What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Newer Films)

[JoeinAR 1,949]

That maybe true. But the theatres we visit have very respectful guests. My biggest problem was a lady who used a bottle of cologne. Smelled like the whole bottle. 

[Naïve Old Fart 9,512]

At least she didn't smell like stale nachos, or half-eaten hot dogs, or salty popcorn.

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Those would have been better. Way better. 

At least that would have washed off right away.

[Wojo 2,453]

1 hour ago, publicist said:

People should stop clinging to their pathetic lives.

 

Meaning..... What? 

 

People should stop worrying about stupid movie theaters and cell phones? 

 

Or people should be more willing and tolerant of being killed in public places? 

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Considering how many people die at the theatre in arguments its on the low end of worries. You are far more likely to die in a terrorist attack in the World Trade Center or see Chicago win the World Series. 

[Wojo 2,453]

I'll take "shit that's already happened" for $200, Alex... 

[Quintus 5,399]

2 hours ago, Woj said:

 

Meaning..... What? 

 

People should stop worrying about stupid movie theaters and cell phones? 

 

Or people should be more willing and tolerant of being killed in public places? 

 

Neither option was the obvious option. "People should just leave their fucking phone alone for a couple of hours and watch the fucking movie instead."

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Its a shame people can't be courteous. Its so easy if you are not a milleninial or gen z

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Typical baby boomer crap!

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Bull. This generation of young are the rudest most self absorbed group of all time. 

[Wojo 2,453]

It's really easy. Don't sit near people, turn to silent, and dim the display. 

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Very sensible. The carmike cinema we attend give you reward points for putting your phone on silent.

[Wojo 2,453]

And the theater closest to me says they'll boot any phone user without a refund. 

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Awesome

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Forcing phone users out of the cinema is bad for business. How else are people able to tweet about the movie, thereby generating free advertising?

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Do it after. Never during. I support the death penalty for that.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

The movie is forgotten afterward. The tweeting must be done while viewing the film while it's still fresh in their minds.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

23 hours ago, publicist said:

Cellphone status checks every 3 minutes are the worst offenders. When i saw RPO in Bangkok i became super-annoyed by hundreds of jittery asians having their display at 100%, virtually always checking FB, Twitter and god knows what else. 

In Canada, I was at the cinema six times and I haven't seen one person using his phone during the show.

People should turn it off - no standby or whatever - really off!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

1 minute ago, Brundlefly said:

People should turn it off - no standby or whatever - really off!

 

Why?

 

Airplane mode is fine. No reason to totally switch off your phone.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

1 minute ago, Stefancos said:

Why?

 

Airplane mode is fine. No reason to totally switch off your phone.

Because it's the classic move like in theaters!

[Quintus 5,399]

5 hours ago, Woj said:

It's really easy. Don't sit near people, turn to silent, and dim the display. 

 

Is this what you do?

 

10 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

 

Why?

 

Why not? I switch mine off, it's a non issue.

[publicist 4,643]

I always forget the PIN, so i'm fucked afterwards.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

25 minutes ago, Quintus said:

Why not? I switch mine off, it's a non issue.

 

So is hitting airplane mode. There's no real difference.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

You ever seen a grown movie patron naked?

[The Illustrious Jerry 3,356]

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

When these things came out I just couldn't stand the orcs and stuff. But watching it again, the animation is junk. The puppetry in TLOR is much more effective. Anyways, Martin Freeman and Ian MacKellenare great!

[JoeinAR 1,949]

4 hours ago, publicist said:

I always forget the PIN, so i'm fucked afterwards.

Dont use one

[Chen G. 3,949]

51 minutes ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

Anyways, Martin Freeman and Ian MacKellen are great!

 

Don't treat it as the story of Bilbo Baggins.

 

Think of it as the story of Thorin and the thirteen Dwarves, and it'll work much better! The guys who play them are great, as well.

 

I'd say its Jackson's best film outside of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

[KK 3,307]

39 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Don't treat it as the story of Bilbo Baggins.

 

Think of it as the story of Thorin and the thirteen Dwarves, and it'll work much better! The guys who play them are great, as well.

 

Well, that's how most people see it, because that's how PJ chose to frame the narrative. And even within that framework, it's shoddy, at best. DoS is mostly a visual mess that overcompensates for it's predecessor's slow pace, sacrifices its more interesting defining characters and is only somewhat saved by some fun performances in Laketown and a great rendering of the Smaug/Bilbo confrontation. It's ranking credibility is that it's not as bad as the god-awful BotFA.

 

AUJ remains the best Hobbit film. And Heavenly Creatures is easily PJ's best film outside of LOTR. Not even close.

[Chen G. 3,949]

Its all the better for being a Dwarven story! Thorin is a much, much better character than Bilbo, and the plight of the Dwarves is far more relatable than anything Bilbo has to offer. I'd even say a lot of the Dwarven roles are better acted.

 

I don't think it overcompensates with the pacing. I think its assured. I love that it slows down for the introduction of Laketown, so that when Bard confronts Thorin, his arguments aren't put forth as a strawman on the part of the film. That's another great thing about Thorin being the actual protagonist: the motivations of the company, while noble, are (unlike the Fellowship's) far more provinicial, and as such - they can be undermined by the narrative, which is great, and it pays off in Thorin's dragon sickness.

 

I like both it and The Battle of the Five Armies better than An Unexpected Journey. They're far more cinematic and dramatic. Most of the critics that I know of agree with me. Honestly, I think you're letting your fondness of the book dictate your favorite out of the three (your pick being the one closest to the source material), instead of asking "which is the better film?" I love the book, too. But I accept that film adaptations can stray quite far from the book, as long as it makes for a good movie. Simply put: If I enjoyed watching something in a movie, I'll never ever complain about that something being unlike the book.

[KK 3,307]

Nah. It has nothing to do with loyalty to the book. That would indeed be a pointless exercise to take up with the Hobbit films. Besides, off the top of my head, wasn't DoS closer to the book's events anyway?

 

AUJ is in all accounts, a better film, at least in my book. It's bloated, yes, but it feels the most complete of the three. The set-pieces, for the most part, feel well defined (the Goblintown sequence was a genuine fun PJ roller-coaster!). There is some real meat for the actors to chew on (Gandalf's good morning, the unexpected party, riddles in the dark, etc), something which the other films sorely lacked. It's also the film that features New Zealand and the "real" Middle-Earth in its glorious form the most, rather than the mostly studio-shot CG crapfests that followed in DoS and BotFA. And for all its flaws, there are parts of AUJ that are genuinely impressive. It was probably the last PJ film that felt like there were properly planned and choreographed sequences (probably because he had the most pre-production time on it), unlike DoS, where he literally asked the cast to run around in front a green screen, and the set-piece was built around them in post.

 

The rest of the trilogy feels more like scraps scrambled and salvaged together to make the deadline to get the print out. BotFA, especially.

 

And I agree with you that Thorin has a more well-defined narrative arc in the films, but he's also pretty boring. He's just too monochromatic in his motives and personality. And Freeman just out-acts Armitage in every scene anyway.

[Chen G. 3,949]

Thorin is actually my second favorite character of the entire series (behind Samwise Gamge which, of course, cannot be surpassed). I guess that's where the subjective aspect of consuming media comes into play. For me, from literally the first few minutes of the prologue in An Unexpected Journey, I was hooked on the character. And once the main four Dwarves arrived at Bag End, I very quickly grew to like them to.

 

Its also telling that I managed to distinguish quite a few of the other, "secondary" Dwarves on the first viewing: I distincly recall Dori, Ori, Oin, Gloin and Bombur; and of course Bofur, but he's a main character, too. That's not bad in terms of getting your characters across to the audience within such a big ensemble. And, upon rewatching the series, I was able to "rediscover" and find new appreciation to some of the characters, which is always a nice thing: I now like Dwalin (Graham McTavish) far more than I did the first couple of times I saw the film.

 

I don't mind issues of production value, as long as there's a gripping story underneath it. But there's plenty of practical effects in the Desolation of Smaug, as well. Really, where it hits CG-overload is in Battle of the Five Armies, but because it holds what is, to my mind, a very poignant conclusion to the story (again, of Thorin), it overrides the quality of the effects, to me. Again, an example of the subjective aspect of evaluating cinema.

 

Even though I love that section of the film, I actually have issues with the Goblin-town sequence, more so than with the setpieces in the other two films: the geography isn't nearly as well-defined: Appearantly, at some point, the company splits into two groups without us ever seeing the split happen, and there are all these montages of individual Dwarves standing their ground, which clashes with the wide-shots that all depict the company constantly running away. I get that its used to show off the individual Dwarves' (especially the older guys - Balin and Oin) fighting skills, but it comes at the expense of the stakes and the orientation of the audience.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Five Armies is the best of the 3.

[Quintus 5,399]

Everything you need to know about why PJ's Hobbit is so shit is in these two excellent videos:

 

 

[KK 3,307]

Sigh.

 

It's times like these that I really miss BloodBoal.

 

[Chen G. 3,949]

21 minutes ago, Quintus said:

these two excellent videos

 

I know Lindsay's work very well, and I've watched both videos. I like her follow-up better than this one.

 

She makes some good points about the stakes, for instance. But I disagree with her on a lot of subjects, in general, and I found some of her points very stock. Mostly, she too treats it like a straightforward adaptation of the book, rather than dissecting it as Thorin's story. The way I look at it, is as an adaptation of the appendix "Durin's Folk", first, and "The Hobbit", second.

 

24 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Five Armies is the best of the 3.

 

I'm not going to argue that. It was a close call for me between the two, anyway.

[Quintus 5,399]

Thorin is awful in these movies, IMO. I think nobody would really have a mind to watch The Hobbit movie without considering Bilbo Baggins the chief protagonist and the main focus of the story.

[KK 3,307]

6 minutes ago, Quintus said:

Everything you need to know about why PJ's Hobbit is so shit is in these two excellent videos:

 

 

 

Seeing some of it, it's been pretty damn spot on so far. Will check out the rest soon.

[Chen G. 3,949]

21 minutes ago, Quintus said:

 I think nobody would really have a mind to watch The Hobbit movie without considering Bilbo Baggins the chief protagonist and the main focus of the story.

 

Bilbo is, to these films, what you'd call a "false protagonist." Essentially, he's the protagonist of the first film, which is where he undergoes his greatest character development. Once that's "out of the way" so to speak, the film can focus on either the company as a whole (especially the first half of The Desolation of Smaug) or Thorin, individually - as The Battle of the Five Armies does. Bilbo functions, in the later two films, more as an audience surrogate than a protagonist.

 

A lot of people say Frodo is a false protagonist for Sam, in The Lord of the Rings. So its a known practice with these films and, to some degree, even in the book. Hell, Beren is the false protagonist of "Beren and Luthien."

 

If someone like Chris Hartwell can make a web essay (thankfully much more concise than any of Lindsay's) about how "great" Pirates of the Carribean 2 is, than I can certainly defend something like The Desolation of Smaug.

[KK 3,307]

9 minutes ago, Quintus said:

Thorin is awful in these movies, IMO. I think nobody would really have a mind to watch The Hobbit movie without considering Bilbo Baggins the chief protagonist and the main focus of the story.

 

Armitage's stale performance doesn't do the character much favour either. Freeman and poor McKellan, who tries his very best to imbue as much life as he could to his generic lines (by BotFA, he's practically reduced to a grumbling caricature of himself) outclass everyone in the company. Ken Stott was great as Balin though.

[Chen G. 3,949]

12 minutes ago, KK said:

Armitage's stale performance doesn't do the character much favour either. 

 

Its an excellent performance! His intensity in the first half of The Battle of the Five Armies is incredible. Better than Freeman's.

[Glóin the Dark 1,220]

The portrayal of Glóin is an atrocity.

[The Illustrious Jerry 3,356]

Look what I've done. A Hobbit discussion!

[publicist 4,643]

It's a curse, like uttering under one's breath the dreaded names of the other two scottish plays, 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars'.

[Chen G. 3,949]

Because god forbid we ever discuss that on...a discussion board!

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

7 minutes ago, publicist said:

It's a curse, like uttering under one's breath the dreaded the names of the other two scottish plays, 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars'.

 

So which one's better?

[publicist 4,643]

There should be a quota, like no fanboy shall devote himself to more than 10 mentions per trilogy/month.

1 minute ago, Margo Channing said:

So which one's better?

 

The third Hobbit movie, an abomination so painful i switched over to the Audi channel.

[A24 4,331]

You got great stamina, pubs, I already gave up after 5 minutes during the first Hobbit movie. 

[KK 3,307]

45 minutes ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

Look what I've done. A Hobbit discussion!

 

Indeed! I say we ban you! Punishment fits the crime.

[Marian Schedenig 8,191]

3 hours ago, KK said:

And Heavenly Creatures is easily PJ's best film outside of LOTR. Not even close.

 

*Perhaps* even better.

 

The Frighteners and King Kong are both far better than any of the Hobbit movies.

[publicist 4,643]

6 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

You got great stamina, pubs, I already gave up after 5 minutes during the first Hobbit movie. 

 

I saw that in the cinema, there was no escape, i didn't carry the keys and it was December.

1 minute ago, Marian Schedenig said:

The Frighteners and King Kong are both far better than any of the Hobbit movies.

 

Bad Taste is better.