Yeah, I definitely agree with that, the rest of the soundtrack wasn't like that at all and then during a couple of sad scenes it was like, ultra stereotypical sad string section playing minor chords. I noticed it even while I was watching and it did take me out of the scene a little. Either silence or something less cliche would've been far superior, but it's only a very small blemish on the greatness that is Fury Road.

Wow, I didn't even realize that was Tom Hardy in The Drop. One of those movies that seemed to kind of plod along when you're watching it but then you just can't stop thinking about over the next couple days.

I thought it was an unparalleled delight. Dennis Lehane, who wrote the script, is one of my favorite authors.

Go back and watch Star Trek Nemesis.

I think everyone, and especially Tom Hardy, wishes they could forget about that movie.

^

What's extra weird is that apparently Patrick Stewart has a son, so if they wanted to get a young clone actor of him in there... they could have done that? But maybe there would have been some family feud awkwardness or something.

Plinkett had a good review on that one, kind of redeemed my anger after watching it a few days ago. I definitely wonder what the main cast thinks of it nowadays looking back on it...

I just meant The Dark Knight Rises and Bronson. I knew he was a good actor but I just hadn't enjoyed his movies yet.

Eh yeah, have to agree with you there, I didn't care for his Bane. Definitely miles better than Batman & Robin though, but what isn't.

This?

I thought he was an awesome Bane actually. But the rest of the movie was stupid.

I thought he was awesome in the movie, but the thing is he just wasn't Bane. Bane is a hispanic luchador sociopath juicer, not a British political terrorist with Darth Vader's Disease. There were literally no similarities between the two, aside from being strong, I guess. I have no idea how Nolan got that out of Bane; it seems like he had his own totally original idea for a villain, and then was either pressured into cashing in on Bane's name and rep or just thought "hey, that scene where Bane breaks Batman's back is cool, I'll have my guy do that too. Fuck it, I might as well just name him Bane."

I hate to bring it up because it's certainly one of the best mainstream action films from just a handful over many years but I feel I'd be brushing over a problem. Sure it's an over the top spectacle but moments of subtly is still necessary, especially when it's scenes you're suppose to feel and relate to the fragile human side of the characters. I have seen a lot of complaints online from the downright laughable to the story isn't explained enough, characters are unlikeable, too much action, it's not about Mad Max, too graphic etc. These I feel are all non-problems and come down to particular personal tastes, like food, or sleeping habits, it's almost like an impossible feat to perfectly please everyone.

I hadn't seen the movie with Bane, but I just watched a few clips, because I honestly don't have much interest in seeing the whole movie. THAT'S the Bane voice everyone was saying was so awesome? This voice that sounds like a terrible, forced Sean Connery impression? I got tired of hearing it after about a minute. It sounds stupid and over the top.

^ Hopefully not around here, the voice was bad, as was Bale-Batman's mumbles.

Nolan fucked up a LOT.

To be fair, this is pretty common. An obvious example is when they made Hellboy into a movie, Kroenen (the Nazi in the gas mask) went from a meek, polite, third-rate evil scientist to an unstoppable badass who deflects bullets with knives and all kinds of crazy shit. A lot of the time, it just comes down to "this character looks really cool, but they don't really fit into the story.

I liked the re-invention of Bane. Bane as he originally was is laughable when put to the live-action.

TDKR is good film but it suffers from too much of everything.

I think that TDKR gets more flak than it deserves because it's a fairly significant dive from the first two in the trilogy, not because it's a poor film on its own. That said, it was still pretty clear that Nolan was "forced" into making it, and he had to completely redo the plot he had in mind when Ledger passed.

It's a 3/5 movie really. It's just so bloated and unfocused, and despite some cool action scenes and a few good performances, it can't hold up to the others. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives his worst performance to date (though probably more the script's fault for giving him those schmaltzy lines), and the plot is just all over the place. It's never explained exactly what Bane wants until the whole twist at the end with his dumb backstory is revealed. Very poor attempts at social commentary where I'm not sure what exactly they were trying to say. And the whole thing where he's like "I'll hold you hostage with this bomb thing, but really you'll be blown up no matter what" is just such dumb action movie crap. Not nearly as well put together or exciting as the other two.

I need to re-watch Batman Begins but I don't remember it being anything special. Just kinda boring origin story that's mostly played safe, with some cool fight scenes, 'does it come in black?', surprisingly boring car chase scenes and not completely awful villains. The third act was really disappointing.

Oh yeah, Batman Begins isn't really a masterpiece or anything, but I always found it enjoyable. The only real weak thing is Liam Neeson as a rather lame Ra's al Ghul - but even he isn't terrible or anything. The first two acts were always cool to me, and the third act had a really great Gotham and brought me back to what I always loved about Batman as a kid - the night-stalking, crime-fighting stuff, etc.

Honestly, Dark Knight may have warped my liking of Begins. Because that had the heist thriller element and it genuinely felt like Batman had a legitimate and believable threat. The Dark Knight felt like a Nolan directed sequel to 15 Minutes only with Batman as the protagonist and Joker as the antagonist.

It's really the second half of the movie where things really fall apart - honestly I thought it was really good up until Bane takes over Gotham. There were just so many individual problems - too many to list, honestly - but I think the main problem, the one that dragged down the rest of the movie and ended up causing the other problems like dominoes, was the excessive subplots and plot twists. Really it comes down to three big ones - Catwoman, Talia al Ghul, and Dick Grayson. While none of them was bad in theory, with all three of them jostling for time in a movie that already had a ton of plot shit it needed to get straight in the second half - Bane's needlessly complex scheme, Batman's recovery and return, the climax and resolution - it just left those major plot points starved for time and rushed. The subplots themselves were similarly rushed, with the Batman/Catwoman relationship explored only on a very rudimentary level, Talia coming out of nowhere and dying almost as quickly, and Dick Grayson being just some dude rather than a credible (future) sidekick. I think that with even just one of those elements (Catwoman, Talia, Grayson) removed, the freed space would have allowed for fleshing out the main plot, as well as the other subplots. If all three had been cut, well, it might've been a good movie.

Totally unrelated to the above complaints, I think the ending completely fucking shot itself in the foot. The way it SHOULD have ended was with Alfred sitting in the restaurant an undisclosed amount of time later and looking up, as he described earlier to Bruce - then BOOM, credits, leaving it ambiguous whether he actually saw Bruce Wayne at all. That would have been really poignant while still leaving the door open for Bruce Wayne being alive - showing him for certain sitting with Catwoman is insultingly obvious and their relationship wasn't even built up nearly enough to justify that. Also, that bit about the Batcopter being on autopilot or whatever was just stupid too. The movie went from implying his death to totally disproving itself within about 10 minutes, just idiotic. Leave a LITTLE up to the viewer, at least. What's so frustrating is that the difference between a good ending and the crap we got was so small, and would have actually taken LESS work to do right.

I've never understood why they so often insist on jamming way too much shit into Batman films the way they do. It's basically just asking for an unfocused clusterfuck where nothing gets adequately developed.

So I'm finding Coach Carter fairly disappointing. Not even the Samuel L. Jackson can save this mediocre MTV-washed basketball movie.

It should just be re-named 'Suicides and Push-ups' because that's his entire training method.

Yeah, TDKR is lame, deserving of nothing more than a 2.5/5 if I had to rate it. I don't know how I allowed myself to sit through the entire thing, thank jeebus I didn't see it in theaters or pay any amount of money either for that matter. At least it's better than Iron Man 3, I erased that from my HDD after watching only 30 minutes of that steamer. I've only seen a couple of clips, but The Amazing Spiderman 2 looks to be every bit of a movie that is so wretched and disastrous that it provides many moments of hilarity. Doesn't mean I'll ever be watching it in its entirety though.

I plan on catching the new Mad Max in theaters at some point this weekend. I'm watching Road Warrior tonight (it's been a few years) and Beyond Thunderdome for the first time tomorrow.

I wanna chip in on last years films too. Nightcrawler and Birdman were my two favorites with the latter slightly edging out as my personal pick. Y'all can hate on it all ya want but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of Birdman. Very entertaining, especially the cinematography and I liked the commentary it provided on critics. The Lego Movie was decent enough and even though I'm one who wishes all these INCESSANT superhero movies would get sucked into a black hole, Winter Soldier was aight (better than The Avengers if you ask me). Godzilla was disappointing... oh wait... NOT. I never held any high expectations of it and it turned out just as I assumed, dwelling peacefully within the confines of mediocrity. I'm copying over Grand Budapest Hotel to my ps3 at this moment, I'm hoping I'll like that one. Also copying over Interstellar but I'm not too interested in it. I plan on watching Gone Girl at some point too.

I'd probably say:

Mad Max - 7
The Road Warrior - 8
Beyond Thunderdome - 6
Fury Road - 9

They could have had a plausible script with Talia, Catwoman and Dick Grayson - those three characters aren't so huge that they can never just be crammed into a film together...but yeah, like U_S said, all these movies just love that overly complicated, convoluted script style where they cram in as much as possible. I think there were definitely ways they could have written a tighter, more entertaining and complete story with all the characters they had, but they wanted to try and outmatch The Dark Knight, and so we got a hedge maze full of half-assed twists and terrorist-style plots, which were cool when The Joker did it - but taken way too far in TDKR.

Honestly The Dark Knight had problems too but its strengths far outweighed them. Batman himself is kind of awful but the Joker is so good it doesn't matter. The 1989 Batman is probably still my favorite, when viewed as a whole. Some people say it's aged poorly, but fuck 'em.

Okay just saw the new Mad Max. No spoilers needed as it's not something that can be spoiled by spoilers spoiling things.

Definitely very good, and I agree with the posts about the soundtrack sucking, and there were a few (thankfully) short Hollywood-esque moments, but my other gripe besides that was the inconsistency of the accents. I was expecting Aussie accents throughout, especially from Theron as she's South African, but it seems she couldn't be bothered switching from her American accent to an Aussie one (which is easier for South Africans to do). That said, during a fair amount of action scenes I had no idea what they were saying and had to rely on the Swedish subs, but I had no problem understanding Theron, so my gripe is a self-harming gripe, just the way I like my gripes to be.

I also thought it would be a constant road chase? That's the impression I got from reviews at least, was horrified when the vehicles slowed down and near knocked my popcorn over in "fury" when they stopped, but thankfully they started moving again so the popcorn was saved (also the dudes sitting in front of me looked pretty buff, knocking popcorn on buff dudes is only recommended for the fool"Hardy").

Hahaha wow

I already want to rewatch Mad Max in 2D. Well, I mainly want to rewatch it because it was awesome, but I had to see it in 3D (all that was available at my theatre) and it honestly detracted from the movie. I always find that tacked-on 3D looks like ass but especially so during fast motion, which was like 80% of Fury Road. Ugh. I was pretty pissed since the movie has such great effects. Was this the case with anyone else?

That's good news since I have tickets for a 2D screening in a few days 3D doesn't work very well with frenetic action, it's better used to create a sense of scale and depth for scenery shots, but should be dialed back to the bare minimum if there's a lot going on. That said, the best use of 3D I have ever seen was in the last Transformers when falling dirt was projected right to the edge of the 3D space, I was leaning back in my seat because it was so convincing

You do remember that whole preceding scene in the prison where he explained his intention to torture Gotham, right?

So I finally got around to watching Stalker (1979) and holy shit, most boring movie I've seen in my life. Yet, I watched the entire three hours of dullness incarnate in film because it was so beautiful to look at. The black and white parts are the starkest shit ever, the colour parts are so soft and magnificent, and the compositions are generally framed in a way that you could pause the movie at any time and have lots to enjoy. But fuck, I understand that the director wanted to make every shot 5 minutes long but this movie is a perfect example of the school of thought that believes movies must not necessarily be entertaining. Not that much happens beyond three people walking around and discussing very flat, surface philosophy, and building up concepts that lead nowhere. This is a movie that your film teacher probably jizzes over, but I just don't.

The only film I've seen in 3D is Avatar and that'll probably remain the only film I see in 3D.

Thank you. I tried watching it once and think I almost slipped into a coma. Couldn't get into it at all. I'll stick to Blade Runner.

Really have to be in the mood to get through a movie like Stalker, I think benzos or opiates or a hammer in the face are needed, but who knows, maybe it's a blast to watch when drunk and dancing like no one is washing, but I won't be trying that.

I have a pile of Finnish DVDs to get through, because I casually remarked once to a Finnish buddy that it's easy to find Scandinavian movies to watch but not so easy to find Finnish movies, and I guess it really touched his heart. I'm going to start with Sauna, one of the few Finnish horror movies, sadly with many blah reviews but it's horror, and judging by the name I assume some evil sauna walks around Tampere drunk attacking people without blond hair so maybe it will be cool after all.

Modern Finnish cinema (aside from Kaurismäkis, more Aki than Mika) is pretty awful anyways. I've not seen Sauna, but from what I've read, it doesn't seem too good. And well, I have to admit that older Finnish cinema ain't much better. Both suffer from the same ailment: It's just the same couple of movies with the same scripts being done in a different setting, but with same characters and same plots.

Or, you know World War II movies so not even the setting changes.

Saw Poltergeist last night. Scariest moment was the price of my nachos and vitamin water.

Mad Max was fun as hell though the music was pretty stupid. It was just an awesome movie and we were a big group of friends and high as balls in the theater so lots of fun was had. Some of them mistakenly called it the best action movie afterwards though, but hey, they're high and don't know they're talking about.

I'm surprised that people don't like the soundtrack. It got pretty cheesy during the slow parts, but the main theme is great, especially when they sync it with the flamethrower guitar.