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+--- Thread: 2012 (/thread-6082.html)
2012 - Butcher - 11-17-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69365:date=Nov 17 2009, 03:00 PM:name=rok)-->QUOTE (rok @ Nov 17 2009, 03:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->After I read a few of Ebert's recent reviews (he mentioned things in certain movies that never happened and provided incorrect explanations for several scenes as well), I am starting to have very little use for his opinion these days. I know he's in poor health, but seriously, he needs a better editor or something.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ebert used to hate a lot more movies than he does now, too. Maybe he's mellowed a little in his old age.
2012 - rok - 11-17-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69367:date=Nov 17 2009, 03:05 PM:name=Butcher)-->QUOTE (Butcher @ Nov 17 2009, 03:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=69365:date=Nov 17 2009, 03:00 PM:name=rok)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rok @ Nov 17 2009, 03:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->After I read a few of Ebert's recent reviews (he mentioned things in certain movies that never happened and provided incorrect explanations for several scenes as well), I am starting to have very little use for his opinion these days. I know he's in poor health, but seriously, he needs a better editor or something.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ebert used to hate a lot more movies than he does now, too. Maybe he's mellowed a little in his old age.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not sure if you've ever seen it, but if you get the chance one day, check out Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which Ebert co-wrote with smut peddler Russ Meyer back in the late 60s. It changed my opinion of Ebert forever, and actually helps put some of his more bizarre reviews into perspective.
2012 - Butcher - 11-17-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69371:date=Nov 17 2009, 03:14 PM:name=rok)-->QUOTE (rok @ Nov 17 2009, 03:14 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=69367:date=Nov 17 2009, 03:05 PM:name=Butcher)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Butcher @ Nov 17 2009, 03:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=69365:date=Nov 17 2009, 03:00 PM:name=rok)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rok @ Nov 17 2009, 03:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->After I read a few of Ebert's recent reviews (he mentioned things in certain movies that never happened and provided incorrect explanations for several scenes as well), I am starting to have very little use for his opinion these days. I know he's in poor health, but seriously, he needs a better editor or something.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ebert used to hate a lot more movies than he does now, too. Maybe he's mellowed a little in his old age.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not sure if you've ever seen it, but if you get the chance one day, check out Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which Ebert co-wrote with smut peddler Russ Meyer back in the late 60s. It changed my opinion of Ebert forever, and actually helps put some of his more bizarre reviews in perspective.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've seen it. And I found it funny that the guy who is considered one of the best (if not THE best) Pulitzer-winning movie critics in the country failed so miserably in his only attempt at writing an actual screenplay.
An Ebert review when he really hates and just lays into the film is an absolute joy. So, it's really a shame that he likes most movies he sees now...
Just read his review of the latest Transformers movie:
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.
The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots®, Decepticons® and Otherbots® is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.
The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed "The Rock" in 1996. Now he has made "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Faust made a better deal. This isn't a film so much as a toy tie-in. Children holding a Transformer toy in their hand can invest it with wonder and magic, imagining it doing brave deeds and remaining always their friend. I knew a little boy once who lost his blue toy truck at the movies, and cried as if his heart would break. Such a child might regard "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" with fear and dismay.
The human actors are in a witless sitcom part of the time, and lot of the rest of their time is spent running in slo-mo away from explosions, although--hello!--you can't outrun an explosion. <b>They also make speeches like this one by John Turturro: "Oh, no! The machine is buried in the pyramid! If they turn it on, it will destroy the sun! Not on my watch!" The humans, including lots of U.S. troops, shoot at the Transformers a lot, although never in the history of science fiction has an alien been harmed by gunfire.</b>
There are many great-looking babes in the film, who are made up to a flawless perfection and look just like real women, if you are a junior fanboy whose experience of the gender is limited to lad magazines. The two most inexplicable characters are Ron and Judy Witwicky (Kevin Dunn and Julie White), who are the parents of Shia LaBeouf, who Mephistopheles threw in to sweeten the deal. They take their son away to Princeton, apparently a party school, where Judy eats some pot and goes berserk. Later they swoop down out of the sky on Egypt, for reasons the movie doesn't make crystal clear, so they also can run in slo-mo from explosions.
<b>The battle scenes are bewildering. A Bot makes no visual sense anyway, but two or three tangled up together create an incomprehensible confusion. I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with...fists.</b> Like I say, dumber than a box of staples. They have tiny little heads, although Jetfire® must be made of older models, since he has an aluminum beard.
Aware that this movie opened in England seven hours before Chicago time and the morning papers would be on the streets, after writing the above I looked up the first reviews as a reality check. I was reassured: "Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan!" (Bradshaw, Guardian); "Sums up everything that is most tedious, crass and despicable about modern Hollywood!" (Tookey, Daily Mail); "A giant, lumbering idiot of a movie!" (Edwards, Daily Mirror). The first American review, Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical, reported that Bay's "ambition runs a mile long and an inch deep," but, in a spirited defense, says "this must be the most movie I have ever experienced." He is bullish on the box office: it "feels destined to be the biggest movie of all time." It’s certainly the biggest something of all time.
Footnote 6/24: Does it strike you as a lapse of Pyramid security that no one notices a gigantic Deceptibot ripping off the top of the Great Pyramid? Not anyone watching on the live PyramidCam? Not even a traffic copter?
2012 - rok - 11-17-2009
Yeah, I remember laughing my ass off reading that a few months ago. It's true though, his reviews of bad movies are usually his best work. His series on "Great Movies" is also quite good though it doesn't have the same biting humor that is on display for the real stinkers.
<!--quoteo-->QUOTE <!--quotec-->They take their son away to Princeton, apparently a party school<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif[/img]
It's sad that he's become so inconsistent and soft these days, but I still read his site at least once per week.
2012 - jeffy - 11-18-2009
The trailer looks lame, and the CGI doesn't impress me. How many close calls can one family have? First they're driving along a crumbling highway, then flying through collapsing skyscrapers, etc. etc.
2012 - Jody - 11-18-2009
What I always wondered from the trailer is when they are flying in the plane through the city and dodging chunks of building, why didn't they just go up? I mean come on, you're in a plane, there's no reason to fly through the city.
2012 - jstraw - 11-18-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69400:date=Nov 18 2009, 09:09 AM:name=Jody)-->QUOTE (Jody @ Nov 18 2009, 09:09 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->What I always wondered from the trailer is when they are flying in the plane through the city and dodging chunks of building, why didn't they just go up? I mean come on, you're in a plane, there's no reason to fly through the city.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dollars to donuts they just took off.
2012 - Jody - 11-18-2009
Yeah but I'm sure not every runway has planes running a gauntlet through the city when they take off. I don't know it just seemed a little silly.
2012 - jstraw - 11-18-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69416:date=Nov 18 2009, 11:16 AM:name=Jody)-->QUOTE (Jody @ Nov 18 2009, 11:16 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->Yeah but I'm sure not every runway has planes running a gauntlet through the city when they take off. I don't know it just seemed a little silly.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If a movie such as this were only a little silly I'd be wanting a refund on my ticket <i>and</i> my Raisinets.
2012 - BT - 11-18-2009
I'm really stumped by some of these comments. Essentially you guys are saying "What's with all the thrills in this action movie?"
Movies have different purposes. Some make you think, some make you laugh, some make you cry, and some are made to take you somewhere you will never (and in some cases don't want to) go. Certainly there are adventure movies that are not only thrilling, but have great characters, and relatively small loopholes in logic. Those movies come around every 5-10 years, and are classics. To write off everything else as a stupid action movie is to be elitist. It also will make you miss out on a lot of fun.
And frankly, even the classics have logic gaps.
-Didn't Indiana Jones traverse an ocean by stowing away on the deck of a submarine THAT NEVER SUBMERGED?
-In the attack on the Death Star, you realize the X-wing fighters are attacking at about 400 MPH. In outer space, they'd be doing at least 10 times that speed, and dog fighting with lasers would be far more ineffective than dog fighting with machine guns is now.
-In Die Hard, would someone as smart as Hans have a big laugh with McClane before shooting him, or would he put one in his head as soon as he dropped his gun?
I could go on. You get the point though. Con Air is a stupid, illogical, poorly written movie. And I pretty much watch it every time it comes on.
2012 - Jody - 11-18-2009
Oh I know that it's there for the action and isn't particularly relevant to the plot but it's just something I thought of when I saw the trailer.
It's like all of my James Bond movies when they try to come up with some devious way to kill him that he always escapes from instead of just shooting him on the spot.
2012 - jeffy - 11-18-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69440:date=Nov 18 2009, 02:44 PM:name=BT)-->QUOTE (BT @ Nov 18 2009, 02:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->I'm really stumped by some of these comments. Essentially you guys are saying "What's with all the thrills in this action movie?"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I guess this type of action movie really isn't my cup of tea. Now if there's some ass kicking involved, then I can get into it.
2012 - BT - 11-18-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69447:date=Nov 18 2009, 02:29 PM:name=jeffy)-->QUOTE (jeffy @ Nov 18 2009, 02:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=69440:date=Nov 18 2009, 02:44 PM:name=BT)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (BT @ Nov 18 2009, 02:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->I'm really stumped by some of these comments. Essentially you guys are saying "What's with all the thrills in this action movie?"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I guess this type of action movie really isn't my cup of tea. Now if there's some ass kicking involved, then I can get into it.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
See, that's perfectly fine. I understand people not getting into spectacle. I love those types of movies though. I'm not a big fan of ass-kicking movies, with the obvious exception of Road House.
2012 - rok - 11-18-2009
I like my ass-kicking in small doses, but it needs to be realistic ass kicking. Otherwise, I prefer my violent films to come in the horror variety.
Anyway, I've never been into the disaster movie genre. I can't say that I hate it, but it just doesn't excite me. Did someone coin the phrase disaster porn? I thought I had read that somewhere.
I prefer invasion movies or other types of sci-fi.
And Road House kicks ass in every way.
2012 - Butcher - 11-18-2009
<!--quoteo(post=69440:date=Nov 18 2009, 01:44 PM:name=BT)-->QUOTE (BT @ Nov 18 2009, 01:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->I'm really stumped by some of these comments. Essentially you guys are saying "What's with all the thrills in this action movie?"
Movies have different purposes. Some make you think, some make you laugh, some make you cry, and some are made to take you somewhere you will never (and in some cases don't want to) go. Certainly there are adventure movies that are not only thrilling, but have great characters, and relatively small loopholes in logic. Those movies come around every 5-10 years, and are classics. To write off everything else as a stupid action movie is to be elitist. It also will make you miss out on a lot of fun.
And frankly, even the classics have logic gaps.
-Didn't Indiana Jones traverse an ocean by stowing away on the deck of a submarine THAT NEVER SUBMERGED?
-In the attack on the Death Star, you realize the X-wing fighters are attacking at about 400 MPH. In outer space, they'd be doing at least 10 times that speed, and dog fighting with lasers would be far more ineffective than dog fighting with machine guns is now.
-In Die Hard, would someone as smart as Hans have a big laugh with McClane before shooting him, or would he put one in his head as soon as he dropped his gun?
I could go on. You get the point though. Con Air is a stupid, illogical, poorly written movie. And I pretty much watch it every time it comes on.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I love the Die Hard movies. The writing is snappy and clever and the acting is top-notch. Did I walk out of the theater when the plane exploded in Die Hard 2, and McClain flies into the screen, still buckled into his seat? No. I laughed my ass off.
From the reviews I've read (minus Ebert's), 2012 doesn't sound like a good movie. The CGI might be outstanding, but you've gotta bring more to the table than that if you want me to buy a ticket.