2012 movies.....

[kalfitegrdan]

Originally Posted by mastodon421

Eh I thought it was alright. I mean I don't tend to judge mindless action movies on their stories, but the story in Ninja Assassin was fucking awful beyond the point of overlooking. The action was good, but there was too little of it to overpower the horrible story.

Every single bit of this. That story was horrendous.

[Natrlhi]

Originally Posted by mastodon421

Eh I thought it was alright. I mean I don't tend to judge mindless action movies on their stories, but the story in Ninja Assassin was fucking awful beyond the point of overlooking. The action was good, but there was too little of it to overpower the horrible story.

Originally Posted by kalfitegrdan

Every single bit of this. That story was horrendous.

Wait, what? It occurs to me that judging an action movie - in particular, a martial arts film - by its lack of plot or character development is somewhat like judging a porno by its lack of plot or character development. Just sayin'.

In other words, I think maybe some folks are missing the point. The classic kung fu movies of the 1970's had horrendous plots, no character development, and the dialog was barely understandable (plus, even when you could understand it, it didn't even make sense half the time), and they were still awesome. Why? Because the fighting, although highly choreographed, was impressive as hell while still being fairly realistic because the actors were actually doing it - they weren't suspended from wires.

At any rate, on topic: I saw "God Bless America" last night. I thought it was...interesting. Best movie ever? Fuck no. Best movie of the year? Hardly. Most novel concept for a movie ever? Not really. This type of "what would happen if we started purging all the assholes of the world?" thing has been done before in slightly different ways. The point here is, it was done by a middle-aged sad sack who thought he had nothing left to lose and a troubled teen girl who was smart way beyond her years. The social commentary was pretty interesting, anyway. Many of the things they made fun of in this movie are things that get under my skin as well, so I felt I could relate. Not bad for an innocent little socio-political comic satire disguised as a mindless carnage fest.

[mastodon421]

Originally Posted by Natrlhi

Wait, what? It occurs to me that judging an action movie - in particular, a martial arts film - by its lack of plot or character development is somewhat like judging a porno by its lack of plot or character development. Just sayin'.

In other words, I think maybe some folks are missing the point. The classic kung fu movies of the 1970's had horrendous plots, no character development, and the dialog was barely understandable (plus, even when you could understand it, it didn't even make fucking sense half the time), and they were still awesome. Why? Because the fighting, although highly choreographed, was impressive as hell while still being fairly realistic because the actors were actually doing it - they weren't suspended from wires.

At any rate, on topic: I saw "God Bless America" last night. I thought it was...interesting. Best movie ever? Fuck no. Best movie of the year? Hardly. Most novel concept for a movie ever? Not really. This type of "what would happen if we started killing all the assholes of the world?" thing has been done before in slightly different ways. The point here is, it was done by a middle-aged sad sack who thought he had nothing left to lose and a troubled teen girl who was smart way beyond her years. The social commentary was pretty interesting, anyway. Many of the things they made fun of in this movie are things that get under my skin as well, so I felt I could relate. Not bad for an innocent little socio-political comic satire disguised as a mindless violence-fest.

Normally I agree 110%. I take every movie for what it is and never try to over-analyze anything (especially action movies). Ninja Assassin is one of the rare exceptions to the rule. There are movies like The Protector, which has a horrible plot, but the action is frequent and awesome, so the poor story doesn't matter at all. On the other hand, Ninja Assassin's plot took up way more time than it should of and a vast majority of the action (which is pretty good, but not great mind you) takes place in the first scene and at the very end.

[dcmetal108]

If we are on the talk of amazing martial arts action movies with little to no plot then The Raid Redemption wins. Easily within my top 10 movies this year.

[hellawaits77ny]

V/H/S was pretty creepy. Thought it would be a little more "fucked up", though.

[kalfitegrdan]

Originally Posted by mastodon421

Normally I agree 110%. I take every movie for what it is and never try to over-analyze anything (especially action movies). Ninja Assassin is one of the rare exceptions to the rule. There are movies like The Protector, which has a horrible plot, but the action is frequent and awesome, so the poor story doesn't matter at all. On the other hand, Ninja Assassin's plot took up way more time than it should of and a vast majority of the action (which is pretty good, but not great mind you) takes place in the first scene and at the very end.

Yeah, again, what he said.

[BloodoftheKings]

I saw Dredd 3D tonight. It was just straight up fun. It's 90 minutes of pure, violent action with little to no story or character development. It's also one of the few movies these days that actually puts the 3D to good use. It doesn't have much re-watch value but I would still recommend it.

[Dextrimental]

Originally Posted by BloodoftheKings

I saw Dredd 3D tonight. It was just straight up fun. It's 90 minutes of pure, violent action with little to no story or character development. It's also one of the few movies these days that actually puts the 3D to good use. It doesn't have much re-watch value but I would still recommend it.

Seeing it tonight. Judge Dredd was my comic book hero as a kid so hopefully this is at least in some way the movie I've been waiting for!

[Natrlhi]

Originally Posted by dcmetal108

If we are on the talk of amazing martial arts action movies with little to no plot then The Raid Redemption wins. Easily within my top 10 movies this year.

I've heard that was pretty tits.

In other news, I watched "The Hunger Games" last night. I was...pretty underwhelmed if I'm to be honest. I thought it was fairly predictable and somewhat boring. It wasn't awful, but I just wasn't impressed. I got the distinct impression that the books might be better than the film, but since I haven't read the books I would have no idea about that.

[mastodon421]

The Raid: Redemption was fucking fantastic. One of the best pure action movies in recent memory imo. If you even have a slight interest in action/kung-fu movies, See it ASAP.