What films have you been watching recently?

I thought it (WotW) was great. As for ham(!) I thought it was one of the most ham-free Cruise films you can see.

I'd go as far to say it was better than the original.

How much screen time does Cruise's teeth get? The more he grins, the worse the film is, generally speaking.

I saw the Illusionist and am half way through The Prestige. Out of the two (so far) I'd have to say the Illusionist is the better of the two.

Haha! Absolutely. War of the Worlds was 'winning grin' free, afaicr. There might have been one near the beginning when he was setting out his 'arrogant dickhead' credentials, but that would have been entirely in context. I hope.

Collateral was the other winning-grin-free winner, I think.

ed: @tw

Watched Appleseed last night; I'm usually a fan of Masamune Shirow and visually it is excellent, but both plot and dialogue were absolutely awful...

If you're on about the George Pal film, that's not exactly a feat is it :)

Ham was provided by the scenery chewing Tim Robbins and the kid actors.

I still definitely would heart Miranda Otto up the knickers though.

Peej

Cool, I've got the Prestige waiting to be watched.

Oh, and Goodfellas was on TV again over the weekend - cracking film! However, I missed the big when Joe Pesci was shot - why was he hit again? I know it was for generally being an arse, but didn't he kill someone he shouldn't have or something? It's bugging me.

My main problem with it was the same as with most modern day blockbusters - a few spectacular set pieces with a very threadbare narrative to string them together.

I also loved WotW. The focus on human drama meant it was far more realistic (and interesting) than something like Independence Day, and the effects were superb without ever being overdone. In fact, I really can't understand why people criticised it so much - as far as alien invasion movies go, it was superbly done.

Apart from the ending, of course, which they completely fucked up.

K

The last effects led film I really enjoyed was the Day After Tomorrow.

I would've loved WoTW to be in the original Victorian England setting too. I wouldn't have been hard to get an English cast.

You mean the film with the *ultra* realistic wolves? ;)

That's the one :D

The problem is with big named star vehicles is that most of the excitement is lost as you know that Cruise, Stallone, whoever isn't going to get remotely close to dying. The only time I've ever been caught out was when watching Deep Blue Sea- Samuel L Jackson was giving a rip roaring speech and then got bitten in half by a shark. So whilst I watched war of the worlds, it felt very uninvolving as I knew Cruise would simply evade any effects they threw at him with ease.

Cruise died in Collateral. Like proper dead.

I wish :)

I mean, stars in 80's action films were obviously never meant to die but generally the certainty with which big namers always survive makes effects led films incredibly boring for me now days.

I remember Segal dying right at the beginning of Executive Decision, and being so surprised by this that I kept expecting him to have survived by dint of a monumentally stupid plot twist at the end, like his belt got caught on the tailplane or something daft.

WotW's followed the novel much closer than many people expected. I never thought Cruise would die because the narrator of the book didn't.

And in the book he is reunited with his brother. So the reuniting with his son makes sense.

I liked it a lot. Though I think they could have lost the whole Tim Robbins section just due to pacing. And perhaps had another big set piece towards the end.

Dakota Fanning should have died, that would have added real drama to it.

I still have a downer on Cruise for ruining Mission Impossible by killing off the whole team in the first ten minutes of the film :(

My problem with the film wasn't that his son survived, it was that his son survived despite running into a huge fiery wall of killer explosions half-way through the film. We're not only expected to believe that he survived certain death, but that he somehow managed to still find his way home completely unscathed. And all of this was done just so Spielberg can engineer another one of his sickly-sweet happy-ever-after conclusions.

If the projector broke down 10 minutes before the end of the film, I would have left the cinema thinking what a great film it was. Unfortunately, it didn't, so I ended up going home feeling cheated.

Watched Anchorman last night, good fun, less funny than I predicted though. Clerks 2 next.

Clerks 2 is just wonderful. I adored it.

He was taken out for killing Billy Batts, who was a made man. Batts was the guy in the bar ('now bring your shoe-shine box over here...'), and the trunk of the car.

'If you're gonna whack a made guy, you better have a sit down and you better get an ok - otherwise it'll be you gettin' whacked....'

And the guy who played Billy Batts, Frank Vincent, plays Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos - great character.

We didn't actually know it was certain death though - it was just the trick of being informed that something bad was happening, without actually being able to see it, or what happened next.

Sort of agree with the Tim Robbins cameo points, but they weren't completely awful. For me, it helped show that the Cruise characters attempts to shield his children from events occurring around them was failing again - and he had to deal with that problem in front of his precious daughter. Maybe a 'survivalist nutter' character would be more recognisable to an American audience.

As for the ending. Come on! It wasn't sickly-sweet . It was just "They all lived happily ever after". And it followed the original quite closely again. The bit that didn't follow the original (the human harvesting) made it a lot more creepy.

I do think people let irritation at Tom Cruise get in the way of (ok, a few) perfectly fine films. I feel a bit ghey now - defending Tom Cruise films.. :o( No more!

As long as you don't start defending Days of Thunder, or Katie Holmes, or kooky religions, I think we can let this one pass... ;-)

Watched Infernal Affairs for the first time last night. It was really rather good. Now I just need to watch The Departed to see how it measures up!

The original unedited versions of Star Wars. The only proper differences are the sound mix and the space bits.

don't know if its mentioned, can't be arsed to go through the whoel thread, but has anybody seen The 300?

That looks like the gayest (i.e. homoerotic) film ever made.

Have also heard pretty mixed reviews - sounds pretty overblown.

Fuck knows what Dominic West (play Jimmy McNulty in The Wire) is doing appearing in it.