The Pitters' Place

Edward Scissorhands was okay.

No it wasn't.

BruceSmith78 wrote:No it wasn't.

True, it wasn't ok. It was great.

Depp did a better job playing Tonto.

Doctor Strange: Definitely worth the IMAX 3D price.

Doctor Strange was so good.

I also liked how it had subtle and less-subtle Matrix references all over the place.

Arrival - good slow burn movie. Amy Adams is fantastic though Jeremy Renner's character is as useless as Hawkeye. With the reveal, I have a few questions after thinking about the movie. A couple of things that are picking at me, but otherwise the movie had me wondering where it was going. 8/10

Trolls - visually creative, but beyond that an average, run of the mill, "dangle keys in front of your kids" movie. Bearable for adults for one sitting, unless you can get a high, then it would probably be a great experience. Still better than BvS 5.9/10

Moana - I didn't like this as much as Zootopia, but I still really enjoyed this. I know there were some concerns about the presence of Maui but I don't feel he was unwarranted. Moana is who Belle & Ariel should have been. An explorer, an adventurer. There is no romance which is refreshing. The songs are pretty good and while both Dwayne Johnson's & newcomer Auliʻi Cravalho's voices sound a bit unrefined at times, it's beautiful when they find their notes. My only nitpick would be there's a point it seems to forget it's a musical, but that is balanced with some nice lampshading of the Disney Princess formula.

Arrival doesn't come out here until January, ugh.

Did you read the short story it was based on? The link was floating around.

Arrival: A movie about ideas and characters instead of action and spectacle and that isn't a franchise or superhero tale and has a female lead who doesn't punch or kick anyone. Hard to believe it even got made, and it almost didn't--repeatedly the guy who wrote the screenplay was asked to make the aliens into invaders and change the lead character to a guy. So yeah, Hollywood is just as bad as you always thought. The stuff the alien language did to the consciousness of the main character was outlandish, but I'll grant the movie this one lapse in physics and plausibility.

Citizenfour: A documentary about Edward Snowden that made me admire him and the journalists who got his story out even more.

Right, movies! I kind of haven't watched much at all in the last month and a half, mostly due to having bought a Wii U. But I've seen a couple. Hope to get through a bunch more before the end of the year to wrap up this list.

Zootopia - Fantastic. The story was so much deeper than most Disney things. It was an actual unpredictable mystery that I was invested in. And funny, too.

Doctor Strange - Pretty good. Great visuals, action, acting, etc. I guess I found the plot itself a bit basic/bland. Ordinary guy gets super powers; gets trained in how to use those powers, fights an evil force with those powers. Just nothing new, really.

Back to watching stuff.

X-Men: Apocalypse - I liked it. Had a pretty epic feel to the whole thing.

Lucas - 80s fun; pretty good.

Terminator: Genisys (3D) - Not great, but not bad. The action was creative, and the stuff they were doing with the timeline was actually really great at first. Biggest problem there was that by the end they don't actually explain how or why any of the cool stuff happened. It's like they were trying to set up a sequel that will never happen.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - About as good as Ghost Protocol, which was good.

Howard the Duck - Yes, it's as bad as you've heard. Most of the problem is, it wasn't stupidly so bad it's funny. It was mostly just boring.

The Martian - Great movie.

The Singing Detective (2003) - Very interesting. A remake of a British serial from the 80s; I hear the remake is worse if you've seen the original, which I haven't. I liked it. I'm not sure if it was actually good or not, but the style and acting were terrific. RDJ was great. The random musical numbers just added the right amount of weirdness.

The last movies of 2016. Ended up watching about 128 movies this year. Only counting ones I was seeing for the first time. Various random re-watches in there too.

Polar Express (3D) - Even despite the total lack of story; this was awesome. The visuals were just so great. Definitely best in 3D.

Suicide Squad - Meh, ok I guess. Better than both new Superman movies.

Homefront - Decent action flick.

Arthur Christmas - Really great.

Earnest Saves Christmas - Surprisingly enjoyable.

Kung Fu Panda 3 - Amazing. Beautiful.

Rogue One - Pretty darn good. I'm not going to try to rank it among Star Wars movies in general. But it seemed like a better-made film than The Force Awakens.

Suicide Kings - Enjoyable for Christopher Walken.

The Revenant - A bit disappointed. Fantastic scenery and such. But the story was just really dry.

Predestination - Amazing. One of the top movies of the year for me, at least for the story. The film probably could have been better in the hands of different or more experienced directors. But it's one of those awesome plots that just hurts your head to think about it because of the various temporal paradoxes it deals with.

Wish I Was Here - The last movie of the year. Nothing special, but I still love Zach Braff''s style.

Predestination - Amazing. One of the top movies of the year for me, at least for the story. The film probably could have been better in the hands of different or more experienced directors. But it's one of those awesome plots that just hurts your head to think about it because of the various temporal paradoxes it deals with.

I loved predestination and remember raving about it a while back on this board but I don't think anyone had seen it at that point - which isn't entirely surprising give it got zero advertising, I just happened across it accidentally at some point and downloaded it without knowing a single thing about it .. then recognised the building in the opening scene (same building my nephew got married in last year) and tho - hey, this is local - which impressed me given it was not like any other local movie I've ever seen.

Suicide Squad was massively disappointing at the cinema - then I downloaded the extended cut and it was much better than the theatrical release, still not a great movie but much better on the second watch with the additional scenes, most of the scenes that were cut developed the relationship between Harley and the Joker and made a lot more sense of the plot. Still a shame this movie didn't deliver on its advertising.

Off to see "Passengers" tonight - which I was really looking forward to until literally everyone started bagging it - will remain open minded

Gendo wrote:Predestination - Amazing. One of the top movies of the year for me, at least for the story. The film probably could have been better in the hands of different or more experienced directors. But it's one of those awesome plots that just hurts your head to think about it because of the various temporal paradoxes it deals with.

One of the best time travel paradox short stories I had ever read! I was so excited when I heard they were going to turn it into a movie and they did a really good job. Sarah Snook is an incredible actress and I want to see her in more things.

Hey, I just went through this entire thread and nobody saw The Lobster? Maybe I missed the post where it was brought up, but if you like quirky, art-house stuff with a Wes Anderson vibe, check it out. (In an alternate universe, romantic partnerships are required by the state. Once you are of legal age, you go to a special hotel with other singles and you have 45 days to find a partner or you are turned into the animal of your choice.)

And yes, I know we're in 2017 now but I saw this last week, so it still belongs here.

Glad to see love for Predestination; like Salmon said it seems to be pretty unknown.

Faustus5 wrote:Hey, I just went through this entire thread and nobody saw The Lobster? Maybe I missed the post where it was brought up, but if you like quirky, art-house stuff with a Wes Anderson vibe, check it out. (In an alternate universe, romantic partnerships are required by the state. Once you are of legal age, you go to a special hotel with other singles and you have 45 days to find a partner or you are turned into the animal of your choice.)

And yes, I know we're in 2017 now but I saw this last week, so it still belongs here.

The consistent deadpan throughout got really annoying for me.

Unvoiced_Apollo wrote:The consistent deadpan throughout got really annoying for me.

It made things funnier for me!

Faustus5 wrote:

Unvoiced_Apollo wrote:The consistent deadpan throughout got really annoying for me.

It made things funnier for me!

For the first 20 minutes yes.