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The Best and Worst Movies of 2003?
rufey asks: "As 2003 comes to a close, I thought it would be interesting to ask Slashdot what they thought the best and worst movie of 2003 was, and why. At the beginning of the year there was excitement about parts 2 and 3 of The Matrix triology, X-Men 2, and of course, LOTR: Return of the King. In Slashdot's opinion, what did and didn't live up to the hype and expectations, and were there any surprises?"
The Matrix proved itself to be the weak series it threatened to be in the first movie.
Lost in Translation
American Splendor
LoTR...meh..Go check out Bubba HoTep
shouldn't this be a poll?
litigious bastards
suck it sco!
3 words:
Bubba. Ho. Tep.
This movie was much better than I thought it was going to be. It was fun to watch and see how Jack Black interact with a bunch of high class elemtary school students.
Not an award winner, or even close, but still a lot better than I was anticipating.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
nemo was pretty darn good for a major released cartoon.
The matrixes were ok, but didn't live up to the hype the first one caused.
i personally though 28 days later was a good movie.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Yes, it was totally predictable, and standard.. but even so, it was awesome. If this is an indication of what Disney might make more of in the future, than I'm glad.
Kill Bill was a surprise. But on second thoughts you never expect the Pulp fiction chap to churn out shoddy things. Though it was too violent for some people's taste, the action scenes are choreographed to perfection. No CGI etc and pure raw martal arts and it beats matrix hands down in the fights. The volume one of Kill Bill was released this year. Check out IMDB
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
28 Days Later may be the best horror movie that I've seen since the original alien. An amazing amount of tension - but what really got me was that it didn't rely on special effects. From an effects perspective, you could have made the same movie in 1970.
Watch this movie and realize that you can do sci-fi and horror without relying on the crutch of CGI effects.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Matrix Revolutions, overrated?
It was rated very poorly by nearly every crit...
Oh.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
A truly hilarious film. There was some controversy that people might have confused it for a lighter Christmas parody, but it was an excellent dark farce.
Best quote from Billy Bob Thorton, while in a Santa suit, while having anal sex with a woman: "You're not going to shit right for a week."
I was really surprised how entertaining X-Men2 was... I didn't enjoy the first terribly, but Nightcrawler alone sold me on the third. Plus, there was better (but still weak) character devolpment, plus tiny peeks of some old favorites (Shadowcat, Colossus, etc.) Surprisingly good... After Reloaded, I don't think many were surprised that Revolutions was as bad as it was though... Reeves' acting started to get cheesy, and the storyline? Good grief...
When I found out I was going to conclude The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings in 2003 all within months of each other, I was jittered with excitement. Both movie series filled in two seperate geek aspects; computers and epic fantasy. Some say The Matrix fell short with the sequels, but I won't get into the argument. I for one enjoyed all three Matrix films, and that's that. The ending of Revolutions left me somewhat satisfied, but not filled with joy knowing and seeing the end. Now just the other night I watched Return of the King and that void of emotion has been completely filled. Not only did The Lord of the Rings movie series end, it gave a full out conclusion. Most people not familiar with the books (That's me until I saw FOTR and then read the books for the first time) would assume that when the ring is destroyed the movie would end. Instead we're returned to the purity of Middle Earth as it once was before the corruption of the ring where the king of men rules once more, and the Hobbits drink, dance and sing joyfull songs. Unlike Matrix Revolutions we just get the idea that the Matrix lives on, but those who want out are freed and the machines no longer go off patrolling and killing humans from Zion (Assuming the humans don't go off killing the machines). That ending is nice and non-conventional, but it leaves an emotional gap. Return of the King fills the void, and even overflows it.
:'-(
"You bow to no one..."
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I agree. That was fantastic. I saw that on Wednesday night and then saw RoTK today. I'd have to say that those two along with "Finding Nemo" are the best of this year.
For movies that were absolutely terrible I vote: "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" and "Anger Management" and "American Wedding" (I didn't bother finishing that even).
The anti-salmon
Kangaroo Jack
Best movie? Pirates of the Carabian was good, I haven't watched Seabiscuit yet (I've got it on DVD near me right now), I liked X-2, and I thought that The Matrix: Reloaded was entertaining, Nemo was fantastic, I loved A Mighty Wind, and those are the only 2k3 movies that I've seen (that I can think of) as I only watch DVDs.
Does Chicago count? It came out Dec 25th of last year, so that's within the last year (not last calender year though).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
That one gets my vote. :) Quietly, unassumingly scary. :) :)
Not many movies get me on the edge of my seat, but The Ring did just that.
I was pondering not seeing it, as I thought it'd be a standard 'blood and guts' horror, which I find both boring, and irritating.
It's anything but. True psychological horror.
Bad Santa was as close to a perfect movie as I've seen in a long time. It stayed true to itself, managed to be funny, thoughtful, and obscene all at once, and the characters and plot developed while still having plenty of action and slapstick.
LotR: RotK was second in my book. I'm a geek who reads the book every year. Yet somehow I don't hold the book or its author up as holy items beyond reproach or critique. Peter Jackson has done a marvelous, magnificent thing with these three movies and I hope he wins some awards this year (best director, screenplay, and/or movie) from the big shows like Oscar and Globe. I find the nitpicks humorous and interesting as pieces of trivia, but feel sad about and pity towards those who get up in a bunch about minor inconsistencies, mistakes, and additions/omissions in such a masterpiece.
My guilty pleasure this year was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It was much better than all the reviews led me to believe. I actually enjoyed it more than X2 by a large margin. It was a fun action movie with really cool steam-punk technology and "magical" mythical heroes. What's not to like?
My biggest disappointments were the Matrix sequals. WTF happened? Jackson did it right and the Wachowskis did not. My personal theory is that if the Wachowskis had been given the opporunity to shoot the three all at once The Matrix would be held up as a peer to LotR. The huge delay between The Matrix and Reloaded caused all kinds of subtle problems and gave the brothers too much time to think about the screenplay. Sometimes less is more.
My happiest moment was when I discovered how to rip DVDs I rent to my hard disk. Then I burn those rips onto SVCDs to pass around to my friends as cheap Christmas presents.
God bless us, every pirate!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Also known as "Belleville Rendez-Vous".
French animated feature, very bizarre and entertaining. Lots more fun to look at than any American feature cartoon in recent memory. It reminded me why I got into animation in the first place.
egypt urnash minimal art.
It got moderated funny, but I'm the parent of a toddler and: that's exactly right. It was a lame tacking-together of a bunch of older footage that didn't even hold my three-year-old's interest.
On the other hand, he likes Kiki's Delivery Service a whole lot (but that wasn't 2003, so it doesn't count).
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
By contrast, Return of the King, shows how to deliver. It was easily one of the best movies this year, for nerds and for "normal" moviegoers alike. There are few, if any, unnecessary scenes in the over 3 hours the movie played. In the previous two, you could count on the Arwen dream scenes for a chance to get to the bathroom, but ROTK gave you no such opportunities. The battles dwarfed Helms Deep and the incomprehensibly presented battle for the dock in Matrix Revolution just paled in comparison.
I would say the Matrix follow-ups are the biggest disappointments, giving a great example of how throwing cash at a franchise always isn't the best thing to do, while X2 shows how upping the budget and actually having a script that makes sense and stays true to the spirit of the overall story of the franchise can give it huge momentum for the years to come.
My biggest surprise was Dirty Pretty Things. After writing this off as a wife movie (due to Audrey Tautou being in it), I really enjoyed the movie and look forward to it coming out on DVD. It was in limited release and come out around here in the later part of the year, so it may still be playing where you are. Do see it if you have the chance
Entered its 13th year of footage this March, and continues today with no clear end in sight. What movie is that? Operation Iraqi Freedom
While not really _made_ in 2003(but more or less properly(if you can call a horrible(imho) dub proper) released in North America, I think Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi(Spirited Away, that is) would definitely be the best of the movies that I'm aware of, with the other two Ghibli films released in April being very close...Don't know about the worst, but imho The Two Towers was not worth going even once(I fell victim to all the hype...not going to happen anymore :)
The question itself is too much of a potential flamebait, so perhaps I'd better not expand anything and stop here...
But Gigli and Kangaroo Jack takes the cake for the worst ones..
Not exactly. Actually, according to the IMDB bottom 100 films listing, From Justin to Kelly (the American Idol movie) is the #1 hands-down worst movie of all time. AND IT DESERVES IT. cf. review here or on IMDB. Or..wow.
I am proud to have fought hard to get low votes for that movie. It was like Mary Poppins without Mary (or popping); like The Sound of Music without any Sound or Music worth re-hearing; like Oklahoma! only set on a god-awful Florida beach.
That said, if you want something to laugh at and have a friend who was foolish enough to pay for a copy of this tripe and you have free time and want to stare off into space for a while, From Justin to Kelly is the movie for you.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
The Hulk was made by an accomplished film maker that made one of my (and probably one of your) favorite films of all time . Visually and artistically, Hulk (while not the BEST movie ever) was not nearly as bad as everyone pretends. I think the problem was everyone was expecting "fun but dumb" and when they received something that was a little more experimental in style and truer to the tortured character from the comic books (especially the later ones), everyone felt cheated that they didn't get a "real" comic book movie. Maybe it wasn't Lee's best decision to try passing off something so different to a summer movie audience, but in a purely academic sense it really wasn't that bad. I would even say it was good.
(Revoutions, of the other hand... I've seen better writing on a cereal box. I think they really phoned that one in.)
I made the mistake of renting Hulk on DVD. Well, at least that wouldn't have been as big a mistake as watching it in the theater. I was pretty stunned at how terrible the CGI was. Sure, I had seen the TV commericals but I naively figured that those commericals had been thrown together before the complete rendering had been completed and that the CGI in the final product would be much better than the trailers. Nope. I was really surprised.
But in watching the DVD extras my surprise turned to bewilderment and a little anger. While there was an entertaining featurette on the history of The Hulk from early comic books to TV to movies, most of the extras consisted of the movie makers going on and on about how incredible their CGI effects were and how they were doing something at a level of realism that no one else had ever tried. Now, I'll accept that perhaps what they had tried to do might have been quite ambitious but to suggest that they succeeded admirably was just too much to take. Quite frankly, I don't care how difficult the CGI technical problems are. If some average moviegoer like myself cringes at the poor quality of the effects, then you haven't succeeded at shit. It was really impossible to feel any kind of emotion because every time you saw that green bunch of silly puddy bounce around the screen you were instanteously "taken out of the movie". The poor quality of the CGI completely ruined whatever effect the director tried to accomplish.
Here on slashdot we oftentimes like to point to the extras on DVDs as a model for the RIAA to follow in terms of adding value to their product. But the more of these extras I watch, the more I'm really doubting whether they add any value. Most of these extras are simply interviews with the cast and crew gushing over what a great job they've done and how thankful they are to work with such a talented group of individuals and so on. It's really just a bunch of self-serving, back-slapping crap. The 'deleted scenes' featured on many disks are really awful to watch -- there's no wonder they were deleted! In times I've come away from a movie having a lower opinion of the film after watching these extras. Attack of the Clones is a prime example. Now, I certainly wasn't under the impression that this was some kind of masterpiece originally. But after watching the featurettes where Lucas agonizes over minute, insignificant details of the CGI characters yet doesn't seem to give a shit about the awful acting and gaping plot holes, I found myself feeling more negative about the film!
CGI has its place but it's clear that Hulk suffered tremendously because clearly the technology isn't there yet. And filmakers, make those DVD extras something worthwhile for a change, please.
GMD
watch this
The Ring was easily the scariest movie I have ever seen. I usually laugh at horror movies, but this one really hit a nerve for some reason. I mean hell, the premise doesn't even sound that scary. Watch a video tape, and a few days later you expire in a rather grotesque fashion. Peh.
It sounded lame to me, but I went to go see it anyway... And then it scared the shit out of me. It ends with a disturbing twist that I think most people will not anticipate--I surely didn't.
In short, it is a brilliantly executed horror flick. I highly recommend it. This movie is bound to influence pop-culture for years to come.
— darco
THANK YOU!!! It's so great to hear someone agree with me on this. The Hulk was the best movie of the year as far as i'm concerned. It was dark and deliberate, and had some of the best editing i've seen (comic-style frames etc). Sure it wasn't a popcorn beat'em-up, but it wasn't supposed to be! I found it both visually and emotionally stimulating. Perhaps a lot of the people watching haven't experienced the kind of scarred childhood Bruce did, so they couldn't identify with it? Screw 'em. It was a great movie.
I am going to have to disagree. This is one case where the American remake is actually significantly better than the original Japanese version. I don't want to take away from the original though, it was an extremely good movie made on a very small budget. However with that said, I could make many points in favor of "The Ring".
First of all "Ringu", the Japanese version, doesn't have the double meaning that "The Ring" has. In "The Ring" , the 'ring' is both the the telephone ring and also the halo of light that the girl saw as the lid was covered over the well. This is not the case in "Ringu".
As another poster has already pointed out, "Ringu" was a bit more fantasy oriented with the girl, as well as others, being psychic. However, in "The Ring", the girl had demonic origins - her parents weren't supposed to be able to have children, but they went overseas and came back with one.
Secondly, "Ringu" was indeed a lower budget film. When the people died from the psychic girl, they were left with a grimace on their face. Where as when the demonic girl from "Ringu" killed someone, their body was left as if they had died and rotted in the well. This is a big step in not only special effects but the motivation of the killers. "The Ring" just tries to be more horrific than "Ringu" in every way that it can. But it doesn't give you an overdose of special effects - I don't think there has been such clever editing in a horror movie since the first big Dracula movie.
There are many other small details, but the difference that stuck out the most in my mind was this: At the end of the movie when the boy says "You FREED her? You weren't supposed to free her." It is such an incredible twist and it leaves you with a terrible feeling in your belly. Nothing like that happens in "Ringu".
In conclusion, it is very apparent that the American filmakers took great effort in making "The Ring" as much of an improvement as they could. But I still say that "Ringu" is worth watching, there are many details in the story that you can only get from the Japanese version - though the story lines aren't exactly the same.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
"Why was everybody turned off by the philosophy and world building in Reloaded/Revolutions?"
:) Phantom edit, cut the two decent films (they clearly weren't terrible, just disappointing after the amazing first one) into two good films.
I was turned off by the two because I loved the fun philosophy in Reloaded, and the action in Revolutions. But Reloaded was a bore, and Revolutions had no intellectual content. Move some of the action into Reloaded, put more universe development into Revolutions (and ditch the crappy dialog-- "I'm scared, Trin"-- and the overused Christ symbols), and you've got a pair of well balanced movies. As it is, I've got Cola syrup in one cup, and soda water in another. What am I supposed to do, mix them?
Hmm, that could work.
The Ring came out in 2002, actually.
:-)
However I agree, this was an EXCELLENT horror film. I think 28 Days Later might edge it out, but as far as pure FEAR, this one is much scarier.
I'm trying to get a friend of mine to come over and watch it with me. Of course, in my opinion, if you want to watch it, you have to rent a VHS tape, NOT a DVD. You'd have to see it to know what I'm talking about.
Then in your pocket, have your cell phone (in silent mode) pre-dialed to your friend's cell... after the movie, push the "Send" button as you walk up to the VCR to push rewind or get the tape. Sure to ruin a perfectly good pair of pants.
Mark
You have to understand that the movies, as shown in the theaters, are nothing more than extended trailers for the Special Edition DVDs - these have much better pacing.
Hmmmm, I saw it last night and thought it was thoroughly BADASS, but I have a few quibbles or additions:
The battle scenes.
I disagree. I would place the opening of "Saving Private Ryan", the first Coliseum scene in "Gladiator", or the massacre in "Last of the Mohicans" well above this. I'm probably forgetting something too. I would also rank the final fight in "Fellowship" above all the fights in the trilogy. It's important to note that these are all done on a smaller scale (even "Ryan" focuses on a small piece of beach) and with much less CG work. The CG work was excellent in RotK, but my suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The "Fellowship" fight, on the other hand, looked brutal and realistic.
Shelob
I didn't think Jackson could make a giant spider frighten me after at least ten viewings of "Aliens". I was wrong. Major, major props.
The signal fire scene.
I agree, but I doubt this was undiluted New Zealand. . . Jackson said very plainly at one point that while NZ was ideal for them, they did some doctoring to get it to look just right. Personally, after repeated viewings I still can't quite tell what shots that aren't immediately obvious as CG are manipulated, and what are original, but I doubt the signal fire scene was all natural. Still, very impressive.
Legolas's required stunt scene
I'm sorry, but the horse mounting in Two Towers fucking rocked, even if every female in the audience simultaneously climaxed. What made it so cool was the whole slo-mo lead-in from Legolas shooting arrows, and that what happens next is totally unexpected. When I watch the movies I keep rewinding that part (no, I'm not gay): I think it's the most impressively directed/coreographed scene in the trilogy. Just eye candy, yes, and nothing to do with the books, but utterly effective.
On that note, I was disappointed that they left out the part of "Fellowship" where Legolas shoots down one of the winged steeds at night (from a boat!). None of the elf stunts in the movies seemed out of place because I remembered reading that, but I wish they'd left it in - it really establishes that Elves are bad motherfuckers.
Yeah because only professional critics have the right to say what is a good film. Cinema should all be about technical excellence and artistic merit. Entertainment should never come into it. In fact if a film is enjoyable it is actually a very bad film. You didn't read the thread but felt the need to be both a psychic and a pretentious arsehole all the same.
Warning! This post may contain a pun!
What happened, you ask? It's hard to even compare these trilogies. The other has two very talented, young guns putting their lifelong influence on popular culture into screen, and the other has one of the best fantasy novels behind the story. If Wachowskis had the LotR-quality script to make a film of, I think they would've made it to the end. Now, the great deal of the best thoughts was already in the first part, the others were merely warming on it's afterglow.
I were on the impression, that the first part was made as an independent film, that is, they didn't know if there were to be any sequels. Naturally, the story became a little bit unbalanced. Stuff was merely added to the end (the sequels). It's all about the story...
I enjoyed The Hulk. It wasn't the greatest movie of the year, by any means, but it was a decent trip to the movies.
I thought the comic-book framing for the scene transitions was very innovative, and at times brilliant. The CGI wasn't nearly as bad as some have made it out to be in this discussion. The Bruce Banner character was very well done.
Like any good geek, I'm a big fan of Jennifer Connolly. The helicopter shot of her from late in the film was one of the best shots of the entire movie, with her seeming to descend from Heaven as the angel she is (to the Hulk, that is. Yeah, we'll say that).
The one really bad thing about The Hulk was the entire father subplot. It gave nothing to the movie except clutter, and after the movie should have ended, we had to sit through more of the same clutter. Want to release a special edition of this movie? Cut 30 minutes out, and forget Bruce ever had a dad.
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
(and I also wanted to point out that...)
The movies serve as a beautiful and epic-scale rendition of Tolkein's story: they "stand-on-their-own" as works of art though fully appreciating them requires being familiar with a prior work of art.
Foo?
A whole CGI character seems pretty ambitious, but hey - WETA Digital got it right with Gollum three years ago, which is an eternity in the digital FX business. There's no excuse for shoddy CGI now.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
The DVD extras on "The Fellowship of the Ring" were awesome. All that stuff about the design and creation of the weapons, armor, wardrobe, etc. were fascination. The pieces showing the camera trickery, props and forced perspective used to the make the actors change sizes was extremely interesting.
One thing I get tired of is featurettes describing the graphics, which invariably show some pasty-faced geek (like me) sitting in front of a computer all day making digital jellyfish or something. Once you've seen one, you've seen 'em all, but FotR didn't dwell on that topic. They gave you the really interesting background of making the movie and you come away appreciating was an incredible amount of work went into the making of it.
I haven't dug into the extras on TTT, but I expect they'll be of the same caliber.
Another DVD with good extras was "Heartbreakers" because it had the entire performance by Sigourney Weaver singing "Back in the U.S.S.R." in a fake Russian accent, which was worth the price of the movie by itself. Actually, I found some of the cut scenes in that movie to be quite good. Often you will notice little continuity errors, or apparent callbacks to something that doesn't exist which make a lot more sense when you see the extra scenes.
Having said that though, I agree with the poster that most DVD extras aren't worth the price. I often purchase used movies from the video store, and when given the choice between VHS for $5 and DVD for $12, I invariably go for the VHS, since the DVD extras are seldom compelling. Of course, the better picture quality, etc, of DVD's is worth something too, but if I'm that interested, I've probably already bought it new.
I have found that the novelty DVD extras is wearing off and that many of these extras aren't worth the effort. However, one thing I do really enjoy is the audio commentary. For instance, the audio commentary for "Evolution" was particularly entertaining because in addition to David Duchovney and Orlando Bloom busting on each other on screen, they were also doing it in the commentary and it was quite amusing. It's obvious they were having a lot of fun and it was enjoyable to hear. The audio commentary for the Simpsons DVD's is also really excellent because you learn a lot of background behind the show. Unfortunately, for Futurama, by season 2 it became painfully obvious that they'd run out of stuff to talk about, although the presence of the actors was a great addition.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
There are a lot of really bad movies out there, but I'm adept at not going to really bad movies. I can only say that I was on a group outing with my buddy, who had the hots for some girl who was part of this Christian bible study group, so we all had no choice but to see Daddy Day Care - it was the only g-rated thing out there. This is why I don't hang out with other christians whenever I can help it.
What I can tell you about are the really good movies that just weren't great. Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions were good movies in and of themselves, but they failed to live up to the Matrix itself. The Wachowski brothers set to many precedents for style, action, story-line, and plot resolution in the first Matrix movie, that it was naturally expected that there'd be even more impressive camera tricks, FX, and martial arts moves. In the end, it came across as "Matrix::Rehashed". However, I'm convinced that for people who had never seen the Matrix, if they watched all three films back to back they'd love the whole series, because Reloaded and Revolutions are merely extensions of the first, not sequels in the sense we as Americans have come to expect.
The LotR series, by contrast, has not been a disappointment at all. Aside from the fact that it is an ass-numbing movie experience (3 hour movies, yikes), the LotR was a known quantity for Tolkein fans and neophytes alike. We knew the story line because the film outlines it in the beginning. That leaves the viewer to sit back and simple watch passively as events unfold. Therein, they are treated to simply incredible special effects, superb acting by all involved (especially Andy/Gollum), and a story line which allows good to triumph over evil (which is what everyone wants).
One movie I think was overlooked was Pirates of the Carribean. Johnny Depp (liberal anti-American punk though he is) did a wonderful job for Captain Jack Sparrow (departing fully from the cagy timid character roles of Ichibod Crane or Edward Scissorhands). The storyline had few holes in it, but was an otherwise rousing adventure that kept one on the edge of their seat.
Let's not forget Kill Bill,which was overhyped to hell, but had value as an icon of pop culture expression. I enjoyed some of the twists and turns of the movie, but overall it sucked.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines turned into the big "blah". I mean, the action was great, the acting was good, the FX was REALLY good, but we lacked the development of the SheTerminator. I would have liked more full frontal nudity on that one to be sure, but I digress: the lack of continuity of characters (except for the T1000 model) made this movie feel like a disconnected franchise piece. I hope to see more Terminator movies, simply because I find the story line compelling (it's the same premise as Matrix and Battlestar Galactica).
Battlestar Galactica: I thoroughly expected Sci Fi to fuck this up, but they've done something worse. They made a really good movie with action, special effects, complex characters, rich story lines, but then nixed the resolution and settled for denoumont. I mean, we're stuck at what should otherwise be the turning point of the story - where the humans get away and regroup. Okay, okay, we all know that this was a segway to a television series, but that's not assured. This could have gotten better treatment, but I'm still quite happy with what I did get, and if it turns into a series with this level of quality, I may ease up on my damnation of Sci Fi as the scourge of the Genre (but not until they bring back Farscape, Invisible Man, and buy up Firefly and put that back into production).
There was more than sci-fi/fantasy on the movie reels this year, so without further adeiu
Finding Nemo: Cute, funny, inventive, and without the patently typical Disney movie aftertaste we're so used to.
Hulk: Good movie, but not great. Erik Banna was too much the wimp in this movie. I liked him better when he was the Somali-hacking Delta operator in Blackhawk Down. Director Ang Lee de
I think the stories as they stand were OK, but could have worked a lot better if they'd made just a couple changes. Things started going downhill as soon as they tried to explain Neo's abilities with 'magic' rather than some unparalleled ability to interface with machines.
SO:
At the end of Reloaded, before Morpheus' ship is blown, Neo - while still jacked in -- wakes up because of the commotion in the ship, and how they're all about to be blown up in the 'real' world. This is definitely unusual - most people can't be aware in both the Matrix and the real world at the same time. But The One can! Since he is still connected to the machine world, he can see both the 'real' and the electronic or 'matrix' versions of the sentinals. Using his matrix hacking skills, like at the end of movie 1, he mucks up the machines' processes. But, the shock of handling sensory input from both worlds sends him into a coma.
So then, in revolutions, things can work pretty much as they do now. When Neo wakes up, he realizes he can stay jacked in all the time. Almost none (if any -- it's been a while since I saw it) of the scenes in the movie where he sees the 'red' matrix are outside of a ship where he'd have access to a rig. Personally, I'd change the dock battle, because however cool it looked, all those sentinals would have swarmed over the humans in an open space like that. Why did they stay in formation?
A few other changes, not so much plot revision:
In reloaded, the first multi-Smith fight. At that point, Smith had learned how to replicate himself, but hadn't absorbed any 'major' characters we know of. The most powerful were probably agents. So why could he fight any more effectively than in Matrix 1? That scene could have been way cooler if Neo was ripping the Smiths apart, but there were so many that he makes no progress, and eventually has to leave. As it was, the scene was almost boring. If there are hundreds of Smiths, and all of them are invulnerable, why did he stick around so long? Later, when Smith starts absorbing more A-list matrix players, he becomes as tough (or tougher) than Neo. Then, the overwhelming force of the legion Smiths is much more apparent.
I also wanted to see what happened to the french guy (I'm not going to try to spell his name...I'll call him M). Did Smith get him? It's implied, since Smith gets everyone in the Matrix...unless M uses his train man to escape the Matrix. It would have been cool to see a bit of the machine world as M escapes, to see the impact the Smith revolt is having there, and hint at some of the turmoil in the machine world that leads to them being willing to deal with a human later.
Anyway, the stories could remain almost untouched but not rely on 'magic' to explain the events.
I'm risking burning off all my karma in one glorious flash, but this has been nagging at me for a very long time.
I've heard many peers whose opinions I typically respect, as well as many ignorant trolls claim the Matrix trilogy was shit the instant it became a trilogy. Really, I think people should step off their holy soap-boxes and consider for just one moment what makes the first movie better than the second or third.
Looking back on the first movie, very little happens. Very little is revealed. The movie was written with vague exchange after vague exchange, with the bulk of the movie taken up by a communal admiration of visuals. What were the brilliant performances from the Matrix? Lawrence Fishburn as an educated black man who gets Neo to take drugs, get scared by lightning, jump off a building (all the cool kids are doing it...), and get his ass handed to him? Is that air you're breathing? Well, presumably yes. Unless I'm not breathing at all in which case this isn't happening. Next question?
Of the cast of the Matrix, how many survive? Perhaps that's the best part of the movie, that the actors each have no more than a few lines (perhaps as profound as "It's my way or the highway" or even "Shut up". Then again, there's Cipher, who gives us "Ignorance is bliss"). Do Epoch and Switch believe in anything? If programs can go against their programming, why does Smith even bother chasing people? Why not just decompile himself?
The Matrix was a great sci-fi movie. I'm not disputing that--I own it and adore it. However, I don't watch The Matrix to find Jesus. It's not a Platonic dialogue, and it's not a chapter of the Tao Te Ching. I watch The Matrix because I enjoy science fiction. As a science fiction movie it is far more than adequate; it has action, suspense, stunning visuals, and not enough character development to make you question anything.
Why do I then think Reloaded and Revolutions are adequate as well? Reloaded is the substance that was missing from the Matrix...the characters we have are developed and we see that they are flawed. Revolutions lets these characters follow their own paths and do what they need to do. Reeves did a great job as the patchwork messiah of a terribly...human civilization. Bad actor jokes notwithstanding, he is confused, unsure, and underneath it all human. He doesn't always have a witty comeback, and sometimes he has to play superhero--if I were in that position I might not stay sane at all considering that I have a foot-long spike in my head that's letting me fight with an invincible program who sneers like no other, and the fate of humanity rests on my ability to think the crap out of a RAM chip somewhere. He never claims he's brilliant--he's a programmer for some huge corporation (maybe he's on the team that codes rpc for Windows), and he never claims he's wise--look how he just follows a squad of goth pirates just because his computer told him.
The Matrix wasn't a perfect movie. I don't understand how one can compare the sequels to the original and come out with an unfavorable opinion. The trolls who endlessly rail against the sequels don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to the superiority of the original. They're movies, not religion. If they are canon to you, perhaps you should invest your faith in a religion less lacking in...substance.
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The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions -- As a 4.5-hour whole, one of the few greatest sequels of all time, and probably my favorite film of all time. I think separating the two parts by 5.5 months was a good business move, but ultimately it cost the finale quite a bit in that many fans have decided not to like it so much. I think that would have been very different had all 4.5 hours been told at once, even if they were still released as separate films (which, in the long run, I think would have made them more money at the box office... oh well).
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King -- I sat it at 12:01am on Wednesday and 1:30pm on Thursday. Another of the greatest sequels of all time. Except I'd stop the movie after the first time the screen fades and put the rest of the footage after the credits as an epilogue, for various reasons. I'll be quiet on that just because so many of you haven't seen it yet.
Identity was my favorite non-sequel movie of the year. Simply an amazingly well done psycho-thriller. If you haven't seen it and don't mind a little blood, I highly recommend it.
Basic was one of the best movies I had seen in a long time when I saw it, just because it left me asking what the hell just happened, yet I knew what had just happened. I thought it was a well put-together film, and I still haven't decided whether I should buy it or not.
The Rundown was much better than I expected it to be. I don't know why I liked it as much as I did, but it was immensely entertaining. The Rock surprised me, and Sean William Scott actually played his part well.
Phone Booth was very good. Simply an incredible performance by Colin Farrell to carry the movie. Another psycho-thriller (I guess I like those) that got my attention when I heard Kiefer Sutherland's voice.
Finding Nemo, of course, is one of the best animated films of all time. Disney is getting better and better with those.
X2: X-Men United was surprisingly good, enough so to get me into X-Men (again for the first time) and by the special edition 4-DVD set. (Another sequel, Legally Blonde 2, was even cheesier and therefore less entertaining than the first. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, however, was surprisingly entertaining. I'm glad I went along for that ride. Terminator 3 was good for me. It fit along with the story, and the action was on par with what I expected. Good, not great.)
Dickie Roberts was surprisingly good. I highly recommend it to anyone who was addicted to TV at any time between the 1970s and 1990s. The plot is what can be expected from a David Spade comedy, but the end credits alone justify sitting through the film for any TV junkie. Daddy Day Care was also surpringly good, enough so to warrant my pondering of an Eddie Murphy comeback. Just Married was also a good comedy. I enjoyed it, anyway. Bringing Down the House, on the other hand, was somewhat disappointing but not altogether horrible.
Old School was also very funny, but not nearly as good a movie as I had hoped for. Will Ferrell makes us laugh, but that's all. I thought the same of ELF, except that it does rank pretty highly for me on the Christmas movie charts, so it gets a bonus point or two for being a holiday film.
The Italian Job makes my list just because I like that kind of movie. Heist movies are generally fun for me. For the same reason, I also liked Matchstick Men quite a bit.
Bruce Almight
Does anyone else think it's interesting how films seem to be getting much, much longer? There have been numerous 2+ hour films in the last year or two, and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Kill Bill (vol 1), the second two Matrix films, all three LotR films, and seemably a couple others. Are people's attention spans getting longer again (due to the internet vs. TV, maybe?), or is this just a trend of a series of 3 3-hour 'compilation' stories?
At any rate, I'm not sure if I like it or dislike it. Part of me enjoys being able to have 3 hours of film to properly tell a story; another part of me thinks that they intentionally pad the films to make them longer (as with LotR and the overly-emotional and excessive dialog at times); yet a third part of me wonders, "Where's the goddamn intermission, I've got to piss!" - they did have intermissions back in the day for really long films. Why not now? It's painful to sit there with a full bladder, but more often than not, it's preferable to missing 5+ minutes of a film you paid $7+ to see (more if you're on a date).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
>"Why should I care what an actor says about anything other than acting? "
Why should anyone care what a computer geek has to say about movies? Obviously you're not an Officially Certified Movie Critic with a PhD in literary criticism so you can't possibly have a valid opinion or have anything interesting to say.