Are These the Movies We've Been Waiting For?

[JamesU]

You mean the fact it was directed by reactionary catholic biggot Mel Gibson isn't enough? Also a lot of his films are historically inaccurate taking for example Braveheart which is possibly the worst film ever made.

They were both good movies Mel Gibson's personal beliefs don't necessarily affect his filmmaking ability

 

[gravenewworld]

Hmm...that just convinced me that I should see that movie. I get tired of movies with ridiculously simple plots. The few I've seen that got "complaints" like yours have been ones I've immensely enjoyed.

Knock yourself out. For $10 a pop I feel like I have the right to be highly critical of any movie I see at the theater.

 

[Gokul43201]

Mel Gibson's personal beliefs don't necessarily affect his filmmaking ability

How could you possibly say that? They certainly do reflect in the content of his films and that does indirectly affect their quality. You can watch a scene from one of his movies and tell what he had for breakfast that morning! It's starting to get incredibly repetitive now.

 

[Gokul43201]

I think Rocky Balboa is probably 4 films too far in that franchise aswell. Such a shame because the first was so beautifully written.

What's quite incredible is that the first film was written by Stallone in less than 3 days - he was inspired by a fight he just watched, where some unknown newbie nearly hung on for the full 15 against Ali.

 

[Kurdt]

They were both good movies Mel Gibson's personal beliefs don't necessarily affect his filmmaking ability

Braveheart was entertaining but if you're going to make a historical film then you have to make it historically accurate. Gibson's personal beliefs are portrayed in the film through the fact that he makes a big deal about Edward the second being gay.

 

[JamesU]

but just because I disagree with certain views expressed in films doesn't mean I have to hate them, nor does it affect their quality. You can't honestly say that Braveheart is the worst film ever (though I'll admit I think it's overrated)

Go here for films worse than Braveheart

 

[Gokul43201]

Go here for films worse than Braveheart

What! They've got Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in the bottom 100?! No way!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This was a great movie!

 

[JamesU]

This is the worst film of all time, not Braveheart ;) With Cheerleader Ninjas as a close second

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This is the worst film of all time,

With Heidi Fleiss?

Yep, that sounds pretty bad.

 

[Kurdt]

but just because I disagree with certain views expressed in films doesn't mean I have to hate them, nor does it affect their quality. You can't honestly say that Braveheart is the worst film ever (though I'll admit I think it's overrated)

Go here for films worse than Braveheart

Its just not at all accurate and I don't like that. The agenda of the whole film seems twisted to me. Anyway if you enjoy it just remember its a complete work of fiction that was 'inspired' by some historical events.

I'm surprised they haven't made Revenge of the Killer Bikini Vampire Girls yet.

 

[loseyourname]

How could you possibly say that? They certainly do reflect in the content of his films and that does indirectly affect their quality. You can watch a scene from one of his movies and tell what he had for breakfast that morning! It's starting to get incredibly repetitive now.

My, uh, girlfriend and I are always joking about the plot of every Mel Gibson movie: Man has his family either threatened or killed, giving him an excuse to go ape**** in exacting bloody revenge.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I just watched Solaris.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/

All in all, as SciFi goes it was pretty good. I'd never even heard of it until I saw it on the shelf.

 

[loseyourname]

I need to watch Solaris some time when I'm not tired. I had trouble concentrating during it, and couldn't tell what was going on half the time, though I got it fine at the end.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This is interesting.

If you've seen Tarkovsky's brilliant "Solyaris" this film will seem more like an Americanized tribute than a Hollywoodization of a great piece of Soviet cinema. Some will likely ask why Soderbergh bothered to make this film if he couldn't improve on the original. Personally, I could not care less. This is a great film, and shows that it is possible for Americans to remake classic non-American films sensitively, intelligently and well.

I wonder if the original is available on disc.

As for being tired and not making sense, this stretches things a bit but makes the point:

To cut to the chase - if you like sci-fi with a soul,which stretches the boundaries of imagination, explores the uncharted realms of the human condition as much as the unknown realities of the universe, and swims upstream against the currents of ethics, physics, and even metaphysics, you will probably enjoy this moody, slow, multi-leveled and heavily textured film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/#comment

 

[JamesU]

:O this thread has 666 views

 

[Gokul43201]

So what's so interesting about the number 666, anyway?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

So what's so interesting about the number 666, anyway?

The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents
1 Kings 10:14

 

[gravenewworld]

the jim carey movie 23 looks kind of interesting

hint:2 divided by 3 is?

 

[gravenewworld]

So what's so interesting about the number 666, anyway?

LOL actually 666 is quite a fiendishly interesting number .

-I thought everyone and their mother knew that 666 in roman numerals is actually all the roman numerals (except M) DCLXVI=666.

-"666" is the combination of the mysterious suitcase retrieved by Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction.

-Various conspiracy theories, including the novel The Da Vinci Code (Brown 2003, p. 22), have suggested that the glass pyramid at the Louvre museum in Paris is dedicated to the Beast and therefore constructed of exactly 666 panes of glass.

-the beast number is equal to the sum of the squares of the first 7 primes
2^2+3^2+5^2+7^2+11^2+13^2+17^2=666

-phi(666)=6.6.6,

where phi is the totient function.


-The number 666 is a sum and difference of the first three 6th powers,
666=1^6-2^6+3^6

-Another curious identity is that there are exactly two ways to insert "+" signs into the sequence 123456789 to make the sum 666, and exactly one way for the sequence 987654321,
666=1+2+3+4+567+89=123+456+78+9
(4)
666=9+87+6+543+21

-666 is the sum of the numbers on a roulette wheel

-A number x in which the first n decimal digits of the fractional part frac(x) sum to 666 is known as an evil number

-Wang (1994) showed that
phi=-2sin(666 degrees)=-2cos(6x6x6 degrees),
where phi is the golden ratio, which can be combined to give
phi==-[sin(666 degrees)+cos(6x6x6 degrees)]

-There are exactly 6 6's in 666^6

-666 is a repdigit and also a triangular number.

 

[Kurdt]

And then they discovered that 666 really wasn't the number of the beast.

 

[Gokul43201]

And then they discovered that 666 really wasn't the number of the beast.

And along comes my fellow QI-mate!

 

[Kurdt]

And along comes my fellow QI-mate!

Well its a good show

 

[Quaoar]

The preview for 23 made me roll my eyes 23 times. I hate numerology.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I've been scouring the Sci Fi shelves at the video store while my wife is out of town. Along with Solaris, I ran across another one that I had never heard about before but really liked - Brazil. It doesn't quite meet the high standard that Solaris does, but it is certainly a unique film and worth the watch.

Brazil (first released on February 20, 1985 in France) is a dystopic black comedy feature film directed by Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. It was written by Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. It stars Jonathan Pryce, and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm. Co-writer McKeown also has a small role.

Jack Mathews, movie critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), characterized the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving [Gilliam] crazy all his life."[1]

...Beginning "somewhere in the 20th century" at 8:49PM, the retro-futuristic world of Brazil is a gritty, post-apocalyptic, urban landscape in which terrorist attacks, counter-terrorist measures and a bureaucratic quagmire make everyday life difficult...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(film )

Retro-futuristic sounds right... I didn't know what to call it! It is also a satire about the information age.

Tom Stoppard also wrote one of my favorite plays - Arcadia.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I also watched what must be one of the worst SciFi movies of all time - Dark Star. Most of the movie is not even worth mentioning, but the last ten minutes were funny. The mission of the deep space planet destroyer, Dark Star, is to seek out potentially habitable solar systems, and to destroy planets that occupy unstable orbits in those sytems. The crew of Dark Star does this by using the very intelligent [to be point of being conversational] Thermostellar bombs.

A systems failure results in a failed launch of bomb number twenty, which then refuses to cancel the scheduled detonation. The bomb explains that it has valid orders to detonate, so that's what it is going to do. So in a last ditch effort to avoid disaster, the commander of the ship challenges Bomb to prove that it exists - he introduces the bomb to Descarte! At the last second, Bomb Twenty realizes that it can never be sure that any order is valid, so it stops the countdown to ponder the paradox.

Unfortunately, Bomb Twenty eventually concludes that it must be God, and therefore declares: "Let there be light!"

 

[Kurdt]

I also watched what must be one of the worst SciFi movies of all time - Dark Star. Most of the movie is not even worth mentioning, but the last ten minutes were funny. The mission of the deep space planet destroyer, Dark Star, is to seek out potentially habitable solar systems, and to destroy planets that occupy unstable orbits in those sytems. The crew of Dark Star does this by using the very intelligent [to be point of being conversational] Thermostellar bombs.

A systems failure results in a failed launch of bomb number twenty, which then refuses to cancel the scheduled detonation. The bomb explains that it has valid orders to detonate, so that's what it is going to do. So in a last ditch effort to avoid disaster, the commander of the ship challenges Bomb to prove that it exists - he introduces the bomb to Descarte! At the last second, Bomb Twenty realizes that it can never be sure that any order is valid, so it stops the countdown to ponder the paradox.

Unfortunately, Bomb Twenty eventually concludes that it must be God, and therefore declares: "Let there be light!"

the whole bomb with intelligence concept and having to negotiate with it makes it sound a worth while watch as a comedy for me.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

the whole bomb with intelligence concept and having to negotiate with it makes it sound a worth while watch as a comedy for me.

I wouldn't have posted such a spoiler if the rest of the movie wasn't so completely worthless, but if you must... I hope you enjoy the thirty minutes of battle between a crewman, and a beach ball with penguin feet.

 

[Curious3141]

My, uh, girlfriend and I are always joking about the plot of every Mel Gibson movie: Man has his family either threatened or killed, giving him an excuse to go ape**** in exacting bloody revenge.

True, except for The Passion.

We Were Soldiers doesn't fit either.

Another exception : Payback. In Payback, no one in his family is killed/threatened, in fact, his wife is the one doing the near-lethal betrayal here. Payback's a pretty cool movie.

I guess Lethal Weapon sort of counts : his wife had been murdered, then his "surrogate family" got threatened/kidnapped, so it sort of fits the pattern. Much more obvious in the sequels : LW2 had his current gf being murdered (and the revelation that the same baddies had done in his wife years back), then the threats to the pregnant partner in the later sequels, etc. etc.

But the rest pretty much fit : Mad Max, Braveheart, The Patriot, even Ransom (murder by proxy of the kidnappers).

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

the jim carey movie 23 looks kind of interesting

hint:2 divided by 3 is?

~0.66666666666666666666666666666667 according to my windows calculator