dalekboy | Movies for 2010

16th March
Stranger Than Fiction

18th March
Transformers

19th March
The Creature from the Black Lagoon - in 3D!

20th March
Hot Fuzz

22nd March
Wanted
The Man Who Would Be King

I rather enjoyed Stranger Than Fiction while Transformers was worse than I remembered. My plan was to watch Transformers then watch the sequel, but it was fucking painful, don't think I'll bother. A film with only one likeable character (female computer geek) is just a wasted effort.

The 3D version of Creature works for all the same reasons Avatar did - the 3D is used to immerse you in a world. I remember seeing this at the Valhalla cinema in Melbourne, and the bits the audience reacted to were relatively simple shots with fish swimming about. In fact, even though I'd seen the film many times before the Valhalla screening, I'd never realised it was 3D feature, there was nothing in the direction that would be out of place in a regular movie. And the most important thing is, I genuinely love the story.

Man Who Would Be King was very good. Sean Connery and Michael Caine playing a pair of utter bastards, but still managing to make them likeable. The end of the film still guts you, even with fore-warning.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Have you seen the 70 minute Star Wars review by RedLetterMedia?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

Watched the first part. Hella awesome!

If Transformers was painful, don't under any circumstances watch the sequel. It's all the painful bits dialed up to eleven AND THEN SOME.

It made me somewhat embarrassed to be a fan of the franchise.

I genuinely like the first Transformers film. I think it's overlong and the plot rambles a bit, but the characters are appealing, the action is very well shot and it has giant robots punching each other.

Transformers 2 is a mysogynist, racist, wall-to-wall offensive piece of shit. And it's boring - possibly the biggest crime a movie can commit. When my wife and I saw it at the cinema, we laughed out loud when the nine year-old in the seat in front of us turned to his dad in the middle of an action scene and loudly asked "Dad, is this movie ending soon?". Gold.

Have to rabidly disagree with you on the characters. The lead is a self absorbed arsehole, and sure by the end he's improved, but only because the plot required it.

The parents, the military, the girlfriend, most of these people are either two-dimensional, fuckwits, arseholes, or all of the above. The female computer hacker was the only one that acted like a real human being. It's like she walked in from another movie.

Of course you listed all the reasons I wanted to see Transformers 2, I wanted to see how wrong they got it. But I'm not sure I can face those human characters again. I thought they were offensively badly written.

However, I will say the first film did what it set out to achieve - it had huge robots beating the sludge out of each other, and it wasn't dull... except for that over long sequence at the protagonist's house that was meant to be funny.

Actually, I'd love to watch Transformers with you. I think it'd be interesting us both dissecting what we like/dislike about it.

The story behind how Transformers 2 got made is pretty interesting, and also quite horrifying if you're a cinema fan.

Remember that big writers strike that Hollywood had a while back? The two writers for TF2 managed to hand a short plot outline to Michael Bay the night before the strike started, and they weren't allowed to discuss the film with him at all while the strike was on. When the strike finally ended they headed in to the studio to get back to work on it and discovered that the movie was already in pre-production. Bay went and wrote a 30 page treatment for the film by himself, created a few characters (can you guess which ones??? C'mon, it's not hard) and a few jokes and came up with some scenes he really wanted to put in the film so he started his special effects guys working on all that. The poor writers walked into this mess and were told to write a script that would tie it all together.

So now you know - the script was literally the last element added to the film.

I wanted to watch Transformers to reacquaint myself with the universe before I watched Transformers 2, which I partially wanted to see just because it was meant to be so bad.

The problem I had with the first film is the total lack of likeable characters. All bar one of the humans is an obnoxious prat.

A few years ago, I finally got to see the first season of the original TV series. I actually rather liked it. Not enough to own it, but certainly enough that I could see the appeal.

What did you think of Wanted?

I ask because I thought it was most tediously awful film I saw in 2008. So bad that when I left the cinema I was physically angry.

I liked it more than Transformers, but not by much. Another unlikeable hero who changes in ways that seem dictated by the plot rather than what the character can do.

Strangely, while watching it part of my brain went, "This is like a poor man's version of Empire Strikes Back" and I have no idea why. I just remember thinking that was a strange thought to have, and that it'd be funny if the bloke turned out to be his dad. And then... *laughs*

I thought the most interesting aspect was Jolie's final action.

I didn't hate it, but I don't need to ever watch it again.

Movies for 2010 - Part 9

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