21

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
I coulda swore I saw a thread for this movie but whatever.

Good flick. It's kind of dumb fun but I have to say the first 2/3 of the movie are really well done. It's when they start swaying from the real life story and trying to come up with a "satisfying" ending that wraps everything up, that it all falls apart. Major faux pas on the screenplay front. They needed to spend more time with that third act.

The lead actor, who some people have a not so nice opinion of, I thought was good. Sure, Kate Bosworth is looking more and more like an alien with anorexia, but she was good too.

Spacey was good. The college students in the group were good. His two dorky friends were funny. Oh, and the sidekick from the most underrated comedy of all time, Europtrip, was in there as well. Barely recognized him.

Fishburne was the only character I felt was kind of a waste. He was supposed to be the bad guy but he wasn't really bad and for that reason he always felt forced. And if I had a quarter for every time a character warned that "biometric face recognition software is coming", I would've recouped the 8 bucks I spent on the movie. I kind of never forgave Fishburne for getting lazy and adding 80 pounds for the two Matrix sequels. That always bothered me. You're making two of the most expensive and potentially (at the time) best sequels of all time - get in shape!

But if you turn your brain off and enjoy the ride, this movie is quite enjoyable. I'm not surprised its box office is barely dropping.
 
Yeah, Fishburn wasn't all too great in this film. Fun seeing him beat up people, but didn't scare me all too much.

I really enjoyed the film. the third act was a bit forced, but I enjoyed it more than you did. I especially love the final scene before we cut to credits.

Kate was a bit thin, but still very beautiful. But I feel the cast did a good job.

It's funny though, critics really hate this film. On rotten tomatoes critics are giving it something like 30%, while the RT community is giving it 80%.

Over all really fun film. Nothing exceptionally wonderful. Watch on a rainy day, or rent it. Worth a rental at least.
 
Did anyone notice the opening shot ?? It was absolutely amazing. Heli-shot of the city, to travelling to the side of the guy riding a bike to travelling right in front of him !!???

Damn, I was stunned by that shot. Anyone know how it was done ?
 
I think this shot was mentioned in the cafe. Yeah, I can't figure out how they did it. The only thing I can think of is they had a helicopter for most of the shot and then somewhere in there, he became on a green screen set, and the rest was a motion tracking camera.

I don't even know what I'm saying. How was this shot done???
 
I watched the crew shoot that scene - it was two shots actually. The first was from the helicopter, and then it switches over to a shot following him on a truck. The transition is a little bumpy if you watched closely, but overall they did a real good job.
 
Did anyone notice how "videoish" a couple of scenes were? Especially the scene were they are running. And the scene in china town. They seemed to have that strobe like effect to them.
 
PIMP said:
Did anyone notice how "videoish" a couple of scenes were? Especially the scene were they are running. And the scene in china town. They seemed to have that strobe like effect to them.
Click to expand...

Yes, I noticed it too. I looked into it. Seems like some of it was shot on film, and some on Video. Seems like a lot of the montages and in between scenes were shot on video. Also the strip club scenes seemed videoish.

Maybe it was due to budget constraints and they wanted to cut a bit of money? Maybe it was for look? dunno...
 
It was all shot on HD - the Genesis.

The DP ended up using a 360 degree shutter on certain sequences (1/24th of a second shutter speed) to gain some more light sensitivity. That adds motion blur however, and is a dead giveaway for stuff shot on video.
 
I thought the movie was incredibly predictable and contrived. Right from the beginning he was gunning for that scholarship and the interviewer told him he wanted to be "dazzled" that his life experience should just "jump right off the page". That gave the entire move away right there. *SPOILER* At that moment you KNEW what his "life experience" was going to be about. He'll have this crazy wacky experience, no money, but probably a sure lock for the scholarship award.

And, I didn't like all the Risky Business wanna-be plot points. From his desire to get into school to the mere fact that he is a well to do kid (in the way of education not money) taken out of his element, thrown in the mix of a very out of character and a morally questionable situation all to wind up back where he started, un-scathed, and wrapped up neatly with a little bow....oh, and enter Rebecca De Mornay scene...Tom Cruise...life has shaken him down and he turns to his only source of comfort....only in this flick...he just got the snot beat out of him and in a fit of desperation and nowhere to turn to...off to Kate Bosworth...

Oh, and I'm no stickler for realism when it comes to bloody bruisy faces but COME ON...he just got the snot beat out of him yet they made his face pale and one eye blue. He looked like Petey from the Little Rascals. They could have done a much better job with the makeup than that. That just seemed lazy.

I could go on and on but all in all as previously mentioned if you don't want to think this movie aint the worst that you've seen. And that opening shot was amazing. I leaned over to my girlfriend and said 'what was that? i need to see that again to figure out how they did that".
 
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So I suppose the main issue seems to be it's predictability. I agree, it was obvious that his experience would be 'dazzling'. It's especially obvious when when you know the story.

Then it's obvious that they're going to deviate from the true story to fit into the 3 act structure, and just adding elements to create more conflict.

But frankly, I think even the mere fact that these elements are predictable, is itself predictable. I expected it from the trailers.

So I turned off my brain (referring to the fact that we as filmmakers can make out these elements, and so I decided to not pay attention) and I enjoyed it.
 
Sorry to go on. Its just that this movie had SOOO much potential and it kinda teed me off. I loved the premise. I mean, M.I.T. students counting cards in VEGAS?! Come on. That’s pure gold.

Jon I agree with you. On automatic pilot and this movie is definitely entertaining. I just didn’t know anything about the true story except for “M.I.T. students rape Vegas!” I don’t even know if the real life people got away with it. But in this flick, as soon as the kid was being interviewed, I knew he’d wind up broke but would have a story to tell that would make him a scholarship favorite. I didn’t need to see the story unfold so easily at that point. I didn’t hate the movie. I thought it was entertaining. But when I could read the contrived words off the page I rolled my eyes and squirmed in my seat. And that’s never good. Also, the movie kinda felt ‘hackish’ to me and unoriginal.

Take the game show sequence. Kevin Spacey was asking Jim Sturgess’s character about that ‘game show question’. About whether or not he would pick door number one or door number two, considering the game show host revealed what was under door number 3. The problem I had with this sequence is that the writers completely lifted this scenario from a real life situation where this question was posed to columnist Marilyn vos Savant who is billed as the “smartest woman in the world”. When she answered the question (the same answer as the lead) it fueled a fairly hot debate and mathematicians and scholars from all over wrote in with their mathematical scenarios. It’s now called the “The Monty Hall Problem”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant

I think it’s an interesting story and mathematical question. But, I wished the writers didn’t blatantly steal from the source. Yes, it’s probably not a household story. And yes, paraphrasing and “being inspired” is common in writing but by this point I was already feeling like the script was a little ‘hackish’ so I rolled my eyes when Kevin Spacey first posed the question. All right we get it you have to illustrate just how brilliant this kid is…but haven’t we seen this before in Good Will Hunting and a slew of other movies where the student bests the teacher?

If the writers are posing that the kid should dazzle the Harvard Interviewer, then I think its fair to ask the writers of the movie for the same consideration. Dazzle us and be original.
 
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