What movies made in the last five years are worth watching?

I went to see Ant-Man and Jurassic World with my wife yesterday.

I knew, going in, that Jurassic World was not going to be very tightly made, based on the very polar reactions to it. Thank goodness Tuesdays are "all-day cheap movie day" at our local theater, because man...that was not a good movie. I certainly had fun during a few scenes, but there were so many unnecessary scenes, so many storylines that never paid off, and quite a few gaping plot holes...it also had a massive pacing problem and could easily have started halfway through without missing anything important. The last battle was pretty epic, though, even if certain parts of it made little sense. I doubt I'll be watching it again anytime soon.

Ant-Man, however, is everything you said it would be Haldurson. My wife and I both loved the heck out of it; it was way more fun than it had any right to be. I might catch it in theaters again, since I saw it in 2D and I heard the 3D works really well.

 

I did see "Jurassic World", but I wasn't going to write about it since I fell asleep and missed a lot of the early parts of the film. The main attraction of the film is that you get to see giant dinosaurs, and who doesn't like that? I know that it was one of my things as a little kid (Dinosaurs, and classic movie Monsters, and Rocket Ships were all phases I went through). But considering the fact that I fell asleep during it, you can take that for what its worth lol. It is surprising that it did so well at the box office, though, all things considered.

I've heard that IMax is the way to see "Ant-Man" -- I did see it in 3-D in a normal theater, and the 3-D does enhance the shrinking scenes.

 

I saw "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" this evening -- it was great. I highly recommend it as a summer blockbuster action/adventure film. If you've liked any of the other MI films, you'll undoubtedly like this one, as it's one of the best of the franchise.


Just a small semi-related anecdote -- when I told my barber (this really old guy) that I was going to see "Mission Impossible", he starts talking about cutting Steven Hill's hair. If you aren't my age, and a big fan of the original "Mission Impossible" television series, then you may not know that Steven Hill played the head of the IMF team in the show's first season (he was replaced by Peter Graves). You also may know him as playing the Head District Attorney in the earlier seasons of "Law and Order". BTW, the guy talked so much (Steven Hill was just the start, he went on about Sinatra and the Copacabana and the hotels he's worked at and so on), that I missed the showing of the movie I had originally intended to see, so I ended up seeing a later showing in IMAX.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0384696/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t8

 

I watched Terminator Genisys today. It was good. What ruined it for me was the very last few seconds of the film. No spoilers. I hate cliffhangers.

*Edit* Wikipedia says it is intended to be the first in a trilogy. So I guess it may be alright. (I had to check my spelling on the name.) I am rather surprised the Governor of California is still doing movies. But he is pretty much perfect for the role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_Genisys

 

I rewatched The Terminator, Terminator 2, Terminator 3 and finally Terminator 4.

I enjoyed the first two most of the entire series. Three and four however just went from bad to worse. At least Genisys was better than those. But the original and 2 were the best by far.

 

I've personally never understood the hate for Salvation. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Was it better than 3? By bucketloads in my opinion. I have yet to see Genisys so I'll have to compare them when I do.

So, since this is about opinions, OmniaNigrum: Why do you hate Salvation? I honestly want to know.

 

I suppose it just rubbed me the wrong way. Each and every other Terminator film was modern day. That one was a future that does not exist once they made Genisys.

And since I love post apocalyptic games, I have a higher expectation for it that the rest. In hindsight, I suppose 3 and 4 were about equal.

In particular, the fact that Humans in that time were still backstabbing asshats factored heavily into my distaste for it. The scene were a group of Humans tried to rape the female soldier whose name escapes me. And the scene where Humans trying to get some fuel were basically all but doomed for the poor luck of finding more asshat Humans until an elderly woman ordered them to stop being asshats. And later in that same scene they crashed a loaded tanker of fuel into one of the machines, demonstrating that the asshat Humans were plainly lying about "not having enough fuel to last the Winter".

And the asshats in charge wanted to kill off all the Humans rather than even consider the rescue. I cannot argue that they were not right, but I got the impression that they would not care one bit if they killed off every last Human save themselves.

I hope this clarifies my distaste for it.
*Edit* Typos.

 

I'm not a big fan of the Terminator series in general, though some of the action scenes were cool. I saw 1 and 2 for sure, but can't remember which of the others I saw (I saw at least one other, but don't ask me to tell you which one it was). I enjoy some time travel stories, but when I see it misused as it often is in movies, it nags at me to the point that I have trouble enjoying the film. I felt that way not only in the Terminator movies but also in the much praised "Looper".

In any case, last night I had something I was going to do with friends fall through at the last minute, so I ended up going to see the Disney Pixar film, "Inside Out". I enjoyed it, and I actually managed to not fall asleep during it like I have with many animated films I've gone to see (including ones that were supposed to be good). It was not my kind of movie, but I did appreciate the cast (I'm a huge fan of Lewis Black, who plays "Anger" in the film). It was one of these films that I'd been told that I had to see so many times that I finally relented, and I'm glad that I'd seen it. But honestly, I could have waited for it to come to Netflix. I do recommend it, but only if you are a Pixar fan (which I admit, I'm not). that said, I am a HUGE fan of "Up" which is simply great film on every level. I just felt like I was not the target audience for "Inside Out".

 

Ah-ha! Okay, that makes sense. I can see why you would feel that way. Like Haldurson, I'm not a huge fan of the series anyway for about the same reason (Time travel annoys me unless it's done really well, or if it's Doctor Who, which I can mostly ignore the issues because it's been a fun ride)

For me, I actually enjoyed the fact that people were backstabbing, because that's what I based my entire sci-fi book series around: the idea that, no matter what happens in the future, humanity will always be its own worst enemy. We -are- a bunch of backstabbing, greedy scumbags after all

Thank you for clarifying, though, it was nice to read why somebody else didn't like it.

Also, Haldurson, I have not brought myself to watch Inside Out yet because I don't want to be caught blubbering at the movie theater. I am a big fan of Pixar and I absolutely cannot watch Up because it's far too sad. I've been through way too much crap in my life and that movie just dredges up bad memories and I simply can't watch it again. Inside Out looks like a gut punch and I'll have to wait until I can rent it in the privacy of my home haha!

 

I agree with you on "Doctor Who" -- it's not intended to be taken seriously, so you really can't. It's all about the characters and their chemistry, and the humor and so on. And my nephew recently discovered "Doctor Who" also -- he hasn't seen a lot of episodes, but I got to watch the two parter "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" with him. He's at that age now where we are starting to have some common interests, which is cool.

BTW, there are a few time travel movies that I've really liked. For example, there's "Time After Time", a film that I fell in love with back when it came out. Malcolm McDowell plays H.G. Wells, and he chases Jack the Ripper into 20th century San Francisco.

Some of my favorite travel books include Doomsday Book, and To Say Nothing of the Dog, both by Connie Willis. The first one is about a university time travel project to study history, and one of the grad students finds herself in England during the black plague, a time that she was specifically trying to avoid (for obvious reasons). Imho, it's the best time travel story ever written. The second is simply a hilarious comedic story, set in the same universe, where a time traveler is sent to retrieve an artifact thought lost during WWII, from a British church, before it gets destroyed by the Germans during WWII.

Two other novels exist in the same series, a two part story starting with Blackout, and ending in All Clear. I didn't care for them, but keep in mind that they are award-winning books, so not everyone would agree with me. They comprise a story about two women from the same university sent back in time to study WWII England. I felt that the story was overly long (which is why it ended up being two books, instead of one), and after the first book, I had no desire to read the second. Imho, the other two books in the series are both far superior. But YMMV.

Then there's one of the smartest time travel novels I've ever read, The Proteus Operation, by James P. Hogan. It's set in an alternate history, where the U.S. is losing WWII. The war has dragged on for decades, and it's now the 1960s. The Americans are on their last legs, but they've finally invented the Atom bomb, as well as a time machine. They come up with a brilliant plan to transport an A-Bomb, along with a team of soldiers and technicians back in time, to smuggle the bomb into Berlin during the early days of the war. Of course, things don't go exactly as planned,

 

Ah, excellent episodes, those. One of my favorite two-parters...perhaps even my favorite. Good stuff. I'll have to check out those time travel stuff, see if I like it.

 

There was one other novel that I wanted to include, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember the title. Fortunately, I posted a description of the book in a different forum, and a couple of people were able to remember it for me.

So, I also recommend a lesser known novel called Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel. It's another humorous science fiction story, and includes one of the most creative uses of time travel -- tourism. Think capitalism run rampant, with time travel, so that corporations build luxury hotels in the past (well, in other time lines) so that you can, for example, vacation in Paris of the 1800s, or see the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, or whatever strikes your fancy. But that's just the background. Throw in a rogue Paleontologist who illegally smuggles a baby dinosaur through time, and a pair of father and daughter con artists. Anyway, it's a really fun novel.

 

I went out to see "The Man from Uncle" last night -- it wasn't all that great, but it was not terrible either. If you are at all interested in seeing it, I'd suggest waiting for it on Netflix. I didn't care for a lot of the directing choices, some of the writing, and I also think it had a horrible score. But maybe that's just me (some people obviously liked it, but not enough to make it successful). I was a bit young when the series it was based on was on the air. I had seen some episodes, and they were fun, but also not great either. But I really liked the cast (David McCallum, especially, as Ilya Kuryakin). It also had a sense of humor. But other than that, my memory fails me.

Anyway...

 

BTW, the TV show had kind of a cool theme song:

 

I was almost embarrassed to mention this film, but instead I'll add this disclaimer. I joined this group that gets together on Wednesday evenings for a variety of activities. And every so often, I learned, they have a movie night. One of the problems though is there is no firm schedule as far as what films will be shown. So, essentially, you show up and you see whatever it is that you will see. I am fairly new to the group and had no specific expectations. But I was hoping that maybe they'd show some old or cult classics, or some underappreciated movies, or whatever -- in other words, something that I may or may not like , but at least it would be a nice evening with potential friends.

Well.... the film that was selected for this past Wednesday evening's get-together was "Hot Pursuit", which stars Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara. It was, simply put, the worst film I've seen all year. It relies on clicheed hispanic stereotypes, semi-incomprehensible dialog, portrays its characters as dumb (and hence, it's audience as well), a plot that makes no sense, 'humorous' situations that are simply not funny, and horrible writing, directing, and acting.

I so WANTED to leave to go do something else. But because I'm new to this group, and I wanted to be sociable, I felt like I was trapped -- I felt committed to sitting through it. And there were a few people laughing here and there, so I know at least a couple of people had a couple of laughs from it. But, simply put, this movie is BAD, BAD, BAD.

I've decided, btw, to skip all future movie nights. I saw the film for free, and it still was not worth the investment.

 

Bravo to you Haldurson for your firm commitment to quality movies.

 

The endig of the the *story* 2001: A Space Odyssey is good, but the problem is you have to read the book to find out what said ending actually is because the movie conveys it in an obtuse and indecipherable manner. In the book he's drawn through an interdimensional portal in the monolith to an alien world where his mind is uploaded into a computer; in the movie he merely appears to have dropped a bunch of acid - perhaps the monolith dropped him into a rave.

 

I pretty much came to my own conclusion after seeing the film, as to what it meant. Then again, I was kind of a precocious kid. Years later, I discussed the ending with a friend, and he saw something a bit different than I did. That doesn't mean that either of us was wrong. And all of that was before actually reading the book (which is decent, but no substitute for the film).

There's a story that I love to tell -- unfortunately, again, it's one of those stories that I interpreted completely different than some of the people I told it to. And this is a totally true story, as told by Isaac Asimov -- both in his writings and he's spoken of it as well. The story goes that Asimov was taking a class at (I think) NYU (not that the school is important). The professor did not realize, when she started discussing Foundation, that the author (Asimov) was in the class (or at least, she didn't acknowledge it). She started talking about what the story meant. Asimov raised his hand and told the professor that no, she was wrong, that's not what the story meant, and that he should know, since he wrote it. Without missing a beat, the professor said "What makes you think that just because you wrote it, that you know what it really means?"

To me (and to Asimov, as it turns out), what the professor was saying was that the meaning of any work of art is in the eyes of the observer. If your interpretation works for you, then it is, by definition, correct. What the author intended is less significant than what you actually got out of it.

 

Oh my god! Like in that one Woody Allen film!? That's awesome!

 

Some fun "Antman" analysis (warning: Spoilers ahead):