MOVIE RATING THREAD 2012

[Randy]

CHRONICLE NEW NEW NEW!!!

Very enjoyable.  The nice girlfriend must have the most boring blog ever.

[Wolfe]

CHRONICLE
HAYWIRE
THE DEVIL INSIDE
THE GREY
THIS MEANS WAR NEW

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THIS MEANS WAR is so stupid and contrived that it hurts you. It’s also not funny at all, unless you were a lady in the audience, in which case you were wiping away tears at everything that awful Handler lady said. And because both Pine and Hardy’s characters are creeps (Pine in particular plays one of the most unappealing douches a movie has asked me to root for in quite some time), there’s no reason to root for either of them to win Witherspoon (whom, incidentally, both could almost certainly do better than). And even if you do care about that, the movie offers up the laziest and most unearned resolution possible. Also, McG directed it, so I probably didn’t need to type anything more than that.

One more thing: Pine meets Witherspoon while flirting with her in a video rental store, which means this script must have collected some dust for a few years and everyone involved was too lazy to bother to update it.

[BrianLynch]

I was asked if I wanted to come in to discuss rewriting this about 10 years ago.  Back then it was for Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence.

[nate.3.0]

I was asked if I wanted to come in to discuss rewriting this about 10 years ago.  Back then it was for Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence.

Dude.  Win lose or draw, how do you ever say no to something like that!?

EDIT: Hence why you have a film that has an Academy nom, and I am a hack on your website. lol

[BrianLynch]

I think it was the same movie.  I'm not sure.  It was called that, and involved friends who fought over a girl and it turned violent, resulting in the destruction of New York City.  It was horrible. 

[SaveALemming]

WOMAN IN BLACK NEW
CHRONICLE NEW
JOYFUL NOISE
DEVIL INSIDE

Woman in Black was satisfyingly spooky. I'm not a big fan of cheap jump scares, which it has many, but at least it still made sure to have a genuinely creepy atmosphere too. Good performances too.

I enjoyed Chronicle, but for some reason, it's not sticking with me very well. It's definitely alot of fun with an epic scale for such meager trappings. And I really love the way the video point of view was incorporated rather than the traditional 'found footage' ideas. I couldn't figure out though SPOILERSY what camera point of view was concentrating on the statue at the end, since it seemed Matt was the only one focusing on it. Other than that, I really liked the way the camera work was handled.

[sean]

It was called that, and involved friends who fought over a girl and it turned violent, resulting in the destruction of New York City.  It was horrible. 

That sounds more appealing than any trailer or poster I've seen yet.

[Amusing Pseudonym]

' This Means War was originally going to be released in 2001 with Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence cast as the two warring agents but the film was cancelled. It was revived several years later, with Bradley Cooper and Seth Rogen attached to the project but the two left and were replaced with Chris Pine and Tom Hardy. '


' In development for more than a decade with former incarnations of the film featuring Martin Lawrence and Chris Rock, several writers have penned drafts of 20th Century Fox‘s “This Means War” including Burr Steers (”How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days”), Cormac and Marianne Wibberly (”National Treasure”), Kiernan and Michele Mulroney (”Paper Man,” “Sherlock Holmes 2”), Tim Dowling (”Role Models”) but Marcus Gautesen (”Carboy”) will be credited with the story (Gore Verbinski was one of the directors originally attached to helm back in the day). '


' THIS MEANS WAR is about “two best friends, inseparable since childhood, who fall in love with the same woman. The two men’s bond disintegrates and their ensuing battle escalates to mammoth proportions, with New York City demolished in their wake. It’s a rom-com that turns into a pre-apocalyptic disaster movie destroying landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. '

[BrianLynch]

That's right!  They also wanted me to rewrite the characters so their front was working for a video game company.  Because video games are cool and fresh.  Did they keep that?

[Wolfe]

Nope, there is no front in the movie. It's like TRUE LIES, where they just lie to people about what they do. Pine says he's a cruise ship captain (presumably so there can be one scene where people call him "Captain" because he's totally Captain Kirk) and Hardy says he's a travel agent, which the movie even acknowledges makes no sense as a cover story for why he's always taking off around the world.

Also, just in case anyone cares, none of that "blowing up New York" stuff happens in the movie. Nothing even close to that happens. It would have helped a lot if it had.

[BrianLynch]

Yeah, after 9/11 I figured they ditched it.

[nate.3.0]

If they wanted all that NYC stuff to happen, they should've let the CRANK guys do this film.

[ScottE]

' This Means War was originally going to be released in 2001 with Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence cast as the two warring agents but the film was cancelled.

I can't imagine why, in 2001, a comedy about blowing up New York City would have been cancelled.

[ScottE]

Yeah, after 9/11 I figured they ditched it.

Dang, you beat me to it.

[Wolfe]

Now that we've returned to a time where it's OK for NYC to be blown up in movies again, they should have put it back in. At least that would have been something.