I liked Avengers a good bit more than Iron Man 3. The latter was just plain dull. Shitty, unmemorable bad guys, Tony Stark pretending he was Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa with his verbal abuse slung at some weird little kid for a whole bunch of the movie, a really messy, overwrought conclusion...just not a lot to like, really. I mean I didn't hate it or anything, but it was definitely a big step down from Avengers. As for Iron Man stuff, I'd probably rate it 1/Avengers > 2 > 3.

Iron Man 3 was my favorite of the Iron Man movies. The first two, ehh, okay, they were enjoyable enough. But I just thought they were standard and didn't really do much that wowed me - they were average action flicks that did what they were supposed to. Number 3 was problematic at times, it had its holes. But it was funnier, had more personality and style to it because of that humor, and I really liked Tony Stark for the first time. Those scenes with that kid out in the country were really interesting, I thought. The PTSD stuff he had made him a more interesting character to me. I never liked him in the first two movies, but after The Avengers and now this, I think he's actually my favorite of all of them.

The Avengers curb stomps all of them into the dirt though.

I thought Iron Man 3 was the worst of all the Marvel flicks, total pile of ass. I hated the jokes, the kid, the panic attacks, everything. Hated that movie.

I've thought a little more about why The Avengers didn't fully click with me. My conclusion is that comic book movies work better when they have a consistent concept of what a superhero (or supervillain) is.

Take the Nolan Batman trilogy, which is probably my favorite of the recent franchises. About 90% of the dialogue in Batman Begins is exploring the idea that a superhero (even if they don't use that word) is a regular guy who employs showmanship and gadgets to create a larger than life persona. So even if Batman is unrealistically good at fighting multiple people at once, Bruce Wayne is still a normal human. So was Ra's Al Ghul. Even the Joker and Catwoman were just people playing dress-up. Things got a little weird with Bane and his freakish strength, but at least he wasn't introduced as an interdimensional alien or something. I end up relating more to what happens in Gotham because the 'rules' seem clear.

In the first two Iron Man movies, Tony Stark is a guy who becomes a superhero because his big brain and vast wealth let him create an unrealistically awesome metal suit. To appreciate those movies, I just needed to suspend my disbelief about ahead-of-its-time mechanical technology. Then when The Avengers came out, not only does it present a universe with absurd mech tech (Iron Man suit, the flying aircraft carrier), but also I need to suspend my disbelief about biological technology as well. Captain America? He's a superhero because he was given an injection during World War II. And the Hulk is a superhero because radiation exposure allows him to turn into a thousand pound green gorilla.

Oh yeah, and the bad guy in The Avengers is either a demi-god, or a visitor from a parallel dimension, depending on your point of view. Good thing his adopted brother and fellow demi-god with the magical hammer is fighting for the right side, though! The whole universe of The Avengers is so over the top, even by comic book standards, that it wouldn't surprise me if the sequel finds them battling an army of vampires. Or maybe even fighting Satan himself.

Like everything, it's all about application and use. It's like a videogame and the difference between one that has a high, or nice, quality of graphics, and one that has a poor quality. Sometimes the use is incorrect and the application is poor. The same can be said for computer-generated blood. Application and use. Now, in my opinion, the best usage for computer-generated blood is to heighten the "impact" of something. The impact being a gunshot, punch or hit, any impact of some sort. The worst usage is using it to "flow" or run, showing it dripping or collecting in large pools, or dripping off of a surface in large amounts.

I think the reason for why you can still like "bad" fake real blood, is it is still fun! Even if it looks horribly fake or poorly done, you can still have fun with it and laugh at it. When computer-generated blood is done badly, it just looks like somebody fucked it up. There isn't that ridiculous, wacky nature to computer-generated blood like there is to fake real blood.


I HATE EVERYTHING SO INTENSELY.

Shane Black has had such a weird career. Wrote Lethal Weapon, one of the best buddy cop/action movies. Was one of Arnie's crew in Predator. Much later, wrote/directed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a smaller-budget but drop-dead funny comedic crime movie about an incompetent thief, who is played by RDJ, with an excellent supporting role from Val Kilmer. It's just full of witty, hilarious dialog (though does try too hard in some parts, mostly in the occasional narration). Then he's tagged to write/direct Iron Man 3, a giant-budget superhero movie, which a lot of people didn't end up liking. The guy is just all over the place.

I think the Marvel Norse mythology stuff is actually really, really cool. The first Thor movie was mostly kinda boring but at least it offers a deeper, more interesting take on the superhero/supervillain trope than the more generic freak science accident paradigm. I'm looking forward to the next Thor movie, which will hopefully have more of Thor being a badass now that the origin stuff is out of the way.

I honestly don't think I've ever met someone who didn't at least get a kick out of Kiss Kiss. Even more bizarrely, I don't think I've ever met anyone under the age of 30 with a college education who hadn't seen Kiss Kiss. It really does seem to be Gen Y's movie of the naughties.

The New Godzilla Trailer has been leaked!!!!!!

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/4/48028 ... er-footage

Would You Rather: So, what we have here is torture porn, but with most of the truly cringe worthy shit being kept offscreen. Which begs the question: Why bother? Jeffrey Combs is in it, and hes as good as he usually is. His presence is the only reason to see it. Every character is generic and undeveloped, so you don't care what happens to them, and it's all so meab spirited as to be unpleasant. They even throw in a twist ending at the last second just to be dicks. Avoid unless you absolutely must see Robb Wells from Trailer Park Boys get his hand blown off.

Probably because Halloween is a few weeks away, my cable company put The Monster Squad on there. This movie is aimed at kids, so I can't advise people on this forum to make much of an effort to see it. Only reason I decided to watch it is because I remember liking it when I was younger. I either never knew, or had simply forgotten, that Shane Black had anything to do with it. But there it is on his filmography, way back in 1987, the same year as Lethal Weapon 1.

Went ahead and saw Gravity in the theater on Thursday night.

I was a huge fan of Cuaron's last movie "Children of Men", so I had pretty massive expectations for "Gravity". I'm not sure it really changed my whole perception of the 3D movie format like some people have been raving about... And yet I can't deny that the 3D format actually added a legitimate dimension to the film that is worth experiencing. On a technical level it is a brilliant movie - the scene with the ISS (I won't get more specific than that) was genuinely mind-blowing (fair warning; I was a little high at the time.) On an emotional level though it didn't have nearly the same effect as "Children of Men" or what I'd normally consider a great movie should have according to my taste in film. My biggest problem with the movie was that the script was not subtle enough to support the simplicity of the plot.

If they release a documentary about how this film was shot I will definitely be watching it.

Police Academy - 3/5

Entertaining 80s comedy. This doesn't really try to have a plot or any kind of characters - it's mostly in the 'wacky' school of comedies that Naked Gun and Airplane, and Stripes mostly, pioneered. But it's not really as good as those. Michael Winslow steals the show every time he comes on screen, but the bulk of the film is just Steve Guttenberg being a jackass and somehow also getting a really hot chick to make out with him. Enjoyable while it's on, but not something you'll go back to again and again.

Gravity - 4.5/5

Very cool. I didn't like Children of Men at all really, but this is much better - this is a very minimalist film, with a small cast and an even smaller number of actors who actually appear on screen. It's not really about the characters or the reason they're in space. Space dwarfs them. It almost eats them entirely. What this unfolds into is one of the better survival films I have seen lately out of theaters...it doesn't have a lot of dialogue, but the step-by-step scenes of the characters doing things are really engaging. Plus the stakes are very high: if they don't do this stuff, if they can't figure out the complexities, they will die all alone in the vast void of space. That's pretty fucking terrifying, and yields some of the best scares I've ever seen in a movie, of any genre. I mean, it's SPACE - it's an endless void of stars and cold, pitch-black nothingness that is millions of miles away from everything you know. The movie does a good job of impressing that on the viewers. It doesn't bullshit around and it delivers what it's trying to do 100% - it just breezed right by like it was nothing. One of the best films of the year.

Don Jon - 4.5/5

I really enjoy Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The prospect of a whole movie written, directed by and starring him was enough to pique my interest. It's a clever sort of flick, a kind of ironic dark comedy, about a guy who is addicted to porn. He meets a really hot chick, thinks he's in love with her and so his life begins to change. It's a bit of a straightforward film, with Levitt's narration helping even the simplest of viewers understand what's happening, but it's still very well done. The character of Jon is well done and the relationship is depicted in a very stark way. Neither character is made out to be smarter than he or she is, and I like that - it doesn't try to glamorize things; it just gives you how two rather shallow, average people would act. The humor is low-key and subtle, but it works and makes a very entertaining backdrop with the more serious message going on. If you're not into stuff about romance or human drama, this will not interest you, but if you like any of Judd Apatow's work, this is far better. While I wish Levitt had left some more of the film's meaning to our imagination and spelled less of it out, the fact remains - it's a very well made, funny and deft film. Very cool.

I watched Insidious 2 the other day. I haven't seen the first one, but the movie was awful. It was hardly scary, major fucking plot holes, the acting cheesy; it was just cringe-inducingly fucking stupid. I'd give it a 1/5.

P.S. When I saw the trailer for Gravity with Bullock swinging around in space, I laughed my ass off. I know it was supposed to be scary, but it was just too funny. I mean, come on, she's spinning around like she's on a fucking swing ride. I kept expecting Merry-go-Round music to be playing. How low are all of your expectations to find that shit scary.

There's probably "major fucking plot holes" because you didn't see the first one.

You saw a trailer and are trying to tell me, who saw the movie, whether or not I can have a certain opinion on it. I bet you are a real smart dude.

The first film is great. The second film is lame, and wasn't the movie James Wan really wanted to make this year.

I had high hopes for Insidious 2 because of the first one. Oh well...guess I won't be seeing it now.

Everybody go see "ESCAPE PLAN" on Oct 18th....I worked as the asssistant to one of the producers on it. On set everyday. First film job. Very excited to see how it gets received.

Just to be clear, I'm not backing the dude's opinion, but I too had a good ol' harharhar at the Gravity trailer. I'm sure the movie provides more of a context to what's happening, (let me take a stab: danger in space?) but seeing Sandra Bullock swinging around all whacky-like in space with that ridiculously dramatic music playing (at least this is how I remember it) had the adverse effect on me. Just imagine for a second that when she starts swinging, five seconds later Yakety Sax kicks in. Tell me with a straight face you wouldn't find that hilarious.

But keep in mind the fact that I find "space" films to be slow burns and very boring. Films akin to Apollo 13 aren't my thing. 2001: A Space Odyssey is interesting though, because it toys with ideas such as artificial intelligence, seclusion and the future!

Ok, first off, I wasn't criticizing it for being unclear, I could understand what was going on in the movie for the most part. Second off, a movie shouldn't use the "it's a sequel" excuse to backfire any criticism from one who hasn't seen the first movie. It's a lazy way to say "you're not allowed to say I suck", simply because I'm judging a movie based on its own merits. Third off, here's the major plot hole I was talking about:

When the spirits (the dad, psychiatrist, and lady; I'm not gonna bother looking up their names) apparently went back in time to see what the kid meant by saying "I'll show you" and magically opening the door, why did it take them from the beginning of the movie to the very fucking end of it for them to find where the guy's memories are? Were they just lollygagging around in the closet, looking for the memory while the people in real life were figuring out that the father was being possessed? Unless I have no complete understanding of the concept of time itself, the movie technically should have ended halfway through.

I mean, I tried to create a suspension of disbelief, and say to myself that "you haven't seen the first movie, you're not going to understand everything in the movie quite yet. Just go with it." But that plot point really bugged me.

That's unfortunate. I mean, I'm no James Wan fan, but I think it's really saddening when a director is forced to make changes to the movie against his own will.

Since it's Halloween I'm going on a horror movie binge - any recommendations? I prefer more psychological horror / thriller like The Shining - I'm not into torture porn garbage.

Well, the way it's done in Gravity creates tension and really keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's a good flick. I also don't see what's silly about the way she was swinging around.

Not psychological horror but The Stuff is one of my favorite horror movies ever and gets watched every halloween.



Watched The Hobbit the other night and it made me realize it has been FAR too long since I read it as I can't honestly critique it against the book. That being said, on it's own I thought it was enjoyable and seemed to go by pretty quick for how long it was. Excited for the next one.

Well, I don't see how it creates tension, and I was only at the edge of my seat because I was laughing so hard.

I'm not giving a bad review to a movie I've never watched, all I'm saying is that the trailer, itself, affected me differently than it did to other people. Seeing how it's the trailers that get people to see the movies in the first place, I'm just surprised that many people were inspired to go and watch it based on that silly trailer.

How about 1408 ?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450385/

For something older, maybe Burnt Offerings.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074258/

Older still, is The Black Castle; a very enjoyable, atmospheric, gothic thriller.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044423/

Time for a roundup of all the movies I watched last week.

Curse of Chucky - I had watched Child's Play 2 the night I got this one, so I was already in the mood for it. My thing with the Child's Play series is that it got much better once it stopped trying to be serious and just started being goofy, which the second movie showed signs of. Curse of Chucky goes back to being serious, and somehow, someway, it totally works. It's a serious take on Chucky that isn't unintentionally hilarious at times; there's no people falling out of windows and crashing into cars from 6 stories up here. They took the stitches off the doll in this one, and it helps so much more in making Chucky creepy than if he had the stitches and scarring. The main girl is pretty good with her role and she sells everything going on around her well enough, although she's really the only "good" actor in the whole movie. That's not to say that everyone else in the movie sucks, but this main girl is so much better than everyone else that it makes the rest of the cast (aside from Brad Dourif, of course) look weaker in comparison. I'd say give it a watch, especially if you're a fan of the numbered Child's Play movies where they were a bit more serious.

I Spit On Your Grave 2 - This movie I was absolutely dreading when I first heard about it. It's a sequel to that dogshit remake from a few years ago, and since the same guy who made that movie made this one, I was fully expecting a horrible, horrible movie. What I got instead was something a million times better than the first one, but still not something I'd ever really watch again. As a rape/revenge movie, it handles the expected first half so much better than the previous movie that it's kind of startling. I'm certain it's because this movie is completely unrelated to the first one, nor is it (aside from one scene in the middle) mimicking scenes from the original movie, so there's nothing really to compare the rape and abuse scenes to. The same general idea of an I Spit On Your Grave-style movie is used here: hot female goes someplace where really skeevy dudes are, one of them takes a liking to her, this escalates to them raping her over and over and over again. This one, however, takes it up a notch as the rapists end up drugging the girl, kidnapping her away to Bulgaria, and keeping her as a sex slave for at least a few days. She then escapes and plots her revenge by brutally murdering each of the rapists. The main girl is both a much better actress than the first movie's girl and her revenge pieces are nowhere near as preposterous or Jigsaw-esq as the first girl. The only way I could ever possibly recommend this is if you're somehow a die hard I Spit On Your Grave fan. Otherwise, give it the curiosity watch and never turn it on again. Not necessarily because it's a bad movie, but just because one view is all you can really get out of it.

Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan - If this isn't a SyFy original movie, then it needs to be. It's got all the trademarks of a SyFy movie: Shitty acting, terrible CGI, preposterous story, and it's hilarious...up to a point. The first half is so funny it hurts, thanks almost entirely to both the crappy acting of the main "kids" (put in quotations because almost all of these people are at least in their mid-20s) and the overacting of Sarge, the not-so-friendly authority figure accompanying our juvenile delinquents on a week long first offender's camping trip. When they arrive, one of the slabs of meat steals a large bull's horn, which summons the wrath of a giant yellow troll that this movie has decided to call Paul Bunyan. Then Sarge dies and the movie begins to get progressively more boring, culminating in Joe Estevez giving what feels like a 15 minute monologue on the origins of Paul Bunyan. Once Sarge dies, the movie becomes practically worthless, as it just drags and drags and drags until you are just begging for it to be over. There are a couple moments of hilarity in the second half however, like Bunyan throwing a girl ass over teakettle into a tree. Still, despite the second half dropoff, it's still much better than...

American Mary - Netflix branded this as a horror movie, and I'm not sure why. There's absolutely nothing scary about this movie at all. Even as a gore film there's nothing to it, as there's very little blood aside from one shot near the beginning of a dude's mangled face, some surgery footage, and a couple stabbings near the end. The premise is Katherine Isabelle is an aspiring surgeon in medical school who needs money, and through a series of unfortunate events she ends up quitting medical school to go work in the dangerous and terrifying field of...underground consensual body modifications. You can see where I'm coming from with the whole "How is this scary?" thing, can't you? The actual body mod surgeries aren't grotesque in the slightest considering that the majority of it is consensual, save for her torturing a former teacher of her's who wronged her in a pretty severe way, nor do you see much of anything in these scenes. It's not like the surgery scene in Saw III either, where the grotesque element came from it taking place in a dirty, dingy room with practically makeshift tools. All the surgery scenes in American Mary take place in pristine, spotless, professional operating rooms. SCARY. I'm pretty sure the main crux the filmmakers were banking on people watching this for was to see Katherine Isabelle in skimpy dresses and leather surgical attire, and while she does fill these outfits incredibly well, she plays her character as uninterested as humanely possible. She shows emotion maybe 4 times in this whole movie, and one of those times is during a dream sequence from another character. Don't watch this movie unless you're having trouble sleeping.

If you want the be all end all of psychological horror, you can't go wrong with "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".

Just watch The Devil Rides Out and The Wicker Man, guys.

Necro, how did it get burned? HOWDIDITGETBURNED?!

My current project is to see every Child's Play movie.

Child's Play 2 - This is a decent sequel. It has the same child actor as the original, and he manages to avoid getting on my nerves the way some kids do. The final showdown at the

is pretty cool. The Chucky special effects have aged well, I think. I admit it, his face is creepy when he's in Angry Mode.

Child's Play 3 - Not terrible, but the premise was starting to wear out its welcome. The opening scene is very similar to the beginning of part 2. The filmmakers do try to mix things up by aging the Andy Barclay character a few years and having an older actor play him, but then they introduce a new, younger character (Tyler) who once again serves as the target of Chucky's soul swapping plan. There's also a nice-yet-tough young woman (played by Mrs. Ari from Entourage!) who serves the same purpose as the short haired blonde from part 2. I'll give it this: the military school setting was unique.

Next I'll watch Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky, neither of which I've seen before.

PS - I agree, American Mary was disappointing. I thought I Spit on Your Grave 2 was OK for what it was, but I felt the same about I Spit on Your Grave 1 (the remake).

I'm not referring to the Cage one, which even I couldn't sit through. The original is a masterpiece of atmosphere.

I thought Child's Play 3 was okay. It was at least as good as 2, if not better. And yeah, the female interest (perrey reeves) is a 10 in my book all day long.

I'm not talking about the trailer, I'm talking about the movie. I'm telling you guys who think the trailer looks silly, that the movie really works to scare the shit out of you with the vastness of space. That's it.

Plus I dunno, I don't have a problem with the spinning or whatever. Picturing myself in that position - spinning around like a pinwheel with very little chance of ever going back home - made it effective enough. Got to have some imagination. But then again I guess it just comes back to that whole movie versus trailer thing.

I'm watching a bunch of old monster movies right now for Halloween. Then I'll move onto some newer stuff I haven't seen yet - got The Brood and Bad Taste on my Netflix queue. Plus some I've seen before - Rosemary's Baby, TCM, The Beyond, Session 9, etc.

THE BROOOOOOOOODD. Oh yes. Let us know what you think, Emp. One of my favorite Cronenberg films apart from Scanners, and probably my overall favorite just due to its awesomely cold, remote atmosphere and fucking out-there psychotherapeutic-nightmare concept. Definitely gonna catch some missed Cronenberg myself this year... Shivers, Crimes of the Future, and eXistenZ.

Started off the Halloween film season with What Lies Beneath the other night. I was expecting some cheese but was pleasantly surprised at how relatively well-done this was for a chilly modern ghost story. Not anything revelatory but a solid piece of work.

Cronenberg is weird for me, I've seen a handful of his films - I thought Eastern Promises and Videodrome were really good. Dead Zone was solid if a bit too safe, especially since I usually expect such dark grisliness from Cronenberg - but here he mostly just stuck to the King book without really pushing the limits. Scanners and A History of Violence I thought were pretty average, and Cosmopolis I couldn't even watch all the way through. The Brood looks awesome though, really looking forward to it.

The idea is fine, I just didn't think its execution worked. It worked more for me in "2001: A Space Odyssey" when Dr. Frank Poole was flung away into space, because it just showed him hopelessly floating away without any distracting cacophony. In space there is no sound, so I find it much scarier when someone is shown suffering with complete silence rather than loud crashing, banging noises and "tense" music playing in the background. It's only my opinion.

There are lots of ways to scare people. If you haven't really seen the movie you don't really have much ground to stand on there. A trailer isn't everything, especially since Gravity is one of the only films lately where the trailer doesn't just give away everything that happens in the whole fucking thing.

After my own heart, The Brood is one of favourite horror movies also. It's mostly a slow burner with horror that could be interchangeable with others of the slasher sub-genre but the third act knocks it out of the park. It has a shock factor that combined with an intelligent and dramatic story, with characters you deeply grow attached to, all wrestle intensively with your emotions by it's climax. I've yet to watch Shivers and Rabid, which I of course expect great things as Cronenberg's past work is terrific, unlike his run-of-the-mill straight drama nonsense he's does now. At least there's hope with Brandon Cronenberg and his disturbing Antiviral film, which I've yet to hear anything negative about.

So they're making Dumb & Dumber 2 and Jennifer Lawrence is also rumored to act in it. I'm really hoping it turns out great coz the first movie is such a childhood favorite of mine.

I finally got to watch Before Midnight. I thought it was great and well spaced out. There weren't just scenes involving the two in long conversations but fittingly there were other characters intermingled in the scenes too. It's been a while since I watched the previous movie but I felt it was more interesting than Before Sunset. What I liked about this movie was that things weren't handed on a platter to be figured out. Over the course of the movie, you get an idea how the dynamics between Jesse and Celine have changed over the years. While it gives closure to the series, it also makes you wonder about how things would end up another 10 years from now.