Seems I was wrong about the Star Wars films being the biggest misuse of Adam Driver. this film is just a massive waste of time and nowhere near a clever as it likes to think, just watch Shaun of the Dead again if you need some zom-com
I would agree. The film managed to be not so bad and fairly good through the first half, but then fell apart into meandering around looking for some way to be unconventional and only finding ways to be noncommittal.
I'm willing to bet a couple movies have appeared in here multiple times. I don't even remember all the movies I've commented on in this thread, so I'm sure most of us don't remember everything everyone has reviewed.
LordofHats wrote: I'm willing to bet a couple movies have appeared in here multiple times. I don't even remember all the movies I've commented on in this thread, so I'm sure most of us don't remember everything everyone has reviewed.
No, but it might be enough to trigger a negative association and inspire a little consideration before "giving it a go."
If people watch these films they'll keep making them!
LordofHats wrote: I'm willing to bet a couple movies have appeared in here multiple times. I don't even remember all the movies I've commented on in this thread, so I'm sure most of us don't remember everything everyone has reviewed.
No, but it might be enough to trigger a negative association and inspire a little consideration before "giving it a go."
If people watch these films they'll keep making them!
don't feel too bad I watched Overlord despite your warnings but then I'll watch anything with zombies / zombie proxies
Ryan Reynolds plays an NPC in GTA Online and slowly realizes he can fight back against the players. The premise of an NPC becoming self-aware and fighting back is fun. The level to which the story commits to the premise and manages to justify everything that happens in the story within it's own reality and create genuine narrative stakes took me by complete surprise.
Or to put it how someone in one of my facebook groups called it Free Guy or "What if Ready Player One was good?"
Seems I was wrong about the Star Wars films being the biggest misuse of Adam Driver. this film is just a massive waste of time and nowhere near a clever as it likes to think, just watch Shaun of the Dead again if you need some zom-com
Aye, that goes well with what I heard about it. So far i steered clear of that one. If you wanna see Adam Driver do interesting things, I think The Man Who Killed Don Quixote works alright.
I also always liked Hot Shots 2 better than the first one. Also recently watched Hot Shots 2 again, and it was ...alright. Top Secret's interesting. Most of all I was impressed with a.) how good a lead Val Kilmer used to be and b.) what a good singer he is.
A true conclusion to the entire Evangelion franchise. Watch as a series that always been a blatant metaphor for living with depression finally learns to break free of the past and live for the future.
If you have even been a fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion in the past, I cannot recommend the 4 rebuild films enough, they are just got added to Amazon prime, and truly are some of the best anime films around. (though they tend to get a little confusing. When you lose track of the plot just focus on the characters as they are the real stars of the show).
Okay Ms Larson can act when she wants to, decent enough film especially in the staying in times, maybe a tad long as the last half could have easily been the last third
The Watch
Oh dear, fupping dreadful, bordering on Earthsea levels of not getting it, lasted one episode, avoid
I just finished listening to the audiobook a few weeks ago because it went free to audible subscribers and really enjoyed it. So I forced my wife to watch the movie with me despite her having no desire to watch it. She enjoyed it, I enjoyed it. It's a good film, consistently funny while still keeping you on the edge of your seat when things go wrong. I don't know how rewatchable it it. But it was for sure worth seeing once.
I’ve read the book 5 or 6 times at this point, and watched the film several times. I certainly find it pleasurable to read/watch it again I use it to calibrate my projector
Granted, I last read the tale about 20 years ago, but it seemed to follow the main story line pretty well. I have heard some reviews indicating that the movie is hard to follow, and things on screen are not always explained. I did not have any problems on that score? Curious.
The movie was beautifully shot, the framing and composition was great, the pacing was slow, and sometimes it veered into camp.
The group had a good time watching it BUT I can see how many people would find this thing a slog.
Rorouni Kenshin: the Beginning and Rorouni Kenshin: The Final
A set of samurai movies based on the manga and anime series; Samurai X..... maybe? Someone more knowledgeable will need to weigh in on it. This was live action.
You know, when a villain comes to the tortured hero and says, "Killing you is not enough, I want you to suffer." I keep waiting for the hero to say.... "Too late. I have been suffering for the last 14 years! You think you can make it worse! Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha...... "
Fun action scenes, and it makes me think about how confusing it must have been to live in 1870's Japan. It would hard to even know how to live or act.
Finally, this movie is a great example of how NOT to use fire arms.
Fun enough for what it is.
Also, did the Snake Eyes movie all ready come and go from the theatre? I must have blinked and missed it! I wanted to give it my money! Is it streaming someplace?
This is about the 4th time I have seen it, as my daughter loves this movie more than she should. I don't know why, but if a teenage girl wants to watch a movie with her Dad, I will allow it.
Harley is of course the star of the show, and they really do the work to make her a character and not just a walking and talking gimmick. I also like the unconventional story structure and the girl power undertones. I had forgot what misogynistic jerks all the villains were in this.
I would love to see a Margrot Robbie led remake of RollerBall now as well.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Under the Stadium Lights
An acquaintance of mine made this movie about five years ago, and now it is being released on DVD by Paramount. Parts were filmed in the small town I owned a business in. Due to this Lawrence Fishburne has eaten waffles from my coffeeshop. However, none of my businesses feature in the movie.
That said, this is a low-budget, Christian themed, football/sport movie, with a dash of gang-banger film thrown in. For a low budget affair, it managed to get Milo Gibson (Mel's 6th son) and Lawrence Fishburne in the cast, so that is something! Some parts you can really see the budget limitations, some of the story beats need a re-work to make it flow better, and there are some cringeworthy performances by some of the "extras". Overall, for a low-budget affair I have seen much, much worse.
I saw this film for sale at my local Wal-mart and a grocery store, so that Paramount distribution is really paying off.
I just finished listening to the audiobook a few weeks ago because it went free to audible subscribers and really enjoyed it. So I forced my wife to watch the movie with me despite her having no desire to watch it. She enjoyed it, I enjoyed it. It's a good film, consistently funny while still keeping you on the edge of your seat when things go wrong. I don't know how rewatchable it it. But it was for sure worth seeing once.
Yup, that pretty much sums up what I think of that film as well. What I found memorable was how much I enjoyed the landscapes shown in the beginning. Looked really beautiful. Maybe it was because I hadn't been at the cinema in a while before that one, so the large screen and the sweeping landscapes impressed me.
So not a movie, but a limited Netflix series, so we'll count it as a long movie.
Actually, this show, adapted from the book of the same name, finishes around the page 70 mark of a 300+ page book, so while it may be limited (and is entirely self contained) there is still more story to come, or a book to read if the desire to know more intensifies.
This won't be for everyone, but if it is your sort of show the odds are you will find something to love. Equally, if you watch it with little foreknowledge, like I did, it almost certainly isn't what you'll expect.
The story follows Anna (Rosa Salazar, Alita: Battle Angel) an aspiring movie maker who arrives in 1990 Hollywood with a remarkable short film she's made and the hope of making it into a feature. A meeting with a well known but down on his luck producer, Lou (Eric Lange) seems too good too be true, and when things take the inevitable turn, the mysterious Boro (Catherine Keener, Being John Malkovich, Get Out) offers Anna a way to extract her revenge.
The simplest way to answer the question "is this for me" is to draw comparisons with American Horror Story. If the idea of a similar camp, over the top show but with a distinctly darker edge sounds like an entertaining prospect, then BNCF is definitely worth your time.
If the idea of a show that bounces around a little like a drug fuelled pinball, while racking up a notable body count without trying too hard to justify itself isn't for you, then keep searching.
There's probably a parable in here about the futility of vengeance or the corrupting nature of the pursuit of fame and/or power, but honestly I wouldn't look too hard for the joins, just enjoy the crazy, sometimes Cronenberg-esque, dream like, occasionally surreal insanity and cross your fingers Netflix decide to give BNCF a second season.
It's my birthday, and as it's become custom I met with my brother and my sister to watch some films.
The Chase (1994)
An action film starring Charlie Sheen and Kristie Swanson. Sheen plays a convict (innocent though) on the run who takes a young lady hostage who turns out being the daughter of "the Californian Donald Trump". A high speed car chase across the freeway ensues.
And it goes on.
It's an interesting film. 15 minutes in my sister exclaimed that she remembered that film. About 10 minutes later I realized I'd also seen that film, but completely forgot about it. Which isn't often the case with 1994 films (to my knowledge). Either way, it's an interesting film. There's some media critizism in there, at points there's a whiff of the wacky races (especially when Anthony Kiedis and Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers show up in a monster truck), there's a heavy romance angle between the main characters, some legal drama... and it's all pretty uneven tonally.
And there's basically three endings too. This is a film bristling with ideas. And they put all of them into the film, but on the way somehow forgot to tie it all together.
One funny thing: At one point Sheen talks to a sleazy shock news reporter and gets angry with him, suggesting they should offer him a sitcom based on his misfortunes. Yikes.
Take it Or Leave it. It's an odd film. A bit messy and a bit forgettable at the same time, but maybe an interesting time capsule of that point in time in California.
No Holds Barred (1989)
Hulk Hogan plays Rip something or other who is the WWF world champion and as virtuous as you'd expect Hulk Hogan in 1989 to be. A nasty (NAAAAAAAASTY) tv network executive plans to hire him as a ratings draw. As Rip rejects his big money offer, the nasty tv network executive turns nasty, sends a marketing lady after Rip to seduce him AND invents UFC. The recently passed 'Tiny' Lister plays their big bad guy who tears up people and ultimately challenges Rip for a fight to settle it all.
It's pretty bad.
Don't Watch. Unless you're a HUGE Hulk Hogan fan. Which would be pretty remarkable in 2021.
Watch it with my wife last night. The tone was not what we expected, the humor was dark and we don't usually have a problem with that, but it felt like we spent a lot more time feeling bad for characters than we did laughing at jokes. I still really enjoyed the movie, my wife enjoyed it less so. When it got to the big fight at the end my wife exclaimed "this is what I have been waiting for!"
All in all I think the entire Harley Quinn subplot could have and probably should have been removed. The movie felt about 20 minutes too long and that would have been an easy segment to cut.
balmong7 wrote: The movie felt about 20 minutes too long and that would have been an easy segment to cut.
They basically spent 20 minutes to set up a single really funny joke. I loved the joke. Red flags. Hahahaha. But yeah, I'm not sure the set up was worth the pay off and that's true of a lot of the gags in the movie. They have really long set ups. In part it feels purposeful. Right as you're rolling your eyes or thinking 'when is something good gonna happen' is usually when the punchline swings in. It's funny, but it makes for a long movie with a fair amount of mood whiplash.
I’d argue that Andrew Garfield was a better Peter Parker under the mask. Certainly (it’s been a while!) my recollection is he was somewhat more flippant in the script.
I’ve not watched it for a while, but if anyone is after a bit of amazing grimdark, then I can recommend Casshern. Japanese live action film with heavy CGI that is highly stylised and competes with anime for bizarro over the topness. It’s bleak and tragic and 40k levels of horrendous waste and lack of compassion. And the hero has to overcome stuff and ends up being super smashy.
A Saw spin-off sequel type thing. Starring Chris Rock in a non-comedy role…
Well, I’m a sucker for the Saw series. Most definitely a guilty pleasure, especially the later entries which become ever more convoluted and nonsensical.
This one is actually rather enjoyable. Somewhat back to basics, without being as lazy as a straight remake. I mean, it’s still not a brilliant film, but it is well made and written all the same.
Well, I like it. It's good. Each time I watch it I come to this conclusion. On top of it all - the costumes seem to be to large degrees historically accurate. Lots of Boeotian helmets. Which is a look I enjoy. Apart from that it's just great, melodramatic filmmaking with little compromise.
I started this one years ago, stopped around the point with the secret subway station. When I went back to finish it it was gone from Netflix. Restarted it a few days ago, got back to the same secret subway and called it a night. Went back and... it got pulled from Netflix today.
Bob Ross: Happy Accidence, Betrayal and Greed (2021)
This was an eye opening documentary. The surprising amount of drama going on behind the scenes and level to which Bob Ross's partners took advantage of his kindness and relaxed approach to the business, was surprising.
High Score (2021)
A neat video game documentary that covers Atari through the release of Doom and mostly uses its history and perspective to relate back to the esports industry, they use the winners of the various major tournaments to craft a plot as the explore the histories of the games/consoles. (Space invaders, Nintendo Power, Sonic, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, Doom)
Either way - yeah, I keep hearing the Irish stuff and so on. I don't know if it's that distracting, because all I've ever seen is the German dubbed version. But really, it's not a bad idea to me in theory. It's one way of depicting people talking differently, yet being understandable if ye talk English. At least they're not all Americans, right?
What to make of this? It's twee. So terribly, terribly twee. That doesn't make it a bad movie, but it does make it one that's a little hard to watch without constantly huffing or groaning at the overwhelming tweeness. It takes every opportunity to point out the era that the film is set in, just in case the audience was too stupid to have made the connection. But at least it doesn't make the mistake of Captain Marvel by saturating the audio with relentless period music. I noticed a single music track that was given prominence (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and it was well suited to the scene and didn't dominate.
Most superhero movies have a good first and second act and are marred by a letdown of a third act. The original Wonder Woman was criminal for this. WW84 reverses this, with the first and second acts being a slog and the final act as worthy entertainment. The success of the later part comes from the stand out efforts of the two lead bad guy actors. In truth, they carry the weight of the whole movie with the titular hero being a bit player for much of the proceedings.
I can't help but believe this would have been better as a mini-series, especially as much of the dialogue and set pieces have all the hallmarks of a Supergirl script.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Sometimes I wonder why the hell I pay for Sky. Then at other times I'm grateful that, having pre-paid, I'm not penalised for experimenting with stuff I wouldn't have paid for. On we go with ... foreign language epic war films. At first glance watching these foreign films I found myself struggling to keep up with who was who and whether there were any characters to hook onto. I was concerned that I was falling into the trap of "they all look the same". Then I recall watching Saving Private Ryan for the first time, struggling to pick out who the heroes were in the first twenty minutes and falling foul of lots of people all wearing the same and looking alike. I think it's an attribute of many a war film, regardless of the origin, and just like SPR, when the action calms down we can get to grips with out heroes and start picking them out from their identi-kit comrades.
The 800 Westerners (myself included) know that WW2 started in 1939, but to many other nations the fighting had begun long before. This Chinese language film is set during the battle of Shanghai in 1937 and gives a perspective on heroism and duty in combat that is familiar to, yet subtly different from, western fare. The fighting in this one feels non-stop, with very brief moments of respite before all hell kicks off again. The absurdity of one side of a river being a murder house while the other side watches on as though it were entertainment is presented well. There's a pervasive honesty of what a person would do to survive, even when that would mean the death of others, that is rarely portrayed in western films with such empathy.
The Battle of Jangsari While American forces raid one end of the Korean Peninsula, a force of untrained student-soldiers are sent on a suicide mission to distract North Korean forces. The roles for our stand out characters are a bit more cookie cutter in this film, but with the foreign language element that probably makes it a more accessible film. Megan Fox "stars" (not really) as an American reporter, nowhere near the battle, that is used to tie the Korean activities into the greater war picture. It's pretty neat that at the end of the film Fox's character is recognised as being a singular representative of the many war reporters of this conflict, and that's something I've been noticing more recently in "based on a true event" programs, ever since they did the same for Chernobyl.
Can I recommend these two over a western war film? Eh, not really. They're good enough, but at the same time there is something rewarding and refreshing about seeing familiar themes from a different cultural perspective. So if you get a chance, do go and watch.
Putting aside the subtext that was spoken out loud at the end (men=bad), and the weirdly shy queerbaiting (when lesbians seemed an obvious tagalong for the former), it was just a bad film.
It was 'Lets do the Professional again, but make it a dark comedy'. Where dark comedy = spray blood everywhere, make everyone incompetent (the incompetence is supposed to be funny, somehow), and just skip anything resembling a scene transition.
I'm not the sort of movie viewer that usually notices scenery, sets and lighting, but in this, they were awful. All the lighting was some manner of glaring, the sets were oddly bare and often high-school theatre level, and nothing gelled together to make anything seem like a real place people inhabited.
I'm reasonably sure the bad sets, lighting and etc. was intentional, but have no idea why. Given some of the actresses involved in the film, I can't figure out why they agreed to be in it.
It’s utterly stupid and totally glorious at the same time. I think it neatly captures all the key points of the original series. No one can hit for toffee, wacky capers and a reasonable dose of do it yourself nonsense.
It’s worth watching all the way through just for the tank bit in the middle.
Re: The 800. I understand that more Chinese soldiers die in the film than actually died in the battle upon which it’s based. I’ve been keen to see the movie ever since Kings and Generals did their video on the battle.
Re: Wonder Woman 1984. I found the highlight of the film to be the White House scene. That’s the only point where the various plot and character elements gelled for me
Re: A-Team. The tank scene I recall was a bit too much for me. However I mainly remember the Swahili joke and not knowing how to feel about it.
It’s really pretty awesome. Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short star as three True Crime fans trying to solve a murder in their New York apartment block.
Really good chemistry between the three. Steve and Martin was perhaps to be expected as they worked together before. Selena Gomez is really good.
This has aged better than when I first saw it. The effects are not great, and the CGI suit looks very bright and not real. Ryan Reynolds is a bit annoying, but he usually is to me.
There is some attempt at character between the three; hero, girl, and henchman. This time, I started to think that Hector's "Mind reading" was not a power at all, but just his fear induced self-talk coming to the fore.
Criminal misuse of Amanda Waller, and the final fight is kind of lame. Also, a very tantalizing end credits sequence, that never gets to go anywhere. Kind of like the Jem movie.
Not as bad as I recall, but just not that compelling. It is somehow missing the secret sauce to put it above workmanlike and by-the-numbers.
Think it's main issue was Ryan Reynolds is Hal Jordan, rather than Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, as well as DC deciding that dudley do-right characters like GL and Supes need to bodged about with cos we all hate Cap
This movie is also by-the-numbers. There are good elements to it, but it does not seem to be able to put it all together into a compelling whole. The Keanu character is a pointless "western" add-on as a half-breed child of mystical origins. However, he never really does much to make me care about him. The main Samurai character (who is played by a familiar face but I sadly do not know his name) is a much better and more interesting character as he reflects the key ideas we need to understand for the premise of this movie to work.... at all.
Plus, what is with movies feeling so insecure about their ability to show and not tell that they feel the needs for a narrator all the time? It is a plague of movies that want to be big, tentpole movies. Opening and closing narration is pointless, as it tells us stuff that we end up seeing in the film most of the time anyway. The studios think we are all idiots, and therefore need narrators.
Overall, and ambitious failure as it lacks rooting interest or a compelling character arc for the main protagonist.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think DC’s issue is their seeming obsession with subverting expectations on their two best known characters.
Nobody really wants Edgelord Superman, do they?
If only it went the other way too..I'd be up for Bataffleck going all Adam West (also both the Adam West animations are glorious and daft in a whole Brave and Bold way)
This movie is also by-the-numbers. There are good elements to it, but it does not seem to be able to put it all together into a compelling whole. The Keanu character is a pointless "western" add-on as a half-breed child of mystical origins. However, he never really does much to make me care about him. The main Samurai character (who is played by a familiar face but I sadly do not know his name) is a much better and more interesting character as he reflects the key ideas we need to understand for the premise of this movie to work.... at all.
Plus, what is with movies feeling so insecure about their ability to show and not tell that they feel the needs for a narrator all the time? It is a plague of movies that want to be big, tentpole movies. Opening and closing narration is pointless, as it tells us stuff that we end up seeing in the film most of the time anyway. The studios think we are all idiots, and therefore need narrators.
Overall, and ambitious failure as it lacks rooting interest or a compelling character arc for the main protagonist.
I watched that one earlier this summer, and liked it way better than I think I would. There's some unnecessary bits, and it feels a bit convoluted in places, but overall it's a fun romp with very fun villains.
Just watching The Village. Last time I saw it in cinema and liked it, and I still do. What a neat film.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think DC’s issue is their seeming obsession with subverting expectations on their two best known characters.
Nobody really wants Edgelord Superman, do they?
If only it went the other way too..I'd be up for Bataffleck going all Adam West (also both the Adam West animations are glorious and daft in a whole Brave and Bold way)
I’d watch that.
Dark and grimy Batman I’m fine with. It’s just Superman….The Big Blue Boy Scout. Told by his Dad “no don’t save people son or the gubmint tek yoo always”.
I mean…..how. How exactly would any Government abduct Superman? He’s Superman. He protects his civilian identity to protect others. But even then? When you’re Superman, who is actually going to mess with you in that way? Because if you want a train carriage forcibly inserted somewhere you rather it wasn’t, that’s how you go about it.
Bruce Wayne wrote:I want you to remember, Clark. In all the years to come, in your most private moments, I want you to remember, my hand, at your throat, I want you to remember, the one man who beat you.
I’m somewhat more convinced than I was at the beginning.
But as stated, I still await MacFarlane disappearing square up his own arse.
Words can indeed describe my distaste for him, but they’re (justifiably) words not allowed on Dakka.
But so far, so good. Sure his trope is traditionally lazy (it’s Star Trek…..but with swearing!), at least he isn’t getting lazy within this specific trope (unlike Simpsons With Swearing, King of the Hill With Swearing, and Teddie Ruxpin With Swearing).
Don’t get me wrong, I effing love swearing. Swearing amuses me. I just don’t think it’s a career path, and I really wish his earlier works had stayed cancelled the first time.
I made it most of the way through but couldn't finish on account of the film being totally worthless. But that's better than most of the films I've tried to watch this year. It's another film that attempts to be feminist without grasping a single shred of what feminism means. The lead character is less interesting than Captain Marvel (she really is that bad) and the action attempts to be John Wick without the skill (and Wick was repetitively boring nonsense to begin with). Even though it has Karen Gillen, who's performance in the Jumaji films is fantastic, I can't recommend anybody watches this.
How to Train Your Dragon 1+2:
I understand now why this series has 3 entries and multiple tv series (as well as themed land for the theme parks in development.) This is an incredibly heartfelt series about growing up and family and friendship etc. a near-perfect family film franchise.
Shang-Chi:
Marvel didn't skimp on the wire-work in their attempt to mold superheroes into a kung-fu flick. The climax was a bit nonsensical and difficult to follow visually, but I am excited to see where the rest of phase 4 goes for marvel.
This is a George Clooney vehicle and it does really highlight his skills. That said, the movie is pretty depressing from the word go, and the "big reveal" isn't much of a reveal. The pace is also a bit slow for a lot of viewers.
Samurai Marathon Interesting set-up, that gets less interesting as the movie goes along. The "climax" is a very poorly paced. However, the fight choreography seems more realistic and less OTT than most samurai films I have seen. I am probably wrong though.
Oh gods I wish I wasn’t watching this. But being stoic and fully embracing of my own mistakes, I will see it out.
I really, really wish I hadn’t picked this fight. This is beyond awful. And not even in a vaguely amusing way.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Seriously. It’s got 14 minutes left to run, and I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about it.
I’ve seen crap films aplenty in my time.
I’ve seen low budget films aplenty in my time.
I have never, ever, seen such a half arsed mess of a film before. And I’ve seen Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, which was both low budget and incompetent.
It's pretty good. First Peele film I've really liked since Get Out. It's not super inventive or anything. In most ways, it's kind of a repackaging of the original film that refocuses on the more presently topical racial themes rather than the urban legend angle (though that angle is still there). It's decently thrilling and suspenseful. Endings predictable and kind of... Well I can see the point it's trying to make but the depiction is fairly absurd. Then again the stuff the film is pointing a finger at usually are fairly absurd so maybe I shouldn't be so critical of it. Or maybe I should be critical of it because for a movie in a franchise where the villification of black men is a major theme, making white cops even more gun happy than the audience might be willing to believe can seem like a reflexive backfire of committing the same sin in reverse. Unless that's the point? Not sure. Peele has this habit now where actually parsing what he's specifically trying to say is a mess but at least the movies still good. Mostly the actual set up is just a bit over the top and a much subtler one would seem to have achieved the desired result more effectively.
It does carry a certain chill with its undertones that's very well delivered even if the set up is bombastic.
YA goes post apoc, harmless enough with some above par cg gribblys (in the daylight, take note Godzilla makers)
Lucifer
Well thank Dad that's over, the last three season have been some of the most hamfisted rubbish made ever fingers crossed everyone involved can go get half decent jobs now, apart from the writers I'm sure there's a special place awaiting them...
Not as good as the first. Basically the same film structure. Only this time instead of it being about the son wanting to use his dad's legos. It's about the younger sister who wants to use her dad's/brother's legos, and the brother pushing back against it. I enjoyed it, but I'm a sucker for this kind of humor. My wife just complained that the kids were too old to be playing with lego's in the way shown in the movie. lol.
It's pretty good. First Peele film I've really liked since Get Out. It's not super inventive or anything. In most ways, it's kind of a repackaging of the original film that refocuses on the more presently topical racial themes rather than the urban legend angle (though that angle is still there). It's decently thrilling and suspenseful. Endings predictable and kind of... Well I can see the point it's trying to make but the depiction is fairly absurd. Then again the stuff the film is pointing a finger at usually are fairly absurd so maybe I shouldn't be so critical of it. Or maybe I should be critical of it because for a movie in a franchise where the villification of black men is a major theme, making white cops even more gun happy than the audience might be willing to believe can seem like a reflexive backfire of committing the same sin in reverse. Unless that's the point? Not sure. Peele has this habit now where actually parsing what he's specifically trying to say is a mess but at least the movies still good. Mostly the actual set up is just a bit over the top and a much subtler one would seem to have achieved the desired result more effectively.
It does carry a certain chill with its undertones that's very well delivered even if the set up is bombastic.
Not a waste of time. 7/10.
I think you've been far too generous. Jordan Peele is not Clive Barker and it shows in nearly every frame. It lacks any of the haunting, dream-like qualities of the original, it abandons any sense of nuance for clumsy good/bad caricatures and the whole thing is littered with redundant characters and characters who are obviously there just to be victims or exposition bots.
The running time is very similar to the original, spend your time watching that one again. 4/10.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I greatly enjoyed both Lego movies. They’re just….fun. Good, clean, innocent childlike fun.
....with a huuuuuge corporate whiff about it. But I have to admit that the first one was alright-ish. In parts. I also dislike Will Ferrell in most things.
I don't think Azreal's opinion is invalid honestly.
A lot of what they point out is stuff I'd qualify as part of the repackaging. The first film leaned heavily into urban legend and folklore and definitely had that fairy tale element to it. The new movie lacks most of that. I do not disagree.
The new movie instead takes a more... I'm trying to find the best way to put it. The best I can come up with is grounded approach. It's a movie that leans far more into the racial tension element in the original but places that element front and center and makes it the focus. In turn, the urban legend element is still there but less prominent and the fairy tale tone is basically abandoned in lieu of more visceral horror.
I still think it's good, but it is a different movie from the original and people who want more of the original very well might not enjoy the new one. I'm not surprised that someone who values the original for what it was would be disappointed or put off. At the same time, we're not exactly swimming in good horror these days and Candyman is probably one of the better films we'll get this year if only because the bar is so low so often.
Finally got to see that one. It's really good fun. Two funny barbarians, a very, very charming lady helping them out, a weird, rambling plot, a woefully underfunded dragon, clowns.
It's one of these great fantasy worlds in which everything can be solved by strength. There is magic, but it's for girls and it works as magic should
Solid fantasy, put on film by late Cannon Films.
Watch It. You have to. They don't make'em like this. They never did, and that's okay. But it's one of the films you gotta watch, just so you get all the avatars and gifs and so on. Media literacy canon.
British Werewolf flick from 2015. I was kinda dimly aware of it, but wasn’t properly on my radar.
It’s really quite enjoyable! Bunch of people trapped on a train, besieged by Werewolves. Definitely give it a spin, especially if you enjoyed Dog Soldiers.
My Little Pony the Next Generation (aka, MLP the Movie 2021, Netflix)
This was an odd one. The CGI animation struck me as a mistake the when they first showed it off, but its far more expressive than I expected.
Overall, its a bit cliche in some respects (intro is framing the story from the main character's childhood, for example), in others, it just chucks cliches out and... doesn't really replace them with anything.
It builds on the previous series (Friendship is Magic) but its basically 'legends from a long, long time ago' when all the different ponies were friends but no one (but a dad and his kid) believes that anymore. Instead they live racially segregated and tell horrible stories about kidnapping, mind control and for some reason, an oddly prevalent cannibalism. 'But why though?' is left unanswered for a sequel series..
Obviously, this is all nonsense, and the main character wants to make friends with other types of ponies, and does. Meanwhile, the film presents several possible antagonists (based around the idea that differences are to be feared), despite not needing one (or wanting one, given the story arc- it seems to have one because children's movies have to have one) and the second story arc becomes all about restoring magic to everyone.
Spoiler:
And this is where it trips, as the message 'if at first you don't succeed, give up and go home, and find the very, very obvious mcguffin at your house, where everyone will conveniently assemble for an unrelated (but extremely telegraphed) resolution' is not very satisfying.
It isn't a bad film, especially for the kiddos, but its a bit heavy handed in its themes (bad cop goes full Kim Jong for no explicable reason in the background, but is still largely a pathetic goofball rather than a proper antagonist), and the story logic jumps several steps, and the main character's actions at the climax seem out of wack
Spoiler:
Sunny just giving up seems utterly bizarre, since her life's goal was about the desire to make friends, which succeeds, not restoring magic, which she never knew about and doesn't seem to affect earth ponies anyway
You can also spot the edits at times. For example, once they get to unicorn town (and emo unicorns are bizarrely adorable), there's clearly supposed to be a internal party conflict about priorities (relaxing with friends or getting on with the mission) but suddenly there is a hard cut to a musical number.
If you've got younger kids, this is probably going to be an inevitable part of your life. Its set up like a Disney movie (and they brought in Sofia Carson from Disney's Descendents, which helps it feel like a disney movie).
It touches on modern social issues in a kid friendly way, but beyond 'embrace differences rather than reject them' its pretty inoffensive and not particularly preachy. If anything, its too cautious and quiet in that regard- other than the Angry Mob song (which sounds like a cover of an Offspring song), but even that is generic and more amusing than serious commentary.
The characters are probably the best aspect (and I can see the fanfic writers already gearing up), especially the unicorn teashop owner who scams people in competitive games of rubik's cube solving and dance dance revolution.
-----
Verdict:
Its fun, but beyond being a vehicle for the next generation of shows and toys, its not particularly exceptional (or hold together particularly well).
I'm about to say something that will be a blast from the past but.
I just watched My Little Pony A New Generation on Netflix.
They pretty much TNGed it with a new cast but set in the same world loong after the last cartoon.
I loved it. A few hiccups here and there but I felt so genuine that I don't feel alot of movie hit nowadays.
Looking forward to the show In a year
Free Guy: a perfect mix between GTA, The Truman Show, Ready Player One and Wreck It Ralph. Starring the worst living actor. Very mediocre movie overall with nice visual effects though.
Aye, that very much sounds like what I thought this film would be.
I started watching a tv show called Superstore on Netflix. Very, very interesting. Not since the very early Simpsons I've seen such people-friendly thing in a US sitcom (or tv show in general). This is a pretty overblown sentence, but it came to my mind last night. Very similar vibes. Rather neat. Now I wanna see a similar sitcom sat in an Amazon warehouse.
William H. Macy is great as the straight man, The Shoveller. Ganine Garofillow (sp) is also interesting as The Bowler. The character of the Blue Raja is good. However, everything else is ..... meh.
I really do not get why Ben Stiller was so popular in the 90's.
Battle Royale
Yeah, that one where school kids have to kill each other off.
I do not recall the ludicrous reason the BR Act was passed, but whatever the reason; I don't think it is working.
I was actually a bit disappointed with this one. I expected a little something.... more? Different? Better? I am not sure, but it sort of bored me, and with that premise! How did that happen?
Yeah, that one where school kids have to kill each other off.
I do not recall the ludicrous reason the BR Act was passed, but whatever the reason; I don't think it is working.
I was actually a bit disappointed with this one. I expected a little something.... more? Different? Better? I am not sure, but it sort of bored me, and with that premise! How did that happen?
Because BR is a vacuous concept at the best of times. Its basically Lord of the Flies without the political depth. (and I use that loosely, never been particularly impressed by LotF)
But the genre has been kicking around for a long time now in various formats, and it still isn't that interesting- at this point its basically just pop culture memes about hunger games and fortnite (or whichever interchangeable emma of a shooter you care to name).
Easy E wrote: Mystery Men Not as funny as it should be.
William H. Macy is great as the straight man, The Shoveller. Ganine Garofillow (sp) is also interesting as The Bowler. The character of the Blue Raja is good. However, everything else is ..... meh.
I really do not get why Ben Stiller was so popular in the 90's.
I think a lot of the appeal is nostalgia, I remember seeing the movie as a teenager and it was awesome.
Never really thought about rewatching it, maybe something to do this weekend.
@Mystery Men: Yeah, I thought there were some alright things, but overall it's just rather 'meh'. (however: 90s Janeane Garofalo!) Works as a superheroes film, I guess. Why was Ben Stiller popular in the late 90s and early 2000s? Well, there was There's Something About Mary, and I think that in these mini movie review threads I often mentioned how much I enjoy that film. It's just such good fun. Met the Parents was alright-ish as well. I recently rewatched it, and it's alright I think he really carved out that niche for himself being the straight man in that first wave of early 2000s raunchy comedies.
@Battle Royale: Yeah, I think I agree with Mad Doc Grotsnik there. It's a bit of a victim of its own trailblazin'. It's been ripped off a lot of times in a lot of ways. Many people say that of To Live and Die in L.A. too. Or indeed Rocky. Also of course, it was the time Japanese cinema started making it into the Western hemisphere, and this one was one of the important ones. If you wanna go political, go with Battle Royale 2. Gave it to a friend of mine once on DVD. He's the sweetest person in the world, but he was pretty mad at me for suggesting watching BR2.
News on Superstore: Its getting much more by-the-numbers and less lefty with time (well, not in the improtant way, but in the basic way of 'be nice to each other' with a hint of identity politics, so boring) and more about individuals and their stuff (and romance. Meh.), but it's lighthearted and fun. It's enjoyable to watch. Neat cast, but basically a basic sitcom, but with slightly less contempt for their audience than others. Not bad, not annoying.
Netflix also started carrying Seinfeld. Hooray. So I'm watching Seinfeld again. Not that there's anything wrong with it. However, on the side i'm also still watching Frasier with a friend. So of course I had to cut Friends out of the loop for now, because I can't go fully vegetable.
But the best news of the day is that I FINALLY found a documentary on John Milius.
Milius (2013)
Documentary about John Milius, and thus Watch It. The guy's fascinating. It's on youtube too, so yay!
Dominic Purcell (Legends Of Tomorrow, Prison Break) is a TV news producer ordered to travel to Burundi in order to wait for the outcry over a poorly researched story to pass by.
His assignment is to follow an expedition to capture Gustave, an enormous Nile Crocodile given semi mystical status by the local population and thought to be responsible for the deaths of over 300 people.
I'm sure the idea of a Jaws cum King Kong monster movie is a prospect I'm not alone in finding intriguing, but sadly this film is a tale of what might have been.
Purcell does more acting in the first five minutes than his entire tenure in the Arrowverse, and he's not in the first three. He's ably supported by his cameraman played by Orlando Jones and the on screen talent played by Brooke Langton (The Replacements, Friday Night Lights, The Passage.) There's also an interesting plot thread which neatly falls under the "man is the real monster" umbrella.
All this is undermined by a script that is almost there, but suffers from one too many FFS moments, poor secondary casting (the English Steve Irwin shouldnt be cast in amdram, let alone paying gigs, and the wild eyed local guide is just a trope that's been done to death) and CG which gaks the bed at the crucial moments while being perfectly acceptable when it doesn't matter (although I hadn't realised it's age until I looked it up to post this, so I won't be as hard on it as I might have been.)
What we end up with is a movie that's 2 actors, one rewrite and a couple million away from being one of the all time great creature features, but falls short as presented.
Interesting footnote which does add a little something, Gustave is a real crocodile, he may be alive to this day, he is significantly larger than typical Nile Crocs, perhaps up to 6 metres, which some people think means he lacks the agility to hunt typical prey and might explain why he is indeed credited by some to have killed up to 300 people.
Rewatching the Mandalorian, a sci fi show by the same guy who did the old Clone Wars show in the 2000s, staring that guy from WW84. Decent show, it's on OSN here in Egypt but not sure where to find it overseas.
A new, Shudder exclusive, volume of what for me is the superior horror anthology series of the handful being made currently.
As will be familiar to anyone who's seen any others, we have a collection of self contained shorts held together by connective tissue in the form of another story.
In truth, it's this connective tissue that is the weakest link, unlike previous installments where there's a conceit in place to hold all the disparate elements together, while I think there's that intent here, it doesn't really come across, and while being broken up is inevitably going to make it feel fractured, there seems to be narrative leaps that don't bring the viewer along between installments.
The shorts themselves, while nothing quite as disturbing, haunting or thoughtful as some previous entries, are all solid. We have a couple of quite different creature features and some solid body horror, the worst criticism one could level at them is that perhaps they don't elevate themselves above "competent," but there's still some good ideas here, and further evidence that horror is the movie that most often succeeds on a shoestring budget as long as the fundamentals are good.
If you're new to the series, this isn't the one to start with, if this is old ground for you, you'll get exactly what you expect, with perhaps a little less flair than some previous versions.
Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson are two aging, former Texas Rangers who are tracking down Bonnie and Clyde.
This movie frequently shows Bonnie and Clyde ambushing cops and machine gunning them down. It also has a clear sub-text about shooting first and asking questions later. It seems to lean heavily into the "wild west" policing mythos, and poo-poo's more modern methods.
In this day and age, the subtext of this film felt very disturbing. Plus, it was kind of slow moving.
They also keep Bonnie and Clyde as background characters. However, the movie explores the "celebrity" of being a gangster/folk hero of the time. It also shows the mobility of the early days of automobiles compared to previous generations. Some good nods to the period in the film that I enjoyed.
Long before Marvel became a bloated CGI mess of quips; nearly two decades before they tried to convince us that Black Panther was the first Black super hero; before The Matrix made fake leather, trench coats and bullet time cool; one of the greatest super hero movies was made...
Blade
Wesley Snipes is excellent, both in acting and physique. We have a quality bad guy and are even treated to a henchman who contributes to the film and isn't insufferable. Sure the plot is occasionally patchy and the CGI doesn't always hold up, but this really is one of the best super hero movies ever made.
I'd never argue they couldn't, it just wasn't clear from your review whether it was something you were aware of, and any attempt to adhere to historical fact is obviously going to bring its own baggage.
Henry wrote: Long before Marvel became a bloated CGI mess of quips; nearly two decades before they tried to convince us that Black Panther was the first Black super hero; before The Matrix made fake leather, trench coats and bullet time cool; one of the greatest super hero movies was made...
Blade
Wesley Snipes is excellent, both in acting and physique. We have a quality bad guy and are even treated to a henchman who contributes to the film and isn't insufferable. Sure the plot is occasionally patchy and the CGI doesn't always hold up, but this really is one of the best super hero movies ever made.
I agree, Blade I and (especially) Blade II are definitely my favorite Marvel movies ever made.
@Easy E: Very, very interesting review! I once watched a long interview with Kevin Costner, and he seems to be a good dude. And I'm fairly certain he's really into the whole Wild West thing and any sort of pre-1900 Americana. A good few years ago I listened to a radio feature I'll never forget. It was about an African war criminal (bad dude), persecuted by European lawyers and US lawyers to get him to Den Hague. The feature mainly was about two different ways of the executive branch of state power. While in Europe the modus operandi is to serve the law, many US prosecutors' main goal in anything is to "get your man". And then we'll see what happens. I found that very interesting and I very often think of it.
Anyway, this very much sounds like something Kevin Costner would enjoy (shoot first, ask later, wild west, slow moving). Thanks for the review. Interesting, insightful.
Speaking of slow and wild west, I watched most of Hostiles (2017) last night.
It's 1890, a US cavalry officer (Christian Bale) has to get his terminally ill nemesis, the Cheyenne leader Yellow Hawk, back to his sacred lands before he dies. He's got his family with him and along the way they pick up Rosamunde Pike who just so survived a Comanche attack and others.
Of course the main characters really dislike each other, viewing the other as a slaughterer of many friends and their people. They have to get along though and over time they come to agree on more and more things, and so on.
Loads of really nice landscape shots. I watched the thing in English. I'm rather good at that language, but I was very glad each time they spoke in Cheyenne, because with that I got subtitles. Christian Bale does that thing excellently of course (as he tends to), but a character who is sparing with words, rather expressionless AND mumbles isn't the easiest to follow. Now I get what it must be like talking to me.
Either way, cool film. Of course it's got a 'modern' hat firmly planted on its head, but that's normal. Because films are made at the time they're made. Insisting that a film can't be watched because notions are different now than they were when the film was made just shows a severe lack of empathy and knowledge. Anyway, it's a good film, good characters. I was told beforehand that it's a very slow, dialogue-heavy film, which initially put me a off a little, However, it's not very slow. And it certainly isn't dialogue-heavy. I mean it probably depends on your frame of reference, but this is a fine film. Watch It.
Henry wrote: Long before Marvel became a bloated CGI mess of quips; nearly two decades before they tried to convince us that Black Panther was the first Black super hero; before The Matrix made fake leather, trench coats and bullet time cool; one of the greatest super hero movies was made...
Blade
Wesley Snipes is excellent, both in acting and physique. We have a quality bad guy and are even treated to a henchman who contributes to the film and isn't insufferable. Sure the plot is occasionally patchy and the CGI doesn't always hold up, but this really is one of the best super hero movies ever made.
At first I thought you're going to review Steel, but that's a DC hero, isn't he. Either way, Blade is class. My favourite Marvel film is Punisher: Warzone, but Blade's firmly in the second top spot. A few months ago I rewatched it on tv, and it's remakable how well it holds up. Just a cool, exciting action film.
I was thinking about Woody Harrelson last night, and it is amazing to me that the fresh-faced actor from Cheers who was brought in to replace the then iconic character of Coach, would be the biggest break out success from that show.
I mean, Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Rea Pearlman, and Kelsey Grammer all had non-Cheers careers, but I Woody ended up being the most successful and arguably Best actor from the bunch.
His Hollywood journey is pretty amazing when you think about it.
Blackie wrote: Blade I and (especially) Blade II are definitely my favorite Marvel movies ever made.
While everyone gets a buzz off of different things, I'm going to have to disagree here.
Blade II
This is a pretty awful film. Everything that was cool in the original is dialled past 11 into parody. All pretence at coherence in world building is sacraficed for the rule of cool. The opening fight scene in Blade is iconic, the start of II is uninteresting. The acting is of lower standard all around, but the lead lady vampire stands out as being particularly bad. Nothing feels like a natural progression of plot, everything feels like one thing happening after the rest for no other reason than it was supposed to look cool. We get TWO bad guy monologues within 30 seconds of each other.
This is on par with Iron Man 2 for being a bad sequal. Am I the only one who finds it interesting that Guillermo del Torro directed this and immediately followed it up with the infinitely better Hellboy?
Even Blade trinity better than II? With the obnoxious Ryan Reynolds and Triple XXX? Wow, I thought it was utterly awful and it killed the franchise. Still ok as one of those trash B movies that are so terrible that are actually somehow fun to watch .
Blade II I've watched it a hundred times when I was a teen. Always been very fond of the chemistry between Blade and the female vampire.
Blade I was a perfect standalone movie. But I'm definitely not a fan of Marvel movies, especially the MCU. Blade, Raimi's Spiderman and X-Men are my favorite Marvel stuff.
... which is not terrible. Is that enough of a review for Blade: The Buffy Edition?
It's better than II, though not so much that I'd say it was good. It beats its predecessor in pacing and plot flow, and the action sequences are much better. The biggest drawback is the over saturation of Reynolds, but it also fails the same as II to exploit the biggest strength that made the original so compelling: the skilled physical performance of its lead actor.
@Easy E: Heh, you're right there. That's pretty funny. It's not even like the guy's extremely versatile, but he's charismatic as heck and fun to watch.
@Henry: I'm surprised by the general thoughts on Blade II here. Not that I disagree in the slightest, but I thought that widely it's considered as being almost on par with the first one. Blade III is something I don't like much (this is an amendment, because at second look the word 'trash' looked a bit harsh).
@Blackie: You have a very sensible opinion about the MCU.
@Blackie: You have a very sensible opinion about the MCU.
I think they're mediocre but still ok movies. I'd rate them between 5,6 or 7 out 10 depending on the episode and I'd give 7/10 to just 3 or 4 MCU movies. IMHO they're basically on par with the recent Star Wars episodes . The only difference is that MCU movies don't have some older masterpieces that make them look quite dull in comparison.
If I had the same age I had when Raimi's Spiderman or Blade I and II were released maybe I'll appreciate the MCU much more, and viceversa if I were already in my 30s during early 2000 I probably wouldn't have appreciated those movies that much. Those movies were released during my childhood so I may still watch them with some nostalgia glasses.
The Guilty: loved the orignal, this remake is ok. It's one of those movies that are entirely set in a room, with a single protagonist and some voices over the phone but manages to be entertaining. Reminds a lot of Locke, starring Tom Hardy. The character's "conversion" is very poorly believable though, and I think it will be quite divisive in the US considering the feeling towards the police.
Sigur wrote: @Henry: I'm surprised by the general thoughts on Blade II here. Not that I disagree in the slightest, but I thought that widely it's considered as being almost on par with the first one.
I was surprised by this myself. I recall watching each one when they came out and enjoying 1 and 2 while disliking 3.
1 still stands up and 3, which is so different in tone from 1 that it might as well be a different franchise, is enjoyable stupidity.
On re-watching, I found 2 to be empty. We're shown how vampires are these mighty creatures who are afraid of these super-vampires (which automatically means vampires are no longer scary), but these super vampires get their asses kicked by everyone so there's never any suspense.
Compare this between Alien and Aliens - sure in Aliens they get mown down by the bucketful, but the director manages to maintain the fear of the monsters. Blade 2 seems unable to do this. There's also no intimacy with the bad guy, so there's no reason to have a personal care over who wins.
Regards Marvel movies overall, I too find them mostly enjoyable but discardable. The universe as a whole is over rated, relying on the good will of a small number of very good movies to give the bad ones a free pass.
I can't put my finger on it, but something was missing from this one. I never felt fully engaged by the story and the plot just trodded along at no particular pace. Several of the side characters it became apparent had completely stopped developing and began to grate on me more they had in previous films. All in all, I didn't hate it, but it was for sure the weakest film.
Excited for the modern-day sequel show they just announced though. Seems like they can have some fun with that.
Since the new Dennis Villaneuve (sp) version is coming out in a few days, I figured I would go back and re-watch this one.
I, of course; love it more than it should be loved. However, the main sin of this film is the editing. Due to the editing, there are few if any transitions, and scenes just abruptly end. Many scenes are only a few minutes here and then <boom> jump to an entirely new scene. No scene overstays its welcome, but it is easy for the importance of a scene to get lost in it all. As a result, the whole thing is rushed.
Overall though, still a great film watching experience. I wish they would release a Director's Cut or even just the TV long edit version. I recall it had some significant differences and more time to breathe than the film cut.
Must Watch
I also saw No Time to Die
To be a mini-review I will saw this. It follows the "every other Bond movie is good!" sequence. This one was fun to watch, and I recommend it.
This remake nobody was calmouring for seems to have snuck out on Netflix here in the UK with precious little fanfare. I'd noticed it a while back, and as the run in to Halloween ramps up, I figured I'd give it a go.
One thing nobody can accuse this film of is not giving something different a try. While the opening is very much the same old, same old (a bunch of, to my mind, fundamentally unlikeable people make bad decisions in the woods unto death) the decision to fundamentally alter the nature of the antagonists will, without giving too much away, wrongfoot most people who watch the film with any expectations derived from the original.
I'll admit to fiddling with my phone while the morons ran around the woods impaling themselves on gak, but the 2nd act reveal and especially the ending brought my focus back.
There's still some special sauce missing that holds it back, and I'm really struggling to put my finger on what. Everything is there, strong performances, interesting ideas, an attempt to defy convention and, dare I say it, subvert expectations. I can't find anything specific to criticise, yet I can't recommend it without reservation either.
Rather than feral cannibals, the opposition are an actually quite sophisticated, albeit primitive, society descended from settlers who withdrew from society generations ago. They even make a somewhat convincing argument that, rather than hunting the "normies" they were defending themselves. One of the protagonists even freely chooses to join them.
The twist proper revolves around whether the final girl, pregnant with the clan chief's baby (consenting, not anything gross) who escapes the mountain will return when the chief follows her home, or find a way of getting away forever. It literally takes until the credits roll before you get resolution on that.
This remake nobody was calmouring for seems to have snuck out on Netflix here in the UK with precious little fanfare. I'd noticed it a while back, and as the run in to Halloween ramps up, I figured I'd give it a go.
One thing nobody can accuse this film of is not giving something different a try. While the opening is very much the same old, same old (a bunch of, to my mind, fundamentally unlikeable people make bad decisions in the woods unto death) the decision to fundamentally alter the nature of the antagonists will, without giving too much away, wrongfoot most people who watch the film with any expectations derived from the original.
I'll admit to fiddling with my phone while the morons ran around the woods impaling themselves on gak, but the 2nd act reveal and especially the ending brought my focus back.
There's still some special sauce missing that holds it back, and I'm really struggling to put my finger on what. Everything is there, strong performances, interesting ideas, an attempt to defy convention and, dare I say it, subvert expectations. I can't find anything specific to criticise, yet I can't recommend it without reservation either.
Wait, what? Aren't they still knee-deep into making sequels for that thing?
Even the first film very much felt like a direct-to-dvd by-the-numbers affair, right?
I was forced to watch the first episode of Squid Games.I feel dirty. I got the feeling that, as with many, many tv shows, this could be told better and more concise in a 110 minutes film. But let's see.
I remember the first film being a bit if a breath of fresh air when the success of TWD had us drowning in Zombie features just as the final wave of Vampire crap began to retreat.
Inevitably a sequel isn't going to offer that same freshness, but it does at least deliver on what its audience is expecting and faithfully expands on what went before.
We have the same big name cast, ably supported by a number of highly recognisable guest spots. I'm convinced Hugh Jackman is a zombie in the quite joyous bullet time opening scene. That whole scene on the lawn of the White House is one of the high points of the movie, so make sure you're ready to watch from the get go.
Small spoiler so I'll tag it:
Spoiler:
We even get treated to some more Bill Murray, as well as discovering that "to get Murrayed" has become a thing in Zee Land, even without modern communication.
So while Double Tap doesn't quite hit the highs of the first film, it's still a fun, light, slice of post apoc nonsense that most of the cast appear to be having a blast making. While a third installment hasn't been confirmed, there does seem to be a lot of goodwill from the key people, and if it happens I'll happily watch that too.
I liked Zombieland 2, although I agree the first one was better. The zombie kill of the year involving the italian dude was terrible though, they guy talked and moved like an american, not an italian. Hire someone that can speak the language at least, it shouldn't cost that much for 10 seconds and a couple of lines.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage. It's very different from the first episode, basically a comedy with some splatter moments. Jokes between the protagonist and Venom are the highlight of the movie, plot is quite bland and Woody Harrelson is overreacting. Overall ok, but worse than the first episode though. Great post credit scene:
Old Henry-man and his son in early 20th century find a wounded man and a bag of money. things slowly escalate as people come looking for the man with the money and the boy clashes with his father. Movie was a slow burn for most of it, but had interesting bits going on. overall i enjoyed it
Nightbooks- boy taken by a witch, has to produce scary stories for her or die. felt like a fairly tame scary movie to watch with the kids. Krysten Ritter made for a lovely witch
Prisoners of the Ghostland- Nick Cage is strapped into a leather bodysuit rigged with bombs and sent to retrieve a woman within a certain amount of time. The entire film felt like it was filtered through a drug fueled fever dream, it was just strange and bizarre in so many many ways.
This is a rewatch, and I'll happily hold my hands up to this being one of my favourite zombie movies.
I'll fight anyone who argues that this isn't one of the strongest openings of any horror. The brief moment of normality, where Sarah Polley's Ana is more concerned about getting home on time for date night and swapping shifts that transitions so rapidly and disconcertingly to creepy undead children and fighting for her life, including some low key stunts that really look like they hurt, even on a repeat watch still invokes a little whiplash.
As one may now expect from a Snyder film, there's not really enough depth to drown an ant, and in that regard it really suffers against the original which had a lot more it wanted to say.
But as a full fat, full sugar, highly caffeinated rollercoaster, DOTD 2004 performs admirably.
Sure, the plot relies on caricatures, rather than characters, acting illogically (but I'd have gone after the dog too) and fast zombies aren't everyone's favourite, but there's genuine little moments of humour and creepiness (zombie baby, I'm looking at you) that help elevate things.
Interesting footnote, the credits list the screenwriter as a James Gunn. Wonder what happened to him?
Azreal13 wrote: Dawn Of The Dead (2004) ... Interesting footnote, the credits list the screenwriter as a James Gunn. Wonder what happened to him?
He went on twitter and tweeted stupid things for attention, wrote the script for Scooby Doo 2 and then directed a bit in Movie43, right?
Anyway, I too really like the Dawn of the Dead remake. Out of all the 'serious' zombie films I know it's probably the most re-watchable one. It's not the best by a wide margin, but it's very, very sleek and it's entertaining.
An above par MCU template film, normally I'd go 7/10 but docking 3 points for Freeman so 4/10 (as ever looking exasperated, but this time with an accent)
Artemis Fowl
I knew the 1st book because I helped my little(r) nephew with his book report on it a few years back, this film is not that and took a terminal grinding in the sausage machine, assuming its part of that "next big thing" gak at a wall barrage once Potter ended, and its a fairly duff film on its own merits
Black Panther I feel is a movie to be seen through certain cultural filters.
I’m not assuming anyone’s background here, for absolute clarity.
But I work in a very multicultural office. To those that this film mattered to? T’challa and Wakanda mattered. Like seriously mattered. Even Kilmonger.
End of the day, barring Martin “this is my exasperated face, and that counts as acting, probably” it’s a very entertaining movie, the significance of which cannot be underestimated.
Does it meet the hype? For my fellow pasty white blokes? Kinda? I mean there’s nothing fundamentally wrong or significantly flawed.
For my colleagues of African background? That’s an emphatic YES. It showed a potential. A potential white peeps have always had presented in cinema. Even the baddie kind of had a point, and at least some kind of justification.
Sorry. I went off on one. This isn’t a critique of the previous poster!
I mean there’s nothing fundamentally wrong or significantly flawed.
Its biggest flaw is that it isn't really T'Challa's fight (its his dad's), and he doesn't even really disagree with the premise (other than the jump to extremism). At least for me, that undercuts it.
The main conflict is basically happening for... reasons that don't really amount to a philosophical conflict, just a juvenile revenge fantasy.
Also the juicing and de-juicing for the superpower is a bit... eh. Thought about too much, its awkward to problematic.
Representation-wise, its great, though we'll see if they carry that lesson into the future. That they felt it necessary to stick Martin in there as a reference point/reaction POV suggests to me that won't, at least not outside this specific sub-franchise.
Its biggest flaw is that Marvel had the courage to put a racist black villain in one of their movies but they had to justify or redeem it somehow.
IMHO Black Panther is one of the weakest Marvel movies. Representation wise I agree it's absolutely great but all characters are extremely bland and uninspiring. Plot is just average.
Never had an issue with Martin Freeman being in there.
I mean there’s nothing fundamentally wrong or significantly flawed.
Its biggest flaw is that it isn't really T'Challa's fight (its his dad's), and he doesn't even really disagree with the premise (other than the jump to extremism). At least for me, that undercuts it.
I found that it's most interesting aspect tbh. T'Challa is the beneficiary of a lot of hereditary resources and ancestral traditions, but he's also put in a position of having to weigh up the good and bad of that to become his own man. Along with all the stuff about honouring your ancestors tied into the Black Panther mythology, you've got stuff about confronting the stuff they did you can't make excuses for.
I think Killmonger is one of Marvel's best villains because he's one of the few where right idea/wrong methods thing they keep going for feels convincing. The fact T'Challa doesn't totally disagree with his premise is a strength and not a weakness of the plot imho
Except, he doesn't really confront it in any meaningful way. They just... fight. And then just fight again, and he wins.
There really isn't space to have real reflection, weighing or confrontation. Instead its standard MCU CGI fightin' time, because Killmonger turns out to just be a usurper with bad ideas. There isn't time for the complex plot that could have happened.
Sigur wrote: Is Martin Freeman the UK's Paul Rudd? Discuss.
No? People like Paul Rudd.
Maybe US peeps like to see Paul Rudd as a mirror of themselves while UK-ians see Martin Freeman as a mirror of how they view themselves. That was my thinking behind the silly question at least.
Sigur wrote: Is Martin Freeman the UK's Paul Rudd? Discuss.
No? People like Paul Rudd.
Paul Rudd has charisma.
Martin Freeman has….*checks notes*….an exasperated facial expression.
What? I feel the opposite, Paul Rudd is pretty annoying (not as much as Ryan Reynolds though, who I still can't understand why people consider him funny ), hasn't really portrayed an unforgettable character so far, while Martin Freeman is always a lot of fun and his performances on Sherlock, Fargo and The Hobbit (ok movies are bland but he's a perfect Bilbo) were pretty high.
The Trip: scandinavian comedy with black humour and some splatter scenes, releasd on Netflix. A frustrated couple is going for a holiday in the family shack but they're both planned to murder each other; they are unaware that in the meanwhile three dangerous criminals that are on the run are hiding in their shack. It has some sort of Guy Ritchie's vibe and it's starring Noomi Rapace. Best movie I've watched in a while.
Thanks Blackie - have added The Trip to my Watchlist, it sounds good
Space Truckers (1996) I made the mistake at looking at the cast for this (Dennis Hopper, Charles Dance) and not looking at the RT score
I am a big B-movie fan but this was shockingly poor. Storyline and concept are awful, script is awful (even with these actors there is nothing you can do with those lines).
Honestly I admire Charles Dance's ability to have a bit of fun at his own expense, but this is as far from treading the boards at Stratford-upon-Avon as it is possible to get and there are a few scenes that are genuinely painful to watch, for the wrong reasons.
There are times it almost tries to border on Big Trouble in Little China, or something like that, as a kind of fun adventure yarn and the bright colouring almost make you think of the Fifth Element (with 10% of the cinematography), but it doesn't ever really decide what kind of film it wants to be.
@Blackie: My thoughts exactly. At least that I think that many people will find Paul Rudd less easy to watch and identify with than Martin Freeman. It was really just a little fun question that popped up in my mind, tickling the "transatlantic differences" nerve a little, but maybe there is something there. As for Ryan Reynolds: He did brush my mind when I thought of the question, but he's not quite bland enough, I thought. I'm sure he's an extremely nice and charming person with nothing but honorable interests in mind (like getting a film about his favourite comicbook superhero done "right" and stuff like that), but I've never seen him in interesting films that I can recall. Now that I find Paul Rudd annoying, but he's wholesome in a way that makes me a little suspicious.
I might have a look into The Trip.
The other night I watched the first 20 minutes of Austin Powers. Don't ask me why. But given what came after, I think that the first film is sort of innocently and superficially entertaining.
I will always remember it's marketing, as there was a preview with a shot of the emperor's empty throne room, star wars-esque music, and a movie narrator guy saying, "If you see one movie this year, make sure it is Star Wars. If you see two movies make sure it is Austin Powers!"
It then cuts to Austin prancing and dancing around with the psychedelic band in the background.
Must be getting soft in my old age, didn't wind me up as much the second time round, its still MCU formula, half an hour or so too long and concludes on a big CGI indulgence but I'm upgrading it to mostly harmless rather than Dark World bad
@Turnip Jedi: Could we say that the last 30 minutes (45 on Avengers films) should be cut in favour of getting to the end quicker? I mean how often can we see a planet fall onto a city or something like that?
I'm going to go against the grain of what I've seen a lot of people say about this film.
This movie is brilliant and claims that it bastardized the source material are idiotic. The movie does divert from the classical version of the story (or at least, the most famous version from the 14th century), but I don't see the issue with that. It's typical of Arthurian tales and this movie does it the right way by making the moral of the story more obvious to a modern audience by dumping a lot of super-obscure conventions only middle English aficionados would get anyway. Gawain has always been one of the more interesting knights because he's not perfect, and this movie plays that straight.
At its core, the movie is the essence of the original story about being your own man, the nobility of doing something for its own sake, and the folly of seeking glory. If anything, the film's main sin is that while it cuts out or alters multiple plot elements to be more familiar/less weird for a modern audience, it still seems to expect the audience to do a lot of the work in piecing it's meaning together and the modern film audience it seems is too lazy and much prefers the original story's ending where a character spends several minutes spelling it out for them. In a lot of ways though, the way the story is told perfectly mimics middle ages literature, so I can't help but wonder if all the people bashing the movie have ever read the source material at all.
I'm unsurprised this movie did poorly at the BO. It's exactly what movie audiences claim to want when they moan about the formulaic nature of modern film, but then is shunned by them as they go and spend another couple hundred billion on the next mainstream blockbuster because anything else requires more than passive viewing to enjoy.
I found it uninspiring, despite I love the two leading actors. Well, one leading actor since Alicia Vikander had 10 minutes on screen in total, which was my first reason of disappointment . Good acting and visuals but quite boring overall.
One scene, totally invented, is copy paste from Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.
I'm going to go against the grain of what I've seen a lot of people say about this film.
This movie is brilliant and claims that it bastardized the source material are idiotic. The movie does divert from the classical version of the story (or at least, the most famous version from the 14th century), but I don't see the issue with that. It's typical of Arthurian tales and this movie does it the right way by making the moral of the story more obvious to a modern audience by dumping a lot of super-obscure conventions only middle English aficionados would get anyway. Gawain has always been one of the more interesting knights because he's not perfect, and this movie plays that straight.
At its core, the movie is the essence of the original story about being your own man, the nobility of doing something for its own sake, and the folly of seeking glory. If anything, the film's main sin is that while it cuts out or alters multiple plot elements to be more familiar/less weird for a modern audience, it still seems to expect the audience to do a lot of the work in piecing it's meaning together and the modern film audience it seems is too lazy and much prefers the original story's ending where a character spends several minutes spelling it out for them. In a lot of ways though, the way the story is told perfectly mimics middle ages literature, so I can't help but wonder if all the people bashing the movie have ever read the source material at all.
I'm unsurprised this movie did poorly at the BO. It's exactly what movie audiences claim to want when they moan about the formulaic nature of modern film, but then is shunned by them as they go and spend another couple hundred billion on the next mainstream blockbuster because anything else requires more than passive viewing to enjoy.
I really enjoyed it too. Definitely one that you took away afterwards and had a long think about. The ending initially befuddled me, but I think I get the point now in terms of Gawain's development as a character.
Definitely think its a love/hate film though. Had a look at people's reviews and it does seem to be a lot of 5 or 1 star reviews, with a lot less in between! A bit like The Fountain, although I found this film a lot more comprehensible.
The reason often touted for sequels suffering against the original in the horror genre, is that much of the fear is derived from the unknown and mysterious, and as the mythos expands the familiarity undermines that fear.
Well PA:NOK, touted as a reboot of the franchise, doesn't suffer from that as it commits the capital horror crime of largely explaining everything.
But, fundamentally, my issues with this movie are that, while it is a found footage horror, it just isn't a PA movie. The signature of those films, the locked off CCTV showing events occurring often while the cast sleep on oblivious to much of it, that static camera that makes the viewer feel like a witness to something but powerless to intervene, is essentially absent.
We instead get to follow a group making a documentary following Margot back to meet her biological family for the first time. Now, this conceit isn't without its merits, it frees the film makers up with more options to shoot disguised as the conceit of the vast array of camera tech that a contemporary film crew has at their disposal. But the consequence is this simply doesn't feel like a movie that belongs to the same series as any of the others, and simultaneously offers nothing fresh or new either.
There are creepy moments, and should one become sufficiently invested, some scares to be had. Emily Bader deserves some praise for doing a lot of the heavy lifting as Margot, and Dan Lippet as the giant, stoner local sound engineer Dale provides some moments of levity which help contrast out some of the darker moments in the first couple of acts.
But ultimately what we get is a film that doesn't feel much like a new beginning, and that while larger in scope than its predecessors, feels much less impactful. Anyone choosing this as their Halloween scare is unlikely to feel cheated, but this never reaches the highs that this series, that found a new way to do found footage in the wake of a thousand Blair Witch clones, has formerly reached.
In fact, it seems to go out of its way to avoid the comparison.
Fire In The Sky (1993) — based on allegedly true events surrounding a missing person and purported UFO abduction, this film tries to be a murder mystery, small town drama, and horror movie ... tries, yes, but ultimately fails to do any of these things in a compelling way ... would not recommend
Demon House (2018) — a feature film-length episode of Zak Bagans’s amusing charlatanry missing nearly every aspect that makes his Ghost Adventures show worth watching ... in a word, boring ... would not recommend
Stargate (1994) — a typically excessive 90s-era action adventure but nonetheless charming in its direct, workmanlike approach to the concept of teleporting across the galaxy to lead a slave rebellion against an alien pharaoh ... highly recommend
Pacific wrote: The ending initially befuddled me, but I think I get the point now in terms of Gawain's development as a character.
Its the thing that's most different from the original telling but it works here. I like that we're faced at the end of the movie with the exact same question Gawain was confronted with;
Spoiler:
Is Gawain going to be killed? This is core to Gawain in the original story. In it, he gets the Gridle which will supposedly protect him, but he doesn't know if it will work. He flinches when the Green Knight moves to strike him despite having it and when prompted swears he will not flinch again. In doing this, he has faced death which was the whole point of the challenge and the test put to him. He escapes with his life but it isn't clear if it's because of the Girdle or because the Knight takes mercy on him.
The movie leaves it more ambiguous and I think that works better here. This movie reminds me a lot of the Headhunter, in that it's a movie that explicitly sets out to get the audience into the main character's headspace and then drop them at the ending right into the point of the film. In the Headhunter, it was all about rage and the fury of injustices done. In the Green Knight, it's about facing very possibility of death, not death itself. That's very much part of the original story and the way the movie ends leaves us asking the exact same question as Gawain; is the Green Knight about to kill him? We don't know. Neither does Gawain. That's the point. Gawain has removed the Girdle and is facing death, not knowing if this moment is truly to be his last.
I can see it as a love it/hate it film, but what mostly gets me are all the comments saying it's not faithful. Yeah, it changes stuff but in terms of what themes it chooses to emphasize, I think it's extremely faithful to the source material and some of the changes to story and its characters are arguably more accurate to older Arthurian legends (particularly the late Welsh and early French versions) than those being told in the 14th century. One of the most interesting things to me are the parallels between the movie's Gawain and Mordred. In Lancelot Grail cycles of Arthurian legend, Mordred was Gawain's half-brother, and the character of Morgan le Fey hadn't fully emerged yet. Her role as this sort of troublemaking figure in Arthur's court was usually filled by Morgauze, Gawain and Mordred's mother and Arthur's sister. In this regard, people are mostly bitching that the story doesn't adhere to the most famous version of Arthurian Legend, Le Morte Darthur (a 15th century version), but most of the lore of the movie isn't that out of step with even older variations of the stories.
It was...a show. Basically the show with the alien that isn't Family Guy, but for conspiracy theories. And dad issues.
Its... basically nothing you haven't seen before (Seriously. This might have been groundbreaking in the time before Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Not Family Guy, the Family Guy Spinoffs and etc. But in 2021... its just a cheap copy of all the above). Evil corporation of evilness runs all conspiracy theories, and the 'protagonists' are basically the company's inner circle. The main character wants to rule the world but also not be particularly evil.
Checklist for:
Everyone is horrible, but you're supposed to like them because of their 'character flaws.'
Intelligent women are always neurotic.
Nerds are stinky basement dwellers who suck.
The show is going to tell you nostalgia is bad, even when trading directly on nostalgia.
Celebrities we don't like are lizard people or whatever.
and so on.
Some of the jokes could be funny, but they're constantly undercut by weird tonal shifts, and the main character's history of abuse that's... supposed to be funny, I guess?
I don't usually do horror outside of spooky season and this having the rather agreeable Rebecca Hall in it most likely swayed my decision, starts with her character trying to deal with the aftermath of her husbands unexpected suicide, starts strong as a study of grief and loss but starts tripping over itself about half ways in as the woo woo creeps in but Ms Hall carries it over the finish line with some proper good acting, worth a go
Not so much a planned viewing as simply tripped over it just as it was starting while surfing and stuck with it for a rewatch, in part because I'd watched the latest installment recently.
Next Of Kin should consider itself fortunate inviewwd it first, as this rewatch only serves to show how far the series has fallen, and how divergent NoK is from the original.
By and large the film is an exercise in "less is more." From the small number of location (generously calling different rooms in the same house locations,) tiny cast and largely understated effects, more than a decade on, it still holds up. If you suspend your disbelief even a little bit, then you've pretty much had it.
Something I think I've missed previously is how much if a dick Micah (the boyfriend) is for good portions of the film. This somewhat changes the emotions around the final scene (was he ultimately deserving of a fate he helped manufacture?)
I'm also still undecided as to whether the cinematic ending (the version aired) or the alternate ending is the more effective, but either way this film remains a modern horror classic.
My memories of Paranormal Activity still end up in my nightmares and weirder dreams about 10 years after having watched it once. I found it very effective! Especially the bit with the photograph.
It's the ouija scene that does it for me, the pointer just merrily swinging around when nobody's even home, silently watched by the camera, before bursting into flames when by that point we know that mysterious fires are something Katie experienced before...
Whatever the failings and merits of this movie (and there's far more of the former than the later), the biggest highlight for me is Cole Young's armour. I don't think I have seen such a comically bad prop used in a movie in ages. Aside from it looking tremendously awful, at one point you can literally see the suit come apart at the seam. And that's the shot the director decided was the best!
I'm not sure if this is a "so bad it's good" movie, but it certainly is bad.
I was forced to watch something new. And a Netflix production too. I'm 6 episodes into the Squid Game now. It's alright. The actors work well. Opportunist lady is very entertaining. Evil Guy is very nice, very evil. Main guy is very nice. And so on. Yes, the thing is very violent. And that's about it.
Yes, capitalism. Well done. And not incorrect of course. That aside though, somehow I think that many, many tv shows could more efficiently be turned into a 100 minutes film, tell the same story, say the same things, and be more concise and to the point.
Eternals (2021) - Planned to see it today, only to find it was banned in Egypt due to a gay kiss. Moreover the website that reported this was blocked in Egypt.
A "modern" re-make of an old 60's spy show I always liked. This one was written and directed by Guy Ritchie, and you can tell when you watch it!
Henry Cavil and Armie Hammer are really strong as Solo and Ilya respectively. Viklander as Gabby is also good. The Italian villainess is great. Hugh Grant is fun.
Don't look too closely at the plot, just squint at it and look sideways. There are some head scratchers in there. Instead, just absorb the cool stylings and directorial flourishes.
Nobody needs a review of this movie any more. But just to say that as part of Disney + Day, a bunch of the MCU films have had new IMAX versions uploaded. I believe the new versions also have additional support for different audio and HDR formats.
Suffice to say, they're superior to the existing versions. The revised aspect ratio give about 10-15% more picture/less black border than before on a typical modern TV. Any other difference will be subject to one's own tech and what is supported, but I swear the HDR effect and colour in general on my setup is improved.
Without doing a side by side comparison, it is easy to convince oneself of these things though, but the objectively larger picture is more impactful than one may think.
Probably not worth rewatching a whole movie unless you already planned to, but maybe worth skipping forward to your favourite scenes to see how much different they look in the update.
I finished watching Warten Auf'n Bus (2020). German TV series, 8 episodes, less than half an hour each. It's about two men in their late 40s in Eastern Germany (Brandenburg). One of them is disabled after a work accident, the other one is long-time unemployed. Every day they sit at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere and wait for the bus to arrive. Or rather the bus driver, who they both fancy.
Until then these two men, who have been friends for a long time, just talk to each other. Often meaningless stuff, but just as often they touch on pretty important things. One of them is more well-versed in the humane disciplines, the other one is a bit more of a hot-head and a man of numbers (I think he used to be a pretty well-off engineer before the fall of the iron curtain. Because this is one of the central themes of the show: the life of people in rural parts of Eastern Germany, and the last generation who lived their early adult life in the German Democractic Republic. This still is a thing in Germany, although one that isn't talked about much, although it somewhat mirrors the fate of people across the Western world.
So apart from life, love, work, family, friendship, philosophy, 'self-care', and so on, there's some pretty hefty stuff on the rise of the extreme right, frustration with politics, the internet and so on. The main thing is though that these two never stop talking, no matter how divided their views are on something. They never succumb to wrong pride or are 'too insulted' to stop talking to each other. They are the antithesis of internet conversations or social media. These two are friends, and they know that this is way more important than a singular opinion. And they know that in the world they live in the most stupid thing they could do is "just go talk to somebody else who shares my opinion", which is what social media is built on. Also, they know that they can not go anywhere else.
I started watching the show back when it first popped up in mid-2020. I liked it fine, but it got too depressing for me, so I stopped. Just last night I caught the rest of the episodes on TV, and it was nice. So maybe not for going to bed, but it's a really precious little show. Very minimalist; most of the time all we see is the two guys at that bus station and wide, flat country around them. The two main actors are really, really good though, and so is the writing. For a show like that you'd think that there's a lot of improv, but I think it's all properly scripted. Both of the guys delivery is very natural though, right down to the very broad dialect used. Just adds to the sense of reality though. Good stuff.
Watch It. IF you're not in the mood for the Marvel film and if your German is pretty much bulletproof.
A Netflix Original, The Old Ways follows a young American reporter on her return to the family home in South America some 20 or so years after she left as a child.
What we have here is 90 minutes of "some film." It can't really be criticised for production values, acting or writing, they're all perfectly adequate, but precious little sets it apart.
This is essentially a riff on The Exorcist formula. The trouble is that riffs on The Exorcist formula are hardly rare, and while the idea of transplanting it into Amazonian South America and exploring culture and beliefs many won't be all that familiar with has promise, the execution is lacking. The creature itself is visually reasonably striking, but this alone isn't going to carry the film, especially with only brief appearances.
Ultimately what we get is a lightweight film that would really benefit from more atmosphere and a deeper dive into the lore it skirts. If you manage to stay focused through the whole thing then give yourself a pat on the back, I didn't.
trexmeyer wrote: Shang-Chi is on Disney+ and it is far better than I had hoped. Best post Endgame MCU movie or show for me.
Edit: Getting kind of tired of Awkwafina tbh.
Just watched this with my wife. Thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not deep, nor is it meaningful, but it is playful and visually stunning and Ben Kingsley just gets to play. Top marks.
This is a very silly film. A very, very silly film. Mostly because it kinda makes American forces look incredibly incompetent.
Bad guys firing some kind of heavy machine gun? Guess we’d better just….sort of….stand around here. Pointing out pistols. And be gunned down in short order.
The baddies? Oh yeah, the South Korean Prime Minister is apparently really awful at choosing his aides, given they’re all in on it.
If I was a service person or police officer, I’d feel bloody insulted.
A "modern" re-make of an old 60's spy show I always liked. This one was written and directed by Guy Ritchie, and you can tell when you watch it!
Henry Cavil and Armie Hammer are really strong as Solo and Ilya respectively. Viklander as Gabby is also good. The Italian villainess is great. Hugh Grant is fun.
Don't look too closely at the plot, just squint at it and look sideways. There are some head scratchers in there. Instead, just absorb the cool stylings and directorial flourishes.
I liked it! Too bad they did not make any more.
I agree, it also had humor without getting too campy.
One of my favourite Bond films, and the first I ever saw in the cinema. It of course also benefits massively from fond memories of Goldeneye on the N64. Not only a rare example of a decent movie tie-in, but a great game in its own right.
Man it’s showing it’s age. But then, it is 26 years old, so perhaps not surprising.
Finally got to see this after it has appeared on Prime.
I would be really interested to know what happened during the editing/final version discussions because the film varies massively from the trailer. Not only did the trailer paint the film as more of an action film, but there are entire scenes which don't appear in the full film (I think Liv Tyler suffered most here, barely appearing as a foot note and probably had more screen time in the trailer).
So the tone of the film is very introspective and slow paced. It was like they had tried to go for a 2001 or Solaris-type effect of mournful space drama but they managed to miss any of the intensity of 2001 in particular. We know the sequence in that film where David is planning to unplug HAL and the computer can lip-read, that feeling of dread and panic. This film had an opportunity to do something similar (we are told that literally the fate of life on earth is in the balance) but singularly fails to grip you throughout. This might be in part because Brad Pitt's character is purposefully unflappable, but it makes for quite dull sequences even when exciting things are happening on screen.
Also the action bits, when they do occur, seem forced. The 'pirates on the moon' bit, while cool as a concept, felt out of place (and damaged the suspension of disbelief), also the (spoilers if you want to see the film)
Spoiler:
baboon in space (!) and sequence where the crew on the ship he boards behave like crazed berserkers in trying to stop him, killing themselves in the process
. I actually laughed out loud at both of those sequences, which I'm not sure was the intent. Did the studio get cold feet about releasing a slow burner and asked for some of these sequences to be changed, for the purposes of the trailer?
Another spoiler on the ending:
Spoiler:
Had they tried to go for an Apocalypse Now style ending with Tommy Lee Jones as Colonel Kurz and Brad Pitt entering his domain? If so again it failed
So not a bad film by any means; a good cast (I felt largely largely wasted) and some lovely cinematography and SFX, but the pacing was poor and it felt confused by what type of film it wanted to be.
I would be interested to know what anyone else that has seen it thought.
Totally. First (and last) bond I saw in cinema funnily enough was "The World Is Not Enough". I really like Casino Royale though. And ....the other one. In which digitalization sucks.
I watched Half Past Dead (2002), possibly for the first time from beginning (well, almost) to end. Fun fact: That one was shot in Germany. I guess that tax law hole was still in effect back then.
Steven Seagal (FBI man with russian name. I like how Seagal very often plays people of very clearly immigrant backgrounds.) goes undercover to prison, of course he befriends all the cool black guys, among them Morris Chestnut and Ja Rule. In a surprisingly easy breakout Seagal and his friend escape the prison and go on an adventure to get money or revenge or whatever.
What a strange film. Seagal is the coolest, and everybody is very readily accepting that. At 2002, his hair looks rather odd already, he's rather bulky, and he moves rather slowly. Lots of gun shooting not that much aikido or otherwise kicky things.
Don't Watch Remember how good Seagal used to be back then? Above the Law, Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, Out for Justice, Under Siege, Under Siege 2. These are the ones to watch. Half Past Dead is not.
thats cos you forgot the Seagal law, if co-joining his name and the film title with "is" makes sense it'll at least be 3 star stupid, Stevie Seagull IS Half Past Dead just sounds depressing...
So not a bad film by any means; a good cast (I felt largely largely wasted) and some lovely cinematography and SFX, but the pacing was poor and it felt confused by what type of film it wanted to be.
I would be interested to know what anyone else that has seen it thought.
2.5 / 5
I fell asleep at the theatre and missed 5 minutes just before the ending, basically the whole "shield scene". IMHO it had good visuals and convincing acting but the plot never really picked up my interest, resulting in a quite boring movie overall.
Following Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox's back catalogue this film with Guy Pierce and Robert Carlisle has now appeared on Disney Plus/Star. You have now the (I think) really funny situation of all of the Disney classics lined up, your Alladins, Bambi, Dumbo, mixed in with 20th Century stuff like Predators, the Alien films, and this film Ravenous which is about a rather peckish (to the point of cannibalism) individual in mid 19th century America.
I really enjoyed this film. The central premise (of massive vitality and virility through the eating of human flesh) is nonsense and the film just about strikes the balance right between humour, of not taking itself too seriously, but also horror, without falling all the way into schlocky B-movie territory. Guy Pierce as the quiet, cowardly anti-hero underplays the role perfectly, and Robert Carlisle is at his Begsby-best as the films antagonist.
Special mention also to the cinematography (lots of uncomfortable close-ups) and the soundtrack, with a plinky-plonky score composed by Damon Albarn (of Blur fame) which again suits the film down the ground.
Knocked down the score slightly as it now makes me a little more uncomfortable around bloody steaks
It was... fine. Undercut a lot by coming out after the character is dead, and the last third of the film is just a mess of nonsense.
Secret base is a flying building? No one ever saw that?
Taking out one engine causes the whole thing to fall to pieces in an overly dramatic fashion? Even in bits not really connected to the engine block? (Seriously, why did the runways just transform into rubble from the outer edges inwards? I could have vaguely understood if their anchors to the main building broke, but those stuck around)
Plus the end was just boring. Watching physics cry itself to sleep in the corner isn't engaging.
Turnip Jedi wrote: thats cos you forgot the Seagal law, if co-joining his name and the film title with "is" makes sense it'll at least be 3 star stupid, Stevie Seagull IS Half Past Dead just sounds depressing...
Angelina Jolie, traumatised fire jumper, kid with a secret, mysterious conspirators out to kill everyone. So far so bland. There were a ton of movies in the 90s where you pick a random career and drop a conspiracy into it and you've got a film. Cliffhanger, Backdraft, Dropzone, etc, etc. All of them at varying levels of badness.
This one is very different. While Angelina Jolie and Aiden Gillen are the two star names, the dialogue is spread fairly evenly over six main characters who all feel intrinsic to the plot.
Spoiler:
Jolie's and Gillen's characters never actually meet but this doesn't matter because the other characters are equally as strong.
The fire jumping career elements are deliberately prevented from being overpowering (unlike in those awful 90s efforts) and the director is self conscious enough to delicately kill off anything that starts getting cheesy or hopelessly sentimental.
While there are moments that stretch into escapist fantasy all of the characters are grounded and none are presented as super heroes so the action has a weight to it that can be missing from modern high budget flicks.
All in all this is not a film that will blow your socks off but it is a well balanced piece that I feel satisfied for watching and can recommend.
Well, what can I say, I'm only human. It's just 5 episodes this time. Joe Exotic is in prison, none of the others is. At first the show (it's not really a documentary, this becomes especially apparent in this second season. I don't watch True Crime shows, but I'm pretty sure that this is what those are like) shows a bit about how the show changed the lives of the protagonists and updates us on the insanity. Then they basically just throw bits and pieces of old stuff they found or new stuff that happens at us, and it's not that interesting. If anything, it's a bit of a mirror of society. A parade of freaks, hanging on to some sort of 'american dream' by being egotistical, narcissistic, greedy crooks who get high on attention and get really whiny and 'murcan ("stand mah ground", "will kill all the animals and myself", "got a gun", "god gave me this and that right..", swearword, ...) once they're being called out on their misbehavior.
An interesting thing is that they for some reason centre almost an episode on some 'internet detective' who runs a youtube show/podcast and 'investigates' crimes. A few weeks ago I heard about those people in relation to the Gabby Petito case, and they're rather scaring me. I get it, it's a fun past-time for the listeners to google around and do 'research', but the people who run those podcasts have to keep their listenership/patreons/whatever somehow. Possibly by presenting new 'findings' and 'developments' on the cases they talk about. And in the usual self-presentation fashion economics of attention require and if this is maybe even just the only source of income for these people, along with an audience who egg them on (possibly simply by listening to what this person has to say), I think there's a lot of potential for scary stuff to happen.
Maybe it's just me and my very basic distrust of every single person being able to get an audience via the new media who may well get very much into it. But in that regard I found that bit interesting.
In general though it's a pretty messy thing, and very much shows how the Tiger King thing was basically the right piece of entertainment at the right time and in the right place rather than having any extra merit or point of interest. While the first series was more focused on the feud between two highly eccentric people, the second series very much feels like a reality show with a ton of manufactured reality tv characters doing silly things without much structure or a story to it.
Carole Baskin's husband seems to be a funny dude though. So there's that.
It’s….perfectly enjoyable. Importantly, whilst it clearly has a reverence for the original, it’s not afraid to be largely it’s own thing, and isn’t particularly fan service.
The dialogue is good, the actors are good. McKenna Grace in particular really shines, as does Podcast.
Is it as good as the original? No. But that’s hardly a crime in itself. I’d say it’s probably better than Ghostbusters 2.
If you’re on the fence, I encourage you to go see it.
This is the Will Smith movie about the Williams sisters of Tennis fame.
This was a solid, character driven sports movie of the "uplifting" variety. Richard is not a hero, or a villain.... he just is. The film let's you decide what you want to think about him.
Solid, but no need to rush to the cinema to see it. It would be perfectly serviceable on a small screen. However, if you want to prove that non-super movies can make money..... you better run to see it!
I'm just glad they didn't go for the whole schtick of Will Smith playing all the family parts a-la Michael J Fox in Back to the Future 2... Oh god... I now can't get the idea out of my head!
This is the Will Smith movie about the Williams sisters of Tennis fame.
This was a solid, character driven sports movie of the "uplifting" variety. Richard is not a hero, or a villain.... he just is. The film let's you decide what you want to think about him.
Solid, but no need to rush to the cinema to see it. It would be perfectly serviceable on a small screen. However, if you want to prove that non-super movies can make money..... you better run to see it!
Out of interest how much of the film is about the dad and how much the girls?
I know he was instrumental on bringing them through into pro tennis and its a remarkable story, but it did seem like an odd choice to not have the daughters as the focus of the movie, as they are some of the most successful female tennis players of all time. And then I saw who was cast as the dad, and I thought "Ah" that is why, because no film with Will Smith exists in which he isn't the absolute centre of attention (I don't dislike him and he has been in some good films, but just an observation) - and wondered if that had lead to the detriment of the story overall.
Wait, the boy in the new Ghostbusters film with the kids is actually named Podcast? Is there a reason to that, or is this strictly down to some SEO bs?
Sigur wrote: Wait, the boy in the new Ghostbusters film with the kids is actually named Podcast? Is there a reason to that, or is this strictly down to some SEO bs?
Not his real name, but he explained that's how everyone calls him (or maybe how he wants people to call him ), so he introduces himself as "Podcast".
Anyway, Squid Game. I finished the show last night. What an entirely ordinary show which comes with two or three sympathetic faces (the main guy, the thug and the dodgy funny lady).
It quotes a ton of things we've seen before. It's a typical Netflix thing: it's okay to look at, because it does things we've seen before numerous times, with some recognizable branding added (the mask guys, the big red light green light puppet). It goes on for too long.
Spoiler:
There is no point what so ever to the whole policeman-brother storyline, is there? The doctor storyline was at least somewhat interesting in that it showed that this system which praises itself for being oh so fair obviously NOT being fair at all, and not everybody is equal, even within this isolated, simple and entirely artificial system. Especially the last few episodes [the bloody marbles game!] and the ending are overly long, tries to be twist-y, but is in no way, and of course they can't have anything changed about the system, because they NEED to have another season, right?
All that being said, I loved the VIPs. They were hilarious. Sure, sinister people with animal masks. We've seen it a TON of times and simply is for effect. Still, a sinister rich dude putting on antlers is always funny. And then they started commenting on everything. If this got a DVD release I'd love for the VIPs to add commentary to the whole show, just pointing out bleeding obvious things, cursing and being childish about the number 69.
Don't Watch. I think that this would have worked much better as a film, and with a stronger ending.
I was never a huge fan of what Venom did with the character, but if one ignored the connection and just treated it as a movie about a guy who got possessed by an alien creature there was some entertainment to be had.
But, after the inexplicably stellar success of the first film (it was apparently a big hit with teens and 18-24s, and I am.. not that) a sequel was inevitable.
So does the second film bring the whole thing more in line? Does Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock now look more like the rage fuelled vengeance machine I'd expect from a Venom film and less like a baffled puppy who needs a pooh?
In a word no.
I'm not sure if the production was affected by Covid, or what we get is what was intended, but the film feels utterly weightless. Exposition aside, the whole film is pretty much "Cletus becomes infected, becomes Carnage, Venom and Carnage fight, the end." In an era where films seem to be getting longer, we have a film that seems to skip over any attempt to build any jeopardy in favour of more or less leaping straight from the opening act to the final confrontation, and could really use a little time to raise the stakes.
That said, the final fight is quite entertaining and Naomi Harris is clearly having a ball with her part. Woody Harrellson is a proven actor with convincing psychopaths on his CV, yet feels criminally underutilised (a recurring theme with the whole film.) The Carnage symbiote itself looks great and acts in a suitably callous manner, just pretend they haven't magically given it the ability to turn into a whirlwind and it's fine.
Frankly, the most exciting part of the movie may be the post credits sequence, which may give a hint of greater, and more familiar, things to come. But in essence LTBC is movie junk food, you'll probably enjoy it while it's happening, but it won't do you any good and you might feel a bit bad after its over.
Watching this after getting shots, so I feel like it might be a fever dream.
Because, really, an MCU film with:
personal stakes
fight choreography (on film!)
a villain with actual motivation!
complexity and nuance (not just 'heroes fight baddies because baddies need to be fought')
The fighting sequences were awesome, loved that they were (predominantly) using wire work rather than CGI for much of it.
Great sense of humour running through it yet, believable bad guys (Marvel does a good job I think of adding believability to their characters, they are not just 'bad' for the sake of it)
Good casting too, I like that Tony Leung (who is a legend of Hong Kong cinema) was in it.
Anyway, Squid Game. I finished the show last night. What an entirely ordinary show which comes with two or three sympathetic faces (the main guy, the thug and the dodgy funny lady).
Don't Watch. I think that this would have worked much better as a film, and with a stronger ending.
I will counter this with a Do Watch!
I really enjoyed it. I know it has been done many times before as a concept, but I loved the characters in it and it had a very quirky (very dark) sense of humour running throughout it. I kept finding myself laughing out loud at sequences, then stopping myself as it was something I really shouldn't have been laughing at.
I did used to live in Korea and I wonder if that might be why I liked it so much, my partner was pretty ambivalent about it and I think only watched because I was.
So the guy taking off his mask at the end was an actor Byung-hun, which was a real bombshell if you know Korean cinema (he is normally a movie A-lister, I would say a Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise equivalent that takes a lot of strong man roles). But I think that would have been lost on most non-Koreans watching.
He did look like a very striking man. He reminded me a lot of Mads Mikkelson. Was the girl they introduced halfway in a famous actress or pop star or something like that as well?
Yeah, it's not a bad show at all, and the actors were perfectly fine. There were lots of concepts in there, but none was elaborated in. Instead there was another bunch of violent deaths or maybe some shot reminiscent of instagram photos. I liked the little twist of them being allowed to end it all via democratic vote. And they did, but the show showed that ultimately they had no choice at all. So that was good. Also nice: The ladies who tried to outplay the system via toilet climbing and poop jokes, but that led nowhere either. In the end the participants submitted to the inhumane system and realized they HAVE to play along to get the money (which in their situation basically meant life or death in the outside world).
I think that with what was done it could have just as well worked as a film, but I'm sure that my personal feelings towards Netflix and how they produce their stuff has somethign to do with it. I'm certain that this would have just as well worked as a film, but they wanna have people spend time on their platform. And have a second season, and it's WAY easier to maked people watch a second season of something rather than have them watch a sequel film.
And i'M sure that several things were lost on me due to how little I know about South Korea. As I said, it's not a bad tv show. I heard two people who know more things than I do claim that the show is way less interesting than the incredible success it has right now and why that might be. But maybe those people are wrong too, who knows. It's cool that you enjoyed it so much. I did too at times, and I did laugh as well (mostly at the VIPs of course).
I watched it in Korean with German subtitles. I really enjoyed the slightly stilted language used in those subtitles too, I have to say. I don't really get why in every single film or tv show people have to talk "like they do in real life" and use lots of swearing. Not that I have any idea about the way the characters talked to each other in the original language, but I think that especially in this show a slightly artificial way of speaking works nicely.
It is that time of year for me to start watching a lot of Christmas movies......
California Christmas
In an inversion of the usual trope, this time a city Himbo goes tot he country to find love and that it is the simple life that matters! Plot twist!
Overall, a perfectly enjoyable, well-executed, and cheesy little romantic Christmas movie. Pretty inoffensive if you recognize it for what it is*.
*Note- to me the whole genre is typically inherently offensive by its very nature. For the "Holiday Movie Formula" to work, you have to make a lot of icky genre tropes fit into your movie. Most of those are offensive, broad, and stereotypical by nature. This one is no different.
Then, not Christmas related.....
Self/Less
Ben Kingsley takes over the body of Ryan Reynolds and hijinks ensue.
Ryan as at his least Reynolds-ish, which actually helps the film. He does not spend the whole time smirking at the camera, and instead does a good job seeming like a man over his head most of the time.
The violence is pretty straight forward, and brutal. The conspiracy is fine, but they could have played up the "who can you trust" aspect a bit further.
Pot-boiler thriller which is workmanlike and solid.
I'm not sure about the girl I was probably in the country too long ago and I think she is quite young, but looked her up and apparently she is a model turned actress. And she went from having a few thousand Instagram followers to about 20 million after the show! So I guess she has done quite well for herself.
I did find some of the deaths quite haunting. One in particular (without spoiling, I will say it relates to a game of marbles) was playing on my mind for several days afterwards and really upset me! Which again my partner found really amusing as it hadn't affected her in the same way at all.
Yes I agree it probably could have worked as a film as well. I have found that with a few series recently, the other Korean drama Sweet Home, which started brilliantly but then lost momentum with some serious padding. Sometimes less is more.
I also liked the social commentary and satire; it has been in a few Korean films and dramas recently (most notably Parasite), commenting on the increasing gap between rich and poor. And what are the lives of the poor worth, especially considering Korean society was already quite hierarchical. So I thought there was a good, darkly comical view about those things.
Oh yes, there were some haunting deaths. They're all grizzly. The marbels episode just did me in though. I found the most exciting game was between the sneery gangster thug and his underling.
I also liked the social commentary and satire; it has been in a few Korean films and dramas recently (most notably Parasite), commenting on the increasing gap between rich and poor. And what are the lives of the poor worth, especially considering Korean society was already quite hierarchical. So I thought there was a good, darkly comical view about those things.
Absolutely, that observation the series makes works globally. But what films like Parasite and Snowpiercer did was show ways how the poor circumvent that system, either by overt rebellion or via 'becoming the other'. Squid Game said 'that's a thing', but inherently also said 'well, can't do anything about it' except if you're the one person who by wild chance and interference from above wins all the money. I would have liked to see that system being derailed.
I wrote a whole lot more ranty rambly stuff, but I don't wanna be the guy who explains why he doesn't like something without anybody having asked them. It's cool that you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too, but found it very tame. But it was a good time, because I watched with people, so that's nice.
Ray (Frank Grillo) is having a bad day. For some reason a team of professional assassins have been hired to kill him. The worst part is, every time one of them succeeds he gets to wake up and do it again.
A curious mix of Groundhog Day and Die Hard, for a low key movie that was released straight to streaming, this is a surprisingly superior action film with a solid core of big names and well choreographed sequences, both big and expansive and small and precise.
Grillo, who prior to this was only really known to me as Crossbones in the MCU, carries the film pretty effortlessly as Ray, with Mel Gibson playing absolutely not the villain and Naomi Watts as the love interest/one that got away. Throw in brief appearances from the likes of Michelle Yeoh in what is barely more than a cameo and plenty of good work from the supporting cast (including one Rob Gronkowski) and you have a film that falls firmly in the "hidden gem" category.
Sure, it falls into a few of the time travel movie and action film clichés, but that's ok because it's not pretending to be high art, and it often does so in a knowing way (the film structure clearly mirrors the way players would approach video games back before save games were a thing, and a retro video games convention is a significant location, as an example.)
Throw in some solid humour, a little heart and a touch of pathos, and an ending that is brave enough not to tie everything up in a bow (or open for a sequel for the cynical) and it really isn't hard to see that, at time of writing, Prime Video has it rated at well over 4 stars.
So, Cameron Diaz gets to get coupled with Jude Law; but Kate Winslet gets coupled with Elli Wallach or Jack Black after ditching Rufus Sewell? Odd for a romantic Holiday movie.
As you can see, this movie has a lot of big names and was released into the theatres at the time. This was before streaming was a thing and mid-budget, character driven, ensemble cast movies were a thing.
That said, it is a bit long, meandering, and over-stuffed. It kind of dragged, but I can think of worse things to watch around Christmas time while snuggled up by the fire.
A Castle of Christmas
This has Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes, yes; the Dread Pirate Roberts himself.
This is much more traditional, Hallmark style Christmas movie writing. The "dramatic conflict" in this flick is paper thin, and when it is used it seems super forced and artificial. It would have been better if they would have skipped it, and just left it a courting/wooing story instead of trying to add a weak "will they/won't they" element.
I think I would rather watch a California Christmas instead of this one.
First the minor one. California Christmas was popular enough to get a sequel coming on December 16th. I can't wait...... maybe.....
Second revelation involves the Christmas Prince{/b] and the [Princess Switch{/b] trilogies. In the [b]Princess Switch 2 there is a small cut away, where the Christmas Prince{/b] characters are at the titular princesses wedding, and pregnant which foreshadows/teases the {b]Christmas Prince III.
Therefore, there are now 3 successful* shared movie universes out there:
Do you like Antoine Fuqua films? (Training Day, Magnificent Seven)
Do you like films with very limited scope, shot in just a couple of rooms and a tiny cast? (Tom Hardy in Locke is probably the closest modern parallel I could think of)
And therefore about an hour of close-up of Jake Gyllenhaal?!
I really enjoyed the film. Gyllenhaal puts in an earnest, convincing performance in the role (just as well as he is practically the only person on camera).
You gradually find out more about the context and background as the film progresses, and it's done in a subtle way.
1hr 30 means it doesn't overstay its welcome and is a tightly performed film.
Kind of average. But who knew after her DCEU misdirection Gal Gadot has at least a modicum of acting ability?
I enjoyed the film, it was good fun. The leads were all good in it (with the caveat that you have to like Ryan Reynolds, as much of the humour and script has his hand on it).
Was shocked to see how much the film had cost, over $200 million (apparently a good chunk of it going on the cast).
I saw this movie as a kid and was obsessed with the robots (though I thought there were more than 2 of the trashcan 'bots)
Fast forward a few decades and... huh. I have no idea why Heart of Darkness in Space! (also starring cowboy gunslinger robots) was a thing.
The end with a weird embrace between the madman and his robot and then an extended woo-woo lightshow and an extended fertilization metaphor using a phallic spaceship entering a black hole and arriving at a planet-egg was a bit... much. A lot too much.
Do you like Antoine Fuqua films? (Training Day, Magnificent Seven)
Do you like films with very limited scope, shot in just a couple of rooms and a tiny cast? (Tom Hardy in Locke is probably the closest modern parallel I could think of)
And therefore about an hour of close-up of Jake Gyllenhaal?!
I really enjoyed the film. Gyllenhaal puts in an earnest, convincing performance in the role (just as well as he is practically the only person on camera).
You gradually find out more about the context and background as the film progresses, and it's done in a subtle way.
1hr 30 means it doesn't overstay its welcome and is a tightly performed film.
4/5 from me
Yeah, I liked it too but I suggest watching the original, a danish movie. The main character is much more ambiguous and interesting.
And also...
Spoiler:
An american cop pleading guilty to manslaughter is simply unbelievable.
The most gloriously stupid smart film I've seen in quite some time, to overcome to my Reynolds ennui (I suspect our Jodie helped at the outset) and deliver that much fun is remarkable, even got most of the game references even if my gamey know whats ends around GTA and Saints Row 4, well worth a go
Johnny Galecki (Big Bang Theory) plays pretty much to type. Nerdy, heartbroken guy, going through a rough time after a bad relationship break up.
He signs up for the chance to attend a free, self-help/new age retreat, to "cleanse his inner demons"
There he meets Anna Friel's fellow lost soul at the retreat, along with a group of similarly broken individuals.
The idea of the retreat is to engage in some new age style introspection, along with a set of strict instructions to ingest a series of specially formulated drinks that will help them purge their inner demons.
They mustn't drink each other's drinks, and must follow the instructions to the letter....
The morning after though, after a lot of vomiting, it seems that their inner demons have literally been purged - in physical form.....
I enjoyed this, it's darkly humorous, and is executed quite well. It's one of those films where the concept is probably better than the final, end product. But it was interesting and well done, worth a watch.
Don’t forget grinding a Viking style sword blade into a scimitar/sabre shape… cos that is totally not going to cause major structural and stability issues with the blade and tang…
I don't remember much of that film, except the hilarious scene in which Banderas learns the Viking language.
Otherwise - it's alright, innit.
Yeah, the scene takes a minute or two, but it is clear that it is suppose to represent weeks to months of travel. I mean, they travel from down by Byzantium up into Norway over that course of time.
I don't remember much of that film, except the hilarious scene in which Banderas learns the Viking language.
Otherwise - it's alright, innit.
Yeah, the scene takes a minute or two, but it is clear that it is suppose to represent weeks to months of travel. I mean, they travel from down by Byzantium up into Norway over that course of time.
Indeed, it just stuck with me, because it's a thing we don't see often in films. People actually learning something new. Just imagine, when they turn that into a TV show they'll spend 4 hours on that part of the story alone, and it will achieve exactly the same. We'll learn though that one of the vikings was bitten by an eel when he was young, so he pronounces Es weird. But by the 4th hour of the whole scene he'll have learned to pronounce Es just like everybody else by learning that he's his own man and totally an individual. Which will have achieved nothing, but it keeps people glued to the screen for a few more hours, because they're promised that that big battle will be really something to look at.
It’s somewhat daft, but it sticks to its in-universe logic and makes for a pretty entertaining film.
Solid performances, including a not-quite-Gotrek-because-if-you-were-Gotrek-it-would’ve-worked-but-you-died-like-a-true-Slayer-death from Matthew McConaughey.
There is something deeply perverse and unsettling about a horror movie that runs all the wrong stereotypes, but seems to want to use them to tell the opposite message. I don't think the intent of this movie is to be as incredible offputting as it is. But it's like, at every point this movie tries to make some kind of commentary on a serious social anxiety (as horror films are ought to do), it ends up making that statement with the wrong characters, the wrong circumstances, and the wrong tone.
Instead of a nuanced and thoughtful film about the the low key horror of modern policing anxieties and uncertainties (from all sides), it just ends up doing a whole lot of 'woe is me, the true victim of society" that comes off as rather sociopathic when it presents a series of candid and mostly authentic situations, but throws all sympathy to the person with the badge and the gun who is heavily implied to be violent, unrepentant, and bitter towards a society that's only crime is looking on their unrepentent violence and bitter attitude contemptuously.
A really great concept here that butchers itself to become utterly tone deaf. To be clear, the film presents it's marine heroine as a 'good cop' but in the course of film she does everything good cops don't do; engages in a violent altercation and defends herself with "it was a tense situation," enters private property without a warrant, turns off her body cam when it suits her, steals evidence from a crime scene for literally no reason, and engages in the grand old tale of 'we must avenge the dead police officers' until near the end of the film (said officers are corrupt as gak which is telegraphed to hell and back to the point it's not a spoiler and one has to wonder how she doesn't know). Yet, she is the hero of this movie by sole virtue of not being a cold blooded killer... And that's just all incredibly fethed up with the film's apparent intent to tell a very different kind of story.
And on top of all that, it's just kind of a very unscary horror movie.
First of all, it's been 10 years since that film was released? Holy poop.
Anyway, a boy(Pi) from India loses his family when the ship they travel on sinks. He's almost the only survivor. A tiger which was being shipped as well sits in his life boat, out on the ocean. And it goes on from there.
Mr. Ang Lee had major balls to choose this story to turn into a film. There's a good amount of CGI in there, but the Tiger looks really good 99% of the time. To my knowledge they did as much filming as possible with a real tiger. In general the film looks really good. There are some visual gimmicks added (not the least because this was a 3d release. 2012 and all of that. But I read it was done really, really well too, and I'm willing to believe that.).
Other than my initial assumptions this is way less Calvin&Hobbes on a Boat, and much more about being in a really crappy situation with a tiger. Or like a good episode of star trek in which a principal cast member is stranded on a planet with a hostile other person.
Anyway, it's a good film that keeps you guessing what'll happen next. Watch It.
I really enjoyed Life of Pi. I did wonder if they would manage to capture the dream-like quality of the book, but I thought Ang Lee did as good a job of it as it was probably possible to do.
Batman Vs. Superman (directors cut)
Did anyone else previously hold quite a low opinion of this film, which was then changed quite considerably by the additional 30 minutes of this version?
There just seemed to be so much more context added, of Lex Luther playing both of the big guys to get them to go at each other, which gave that character at least more of an impression of being a Machiavellian schemer, rather than just a lunatic.
I think some of the flaws remained; the conclusion to the big fight still comes across as ropey (with, I thought, a fairly poor piece of acting by Affleck at that moment), the final fight was either unnecessary or a wasted opportunity (would much rather have seen something like a super-Michael-Shannon, rather than the troll from Lord of the Rings perhaps).
But overall I would definitely say an improvement over the standard theatrical cut, and I found myself enjoying it, rather than finding myself getting angry at the idiosyncrasies of the original release.
I am now going to watch the Snyder-cut of Justice League, as I wonder if it's the same situation with that film too.
It’s somewhat daft, but it sticks to its in-universe logic and makes for a pretty entertaining film.
Solid performances, including a not-quite-Gotrek-because-if-you-were-Gotrek-it-would’ve-worked-but-you-died-like-a-true-Slayer-death from Matthew McConaughey.
Haha that's a good observation about MM. I thought it was one of those films that was a great premise, but a few bits of it (the sky diving for one) while looking great, made little sense. And so the execution wasn't that good.
I haven't watched it in years. I wonder if it might actually stand up a bit better in amongst the endless tide of other post-apoc movies (disease/zombies/aliens - delete as appropriate), with a protagonist that's quite original and a great deal cooler - dragons!
Starts okayish with the ongoing whole quest of the week format, then a hard swerve in the somewhat sticky fan service swamp (Ahsoka gets a pass cos Rosario...) and should of been Mara or Kyle at the end as they are proper good at sabering up Dark Troopers
My kids found it on D+. I am so glad they did. It is very much my kind of show. Uplifting, sciency and with a massive dash of the bizarre. Even the films are good.
We are currently on watch through number 4 or 5. Might be into 6 shortly
Finished House of Cards and wow, it does jump the shark, and sooner than expected.
So we all knew that Season 6 (the season where Kevin Spacey was fired for being a serial predator) would be pretty strained, but I see the Shark Jumping around S5. And S3 was a bit of slog too.
So S1 and S2 are about a congressman manipulating and destroying people until he rises to vice president and then president, without the both of getting elected.
S3 was a slog because now that he was on top there was little for him to do.
S4 and 5 picked up as Underwood now had to actually win an election by manipulating social media, and declaring a national emergency to shut down voting in states he was likely to lose.
Awesome stuff and more than a bit chilling after the real 2016 and 2020 elections.
And then...
Well we find out that America's billionaires are members of an honest to gosh pagan cult and like to dance through the woods in the robes and burn offerings. And Underwood now has political assassinations live streamed to his tablet. Basically he's gone from semi-plausible Machiavellian schemer to Lex Luthor.
S6 might have been able to turn this around with Frank dead and Clair president. (Oh yeah he got his wife appointed VP in the middle of all of this). But they futzed around for 5 of the 8 episodes, ended on a cliffhanger with Clair pregnant (supposedly with Frank's child), a nuclear war about to start, a coup about to overthrow her, and her murdering someone in the oval office.
The end.
So uh, if you don't have issues with watching something staring Spacey then watch Seasons 1 and 2. If you like finish it, but be warned.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Finished House of Cards and wow, it does jump the shark, and sooner than expected.
So we all knew that Season 6 (the season where Kevin Spacey was fired for being a serial predator) would be pretty strained, but I see the Shark Jumping around S5. And S3 was a bit of slog too.
So S1 and S2 are about a congressman manipulating and destroying people until he rises to vice president and then president, without the both of getting elected.
S3 was a slog because now that he was on top there was little for him to do.
S4 and 5 picked up as Underwood now had to actually win an election by manipulating social media, and declaring a national emergency to shut down voting in states he was likely to lose.
Awesome stuff and more than a bit chilling after the real 2016 and 2020 elections.
And then...
Well we find out that America's billionaires are members of an honest to gosh pagan cult and like to dance through the woods in the robes and burn offerings. And Underwood now has political assassinations live streamed to his tablet. Basically he's gone from semi-plausible Machiavellian schemer to Lex Luthor.
S6 might have been able to turn this around with Frank dead and Clair president. (Oh yeah he got his wife appointed VP in the middle of all of this). But they futzed around for 5 of the 8 episodes, ended on a cliffhanger with Clair pregnant (supposedly with Frank's child), a nuclear war about to start, a coup about to overthrow her, and her murdering someone in the oval office.
The end.
So uh, if you don't have issues with watching something staring Spacey then watch Seasons 1 and 2. If you like finish it, but be warned.
Interesting, I watched seasons 1 and 2 a while ago and thought it was good enough but felt it had told its story and had no interest in watching season 3 or beyond. Glad I didn’t bother!!
A god-awful movie with two really good bits (the medical emergency on the shuttle, and the very last sequence of the film) and literally everything else about it is just a waste of all our time. It wasn't even worth watching on TV while I had nothing better to do. Watching paint dry is more stimulating.
Don’t knock watching paint dry. It’s captivating how it starts out shiny and alive and watery, glasses over, stiffens and then fades to dull lifelessness while you lean close, whispering “What do you see paint? What do you see when the end comes?”
A god-awful movie with two really good bits (the medical emergency on the shuttle, and the very last sequence of the film) and literally everything else about it is just a waste of all our time. It wasn't even worth watching on TV while I had nothing better to do. Watching paint dry is more stimulating.
It is mediocre indeed but Prometheus and Alien 3 were much much much worse. I managed to watch it a couple of times without getting too bored.
I feel like that's a debate almost unto itself really.
I like none of those movies, but if I had to rank them Prometheus would be on top and Covenant on bottom. I think that ranking is fairly subjective. Like Prometheus was terrible, but I do appreciate some of the things it tried to do a lot more than anything in Convenant. Prometheus had a small handful of redeeming qualities in all the garbage where as Covenant really has none. Alien 3 I think I mostly hate because did they really need to kill Newt and Hicks? Seriously feth them for that, but outside of that issue, the movie (especially some of the extended cuts) is decent enough. It's really just that one sore spot of bitterness that prevents me from caring to give the film any credit even for the things it does right.
And I feel like we could go back and forth on that for pages because at the end of the day all three of these movies are kind of crap and we're just debating which is the least crappy of the lot. There's so many things to dislike in all of them the actual ranking probably becomes pure personal preference.
Honestly I feel like both Alien and Predator ultimately peaked in their comic book adaptations years ago. It's been downhill for both franchises ever since as movies and books kept getting dumber or are clearly attempts by someone to write something completely different but that have Alien or Predator shoehorned into them.
Prometheus probably would have managed to be a much better movie if it either A) stuck to the original concept of being a true Alien prequel, or B) cut the entire connection to alien away and did some stupid ancient aliens gak (granted I'd still think less of the movie for trying to capitalize on a fad). I think we'd all feel a lot less insulted by it if it had just picked a lane and stayed in it and the movie probably would have been better off too. The same really applies to Covenant IMO. Ridley Scott seems to want to make some biblical allegory deep think movie, but can't get away from Alien enough to actually make it and the end result is the most uncomfortably awkward flute-playing scene in cinema history.
LordofHats wrote: Honestly I feel like both Alien and Predator ultimately peaked in their comic book adaptations years ago. It's been downhill for both franchises ever since as movies and books kept getting dumber or are clearly attempts by someone to write something completely different but that have Alien or Predator shoehorned into them.
Careful with that sentiment, or else we'll get Fast and Furious 10, where Dom, in order to save the crew must out space-car race a motorized gang of Predators
Guy Ritchie reunites with Jason Statham to tell the story of "H," a man who applies for work at a security company in the wake of the fatal shooting of 2 guards during an armoured car robbery. Fortunately he proves to be precisely as competent as he needs to be to pass the assessment and gets the job...
First off, this isn't a typical Ritchie film, so anybody expecting one of his signature knockabout London gangsta films with bullets and witticisms flying will be disappointed.
In many ways, it is evocative of a style of thriller that was popular in the 70s and 80s, both in terms of plot and visual style. It feels like something you may have seen Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood fronting in 1982. Which is in no way a criticism, merely an observation.
Ritchie's style is still there in places ( he wrote the screenplay and produced, as well as directing) chiefly in the signature retrospective storytelling device he uses so frequently, showing you the "now" before going back and explaining how everything got where it is. Statham plays it straighter than he does in something like Crank or The Transporter, but still isn't risking an injury by overstretching. The rest of the key roles are filled out with some really good choices though, which seems to be another Ritchie hallmark.
Overall, the word "solid" keeps coming to mind. Both in terms of the action sequences, which feel weighted and grounded (if muc of the cast had, or underwent, pretty significant firearms training, I wouldn't be surprised) and in terms of the acting, plot, cinematography and pretty much all key aspects.
Ultimately, if you're disposed towards the genre, you're unlikely to feel too cheated by spending time watching it, but there's little here that's going to stay long in the memory.
I was bored, so decided to let it play. I mostly remained bored throughout the film.
It isn't terrible, for what it is. But its 90% recycled from other films and franchises, and they somehow made a less interesting version of Pirates of the Caribbean.
I guess its fine if you're having a social gathering and want a film to run in the background so people who don't want to talk have something to keep them occupied. /shrug
John Woo's first effort in the US, with a proper 18million budget and LOT of ideas. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and his hair, the guy from the Mummy and Lance Henriksen. Also: Ted Raimi as "man on street". Is there a list of all of Ted Raimi's cameo appearances? I like the Raimis.
Anyway, what an interesting film. The plot is entirely secondary. JCVD is being hunted by evil people. But the ideas and the shots in this film. Mr.Woo really wanted to make the most of what he's given.
Watch It. It's got to be seen to be believed and it will be a memorable experience. Sadly I watched it on German TV last night, and they butchered the film pretty badly and extreme prejudice.
"A dysfunctional couple head to a remote cabin to reconnect, but each has intentions to kill the other. Before they can carry out their plans, unexpected visitors arrive and they face a greater danger."
This didn't have great reviews but I absolutely loved this.
It's possibly because I have a sick sense of humour and don't mind a bit (or a lot) of gore.
It's not a perfect movie but I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud so much. However, this may not be for everyone.
This makes 300 look like a documentary. They just turn the Snyder/Miller-isms up to 11 and let it rip.
About as faithful to Herodotus as Herodotus is to the truth.
Record of Ragnarok
Historical humans face Gods of Myth in an arena battle.
Most Animes are 4 episodes of set-up for a 30 second battle. This is the opposite. Too bad the battles are really boring.
On a related note. I have started and not finished a number of animes recently. Some of the tropes made me really wonder about what is going on in Japan. Then, I thought about a number of Western and Chinese movies I have seen, and started to wonder what the Feth is going on in the world!
I read the Nick Hornby book many years ago, but somehow have avoided seeing the film over the past 20 years. Wish I had seen it before now! Cracking script, great characters (of course the role that was built for Jack Black) and just an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours - John Cusack's character is a gak, but a likeable one, and there is a really nice story arc. Was a nice, slow-paced counterpoint to some of the action extravaganzas I have been watching recently.
John Woo's first effort in the US, with a proper 18million budget and LOT of ideas. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and his hair, the guy from the Mummy and Lance Henriksen. Also: Ted Raimi as "man on street". Is there a list of all of Ted Raimi's cameo appearances? I like the Raimis.
Anyway, what an interesting film. The plot is entirely secondary. JCVD is being hunted by evil people. But the ideas and the shots in this film. Mr.Woo really wanted to make the most of what he's given.
Watch It. It's got to be seen to be believed and it will be a memorable experience. Sadly I watched it on German TV last night, and they butchered the film pretty badly and extreme prejudice.
Probably one of my favourite John Woo films, definitely one of my favourite JVVD outings (and not just because of the hair). Cracking action sequences, great characters (uncle Gaston!!) good idea for a story and some great lines. I still have the DVD somewhere so need to watch it again!
John Woo's first effort in the US, with a proper 18million budget and LOT of ideas. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and his hair, the guy from the Mummy and Lance Henriksen. Also: Ted Raimi as "man on street". Is there a list of all of Ted Raimi's cameo appearances? I like the Raimis.
Anyway, what an interesting film. The plot is entirely secondary. JCVD is being hunted by evil people. But the ideas and the shots in this film. Mr.Woo really wanted to make the most of what he's given.
Watch It. It's got to be seen to be believed and it will be a memorable experience. Sadly I watched it on German TV last night, and they butchered the film pretty badly and extreme prejudice.
Checking Hard Target now, it's on UK Netflix, don't know about other markets.
I watched Jingle All the Way while baking Christmas cookies.
I saw it originally in theaters when I was a kid and enjoyed it then. I may have enjoyed it a little more now. A lot of Sinbad's lines went way over my head as a child. Ted is considerably creepier as an adult.
I don't understand why it got awful reviews back then. At worst, it is a middling 90's child-comedy.
Finally sat down to watch The Green Knight, fantastic film. Clearly a good understanding of the 14th century original tale, great additions to the story to add to the imagery. Cinematically excellent, great use of light and colour. And also an understanding of how folk tales are supposed to be. They change with the telling, that's up to the storyteller to decide what goes into the tale.
Dev Patel is a phenomenal actor, really happy for him, loved him when he was in Skins. Loved the way the used deliberately fantastical architecture of Morgana's castle to make it obvious it was otherworldly.
Shame I waited this long to watch it, wish I could have seen it on the big screen.
Flinty wrote: It’s fun, but I think True Lies beats it to that particular title
That is an absolute masterpiece but more like an action movie that an actual comedy.
It is, I think in many ways its the ultimate action film. Just the set pieces, the humour, the characters are absolutely brilliant. But it was released at the tail end of those films being really popular, so perhaps isn't given the status it deserved.
Well, it IS pretty hokey. I won't complain though, it's got Tia Carrere and all. But I understand the notion. To me it feels more like a comedy than an action film as well, although it's got some okay action scenes. Maybe that's due to the time and context though. True Lies very much is a 90s Schwarzenegger film, flanked by Last Action Hero, Jingle all the Way and Junior. And I'd say it's way closer in spirit to those than say Commando.
Either way, genre names are good food for inane internet debate, but not much good for anything else.
It seems that a bit was made out of how this failed in the cinemas and that shows the public isn't prepared for new and alternative material, which means the audience is to blame for reboots and endless sequals.
Or it could be that the film isn't that good. The best description we could make is that it is "watchable". It gets much better in the second hour when the latter two stories are told, but the first is hampered by Matt Damon's stilted delivery. This may be a deliberate characterisation to show how cold he is, but then the director should have rearranged proceedings so that we didn't have to suffer the discomfort for so long before the film sorts itself out.
Watch it only if it's not going to put you out of your way.
The ads looked terrible. His weird half-faced helmet also puts the lie to this film being any kind of deep, thoughtful, or better than the average Hollywood history flick.
I'll admit that Harold and Kumar is one of my favourite films to just watch over and over. It's fun, it's silly, it's got a heart to it. Never managed to watch the sequel beyond the first 10 minutes or so though.
Imagine Alexa and a Roomba had a baby, and it spent a lot of its formative years with its Uncle Baymax. The result may look something like the B-bot, the new social media connected companion from global mega corporation "Bubble."
Barney, a socially awkward boy from an odd family, is the only kid in school not to own a B-bot, until his dad, realising how unhappy this makes him, manages to skip the 3 month waiting list by getting a bot with slightly damaged packaging from a delivery driver as a last minute birthday present...
Firstly, for a kids film this is long. Nearly 2 hours in fact, and I just don't think it has the magic of the best of Pixar or DreamWorks to carry they for younger kids.
That aside, it struck me how similar this film is to ET, so many plot points are either the same or echo those from that film it can't be coincidence. Swap Ron the robot for the alien, the government for a global mega corporation and the parallels are undeniable.
Drawing comparisons with a movie that commonly challenges the top of greatest movies ever charts certainly isn't an outright negative, but sadly, while charming enough, RGW never troubles those same heady heights.
Ron is endearing enough a creation to carry the early scenes, but the jokes are more "smile quietly" than "laugh out loud." The viewer is repeatedly smacked in the face with the "subtext" around screens and social media being bad and no substitute for good old fashioned person to person contact, which, alongside the common "be yourself" and "our differences are to be celebrated" themes means that the film isn't really saying or teaching its audience anything new.
All that said, endearing robot retells the story of ET with a dash of heist movie and the occasional fart joke is never going to be the worst way you can spend your time, it just lacks some of the magic that really could have elevated it alongside some of the all time greats.
Just watched it and I have to consider that my review is shaded by the experience being awful.
Spoiler:
They started the movie on time, so when lots of people turned up 20 minutes late they restarted the showing. One group of kids were talking, throwing confectionary and shining torches at the screen and it took nearly am hour for the ushers to sort them out.
I'm ambivalent of the MCU as a whole but love the Spiderman movies. I think the first is a good super hero origin movie that effectively used its tie ins to the larger franchise while remaining focused. The second was a teen comedy trip adventure. Both had excellent bad guys.
Spiderman 3 is, at heart, an MCU movie. If you love the franchise, if you want more MCU, then this is the movie for you. If you are less won over by hype and franchise continuity then this is just a good movie. It's close to the top of the good movie pile, but it doesn't break into the great tier.
I guess this is a special based on an existing TV series; Zoey's Extraordinary Play List. I did not know that before we started watching it.
The main conceit is that the main character can experience other people's emotions via song and dance numbers. It is a "unique" form of empathy/mind reading.
In addition, this character's father recently died after a long bout with a debilitating illness. Her song and dance mind reading allowed them to still have a relationship up to his death.
All sorts of shenanigan's ensue, but it is just an extra long, Christmas themed episode of the TV show. If you all ready like the show.... great, you will like this. For everyone else? I think you could do a lot worse, but it is skippable.
At last! The grim and gritty MLP reboot we've been waiting for! No magic! No friendship! See the rise of the Emperor and his cybernetic legion! Racism! In the grim darkness of MLP there is only war!
Saw it with Kyoto Secunda, it was OK. The music was better in MLP FIM, but the animation was quite good.
What an excellent film. I’ve no idea if it’s even vaguely historically accurate, but it’s a compelling watch.
On the scale of Hollywood to History, it's still Hollywood but it puts a lot more effort into trying than a lot of films. At the very least, they didn't get costumes wrong and they used authentic vehicles and equipment for most of the film which is probably the thing history nerds would focus on before any errors.
Flinty wrote: Fury is awesome right up to the final set piece. Then it gets sufficiently stupid to drop me out of the suspension.
I've pointed this out before, but while the ending of the film seems based on a famous anecdote from Tank Traps (a book historians of WWII have raked back and forth as creating more problems than it tries to solve), the scenario presented isn't as unreal as you'd think.
It's fairly analogous to the events that earned Audie Murphy a Medal of Honor, which happened in Italy during the Anzio campaign in 1943. It's fantastical, but not as unrealistic as many seem to think. If anything, Murphy's feat was far more absurd and I'll bet that if I made a movie about it people would be skeptical he really did it.
I just looked up Mr Murphy’s exploits… yikes. There are clear similarities, and I’m aware of other examples of small units or individuals holding up larger forces. However my understanding is that it tends to be attackers thinking there are more powerful forces ahead of them and therefore leading to an overabundance of caution, or stuff like KV1 just being generally invulnerable to most return fire and therefore being able to just dish it out. However, the final bit in Fury shows that the attacking force knows what is there and just attacking in what looks like really stupid waves. I am just a Wargames so I can’t really speak to the accuracy, but the final scenes to me just descended into random explodey Hollywood fare.
There is a definite question of “why didn’t the Germans just sort of walk away?”
The opening bit? Fine and groovy for me. Cut them down like wheat, but surely they’d notice that the tank hadn’t physically moved, so just make good your losses and leave?
Mind you. We also know they were capable of repairing the tank, they just didn’t have the time needed. So I guess one could argue the Germans wouldn’t want a fully mobile tank coming after them once it was repaired?
Still a bloody good scene though. Nicely gets across how nasty tanks can be.
The film itself is a bit weird, because there’s not really a plot as such, and we learn relatively little about the protagonists. It almost feels like a drama based documentary. Yet, for all that, as I said earlier it’s a very compelling watch.
There's something to be said that war is no more immune to the sunk cost fallacy than any other venture.
There are numerous examples of forces committing to a questionable objective far past the point it made any sense to pursue it. In a very short engagement like we see in the movie (it's a couple minutes) it's very easy to think an objective is easily surmountable only for that to become untrue and for anyone in charge to be very slow to realize they're losing more than there is to gain.
Really, the most questionable part of the movie IMO is the encounter with the Tiger. Dramatically its fan-fething-tastic! Logically, it's not clear why the Tiger left a hulled-down position to confront the Shermans except that it was more cinematic. Especially in the late war, this was basically what tank crews were being trained to do because they could barely operate their vehicles. Tanks were increasingly used as armored movable bunkers.
One of the oddest Bond films. It’s rather faithful to the novel, and of course is Lazanby’s sole outing.
But…it’s really pretty cool, and is one of the better Bond films (I’d say easily superior to any Roger Moore ones, excepting A View To A Kill, which is superb, and does dial back the camp somewhat).
Watched this last night- definitely a weird one, even for modern Disney princess movies. (Except both her parents are alive and not utterly terrible, which should disqualify her entirely)
I have no idea what the messaging is supposed to be. I mean, she's obviously smart and a great climber (for some reason), but she faces no real challenges in her actual quest (sailing alone across the great ocean) because the Ocean Itself is sapient and is constantly rescuing her (God from the Sea-Machine style) and taking her to exactly where she is supposed to be. So.. yay, achievement?
But in the end she gets to be who she wants to be after... basically one real lesson where she falls asleep. The end.
Also Maui is... an obnoxious, attention seeking manchild, but its not his fault because bad parents, I guess? So a thousand years of darkness and everything dying or whatever is... also not his fault?
Moana's significance is similar to Black Panther's in that it is an ethnic milestone. ASFAIK, this is the first movie by a major studio to focus on Pacific Islanders. I enjoyed it, but I watched it shortly after Coco and Coco was much better as a film.
I watched King Richard when it came out and really liked that movie. Will Smith actually acted for a change.
Here's the thing I know about Moana: It's called Vaiana in Europe, due to a very popular porn lady (who sadly died of something in 1994) in Italy, an ice cream brand of the same name in Romania and so on.
Without tripping over any ehtnic milestones, new or old, here's things I've seen recently:
Camouflage (2001)
Heavily advertised as a Leslie Nielsen film, he actually plays more the sidekick, and Lochlyn Munro plays the protagonist. It's an inexpensive crime/film noir flick, and a comedy. And as we all know, comedy is hard, because if it fails there's nothing to save it really. No ironic levels or anything, as with other genres. This film isn't funny or very interesting at all.
Lochlyn Munro is an enigma to me. He doesn't look like a human being, does he. More like a caricature. I'm sure that's due to US film things, that he's a very pleasant looking and lovely person in real life, but never ever in my life I thought "oh, how nice" when he pops up in a film or a tv shows.
In the film's favour: it's got William Forsythe (as a small-town policeman. Interesting tidbit: Ponytail) and Patrick Warburton. Gotta love Warburton. Sadly I can't go much into the plot and thus babble on about actors, but the plot is pretty thin actually.
Don't Watch.
I also watched the second half of Double Jeopardy. I'm sure I watched that film at least five times before. Can't not like Double Jeopardy, right? It's probably not a very good film, but it works with/ due to Ashley Judd (and to a lesser extent Tommy Lee Jones.
Last but not least I watched the first two episodes of Occupied, season 2. So far, so good. Nerve-splitting stuff, as in season 1, just more heated up. Yes, yes, the few special effects are a bit inexpensive, some backgrounds make certain scenes look like a Command&Conquer video sequence. In general, the whole thing feels a bit Command&Conquer-y to be honest. But that's all beside the point, because this show is 99% about Norwegian people looking at screens and talking to each other. Most of the ladies in that show are absurdly thin, but also well dressed. Jesper Berg is a great character. You never know whether he's a bumbling fool or a thoroughly political animal. But to me the main appeal is just the central premise: A liberal democracy is tested by geopolitics (and due to some contrived reasons left alone by international partners). All these people try to do the right thing in the correct manner in an ever-escalating situation. Whereas Jack Bauer happily runs around, torturing people as he pleases, blowing stuff up, and so on, with Occupied's Hans Martin Djupvik the tiniest transgression of the moral and legislative norms and rules of his job are so much more impactful to the watcher.
Definitely agree that the music is Moana's big redeeming feature. The story, as pointed out, is actually kind of wtf when you look at it :/ But music-wise yeah. You're Welcome in particular is very fun and funny.
I never really complain about music in Disney films (except when they were over-using Phil Collins at his most creepy), even when its not to my taste, its pretty well honed to the audience or the film in question.
Even when some of it (*cough* Descendants *cough*) is absolute gibberish outside the context of the film, because the songs include scene dialogue. Or are scene dialogue. Some are still really good earworms regardless.
Streets of Fire I know this is a Sigur fave. However, I think the movie just misses the bulls-eye. However, the set design is awesome.
The Truth about Christmas This is Liar, Liar only without Jim Carrey and with a Christmas theme. Harmless for what it is and it has a few moments.
Competent.
Ghosting: A Christmas Spirit Story A Gen Z lady meets up with a Gen Z guy, but dies after the date thanks to texting and driving. She returns as a ghost and the gang must figure out how to help her ascend.
Pretty slick little, low budget movie. The rules of being a ghost are all over the place, but the dialogue is cracking and well delivered.
The Man in the Iron Mask (1977) I was expecting a lot more swash and a lot more buckle. However, it is mostly just intrigue and .... kind of boring.
Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas and The Farmer's Llamas It is Shaun the Sheep so it is amusing and fun enough. It is amazing how much they get across with 0 dialogue. The Farmer's Llamas is a bit questionable though.
White Christmas Watch it every year, and still awesome.
Hans, a young doctor in Carlsbruck, discovers that the enigmatic surgeon Doctor Stein is actually the notorious fugitive Victor Frankenstein. The latter takes the former on as an apprentice and the two transplant the brain of willing volunteer Karl, a deformed but clever man, into a perfect, created body. The operation initially succeeds, but tragically typical human foibles begin to unravel not only Frankenstein’s latest attempt to validate his scientific theories but also the cover story that saved him from the guillotine. I loved this film! It is a direct sequel to the one that started it all, Curse of Frankenstein. Peter Cushing is once again magnetic as Dr Frankenstein and the movie is full of pathos balanced by scientific callousness. Highly recommend.
Easy E wrote: I have watched a lot of flicks recently....
Streets of Fire I know this is a Sigur fave. However, I think the movie just misses the bulls-eye. However, the set design is awesome. ...
Aye, I think that this is very accurate. Honestly, the acting isn't too great, one might say that there isn't that much chemistry between the leads (but who cares, they're both young and attractive. Or in the case of Diane Lane: FFOOOAAAARRRR), but I think that some films which just miss the bulls-eye are endearing. Of course the music makes the film as well, especially the first and last songs book-ending the film. RIP Jim Steinman.
Love the set design as well (the whole design of the film really). IIRC they actually put a HUGE tarpaulin over the set to have it look big while also keeping basically the whole film nighttimey looking.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Marquise (1997)
The story of a dancer-turned-actress in the mid-17th century in France who worked her way up from the streets to Versailles.
...played by Sophie Marceau! She probably is the main reason this film is just so entertaining. That, and the lavish production value. The film opens with some estabishing of the setting, then Marceau gets on the tiny stage on that horrible marketplace and starts dancing. From the moment on, it's just great to watch her act.
The other characters are also entertaining and some are endearing (like her husband). And Louis XIV. is just great.
Okay, I have to admit that I got a thing for the 17th century. In films the court setting in that time is just great because it's so ambivalent, and this film expresses that gloriously. It very much reminded me of the line that goes something like "if nothing is allowed, everything is possible, but if everything is allowed, nothing is possible". Something like that.
Anyway, Watch It. It's funny, it's really well acted, it's got an amazing production value, and it's incredibly accessible, even if you don't know a thing about France during the 1660s. It's much more about an ambitious and clever lady doing her thing, and a bit about stage art. Oh, and the score kinda rocks.
This leaned into the nostalgia for those who have been long time Spider-Man movie goers. Great to see Doc Ock and Green Gobbo back on the screen. I have not felt that geeked out by a flick since Thor hit Cap's Shield in Avengers.
That said, I am not convinced this is actually a "good" film.
Streets of Fire changed my life. It revolutionized my aesthetic, not just visually but also thematically. When i first saw it, I couldn’t believe I had never heard of it. The idea that the film had bombed seemed insane. The next movie that would have such an impact on me was Life Force.
Streets of Fire never really impressed me but another Walter Hill's movie was really revolutionary to me, both visually and thematically, I'm talking about The Warriors. Still a masterpiece, I hope no one ever gets the insane idea to remake it.
It was... fine? Love your family or everything is ruined forever is a bit heavy handed, but its a lesson, I guess.
There were a lot of Columbian culture notes to the film, but they were bizarrely and pretty much entirely irrelevant. I was basing gnoblars while watching it and had to keep looking up to remind myself that it wasn't just a bunch of Americans chatting, gossiping & having musical numbers in a local suburb.
So... watch it or not. But don't expect a lot. The best bit is when the film takes the time to dig into the heads of the protagonist's sisters. There was some depth and actual psychology in play there, but unfortunately it got cut short by the plot happening.
Spoiler:
I was highly amused that in the flashback, the actual first 'miracle' was Abuela Madrigal fireballing the gak out of the vague bandit/soldiers/whatever, and then trapping everyone in the valley by raising mountains in the pass. I mean, what the actual feth. Its easy to miss, but its an entirely different tone, even knowing at the beginning that her husband was murdered.
Also, I'm still not convinced that Mirabel doesn't have a Gift. She's clearly a timebender, as she stops time during her songs, and can simply watch the past as if she's there.
It was... fine? Love your family or everything is ruined forever is a bit heavy handed, but its a lesson, I guess.
There were a lot of Columbian culture notes to the film, but they were bizarrely and pretty much entirely irrelevant. I was basing gnoblars while watching it and had to keep looking up to remind myself that it wasn't just a bunch of Americans chatting, gossiping & having musical numbers in a local suburb.
So... watch it or not. But don't expect a lot. The best bit is when the film takes the time to dig into the heads of the protagonist's sisters. There was some depth and actual psychology in play there, but unfortunately it got cut short by the plot happening.
Spoiler:
I was highly amused that in the flashback, the actual first 'miracle' was Abuela Madrigal fireballing the gak out of the vague bandit/soldiers/whatever, and then trapping everyone in the valley by raising mountains in the pass. I mean, what the actual feth. Its easy to miss, but its an entirely different tone, even knowing at the beginning that her husband was murdered.
Also, I'm still not convinced that Mirabel doesn't have a Gift. She's clearly a timebender, as she stops time during her songs, and can simply watch the past as if she's there.
I hated it
Plot was boring, songs didn't catch my attention and after Hamilton (hands down the best show of 2020) I had a lot of expectations from Lin-Manuel Miranda. The movie's message was grim and IMHO completely wrong for a disney movie. But I agree about one thing, songs from the strong and the flower girls' point of view were the highlights of the movie.
Spoiler:
The Madrigal family reigns over the village with a system of favours and concessions, like mafia. Flower girl that has to marry a specific guy in order to make her family and the village "happy" was a perfect example of that. They keep the villagers "safe" but also completely dependant on their magic. Not only they can't leave the place but apparently they can't even survive without their magic as nothing works in that village without the help of the Madrigals.
I thought the ending could haven been refreshing but no, the family got their magic back and so the villagers will still depend on them with no chance of personal growth and emancipation.
Hot Fuzz is my favourite of the 3 despite Worlds End being the better movie, then again living in a place only a few notchs up from Sanford might have something to do with that and Welsh Bond can bring the baddy like few others
Really? Hot Fuzz is the only one of the Cornetto Trilogy that I feel doesn’t fall apart in the second half. Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End both start out funny with likeable characters, and then halfway through just stop being funny or enjoyable. I’ve never felt the urge to rewatch Shaun, and I was angry by the end of World’s. Hot Fuzz stuck the landing, making it the only one worth rewatching for me.
I use it to calibrate my projector 
. The only difference is that MCU movies don't have some older masterpieces that make them look quite dull in comparison.
