Avatree

I've ran out of likes but thanks Tele I didn't even realise there was a games forum I'll have a look. Sounds like fun.

I found a previous summer game thread. Thanks to the forum's formatting of older posts, it is very clear... (could anyone explain this in a few sentences? pretty please?)

#ethicsinspyagencies

Sorry, how exactly am I ruining it? Not everyone has the same opinion. I'm well aware that most people like the film and don't have the same problems I do. On Rotten Tomatoes, there are 47 critics and 11,600 users who didn't like the film. I suppose they are all ruining the film for you too? And as said several times above, by myself and others, it is not just the final shot. The whole thing about how he gets to fuck a princess if he rescues her (20 mins before the end), in addition to the other gender issues in the film, it makes the film a huge problem for me. And, as I said before, I would still think it is a bad film even without it being sexist, as I think the movie has some major flaws. Would you like me to say "In my opinion..." before every sentence regarding a topic which is inherently, necessarily, subjective? No one needs to remind others that it's just their opinion, because it is obviously just their opinion. Read any review of any film on any website, I doubt you'll find them saying, "In my opinion" before every word.

Since I'm pretty new to the forum, can someone please explain how these season games work? Everyone else is saying 'reserved' so I will too, I'll figure out what I'm signing up to later. RESERVED

Opinions are subjective. In your opinion, it succeeded. In my opinion, it failed. I've explained why I think the things I do. End of discussion.

49. Nicholas Jarecki's ARBITRAGE Starring: Richard Gere, Tim Roth, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling, Nate Parker Box office: $7.9M Rotten Tomatoes: 87% "Do you want to be the richest guy in the cemetery?" Arbitrage serves as a return to form for Richard Gere. He gives a layered, nuanced performance that grounds this thriller and viscerally connects the plot (which would in other hands be dull) to the audience. All of the supporting cast (in particular Roth, Parker and Marling) do a great job of lifting Gere up and enabling him and his character's nature to be shown off; it is due to these performances that we understand just how badly Robert Miller mistreats the people in his life. He's a formidable but charming character - perhaps even a psychopath - who cares about nothing but the so-called 5 most important things in the world - "M. O. N. E. Y.". Thanks to both Gere and director-writer Jarecki, we end up rooting for this despicable man, and he's a character who will stick in my mind for a long time. The film itself is a more gentle thriller - it remains engaging throughout, but it's never unbearably tense, which makes for an interesting but calmly enjoyable experience. It doesn't do anything new, but it is a properly-fashioned and finely polished thriller, the sort of which we don't see enough of these days. The film proves that Richard Gere is too young to be making some of the rubbish that he's recently been in, and shows real promise for first time director Nicholas Jarecki.

Could be worse, some analysts predict 3B

If you look at the top 10 worldwide grosses for each year, you will see that they gradually increase each year. This can be measured by the #10 film of the year. In 2010, the #10 film grossed 495M. 2011 was 560M. 2012 was 624M. 2013 was 644M. 2014 was 673M. If the trend continues, then 2015 should end up with close to 700M. My personal predictions are: 1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 2,205M 2. Avengers: Age of Ultron - 1,775M 3. Jurassic World - 1,045M 4. Spectre - 1,026M 5. Minions - 931M 6. Furious 7 - 902M 7. Mockingjay 2 - 851M 8. Mission: Impossible 5 - 820M 9. Inside Out - 720M 10. Ant-Man - 631M So looking at it, 10 films above 700M might be harder than it seems. Even if the 9 that I predict will do it, manage to, there would still have to be another. Ant-Man? Ted 2? Tomorrowland? The Good Dinosaur? Will 2015 be the year we have 10 films over $700 million, or will we be waiting for 2016?

I understand fully that the film is trying to make fun of the sexism in traditional action films rather than be sexist itself. But because it fails at doing that, it ends up just being sexist.

Lol, thinking a movie shouldn't be sexist makes me dumb?

edit: wrong thread

50. Timo Vuorensola's IRON SKY Starring: Christopher Kirby, Gotz Otto, Julia Dietze, Udo Kier Box Office: $0.1M Rotten Tomatoes: 36% "The Great Dictator, by Charlie Chaplin. It is one of the world's most famous short films, which illustrates in ten minutes his wish that one day, the entire world will be held in the great Führer's wise and gentle hands." Here at number #50 is proof that in this day and age, if you want to make the most ridiculous film imaginable, then you can. After unsuccessful attempts to get financing from studios, and eventually produced through an online campaign of crowdfunding and participatory cinema, Iron Sky really had no right to be any good. And by many people's standards, it isn't. But the truth of the matter is, the film manages to sustain its ridiculousness long enough for me to take it seriously. For the uninitiated, the idea is that in 1945, the Nazis fled to the moon. In 2020, they are invading the earth. Jokes are fired off by the second, and whether they're about how the Nazi officers have never seen a black man before, or the idea that Sarah Palin has an exercise machine in the Oval Office, they're funny. I laughed and laughed and laughed - it's a genuinely hilarious film. At times, it verges on pretending to be intelligent, but it knows it isn't, so simply turns a political point into a slapstick gag; the film delves into very serious topics and just giggles, and it's all the better for it. The visual design is thoroughly inventive, the script is filled with effective jokes, and it acknowledges its stupidity from the beginning. I can think of few ways to spend a more fun 2 hours.

Is the 2005 V for Vendetta really no good?

Before I begin, I should point out the obvious - there are a bunch of really great films since 2010 that I haven't yet seen. I haven't gotten round to watching The Wind Rises, despite owning it on blu-ray, and I'm sure that would otherwise make it on to the list. I haven't seen dozens of Oscar winners and nominees. If you wonder why 12 Years a Slave isn't on the list, it's because I never saw it. Why isn't Boyhood on here?, I might hear you ask. I never found time to get to a screening. I wish I could have seen said films before making this list, but I have to start at some point. On another day in the near future, this list might be different. But whatever. I'll crack on with this. Be warned, I may have some peculiar choices...

Everyone has an agenda. Different people value different aspects of film differently. I happen to think that if a film is being overtly sexist, then that's a bad thing. I know some people don't care about the social aspect of a film, some people even try to argue that it's harmful to debate such things. But at the end of the day, we all bring baggage to art. That's why not every review is exactly the same! FYI, without the sexism it would still be a bad film, but it makes the movie much worse and is perhaps the biggest individual problem the film has.

V for Vendetta is rubbish, I think John Green should write a version, and then maybe Vaugustus Vaters will be the greatest character in all fiction - Ethan

Literary masterpiece? Can't be Shakespeare then.

Haha, that sounds fab. And I read your post in Hugo Weaving's voice, too. Don't worry about thread hijacking 75, I haven't even posted the first film yet so you can talk about the subatomic structure of a cow, for all I care. Damn, I thought for a second there Michael Ironside was in V for Vendetta and got excited. I am disappoint

I still haven't seen V for Vendetta, can someone please fill me in on the joke here

My time has come. I'm hopefully gonna get through this in a week, depends on how lazy I am. The first top 50 of the half decade were posted over 2 months ago, so I figure I should probably do it. You have no idea how long it took me to come up with the title...

Kingsman: A Satirical Disservice http://entwinedbranches.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/kingsman-satirical-disservice.html ☆☆☆☆☆ Truth be told, I'm not a huge Matthew Vaughn fan. I'm rather fond of Stardust, for the quirky, Labyrinth-inspired fantasy that it is, but I thought very little of Kick-Ass. If Kick-Ass was meant to be some sort of clever deconstruction of superhero movies, then it failed on every level. Given that Kingsman was going to delve into similar territory, I went in with a sceptical, but hopeful, mind. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the film isn't much of a step up for Vaughn. It falls into one of the most common traps for satirical storytelling - pure imitation. There's a fine line between poking fun at genre tropes, and straight-out copying them. For instance, in many places the film makes fun of sexism in Bond films... by being sexist. That's not satire, it's not funny - it's the mark of incompetence by a novice filmmaker. The unfortunate thing is, there was potential for this to be great. Bond films have been around for over 50 years, and they haven't grown up at all; they use action clichés, they have one-dimensional characters, and they dispose of women characters as easily as I would an unripe banana. It's a great shame that Vaughn and Goldman have missed out on an effective satire, because it could have been excellent. Kingsman suffers from an unsettling amount of sexism. The only characters who don't think for themselves? Women. The only secret service agent too scared to jump out of a plane? The sole woman. And then there's that closing shot, which I won't spoil but I'm sure you have heard about. You don't have to make a misogynistic film in order to make a point about misogynistic movie tropes. The film also suffers from an unhealthy sense of tonal dissonance. It never feels like it quite knows what it's trying to do - in one scene there'll be jokes as abundant as they are in, say, Airplane!, and with a swift cut to the next shot, some delightful person will be ripped in half. Not in a deadpan manner, not in a comedic manner, just in a gory one. It's very strange and rather offputting to have this clash. That's not to say that the film is meritless - quite the opposite. The film is very funny; there's no way around that. I laughed much more than I did in Kick-Ass, or for that matter any film I've seen in the past month or so. Not all of the jokes hit the spot, and again the problem of Vaughn's conceptual conflicts comes into effect - alongside the harmless, amusing quips there is the same old toilet humour, 'lad' bants and the remnants of a film which in a parallel universe might have been a Judd Apatow production. But most of the gags are good. They aren't intelligent, they aren't anything I would particularly desire to recall at a dinner party, and they won't stick in your head either, but they did make me laugh. It's made clear at the beginning that the film isn't serious - it starts with a news report about Iggy Azalea being kidnapped by a Steve Jobs figure - and the jokes are, accordingly, light-hearted and silly. However, it remains a shame that the film can't get over its sense of self-importance and the notion that it's a step above other comedies because it's an intelligent satire of Bond films. The straight-faced Colin Firth particularly excels in his comedic role, as a nice contrast to his usual tragic, sincere self. The central performances are both great, actually. Colin Firth is clearly the funnier actor, but newcomer Taron Egerton is outstandingly cast, in a similar way to Attack the Block's John Boyega. A hoodie from South London with no previous acting experience sounded disastrous, but he's likeable, articulate and pumps the movie's heart - for better or worse. A brief appearance is made by Mark Hamill, but he leaves the film early on and as a result is nothing short of underused. Samuel L. Jackson is horrific, as is the writing for his character: clearly, someone somewhere in the production thought it would be outstandingly funny if Sam Jackson's villain had a lisp. So nearly every second that Jackson is on camera, the lisp joke is shoved in our faces. The first time, okay, I can live with that. I never found it funny but some people in the audience did. But you don't need to make the joke seventeen thousand times. Aside from the comedy, the visual style of Vaughn gets to go wild here, and in the best possible way. It's a genuinely wonderful film to look at. The strange pans and zooms from cinematographer George Richmond feel like a robot that's on its last legs: it doesn't know what on earth it should be looking at, but it shifts around in mechanical desperation anyway. It's a brilliant contrast that is a genius choice by Vaughn. This really is where the man shines: his previous outings showed hints of fizzy visual splendor, but he turns everything up to eleven in Kingsman, and it's easily the star of the show. Crisply edited and mesmerisingly splattered with vibrant colours, it's a terrific film to look at, and one that will undoubtedly stay in my mind for the rest of the year. This all leads me to conclude my thoughts about Matthew Vaughn. It's such a shame that he can't rein in all his different ideas - it doesn't know whether it wants to be a serious, gory action flick, a layered critique of an age-old genre, a love letter to said genre, or a straight comedy. He debuted with Layer Cake over 10 years ago, but still hasn't managed to get a hold of what he's trying to do. Kingsman is a scattershot film: he tries to do far too many different things, and fails on far too many fronts. Vaughn is clearly talented, but it's almost like he needs a director himself. If for his next picture he can co-direct, or find a hands-on producer who can shout at him when he goes too far astray, then he could have something genuinely great on his hands. For now, we have to live with this. Even if you infrequently laugh - hell, even if you frequently laugh - at its core the film is broken, and there's no way around it. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a mess of three different movies in unsynchronised disharmony.

An Unexpected Journey: 2/5 Desolation of Smaug: 4/5 Battle of the Five Armies: 3/5

There has been a worrying lack of Erin Brockovich votes so far. Only people who have put it on their lists are two really awesome people who I won't name *cough* me and Tele *cough*

We're not even at the end of March and we've had 5 $50M+ openings this year. At the same time in 2014, there was only one.