What Did You Watch Today?

[Benji]

Crank is brilliant. Funny, action packed and never lets up. Outstanding stuff.

[GhostMachine]

I own both Crank movies on blu-ray. `nuff said.

Yesterday I watched Brick Mansions, the last movie Paul Walker actually completed before his death, and its a remake of a French film called District B13, with David Belle in both movies. Pretty damn good movie, with a lot of parkour action from Belle. RZA's presence makes the movie even better.

I want this movie on dvd or blu-ray.

Incidentally, the original French film has a sequel, with Belle in both. Netflix has both movies, but since they're in French and I hate subtitles, I doubt I'll watch. (The ONLY subtitled movie in my top 25 films of all time list is Throne Of Blood, even though I own Gojira on dvd)

Edited October 14, 2014 by GhostMachine

[Monkey D. Lars]

Brick Mansions was just one big shitfest, I couldn't get into it.

[Benjamin]

Both were wonderful, but I think Kings of Summer was the winner of that year. I loved every second of that film.

I like all three a lot but only one of them has Sam Rockwell in it so that wins by the narrowest of margins.

Miles Teller is amazing in The Spectacular Now though.

You guys need to watch Two Night Stand. As a movie it's not very good, but Miles Teller is once again bloody wonderful and his chemistry with Ashleigh Tipton is unbelievable. It feels like they've really just hooked up online, it's incredible.

Also, 2013 also had Mud and the Selfish Giant too. I'm sure there are others, but those are off the top of my head.

[Monkey D. Lars]

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), a lovely Hammer horror film!

[Benji]

Turbo was typical animated fare. Nothing out of the ordinary but fun.

[Draevyn]

Just finished the entire Veronica Mars series and man, I would have been pissed if I had listened to Teej back in the day and watched it week by week. They didn't even get to do a proper ending. I haven't watched the movie yet but even if it ties things up, that still sucked.

[Monkey D. Lars]

The Beast From 20,000 Fantoms (1953)

This one started all the classic giant monster rules and offcourse the master Ray Harryhausen did the stop motion work. Any movie lover should see this one for the impact it had. This one started the scientists talking about what kind of monster it is, the monster being awakened/created by the atomic bomb, etc. etc.

[Brody]

The Veronica Mars movie hardly ties anything up. It's really just a movie that takes place like ten years later.

What's odd is the next season was supposed to be Veronica in like FBI training or something, so they really had no plans to wrap it up anyways.

[Benji]

The Man With The Iron Fists pissed me off. Asian actors have a hard enough time getting cast as non-stereotype roles, and yet in a film that's set in old land asia, two of the three big damn heroes are a white guy and a black guy, and the one asian guy who is a lead hero is a distant thought to whoever wrote it. Hollywood's treatment of asian actors is something that's peeved me for years (heck, I mentioned it in Breakfast At Tiffany's and worried about it in Pacific Rim a week or two back), so this is probably one of the more subtley bad things I've seen, but even so it got under my skin.

Outside of that it was a pretty poor film anyway. Cliché writing, some hammy acting in parts, and terrible directorial choices too. It feels like a film written as an homage to kung fu movies but comes off far more like a parody. Probably the worst film so far in my 365 watch.

Kudos to the makeup and wardrobe crew though, everyone looked very cool.

[Benjamin]

You know you're not supposed to take a serious view when watching that, right? It's just a fun, mindless action movie.

[Benji]

Yeah but it wasn't fun. It failed at what it tried to do. Just because something is intentionally mindless doesn't mean it can't be done badly.

[Benjamin]

I thought it was stupendous fun. The visuals were great, the sets were incredible, the fights were really good, the characters had enough going for them that it made it all fun, it had all the essence to be one of those silly, style without substance movies that can work, because it knows it's going outside the realm of reality and expects you to know it's being ridiculous. Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe were great in it, too. RZA's acting was pretty cringeworthy, though.

[Draevyn]

The Veronica Mars movie hardly ties anything up. It's really just a movie that takes place like ten years later.

What's odd is the next season was supposed to be Veronica in like FBI training or something, so they really had no plans to wrap it up anyways.

That was the pitch when they first talked about cancelling it. The problem was both Veronica Mars and One Tree Hill had the same idea of fast forwarding a few years. They chose One Tree Hill over Veronica Mars which at the time I agreed with because I liked One Tree Hill and had never watched Veronica Mars. Now I wish they would have chosen VMars because OTH turned out to be crap after the 5th season.

[Benjamin]

I love One Tree Hill more than most people, and even I think that show was bad even before the time jump.

[Draevyn]

It was going downhill before the time jump but I could still enjoy parts of it. Pretty much anything that wasn't Lucas/Peyton.

[Benjamin]

I enjoyed all the parts with Brooke, but they were all for the wrong reasons And Peyton's legs, too

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Just got back from The Maze Runner. Really liked it. Premise is really dark for, what I was told was, a teen movie; but my mate and I both really enjoyed it.

[Benji]

Goodbye World was pretty good. It was an interesting look at the apocalypse scenario and its focus on the people rather than the actual apocalypse really shined a light on its attempts to show realistic elements of the best and worst in human nature.

It kind of lost it's way in a small way by...

... revealing the exact nature of who caused the apovalypse...

... but it was still an interesting ride, and despite being heavy handed with its libertarian message it does make its points in a lot of the right ways.

[Jimmy]

Been watching a couple of documentaries recently, from Art Essay docs like London and Of Time and The City, which were both really interesting experiments in what you can do with a documentary, the second one in particular, is worth checking out. Tabloid, by the great Errol Morris, is also pretty good. It runs out of steam, but it's a doc worth watching for just how crazy its subject is.

Finally, I watched Orson Welles' F For Fake, which continued the trend of watching documentaries which experiment with different form. It takes a lot of attention to keep up, but it's so rewarding, plus Welles is just so ridiculously charismatic. It reminded me that having only seen three of his films isn't enough.