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Ben said:
Yeah, the Dark Knight is one of the best films released in the last 10 years, and has set a benchmark that all comic book films will try and match, and none will.

Yeah I know, Watchmen was made tedious by being thirty minutes too long as well. :roll:

I severely hope that no more superhero films are made if they have to match the drudgery of the last thirty minutes of Dark Knight. Such a great film ruined by not ending soon enough.

Anyway, watched a classic with Minor_Furie on Friday night The Fly - The original version with Vincent Price.

Brilliant, I loved this film as a kid, and it's still superb. It's just got something about it. It's charming, camp, dreadful drivel. So enjoyable to watch, I love it.

Help meeeeeee. Help meeeeeeeee

:D
 
The Last House on the Left

I figured it'd just be your typical slash and kill or whatever, but it was actually a pretty good movie. Some of the scenes were horrifying, especially some of the ones near the beginning. Acting was also really good, and it's definitely a movie I'd recommend watching if you like the horror genre; it keeps you watching from beginning to end and is certainly one of the best films of its type that I've seen in a while.

7.5/10
 
Ben said:
^Just cause you've not got an attention span Phil ;)

I'd say the only way you could miss the fact it was over long is if you don't have an attention span. Sitting day dreaming, going to the toilet, out for more popcorn, sending people texts saying "this is the most amazing film ever" :p

I've got an attention span for direly overlong films, I saw all the LOTR films at the bloody cinema (though I did take a three course buffet in to the Two Towers) :)

The difference is that they needed to end very soon, Dark Knight made you think it was brilliant, and then didn't end soon enough. It needed to be two films, two absolutely awesome films. Sadly it was one film and the additional length made it feel like Spiderman 3, which is a VERY bad thing.
 
Well, after years of resisting it...

Ghost
Now, as far as soppy love story movies go, I am not a particular fan. Now and again they are ok I guess, but very rarely am I in the mood to watch it. So naturally, I avoided watching this film as it had always come across as a chick flick from what people had told me.

Clearly the term chick flick is a massive misinterpretation for this film. What engaged me almost immediately was the opening credits in the sense that it opened like any generic horror film would. Needless to say, this took me quite by surprise as I was expecting the dulcet tones of the Righteous Brothers to be present almost immediately. Instead I heard dark, stirring music and an almost chilling camera pan of empty rooms. Certainly not what I was expecting to see!

The film continues to unravel a plot of embezzlement in a bank firm which lead to the murder of the leading man (Patrick Swayze). So far so good. Im clearly watching a different film as this is now coming across as a crime-thriller. An albeit obvious one in terms of the whodunit side of things, but still, this thread of the plot is entertaining enough.

Everything takes another turn and introduces Goldberg and she brings her comic tongue with it. Some great comic moments are here. Again where did that come from.

More Crime Thriller and Comic moments follow and then bam, the truth is revealed and the leading lady (Demi Moore) gets her moment with the man she lost. Jesus, here come the waterworks! All they did was dance!
And therein lies the critical point. How and when on this earth did I become invested in these characters to the point it made me blub? Crime Thrillers do not tend to lend themselves to thought provoking character development so much, much less tearjerkers.

This all left me wondering whether this was ever intended to become the film branded a chick-flick that it become?

From a critical angle I guess some could say that the film jumps around genres so much that it simply doesn't know what it is but I disagree. It actually harnesses a very good blend of genres and let's them work quite solidly together. This gives the film a unique edge. Even the most "masculine" of men can watch with his wife/girlfriend without being bowled over by blinding mushy love scenes, yet still feel touched enough to tell his wife how much he loves her and feel no less masculine about it.

There are not that many films out there that pull off the mixture of genres that Ghost does and this, I feel is what made it such a huge movie in the first place. A wonderful script that doesn't confine itself in a genre box but doesn't overdo it in the same breath.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie throughout and would recommend it to anyone. If you have never seen it before, ignore everything you have ever been told about this film being a chick-flick because this romance movie comes with guts and brains and heart.

9/10
 
I'd say the only way you could miss the fact it was over long is if you don't have an attention span. Sitting day dreaming, going to the toilet, out for more popcorn, sending people texts saying "this is the most amazing film ever"

Gonna have to agree with you, Phil.. Haha. By the time it was like, two/two and a half hours in, I was like oh my god when is this gonna end, my butt is sore :( . And it was just confusing, which didn't make it that much better.. If I had actually understood it, it might be okay, like, I can deal with the Green Mile being so long because it's actually a bombbb movie.. But this was just.. Not.
 
Slayed said:
So it's the most overrated film ever, nothing spectacular at all and very pointless - and you gave it a 7? I'd hate to see one of your low scoring films then :wink:.

It was good, but very much over rated. A film can be overrated without being awful. People were saying it was the best film they had ever seen, and the review were mad for it, but it was just an average film really. The special FX and make-up were awesome though, that's probably prevented me from turning it off.

Remember, I have an opinion ;)

^ And I totally agree, Taylor, I had to stop half way through, firstly to rest my sore arse, but secondly to look through a synopsis so I could keep track.

But Green Mile <3
 
Gah! Stupid people undermining my criticism! :lol:

The plot is very simple, it's just that so much of it is extraneous to the core story. In most films, that would be removed, but for some reason it was left in The Dark Knight.
 
LiveForTheLaunch said:
By the time it was like, two/two and a half hours in, I was like oh my god when is this gonna end, my butt is sore :( .

Umm, the film is only 2 hours, 32 minutes long. :wink:

I honestly don't get why people moan that TDK is a long film, it has so much packed into it I think the length of the film is justified, unlike LOTR films.
 
Yeah, the Dark Knight NEVER stops being interesting IMO. What could they have cut out without seriously damaging the story? Uh, that's right, nothing!

It's no longer than almost every other film like that now! At least it does something!
 
Well they could have cut out the line "I'm not wearing Hockey Pants" and replaced it with "I'm not fat like you"
 
Umm, the film is only 2 hours, 32 minutes long.

I honestly don't get why people moan that TDK is a long film, it has so much packed into it I think the length of the film is justified, unlike LOTR films.

Yah but it felt like four hours because it dragged on, and last time I checked, two hours and thirty two minutes is longer than just two and a half hours :p .
 
ciallkennett said:
Remember, I have an opinion ;)
I didn't say you couldn't! I just criticised your score ^_^.

As already mentioned, TDK isn't the longest film around, and I didn't find it boring (unlike say Let The Right One In, which nearly killed me) - however the ending *is* too long, and it should be have been called The Joker since Batman just gets used as a device for the smiley one!

Lol at Ghost, Mark's spot on - it's the genre-spanning aspect that gives it the broad appeal, and it's fun too (if a little silly at times). It even makes Demi Moore appear to act, which is no mean feat :p.
 
But to end on Batman taking the blame is the next step of the story, without that ending it would of been Heath Ledger's film all over. I still really like the ending, made the neck hairs stand on end.

Anywhoo I watched Brazil on the iPlayer, really enjoyed it, love surreal fantasy films, gives me ideas for photography. Great performances by some great actors, was almost spot the famous film/tv star! But plot was hard to follow at times 8/10
 
^It's not so much the final scenes that are extraneous as the whole section with the ferries, which added very little and could easily have been dropped (great FX though).
 
Ben said:
Yeah, the Dark Knight NEVER stops being interesting IMO. What could they have cut out without seriously damaging the story? Uh, that's right, nothing!

It's no longer than almost every other film like that now! At least it does something!

The scene with the shooting. Where Batman finds the bullet in the wall, then uses the computer to remake it so that he can back track and find the Joker (I can't remember the exact details).

It's essentially about ten minutes of Batman running around being Sherlock Holmes - when in reality, they could have used some much simpler plot device to get him to his destination (if I remember correctly, it was to find the sniper position in the parade, where the Joker was already one step ahead of Batman - it would have been quicker for them to cut the whole bullet remake scene and just a have a much simpler way of finding the room that puts him off the scent).

Slayed said:
however the ending *is* too long, and it should be have been called The Joker since Batman just gets used as a device for the smiley one!

Even Slayed agrees :)

The question is, would so much have made it through editing if Ledger hadn't died?

Slayed said:
^It's not so much the final scenes that are extraneous as the whole section with the ferries, which added very little and could easily have been dropped (great FX though).

Another nail on the head. They needed to remove that, or to remove the Two-Face element in this film. If they'd ended with Harvey Dent being blown up and ruined in hospital - he could have taken the starring role in the next film, and it would have been great.

I know why they kept him in it and the whole plot twist at the end. However, it just seemed tacked on to the end of the film about The Joker. If they'd focussed on The Joker only (as they pretty much did), then it would have been 20 minutes shorter and ended more satisfactorily. With the Two-Face bit at the end, it cheapened the brilliant part Dent had had all the way through as a secondary (but very important) character and it just wasn't really thoroughly developed enough.

See, I do think it's a brilliant film, well made, etc. It's just not perfect. It's just tried to cram a little too much in to the detriment of the overall experience. I just ask for a little bit here and there to be removed and it will be superb. In future I shall give it the:

Star Wars: Episode 1 treatment which I watched last week with Maxi-Minor_Furie. He's been enveloped into the Star Wars universe - it's odd that at the same age I was when Star Wars was released, the hype machine and influence on a child's world is still as huge.

So, we sat down to watch The Phantom Menace, remote in hand, finger on the "skip" button.

It's amazing, with judicial editing, you can make a direly long and tedious film into a great piece of entertainment, I feel like going to visit George Lucas and trying to teach him the joys of editing! :)

It also reduced the total film time down to about an hour and a half. Amazingly, the film loses nothing in terms of plot by skipping all the political meanderings and bollocks about medichlorians :roll: You also have to suffer less Jar Jar Binks! :)

So, we really enjoyed it. It's exciting, amusing and overall not a bad little kids film. If anyone wants the limited edition furie version which makes it good, let me know and I'll send you a list of which chapters to miss. ;)
 
Knowing

Well.. it was totally different then I thought it would be.. but it wasn't too bad. I thought it was ok, until the ending.

7/10
 
Last night I recorded True Romance.

The film is written by Quentin Tarantino & uses the music of Hans Zimmer, so I thought "this has to be something".

And to my suprise when the opening credits began, my eyes widened at the amount of great actor/actresses in this film. They included;

Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Samuel L Jackson, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Conchata Ferrell & James Gandolfini.

Anyway the film is basically about a recently employed amateur hooker, Alabama {Arquette} who meets Clarence { Slater }. They almost instantly fall in love. Clarence is determined to go and retrieve Alabama's things from what seems to be a brothel where she worked. After a lot of violence & dispute Clarence comes back with a suitcase.
However, the suitcase contained a hefty amount of cocaine instead of the clothes Clarence went to retrieve. The pair then realise they are in trouble & go on the run with the cocaine aiming to sell it. Meanwhile the drug dealers & Sicilian gangsters are on the hunt for the couple.

I think the film's setting and storyline is promising, but the execution of it all was awful. Slater's character bored me... the whole Elvis thing about him was crap, and him being a simple guy turned badass just put me off the film. His relationship was even more unrealistic to me, I really didn't want to know how much they loved each other, I'd rather the storyline had a better foundation than that.
Most of the better actors in this film have minor roles, which probably explains why the protaganists are not doing much filmwork this day in age. Gary Oldman should have been in the film more, he's great at doing badguys and I really felt hatred for his character, but just as I got into it, we saw no more of him. The same for Christopher Walken, who is in only 1 scene, which is my favourite scene of the film.

6.0/10

Some pretty cool bits, but it's a forgettable film.
 
^ I actually liked that movie, until like you said, the end came on. It got a bit too sci-fi for me at that point, but either way, it's still better than I thought it would be. I felt bad for the dude though, but no tears formed!
 
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