It's alright, your willingness to defend Transformers against wholly unnecessary criticism sees you in good stead

I almost stopped watching, to be honest Casino Royale started going crap after half way through, they immediately reverted to type with QoS, I think we've seen all of what Daniel Craig has to offer now, and it wasn't much.

I enjoyed all of those...well apart from the LOTR which doesn't interest me in the least.

Alright, alright. Lets put you all back into your cages. We've had enough of you for today. Yalla yalla!

Lots, and lots of films, are over-rated, but every person has it's own opinions. Slumdog Millionaire was my film of 2008. For the sheer fact that the director was Brittish.

A Brittish film? 8 Oscars? Not on my nelly!

But it is! And it did! And it was the best film of the year... Imho.

Hype is just a marketing skill.

If they tell you it's this! And it's this! And it's won these! And this many people love it! It triggers your instinct to want to go and watch it because you feel like you are missing out.

Just making Bish's transgressions in the FPOTD thread less obvious…

I'm with bish on this one, I though it was an excellent film and made a refreshing change to all the cheese and PIE..

On the

Most self-aware people can filter out the hype and draw their own conclusions.

If you're daft enough to believe the hype, you will probably be disappointed when you get to see the film. (any film)

Reservoir Dogs had an almost silent release, and it turned out to be a great film. A couple of months later it was relaunched to a fanfare of critical acclaim and hyperbole, and I've spoken to a couple of people, that saw the later release, who thought it didn't live up to it's billing.

The Dark Knight was massively hyped, and IMO turned out to be brilliant. Although, a lot of the hype was based around the death of Heath Ledger, and his fine performance. So, you could argue that the film was something of an exception.

I haven't seen Slumdog yet, it didn't look like the type of film I felt the need to see on the big screen. I will most likely rent it on DVD, to see what the fuss was about.

I never buy into the hype for any film (I'm far too cynical for one thing ), but that doesn't mean I can't judge the hype itself later on, esp. when I catch it on DVD months later like most times...

Re. Craig and the recent Bond films, I think he's quite good as a 'realistic' Bond, it's just the directors of the new films who lose their nerve... And in the case of QoS, had bugger all to work with IMO

Gah, I saw the trailer for Slumdog and though ti looked really worthy... which is about as bad a review as I can give it (haven't seen it and refuse to).

Don't get me started on the Blair Witch Project. What a load of dross. Quite frankly the numpties in that film deserved everything that happened to them.

Cloverfield.
Owes me 2 hours of my life back. Can I sue the producers for murdering me, a little bit, after I watched that waste of time, money and carbon?

I didn't know anyone rated Equilibrium in the first place . However I do have to say that the first matrix film was something genuinely new; it had technology that hadn't been used in a mainstream film before and it was the first film to take your proper Hong Kong Martial arts movie ideas an put them in a western film. It was actually something people hadn't seen before and even if objectively it's not great art, it is quite good cinema.
The second and third ones mind, they sucked worse than a English tennis player.

Jon

Haven't seen Slumdog, or Mamma Mia come to that. I read reviews about films and then decide if I want to see them, I try to go into movies without any preconceptions which is probably why I have immensely enjoyed films like:
Independence Day, The Fifth Element, Hocus Pocus, LotR, Transformers, The Matrix, Cloverfield, James Bond (except the Daltrey ones) and the like.

Perhaps I have a low "fascination" threshold??

I don't like films that try to be too "off the wall" and alternative. "A Scanner Darkly" was a pretentious old pile of steaming t0ss in my opinion. I didn't especially enjoy Blade Runner, it was ok, but I don't understand why people rave about it, I expect there are people who will tell me I just "don't get it" which is perhaps the case, but deliberately making a film that will only appeal to the few people whos minds are wired to "get it" means that there will be a lot of people (like me) who think that having to "get" a movie to enjoy it is a load of pretentious ass-kissing rubbish.

Plus it gets difficult to tell which people actually really thoroughly enjoyed a movie, and which hangers-on are just saying they loved it because it seems like the cool thing to do. I'd much rather hear someone say they either loved or hated a movie, but be able to explain why, thus proving they still have a brain and an opinion of their own.

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