What was the last movie you've seen?

[isiolia]

I'm sure the relativity physics are representative of our best current understanding of how that stuff works. My problems with the plot had to do with time paradoxes, and no real explanation of what "the blight" actually is. Still a great film all things considered.

Those aren't even the easiest criticisms of the film. I still quite enjoyed it though, watched it a couple times in the past week since getting the Blu-ray.

[Ack]

I reserve 9s and 10s for the best fight scenes of all time

Maybe this should be a separate thread, but what fights have you given a 9 or 10?

Have you seen The Raid 2? That is what 9 or 10-rated fights look like.

[Luke]

Have you seen The Raid 2? That is what 9 or 10-rated fights look like.

Damn skippy.

DREDD was also critically underrated.

[Exhuminator]

Those aren't even the easiest criticisms of the film.

What are yours then?

[isiolia]

Those aren't even the easiest criticisms of the film.

What are yours then?

A big inconsistency is, say, the initial launch from Earth taking a multi-stage booster to get their shuttle into orbit...which then takes off from two other worlds all on its own, one of which has 130% Earth gravity. The other shuttle is also shown making repeated trips back and forth from the Endurance. Neither seem to have room for much in the way of fuel at all. They basically go from realistic-ish NASA stuff to Star Trek shuttlecraft, despite being the same vehicle(s) from the start.

They'd also have benefited from much more liberal use of probes and robots, which likely would have avoided a lot of the problems they ran into. Also seems odd to be able to get that close to a black hole at all without being destroyed - kinda like flying something into the sun, just getting relatively close would burn it up.

Time paradox stuff maybe we're thinking of similar things. For all the attention payed to relativity, forgetting about it working both ways before landing on the first planet seems odd.

Mostly, I guess I'm thinking of stuff that seems inconsistent within the scope of the movie.

[MrPopo]

Also seems odd to be able to get that close to a black hole at all without being destroyed - kinda like flying something into the sun, just getting relatively close would burn it up.

That's actually fine; Kip Thorne goes into details as to how that isn't a problem.

[Exhuminator]

They'd also have benefited from much more liberal use of probes and robots

That was something that bugged me too. Like why not just send one of the robots down to a planet to investigate the probabilities of it being habitable. Instead of sending flesh and blood astronauts who's loss is far more detrimental to the mission. Guess that would have gotten in the way of proper drama for the movie though. Pretty much everything in the film outside the relative physics aspect is ripe with plot holes. But it was a lot of fun regardless after you turned your inner skeptic off.

[Jmustang1968]

They'd also have benefited from much more liberal use of probes and robots

That was something that bugged me too. Like why not just send one of the robots down to a planet to investigate the probabilities of it being habitable. Instead of sending flesh and blood astronauts who's loss is far more detrimental to the mission. Guess that would have gotten in the way of proper drama for the movie though. Pretty much everything in the film outside the relative physics aspect is ripe with plot holes. But it was a lot of fun regardless after you turned your inner skeptic off.

While it had some issues like that, it was much better with realism than almost any other space opera.

[isiolia]

Pretty much everything in the film outside the relative physics aspect is ripe with plot holes. But it was a lot of fun regardless after you turned your inner skeptic off.

Probably, yeah. Most things at least wind up being something that would merit further explanation. Still, it is a fun movie, at least on the merit of being an optimistic sci-fi film, instead of having technology be the problem, or otherwise turning into a different kind of film by the end.

[Ack]

The Caine Mutiny

There has never been a mutiny in the US Navy, but this film speculates on how one might come about, as naval officers rebel against their paranoid captain, a man named Queeg. As Queeg's behavior slowly becomes more erratic, the officers consider their options carefully before pulling the trigger during a fateful typhoon. Unfortunately the rest of the Navy disagrees with them, and Lt. Maryk and Ensign Keith find themselves facing a military tribunal with the potential for the death penalty. Military lawyer Lt. Greenwald takes Maryk and Keith's case in a difficult yet thrilling trial, where nearly every action and observation taken up to that point is called into question.

Everyone in this movie gives a hell of a performance, and the cast list is quite remarkable. Humphrey Bogart(in one of his final films), Van Johnson, Jose Ferrer, Fred MacMurray, Tom Tully, and even Lee Marvin in a small role all are in excellent form, as is Robert Francis, who sadly made only four films before his death at age 25. It's not an easy subject, and the Navy was reluctant to help in its film at first, but the performances are spectacular and worth watching. Both Bogart and Tully received Oscar nominations for their performances.

Also, this is the movie from which a young Maurice Micklewhite took his name, becoming Michael Caine.



The Narrow Margin

This is one of those Academy Award nominees(for best screenplay) where you wonder how it could have ended up a choice. Then you watch it and realize the film ratchets the tension so high from the beginning that it feels twice as long as its 71-minute run time. The Narrow Margin is a B-film, where a police officer must protect a mob wife on a train, and there are hitmen on board looking for her. Unfortunately neither the cop nor the hitmen know what she looks like, and there are quite a few other unusual characters on board that get in the way of things.

So what do you get? Some classic film noir, as the hitmen and the cop try to outmaneuver and outfox each other, while not realizing that everything around them is not what it seems. By the end, the hero has been named a villain, possible villains are revealed to be heroes, an ongoing corruption probe from Internal Affairs has been revealed, several people are dead, yet there's a surprisingly happy ending to it all. At least one more upbeat than I was expecting.



Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick was crazy but really good at what he did.

Barry Lyndon is the three-hour long period drama about the life of Redmond Barry, an Irishman drifter who comes up from relatively humble beginnings, becomes a gentleman, and then loses everything by the end. Along the way he gambles, womanizes, makes war, flees as a deserter, fights, gets drunk, and basically tears his way through Europe during the later-part of the 18th century.

The film is presented in two acts, with an intermission breaking them apart. The first act presents Redmond as a lovable rogue who builds himself up through luck and guile. Unfortunately his luck falters in the second act, and he loses everything, largely in part to him going from lovable rogue to douche with a domineering mother. While there is a lot that I absolutely loved about this movie, the plot is the part I like the least, mainly because I found some of Lyndon's actions abhorrent, idiotic, or both. In short, I find myself no longer rooting for the character that I spent the first half of the film getting to know. But that's the only thing about the film I really didn't care for, and in truth it's such an impressive picture otherwise, I have nothing else negative to say.

The high point of Barry Lyndon is its cinematography. Kubrick had been studying a lot of 18th century art and history in anticipation for a project about Napolean, and while that project never materialized, all of it came together here for some of the most intricate and beautifully composed shots I have ever seen. In particular, Kubrick studied the art of William Hogarth, and with the work of Director of Photography John Alcott, Kubrick's framing and the position and posing of his actors is precisely to the same effect. Kubrick also used some heavily modified special made 50mm lenses from Carl Zeiss to film sequences shot by candlelight, the same kind of lens used by NASA for the Apollo mission to film the dark side of the moon. The effect? Well, judge for yourself.



Funny enough, the low resolution of that image actually makes it look even more like a painting.

Fast and I had a brief discussion about camera lenses for filming. Apparently the ones Kubrick used were f/0.7.

On a side note, Barry Lyndon marks the 8th out of Kubrick's 13 full length films I've seen. I should really get around to finishing off his filmography.