What have you seen lately...and did you like or not and why?

A few for me:

The Enforcer: Denzel Washington in an ex-military badass takes on mean nasty Russian mafia in (if I recall correctly) Boston, kicking butt here and there. Rambo-ish basically but not so overtly military and his character is much more subdued. Predictable and not very believable, frankly not very good in general, but I'm a big Washington fan and he made it worth a watch if you're in the mood for such a thing.

Inside Out: a Pixar animation and one of their best ever. A young girl and her family move to a new town and the difficulties it places on them, with her emotions being characters in the film. Delivers a message (several really) without being preachy or self-righteous about it (refreshing) and just plain fun and done very well in all respects.

Annihilation: mentioned in another thread and gave me the idea for this thread. Someone else liked it but sorry IMO it was terrible. Basically some aliens land and put up some weird "protected" area that people can go into but never come back. Our heroine goes in with a few other people and nasty things happen - dressed up as sci fi but really a horror film, a gimmick which ticked me off as I like sci fi and hate horror (and do I need to explain how almost all horror films are really weak on plot/dialogue/etc...).

I'm currently watching the Sniper series of films starring Tom Berenger. Most of them haven't been converted to Blu Ray yet but the DVD version is quite sharp.

Great movies IMO.

I'm also watching the Jurassic Park movies, great stuff!

Thx will check out. I liked the first JP movie but the others were so badly panned I haven't yet bothered. I did read the first 2 books...the first was excellent, the second weak.

Caught Avengers Infinity recently. A fun film generally speaking but as a nerd who grew up reading about these characters I hate how more and more they are not faithful to the source material, esp how EVERYONE has to be a wise-cracking joker to some degree or other. It really detracts from the credibility of the flick and just plain gets annoying after a certain point. They did do a great job with Thanos though.

I really enjoyed Infinity War. I have all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, I really dig them.

Today I watched the Power Rangers movie. Hadn't seen it since I thought it was animated. It has real actors. I enjoyed it thoroughly and the special effects were excellent.

Zootopia: another outstanding animation flick. The DMV scene alone is worth the watch, lmao (anyone who's had to endure the painfully slow stupidity of this haven for knuckle-draggers will appreciate it).

I haven't seen it yet, but the new, 4th remake of "A Star Is Born" has me interested from the music/engineering aspect. Anyone on the way to see it yet?

Unlike most every other movie and every single tv show (esp the ones I get involved with)... the music clips in the new Star Is Born... are not clips. Everything was played live.... everything was sung live.... even in intimate apartment scenes etc... all live....all the time. Every iota of playing and singing. Warts and all. Technically, that's really really hard to do in a tv show or movie. Like....really hard.

The info I've read so far is that the sound editors captured everything live on two 32-channel mixers and routinely were capturing 60 tracks of multitrack "stuff" (ie...massive amount of micing on the sound stage set as well as on location).

Huge amount of room modeling used also.... check out that interesting story on how the movie producers successfully prevented live audiences (at the live filming and recording sessions at Coachella etc) from being able to grab the performances on cellphones to leak before the movie was finished.

Interesting interesting stuff. I remember the 1976 remake and it was too schmaltzy and removed from the times I was living in.

This movie may be a success on a number of fronts. The approach to recording the film's dialogue and music itself is guaranteed to draw me to the theater to see it.

FYI the gist of the thread is movies you've seen and what you thought about the movie, not the music attached to it

No idea how that's relevant since it's a TV show and not a movie, but anyway...

Time Trap - Basically some teens go looking for their teacher who went into a cave and didn't return...so they go into the same cave he did and it turns out time passes differently there. I like movies involving some twist on time, but this is so bad, to call it a B movie insults all B movies. It's that bad. Avoid.

Hacksaw Ridge - Based on a true story of a medic in WW2. Liked it but could have been a lot better, esp in character development. Also at times it digressed to seriously cheesy cliches, which if they didn't hit us over the head with it could have worked so much better. There were also numerous scenes of pointless gore/etc. Yeah the realism of war, blah blah, but it was still excessive, had a kind of shoved in your face feel. Basically an uneven film which still is well worth the watch. I thought the actors did an excellent job, just that the screenplay needed work.

I've heard some good reviews on this one but I haven't watched it yet.

Yeah it was good overall for sure; forgot to mention that Hugo Weaving (chief baddie in Matrix and elf dude in LOTR) was outstanding IMO as the father.

Bridge of Spies - true story about the prisoner swap between U.S. and Russia for Gary Powers and a Russian agent. Vintage Tom Hanks/Spielberg.

Mars Attacks.

I watched Ex-Machina the other day and it was awesome! Lots of suspense!

I re-watched Nightmare Before Christmas since it's Halloween. Unique in that it's an animation that's also a musical. I'm not a big musicals guy but this was very well done. Van Helsing is up next, also a re-watch and also very good IMO...a shamelessly cheesy send-up to the great horror flicks of the 30s/40s era starring Hugh Jackman.

Lately, I've been binging on the Planet of The Apes. Recently, I scored the Evolution Collection which contains the first seven films. It's been fun!

The older ones were good but I heard the newer ones were not. ? Even if good, just wouldn't be the same without Roddie McDowell.

I haven't seen anything lately, sadly. Not because I don't want to, but because the movie industry is heavily politicized, so what good to see manipulation propaganda and such?! There was probably some propaganda going on for some time now, but in the past 8 years or so things went full turbo. Long story short...I don't watch garbage, I'm better off looking at grass growing.

PS: Sadly Politics corrupted so many other innocent sectors, including gearslutz. I mean, I got a ban for literally writing down the word "Jew", asked to be removed, never happened. And we're talking music tools here. What expectation could I have from Hollywood if that's the case?! haha

Yeah, I really like the older ones. I've seen Rise of the Planet of The Apes from the new trilogy. It's quite good. I haven't yet watched Dawn and War though. The special effects though from the new trilogy are great IMO.

The Book Thief - a young German girl is adopted by a family (ie in Germany) right before WW II begins. Centers largely around her family hiding a Jew in the basement. Not without its flaws but good flick overall. Fine acting by the mother and father who adopt her...the girl not so much. There were several key scenes where she kind of fell flat; she just didn't have the intensity she should have. In fact that might be said about the film overall a bit. But not overly so... in fact, I was so glad they don't make it all about WW II or the n a z i s, etc, which would have been easy to beat us over the head with....but that's been done to death 1000 times over so I'm glad they took a refreshingly different approach.

Edit: ironic and curious that a group famous for censorship (the n a z i s) is itself a censored word here.

Nobody else here watches movies?

Re-watched "Edge of Tomorrow" the other day, with Tom Cruise. Good film. They handle the time twist thing well (an easy thing to mess up or lean on too much).

I watched "They live" last week. Believe it or not is the only movie I've seen in 2018. Very average, but somewhat decent if you watch it in the late 80s I guess. All things considered it does hold some truth for our days I think.

PS: It's ok if you can't say "n a z i". This is an abbreviation for Nationalsozialist given by the opponents of National Socialism in Germany as it rhymes with the German nickname Naczi meaning a stupid, foolish person. So next time say "nationalist" instead of the forbidden "n a z i", or even better "stupid nationalist" if you really care for exact semantics.

I've seen Edge of Tomorrow a couple of times. I enjoyed it a whole lot better the second time around.

Currently I'm watching The Exorcist collection. The first movie, I watched when I was a teen and I didn't remember how good it really is. The Heretic was meh IMO, but entertaining nevertheless. Looking forward to watching the rest of the collection.

Yeah The Exocist was really good, almost too good. Too creepy for me a second time. Curious if the others hold up since sequels are often poor (although with the trend in recent years of sequels and "franchises" that's getting better).

I'm on a time travel movie kick now, just watched Predestination. The overall concepts (once they are revealed) are unique and interesting, but it doesn't make up enough for the overall movie which IMO just wasn't very good. I wouldn't say it was a waste of time to see or it was terrible and if you're a time travel nut it's definitely worth it, but that's it.

Exorcist III was very good. It's a murder mystery type movie with a demonic twist. It's very suspenseful and quite gripping.

Exorcist: "The Beginning" was also excellent. It's the prequel to the original. It fills all the gaps nicely. The cinematography is very well done.

Dominion is another prequel but essentially follows the same story line as "The Beginnining" Why they chose to do a remake of it makes no sense to me. It was good but "The Beginning" was much better IMO.

The last disc in the collection is the Exorcist Director's cut. Same movie but with all the scenes that didn't make it into the theatrical version.

Overall the collection is worth it if you've seen only the first movie.

Trading Places - I wouldn't exactly call this a "holiday flick" even though it occurs around that time, but haven't seen in a long time and it's a classic. Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd at their best with an excellent supporting cast.

Tonight I watched 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's a great thriller packed with suspense and a wild twist at the end.

I’ve completely given up on Hollywood movies because I don’t find force fed indoctrination of liberal (or otherwise) ideology to be entertaining. I enjoy movies for their entertainment value not their virtue signaling and diatribe. There’s a place for politics and it’s not the big screen. And I’m not paying my hard earned money to see it.

That said, I really enjoyed the Korean film Train to Busan. Very intense and exciting film about the dreaded “fast zombies” that had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Never thought I could be so pumped up about a movie while reading subtitles but it happened.
Best movie of 2018 IMO.

I hear you but they aren't ALL like that. Just hard sometimes to find the hidden gems. For ex. I saw "Up" the other day (animation). Great film starring the late great Ed Asner (aka Lou Grant). No politics.

You’ve got a point. My old lady dragged me to the most recent Harry Potter movie and while I’m not a big fan I was at least relieved it wasn’t beating my head in with boring politics and idealism. Good entertainment value there.