Jack Reacher, with Tom Cruise. I like the way the main character analyze things, from the victims to the evidences. I enjoyed it and don't mind watching it again.

The Wolverine: It seemed ok.........except that I fell asleep during it for about 40 minutes. Remember Logan being picked up, flown to Japan, and turning down the old guy. Woke up right where Viper kidnaps Yukio.

Viper was lackluster and the Silver Samurai was an interesting idea, I suppose. Anyway...from what I saw....it was alright but nothing I'm interested in watching again.


Dredd: Liked this. Didn't think I would. A nice simple story with plenty of blazing guns and law enforcement. Liked the Judge Anderson character way more than I thought I would. Great performance from both Urban and Thirlby.

Watched Attack the Block and The World's End. Attack was a pretty joyless watch with unlikeable protagonists, but The World's End was fantastic fun.

Really? Attack the Block is one of my favorite movies for the last couple years. I thought it was a fun, fresh take on the sci-fi alien genre, and loved the characters.

Still haven't had a chance to see World's End yet, but looking forward to it.

Saw World's end

I liked it a lot, but perhaps not as much as their other movies. Still a solid way to spend a Friday.

I have to agree with Owlman on Attack of the Block. That movie was pretty bad. Besides the unlikeable characters, I COULDN"T UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT! I even had subtitles on and I had no idea what the hell they were saying.

To each their own I suppose. I really liked the characters, and don't see why they would be unlikeable. For me it was a breath of fresh air in a world of remakes, sequels, and licensed crud.

Actually saw World War Z last week. Wasn't bad at all, honestly. Not sure if it is Bluray-worthy, but it was fun.

SPOILERS, if anyone cares. I'll bold the actions of Moses and his crew that make the characters unlikeable for me:



The film opens with Moses and his gang surrounding and mugging a woman as she tries to go home. They steal her phone, her wallet, her purse, and the ring off her finger. Moses pulls a switchblade when she gets shaky and takes too long forking over her belongings. We're not sure whether Moses is willing to hurt her, because the mugging is interrupted by a meteor hitting a nearby car, and the nurse escapes. Moses then decides to loot the car, and is scratched by the little alien. Moses, thinking it's a dog, decides to hunt it down and kill it.

Moses and his gang return to their block and offer the alien corpse to the Hi-Hatz, chief thug in the block. Hatz gives Moses drugs to sell for him, and the gang (seemingly unaware of the drugs) congratulates Moses for getting in good with Hatz. Moses clearly enjoys their praise. The gang see more aliens landing, and they rush out to kill them. The gang is followed by two little kids who clearly idolize them. When the gang realizes that the new aliens are bigger and deadly, they proceed to run away right past the little kids, essentially leaving them to die.

At this point I was actively hoping for the gang to all die. Moses gets two police officers killed (inadvertently, but it's still his fault); the gang return to the block to find that the nurse is their neighbor, so they force their way into her apartment, disable her phone so she can't call for police to help, and demand that she patch up the one gang member who was injured by the aliens. When the gang depart, the only member who vocally advocates taking the nurse with them is the patched up kid, and only because he might need a nurse (and because he finds her attractive). The others are willing to leave her behind.

Two of Moses's gang die, the nurse saves Moses's life, and Hatz dies trying to kill Moses. The group figures out that Moses is drawing in the aliens because he has the scent of the little one he killed earlier: a female. Moses offers the nurse the most half-assed apology I've seen in a while; the patched-up kid selfishly whines about his own needs when he learns that the nurse has a boyfriend working with the Red Cross in Africa ("Why can't he help kids here?" Selfish little gangbanger, isn't he?). By the way, Moses doesn't have any parents around to look after him, and he makes the injured kid give the nurse her ring back. That's all the redemption he's going to get, though.

Moses blows up the aliens, gets arrested, and has the nurse vouch that he wasn't responsible for the deaths. Everyone cheers for Moses.



TL, DR: So for the record, we start out with our "hero" and his gang robbing a woman at knifepoint, looting a car, and deciding to kill a "dog" because it scratched him. The "heroes" are willing to leave children to die, they are willing to leave the nurse they mugged to die after she helps them, and they even prevent her from calling for help from the police. They're selfish, cruel, and generally a bunch of little snots. I have to ask... what did you find appealing about the main characters?


I think the movie did several things wrong. Very little humor, unlikeable main characters, emotionless lead, and an underdeveloped cast. Based on reviews, my opinion is the minority one here, but I just don't see a good film here. Cool aliens, but this film owes any and all of its success to a glorified cameo by Nick Frost and the "From the producers of Shaun of the Dead" line.

I found them to be real, human characters. They're kids, trying to act tough, who come from a tough neighborhood. The way you put it here removes all of the empathy from them. It seems you were viewing the characters in a different way, and painted them to be these hardened thugs when in fact they posing, scared children.

Eh, not really worth a debate here. I liked it (as did a majority of people I've talked too, and reviews I've read), you didn't (and this doesn't make you wrong), and that's pretty much that.

I'd toss out Saturday Night Fever for reference to the Attack the Block debate.

The characters the film follows are all pretty much scumbags at best. It ends with gang-rape and suicide. But people find it interesting because of the acting and characters. And the dancing, probably.

Don't worry, I don't see this as a debate, just explaining why we respectively enjoyed/disliked the film. I have reasons why it was a poor film in my opinion, but it's all just that: opinion.

The problem for me is that these characters aren't real, they're part of a narrative. They have to earn the empathy by showing that they deserve it, or they have to take a stand that they don't need your empathy, they'll do without it. Either way, the writers/actors/directors have to make that decision and use it to sell the characters. In this case, the film wanted to have the kids be unapologetic, but still wanted us to forgive them. That's poor writing. Sometimes the acting can overcome that, but that didn't happen either.

Moses and the gang aren't all hardened thugs by any stretch, but let's not kid ourselves for a second: they are thugs, and the older three were hard enough for their ages. The movie went out of its way to make Moses fit the hardened badass archetype and cast a 19-year-old so that the final act reveal of his age (15) would surprise us and make us feel sympathy for him. Unfortunately, I need more than knowing someone is 15 and lacks parental figures for me to feel sympathy when he leaves 8-year-olds to die.

Moses is a character who will mug a woman while he has his gang as backup, demand that she let him out of the back of a police cruiser when crap hits the fan (that's an understandable request, but given that he threatened to stab her a little earlier, not likely to win her over), lead killer aliens to her door, demand that she patch up his friend and fellow mugger, and then leave her to die. That's not me spinning anything or emphasizing anything in particular, that's literally all of his interactions with her until she saves his life and he offers her a half-hearted apology and one of her stolen items back. Our hero.

In Attack the Block, the acting is mediocre at best, and the characters have next to no characterization or development. Had the film taken the time to develop its characters well, even if it didn't redeem them, I probably would have enjoyed the film. At 88 minutes, the film didn't spend much time on character development at all, and it wasn't funny enough to get by on humor as a substitute.


Like I said, it's clear that mine is the minority opinion, I just want to explain why I failed to connect to the protagonists. Obviously plenty of viewers felt otherwise, it just missed the mark for me. I think I'm especially disappointed because I love this genre, and this could have been a classic; instead it's just a letdown.

Add me to that minority. I just don't understand what the appeal was for the majority of viewers. It's a movie that I wouldn't recommend and would never watch again.

Same for me. The worst part is, I own it,and I feel bad getting rid of it because it was a gift from my dad, and he was really trying to find something cool for me when he bought it.

I just watched Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.
It was fun, although it showed a bit more violence than I was expecting.
Also interesting to see that Alan Tudyk does not steal every scene in the movie the way he usually does (while still giving a good performance, of course).