What is the latest movie you watched and what did you think of it?

[clocker]

Haven't watched anything in a few days.
I'm sure that everything I missed was great though.

[brightsid]

Even the Rain
One of the most interesting political committed movies I've seen the last few years. A spanish director and his crew went to Bolivia to film his dream movie about Christopher Columbus as a conquistador. The country was a cheap choice, as they could hired the locals for 2 $ per day. At the same time American Water Company tried to privatize the drinking water service in the town and the same people had to pay 400$ for the water that it used to be free. Director is describing investors in poor third world countries as the conquistadors of our days. A nice screenplay without the overdose of political corrects that are usual in these kind of movies. All the actors are great from the drunk Columbus to the poor wild Hatuey who is trying to combine his fighting beliefs with the need of keeping his family safe.

[TorGil]

I saw In Time last week, and it was very bad. I like JT, and Olivia Wilde and that other chick were hot, but the writing was terrible. It's like they took a substandard screenplay thinly written about the Occupy movement and went ctrl+f replacing 'money' with 'time' So bad. It made me miss Logan's Run

[killuminati96]

Return of the Living Dead II

pretty good movie with a touch of comedy in the mix

[clocker]

Helvetica.

Yup, a documentary about a typeface.
Normally, a film about something so arcane and semi-elitist (do proles care how their food stamp coupons look?) would be right up my alley but Helvetica left me with less
appreciation for the nuances of graphic design than I started with.

Created in 1957, the Helvetica typeface has become THE default look for corporate branding and public signage and after Apple made it the main typeface for their GUI (followed quickly by Microsoft)
it became the look of most printed material everywhere.
It's a weird phenomenon if you think about it and the viewer wonders why and how it came to be and more broadly, so what?

Unfortunately, the documentary spends half of it's time on repetitive street montages of signage/logos (all in Helvetica, natch!) and the other half with talking heads who mostly blather in the abstract.
I kept waiting for a side by side comparison with another typeface that would show why Helvetica was more legible/forceful/beautiful- basically, a practical example of the concepts being spouted, but no, t'was not to be.
Helvetica asks the viewer to accept statements like "each Helvetica letter exists in a tightly bound negative space" without showing an example of WTF they're talking about.
Another head claims that the discerning eye (his, presumably) can tell the nationality of the designer by the spacing between letters but he doesn't demonstrate this miraculous skill or explain why it might be important.
Back to another montage.

I like documentaries.
I've suffered with French pastry chefs, cared about the national spelling bee and marveled at the fucked up life of penguins.
I've enjoyed being carried along by a filmmaker's passion for an apparently trivial subject ("Wow, I did not know Donkey Kong was still a thing!") and looked for Helvetica to amuse/educate me about a subject I already had an appreciation for.
It did not, so I can't imagine why someone with no previous interest in the subject of typography would waste their time.



Yup, a documentary about a typeface.
Normally, a film about something so arcane and semi-elitist (do proles care how their food stamp coupons look?) would be right up my alley but Helvetica left me with less
appreciation for the nuances of graphic design than I started with.

Created in 1957, the Helvetica typeface has become THE default look for corporate branding and public signage and after Apple made it the main typeface for their GUI (followed quickly by Microsoft)
it became the look of most printed material everywhere.
It's a weird phenomenon if you think about it and the viewer wonders why and how it came to be and more broadly, so what?

Unfortunately, the documentary spends half of it's time on repetitive street montages of signage/logos (all in Helvetica, natch!) and the other half with talking heads who mostly blather in the abstract.
I kept waiting for a side by side comparison with another typeface that would show why Helvetica was more legible/forceful/beautiful- basically, a practical example of the concepts being spouted, but no, t'was not to be.
Helvetica asks the viewer to accept statements like "each Helvetica letter exists in a tightly bound negative space" without showing an example of WTF they're talking about.
Another head claims that the discerning eye (his, presumably) can tell the nationality of the designer by the spacing between letters but he doesn't demonstrate this miraculous skill or explain why it might be important.
Back to another montage.

I like documentaries.
I've suffered with French pastry chefs, cared about the national spelling bee and marveled at the fucked up life of penguins.
I've enjoyed being carried along by a filmmaker's passion for an apparently trivial subject ("Wow, I did not know Donkey Kong was still a thing!") and looked for Helvetica to amuse/educate me about a subject I already had an appreciation for.
It did not, so I can't imagine why someone with no previous interest in the subject of typography would waste their time.

Edit:
Originally I intended on being subtly snarky by formatting my post in a different typeface but realized that I had the perfect example of how Helvetica could have worked at hand.
So, I copy pasted the body of text (in Helvetica this time) and present a side by side example of the power of type.
In the space of this one post I've given you more insight than the entire documentary.

You can thank me later.

[Jimbo76]

Just watched the directors cut of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. probably the best film ever made imo. 10/10.

[mjmacky]

FONT=Book Antiqua

It was fucking up my eyes making me feel like my vision is blurry again. Maybe step up a font size? I too am yearning for another great documentary, it's been a few months.

[Artemis]

I had a very pleasant surprise in Monsters http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/ . The short review, this is everything that Skyline is not.

The long review. This is yet another the aliens are coming, movie, a genre that seems to be trendy with American viewers post 9/11 despite the fact that they have managed to blast a couple of countries back into the 19th century and really there is no one left to lob a laser guided smart bomb or task a predator UAV at.
The difference is this movie breaks the mold in some significant ways. The first of these differences is that ala M Knight Shamalan, you only get to see the aliens briefly, but you get to see alot of carnage and destruction caused by them, something that cleverly builds the suspense.
The movie was done on a small budget sans the CGI extravaganza (although there is CG imagery in the movie it does not overwhelm the movie) and it is the better for it. Instead of the pitched battles we see in other recent movies, this story is about how people are learning to adapt to an alien presence which is spreading, and it is fascinating to see the subject handled in this way.
All in all a genuine surprise for me, and a movie I thoroughly enjoyed.

[mjmacky]

I had a very pleasant surprise in Monsters http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/

Oh the one with the dude and the chick trying to get back to the U.S. via Mexico? <--? Yeah that was a good one.

[IdolEyes787]

I had a very pleasant surprise in Monsters http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/

Oh the one with the dude and the chick trying to get back to the U.S. via Mexico? <--? Yeah that was a good one.

If there is any smart studio executives out there they should hire you to write tag lines.
................................................................................
Universal Soldier: Regeneration

Yes I know.

Well for a few moments there around the 1'08" mark it wasn't that bad. After that everything that you need to know quality-wise can be surmised by the fact that it's Universal Soldier:Regeneration.
Although I do think having Jean-Claude Van Damme play a mindless automaton was overdoing the irony a little.