I would say that Star Trek: The Motion Picture is pretty good. Despite being slow-paced, it is visually interesting to watch, and it fits quite nicely into the philosophical aspect of The Original Series.

The other movie I will put forward is the Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom. I really enjoyed it, as it felt like an interesting direction to take Indie. Only downside to the film was Willy...they really should have picked out some other lady for the role, and made it less grating on the ears. The death scenes were terrifying to me as a kid, between the sacrificial magma pit and the rock crusher, I was sufficiently disturbed. Come to think of it, the movie has a Dwarf Fortress vibe to it. :)

I imagine it had the same problem Fallout fans saw in Fallout 3: not bad in itself, but not necessarily true to its source material.

Because is Mario really something you want to make dark and edgy? :)

Or better even: is Mario really something that desperately needed to be a live-action movie?

Live action seemed to work in small doses in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.

But they really should have used a puppet for Bowser. The kids would have loved puppet Bowser.

Well, my main problem with it is how they crapped on Homer's work and did it their way. Oh yeah, Brad Pitt wants $100.000.000 - despite the fact that we had to use CG to add some muscles - we need to give him more screen time to make it worth the money, fuck mythology.

I know, they did a similar thing to Gladiator before which didn't annoy anyone for some reason... but it's probably because everybody appreciated a bad-ass Russel Crowe. :P

Yeah, I only watched the theatrical version which I just hated. I heard that the director's cut is supposed to be much better but I doubt that they replaced Orlando Bloom with a more charismatic and talented actor there... which is one of my main problems with the movie. :P

Agree. I'm a huge fan of the games but I just didn't care about how "spot on" the adaptation was, especially since it was obvious how hard it would be to work with this franchise. I mean, I'm still angry at the crew for casting Timothy Olyphant who looks just ridiculous without hair but heck, I was expecting a shallow action flick and I got a surprisingly violent shallow action flick with soldiers with glowing eyes and stuff... awesome! And it definitely beat the Max Payne adaptation which was imho horrible... well, let's say pretty bad.

Edit:
Speaking of game adaptations - I think both the Silent Hill and Doom movie deserve more credit. For me Silent Hill was one of the best-written horror movies yet, additionally with a great cast and superb effects. And most people I know who hated the movie either complained about it not being true to the franchise, others complained about supposedly needing a deep understanding of the games in order to get the point (something my non-gaming father had no problems with for some reason). Sorta paradox and kinda just confirms how lazy today's audience is. The funniest review I read also complained about the audio being so horrible that he had to turn down the volume... way to watch a horror movie, moron!

Doom was kinda trashy and I don't know anyone who didn't get lost in the plot, the timing and the places on the first time but heck, again, people just accuse the movie for weird reasons. "This movie has no plot". Heck, there is a plot, you have to focus in order to get it (which is usually a plus in my book). And I didn't care that they didn't stick to the story of either Doom game, the Doom series wasn't ever known for a clever plot, in fact the original games didn't take themselves seriously plot-wise and the new one didn't acknowledge the events from previous games. So how can one complain about the movie ignoring the "canon"? At least the crew did a glorious job adapting the visuals of Doom 3 including the monster designs. And speaking of the monsters - I read reviews where people complained about the monsters being some of the lamest CGI creatures ever. Those were costumes, you idiots! Also I appreciated that the film has multiple unpredictable twists (I won't spoil it but anyone who claims that everything was obvious from the beginning is a liar).

Well, that's it for now.

"Lady in the Water" by M. Night Shyamalan.

It's a beautiful tale, has engaging imagery, and it is the first Shyamalan movie where he really got the "mystery" part right.

In "Sixth Sense", I found the intended mystery/twist plain boring - it was obvious after 30 minutes, and the movie has very little to offer beyond it. In "Unbreakable", there was a surprising twist, but very little mystery throughout the movie. In "Signs", he tried to make the twist _not_ as obvious as in Sixth Sense, with the result that 80% of people didn't get what the movie was about. In "The Village", the twist was a bit bland, though the characters carried the story well enough. In all of these movies, the fundamental problem is that there is one single twist, and (at most) one single cover story.

In "Lady in the Water", Shyamalan lets - for the first time - his characters discuss and explore _alternative_ explanations for the mystery in the plot. In all his earlier movies, the situation either _seems_ clear (as long as you haven't understood the twist), or _is_ clear (as soon as you have). "Lady in the Water" delightfully pits alternative explanations against each other, and is therefore the first Shyamalan movie that manages to maintain a sense of mystery and wonder.

It 's a bit odd, though - popular opinion seems to be that Shyamalan produced his "masterpiece" very early (Sixth Sense) and has declined since then. Whereas I am seeing his earlier works as mostly failed experiments with simple twist plots, while "Lady in the Water" uses a much more complex, evolved, and mature way of storytelling.

Shyamalan is, however, partly responsible for the trashing that "Lady in the Water" received, even though I regard it as undeserved. When you put a movie critic into your movie and make him the worst character in the whole cast, and at the same time write yourself into the script as some Jesus-like character, then you're basically begging for low review scores. Shyamalan attacked the critics, the critics downrated the movie. It's a pity, because it's imho the best of Shymalan's works.

You're an unlucky guy, then. Honestly, I think all people I know personally were surprised by the ending, some even didn't believe that the ending was consistent with other parts of the movie until they got a chance to watch it again. There was one buddy who claimed that he got it right after a couple of minutes but admitted to me later on that he lied in order to impress the ladies we had watched it with (yeah, he's kind of an idiot).

Haven't seen it yet but I'll certainly have to give it a try then. Certainly sounds interesting.

Btw, other movies that come to my mind are Ondine and K-Pax, both of which I consider kinda underrated. In both cases it's only kind of a binary choice which makes the plot quite simple but still, both of them were great experiences to me.

When I was watching "The Sixth Sense", I already knew about the twist because someone had spoilt it for me. I still enjoyed watching the movie. I like that it's one of the few "horror" or ghost movies that actually managed to give me the creeps. Most others are just over the top, gross or trying to scare by sudden (un)expected images and loud sounds or screams, not by being genuinely eerie and uncanny.

Hmm. Around my friends, about 2/3 realized the twist somewhere in the middle of the movie, and 1/3 were surprised by it. My girlfriend realized it almost immediately after the prologue.

But I think the problem of this movie is not whether the twist is too easy to guess or not - it's the fact that _if_ you realize the twist, the movie is practically done for. You can still watch it and marvel at the consistency with which the twist permeates every scene, but that's not really enough to keep one's interest for an hour or longer. If you ask people whether they liked "Sixth Sense", you will typically hear extreme praise from the people who didn't realize the twist, while most of the people who did will call it a very boring experience. In other words, the movie completely _depends_ on the spectator not realizing the twist too early. And that's not a very elegant way of storytelling imho.

Give it a try. :)

One caveat, I remember that several critics called the characters and the setting "not believable enough". Personally I didn't have a problem with that, in fact I enjoyed the slightly surreal atmosphere. I didn't really question the "unrealistic" parts of the setting - I just acknowledged them, and thought "now let's see where this takes us", and that worked pretty well.


Hmm, never heard of those. *conjures a friendly IMDb djinni* ;)

That's interesting - the movie didn't feel creepy at all to me. It started out interesting, but then came this sudden crash when I realized what was going on, and my "watching experience" never really recovered from that. For five minutes I wondered "Am I seeing this right?", for five more minutes I thought "It can't really be _that_ obvious, can it?", and for the rest of the movie I felt like "How much longer are they going to drag the story along?". Imagine a theater performance where a huge elephant stands on the stage for the whole time, and no character ever addresses it, but after 2 hours one of them suddenly exclaims "Look! There's an elephant!", an everybody is supposed to be incredibly surprised. That pretty much sums up how I felt while watching the movie. ;)

I carefully read a bit about them, and especially K-Pax sounds like a movie that could be very interesting independently of whether there's a twist at the end or not.

Ondine ... now this is creepy. I first thought I had seen it, but then realized that it just reminded me of a different movie, The Dark (2005). Probably coincidence? ;) I didn't read too much about Ondine, I hate being spoiled. :)

Ah, Ondine. That was a strange movie. Can't say I really liked the twist that much, but it was interesting.

Also, i'm glad I'm not the only one who liked Lady In The Water. :)

The internet is full of fanservice T&A stuff like this. What the world is not full of is B-52s in a dogfight with a dragon.

That's right, a B-52 in a dogfight with a mother-fucking dragon!

The movie was overall a let down and had a deeply depressing ending. I actually think the director and producers were going for something special, but they missed their target, and likely by a very wide margin considering the results.
I'm with I&G on this one, yes, you can have objective measurements of movies, but they're art and art demands subjective measurements as well.
Everyone kept saying how bad this film was going to be, I always replied, "I don't care, all I want to see is someone get a spear in the head and I'll be happy." I saw it week 1 and was not disappointed.
I consider it extremely good, the acting is also very well executed. I'm at a loss to understand why people hate Lady in the Water (other than the overall cliche of the story, but it's hardly unique in employing cliches, especially this one).

Oh, I've got one: Moulin Rouge! Some people seem to really despise this movie, and I don't really get it. I mean, it's not a masterpiece, but it's fun and entertaining. I personally like it. :)