Matt C

I want to defend Sleepy Hollow, but I feel the same way. For me, the movie just falls apart somewhere between halfway and 3/4 of the way through and it seems like they didn't have a completed script and just kept rolling while the crew passed around a doobie.

Quantum of Solace
Somewhere in this rushed mess of a movie, there could have been something interesting. The film's main problem is that it sets up a cool premisse in the first fifteen minutes (we pick up right where we left Casino Royale and Bond is about to start digging, investigating Mr. White and the people behind Vesper), only to demote that to the film's subplot once Olga Kurylenko and Mathie Amalric enter the story. The opera scene is really cool, but other than that, it's a wasted film.

It's terrible.
Jurassic World, on the other hand, is strangely good. I mean, it's nothing great, but shit. It was so refreshing after like decades of endless bad sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes and fucking comic book movies AKA Summer blockbusters.

Not hard to be better than that scientifically inaccurate, plot-hole riddled, eardrum-damaging crapfest.
(but actually only morons feel that way)

Did anyone really think Spielberg and Williams had falled out?
It's always been perfectly clear why JW was unable to score Bridge Of Spies

I'm often one for producing a few little fairy man tears during good heart warmers but this movie failed to affect me.

My guess is that Quantum of Solace was being edited as it was shot due to the compressed time schedule. It shows... Forster doesn't let the scenes flow properly. I watched QoS once and never want to see it again, that's how forgettable and sloppily put together it was.
Skyfall was decent... well-shot and nicely cut together, but I really didn't get the praise people showered on it.
My interest in Bond has dropped altogether. It isn't Daniel Craig's fault.

I suppose, even though it is easy to own anything your heart desires via the internet, I look at film scores being rare in today's world because I don't know anyone outside of this board who listens to them. Let alone buys them. I listen to popular music today along with my friends as well but to me film scores are more special. Maybe I'm just weird but orchestrated music feels deeper and more emotionally complex than pop music. Well actually acknowledging that I don't think makes me weird. Even still buying and listening to film scores, despite them being more easily acquired in this age, feels rare and special to me. Perhaps that makes me weird lol
On another note I am definitely going to have to listen to Krull. It has been mentioned a lot since reading these boards.

Proof that Jurassic World had more animatronics than just the Apatosaurus.

Even though it's been reiterated several times over, here's another article detailing how J.J. Abrams went back to the old-school techniques for filming The Force Awakens -- matte paintings, forced perspectives, practical sets, models.
Why J.J. Abrams and His Crew Went Back to 1977 for 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'
Abrams was so attentive to detail that the production designers even researched the way the sets were built for the original trilogy to align the new film more closely.

Even though it's been reiterated several times over, here's another article detailing how J.J. Abrams went back to the old-school techniques for filming The Force Awakens -- matte paintings, forced perspectives, practical sets, models.
Why J.J. Abrams and His Crew Went Back to 1977 for 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'
Abrams was so attentive to detail that the production designers even researched the way the sets were built for the original trilogy to align the new film more closely.

RIP James Roy Horner – a bit of soapboxing
One of those elusive creatures of the movie world that magically appeared at the right time at the right place - Spielberg's music-craving “new“ Hollywood, to be precise – James Horner was a most successful but also odd film composer, who reigned popular culture for a long time, longer than usual for most of his contemporaries. The end of an era, indeed.
Often the butt of jokes for several right and twice as many wrong reasons (mostly his idiosyncratic ways of musical expression), he possessed a talent to enhance movies, especially those with a big trust in their musical collaborator, with an uncanny ability. His insistence on often long and classically structured pieces that were fluid and, when called for, breathtakingly orchestrated betrayed the unmistakable hand of a musical purist – a feat that is doubly impressive in his chosen field which is still dominated by musical wheeziness and lack of structure.
Mistakenly confused as heir to Spielberg's John Williams, partly due to both men’s heavy penchant for the russian masters, Horner actually had more in common with his short-time mentor Jerry Goldsmith, with whom he formed a strange love-hate relationship in later years. Though in many respects polar opposites, the gruff hemingwayesque Goldsmith vs. the more effeminate, shy Horner, there was a shared belief for catching a movie’s core with a simple, direct theme, augmenting it with more textural and motivic ideas and also, more importantly, a passion for experimentation and unusual instruments and timbres.
Horner, like Goldsmith, was a workhorse, though maybe with a slightly different motivation. Since his early days - he was only 25 when he started to enter the movie world - he was steadfast in establishing himself as a quintessential Hollywood animal, doing all kinds of movies, often up to 5 a year, in virtually all genres.
It was clear from the outset that his biggest gift was for melody and a willingness to break out of established musical memes, not afraid to cook up either shamelessly sentimental tunes that played like dusted-off reminders of the golden MGM era or assembling Bulgarian street musicians that hardly could understand a word of English in posh London recording studios for creating most wondrous synergies between orchestra and world music - it is to Horner’s credit that he early on was a vocal critic of the subdued racism and snobbish attitude of the conservative musical establishment.
The prize of big Hollywood success may have robbed us of some of Horner’s inventiveness though: with the heavy workload it soon became apparent that his biggest Achilles heel was his tendency to recycle material mercilessly (his own and that of others), a trait that worsened with later years.
Also, the formula and manipulative approach of many commercial pictures he worked on brought forth a likewise superficial side in his music that often helped to flatten potentially complex characters and situations to simple stereotypes that often sold even pictures for adult audiences like fairy tales, often with a heavy dose of sugar.
This of course made him a logical and sought-after collaborator for fantasy and children’s movies: those were his haven and while he abandoned them in later years for more portentous epics , there was an irresistible sweep to them, maybe the final proof that only movies as the one new art form of the 20th century, were able to release and contain the best of the past and the dazzling innovations of the future all at once, often within a single person.
Horner was able to go deeper when he wished: with more idiosyncratic artists like Mel Gibson he made a remarkable pair of pictures, ranging between bittersweet Americana of THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE to the ambitious BRAVEHART, a then-unexpected epic that made Horner a runaway success and which, apart from a few too-populist touches, also confirmed Horner’s attachment to strict classical forms and his eagerness to expose younger audiences to the beauty of, say, Vaughan-Williams modal writing – and finally, the less-beloved stepbrother APOCALYPTO saw Horner return to the wholly experimental realms of his early days with its almost abstract synth-and-percussion approach.
In the fast-changing world of movies, Horner became somewhat of a bitter recluse in recent years. From what could be gathered from interviews, he felt hurt and rejected by the lack of loyalty and integrity of former collaborators but also betrayed a more wistful perspective on his profession.
His colourful approach to music is less and less in demand these days and even his slick SPIDER-MAN score, while fitting this picture, seemed hopelessly refined and pushing emotions that big tentpole pictures have long abandoned by now. He still hit home from time to time – though mostly for reliable standby’s like James Cameron or Jean-Jacques Annaud.
It remains an open question why he stubbornly refused to let go of certain trademarks that did their share to tarnish his reputation. It may have been for psychological reasons not easy to understand but for a composer who could with so much ease dream up fluid 10-minute pieces, it seems a bit puzzling.
I may close with a quote that is attributed to Billy Wilder and William Wyler, who at the burial of their admired colleague Ernst Lubitsch muttered to each other “Oh God, no more Lubitsch”, to which the other replied “Even worse, no more Lubitsch films!”.
So especially for this reason with a heavy heart, Goodbye James Horner!

If we all play Krull with maximum volume, Mr. Horner might resurrect with force.

I'm trying to stop! I'm trying to stop!

I enjoyed it a lot more than the first IMO. Eva Green makes everything better.
There are some shots in the Final Cut that look great with the pumped-up contrast, but in the first two caps it's just overdone. I hate that most directors nowadays have no sense of holding back when it comes to DI mastering. It almost undoes the original DPs' careful work into lighting the damn thing. I think more movies could look better if they just hold to 'basic' color correction of flat-looking footage.

Inside Out
It was fairly decent but not as accomplished as Anal Gape Stretchers 1. Max Hardcore doesn't make them like he used to.

I just put mine in a jewel case and ditched the packaging. What else can you do? That packaging was designed to damage the disc. These aren't vinyls.

You wouldn't know what Neoclassicism meant if it bit you on the arse.

Temple of Doom
The best Indy score!

It is, by a large margin. And it's not shown in the trailers, only hinted at.
That in itself is refreshing, in an age where every other movie gives away major plot points and/or action scenes in the trailers.

It is, by a large margin. And it's not shown in the trailers, only hinted at.
That in itself is refreshing, in an age where every other movie gives away major plot points and/or action scenes in the trailers.

It is, by a large margin. And it's not shown in the trailers, only hinted at.
That in itself is refreshing, in an age where every other movie gives away major plot points and/or action scenes in the trailers.

I couldn't resist and I went to see it today. I had the perfect experience, no annoying commentators or chewing people, it was just right.
Let me just say that after 14 years of wait, it was worth it. I left the theatre with a smile from ear to ear, had it all the way home and still I'm smiling like an idiot.
It had its flaws, but all around it was a great popcorn movie. I'll comment more as people see it, the only downside were the cinematography (in night scenes was fine, but I really didn't like the day light) and the CGI wasn't as perfect as it could have been. Still, it returned to the more light horror roots of the original two movies, and I fucking loved that.
8/10 from me, I'm going to see it again with friends no doubt.
PS: *The* scene with the animatronic was brilliant. Wish we had had more of that!

Batman Returns is seriously one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen.

If the movie was simply about Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings going on sexual misadventures together, it would have been better.