And Sean Connery is brilliant as a dragon!

And that dragon is amazingly done.

It has a really nice storyline, I think.

Definitely. And I loved the Old Code. Not just the idea, but what was actually in the code.

And Pete Postlethwaite as Brother Gilbert was brilliant

Agreed. Now I want to see it again,

Heheh, so do I!

I saw Victor Frankenstein today. It was an excellent movie. James McAvoy was absolutely outstanding. His portrayal of Victor Frankenstein is different from any I have ever seen before. He is a genius, likeable, fun, has no censor on his mouth, is not just obsessive, but often so erratic the point of being mad. In many ways he is over the top, but that is the very thing that makes this Frankenstein different from the others. He chews up the scenery. even when an eight foot tall monster is on the screen, you are still looking at James McAvoy.

Daniel Radcliffe also gives a solid turn as Igor. Or at least someone going by the name of Igor. Like McAvoy's Frankenstein, this is an Igor we have never seen before. The story is told from his point of view, and he is an excellent everyman character. We feel sympathy for him, glory in his triumphs, and can understand his loyalty to Frankenstein, and his frustration over Victor's obsession.

The monster itself is kind of incidental, though it does turn up at the end. But that is not a problem. This story is about Victor and Igor, not him.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 14 2016, 12:12 AM

I am watching The Prophecy.

"Ever cut off a Chinaman's head? They don't bleed. Not like we do.

Or maybe it was just the cold.

You could always tell when they were coming. Those songs.

They charge through the snow.

The guns froze, and that was ok, because we were better, colder.

At Chosin, we were colder than anyone."

I started watching Star Wars: Rebels again, starting with the original movie and the first season. It is a lot of fun going back to the original era of star wars, seeing Tie Fighters, Star Destroyers, etc... Today I saw the episode with Threepio and Artoo, and I noticed that the bottom half of one of Threepio's legs is silver instead of gold. That made me go back and look at the first movie, and it is the same there! I never noticed that before.

Watching Iron Man, since I'm about to go on another Avengers binge.

I have to say, Gwyneth Paltrow is freaking gorgeous as Pepper Potts

Darth Vader in the season finale was great. I enjoyed seeing Darth Maul return, too.

Yesterday I saw The 5th Wave. It is the latest Hunger Games clone teen movie. It wasn't as good as Hungry Games, but I thought it was better than all the other clones out there. I enjoyed the characters. They had good motivations and their actions made sense, and I liked seeing them on the screen. Chloe Grace Moritz is the protagonist, and she puts in a good turn as a believable person I could root for. She was Hit Girl from Kickass (she was the only part of that movie worth watching).

The whole process of the alien invasion seemed well done too. The 'Waves' of alien actions in the movie actually go down a checklist of the basic ways to conquer a planet. EMP to knock out all electronics, earthquakes and tidal waves to cause massive damage and loss of life, an artificially engineered disease to wipe out the survivors, etc... I liked this, because it shows the writer was thinking and paying attention. The one tactic glaring by its absence is using asteroids to bombard the planet. But one character observes early on that the aliens want the planet. They just don't want the people on it. A serious comet/asteroid bombardment would make the world uninhabitable for millennia (which has happened in the past, more than once).

The Fifth Wave is the aliens finally getting their boots on the ground (it's not a spoiler, it comes out really early). But it is not a horde of monsters washing across the planet. Instead it is a lot more sneaky, in the form of infiltrators. More might be a spoiler, so I will leave it at that. But what I found interesting about that is it implies that the aliens don't have massive numbers. There would be no need to be subtle if they did have a horde of monsters. Granted, the writer may not have thought of that...

The ending is basically just the beginning. This is obviously meant to be Act I in a series of films. I will be looking for the sequels. It is not great, but I was entertained.



May The Fourth Be With You All!

I have not seen the Season 2 end yet. But I am looking forward to seeing Vader and "The Apprentice" squaring off. Obviously Vader is going to still be around afterward though... I did not know Maul was in it too. I have always liked him. It will be cool to see them doing more with him.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 5 2016, 01:02 AM

Vader was pretty chilling in the new season. Especially at the very end when he meets a certain apprentice.

Bruno - hysterically funny!

DE =







This post has been edited by mALX: May 10 2016, 12:05 PM

I finally saw Deadpool today. It was ok, but nothing astounding. It's basically a super action movie with a never ending train of pop culture one-liners. That is really all there is to it. It feels like it has no soul to it, like those two Amazing Cash Grab Spider Man movies. Look, I can make a snarky pop culture one-liner too! Do I get my own movie?

I have also gotten up the gumption once more to give Daredevil another try. I am glad I did, because I was very impressed with the first season - straight, white, Christian, male lead and all. Not nearly as many snarky quips as Deadpool, but it does have a soul, and plenty of it.

Vincent D'Ornifo was fantastic as Wilson Fisk - I don't believe I ever heard the name Kingpin. I thought he gave the character a great deal of depth, beyond being just a simple villain. As in real life, he saw himself as the hero, up until the end.

The rest of the cast is solid as well. I don't know their names, but the people playing Matt, Foggy, Karen, and Urich are all outstanding. They give their characters so much life and believability that I can believe they are real people.

I am into Season Two now. I was originally thrilled that the Punisher clearly has a large part to play in it. But last night I found out who is playing the Punisher - the same guy who did Chance from Walking Dead, and he still has the same bad hair he did before. That took all the wind out of my sails. I suppose Ray Stevenson will always be my Punisher. The movie he was in - Punisher War Zone - was pure crap. But that wasn't his fault. He was the perfect Frank Castle. But I suppose he is too old these days for the part.

I've been on an Avengers binge recently, so I'm finishing up with Age of Ultron, which isn't that great a film really.

Tomorrow, I think I'll take a break from Marvel films and watch Ran, since I recorded it the other day.

Forgot to mention that I watched In The Heart Of The Sea last week. Which I believe Grits referred to as Thor vs The Whale. It was pretty meh. I thought Chris Hemsworth was good. In fact, I always enjoy his performances. He always comes off as a very friendly, approachable, decent guy in the films he does. Someone easy to like. He's not a great actor, but he's not a bad one either. I think he makes bad choices in picking the movies he does though, because a good actor cannot save a bad movie.

But this was not really a bad movie. It just wasn't a good one. Most of it is dirty, grimy, ugly, and gross. Be it the ordinary life at sea, or killing whales and climbing into their corpses to bucket out their innards. Of course the whole killing whales makes it hard for me to root for the humans. While I liked Chris Hemsworth's and the young Brendan Gleeson's characters, I was still on Team Whale for the entire movie. That whole morality thing. It would have been cool if the whale had swam into Nantucket, pulled out a laser minigun, and killed everyone. Not very very realistic, but I still would have cheered.

I was wondering how they were going to end it, since it sure looks like it is either going to be Chris or the Whale. The ocean didn't seem big enough for both of them. But they did wrap it up nicely without having to go there, and what happened to everyone after it all was nice too. All in all it is an ok watch if you are bored and it turns up on Netflix's Instant Viewing.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 15 2016, 12:21 AM

Today I wrapped up Season Two of Daredevil. It was good. I will definitely be looking forward to the next season. I liked some of the small things I wove in that connect it to the rest of the MCU, like newspapers with stories about the Battle of New York. There were also some connections with Jessica Jones, with an oblique mention by Nurse Temple that she is in hot water at her job because of something she did (in Jessica Jones). Carrie Ann Moss also appears at the very end of the last episode, offering Foggy a job.

One thing I did not like was the split focus in the season between two major storylines. On one hand we have the whole Frank Castle arc, then we have a completely separate arc with Elektra, Stick, and The Hand. Just give me one story at a time please. I think one thing they were trying to do was to show how Matt/Daredevil was being torn in multiple directions at the same time. And it did make it clear why there would be a real need for an actual super team like The Defenders (the Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist show in that is in the works). But on the other hand, it just gets distracting going back and forth.

Star Wars Dogfights set to Kenny Loggins - Danger Zone

Pure awesomesauce, SubRosa! Thanks for sharing!