Metal Reviews

i usually enjoy movies whenever i do watch them, but it's starting them that's the hard part. i have a hard time committing an hour and a half or more to sitting down and watching something. i watch a lot of tv with my wife and tv is generally worse but it only asks for your time in 20 minute chunks.

also most things kind of suck. like Jeff Who Lives at Home was funny and i felt things and it was even kind of subtle in how it portrayed a family that was crippled by the loss of the father and it brought the dad-feelings back for the finale in a way that brought a bit of a tear to my eye, but also way too much happened in a single day and the characters were dislikable but in a cute way rather than an i dunno 'genuine'(?) way and the ending was way too happy (but if something bad happened it would've been way too sad?). and i kinda feel like every actor acts the same in every movie so by watching a different movie you're just seeing the same character in different situations through a different lens, so they might as well just be in a tv show

Don't understand any of you. Enjoyed the latest Mission Impossible at the weekend, and saw two good and very different films since - What We Do in The Shadows and The Drop. Your attention spans are clearly failing you with age. ;)

I don't think it has to do with attention span. I listen to jazz and classical which needs quite a bit of attention just because of long compositions especially with classical. I'm just not really interested in motion pictures these days. I saw "Mad Max" a few weeks back and thoroughly enjoyed it but the feeling I described was still apparent. It's strange, I enjoyed the movie but still wanted it to end sooner.

I liked that scientology documentary, but it all comes off as a little too crazy. I guess I just don't get people who so obviously enter into cults. Similar to documentaries on Jamestown or the Manson family.

I think TV now has surpassed what I want from movies. So I don't love movies, but the girlfriend does. We don't watch TV together, because she doesn't wasn't to sit through full seasons of things, but also doesn't want to start something that isn't already completed. The last series she watched was The Wire and The Shield before that. Other than that she catches random episodes and has me explain broad plot lines to her minus the heinous violence of shows like Sons of Anarchy, etc. She absolutely hates sitting down to watch a movie, but really likes film as an art so it is a constant pull between us, because if we don't watch something together we tend to end up on our computers on opposite sides of the couch after dinner. Not nearly as bad as other folk, I imagine, but it happens. When we do watch a movie, she usually ends up loving it, although that does require me to kinda screen things and be assured that what we're watching is legit beforehand. Right now, she just wants to watch Kurosawa's Rashomon and I'm just not super interested in it, but in order to watch the next movie on her mental list we have to get through this one. Tres strange.

This. As well as noodles point about starting them and devoting 90-120 minutes of my time to something regardless of whether or not it turns out to be something I enjoy. I can sit around and listen to records all day and surf the web some while doing it and not have a problem. Granted records are only 30-60 minutes usually but still when I watch movies I just feel like I'm forcing myself to do it and it just doesn't have the same affect on me that music does.

the narrative structure of tv appeals to me more because it can keep on going. characters and plots get more space to develop and breathe rather than having to do it all in an hour and a half (i think novels appeal to me more than short stories for the same reason. shorter space means everything is jam packed with significance which makes me think more about the story-ness of it all)

Well said, noodles. 90% of movies out there today are garbage with cool action scenes, and I have no desire to sift through the indies/foreign for the hidden gems. The development of characters over 100 episode arcs is far more interesting: when TV switched from episodic to serialization it just became a matter of time before it surpassed movies.

Modern movies are too long as well, why does every comic book movie need to be 2:15 to 2:30 exactly? Bergman, Kieslowski, and Herzog said infinitely more about the human condition in 90 minutes. Give me Pretty fucking Little Liars over any big movie out there today.

If you'd seriously rather watch Pretty Little Liars than Mad Max: Fury Road or even Mission Impossible Rogue Nation then something has gone very wrong. I appreciate that TV has come on leaps and bounds in the last decade or so, but hell, for every good season of a show there's a hundred crappy ones. Seek out quality wherever it exists, but don't pretend that giving up on movies because you find it hard to focus for more than an hour at a time isn't daft as hell. Have I just set my standards lower than the rest of you, or something? Preferring one art form to another isn't strange, but rejecting one entirely for spurious reasons is most definitely odd.

Who said that? Of course I was half-joking with your highlighted comment, but I've always been consistent about not caring for action movies with explosions, no matter how good they might be in sum. This is not some new revelation: recall how unpopular my opinion was about Inception relying on guns too much?

And how could the attention span accusations apply to someone willing to sit through 4 hours straight of a mediocre teen show?

I just edited for grammar guys. No big argument here like the old days, sorry.

Hm, clearly took you too seriously. Won't do that again! ;) Seriously, dealing with the pronounced averageness of new Soulfly and Fear Factory albums may have taken a toll on my brainpower, but I honestly can't remember what you said about Inception...

Oh I said I liked Inception but wished the gun battles weren't so pushed forward in the second half of the film. I always take your recommendations seriously but I also love how cheap having collections of entire TV shows is through netflix. I like that most TV has a limited budget and simply can't rely on some of those scenes that big budget movies have to have.

Still, I'd be remiss if I said I didn't love the movie Heat, primarily because of how climatic and relatively realistic the bank robbery/gun battle scene was done. That was an example of a movie doing something that TV simply couldn't do. I might very well get back into movies, selectively, once money becomes less of an issue. I like going to the theater as much as anyone else does, and then maybe we could discuss which movies we've seen instead of me castigating film partially because I am too cheap to go see them.

Loved "Heat." Engaging, and yes, very realistic and to the point. There aren't very many movies that I would like to go and see in the theater these days. Much rather prefer to spend that money on expanding my musical library and books than anything else. Only future will tell better.

This matter really boils down to if you would like to use to ears for pleasure or, more so, follow a story-line for a few hours. I would rather sit through an album with the booklet open, brows the art work and read the lyrics. Taste and preferences simply differ.

Well now I feel like I should have checked my privilege, heh. I'm hardly rich but am comfortable enough these days to fund things like cinema trips without a second thought... Hope your money worries are over soon, I've been there and it sucks.

Are you up to date on True Detective season 2 btw? The shoot-out partway through is seriously the best I've seen in years and quite possibly since Heat, which is indeed a classic that I need to see again soon.

generally if there's more than about 30 seconds of shooting i start to lose interest. inception's guns bored me because like kind of boring and also it was dreams so they could've been shooting lightning bolts out of their fists and breathing fire. or at least the gun version of that rotating room fight.

i tried to go see the lego movie in theatres but then it was 15$/ticket so my friend and i drank beer by the canal instead

Everyone acted like the worst show ever and now the show got its act together. Should I watch it?

Movie theaters always fill a social role for me. Going out to the movies when I can illegally download fucking anything always made it more of a little venture to hit the theater.

It's nowhere near as good as the first season but is decent enough and entertaining enough so far that I would say so.

Yeah, I do like that aspect of the cinema. Always a treat, and always feels special since I didn't go much as a kid.

Funny you should say that. The big budget action spectacles are the only movies I will actually go see at the theater. If I'm going to spend 10-15 bucks on a ticket then I want to watch something that is going to "Wow!" me both visually and sonically. Dramas and thrillers can be saved for home viewing.

I've always preferred watching movies to television shows, mainly due to the time investment required to keep up with the story-line. With movies, I only have to devote one 2-2.5 hour block of viewing time as opposed to a prolonged commitment of following a TV series over several seasons. It took me forever to finish both Rome and Deadwood and I'm only just starting Season 4 of Sons of Anarchy.

Now that you all mention it, I haven't watched Heat in a long time either. Will have to do that sometime in the near future.

this is weird to me. any movie with sufficient attention to cinematography is worth seeing on a big screen, and pretty much all good movies care about cinematography, so imo any movie worth watching is probably worth watching in theatres. and i saw first hobbit movie and Man of Steel in theatres and i guess maybe being big made them better but they were still awful

Some movies lend themselves better to the cinema experience than others. I just don't see the point of spending $10-15 at the theater when I can get the same effect from watching the movie at home for much cheaper and without distraction. Seeing a big budget flick like Avatar in 3-D Imax delivered such a grand visual/auditory experience that you simply can't replicate by watching it on the small screen.

War movies and historical epics especially are essential theater viewing. I remember seeing Saving Private Ryan in the theater and getting so completely immersed in the hail of gunfire and explosions on the D-Day landing that I had a slight feeling of shell-shock after the scene ended.

'71

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2614684/

Quite good, if a bit over-complex towards the end.