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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?"
I dont know which were the best ones..
But Gigli and Kangaroo Jack takes the cake for the worst ones..
Rapid Nirvana
Mystic River was pretty good.
Les Invasions Barbares (transl. to The Barbarian Invasions) was excellent.
I still haven't seen Lost in Translation. I hear it's great. 21 Grams seems really good too.
Pirates of the Carribean was surprisingly fun. A mix between The Princess Bride (but not as good story) and old computer game Monkey Island.
I can't think of anything else right now. Haven't seen RotK yet. Hopefully it'll be better than The Two Towers.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
I really really like the 3rd Matrix film. I'm a sucker for Dragonball Z fights.
It gets my award for best ever.
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
Matrix Reloaded: Great
Matrix Revolutions: OK
Terminator 3: Lame
About Schmidt: Pretty good
Finding Nemo: Great
You can all stop debating now.
HELLLS YEAH.
Bubba Ho-Tep is the best damn film I've seen in a long time. An instant cult classic.
Basic plot: Elvis and a black JFK take on a 10,000 year old mummy from Egypt. It's also got a great explination for Elivs's life, times, and thoughts on fame.
See this movie. Hopefully it will make it to DVD sometime soon.
In The Cut. Period.
I cant believe Meg Ryan, let alone a movie studio would make that garbage. I still have nightmares about it. I dont know why I stayed through the whole thing. Maybe it was because I shelled out 8 bucks to see that crap. Ughhhh..
NEVER SEE IT. EVER.
Frankly, American Splendor was utterly uniteresting to me. Lost in Translation, however, was brilliant. I dont think I ever respected Murray as an actor before - though I've thought him to be a fantastic comedian - but this movie showed that he actually had the ability to evoke complex emotion. Scarlett similarly was impressive. The two of them are the movie, and I'd be shocked if they're utterly excluded from the Oscars.
"Stumble before you crawl"
This is probably the scariest movie I've ever seen. It was released in 2003, right? If not, it's *still* my pick of 2003.
At first it looks like a juvenile cross between "Conspiracy Theory" and "The Net", but then it shifts gears and scares the living shit out of you.
I'm still freaked (can you tell?), and I only saw it once.
sigs, as if you care.
I thought that the Matrix series had potential, but I was extremely let down by the Reloaded, though Revolutions almost redeemed that. In my mind, they should have stopped with the original. It stood much better on its own than the story line created after the addition of this year's movies.
Went into Kill Bill without really knowing anything about it, and enjoyed myself as much as when I saw Clockwork Orange at the theater after it was unbanned (I'm from the UK).
Why? Because of the fighting. I'm not really into violent movies or the whole escapism thing, but seeing Uma Thurmann kick some major ass was almost sexual. A nice pastiche of the last 50 years of kung-fu cinema.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Actually, I think the value of 28 Days Later lies not in the fact that it somehow managed to reinvent zombies: I cant think of a single movie/video game in the past few decades that had a zombie move quickly. Any movie that takes what would reasonably be called a standard like "zombies", and reinvents it, deserves a hell of a lot of credit.
It had scientific flaws - such as the speed of the viral infection, or the fact that the rageaholics dont attack each other - but what story isn't a little fantastical?
"Stumble before you crawl"
I'm certainly not going to vote for any of the LOTR pics as 'best movies'. Best "emulation of a coffee table picturebook" yes. Phenomenal scenes, pretty well done compositing, amazing themes but... everything just kept running ahead without giving me a feel of the true fellowship between our adventurers.
I've not read the LOTR books, and the movies have made me want to, but I don't feel they stand strongly on their own. Large format animated picture accessories to the books, but not on their own.
No doubt. Powerful stuff. Too bad Kidman won't be there for the rest of the trilogy, but I don't think von Trier will disappoint... 'nuff said. Wouldn't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it.
Who would have guessed the X-men 2 would be so great?
I literally shed tears when I saw the way they did Nightcrawler... it was perfect. The attack at the beginning of the movie was perfect... I just wish that I hadn't seen the previews so that I would have been completely caught offguard.
The portrayal especially his religiousness was amazing.
The only minor problems that I overlooked:
1) He wasn't fuzzy (ie. Fuzzy Elf)
2) In the attack scene, he was clearly teleporting behind walls and such, something that he wouldn't be able to do properly. The only reason that I could think of that he would do that was because he was under the mind control and that forced him to do crazy things.
Finding Nemo was really fun and Kill Bill Vol.1 was very entertaining. I can't wait for volume 2.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
The story's the thing. The Matrix started strongly, with enough subtlety and interesting ideas paired with killer wire fights and excellent effects to capture the public eye; the 2nd film, however, floundered on screen (though I thought it was still worth the price of admission) with less story and more special effects and CGI. By the end of the third film, It was like watching a hurricane, that once was beautifully coiled, rippling with power and newness, dissipate into just another tropical storm named Huey, or something similar. I still thought the third flick was worth my ten bucks but was let down, ultimately with the 2nd and 3rd, because the beginning was so strong. With the LOTR, the story's already there and strong. Tolkien knew more world mythology by rote than most people have ever heard or read. I remember in college chuckling when coming upon certain dwarf names in some obscure book of the Dead Sea Scrolls. With that background and perspicuity already in the work, Jackson had to "merely" transfer one great media work to another format (and I applaud his efforts). Did he also make use of the best CGI available? Certainly. Did it work? Yes. Of course not everyone is pleased with casting, cuts, etc., but I've found the three Tolkien films a much more pleasing crescendo when compared with the Matrix.
End of story!
Seriously though, it was the best horror/sci fi movie that I have seen in at least a decade.
The night that I saw it, I stopped to pee outside in a wooded area and every time I heard ANY sound I would spin around to make sure that it wasn't an infected coming for me.
No movie has made me get up and check to make sure my doors were locked like 28 Days Later.
I've seen more movies this year than I did since I was about 9, and there have been some real Gems. Like X2 & Underworld, but 28 Days Later really spoke to me.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Good:- :)
"Gettin Square" - David Wenham in Leopard print budgie smugglers anyone? Maybe not but I'll happily watch Freya Stafford getting hot & sweaty any day of the week
"Standing in the Shadows of Motown" - like Buena vista social club with a better soundtrack
Bad:-
Kill Bill - easily the worst movie Quentin Tarantino has ever directed (because the other three are all 5* classics) and a huge disappointment didn't pay to see the Matrix or the Hulk so I can't comment on their suckiness
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
I watched Kill Bill with great anticipation but was thoroughly disappointed. I mean anyone who starts the credits with "Quentin's 4th Film"... WTF!?! I mean I like his movies but this was just a piss take. I didn't feel involved during the action scenes. We knew Uma would win from start and I didn't even notice most of the people she killed. Deja-vue to death. Then this all this slow-motion shite to make it 'super-emotional'. That coupled with supposedly 'cool' humour and - ohh my God!!? - REFERENCES TO OTHER FILMS... How soooophisticated.
Not only was I bored during 40% of the film, but I felt ripped off at the end because I only got half a film. I might download KB II but that's as far as I'll go.
I use to like Tarantino. But he's hot-headed and cliche-driven now.
Maybe it's just my penchant for Japan-themed movies, but I found this one to be excellent. Great acting, good plot... and somehow they managed to pull it off without gobs of arterial spray (yes, there is blood, but for the concept of the movie it is limited) and/or gratuitous sex.
In fact... it's the first movie I've seen in a long time that pulled the romance theme without a down-and-dirty-sheets moment. Imagine that.
It also reminded me of Shogun... for any that remember the old miniseries (recently re-released on DVD) with Richard Chamberlain as a European naval pilot stranded in Japan. Could just be that Cruise resembled Blackthorne in this one, but man the guy had style! In fact... not normally being much of a Cruise fan myself, I'd recommend this movie all the movie because he really did do a good job of it.
Ditto. I rented it a couple of weeks ago. I was expecting "dumb and fun". What I got was "stupid and excruciating."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
and ppl complained about ROTK being too long! pfffhh. my god, they could have cut (edited) kill bill in half (any ole bits removed, it would not have mattered as there was no plot to runi) and it would still have been boring long.
remove NOT from email.
Being in science/engineering is like playing Santa in a mall: people like the superficial image of benevolence but not the underlying reality of harsh disappointments.
What did it for me, though, was the bit about the hot bartender that is so obsessed with the superficial image of Santa that she completely ignores the underlying realities of Bad Santa and throws herself at him.
If there's hope for Bad Santa, there's gotta be hope for me.
Just got back from seeing LOTR-ROTK, it simply IS the winner. As a 40-something who read LOTR first at about 12, I can only say WOW! To see a story I love dealt with so well by artists who seemed to also love the story... well, they win.
Like every year, there were so many losers it is hard to pick, but Timeline gets the nod for the same reason LOTR did - how they handled a book I had read. I really liked Timeline when I read it about 4 years ago, but the hollywood hacks (no artists involved) thought all that boring history stuff would just get in the way of the big yellow fireballs. They seem to say "The book you read didn't have enough explosions, we know you'd rather have explosions than any respect for the story."
Since it inevitably came up - The Matrix finale was a disappointment, but not anywhere near the worst of the year. Seeing it in IMAX made the explosions and big yellow fireballs kind of mesmerising...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Here are my top 10 of 2003 (IMDB ratings in parentheses):
10). School of Rock (7.7)
9). Kill Bill (8.2)
8). Mystic River (8.1)
7). 21 Grams (7.9)
6). Elephant (7.6)
5). Talk to Her (8.2)
4). American Splendor (8.1)
3). Gerry (6.2)
2). Spellbound (8.5)
1). Lost in Translation (8.2)
A few movies that I've heard good things about that haven't reached us yet in Boston that may end up displacing some of the above are:
- House of Sand and Fog (?)
- Girl with the Pearl Earring (7.2)
- Japanese Story (6.5)
- The Triplets of Belleville (7.2)
Movies that I can't fathom why everyone liked:
3). Better Luck Tomorrow (7.6)
2). Swimming Pool (7.1) (I didn't understand this movie until about a week after seeing it, so maybe it is good and I'm just an idiot).
1). Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (7.5)
I'm glad I'm not the only one here on the dot that thinks kill bill was a crap flick.
I think even with all its weirdness there were really just three things that ruined it for me. The dialog, and the lack of editing, and the silly pressurized bleeding. and the dramatic pauses every 2 seconds. so I guess that was four things.
If I heard uma say "wiggle your big toe" one more time, I think I might have killed someone.
As far as single scenes go the fight in the Frenchman's stairway was probably my favorite of the three, although the lobby scene from the first is also a masterpiece. The stairwell fight is just gorgeous, and Juno Reactor fits it well. Three was an interesting end and ok movie, but not as fulfilling as some of the theories I read on the internet, so it was a bit of a letdown. The docking battle was cool, but the club entrance felt like a rehash, and I didn't care for the final Neo/Smith fight.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Lost in Translation is my pick with Bill Murray as the best male actor performance of the year. One of the best defining scenes has Murray as the aging unknown actor with the brief 70s moment of glory doing a photo shoot to hawk whiskey. The photographer fires off a series of thickly accented names, "Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Roger Moore" and with each name Murray with just a subtle shift in position, a slight change in the angle of his eyes and his body becomes a characature of Sinatra, Connery and Moore. The scene is both funny and pathetic at the same time. Murray's character riffs on all of these icons, softly cracking one-liners at the expense of his audience of very professional Japanese advertising photographers, while the eyes reveal that this is a washed-up over-the-hill actor who is being paid a million dollars to sit in a chair with a glass of ice tea and pretend to be Sinatra hawking whiskey.
And while Murray is pulling off the acting job of his career, Sophia Coppola earns a name for herself as a director by keeping the entire thing hanging together, and delivering an astonishing romance without sentiment. Johannsen does an excellent job paired with Murray. Of the movies I've seen this year, this one sticks with me the most.
It is a shame you have so little confidence in your own parenting ability.
> At the end of Reloaded, I was left with a lot of
> questions as to what was going on, and why Neo
> was able to stop the sentinels. I have various
> ideas about that, most of which involved Neo not
> actually returning to the same Matrix (or "real
> world") he had come from. It also seemed possible
> that even the original "real world" wasn't really
> the real world, but in fact another Matrix.
My god Eric! I thought *EXACTLY* the same thing! I was still wondering if they were going to do the matrix within a matrix thing when NEO was able to see things in Red instead of Green. I just figured that the Red was him seeing the real matrix instead of the Green matrix within a matrix. When NEO stopped those sentinels in the fake real world, I could ONLY assume it was another layer of matrix. Remember when they said there was an original matrix? I figured that this original matrix was the one where NEO saw things in Red.
I *STILL* think they could reopen the storyline using this premise. Maybe go deeper into prequel with Creation of the Matrix or further into the storyline with NEO reawakening in the Real World and remembering he's a programmer or something. Maybe everyone in the matrix is a vegetable in the Real World - people who's only means of communication and life are only possible within the matrix. There is still much material that could be developed.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
The movie I thought was the best of the year was the one I least expected to like. Kill Bill (Vol 1) was just astounding. The sense of style, the attention to detail, the outright chutzpah, the buckets of blood... Usually I hate bloodfests, but this movie was just so well executed that I got over the blood and just loved it to pieces. I guess his goal was to make a live-action anime, and as far as I'm concerned it was perfection, even down to all the names being like stupid translations from Japanese.
And you have to give QT props for dressing Uma up like Bruce for half the movie!
I guess I'll have to comment on the general negativity being expressed by people who didn't like this film, both here in this thread and elsewhere.
Most of the complaints seem to stem from a general misunderstanding of QT's intentions and motivations for this film. The film's main motifs are ACTION and REVENGE. There is nothing particularly deep or difficult to comprehend in either of these themes. Action is Hollywood's favorite device. Revenge is something that is very close to the human heart. There is no need to really look for any meaning further than this. If you do you risk missing the simplicity of this film. (And then you may not like it.)
We complain about Hollywood films being too predicable and shallow, but there is something noble in QT's quest to make a movie DELIBERATELY simple. Action is its purpose, not a device. Its plot can be implied to: Injustice, then revenge. If poetry is minimalist communication, then well... far be it from me to say spring-loaded decapitations are poetic... but it looks like I just said it anyway.
To sum up, you are DEFINEATLY allowed to not like the very graphic nature of this film. I can respect that. But otherwise you may have missed the fact that this move is intentionally simple.
One of the years best for sure.
The script for "Lost In Translation" was pure genius. If there was ever a movie that deserved a screenwriting award, it's this one--just for what he tells her at the end. (Yes, I'm trying desperately to avoid a spoiler.) That was certainly one of the greatest moments in movies this year.
Sofia Coppola deserves an Oscar for the script, and a nomination for Best Director. I'm not so sure she deserves to win, though; there were some problems with the flow and pacing, and definitely some scenes that didn't need to be there. (For example, after the nth long sequence of Scarlett Johansson wandering around, I was thinking "We get the message, already.") On the other hand, the performance that she got from Bill Murray was just incredible, so it could go either way.
It will be a shame when Bill Murray doesn't win the Oscar, because his was literally the performance of a lifetime. I was overwhelmed. There were so many moments when he could have spilled over into being "that Bill Murray character", and didn't. He showed remarkable restraint that I didn't think he was capable of. He deserves the award. I doubt he'll get it.
I agree that Kill Bill was good. The fact that they didn't use any CGI made it significantly better, IMHO. Does anybody else feel like they're overdoing it with computer graphics in some movies??? Maybe I've just seen so many well done CGI scenes that the majority of computer aided action shots just seem lame to me.....
I'm a bit puzzled that you seem to be extolling the virtues of a wire-fu flick as a pinnacle of realism. It's been a damn long time since I've seen a believable martial arts film. The wire-fu stuff is getting as overused as CGI. Seriously, if you're in a fight you don't do 10 meter backflips over your opponents. Actually, I'm not sure anyone can do flips like that regardless of whether it makes good tactical sense or not. Yes, I'm aware the capoirera contains lots of flips and cartwheel-like motions but a lot of that is built into that particular martial art because it was developed by slaves who had to disguise their practice as a dance to avoid their masters cracking down on them.
When you do a flip you are basically expending a considerable amount of effort and energy to perform a complex maneuver that temporarily blinds you, leaves you vulnerable to your opponent, and doesn't really move your center of mass very far in the horizontal direction. It's just not a wise idea to go flipping around like crazy when people armed with weapons are trying to kill you. Best just to stand your ground and block or take a step back (or to the side).
Sometimes I wonder whether the reliance on wire techniques is an attempt by Hollywood to show something outside the everyday experience of the moviegoer in the abscence of any talented martial artists. In decades past, audiences could be wowed by the superior skill of someone who could actually do martial arts well. These days, it seems like directors are insisting that the actors try to do the fight scenes and then they use wire-fu to make up for the fact that these people really can't do very much. You don't see any Bruce Lee or Jet Li types who can move incredibly fast. Instead you get Keanu Reeves or Uma Thurman doing a backflip over 3 opponents in slow motion. That just doesn't really impress me and it certainly doesn't count as realistic fighting. Why can't they hire some competant martial arts to do something REAL and just use CGI or maybe even masks to make the stunt person look like the actor?
Ah well, just my two cents. I'm just getting a little annoyed by everyone gushing over these acrobatic shows as "awesome martial arts flicks".
GMD
watch this
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm just wondering. Why is there such a..well..harsh retribution on the movie equilivient of a hard sci-fi movie?
Why was everybody turned off by the philosophy and world building in Reloaded/Revolutions? I thought that was the best thing about the movies. Forget the fight sequences, I want more thought, more detail, more technology.
The ONLY thing that disappointed me (on an intellectual basis. On an emotional basis it made me giddy) about Revolutions, is that now after seeing the ending, and looking back on it, the story was actually written as a homage to the Final Fantasy series.
Nothing-hero is the chosen one to take command and lead the battle against multiple enemies, only to join forces with one, to fight against an even greater threat to them both.
Then take the music during the battle between Smith/Neo, and the music during the final credits (the underbeat is the same as the Boss music from FF9).
Too easy.
But still a great movie.
Why don't people get giddy about detail like I do?
Best of 2003:
Worst of '03:
--
Power to the Peaceful
Also some Barbershop Pirates, a terrible production of "Speare!" (the compressed works of Shakespeare)... a supercilious desk clerk ("I'm not the pirate you're looking for"), the arms-dealing former lemonade salesman and the donning of a large augered tofu block as headwear.
Oh! And the use of baggy pirate pants to store everything.
Oh! And musical numbers. Many musical numbers.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Five days after I saw Revolutions, I realised what it was that I saw. The third Matrix movie is, in many many ways, the first Matrix movie. It's the same story, told again, different enough so as not too be obvious, but still with enough commonalities so as to leave me quite impressed with the whole franchise. The storytelling was at it's best in the first movie to be sure, but I can certainly appreciate the vision and ambition of the trilogy as a whole. Can't wait for Revolutions to come out on DVD.
>> 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.
3 701869
The girl in Ringu probably had demonic origins too, it just wasn't in your face, just slightly hinted at.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178868/board/thread/
Covers this interpretation pretty well.
Having read the all three of the books the compromise TLOTR, I feel the need to note that:
a) the books are simply amazing, probably one of the best pieces of literature written in the 20th century.
b) the movies are are very entertaining, with some of the CG i've ever seen.
c) anyone who has seen the movies before reading the books has missed out on a truely great experience.
The movies I think are an excellent suppliment / add-on to the books. If you see the movie before you read the books, the books then become tainted, and you start seeing all the characters as they are portrayed in the movies. You also start to compare the movie to the book, instead of the more accurately book to movie view.
In closing, TLOTR:TROTK is one of the best movies created this year. I'm just depressed for all the poor people who haven't read the books first.
David Novosel "Two roads diverged, and I - I took the one less travelled by."
Although I didn't enjoy the second film, the third film would undoubtedly stand with high ranking on it's own merit, and is only frowned upon as a sequel. It's got excellent drama, eye-catching but not pointless effects, and good action. The story is even reasonably twisty without the pretention of the second film.
People have critisized the ending, but, in general, it seems to me those are the people who had a particular ending theory based on the second film that was proven wrong. Again, if the third film hadn't been a sequel it wouldn't suffer from the same kind of criticism.
Didn't hold a candle to X2, though, IMO, because that managed to be an extremely cohesive and surpassing sequel. However, it is a great film, with all the elements that most people enjoy in a movie.
Kill Bill Volume 1 - Beautiful art cinema
Lilja 4-Ever - Harrowing and one of the few movies to make me cry
28 Days Later - Brilliant low budget horror
Terminator 3 - A sequel that lived up to its predecessors
The Return Of The King - The entire trilogy is a masterpiece of modern cinema
As for the rest.... well I was severely disappointed by the Matrix sequels more than anything else. Those who respond that I "just don't get it" are missing the fact that while the IDEAS were sound, the EXECUTION left everything to be desired. A movie needs STORY, PLOT and AUDIENCE EMPATHY to be successful, not just eye candy, which while great doesn't keep you coming back over and over again.
Let's hope there's better fare in 2004.
Visceral Psyche Films
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".
:)
:). The scary thing in the original is that you never knew what the people heard on the phone. When I saw the American version and the "You are all going to suffer", I wanted to puke. Cheap thrills.
I certainly thought it was, as did everyone else I know who saw the movie
The problem I have with the American version is that it's so.... American. You can simply see that the Hollywood producers took the original, added all sort of American goodness that would make it a successful movie, and through that the movie lost most of the point.
An example is the old addage that the audiences must have a real live villain in a movie if the movie is to be successful. A good example is Sauron, who appears out of nowhere in 'Return of the King'. Another example is when a girl who never spoke, and never appeared in the original Japanese version, suddenly shows up, face and all, and starts speaking, singing, dancing and riding a fucking magical broom
Furthermore, the Japanese version is brilliant in the way it touches on the society. The Japanese society is a high-tech society. Gadgets, VCRs, phones and such are a part of everyday life more than anywhere else in the world (they even have electric toilet seats, for crying out loud!) Ringu took the most common appliances in a Japanese home (VCR, TV, phone) and turned them in instruments of terror. That is why the original had such a shocking effect, and why people were destroying their TVs after seeing the movie. I don't know of anyone who smashed their TV after watching the American version.
Furthermore, Ringu outlines the relationships between people in modern Japan. A woman seeks help from her estranged husband, who has a newer, younger girlfriend. They have a child. The interaction between these three is very interesting, and adds more tension to the plot. By watching their reactions, you can better comprehend the terror they must be feeling and adds to the impact of the movie. This concept is completely missing in the American version, which is a reason why it is so bland.
The Japanese version is also much more detailed. For exampe, in almost every frame, you can notice a clock. We are constantly reminded that the time is running out. The development of the characters is observable throughout the movie, thanks to excellent acting. And I don't think you understood at all the ending of Ringu, if you don't think that there is a twist there. Dude, there is a huge moral dilemma left in your stomach after the movie. But maybe you think that freeing a roaming demon (no connection to reality whatsoever) is more horrible than brutally murdering your own grandfather.
I agree. I saw the second Matrix film on DVD and had to "rewind" (or whatever it is you do with DVDs) several times so I could make out what was being said. So I got a lot out of the film because I could follow what was going on.
In a cinema, I think it would all wash over you - you'd be so phazed by the fight scenes that the dialog/philosophy would pass you by.
Just my 2p
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions are obviously a completely different movie from the Matrix. They just share the same characters and environment in the hope of locking the spectators into a movie theater.
In the first one, Neo and Morpheus are the most important persons in the movie; in the sequel they turn out to be just small pawns in a much bigger play.
Reminds me a lot of Rambo. First blood was an excellent movie with a great story and a psychological side, Rambo II and III featured the same actor playing the same character in a war movie and a completly different situation setting.
Actually, I do watch a little tv, but not much. Most of the time I'm either playing with my daughter or doing computer stuff - programming or playing ET, etc.
/. mentality - I just don't like the thought of paying nearly $10 to watch a movie where I have to deal with others. Easier to wait until the drivel comes to HBO, etc. At least then when I get bored I can go back to programming, etc.
And its not a
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
It wasn't the first time that a legendary asian filmmaker has made a dud. In fact, it's not ang lee's first dud either.
Everyone is entitled to half of their films being well-intentioned failures... that shouldn't tarnish a reputation too much. Ang Lee is floating on the upper half of that equation, and is successful overall. The Wachowskis are two and two. Personally I feel Revolutions received a lot of the venom that should have been directed towards Reloaded. Forcing Keanu to act without his eyes was a stroke of brilliance, and really helped his performance.
The ______ Agenda
They've got three in there, none of which were actually rendered, just storyboarded. The first was just a different intro, didn't add much, but the other two were incredibly funny. They were put in as pitch sessions, with the writer showing the storyboards to the rest of the department, filling in all the voices himself, a really creative way to do the extras on the DVD.
Both were deleted, incidentally, because they had jokes that the kids wouldn't have gotten, but the adults would have laughed their asses off at.
-T
I agree. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was awesome, but not realistic. But that was not meant to be realistic. Same with Kill Bill, which I really liked. That animation sequence in the middle was cool, and the way he went to black and white took some of the "blood" out of the shots.
Oh, back to my point. You want a real martial arts movie? The Last Samurai. Fan-fucking-tastic movie. I was a little disappointed at the last few scenes, and the way they couldn't leave well enough alone. They always have to Hollywood the fucking ending, just like in Cast Away. But The Last Samurai was really good, and very realistic. Kill Bill had a lot of good techniques, but Uma Thurman just wasn't believable with the sword. Many times she held it incorrectly (like a baseball bat). But in TLS, they covered everything pretty well. There were a few technicalities I caught (with the ninjas), but I can give them a little leeway because they did such a good job with the rest of it.
I know it is Tom Cruise, but go see it. It gets my vote for one of the year's best.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If you see the movie before you read the books, the books then become tainted, and you start seeing all the characters as they are portrayed in the movies
I personally have always had a hard time with books with a ton of characters. It's difficult for me to 'imagine' the appearances of a lot of different people. I tried on two separate occassions to get through the LOTR books and couldn't do it. After having seen the first two movies I sat down and read through them all and it was much easier because now I knew what the various characters looked like and it was much easier to keep track of who is who.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I'm a big Pixar/Toy Story fan, and I really liked Nemo too. But I happened to rent both DVDs a week apart and think that Ice Age (2002)really won out. It's made by Fox Home Entertainment, and not Pixar, but they really nailed it on the animation, the sweet story, the subtle adult humor, etc. It has more of a Monsters flair, which was also great. The second DVD, for those into animation, includes multimode cuts of the movie - showing how the animation is framed in before the finished product. I was really impressed and don't think the movie got a fair shake competing with Pixar.
In the first movie, Morpheus says that Neo feels that there is something wrong with the world and that he (Neo) has known this all his life. He (again, Neo) has always been semi-aware of the two worlds.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I like commentaries. Even for movies I despise (Starship Troopers) I like knowing just what went through the director's head. Or, in the case of ST, what didn't go through the director's head. What a drooler. Paul Verhoven, a director to avoid.
But it was interesting to know that it wasn't someone honest interpretation of the movie - the director hated it and went in to mangle it, because it was easier to mock if everyone was a caricature.
Then with movies I like, LotR for example, it's interesting seeing how they made it and all the effort they put into things I didn't notice (custom props) but that I now see are tailored very well to every scene they're in, instead of using the same props scene after scene.
And it's interesting hearing Jackson explain why he made the cuts and changes that he did, some I agree with, some I don't, but he usually has a reason that goes beyond "Well, Saruman's character was somewhat fascist, so I stuck him in a Nazi uniform to make this very clear, while changing his lines to reflect the fact that he's in a Nazi uniform and thus fascist..." Jackson at least is a fan of the books he's doing and I can see that it's hard to cut - if he was king, each part would have been well over six hours and contained all the minutae.
The problem with the "Extra features" on DVDs is that, more often than not, the original film wasn't good in the first place: it didn't draw you in and make you part of the world, the environment, etc.
Good examples of films that do tend to do this are the Kevin Smith films, the original Star Wars films, the LotR films. There's extra value there because the films weren't just simply thrown together hastily, and there are some interesting things about the creation of the film that viewers might be interested in (for instance, how many horses were actually used for RotK, etc.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Ack! Wrong, wrong, wrong! I am a firm believer that, if at all possible, you should see the movie first and read the book second. In my opinion watching the movie is like reading an abstract or cliff notes... it hits the main points and gives you a good idea of what happens without a major time investment (granted the investment for LotR is a bit higher than the norm!). Then if you like the ideas and plot you can progress to the book and find out what *really* happens.
I love the LotR book trilogy, but when watching RotK I honestly wished for a few seconds that I hadn't read the books... that all the explanations, twists and developments could have been new and surprising. Instead while I enjoyed it greatly I also caught myself thinking "Sam never put on the ring!" and "Why aren't Merry and Pippin taller from the Ent-draughts?" and "What about replanting the Shire?"
My experience with Harry Potter solidified my watch-first belief... I watched the first movie and loved it, so much so that I went out and bought the first four books (which I had been avoiding for that absurdly stupid geek reasoning "They're popular and thus must be evil."). Then I watched the second move (after reading the book) and had that same nitpicking experience. "Why is Harry falling out of the car? He never fell out of the car! That's gratuitous nonsense!"
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
I took my son to see the Hulk because he begged me and I had heard the CGI was great, they had spent a lot of time in post production getting it right and I had heard Ang Lee was this great filmaker (I had not seen Crouching Tiger), etc.
It was HORRID. I have never seen such a piece of crap. The only thing that was good was the part where he changes into the Hulk. Not only did I want to throw something at the screen, I felt like I had 2 hours of my time stolen from me. I thought the director should be put in jail for letting such a total piece of crap loose on the world.
The dialog sucked, sucked, sucked. Jennifer Connelly was completely wasted in this movie. She had bad hair, bad clothes, worse lines.
The guy playing David Banner was wooden, worse lines, looked like he would trip over himself just walking around.
Nick Nolte was OK, but his character was over the top. When he turned into that water creature, that didn't make any sense. He should have turned into Magneto.
The general's character probably had the worst lines, and he was not believeable, nor was the defense contractor that wanted to kill the Hulk.
I couldn't buy Jennifer Connelly's character EVER having a relationship with Banner. I couldn't buy the whole act of Banner not having any feelings. Maybe the old comics went into this, but I was used to the Bill Bixby character more and thought it was more believable. At least Lou Farigno wasn't super duper sized Hulk. The movie Hulk was too much over the top.
I didn't like the way they jumped around in the timeline. The movie would have been better told from beginning to end and with out the POOR flashbacks.
The dog fight scene sucked and made little sense. If Banner's dad wanted to kill him because he was afraid of what he had become, why not get up close and kill him and then kill himself. That would make more sense. Also, why would he then try to turn himself into a super being?
Hulk was able to jump WAAAY too far. Physics defied.
There was so much wrong here I can't go into it all. The only redeeming value the movie had was the closing scene.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
"Why should I care what an actor says about anything other than acting?"
Well, Jack Black pointed out that since Washington has lots to say about how movies and music should be regulated, then conversely the actors and musicians should have a say on how Washington should be regulated.