Movies of 2012

ProjectX2

ProjectX2

Don't expect me to take you with me when I go to s
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Sep 15, 2004
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We're already two months into 2012 and I'm sure we've all seen some movies already. You know the drill: what have you seen and what did you think?

I've seen two: Chronicle, which was a pretty neat superhero/found footage film and The Grey, which was an incredible film and I think one of the best I'll see all year.

How about you? And what are you looking forward to this year?
 
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I've seen THE IRON LADY which was boring and rather bland, but Meryl Streep is ****ing amazing. The only American in the film and she's the most British of everyone in it.

I saw THE ARTIST which was charming but I felt somewhat pretentious. Once the novelty of a silent black and white film wore off I realised I knew everything that was going to happen and that I'd seen it all before. But it was charming, no doubt.

I also saw SHERLOCK HOLMES: GAME OF THRONES either early in January or right at the end of December. It was rather listless and plodding, relying too much on farce, but the acting was engaging and the end was very very satisfying. Unfortunately, nowhere near as good as BBC's SHERLOCK which was out at the same time.

I'll be seeing THE MUPPETS probably next week and then JOHN CARTER soon after and I cannot wait to see that. I am so excited to see another Andrew Stanton movie.
 
Just 2 so far: Beauty & The Beast 3D and The Phantom Menace 3D, taking kids both times. We'll probably go see The Lorax, John Carter, and Brave as well.
 
Contraband - This was better than I expected it to be. Marky Mark makes a likable hero and Giovanni Ribisi makes an effectively unlikable villain. Plus J.K. Simmons is in it. Not overly stylish and it certainly covers well-worn ground, but a decent little heist movie if that's what you're in the mood for.

Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption - Better than the second one, not that that's saying a lot. Stupid movie, some okay action, would've been greatly improved to almost decent if the script cut out every one of the jokes and Billy Zane wasn't in it.
 
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The Avengers -- A+ 'Nuff Said

MIB III -- B- It was pretty fun, about as good as the other two. To be honest, the beginning part felt pretty tired. Same old alien crap. The time travel stuff was fresh enough that I enjoyed it over all.
 
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The Avengers -- A+ 'Nuff Said

MIB III -- B- It was pretty fun, about as good as the other two. To be honest, the beginning part felt pretty tired. Same old alien crap. The time travel stuff was fresh enough that I enjoyed it over all.

The Amazing Spider-Man -- A I don't care that we've seen the origin before, this was a near perfect Spider-Man movie. Garfield and Stone's Peter and Gwen were so good. Their chemistry was perfect. Spider-Man was fun, the fight scenes were cool. The Lizard story wasn't overwhelmingly impressive, but it wasn't the main story - Peter & Gwen were the main story; which is exactly the way it should be. And, as I said, the action was still cool. The Lizard made a formidable foe for Spidey to fight between the important stuff. Leary's Captain Stacy was great, and so were Sheen's Uncle Ben and Fields' Aunt May. Stan Lee's cameo was his best to date.

At the end of the day, Webb nailed it. The movie is carried by Garfield (who is a much better actor than Maguire) and Stone (who actually made it all the way through the movie without screaming for Spider-Man to save her). Go see it!
 
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Finally saw John Carter last night and loved it. It was so well done; unexpected twists and turns all over the place. I will be really bummed out if they don't make any sequels.
 
They probably won't because Disney want it to fail. They sabotaged the whole thing. Which is a shame because, as you say, it's excellent and the ending is particularly brilliant.
 
Bass said:
They probably won't because Disney want it to fail. They sabotaged the whole thing. Which is a shame because, as you say, it's excellent and the ending is particularly brilliant.
Click to expand...

That's not what I heard. Not saying you're completely wrong, but I read a completely different story.

What I read (and I wish I could dig this up; I can't seem to find it) was that Disney - very reluctantly - gave COMPLETE control of the movie and the marketing thereof to Andrew Stanton, and he was extremely stubborn with some of the choices. He insisted on calling it "John Carter" even though marketing tests showed that people thought it was a movie about a lawyer(!) and Disney wanted to call it John Carter of Mars (I think), and Stanton refused. He also had complete control over the trailers and commercials and refused to budge even though they tested poorly.

Because of his successes with Pixar, Disney reluctantly let him have final say on pretty much everything, and he was either in over his head or was just too stubborn. Disney just kind of sat on their thumbs rather than upset a Pixar guy.
 
That is completely false. I put up a big essay about it on my blog.

Andrew Stanton's character completely refutes the image of him as portrayed in those articles, plus, the source on those articles was the very marketing people who said they had no control.

First of all, The guy who greenlit JOHN CARTER gave Stanton anything he wanted because Stanton is not only head of story at Pixar, but has personally made at least four Oscar winning films (WALL•E, TOY STORY, TOY STORY 3, and FINDING NEMO). This was an attempt by Disney to get "boy" franchises (the princesses are great for girls, and TRON: LEGACY didn't work out). So Stanton went away and said, "here's a full itemized budget including reshoots of $250million to do it right" and this guy said okay because he was smart. Then, that guy got fired and the new guy came in and bought Marvel and now Disney has every boy franchise EVER and they don't need to risk that money on some uppity director who knows how to make films and embarrass them, plus of his predecessor's project succeeds, he'll be out of a job. So this guy hired a brand new marketing team, a group who had never made marketing for a film and gave it to JOHN CARTER. Think about that: this is a $250m tent pole blockbuster and they give it a new marketing team and then give the team the bare minimum marketing. Compare what AVENGERS got. Plus, no merchandise of ANY kind. No toys, no posters, no t-shirts, NOTHING.

When it tanked, people rightfully blamed the lack of marketing, so the marketing team tried to blame Andrew Stanton. If Stanton were as stubborn as they suggested, would he have been, all the way up to the film's release, retweeting FAN trailers saying, "These guys GET IT"? I followed him on twitter and he was doing that. If he were a control freak he'd have had those trailers taken down. The marketing people asked him to rush cool scenes in the film so they'd be in the trailer and Stanton only refused to switch up production to meet their demands. But if you look at the "Heritage" trailer made by fans on YouTube, which Stanton retweeted a lot, you'll see what they could've done with what footage they had access to.

The "OF MARS" was dropped at the insistence of Disney because MARS NEEDS MOMS failed and they thought no one would see a film with MARS in the title. Stanton went along with the decision and turned it into a story device.

I know people in the business and I told them that during the opening week, Disney announced they lost $200m on JOHN CARTER and their eyes lit up: this is utterly unprecedented and never been done before ever. There's a book coming out called HOLLYWOOD VS MARS which details how Disney totally sabotaged the movie.

And I think it's precisely to upset the Pixar guys. They have managed to take over Disney and produce hits every year and they have too much power. Brad Bird owns the rights to THE INCREDIBLES. That's why Disney hasn't made a sequel. He's said no because "he can't think of a better story than the first one". They want to knock these guys down a peg so they can control them.

There is no way in which Stanton is to blame for the films failure. There is one article which blamed him from an anonymous source in the very marketing department that sabotaged the film, while every documentation shows at every step Disney did everything it could to undermine his efforts. It's terribly sad.
 
Bass said:
That is completely false. I put up a big essay about it on my blog.

Andrew Stanton's character completely refutes the image of him as portrayed in those articles, plus, the source on those articles was the very marketing people who said they had no control.

First of all, The guy who greenlit JOHN CARTER gave Stanton anything he wanted because Stanton is not only head of story at Pixar, but has personally made at least four Oscar winning films (WALL•E, TOY STORY, TOY STORY 3, and FINDING NEMO). This was an attempt by Disney to get "boy" franchises (the princesses are great for girls, and TRON: LEGACY didn't work out). So Stanton went away and said, "here's a full itemized budget including reshoots of $250million to do it right" and this guy said okay because he was smart. Then, that guy got fired and the new guy came in and bought Marvel and now Disney has every boy franchise EVER and they don't need to risk that money on some uppity director who knows how to make films and embarrass them, plus of his predecessor's project succeeds, he'll be out of a job. So this guy hired a brand new marketing team, a group who had never made marketing for a film and gave it to JOHN CARTER. Think about that: this is a $250m tent pole blockbuster and they give it a new marketing team and then give the team the bare minimum marketing. Compare what AVENGERS got. Plus, no merchandise of ANY kind. No toys, no posters, no t-shirts, NOTHING.

When it tanked, people rightfully blamed the lack of marketing, so the marketing team tried to blame Andrew Stanton. If Stanton were as stubborn as they suggested, would he have been, all the way up to the film's release, retweeting FAN trailers saying, "These guys GET IT"? I followed him on twitter and he was doing that. If he were a control freak he'd have had those trailers taken down. The marketing people asked him to rush cool scenes in the film so they'd be in the trailer and Stanton only refused to switch up production to meet their demands. But if you look at the "Heritage" trailer made by fans on YouTube, which Stanton retweeted a lot, you'll see what they could've done with what footage they had access to.

The "OF MARS" was dropped at the insistence of Disney because MARS NEEDS MOMS failed and they thought no one would see a film with MARS in the title. Stanton went along with the decision and turned it into a story device.

I know people in the business and I told them that during the opening week, Disney announced they lost $200m on JOHN CARTER and their eyes lit up: this is utterly unprecedented and never been done before ever. There's a book coming out called HOLLYWOOD VS MARS which details how Disney totally sabotaged the movie.

And I think it's precisely to upset the Pixar guys. They have managed to take over Disney and produce hits every year and they have too much power. Brad Bird owns the rights to THE INCREDIBLES. That's why Disney hasn't made a sequel. He's said no because "he can't think of a better story than the first one". They want to knock these guys down a peg so they can control them.

There is no way in which Stanton is to blame for the films failure. There is one article which blamed him from an anonymous source in the very marketing department that sabotaged the film, while every documentation shows at every step Disney did everything it could to undermine his efforts. It's terribly sad.
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Iiiiiintreesting. And yeah, it is sad. It's sad that people have no problem manipulating people like that, and will sacrifice a good product to do so.

The bit about the failure of Mars vs. Moms is hysterical. I saw most of that movie just because I have a 9 year old and he likes that kind of thing. I can say pretty confidently that the word "Mars" in the title wasn't what doomed that turd.

I'll have to look for that book when it comes out.

And now I feel bad that I "fell for" that story and repeated it.
 
Bass said:
That is completely false. I put up a big essay about it on my blog.

Andrew Stanton's character completely refutes the image of him as portrayed in those articles, plus, the source on those articles was the very marketing people who said they had no control.

First of all, The guy who greenlit JOHN CARTER gave Stanton anything he wanted because Stanton is not only head of story at Pixar, but has personally made at least four Oscar winning films (WALL•E, TOY STORY, TOY STORY 3, and FINDING NEMO). This was an attempt by Disney to get "boy" franchises (the princesses are great for girls, and TRON: LEGACY didn't work out). So Stanton went away and said, "here's a full itemized budget including reshoots of $250million to do it right" and this guy said okay because he was smart. Then, that guy got fired and the new guy came in and bought Marvel and now Disney has every boy franchise EVER and they don't need to risk that money on some uppity director who knows how to make films and embarrass them, plus of his predecessor's project succeeds, he'll be out of a job. So this guy hired a brand new marketing team, a group who had never made marketing for a film and gave it to JOHN CARTER. Think about that: this is a $250m tent pole blockbuster and they give it a new marketing team and then give the team the bare minimum marketing. Compare what AVENGERS got. Plus, no merchandise of ANY kind. No toys, no posters, no t-shirts, NOTHING.

When it tanked, people rightfully blamed the lack of marketing, so the marketing team tried to blame Andrew Stanton. If Stanton were as stubborn as they suggested, would he have been, all the way up to the film's release, retweeting FAN trailers saying, "These guys GET IT"? I followed him on twitter and he was doing that. If he were a control freak he'd have had those trailers taken down. The marketing people asked him to rush cool scenes in the film so they'd be in the trailer and Stanton only refused to switch up production to meet their demands. But if you look at the "Heritage" trailer made by fans on YouTube, which Stanton retweeted a lot, you'll see what they could've done with what footage they had access to.

The "OF MARS" was dropped at the insistence of Disney because MARS NEEDS MOMS failed and they thought no one would see a film with MARS in the title. Stanton went along with the decision and turned it into a story device.

I know people in the business and I told them that during the opening week, Disney announced they lost $200m on JOHN CARTER and their eyes lit up: this is utterly unprecedented and never been done before ever. There's a book coming out called HOLLYWOOD VS MARS which details how Disney totally sabotaged the movie.

And I think it's precisely to upset the Pixar guys. They have managed to take over Disney and produce hits every year and they have too much power. Brad Bird owns the rights to THE INCREDIBLES. That's why Disney hasn't made a sequel. He's said no because "he can't think of a better story than the first one". They want to knock these guys down a peg so they can control them.

There is no way in which Stanton is to blame for the films failure. There is one article which blamed him from an anonymous source in the very marketing department that sabotaged the film, while every documentation shows at every step Disney did everything it could to undermine his efforts. It's terribly sad.
Click to expand...

This would actually make for a pretty interesting film script in and of itself. Wonder if Disney would back it...?



It is sad, though. As I mentioned (I think in the DVD thread), I rented John Carter a few months back and enjoyed it. It had all the classic trappings of both sci-fi and fantasy, with a bit of Western thrown in, both due to the arid setting of Mars and the timeline of it beginning and springing out of the post Civil War era. Loved the twist at the end, thought it was handled well, though I'd have recut the very beginning a bit to establish Carter just a tad more before his supposed death.

I'd have loved to see the series continue, and who knows? Maybe it'll do great on DVD/Bluray and another studio could buy the rights and take a chance on a more modestly budgeted sequel. It's a pipedream, but I'd love to see it happen.
 
Ultimate Houde said:
Not having seen the movie but read the books, I can say that Carter's passing happens in the first chapter with little explanation.
Click to expand...

Didn't realize that, so they stayed true to the novel then. Have to respect that over Hollywoods usual egotistical approach of changing things pointlessly when adapting existing works. This makes me respect John Carter even more.
 
Even though there was little explanation, I never felt like it was a fault. If felt completely like a mystery that was being explained.
 
E said:
Even though there was little explanation, I never felt like it was a fault. If felt completely like a mystery that was being explained.
Click to expand...

That became apparent once Carter was transported to Mars from the cave, and fully explained at the end. I was just confused at first when we were introduced to Carter and then suddenly he was dead. In totality it worked, and well, just had me perplexed for the first 10 or 15 minutes of the film. Once his nephew started reading his journal it became apparent.
 
The Avengers -- A+ 'Nuff Said

MIB III -- B- It was pretty fun, about as good as the other two. To be honest, the beginning part felt pretty tired. Same old alien crap. The time travel stuff was fresh enough that I enjoyed it over all.

The Amazing Spider-Man -- A I don't care that we've seen the origin before, this was a near perfect Spider-Man movie. Garfield and Stone's Peter and Gwen were so good. Their chemistry was perfect. Spider-Man was fun, the fight scenes were cool. The Lizard story wasn't overwhelmingly impressive, but it wasn't the main story - Peter & Gwen were the main story; which is exactly the way it should be. And, as I said, the action was still cool. The Lizard made a formidable foe for Spidey to fight between the important stuff. Leary's Captain Stacy was great, and so were Sheen's Uncle Ben and Fields' Aunt May. Stan Lee's cameo was his best to date.

At the end of the day, Webb nailed it. The movie is carried by Garfield (who is a much better actor than Maguire) and Stone (who actually made it all the way through the movie without screaming for Spider-Man to save her). Go see it!

The Dark Knight Rises -- A I can't believe I never graded this when I saw it. I loved this movie. I like it better than TDK, and felt that it redeems all the things that I didn't like about that movie. I feel like the whole Nolan Batman story is more complete with this as a final act. It was a good bookend to Begins and it wrapped up the loose ends from TDK really well.

Taken 2 -- C- I would say that this movie was a disappointment except I knew going into it that it was probably not going to be good. There were a few cool parts, but over all there wasn't enough story to tell or even action to drive the movie. Which was made clear by how short the whole thing was.

Argo -- A Argo is fantastic! The tension is thick all the way through and the suspense at the end is crazy. This film has heart and portrays a really awful time in history without being jingoistic about America. The story is set up by explaining that the Iranian people were desperate and hated the US after the CIA deposed their democratic leader and set up a Shah who supplied the West with oil, but who lived lavishly while his people starved. After the revolution where the Iranians deposed this leader, he fled the country with all his gold and was harboured by the US. The Iranians were certainly the antagonists in Argo, but I didn't ever feel like they we the bad guys. Ben Affleck acted well and directed really well. Alan Arkin stole the show. Over all, it was a really well put together movie and I would highly recommend it. Here's hoping for a sequel... Argo 2: Iran Back Home
 
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I saw Seven Psycopaths today. Its easily the best movie I've seen this year. You should all go see it.

Has Sam Rockwell won an Oscar yet? Because he needs one.
 
The Avengers -- A+ 'Nuff Said

MIB III -- B- It was pretty fun, about as good as the other two. To be honest, the beginning part felt pretty tired. Same old alien crap. The time travel stuff was fresh enough that I enjoyed it over all.

The Amazing Spider-Man -- A I don't care that we've seen the origin before, this was a near perfect Spider-Man movie. Garfield and Stone's Peter and Gwen were so good. Their chemistry was perfect. Spider-Man was fun, the fight scenes were cool. The Lizard story wasn't overwhelmingly impressive, but it wasn't the main story - Peter & Gwen were the main story; which is exactly the way it should be. And, as I said, the action was still cool. The Lizard made a formidable foe for Spidey to fight between the important stuff. Leary's Captain Stacy was great, and so were Sheen's Uncle Ben and Fields' Aunt May. Stan Lee's cameo was his best to date.

At the end of the day, Webb nailed it. The movie is carried by Garfield (who is a much better actor than Maguire) and Stone (who actually made it all the way through the movie without screaming for Spider-Man to save her). Go see it!

The Dark Knight Rises -- A I can't believe I never graded this when I saw it. I loved this movie. I like it better than TDK, and felt that it redeems all the things that I didn't like about that movie. I feel like the whole Nolan Batman story is more complete with this as a final act. It was a good bookend to Begins and it wrapped up the loose ends from TDK really well.

Taken 2 -- C- I would say that this movie was a disappointment except I knew going into it that it was probably not going to be good. There were a few cool parts, but over all there wasn't enough story to tell or even action to drive the movie. Which was made clear by how short the whole thing was.

Argo -- A Argo is fantastic! The tension is thick all the way through and the suspense at the end is crazy. This film has heart and portrays a really awful time in history without being jingoistic about America. The story is set up by explaining that the Iranian people were desperate and hated the US after the CIA deposed their democratic leader and set up a Shah who supplied the West with oil, but who lived lavishly while his people starved. After the revolution where the Iranians deposed this leader, he fled the country with all his gold and was harboured by the US. The Iranians were certainly the antagonists in Argo, but I didn't ever feel like they we the bad guys. Ben Affleck acted well and directed really well. Alan Arkin stole the show. Over all, it was a really well put together movie and I would highly recommend it. Here's hoping for a sequel... Argo 2: Iran Back Home

Wreck-It Ralph -- B+ Cute, funny, enjoyable over all. Not the best Disney movie ever, but really good.

Skyfall -- A I really enjoyed this movie. And I don't usually love James Bond. I didn't even really like Casino Royale all that much. The story was compelling, Javier Bardem was fantastic, the action & cinematography were really cool, the nods to classic Bond were cool without being corny, the ending was surprising and satisfying
(and sad)
. The one complaint I had was that it was a tad long, but I hardly noticed.

And i loved that it turned into
Home Alone.
 
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The Avengers -- A+ 'Nuff Said

MIB III -- B- It was pretty fun, about as good as the other two. To be honest, the beginning part felt pretty tired. Same old alien crap. The time travel stuff was fresh enough that I enjoyed it over all.

The Amazing Spider-Man -- A I don't care that we've seen the origin before, this was a near perfect Spider-Man movie. Garfield and Stone's Peter and Gwen were so good. Their chemistry was perfect. Spider-Man was fun, the fight scenes were cool. The Lizard story wasn't overwhelmingly impressive, but it wasn't the main story - Peter & Gwen were the main story; which is exactly the way it should be. And, as I said, the action was still cool. The Lizard made a formidable foe for Spidey to fight between the important stuff. Leary's Captain Stacy was great, and so were Sheen's Uncle Ben and Fields' Aunt May. Stan Lee's cameo was his best to date.

At the end of the day, Webb nailed it. The movie is carried by Garfield (who is a much better actor than Maguire) and Stone (who actually made it all the way through the movie without screaming for Spider-Man to save her). Go see it!

The Dark Knight Rises -- A I can't believe I never graded this when I saw it. I loved this movie. I like it better than TDK, and felt that it redeems all the things that I didn't like about that movie. I feel like the whole Nolan Batman story is more complete with this as a final act. It was a good bookend to Begins and it wrapped up the loose ends from TDK really well.

Taken 2 -- C- I would say that this movie was a disappointment except I knew going into it that it was probably not going to be good. There were a few cool parts, but over all there wasn't enough story to tell or even action to drive the movie. Which was made clear by how short the whole thing was.

Argo -- A Argo is fantastic! The tension is thick all the way through and the suspense at the end is crazy. This film has heart and portrays a really awful time in history without being jingoistic about America. The story is set up by explaining that the Iranian people were desperate and hated the US after the CIA deposed their democratic leader and set up a Shah who supplied the West with oil, but who lived lavishly while his people starved. After the revolution where the Iranians deposed this leader, he fled the country with all his gold and was harboured by the US. The Iranians were certainly the antagonists in Argo, but I didn't ever feel like they we the bad guys. Ben Affleck acted well and directed really well. Alan Arkin stole the show. Over all, it was a really well put together movie and I would highly recommend it. Here's hoping for a sequel... Argo 2: Iran Back Home

Wreck-It Ralph -- B+ Cute, funny, enjoyable over all. Not the best Disney movie ever, but really good.

Skyfall -- A I really enjoyed this movie. And I don't usually love James Bond. I didn't even really like Casino Royale all that much. The story was compelling, Javier Bardem was fantastic, the action & cinematography were really cool, the nods to classic Bond were cool without being corny, the ending was surprising and satisfying
(and sad)
. The one complaint I had was that it was a tad long, but I hardly noticed.

And i loved that it turned into
Home Alone.


The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey -- B+ I liked this movie a lot, but it certainly had it's downfalls. The opening scene with Bilbo and Frodo was unnecessary, the White Orc felt like he was just thrown in to make this segment of the movie have a villain (which is exactly what he was). He was unnecessary and because he was not developed well, he felt unnecessary. I also saw it in 3-D and with the HFR, and that was really distracting. I want to see it again in 2-D and with the regular frame rate. But yeah, over all, it was fun and epic in scope. The Dwarves were awesome and it was good to see familiar characters like Elrond, Gandalf, etc again. The best parts were the Dwarves's Song (Misty Mountains Grey) and the Gollum scene.

Les Mis -- C+ I went and saw this with my girlfriend because she really wanted to. She loved it, even cried. I was sort of bored. It was a really great story. I loved the themes of mercy and justice and how they were embodied in Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) and Javert (Russell Crowe). But wow! 2 hours of singing was more than I could handle. The songs were really good (it was stuck in my head for days) but there was NO dialogue! If they had spoken between the songs instead of singing their lines (most of them not singing all that well) I probably would have liked it a lot more. I almost fell asleep in the second act. So yeah, awesome story that suffered because of the way it was presented.
 
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