Baumer's Top 50 of 2015 5) Creed 4) Jurassic World 3) Trumbo 2) It Follows...number one on pg 13

[IronJimbo]

8 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

Is it an actual remake? Or just inspired by it?

 

Regardless, you should see SECONDS, if you haven't. 

 

That films triggers me, a mind transplant, WTF DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? I would understand a brain transplant but mind???

[baumer]

@Telemachos youre the true Cliff Clavin of film. Youvr seen all kinds of odd and obscure titles.

 

According to IMDB it is a remake of that movie.

[baumer]

22 minutes ago, IronJimbo said:

 

That films triggers me, a mind transplant, WTF DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? I would understand a brain transplant but mind???

Watch the movie. Its what Transcendence tried to be

[75Live]

sadly I can't use any likes on this thread as I will run out too fast if I do

 

but good work so far  

[Dementeleus]

3 hours ago, Baumer said:

@Telemachos youre the true Cliff Clavin of film. Youvr seen all kinds of odd and obscure titles.

 

According to IMDB it is a remake of that movie.

 

Hmm, I took a look at the synopsis of SELF/LESS' plot. If it's a remake, it's a pretty loose one. Still may check it out on Netflix at some point.

 

Keep 'em coming, B!

[IronJimbo]

2 hours ago, 75live said:

sadly I can't use any likes on this thread as I will run out too fast if I do

 

but good work so far  

 

Huh you can run out of likes? I've found a couple of films in here I'm now interested in watching so yeah good work.

 

 

[baumer]

4 hours ago, IronJimbo said:

 

That films triggers me, a mind transplant, WTF DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? I would understand a brain transplant but mind???

Watch the movie. Its what Transcendence tried to be

[baumer]

Sorry about that last double post.

 

Just got off work. Am going to have a beer and watch a quarter of football and then get on this tonight.

[Avatree]

6 hours ago, Telemachos said:

 

Is it an actual remake? Or just inspired by it?

 

Regardless, you should see SECONDS, if you haven't. 

No, it is not a remake. Don't trust everything you see on IMDB.  

 

13 hours ago, Baumer said:

After we get to Zod and his drugs, here are the next four after:

 

25) Joey Potter stands by while her husband fights the Nazis (but not war, in court)

24) Pennywise listens to Eames and all hell breaks loose

23) Six Degrees of you know who now includes Glen Lantz

22) They offered me a 100 grand, when I found out it was you, I said I'd do it for nothing. (well he's not in this anymore but he was in the original)

25) Woman in Gold

24) The Revenant (not quite fair to refer to Poulter as It, given that the film isn't out yet... )

23) Black Mass

22) Fury Road ? - Wells was not in the original though, just the sequel...

[baumer]

Like I said, I can't make it too easy to figure out...a little bit of misdirection is good.

[baumer]

26) The Night Before:  Three wise men.  One wild Christmas

 

National Lampoon's A Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story....and The Night Before?  Well, let's see how it holds up in the years to come but right now, I'd have to say that this might make my list of must see Christmas movies. Seth Rogen has made another excellent film full of laughs and high jinx. Anthony Mackie and Joseph Gorden Levitt are along for4 the ride and with Rogen they make up three life long friends who have vowed to do their traditional things on Christmas Eve.  They began this tradition when Levitt's parents were tragically killed on Christmas Eve in a car accident.  They karaoke, eat Chinese food and  with this being a Rogen film, they do plenty of drugs.  Playing their drug supplier is Michael Shannon, in what might be his funnies role to date.  He is fucking awesome in this film and he made me laugh every time he showed up.  Other cameos include Mindy Kaling, Miley  Cyrus and James Franco.  This movie is funny from start to finish and it of course has a great message.  

 

Trivia:  Director Jonathan Levine revealed that all of the comedy in the film was ad libbed and the dramatic stuff was mostly adhered to in the script.

 

  

[baumer]

25) Woman In Gold:  They'll never admit to what they did because if they admit to one thing, they'll have to admit to it all.

 

 

Simon Curtis directs this near docudrama and he has a flair for art, music and for history.  This is based on a true story and it's based on books by Maria Altman and Randol Schonberg.  These are the two characters played by Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds.  

 

An 80 year old Maria Altman hires a young, rookie lawyer, Randal Schonberg (in perhaps a career best performance from Reynolds, although I still think he was Oscar worthy in  Waiting) to help retrieve a painting that was stolen from her family by the Nazi's.  The painting is simply called the Woman in Gold.  This is now hanging in Austria's Belvedere.  Randy's initial interest in the painting is strictly monetary as he discovers it is worth millions.  This is how he gets his firm to allow him to represent Maria.  Through a well developed relationship between Maria and Randy and a brilliant use of flashbacks to the time when the Nazi's were condemning Jews to death camps and stealing all that they owned, Maria and Randy ultimately triumph in what seems an impossible quest.  In doing so Randy gains a new appreciation for his background, and of course he grows to understand more about the Holocaust and his heritage.  

 

In addition to Mirren and Reynolds, the cast is excellent, especially Daniel Bruhl who is a researcher who assists Maria and Randy.  The Woman in Gold isn't very flashy but it is an incredibly well told story blessed with a fine cast and a film that has an important tale to be told.  

 

Trivia:  Andrew Garfield was originally cast in Ryan Reynolds role.  

 

 

[baumer]

24) The Revenant:  (Noun) One who has returned, as if from the dead.

 

The Revenant is a terrific film.  It's just too bad the middle of it weighs it down.  If they could have managed to trim about 15 minutes from the movie, this might have made my top ten of the year.  It's still a very good movie, but it could have been so much better.  As many have mentioned, this is the kind of film that you feel everything while watching.  Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has done an excellent job making you feel the cold, the isolation, the hunger and the pain.  In fact, the famous bear mauling scene was so realistic that it made me wince while watching it happen.  You also get lost in the landscape and feel for Hugh Glass when he is left for dead.  He's cold, alone, can hardly walk and is barely clinging to life.  But somehow he manages to hold on long enough to get his revenge.  I loved the first 30 minutes of the movie and the last 30 minutes.  It's the stuff in between that needed some work.  Worth mentioning are the two lead performances.  DiCaprio is Oscar worthy and if he doesn't win this year, then it has to be something personal between he and the academy.  Tom Hardy is also outstanding as the grunting, selfish troglodyte who has a different ideology than everyone.  He's just straight up mean and nasty and when he finally gets his due, you are happy to see it.  The Revenant is definitely ambitious and it's very well made.  I just wish it would have been a little shorter.

 

Trivia:  Tom Hardy watched Tom Berenger in Platoon for inspiration

Due to the difficult working condition, which included Inarritu being an asshole to work with, several members of the crew quit and vowed to never work with him again.

 

 

 

[Kalo]

Lower than I would put it. but you still seemed to enjoy it a lot at least. 

[baumer]

23) Black Mass:  Take your shot but make it your best.  Cause I get up, I eat ya.

 

It's strange, a lot of the complaints about this film are that it moves slowly.  I felt that way about The Revenant but not this one.  I liked the pace and enjoyed how it took it's time to let it all unravel at the pace it did.  You can attribute this to director Scott Cooper is someone I think I'm starting to appreciate.  He only has three films to his credit and while the other two are good but not great films, the one thing I have noticed about him is his qability to get terrific performances from his cast.  His other two features are Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace.  Crazy Heart got Jeff Bridges his first Oscar and Out of the Furnace has two performances that stuck with me.  The first was Woody Harrelson's who was just mean and nasty but moreso was Casey Affleck's.  I'd always been a fan of Ben's younger brother but never had I seen him give the kind of performance like he did in that film.  Cooper seems to be able to draw these intense and incredibly powerful performances from his cast.  He does it in here as well as Johnny Depp probably should have been nominated for an Oscar.  His quiet intensity is scary.  His character is obviously based on reality so I'm sure Depp used a lot of what he knew about Whitey Bulger but without the guidance of the director, maybe his performance isn't quite that good.  

 

Black Mass is a fascinating look at how the FBI and the mafia were bed together.  This also makes me wonder if this was common practice as we have now seen two really good films that describe this very thing, the other being the Departed.  And this of course blurs the lines of right and wrong, good and bad, virtuous and unscrupulous.  It's one of the themes that makes the film so good and interesting.  

 

Trivia:  In order to ensure that Depp's performance was as close to Whitey's character as possible, director Cooper hired several of Bulger's former associates as consultants who would either praise Depp when he did something that resembled Whitey or they would give advice as to how he could make it better.

 

[baumer]

22) Mad Max Fury Road:  What a lovely day.

 

Here's a film that is very odd to me.  I didn't really enjoy it, actually I didn't enjoy it at all.  I thought Tom Hardy was kind of abysmal as Max and I thought it was just a little too glossy strayed too far from the originals.  In the original, post apocalypse meant that weapons and ammo were rare, but not here.  They seem to be in abundant supply.  It's a film I will probably never see again and I'm still giving it an 8.5/10.  Why you might ask?  Why am I giving a film that I don't particularly like an 8.5 and why am I ranking it above a lot of films that I did like?  Two reasons.  One, @Telemachos has threatened me personally with bodily harm if I say anything too disparaging about the film and two I'm simply in awe with how they made this movie.  In my opinion, it's one of the greatest directing efforts of the year.  I'm simply in awe with how it looked, how it sounded, how it was designed and everything else from a technical standpoint.  I appreciate the film I just don't necessarily think it's my kind of movie.  But when you have a dude hanging on the front of a truck, playing guitar while flames shoot out of it, and somehow this makes sense in the film, you have done something really right.  I'm in awe of Mad Max Fury Road and I understand the praise its getting....even if I didn't really care for the movie.  

 

Trivia:  The film editor is Margaret Sixel, George Miller's wife.  She had 480 hours of footage to edit and it took three months to watch the movie.  

 

[baumer]

21) Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse:  Always bring protection

 

The most surprisingly awesome film of the year.  Every year there are one or two films that completely take me by surprise.  I knew nothing about the film going in except that the trailers were incredibly prosaic and did nothing for me.  I ended up seeing this one because I had some time to kill between shifts.  What I got in the 90 minutes was hilarity, action, more hilarity and a terrific script with wonderful little observations.  Tye Sheridan plays the leader of three kids who are still in Scouts.  He and his one buddy, played by Logan Miller, are kind of embarrassed to still be in scouts but they stay because the third in their party still loves it.  Tye Sheridan was one of the kids in Mud, and after seeing that movie I thought to myself that the  two kids would go places in Hollywood. Watch for Tye Sheridan, he will have a long career in my opinion.  The camera loves him and he has a natural charisma.  It also helps to have two incredibly beautiful actresses grace the screen.  One is Halston Sage from Paper Towns and Sarah Dumont I'd never heard of or seen before.  Both are great for a film like this.  Add in David Koechner and you have a terrific cast.  

 

The film itself is funny in a large way from beginning to end.  There's a lot of references to other zombie films and writers Carrie Lee Wilson and Emi Mochizuki find the right balance between horror and comedy.  This is much more comedy than it is horror but there's plenty of brains that get eaten and in perhaps my favourite scene, when a girl decides she is not going to sleep with a guy, "but you can go down on me," she lays back and has her pants removed.  But before the guy can get to it, he is eaten by the zombie, who then proceeds to do the deed.  When she finally realizes what's happening it's too late as she is eaten, and then then eaten again.

 

Trivia:  A mile marker in the film has Haddonefield as a a nearby city.  Haddonfield is of course where Michael Myers is from.

 

[4815162342]

2 hours ago, Baumer said:

22) Mad Max Fury Road:  What a lovely day.

 I didn't really enjoy it, actually I didn't enjoy it at all.  I thought Tom Hardy was kind of abysmal as Max and I thought it was just a little too glossy strayed too far from the originals.  In the original, post apocalypse meant that weapons and ammo were rare, but not here.  They seem to be in abundant supply.  It's a film I will probably never see again

 

Tell us how you really feel

[baumer]

And yet it is an outstanding achievement in film,  @4815162342

[Avatree]

Wow, someone actually liked Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse?