TV/Movies Megathread

[katmai]

My favourite's You Only Live Twice.

Watched a couple of episodes of Justified and liked it. Worth carrying on?

Yes
or if you ask Scipio, a Hells yes.

[Ed Anger]

Moonraker is colored by my memories of watching that when I was 10.

OH MY GOD SPACESHUTTLES! LASERS!

[Eddie Teach]

My favourite's You Only Live Twice.

Watched a couple of episodes of Justified and liked it. Worth carrying on?

What Kat and Skippy said.

[Queequeg]

My favourite's You Only Live Twice.

Watched a couple of episodes of Justified and liked it. Worth carrying on?

Margot Martindale in the second season is wonderful.  She's one of my favorite American character actresses.  She's amazing. 

[garbon]

Ugh Quantum of Solace.

[Admiral Yi]

Watched a couple of episodes of Justified and liked it. Worth carrying on?

Did you read The Atlantic's very favorable review?  It was disguised as an analysis of the difficulty of adapting Elmore's work to the screen.

[katmai]

I've only seen 1st season, work made it impossible to keep up with season 2 and have neglected it since then, but Amazon has all the seasons on demand so planning to catch up after i finish Hannibal.

[Ideologue]

The Croods (2013).  A caveperson family is evicted from their hollow in the living rock during an earthquake; they are guided to a new home by a more advanced human.  The central conflict is between the world's most absurd conservatism and its most stupidly optimistic radicalism.  It's basically garbage, not helped by the fact that the character designs are unappealing and that, you know, there were real animals that existed a couple million years ago, and they were pretty cool, whereas this film features alien monsters.  Whoever was in charge of the backgrounds, which are gorgeous, needs to spend his or her time on better projects.  Otherwise, its mainly notable for Nic Cage shouting "HAND ME THAT ACTING STICK!"

C

To the Wonder (2013).  Affecting, largely beautiful, yet obnoxious.  35% of the film is Olga Kurylenko prancing.  It gets older faster than you'd think.  Still, I sort of enjoyed its elliptical, essentially non-narrative depiction of how worthless human beings are, incapable of love yet cursed to believe they aren't.  I daresay better than most Christian propaganda.

B

[Josquius]

Enders game - Harry potter in spaaaaaaace.
It is proper sci fi. Always a rarity. So gains major points there. But... It just feels weird. Everything goes so fast and it's never really explained why they're making kids commanders like this. Reading the book synopsis it seems things are more drawn out and sensible there. Hmm

[Ideologue]

I thought it sucked, and it teaches that air war is immoral, so it's got that against it too.

There's been plenty of proper sci-fi movies this year, though.  Gravity, Her, Europa Report, and Upstream Color are all reasonably hard SF.  Oblivion is "proper" in the sense that it uses SF to ask questions about the nature of humanity, although it's very soft in its particulars.

[The Larch]

Just watched "This is the end" yesterday. I LOL'ed several times, great fun.  The wild Rihanna-spanking Michael Cera was a treat.

[celedhring]

Enders game - Harry potter in spaaaaaaace.
It is proper sci fi. Always a rarity. So gains major points there. But... It just feels weird. Everything goes so fast and it's never really explained why they're making kids commanders like this. Reading the book synopsis it seems things are more drawn out and sensible there. Hmm

That was my take too. The film felt very rushed and didn't explain a lot of things which made a lot of it more implausible than it is in the book.

I liked it though, as you say it's proper sci-fi with a strong thought-provoking premise. We don't get many films like that anymore (and won't get many since Ender bombed).

[celedhring]

Rewatched Terminator 2. Gotta say it hasn't aged gracefully, but despite the action and the SFX not feeling as amazing as they felt 20 years ago (which exposes the cheesy dialogue and plot holes a little bit), it still is pretty great. The strength of the concept and the sense of dreariness are still there, plus some of the action scenes do hold up quite well (particuarly from cyberdyne until the end). I just realized how great Robert Patric actually is in playing the remorseless silent killer, despite not having an intimidating presence.

I do prefer Terminator 1 on some points though. I think having Schwarzenegger talk so much and joke so much dillutes the cyborg character a bit, plus with the first movie being so low budget Cameron was able to be meaner (the massacre at the police station, for example).

Watching the prologue of the movie (the war of the machines). I remember talking with my friends when I was 13 about how AWESOME would it be if they made a movie just about the war against the machines. Fast forward 20 years, we get Terminator: Salvation 

Makes me wish Cameron hadn't stopped doing mean sci-fi actioners...

[Viking]

Apart from the eternal time travel grandfather paradox bit, what plot holes did T2 have?

[Admiral Yi]

Linda Hamilton's nipples were OUTSTANDING in T2.