The Recommended Movies Thread

[sandman67]

KICK ASS 2

The everyday dynamic duo of teen vigilantes Hit Girl and Kick Ass return to the screen in part 2, but unfortunately this sticks to the film making rule.... part 2 almost always is a pale shade of part 1.

Dave and Mindy are desparately trying to fit back into normal school life after taking down the evil crime lord D'Amico in the first flick. Mindy in particular is having a hard time trying to fit in with normal life, and after her guardian finds she has been bunking off and slaughtering baddies he grounds her and makes her promise to not put the mask on again. Dave turns to a new set of allies instead, new masked vigilates inspired by Kick Ass to take to the streets and clean up the town. Unfortunately little Chris D'Amico, mourning his dead dad and newly rich after his mums death, decides to turn full on evil and becomes The Motherf*cker...a super rich super villain with a gang of bad guys and only one aim...kill Kick Ass, Hit Girl, and everyone around them.

The problem is the shoddy writing and editing, which sees the focus not on the battle between Dave and Chris, but instead focuses on teen angst case of Mindy and her school trials, and Dave with his un-approving father. What should be the main plot - the twisted trail of bloody revenge carried out by Chris - is given second billing, and that plot arc is messy, disjointed, and the bash em ups have none of the foul mouthed fun and dry wit of the original. They seem like bloody cherries on an otherwise over iced stale cake, and the whole film is a badly edited mess with hardly any snappy one liners, and more redundant side characters than a dole line in Thatchers Britain.

Its a worthwhile watch, and because I love the genre is a keeper, but its a sad and shabby idiot cousin to the spectacular first film. Two full cheers and a hmmmmmmm

Out and about in R6 DVDRIPs that have annoying Chinese subs on the copy....better version will be out in a few weeks.

[sandman67]

Woop Woop Woop!

Ah tis the SandoMatic 2000 Early Warning System going off

WORLD WAR Z is out and about in hi rez and normal rez DVDRIPS at all the usual suspects

review to follow

[sandman67]

WORLD WAR Z

When the cack hits the fan and a worldwide outbreak of zombie-itis starts eating away at humanity ex-UN special investigator Brad Pitt is sent out to lead the team trying to find patient zero and hopefully a cure, only to find that this is an outbeak like no other, and as fast as he runs from one place to another the snarly biters are already there.

This relatively gore free zombie chiller thriller is like a big budget CGI heavy version of 28 DAYS LATER, complete with the rapid transformation all action running jumping snarling and clambering zombie berserkers of the "28" franchise combined with a lot of computer graphics and a high adrenaline badda boom globetrotting chase. That's not to say its a bad thing at all - the gore lite touch works very well, leaving the splatter fan boys whining but film fans like me who prefer a decent story with depth and pacing laced with thrills and action very satisfied indeed. The interlaced slow then manic segments works well to keep the adrenaline bouncing about, and the acting is ok too. Not too splattery, not too stupid, not too saccharine.... just right as Goldilocks would say.

A good example of the smarter and less gory end of the zombarific market, and well worth a download. Out and about in crispy DVDRIPs at all the usual suspects. Three growls and a solid keeper.

[sandman67]

THE WORLDS END

The dynamic duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost return to complete the third and final installment of their Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, again taking a well loved genre flick and running it through the comedy spin cycle. With SEAN OF THE DEAD it was zombie survival flicks, HOT FUZZ took Us buddy buddy cop movies and added a Home Counties spin, and WORLDS END mashes up the sci-fi alien invasion Bodysnatchers genre with a bittersweet poem to loss of youth and not being able to ever regain what was lost.

Gary King was the coolest of his gang of mates, but where their four lives went on to better things Gary's hit a downward spiral. So in a last attempt to regain the glories of his lost youth he cons his mates into repeating a famous pub crawl around the 12 pubs in their old home town. But when the gang arrive back in their old place, things have taken a turn for the worse. The pubs are all franchised and sterile, loosing all the character of their older versions....and strangely so has everyone in town. Seems the place has been taken over by a group of bodysnatching aliens, and so the crazy gang find their pub crawl becomes a survival chase literally to The Worlds End.

Its a damn good laugh, like the other two previous Cornetto flicks, blending black humor with madcap action, frenetic and silly fights, and more references to famous flicks and tropes than you can wave a empty glass at. There is a hilarious and excellently staged sly nod to the action director who worked for Jackie Chan (his trademark umbrella fight) for example, as well as the fun of playing "spot the Cornetto" and the inevitable garden fence gag.

A great addition to the set, and a fine way to duck out of the trilogy. Solid gold keeper material and out and about in R6 DVDRIPs with hard subs - a non subbed version will be out soon so its worth dropping now then again, when the clean one comes out, for the keeper version. Three hearty beery cheers all round

[STEVE G]

The only time I ever watch movies is on flights and last month on KLM I discovered this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1412386/

It's about retired Brits and not zombies!

[Dannie Boy]

The only time I ever watch movies is on flights and last month on KLM I discovered this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1412386/

It's about retired Brits and not zombies!

This was reviewed by Sandman a couple of weeks ago, like you I watched it on a flight some while back and thought it was very funny.

[Terry]

THE PURGE

It's 2022 and for 12 hours once a year you can kill, rob, butcher who the hell you like with impunity - for the sake of a new America.................well you would wouldn't you?

So - why not go get the guy who's made a lot of dosh out of selling the security systems that protect you.................

Quite gripping stuff.

2012 vintage spook stuff - out and about on the usual torrent sites.

[sandman67]

Ok....something a little bit different

OXYANA

This at times harrowing feature length documentary shows how the twin evils of unemployment and prescription drug abuse to alleviate the boredom and desperation that follow hand in hand have turned the once prosperous and happy Appalachian mining town of Oceana into the crime and drug raddled hell hole that is now known as Oxyana, a play on the most commonly abused drug in town - Oxycontin. A town where once busy mines stand idle while the redundant workforce turns to drugs as a way of coping, drugs obtained through corrupt prescription mills out of state and dealt at crippling rates to junkies locked in to their own personal hell. A town where everyone knows someone who OD'd and is now wormfood.

Its fascinating watching for all the grimness, and a solid well made documentary that seeks to gather opinion from all involved in the tragedy, from the local DA down to the dealers and addicts.

Out and about at all the usual suspects

[Homer]

Start Trek Into Darkness

What a stinkin' mess. Only 3 reasons not to turn it off in disgust. First is no matter how bleeping ridiculous the premise, the talent of the actors makes the interplay of characters work. JJ Abrams' visual storytelling is excellent, no matter how bleeping ridiculous the premise. Finally, the little tidbits of Trek backstory covered in a single line of dialog or unmentioned in the background of a shot all make Trek fans happy.

If you know ANYTHING about Star Trek's original series, none of the following are spoilers because you knew all this before watching any Trek movie:
- Kirk breaks rules, is punished.
- Kirk breaks rules, is rewarded.
- Kirk matures.
- Kirk cavalierly risks some horrible cross species STD. I'm waiting for the scene where he dips his photon torpedo into some alien's goo, boldly going with a species no human has gone with before only to discover the alien's normal body chemistry causes an intensely unpleasant reaction in humans. Bones isolates the cause. He has both a sense of humor and knowledge of Earth history, so he names the STD 'Box Jellyfish'.
- Spock learns more about humans.
- No major characters for the latter day Trek world die*.

So despite the hack writers best efforts and Abrams' best intentions, there is little opportunity for dramatic tension because everyone knows how most of it will be resolved. BORING.

SPOILER ALERT
Once the purpose of the unnecessary character is known (sick little girl), one knows a major character will also face death, but can't die (see above)
Once the girl is saved by Khan's blood, one knows the major character facing death will be saved by the blood.
Once Chekov says the warp drive is misaligned you'll groan out loud, knowing who dies, how they die and how they will be revived, and you'll be angry the franchise revisited a scene that didn't need no stinkin' cover version.

And don't get me started on the seriously bleeping stupid actions by almost everyone, the inconsistencies, incongruities and plot holes big enough to swallow the Enterprise. This site does a pretty good imitation of back and forth between a rational person and an increasingly incensed viewer who knows the basics of Trek and has an IQ higher than room temperature (relative to wine, not the tropics). I recommend watching the movie so you'll get more enjoyment from the linked page. http://io9.com/star-trek-into-darkness- ... -508927844

An excerpt, with the viewer in bold

...

Wait, what?

Yeah, he sets off the cold fusion bomb and all the lava freezes.

You know cold fusion isn’t actually cold, right? It’s only “cold” in the sense that opposed to regular fusion it’s not a bazillion degrees hot.

Huh.

And did you say Spock was in the volcano? Why the hell didn’t they just beam the bomb in there?

Um, something about the planet’s magnetic field. Although they do beam Spock out of the volcano just a few minutes later, so…

And why did Spock have to go with the bomb to set it off? Are you telling me in the 23rd century that people don’t have a way to detonate bombs remotely? That’s stupid.

Well —

And why the *bleep* is the Enterprise just carrying around a cold fusion suitcase bomb anyways?

Look, you’re getting very upset, and this is just the first scene of the movie.

===

*Pike's not a major character.

[sandman67]

ok....first up a bit of fun

If HBO, notorious for their overblown movie and series trailers full of booms and bashes and dramatic blart blaaaart music, made a trailer for a certain Monty Python film about the middle ages.... it would probably look just like this





Cool eh? Just shows what you can do with a love of movies and a Mac editing suite of software nowadays.

Anyways

ELYSIUM

Director Neill Blokamp, having made his name with the relatively small budget masterpiece of sci-fi allegorical apartheid tale telling DISTRICT 9, now gets his hands on a bigger budget, and so has made a second allegorical finger poking sci fi epic. Where District 9 addresses the evils of apartheid and racism, this instead addresses wealth differentials, overpopulation, pollution, immigration policies and access to healthcare.

By the mid 22nd century the Earth is a polluted and overpopulated hell hole, so the rich live in an orbiting space environment where all is peachy and no health problem is uncurable. The environment is protected from intrusion by the proles down on Earth left to toil and rot for their celestial masters. Mat Damon plays Max, an orphan who after a life of petty crime tries to make a honest living in a factory. When an industrial accident leaves him with only five days to live he has only one option, link up with his old crime gang mates to try to hijack an access program that allows access to the orbiting utopia, and then invade to get access to the stations healthcare system. Two things stand in the way - Elysium's defence system managed by the corrupt and power hungry Jodie Foster, and a psychotic bounty hunter played by District 9's Sharlto Copley who is set to track Max down and recover the data in his head.

Its like a mash up of the Bourne trilogy with District 9 and Bladerunner and Neuromancer, and while its a lot more mainstream Hollywood than District 9, it still has the same overlay of social messages given a sci-fi spin cycle. There are lots of chases and big biffa booms, and Copley's crazy bad South African psycho bounty hunter shines like a lighthouse. Man for a little bloke he can be proper scary....perhaps its that I grew up with Spitting Image's "You Never Meet A Nice South African"

As with District 9 its sci-fi with a brain, and I really rate it.

At the mo its only out and about in a sort of watchable TS version. Id wait till the proper DVDRIPs come out though. When it does, its a proper full on three cheers keeper all the way.

[mariewills00]

I have used vidics4 to watch movies and tv shows. I like the collection movies and tv shows of this site.

[richard]

Watched I KNOW YOU KNOW starring Robert Carlyle and I'm puzzled. I must admit I dozed off a couple of times but could not for the life of me fathom it out

HELP oh wise ones

[blue05]

2 I watched recently and enjoyed

Jobs

The story of Jobs at Apple, lot of critics did not like it but i enjoyed it

42

True Story of the first black player in big league baseball, great movie

[Homer]

2 I watched recently and enjoyed

Jobs

The story of Jobs at Apple, lot of critics did not like it but i enjoyed it

+1

Most of the criticism came down to wanting the director to have made a different movie. Dudes, you're critics, not directors or screenwriters*. Review what's in front of you because you've never successfully created anything on film. His biography was 656 pages so of course the movie had to truncate. Critics wanted the film to be about the complexities of the man. Yeah, a movie all about an a$$hole with abandonment issues who, if he ever learned anything about himself, kept it well hidden. That's entertainment.

* Roger Ebert wrote 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls'. Some critics called it garbage, others said it was junk. They missed was it intentionally 100% Pure Grade A Trash.

[sandman67]

THE FAMILY

Robert DeNiro stars in this black comedy care of Luc Besson - so y know its going to be full of gallic oddness right from the start. Bob is an ex-mafioso wise guy who after turning states evidence has disappeared into the witness protection system. Hes so high profile he has to hide out in France, which for him and his Brooklyn Italian through and through family is a bit of an issue. When they get moved to a small sleepy Normandy town things go awry, giving his protection supervisor and team a bit of a nightmare. And just to make things even harder the don that Bob put away is hot on his tail, and has a team of professional hitters and a $20M bounty on him..... let the baseball battings begin.

Its a good giggle in places, with Bob and Michelle Pfieffer shining as the dyed in the wool mafia couple trying hard to fit in in their own special way. There are some lovely comedic sequences, as well as a stack of snappy narrative dialogue care o Bob.

I loved it, and when it comes out in DVDRIPs it will be a three cheers keeper. At the mo its doing the rounds in a very watchable CAM version so its worth a watch now if you like. Out and about at all the usual suspects.