Recent Viewings!

[Mr_Vindictive]

My netflix seem to pile up at my house for weeks before I have a chance to watch them.  This weekend, I finally got down to it and watched some movies.

Robots (2005) - Rented this one for my daughter, and wasn't expecting it to be very good.  Overall though, I was surprised.  It's much better than many of the children's CGI films to come out in recent memory.

The story is about Rodney Copperbottom (Ewan McGregor), a regular robot who wants to be an inventor.  He goes to the robot city to find his idol, BigWeld (Mel Brooks), who owns a large corporation.  Once Rodney shows up, he finds out that the company has been taken over and nobody knows where BigWeld is.  He then joins with a band of other outcast robots to find BigWeld and restore the company to the way it was.

As I said, this movie wasn't as bad as I expected.  Robin Williams is in it as one of Rodney's friends, and he (for once) was not annoying.  Not a movie I'd recommend to you guys, but if you have kids then it's a recommendation for them.



Batman Begins (2005) - Did you guys just hear that?  Know what that sound was?  That was me kicking myself in the balls for not seeing this film at the theater.  I had looked forward to it so much, and then it slipped right past me at the time of it's release.  Thank God for DVDs.

Batman Begins is a much darker, serious version of the caped crusader.  It starts with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in a tibetan prison, starting fights with the prisoners so that he can train.  While in the prison, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) shows up and tells Bruce that he can help train him.  Ducard and his leader Ras Al-Ghul help Bruce get in touch with his anger, hatred and fears.  

Bruce then returns to Gotham to clean up the city of the evil and crime that has taken it over.  With the help of one of the employees of Wayne Industries, he obtains what will eventually become the batsuit, batmobile and the various weapons Batman uses.

The film has a great villian as well.  Cillian Murphy is fantastic as The Scarecrow.  The hallucination scenes involving the scarecrow are absolutely amazing as well.

The only thing that bothered me in the film was the actors.  They were great in each of their roles but one thing kept taking me out of the film.....they're all British!  With the exception of Katie Holms, and Morgan Freeman, the rest of the cast is completely British!  Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Gary Oldman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson....etc etc.

Overall though, this is the best Batman film of all time.  

10/10



Dominion: A Prequel To The Exorcist (2005) - So I finally saw Paul Schrader's version of the Exorcist prequel.  Before I go any further, let me break down my opinion of the Exorcist films so far:

Exorcist - Not as good as everyone says.  A film that has been overhyped over the decades, but still decent.

Exorcist 2 - Vomit.

Exorcist 3 - One of my favorite horror films of all time.  This is a film that more people should experience.

Exorcist The Beginning - Renny Harlin is a talentless hack.


So, out of the four Exorcist films, I've only really liked two of them.  I remember being absolutely p**sed when I heard about Morgan Creek getting Harlin to remake the prequel after Schrader presented them with his final version.  I have a huge amount of respect for Schrader and love most of his films.  Therefore, I was psyched to finally get to see the version that should have been released at the theater!!!!

And yet....it's not that good.  

The film starts with Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard) as a priest in WWII Germany.  A nazi soldier has been killed by someone in the town and Merrin is forced to choose 10 people in the town to be executed for the deed.

Skip a few years later and Merrin has given up on religion and has turned to being an archeology.  While in East Africa, he finds an ancient church that has been buried by the winds and sands of the desert.  In the church lies Pazuzu, the evil demon that will one day inhabit Regan in the 60s.

The film is slow and far from perfect.  I now understand why Morgan Creek decided to remake the film with a terrible director who would infuse it with crappy CGI and boo scares.  They knew that Dominion could never be marketed to the average person, and they were right.

I love slow films, and I love dramas but Schrader's film just didn't work for me.  It's slow, looks cheap and by the end seems like a bad acid trip.  I can say in it's favor though that I loathed it much less than Harlin's version but IMHO this project should have been aborted before either of these films was made.

3/10

[trekgeezer]

Skaboi wrote:

> The only thing that bothered me in the film was the actors.
> They were great in each of their roles but one thing kept
> taking me out of the film.....they're all British!  With the
> exception of Katie Holms, and Morgan Freeman, the rest of the
> cast is completely British!  Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson,
> Gary Oldman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson....etc
> etc.

The director is British and a lot of the movie was shot in England (but, so was Tim Burtons).

Rutger Hauer is Dutch, so I guess that makes it an international cast. What's weird is that Bale is Welsh and has a thick accent in real life, but for all the promotional stuff and the extras on the DVD set he speaks with an American accent. .

I've watched it 4 times and I think it is one of the best movies to come out this year. Definitely the best action flick.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Trek,

Yeah, I saw in the credits that Rutger Hauer was in it, but I can't place who he was in the film.  It's not surprising, since I could hardly tell it was him in Sin City as well.

BTW Trek, that's a great sig

[Neon Noodle]

another good movie with Christian Bale was "The Mechanic". He got mad skinny in that movie, almost 114 pounds. If you see it, take into consideration that he looked like that when he auditioned for Batman Begins.

The Mechanic is probably one of the best films Bale has ever done, right up there with Batman.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Neon,

Yeah, I'm with you on The Machinist.  That was an amazing film, and seeing the flashback at the end of The Machinist when Bale was at his normal weight is an amazing contrast to the rest of the film.

[ulthar]

Skaboi wrote:

> Robots (2005) - Rented this one for my daughter, and wasn't
> expecting it to be very good.  Overall though, I was surprised.
>  It's much better than many of the children's CGI films to come
> out in recent memory.


We saw Robots at the Drive-In when it came out.  I enjoyed it on a technical level (man, the modeling and scenery in the flick must have been a nightmare to create), but I personally thought the story was a bit weak compared to the Pixar films.

Maybe I'm biased, but I think Pixar has all the other big CGI houses (both of them?? PDI/Dreamworks and Blue Sky) beat hands down in the story department.  With the exception of the original Shrek, that is.

Don't get me wrong, I do like Ice Age and Robots; visually, Blue Sky is doing it right.

>
> While in the prison, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson)
> shows up and tells Bruce that he can help train him.  

> ....they're all British!  With the
> exception of Katie Holms, and Morgan Freeman, the rest of the
> cast is completely British!  Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson,
> Gary Oldman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson....etc
> etc.
>

At the risk of flogging Trek's horse, Liam Neeson is not British, either.  He's Irish.  Small distinction, perhaps, but to one of Irish decent, a significant one.  

[Mr_Vindictive]

Ulthar,

Well, when I said it was better than many of the other CGI films, I was mainly thinking of Shark Tale and (everyone is going to hate me) Finding Nemo.  Shark Tale wasn't good by any means and I never did like Finding Nemo unlike everyone else who has seen it.

And yes, Robots did look absolutely amazing.  Some scenes were jaw droppingly good.

[BeyondTheGrave]

Skaboi I saw Dominion and thought it was decent enough when I saw it thearters.  That kid posessed really freaked me out for some reason.

-------------------------------------------------
Most of all I hate dancing then work, exercise, people,stupid people

[trekgeezer]

Bale was making the Machinist when Nolan chose him for Batman, and they were worried about what the studio would think of him in his then current shape ( I think he weighed like 128 lbs). He ended up gaining so much weight (up to 220) that one of the crew said he thought they were making Batman not fatman.

Yeah Skaboi, that Needs more Cowbell thing  is something we started doing at work after I found that Walken for President site. One of our Sys Admins found the video of that SNL skit and we were rolling on the floor. Now it's our catch phrase for when something doesn't work right around here.

[odinn7]

"Did you guys just hear that? Know what that sound was? That was me kicking myself in the balls for not seeing this film at the theater."

Ok...know what this sound is?...It's me kicking you in the balls for not seeing that film in the theater. Seriously though, I can't say enough about this movie. I have said it before but I'll say it again. I'm a huge Batman fan (mostly the Dark Knight) and this movie was perfect as far as I'm concerned. They really did the Dark Knight justice when this film was made. No stupid slapstick needed. Batman was dark, bitter, angry and trying to come to terms with all of it just the way he should be.