oh finally someone saying good things about this movie. I've been so hyped for this flick I was tempted to fly to America to watch it sooner than the first. I was getting really worried about all the hate for it but you are one of the only critics who I actually listen to so this review was a good thing to see.
Escape to the Movies: Sucker Punch
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Nah. Doesn't interest me. Despite all Bob said about it being much deeper than it appears, it still is a movie that relies on cramming in a bunch of fantasy genres and skimpy girls to appeal to the nerds. If it had a deeper message and the girls are more *ahem* developed than they seem, so what? It still is a tacky attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I find it a tad convenient that these girl's dreams all involve stuff pertaining to typically male fantasies (skimpy clothes, world wars, dragons etc). Seems no different from Japanese "Pinku" films from the 70s: softcore porn films about sexy girls getting revenge (they partly inspired Kill Bill). Sure the female might have a back story (so deep!), but this is still a chauvenistic fantasy.
Bob eats up this kind of spectacle though, so, I'm hardly surprised he'd like it after the way he treated Scott Pilgrim as the second coming.
Bob eats up this kind of spectacle though, so, I'm hardly surprised he'd like it after the way he treated Scott Pilgrim as the second coming.
About Watchmen: Dont get me wrong, i love this movie. But i think it wouldve been much better with a music score. Can you imagine Dark Knight, 300, Harry Potter, Scareface, Godfather, or Starwars with Jimi Hendrix? Or Jaws? I saw Watchmen 5 times in theater and then bought when it came out, to watch it at least once a week for a good 3 months. But everything i see it im reminded how shitty the music was. The only songs i can think of that fits off the top of my head is "Sound of Silence" at Comedians funeral and "Boogie Man" in that same scene. And i only liked it because it was most likely coming from a radio.
You must of seen a totally different movie 'cause Suker Punch is just eye candy with bare-bones plot with horrid acting and over-the-top action scenes (and considering they're in no real danger for the most part) really feels distant. No movie should be considered only by it's looks. Personally I doubt many will watch this movie and it'll become obscure and lost in time.
It's the exact opposite of 300 where we had flushed out characters, great story taken from real life events, great acting, awesome fighting scenes and there was always suspense and the sense of danger.
I also don't really know why you liked Scott Pilgrim so much... I read the comics and the movie was just that... a bare-bone adaptation with some bad actor choices that lack facial expression and felt like watching a disney movie.
Sucker Punch is just fan-service just like The Expendables only there you had well known actors of the genre and heck it was just awesome seeing them plow thru their enemies in an all out war.
Edit: I think "maninahat" nailed it (look up) with his comment.
It's the exact opposite of 300 where we had flushed out characters, great story taken from real life events, great acting, awesome fighting scenes and there was always suspense and the sense of danger.
I also don't really know why you liked Scott Pilgrim so much... I read the comics and the movie was just that... a bare-bone adaptation with some bad actor choices that lack facial expression and felt like watching a disney movie.
Sucker Punch is just fan-service just like The Expendables only there you had well known actors of the genre and heck it was just awesome seeing them plow thru their enemies in an all out war.
Edit: I think "maninahat" nailed it (look up) with his comment.
The use of music was one of my favorite things about Watchmen actually. Especially the history sequence set to "The Times They are a Changin'", that was one of my favorite pieces of movie-making ever. Only complaint I had was that I would have preferred a different cover of Hallelujah during the sex scene, I've heard some that are much more passionate and would have fit better.Dethgeezr said:
Just goes to show how subjective all this is.
Aiddon said:
Rotten Tomatoes is the worst website for film rankings. Like how Toy Story 2 is officially the greatest film ever made? Cheers for that RT.Nautical Honors Society said:
The Rotten Tomatoes system is flawed, although it's nice to see that it's found a lot of positive reviews. Actually, it on;y found 10 reviews in total. Whoop de doo.
I've stumbled across some huge hatred by official film critics and fans alike, mostly American. Of all the reviews I've seen, maybe 50% didn't seem to understand what was going on, nor did they enjoy it, despite being one of the finest films I've ever seen. Maybe those guys just don't get included into the RT website...
Anyway, point is that some great films DO get critically hassled
Metacritic has over 20 reviews from major outlets praising the film. Ebert and Travers (from Rollingstone) LOVED it; if I remember right Travers named that one of his favorite films for the year it was released and listed the octopus scene as one of the most iconic he's ever seen. The guys you read were probably not prominent enough to be featured on MC and RT.Verlander said:
Id just like to know what he thinks about Frank's other works if he thinks 300 is drivel.InterAirplay said:Just because he referred to one film adaptation as "Frank Miller Drivel" doesn't mean "All Frank Miller's stuff is drivel" does it?Primus1985 said:I wish I had already went out and seen it instead of waiting for the review, but I had to be sure, now I know I'll love it
My only concern is what exactly is Bob's deal against 300? Its one of my favorite movies. And for him to call Frank Miller's work "drivel" is appalling to say the least.
What about Sin City, or Miller's adaptation of The Spirit? Bob claims he's for artistic stuff as well as grindhouse style action so what exactly is his beef?
Anyway, since everything Bob has said about 300 seems in line with my and a few other people's general opinion of it, allow me to offer this synopsis of what the anti-300 camp tend to think: a film/graphic novel totally loaded with hyper-masculine warrior-cult crap that portrays a group of ferocious fascist bastards as being brilliant and admirable and wonderful and oh-so-brave. You might see it as "SPARTANS FUCK YEAH" and then gleefully sit watching those badasses kick the shit out of some Persians like I did the first time I saw it (and to be honest, I can't really blame you or anyone else for that matter for admiring it like that).
But to the other camp (which included me after the honeymoon period was over) the constant misty-eyed worship of un-ironically despicable, violent, super-macho piles of rage and muscle gives off the distinct impression that Mr. Miller is just stroking a broomhandle he got from watching a particularly violent documentary about a furious warrior-cult and decided o write some creepy fanfic to facilitate that rather unpleasant end.
But then, maybe I read too much into it and am too busy throwing my opinions at someone who doesn't care about them to notice how neurotic I'm being. Back in the hole I go! sorry to bother you!
Personally, I liked 300's style and its story. It was a pretty damn good adaptation. As far as the Spartans go...*rolls eyes* I supposed I must play Devils Advocate once again and come to the Spartans defense.
The Spartans where harsh, but they had to be. They made damn sure they where the baddest mofo's of the ancient world. They small kingdom, and they where surrounded by nations that where much bigger. They had to become harsh to survive. Their methods may seem cruel and maybe even barbaric by todays standards, but 2500 years ago it might not have seemed so bad.
I've seen the movie and to be quite honest, its not a "bad" movie. In truth, its a highly stylized "Shadow Play". Now granted it does try to touch on a few in-depth concepts, the word of the day being "Try". I don't think it succeeds well at this, at all. You only really feel engaged during the fight scenes or in the later 3rd or 4th part of the movie, as it comes to its climax. The rest of the film jumps from music video/car commercial style action fair, to high drama trying desperately to get you to care about these plucky girls... when frankly you don't give a crap.
I get what the movie was saying, I get what its about.... I think. It just really could have did a better job of explaining itself.
I get what the movie was saying, I get what its about.... I think. It just really could have did a better job of explaining itself.
I saw this movie with my friends last night, and our reaction was ".....Meh"
There was actually a split of sorts. Half of us didn't like it and half of us thought it was okay, but mediocre (I'm in that group). This isn't an issue though of us being the wrong audience, as we all liked Scott Pilgrim (to be frank, besides the action this movie is in no way similar to Scott Pilgrim, different style, different story, different direction), we all thought Watchmen was really good, the half of us that ended up seeing Legend of the Guardians thought it was decent, and we all thought that 300 despite some issues served its purpose. So no, what I'm about to say isn't a matter of "I didn't like it because it was wierd" but rather "I thought it was only okay because while it was wierd, it did it wrong"
I'm not sure if we didn't see a different movie Bob, because walking out of that theatre we all concluded, whether we hated it or were indifferent about the movie, that those were some terrible characters. Not awful necessarily, but definitely not as deep as you said they were. They were what I call the two-dimensional character, a character that has different emotions and attitudes, but the seperate attitudes are fairly one-dimensional, flat plane upon flat plane. Also, I'm not sure if you were maybe just tired at the time and as such started to see things blurry themselves, but the realities in this movie do not blur. They are well defined (in that they are easy to spot which reality is which) and easy to understand where they begin and end. At no point did any of us think "Wait a minute, what parts are real and fantasy? Is what we thought was the fantasy actually part of the reality?". The answer to that question, if anyone asked, would probably be answered no.
The beggining we thought was well done and interesting, the cover music fit with it and was interesting (it becomes clear though that the music had to be covers for them to work), and the fight scenes were well done in our opinion. Everything else though we thought was either a let-down, wasted potential, or flat out sucked. The fight scene again were well done, but they felt out-of-context, unnesecary. One of my friends came to the conclusion that Zack Snyder showed the fight scenes only to the producers, to which the suppossed conversation went like: "Those were some great fight scenes Zack! Now, the story and script will give this all context right?" "(Blank stare)uh..um...oh....yeah. (Pause for thinking) Yeah, the script, it will explain it". It seems like he simply came up with the action first and the story second. Also speaking of scripts and story, we also came to the conclusion that the script was probably around 6 pages long, with an entire page dedicated to Jon Hamm saying "Did you see that? The look in her eyes? She was staring at me wierdly? Did you see the look in her eyes?" over and over again. There was just very little n the film to justify a theatre screening
And you know, maybe thats the thing. All anyone wanted from this movie was the fight scenes. It occurs to me that if these fights were released online that they would function perfectly as online vids or even Zack just testing to see if the CGI he's working with actually works. The were still good fight scenes, but they didn't really justify a theatre screening. In an attempt to justify it thought, it creates a terrible justification, as the rest of the movie, the "meaningful" parts or parts where it seem you Bob think there is a lot of deep meaning to it, were terrible. They weren't deep. They were just there. Flash in the pan moments.
We all agreed that the 22 its getting on rotten tomatoes is harsh, but we probably wouldn't give it more than a 5 or 6 out of 10 to be perfectly honest. You say that people will be on either the HELL YES or HELL NO side, but I actually think alot of people, myself included, will be on the HELL MEH side.
There was actually a split of sorts. Half of us didn't like it and half of us thought it was okay, but mediocre (I'm in that group). This isn't an issue though of us being the wrong audience, as we all liked Scott Pilgrim (to be frank, besides the action this movie is in no way similar to Scott Pilgrim, different style, different story, different direction), we all thought Watchmen was really good, the half of us that ended up seeing Legend of the Guardians thought it was decent, and we all thought that 300 despite some issues served its purpose. So no, what I'm about to say isn't a matter of "I didn't like it because it was wierd" but rather "I thought it was only okay because while it was wierd, it did it wrong"
I'm not sure if we didn't see a different movie Bob, because walking out of that theatre we all concluded, whether we hated it or were indifferent about the movie, that those were some terrible characters. Not awful necessarily, but definitely not as deep as you said they were. They were what I call the two-dimensional character, a character that has different emotions and attitudes, but the seperate attitudes are fairly one-dimensional, flat plane upon flat plane. Also, I'm not sure if you were maybe just tired at the time and as such started to see things blurry themselves, but the realities in this movie do not blur. They are well defined (in that they are easy to spot which reality is which) and easy to understand where they begin and end. At no point did any of us think "Wait a minute, what parts are real and fantasy? Is what we thought was the fantasy actually part of the reality?". The answer to that question, if anyone asked, would probably be answered no.
The beggining we thought was well done and interesting, the cover music fit with it and was interesting (it becomes clear though that the music had to be covers for them to work), and the fight scenes were well done in our opinion. Everything else though we thought was either a let-down, wasted potential, or flat out sucked. The fight scene again were well done, but they felt out-of-context, unnesecary. One of my friends came to the conclusion that Zack Snyder showed the fight scenes only to the producers, to which the suppossed conversation went like: "Those were some great fight scenes Zack! Now, the story and script will give this all context right?" "(Blank stare)uh..um...oh....yeah. (Pause for thinking) Yeah, the script, it will explain it". It seems like he simply came up with the action first and the story second. Also speaking of scripts and story, we also came to the conclusion that the script was probably around 6 pages long, with an entire page dedicated to Jon Hamm saying "Did you see that? The look in her eyes? She was staring at me wierdly? Did you see the look in her eyes?" over and over again. There was just very little n the film to justify a theatre screening
And you know, maybe thats the thing. All anyone wanted from this movie was the fight scenes. It occurs to me that if these fights were released online that they would function perfectly as online vids or even Zack just testing to see if the CGI he's working with actually works. The were still good fight scenes, but they didn't really justify a theatre screening. In an attempt to justify it thought, it creates a terrible justification, as the rest of the movie, the "meaningful" parts or parts where it seem you Bob think there is a lot of deep meaning to it, were terrible. They weren't deep. They were just there. Flash in the pan moments.
We all agreed that the 22 its getting on rotten tomatoes is harsh, but we probably wouldn't give it more than a 5 or 6 out of 10 to be perfectly honest. You say that people will be on either the HELL YES or HELL NO side, but I actually think alot of people, myself included, will be on the HELL MEH side.
Saw this movie in an unofficial pre-screening thing at my local cinema (I'm friends with pretty much everyone there, they do this stuff for a few people).
I gotta say, I found it... terrible. I hated it. I just wanted it to end. For me, I just didn't like anything about it.
I gotta say, I found it... terrible. I hated it. I just wanted it to end. For me, I just didn't like anything about it.
Sadly, you are right. The presentation does not represent the material. It seems more and more that marketing does not know how to handle that is given to them. Let's take Valve and Portal 2 for example: the fired the marketing team and decided to do the commercials themselves.
Part of me is wondering whether or not to see this because it DOES look like nerd bait. What with the giant robots, a dragon, more robots, cool swords, and chicks kicking butt. With so many different things going on I fear it will have no direction and end up being an artsy-pretentious-fetish extravaganza.
But then again I though 300 and Watchmen would be just as pretentious from the previews and I was completely wrong. Both of those movies were great.......except for Dr. Manhattans uhhhhh little Manhattan and that almost naked girl dancing in 300. I could have done without that. Even art should put some limits on itself.
But then again I though 300 and Watchmen would be just as pretentious from the previews and I was completely wrong. Both of those movies were great.......except for Dr. Manhattans uhhhhh little Manhattan and that almost naked girl dancing in 300. I could have done without that. Even art should put some limits on itself.