Mr. Seven

Absolute bollocks on that last point.

At least I could see what the fuck was going on during the Tim Burton-directed action scenes.

That would be a bit of an understatement.

I'm glad you took a risk with a thread like this because it's a red flag for some of the dickheads on the board to come and cry foul about them being shit so good god thanks for this topic.

At the risk of upsetting Waterboy's intentions; you're not suggesting if you don't like The Beatles, you are thusly a dickhead, are you?

Reznor > all, really.

YES!

It's "I'm working my ass off here John."

Thanks!

Nah definitely not it. It might even be a horror film.

On the subject of vague film-related questions. A line of dialogue popped into my head the other day and I can't place it, despite even being able to here the intonation and delivery. Basically, someone has been revealed as a villain, has the hero at his mercy and responds to some sniping about his plan being lazy/not being hard work with;

"I'm working my ass off here man."

It's driving me nuts. I'm sure the film is in my DVD collection and I've seen it more than once, but yeah if this rings any bells, feel free to put me out of my misery.

Finally got around to X-Men First Class today. Pros and cons listed below, and SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS so you've been warned.

I LIKED

At times the film touches on greatness. However, Matthew Vaughn is not and never will be a great filmmaker so natually he can't quite nail it. The beats between Xavier and Magneto are excellent. If anything I wanted more of them. While there was lots of things in the film I didn't buy, I thought their relationship worked.

McAvoy (who I don't like) and Fassbender (who I do like) were perfectly cast and brought a lot of character to both roles. What was with Fassbender's Irish accent creeping in at the end though?

Kevin Bacon clearly had a lot of fun, and while his Sebastian Shaw is unquestiionably hammy (he's basically a Bond villain with superpowers), I did find him genuinely menacing. Bravo Kev.

Azazel's storm and massacre of the compound was done very well and was pretty fucking dark for a film that's bloodless and 12A. It was 12A wasn't it?

On a related note, Oliver Platt's death was so unceremoniously funny that I very nearly cackled.

Nicholas Hoult surprised me by being pretty damn great.

The Wolverine cameo was a nice touch.

The casting all round was pretty good.

How Charles winds up in his chair is done very well.

I also liked that we see him being a bit cocky and chasing skirts. Not something you really ever think of when you imagine Professor X.

Jennifer Lawrence did a good job as the conflicted Mystique, although I think her character was really poorly written.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

So Mystique then. No easy way to say this. She's a bit of a dumb tramp isn't she? She's clearly dying to fuck Xavier, and when he shows no interest she goes after Beast, a lesser version of a genius. But he's not really interested either (the fucking idiot) so she is seduced by Magneto (understandable, Fassbender is a charmer), but to fucking end up in his bed, offering herself to him after being rejected by Beast? Come on. I realise she's meant to be naive and such, but jesus. Also, I'm not sure I like Magneto kissing (and probably fucking) her.

Her heel turn at the end, for the logic gaps in her character, is also a little hard to swallow.

Speaking of heel turns, that's the only reason Angel is in this. Shit character.

And speaking of shit characters with tenuous reasons to be here, step forward Darwin. This poor fucker gets to:

1: Have a shit power.

2: Be the Token Black Guy.

3: Die to show how serious the situation/evil the villain is.

Great job guy!

Banshee. Pretty meh.

Havoc. Should have turned heel, would have made a more interesting choice.

Azazel. Did he need to look like the fucking devil?

Emma Frost. Not as rubbish as I had been led to believe but she's pretty vacant.

Beast looked a bit shit.

The boats sequence goes on waaaaaaaaay too long, reminding you of the much worse and longer boats sequence in The Dark Knight.

The film is too long. You could easily lose half an hour.

Also, and I realise this is highly sexist of me, but Rose Byrne is a pretty shit actress, so if you're going to go to the trouble of having her strip down to her underwear for ridiculously convoluted reasons, at least include a shot of her posterior.

So yeah, good film, but fell way short of greatness. But that's Matthew Vaughan for you. A huge improvement on the odious Kick-Ass though.

Is Capitol Punishment on Sky Sports or Box Office?

Honestly stop watching after season two.

Hai neil, first-time caller, long-time listener. Is the banning of Keith Houchen, Loki, Ian_hitmanhart, Gladstone et al a legit permanent thing or a LOLtastic Rapture-related jape?

Social Network is excellent.

I watched Collateral for about the fifth time last night. There's something so very engaging about that film. Every time I watch it I gain further appreciation for Michael Mann. The script isn't fantastic and there's plenty of holes if you look for them, but Mann holds everything together with such skill that it's impossible not to admire while also wondering what a hack director would have done with the material. Even the little things like Audioslave appearing on the soundtrack out of nowhere - while a classic Mann tonally-jarring move (see the song that closes Manhunter for another example) work and the acting from the biggest to the smallest role is note perfect.

Get Detective Sprules on the blower.

Worst film of 2010, easy.

If I was such a "hater" I would have called him a bad actor, not an average one. He doesn't offend me, but he's yet to impress me.

Stephanie's weird pre-teen girl-with-a-Smash Hits-subscription championing of R-Patz is fucking mental. He's a very average actor. Remember Me is literally laughable. If you buy into his angst and such, it's because he makes you wet. Please don't confuse this with a great actor in waiting.

LOL. The difference is that DiCaprio is an excellent actor who has progressed brilliantly throughout his career. By the time Titanic came out he had already turned in great performances in The Basketball Diaries, What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and to a lesser extent; This Boy's Life. Pattinson is not dreadful by any means, but he's quite generic and I'd be stunned if he ever puts in a performance that matches some of the stuff DiCaprio has done.

Hey chokeout, can you give spoiler details on the random cameo please? I know who it is, I just want to know what happens, what the costume looks like, etc. Thanks.

Has Soap McTavish been banned?

He's great in The Princess Bride and he's the (non-singing I think) voice of Jack Skellington. He may have had a fairly humdrum career but he's played some good roles.

Dreamcatcher is rubbish but it has Timothy Olyphant (briefly) so it's not the worst thing ever made.

Right, Scream 4 then. I'm not doing spoiler tags as I'm in fast reply so deal with it. Just to reiterate;

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS HERE SO SCROLL DOWN PAST THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT A REALLY BAD FILM SPOILED.

Ok. Let's get to it.

As someone who was about 12 or 13 when Scream came out and was thus mesmerised by it, I guess it's a telling sign of how badly the franchise ended up that I really didn't care about Scream 4 (or SCRE4M if you're a moron). The trailers all looked rubbish, and there was really no reason for it to exist. But the release date beckoned and I caught the bug and sad as it may be, I wanted to know who was behind the mask this time round, so off I went.

And yeah, it's shit. Really shit. I didn't expect a good film but I did expect some reason for it to be made in the first place. The problem is that Scream sells itself on things that are no longer clever to point out, so you're literally looking at your watch until it's time for THE BIG REVEAL. Everyone onscreen is just knife fodder until it's time for the end game.

- Speaking of knife fodder, the film takes (very mild and throwaway) shots at its rivals, dismissing the torture porn aspect of the horror genre. That's fair enough, as Saw is in many ways the Scream of its generation. It came along and did something new and made people excited about horror again but only served to usher in a flood of poor copycats and sequels. It's also a fair enough shot to take because the torture porn thing is played out and boring. However, it's more interesting than watching endless knife killings. That's really all Ghostface does. Phonecall - lurking in the shadows - jumping out of nowhere - stab stab stab, wash, rinse, repeat.

- There's zero tension and everything is telegraphed. Again, it's a stalk and slash movie so you're not expecting much but this is Scream, 11 years on and it's the original team and it's really smug and self-referential so you expect.... something? But you get nothing. Worse than nothing you get the confirmation that Wes Craven is done from a creative point of view, which is something of a shame.

- There is no reason for Sidney, Gale and Dewey to be in this movie. As a result they look incredibly out of place. The "new blood" on offer gets no chance to shine because the film doesn't know who to focus on. Everyone is just walking around waiting to get killed and not really giving a shit about it. Sidney's character is especially irrelevant. She is just there.

- So if there's no reason for our original characters to be here, why the FUCK do you have them all survive? What possible purpose can it serve? The whole thing feels like the criticisms that WWE gets when they don't push new faces, not to mention I guess everyone figured one of the three (if not all three) would buy it in the opening scene. So instead we get an opening scene that is trying way too hard to be clever that only serves to dilute the effect they were going for. So yeah, film ends with the old guard alive and well for no other reason than they were terrified to have different names above the poster. Who could possibly care about what happens next?

- As for THE BIG REVEAL, it's a mixed bag. It's believable in some ways, and really stupid in others. It also needs better actors to pull it off as the dialogue is so clunky, expository and desperate commentary that it simply doesn't work coming out of the mouths of who it comes out of.

- It's coming out of dumb fucking characters who can't see obvious shit coming. Infuriating.

- The scene that follows said reveal is beyond parody to the point that I thought someone had slotted Scary Movie into the reel.

- As is the finale which is so fucking stupid it beggars belief.

- Hayden Panettiere is probably the only one to come out of this mess with any credit. She's pretty good, sells the character well and manages to look so incredibly hot while sporting a haircut that a granny would admire.

- It's not enough to be self-referential anymore. The film makes a big deal out of being "meta" but all that does is make the film acknowledge how fucking run of the mill it all is.

I guess it'll make money and we'll probably get another installment. The problem is that we could really use another Scream right now, but not another episode of the Scream series.

You sure that sig is big enough?

Tom Cruise is awesome.

Speaking of pinned topics, why is that one about the online wrestling magazine pinned in on-topic? It hasn't been updated in months.