Rate the latest movie you've seen.

[SGOS]

And then of course, there was the blockbuster of them all:  <Ta da>... The Erector Set with an electric motor, the young boy's introduction into the world of civil engineering.

[Baruch]

And then of course, there was the blockbuster of them all:  <Ta da>... The Erector Set with an electric motor, the young boy's introduction into the world of civil engineering.

An older neighbor boy had that.  One thing I saw, but didn't know anyone who had ... was a toy of plastic girders and wall/roof panels to build futuristic cities like the Tomorrow House at Disneyland.

[Munch]

I must say, the new human centipede looks promising.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[SGOS]

The Girl on the Train 8/10

It got a green splat on rotten tomatoes, so I didn't see it at the theater, but I thought it was much better than that.  A bit hard to follow as the story shifts from character to character before it starts tying everything together.  But I watched it again the second night, and it makes total sense on the re-watch.  Actually, I thought it was a fairly well crafted who-done-it type story.

[aitm]

I watched, Arrival.....I thunk it was pretty darn cool as far as plot line. The movie itself...cinematically kinda sucked with the lighting and all. And the sounds was a bit mushy. But it was kinda cool for a flick. I go as high as a 7.

[SGOS]

I watched, Arrival.....I thunk it was pretty darn cool as far as plot line. The movie itself...cinematically kinda sucked with the lighting and all. And the sounds was a bit mushy. But it was kinda cool for a flick. I go as high as a 7.

Your observations about the light and sound are spot on.  I would have preferred more clarity in both, and of course Hollywood knows how to do that, so I'm thinking it was intentional, perhaps to enhance a dreamlike quality, but carried too far for my tastes.  The story was thought provoking, and overall, the movie is a superior sci fi film.

[Solomon Zorn]

I hate to keep a tangent alive, but I agree with this sentiment:

I don't think I can do that.  Ever since Legos were first introduced as toys, I have had what might be described as ideological difference of opinion with them.  The closest parallel to that behavior in everyday life, might be Christians condemning homosexual behavior as wrong.  They have nothing rational for this notion.  Doesn't matter.  It's just wrong!

That's how I am with Legos.  They are wrong, even though I have no rational explanation for how I know this.  And then they make a movie out of them.  It's like making Coffee Filter Movies would be wrong.  And nothing you can say that makes sense will change my Legophobia.

I've always hated Legos. Even when I was a little kid. Too limited.

To give them credit, they have come a long way since I was little. A huge variety of shapes to choose from, now.

I built a bunch of them with my great-nephew, some years back. They are still too blocky, to be a good model, and too fragile to be a good toy. At the time, I thought it might help him learn to follow visual instructions, and translate them into manual assembly. Improve his eye/hand coordination.

When I was a kid, age 3 or so, there were wonderful boxes on the toy shelves, of some fantastic subjects. But if you bought them, you would find, inside the box, only monochromatic parts on a sprue, that had to be built, with glue, and painted to your own satisfaction. They were called "models." They required a sufficient drive on the part of the kid, to possess that little icon, to get them to follow the steps, and have that 3d car, tank, boat airplane, spaceship, dinosaur, or monster, that was pictured on the box. You could do even a shitty job, and have something that better represents the thing you are playing with, than a Lego-construct.

But model-building requires using sharp tools. Dumb-ass, litigious parents today, would probably sue the manufacturer, for their kid cutting his finger on an Exacto-blade.

I have a similar derision for Minecraft.

[Munch]

I've just always looked at Lego and duplo as a means for kids to be creative. I use to own a large box of legos, it didn't have any special parts to them, just loads of multi coloured bricks that I'd spend ages making things up with. I see my nephews doing the same thing now. It's all about creativity, there's not much else to 'get'.

[SGOS]

I hate to keep a tangent alive, but I agree with this sentiment:

I've always hated Legos. Even when I was a little kid. Too limited.

To give them credit, they have come a long way since I was little. A huge variety of shapes to choose from, now.

I built a bunch of them with my great-nephew, some years back. They are still too blocky, to be a good model, and too fragile to be a good toy.

Yeah, that sort of nails my problem with Legos.  They attempt to provide unlimited capabilities to build anything, but they are not specialized enough to do anything well.  You get cars that kind of have the shape of cars, and boats that kind of look like boats, but not really good cars and boats.  If you don't mind the abstraction, it might be good enough, but if you want miniature realism, you just can't get there with Legos.

[Baruch]

Toothpicks and glue ...
http://www.wfmz.com/news/berks/man-uses-toothpicks-glue-to-build-models-of-famous-buildings/17009442

[Munch]

While there not the latest movies I've seen, i've had them for a while on blueray, I decided to have a kind of marathon of james wan movies, including insidious, and the conjuring 1 and 2. I can to an interesting thought after watching both conjuring movies, before I stopped believing in things, as a teenager I was someone who believed in things like ghosts and haunted houses, I remember watching a documentary on the amityville horror, and back then it scared the dickens out of me.

Obviously over the years along with no longer believing in the idea of there being a god, I stopped believing in hauntings too, however that was like the last thing I stopped believing in, and even today, ghost stories hold a special place for me, maybe because it takes me back to that kind of childlike imagination of something invisible watching you.

This is why I love James Wan's movies (not really saw, that kind of gross body horror movies never appealed to me) but things like that, and seeing the woman in black in the theater and the movie, things like that always hold a place in my imagination, and James Wan does a terrific job of capturing that, his haunting movies are fun roller coasters into ghosts and supernatural.

However, something I looked into with the two conjuring movies, was just how far removed from the 'based on a true story' it was. That claim in the two films holds to it being based on the story of the Perron family haunting, and the sequal on the The Enfield Poltergeist story. In these movies, Wan does a great job of creating a world where these kind of entities exist, where demons are real and everything that happens in the movie is terrifying for the family in it.
However, as it says, 'based on a true story', because while Wan makes the events in the movie based on the story of it seem gripping, dark, thought provoking and 'insidious' (pun intended), the reality that he's taken it all from is so much of a disappointment, but of course as you would expect it to.

In the movie, Ed Warren is portrayed as this bright, happy, humanitarian and rock of a character whos perfect in every way and is always there to help people, almost on superman levels of courageous. The real Ed warren was a charlatan, swindler, a liar and made up so much crap to sell books and get noticed. Lorraine Warren, while not as awful as his husband, was in on the game of it.

Someone wrote a review of the Warrens, after the release of the conjuring, and did an interesting comparison, in the first movie, it presented on of the warrens more 'creepy' cases, of Annabelle the doll, a doll possessed by demon posing as a little girl. In the movie, the doll looked like this.



Yeah, I wouldn't want to be in a room with that thing either. However, in real doll, based on the Warrens account, the one lorraine warren keeps in her occult museum, looks like this.



Kinda breaks the tension a bit, you can see why Wan didn't have it look like the actual 'possessed' doll, it would lose any sense of tension the movie was going for. And as someone in a review said, the real life Ed Warren, just like the real life Annabelle doll, are both pretty disappointing.

I'll still watch it if they make a third conjuring movie, because I just imagine it being like a parallel world where ghosts actually exist, and its escapist storytelling, just like having a man in blue spandex flying around is.

[Mr.Obvious]

The Avengers 3: Civil War.
I liked it. Wasn't blown away. Will still watch sequels though.

[Hydra009]

The Avengers 3: Civil War.
I liked it. Wasn't blown away. Will still watch sequels though.

Avengers 3??  *heart skips a beat*

Oh, you mean Captain America: Civil War.  Most of the same characters, so I guess you could see it as a continuation of Avengers 2.

But to me, Avengers: Infinity War = Avengers 3.

[Munch]

After watching Mamoru Hosoda's The boy and the Beast, I began to think of a growing problem in the west, when it comes to animation. Growing up watching works by Hayao miyazaki, it felt refreshing to see a new animation studio produce something on his level of quality, because of late, with the rise of cgi animated movies in the west, I've missed traditional hand drawn animation lately. There's just something missing in cgi animated films you can only get from traditional hand drawn animation.

[Mr.Obvious]

Avengers 3??  *heart skips a beat*

Oh, you mean Captain America: Civil War.  Most of the same characters, so I guess you could see it as a continuation of Avengers 2.

But to me, Avengers: Infinity War = Avengers 3.

Oh wait. Yeah you are right. Thought it was an Avengers flick but it ain't.
To be fair though, how is it not?