It'll be slightly strange seeing Jeff Daniels play a bumbling doofus again after he's done The Newsroom for a couple years. Still, I hope it's at least watchable, and science knows Jim Carrey has been struggling in that department for the last few years.

Here you go.

I think the reason why The Hunger Games is more popular then Battle Royale is because BR is in Japanese. I feel its a vastly superior movie, based more in reality and much faster paced then The Hunger Games. They are different but the premise is pretty much the same. Am I the only one who thinks this?

Not having seen (or read) The Hunger Games, but being familiar with the concept behind it, it feels more similar with The Running Man (film) than Battle Royale. While Battle Royale is more about the ruthlessness of modern society in Japan, capitalism and its effects, corporation and competitiveness in the world in general, The Hunger Games and The Running Man focus more on entertaining the masses, game shows and reality TV taken to extremes, entertainment no matter the cost to humanity. Of course, The Running Man being made in the roaring 80s while The Hunger Games is rooted in the economic depression of our times, wealth and class play a more important part in the latter.

If you mean on the surface though, I can't comment on that except that I doubt The Hunger Games has such a comedic take on its subject as The Running Man.

That's one of the reasons.

I think Dumb and Dumber To might turn out alright considering it's the same team although I'm uneasy about it being modernised. I understand they have to because they're are older, but why not set it in 2004? They look about the same as then and it wouldn't have to cater so much to the Gen Y trend hopping sensibilities. I feel uneasy at the possibility of facebook, reddit, meme and twitter jokes and cameos from Danny McBride and Seth Rogen. I mean you look at the first one and there's basically no dated material, so why turn it on it's head and start poking fun at what's now? It makes little to no sense other than appealing to all audiences of today.

I watched FUBAR and FUBAR II: Balls to the Wall last night with my woman. I was very glad that she seemed to enjoy the movies just as much as I do, laughing all the way through them. I wish there was more Terry and Deaner available to us! More metal comedies in general wouldn't hurt

I agree, the similarities between The Hunger Games and Battle Royale are vastly overstated. Only the most general part of the premise is the same (teenagers being forced to kill each other within a wildlife preserve-like arena by a dystopian government), pretty much every single other thing about the two movies is different. In THG the major conflict is class-based, while in BR it's generational.

That said, I didn't care for the Hunger Games movie all that much. I haven't read the book, so it would probably have much more impact if I had, but so much of it just felt rushed - we were expected to feel things that the movie just didn't properly build up. Example:


A lot of the movie felt just like that - forcing emotions at us because they were in the book, but while the book had (I assume) taken the time to carefully lay the groundwork for them, the movie had 500+ pages of plot to paraphrase and couldn't take the time to do much more than briefly sketch anything but the most important plot points.

Battle Royale on the other hand had a very simple plot, took the time to flesh it out, and developed it much better. It was a much better movie.

Being John Malkovich. An underrated classic.

What are some annoying flaws you have found in otherwise great movies?

For me:

Citizen Kane:

Now I'm not giving anything away by saying that the point of this movie is that journalists are trying to uncover what Charles Foster Kane meant when he uttered his last word: "Rosebud". However, when you watch the movie, Charles Foster Kane says this word when no-one is around: the nurse only rushes in after he said his dying word, and no-one could have possibly heard it.

Donnie Darko:

Now, I might not have understood this movie perfectly: it's pretty confusing.


Kill Bill:

This one would be one of my favourite movies, but...



The Fountainhead:

The flaw in this movie lies with Ayn Rand's original novel, so I can hardly blame the film makers.



Finally, and this one is really nitpicky.

The Buddy Holly Story:

Gary Busey does a good job of playing Buddy Holly, but Buddy Holly was left handed. At the time most left-handed guitarists restrung their guitars to play, but Buddy Holly played a right-handed guitar turned upside-down, which made him one of the most unique guitarists of his time. Gary Busey did not do this.

So what are some of those great movies that it's difficult to enjoy due to one such flaw?

I'm quite a few pages late for the Funny Games discussion, but I just saw the 2007 version and thought it was pretty much worthless, except for Michael Pitt's performance. When he wasn't speaking directly to the audience, at least.


I could do without the incest kiss in The Empire Strikes Back.

Paranormal Activity-After a series of vicious and brutal attacks in their new house, a couple's efforts to video-tape the culprit leads to a more harrowing series of attacks by the ghostly perpetrators and force them into ever more dangerous methods of getting away from the creepy beings. Frankly, there's not enough here to really care at all for it. The main issue with this one is the main selling point of the movie, that the found-footage aspect of this one manages to completely undo the film on several vantage points. From the very first seconds of frame-time, the film makes a big deal about the whole effort being shot with a hulking video-camera instead of a smaller, more portable device throughout the duration of the film, and essentially that means numerous opportunities of having to handle the unwieldy object through situations that require the safety of their own well-being before documentation is required, so a lot of time is spent on them trying to keep the camera rolling rather than get to a safe location, and it really takes a lot of the suspense away from the scene. As well, the fact remains that the events have to be captured by the camera to be able to figure out what's going on as there's no way to tell what's going on from time-to-time, since the camera can't capture everything so noises, banging and scratches that go off-screen are exactly that, off-screen noises that leave no definitive take on what's going on. Those issues are combined with two other big negatives here, the ungodly amount of build-up that basically leaves this one with very little going on for the majority of the time since they're reacting to everything around them first before the main attacks come in, which really aren't that dangerous since the stationary camera doesn't go chase them to see what's going on and certainly makes this feel a lot longer than it should. That said, there's some good stuff here as the last half where the attacks actually get physical rather than just the odd or the off-screen are absolutely fun and enjoyable, including the beating in the bedroom hallway and the encounter in the dining room which are pretty creepy, and the fact that it's got a creepy story set-up works for it. Overall, it's a real mixed bag but ends up on the bottom rung of decent.

Yeah, but they didn't know they were siblings at the time.

Insufficient justification.

Carrie Fisher looked so good back then I almost wouldn't care. Almost.

So just saw Gravity 2 days ago.

Let me first say that I'm no movie pro! So my bad if my review is not as perfect

Gravity was an amazing experience (yes, experience). I perfectly remember how everyone left the theater in silence, it was that good. The cinematography, the dialogues, the characters and the emotion were perfectly executed. The aesthetic nature of the movie was simply beautiful, you could see every single detail and the atmosphere was terrifyingly brilliant. It is also amazing how, even though there was little or no character development, I felt as if I knew them; simply through their actions. That is why i call it an amazing experience; because you really feel as if you were part of the vast journey through space. I may have not seen many movies, but I think this is my favorite movie for now. Will give it a 10/10

I'm all done with my Child's Play marathon, now I only need to see Curse of Chucky when it comes to DVD.

Bride of Chucky - This 4th entry in the series reminds me of the 4th Elm Street movie (The Dream Master). Scary? Not really. Entertaining? Absolutely! It somehow doesn't bother me that the plot revolves around Charles Lee Ray's human body being buried with a super important magical amulet that I don't think was even mentioned in the previous movies. In terms of casting, I knew beforehand that Jennifer Tilly is in this and voices the female doll, but I had no idea Katherine Heigl and John Ritter (RIP) would appear as well.

Seed of Chucky - Despite my enjoyment of part 4, I wasn't sure I'd like part 5 because I feared the "Jennifer Tilly playing herself" gimmick would be too self-indulgent. Turns out they pulled it off rather well. She's quite a trooper with the self-deprecating humor, too. There's a Britney Spears gag that makes this one feel dated, but even after 5 movies nothing in the Child's Play franchise has pissed me off the way Nightmare on Elm Street eventually did (I even like ANoES 5 to some extent, but I despise Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare). Let's hope Chucky doesn't shit the bed in part 6 the way Freddy did.

Chuck 4 and 5 give me douchechills. Can't stand them.

Have any of you saw It's A Disaster? I liked it, but what did you guys think of how they ended it?

Last night I watched Inglourious Basterds and man, Quentin knows how to create interesting characters, it's always better to watch his movies more than once, so you can see things that you didn't the first time, really love the dialogues and the way everything builds up, Hans Landa is definitely one of my favorite characters ever, and Brad Pitt did a great job as Aldo, kind of reminded me to his role as the Gipsy guy in Snatch, because of the funny accent. I'm looking forward to watch Reservoir Dogs soon.

"The Ebola Syndrome". HOLY...FUCKING...SHIT. This was one of the silliest, stupidest, funniest, sleaziest and weirdest movies I've ever seen! A Chinese film, its about a sick psycho who kills his boss and goes into hiding in Africa for a few years. While there he rapes a native woman who happens to have the ebola virus. Well luckily for him, he has an immunity to the virus and becomes a carrier of it, using that to his advantage when he goes on a ludicrouds revenge spree.



This movie includes, but is not limited to having, the main character masturbating into pork and later having it cooked up for customers, people getting turned into pork sandwiches, gratuitous sex and rape, on-screen animal slaughter, jaw-dropping, beyong non-PC dialogue, and a bucketload of blood n gore, though clearly that aspect was heavily cut. Still, I really reccomend it for fans of sick, sleazy and totally over the top horror movies.

Machete Kills was terrible.

It looked worse than Kick Ass 2 from the trailer. Don't think I'll be seeing it.

Watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Rosemary's Baby and The Beyond all in a row tonight to wind down after a long weekend of traveling. Good shit.

I'm not justifying it, just explaining it. Leia wanted to get back at Han, so she kissed the nearest guy, who happened to be Luke Skywalker. I don't think George Lucas was trying to insinuate anything.

I liked Machete Kills, but what I didn't like about it was the horrible cgi blood and that they spoil the movie with a trailer at the beginning . I had no idea theyd be doing a damn near Star Wars tribute....Alexa Vega :>P

Just saw Gravity yesterday, was pretty cool. Simple 'shit goes wrong in space' premise, but executed well. The scenes where Sandra Bullock is scrabbling for purchase on one of the space stations to avoid being flung out into the void are terrifying. 3D also definitely added a lot, making the isolated islands of matter stand out starkly against the backdrop of limitless space. There's not really a whole lot to it other than the premise, but it's exciting and there's no bullshit in its short 90-minute runtime.

Machete in space? Goddamn, I must see this immediately.

It's really not as cool as you think. Where the original Machete seemed like a love letter to exploitation (mexploitation), this one felt like a parody of exploitation films. They just threw together a series of ridiculous scenes with no regards to action momentum or pacing. Seriously, it was the most flat feeling movie I've seen in god knows how long. The whole thing was just "ok , now Machete does this. Now this random celebrity does this. Now gun tits. Why? Who gives a shit." Like Aaron said as well, the CGI blood looked BAD, as did pretty much every effect.What was up with Machete himself too? He speaks like a monosyllabic retard for the whole thing. Machete don't this, Machete don't that. Fucking tedious. It all comes down to the fact that I had very little fun watching it, and fun is one of the only things a movie like this is striving for.

I'm shocked Machete got a sequel before Sin City. It's not like it's expensive to make either what with it being all green screen. If Robert Rodigeuz gave a damn, Sin City 3 would be in cinemas by now.

As for Machete Kills, I imagine like the first one it's download worthy at best.

It's supposed to be ridiculous/stupid/over the top. It was a little too James Bond/Austin Powers though. Where did you get the "random celebrity" from?

I've said it before, but: that does not negate a movie simply having awful quality.

Speaking of which, I finally watched High Tension the other night. Complete fucking waste of time.

I like bad movies.

Haute Tension is hilarious. Gory movies are funny. I view horror movies as stage magic basically, and it's just meant to trick the viewer into thinking something is real, but it's not.

I used to really like High Tension, but not so much now. Has some really great settings and imagery in the latter bits with the "chase" scenes though.

I just remember High Tension being extremely fucked up and creepy. What's the consensus on Wolf Creek?

I might have mentioned Wolf Creek a few pages ago as an unspectacular modern horror movie that looks like a masterpiece compared to The Loved Ones. I don't even remember that much about WC aside from its rather slow buildup, but I guess the movie was adequate for what it was. Oh, they're making Wolf Creek 2? Maybe I'll see it eventually.

About High Tension,

Watching "Vault of Horror" right now. Classic creepy/cheesey 70's British horror.

Just saw Lost in Translation. Holy shit that ending.

So I am watching Extract and IDK if anyone has noticed but this guy is some metal guy and he has worn Mastodon, Exhumed and Cephalic Carnage shirts. He also has the best lines in the movie. So far really digging this movie.

While we're on the subject of New French Extremity, I just finished watching Martyrs. It walks a FINE line between good and bad, and oftentimes ended up slightly more on the bad side. The whole deal with this movie is that the ever overused "secret society", this time dedicated to finding out if there's an afterlife, subjects a woman to horrible tortures in an effort to make her achieve transcendence and become a "martyr" for their cause. The entire second half of the movie is this, and the entire first half is about the girl's friend who had escaped these people and seeks them out to kill them. The thing about the first half of the movie is that it feels like you're watching a movie while somebody is using the chapter skip function to finish scenes before they're actually done. It's like a movie playing in fast forward, and it honestly felt incomplete and choppy. Once it switches to the nonstop torture, it pretty much becomes the first five minutes of Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment over and over and over again, right down to fading in and out for every transition. Chick gets beat up, fade out, fade in on her being force fed this yellow soup stuff, fade out, fade in on more beatings, fade out, fade in on her getting a forced haircut and pissing into a bucket, fade out, lather, rinse, repeat. Whereas the first half of the movie felt really underdone and short, the second half of the movie drags and drags and DRAGS. It's such a jarring pace shift that you really have to see it to believe it.

One very positive thing I'll say about this is that the special effects are incredible. It's all practical and that made all the difference in the world. From people being blown away with shotguns (including children) to the horribly scarred and fucked up body of a fellow torture victim to legit one of the nastiest gore moments I've ever seen in a movie, the effects are very convincing, very bloody, and just plain disgusting to look at. The 2nd half's girl's face is also smashed into a swollen, bleeding pulp throughout, and the makeup on her in the aftermath of these beatings also must be seen to be believed. The acting from the two main girls is also quite good, particularly the 2nd half's perpetual victim. Even though the 2nd half is for the most part free of any dialogue, she sells everything that's going on perfectly through body language and facial expressions. However, these are really the only great things about the movie, and they just aren't enough to save it from the pacing issues. Give it a curiosity watch, marvel at the gore effects, and leave it alone.

Subrick absolutely nailed Martyrs. He did such a comprehensive job with reviewing it that I'm actually at loss for words to add. (I'm as surprised as you)