Present Movies: The First Showing!

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.

Wow. Just wow. Phenomenal. At its heart, the movie is a science-fiction drama/space exploration thriller but it also showcases philosophical elements. Remember the best parts of 2001: A Space Odyssey and you'll have some idea of what to expect. The script is generally well-written and thought-provoking, if a little nihilistic and humanity-is-our-saviour-ish. The acting is heartfelt, the visuals brilliant but purposeful and the music bombastic where needed. Nothing is there just for the cool factor. In fact, there's a heavy 80s but futuristic, practical feel to the space aircraft aesthetics and technologies. Still, a high-concept movie is nothing without a beating heart, and Interstellar has heart in spades. The father/daughter relationship is particularly powerful. There are a few pacing issues in the middle and there's a little evolution talk but nothing too troublesome. At times, sound-mixing issues drowned out dialogue, but this may have been by design (can anyone confirm?) The final act is beyond words. Finally, while Interstellar contains very little objectionable content (just one F-word and a few minor words) the movie is rather long (170mins) and includes several super-intense scenes that will have you clawing at your seat.

See it!

8.5/10

[Shadowlander]

Two thumbs up for that review. Interstellar catapulted itself into my Top 5 Best Sci-Fi films in short order. The worlds they made planetfall on were wild, were they not? I felt the ending was left open....I would not at all mind seeing how that segment turned out but I left the theater feeling hope and optimism, so perhaps that question is already answered in my heart, cheesy as that sounds.

[Anhun]

I saw The Hobbit: the Battle of the Five Armies and was bitterly disappointed. I had steered clear of Unexpected Journey two years ago because of the poor reviews. I saw Desolation of Smaug last year because the critics gave it better notices, and was delighted. It was an entertaining movie event, though not a cinematic masterwork like LotR.

This year I was hoping that Battle of the Five Armies would be similarly entertaining, but the fact of the matter is that there is simply not enough content in the original book to spread across 3 movies. Peter Jackson sold out his artistic integrity to make a extra buck (or 2, or half a million).

They bloated the running time with endless over-the-top battle scenes. In LotR, the special effects added to the drama, they didn't single-handedly make the movies great. Now, 10 years later, the "special effects battle extravaganza" is becoming a tired concept. Without a connection to well-developed stories or characters, the special effects are dull and pointless.

They couldn't think of an organic way to develop the relationships, so they shoehorned in "moments" most of which had little or no emotional impact. The only character I could care less about was Thranduil, and that's a testament to Lee Pace's talents as an actor, not to anything the writers did. Seriously, I think you could make an interesting short film, just by cutting out all of the scenes that don't involve Lee Pace. He made his fight scenes epic and his big emotional moment actually made me cry.

My advice: rent the DVD from your local library, and fast forward through the non-Thranduil scenes.

[aragorn2]

The Avengers: Age of Ultron is messy, convoluted, overstuffed, pandering, bloated, rushed at times and absolutely the most fun I've had at the cinema since Guardians of the Galaxy last summer. Whedon is able to juggle almost a dozen major characters, introduce several new ones and delve even deeper into several of the returning ones, outdo the incredible action set pieces of his previous film and set up upcoming films all the while keeping it mostly fresh and incredibly fun. And while the resulting film is nowhere near perfect he still deserves huge amounts of credit that this film even works on any level. There are too many action scenes and almost all of them go on for too long and they are far too reliant on CGI and yet he is able to put more character moments and development in any given one than a lot of modern blockbusters manage in an entire film. And it doesn't hurt that all the said action scenes are really good despite Whedon's weakness's as an action director getting in the way here and there. The dialogue has all the great wit and flair that Whedon's become famous for and than some.
A really fun, delightful mess.

Ps.
And we finally actually get to see Paul Bettany, he alone is almost worth the price of admission here!

[starkat]

Saw Avengers Saturday. A couple of people have said it felt a bit rushed. I agree. However, I think it was a bit rushed because they neglected to touch on a couple of things like:

How Tony was doing after Iron Man 3 and getting the electromagnet out.

Could have set up his reasoning behind developing Ultron a little better.

Also, the set up with the twins. If you don't follow Agents of Shield, the twins and Strucker were just kind of dumped on you.

I think if they had added an additional scene in there with some dialogue about both it would have set it up a little better.

Loved the character development. Especially that of Hawkeye and Black Widow. The CGI was too video game in the opening scene, but that smoothed out as the movie went on.

aragorn2, I totally agree. A fun, delightful mess.

My viewing was particularly hilarious in that the power flickered before my friend and I got in the theater and apparently it goofed up the projector. We got to hear the commercials, but not see them. Someone had the bright idea of using the flashlight app on one or more phones and proceeded to do a shadow puppet show. Had the whole theater in stitches for a good 20 minutes. They did get the movie going. We didn't have to sit through endless previews.

[stargazer]

I agree with these comments about Age of Ultron. The opening CGI also seemed off to me but that was short-lived.

My tongue-in-cheek thought as I watched Tony Stark do his thing: He's obviously never seen any of the 'Terminator' movies, since he was so determined to create his world's version of Skynet, and we know how that turned out.

[aragorn2]

Tomorrowland is a sweet, childish, heavy-handed and over bearing message of humanistic hope brought to us by Brad Bird, that despite all of its best and noblest efforts doesn't entirely work.
But... having been brought to us by the one and only Mr. Bird, despite it's flaws, it's still an incredibly fun and at times very creative film with great chemistry between its leads and a lot of wit.

Bird's love letter/invitation to a bygone age of childlike hope and optimism doesn't totally come together in the end, but it's still a wonderfully delightful flight of fancy from one of the best film makers working today.

[aileth]

I had nearly forgotten about that movie (Tomorrowland). A couple years back we were taking some lambs to the butcher in Enderby. Just beyond where we turned in the driveway, we noticed a whole bunch of receivers(? telephone or internet) stuck all over a silo. Thought it was a bit weird, and didn't remember them being there the time before.

The butcher, as next door neighbour, told us all about it--the house front set they built, and so on. I figured I might have heard of George Clooney before, but I wasn't quite sure. I guess some of the local people were excited (good for the economy) but the butcher wasn't overly thrilled. I don't think they were filming there at the time.

Probably won't watch the movie, though

[johobbit]

We have opened a general Movies topic here, which includes Past, Present, and Future Movies. For any related discussion, that's the place to go.