Rate the last movie you saw

[gourimoko]

The Martian was good, 8/10, but it felt hollow at times. I think that falls on Ridley more than anything. Unlike Moon, which deals with similar issues, the Martian doesn't give you that feeling of extreme loneliness - it just doesn't come off throughout the film, but only in select segments culminating in the final act.

Green Inferno - 2/10. This movie was pure garbage, with lots of reviewers from South America calling it racist. I'm not Latino, but I thought the same things they mentioned throughout the movie and I lost a lot of respect for Eli Roth having seen this film and what he did with Cannibal Holocaust.

To give you an idea, the protagonist is a beautiful young actress from South America, she is not White, doesn't look White at all; yet we the audience are told she is White 3 distinct times in the film, and awkwardly so. Her race is apparently a pivotal plot point, but in reality it really didn't need to be mentioned because who the fuck cares?

This actress btw, is a 22 year old model who is married to 45+ year old Eli Roth, and he's been fucking her apparently for years. She's hot, but come on Eli, if this is your wife you could at least try to respect her culture.. Instead, he pulls a Donald Sterling and essentially tries to white wash this girl.. It's, kinda fucked up and people are calling him on it, rightfully so.

Essentially this movie is equivalent to one of those old films that portrayed Africans as cannibal savages. There is absolutely no difference except instead of the natives being Black they are Brown. Which is the other end of the racism, because half of the actors playing the natives were actually White.

I get the criticism and it's fair. If this movie were about African people, it wouldn't have been made - but since it's about people from South America, then it got a pass.

I don't suggest seeing this movie for several cinematic reasons alone, including the awful acting, idiotic story, bastardization of the plot of the original, lack of gore -- yes, a lack of gore compared to the original, and a general feeling of cheapness.

Pirate the movie if you want, but, I'll never watch it again. Cannibal Holocaust, as low budget as it was, is an infinitely better experience and literally makes you cringe. This movie is essentially Hostel made on a budget of a few thousand dollars.

 

[JSS2306]

Green Inferno - 2/10. This movie was pure garbage, with lots of reviewers from South America calling it racist. I'm not Latino, but I thought the same things they mentioned throughout the movie and I lost a lot of respect for Eli Roth having seen this film and what he did with Cannibal Holocaust.

To give you an idea, the protagonist is a beautiful young actress from South America, she is not White, doesn't look White at all; yet we the audience are told she is White 3 distinct times in the film, and awkwardly so. Her race is apparently a pivotal plot point, but in reality it really didn't need to be mentioned because who the fuck cares?

This actress btw, is a 22 year old model who is married to 45+ year old Eli Roth, and he's been fucking her apparently for years. She's hot, but come on Eli, if this is your wife you could at least try to respect her culture.. Instead, he pulls a Donald Sterling and essentially tries to white wash this girl.. It's, kinda fucked up and people are calling him on it, rightfully so.

Essentially this movie is equivalent to one of those old films that portrayed Africans as cannibal savages. There is absolutely no difference except instead of the natives being Black they are Brown. Which is the other end of the racism, because half of the actors playing the natives were actually White.

I get the criticism and it's fair. If this movie were about African people, it wouldn't have been made - but since it's about people from South America, then it got a pass.

I don't suggest seeing this movie for several cinematic reasons alone, including the awful acting, idiotic story, bastardization of the plot of the original, lack of gore -- yes, a lack of gore compared to the original, and a general feeling of cheapness.

Pirate the movie if you want, but, I'll never watch it again. Cannibal Holocaust, as low budget as it was, is an infinitely better experience and literally makes you cringe. This movie is essentially Hostel made on a budget of a few thousand dollars.

I want to eat my own eyes after this review.

 

[The Oi]

Watched The Sacrament, House of the Devil and We Are What We Are over the weekend.

Sacrament is entertaining. It might as well be a documentary of the Jim Jones/People's Temple tragedy (Killer Kool-Aid). The Jim Jones character was really well played and reminded me of Cameron from American History X.

The funny thing is you'd want to say it's unrealistic that one crazy ass drug-addicted preacher could get 900+ people to drink kool-aid laced with cyanide but...it actually happened in real life.

It'll bum you out for a while, just as the documentaries about Jonestown will. These people were literally feeding their infants cyanide believing they were going to go to heaven. I wish I could dick kick every single person that was part of that.

House of the Devil was also very entertaining. I don't know if it was ever acknowledged that it took place in the 80's but it has a very 80's feel. It was well done until the end of the movie, at which point it shark-jumped. Still worth a watch if you're into horror.

We Are What We are just isn't believable. The girls are too movie star beautiful to be part of the kind of hilljack family that would partake in the kind of rituals they do. The father is believable and well played. On that topic, the daughters are actually very well played, they just don't look the part. The flashbacks are distracting and not believable.

All in all, the atmostphere of the movie is good, but the end is also a huge, HUGE sharkjump. Tom Cruise's love interest from Top Gun is a secondary character in the movie and she is completely unrecognizable.

I'd actually recommend watching all of them if you're a horror movie fanatic, but be prepared to be disappointed by each to a certain extent.

 

[gourimoko]

Rewatching though also reinforced my belief that the whole tesseract/communicating to Murph idea was an incredibly convoluted deus ex machina ending.

I don't think you can really call it deus ex machina, since the ending was not only entirely consistent with the opening of the film, but it was really where the movie was going the entire time.

These "aliens" weren't aliens at all. It was just Cooper.

I think people have a hard time understanding this because they feel it's too far fetched, but, again, the point of the third act is to demonstrate that we are more than just a collection of brain impulses and that consciousness is something that exists on a higher plane of existence. They refer to this as "fifth dimensional beings," but again, these beings aren't aliens -- it's Cooper, the entire time.

This ending is actually far less "out there" than 2001: A Space Odyssey's third act, which really makes the movie.

Lastly, this is the second time Nolan has made a film specifically about personal love from the perspective of a man. Inception was about the distinctly different loves between a man and his wife, and a man and his children - especially when separated from them. Interstellar solely focused on the love of a man for his child and vice versa.

That's not to say that I don't think that they do a decent enough job explaining the science behind everything, but it just feels rushed after 2.5 hours and in the end relies on the dumb luck that she realizes what the clock movements mean.

It wasn't at all dumb luck.

She had been working on the problem for years and it wasn't until it was revealed to her that the entire project was a lie that she decided to start over from scratch.

She went back to where it all started, where she first noticed these localized gravitational disturbances. This isn't something a physicist would forget, as it generally would be impossible. When she went through her things and saw her father's watch and that it was moving systematically, she figured it out on the spot since the movie goes out of it's way to explain to the audience that she is more than familiar with Morse code.

Every movie asks you to suspend your disbelief at times, but in a movie that relies so heavily on logic it just seems strange to have your whole movie rest on your audience taking that leap of faith.

The entire point of the movie is to not rely solely on logic.

The exposition between Cooper and and Brand regarding what planet to go to, which is done 3 different times throughout the film, and revisited twice thereafter including the very final scene of the movie should explain this in detail.

Love was the overriding factor of the movie. The human spirit.

This is not a movie for someone who expects a film sterile of such things. It's a movie literally about the transcending and metaphysical qualities of love. That's what it's about.

I also feel like it would have made sense to condense the second act into one disaster planet. There was no need, imo, to have two "tricks," especially when all that was gained by the second planet was the redocking sequence which could have been worked in some other way.

I'm not sure what you mean by this...

The point of having two planets was to demonstrate in the end that none of the planets were actually meant for colonization at all. That the remnants of NASA had totally misinterpreted the wormhole's purpose.

Cooper placed the wormhole in the Sol system not so humanity could colonize any of the planets orbiting the black hole; but so that humanity could traverse the black hole and discover a useful theory of gravitation.

The point of the wormhole was to get to the black hole. Not the planets.

In the end, I hope that Nolan takes something away from this and TDKR experience and tries to do a better job of tightening up his films because he's clearly one of the best filmmakers of our time.

Interstellar and Inception are his two best films, easily. I'm not sure there's anything that should be changed about either.

I'd argue that Interstellar is just as good as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

@gourimoko

I think you should watch 2001: A Space Odyssey first, then rewatch Interstellar.

Try to understand, Interstellar is essentially a retelling of Kubrick's 2001 with a different interpretation on personal salvation and spiritual evolution. Instead of everlasting life individually, we have everlasting life through our children.

I'm a big Nolan fan, as many folks know. I love his work. I think he did an exceptional job on these films.

I give Interstellar a solid 10/10, and I don't do that lightly. It, like Inception, is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life, and easily in my Top 10.

In fact, Nolan is the only director other than Kubrick with 2 films in my Top 10 list.

 

[gourimoko]

Watched The Sacrament, House of the Devil and We Are What We Are over the weekend.

Sacrament is entertaining. It might as well be a documentary of the Jim Jones/People's Temple tragedy (Killer Kool-Aid). The Jim Jones character was really well played and reminded me of Cameron from American History X.

The funny thing is you'd want to say it's unrealistic that one crazy ass drug-addicted preacher could get 900+ people to drink kool-aid laced with cyanide but...it actually happened in real life.

It'll bum you out for a while, just as the documentaries about Jonestown will. These people were literally feeding their infants cyanide believing they were going to go to heaven. I wish I could dick kick every single person that was part of that.

House of the Devil was also very entertaining. I don't know if it was ever acknowledged that it took place in the 80's but it has a very 80's feel. It was well done until the end of the movie, at which point it shark-jumped. Still worth a watch if you're into horror.

We Are What We are just isn't believable. The girls are too movie star beautiful to be part of the kind of hilljack family that would partake in the kind of rituals they do. The father is believable and well played. On that topic, the daughters are actually very well played, they just don't look the part. The flashbacks are distracting and not believable.

All in all, the atmostphere of the movie is good, but the end is also a huge, HUGE sharkjump. Tom Cruise's love interest is a secondary character in the movie and she is completely unrecognizable.

I'd actually recommend watching all of them if you're a horror movie fanatic, but be prepared to be disappointed by each to a certain extent.

I loved House of the Devil, thought it was great, and loved the 80s feel of the movie. I thought they did a much better job than some more recent, and more popular, attempts.

 

[Adam]

The Martian was good, 8/10, but it felt hollow at times. I think that falls on Ridley more than anything. Unlike Moon, which deals with similar issues, the Martian doesn't give you that feeling of extreme loneliness - it just doesn't come off throughout the film, but only in select segments culminating in the final act.

I think the martian lost that isolation due to the pace, which will make it a more popular film amongst most as it is a roller-coaster ride. In adapting the book they had to make a lot of cuts and as a consequence the feeling of time moving is just way too quick, they increased his communication and made his trip a lot less arduous. I get they need it to be a movie but the book deals with the isolation so well its a shame its lost.

 

[gourimoko]

I think the martian lost that isolation due to the pace, which will make it a more popular film amongst most as it is a roller-coaster ride. In adapting the book they had to make a lot of cuts and as a consequence the feeling of time moving is just way too quick, they increased his communication and made his trip a lot less arduous. I get they need it to be a movie but the book deals with the isolation so well its a shame its lost.

Right.. and that really detracted from the movie for me.. I felt that it wasn't really handled very well at all, and it makes me question Ridley Scott's decision making process.

I'm thinking he's trying too hard to adapt to modern film-making instead of doing movies the way he has in the past.

It makes me wary when I think about the upcoming Alien and Blade Runner movies; since this new style of his was also used in Prometheus.

 

[Otsego Mar]

Mass was really good.

It was more driven by acting performances than plot IMO, but others may disagree.

I opted for Martian in 3D.

8/10

As someone else mentioned, it moves along well..... almost too well. The guy at the ticket counter told me he heard it was Damon's best since Good Will Hunting - but I'd have to disagree.

 

[The Oi]

I don't think you can really call it deus ex machina, since the ending was not only entirely consistent with the opening of the film, but it was really where the movie was going the entire time.

These "aliens" weren't aliens at all. It was just Cooper.

I think people have a hard time understanding this because they feel it's too far fetched, but, again, the point of the third act is to demonstrate that we are more than just a collection of brain impulses and that consciousness is something that exists on a higher plane of existence. They refer to this as "fifth dimensional beings," but again, these beings aren't aliens -- it's Cooper, the entire time.

This ending is actually far less "out there" than 2001: A Space Odyssey's third act, which really makes the movie.

Lastly, this is the second time Nolan has made a film specifically about personal love from the perspective of a man. Inception was about the distinctly different loves between a man and his wife, and a man and his children - especially when separated from them. Interstellar solely focused on the love of a man for his child and vice versa.



It wasn't at all dumb luck.

She had been working on the problem for years and it wasn't until it was revealed to her that the entire project was a lie that she decided to start over from scratch.

She went back to where it all started, where she first noticed these localized gravitational disturbances. This isn't something a physicist would forget, as it generally would be impossible. When she went through her things and saw her father's watch and that it was moving systematically, she figured it out on the spot since the movie goes out of it's way to explain to the audience that she is more than familiar with Morse code.



The entire point of the movie is to not rely solely on logic.

The exposition between Cooper and and Brand regarding what planet to go to, which is done 3 different times throughout the film, and revisited twice thereafter including the very final scene of the movie should explain this in detail.

Love was the overriding factor of the movie. The human spirit.

This is not a movie for someone who expects a film sterile of such things. It's a movie literally about the transcending and metaphysical qualities of love. That's what it's about.



I'm not sure what you mean by this...

The point of having two planets was to demonstrate in the end that none of the planets were actually meant for colonization at all. That the remnants of NASA had totally misinterpreted the wormhole's purpose.

Cooper placed the wormhole in the Sol system not so humanity could colonize any of the planets orbiting the black hole; but so that humanity could traverse the black hole and discover a useful theory of gravitation.

The point of the wormhole was to get to the black hole. Not the planets.



Interstellar and Inception are his two best films, easily. I'm not sure there's anything that should be changed about either.

I'd argue that Interstellar is just as good as 2001: A Space Odyssey.





I think you should watch 2001: A Space Odyssey first, then rewatch Interstellar.

Try to understand, Interstellar is essentially a retelling of Kubrick's 2001 with a different interpretation on personal salvation and spiritual evolution. Instead of everlasting life individually, we have everlasting life through our children.

I'm a big Nolan fan, as many folks know. I love his work. I think he did an exceptional job on these films.

I give Interstellar a solid 10/10, and I don't do that lightly. It, like Inception, is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life, and easily in my Top 10.

In fact, Nolan is the only director other than Kubrick with 2 films in my Top 10 list.

Why was Cooper able to send morse code indicating coordinates, but unable to just tap out exactly what his daughter and NASA needed to know?

 

[Otsego Mar]

Do I need to watch that gayass McConaughey film now that I've seen The Martian?

That's practically douche overload if I watch them back to back.

 

[Adam]

Why was Cooper able to send morse code indicating coordinates, but unable to just tap out exactly what his daughter and NASA needed to know?

I always thought it was due to the fact that he didnt know what it all meant. He's not smart enough but he had faith in Murph that she would be able to use it and make sense of it

 

[gourimoko]

Why was Cooper able to send morse code indicating coordinates, but unable to just tap out exactly what his daughter and NASA needed to know?

He does.

Cooper sent several messages to himself at different points in time throughout his experience. His first message, chronologically from his future perspective was the message: "stay."

The messages preceding that message, chronologically from the films perspective, were from Cooper at a later time (perhaps the very last messages he sent while in the black hole).

Once he established communication with his daughter, he continued to relay TARS observational results from the singularity. That was the information she needed to complete a theory of gravitation.

 

[gourimoko]

I always thought it was due to the fact that he didnt know what it all meant. He's not smart enough but he had faith in Murph that she would be able to use it and make sense of it

That's right.

Cooper doesn't solve the gravitation problem while in the black hole, instead he simply relays his observations to Murph believing that she will be able to do it considering her background.

 

[The Oi]

Goddamnit, what a brilliant fucking movie.

What other movies haven't I watched that are this combination of smart and moving?

I've never watched a movie that made me as excited as I felt throughout Interstellar. It's just amazing to think that if we don't all kill each other, the chances seem pretty good we're going to get to this point some day.

 

[spydy13]

I don't think you can really call it deus ex machina, since the ending was not only entirely consistent with the opening of the film, but it was really where the movie was going the entire time.

These "aliens" weren't aliens at all. It was just Cooper.

I think people have a hard time understanding this because they feel it's too far fetched, but, again, the point of the third act is to demonstrate that we are more than just a collection of brain impulses and that consciousness is something that exists on a higher plane of existence. They refer to this as "fifth dimensional beings," but again, these beings aren't aliens -- it's Cooper, the entire time.

The reason I call it deus ex machina is because Cooper thinks he's just sacrificing himself when he launches into the blackhole. Brand is painted as the likely hero of the story, and seems like she will be eventually given the end scene because I assume it's the people on that planet who will eventually figure out how to place whatever the hell it is that is represented in three dimensions by the tesseract (although maybe I'm wrong and the equation Murph solves would allow that to take place) that let's Coop send the data back to her.

But I guess you're right that it's more a case of Chekhov's gun, since the bookcase is the first shot in the movie. Again, the whole metaphor of books being the way we communicate information across time is a thought provoking idea, but I don't think they do the best job communicating that idea in the third act.

It wasn't at all dumb luck.

She had been working on the problem for years and it wasn't until it was revealed to her that the entire project was a lie that she decided to start over from scratch.

She went back to where it all started, where she first noticed these localized gravitational disturbances. This isn't something a physicist would forget, as it generally would be impossible. When she went through her things and saw her father's watch and that it was moving systematically, she figured it out on the spot since the movie goes out of it's way to explain to the audience that she is more than familiar with Morse code.

I don't deny that she would understand Morse code or that she go back to the "well" that started it all, but to notice such a tiny thing like the hand of a seemingly "broken" watch moving a certain way seems like a little much, at least for me as the viewer. Go look at her when he runs out of the house. She looks and sounds like a crazy person, and her brother embraces her not with a look of happiness because she's right but completely stonefaced.

The entire point of the movie is to not rely solely on logic.

The exposition between Cooper and and Brand regarding what planet to go to, which is done 3 different times throughout the film, and revisited twice thereafter including the very final scene of the movie should explain this in detail.

Love was the overriding factor of the movie. The human spirit.

This is not a movie for someone who expects a film sterile of such things. It's a movie literally about the transcending and metaphysical qualities of love. That's what it's about.

What I mean by logic is the very legit, complex science that permeates the whole movie.

Yes, love and the human spirit is a huge component of the story, but there is also a gigantic emphasis on science and they take a lot of time explaining it in the movie. They also spend time on how the people on Earth have turned on science and are burying their head in the sand when facing their problems, and even the people on the recently built station are, in the mind of Cooper, too worried about restoring/honoring the past than looking to the future and potential advancements. That's what pushes Cooper to leave the station in pursuit of Brand (in addition to whatever feelings he has for her).

So again, imo, the ending just seems too rushed, in that it abandons explaining the science part of the third act in favor of getting across their central metaphor.

I'm not sure what you mean by this...

The point of having two planets was to demonstrate in the end that none of the planets were actually meant for colonization at all. That the remnants of NASA had totally misinterpreted the wormhole's purpose.

Cooper placed the wormhole in the Sol system not so humanity could colonize any of the planets orbiting the black hole; but so that humanity could traverse the black hole and discover a useful theory of gravitation.

The point of the wormhole was to get to the black hole. Not the planets.

Cooper, or some future humans, places the wormhole at much later in time though, right?

Also, doesn't the last scene imply that there was a good planet that would be inhabited by people eventually? Love (and Brand) was right, wasn't it?

My point though was that simply in a pacing sense, I think they could have combined the planets and had one that caused them to lose a ton of time and also caused them to fail the mission due to a rogue, selfish astronaut. That might have given him more screentime (since I'm sure the studio was pressing him on the three hour running time) to give the third act the time it deserved, since that's what the movie is really about not the shock twist that Matt Damon is a bad guy.

Interstellar and Inception are his two best films, easily. I'm not sure there's anything that should be changed about either.

I'd argue that Interstellar is just as good as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I agree with you on Inception. I thought he did a brilliant job setting up the rules of his world in the first half of the movie before letting his characters play in it in the second half without it at all feeling bloated or confusing.

Interstellar, on the other hand, needed some tightening, imo.

I think you should watch 2001: A Space Odyssey first, then rewatch Interstellar.

Try to understand, Interstellar is essentially a retelling of Kubrick's 2001 with a different interpretation on personal salvation and spiritual evolution. Instead of everlasting life individually, we have everlasting life through our children.

I'm a big Nolan fan, as many folks know. I love his work. I think he did an exceptional job on these films.

I give Interstellar a solid 10/10, and I don't do that lightly. It, like Inception, is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life, and easily in my Top 10.

In fact, Nolan is the only director other than Kubrick with 2 films in my Top 10 list.

I've been meaning to do this, just haven't come across 2001 on any of my streaming platforms. I'll have to find it someway though, and I'll comeback then with my definitive review for you.

That being said, I would be shocked if I get to your level of appreciation for the film, and that's totally fine because everyone has their own tastes.