[Keeker]

I saw Riddick too... enjoyed it well enough. It was more like the first movie, not as good though. But.. but... they shot his doggie!

Jack the Giant Slayer - Fantasy/fairytale movie with some big names in the cast. Entertaining and enjoyable, not brilliant. Would watch again.

12 Years as a Slave
One of the most depressing movies about slavery I have ever seen. Consequently, it is also one of the most emotionally gratifying. Of course this was directed by Steve McQueen, so I would expect nothing less.

Every bit of hype of how powerful and award-worthy the performances and direction portrayed in the film are well-earned. And while artistic liberties are taken, it is faithful enough to reality to not be one of those loosely-based movies that claim to be historically accurate; this one means it.

There's none of the flash and action of Django Unchained here; there doesn't need to be. What we have are real characters and believable mannerisms. It's difficult and often painful to watch but anything less would cheapen the impact, nor does it go beyond what's necessary and become exploitative.

Highly recommended.

Rush

Now here's formula one movie to my liking, highly entertaining and very nostalgig too. I remember when I was kid and saw Tyrrell P34 in Tamiya catalog (in two or three different scales) and wondered why that car has six wheels, that oddity makes appearance in this film and boy did that take me back. Also main characters look almost identical to their real life counterparts, specially Daniel Br

[swervedriver]

Also saw Rush recently. Very good indeed, highly recommended if you have any interest in F1.

Watched The Final Sacrifice last night, although the MST3K version of it. Rowsdower. That is all.

Saw The Lego Movie and it's probably become my favourite animated kids film after one showing. A complete mix of pop-culture references, nostalgia and comedy. It's animated beautifully with a kind of hyperactive energy that makes it cute and adds to the jokes. As you'd expect, there's loads of little Lego in-jokes and details but they often make fun of the toys' limitations which is nice. Obviously the whole thing will shift more units and I'm sure there's tonnes of toys based on it out there by now but unlike most recent kids film it feels less cynical since it started out as a toy in the first place.
The way the theme song is pumped into you throughout the film is sort of annoying but then since seeing it I've had it constantly open on YouTube so it obviously infected my head, they do make jokes about being constantly bombarded with the song though it's alright? I dunno *plays it again*

Semi-spoiler:

Spoiler: show

There's a bit, probably three-quarters in, where the tone shifts dramatically. It starts as a predictable plot point and gives a little break from the mayhem but it goes on to address something that bugs me about some adult Lego fans which I wasn't expecting.

[EphelDuath666]

watched a whole bunch of silent movies from the 1920's recently, including Die Nibelungen, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Nosferatu and The Loves of Pharaoh. They were all pretty great, The Loves of Pharaoh might have been a little more difficult to watch as a lot of the movie consisted of still pictures and text because a big portion of the original uncut movie is lost, maybe forever. But it was enjoyable anyways. The other movies were quite amazing though.
I have watched Nosferatu several times on DVD but this was my first time watching it in 1080p and it was a great experience. The level of detail and clarity is simply astonishing. Words almost can't express how amazing this restoration looks in HD. Die Nibelungen was a lot of fun to watch too. It's almost hard to believe that the movie (or movies rather since it's a 2-parter) was made 90 years ago, considering the amount of work that went into it. Siegfried, part 1 of Die Nibelungen, was very impressive in particular. I guess most of these movies can be found on online streaming platforms such as Netflix so I strongly recommend watching them.

I also watched Olympus Has Fallen...oh boy. Was it a good action movie? Yeah. Does it seem like the script for this movie was written by a 12 year old? Absolutely. This movie inlcudes some of the dumbest dialogue and writing in movie history so you really have to turn your brain off to get anything out of it. It ain't easy though.

I also watched Hell Comes To Frogtown not too long ago. I only need to say this: Rowdy Roddy Piper is in it. And frog mutants. If that doesn't make you wanna watch this movie then I can't help you either.

[swervedriver]

Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Decent overall, really good sometimes and somewhat lacking at other times. I'm can't help comparing it to the book, which does a better job of setting an atmosphere and describing a certain mindset. This one is better than the first film though, as Katniss actually has people around her most of the time so her train of thought is more easily expressed (whereas in the first film she was alone most of the time).

Kick-Ass 2
Meh.

XMen: Days of Future Past

Good stuff all round. Plenty of action, as well as familiar old faces there's loads of new mutants to the film franchise which keeps things fresh...Along with Magneto fucking shit up as per usual. Felt like it was dragging a bit towards the back end of the film but still very watchable. 7/10.

[EphelDuath666]

Godzilla

suuuuuuuuuuuuuuch a disappointment I expected Godzilla to kick ass throughout the entire movie and be all badass and all roooooaaaaar. Well, and then you get to see him in action for like 10 minutes.

spoiler ahead, don't open if you don't want to know anything about the movie

Spoiler: show

And they killed off Cranston after what...half an hour? And in such a cheap way without any emotional impact on the viewer? Even worse, they killed off Juliette Binoche after 2 or 3 mintues. The most talented actors of the movie are the ones to die first....hmmm, interesting choice. Ken Watanabe was quite pointless too. Everyone who should have gotten more screen time didn't get it, including Godzilla and everyone who didn't deserve that much screen time got WAY too much. Like the dude who played the main character and the very generic looking M.U.T.O.s

I understand they wanted to give the movie an environmental message and that's fine. But a movie is also supposed to be entertaining and this one just wasn't that entertaining to me.

The new X-Men movie was pretty cool actually. My favorite out of all the X-Men flicks so far I'd say. And next week I'll go and watch Edge of Tomorrow, which will hopefully be awesome. If you can believe all the positive reviews it's getting then it should be fun!

Also should receive Grave of the Fireflies on Blu-ray tomorrow, can't wait to get emotionally crushed by that movie once again!

oh I also watched every single Jean Claude van Damme movie over the past few weeks. Why? Because a friend of mine and myself had this retro fanboy thing going where we decided to watch all of his movies again. Some of them are still pretty awesome (in the cheesiest ways) and others....well, they are not really all that wonderful.

Godzilla: I liked it enough, I guess, but I'm not gonna watch it a third time.
I agree with most of your complaints, but I was fine with it on the grounds that it WASN'T Godzilla 2000, and the Godzilla fighting that WAS in the movie was still really great to watch. The brutality of that last kill was excellent, even if the fight before it was kinda short.
I saw it twice, actually, once with one group of friends at college and once at home. The first time it was a fun movie, with some complaints, the second time all the human drama really dragged on, so it only gets a 7/10.

Last movie I saw other than that was IP Man and Exit Through the Gift Shop the same night.
IP Man is a really great, not cheesy martial arts movie. The action is great, and IP Man is a really likable character, if a bit one-dimensionally "good". The historical backdrop is effective as well, balancing a martial arts master against the futility of kung-fu in the face of the Japanese invasion of China in WWII made for an interesting movie, 9/10.
Exit Through the Giftshop is a documentary about street art and Banksy. It's pretty interesting even if you aren't into that scene, because it deals with commercialization and the "fake rebel" act that society loves to buy into, 8/10.

Watched X-men Days of Future Past yesterday. Daaaaaymn, that was good. Definitely the best of the bunch (which says a lot considering how much I love the film series).

Spoiler: show

Wish they'd explain how Xavier was all of a sudden alive again. I realize you could put together previous after-the-credits-clips to get some account of it. But even that doesn't really explain anything.

^ Ip Man is fucking amazing, fact. My second favourite Donnie Yen movie

[EphelDuath666]

watching the IP Man movies is still on my to-do-list, bought 'em all not too long ago.

Watched Werner Herzog's Nosferatu on Blu-ray...very good movie of course, maybe not quite as good as Murnau's original of course. But still very good. And to anyone interested, if there's one version of this movie to get then it's BFI's latest UK Blu-ray release. Looks really, really great. Wipes the floor with any of the other releases of this movie.

also...both The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari AND Faust will be released on Blu-ray this year. Sweet. Now one can only hope Der Golem and Vampyr will follow soon.

I last saw Godzilla as well. While I do agree the second act is flawed and Aaron Taylor-Johnson really is not that good an actor, I still enjoyed the film as a whole and thought it had some good suspenseful scenes (was I the only one who remarked "I lost the comb" - you know what I mean). Naturally when the titular monster was on screen it was nothing less than amazing.

Spoiler: show

Cranston's death I do agree was quite unceremonious and is pretty much what bothered me most about the movie.

I suppose the director (who also did Monsters) figured that by building expectations and hiding our hero in a way similar to the original Japanese film would have a payoff that would be appreciated, however this has been lost on quite a few viewers; some who understood the Spielberg-esque direction and thought it was overdone are fair enough in their critiques, however one person I had a (brief) discussion with liked the '98 Godzilla more because you saw the monster throughout most of the film and wanted exactly this from the remake and less emphasis on characters. Whatever, go watch Transformers.
Overall I give this a 7.5 however acknowledge it's not one that's going to get a lot of repeat viewings.

[EphelDuath666]

it wasn't so much that we didn't get to see Godzilla all that much (even though I would have liked to see him at least a wee bit more), it's the fact that the MUTOs were just overexposed and I really didn't like them that much. And they looked a lot like the Alien from the Cloverfield movie, just not as cool. I mean, it was not bad, I would probably give it a 6.5 - 7.0 out of 10 too. I just expected it to be much better. I expected the bastard child of 'The Impossible' and 'Pacific Rim', sorta. You know, great drama that has an emotional impact on you AND memorable monster action.