Things you love about movies

krudler

Following on from my "things that annoy you about movies" thread, time for some love to be shown, pretty simple, what do you like about movies? couple of mine:

Credit sequences, these days movies are too intent with getting straight into it, I love me a good mood setting opening credit sequence. Being a big fan of soundtracks and scores I like to see what particular composers come up with for the opening titles of a big summer blockbuster or something, of late directors like Christoper Nolan just go from studio title to movie. It works in some cases like The Dark Knight as the movies barely begun and we're watching criminals absail over a city street to hold up a bank but it'd be nice to see a longer title sequence. couple of great examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nnr49f3kHs

^ Spider-Man 2, it sets the scene brilliantly, familiar score, recaps the first movie with Alex Ross's fantastic paintings and is the perfect setup for a sequel opening.

^ Stargate, I absolutely adore David Arnold's score for the movie, and this is one of the best main themes ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGrH901xMFI

^ Just....yes.


Awesome trailers those "ooooh, cant wait for that" ones. not, repeat NOT the ones that give away the entire bloody movie like so many do, but more like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYkHD9y8EqI

Now granted the movie its for is an unmitigated mess of a film, but thats hands down one of the best trailers ever made.

Pleasant surprises/complete shocks, of this year Thor was the most unexpected movie I actually loved ever minute of, didnt know what to make of it when I was going to it, but it just worked. last year it was How To Train Your Dragon, I usually find Dreamworks movies soulless and full of pop culture references, but I was absolutely blown away by HTTYD, one of the best movies of 2010 without a doubt.
Then you have stuff that just comes out of nowhere and just shocks and audience, I remember going to The Matrix in 1999 having only seen a short trailer before something a few weeks beforehand, went to it not expecting much and I remember sitting there about halway through thinking the exact same thing as my friends and probably most of the people in the audience, "where the fcuk this THIS come from?!" Its easy to look at it now having been parodied and imitated to death, but it was truly new and mindblowing to see it for the first time, one of my favourite cinema visits ever.

Event movies, I love blockbusters, there I said it. Seeing the teaser posters and trailers, that opening weekend excitement feeling, and when the movies deliver what they promise then its even better. You cant beat being in a crowded cinema (hopefully when people arent fcuking yapping the whole way through) and feeling the buzz of some exciting sequence or when an audience is totally into whats going on onscreen. Theres a lot of disappointment, but for every Transformers 2 theres an Inception or Casino Royale or Pixar movie.

qz

I'm going to agree with you on the trailer part, there is nothing better than a well made trailer that leaves you dying to see the film. I remember seeing the Cloverfield trailer for the first time and searching all the info on the film I could until it was released. Whatever people may think of the film itself, there's no denying that the trailer was pretty special.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvNkGm8mxiM

EDDIE WATERS

I loved spirited away and all of studio ghibli films

mike65

Genuine wide screen ratio picture and use of focus.


Special effects that have a tactile, three dimensional quality to them. The great thing about older films is you know they didn't use CGI to fake an entire scene!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akZkgNzaOPQ

Overall pacing and scene editing that allows the viewer to take it all in. The post MTV "hacking" that passes for editing these days makes so many film pretty hard work.

A proper music score, you know one you can whistle. Or that supports/compliments the visuals rather than TELLING YOU THIS IS THE SAD BIT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw

Sl!mCharles

T2 opening credits - great choice. The pounding drums and then the kind of heroic synth flowing over them. The flaming playground underneath it all.
Sets up a motif that pops up again a few times in the movie. Luv it.

krudler

Heres one, seeing a movie or scene that will become iconic for the first time at the cinema, stuff like the first appearance of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, or the rooftop bullet time scene in The Matrix, or a recent favourite, this scene:



That instantly became (for me anyway) the iconic shot of TDK, this silent save for the musical score and very faint background noise shot of the Joker just revelling in the utter chaos he's just unleashed and riding off into the city night not caring about anything. like a dog chasing cars indeed.

Jako8

Animatronics, puppets and costumes. They have a brilliant quality about them and add to the movie. Knowing that the thing onscreen is actually there is something I love.
The T-Rex from Jurassic Park is a perfect example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdx_zQLtme4

The ending of one of my favorite moves has a great monster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyLBbFbcYD4

When his girlfriend comes running into the shed, headless, is just amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAX2amSpBMQ

The Thing uses loads of brilliant looking animatronics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TevQS4qgE_Q

And of course the Mos Eisley cantina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr0ZyMPFJeU

Jim Henson is a creative genius. He really brought a sense of wonder to his films like Labyrinth. Great looking puppets and monsters.


I think the things I love most are the practical things. The things you know they did on set.

Marty McFly

Theres so much I love about movies, a hell of a lot more than i hate about them anyway:).

I love the fact that no matter what humour youre in you can find a film to suit it, whether you just want to laugh out loud, be enthralled, scared, cry, or films to loose yourself in or simply switch your brain off and watch some mindless action you can always find it in a film like nothing else out there.

I love the way there people out there like Spielberg,Cameron out there who can create whole worlds for us to get lost in, and send our imagination wild, to the point youll often hear people talk passiontely about the wolrds,visions created such is the power of film.

I love the way a film can be aspiring or even life changing for some people, it can change you whole view point on life or on some opinion on life you had can be completely overturned by a powerful film that makes you question yourself and the world around you.

I love the way some films are timeless, youll rarely see parent and child sitting around listening to music and agreeing on it, but with childrens classics like Home Alone youll have a child sitting there twenty years later still laughing at it along with there parent who enjoyed it in there childhood. Even look at pixar those guys revolutioned animated films with Toy Story and continue to do so making films for adults and children alike.

A great film can have people from all walks of life enjoying it and theres not many things out there that can stake a claim on that. Theres plenty more I love about films but reckon I should stop waffling now:), I know some of what I said is prob cheesy:o but its also the truth.

Nolanger

I love the music to this old Miss Marple movie!

ziedth

Great idea for a thread:

For me I still love special effects like I know 3D gets (rightly) a hard time but I was back to being an 8 year old when I saw it first in Avatar or the hallway fight in Inception.

Hank_Jones

I'm just going to mention a couple of things that I love about films.
The first is the colour schemes used in films, some just have the most amazing visual aspects to them, alive with depth and colour.



Another is when I see something in a film that just blows my mind.
I just find myself thinking how brilliant that certain scene or thing in the film is.
An example would be the camera movement and editing in Irreversible,
how unsettled it all made me feel and how it was completely different to anything I had ever seen before.

Another example of this would be the fight scene that took place in the hall in Inception.
It really struck me as amazing, up there with the best cinema moments ever personally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VkSHQPl9tA

mike65

Hank_Jones, you beat me to the punch about colour schemes.

I was watching a bit of To Catch a Thief yesterday on Film Four (sparkling pristine print) and it reminded me of how I love the art design and set decoration of that era, mid 50s-early 60. Pastels, and subtle green/brown/blue/grey (probably why I love Mad Men!). That decade was, as colour became the norm, when the "look" of film really started to become a central feature of a film.

krudler

I love (and miss) when films looked like films. Its hard to describe but these days movies look too clean and artificial, I was watching the Terminator trilogy during the week and 1 and 2 are gritty, shot on locations, use costumes and props that look real and worldworn, by the time you get to T3 everything looks too sanitised and clean.

Compare Arnie's outfit in T2 to T3, in T2 its just some greasy bikers gear thats weathered and worn, it looks real, in T3 its a pristine looking fresh off the factory line jacket with not a wrinkle in it, the whole first 20 mins of that movie look like it was shot on a backlot as well. The whole movie has a too perfect sheen to everything compared to the real world look of the first two movies.

Fysh

On the subject of opening credits, I thought James Gunn's Super had a great credit sequence - funny, visually arresting and setting the mood for the film perfectly. Fight Club is another example of opening credits done well.

I really like it when film directors do a good job of using music to enhance the film - not just having it there as a backdrop but using it to draw you into the events happening on-screen. The scene near the start of 28 Days Later where Jim's walking around a desolate and empty central London, while the Godspeed You! Black Emperor music plays in the background at an ever-accelerating pace, raising your heartrate and making you tense in anticipation is an excellent example of this. Or, on a lighter note, the scene in Shaun Of The Dead where Shaun & co are battering a zombie in time to Don't Stop Me Know which is playing on the jukebox. The whole of Pi was great at using a mixed electronic soundtrack to really emphasise the paranoid and tense atmosphere of the film as Max seems to lose his mind.

The Mad Hatter

I love long takes, where a whole scene is shown without a cut. There's a certain amount of ballet to a scene like that - everything has to be planned out meticulously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8MqjoFvy4

There's a type of shooting where the director deliberately hides something from us in order to increase the emotion in a scene. In this Captain Stanley's wife's faces away from us as she describes her dream. The camera focusses on everything else, but her face remains hidden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLaXJWcrgzM

Fysh

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

I love long takes, where a whole scene is shown without a cut. There's a certain amount of ballet to a scene like that - everything has to be planned out meticulously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8MqjoFvy4

Oh, long takes done well are excellent - done right they can really draw you into the events being shown. One of my favourite examples is this scene from Children Of Men:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saGaBJMqQo8

JCVD opened with a pretty great long take and to make things better managed to even work in a metajoke about the difficulties involved in long takes. One of many things that made me really enjoy that film.

johnny_ultimate

You haven't seen a longshot until the one in Godard's Weekend. Guy was a pretentious so and so at the best of times, but hey he did an awesome tracking shot.

Nolanger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJ1c3kCnjQ

There are so many things that I love about cinema but one of the things I love most is when I find a film that's been critically derided and flopped massively yet when I see it I fall in love with it.

I also love films which do something completely unexpected in an attempt to mind fuck the audience, not in the M. Night way in which everything we thought we knew is conveniently played for some big twist but rather when a skilled filmmaker does something as off the wall as insert a music video into the middle of his film.

This scene is one of my all time favorites, I can't help but love the film and can watch it over and over again, hell I've even went out of my way to track down and watch the Cannes version which I think is a work of pure genius, shame that so few people agree.

S.M.B.

How easy is it to track down the Cannes version of Soutland Tales? I've yet to watch it but must do so one of these days. Would give that version a go if it's regarded as being the best of the bunch.

S.M.B.

S.M.B. wrote: »

How easy is it to track down the Cannes version of Soutland Tales? I've yet to watch it but must do so one of these days. Would give that version a go if it's regarded as being the best of the bunch.

I think it's been shown on Sky Movies, I got a copy of it from someone involved in the film when it was still really hard to come by.

krudler

Ooh, when they mess with the studio logos, some great examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46lSslZe6Pk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5ixJu2YvZQ

Warners seem to love changing and messing with the logo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKfGVBovZUg

krudler

This opening music, best part of the entire movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lXURWUIVNE

I love when films which are made simply to entertain an audience are done right, there's no underlying message or point being made, just 90 plus minds of sheer mindless entertainment. I get a lot of slack for including the Losers in my top 10 films of last year but I will defend it to the end of time, it was the A-Team movie (which was a lot of fun too) done right. A medium budgeted film which didn't get the love it deserved from either audience members of the studio behind it who released in in the middle of the Summer Blockbuster season with little marketing.

It's odd watching the scene below as so many recent films have stolen the shot of the camera going through the bullet hole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoOOpLpcF28

krudler

I loved The A-Team, its mindless entertainment and loads of fun. I did have to laugh at overhearing some guy saying it was too far fetched after the cinema, like the original series was The Wire or something in regards to realism?

krudler

krudler wrote: »

I loved The A-Team, its mindless entertainment and loads of fun. I did have to laugh at overhearing some guy saying it was too far fetched after the cinema, like the original series was The Wire or something in regards to realism?

It was great fun but it did take it's self a little too serious at times. Shame that chances of a sequel are slim, well I mean its a shame that the chances of the original cast returning for a big budget sequel are slim. Expect a low budget, direct to disc film in 3 to 4 years featuring Luke Goss, Tom Berenger, Sean Bean and at least one wrestler/UFC star turned actor.

krudler

Deleted User wrote: »

It was great fun but it did take it's self a little too serious at times. Shame that chances of a sequel are slim, well I mean its a shame that the chances of the original cast returning for a big budget sequel are slim. Expect a low budget, direct to disc film in 3 to 4 years featuring Luke Goss, Tom Berenger, Sean Bean and at least one wrestler/UFC star turned actor.

I'd happily watch a movie with those actors in it, Luke Goss is awesome :pac:

Beruthiel

Scenes that stick in your brain forever and you will watch them over and over again. I have watched the below four countless times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4RdPBImnuE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6wqKb8EUxI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m6LhZJdCQY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yjNbcKkNY

krudler

Beruthiel wrote: »

Scenes that stick in your brain forever and you will watch them over and over again. I have watched the below four countless times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6wqKb8EUxI

"Never trust a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!"

thats it I'm watching The Princess Bride later

Nolanger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzM8MgJxcEY

_Kaiser_

krudler wrote: »

I love (and miss) when films looked like films. Its hard to describe but these days movies look too clean and artificial, I was watching the Terminator trilogy during the week and 1 and 2 are gritty, shot on locations, use costumes and props that look real and worldworn, by the time you get to T3 everything looks too sanitised and clean.

Compare Arnie's outfit in T2 to T3, in T2 its just some greasy bikers gear thats weathered and worn, it looks real, in T3 its a pristine looking fresh off the factory line jacket with not a wrinkle in it, the whole first 20 mins of that movie look like it was shot on a backlot as well. The whole movie has a too perfect sheen to everything compared to the real world look of the first two movies.

Couldn't agree with this more

Take Top Gun as an example. Those were REAL planes and pilots doing REAL flying - not all virtualised CGI effects that (if done today) wouldn't look half as well as they did in that film (eg: Stealth from a few years back)

Or animated films... remember when these were an event? Like The Lion King, or Toy Story, or the earlier Disney efforts.... nowadays they're churned out every other week and don't have anywhere near the "heart" of their predecessors (with a few very rare exceptions)

Same thing with any of the classic 80s/90s action films with special effects featuring real cars/trucks/planes etc and the talent, time and effort that went into pulling off a great stunt. Something you can appreciate, not something that a techie knocked up on a workstation.