The Kingdom

tristanrobin · Joined: 29 Dec 2007 Posts: 142 Location: New Haven, CT USA

The only thing left in Blockbuster we haven't seen LOL.

Turns out - it's a pretty darned good action/adventure flick! If you want to spend two hours watching a lttle shoot-em-up-and-stomp-down-the-saudis movie, give it a shot! I'm surprised it didn't get more advertising and press.

Kizzume · Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:03 pm Post subject:

Actually, I think it got awful reviews if I remember--let me look at RottenTomatoes.com... hold on... (hold on? this is a message board!)

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_kingdom/

Well, it seems to have about 50% rating. It looks like it's one that people either love or hate.

It's often hard for me to get into war movies--but Full Metal Jacket sucked me in hard, also a really old movie that they had to blow up this bridge at the end of the movie--and I mean OLD, like 40's-50's--I just can't remember the name of it.

Is it filmed in a way that has a lot of moments of uncomfortable silence and that feeling of "holy shit--anything could happen right now", or is it filmed in a way that sort-of represents the standard new way of filming action movies: where the camera shots have to constantly change, but usually the camera is shaky to represent stress, and there's always some sort of sound going on to try to over-tantalize all the senses? Or is it different than either of those?

I'm big into more older-style cinematography and having scenes that are truly in-the-moment and where a scene can move slowly but the slowness is what makes it uncomfortable instead of it being the fact that the camera angles switch so much and that you can't keep track of what's going on because of how many changes there are happening all the time. Both methods achieve the same effect, but I like it when it's my MIND that is asking all the questions, not the screen forcing the questions on me. Does that make any sense, or am I just rambling? I'm a little bit drunk--we had a great show tonight and used the opportunity for free drinks to my advantage tonight. Smile

tristanrobin · Joined: 29 Dec 2007 Posts: 142 Location: New Haven, CT USA

Bridge on the River Kwai? excellent war flick!

congrats on the good show and freebie alcohol LOL

Kizzume · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:06 pm Post subject:

Cool--I wouldn't have been able to remember the name of it. That was it.

As far as The Kingdom--how was it filmed? Quick action all the time, constant camera switching, or lots of uncomfortable silence, or at least, scenes where they don't change camera angles every 5 seconds?

tristanrobin · Joined: 29 Dec 2007 Posts: 142 Location: New Haven, CT USA

Well, first, it's about war - but it's not a war film, per se. It's more a spy film than anything. This group of FBI agents are sent to fnd out who killed all these people in an American compound. So it's more terrorist/spy oriented than actually war. However, there IS a big shoot out at the end, which I thought was pretty well filmed - it kept you on the edge of your seat LOL.
It didn't have MTV camera style - and it wasn't guerrilla hand-held style either. It was normal LOL.

Kizzume · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject:

Cool. I'll check it out. Smile

Thanks for the info on that. Smile