Uncut doesn't mean much... generally these films are made trying to get an R rating and then trimmed for the theatrical version. It makes a lot less difference these days than it used to, because the tolerance is much higher.

Holy shit, the church scene in Kingsman is the best action scene I've ever seen. I'm sure I've witnessed better but nothing comes to mind right now. Also holy shit ( x2) that movie is excellent.

The 2nd Inbetweeners movie was waaaaay better than the first. Finally, the big screen send-off the show deserved, although it did seem kind of unfairly slanted against Australians? Anyone else here seen it? Even better, any Aussies/Kiwis who've seen it?

Told y'all! Shockingly cool stuff.

Agreed; just saw it Saturday and it totally lived up to the hype. Goddamn. Plus I had no idea it was made by the same guy who directed Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which I also recently saw.

Uhh... No. While Vaugh produced Lock, Stock blah blah, it was directed by Guy Ritchie. Unless there's some secret, uncredited thing that's not general public knowledge.

Gah, I had misread it. Good catch.

Some movies I've seen lately:

Cloud Atlas
This is actually my second time seeing it, and just reaffirms how great a movie it is. Picked up on a lot I didn't the first time, such as some of the stuff linking the stories together. Also, didn't realize just how many characters the same actors played the first time, they pulled that off brilliantly. With the six different stories spanning such a long time only loosely tied together (although philosophically intertwined), it could have easily collapsed under its own weight. But totally engaging and interesting the whole way through.

Time is Illmatic
Had very high hopes for this one, given that this is one of my favourite albums of all times. The movie was ok, did a good job at looking at his upbringing and whatnot. However, they didn't do that much on the actual development of the album and didn't really focus on what made it so good and influential beyond "this kid is just so good". Also, they didn't play much of the actual tracks from the album, opting to do modern performances of it at his shows. Bad idea, because they weren't done very well and his homies incessantly yelling out the end of the verse totally killed the songs. Honestly think this is a pretty good documentary of his upbringing, but in the end it's not really that much about the album.

Olympus has Fallen
Extremely generic action movie. Not worth watching.

Kingsmen and Hot Tub Time Machine 2
These were only sort of ok because I was high as fuck in the theatre. It seems that a lot of people here enjoyed Kingsmen, and Samuel L. Jackson was definitely good and that one action scene was awesome,but found a lot of it rather obvious. Also, hated the main dude. Went from an asshole chav to a high class asshole. Still an asshole.

That's great to hear. I love the show but the first movie was so disappointing, except fo the dance scene in the bar.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/02/26/ ... surrection

Interesting development. As far as Sigourney Weaver is concerned, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection do not exist and the upcoming Alien feature (directed by Plan 9's director) will pick up after the second movie.

Ridley Scott producing too.

Fuck Prometheus 2 haha, I just want this now.

I bet this wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Alien Isolation boosting the series again. It's great to finally see Alien detached from Predator after all these years. Predator is great and all and the two together does work for the most part, but Alien is the series with the awesome lore and world. I definitely want more non-Predator related Alien material.

Alien 3 was cool though.

Alien 3 was ahead of its time. It was like the Game of Thrones of sci-fi.

I think the concept art that was shown by Blomkamp and the highly positive reaction was the big contributor.

This is the absolute best conditions for a sequel that the Alien series could have received, Ridley would never have directed it as evidenced by Prometheus, and even if somehow he did he hasn't been any good in ages. Blomkamp genuinely wants to make an amazing sequel to Aliens.

The whole film is one giant nail in the coffin. I certainly don't hate it but I do see it's faults, everyone in the film is unlikable and cold, and structurally speaking it's a mess (but I put that down to lack of control from David Fincher).

I never saw the need for likable characters in films, I prefer people to be realistically ugly. The studio taking control away from Fincher is definitely the biggest problem. I reckon if there was a third cut - basically a trimmed Assembly Cut with the Alien birthing from the dog retained from the theatrical cut - it would work pretty well. The Assembly Cut is easily the best version, it's just a bit overlong and hampered by the inconsistency of the Alien birth being all wrong. Plus the compositing of the rod-puppet VFX is crap, the lighting never matches and it just looks like shit. There's no such glaring VFX issues in Aliens, which just shows how sloppy the work is on that aspect of Alien 3.

I just saw the film, and I'm tending more towards lord_ghengis' verdict. It felt like a case of style over substance, and I didn't feel the single take added much besides a touch of hyperrealism. In Russian Ark it made sense because it was a historical progression actualised as a trip through the museum. I also got very little insight into art, the theatre, passion or the movie star ego, and the conclusion was highly unsatisfactory. Stylistically it was great and the energy was infectious, strip all that away and you're really not left with much to think about. Maybe I needed to know more about Keaton and Norton's lives and careers, I don't know.

I think Emma Stone's acting was awful, and her big hateful spiel to her dad just cried 'I'm trying to be convincing and impactful', 'best supporting actress nomination pa--lease!'. But by and large it was disappointing and felt pretentious stylistically and structurally with the distinct interwoven play, new twists in the story went absolutely nowhere, it felt tedious and hardly funny (awkward doesn't equate to funny), scenes extended well beyond necessary due it's 'one take' style, not to mention the obnoxious drum score got old real quick.

I'm with Empyreal. That movie was smart and funny through-and-through.

Yeah, I really thought it was just fine for what it wanted to be in terms of the commentary on theater, movie stardom, art, etc. It was a comedy and played itself as such...true it coulda been more substantial in the drama department, but I think that would work fine for another movie entirely.

I used to despise Iñárritu but I thought Biutiful was super dope. 21 Grams was insanely overrated and Babel was a 2.5 hour snoozefest. Birdman looks pretty bad from all I've seen and heard, but it could still be fun, I suppose. Maybe.

Ugh, I sat through both Babel and 21 Grams waiting for something to happen other than randomly connected boredom and Parkinsons camera-work. It's like someone thought "hey, that Pulp Fiction film was neat, let's take that formula and get all serious/philosophical with it"..

Huh, shame to hear that about Babel. I recently added that to my Netflix list having not seen it yet - guess I'll find out for myself.

Yeah, Biutiful was quite cool. It took a lot of what's good about Iñarritu's films and cut out the "let's connect all the subplots" stuff to focus just on one story. I have to say I wasn't that into 21 Grams or Babel either, though I remember the latter being better at least.

It wasn't a comedy. The Hobbit had lots of jokes too, you know. I think my biggest problem with it is that even with the 'technical achievements', I have absolutely no interest in watching it again. The other is that lots of dramatic stuff happens, but you don't sense any big shift in Keaton's character, or anyone else really, which is what the whole film rests upon. Which kind of explains why they drag in an incomprehensible fantasy ending, so the audience can walk away saying 'that was cool'. It's a screenwriting/directorial problem. Tons of movies make more happen on screen with far less drama to work with.

I remember having seen 21 grams with a friend when I was 15 or so, we left the theater in an overwhelmed state, I don't think we both had ever seen an extremely grim film like that. To this day I still haven't re-watched it, because I think it still needs to sink in But I did found it a good movie, though... You just need to be in the right mood to watch that one... Still need to watch Babel; I've seen bits and pieces on tv, the different storylines did appear to have a similar tone and style. Birdman I've seen not so long ago in the theaters. Pretty good, eventhough I don't think there was much of a story, it was very character-driven, but it kept being interesting and the continuous camera tracking style together with the interesting drumbeat score, helped with creating a good pacing for the film.

Anyone that has seen the BMW 'Powder Keg' short from Iñarritu'? I remember having seen that one very long ago and I was amazed by it, recently 've seen it again, but it didn't have as much of the same effect as the first time. But I must credit him for the fact that he was able to create a ten-minute short that included as much as possible of his very recognizable directing style ..........and at the same time promoting BMW to the fullest

Babel and 21 Grams aren't even the same league. Babel was boring and the plot strands were only connected in the absolute loosest terms imaginable. Good acting all around but that really needed to be three or four different films, or three or four different TV episodes.

Lucy - I admit I made fun of the premise of this movie when it was in theaters, and I was seeing non-stop TV ads for it. Nevertheless, I tried to watch it with an open mind. "Hey, don't forget you like the X-Men movies, and most of their powers are completely over the top as well! So maybe Lucy could be good!"

I still thought it pretty much sucked though. The main character was never likeable or interesting to me (maybe an actress other than ScarJo would have helped?), and there was no sense of fun with her discovering her abilities like there was in Spider-Man or The Matrix. Yeah, this comparison has probably been done to death, but for an R-rated action / sci-fi movie about people gaining new powers while occasionally reciting pretentious philosophy, I'd much rather watch The Matrix for the dozenth time than ever watch Lucy again.

Ah, almost forgot to mention the unsatisfying ending, and all the ugly CG. Best thing I can say about this movie is it was over in about 80 minutes.

Just watched They Live.

I'm not even sure how to put that one in words? Put on the glasses.

They Live is absolutely amazing. My second favourite Carpenter movie after The Thing. It's just a heap of fun and a joy to watch. Rody Piper owns it. That alleyway fight scene is absolutely legendary, too. It's really too bad Carpenter went from making films like that to stuff like The Ward. Oh well, his recent music album Lost Themes is still awesome.

Holy god, has anyone seen the Nic Cage Left Behind? Holy. God.

I didn't know it had been released yet. Does he lose his shit a few times?

I WANT TO SEE IT SO GODDAMN BADLY.

I have a legit fascination with Nic Cage because under the right director (aka anyone who can control him) he's a BRILLIANT ACTOR. Some of my favorite movies star Cage (The Weatherman[i/], [i]Adaptation, Bringing out the Dead) and I have immense respect for him. But, I also love the persona he has, boisterous and huge, and just bizarre and disconnected in a gloriously eccentric way.

Adaptation, Bringing Out the Dead and Leaving Las Vegas were so good, and his recent movie Joe has the best acting of his career probably. Check that out if you haven't, PhilFrog.

^Yeah, those are winners. Have you seen Matchstick Men, Empyreal?

Joe's good? Happy to hear that, I'll definitely check it out. I also remember Matchstick Men as being fairly charming, but I can't remember it for the life of me I'll have to rewatch. Did you dig?

Nah, haven't seen Matchstick Men; heard a lot of divisive things about that one...should finally check it out sometime.

Oh and about 21 Grams - I forgot that I actually saw that a few months back; just didn't remember the name. I liked it. Kinda melodramatic and pretentious a bit I guess, definitely not perfect...but I enjoyed it the whole way through. Maybe a 3.5 or 4 star movie for me.

It must've been 2010 or 2011 when I watched it, but from memory, "charming" would indeed be a fitting one-word description.

Matchstick Men was quite good. Ridley Scott definitely knows how to use him.

Just a warning; I've heard Left Behind is atrociously bad (note: not so bad it's good) and there's no freak outs at all. It's his most subdued, auto-pilot performance to date. Puts Ghost Rider to shame apparently.

Can't go wrong with the trilogy of overblown derp action roles he had in the mid 90's, 1) The Rock, 2) Con Air and 3) Face/Off.