The Man With the Iron Fist (2012)

Absolutely terrible movie. A disgrace to kung-fu action genre. Horrible and corny dialog, terrible acting by what seems like a decent cast (seriously Russell Crowe?!). A black man... trying to be some amped up Donnie Yen?

All of that wouldn't have been so bad if the fighting was actually good. But the problem is, it isn't. Overuse of slow-mos and way too much camera cuts because none of the actors or actresses could actually fight (or at least pretend that they can).

If you can't have a story, then at least have good fights. But when you have neither, then why was this movie even made?!
I know I'm 2 years late into watching this terrible piece of crap, but damn.. I wished I didn't ever watch it. Waste of time.

Not worth rating.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Feb 7 2015, 06:15 PM

Watched - The Conjuring 2



My Rating : 6.5/10


Been wanting to watch this movie in the cinema itself, but fearing pointless censorship (you know how it is when it comes to horror movies here, particularly based on religion), I decided to wait until a Blu-ray release (yes I know, it's technically not out yet).

To keep it short and sweet, The Conjuring 2 isn't as good as the first Conjuring. I find that 2 of the 4 spirits presented in this movie were too comical and silly, pausing suspense and disbelief which to me breaks the immersion of the movie. That said, I still had a number of decent jump scares thanks to the well mixed soundtrack of the movie. Not going to go into too much plot details here as summary is available all over the net, but all I will say is that the whole Enfield thing was obviously too short of a plot for this movie alone. Trying to tie up the Amityville and Enfield poltergeist activities as something related to Lorraine may be a good idea on paper, but somehow it just didn't feel very impactful to me at the end.

Cinematography wise, this isn't James best work. There are a few new things he tried with this movie, particularly with lesser close-up shots that was in some cases over-used in many of his previous horror movies. But I think that there were areas that certainly would benefit from better camera placements, to keep the surreal suspense intact. Otherwise, it's the usual James Wan flair. A camera pan and wham! A jump scare! It's predictable but I found the use of camera pans effective.

Audio wise, I watched The Conjuring 2 in Dolby Atmos. Unfortunately, the Atmos effects sounded 'tacked-on' and they were barely used to give a bigger sense of horror immersion. I can count in one hand the amount of scenes that there were height-effects and even those were pointless "running footsteps ontop of you" or "objects flying above you" sort of thing. Atmos aside though, the bed-layer effects were fantastic stuff.
There's a good amount of LFE in this movie and boy do they sound GREAT! The mid-bass thumps and thuds are which comprises of chest thumps were all well integrated with the jump scares. Vocals were mixed just nice, never out of focus and was very loud when it needed to be. To me, audio is extremely important in horror movies and while the height effects were a let down, everything else was sublime in this movie!

I came off the movie at the end feeling a little... down. There was no "wtf.. I just wet my pants" feeling at the end. The ending to me felt abrupt and the build up to it was a little too comical as well.

The Conjuring 2 is a fairly decent movie, well worth the watch just for the sound production alone IMO. But if anyone is expecting this to be better than the first movie, then well.. you'd be a little disappointed.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Sep 2 2016, 05:24 PM

Schindler's List




8.5/10.

Absolutely one of the best films of all time. "Old" as this film may be, but the amount of detail that goes into this film in regards to how the Jews were treated, killed, and humiliated by the Germans is one of the most harrowing experience I've seen from a film. The fact that it stuck rather close to what really happened further makes the impact of entire plot even more sorrowful.

Cinematography is top notch stuff here, fantastic camera shots and all the actors (especially Liam Neeson, how the F did he not win an Oscar for this back 93 is beyond me) were great at what they were supposed to portray - Jews.

Watch this film with an open mind and you'll understand just how things are not what history books would like to tell you.

I think while it is disturbing, it is also pretty at the same time. It isn't just blood and guts, there's a hollow and dread sense of feeling when Jews were shot in the head because the Nazis thought; "why the F not?"

Fantastic film indeed, definitely one of Spielberg's best work of all time. Also mad props to Steven Zaillian for the great pacing of events in the movie. It's over 3 hours long, but it felt like a very complete 3+ hours. Not like movies today where after 2 hours you're asking yourself "wtf did I just watch?". Janusz Kamiński sense of cinematography was just brilliant as well, everything that needs to be seen is shown in a manner that was clear and concise.


Lol porn. Dafuq? Bird brains are forever bird brains.

Yeah. Definitely worth the weekend afternoon to watch this masterpiece. Most of the things in this movie has a meaning to it, even if it's as pointless as a Nazi soldier shooting a Jew in the head for no reason. There's a meaning behind why it was portrayed like that, this movie shows it.


Yes. That's one of the most wtf scene in the movie. Like... I was totally speechless on his reasoning to kill for who know's for what sake. He's mental in the head, so he doesn't even know why.

One of the shittiest movies of this year. This is coming from a person who reads, write and speaks Korean in the last 5 years.

The acting is barebones, other than Kim Hwan Hee (yes a little girl outperformed every other actor/actress in this movie, go figure). The "suffering" that was to be conveyed ended up looking lame and hilarious, rather than harrowing or sorrowful.
The plot is predictable from 10 miles away... what's so sinister about an "akuma" anyways? A town goes crazy because reasons, BIG EFFIN' deal.

About the only good thing about this movie is the cinematography. Seriously props to the DOP, the sceneries that was captured were absolutely mesmerizing to say the least.

I'm not sure how this movie did so well in the west. But in Korea, it's quite shit and most natives don't care for it.

Of course. When did I say it wasn't?

Good recommendation.

Though the acting is a bit shit overall, but still pretty fun throughout.

It's got some decent LFE too, best out of the entire series. I don't know how people can say the CG is stunning though....? I don't see it.

My friend is actually one of the lead for one of the post production vfx companies for this movie. He even agreed it's not very impressive... So~

Reasons are much more technical than just "PQ is better" I'm afraid.

I've already watched the UHD version on my LG C7.... granted I'll admit I don't own the disc but I do have an untouched remux file of it.

You are not getting my point. You are assuming that I say the movie looks bad and then you are comparing it to previous installments. I never once did say the movie looked bad, I'm saying from this movie alone - objectively speaking from a technical point of view is unimpressive. Your understanding stems from: "it looks good because pixels". That's the layman way of looking at CG, no offense.

The rigging of the models are passable, the models have high tri counts yes but it's really no better than what Kong did. There's a weird use of speculars on the bodies and the fact that they chose to DI this movie at 2k instead of 4k is a weird one. The friend who works on this movie said they had the raws for a full 4k DI, but for whatever reason didn't go that route.
If you think high poly count is the only thing matters, then well... okay, not gonna argue that. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder right?

You are simply misunderstanding my point:

1) The movie looks good, YES. No one said it looked bad.

2) From a technical artist perspective, it is NOT impressive because it doesn't do anything amazing.

There's really nothing to talk about if people are only focus on the bangs and the whizzes without looking at the work that goes behind it.

I don't think Kong is impressive if I look purely at the layman term of "picture quality". No it absolutely doesn't, Ghost in the Shell looks better in that case. But if you've ever done any 3D rigging, modelling, and texture wraps along with effects work, Kong is impressive. If you think doing hair and fur is easier than modelling metal, that's naive.

Your eyes aren't faulty, Last Knight definitely looks better than Kong.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Nov 3 2017, 07:50 PM

Yup forgot this thread is for casuals.

Well TIL constructive and productive discussions are not allowed. So okay. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This post has been edited by SSJBen: Nov 3 2017, 10:10 PM