What Movies Have You Seen Lately?

Quote: Nareed

What I've read is that it was atrociously done.

Horrible critical reviews. Maybe it's not a trend, but a once a generation type of film. 9 1/2 WEEKS (1986) actually got much better reviews than 50 shades.

Quote: Pacomartin

Horrible critical reviews. Maybe it's not a trend, but a once a generation type of film. 9 1/2 WEEKS (1986) actually got much better reviews than 50 shades.

I wonder if the sequels will be released? Have they been filmed yet?

Quote: TheCesspit

I wonder if the sequels will be released? Have they been filmed yet?

The second answers the first, though direct-to-video seems more likely.

Otherwise they'll go with recast sequels, maybe.

Any word on Toy Story 4? The third one seems like a fitting end.

Quote: Nareed

Any word on Toy Story 4? The third one seems like a fitting end.

The franchise had $2 billion in worldwide ticket sales, with half coming from Toy Story 3. Nobody is going to stop that train just because the narrative came to a conclusion.

Shrek made $3 billion, and they were able to squeeze out another half billion dollars with Puss 'N Boots.

Tom Hanks may be doing OK, but Tim Allen hasn't had a successful live action movie for 7 years (Wild Hogs about middle aged men on Harleys). He is on Friday night network television in the lowest rated sitcoms on ABC.

There is no way that they won't at least do a spin off with just Tim Allen even if Tom Hanks doesn't want to be bothered. But remember that Tom Hanks was paid $15 million for Toy Story 3, and he was paid $50 million to do Angels & Demons as a spin off The Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code. code made less money than Toy Story 3. So I think if they throw $50 million at Tom Hanks, it won't be beneath him to do Toy Story 4.

Hanks and Ron Howard are shooting Inferno
this summer and Hanks is doing yet another
Dan Brown book next summer. Big bucks all
around.

Quote: Fleastiff

Although described as a crime thriller set in NYC's "most violent year" it is more a "character study" of those who have to deal with a crime situation. This is in keeping with the prior Margin Call which didn't focus on finances but on how the stress of the margin call is dealt with or the Redford movie All is Lost wherein nothing much happens but Redord deals with it with courage and determination and alot of sailing techniques that are physically impossible. The director does character studies not crime thrillers. Same as watching Redford struggle in virtual silence with a vessel he knows is sinking... its not a mystery, its a depiction of grim determination in the face of the inevitable, a character study of a "non quitter".

Mrs and I both loved Margin Call and All Is Lost. The problem with A Most Violent Year is that it spreads itself too thin to be good at any one thing. It's not devoted enough to action to be a good action flick, and there is not enough character development for it to be a good study. The only reason we know Abel is righteous is that he keeps saying that he is.

Compare it to a similarly named film, A Most Wanted Man. Philip Seymour Hoffman does so much more with his character, with his part. There is very little action, but it is properly used in the film so that when it comes, it changes everything that came before. The action in A Most Violent Year leads nowhere; really, why have Abel chase a truck into the rail yard in his Mercedes? And then continue to chase the driver on foot? It doesn't jibe with the rest of the film, with who Abel has been up to then... and then it isn't important to who he is afterward, either.

I wish it were better, but it just felt like sop to me, like dumbed down noir. No one put any effort into being worth caring about.

Quote: terapined

Predestination.
Based on Robert Heinlein short story All you Zombies.
Its time travel and very well done.
I highly recommend it. Just watched it.
Its one of those movies where you are wondering where this is going then you have those OMG moments as you start to figure it out.

I'm going to check this out. Thanks for the tip.

MOST of Taken (1) was fairly reasonable. He is retired, not dead. He has skills, he has contacts, he uses them. Yeah, he is pushing it age wise, but he still functions well. Constantly alert but he misses the back up muscle at the airport. Clever in his employing the language instructor and the electronic bug, but its a wild goose chase.

I think too many of those movies have Rambo firing unlimited amounts of ammunition and hitting every target in site despite the hundreds of machine guns aimed at him. For much of the movie it was to a fair degree "reasonable". A lot of those slap happy fighters would have broken their own arms. Leaping tall buildings or leaping fleeing yachts is pretty much what Hollywood does.

He actually had experience making money on the streets of Dublin and that got him cast in one role.... and he went on from there. He admits its hard to be an action star at his age but he is very much in demand, perhaps because so much of Taken was at the very least plausible if not entirely realistic.

Its similar to a character who has to carry a heavy suitcase and aches with every muscle fiber to switch hands but forces himself to keep his pistol firing muscles from being tired. Or in Bullit where the hit men are middle aged and know enough to use ear plugs before firing shot guns in closed spaces. A little realism goes a long way in Hollywood now.

Quote: Pacomartin

The franchise had $2 billion in worldwide ticket sales, with half coming from Toy Story 3. Nobody is going to stop that train just because the narrative came to a conclusion.

They really should. See how Terminator was done in. the story ended in the second movie. Although the short-lived (still-born almost) TV series, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was very well done. Of course, they took care to do an alternate timeline, and to hurriedly sweep the conclusion of the second movie under the rug hoping no one would notice (I sort of did). In any case it wasn't a mindless series of violent action sequences strung together into a kind of story, as the latter movies have been. Rather there was a real story being told.

That said, Toy Story can continue if you change the characters, or do a prequel. The story of Woody, Buzz, Jessie and Andy is played out. Finished, and very nicely finished, too.

A prequel could be great. We know Woody is far older than Andy, for instance. He was probably in the family for decades. Much of this is explained in the second movie. Perhaps watching Woody's origins would be more interesting than a further rehash of what's already happened.

Quote: Fleastiff

MOST of Taken (1) was fairly reasonable. He is retired, not dead. He has skills, he has contacts, he uses them. Yeah, he is pushing it age wise, but he still functions well. Constantly alert but he misses the back up muscle at the airport. Clever in his employing the language instructor and the electronic bug, but its a wild goose chase.

I think too many of those movies have Rambo firing unlimited amounts of ammunition and hitting every target in site despite the hundreds of machine guns aimed at him. For much of the movie it was to a fair degree "reasonable". A lot of those slap happy fighters would have broken their own arms. Leaping tall buildings or leaping fleeing yachts is pretty much what Hollywood does.

He actually had experience making money on the streets of Dublin and that got him cast in one role.... and he went on from there. He admits its hard to be an action star at his age but he is very much in demand, perhaps because so much of Taken was at the very least plausible if not entirely realistic.

Its similar to a character who has to carry a heavy suitcase and aches with every muscle fiber to switch hands but forces himself to keep his pistol firing muscles from being tired. Or in Bullit where the hit men are middle aged and know enough to use ear plugs before firing shot guns in closed spaces. A little realism goes a long way in Hollywood now.

Liam Neeson is very close to jumping the shark. The ads for his new film "Run All Night", really look like "Taken 5".