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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
There was a sequel to Skyline? Mind giving us a spoilered summary?

no problem
Cover image


Beyond Skyline

That sounds.....so bad it has to be fun. Another movie I need to make time to see. Thanks!

 Overread wrote:
Wasn't the reason for the Jaws 3 effects being as they were because it was an early "3D" film and the method used looked good in a specially made 3D cinema, but fell flat when shown in regular. A feature that I think also happens to other specialist 3D films, but where they today produce two versions - a 3D and a regular - so that you view using the right screen with the right version.

I recall when 3D glasses were "all the rage" for a bit and if you took them off the film was blurry.

This is a fair point.

But, brace yourselves.....Dredd (because in the words of Han Solo? Hey, it’s me!) is the exception that proves the rule.

I like Battle L.A. and still watch it from time to time when the mood strikes me.

... Which kind of worries me, given that between the premise (aliens want our oi-water, I mean...) and the dialogue (small words, repeated often, as though explaining things to a child), they're clearly trying to hook the dumbest audience they possibly can... what does that say about me?

Still, I like the different battle setpieces, the aliens add a bit of novelty to your standard 'war in the streets' style scene, and I think the music is genuinely good.

So yeah, solid B movie for me - even more solid as background noise for building minis.

Battle LA is a movie where you freely skip large parts, particularly the beginning, and put it on as pulp scifi background while doing something else like gaming or cooking. It's got some neat visualizations, some cool battle scenes, some fun action, but if you're expecting much more out of it, you'll be grossly disappointed. There's a lot to criticize or poke fun at about it, it's definitely not the highlight of anyone's acting or writing careers, but there's also some genuinely cool stuff to watch.

I enjoyed the movie because it felt like everyone making it was on the same page. “So, Black Hawk Down meets Aliens. We’re gonna have fun with this, get a pay check, maybe make a video game. Everyone on board?”

I can no longer resist. Forgive me, Dakka.

You mum’s “special and secret” video.

Again, I am sorry, but I needed to get it out of my system.

I’m a terrible human being.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I can no longer resist. Forgive me, Dakka.

You mum’s “special and secret” video.

Again, I am sorry, but I needed to get it out of my system.

I’m a terrible human being.

it was very good and not disappointing at all.......








..... I don't know why she kept Singing in the Rain to herself all those years? There was no need for it to be "secret and special"

Kung Pow- Enter the Fist is probably in this category for the vast majority of the world's population. Steve Oedekerk bought up the rights to 3 or 4 old kung fu movies. This is Steve Oedekerk of 'Thumb Wars' infamy. Then he recut them into a single film. And spliced himself in as the star. And did all of the dubbing himself.

He fights a cow, and pyramids, and a cybreasted woman (one large breast).

It is a hilarious travesty of a film that will either have you laughing to tears in the first 15 minutes, or turning it off and asking whoever showed it to you what is wrong with them. I've never seen anyone have a moderate reaction to it.

Ohh man, Kung Pow is amazing. But as a spoof, it's fair to say that you need at least a rudimentary knowledge of kung-fu flicks to appreciate it... without that, I'd say you don't really have grounds to complain.
It's like trying to complain that Spaceballs is nonsensical if you've never heard of Star Wars.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I can no longer resist. Forgive me, Dakka.
You mum’s “special and secret” video.
Again, I am sorry, but I needed to get it out of my system.
I’m a terrible human being.

Pfffff, my mum's videos are hardly "special and secret". Yes, that's plural, thusly explaining the conflict in terms.
Tell me, were you around for the original VHS production or did you get one of the market stall DVDs more recently?

It's a funny joke now but fast forward 20 years and it will be very real given how many young ladies are on OnlyFans and the like.

 trexmeyer wrote:
It's a funny joke now but fast forward 20 years and it will be very real given how many young ladies are on OnlyFans and the like.

And people will be able to see your dad sending her money... hey people got to meet somehow. That's if the website isn't belly up in 5 years like so many tech company.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Kung Pow- Enter the Fist is probably in this category for the vast majority of the world's population. Steve Oedekerk bought up the rights to 3 or 4 old kung fu movies. This is Steve Oedekerk of 'Thumb Wars' infamy. Then he recut them into a single film. And spliced himself in as the star. And did all of the dubbing himself.

He fights a cow, and pyramids, and a cybreasted woman (one large breast).

It is a hilarious travesty of a film that will either have you laughing to tears in the first 15 minutes, or turning it off and asking whoever showed it to you what is wrong with them. I've never seen anyone have a moderate reaction to it.

The only way you could be disappointed by that movie is if you saw absolutely none of the advertising and went in expecting a serious (well as serious as they go) Kung Fu movie only to get that insane, silly riot of a movie.

@LordofHats - thanks an awful lot for writing that up. That definitely sounds like it should be 'OK' for me to watch!
I've done a fair amount of reading around tank battles and WW2, it sounds like you have too and if there are no completely out there endings hopefully I will be able to watch and enjoy it.
Thanks again!

 Super Ready wrote:
Ohh man, Kung Pow is amazing. But as a spoof, it's fair to say that you need at least a rudimentary knowledge of kung-fu flicks to appreciate it... without that, I'd say you don't really have grounds to complain.
It's like trying to complain that Spaceballs is nonsensical if you've never heard of Star Wars.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I can no longer resist. Forgive me, Dakka.
You mum’s “special and secret” video.
Again, I am sorry, but I needed to get it out of my system.
I’m a terrible human being.

Pfffff, my mum's videos are hardly "special and secret". Yes, that's plural, thusly explaining the conflict in terms.
Tell me, were you around for the original VHS production or did you get one of the market stall DVDs more recently?

Haha.. I think my generation the video would have been on a super 8 so hopefully no such thing existed!

Finding a box of old negatives once in the attic on the other hand...

epronovost wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
It's a funny joke now but fast forward 20 years and it will be very real given how many young ladies are on OnlyFans and the like.

And people will be able to see your dad sending her money... hey people got to meet somehow. That's if the website isn't belly up in 5 years like so many tech company.

No one paying for that is actually hooking up with them unless they're actually wealthy. It ain't a dating app.

Going to expand to series rather than just movies and I'd say Game of Thrones. I mean it was dumbed down a lot, I appreciate its gotta be simplified a bit but they went too far.

Was just reminded that I have to change my answer...


The Hurt Locker.



I try to avoid US military movies based on procedural inaccuracies, but the last two decades have seen movies that portray the character in an incorrect light every bit as much as they butcher procedure. Some "high"lights from this piece of swill:

US Army Lieutenant Colonel directly orders a medic to kill an unarmed wounded insurgent, and you hear the medic following the order as the LTC walks off to essentially fellate Renner's character.

Apparently EOD is nothing but spec ops and Green Berets. Nice to know that they are all trained to be highly proficient snipers.

I was deployed to Baghdad and was based in Camp Liberty, which is portrayed in the film. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that EOD teams weren't cruising around the countryside alone and unsupported whenever they felt like it.

Look up the weight of a 155 artillery shell, multiply that weight times, what, 9? THAT is what Renner deadlifts with his fingertips via det wire in the movie.


There's actually a ton more I can eviscerate this movie over, but I'll stop there while I'm still being civil. Needless to say, this movie smacks of a movie made by someone who was dating a soldier who deployed that came back and rattled off a thousand embellished war stories.

Hurt Locker was assigned to me in my movie class on how not to make a movie.

Zero dark thirty.
It's message "torture is bad but sometimes it gets things done"

If you follow the plot very closely which surprisingly seen to follow closely real life events you have this different message. "Well we tortured a heap of people and that really got us nowhere. But then we put our noses down, did some actual detective work like you'd expect any intelligence agency to do and wowee we found him."

Also if you are practicing to land a helicopter next to a solid wall. Do not simulate said wall with a chainlink fence.

Just Tony wrote:Was just reminded that I have to change my answer...


The Hurt Locker.



I try to avoid US military movies based on procedural inaccuracies, but the last two decades have seen movies that portray the character in an incorrect light every bit as much as they butcher procedure. Some "high"lights from this piece of swill:

US Army Lieutenant Colonel directly orders a medic to kill an unarmed wounded insurgent, and you hear the medic following the order as the LTC walks off to essentially fellate Renner's character.

Apparently EOD is nothing but spec ops and Green Berets. Nice to know that they are all trained to be highly proficient snipers.

I was deployed to Baghdad and was based in Camp Liberty, which is portrayed in the film. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that EOD teams weren't cruising around the countryside alone and unsupported whenever they felt like it.

Look up the weight of a 155 artillery shell, multiply that weight times, what, 9? THAT is what Renner deadlifts with his fingertips via det wire in the movie.


There's actually a ton more I can eviscerate this movie over, but I'll stop there while I'm still being civil. Needless to say, this movie smacks of a movie made by someone who was dating a soldier who deployed that came back and rattled off a thousand embellished war stories.

I defense of that "sniper" scene.

1) They weren't "snipers." It was just a long range engagement.
2) At the time (I'm not sure when it was changed), USMC recruits were trained to hit stationary targets at up to 500 yards with iron sights and IIRC we had targets up to 600 yards in MCT (used an ACOG then). I know the USMC has switched over to some kind of scope since then. In terms of shooting, it's not completely unbelievable.

In general, yes, it's not a good movie and the EOD personnel I know hate it.

I've never watched Zero Dark Thirty. For some reason unrelated to this thread I was watching clips of it on YouTube yesterday and I was thoroughly unimpressed. It really seems like a propaganda puff piece.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OldMate wrote:
Zero dark thirty.
It's message "torture is bad but sometimes it gets things done"

If you follow the plot very closely which surprisingly seen to follow closely real life events you have this different message. "Well we tortured a heap of people and that really got us nowhere. But then we put our noses down, did some actual detective work like you'd expect any intelligence agency to do and wowee we found him."

Also if you are practicing to land a helicopter next to a solid wall. Do not simulate said wall with a chainlink fence.

At the time McCain lambasted the film for showing how torture failed to provide reliable intel and in fact proved false information.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Just Tony wrote:Was just reminded that I have to change my answer...


The Hurt Locker.



I try to avoid US military movies based on procedural inaccuracies, but the last two decades have seen movies that portray the character in an incorrect light every bit as much as they butcher procedure. Some "high"lights from this piece of swill:

US Army Lieutenant Colonel directly orders a medic to kill an unarmed wounded insurgent, and you hear the medic following the order as the LTC walks off to essentially fellate Renner's character.

Apparently EOD is nothing but spec ops and Green Berets. Nice to know that they are all trained to be highly proficient snipers.

I was deployed to Baghdad and was based in Camp Liberty, which is portrayed in the film. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that EOD teams weren't cruising around the countryside alone and unsupported whenever they felt like it.

Look up the weight of a 155 artillery shell, multiply that weight times, what, 9? THAT is what Renner deadlifts with his fingertips via det wire in the movie.


There's actually a ton more I can eviscerate this movie over, but I'll stop there while I'm still being civil. Needless to say, this movie smacks of a movie made by someone who was dating a soldier who deployed that came back and rattled off a thousand embellished war stories.

I defense of that "sniper" scene.

1) They weren't "snipers." It was just a long range engagement.
2) At the time (I'm not sure when it was changed), USMC recruits were trained to hit stationary targets at up to 500 yards with iron sights and IIRC we had targets up to 600 yards in MCT (used an ACOG then). I know the USMC has switched over to some kind of scope since then. In terms of shooting, it's not completely unbelievable.

In general, yes, it's not a good movie and the EOD personnel I know hate it.

I've never watched Zero Dark Thirty. For some reason unrelated to this thread I was watching clips of it on YouTube yesterday and I was thoroughly unimpressed. It really seems like a propaganda puff piece.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OldMate wrote:
Zero dark thirty.
It's message "torture is bad but sometimes it gets things done"

If you follow the plot very closely which surprisingly seen to follow closely real life events you have this different message. "Well we tortured a heap of people and that really got us nowhere. But then we put our noses down, did some actual detective work like you'd expect any intelligence agency to do and wowee we found him."

Also if you are practicing to land a helicopter next to a solid wall. Do not simulate said wall with a chainlink fence.

At the time McCain lambasted the film for showing how torture failed to provide reliable intel and in fact proved false information.

By McCain do you mean john mccain? He had some familiarity with torture, I recall.

As to portrayal of torture in movies it's usually inaccurate and usually doesn't give good information. Sheik Khalid Mohammed was captured in 2003 and tortured extensively. He was waterboarded 183 times in a month, despite the CIA trying to claim that some of it was jut pouring water on his face not actually waterboarding. He was kept from sleeping for 71/2 days which likely caused permanant damage to part of his brain and his chillden, who were 6 and 8 at the time, were subjected to abusive interrogation.

This is a quote from his wiki article:

"One CIA official cautioned that "many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were 'white noise' designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session." For example, according to Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and the top Republican on the terrorism panel of the House Intelligence Committee, he admitted responsibility for the Bali nightclub bombing, but his involvement "could have been as small as arranging a safe house for travel. It could have been arranging finance." Mohammed also made the admission that he was "responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation," which killed six and injured more than 1,000 when a bomb was detonated in an underground garage, Mohammed did not plan the attack, but he may have supported it. Michael Welner noted that by offering legitimate information to interrogators, Mohammed had secured the leverage to provide misinformation as well.[99]

In an article discussing the reliability of Khalid's confession and the motive for giving misinformation under torture, Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out that:

When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless.

His words are echoed by the U.S. Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:

the use of force is a poor technique, as it ... can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

As an example of this the article discloses that although the George W. Bush administration made claims that the water-boarding (simulated drowning) of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produced vital information that allowed them to break up a plot to attack the U.S. Bank Tower (formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center) in Los Angeles in 2002, this has been proven to be untrue. In 2002 Sheikh Mohammed was busy evading capture in Pakistan.[100] Likewise the claim by former George W Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former CIA director of the National Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, that the torture of Khalid Mohammed produced the most significant lead in finding Osama bin Laden, has also been shown to be false. According to U.S. Senator John McCain, "The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times ... not only did the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information."[101][102]"

The fact is that the US treatment of mohammed has only disgraced america and made him a martyr and hero to radical islamists.

But we're getting off the topic here, even tho this is related to the topic of torture in movies and how movies often portray it inaccurately.

I never understood the aclaim for Zero Dark or the Hurt Locker - both seemed poor movies.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I never understood the aclaim for Zero Dark or the Hurt Locker - both seemed poor movies.

I think Hurt Locker was a patent case of favoritism shown toward its director. I found the movie to be profoundly mediocre in every respect, but there was a narrative behind its production that caused people to stake claims. I actually don't think anyone really ever praised Zero Dark Thirty much. It got good press when it released and favorable reviews, but then it passed into the void of forgotten films with nary a whimper. It wasn't a good movie, but no one was going to claim that the movie about how the US got Bin Laden was crappy.

I must say I really enjoyed the Hurt Locker

I had no idea whether it was accurate or not (although the sniper bits at the end did seem a bit far fetched)

But bomb diffusal definitely does make for some tense watching, and I liked the bit about Renner's character trying to adjust back to civilian life.

If you really like movies dealing with defusing bombs you need to watch "Juggernaut". It's pretty much a movie about bombs on a cruise liner, about half is dedicated to police finding the bomb maker, half is dedicated to stopping the bombs.

On one hand i'd almost like a remake of this with modern technology, as the movie was made in the 70's and the techis quite old by now.

On the other hand the odds of hollywod remaking it with the same quality, plausibility and suspense of the old one is pretty low at best.

I thought both the Hurt Locker and ZD30 had some cool scenes, but didn't come together as a cohesive total movie.

I can definitely see where people are coming from about The Hurt Locker, but I went into it more as a film about the psychology of the main character, rather than an attempt at a militarily accurate film.

And in that sense it was ok. I don't think it's the best movie, but it wasn't terribly disappointing either.

Can’t remember if I’ve wailed on it already?

Supersize Me.

Who knew eating nothing but McDonalds for 30 days would lead to weight gain, and a drop in health? Spesh when you stop exercising?

Bog off, Morgan Spurlock, you pathetic hack,

Not to mention he lied.
The calories he was eating didn't match what he said. It was a good 1500 more