My Movie Watching Project

MacGruber - 5/5
This is the funniest stupid movie I've seen in a long time. And here's where the explanation for ratings becomes needed. Is it 5/5 because it's a piece of art on par with Pulp Fiction or Wizard of Oz or whatever? No, of course not. But it was hilarious and entertaining.

Cool Hand Luke - 4/5
One reason I can't rate movies like a movie reviewer, as noted above, is because I have a hard time with older movies. When I say older, I mean before 1994 or so. I can respect a movie for what it was at the time or what it did for the medium, but that never positively affects my enjoyment from watching it. Cool Hand Luke is a great example of this - I feel stupid giving it a 4/5 (especially having just given MacGruber a 5/5) but it felt long and like there was a lot of setup before getting into the meat of the story. Dragline's feelings toward Luke were too over-the-top after the fight scene. But, that said, Paul Newman was awesome.

It also kind of bugged me that all of the sudden Luke had a saw in the sleeping quarters. How did he get that in there?

Anyway, I'm putting on my flameproof jacket here.

come-at-me-bro-turtle.jpg
 
ultimatedjf said:
MACGRUBER is hysterical. Everyone needs to see it regardless of what they've heard about it.
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YES! I can't believe someone agrees with me. I was fully expecting to be crucified for liking it.

I was laughing so hard I was crying. That hasn't happened in a movie in a long time.

Starship Troopers - 2/5
I saw this when it came out in the theater and decided to give it another look. I remember it being cheesy but, man, I don't remember it being so bad. The acting is terrible - almost as bad as Robocop but I don't think anything is as bad as that turd.

Speaking of Robocop - almost every time I watch one of these movies, after it's finished, I will go and read up on it and find out any significant or interesting informational tidbits about them. I was surprised to learn about Starship Troopers that, like Robocop, it presents itself as some kind of social commentary or something another. This is hilarious to me, and that snippet is more interesting than the movie itself, because to me that implies that it gives a lesson to be learned and neither of these films really do that, and if they do it's impossible to see because it's presented so poorly.

I almost want to see the (direct to video) sequels out of morbid curiosity but can't bring myself to waste the time it would take to track them down when I've got some movies in the queue that I legitimately want to see.

Like Scarface. I'm totally geeked to see Scarface.
 
Starship Troopers, the book not the movie, handles the whole social commentary thing better. In the book you find out that the Earth sent the meteor that destroy that city, in an effort to boost the number of Citizens (people enrolled in the army) and solidify the government more.

You also learn that the Government started the attacks on the bugs, not the other way around.
 
E said:
that implies that it gives a lesson to be learned and neither of these films really do that, and if they do it's impossible to see
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Not for everyone.

Ultimate Houde said:
Starship Troopers, the book not the movie, handles the whole social commentary thing better. In the book you find out that the Earth sent the meteor that destroy that city, in an effort to boost the number of Citizens (people enrolled in the army) and solidify the government more.

You also learn that the Government started the attacks on the bugs, not the other way around.
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Those things both occur in the film too, just with more subtlety as it's deliberately being told from a single person's perspective.

I can't really give much higher praise to Starship Troopers(easily a top-20 film for me) than the fact that I basically dropped out of the program I was in at university in part because of how badly a professor butchered a unit on Starship Troopers. It was way worse than just missing the satirical aspects, though(but there was plenty of that); she also accused it of preaching fascism and jingoism to kids because there was a tie-in animated series and got most of the class on her side, despite the fact that the movie doesn't actually preach either and the animated series was specifically anti-fascist/jingoism and one of the main arcs was about a Bug soldier joining the Roughnecks and being discriminated against with hostility before gradually earning their trust and proving he's a real person too. But they wouldn't know that as none of them actually watched the material themselves, but read about it in biased and poorly researched $100 textbooks.

Stay out of liberal arts programs, kids.

There's also this fantastic article about how it predicted the future.
 
Planet-man said:
Not for everyone.
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Uh huh.

Planet-man said:
Those things both occur in the film too, just with more subtlety as it's deliberately being told from a single person's perspective.
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What?! I saw absolutely nothing to indicate or even suggest that Federation attacked Earth.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - 4.5/5
My only criticism is that parts were kind of long-winded, but it was pretty minor. Very funny throughout. The best line was, "You can't fight in here! This is a war room!"
 
E said:
Uh huh.
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Well, sorry, but given how widely it's regarded this way it's obviously not "impossible" to see this stuff just because you personally didn't.

E said:
What?! I saw absolutely nothing to indicate or even suggest that Federation attacked Earth.
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It's all subtle information over the course of the film which probably isn't picked up on without multiple viewings, but - they establish in the newsreels that the Arachnids use the giant plasma bugs to shoot asteroids out of orbit and send them at Earth, but all the actual encounters with the bugs show they're only just accurate enough to be able to hit ships in their own atmosphere by scattering big, slow plasma blobs everywhere. They then show that Klendathu is actually on the other side of the galaxy from Earth, and can only be reached to via faster-than-light ships. Basically, it's impossible that the bugs executed the asteroid attack, and if they could have, they could easily destroy the Earth, not just one city. Newsreels also mention a "vocal minority" claiming that the Bugs are peaceful and humans are the ones who invaded their natural environment, implying that it's the humans need a better excuse to wage war.

This is a separate issue, but another cool theory is that the entire film is actually a dramatized war movie made by the government as propaganda in the movie's universe.
 
Starship Troopers is also excellent. It can be viewed as a commentary on propaganda.


If you were to rank cinema's Top 5 Silliest -- as in, most hilarious -- Sex Scenes, two of them would be from MACGRUBER. (And yes, one would probably be from TEAM AMERICA.)

SEE MacGruber!
 
You guys that like Starship Troopers - doesn't the horrendous acting just ruin it for you? How do you excuse that when evaluating the film?

For me, bad acting takes me completely out of the movie. It ruins everything.

The A-Team - 3/5
Brainless fun action movie...not really much to say about it.

Platoon - 5/5
Wow. Intense, sad, and scary. Everything a Vietnam movie should be.

I also just started Scarface and am a half hour in but I had to pause it. Will finish it tonight.
 
E said:
I also just started Scarface and am a half hour in but I had to pause it. Will finish it tonight.
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For some reason I don't mind the length of the Godfather movies but I can't stand how long Scarface is.
 
E said:
You guys that like Starship Troopers - doesn't the horrendous acting just ruin it for you? How do you excuse that when evaluating the film?

For me, bad acting takes me completely out of the movie. It ruins everything.
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I'm actually kind of surprised you thought the acting was that bad.... it's always seemed fine/good to me and has never been brought up during countless viewings with friends and family. Some of it, like Michael Ironside and Dina Meyer, was even notably good, I'd say.
 
The bad acting even fits in with the whole propaganda idea (or satire in Robocop's case). I think it's fine and I really like both films.
 
Langsta said:
For some reason I don't mind the length of the Godfather movies but I can't stand how long Scarface is.
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Scarface - 5/5
Scarface is 2:50 - very long and much longer than I usually like. But I didn't feel like a single second of it was filler or wasted in any way. Loved the intensity, and Al Pacino was incredible. I'm mad at myself because I had part of the ending spoiled for me because I was browsing the extended cast list and one of the cast was named simply
"Gina's killer"
.

ProjectX2 said:
The bad acting even fits in with the whole propaganda idea (or satire in Robocop's case). I think it's fine and I really like both films.
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That had occurred to me and does fit, but the propaganda aspect of it was too ridiculous to take seriously in any way.

Also...
X-Men Origins: Wolverine - 2/5
Completely unremarkable with a bad plot and pointless character introductions. Extra points taken off for dumbing down the otherwise quality book Origins and bastardizing it into a 4 minute video clip.
 
Do you feel like playing Vice City again after watching Scarface?

Carlito's Way is also a good companion film.
 
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ProjectX2 said:
Do you feel like playing Vice City again after watching Scarface?
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As soon as the music started in the opening credits I was thinking it was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City The Movie.
 
ultimatedjf said:
E, have you seen DO THE RIGHT THING? You should definitely put that one on your list (even if you have seen it!). Spike Lee's best film.
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I have not but I will look into it.
 
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