and there's no right way to raise a family, but also things are never so absolute that you can't compromise. And Viggo Mortenson is fucking awesome.

The new Star Trek was a solid action movie. That's exactly what I was expecting, and that's exactly what I got. I feel like there's been a slight decrease in quality for each of the new Trek films, but I've enjoyed all of them so far.

Disagree because I liked Beyond better than Into Darkness.

Fair enough . They're both quite close in quality IMO.

I'm genuinely curious. What did you guys like about Beyond? I can't think of a single thing I liked about it besides the usual pretty effects and gorgeous sets that come with a typical $185 million sci-fi blockbuster. Not one single thing.

The villain had a decent motivation. The scavenger character was pretty cool (between this movie and The Force Awakens, I wonder if the "tough orphan scavenger girl" is becoming a thing in sci-fi). The action was good and fairly creative in places (the organized fleet of bad guy ships dismembering the Enterprise). The movie continued everyone's character arc nicely. The movie and plot felt skillful and professional, and the film was briskly paced. It's not a movie I'd be in any rush to see, and I doubt I'll watch it again, but I was definitely entertained the whole time.

Suicide Squad - Honestly a horrible movie so far as the way it was constructed and put together - messy, rushed-feeling, sloppy, it felt like a barely finished film most of the time. You could tell it got edited the fuck out of multiple times. The characterizations were thin and generic and the plot was pretty bargain-bin YA magic-sorcery fight fare. But honestly, for all that, I had more fun with this than I thought I would, mostly due to Margot Robbie, Will Smith and a few of the other leads - they were fun to watch. If only they'd been given better stuff to work with. There were some good parts here and there, but they felt scattered and scarce, jumbled into a mess without any cohesion.

Disappointed by Goodnight Mommy. Ending (which I won't say) was a big truckload of NOPE. So sick of movies having such a strong opening and middle and then dissolving into mediocrity. It's hard to fault the movie beyond the ending though, everything else was on point; the visuals/the lighting/the acting/the pace/the tension were all impressive and striking like a Michael Haneke creation only less dreary.

Friday the 13th Pt. 2
My fave Ft13 movie, its ending is just brilliant.

Got on the Goodnight Mommy train last night. I thought it was quite great. I didn't like it as much as I did The Babadook or It Follows, but it was still a very good, very creepy and intense movie, especially once shit starts going down in the third act. It works as well as it does because, as others have said, the movie slowly ratchets up the intensity and dread throughout, and it waits to blow its load until it really will hit the audience deep. That's something a lot of newer horror just doesn't show; restraint. Because this movie takes so long to build to the climax, and because that build is so good, it makes the payoff of everything that much more impactful.

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)

This is a horror movie about a homicidal bed, which eats stuff (if the title was too deep and cerebral for you). You really get what you pay for in this movie, because the bed eats & drinks a wide variety of stuff in the movie...apples, fried chicken, wine, suitcases, crucifixes, clothes, pepto-bismol, people, etc. At one point, a character tries to stab the bed, and then the bed eats all the flesh off his hands, and he just looks at the bare bones and is like "well that's odd!" This image, straight from the film, is fucking priceless:


Anyway, this film is an obvious cinematic masterpiece and one of the greatest achievements in American cinema, 10/10.

I watched the Lethal Weapon movies recently. I don't think I had ever seen the third or fourth ones and it had been a LONG time since I saw the first two. Very fun flicks. Apparently Hollywood is doing a remake/reboot (of course...).

Eh, not when the reveal is M. Night Shyamalan level of pure arse.

For my folks who pay attention to Hong Kong action films, has anybody seen SPL 2 (Kill Zone 2)?

I just saw The Invitation from last year. It definitely had some things going for it, and I liked it overall, but it was ultimately just too damn tame to really be effective.

I thought it was a relentless, brutal horror movie on your senses and atmospherically. Just super tense, creepy, etc. It didn't seem to hold back at all to me.

It didn't hold much back but it also didn't have a lot to hold. It was a solid shove from a tween to the gonads, enough to get your attention but not enough to do any real damage. If that's your measuring stick for brutality, though...

Maybe brutal should be used for a more violent movie, but The Invitation was immediately tense, paranoid and uneasy from the start and stayed that way the whole time until it finally did get violent. I just didn't think it was tame is all.

It wasn't tame in the sense of, say, Mr. Boogedy or the Goosebumps movie, but it was tame by horror standards after a decade of torture porn. The biggest faults I found with it is that the secondary characters (the friends also invited to the party) were treated as tertiary characters and the finishing stretch should have been a little longer and more intense. It was a lot of great build to an abrupt finale and overall unsatisfying finale, much like Ti West's House of the Devil.

I have tickets to an advanced screening of Rob Zombie's 31 on September 2nd. I'm a lot more lenient on his movies than most, here and every other board I frequent, so I'm looking forward to it. Lords of Salem fell to complete shit in the final act but there was enough that worked for me to say I overall enjoyed it (namely John 5's score), and come on...Richard Brake as a horror villain? Sold.

I can see that about the finishing stretch, but with both this movie and House of the Devil it wasn't a big enough deal for me to not enjoy the movies wholeheartedly anyway. They were both excellent for me anyway.

Lethal Weapon (1) is such an incredible movie. I actually watched it in full for the first time in my adult life about six or seven months ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it all the way through. Lethal Weapon 2 didn't really have a lot of staying power with me, at least not in the way the first movie did.

I really want to go back to Lethal Weapon now.

While we're talking Lethal Weapon, I never understood the hate for the fourth one. Maybe it's because it was the first one in the entire series I watched start to finish, but I love that movie and think it's pure fun with a cast that knows how to play to each other's strengths and cover each other's weaknesses. If anything, the third deserves that level of disdain, because it's so saccharine with the "get the guns off the streets" theme and Bone Thugz N' Harmony soundtrack that the actual action, as low key as it is compared to the first two, feels even less enjoyable. It was when the series tried the "let's get serious" moment, like every lame TGIF sitcom but with cursing and explosions and Mel Gibson.

The second LW never struck me as great until I watched it immediately after the first one day. There was a marathon on some channel, maybe HBO or Cinemax, and I buckled in, but there's definitely a tonal difference from the first one. If the original was a wild take on Dirty Harry that defined the buddy cop dynamic, the second was in full Reaganomics cocaine frenzy mode. The villain, though, is great and the best of the series, if only because Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey) in the original seemed so mentally unhinged whereas the South African diplomat gangsters (is there ever a more action movie term for a villainous group?) came across as droll and professional. Those are the kinds of action movie villains that speak the most to me: the ones where the heroes' plights are just Tuesday. That's why I love Hard Target, too, because Lance Henriksen and Arnold Vosloo just seem like JCVD is finally the kind of prey they can get excited for.

I've heard that too. I simply can't look passed a poor finale, not in my registry. Every film review I have done by judging the film as a whole complete story, there's been some truly masterful breath taking films, yet if that ending is poorly done than I easily shave of a star or downgrade my rating because I don't award or look past poorly crafted bad finales.

Whoa whoa whoa stop right there! If that's the Ti West who directed Cabin Fever 2 (a crime against Eli Roth, the horror industry, film in general and humanity overall) then we shall not speak his name ever.