AST Loves Movies

[SlyBattery]

Has anyone seen "Streets of Fire"? I saw a soundtrack of it for sale at Goodwill and based solely on the cover art, I am about to watch it. Seems like it has to at least be interesting for the highly stylized theme of it but yet I feel like I have never heard of it for a reason.

[Monty]

I remember Streets of Fire as being awesome, but I was 14 when it came out, so it might actually be extremely goofy. The soundtrack is definitely amazing, though.

[SlyBattery]

Yeah, I'm gonna go with goofy.

I couldn't even finish it. Even though it had some good qualities, it was overwhelmed by the corny lines and the bad acting of some of the actors.

I did fast forwarded to the end though, only to witness a sledgehammer duel between the main guy and Willem Dafoe. Not as cool as it sounds.

[Alex Mac]

I saw Looper tonight and it was basically everything I wanted from the Total Recall remake (ie. a good, generally smart sci-fi action movie). There's some things you have to take at face value and some of the beats hit reminiscent of T2 but that's not really a bad thing, I don't think that's a bad thing. If you're looking for something a bit more high octane but still mentally stimulating, this is a good flick to check out.

[Couldn'tThinkOfaName]

You extrapolated THAT from this?

Somebody just 'bad' voted this.

I AM GOING TO FIND YOU AND KILL YOU!

[BillBrasky]

I just checked and I have seen 31 movies so far in a theater this year, and an additional 5 or so on demand at home (Bachelorette, Piranha 3DD, Butter, Liberal Arts, and God Bless America.* Those were all in their own way disappointing. GBA was probably the best of the bunch).
My favorites for the year so far are pretty much the same as they were back in May- Wanderlust, Cabin in the Woods, Bernie, Moonrise Kingdom, 21 Jump Street if you really want to stretch it. This year was kind of rare in that most of the good stuff came out in the first half of the year, with almost nothing worthwhile coming out from June to October. Sorry, The Master was just too flawed and boring for me to consider it a good movie.

I'm really hoping that Wreck-It Ralph will be one of the better movies of the year, it certainly looks like it's going to be good. Looking ahead after that, the movies I'm looking forward to or that I think sound interesting are Lincoln, Hyde Park on Hudson, This is 40, and Django Unchained. Overall this seems like a pretty bad year for movies though.

*I forgot about the Tim & Eric movie. That was all right I guess, at least it was different. It didn't seem to get much of a theatrical release though.

[SlyBattery]

Cloud Atlas was pretty cool. Anyone else think so? I want a friend.

[Shauno]

I watched Looper today. Took awhile to get used to Willisface, but it was really good. Man, Paul Dano's future self.. Shiiiiiiit that was crazy.

[Cameron]

Cloud Atlas was pretty cool. Anyone else think so? I want a friend.

I loved it.

[nathansmart]

I just watched The Catechism Cataclysm and it was pretty good. Lots of funny stuff form Steve Little.

[MJEH]

[Battleship Pretension]

I also loved Cloud Atlas.

[BillBrasky]

I'm not going to go through the trouble of making a thread for it or anything, but I saw the movie "Fun Size" today and it was all right. The closest movie I can compare it to is "Sex Drive" in that it is mostly a movie for teenagers, but it has enough moments in it that adults will like that it's not too painful to sit through. It gets points for being A) a comedy set during Halloween, which I don't think has really ever been done before and B) being an above-average teen/high school age comedy, which I guess hasn't really been done well since "Sex Drive" (or "Easy A" I suppose).

The lead actress in it, Victoria Justice, doesn't really ever progress much beyond the Nickelodeon level, but Jane Levy from "Suburgatory" plays her best friend, and her comedic timing and acting ability really help the movie a lot. James Pumphrey, Abby Elliott, Ana Gasteyer, and Kerri Kinney were also in it and were all funny in their scenes. Rikki Lindhome is in it and wears a "Sailor Moon" type costume for her role, which was nice. Chelsea Handler plays the mom in the movie and was actually surprisingly good for a non-actress in the scenes where she had to cry and stuff.

I'm not going to lie and say that this movie was great or anything, it was still mostly a teen comedy, but there hasn't really been a good one for a while so I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

[MJEH]

I just saw "Ted". Maybe I've seen too many FG eps, but I thought it was predictable. Maybe I ruined it for myself by watching too much FG...??

[JPSpaulding]

I saw 5 movies this past weekend.

The Master- great music, acting, cinematography and tone. The story isn’t as compelling as some other PTA films but I enjoyed it just the same.

Wreck-It-Ralph- Watching this at 4 in the afternoon with a theater full of kids and hearing them laugh at the jokes warmed my cold dead heart. The visuals were outstanding but again the 3D wasn’t necessary. Wished the licensed video game characters would have gotten more screen time. The acting was good. Who since Robin Williams in Aladdin has been better than good at voice acting in a cartoon?

The Man With the Iron Fists- Pretty good fight scenes.

Looper- I really enjoyed the future they created and how the story came together. No big surprises or great risks taken. Emphatically left thinking…that was a movie!

Argo- Ben Affleck made another movie from start to finish. Good for him.

[Battleship Pretension]

The Comedy is really fucking great.

[nathansmart]

Yeah, I know! I wasn't sure what to expect going in. Everything I heard about it was that it would make you sick and that it was really hard to watch but I didn't think that at all. I mean, the way they acted was so awful and in real life I would have been absolutely disgusted but I was fully expecting to hate these guys because they were supposed to be douches. But, in real life, douches don't actually do anything funny - they just beat up on little people. Sure, the main characters took a lot of unnecessary shots but when they were just hanging around, they actually said and did really funny stuff.

Spoiler:  

I was so torn. For instance, I hated when Tim's character was messing with those rich people because I didn't want the gardeners to get in trouble but then he got them all to be able to swim in the pool and that made me laugh so hard! Of course, they will probably never be hired again and that made me sick. The worst part was probably Tim just staring at the girl having a seizure. That was so uncomfortable and that is probably what everyone remembers when they call this movie "hard to watch." But then just minutes later, he's playing with what seems like a boy stranger and making that kid's day.

I could never tell if he was changing who he was or if he was just thinking about nothing. When he started combing the old guy's hair that seemed so sweet but was he just being an ironic prick or was he having a moment??

I love this movie.

[Alex Mac]

Right so. Blah blah. Casino Royale was great. Blah blah Quantum wasn't as great (but I still liked it).

Anyway...Skyfall. I adored this film, from a technical level, acting, and on a meta level for what it does with the Bond franchise.

It's not perfect but it's really one of the best films I've seen in a while. And not just on raw entertainment value. There's some genuinely deft film making here.

[BillBrasky]

Here are the biggest flops financially so far this year:

1. The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure (Box office: $1 million / Budget: $20 million)
2. A Thousand Words (Box office: $20 million / Budget: $40 million)
3. Dredd (Box office: $28 million / Budget: $50 million)
4. Big Miracle (Box office: $25 million / Budget: $40 million)
5. Wanderlust (Box office: $21 million/ Budget: $30 million)
6. Rock Of Ages (Box office: $56 million / Budget: $74 million)
7. People Like Us (Box office: $12 million / Budget: $16 million)
8. That’s My Boy (Box office: $57 million / Budget: $70 million)
9. Premium Rush (Box office: $29 million / Budget: $35 million)
10. Red Tails (Box office: $50 million / Budget: $58 million)

I only saw 2 of these in the theater, so I was exercising more judgement this year. It's a shame "Wanderlust" bombed so badly, but how did "That's My Boy" cost 70 million???

[JDiddy]

Vanilla Ice's salary demands are getting out of hand.