Recently Viewed Movies Episode 2: The Vampire Bites Back

[Yoda]

Well, I apologize.

My favoritest ones are:
Word Wars
American Movie
and King of Kong. That's pretty much one of my most loved movies in general.

Those all fall into the quirky variety

Night and Fog if you want to get serious

[GrimReality]

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen -
I really only watched this because Emily Blunt is in it. I'm not normally one to fawn over actresses, but she's freakin' gorgeous, and a damn fine actress to boot. (Her only "flaw" is that she probably weighs 90#'s soaking wet). Throw in the always great Ewan McGregor, and I figured why not.
The quirkiness works for most of the movie. The idea of what they are doing is kind of fun, and intriguing. Some super rich Sheik in Yemen loves to fish, and wants to bring Salmon to Yemen. This idea is preposterous, as it is explained in the movie, but they go about trying anyway. Money talks, after all.
Unfortunately, the movie ends up falling into the typical rom-com tropes, and I was able to predict everything that happened in the last half hour.
It was still a decent movie, but nothing I'd really recommend to anyone. Unless you're like me, and just want to stare at Emily Blunt for 1hr and 52 minutes. Then it's quite good, actually.

[GrimReality]

Mama -
A relative by-the-numbers horror flick that's elevated by fantastic atmosphere, creepy kids, and some sincere perfomances by it's two leads.
Most of the movie is done on this subdued, sepia-like palette, that looks great, and works well to build the tension slowly. We truly wonder what's going on and why.
I give a lot of credit to both Jessica Chastain and Niolaj Coster Waldau for taking this silly little horror movie seriously, and giving us characters we actually like and care about.
The girls play "creepy little kids" quite well, and considering that was all that was asked of them, they were perfect.
The movie does rely far too much on jump scares and sound cues. You really do see most of it coming.
The final 10-15 minutes drops the subtlety and goes all CG and crazy on us. I understand the ending of any movie has to involve conflict and resolution, but I would have liked something that fits better with the rest of the movie.
Still, considering how many terrible horror movies we're subjected to on a yearly basis, this is a nice surprise. Definitely worth a watch for anyone who likes movies like The Others, The Orphanage, Sixth Sense, etc.

[GrimReality]

The Expendables -
The perfect example of a guilty pleasure. This is not, by any means, a good movie. The story is ridiculous on top of ridiculous. The action set pieces are so over the top and unbelievable, that it's hard to suspend disbelief, even in a movie sense. There is no way a single person would survive what goes on here. Then, of course, we have the classic "damsel in distress" to top it all off. And YET...I was kind of entertained. Why is that? All my bad movie senses were screaming code red, but my nostalgia for wacky 80s action movies allowed me to push some of the nonsense aside and wallow in the fights and explosions. Even I let my barriers drop on occasion.
It truly does harken back to days of Commando, Missing in Action, Rambo, etc. Not a great movie among them, but they were still fun as hell to watch.
Stallone is kind of creepy looking nowadays. The man is 66 years old! How can he be this pumped without "help" of some kind? It's a little distracting.
Jason Statham is in his usual thug mode, but I've always kind of liked him for some reason.
Jet li is awesome as Jet li.
Everyone else is just kind of there.
I was avoiding this because I knew it would be bad. I was right. Without the 80s nostalgia, I can't see how anyone could like this. Heck, even WITH that a lot of people won't like it. Unless your only requirement for a movie is explosions. Then go for it. You'll be thrilled.

[Yoda]

You should've jumped right to 2. That one was actually decent and used the nostalgia to better effect. Jean Claude van Damme was used with excellent creepoff.

[Kevadu]

I watched the recent live action Rurouni Kenshin movie last night.  Now generally speaking live action adaptions of anime/manga are pretty terrible, but wow, there are exceptions.  Well, at least one exception: this movie.  Can't really think of any others...

Disclaimer:  I'm a huge Kenshin fan, it's one of the first animes (and mangas) I really got into.  So I can't help but analyze the film from that perspective.

The action was great (for the most part) and the characters were pretty faithful to the source material.  I'm generally in favor of what they did with the story.  They merged a few different story arcs from the early Kenshin volumes together but did so in a way that works pretty well.  Frankly speaking a lot of that early stuff isn't that great, and in a way I like this version more.

Still, it's not perfect.  One thing I really don't like is that you don't hear anything about Sanosuke's past, which is a big part of why he acts how he does.  Obviously I knew his backstory already, but I'm afraid that to somebody who's only seen this version he might come off as a random thug.  Some other bits of character development also suffer from the time constraints.  When Kenshin is desperate to save Kaoru from Jinei at the end it seems a little far-fetched since (in this version) they practically just met.  They just haven't had time to develop the same bond that they had at that point in the manga.

But this quibbles aside, the movie is a lot of fun.  The fight scenes are extremely well done.  They successfully walk the very fine line between making Kenshin appear extremely powerful without being too over-the-top.  That's not something that's easy to do in live action.  They also dropped some of the sillier-looking foes from this version, which I'm fine with.  The movie is probably worth seeing for the martial arts alone, but they didn't lose sight of what Kenshin is all about.  It's not just a brainless action flick either.

It's also just cool from a period drama perspective.  The Meiji era was an extremely turbulent and interesting period of Japanese history.  Japan had just ended centuries of extreme isolationism and gradually started incorporating bits of western culture and technology into their own.

There are lots of little scenes are dialogue that are straight out of the source material.  It really gives you the impression that the creators were fans.  It's an adaption, yes.  Compromises had to be made to fit as much material as they did into a single movie.  But given those constraints I thought they did a darn good job, while still respecting the source material.  This is a not a case of Hollywood-style butchering (thank god).

[Aeolus]

It really helps that Kenshin really sidestepped a lot of the issues plaguing most anime by keeping the powerlevels bullshit down to a minimum. Especially given that fights were typically resolved through technical prowess, which translates far more effectively outside of manga/anime compared to the constant throwing of bigger beams/better swords/more robots at the problem until it either goes away or needs moar hotblood/power of friendship/cowbell to make it go away for good.

[Dice]

It really helps that Kenshin really sidestepped a lot of the issues plaguing most anime by keeping the powerlevels bullshit down to a minimum. Especially given that fights were typically resolved through technical prowess, which translates far more effectively outside of manga/anime compared to the constant throwing of bigger beams/better swords/more robots at the problem until it either goes away or needs moar hotblood/power of friendship/cowbell to make it go away for good.

All I could think about was FF7 Advent Children hiting some awkward uncanny valley with that.

[Hathen]

Saw Die Hard 5.

It was Die Hard.

[Aeolus]

Saw Die Hard 5.

It was Die Hard.

What was being stolen this time? The moon? Valentines Day? A statue of Lenin?

[Agent D.]

Saw Die Hard 5.

It was Die Hard.

Cursed overseas early release BS. I'm dying to see this.

[GrimReality]

Saw Die Hard 5.

It was Die Hard.

Cursed overseas early release BS. I'm dying to see this.

I saw the extended trailer for it over the weekend when we saw Mama. It looks totally ridiculously stupid. Now we have his son showing up and teaming up with him to cause mayhem? Seriously? They couldn't come up with something better than that? Ugh. Unless this miraculously gets positive reviews I'll stay far away.

[Agent D.]

I'm a whore for nostalgia, and I've been a die hard fan since I was old enough to understand it. Granted, 4 wasn't great, but the first 3 were awesome. This is more than enough to get me to see 5.

[Kevadu]

Die Hard 2 was not 'awesome'.  It wasn't even good.  I think I might actually dislike 2 more than 4 (and I didn't like 4...).

[Aeolus]

Saw Die Hard 5.

It was Die Hard.

Cursed overseas early release BS. I'm dying to see this.

I saw the extended trailer for it over the weekend when we saw Mama. It looks totally ridiculously stupid. Now we have his son showing up and teaming up with him to cause mayhem? Seriously? They couldn't come up with something better than that? Ugh. Unless this miraculously gets positive reviews I'll stay far away.

I take it that you didn't watch 4 (which also had his son show up and teaming up to cause mayhem, all to save the Internet from being stolen).

Also, the two best Die Hard movies are the first one and the Fifth Element.