Movies

[richardmorgan]

Any1 Wanna discuss them?

[philipswales]

Now there's a novel idea.

[philipswales]

I saw "The Day After Tomorrow" a few hours ago, if that helps.

[richardmorgan]

Do tell

[philipswales]

Well, it's template was directly lifted from "Independence Day":


Scene 1 - trouble brewing somewhere remote
Scene 2 - someone picks up a rogue signal
Scene 3 - the shit hits the fan on a global scale


If you liked that film, or if you're a sucker for disaster movies, you'll like this.

It all starts to peter out by the second half, and the story is wafer-thin, but there's enough distraction to warrant an entertaining couple of hours.

[Kev Owens]

I couldn't face going to see it, or Van Helsing for that matter, both look like recycled rubbish.

Did go to see 'Eternal Sunshine' a couple of weeks ago, most original film I've seen in a long time. Well worth seeing.

[richardspate]

I went to see The Football Factory a fortnight ago.

[Tard]

It was a fun waste of a couple hours. (Day After Tomorrow). Here's my more-than-one-sentence-review of the movie...

--------------------------------------
The environmental groups that have been endorsing "The Day After Tomorrow" as an 'issue' film weeks in advance of its release may want to reconsider that position now that people are getting the chance to see the movie.

Yes, this mega-budget flick touches on global warming, but director/co-writer Roland Emmerich (no sign of his usual co-conspirator Dean Devlin) uses the premise as an excuse for another big, dumb disaster flick. In the movie, global warming causes very quick catastrophic climate changes, as a result of which we get to see polar ice shelves break off, LA leveled by multiple monster tornadoes, and NYC wiped-out by a tidal wave comparable to the 'threat' at the end of "The Abyss".

As is usual in the case of Emmerich, spectacular special FX are used to 'WOW!' the audience & hide the stupidity of major characters' and crazy coincidences which spring-up constantly thru the plot.

For an early-afternoon matinee show, there were a HELL of a lotta people in attendance! I think this is the first big disaster movie released since 9/11 and the East-coast blackout last year, ...? And living so close to NYC, even the loudmouth ghetto-boyz sitting behind to my right shut-up to watch this! (example of a 'crazy coincidence' and 'stupid characters' ; in the first 4-minutes of the movie, an itsy-bitsy scientific campsight in the middle of an arctic ice-shelf. The shelf breaks-off DIRECTLY THROUGH this tiny campsight, leading to a couple 'WOW' special-FX stunts. There was NO reason for Dennis Quaid to risk his life to retrieve those ice-core samples from the side of the shelf that broke off, as the ice-samples were never brought-up in the movie again!)

Once the ridiculously huge tornadoes wiped-out Hollywood, the audience relaxed, and had as much silly fun watching the movie as I did, towards standard B-movie nonsense with a $125million budget.

Millions of people died in the LA & NYC destruction scenes, but we're expected to root for the survival of a cute little homeless-persons doggy? (cliche lifted from the evacuation-scene in "Independence Day") The audience is also asked to care about one nearly blind sickly bald kid with a terminal disease whom gets less than 1-minute screentime to explain his dillema in an attempt to give a reason for scientist Quaids wife to stay in the hospital during "Blizzard-Of-The-Millenium"'s pile-on. And lets not forget Quaid's crazy pledge to his son; to walk from Washington, D.C. to NYC in the middle of said blizzard.

Quaid is a climatologist who has informed everyone from the Vice-President down through the D.C. govt. that the planet is going into a neo-Ice Age. Not within millenia or centuries or decades, not even within months, but 'WOW!', DAYS!!! Sometimes just HOURS!!! These supercell storms which look like hurricanes from space (thanks to the ISS) are coming down North America, Europe and Siberia with 'eyes' 50+ miles wide with temperature drops of 150-below-zero within seconds, immediately killing anything outdoors.

But Quaid swears to his estranged son that he'll somehow get to Manhattan & save him. (another 'crazy coincidence' ; the teen hears his fathers pledge over a submerged payphone on an upper floor of the New York Public Library which conviently still works underwater even after a tidal-wave has destroyed most of the Eastern seaboard and all other power sources have failed, only because "public phone lines are using their own power". How public phones still have operators and electricity despite the utter obliteration of the coast, nevermind electric circuits still working underwater, baffles me... ;p ) It got more fun during Quaid's trek across the frozen wastlands of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Staten Island.

Movies like this were a blast in the 50's & 60's, geared for kids & teens, able to play-up the camp as much as as possible. O'course, those movies were prolly made at about $100/each. Now we get into $100MILLION+/each and a gulf arises between the same B-movie stories and just "wowing" audiences with SFX. Quaid plays the same know-it-all-scientist as characters seen in "When Worlds Collide" and "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" (and lets not forget the know-it-all-scientists in Emmerich's other movies; "Stargate", "Independence Day", and "Godzilla"; all similar B-movies with huge SFX budgets). Sadly, the actors in early B-movies KNEW they were working in B-movies, seen almost exclusivly by kids & teens so were able to camp things up. Quaid is acting like he's in a serious drama! Sorry, you're not remaking "The Day The Earth Stood Still" in this case; closer to an Irwin Allen 60's disaster-flick, popcorn-fun until the credits start rolling.

In closing; it's a stupid fuckin movie, but also quite entertaining. I had fun watching it, the action SFX and destruction-sequences were incredible CGI, but also had a lotta fun laughing AT the plot and scriptwriting. I'll have to give it a [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]

[philipswales]

Is that all your own work?

[Tard]

95% mine. I didn't even realize the homeless guys dog being copied from ID4's tunnel evacuation scene until reading someone elses review of it.