Red Letter Media

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Favorite recurring character? (Select 4)

  • Jack / AIDSMobdy

    Votes: 257 24.0%

  • Josh / the Wizard

    Votes: 77 7.2%

  • Colin (Canadian #1)

    Votes: 460 42.9%

  • Jim (Canadian #2)

    Votes: 230 21.4%

  • Tim

    Votes: 386 36.0%

  • Len Kabasinski

    Votes: 208 19.4%

  • Freddie Williams

    Votes: 274 25.5%

  • Patton Oswalt

    Votes: 27 2.5%

  • Macaulay Culkin

    Votes: 541 50.4%

  • Max Landis

    Votes: 64 6.0%
  • Total voters
    1,073
I only saw District 9 and thought it was gay and for babies.

Pick a style. Fuck this found footage/documentary/actual movie shit.

The narriration was retarded. The bug man stood on hill after transforming, clearly looking distressed then black friend goes "HE WAS FEELING SO ALONE AT THAT POINT." like jfc thanks for explaining the script.

Maybe if I see it again I'll like it, as whatever point in life I'm in finds myself enjoying shit more than I ever did as a bohemian 20 something year old dope a zillion years ago, but it's one film that still generates more negative feels than "I am curious to see it again" type emotions many other things have had.

I also feel like we dodged a bullet with his alien film. Probably some south africa shit injected into it. Resurrection was just fucking bad and Covenant confused but I am sick of these reboot not reboots and rather not lose Alien 3 to some dweeb being interviewed on youtube nerd crews shows.

edit: drunk typo fixing
 
District 9 is pretty good, but I also think Chappie is alright, so what do I know? And I will watch nearly anything with Noomi Rapace in it... so I guess I won't be seeing Demonic.

I think if Neill was paired with a competent writer, he would excel, as he has a decent visual style and can direct action.
 
bifftango said:
District 9 is pretty good, but I also think Chappie is alright, so what do I know? And I will watch nearly anything with Noomi Rapace in it... so I guess I won't be seeing Demonic.

I think if Neill was paired with a competent writer, he would excel, as he has a decent visual style and can direct action.
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I've seen those short sci fi/horror films he released for free online. Very student film in a lot of ways.
 
Megaroad 2012 said:
I only saw District 9 and thought it was gay and for babies.

Pick a style. Fuck this found footage/documentary/actual movie shit.

The narriration was retarded. The bug man stood on hill after transforming, clearly looking distressed then black friend goes "HE WAS FEELING SO ALONE AT THAT POINT." like jfc thanks for explaining the script.

Maybe if I see it again I'll like it, as whatever point in life I'm in finds myself enjoying shit more than I ever did as a bohemian 20 something year old dope a zillion years ago, but it's one film that still generates more negative feels than "I am curious to see it again" type emotions many other things have had.
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District 9 was a huge disappointment to me as someone who expected it (based on trailers as well as general reactions) to be hard sci-fi.

Instead, I got completely alien creatures that somehow have Disney-esque, humanly expressive faces. Magic technology, like the thrilling yet limitless (and so meaningless) alien weaponry showcased at the end of the film... as well as the inexplicable spaceship fuel that uses prawn DNA (?) so somehow exposure to it can turn a lifeform that evolved on a different planet into a prawn (???) while allowing him to retain his memories (?????). Absurdly evil villains whose actions and motivations are impossible to take seriously. ("I hate aliens so much I will use them as helpless targets in my weapon demonstrations!") And so on.

District 9 is a technically well-made film with stunning visuals and a cool basic premise... but it's a fantasy film, not a sci-fi film. And it doesn't makes much sense once you scratch the surface. I think it might be time to conclude, considering the totality of his output, that Blomkamp might not be a very good writer. Not a bad director, though.
 
IMO District 9 was a very good debut for a film maker. A fair few problems with it, but undeniably had a lot of 'cool' elements and scenes in it as well as the narrative being told in an interesting manner. Elysium was a decent enough follow up, with a clearly bigger budget, but it also felt safer (more Hollywood) in a lot of ways and the plot was quite eyeroll worthy. Chappie and this drek simply don't appeal to me, but I will say that I don't think this latest film should be held against him considering the context and limitations of how it was made. IMO like a lot of talented film makers he just needs better offsiders and to cede some of his control to others, especially a scriptwriter.
 
Demonic was painful to watch, just so dull, I kept zoning out thinking about other stuff.

From the trailer, I thought it would mostly take place in the nightmare dream world, with the plot of her travelling through her mother's demented and broken mind.

Worst movie of the year? no. Dullest movie of the year? very likely.
 
I remember being blown away by Blomkamp's early short films that I saw on YouTube all the way back in 2006 or 2007, I later loved District 9 and while it wasn't great, I didn't hate Elysium, his whole conceit of shooting sci fi shit with a documentary style realism and grit was insanely clever, it felt very fresh and modern during a time that sci fi was feeling pretty stagnant.

However I didn't bother with Chappie, it's sad to see him reduced to something like Demonic that doesn't even have his trademark style, he really couldn't have shot it in his faux documentary style?

What's weird is I swear he's ripping off a couple of mangas for Demonic, I remember reading a manga called Chrono Crusade that had a story about a nun using a VR headset looking machine to enter someone's soul to exorcize them of demon possession, the militarized Catholic group also makes me think of Hellsing, could be coincidences but I wonder, there's an obvious anime/manga influence in Blomkamp's visual style so I wouldn't consider it an impossibility.
 
Dr. Pasquale said:
Chappie was just a collection of terrible ideas glued together with hollywood bucks.

A cop android with a childs mind gets raised by a couple of weirdo south african rapper criminals into being a gangbanger while Wolverine tries to arrest them. It sounds like a fucking fever dream.
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And here I thought it was just a gritty remake of short circuit.

Now you're telling me it was a remake of short circuit 2?
 
Short circuit two famously had Fisher Stevens in Indian makeup. And I'm embarrassed to say I used to like Aziz Ansari a lot
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StarkRavingMad said:
I really, really liked District 9 when I saw it years ago. I don't know how well it holds up, though.

I've found the rest of his movies to be incredibly boring.
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I give Elysium credit for daring to depict a future majority Hispanic California as surprise, surprise, a third world shithole, certainly wouldn't see a movie do that today.

Overall Elysium painted a very believable vision of the future, so Blomkamp came up with an interesting world, he just didn't come up with a good enough story or characters to put in it.
 
Dom Cruise said:
I give Elysium credit for daring to depict a future majority Hispanic California as surprise, surprise, a third world shithole, certainly wouldn't see a movie do that today.

Overall Elysium painted a very believable vision of the future, so Blomkamp came up with an interesting world, he just didn't come up with a good enough story or characters to put in it.
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We had Elysium on for Movie Night once and most of us came to the conclusion that it would have worked better as a game rather than a movie.
 
Dom Cruise said:
I give Elysium credit for daring to depict a future majority Hispanic California as surprise, surprise, a third world shithole, certainly wouldn't see a movie do that today.

Overall Elysium painted a very believable vision of the future, so Blomkamp came up with an interesting world, he just didn't come up with a good enough story or characters to put in it.
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Only character I remember from Elysium is Sharlto Coopley's and only because he once again plays a funny raving lunatic. That scene were he got his head busted open and then healed was some gnarly shit.
I find the "We live in a shithole dystopia and rich pipo opress us ese" setting very boring, any hack can write that and this Bloomkamp nigga is fucking terrible at delivering his themes in a subtle way. It doesnt help that Matt Damon's character has no personality whatsoever besides having super cancer and an exo skeleton, by the end of the movie he's just there so the little girl can spout off some metaphors or whatever the fuck she was doing.
 
The thing about Neill Blomkamp is, I LOVED District 9. It was oozing originality, schlock, and social commentary. Neill was channeling Paul Verhoeven. I had hoped he'd be the next big thing in Hollywood. He was being floated for Dune (when it was still at Paramount). But its clear after Elysium floundered that he needed Peter Jackson to guide him. The second Peter wasn't around, he lost his focus. He let his bitch wife carry his sorry scripts, and he got lost in worldbuilding, set pieces, and forgot all the Joseph Campbell shit actual good writers rely on.

I feel like Chappie would have worked better if it was recut like its first trailer, more like a story of exploration and discovery of robotic independent themes. Instead we got a bad Die Antwoord music video. I'm not going to bother with Demonic.

At this rate he'll end up a VFX Supervisor for a good director, or out of the industry altogether. What a fucking fall from grace. Sigh.
 
Watched the suicide squad hitb the other day and all it made me want was for Mike to do a re:view for Doom Patrol, who knows perhaps they will after the latest season finishes.
 
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