f13.net

Speaking of good movies, what a great ending. Even kinda seeing it coming, I had to rewind and watch it again. I remember my jaw being dropped and saying 'Oh shit' a few times.

The Prestige was fabulous from start to finish. Bowie as Tesla was just awesomesauce.

Yeah, this film is a twist ending done well. Even when you see it coming it still works and some nice acting too.

Bowie as Tesla. Bowie as Warhol. Bowie as Pilate. Bowie in Labyrinth. Bowie in Hunger. The man should act more.

Anyhow, I didn't see a lot of things coming. Liked it a lot.

Great movie.  It motivated me to read the book because, hey, the book a movie is based on is always better, right?

Umm, no.  It was pretty enjoyable right up until the end.  Christopher Priest is defintely not the kind of author that feels the need to shackle himself with such creatively stunting constructs like logic, or plot resolution.  The movie actually improves on the story.

Think that Bowie as Maj. Jack Celliers is probably the best acting he's done.

Sorry but Bowie is a subpar actor and this was a great film really enjoyed it.

I figured it out before it hit (usually I don't), but it was still a pretty good movie.  I definitely feel like I didn't waste my time or energy watching it.

A bit of advice on this one:

1.  The book is much better than the movie.
2.  If you have already read the book, do not expect the movie to be the same as the book.  In fact, consider them almost 100% different.

Good movie on its own.

The book was fantastic all the way up until the very last page.

I know.  It is sad, really.  I still give it a B plus.

I really loved this movie. Most people I know who saw it didn't like it.

If Jackman, Bale, and Caine didn't do as good a job as they did the movie would have been pretty meh, as it is it was enjoyable though.

The ending was obvious roughly 30 minutes before it happened.  The movie was fantastic until about that point, then it turned stupid.  

I didn't care about the twist. I cared about

I do feel like it suffered from the few too many twists syndrome that plagues a lot of movies these days. Sometimes I'm watching a film with twist after twist and I lose interest because the plot doesn't seem to matter to the writers as much as the supposed cleverness.

I do think what UnSub mentioned was the core of the story and should have been played up a bit more rather than the reveals at the end. In particular the penultimate reveal was not surprising at all to the point where I'd say it wasn't even supposed to be surprising except that the camerawork lingering on certain shots was clearly supposed to shock the viewer.

IMO it could have wrapped up 15-20 minutes earlier and been a better film. I still liked it, just thought it lost the plot a bit in the third act.

Great flick. If ScarJo had frolicked around nude for a few scenes it would rank among my favorites of all time  :grin:

Reading this thread makes me want to watch The Illusionist again.

Superior movie.

Johannsen, Bowie.

Biel, Giamatti.

Yeh Illusionist beats this hands down. Bowie is a terribad actor can't believe anyone would watch a film for him, remember Labyrinth?

I thought a better movie would have had the Bale character, crazy in prison, insisting that Jackman has a machine that duplicates people... only to learn that Jackman was simply doing a flashier version of his original version of the trick, and faked his own death by killing his look-alike when he knew Bale would be at the show. The Tesla bit was never believable and felt at odds with the otherwise realistic film. I felt the same way about the book. Better to have it turn out to be just another elaborate lie in the journals they're writing for eachother. Those relationships between the characters were far more interesting than the twists and gimmicks.

...and yes, while The Prestige is a quaint little puzzle box, The Illusionist is cinema. Also Giamatti's role is my favorite he's played.

Shaddap. :why_so_serious:

"The Illusionist" is a cheap trick next to "The Prestige". Quaint, watchable, but it lacks the substance.

No.

Go play some Red Steel.   :awesome_for_real:

Not saying I didn't like this movie either.  Without the dumb sci-fi stuff it could have been truly epic. 

The Illusionist bugged me from the get-go. The accents bugged the shit out of me for some reason, especially Giamatti's and Norton's. I love the actors in the Illusionist, but it just fell flat to me.

The Illusionist kinda bored me.

This is because you're bland and unrelenting in how you demonstrate how bland you are.

Mr. Bland.

I'm so sorry I didn't see this until now.  Holy fuck what a movie, great twists, loved it.  It almost lost me for a minute there in the middle I have to say, but that was because I thought I had it figured out (I knew something was up with Bale's buddy) but I had it all wrong which makes it even more fun.

The Illusionist was a fucking horrible movie. There was zero chemistry between the Ed and Jessica, a stupid ass plot, illusions that didn't make sense, and a wasted use of Paul Giamatti. I will forever remember Paul laughing at the end at what they got away with and being pissed that that was his reaction. Regardless of how he felt about the victim, his character's life was the law and these people broke it in a major way. Didn't make a bit of fucking sense.

I'm not sure about the Prestige. I liked it and didn't like it. I think what Hugh's character did in the end was both horrifying and effective, yet kind of didn't fit for me. I would have liked it better, and thought it fit better if it were actually a trick and not some weird magic Tesla ... thing. I don't know. I'm pretty sure I'm alone on that, but it is what it is. I felt it would have been far better to have had Hugh's character get the upper hand with a trick that nailed Bale's character. And yes I understand it was a game of one upmanship with Hugh going too far. But still... I just felt it was... meh. Oh, and if I missed something at the end, and didn't understand what truly happened, then please explain it to me.

Oh, and Bowie as Tesla was fucking win.

Prestige is better, but in a flawed way. Also are we really going to degrade Giamatti's work to say it was his best role in The Illusionist? The man is one of the more talented actors I've seen. His recent work in John Adams is rivetting alone. Also, Cinderella Man and Sideways. Geez.

His best work was Shoot'em Up, no question. In fact, it made up for Sideways, which was intolerable trash for people who want to pretend to care about cinema and made me hate the guy on a level I hate few actors.

His best work was probably in American Splendor.

It's very debatable, which gives you a good idea of how awesome he really is. I would still contend the Illusionist was a footnote though.

It's really not.

Debating that something is debatable? REALLY?

You know what the word means right? Of course you do, you're not that stupid.

Yes, you said it was debatable. I'm informing you it's not.

I'm not debating _anything_.

That's pretty much the end of it unless YOU want to debate why it's not debatable. In which case, we can debate that, but the point will still stand that his best movie was Shoot'Em Up. I could explain why, but I shouldn't have to if you've already seen it. Now if you want to debate the definition of debatable, go ahead, but I'll be over here, watching Shoot'Em Up and wondering how anyone could possibly list some of his movies without listing that.

Edit: Look, I know you hate conversations like this and you're probably banging on your keyboard. But you should really just go watch Shoot'Em Up and Sideways back to back and realize that I'm stating fact not opinion.

I was just saying you're being silly  :awesome_for_real:

Which you are about movies for some reason. You can be right if you want. I don't care.

EDIT: I don't like Sideways, it's just mainstream award fodder.

I'm not being silly. You're being tasteless. Fucking Sideways? Really? Look, I like Chocolat and I'm about to call you out as being a vapid girl.

That movie was shit.

Edit: Shit, on that note, so was Cinderella Man.

Cinderella Man was cool, come on.

John Adams rocks, which I mentioned first. It is good shit.

Still no Shoot'Em Up.

At this point, I have to assume you just haven't seen it.

I don't lie, you'd be right. Does that mean you win now and we can stop this?

You should really go fucking watch it and not try to engage in something that's not debatable without having all the fucking facts first, monkey.

Edit: Mostly though, you should watch it because Giamatti plays what can only be described as one of the most soulless characters ever filmed. Rarely is someone so... evil. He makes my fucking skin crawl. Also, outside of Croupier, it's probably Clive Owen's best movie also. Oh, and it's 90 minutes of some of the best gunplay since John Woo made movies that mattered in Hong Kong.

And you shouldn't toss out a 2007 $12M gross action movie as the best thing an actor has ever done as the gospel. Who really saw it?

Why don't we just reference all his work in total and decide? Should we do that?

EDIT: Because I sure as shit don't. This is one of those weird subjective points.

I can toss out whatever I want. It was a fucking fantastic action movie. Shit, I'd go as far to say as that it's one of the notably FEW action films. Very few people seeing something doesn't diminish the value of it. Titanic is arguably DiCaprio's WORST performance and it's the highest grossing movie of all time. Edit: Shit, Croupier made $7M, it's still Owen's best performance - though, admittedly, that's not fair since he was basically the only person acting in it - so it's kinda like seeing a somewhat attractive chick among a bunch of fat chicks. But, said somewhat attractive chick is probably still attractive next to hot chicks. This is turning into a downward spiral of an edit, I'll stop now.

And sure, we can reference all of his work - and having looked it up, I've seen the vast majority of it - and Shoot'Em Up is still the best he's done. If you're wondering, Duplicity was mediocre. I liked it, but I felt dirty liking it.

EDIT: IT'S NOT SUBJECTIVE. GO WATCH THE GODDAMN THING.  :angryfist:

 :grin: You made a Titanic reference. That was worth it.

I'll put Shoot'em Up in my queue just because you made the angry smiley.

You should put it into your queue because it's a fucking excellent movie.

As for the Titanic reference, I did it to completely manhandle your awful arguing point.

Don't worry about it, when you come back and apologize, all will be forgiven. And if you ever say Sideways was good again, I'm going to redirect your account login to the Better Homes and Gardens Forum so you can vag it up with a bunch of people who have superior taste in wine.

Fuck that, I'm going to watch all the Die Hards now. That's real cinema. Yeah!  :why_so_serious:

I see nothing wrong with watching all the Die Hards.

Better than watching all the Star Wars movies.

I'm going to bed, but in the morning I'll realize we've totally derailed this thread from The Prestige.

And I'll have a good chuckle. Good show.

AND YOU STILL WON'T HAVE WATCHED SHOOT'EM UP.

I hope you wake up with a rash.

I saw it and in this case, schild is right. It really is that awesome, and Giamatti playing what is in essence a real-world version of Elmer Fudd the crime lord is epic win.

Giamatti's best role was in Burton's Planet of the Apes. Fact.

No, most definitely no.

Not Pigvirus in Private Parts?

I swear to GOD that you assholes need to watch Shoot'em Up and quit this bullshit of else it's dick moustaches all around.

In The Prestige, both sides go too far but it's TWIST which one and how so.

On a related note, Shoot 'em Up on Blu-ray is on sale at Best Buy this week for $12.99.

Also, as much as I like Shoot 'em Up, Children of Men is my favorite Clive Owen movie.

I can't fault you for that.

I still like Croupier more than both though if we're just talking Clive Owen though. Shoot'em Up is probably the most watchable of the 3 though. I'd call it a desert island movie in fact. You know, one of those movies you could watch a thousand times over if you had to.

Looks like I have to stop by Best Buy today and see if they have any copies left.

Shoot'Em Up was awesome.

Jesus fuck that was a terrible movie. TERRIBLE.

I'm still waiting for Paelos to come back and say I was right. It should not have taken him this long to see the goddamn movie.

Awww come on. It had hot monkey sex!   :why_so_serious:

Shoot'em up was greatly awesome for the first half hour.  First action sequence was good stuff, but after that, every other one was like watching sleepwalkers marching into a meatgrinder...  Smokin Aces was way much better in the random violence action movie department.

Prestige > Illusionist, but both great movies.

No.

Smokin' Aces was the Dungeon Siege to Shoot Em Up's Diablo.

Yes.

Bah, I think you're all crazy.  If all the scenes could have had cool elements like the sliding on oil, or the table to ramp conversion, or the crashing into and flying into the bad guy van then ya this would have been great, but... most of the action scenes were just "Mr. Hero" shooting a bazillion morons while miraculously evading harm... bleh....

At least Smokin Aces never did that, and all the action sequences were innovative in some way.

Giamatti was superior in Private Parts... "you are the mother****ing anti-christ" god I laugh everytime I see that.

Carrots.

And of course in a movie called SHOOT 'EM UP, the main way of dispatching bad guys will be by shooting them up.

I choose to watch this last night during a platelet donation because of Nolan In The News & Interstellar.

The film really holds up. You need to watch this movie twice to really appreciate the tight script where no line or scene is wasted and hints at the twists to come. Once you know the twist, it becomes a game of paying really close attention to the details. It's a different move altogether.

Also, Hugh Jackman at his most dapper and young. Man, he's still great as Wolverine, but he had a perfect physique and Hollywood, excuse me, Broadway-esque face. Also, Scarlett Johansson pre-Widow.

Maybe I'll try to rewatch this but the only Nolan movie I've enjoyed less than this was the Dark Knight Rises. This movie just dragged and had such a silly plot twist of an ending that it totally lost me.

Have you not seen Inception?

I have and I quite liked it. This movie? Not so much.