Last night, Saturday, upon perusing the TV offerings and finding nothing worth my time to watch, I checked out the pay per view section. Saw a movie called "Ashby" starring Mickey Rourke. Since I liked some of his other work, I decided to take a chance. As far as todays movies go, it was fairly good, IMO. It is a film that has a bit of everything. Some mild comedy, some violence, (hey, it's a Mickey Rourke film), some romance, but no sex scenes. I give it **** out of *****.
I've never heard of that. I can't afford pay per view, but if I ever see it on 'free' tv (what's really free nowadays, after we pay out the ying yang for cable?), I'll have to check it out. I saw one of his movies a couple of years ago, called Passion Play and it was interesting. I don't remember everything now, since my memory is so bad, but here's the trailer, in case you're interested. It got mixed reviews.
Liked Mickey in Iron Man 2 and The Expendables. Those are the only ones I've seen him in. We are looking very forward to the DVD release (later) of War Room and after that, 90 Minutes In Heaven. We love action (Last Stand, Under Siege, U-571 among some others), comedy (Grownups, Get Smart, Weekend At Bernie's, Blended among some others) and religious types (Courageous, Heaven Is For Real, God Is Not Dead, Blindside) among others.
We've been watching some movies on netflix lately, but I have to say, they are all really bad. It just seems the last few years they've tried to get "artistic" and they shoot them with low light or dark filters so it's hard to see a lot of what's happening. They also seem to put a lot of background noise into them so it's hard for me to hear the dialog. Then, they think that they have to open with either a graphic sex scene or blowing something up. And the language. I'm no prude, but after watching 10-15 of mindless sex and violence, I usually just give up on them. I have to say, some of my favorites that I've seen lately are either kids movies (Boxtrolls was really good) or young adult fiction.
@Mal Campbell I don't have Netflix right now, but I've noticed the same things overall. If you go into your sound settings (if you have any), sometimes you can change them, and it will lower the volume on the background sounds so you can hear the dialogue better. I can't remember if it's only on my sound bar that I've been able to do that, or on my televisions in general, but it's worth a shot. I don't have a hearing issue, so I know it's how they're making the movies, and television shows as well. It's so bad that I (and others I've discussed the issue with) routinely turn on the closed captioning, just so we don't miss half of what's said. Of course, in doing so, we miss seeing half of what's going on, because we're reading it so intently.
I have given up on several movies due to sound problems. If I have to keep adjusting the sound in order not to be deafened, yet still be able to hear what people are saying in the movie, it better be a darned good movie or I'll give up on it. Typically, I will run into these problems when a character in the movie enters a bar with loud music. As would be the case in a real bar with loud music, I don't know what anyone is saying while they are there, and I don't particularly want to be there, so I have to turn the sound down. Later, I find that I don't know what people are talking about after they've left the bar because I've turned the sound down. If I turn the sound back up, within a few moments, I'll be confronted with loud music again. So it's up, down, up, down, up, down... and very few movies are worth the trouble. Sometimes the sound track itself drowns out the voices of the characters.
That's me exactly. I don't have the best of hearing, and the background noise seems to penetrate while the voices are inaudible (is that a word?). Luckily, my husband has great hearing and he usually catches what they're saying, but I think sometimes he gets tired of translating for me. Like Ken says, though, it has to be a good show for me to put up with much of that. Life's just too short to watch bad TV - there are always better things I could be doing.
@Mal Campbell Before I forget, yes, it is a word . I totally understand what y'all are saying @Ken Anderson, but somehow I've got either the sound bar or television volume downstairs set to decrease the music or background noises in whatever I'm watching, without having to keep messing with it. I know I used to get really aggravated about it. I haven't noticed as much of a problem now since I've adjusted the settings, but I do still need to turn on the closed captioning on occasion, which still irritates me. I know music is used to set the mood, but if it's turning off a lot of viewers, there's a problem.
Yes, but there are also additional settings for my sound bar, and I've never bothered to investigate them all. I usually toggle through a few before finding one that works for that particular movie, but sometimes I'll have to go back in and toggle around, because each movie is different. Some have really loud music, with others it's whisper-type talking. It would be great if they'd standardize the way they manage sound when making movies. I think the most annoying movie I tried to watch recently sound-wise was Focus. It was really irritating, so I just shut it off.
You're right Jim. I had forgotten about the sound settings. We can't hear half of the dialog either and I thought it was just us. I have just added a wireless sound bar and hope this will help too.
I have trouble with a lot of the recent movies and often watch them on a tablet wearing headphones, and even then I often have to use closed captions/subtitles, which as mentioned spoils the movie because you are reading half the time. Evidently as we age the brain becomes less efficient at separating speech from background sounds, as well as a general deterioration in hearing for a lot of us. I had a hearing test some years ago and my mid frequency range levels had dropped, this is the speech area of the spectrum so explained why speech was falling into the background of other sounds in my case. The other problem I find is because of the naturalistic way of acting these days, where characters mumble and speak with strong accents as in real life, which combined with loud music and lots of background sounds makes it even more difficult to catch some words The old movies had the dialogue clearly spoken and very little background sounds or music, more like a stage play, seems unnatural to listen to but at least you could hear all the dialogue.
Watched the new 'vacation' movie starring Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins. Rusty Griswold takes his own family on vacation. Not as good as the original, but does have some pretty funny stuff. If you're sensitive about swearing, be warned. http://www.movienewz.com/vacation/