This Old Neon Forum

Last night, I watched Elysium. I found it disappointingly shallow. The bad guy could have been awesome, but he had no depth. They put Matt Damon in a bad situation and expect the audience to automatically sympathize with him. The thematic layer was slathered on as thickly as any I've ever seen. It had potential, but there's really nothing to the movie beyond what they showed in the trailers.

I give it a 5.51/10 largely for having a good concept and some nice effects.

See, I liked Elysium for the fighty fighty. Wish it had more, to be honest. Oh, what have you done to me, 80's action cheese?

Anywho, I broke down and bought Antman. Paul Rudd is one of my "younger" man-crushes, so I'm instantly biased when he's filling the lead. Michael Peña is always a delight, though. For a film in the MCU, I thought it was one of the better ones. Definitely liked it more than either of the Captain America films or the last two Iron Man movies. Thor I'm biased towards for other, more base reasons. I've never been a fan of the Antman character, but this movie might have changed that. I'm also shocked to see Hollywood didn't go for the Hank Pym wife beater/alchoholic angle /s.

Drauks wrote:See, I liked Elysium for the fighty fighty. Wish it had more, to be honest. Oh, what have you done to me, 80's action cheese?

That's the thing. It could have been a better movie if it had gone with that angle. But it didn't. There were no real action set-pieces or fight sequences. One shootout, and then some vague guys doing bad things with no real tension, and then one fistfight.

Drauks wrote:Anywho, I broke down and bought Antman. Paul Rudd is one of my "younger" man-crushes, so I'm instantly biased when he's filling the lead. Michael Peña is always a delight, though. For a film in the MCU, I thought it was one of the better ones. Definitely liked it more than either of the Captain America films or the last two Iron Man movies. Thor I'm biased towards for other, more base reasons. I've never been a fan of the Antman character, but this movie might have changed that. I'm also shocked to see Hollywood didn't go for the Hank Pym wife beater/alchoholic angle /s.

Also not a fan of Antman, but found the movie quite good. Rudd is awesome, and I was surprised (and impressed) with how well they used Douglas. He managed the snappy Marvel wit quite well.

Kong Wen wrote:That's the thing. It could have been a better movie if it had gone with that angle. But it didn't. There were no real action set-pieces or fight sequences. One shootout, and then some vague guys doing bad things with no real tension, and then one fistfight.

Yeah, it felt like they were pushing too hard on the class divide for 3/4 of the movie. After he played Bourne, I'm just so used to seeing Damon mess people up that when I see him in a sci-fi mech suit it's pretty much an expectation.

Kong Wen wrote:Also not a fan of Antman, but found the movie quite good. Rudd is awesome, and I was surprised (and impressed) with how well they used Douglas. He managed the snappy Marvel wit quite well.

Douglas has always been an actor whose movies I tended to either love or hate (Falling Down and Wall Street easily taking the cake). I liked him in this, but in a way felt I didn't get to see him as much as I would have liked in this role.

Hunger Games Mocking Jay Part 2

MEH!

I've never been into the HG movies, and this one didn't change my mind on the series much. I really and truely felt like there was no characterization at all throughout this entire movie. It was just characters moving from plot point to plot point. The ending seemed abrupt and unearned. Some people in the audience clapped when it was over. I laughed.

6/10.

Saw Creed.

Thought it was great! If you enjoyed any of the other Rocky movies at all, you'll dig this one.

The Shoemaker wrote:Hunger Games Mocking Jay Part 2

MEH!

I've never been into the HG movies, and this one didn't change my mind on the series much. I really and truely felt like there was no characterization at all throughout this entire movie. It was just characters moving from plot point to plot point. The ending seemed abrupt and unearned. Some people in the audience clapped when it was over. I laughed.

6/10.

The last book sucked apart from

Spoiler

Prims death.

was easily the worst of the three but stupid movie studio decided to make the worst book 4 1/2 hours long to make more money. Part 2 felt long enough as it was.

Claytone wrote:Saw Creed.

Thought it was great! If you enjoyed any of the other Rocky movies at all, you'll dig this one.

I saw it this weekend too, and also thought it was great!

Rocky is at its best when it focuses on the sometimes gritty personal angle. I thought Rocky VI / Rocky Balboa was great in this respect as well. And I really like the way they've backgrounded Rocky in this one but made it really fit into the series. He's an important figure, but it's not entirely his story. In some ways, I wish we got to see a little bit more of his struggle, but in other ways I appreciate that they didn't give in to the temptation to give us all the connections (i.e. they didn't need to give us a big exposition on Paulie, because it wouldn't be realistic, it would just have been fanservice).

Great movie. The leads did a great job. The fighting was done well. The music was good.

Just watched Spy last night. Missed it in theaters, but it really was quite funny. It reminded me a lot of the Cornetto Trilogy by Edgar Wright with its penchant for gore effects in the middle of something funny happening.

Mentioned this in the chat last night, but I saw Star Wars episode IV A New Hope for the first time last night. The only other Star Wars movie I've seen was episode VII.

I thought it was not bad. I won't bash the 80's special effects because I'm sure they were good for the time. Once you've watched the movie for half an hour the red lasers don't look as bad anymore. They definitely did a good job with the droids and lightsabers (though the one lightsaber battle looked a little robotic to me).

The pacing was a little slow for me, but this is coming from someone who came right off of the Force Awakens, a movie with excellent pacing. They did a good job with the characters and back story, while the delivery of most of the lines came off as a little cheesy. It doesn't help that I already knew most of the story beats so that may be why it seemed a little slow to me.

Overall, not bad. 6/10. Will watch episodes V and VI.