[DruulEmpire]

6, thanks for that link.  I checked out their take on "Tinker Tailor" and it's sad but true, Oldman was able to pretty much get away with just staring through the whole thing.

Wound up catching two action heroine movies yesterday, "Underworld: Awakening" and "Haywire."  I continue to be fine with the "Underworld" movies but I wish they could just END already, "Evolution" left me in a relatively happy place and now that's all been trashed.  As for "Haywire," it takes a while to understand, it's a little too Soderbergh-slick for its own good, but Gina Carano is a real find.  I call her Manlicker Carano.  (As in Mannlicher-Carcano.  I know, I know, poor taste.  But it does fit her.)  I'm glad this let her show her relatively elegant James Bond cred, but I'd like to see her streetwise from here on.

[solvegas]

Yesterday I saw The Three Stooges movie and it was much better than I expected. Having grown up on their reruns back in the 60's and 70's, it was amazing to me how well the actors portraying them did. The Farrelli brothers stayed pretty much true to their comedy style and played them straight. It was an hour and a half of the stupid, moronic slapstick which I enjoyed greatly as a young man. Me and my brothers used to watch them, mostly saturday morning, and of course, we acted out some of their gags. My sister did not like them because " they're stupid ! " but that was the point. The movie had scenes which they took from the original series and it worked very well. There is maternity ward scene which is a belly buster. And it has Sofia Vergara in the clingiest, cleavage exposing dresess and she does great slapstick. So if you want to spend 1 1/2 hours on something which will be chewing gum for the mind and has a lot of great laughs ( precisely because they are sooo stupid ) I soytlenty recommend it. Nyuck, nyuck !! 

[DruulEmpire]

I must confess to feeling clueless as to why Europe and Asia seem okay with "John Carter" while it's tanking in the States.  I've seen it three times, and it's a lot to have to digest -- one reason I had to catch it at least a second time -- but I was moved by it.  I've even adopted as a personal motto TUACFILWAB -- no, that's not Barsoomian, that's an acronym of nearly the very last words we hear Carter say.  What kills me is that the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series has been running on fumes and yet even the last one will probably have done better that "Carter" Stateside.

[DruulEmpire]

Is anyone else around here feeling pissed off at getting very nearly force-fed 3D?  My neighborhood used to have four theaters but now has just one, which means half the time I have to bus down to a multiplex.  Then "The Avengers" was playing at my theater, and feeling particularly bored I went -- and it was in 3D (the most "3D" aspect of which was the fucking price), and I rather wish I could have been in the multiplex to AVOID it (and, as I say, the fucking price -- though when you add in bus fare, eh, still not great).  My first taste of 3D was not "Avatar" (still might not mind that) but Scorsese's "Hugo," and it worked for that, it gave me a sense of items of stage scenery floating past each other, which was oddly appropriate to the whole Georges Melies story, and then I saw "Ghost Protocol" (what can I say, I screwed up the showtimes and felt obliged to see SOMETHING) in both 3D and IMAX and that too was appropriate to the movie's sense of spectacle (along with its sense of Paula Patton).  But I found "Avengers" to be for the most part a bit of a headache and the 3D did not help at all.  (Best parts are Downey's performance and the Hulk's fighting and screaming, but even so I'm giving up on this franchise.)  I was rather hoping Scarlett could help charm me through this, but eh, not really.

Maybe this belongs better in the "bodacious" thread lying around here somewhere -- but damn it, when is anyone going to make OUR 3D movie?  I'm talkin' Christina Hendricks, I'm talkin' Sofia Vergara -- hell, I'm even talkin' walk-ons by big bust stars in otherwise mainstream sex comedies.  When are we ever going to get a 3D movie with Beshine in her first major cameo role?  All this technology, all this potential -- and no one is putting them together.

V to Kit below: not sure I'm saying you SHOULD see Carter, and I'm not sure how it would feel stuck on a small(er) screen -- plus, as I say, it might take two viewings to wrap your head around it -- but I am saying that I don't seem to be the only one who finds the aversion to it to be puzzling.  A good friend of mine took up my recommendation and his wife loved it.

Also, I agree with you about Cabin -- Whedon also writes and directs Avengers, you can detect his signature cleverness trying to hold it all together, I'm just not sure it's a worthy task -- and I look forward to Prometheus and Dark Knight Rises (some of it shot in my home town of Pittsburgh).

V to Tenshi far below: well, then, it succeeded in its mission.

[Bad Kitty]

So you're saying I should watch John Carter?

The reason it is tanking in the states, is that the preview looks like a generic action-cgi movie with relatively unbelievable dialog and plot... which would make it a dime a dozen.

If it's more than that (and I DID get just the faintest impression that it might have something more substantial, perhaps along the lines of Dune), I'll get the rental when it comes out, or catch it at the cheapo couple-month-old-movies theater.

I've been wrong about previews before. I thought Avatar looked "maybe ok" from the preview, and it turned out to be great. Or Fight Club... the preview made it look like a mindless testosterone jerk fest, but when a friend made me watch it years after it's release, I realized it was a true classic.

It carries a little weight for me, if a skilled writer likes a movie



ok, reviews de la Kate...

A Cabin in the Woods -
I went to this not realizing it was Joss Whedon's work, but within 30 minutes, I became sure he had his hands in it. Classic Whedon goodness. And it really exceeded all expectations. It's a horror movie, with comedy, which doesn't detract from the scariness, but is really witty comedy (love you Joss). And then there's an organization reminiscent of Wolfram & Heart, Amy Acker, mind**** plot twists, and a larger than life perfect ending. It was the first time all year so far, that I felt like I got more than I paid for (at $10 a head).
And if you liked BuffyTVS, this movie goes from recommended to absolute must-see.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance -
Sequels... every once in a while they're actually good. In this case, it's better than the original movie. Not "super awesome", but pretty good. Nick Cage gets more comfy in his role here, and has more fun with it. And Cage tends to be fun to watch when he's having fun, and not fun to watch when he's not. Anyway, this was actually a pretty decent popcorn action movie. Honestly though, for movies of a similar 'feel', I liked Drive Angry better.

Nothing else I've seen so far in 2012 bears mentioning. But to be fair, I have not seen John Carter yet. And I am going to see The Avengers probably later today.

Movies I am looking forward to:
1) Prometheus - I'm a xenomorph fangirl since I was little. Alien was my very first horror movie (I had to sneak to the living room to watch it on cable after the parents crashed, at about 6 years old) and I fell in love with that scifi setting/cannon, and HR Giger, and Ridley Scott... And then Aliens (directed by James Cameron) was possibly even 'better'. But then Alien 3 went downhill, and then came the "sellout" alien saga movies (Alien Resurrection, AVP, and AVP:R)... such a waste. But the idea that Ridley Scott is back, and doing another movie set in that universe, AND he has a huge budget to work with... is very exciting. I'll be there for this movie's opening night with bells on.

2) The Dark Knight Rises - The third installment in this batman movie series. The first two movies in this series are possibly the best superhero movies to date... need I say more?

3) The Amazing Spider Man - A 4th movie from Sam Raimi. So far his spider man movies are not pure gold. But they are mostly gold. I'm pretty hopeful. It'll be the first 3D spider man. And for once, I really REALLY want to see a movie in 3D... Spider Man was born for 3D, it's a match made in heaven.

4) Silent Hill: Revelation - The first Silent Hill is one of my all time favorite horror films. Seriously if I could pick only 5 horror films from my collection to save from a fire, it would be one of them. And it was an exceptionally rare example of a video game - made into a 'good' movie. I have my fingers crossed that lighting can strike twice for this series, and they can actually make TWO good movies based on a video game.

[AgentDee]

Kitty, the new spider man movie is NOT directed by Sam Raimi, nor is it a sequel to the other 3 it is a completely new retelling of Spidey's origin and is directed by a guy named Mark Webb (no pun intended) .

[Tenshi]

are you kidding? I LOVED the Avengers

[AgentDee]

me too it kicked the ass!

[jjjay999]

Saw The Avengers in 3D this past weekend, and it was AWESOME! Two thumbs up, 10/10, I wanted to go see it again as soon as it was over! Joss Whedon did an OUTSTANDING job! The cast, acting, effects, interactions, and humor were all excellent!

[rtpoe]

I think it's James Cameron's fault that we're getting swamped in 3D movies that don't really need it. "Avatar" pretty much forced theater operators to upgrade to the technology. And now that they have it, it would be a waste to not use it... Especially when you can charge people extra to wear headache-inducing glasses....

[solvegas]

I enjoyed the Avengers. My favorite scene is when the Hulk stomps the crap out of Loki. It was hilareous and it reminded me of the old Warner brothers cartoon when a character would just get hell beat out of them. I give the movie 4 out of 5 stars. 

[madcow4]

I liked the part where they assembled to avenge stuff band things!

[TysonWarm]

Saw Battleship, in Asia.  It's out there already.  Would have been better if Rihanna wasn't in it.  Don't know why singers think they can act.  It was OK though, but too predictable.  I would rather see a movie that you don't know what is going to happen in the first 15 minutes.

[DruulEmpire]

What kicks me is that this is supposed to be a tie-in to Battleships, the game.  I have always loved the game -- the old one, with two plastic boards -- but I'm pretty sure that trying to make a conspicuously Transformers-like movie about it would do zero to sell me on it.

My own idea for a Battleship movie would go more like this:

An elaborate naval war game is getting played.  Perhaps a serious war (with China?) is brewing and a lot depends on this game.  But, wouldn't you know it, some sort of alien artificial intelligence grabs hold of half the game and its commander, basically an Admiral Now-Bad leading the fake-Chinese way too seriously.  Realizing that everything has gone seriously wrong, an Admiral Always-Good desperately sets off some sort of Philadelphia Experiment techno-bullshit device, let's call it a Screen, a barrier which renders the opposing fleets respectively invisible, if only to buy time.  For some reason all ships, both "ours" and "theirs," need to be arranged tightly along lines of latitude and longitude.  From that point on the two Admirals are stuck hurling missiles at each other with simple letter-and-number coordinates, trying to psych out the positions of the opposing ships.  (Once this is all over, all the "fake-Chinese" sailors would get miraculously rescued and deprogrammed.)

See, now, that would be a Battleship movie I might be able to relate to -- even if it had Rihanna.

V to prinz below: ah, memories ... my father and I used to play out the Avalon Hill game of Jutland on the floor of his den.

[prinz]

You guys want Battleship... How about a movie about the greatest Battlewagon slugfest that really happen  JUTLAND !!!   To see a really good 3d rendering of Hippers 5 punch **92** battlecruisers turn tward the British grand fleets 23 drednoughts  to let Sheer and the high seas fleet  battle turn away to disengage...ah yes ..the death ride of the german Battlecruisers!