Backlog: Interstellar So fucking good, deserves a 2nd mention. 9.7/10 The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson & co with new addition Ralph Fiennes who does a fantastic job. 9.5/10 The Equalizer Denzel delivers! Easy entry into actions GoAT. Very reminiscent of T2:JD in pacing and quality. 9.0/10 Edge of Tomorrow Cool story, cool sequences, and Cloud Strife's Buster Sword! 8.0/10 Guardians of the Galaxy Expected garbage, but got the best comic-book movie ever. Very good. 8.0/10 A Walk Among the Tombstones Liam Neeson + film noir + reasonably justified violence = Win 7/10 Maleficent Thought it was gonna be a turd, but was good. 7/10 The Maze Runner Entertaining enough entry into the "young dystopia savior" genre. 6/10 Godzilla Spoiler Heisenberg died early on. Felt like I'd been lied to. 4/10
The Equalizer was very entertaining. I enjoyed seeing Denzel turn a Home Depot into an arsenal for murdering bad guys.
Good Will Hunting Never seen it before. I think the story would have seemed like crap if there weren't some really good actors in it. 7/10.
Machete Kills This movie was terrible, and not in the goodbad campy kind of way either, even though that was clearly what Rodriguez was going for. It seems like they really wanted to make a Moonraker type sequel with Machete in space, but I don't see that happening after how badly this bombed. I get the impression that Robert Rodriguez needs his buddy Tarantino around to keep him grounded, or he makes complete shit. Tarantino seems to know how to pay homage to grindhouse movies without actually making one himself, whereas Rodriguez seems to just make actual grindhouse movies.
The Day After and Threads Both of these movies were deeply disturbing. I thought The Day After did a better job of showing the actual nuclear strike, even showing how the Soviets would start out with high altitude nuclear EMP to disable electronics before actually nuking the cities. Threads did a better job of showing the long term aftermath of nuclear war. Even if you survive the nuclear blast, you are fucked. If radiation poisoning from the fallout doesn't get you, starvation from the nuclear winter, or all of the violence that would ensue from the collapse of civilization probably would. And even if you survive all of that, society would be reduced to a medieval agrarian level and there would be cancer and birth defects for decades. The people who just get vaporized are the lucky ones.
Yeah. You know it's old when Carl Sagan comes on after to discuss the movie. It was seen by 100 million Americans. Ronald Reagan was shocked by the movie and said it completely changed his attitude towards nuclear war. It was also later shown on soviet TV. It was an important movie in its day that caused public outrage and changed attitudes of policy makers, but a lot of it hasn't aged well.
The Interview The first half was so bad I suspected they leaked their own movie because they knew it was a turd. The second half could pass for entertainment.
The Lion King I started watching a GoPro video about lions Youtube, a dozen video hops later, a stealth upload of the movie. It's been awhile but still good!
I haven't seen it yet but I ordered the bluray. I guess it's Disney's 3rd highest grossing film now. I believe it goes Lion King, Frozen, then Big Hero 6.
Gone Girl I had low expectations, but this movie was a delightful little piece of trash and ended up being one of the better thrillers in recent memory. I can see why Rosamund Pike got an Oscar nomination. She was thoroughly convincing as a complete sociopath who gets off on destroying mens' lives. 8/10
John Wick This movie sucked. Keanu is as wooden as ever, they made his character so invincible that the action scenes are boring, and there's annoying, overbearing music playing constantly. I also didn't appreciate seeing a puppy get murdered.
Oh come on, you can't watch a Keanu Reeves movie and complain about him being Keanu Reeves... This is what he does, and he's good at it. Also, he wasn't nearly as invincible as Denzel in Equalizer. The bad guy in John Wick was underwhelming in comparison though. What did you think of Street Kings?
Never saw it. And I thought The Matrix and Speed were good despite him, not because of him. Equalizer was different. Denzel is such an amazing actor that he can play an invincible badass and make it convincing. Not so with Keanu. The Equalizer also had a great villain. The Villains weren't really memorable in John Wick.
Big Hero 6 I'm a little surprised that I didn't like it. I think it's targeted the 5 to 14 crowd and didn't have much extra for the adults.