Rate the Last Movie You Watched

Jackal said:

You mean Disney

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Marvel is a largely autonomous entity

ambershee said:

Marvel is a largely autonomous entity

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owned by Disney

Marvel Studios/MCU/Kevin Feige = Disney (the company who also brought Marvel Entertainment for $4B since 2009)
Spider-Man/Venom = Sony
X-Men/Fantastic Four/Deadpool/Gambit = Fox
Namor = Universal

Elysium - 7/10 ... utterly predictable but surprisingly watchable helped a great deal by having Sharlto Copley in it. Also, damn but Jodie Foster got old.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - 9/10 ... Apparently if you've read the critically acclaimed novel you'll have a better handle on the film - I hadn't and had no trouble following it so whatever. Intelligent & uncomfortable viewing for gung-ho patriots reflected in the poor box office reception in the US.

The new Robocop ... shite.

12 Years a Slave - 9.5/10

Fucking white people

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) [2D | watched: June 25, 2014]
+ Redesigned Autobots models and some new robot characters include three Autobots and one Wrecker, Decepticon bounty hunter Lockdown, the dastardly Galvatron, and Grimlock & his Dinobots.
+ Visuals are still amazing and cool sequences shot in IMAX's new 4K 3D digital camera. (Though I'm only seen in 2D format so I won't reduce more money from 3D or IMAX 3D theaters.)
+ Kelsey Grammer's chilling performance as a paranoid CIA agent.
– Michael Bay directing and Ehren Kruger scriptwriting once again.
– Human story and script/story are still the same and may very uneven despite new cool casts (Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, etc.).
– Sound effects are too noisy done by EDM artist Skrillex.
– Due to the length of 2 hours and 45 minutes, fans and audiences may be found too boring during playing.
Grade: C

The Counselor

Americans have been so used to (or oblivious to) non-Americans retranslating their fiction for them that it is difficult for me to fault Ridley Scott for channeling Cormac McCarthy's dark-western themes of death like it was standard nihilism. This is why American audiences probably blinked through this one but sat locked to their seats during the far superior No Country For Old Men, by the Coens. Even the actors in this seem confused at times, and there are a lot of good actors in here.

This is a cautionary tale (is it?) about characters with no names, just aliases. The title character, The Counselor, takes his first steps into the seedy world of drug smuggling and barely gets his heels wet when a freak occurrence causes everything to go tragically wrong. If you have read even one Cormac McCarthy novel then you know where the story has to go. What goes wrong is, in Ridley Scott's hands, we just sort of watch reality play out with no real investment. One or two truly graphic scenes of violence make notable an otherwise pointless endeavor for any audience, unfortunately. I did not dislike the movie but I could not recommend it. The Script is clearly well written, it's how the movie is presented that fails McCarthy. No tax paying person is going to watch this on Netflix and feel gripped by the pacing. There's no Walter White to relate to...and then back away from by the conclusion. No chase between hunters and the hunted are interesting, tense, or attention grabbing, unlike No Country, which had you watching even if you didn't care for the ending.

This is supposed to be a movie, man!

I'll chalk up my opinion to one scene, which was the movie's one chance to give us a yarn to care about. The only innocent person in the whole movie is The Counselor's girlfriend turned fiancé (Magneto and Penelope Cruz). A poorly shot, poorly expressed proposal scene stifles the grief displayed in a pivotal climactic scene because there is no joy expressed in their pairing beyond a few fleeting scenes of lust. It just doesn't work. We don't believe their love because it's not real.

A cautionary tale has to make us care, Ridley. To be fair, this movie was shot during Tony Scott's suicide, where production was paused for a week so the director could grieve. Would I say this had a profound effect on how the movie turned out? Who knows. The dedication at the end hardly seems befitting of Tony's Scott's career.

Tux Android said:

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) [2D | watched: June 25, 2014]
+ Redesigned Autobots models and some new robot characters include three Autobots and one Wrecker, Decepticon bounty hunter Lockdown, the dastardly Galvatron, and Grimlock & his Dinobots.
+ Visuals are still amazing and cool sequences shot in IMAX's new 4K 3D digital camera. (Though I'm only seen in 2D format so I won't reduce more money from 3D or IMAX 3D theaters.)
+ Kelsey Grammer's chilling performance as a paranoid CIA agent.
– Michael Bay directing and Ehren Kruger scriptwriting once again.
– Human story and script/story are still the same and may very uneven despite new cool casts (Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, etc.).
– Sound effects are too noisy done by EDM artist Skrillex.
– Due to the length of 2 hours and 45 minutes, fans and audiences may be found too boring during playing.
Grade: C

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It's just about walking heaps of junk smashing stuff .. into other piles of stuff, isn't it. A two year old could "write" this, and probably do a better
job...
For crying out loud, it's michael bay.

All three of the previous films are minute-to-minute identical - you can watch them side by side and see the cookie-cutter template play be scene by scene, and it's so obvious it's insane. I'd be curious to see how this one stacks up.

ambershee said:

All three of the previous films are minute-to-minute identical - you can watch them side by side and see the cookie-cutter template play be scene by scene, and it's so obvious it's insane. I'd be curious to see how this one stacks up.

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Heh, now that you mention that ...

[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rfup0XKx7o[/m]

Hah, I didn't realise someone had actually done it xD

This Is England (2006) 8/10

It takes place in 83 after The Falklands War. The protagonist's father was killed in it and he misses him greatly. At school he is given shit for being poor and his clothes not being cool enough. A group of a-political skinheads befriend him and he feels like he has a place. Then a member of their group is released from prison and he has an agenda of "if it ain't white, it ain't right." Shit goes south from there.

This movie will leave you feeling like shit, but that's its goal and it has a killer soundtrack. You are suppose to be disgusted by all the hate etc. Red state people in The U.S. might find it inspiring.

[m]http://youtu.be/H0jkv2bRFgQ[/m]

BillyBadAss said:

This Is England (2006) 8/10

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It's hard to believe this is as recent as 2006. It's so well done it feels like it's much earlier than that. Shane Meadows's first film, 'Small Time' [96] is one of my favourites, you should definately watch it if you can. Also, 'Where's the money, Ronnie?' which is a short but still good.

I saw This is England a while ago, but don't remember it very well. I need to watch it again.

(Ugh, it's not on Blu-Ray)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) [Cinema, 2D, Jul-11-2014]
Like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the first of the rebooted Apes series back in 2011, this sequel ignites the continuation of the first reboot (10 years after the events that happened), the plot (but there are little problems in which I don't comment), human-ape contact, political, and emotional to make this film a noteworthy sci-fi summer bonanza. Highly recommended!

I enjoyed Matt Reeves directing complex, great human casts (Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, and Kodi Smit-McPhee), super-thrilling motion-capture performance of Andy Serkis as ape hero Caesar, and the folks at Weta Digital made some amazing motion-capture utility of the apes, ape designs, and visuals (just like the film's predecessor). I wish Andy Serkis should do a lot more with Weta in the future. Also, Koba, Caesar's rival, is seemingly a decent but scary villain and battling with Caesar above the human tower in the pre-final scene is very proper.
Grade: A