Rate the last movie you saw

[MD13]

I watched Beasts of No Nation, the new Netflix film starring Idris Elba and a fantastic new child actor who was apparently a street vendor before. Incredible cinematography (Cary Fukunaga) and great acting all around. It was a bit limited by the limitations of the story, but it's still a great experience and Fukunaga does a great job conveying the atrocities while keeping enough off camera that it doesn't become war porn.

I give it 8-8.5/10

 

[Sebastian]

I love TNG, don't get me wrong.. I think it's fantastic.

But, I prefer TOS for a couple of reasons.

1) I prefer the TOS crew. I prefer Kirk because I can relate to him. That doesn't mean Picard is not a badass in his own right, but Kirk is more like me as a person.

2) Spock is a fantastic character as is Data, but nothing beats the Kirk/Spock dynamic duo.

3) TNG tried to replicate McCoy with Dr. Pulaski but that didn't really work very well. She was a good character, and offered a counter for Picard, but, not a good companion. They wanted to so desperately avoid a romantic relationship with Crusher and Picard that the constant tension between them seemed odd. By contrast, McCoy, when added to Kirk and Spock is the perfect group of 3 guys all very different all with their own dimension to add to the group.

4) TOS is so fucking Cold War old-school it's ridiculous.. There's an episode about two planets waging endless virtual computerized war, where they simulate detonating thermonuclear bombs over their cities and based on the simulated results, they kill people who were killed by some probabilistic function. It's insane.

Long story short, Enterprise shows up with some loud mouth diplomat who shirks Kirk's authority and forces them to enter this warzone. Upon beaming down and being politely greeted, they're immediately taken into custody.. The guy asks him straight up: "You mean.. we are to be killed?" The cold-hearted response in the affirmative is just as great.

Now, TNG had some great characters that TOS didn't have any semblance of like Riker, Troi, and Warf. Those characters' best episodes are typically among the best of the series.

Beyond the main cast, I thought the stories in TOS were very well done, often more so than TNG. TOS Seasons 1&2 are fantastic and the quality of writing is often superior to what you would find in TNG over the same run of episodes.

Now, TNG has the absolute best Star Trek episodes to date, including Best of Both Worlds, etc, but, I don't think that really speaks to the average episode and if we remove TOS Season 3, then I think the Original Series is marginally better and more enjoyable.

Gour,

What did you think of Deep Space Nine?

 

[Adam]

As a 25 year old black male I've never watched the cult hit that is Back to the Future, until today that is. With all the buzz about the date from Part II coming up, I felt compelled to finally sit down and watch it.

I have to say, it's a pretty damn good movie. I'm not breaking any ground here but I was genuinely surprised at how much I liked it.

8.5/10

Was so hyped for this I thought I would watch it with my 5 year old daughter. It's a PG so I thought it would be fine within 15 mins the had bed a shut a bastard and a man shot with an ak47 so I turned it off. Must have underestimated the certification and only remembered the nice bits

 

[Biw]

Was so hyped for this I thought I would watch it with my 5 year old daughter. It's a PG so I thought it would be fine within 15 mins the had bed a shut a bastard and a man shot with an ak47 so I turned it off. Must have underestimated the certification and only remembered the nice bits

You'd also have to explain to her what a "spook" is. I laughed out loud for 5 minutes at that part. Was so unexpected.

 

[gourimoko]

Gour,

What did you think of Deep Space Nine?

You know, I originally had mixed feelings about DS9. I thought the first episode was fantastic actually. Really liked it, but then I thought the first season had a rocky start and it kind of lost me.

As I watched for the first time, I got lost because the series wasn't like TOS/TNG in that you really needed to have seen the previous episodes in order to keep up. This is why I don't watch The Walking Dead anymore, because I'm so far out of the loop with respect to the show that I'd need to catch up.

Also, there was a divide for me with where they were taking the show. I simply couldn't get with the idea of Sisko being The Emissary. I kind of rejected the Space Religion in the series, and I think this was largely due to youth.

When I finally tried to get back into it, I started rewatching towards the end of Season 6, and I just had no feel for the show.

However, later in life I had an injury while rock climbing so I had a bit of free time on my hands while recovering in a cast. Lol! I said fuck it, and started watching DS9 from episode 1 to the very last episode.

Having done that, I can see why people love the show. It really is fantastic and you can see how the actors began to learn the characters they were supposed to be portraying. Things felt a lot less stiff, far more real and natural, and yes there was that feel of grittiness that comes with the setting.

I also found myself appreciating the role of the Emissary as by now I had done quite a bit of religious study myself, and I could fully understand where the show was trying to take this idea.

It's amazing really how much differently you can look at something just watching it a second time. I tried that with Voyager, and, well, while I do appreciate it more, it wasn't nearly as good.

 

[col63onel]

@Jack Brickman would kill me, but, I'm not the biggest fan.. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike it, I just never really gave it a chance. I hear it's fantastic though if you really sit down and watch it, and I see how Serenity is so well liked.

Yeah, it's only one season, so you could binge watch everything in a weekend if you had it free.

A lot of interesting ideas, but felt like it was just getting started when it got cancelled. Nathan Fillion is absolutely great. He's so good, he tricked me into watching a few seasons of Castle.

 

[gourimoko]

I personally like that the reboot goes back the TOS characters. I don't get too caught up in Gour's issue that the story line is impossible. We're talking about a show with warp drives and transporters, which are also both impossible.

Neither of those things are demonstrably impossible.

In fact, warp drive is very likely probable just with a very high energy constraint. If recent advances in improving the efficiency of the Alcubierre solution to general relativity are sound, then that energy constraint is actually well within human capability.

Whereas we once thought it would take the total mass energy of Jupiter to power a warp drive; we now have recent findings suggesting it could be done with just 750kg of antimatter.

Yes, that's trillions of times more than we can produce at present and there are tremendous scientific hurdles outside of this; but it is very likely not impossible.

The problem with the reboot is that it posits a supernova as a galaxy threatening event. Yet supernovae happen regularly in our galaxy. So much of the movie was based not on flawed or imaginative science but on the lack of science that it became a distraction.

 

[Adam]

You know, I originally had mixed feelings about DS9. I thought the first episode was fantastic actually. Really liked it, but then I thought the first season had a rocky start and it kind of lost me.

As I watched for the first time, I got lost because the series wasn't like TOS/TNG in that you really needed to have seen the previous episodes in order to keep up. This is why I don't watch The Walking Dead anymore, because I'm so far out of the loop with respect to the show that I'd need to catch up.

Also, there was a divide for me with where they were taking the show. I simply couldn't get with the idea of Sisko being The Emissary. I kind of rejected the Space Religion in the series, and I think this was largely due to youth.

When I finally tried to get back into it, I started rewatching towards the end of Season 6, and I just had no feel for the show.

However, later in life I had an injury while rock climbing so I had a bit of free time on my hands while recovering in a cast. Lol! I said fuck it, and started watching DS9 from episode 1 to the very last episode.

Having done that, I can see why people love the show. It really is fantastic and you can see how the actors began to learn the characters they were supposed to be portraying. Things felt a lot less stiff, far more real and natural, and yes there was that feel of grittiness that comes with the setting.

I also found myself appreciating the role of the Emissary as by now I had done quite a bit of religious study myself, and I could fully understand where the show was trying to take this idea.

It's amazing really how much differently you can look at something just watching it a second time. I tried that with Voyager, and, well, while I do appreciate it more, it wasn't nearly as good.

I hated DS9 at the start because i wanted a space adventure. It took me until a second go to realise in many ways it has a greater scope than TOS or TNG and i just got lost in the superficial. It really is a show where the characters develop, more so than TNG (which is the show i grew up with and loved)

 

[KI4MVP]

Neither of those things are demonstrably impossible.

In fact, warp drive is very likely probable just with a very high energy constraint. If recent advances in improving the efficiency of the Alcubierre solution to general relativity are sound, then that energy constraint is actually well within human capability.

Whereas we once thought it would take the total mass energy of Jupiter to power a warp drive; we now have recent findings suggesting it could be done with just 750kg of antimatter.

Yes, that's trillions of times more than we can produce at present and there are tremendous scientific hurdles outside of this; but it is very likely not impossible.

The problem with the reboot is that it posits a supernova as a galaxy threatening event. Yet supernovae happen regularly in our galaxy. So much of the movie was based not on flawed or imaginative science but on the lack of science that it became a distraction.

A warp drive warps the space in front of it so that when it travels through that warped space, it doesn't have to travel faster than the speed of light to effectively travel faster than the speed of light. A cleaver idea until you realize the warping itself still has to happen faster than the speed of light.

 

[Maximus]

It wasn't a movie...but i just watched a Matthew McConaughey commercial for Lincoln. 0/10...someone should get be-headed for producing those commercials.

Sorry, had to vent...

 

[Sebastian]

You know, I originally had mixed feelings about DS9. I thought the first episode was fantastic actually. Really liked it, but then I thought the first season had a rocky start and it kind of lost me.

As I watched for the first time, I got lost because the series wasn't like TOS/TNG in that you really needed to have seen the previous episodes in order to keep up. This is why I don't watch The Walking Dead anymore, because I'm so far out of the loop with respect to the show that I'd need to catch up.

Also, there was a divide for me with where they were taking the show. I simply couldn't get with the idea of Sisko being The Emissary. I kind of rejected the Space Religion in the series, and I think this was largely due to youth.

When I finally tried to get back into it, I started rewatching towards the end of Season 6, and I just had no feel for the show.

However, later in life I had an injury while rock climbing so I had a bit of free time on my hands while recovering in a cast. Lol! I said fuck it, and started watching DS9 from episode 1 to the very last episode.

Having done that, I can see why people love the show. It really is fantastic and you can see how the actors began to learn the characters they were supposed to be portraying. Things felt a lot less stiff, far more real and natural, and yes there was that feel of grittiness that comes with the setting.

I also found myself appreciating the role of the Emissary as by now I had done quite a bit of religious study myself, and I could fully understand where the show was trying to take this idea.

It's amazing really how much differently you can look at something just watching it a second time. I tried that with Voyager, and, well, while I do appreciate it more, it wasn't nearly as good.

I think Deep Space Nine was probably too far ahead of its time for many people back then to embrace in the manner they did TNG simply because they were used to one and done weekly episodes. It really helped pioneer serialized television, which is the norm now, and was the first post-9/11 TV show even though it was aired years before the attacks.

It was very successful in predicting how a society used to years of peace would react to a sudden threat by imposing aggressive, militarized security policies at the expense of individual liberties and how years of war eroded the moral codes of even the best people. It is spot-on illustrating the toll brutal conflicts take on a society at both the individual (Nog losing his leg and innocence in battle) and collective (the Federation Council sanctioning genocide as a weapon of war) levels. In that manner is somewhat sad that the darker responses of the post-9/11 world were quite predictable yet we were unable to avoid them anyway.

DS9 also succeeded brilliantly at portraying the antagonist factions not as simply evil caricatures bent on conquest and hating freedom (the Cardassians), or fanatics devoted to a twisted religion (the Jem Hadar), but as complex, nuanced rational actors that pursued (somewhat) understandable policy aims. In itself it is an achievement considering how poorly American film and television have been at portraying our enemies over the years, but can also serve as a guide on how to help people understand complex problems like war through popular mass media.

You know a show is running on all cylinders when the guest-stars become just as important, if not more so, than primary cast. Garak, Dukat, Weyoun, Winn and Damar were incredible characters.

 

[gourimoko]

A warp drive warps the space in front of it so that when it travels through that warped space, it doesn't have to travel faster than the speed of light to effectively travel faster than the speed of light. A cleaver idea until you realize the warping itself still has to happen faster than the speed of light.

There is no speed limit on the warping of spacetime; spatial deformation can occur at any arbitrary speed. SR applies to things moving through spacetime, not to spacetime itself.

But I think you're referring to Alcubierre's own objection to the metric, however, these concerns have largely been addressed using modified versions of the metric (since 1999) which call for unstable warp bubbles that degrade in very brief periods of time.

Using an oscillating warp bubble, you never actually need to signal bubble's wavefront to "turn off," so to speak. It will turn itself off. This idea is distinctly different than Alcubierre's which posits an eternally stable warp bubble with no regions of flat spacetime within it.

 

[Biw]

It wasn't a movie...but i just watched a Matthew McConaughey commercial for Lincoln. 0/10...someone should get be-headed for producing those commercials.

Sorry, had to vent...

That's a big bull...

 

[natedagg]

It wasn't a movie...but i just watched a Matthew McConaughey commercial for Lincoln. 0/10...someone should get be-headed for producing those commercials.

Sorry, had to vent...

Jim Carey Lincoln parody. Lolllllll
http://youtu.be/z3eN9u5N2Q4

 

[Jack Brickman]

Yeah, it's only one season, so you could binge watch everything in a weekend if you had it free.

A lot of interesting ideas, but felt like it was just getting started when it got cancelled. Nathan Fillion is absolutely great. He's so good, he tricked me into watching a few seasons of Castle.

Nathan Fillion is incredible in Firefly.

It just really sucks that show only got half of a season, because it was really picking up near the end. Serenity was a fantastic movie, though. It was basically everything the Star Wars prequels should have been but weren't. I was really hoping that movie would have done better and led to either another movie or the TV series being picked back up by someone. Sadly, that wasn't meant to be. Still a great show, though, and it holds up well because it doesn't really rely on effects.