f13.net

No Hancock thread?  Odd.

Anyway, I liked it.  I guess.  First half of the movie was actually pretty damn good, but then they went off in a direction they really didn't need to go.  They had a good thing going, and then it just got weird...like two different movies.  Could've been much, much more than it was.  Shoot, in retrospect, maybe I didn't like it.

I still haven't seen it yet but want to. Is it Office Space "two different movies" or Stargate "two different movies"?

It's a Will Smith movie. Watching for the plot (or in this case, yes, plots) is kinda ... I don't know... watching it incorrectly.

As long as it's not Dusk Till Dawn "two different movies", it can't be that bad.

I won't start spoilering it just yet, but it's more like "hey, this is a really interesting concept of a super hero struggling with real life issues and isn't universally loved - wow, I really like where this is going" and then it turned into "hey, they totally fucking missed the target here, I had no idea they were going in this direction and they really fucking shouldn't have."

Seriously, the first half was almost...not gripping, but a less powerful word.  Then it fell off the rails.

I liked From Dusk til Dawn,  and I really liked that it was two separate movies.  The setup was taken seriously, and wasn't just something you had to sit through to get to the payoff.

Really,  Predator was the exact same:  you had a military shoot-em-up on the front end where you established the characters and plot, and boom all of a sudden it turned into a monster movie.  For that matter, Aliens and Dog Soldiers were pretty similar. 

I also loved Dusk til Dawn but especially because it was another one I watched knowing *nothing* about it beforehand, so when this bland-feeling road movie suddenly turned into a mad vampire film I was all  :ye_gods:   :uhrr:    :awesome_for_real:

Hancock seriously underwhelmed me however. Good start and er... that's it.

I don't get Will Smith. He can be a damn fine actor, but he does so much crap. Surely he's beyond needing the money by now. I also just got serious deja vu typing that sentence so either I've said that before here or they changed something in the Matrix. Or I have a brain tumour.

For me, Full Metal Jacket is the epitome of the two-movies-in-one.

I want to explain to you how they're really not two seperate films but I don't think I've got the energy.  Plus it's a film-geek place I don't want to visit right now.

K9's bang on though - Full Metal Jacket is two films in one and is the only real one that's been mentioned here.  Two films, six acts, one marvellous whole.

FMJ's second half is not very good imo.


I liked Hancock. Also, I think this is the first time I realized how gorgeous Charlize Theron is. Somehow, it escaped me before.

Aeon Flux pika?

never seen it.. heard too many bad things about it..

then again, it could all be bullshit and turn out good, like a lucas movie  :why_so_serious:

Charlize Theron is the only redeeming thing in Reindeer Games.

Same could be said for Hancock.  The script killed any potential this film had. 

I bought Aeon Flux on blu-ray because of Charlize Theron. She is goddamn HOT in that. Just brutalizingly hot.

Hmm... Worth a download then, I guess  :oh_i_see: :grin:

I liked Hancock, it was fun.

I agree it was fun. But I also agree the second half where they turn the superhero movie into ....sucked ass.

I loved Will's last vampire flick. But the script writers killed this one in the second half.

Also this.....make another thread for From Dusk Til Dawn. It sucked. The only reason ANYONE liked it was because A) They thought liking Quentin Taratino was cool and B) Salma Hayek got their dicks hard.

Will smith had a vampire flick?

I Am Legend.

Or C) They actually enjoyed it in its own right as an fun, entertaining and enjoyable film.

The only reason ANYONE dislikes From Dusk Til Dawn is because they hate fun for the sake of hating fun.
What next, you'll say that you dislike The Four Rooms?

I like Tarantino, but I don't necessarily equate it with him.

It's hit and miss for me though. All of the actors are cool, the setup's cool, but I don't really care for that particular take on the vampire deal.. I am Legend and 30 Days of Night aren't really my cup of tea either. Those type of stories, with the rabid vamps and shit, don't really tap into what makes different than other movie monsters: That they're not monsters. Practically human in every way, except for the bloodlust. Evil by necessity. A lot more room for character stories that way. When you turn them into animals, it gets boring imo. And it becomes all about the victims warding them off -- but I say to hell with the victims!

Sorry if this sounds all serious and faggy.. heh..

No worries, I noticed your name before I read the post. :awesome_for_real:

Just saw Hancock on BluRay and I enjoyed it.  I could have used more of the first half, but I'm not sure how much they could have gotten out of it.  Second half had lots of Theron, so it was also OK.  I liked her more before she lost the weight; now she's only a few miles better than most other actors.  Also Bateman was good.

Oh yeah.. Bateman.

I'm gay for him too. I heartily welcome the weird return of Bateman to movies. Funny dude.

Alright, you take Jason and I'll take Justine.

She showed up in Californication recently actually. That was odd.

She hasn't aged particularly well, either.

Charlize Theron is fucking hot.

Yes, sir.

Noted.

***

I'm going to totally disagree with all of you it seems like.  I thought the beginning of this movie was shit.  It almost sort of got interesting in the second half.  The action was absolutely terrible.  There was so much wrong with that first action/chase sequence I don't know what to say.  The part with the girl was terrible because I wanted to see those titties in a bad way.  Stupid we dont make R movies anymore bullshit.

The movie only kind of redeemed itself later when it became about the two of them.  It wasn't great but it was interestingly different.  The first part was fucking awful.  I mean every time something got torn up it looked so bad.  Who was doing the CGI for that movie anyways?  I've never seen such generic chunks of twisted metal flying around be used for pretty much everything that gets destroyed.

I liked the movie very much.  Love, though, is such a strong word. 

I really dug this movie. I didn't realize it was a Peter Berg joint until the end credits came up, but having seen it, it totally fits his work. I actually would have liked it to have been longer, to flesh out some of the unexplained bits. The surprise reveal was not really a surprise, thought. Theron was so obvious the first time they met that something was not right, it kind of gave away the middle part of the movie.

This movie sucked ass.

The action sequences were awful. Terrible effects. The catchphrase ("Call me crazy one more time!") was retarded and grating. It had way too many MEANINGFUL LOOKS BETWEEN CHARACTERS WHO ARE OSTENSIBLY STRANGERSl Seriously it had about ten minutes of meaningful looks in it. Real subtle there guys.

The plot itself was fucking retarded. Two characters get weaker when they are close together so when one is injured the other one - sidles up right next to them. Brilliant. The big reveal was tepid.

Parts of it were comedy, parts of it were absurdly melodramatic, then straight action. It felt like the typical studio meddling shit of "ok we need a funny scene. Ok now we need a scene for all the girls that were brought to the movie as dates. Ok now a scene for all the guys who brought those girls."

Totally incoherent mess. I honestly don't understand how anyone could watch it with anything but a combination of boredom and disgust.

The very basic premise of a drunk, irresponsible super-hero was great but they did nothing with it.

Also I think Charlize Theron is kinda ugly. (Her knees are too sharp!)

You almost had me taking you seriously, despite disagreeing with everything you said. And then you went green.

I don't know what it is about her. I can see why people find her attractive but she's never done anything for me at all. The same is true of Cameron Diaz.

Heh. I liked Hancock. But I'm gonna go with Margalis on CZ. She's got the body of a 19 year old nerd boy and one of those generic Revlon faces.

Oh. Cameron Diaz has that kinda fun bubbly thing going on. And she's not quite as boyish as Charlize Theron. Not mind blowingly hot, but attractive, IMO.

Diaz was only hot in the Mask, everyone knows that where I'm from.  Not sure what happened after that.  What has me confused is that new preview where Dane Cook smacks whatsherface ass and it looks so damn good/huge.  Since we're speaking of blond not amazingly hot actresses.

*edit* imdb says Kate Hudson is who I'm thinking of.

Charlize Theron is hot because she killed her own dad with a shotgun.

I think that was her mother's doing. Unless that's just a cover-up story.

She lost about 40 pounds and wound-up looking like a stick figure with no tits.

She also was deliberately doing the blonde bomshell thing in The Mask, and it work well.  She was smoking hot in that movie.  Ever since then?  Not so much.

Necroposting for the win!

My wife pulled this up on Netflix via our Xbox and I decided to sit in.

This was not a great movie. It was not horrible either though.

I quickly likened the beginning of the film to some of the off the track comic book heroes of the late 80's and early 90's. Like Lobo in the 90's for instance. It was a chance to present a different kind of hero in film and still make good on it despite not being Spider Man 4, etc. Scripting and effects failed that.

The geek in me was distracted enough by the background story of the 'hero' to start sorting out what Gods they must have been, etc. so the second half had a chance, but the delivery was equally flawed.

I think it's a really good idea that was executed poorly. I know there won't be a second film, but I would give it a try to see if they could handle it better. That means I must not hate it.

Necro'd because I'd just as soon not make another thread.

So a guy wakes up in a hospital in the American south in 1928 with no memory and the powers of a god. And he's black. Am I the only one who saw this movie and thought the premise could/should have led to a MUCH more interesting story?  :awesome_for_real:

Yes. It's a comedy. It's uncomplicated.

It's like 2 movies.  The first half is pretty enjoyable, then it kind of goes  :uhrr:.

Oh come on, if you were Jason Bateman sitting across the table from Hancock when he said that he'd been hanging around since at least 1928, are you telling me something about WW2 wouldn't come out of your mouth within the next 60 10 seconds?

Given that people in that world simply accepted the existence of superheroes, assuming World War II even happened is a little presumptuous.

Trying to decipher the lore in a Will Smith blockbuster is just unbelievably stupid and I'm shocked you would even go down that path. Shame on you, WUA. Shame on you.

Golf off the carrier was cool but I was sad when the dog died  :why_so_serious:

I try to decipher the lore in everything. Everything. It's like a disease. Plus if they had him living normal up until getting jumped and knocked amnesiac TEN OR TWENTY years ago it wouldn't have changed the movie and I probably wouldn't have really thought about it. Instead they just have him go "Yeah I was super throughout an entire period of history where my very existence would have a significant impact on society, but we won't acknowledge this even though how I interact with and am perceived by society is supposedly a major component of the plot!"

Know what else I wonder? I wonder what they did with the alien survivors in Independence Day. Like even if every single alien in every single big saucer died, because they flamed out pretty good, there still must have been plenty in the little fighters that managed to survive. What would they do with them? Kill them? Put them in camps? It's not like you can send them home or integrate them into society.

Help.

Didn't they asphyxiate outside of the saucers?

Nope, they breathe the same air we breathe. I figure there was some big land battle afterwards. "Happy Fourth of July, Daddy!" "Same to you, Pumpkin!" Then Will Smith goes "It ain't over yet!" and the Mortal Kombat theme plays and everybody gets busy with the rockem sockem alien ass kickin!

The captured alien saucer at area 51 was nonfunctional until the mother ships arrived.  This suggests to me that they don't have their own power sources, and get all their energy beamed to them.  It's therefore entirely possible that all the fighters crashed and burned when the mother ships went up in flames.

And a superadvanced alien fleet wouldn't equip their fighter saucers with parachutes? Unlikely.

Why equip your saucers with parachutes if they're protected by invulnerable shields and have limitless power from the even more invulnerable mother ships?

The real question is why they didn't have any sort of security software on the mother ships.   :awesome_for_real:

Ah, but that same captured saucer maintained power long enough after the destruction of said mothership for Smith and Goldblum to make a survivable landing in the vicinity of Area 51. The other alien fighters, given their less precarious situations and more experienced pilots, should have had it much easier.

Point.  Maybe all the aliens were clustered tightly around the mother ships trying to defend them, rather than fleeing for their lives, and were obliterated in the explosions?

The deaths of the big saucers weren't really all THAT violent though. They basically boiled up in flame and went down in recognizable heaps, rather than going up like bombs and wiping out everything for miles. And let's not forget, Smith's saucer got hit by that giant shockwave from the destruction of the mothership and was still in good enough shape to make re-entry from space, so they're probably pretty sturdy.

Because as far as I can tell, Independence Day was conceived as a black comedy, a preposterous parody of aliens invading and America saving the world again. Jeff Goldblum said so in an interview I saw in the UK: "I thought we were making a comedy". He was surprised when the studio made it into a blockbuster and had him promote it as such.

A swaggering fighter pilot hero white American president presumes to lead the world, while the black guy and the Jew save everyone with a laptop.

So, basically, it was portent. Chances are this is what is going to happen within the next 3 years.

BTW when you said black guy, deep south, superpowers in 1928, I thought you meant pwning racism, not pwning WWII.

I meant all of the above and more, really, but WW2 is the thing you really can't escape. I mean either you're the monstrous prick who let millions of people die because you were too good to just throw Hitler into the sun around 1938, or you go ahead and stomp Nazi ass and by 2008 the world has become some completely unrecognizable alt-history version of itself.

I mean I know it's not frigging Watchmen or something and that's not the movie they wanted to make. That's why it would have made a lot more sense to just have him wake up as a super amnesiac in like 1994 and not invite those kinds of questions in the first place.

As for him pwning racism, well, the movie basically walks up and says "Hello there, I'm Hancock, incredibly powerful and godlike superman who frequently reacts to disrespect from normal people with grossly disproportionate and/or violent responses. Where did I come from? Well I woke up in the American South in 1928. Why yes as a matter of fact I am black, why would that be of any interest?"

I'm normally the first one to say "STFU and watch the movie they made, not the one you wish they made!" but wow. I mean why put all that there if I'm not supposed to think about it at all? In most other regards it's not a particularly boneheaded "brain totally off plz" type of movie.

Ha. I'm getting plenty more than nothing for my subscription dollars.

Speaking of, we're never going to hit the renewal fees by October. Urgh.

Mayhap you aren't being generous enough with nothing.

It just says "make a donation". Mindless internet self says "but I already subscribed". Better if it said "Schild only has 72% of the $x,000 hosting fees due in October, hlep!"

I will do that on September 12th, one month from renewal.

What amount do you recommend we donate? 

Whatever you can! I never ask for specific amounts. Except last year, at the witching hour, when I knew exactly how much more was needed.

OK, I'lll do what I can, I visit this site more than anywhere else on the webz.  Just don't expect a million dollars, I'm an engineer in the manufacturing sector!

/12% pay cut 4tehlose

Just want to drop in and say that I logged onto the forums and swore I saw "Mancock"

What you do in your personal life is none of our business.  :why_so_serious:

I did find the backstory kind of unnecessary to the basic schtick. Basic schtick is that Hancock is a superpowered dude who doesn't give a fuck, decides to grow up. That's kind of interesting enough, eh? You don't have to end up with him being Superman, fully stick-in-butt righteous. Once it threw in the whole "we were gods, we can't be together" I was like huh? wha? really? srsly? Muddled the whole thing.

The original screenplay was kind of interesting and nothing like the film. No mention of amnesia or any of that mythological crap about couples and whatever.

You're thinking too much.  It wasn't supposed to be anything more than showing he's been lost and kicking about aimlessly for 80 years.

Were it a serious movie, there were some interesting consequences they could have explored.  But it was a Will Smith summer movie.

I confess I was disappointed by the story's development. Psychological talking mixed with mythology did not become a harmonious whole, but instead left me confused of what the story wanted to tell me at all. o.O Am still sad, because I liked the original idea.

This, it's a popcorn flick and a fairly decent one at that. The later plotline was a bit contrived and they seemed to try and do a paradigm shift into epic drama, they should have gone popcorn all the way for better result. Still though watchable fluff.

Personal I would have gone forward with the whole domestic violence.  He does something egregious, she losses control and clobbers him causing him forget.  She decides it is better that way and moves on.  Fits better with super heroes as real, flawed people.  The Soul Mates mechanic is lame.

I still think taking the traditional thirties-and-forties Superman story and basically re-telling it with him as a cynical black guy is a fucking awesome idea, and could have been way more entertaining than what we got. Bah.

Anyway, can anyone tell me why they played the Sanford & Son song as that guy was running around with the other dude's head up his ass? I saw this again the other day and it just seems so... random.