[Jura-Glenlivet]

If you just like the idea read Battle Royale. Teenagers kidnapped and forced to fight one another to the death with random weapons. Plus it's gruesome as feck.

Is the movie actually any good? I keep seeing it on Netflix but it just doesn't seem like it would be great.

Hunger Games?  No good. Steer clear.

No. Battle Royale.

Watch it, it's Japanese so it's a bit fucked up, but it's worth a watch, plus it's got the psycho girl from the Crazy 88 from Kill Bill in, and she is fit.

[beardo]

Seen it. Was kinda bad.

[Saddam Hussein]

Seen it. Was kinda bad.

You just hate fun.

[beardo]

there's nothing fun in it

[Snupes]

No it was good.

[beardo]

It was really bad.

[Crudblud]

Battle Royale is okay, but it probably would have worked a lot better in animation than live action.

[xasop]

Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)

A bizarre, dark and at times ludicrous exploration of sexuality, metaphysics, humanity and power. I didn't find any of the characters to be particularly relatable, but I also got the impression that was intended; everything was shrouded in a surreal sense of hyperbole. Perhaps it's just me coming straight off the lampshade-happy Stargate franchise, but I found the suspension of disbelief on the part of the characters to be somewhat jarring. They all appear to accept the strange themes the film throws at them without question. I'm not saying that as a good or a bad thing, just something that struck me as odd.

The plot is fairly simplistic, as the film itself seems to be primarily driven by the exploration of themes and ideas rather than the progression of a story. It leapfrogs between themes of lust, betrayal and the unexpected with uncanny nonchalance, making for an interesting if somewhat confusing experience. I liked it, but I think there's too much here to take in on a first viewing.

Would watch again, and probably will at some point.

[Blanko]

Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2013)

Harmony Korine is not someone who's exactly known as a critics' darling, and a lot of that probably has to do with his distaste or even outright contempt for conventional narrative structure and tactfulness. My only previous venture into Korine's body of work was with Gummo, a brilliant portrait of the white trash of southern US. That film was critically panned, as was every other film of his until this one, which for the first time in Korine's career actually gained mostly positive reviews.

It's pretty obvious why this one garnered a bit more positive critical attention. It's got the polished look and production value you'd expect from a big budget film (meaning it's not shot on VHS home video this time around), it's got a far more conventional narrative than Gummo and presumably his other earlier films, and perhaps what's the most significant aspect of all, it's very moralistic. The film is exactly what the title suggests: a bunch of college girls who idolize hedonism above all else go on spring break and indulge in, well, pretty much everything you can imagine. There's really not much to say about it.

One of the things I really loved about Gummo was how uncritical and even sympathetic it was towards its subjects. It simply sought to portray how those people really were, and it's precisely for that reason that it achieves a level of realism that really triggers the sensation of discomfort in the viewer. Here it's the complete opposite; it's intensely critical of its characters and at no point aims to portray them as anything other than hypocritical and morally repugnant. It does try to evoke sympathy, mostly with the only girl in the group who actually has a personality of some sort. She's aptly called Faith, is ostensibly a Christian, and calls her grandmother while we're treated with a clip show of spring break party rituals. If that sounds like cheap emotionalism, that's because it really is. The film tries to abuse it constantly with little to no effect.

Eventually we're introduced to James Franco's ridiculous caricature of a character, and the film entirely gives up on trying to make a statement of some sort. Paradoxically, his character seemed like the one good film about this film, although I'm not sure if it was entirely intentional; he's essentially mirroring the viewer's thoughts about the main characters and their actions. He's completely overblown and basically a walking critique of everything the girls represent. As he's talking about spring break sluts in his sleazy, belitting fashion, and basically just acts like a massive douchebag, you get the sensation that the girls come to a self-realization on how dumb they are, and perhaps there after all is a point to this film. Sadly, it doesn't really carry through with that idea, and manages to devolve into something resembling self-parody.

Giving credit where credit is due, this film is at least competently made. It's very pretty and well shot, and the meandering dream-like pacing works well, but beneath the polished surface you have a far more disingenuous and dishonest film than what Korine has demonstrated to be capable of. 5/10

[xasop]

Stargate (Roland Emmerich, 1994)
Stargate SG-1 (Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner, 1997-2007)
Stargate: The Ark of Truth (Robert C. Cooper, 2008)
Stargate: Continuum (Martin Wood, 2008)

These three films and one TV series chronicle the story of an interplanetary teleportation device, known as the stargate, through its discovery on Earth and the ensuing exploration and militarisation by the US Air Force. There's a lot of variance in plot, characters and quality of screenwriting throughout the 15-year story, so I'll go through them one by one.

Stargate is a passable but altogether underwhelming introduction to the universe. As enjoyable as it is for the mythological references that would be gradually phased out through SG-1, the characters are very cliche and predictable, and it follows the done-to-death frame narrative of "introduction / complication / resolution" we learnt to write in school. Not a bad movie, but it stops short of being a good one.

SG-1 starts out picking up the pieces from the film, and for the first couple of seasons fails to amount to anything greater. Once again, the main appeal of the early seasons is their focus on mythology, with the dominant alien races (in particular, the Goa'uld and the Asgard) having taken on the role of gods at some point in Earth's history. Throughout SG-1, the fun episodes are the only ones which manage to be consistently strong, possibly due to not taking themselves too seriously. "1969" is a good early example of such.

Things start to pick up towards the end of season 2, and the various story arcs involving the Goa'uld, the Tok'ra, the Asgard, the replicators and the Ancients make up the meat of seasons 3 through 7. Those five seasons are SG-1's best, in my opinion, finishing in a cliffhanger reminiscent of The Empire Strikes Back, as one of the characters is frozen in stasis under less-than-ideal circumstances. The classic SG-1 lineup of O'Neill, Jackson, Carter and Teal'c remains the best one to date, although Jonas Quinn made a nice addition in season 6.

Things started to fall apart as the central characters left the show, and none of their replacements ever quite filled the shoes of their predecessors. Season 8 was saved from total disaster by a few well-written episodes (the finale in particular), and the fact that O'Neill was still involved, even if to a lesser degree. It was also the last season with the Goa'uld as the dominant enemy; who, for whatever faults they may possess, felt like a relatable and tangible threat, without invoking too much suspension of disbelief.

Season 9 was the worst of the run. The new leader, Mitchell, failed in every way to live up to either O'Neill or Carter's leadership abilities, and felt like a cheap substitute for O'Neill's happy-go-lucky humour. Carter was absent for the first half of the season, and while I like Vala as a character, her constant antagonism of Daniel Jackson got old fast. Couple that with a confused jumble of story arcs involving the newly-introduced Ori shitlords, the last of the Goa'uld and the newly-formed free Jaffa nation, and the season really doesn't go anywhere. It ends in another mythological reference, this time relating an ancient battle against the Ori to Merlin and King Arthur, but by now it just feels like a token effort.

Season 10 was made slightly better by a more consistent focus on the Ori as the main threat, although they're still a much less well-developed enemy than the Goa'uld ever were. The finale, "Unending", was the highlight of the last two seasons, partly due to disregarding established story arcs and focusing on creating a well-written standalone episode, as many season finales before it did. At least it ended on a high note.

The two follow-up films, The Ark of Truth and Continuum, couldn't be more different from each other. Ark concludes the Ori story arc from seasons 9 and 10. As if that weren't bad enough, they introduce a brand new civilian government character whose sole purpose is to fuck up all of the military's plans by re-introducing replicators (an enemy previously defeated once and for all) without good reason or clear motive. The replicators then attack that guy (who is so unmemorable I've forgotten his name) to create a replicator/human hybrid who fights hand-to-hand with Mitchell. No doubt it was intended to come across as impressive or scary, but it just looked ridiculous.

Continuum, on the other hand, concluded the Goa'uld plot by portraying the death of the final Goa'uld system lord, Ba'al. While his execution takes only minutes, the majority of the film is taken up by a deviation in the timeline, whereby Ba'al tries to undo all of the accomplishments of SG-1 by going back in time and preventing them from ever discovering the stargate in the first place. While I am a sucker for time travel, I also genuinely think this is better written than The Ark of Truth, not to mention that O'Neill makes a comeback (which is always worthwhile).

The SG-1 narrative is among the most inconsistent sci-fi I've watched. Overall, I liked it a lot, but it had a lot of weak spots where not much interesting happens for many episodes at a time. All things considered, I'm glad I watched it, but I probably wouldn't watch it all the way through again; I'd pick the good bits (seasons 3-7 of SG-1 and Continuum, mainly) and skip the rest.

[Blanko]

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)

Ya done it now, Terry. I'd never been particularly impressed by Malick's films, but I have been fascinated by his craft and intentions. I guess the sad reality of his creative process is that not everything he puts out lives to its potential. But I was never entirely sure why that potential was not reached, until now. The difference between this and The Tree of Life is that while they're both shot entirely out of stream of consciousness and made into actual films in editing, I always felt like The Tree of Life was holding back on us; you could sense the struggle of finding the coherence out of the chaos, and for better or for worse, it felt like a filtered product. That's not what To the Wonder is. It's Terry not holding back in the slightest. It's pure and unfiltered stream of consciousness, and all the raw sensuality that comes with it. People say it's incoherent, but so what? It's still functional and fulfills its purpose. I think when Terry is trying to explain himself, his method loses its purpose, and this film avoids that mistake. It's like all the stars have come aligned and I finally get it. 10/10

[Rama Set]

I really enjoyed Tree of Life so I imagine I will like To The Wonder as well.

[Blanko]

I dunno, it seems like a lot of people who loved The Tree of Life hated To the Wonder. It's definitely worth a shot, at least.

[Saddam Hussein]

No spoilers unless indicated, I promise:

I have now seen Ant-Man, and I can say without hesitation that it was fucking fantastic.  Much, much better than I was expecting, and I'd like to think that I was feeling fairly optimistic about it to begin with.  It's easily the funniest MCU film so far, the cast and characters are great, and the small scale and creative use of visual effects help it feel truly unique within the MCU.  To be sure, it does have a few flaws.  There's a lot of exposition in the first act that's worked in a bit too clunkily, the story takes a while to really get going and deliver on the action, and the father-daughter relationships that are intended to provide drama for the movie are a little rushed and so never feel as poignant as they were probably meant to.  Also, it would have been nice to see Evangeline Lilly get to do a little more as Hope.  She isn't just a love interest by any means, but...okay, spoiler time: No, she doesn't swoop in as the Wasp at the end of the second act and kick ass in the name of feminist capeshit.  An end-credits scene hints that she'll get to be the Wasp in the future, but alas, it doesn't happen in this movie.

That missed opportunity aside, Lilly does the best she can with what she has, and so does everyone else.  Paul Rudd makes Scott Lang very likable and relatable; certainly a far cry from the typical snarky-snarky-one-liners-and-quips persona that Joss Whedon seemed to confine himself to writing.  If I'm properly understanding the character of Hank Pym from what I've looked up, then I'd say that Michael Douglas has him just right - he's a brilliant scientist with nothing but the best of intentions; but just under the surface, there's a very dark man twisted by bitterness and rage clawing to get out.  Michael Peña is fucking hilarious, and a mere description will not do his performance justice.  And even our villain, Corey Stoll as Darren Cross/Yellowjacket, isn't half-bad.  He doesn't steal the show or anything, but he has a decent amount of screen time, an established personality and character, remains a credible threat throughout the film, and there's even some small effort put into showing why he might have gone down this villainous path in the first place.  He's one of the better MCU villains for sure.

I don't really want to try to describe the various setpieces that the movie has, because that would just spoil it.  All I can say is that they're incredibly creative, and they prove that you don't need to demolish a city to come up with an entertaining climax to a superhero movie.  Stakes are the important factor, not scale.  Under the right circumstances, two tiny dudes in silly suits throwing toys at each other in a little girl's bedroom can be every bit as compelling as two big dudes of curious pigmentation throwing cars at each other on the streets of Harlem.

[Vindictus]

Yeah, it has a few problems. The movie feels very short, some sequences take place really fast. One second a character will be doing something somewhere, next second they'll be somewhere else doing something and it feels like you missed 2 minutes. And yeah, some exposition was heavy at the start.

What I really appreciated, and that Saddam mentioned, is that they really ingeniously got around the typical excessive destruction by minimising it, while simultaneously drawing humour from it too. The villain is slightly better than most marvel villains, and the humour is solid.

Also enjoyed agent carter rocking up.

[beardo]

Ant-Man. Was great. 10/10.

[Thork]

I watched the Jackal (1997) last night. Not sure how I've never seen it before. The bit where Bruce Willis kills Jack Black is awesome.

Great film. Some very serious plot holes. The most annoying I found was Bruce Willis can cross the Canadian border into the US anyway he likes. And he chooses to use a sailing boat via the Great Lakes. Somehow Richard Gere guesses correctly the exact time and port he arrives at knowing nothing more than he has to cross the border and the whole FBI and KGB scramble there based on this guy's improbable but correctly placed hunch. He then does the exact same thing later having spent the whole film trying to prevent the head of the FBI being assassinated, he has another hunch the target is really the First Lady, based on nothing more than Bruce Willis saying to a dying FBI agent "Tell him, he can't protect his women". Bruce Willis had already shot Gere's first love and she lost the baby and now just as he likes the scar faced FBI woman, he kills her in the house of the baby losing woman in a failed hit on her. From that he gets "we must all stop protecting the head of the FBI and protect the first lady instead". He gets there just in time, shoots through a blacked out window to disable the scope on a KPV mounted in an unmarked SUV, and then guns Willis down in a subway.

By the end, I really wanted Willis to shoot Gere in his hamster abusing arse so I wouldn't have to hear the distressing Northern Ireland accent he bodges all the way through the film. Bruce Willis was awesome in the film though and made it a really good watch.

3 stars.

[Snupes]

I saw Ant-Man. Definitely one of my favourite Marvel movies so far. It definitely has a lot of Edgar Wright still lingering within it and that is a very good thing. Probably the most visually interesting Marvel movie so far, and its tone isn't as samey as many of the others, so hopefully this means they'll start branching out with that in future films. And I can't believe I'm saying this about anything, but Paul Rudd was fantastic.

They were also very faithful to the source, not that that's super important.

[Saddam Hussein]

...wat

Well, there goes any inclination of me being vaguely excited about that movie. I can't wait for another mediocre Paul Rudd comedy

lol

And on the subject of Wright, you might want to read this to see which ideas were his and which ones were Reed/Rudd/McKay's.  I've seen a lot of reviewers attributing basically everything that was funny or unique about the movie to Wright, and that's just not fair when his replacements made some excellent contributions of their own.

[Rama Set]

Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1"

Better titled, "how selfies can unite the world".  What a piece of vapid shit.