Gonna watch it this weekend.
As Spiderman, more actions and fanciful camera angles (better CGI), to cater to the 3D version, I guess?
As Peter Parker, he's being a typical teenager, who could be annonying?
Ya, gonna watch it anyhow.

John Lasseter and most animators in Pixar are inspired and do look up to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, if you watch before The Pixar Story (2007) and read his interviews in entertainment news. It's inevitable Pixar films sooner or later will 'borrow' a scene or two from Studio Ghibli films.

Btw, I understand why Cars 2 didn't do well for most, but for me, a racing fan, there are more actions and happenings on tracks; so, it didn't disappoint me, in a way.

As for Brave ... haven't watch it yet, but I believe you ... coz altho the director credit goes to more than one person, from interviews, it seems Brenda Chapman is the main director, as Pixar wanted to do a film from a more female point of view ... not to say it's inferior, the keyword, as you've mentioned is ... pacing. If you've watched films directed by Nora Ephron (R.I.P), Nancy Meyers, Penny Marshall, Julie Taymor, Jane Champion, and to some extent Kathryn Bigelow; they seem to edit or pace their films differently, especially for those dramatic or romantic comedy films. More than once, when I (as a guy) watched their chick flick, I expected a scene to be followed by another scene, but they jumped to another scene for a while (to explain further or to see what other characters are doing), then only get back to the main arc. Maybe our gender brains are really wired differently even in movies ... nonetheless, this isn't a rant, just an observation to the diversity of works.

Have you watched Timur's work in Russia before he did Wanted (2008)? Specifically Night Watch (2004), and some parts of Day Watch (2006). The action and style in Night Watch made me chuckled ... fun to watch. Yeah, Timur's forte is his visual directing.

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Added on July 5, 2012, 4:12 pmThere are reasons, but mostly obsure for mainstream viewers; there are rhythms, but according to the makers' homage of Alien (1979). Majority of viewers complained about the lack of common sense and scientific inaccuracies ... valid points most of them.
For me, I enjoyed it as a visual film (with the 1st Alien film in mind), and looking forward to the sequel for clear-cut answers. Hope the writer won't leave it too abstract like the ending of Lost TV series; I like ambiguous ending in artistic films but not in sci-fi films.

Heheheh, luckily I didn't spend my money to watch it in cinema ... although really tempted to after watching Prometheus ... the connection being, Charlize Theron. But lack of time wrestled me away ... else, I'll be ranting like you have. Btw, from the trailer, a scene involving a white deer in the forest reminds me of an animated film ... you know it, by Studio Ghibli ... Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke).

This post has been edited by r2t2: Jul 5 2012, 04:12 PM

Yeap, me too ... wanted to skip till the end many times.
Not that the film is bad, it's the characters themselves ... since it's based on true story, can't believe they're sooo sooo sooo (can't stress how many times) stooopid.
Anyway, watched till the end and read the imdb discussion board after that, and watched the interviews & the real uncensored footage (excerpt) of the real event (this film is almost exactly what happened in a McDonald store in 2004(?)) ... it's unbelievable these no common sense kind of people exist in the world.

I concurred with Mov_freak, it's not a bad video game to film adaptation ... it contains the earlier elements of NFS (cops vs racers), a bit of NFS Most Wanted (pink slip races) and NFS World (bounty hunters) but no NFS Underground elements (coz no Japanese tuner cars, only muscle cars and supercars). I remember there's a track in NFS: Hot Pursuits 2, it featured almost exactly the same as in the movie ... the forest part ... or maybe Hot Pursuits 2 makers used that location in their game.
The irritating part might be the prolonged scenes of side-characters, who provide comical reliefs, but imho dragged the movie a bit.
Given the USD66 million budget and minimal CGI effects (mostly prop-cars), the car stunts looked nice...but of course, not all really feasible. Got some plot-holes as well, but those didn't really affect my enjoyment of the movie.

There's a character who keep asking his friends to call him Maverick when he's flying ... I chuckled a bit at the scene when his friends asked him why the insistence on being called 'Maverick' ; he didn't give a direct answer but you know which movie he's referring to.

That being said, do lower your expectations, as each of us got own different standards ... different strokes for different folks.

Singapore's GVs are/were showing. Almost went to watch it during a trip there last few weeks but the show was around 1am+ in the morning.

I quite love this film. I'll agree that this isn't an action movie and a bit too technical, but some of your points could be countered.
Kip Thorne was consulted for the theories, of course there's no math to prove it (not even Stephen Hawkings has reconciled quantum & gravitational physics), but after watching the film, even Kip Thorne want to use the probability of how the light looks from black holes' event horizon in his future work.
Cinematography doesn't mean wide panning shots of great scenery ... it just mean moving photography, it encompass the setting of lightings and camera setups ... and here it looks great in scenes like the dusty room. The planets look bland and not too alien, coz they're the type of planets that supposed to be potentially habitable i.e. almost like our planet. They could've shown more graphical mapping presentation on the wormhole, the black hole and the 12 planets locations, I supposed.
While Anne Hathaway does look good in the film, I feel she doesn't bring much ... Matthew's and Jessica's acting are moving.

For me, Interstellar is kinda opposite of Inception ... while watching Inception last time, I felt there's too much unnecessary/prolonged action scenes (except the hotel part), I wanna watch more on the 'mind-bending stuff'. Here, there's less time allocated for actions and more to personal drama and 'science-y'/metaphysical stuff.

I'll be heading to imdb to read more after this ... just came back from watching it, but wanna see what u guys think.
From the general reviews, we already know that there's a lot of reference of 2001:A Space Odyssey. Maybe that's why Steven Spielberg skipped it, he don't wanna do another A.I (the 3rd act ... which I feel is appropriate as a tribute to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 as well). TARS humour percentage scenes do provide some chuckles in an otherwise heavy drama film.
All in all, I agree with your review ... was worried that the 'science' part of the story too hard for me to understand or Hans Zimmer might overdone the music like some critics mentioned ... but for casual fans of theoretical physics and philosophical metaphysics, it just uses/validates some of existing theories, nothing much new, just quite interesting to see it in a nice package. And although the soundtrack was loud in some scenes, overall it fits the film.
For the booster rocket ...


No IMAX screens nearby, only watched on normal cinema (the subtitle track was stuck somemore ... permanently at "Do not go gently into the night" .... "Jangan leka something something" ....
Yeah, I like the dimensions thingys, it could possibly actually explain a lot of our real world ... not just Christopher Nolan, the script was initially by his brother Jonathan.
Well, off to read more discussions ... at least this has a 'happier' and less ambiguous ending than 2001:ASO or A.I. ...

Joss Whedon did announced that there'll be no post-credit scene, just mid-credit ... so that fans won't be left furious after waiting for maybe 10mins+

Who knows he'll direct a sequel to Cabin in the Wood, instead of just producing it with his pal Drew Goddard.

To be honest, I was underwhelmed a bit ... although the production scale of the movie is kinda bigger with globe trotting 'adventures', story-wise it's more personal, more 'down' to earth and no alien invaders this time ... ... The movie almost could be made as Iron Man 4, but since they need to 'get-rid' of the Ultron storyline before continuing to Thanos & the Infinity Gauntlets storyline, I guess it had to be one of The Avengers movie (since in the comic, the original Ant-Man, one of founding members of The Avengers, was the creator of Ultron; here it's Tony Stark).

Btw, how's the 3D effect for AoU? Many popping effects? Or just mostly perspective / layers effects? I only watched the 2D version in cinema.

Rose Byrne, the Australian actress, became well-known, for me lah, as Queen Amidala's maid/dupe(?) in Star Wars : Episode 2.
After that, didn't really notice her until the very funny Bridesmaids ... then, suddenly she's like quite prolific ... appearing in (like u mentioned) Insidious, and various genres ... but I mostly remember her roles in comedies such as The Internship, Neighbours, I Give It A Year (quite funny British movie), etc.

Concur.
The cameos, the big-eyed Amanda Gollum Seyfried, the comic-con ... I lol when the Jurassic Park theme played during a scene. My Mom, who was watching a bit, chuckled at the fertility clinic scene.
The serious plots are meaningful enuf, more so than the first Ted; so that it doesn't go all the way of A Million Ways to Die in the West.

After that, I continued to watch Paddington (2014). (Sometimes, movies are more memorable if watched in pairs especially if there's a common element). Although it's targeted for kids, the movie is really well-made ... quite artistic I dare say. Even tho it's predictable, it's not boring at all. Ben Whishaw's voice as Paddington is quite suitable.

Wanna quickly write something before 'consulting' IMDB ...

Although I have similar "That's it?" feeling by the end of the movie, during the credit I ponder back and compared it to movies like Contact rather than Interstellar....and do agree that Arrival is an elegant piece of film.

I'll throw my 2cents here ... Arrival is a sci-fi movie, but for me it got religious theme as well.
In Contact, the main point is personal experience being categorized as faith, either in science or religion.
In Arrival, the main point for me is the transcendence of human beings' brain from within.

In Contact, maths is the universal language, and the first contact isn't the prime-mover/God, but just a fellow star-traveller race which uses human appearance coz we can't perceive their metaphysical nature yet (here, a lot of viewers were disappointed, but I equate it to religion too; our senses can't comprehend the nature of God yet until heaven/nirvana/etc.).
In Arrival, we're learning a higher visual language which could make us godlike, making time just another dimension which we could perceive non-linearly ... which lead to another point in the movie, would we change things if we knew the outcome? Arrival didn't touch on universal what-ifs, just personal experience such as having a child. Here, I relate this to religion again, afaik, Christians believe that time for God isn't linear.

Both Contact and Arrival got sub-plot of someone trying to sabotage the whole thing.

Asides from the emotional feel of the film which I guess resonates with most critics, the theoretical aspects are quite solid as well ... linguists and linguistic engineers must have been trying to prod for errors, and based on the theory mentioned in Arrival stating that our brain could be re-wired through forms of languages, I guess they're wondering if there exist a language which could unify the whole race of humanities and at the same time evolve us into a 'higher' being.

Film technicalities ... I like the low-rumbling sound mixing ... the editing is nicely paced for me as well, not too slow, not too frantic.

Now, I wanna know .... does the name Hannah and its palindrome nature can be applied to the film Arrival itself? Can the film be viewed from the end to the beginning like Memento? (I would like also to read, if any, Christopher Nolan's opinion on Dennis Villeneuve's take on this theoretical work). What's with the 3,000 years in the future aid? Important or just a sequel device? (Where are you, Another District 9??).
Anyway, with my liking of Prisoners and Sicario, I'm really looking forward to Blade Runner 2049.

I guess most people watched it already kua ... after the news that Dangal is the top box-office foreign movie in China ever ... the movie earned more money in China than in India!

When recommended to friends, siblings & in-laws, some who never watched Hindi movie before, they really like it as well.

For me, one of the best movies of 2016/2017.

It is one of the best movies of 2017 ... I really like the first Blade Runner movie and the world it envisioned ... among the most influential sci-fi movies ... even played the PC game last time, and had read the short story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?".

After watching the three shorts on YouTube, BR:Black Out 2022, BR:2036 Nexus Dawn, & BR:2048 Nowhere to Run, I was ready to immerse back in the bleak plausible future world ... and I'm not disappointed at all with Blade Runner 2049. Actings were top-notch & moving, cinematography was captivating, soundtrack was minimal but effective (still wondering how much of Johan Johansson's score was altered, and how much was Hans Zimmer's), sound effects was superb (wanna watch again with a good home theatre system for the LFE rumblings), visual effect mixed with more grounded practical effects were not too jarring, the noir detective + 3-sided conflicts + AI romance storyline was interesting enough ... most importantly, the message and theme of the movie is meaningful for me.

Nonetheless, I couldn't recommended the movie to most people, ... mainly due to the deliberately slow pacing, and the actively churning grey cells required while watching the 2hrs40+mins film. Hopefully though, Blade Runner 2049 will also be a cult-classic and has a huge following in the future, similar to its predecessor.

I watched Blade Runner 2049 one week or so after the mass-shooting in Las Vegas; in the movie, when K reached Las Vegas, I was like ...

Roger Deakins' works with Denis Villeneuve, namely Prisoners, and Sicario are exceptional as well ... the road at night scene with a lot of cars when Hugh Jackman's character was driving, memorable.

Anyhoo ... getting out of topic, heheh ... to make up for that, a short movie review of the last film I've watched.


The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) ... currently on Netflix.

Nice performances from Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, etc.

A drama with a tinge of comedy about the Meyerowitz family ... a retired art professor/artist with two sons and a daughter (half-siblings), who had 'slight' relationship/communication problem with his sons (coz he's an artist, haha) ... the usual expectations for sons to follow own footsteps, coupled with playing favourites, led to some 'amicable' conflicts between the siblings. Ben Stiller had a great scene. Grace Van Patten as Adam Sandler's character's young adult daughter who obtained patriarchal approval coz she's studying filmmaking (continuing artistic careers in family), oohlala ... Elizabeth Marvel, from House of Cards and Homeland, I didn't recognize her. In a nutshell, a retrospective film focusing on characters and dialogues.

6.5 out of 10.

Err ... Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) was George Clooney's directorial debut.


Me too ... I was sorely disappointed with Assassin's Creed ... fell asleep in the cinema.

Anything related to Tokyo Raiders (2000), and Seoul Raiders (2005)?

Nvrmind, Europe Raiders is the 3rd in the 'series' ... same director, Jingle Ma.

This post has been edited by r2t2: Aug 14 2018, 05:17 PM

I loved it ... just a simple story, and it doesn't feel slow paced (eventho it is); I paused at one time when getting drink, found that 40mins had passed without me realizing it.
Every scene seems to draw the viewer in ... the compositions, the lightings, the camera movements, etc.

Initially I was looking for the director's famous long takes (after seeing Hideo Kojima tweeted that how did Alfonso Cuaron framed some shots), but then I found that the highlight of the film is how the director stages scenes with many people ... the holiday house scene, the wood scene, etc. ... it feels like the director gave everyone a specific direction what to do, no matter how small the character is ... which made the scenes look 'alive' with real characters.

Roma doesn't seem to have big moral story, I thought it was about poverty in Mexico, but no (there was glimpses into Mexican Dirty War in 1970s and the Corpus Christi Massacre) ... it's just a recollection of memories from the director's childhood life in Mexico; it's a poignant memory.

(Only caught two 'references' to the director's previous works ... Gravity (very obvious), and Y Tu Mamá También ... after reading IMDB trivia, oh, one part of the film also feels like Children of Men).

Although Roma isn't for everyone, everyone should try to watch it.

We're in the future of movie entertainment!

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
https://www.netflix.com/title/80988062?s=i&trkid=14170286


The first live action interactive movie I watched ... heard of those interactive cinemas but never been to one ... this might be a first for streaming service.

Watched and reached two of the final endings (which the credits will appear with no options to choose another path) ... dunno how many 'true'/'best' endings are there? Not yet read IMDB or in-depth reviews/analysis, wanna avoid spoilers, in case still wanna try other paths ... talk about watchability / 'replay' values.

Yes, a movie that you can change a bit of the storyline by making choices when given decisions.

Feels like those (old) full motion video (FMV) games such as Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, Mad Dog McCree, The X-Files Game, etc. ... choose your own adventure books / gamebooks like Lone Wolf series, etc.

Don't know if can watch 'offline' or as normal video ... won't make much sense since got many branches/paths .... have to watch through Netflix app, website, Smart TV or consoles in order for the 10 seconds decisions making 'scenes' to appear (I used PS3 ... the controller will vibrate when it's time to make decisions). One particular choice/path made me LOL because it really breaks the 4th wall

This post has been edited by r2t2: Dec 29 2018, 04:01 AM