What movie(s) have you seen IX:The Police Academy Edition

[Cutlass]

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) - 8/10

Spoiler :

One of my favorite action movies of the 1990s, and maybe would be on my Top-20 all-time list, if I had one. I blow the dust off the DVD probably once a year. I got it for like $2 at a store closing sale, when the movie rental stores were all going out of business.

Geena Davis deliberately plays on her wholesome, doe-eyed American girl image as Samantha Caine, a small-town high-school teacher with amnesia, some mysterious scars, and the occasional cranky outburst. Samuel L. Jackson is a low-rent P.I. she's hired to look into her past. Then Craig Bierko, Brian Cox and David Morse show up and everything goes to H-E-double-hockey-sticks. Gunfire, car crashes, explosions.

I recall liking that one. But it's been so many years since I saw it that I can't say I remember it well.

 

[madviking]

the world's end - 4/5

 

[Kyriakos]

Hunger games 2: 6/10. Really uninteresting and linear. I suppose the series ends here for me.
Only positive note was the girl from Donnie Darko

 

[EgonSpengler]

Hunger games 2: 6/10. Really uninteresting and linear. I suppose the series ends here for me.

I'm with you. I know I watched the first two, but I remember only bits and pieces. I couldn't tell you what the plot of the second movie was.

Only positive note was the girl from Donnie Darko

I liked her too. I also thought Elizabeth Banks was a riot. I think if that character had her own movie I might get tired of her, but in a supporting role I thought she kind of stole the show.

 

[Kyriakos]

I'm with you. I know I watched the first two, but I remember only bits and pieces. I couldn't tell you what the plot of the second movie was.


I liked her too. I also thought Elizabeth Banks was a riot. I think if that character had her own movie I might get tired of her, but in a supporting role I thought she kind of stole the show.

May the odds be ever in her favour

 

[CommonKnowledge]

Mad Max Fury Road: 2/10. Completely devoid of plot, character development, story, stakes, charm, intrigue and point that's full of contradictions which invalidate its own world building but hey, plenty of splosions right?

It's essentially two hours of explosions whilst several groups of people that I care nothing about fight each other for some reason. Remember that car chase scene from Matrix Revolutions which just keeps on going? Well Mad Max Fury Road is that for two hours so if you like watching cars blow up repeatedly then you're in for a treat but if you want anything more than that then I'd give it a miss.

I honestly haven't considered walking out of a film (would have if I hadn't been with friends) since I saw a piece of absolute garbage about a decade ago called Cats and Dogs.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I rewatched Casino last night, which confused me. I thought the movie ended with de Niro dying in a parking lot shootout. Must be another De Niro movie. Moving on to Carlito's Way, a Pacino movie I've never seen. I have played Vice City, though, and INSTANTLY recognized Kleinfield/Rosenberg. They even had his office in the game! Of course, Ken was never remotely that interesting. I'm almost through with it, I think...the feds are pressuring Carlito to testify against Kleinfeld. I'm guessing he doesn't and dies fighting with Benny Blanco from da Bronx.

 

[NovaKart]

I watched Mad Max Fury Road. The first half hour or so was just non-stop action and I had no idea what the hell it was about and I hated it and thought about just walking out. Visually it was very impressive but it was so bizarre and confusing and disturbing, I mean strange looking people with extreme body modifications and lots of bald albino looking men. If you want to talk about strange wardrobe choices, there's one rather heavy middle aged man who looks rather normal (as much as one can in this movie) but has his shirt strategically cut so that you can see his pierced nipples and a chain going between them. Maybe he also looked strange besides that but that's all I remember about his look.

Then, finally, there's some dialog and you actually find out that there's some sort of plot. Later they meet up with a group of elderly women who drive around in motorcycles and shoot at people and that was pretty cool. It's the first action movie I've seen with elderly gun slinging women going up against the villain. I was thinking, well the last movie had Tina Turner but she's too old to be in this one, well OK, maybe not. Unfortunately she's not in it.

Anyway, overall I thought it was very good but took awhile until I actually knew what was going on and could appreciate it. Also, I found the flashbacks about the family the main character lost to be really tiresome.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Colony (2013) - 4/10

Competently executed, post-apocalyptic, monster movie that follows the recipe and doesn't really offer anything new. Lawrence Fishburne and Bill Paxton do a good-cop-bad-cop, Sgt Elias & Sgt Barnes* riff. Kevin Zegers is someone I hadn't heard of, but he did a nice job. Charlotte Sullivan, who's on a Canadian cop show whose name escapes me right now, is gorgeous. Um... Decent visual effects. The filming locations looked really cool. Did I mentioned Charlotte Sullivan is beautiful? If you've seen 30 Days of Night, or The Crazies, or [REC], or 28 Days Later, or... well, you get the idea.

p.s. Not for kids. There's some pretty nasty violence.


Link to video.


* Platoon.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Icetastrophe (2015) - 2/10

Oh, take me home mama, and put me to bed; I have seen enough to know that I have seen too much.* This movie is some kind of 'tastrophe, that's for sure. It stars a handful of folks from the Canadian series Continuum, who must have needed something to do while awaiting word on their show's 4th season. Anyone familiar with the American cable channel SyFy and their "movies of the week" knows what to expect here, so who knows, it may be just the kind of thing you're looking for. I expect this was filmed over a long weekend, somewhere near Whistler. If the cast and crew made a paycheck and got in some skiing, it was probably worth it. Continuum was picked up for a fourth season.


Link to video.



* A League of Their Own.

 

[civvver]

I watch the new Lone Ranger movie over the weekend. It's pretty bad. It tries hard to be funny but just comes off as corny and not very funny at all. I thought tanto was fine but some others said he's a very racist interpretation, although I'd imagine that's keeping in line with the original series, which I have never watched by the way. I think it would've been better if they just made it a streamlined action movie and dark without any homages to the original. But it's disney so can't do that.

Also watched the Wedding Ringer which was much funnier than I expected (I didn't expect much at all). So that was good. I wouldn't pay money to see it but if you get it for free off netflix or something it's a good lighthearted comedy.

Finally I watched 2/3rds of Zero Dark Thirty last night but had to go to bed. It's fascinating. I do wonder how much of it is hollywood embellishment but the story of those agents and their determination is incredible, as is the secrecy of the al qaeda network.

 

[Cutlass]

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies.

If there was a low of physics that the makers of this movie didn't break, I'm certain it was either a simple oversight, or they just didn't know all the rules that they needed in order to find a way to break them all. As a whole I'd say the visual effects were poorly done. And it would have been a better story had they stuck closer to the book.

 

[daft]

For comedy I recommend: Hall Pass, or even better: Bad Grandpa (Jackass 2013).

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Mad Max Fury Road: 2/10.

I watched Mad Max Fury Road.

Anyway, overall I thought it was very good but took awhile until I actually knew what was going on and could appreciate it. Also, I found the flashbacks about the family the main character lost to be really tiresome.

I watched Mad Max: Fury Road and as a FAN of Mad Max films for 33 years, I must say THIS was fantastic.

First of all: this is a Mad Max film. If you are expecting The Godfather, then I cannot help you. So, you can't really compare it to anything else.

Secondly, George Miller still has a pair of brass ones, at his age, to revisit the franchise that made him a man. He practically invented the revenge-cop drama (#1) in 1979, turned it on its head and kicked it up a notch by melding it with the post-apocalypse genre (#2 in 1981 and #3 in 1985 -- #3 of course giving a nod to Lord of the Flies) then he made movies about talking pigs.

Now, thirty years after Mad Max 3 blew us all away from the opening credits, we get another Miller twist: Max is the segundo to Charleze Theron's Furiosa. Bravo!

Tom Hardy was fantastic, a real quiet but angry soul with not a shred.left of his humanity. Theron was great and if you are not a Mad Max fan, then this film is not for you.

I found it refreshing and very moving.

"If you can't fix what's broken, you'll go mad."

8/10 (but a 12/10 for a Mad Max film)

 

[Rashiminos]

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies.

If there was a low of physics that the makers of this movie didn't break, I'm certain it was either a simple oversight, or they just didn't know all the rules that they needed in order to find a way to break them all. As a whole I'd say the visual effects were poorly done. And it would have been a better story had they stuck closer to the book.

I would find it hard to hold a movie to a standard that its predecessors had abandoned at the outset.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Punk Singer (2013) - 7/10

For those who haven't heard of Kathleen Hanna, she was an important part of American punk rock in the early '90s, as the lead singer of Bikini Kill (later also Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin). She coined the phrase "Smells like Teen Spirit" and co-founded the punk 'zine Riot Grrrl, from where we got the name for the scene and its music. I don't know if someone who's not already into Hanna and/or her music would get much out of this movie, but as someone who was into it, this was a nice nostalgia trip.



Link to video.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Was that Cobain biopic/movie ever made? (not the horrible tv series/something).

Not that it would be interesting. Cobain wasn't a good musician or person in the first place.

 

[NovaKart]

The Punk Singer (2013) - 7/10

For those who haven't heard of Kathleen Hanna, she was an important part of American punk rock in the early '90s, as the lead singer of Bikini Kill (later also Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin). She coined the phrase "Smells like Teen Spirit" and co-founded the punk 'zine Riot Grrrl, from where we got the name for the scene and its music. I don't know if someone who's not already into Hanna and/or her music would get much out of this movie, but as someone who was into it, this was a nice nostalgia trip.



Link to video.

The only time I've ever heard of her is when Courtney Love got in a fight with her.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The only time I've ever heard of her is when Courtney Love got in a fight with her.

To this day, I'm not sure anyone knows what the heck that was about. Hanna was friends with Kurt Cobain back in the day, and Love really unraveled after he committed suicide (not that she had her [stuff] together while he was alive). I remember Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) saying that Love had pretty much lost her mind. She said some not-so-nice things about B-Real (Cypress Hill) and his fans, and crashed a live radio interview that Dicky Barrett (The Mighty Mighty Bosstones) was doing - she literally grabbed the phone out of his hand. And all of that was just from the one Lollapalooza tour, back in the mid-90s.

 

[NovaKart]

I think Courtney Love must have a personality disorder or be bipolar maybe. I read these two articles by people who interviewed her. Well one wasn't exactly an interview. Her obsession with the bizarre conspiracy theories about her lost money really stood out to me. I wish I could quote some pieces but its too much of a pain to do it on an iPhone.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/mar/25/courtney-love-interview

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/11/courtney-love-201111