Girlfriend's been on a bit of a Hugh Jackman binge this weekend so I sat down and watched Real Steel last night.
Premise is in the very-near future robot boxing is a huge sport, and a retired actual boxer is struggling to survive with his robots in the sport.
It's a little cheesy with the whole dad/son interaction and storyline, but I found it to be a decent watch.
Valkyrie wrote: Girlfriend's been on a bit of a Hugh Jackman binge this weekend so I sat down and watched Real Steel last night.
Premise is in the very-near future robot boxing is a huge sport, and a retired actual boxer is struggling to survive with his robots in the sport.
It's a little cheesy with the whole dad/son interaction and storyline, but I found it to be a decent watch.
You and her should see the original version of this movie.
Few years ago I watched Accepted (of course the German title is "S.H.I.T.", because when in doubt, they go for incredibly crass titles on comedies since ~2010). I found it to be surprisingly alright.
Didn't watch Real Steel, not overly keen on Hugh Jackman (even though he seems to be a very decent bloke). I'm interested in the Twilight Zone story though!
Sigur wrote: Few years ago I watched Accepted (of course the German title is "S.H.I.T.", because when in doubt, they go for incredibly crass titles on comedies since ~2010). I found it to be surprisingly alright.
Didn't watch Real Steel, not overly keen on Hugh Jackman (even though he seems to be a very decent bloke). I'm interested in the Twilight Zone story though!
it's easy to find on the net and if you see i'm curious as to what you thought.
Sigur wrote: Few years ago I watched Accepted (of course the German title is "S.H.I.T.", because when in doubt, they go for incredibly crass titles on comedies since ~2010). I found it to be surprisingly alright.
Didn't watch Real Steel, not overly keen on Hugh Jackman (even though he seems to be a very decent bloke). I'm interested in the Twilight Zone story though!
it's easy to find on the net and if you see i'm curious as to what you thought.
Not sure I'm too keen to put me through that film again. It was surprisingly alright when I caught it at night on TV a bunch of years ago, so I guess that's one category. Not sure I'd seek it out to watch again. I'd rather watch Girl Next Door again (which to me for some reason feels like a very similar sort of thing). I think it's even on Netflix. I might watch it again? Let's see.
@Easy E: Hmm, I have a surprsingly high tolerance of Mr.Black's mugging. Maybe I'll give it a go if I run across it.
Right, last night I watched TV because I thought that this would be the best way to spend my time. And I got swamped with options! Because it was the weekend and after midnight.
Things I saw: Shape of Water (meh), Tafelspitz (I think I even exclaimed an audible "aaaw", because I'm old and sad and the film's from 1994 and a weird thing in itself, and it kinda makes me feel warm and fuzzy), bloody Guardians (the russian superhero film. I wrote a mini review of that a while ago. Basically it's an Avengers thing with built-in giffable moments and so on. I have no particular emotion towards it, because it doesn't bring any particular emotions itself.). I heard that the glorious German tv channel Tele5 showed an old Chalies-Angels-ploitation film, but I didn't catch it. I have to say though, that the existance of this tv channel is a blessing. Here's what Tele5 do: .) They show films. Even at prime time. And not a single horrible US TV crime show. Okay, that's mostly crap (for a while they showed pretty much the whole Asylum library. Incredible. But at least that way I watched the first Transmorphers film, Battle for Los Angeles and the very interesting Sherlock Holmes. I also saw a bunch of boring Asylum crap, but oh well.), but very often also the crap I like. And they show films from the 70s, 80s, and 90s!. So Yeah, crap I like. They got a timeslot for "the worst films ever made" (we all know that's never really true, but oh well). Last week they showed bloody Zombie Nightmare! Watching that one's German dubbed version and without the commentary by Mike and the 'bots was pretty interesting. .) they show Star Trek, Babylon5 and Relic Hunter on a regular basis.
Yup - gotta love Tele5. It's for the old, set-in-their-ways dude in all of us. :p
So last night I watched a film I hadn't seen in a long time:Leon (1990). I actually misread the title wrong first. At the first moment I thought it was The Professional, but nooooooo, it's the JCVD film. I guess it's mostly known as Lionheart? There seems to be a baffling range of cuts of that one (mostly cut for violence of course).
The film tells the tale of a Foreign Legionnaires dude (Jean Claude van Damme, of Friends fame) who deserts to go to America and help out his brother or something like that. Said brother gets killed by evil people, van Damme wants to a.) protect and b.) support his late brother's wife and daughter. Good thing is that he's Jean Claude van Damme, so he's got one skill that'll take care of both these things: kicking highly or round-housely.
This film presents us with a nice mix of "action dude caring for family" and "underground fighting tournament" with colourful characters. PLUS foreign legion agents being after van Damme to get him back and probably court martialed or what ever the french foreign legion do to deserters. Anyway, JCVD makes a fast-talking friend who becomes his 'manager'. There are some funny bonding scenes in which they get drunk or fight and so on. Van Damme is introduced (in a very entertaining way) to an evil rich blonde lady who'll pay him to fight other dudes for lots of money. Of course her sidekick is Brian Thompson (nobody knows his name, but if you see him, you know him).
So the film switched back and forth between van Damme slowly gaining the trust (well, fastly, based on the things he pulls on them at first to give them money without them knowing) of the widow and the kid and pretty brutal fight scenes. Van Damme is shown to get kicked, punched and thrown around quite a lot.
The film is good fun. A bit uneven, a bit overloaded, but the emotional stuff works, the 'comedy' stuff ...works (mostly due to how odd it is though) and the action parts of course are good. The only let-down is a problematic one though: It's 1990 Jean Claude van Damme. And he just wasn't a good actor then. Even the German dubbed version I saw had van Damme talk really low and mumbly compared to the other characters, which of course doesn't help a lot. It's really impressive how much better an actor he became over the coming 15 years. He pulled a reverse Steven Segal.
Rating this film is easy: If you like Jean Claude van Damme films Watch It Again. Because you most probably have already. If you don't, Don't Watch of course. Simple, brilliant.
Yes, the one in the theatre RIGHT NOW! (Unless you are reading this in the future! Then, it is not in the movie houses right now.... or is it! It is all timey-whimey)
This actually feels like a Pre-quel to the actual Mortal Kombat tournament as there is no actual tournament in this film! Instead, Shang Tsung is trying to kill off earth's champions BEFORE the tourney so they can auto-win. I guess the rules do not explicitly forbid conflict outside of the Tourney.
All Champions have a MK mark. If they get killed or defeated by another member of their plane, the mark transfers to them. If they are killed by someone outside of their realm, it starts fresh with a new person (who may or may not be an actual fighter yet).
So, the big question is how does this stack up compared to the "original" Mortal Kombat (OTMK)?
1. Outworld is really boring compared to the OTMK.
2. The acting and story is much better, even if some of the character actors in the OTMK are iconic.
3. This has 100% less Johnny Cage, and it is weaker for it.
4. Kano in this one is particularly good.
5. The fighting in this one is better, with the potential exception of Jaxs vs. General Hammer Guy.
6. Actual Fatalities from the games in the movie, which is delivered in a superior way than the OTMK.
Overall, this is a much more "serious" effort than the OTMK and it has its charms. However, it lacks the over-the-top zaniness of the OTMK. I was still entertained, but my bar was very low going in.
***Reviewers warning, my daughter asked to go see this with me and she is a teenager who can drive and hang-out with her friends and see a movie like this without me. However, she asked me to see it with her, because she is secretly a MK fan girl, which I did not know! Therefore, my MK experience is being clouded by dad emotions!***
A demonically possessed left hand goes on a rampage, possessing other people until they (willingly, as part of its design) chop their left hand on, providing it with a new host.
It’s actually rather good. Distinct Hammer feel to it, despite being a Mexico/US combo.
The effects are pretty solid for low budget horror nonsense. A combination of clever camera angles and prosthetics.
Slight point deduction for entirely gratuitous boobies in the opening minutes.
Got nothing against fun bags, just bored of gratuitous dirty pillows.
If it’s something like an Italian Giallo or an 80’s slasher, they’ll at least pretend they’re contextual. But here it was “I’ll just rip your blouse because reasons”
But it was made in 1981, so possibly par for the course.
The film sounds like fun. Opening boobies aren't a bad thing, I suppose. It's a staple of the genre. Few weeks ago I read an article about all these hollywood bodies. It's almost as if these things are an expression of dedication to 'self-improvement' and 'hard work' (and I'm sure these strictly conforming-to-standard bodies are, not to mention surgical adjustments, hard work to attain), but nobody in Hollywood films - or other broad films it seems - ever has sex or even has a look. These chaste hulls are more like a CV, carried around and visible to anybody. It's weird.
But then again, I don't see many new films and I'm all wrong there.
Have I seen something recently? Not sure. The other night I saw some Australian horror films/thrillers on TV, but skipped them. Not sure I enjoy those much. Of course I saw the one with the dude and kids in the outback. Oh, and I saw the one with the sniper (was that even an Australian film?). Jeez, that one was ....meh.
I did watch the beginning of Breakdown (1997). Kurt Russel and his wife (not goldie hawn, his film wife ) drive their car, it breaks down in the middle of nowhere, before that they almost collide with some local's truck,they have a few words, etc.
Friendly trucker comes along, offers to take the wife to the next gas station so she can call for a repair truck, Russel stays with the car, he gets the car to work again, drives up to the gas station, but it seems like his wife never arrived. Yikes stripes!
Of course I wouldn't have even watched that far if the film had been made in 2004 or somethingk because it would have gotten nasty. Even this one I switched off at that point, because that's kinda scary. And I've seen the film before (a long time ago) anyway.
It's not that great either. A tense scenario, but meh. If you want to watch an 'evil trucker' film, watch Reindeer Games instead. Or that film with Jim Belushi in which he's got that big belt buckle and the lady's car breaks down.
I think that social media may have twisted our perception of what is a short text and what is a long text. If a mini review's got fewer than 5 lines (don't pin me down on that number ) it's hard to make a review interesting or meaningful beyond basic opinion, or very clear that the film's crap.
Somehow this sci-fi calamity starring Bruce Willis gets a four star on Sky's preview. I lost track of how long I'd been persevering before I gave up. This is awful on every level. It gives the appearance of a high production value amateur live action tribute to a computer game. The script is shocking, the costume design is sub Comicon cos-play and I'll be damned if I could work out a single coherent moment of plot. Avoid, for the love of all that is good on this earth, please avoid.
It gets better. The pilot and first few episodes are rough as they decide to dwell on Arthur's PSTD and introduce the idea that the Tick is just his delusion.
Then someone realizes that grim, gritty psychological thriller Tick is very, very bad idea and we're off to the races with a gay sentient speed boat, and other madness. Season 2 is a real improvement and plants a lot of seeds...
A different sort of comedy, sort of building to wry smiles and fond memories rather than laugh out loud humor if that makes sense.
I have vague but fond memories of the 2000s Tick series with Putty/Brock as the Tick (really have to look up that dude's name) so I might try that next.
It gets better. The pilot and first few episodes are rough as they decide to dwell on Arthur's PSTD and introduce the idea that the Tick is just his delusion.
Then someone realizes that grim, gritty psychological thriller Tick is very, very bad idea and we're off to the races with a gay sentient speed boat, and other madness. Season 2 is a real improvement and plants a lot of seeds...
Just in time to be cancelled.
Ah well.
Cancelled ? Pooey, we didn't even get to see Dangerboat get his mojo back and soar like, what's the phrase, a leaf on the wind
also watched Palm Springs, twice in fact as wasn't sure about my objective assessing being muddled by Ms Milioti, but even with that its worth a watch
Uh, yeah, this is...a movie. That got made, and is...a thing.
Spoilery review (or maybe a warning?) below. Read with caution.
Spoiler:
There's this scientist, named franken. he has this girlfriend, she's really smart and it looks like he loves her. He's making this regeneration stuff that's based on estrogen, somehow. It only works on women.
His smart girlfriend somehow gets her head cut off, and he saves it but her body gets lost.
So he plans to murder some hookers to get female body parts to build a new body for his smart girlfriend, but he feels really bad about murdering women, so he drills a hole in his head with a black n decker drill. To not feel so bad anymore.
He rounds up some hookers to use for parts and murders them with these special rocks of crack he's made, that make people who use it explode, somehow. Apparently blowing them to pieces saves him the time and effort of cutting them apart.
He gets all the parts together, but something's wrong with his girlfriends smart brain. She starts acting like a hooker stereotype, because somehow her body is controlling her brains, he must have gotten something crossed somewhere.
She goes out looking for customers but because.. reasons, anyone using her services explodes.
The pimp who owned the dead hookers comes looking for her and ends up knocking the scientists head off and trying to reclaim his property, but the discarded parts form a patchwork monster and drag him off into a tank or something.
It has a happy ending, sort of, the smart girlfriend and her scientist lover end up together ever after.
I'm not sure people would want to watch it, I felt kinda dizzy aftr i did, so i decided to describe it and let them decide.
I'm not one for "buzz" movies, I'll avoid even the ones that interest me at least until all the fuss has died down. But lockdown had left me short of stuff to watch and Disney+ has this available, so...
It's a remarkable movie. I can't eulogise about it unreservedly simply because it won't be for everyone, but the landscape and soundtrack are almost worth it by themselves. Then you also get the story of Fran against this backdrop and through her perspective topics like grief, loss and mortality as well as wider societal and philosophical ideas are explored.
Not one person develops superpowers, no zombies were harmed in the production. Whether that's a net positive or negative will depend on your tastes.
Aboriginal girl group goes on tour in the Vietnam War when Australia didn't even recognize aboriginal peoples as fellow humans. Based on True Events!
A solid musical bio-pic movie that sheds some light on bad things that happened in the 60's outside of America, even though those do get touched on briefly as well.
Expected female revenge serial killer, got female twisted revenge movie
Thought it was absolutely excellent. Good acting and dialogue. The comedian was surprisingly good. The only downside was that the wife guessed the ending about two thirds through.
Keanu Reeves is taken under a daimyo's wing, lives (kinda) alongside samurai. Evil clan takes over by nefarious means, throws good clan's samurai out who then become ....47 ronin and they're out for revenge. Based on a historical incident, with witches, ogres and Keanu Reeves added.
This one's kinda infamous for being bad, I think they had to reshoot portions of it on release and so on. I just read it was extremely expensive, which I found surprising, because it doesn't look very expensive. Anyway, I found it to be alright. Sure, all the Japanese/asian actors talk english with a Japanese accent, but that's okay. The CGI looks really, really bad in some places and the story kinda plays out like a stop-and-go version of Robin Hood. Keanu Reeves does things, the actual stars are all the people around him. Notably the bad guy and the evil witch. Both of whom seeming to have tons of fun with their roles, the witch especially. Oh, and there's Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, playing the Shogun. So that's an instant winner.
Visually there's several niceties across the film. Most of it really. The rest looks like studio settings.
The pacing is a bit odd. Maybe because there isn't really that much to the story actually (as far as I know). So they added a scene in which they meet some Tengu to get +1 magic weapons (man, the Tengu.... maybe that look is based on actual proper stories, but I don't know. Totally traditional looking tengus would have done it more for me. This one on the film looked like Snape(?) from the new star wars films).
Anyway, overall it was alright. A bit odd here and there, and I really liked the ending. So that's good. To be honest, I also got this thing about feudal Japanese scenery. It's just so pretty and/or interesting to look at, and I got this Feudal Japanese skirmish wargame thing on the backburner, so I always enjoy seeing terrain ideas.
Don't Watch, unless you enjoy seeing pretty pictures of Japanese scenery.
It feels like the ridiculous, propaganda version of their story, like the 300 of Feudal Japan. The witch is the actress from Pacific Rim, and the best part of the movie.
Yus, it rather comes across as something we're not really used to with our post-heroic mindset and all. I'd probably be WAY harsher on the film if it was a Chinese production.
She was the lady from Pacific Rim? Wow. Pacific Rim is a remarkable film in how much of a 180° I turned on it. Watched it at the cinema and had the time of my life. Tried to watch it on Netflix lateron twice, I was too embarassed to even watch it in full.
Always the great big ass of the franchise. This is the OVA that pointed a finger at Gundam and said "stop thinking these giant robots are so damn cool while people are dying on screen!" The moral of the story actually holds up fairly well but it's just always been hilariously on the nose for the franchise. Deserves some credit for having a child as a primary character and effectively making them act their age but not quite so annoyingly that it ruins everything. Probably has one of the franchise's darkest endings, which is saying something with Hathaway's Flash, IBO, and Victory Gundam in the running.
Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 Stardust Memory
Another Gundam OVA, which I think has never gotten enough credit for how good it's animation was for 1990. The characters and action scenes are fantastic. The story suffers in the second half, mostly because you can tell the people making the OVA changed and that change came with radical shifts in plot. Mostly it's good for it's animation imo. The story gets pretty blarg toward the end when characters start making nonsensical choices.
@LordofHats: Hmmyeah. I never got into watching Gundam things. Maybe I should. I love the look of 80s/early 90s anime, especially sci-fi spacey stuff.
@Easy E: So I read when I read about the story behind the film! It's at like 19% on rotten tomatoes, so I decided not to pursue that film any more. But if you say it's decent... maybe I'll run across it some time. What's the deal with Clive Owen? Everybody likes him. He's really good in good and interesting films. And yet he does a ton of bad films. Does he just like putting on armour, ride horses and be a manly man maybe?
I think he has a hard time getting leading man roles, and I have no idea why. I like him as an actor, but he just never seems to break out, or gets cast in drek.....
Yeah. Maybe he just likes to do wildly different parts. He's the kind of guy you can put in pretty much anything and it'll work. Few years ago I watched that perfectly alright film about a British prison using gardening to resocialize inmates. He's perfectly good in any film really. Sin City, Killer Elite, some romantic comedy, one of those ones in which he's a late Roman officer, ....
I'm only half an hour in and I've got a headache. Not because of the plot, that seems silly and straightforward, nothing more fanciful so far than a Brosnan era James Bond plot.
What's giving me a headache is the director's pitiful selection of camera angles and shots. There's just been a scene in a posh restaurant and it's plain bad. The scene has 68 different shots in a sequence of 167 seconds. That means the average shot lasts less than 2.5 seconds. Two and a quarter minutes of your eyes never being allowed to settle, to take in details, to appreciate any worthwhile acting going on. At the very end there a sequence of 8 shot changes where each one lasts less than half a second. If this was the director's intention to induce a sense of pace into the film then its wrecked by the fact they're talking about buying suits and getting a doggy bag from lunch.
And the scene makes it absolutely obvious the two actors were never in the same room together. A good director can mask this, but this attempt is plain awful.
Is it too much to ask that at some point this year I see at least one new movie that isn't awful?
Is it too much to ask that at some point this year I see at least one new movie that isn't awful?
Bro. . . There's another Fast and Furious franchise movie coming, and there's Top Gun Maverick this year, theres 2 that are gonna be absolutely amazing (ok. . . sarcasm aside, the TG one has at least the slightest possibility of being not complete trash)
To be fair, I managed to make it through to the end of Tenet and it was... acceptable. There were some interesting things (I very much liked the temporal pincer idea) and all the action sequences were good. But.. the sound mixing was terrible, the shot selection seemed to be for the deliberate purpose of causing a migraine and the plot is really weak once you see past the time gimmick (and since I worked out what was going on at the airport on the first run through, the time gimmick doesn't last long).
Overall not a terrible film, but it leaves me with no reason to recommend it or think about it at any deeper level.
Change of plans! I watched Hard Ticket to Hawaii instead. Because why wouldn't I. An infamous classic of the erotic tough island police ladies vs. drug farmer's diamonds vs. contagious giant snake martial arts action comedy genre. I watch it every few years and then kinda forget about it again.
It pops up on youtube pretty regularly, but with computers and alghorithms making our lives more and more annoying the version I watched last night had the music cut out and of course nudits/sex scenes. And the gore was cut as well. This is NOT the way to watch that film. If one's inclined to do so. There are some famous bits in there (like the frisbee scene, the casual introduction of nunchucks to the film, the weird dialogue between the male protagonists, some meta talk about another film by the same director [if I remember correctly]), but overall I think it's mostly a nostalgia thing. People of a certain age would have seen this one constantly on cable tv late at night, so I was told. Maybe I saw it once on tv years and years ago, but I probably can't remember.
I do like the opening credits scene a lot though. It's got a neatness to it.
Sigur wrote: yes. I just learned about Six-String Samurai and that might be the movie I'll watch tonight.
It has a strong premise, and good idea, and some decent execution..... but it can't quite pull it all off in a satisfactory way.
Chef
Jon Favreau takes some of his Iron Man money and connections and uses it to make a Food Porn movie. So many loving shot sof food being made... so many. The plot and story is the basic "Man finds what is important in life after a career break down".
As the "former" owner of a bakery and cafe..... this induced a lot of PTSD. Also, food trucks and licensing for food trucks would stop this movie about half way through.
It is a solid film.... but man, I had a tough time watching due to my own psychological baggage.
The director made a lot of movies like that. I can’t remember the name of the film he made where Al Leong flies a helicopter, but that’s the one I’d most want to revisit.
Mitchells vs The Machines.
Most movies I will say to myself "that was funny" and just kinda have the same blank expression kinda on me, even if I'm enjoying it.
I smiled so much during this movie, for like all of it. Which is better than just a few laughs.
Unlike other studios that try to get the internet and humor and internet culture, this one does Soo much.
Not to mention a heartwarming story that doesn't take sides, once you learn a bit more of the father, how he acts makes sense. Everyone is a little wrong(except the son, he is right 100% of the time, I don't care if he sounds like a full grown man)
Just so fun.
I almost don't want to bash this movie because some blatantly racist gaks are review bombing it over the actor, but I guess I just can't bring myself to care? Without Remorse is the only Tom Clancy book I think I actually like and while I could give less of a damn that John Kelly is played a black actor, it's the deviations from the primary story that really irk me. John Kelly's quest for revenge against great big donkey-caves who murdered a woman he barely knew but who made him feel alive again was a compelling story. A bit like John Wick actually, in that the injustice of this woman's life and death is more what drives John than his actual relationship with her. His relationship with her is simply his personal connection. The original book (to be fair I haven't read it in a long time) treats that connection as happenstance and its what was done to her that drove his roaring rampage of revenge more than who she was to him.
The movie takes that and turns it into something much more more generic and in turn produces a very run of the mill film that lacks all the book's down to earth strife and struggle. Instead we get another banal experience of idiot black ops operatives who are too stupid to be black ops operatives getting in on a dumb conspiracy to achieve some dumb end and dumbly getting themselves killed by going after a guy they had no reason to go after. They took a surprisingly nuanced and compassionate story that set a man on a road of violence and made you wonder how much better he was than the men he was killing, and made a slice of 'Murica pie out of it. And I just can't get over how that's so much worse than what the film could have been.
It's just not a good movie, and it's a horrible adaptation of what should have been Clancy's most readily adaptable novel (or at least, the parts of that novel that were good, half of it is a Vietnam POW's plot that I guess was topical in the late 80s early 90s but has aged poorly now and just isn't nearly as good as the revenge drama).
Jon Favreau takes some of his Iron Man money and connections and uses it to make a Food Porn movie. So many loving shot sof food being made... so many. The plot and story is the basic "Man finds what is important in life after a career break down".
As the "former" owner of a bakery and cafe..... this induced a lot of PTSD. Also, food trucks and licensing for food trucks would stop this movie about half way through.
It is a solid film.... but man, I had a tough time watching due to my own psychological baggage.
That's the food truck one in which he's married to Sofia Vergara, right?
Yeah, that one was absolutely alright and very inoffensive. Maybe I didn't watch it very astutely, but it struck me as a bit too inoffensive and unproblematic. Also of course: To me Jon Favreau will always be "the richest guy in the world who conquered the financial world and strifes to conquer the physical world by becoming the ultimate fighting champion".
Last night I watched Firestorm (1998), starring someone who looks a tiny bit like Favreau, William Forsythe.
Prison inmates are used to help put out a forest fire (because having a huge, free workforce of slaves at the ready is really handy, I assume), but evil mastermind inmate William Forsythe and his mates (including Berry Pepper, sporting a Dumb and Dumber hairdo. Btw, if you wanna see a weird picture of him, go to his wikipedia page) escape and steal the outfits of Canadian firefighters.
There's a lot of stuff going on. The female lead is an ex-marine-turned-ornithologist, Forsythe's killing off his buddies one by one because there's some sort of money stash he doesn't want to share, there's a square-jawed firefighter/park sherriff, and the big fire of course.
This feels like a very cheap film. Was to be produced by a company who actually got Stallone to star in it, but the company went under before they started shooting. Then 20th century Fox took over, cut the budget, and the result is a rather made-for-tv looking film. There's one pretty exciting action scene including a parachute, but that's it really. Given how there's a raging forest fire and escaped murderers and all of that it's pretty boring. At least the fire effects look mostly nice. If that film had been made just a few years later we'd have gotten horrible made-for-tv forest fire effects, and that would have been even more painful.
This is a hilarious movie. It's basically a dad comedy about 3 out of practice kung fu disciples in middle age, getting caught up in events after the death of their master. It's a simple formula, and it's a very funny movie and incredibly wholesome in the best ways.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Thanks. The ads make it seem like it could be enjoyed by the whole family. How old do you feel a child would need to be to see the movie?
Off the top of my head, there's some cursing (I know 'gak' and 'son of a bitch' are both uttered but the movie isn't excessive), no sex jokes I can recall, there's violence but it's not particularly graphic pretty general Kung fu movie violence. There is one time the movie makes a drug joke but no actual drugs and one case of the n-bomb being dropped. It's rated PG-13. Honestly, the morals of the film are pretty wholesome. Brotherhood, family, learning to apologize and be the bigger person. So I guess it depends on what the attitudes in your family are. I know some parents are super sensitive about cursing and others are less so. That's really the only red flag that really stands out for me on this movie and kids.
A lot of the humor and small moment feel like something only someone into their thirties will appreciate though. Stuff like how you just don't move like you used to, regrets about how we maybe didn't appreciate our mentor figures enough when we could have, the difficulty of living up to our promises. I can see a kid enjoying the movie's goofier moments and humor in a 'haha old people kind of way' but for me at least what kept making me smile and chuckle are the 'yeah I feel that' moments now that I'm getting to that age myself.
Hallelujah, I've seen something this year that is actually good! It doesn't always meet the slick writing of its predecessors and the resolution of the plot is rediculous (it makes no sense however you look at it). And the kill count for innocent bystanders must be through the roof - but it's Bad Boys, they're forgiven.
Everything is made worthwhile by the moments when the brotherhood of Mike and Marcus gets to shine. The motorcycle scene arguing about being an instrument of god had me giggling for a good while. There's some pretty good technical camera directing going on which complements the emotional parts too, but I won't bore you with the details.
I don't think this is one to watch again, unlike the first, but it raised more than a smile with me.
That guy from House plays the captain of a luxury space liner knocked off course turning an 8 week trip to a 3 year one. Watch as his billionaire boss and the rest of the passengers go slowly insane. Neelix is there too. A lot of subtle humor.
"See those skulls, all 4 of the Beatles, they're real, signed and everything. They didn't sign them obviously, that would be impossible, I did."
Horror comedy about nasty Leprechaun wanting to keep his gold together. This time he's going to Las Vegas!
This one goes full silly comedy and after a slow start it goes full on bonkers. I went into this one knowing nothing (hadn't even seen the second film!) and it won me over. It features very fun characters (except maybe for the leads), a fun Leprechaun, at least two very cool and inventive kills and a ton of gags. I enjoyed it a lot.
Watch It. (presuming you're open to watching a murderous leprechaun film)
Black Cobra (1987)
Action film starring Fred Williamson. This is the first in the 4-films Black Cobra series. Fred Williamson is Joe Malone, a tough cop dude who doesn't play by the rules, but by god, he gets the job done. He's after a nasty gang of motor bikers and has to protect a witness lady who saw their leader and thus the gang is after her.
The plot is very generic, the level of violence is high, the characters are all pretty lifeless. Of course it also suffers from English dubbing of course. But still - I wasn't taken by the film.
Since this is a year we have cicadas returning, at least in my sector, it's kind of a thing to watch this horror movie coming to you from 1982.
Basically, it's a monster cicada movie. There's a monster that apparently has kinda the same lifecyle as a cicada. It gets born, it hibernates for like 17 years, then comes out, kills some people, breeds, leave an offspring that will repeat the cycle in 17 years, then dies.
See? Just like a cicada. Well, except for the fact it hibernates in a human body for 17 years, kills people and breeds thru violent rape, yeah, it's exactly like a cicada.
It's a minor cult classic with at least slightly above average effects, acting and such than the typical almost direct to vhs rental store movies of the day, and a star of the movie was also in another 1982 movie you just may have heard of called "Star trek 2, the wrath of khan." She plays a mother in both movies, tho in this one her son, the cicada monster, is a little more sympathetic a character and better acted than her little kirkling in ST2.
The next to last episode turns really dark. Then the last one goes for farce as the cast fight over the one shuttle seat back home. Didn't really stick the landing but I'll give season 2 a try when it's out. Apparently it was renewed because they thought a show about 5000 people in lockdown is just what we need now.
Joss Whedon presents: Rule 63 Steampunk X-Men
Spoiler:
Really? You put the head of the school in a wheelchair? You didn't think that was just a bit too on the nose?
OK pilot but tried to introduce too many characters at once, should have halved them and brought in the rest over time. Will stick with it.
It's that new Snyder zombie flick. It's okay for an action movie. Cliche plot. Bland characters to are too dumb to live. Not sure anyone is looking for that in a zombie movie though.
A couple scenes further convince me that Snyder holds audiences in contempt, but Snyder's audience seems to consider that a plus half the time so XD
Easy E wrote: I would think Snyder's cinema nihilism would work great in a Zombie flick.......
I could just be biased. I expect Snyder to state the obvious and stupidly think it's clever, so maybe I'm just seeing what I expect, but it happens a lot in this movie and it's a lot more condescending that his usual shtick.
To give a specific example
Spoiler:
So early in the film it's a 'gets hired for a job, gathers the team' sort of deal. Not much of a spoiler there that's basically the trailer of the movie. Anyway, one guy hired for the team is this safecracker whose obviously really into safecracking but is the token idiot. While explaining the 'plan' the film practically breaks the 4th wall to have him ask "how do we kill the zombies' and then one character looks around at everything but the camera and explains how to kill zombies. The obvious way obviously. And that scene feels not like it's making a gag about how this guy is an idiot savant, but like it earnestly believes it needs to explain to the audience how this works which is pretty typical of Snyder in my experience. He treats bum basic information like it's somehow clever and talks down to the audience to explain everything from children's book aesops to his own empty platitudes, and now the basics of zombie flicks (headshots, duh).
That ranted about, it's still a fairly well put together (if very generic) zombie/heist flick. I didn't feel like it was a waste of my time or anything. The sheer fact it has decent production values and a capable cast already puts it a leg up on most movies of its genre XD One character in particular really ruins the entire show imo mostly because she's so fething dumb she feels like a wound inflicted on you every time she has a moment because her entire roll in the plot is 'selfish donkey-cave who gets people killed in the name of doing the right thing that is so obviously the wrong thing" that it hurts to have to watch her be involved in the plot.
Easy E wrote: Fred Williamson is pretty awesome though.....
That is true. He's great for the role. It's just a bit weird when he's in longer dialogues, revealing his character's motivations. Not due to him, it's just the clunky dialoge (maybe it's just the dubbing).
Started watching Leprechaun 4; I've got the feeling that a.) this won't be as good as part 3 and b.) that originally this was a film about space soldiers to which they added the Leprechaun later. I think the German release was called Space Platoon. At least I know a film now which starred Heidi from Tool Time.
I have little inclination of watching Army of the Dead, but I just read up on the development history of that one on wikipedia. Seems like Warner Bros. had this one planned since 2007, in 2019 Netflix picked it up, stuck a starring name on it which people know, got a director whose name people know, added some more names to cover more target audiences (Sanada and bloody Schweighöfer) and off they went. Looks like Netflix are working as per their cookbook. What I didn't expect to see was how expensive this film was: 90 million dollars. That's a lot of money for a zombie heist comedy. I'm sure they turned it into something entirely watchable.
It was way better than it had any right to be. A friend of mine said that they heard it was a "make fun of gen Z and Millenials for cell phone addiction" and I don't know where that came from. The film only comments on tech addictions a few times, in the beginning, to set up the dad's alienation with his family, and otherwise, all characters are portrayed as competent well-rounded individuals. There aren't any "Let me teach the spoiled kids how to do X" moments or anything like that. It's just a good pretty wholesome movie about family and how our different unique interests can make us a stronger group. I am convinced Lord and Miller can't make a bad film.
Plot setup:
Spoiler:
Weird artsy girl is obsessed with film, Her outdoorsy father doesn't really know how to connect with her and it's been straining their relationship. The girl is about to leave for film school and in a last-minute fear that she will leave home and never return Dad decides to take the family on a long road trip to spend some more time with her before she goes to college.
Meanwhile, an Apple stand-in accidentally causes a robot apocalypse when his not-Siri AI assistant realizes that planned obsolescence means she is about to be phased out. Cue hilarity as the dysfunctional family becomes humanity's last hope.
WW2 supernatural horror, low budget. basically a 3 person cast. 2 commandos are sent to an island called the devil's rock to see what nazis are doing there.
Summoning on hawt demon to win the war for der fatherland. Vat could pozzibly go wronk, ja?
Very hawt actress who was in the power rangers, sadly retired after this, and no actual nudity. Lots of dead nazis.
Here's a poster for the movie, can't post the actual image, just a link because it has a bad word in it and as Bill Maher said, babies get offended when you use a bad word.
A German Wehrmacht soldier is sent to lead the guard of Kaiser Wilhelm in Holland after the Nazi invasion of Holland in 1940. A British agent is suspected to be in the area as well.
The movie plot is obvious and you know exactly how it is going to end. However, it was still interesting to me because..... Christopher Plummer (RIP) plays the Kaiser (RIP)!
Enjoyable and mostly accurate except for the British Agent and Himmler plots. I also liked the ending......
It’s an animated comedy from the late 70’s that parodies network coverage of the Olympic Games. There is a ton of talent in the movie, from the voices of Billy Crystal, Gilda Radner and Harry Shearer to directors and animators like Steven Lassiter and Brad Bird, and it shows. The soundtrack is amazingly catchy. Even if one is not old enough to get the pop culture references, the comedy still holds up due to them covering all the bases: word play, puns, slapstick, visual gags, character interactions, and surrealism. Unfortunately, there is a bit of fat shaming and one blatantly racist character (Bruce Kwakimoto), so it hasn’t all aged well.
I’d recommend checking it out for at least the following scenes:
Bolt Jenkins
Noah’s Ark Disco
Ice Hockey
Platform Diving.
Some great animation and humor from top talent at the beginnings of their careers.
Since this is a recent Zack Snyder film I think a lot of people are going to have an opinion on it before even watching it. Ignoring who the director is though, I was actually pleasantly surprised. My expectations were admittedly low, though being a fan of the zombie movie genre in general I found this to be better than most.
I'm not sure what your average George Romero fan thinks, though I imagine most would have preferred it if Snyder hadn't used the name that he did for this film.
Since this is a recent Zack Snyder film I think a lot of people are going to have an opinion on it before even watching it. Ignoring who the director is though, I was actually pleasantly surprised. My expectations were admittedly low, though being a fan of the zombie movie genre in general I found this to be better than most.
I'm not sure what your average George Romero fan thinks, though I imagine most would have preferred it if Snyder hadn't used the name that he did for this film.
Can I ask how did it compare to his Dawn of the Dead? I really enjoyed that film.
From the trailer I had the feeling this was more of a light-hearted tongue-in-cheek film more like Zombieland than his earlier film?
RLM’s Half in the Bag pretty much tore Army of the Dead a new one...which might be an even more appropriate metaphor for this film considering where Snyder apparently wanted to go with the zombies.
Since this is a recent Zack Snyder film I think a lot of people are going to have an opinion on it before even watching it. Ignoring who the director is though, I was actually pleasantly surprised. My expectations were admittedly low, though being a fan of the zombie movie genre in general I found this to be better than most.
I'm not sure what your average George Romero fan thinks, though I imagine most would have preferred it if Snyder hadn't used the name that he did for this film.
Can I ask how did it compare to his Dawn of the Dead? I really enjoyed that film.
From the trailer I had the feeling this was more of a light-hearted tongue-in-cheek film more like Zombieland than his earlier film?
It's been quite a few years since I last watched the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead, but from what I remember Dawn of the Dead leaned more on the horror elements. Army of the Dead is more of an action film, which happens to have zombies in it.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Army of the Dead is similar to Zombieland, it just doesn't try to rely on jump scares. It's a pretty tame film overall, as long as you don't mind lots of gore.
Yeah,I won't watch Army of the Dead. Had my latest fake fighting event ruined with ads for that one, and I haven't read a single really favorable review. I do like the Day of the Dead remake from 2005 a lot though. Possibly my favourite serious zombie film (apart from Train to Busan). In terms of comedy... well, everything's been said and done (well) in Shaun of the Dead, hasn't it.
What I DID see though was Cape Fear (1991). Pretty sure I wrote about it before, so I'll keep it short. It's a very interesting film and yet it doesn't feel like Scorsese's strongest, or even close to it. It's very violent, very "human vs. evil". Because that Max Cady IS pure evil, isn't he. This film also is a testament to how good the Simpsons once were. Nowadays you can't watch Cape Fear without thinking of the Simpsons episode. Either way, very interesting, not the least due to Juliette Lewis' character who adds a cool layer to the film.
In the end I forgot about the 'speaking in tongues' bit. That was pretty creepy. If you haven't seen it - Watch It of course. No Ifs and Buts.
I also watched half of Alien Nation (1988) (or "Space Cop L.A.1991", as the German release is called Not to be confused with "Der Space Cop" from 1991 ). I'm not sure why, but I love Alien Nation. The TV series probably more than the original film, but the film's good as well. Of course the film doesn't go as in-depth as it should go, and Newcomer culture/phsiycal differences to humans is in large parts played for laughs, but that's okay.
I don't know what it is, but I love the idea of a cop drama with that additional layer of the Newcomers having landed. It's a bit like I, Robot, but interesting. I also just like the look of the Newcomers, I like the mystery, I like the setting. I really like how in the series they play with Newcomer culture. Some rich hipster humans being enamoured with it and become "Newcomer posers", some young Newcomers being fed up with having to 'integrate' getting all 'aware' of their 'roots' (which they never cared for before and which they misinterpret). The slightly different clothing, tastes in interior design, and so on. Interesting stuff. I'm not sure I've seen all the TV films which followed the end of the show.
Anyway, I like it a lot. It's got a special something to it, I think. Oh, I also like the tv show's theme music. Quite ahead of its time, that whole thing.
I feel like the Netflix movie Bright is an interesting successor to Alien Nation, and that Alien Nation is an interesting adaption of the mini-series V.
Starship troopers
It's really interesting when you look into the production stuff. They purposefully chose good looking actors who couldn't really act well just to cement the sort of propaganda feel of the movie.
I'm doing my part!
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Somehow there are people who weren't sure if ST was a parody or not...
More than you would like to realize. I most often see it with folks who are big "Heinlein" fans who like the source material a lot, and do not realize that the movie is making fun of fascism and totalitarianism.
Easy E wrote: I feel like the Netflix movie Bright is an interesting successor to Alien Nation, and that Alien Nation is an interesting adaption of the mini-series V.
I thought Alien Nation was better than Bright - wonderful concept for the latter, but like everything that has him in it, it managed to be the Will Smith show even though he was surrounded by Orcs and Noomi Rapace as an elf. Thought it had a fair bit of wasted potential (should have had more of things like the Centaurs working as traffic police) and didn't think the end of the film worked very well.
Then again I haven't seen Alien Nation for many years so it might not have aged as well.. but from memory it certainly seemed a lot less preachy.
Yeah, that's why I'm reluctant to watch Bright to be honest. I doubt a film made recently would be able to pull that theme off without beating you over the head over and over and over. Somehow I think that genre films, B-movies, lower-budget films, call them what you want, don't hold the viewer as in much contempt as big-budget films do. I'm also a bit weary of Will Smith films lately and the big red N is just a turn-off for me.
Funny you should V, Easy E! The tv channel I raved about a few weeks ago shows the miniseries every few months. That's how good they are.
Alien Nation probably didn't age that greatly (but then maybe nothing has, depending on how dead-set the viewer is on being critical about minor things), but when I saw half of it recently it was perfectly okay. The funny thing is that James Caan seemed a bit more out of place than the aliens. Something wasn't quite right about him, I felt. Maybe the outfit or something.
Aaandway, last night I watched Porco Rosso (1992)! There's some gaps in my knowledge of Miyazaki's films, and that's one of them patched now.
Porco Rosso is the story of an Italian World War 1 pilot who after the war becomes a headhunter and helps keeping the Adriatic safe from air pirates. He also got the head of a pig for some reason; people don't know why. There seems to be curse going on or something. The film takes place during the 1920s, and it's made explicitly clear that it does. It also is very clear about where exactly it takes place, which to my knowledge is unique to a Ghibli film. Even beyond time and location, the film references a whole slew of historical people, names and events.
There are very few things for certain in this weird world of ours, but I think it's safe to say that that Miyazaki's (maybe even all of Ghibli's) films are ALWAYS touching, overwhelmingly beautiful to look at (right from the first frame in this film), handle every single topic they touch well, and are just an enriching experience. Even the less strong ones just stick with you and make you think back on them with fondness. Watching his films actively makes you a better and happier person. I'm convinced of that.
Watch It.
P.S.: Oh, and it's the only film I know which features the Austro-Hungarian Marine Airforce!
Yeah, HFTD was remade, and the remake sank like the lusitania. (I know people say sank like the titanic, but the titanic took 2 1/2 hours to sink after hitting the iceberg. The lusitania went under in 15 minutes after being torpedoed.)
As to it being misogynist, well, IMO it just delivered what the classic movie "the creature from the black lagoon" implied. We consider creature to be a classic today, but really, what do you think the creature really wanted from the women it was abducting? Something 50's movies couldn't even hint at.
HFTD was just saying what CFTBL implied.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
greatbigtree wrote: I had not realized it's a 50 year old film now! I was born 13 years after it was made, and just saw it this past week.
It's in desperate need of a recut. There is so much filler in there. For anyone interested, the IMDB has a few trailers, both old and new, and it really is one of those movies where all the best parts are in the trailer. Perhaps in it's time, but today it just feels like a director that couldn't cut what needed to be cut.
@ the OP: This was fun, I'm going to have to try and remember what the last movie I saw before 2001 was.
Yeah, you should know something about 2001.
it was made before computer graphics existed in any way, when colot tv was still new and not the standard. So those graphic displays you take for granted today did not exist when 2001 was made. A;; thopse graphics, were hand drawn animation rear projected onto screen the actors were facing, which accounts for the idea that a video screen will display imaged on a person's face...
2001 literally invented computer graphics, windows, video displays that displayed actual video and data , etc.
Years later when the compute resolution was beginning to reach homes in the late 70's people wondered how to make the information accessible, and many of them used 2001 as an inspiration. A lot of modern computer display interfaces were based on the displays created for 2001.
Matt Swain wrote: Yeah, HFTD was remade, and the remake sank like the lusitania. (I know people say sank like the titanic, but the titanic took 2 1/2 hours to sink after hitting the iceberg. The lusitania went under in 15 minutes after being torpedoed.)
As to it being misogynist, well, IMO it just delivered what the classic movie "the creature from the black lagoon" implied. We consider creature to be a classic today, but really, what do you think the creature really wanted from the women it was abducting? Something 50's movies couldn't even hint at.
HFTD was just saying what CFTBL implied.
Well, Humanoids from the Deep is no The Shape of Water.....
Also, watched Demon of the Paradise
Yes, it is another water monster movie..... but much crappier than even a Corman produced water monster movie. Just boring and not even the decency to insult me with low-brow sleaziness. However, one of my favorite lines is from the "reporter" who is a reject from a 'Nam movie.
"Here is my detailed 9 point plan to success:
1. Do nothing
2. Do Nothing
3. Do Nothing....."
It he never gets past point 3 in the exchange as the piece of wood hero interrupts him. I was really interested in hearing the rest of his plan so I could mimic it in my own life!
Oh, you want to go off on a cheesy water monster movie tangent? Ok I'm game!
There's 'sting of death" where a mad scientist turns himself into the prefect killer, a create that is half man, half jellyfish.
Behold!
Here's one of his so called victims. (The real victims of this movie were the people watching it...)
There there was "Zaat!" A (literal) nazi scientist reflecting on the fall of the third reich concludes the way to dominants der vurld..ahem, dominate the world is obvious, so he turns himself, as part of his world domnation scheme, into a creature that is half nazi, half....catfish. Because catfish are ferocious and savage fighters and survivors. (I know a lot of people that consider them dinner.)
Man, what was the writer of that smoking and keep it the hell away from me!
This movie boasts it was filmed in florida, and i believe it as i think it must have been written by a true "Florida man"...
I also started one about a Dr. who gets a prehistoric fish and turns into a monster..... or something.
It starts with "our hero" making a sexist joke and then forcefully tickling his female assistant. OH, the 50's were a magical time.....
Dang, the name is escaping me at the moment.
Zaat is definitely a movie made in Florida...
As to the other movie, i think you may be referring to "monster on campus", where a scientist gets accidentally infected with...juices....from an irradiated Coelacanth.
On a quick note, sting of death is a truly and irredeemably bad movie. I honestly found it hard to get thru, it was just so bad, and not even funny, just tiresome, dreary, dull, insipid, etc.
I would have more fun watching plan 9 from outer space. Even Zaat was funny in it s badness, the idea of a nazi scientist deciding he could could conquer the world by becoming half nazi, half catfish alone just makes you laugh.
Sting of death had nothing even laugh worthy in it.
If ever there was a movie that was literally "So bad I could eat a roll of film and gak a better movie!" this is it.
Really enjoyed this. It's a B-movie with A-grade effects and filming, really beautifully shot and the effects are wonderful (watching with the lights off in the room almost seared my retinas a few times!)
Nicolas Cage brings the ham home in predictable fashion, he starts off borderline unhinged and it goes downhill from there. You either love this and find it very entertaining, as I do, or it will switch you off the film.
Storyline is very much B-movie as I have said, but it is so in the traditional sense in that it tries to be believable and is well plotted, not in the modern sense of gak like Sharknado where it is meant to be a joke and all of the cast know it is tongue in cheek. This has some really, really nasty body horror and wouldn't look out of place in a John Carpenter film, with some really good practical effects backing up the (extremely colourful) CGI.
It's currently free on Prime so I think worth an hour and a half of your time if you subscribe to that service, some nice horror/sci-fi schlock.
This is billed as a dark comedy. It is a comedy in the sense that the only rational response to an insane world is to laugh.
People should really see it, but it is not a pleasant watch at all.
Totally agree, it's definitely a dark comedy and very uncomfortable to watch at times. But, excellent I thought there are some really stand-out scenes in it and it has a great cast.
Guy Ritchie stops poncing about in the Middle Ages and returns to the territory that made him and that he clearly knows best.
If you enjoyed Snatch and Lock Stock then you'll likely enjoy this too, it hasn't got quite the same fire as those two, but it hits most of the right notes. If you don't like those films, this will do little to convert you.
Special about to Hugh Grant clearly relishing playing something other than a bumbling upper class Englishman and McConaughey manages to add another film to his résumé to balance out all the relentless trash he's made in the past.
Watch if you like Guy Ritchie London Gangsta movies, or fancy just under 2 hours of people running around yelling "caaaant" at each other.
A fairly tight, well paced, American gangster movie featuring Shia LeBeouf channeling his best Ben Kingsley/Sexy Beast/Don Logan in both looks and quirky viciousness.
The first half is wonderful character building. Not knowing what I was getting into, I was prepared for this to be the extent of the film and I would have been happy with that. What follows in the second half is a satisfying explosion of violence, but as visceral as the blood spilling gets it never feels gratuitous.
Recommended to watch if you fancy a latinx mobster flick.
Guy Ritchie stops poncing about in the Middle Ages and returns to the territory that made him and that he clearly knows best.
If you enjoyed Snatch and Lock Stock then you'll likely enjoy this too, it hasn't got quite the same fire as those two, but it hits most of the right notes. If you don't like those films, this will do little to convert you.
Special about to Hugh Grant clearly relishing playing something other than a bumbling upper class Englishman and McConaughey manages to add another film to his résumé to balance out all the relentless trash he's made in the past.
Watch if you like Guy Ritchie London Gangsta movies, or fancy just under 2 hours of people running around yelling "caaaant" at each other.
That sounds interesting!
The Mask of Zorro (1998)
Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) got old! He's choosing a successor to don the black mask and fight evil military types and peasant-exploiting bigwigs.
Never seen this film before, but I had a very good time with it last night. Zorro is a superhero I can get behind. Banderas is the perfect choice for the character too, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is equally nice to look at and to see act and do stuff. Good female lead. Anthony Hopkins does things, the bad guys do things, it's all fine. I really, really enjoyed the fencing and action scenes in general. Those looked great.
Watch It. It's perfectly alright.
The Untouchables (1987)
Brian de Palma film about prohibition timey policemen (Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, etc) who try to catch moonshiners, but mostly organized crime and Al Capone (DeNiro).
As a period piece it looks really nice, there's plenty of solid action scenes, lots of guns, and all that stuff. It's rather cartoony, but Costner deliberately made his performance bland (so I read) to ground the whole thing a bit. And it works. The Untouchables is a classic, Sean Connery got an oscar for his performance, all probably justified. It's got very little to do with historical events, but oh well.
I thoroughly enjoy The Untouchables, the only problem for me being Connery's Irish accent is about as convincing as his Russian one in Hunt for Red October.
I just tried to watch a British sf movie called 'horizon'.
Didn't make it.
I mean yeah the effects looks like a modern Dr. who episode. And i suspect one of the stars was picked because she looked like Jodie Whitaker's sister, the low budget didn't bother me, the story and jumping around in a plot with more holes in it that ten tons of swiss cheese bothered me.
Matt Swain wrote: I just tried to watch a British sf movie called 'horizon'.
Didn't make it.
I mean yeah the effects looks like a modern Dr. who episode. And i suspect one of the stars was picked because she looked like Jodie Whitaker's sister, the low budget didn't bother me, the story and jumping around in a plot with more holes in it that ten tons of swiss cheese bothered me.
Yeah, but no, but yeah
It is indeed a stinker of a movie, I watched it a while back as it was as close to local as films ever get, felt like watching a LaRP event with phone based fx nailed on
Despite broadly being a fan of horror, I was quite late to The Conjuring-verse. I'd seen the first, but totally failed to realise there were sequels until the spinoffs started.
By and large I've enjoyed the franchise, but it's undoubtedly suffered from diminishing returns.
Sadly, this doesn't do anything to reverse the trend. While the Farmiga/Wilson led installments are broadly the stronger, this stretches the conceit of "based on a true story" while also being decidedly predictable.
I'll grant that it carries the near 2 hour running time fairly lightly, again largely thanks to the core cast performance, but it largely fails at a horror movie's core objectives to scare and/or unsettle.
Were I convinced that the events were less exaggerated than logic tells me they are, it might land a little harder, but as it stands it's just a reasonably entertaining story.
I could talk for hours about how this film is more important than just taking the piss out of terrorists and their sympathisers. It's a comedy and a tragedy.
I could talk for hours about how this film is more important than just taking the piss out of terrorists and their sympathisers. It's a comedy and a tragedy.
Indeed. Looking up the making of, it was thoroughly researched by Mr Morris. Not just with terrorism experts, but Imams and Muslim communities.
The main characters are really quite pathetic people in their own way, yet we feel sympathy with them because they’re such oddballs. It doesn’t make light of their crimes either, which is quite the balancing act. It can still prove heavy watching, especially when we see just how in over his head Waj is, and how manipulative Omar is.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It doesn’t make light of their crimes either, which is quite the balancing act. It can still prove heavy watching, especially when we see just how in over his head Waj is, and how manipulative Omar is.
Waj is the first person that comes to mind when thinking about this. His last scene in the kebab shop is heart breaking and it really is that balance between acknowledging the horrific things they are planning to do with how relatably human they are. Powerful stuff.
Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) got old! He's choosing a successor to don the black mask and fight evil military types and peasant-exploiting bigwigs.
Never seen this film before, but I had a very good time with it last night. Zorro is a superhero I can get behind. Banderas is the perfect choice for the character too, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is equally nice to look at and to see act and do stuff. Good female lead. Anthony Hopkins does things, the bad guys do things, it's all fine. I really, really enjoyed the fencing and action scenes in general. Those looked great.
Watch It. It's perfectly alright.
One detail I really love in this movie, is that the main villain is NOT afraid to do his own dirty work when he needs to.
Great steampunk magic series that chickened out in the last episode leaving nothing resolved.
Hope it gets a season 2, it would be a crime to leave it where it is.
Suffers a bit since the gang of thieves are much more interesting than any of the main characters.
No, this series just stank of YA Fiction through the whole thing. I felt it was weak sauce, and the band of Thieves were ridiculous caricatures. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the whole thing turned out to be an RPG Campaign that they wrote down as they went. It felt like someone had played too much Blades in the Dark to me as I watched it.
However, after years of ragging on Twilight and its stupid sparkly vampires (amongst other sins, such as god awful toxic relationships)...watching The Lost Boys in HD reveals that the goo the Frog Brothers get covered in after staking Marco?
It’s....it’s glittery. Glittery.
I need a support group, I don’t know who I am or what I think anymore.
Because if I have to notice it, you have to notice it.
Raya and the Last Dragon has just dropped out of pay per view on D+, so watched with my daughter yesterday.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Entirely predictable, but the art is gorgeous, the characters fun and there are some pretty cool fight scenes. Alan Tudyk voices an armadillo/insect/bear/motorcycle/thing that I want almost as much as a porg
Tempted to find out a bit more about it as it seems to be an amalgamation of a range of south Asian archetypes. the dragons to me as an uninformed westerner look "chinese" but thats probably just showing up my ignorance.
Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) got old! He's choosing a successor to don the black mask and fight evil military types and peasant-exploiting bigwigs.
Never seen this film before, but I had a very good time with it last night. Zorro is a superhero I can get behind. Banderas is the perfect choice for the character too, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is equally nice to look at and to see act and do stuff. Good female lead. Anthony Hopkins does things, the bad guys do things, it's all fine. I really, really enjoyed the fencing and action scenes in general. Those looked great.
Watch It. It's perfectly alright.
One detail I really love in this movie, is that the main villain is NOT afraid to do his own dirty work when he needs to.
He can twirl a sword with the best of them.
Quite true! There's two villains actually, but both are good at the buckling of the swash!
Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) got old! He's choosing a successor to don the black mask and fight evil military types and peasant-exploiting bigwigs.
Never seen this film before, but I had a very good time with it last night. Zorro is a superhero I can get behind. Banderas is the perfect choice for the character too, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is equally nice to look at and to see act and do stuff. Good female lead. Anthony Hopkins does things, the bad guys do things, it's all fine. I really, really enjoyed the fencing and action scenes in general. Those looked great.
Watch It. It's perfectly alright.
One detail I really love in this movie, is that the main villain is NOT afraid to do his own dirty work when he needs to.
He can twirl a sword with the best of them.
Quite true! There's two villains actually, but both are good at the buckling of the swash!
Yeah, but I think Captain Love was just a glorified henchmen. Don Pedro was the mastermind who could fence real good!
A Korean period creature feature. It's not bad. It's got a lot of things typical of East Asian period cinema. Court intrigues, and such. Themes of loyal service and piety. Also a decent monster mystery and some good action scenes. Save one scene that uses the worst shaky came ever and is almost unwatchable for it, which is a shame for how good the action is. The only thing that's really bad about it is the title, which doesn't make much sense and the fact the characters use it frequently just feels weird cause I'm pretty sure Monstrum is not a Korean word or folk legend/myth. But that's a minor thing.
Solid B movie, decent monster flick. Similar quality to the Kingdom TV series if you're familiar with it.
Great steampunk magic series that chickened out in the last episode leaving nothing resolved.
Hope it gets a season 2, it would be a crime to leave it where it is.
Suffers a bit since the gang of thieves are much more interesting than any of the main characters.
No, this series just stank of YA Fiction through the whole thing. I felt it was weak sauce, and the band of Thieves were ridiculous caricatures. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the whole thing turned out to be an RPG Campaign that they wrote down as they went. It felt like someone had played too much Blades in the Dark to me as I watched it.
Can we agree it's better than Steampunk X-Men at least?
.) Last night I watched the last 10 minutes of The Burbs. I love The Burbs.
.) Watched the first 10 minutes of Filthy McNasty. So far I don't love it, but I'll keep you posted.
Great steampunk magic series that chickened out in the last episode leaving nothing resolved.
Hope it gets a season 2, it would be a crime to leave it where it is.
Suffers a bit since the gang of thieves are much more interesting than any of the main characters.
No, this series just stank of YA Fiction through the whole thing. I felt it was weak sauce, and the band of Thieves were ridiculous caricatures. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the whole thing turned out to be an RPG Campaign that they wrote down as they went. It felt like someone had played too much Blades in the Dark to me as I watched it.
Can we agree it's better than Steampunk X-Men at least?
No, because this is the internet.....
..... <whispers>and because I have not seen Steampunk X-men. Therefore, I will take your word for it.
A horror comedy. Two bookworm-ish girls wish they were popular at school. A mysterious Goth kid turns up and offers them a deal to summon an ancient demon who will turn them into knock-outs. However, this comes at a price beyond the wildest imagination of the girls...
In school I had a friend who was very much into filmmaking. He introduced me to horror films and all sorts of comedy horror films. All the Peter Jackson stuff, the Subspecies series, the Evil Dead, and so on. For his final exam arts project we made a little horror film at his home. (the only of our film projects which actually were put to tape). Incidently that must have been around the time Filthy McNasty was made; possibly a few months earlier. The guy I was friends with then (haven't seen him in ages) is Phil too. Oh, and the Filthy McNasty film looks and sounds like the film we made then. So right from the start there was this odd flashback familiarity with that film, and that DIY charm. Some of the ideas in this film also seem a lot like what we may have liked at the time.
That feeling didn't last long though. I admire people who make a film and get it released, all on a shoestring budget, a shoestring for equipment, and a shoestring worth of skill, but a lot of enthusiasm and drive. However, especially over the latter half of the film the dude who made this one (who's somewhat notorious for making these films) just seems like he stopped trying. Or maybe I just got a bit bored. However, it kept me watching, just so I'd see what else is going to happen. And a lot of random stuff did happen.
The film just goes for 45 minutes, so in that regard it's pretty easy to sit through, but it feels a bit long overall simply due to how directionless it feels at times.
I looked up some of the actors. The main bookwormish-turned-pretty lady (Debbie Rochon, the other one's a bit lifeless compared to her) is featured in a ton of films actually. A ton. The other girl's got one, and that's being on Filthy McNasty (and being the make-up lady for Filthy McNasty). Anyway, I think everybody seems like they have a good time making this film, so that's nice.
What I like about this film was the sound quality, which was (mostly) better than what the camera and lighting quality led me to guess it would be like. The language in that film is absurd, but then everything is.
I think it's an interesting 'underground counter-culture' thing. Either way, got me more interested than a boring, predictable film, even though it's kinda 'meh'.
Take it or Leave it. By the way, Filthy McNasty is a franchise and there's 4 films. Just in case you were wondering.
If you’re interested in low budget high passion horror, one of my coworkers write and directed a film called The Quiet Room. (Not to be confused with the Quiet Place.) It was available on Shudder last time I looked. It’s only about 30 minutes, and I recommend it.
Not sure how much I should talk about the subject matter on Dakka. It starts with an attempted suicide and gets pretty bleak in parts, and the actress who plays Hattie has a name I can’t type on Dakka.
Splendidly silly Boys Own adventure nonsense indeed, although falls down when theres a 'big' battle, 30 extras a side just doesnt cut it, then again I was spoiled as a spoutling by the utter madness of Waterloo
@Mad Doc Grotsnik: Very enjoyable, those films! Got'em all on DVD.
@Bobtheinquisitor: Well, I don't especially seek them out, I have to say. Not sure I'm into the idea of a bleak horror film either (I've gone off those a bit), but let's see. Thanks for the suggestion anyway!
Yesterday I also watched Kiki's Delivery Service (1989).
Kiki's a witch, and has to go out, look for a town to live in and live on her own for one year, because that's how witches work. One of the things I love about Miyazaki's films is that we're put into these amazing worlds very quickly, efficiently, and without all the exposition that annoys us about other films.
I'm sure people went on and on about how this is about growing up, childhood vs. adulthood, being a girl, etc. And all of that this film handles gracefully, greatly, excellently. Of course. It's also very clever about how men are depicted in this film in that they basically aren't, except for that boy who likes Kiki. Which probably is a rather fitting view of the world for a 13 year old girl? I don't know, but from watching the film it makes sense. The friends Kiki makes along the way also represent positive role female models at various stages of life.
As with most of Miyazaki's films, flying plays a big role, and the broomstick flight is depicted very cleverly I thought.
To cut it short - another must-see. Watch It, it'll enrich your life.
Caught that one last night on TV, because that's where interesting things happen. Originally a series of 10 10-minute episodes, it was stuck together to become a feature-length film for foreign broadcasting (I assume, because it was presented to me as a film). The way it works is that it's all the episodes stuck together with title cards in between. So to me it was presented as a film, which is why we can discuss it here.
The plot is about a couple (Rosamunde Pike and Chris O'Doud) whose marriage is in trouble. Each week they meet at a pub before their marriage counseling session and talk/argue. It's a very unique sort of tension between two people who are endlessly familiar with each other and also endlessly bored/fed up with each other, yet have a seemingly endless fondness for each other as well, be it genuine or customary. It's interesting to follow them as their biographies and common past unfold and yet at times it's testing as their constant arguments go in witful circles. I'm sure that it would just be like that too if we listened in on couples of a certain social standing.
I think this works better in its original format of a series of 10 minute episodes rather than a big chunk of the same scene playing out over and over. Still, it's entertaining to watch to learn about these people, and it's acted very, very well. Both these people carry the whole thing pretty effortlessly. Their dynamic is pretty interesting too in terms of power and perceived power.
Watch It if you happen across it. It's well acted, dialoge-driven grown-up stuff. Not sure where one would watch it except it comes on on TV, but I'm sure UK peeps especially got that series available.
We wanted to see a recent Sci fi movie, and Prospect came up as highly rated in a Google search. It stars Pedro Pascale as a Joss Whedon space cowboy type in a supporting role—and if that doesn’t sell you on the movie, don’t see it.
The film is about a father and daughter on a ticking clock space prospecting job who run into bandits Pascale and [name not found]. It’s a fairly stylish movie that progresses characters through some drama and various weird situations (Why is there suddenly a roided up pink man?), and could have been fairly entertaining except for a few minor flaws, such as:
The pacing. It is very deliberate.
The score. It’s beyond awful. And it makes deliberate pacing even more tedious.
The cinematography. What the hell is even happening?
The audio mixing. We had to put on subtitles to understand more than half of what Oascale was saying.
Adventure story done as a serious drama. Pascale was the only one having fun. Character arcs would have made more sense in a cheesier film.
The effects were good. The story, if you can get past the pacing, was good, in that we wanted to know what happened next. The setting felt well realized, and really could have been part of a better movie.
Watch it if this still sounds enjoyable to you.
I caught this kinda classic and it's not bad. Jamie lee Curtis and donald sutherland basically battle a borg invasion from outer space that comes to earth as a virus from a weird space stormwave that destroys the Miir space station and then downloads to a russian (spy) trawler. (HELL YEAH! XXXX RUSSIANS!)
Somehow a software entity takes over the ship's computers and somehow makes machines kill people and use them to make ubergross borg out of the corpses. (Don't question the plot here.)
Along comes a small salvage tug looking for a score and the captain, donald sutherland, ends up becoming a more voluntary version of Locutus from STTNG. The movie is clearly a takeoff of "Best of both worlds".
All done with practical effects, no cgi, and really not too bad for the time. Sadly no topless scenes with JLC, so don't get your hopes up.
Sigur wrote: I think Trading Places got that well covered.
Weird how I can't remember hearing anything about that film! it sounds a bit like Event Horizon, but a bit less Warhams 40k. Interesting.
Ehhh, not really event horizon. The alien borg malware wasn't inflicting pain for the sake of it, it was trying to essentially trying to reproduce itself all over earth. Again, think of the borg without tv gore restrictions and a bigger budget.
Flinty wrote: Raya and the Last Dragon has just dropped out of pay per view on D+, so watched with my daughter yesterday.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Entirely predictable, but the art is gorgeous, the characters fun and there are some pretty cool fight scenes. Alan Tudyk voices an armadillo/insect/bear/motorcycle/thing that I want almost as much as a porg
Tempted to find out a bit more about it as it seems to be an amalgamation of a range of south Asian archetypes. the dragons to me as an uninformed westerner look "chinese" but thats probably just showing up my ignorance.
Watched Raya tonight. I liked it a lot more than I expected to and it kept my attention far more than I thought it would.
Its rare that I fully pay attention to films, they're more background to another activity, like painting. I fully expected to work on some termagants while I watched it, but... never did.
The baby was a bit creepy though.
More honest emotion in it than I expected, too.
Flinty wrote: Raya and the Last Dragon has just dropped out of pay per view on D+, so watched with my daughter yesterday.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Entirely predictable, but the art is gorgeous, the characters fun and there are some pretty cool fight scenes. Alan Tudyk voices an armadillo/insect/bear/motorcycle/thing that I want almost as much as a porg
Tempted to find out a bit more about it as it seems to be an amalgamation of a range of south Asian archetypes. the dragons to me as an uninformed westerner look "chinese" but thats probably just showing up my ignorance.
Watched Raya tonight. I liked it a lot more than I expected to and it kept my attention far more than I thought it would.
Its rare that I fully pay attention to films, they're more background to another activity, like painting. I fully expected to work on some termagants while I watched it, but... never did.
The baby was a bit creepy though.
More honest emotion in it than I expected, too.
I thought it was pretty good up until the ending.
The film joins a now lengthening line of popular media where someone (namari) is an absolutely horrible person who feths everything up, and is then forgiven despite having done nothing to really earn that forgiveness. I feel like it started with Zuko in Avatar, but Zuko had three seasons of heavy character development to earn his redemption. Characters like Catra in the latest She-Ra interation and Namari in Raya on the other hand, however sympathetic, are basically forgiven after realizing how they fethed up and the story then glosses over entirely that hurting people hurts people and an 'I'm sorry' is weak consolation when the thing you fethed up was the world and the person you screwed over was everyone.
Spoiler:
I got to the end of the film and the "you're just as bad as me line" and I laughed, because feth no Raya ain't, her mistakes were nowhere near as stupid as Namari's and acting like Raya's errors in judgement were just as responsible for everything as Namari's idiocy is a serious moral cop out. The really fethed up part, is that movie plays off Raya's sin as being willing to believe Namari will make the right choice when Namari constantly makes the worst choice, so the moral is...That Raya never should have trusted Namari? The ending of this movie is a completely mixed signal that completely undercuts the supposed point of the film. The only good thing Namari does in the entire film is save herself after she doomed the world. That's not trust, that's desperation and Raya and her friends were the ones to actually make a sarifice.
The movie wants to be about unity and trust, but Fang spends the entire movie showing itself as completely untrustworthy and it's the constant attempts to trust them that cause all the problems in the film. Had people simply not trusted one another, the gem never would have been shattered in the first place. It's not like the plot couldn't have worked, but as written it doesn't.
I'm also going to say I raised my eyebrow at the combination of plot elements that Dragons do water magic, the evil monsters hate water, and the Dragons lost a battle against them...Like, why didn't that one Dragon just make it rain? How was that not an instant win, except that the plot required all the Dragons to be gone even if their powers make losing a plot contrivance?
Flinty wrote: Raya and the Last Dragon has just dropped out of pay per view on D+, so watched with my daughter yesterday.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Entirely predictable, but the art is gorgeous, the characters fun and there are some pretty cool fight scenes. Alan Tudyk voices an armadillo/insect/bear/motorcycle/thing that I want almost as much as a porg
Tempted to find out a bit more about it as it seems to be an amalgamation of a range of south Asian archetypes. the dragons to me as an uninformed westerner look "chinese" but thats probably just showing up my ignorance.
Watched Raya tonight. I liked it a lot more than I expected to and it kept my attention far more than I thought it would.
Its rare that I fully pay attention to films, they're more background to another activity, like painting. I fully expected to work on some termagants while I watched it, but... never did.
The baby was a bit creepy though.
More honest emotion in it than I expected, too.
I thought it was pretty good up until the ending.
The film joins a now lengthening line of popular media where someone (namari) is an absolutely horrible person who feths everything up, and is then forgiven despite having done nothing to really earn that forgiveness.
Low budget Australian horror. Mother and Daughter return to their family home after the Grandmother is noticed to have gone missing. Grandmother returns, but something has changed.. The house doesn't seem very happy about the situation either.
As is often the case with horror, and first time directors, the film is overrated. But that doesn't mean it isn't good so much as it is often near impossible for these sorts of films to live up to the hype surrounding them.
Essentially a metaphor for the way a person loses themself and a family loses a loved one when they're taken by Alzheimer's, it's a film that relies on creeping dread, claustrophobia and disorientation than jump scares and gore, and is all the better for it.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: We wanted to see a recent Sci fi movie, and Prospect came up as highly rated in a Google search. It stars Pedro Pascale as a Joss Whedon space cowboy type in a supporting role—and if that doesn’t sell you on the movie, don’t see it.
Thanks for the short review! I've had this one in the Netflix queue for a while, will definitely turn on subtitles so we don't miss anything.
If I wanted Smith-o-centric self nostalgia along with some THC addled bobbins about aging and parenthood I'd have clearly suffered some awful brain injury, I wasn't expecting much but this was fup awful, seems not all Vegans have superpowers
If I wanted Smith-o-centric self nostalgia along with some THC addled bobbins about aging and parenthood I'd have clearly suffered some awful brain injury, I wasn't expecting much but this was fup awful, seems not all Vegans have superpowers
yea, it was.....not great
i view it as him going "feth, heart attack almost got me, lets see if i can do at least one more movie will all my friends"
I suspect that actually it's broadly just as good as everything after Mallrats, it's just that 20 years or so on, movies spouting stoner jokes relentlessly for an hour and a half just aren't quite the height of cultured auteur cinema they were to our much younger selves.
Azreal13 wrote: I suspect that actually it's broadly just as good as everything after Mallrats, it's just that 20 years or so on, movies spouting stoner jokes relentlessly for an hour and a half just aren't quite the height of cultured auteur cinema they were to our much younger selves.
damn it, i was trying to avoid the "we got old" angle
Azreal13 wrote: In many ways it's pretty impressive that Smith, who's 50 or so by now, still has the stamina for weed and dick jokes needed for that sort of output.
maybe that's the superpower he picked up at Vegan Academy
A blockbuster from the silent film era. The story is facile enough for a modern summer movie (I could easily see a remake starring, say, Chris Pratt, Zendaya and Charles Dance. But please don’t), but the visuals were groundbreaking and still make the movie a mesmerizing experience, lots of spectacle and surreal imagery. I personally feel the effects hold up better than many modern movies because they went for impact instead of realism; robot Hel, for example, is on screen for only a short time, yet I see now why she’s on all the posters.
The acting, pacing and to some extent the music all feel pretty modern, too. The actors do a great job of filling the screen and using their body movements to add visual interest (not sure what the technique is called). The actress who plays Evil Maria is the Nicholas Cage of German Expressionist Cinema. The story never drags, or at least I found something interesting in just about every scene. The music added a lot to the feel of the movie, although it started to feel repetitive by the end. Made me think of Alexander Nevsky’s(?) score for some reason.
I was also surprised at how subversive it felt for most of the run before the typical safe ending.
Highly recommended.
Edit: We watched this on an old DVD. Apparently youtube has a more complete version with 25 minutes of missing footage and the full score restored.
I couldn't help but think this would make a great RPG adventure.... light on combat, but high on sleuthing and socializing. There are literally 5 NPCs to play as the DM. Easy.
Corman and company manage to make a movie out of a few snippets of Poe. Impressive. Barbara Steele is always fun to see on screen, and Price is such a fun watch too.
Flinty wrote: Raya and the Last Dragon has just dropped out of pay per view on D+, so watched with my daughter yesterday.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Entirely predictable, but the art is gorgeous, the characters fun and there are some pretty cool fight scenes. Alan Tudyk voices an armadillo/insect/bear/motorcycle/thing that I want almost as much as a porg
Tempted to find out a bit more about it as it seems to be an amalgamation of a range of south Asian archetypes. the dragons to me as an uninformed westerner look "chinese" but thats probably just showing up my ignorance.
Watched Raya tonight. I liked it a lot more than I expected to and it kept my attention far more than I thought it would.
Its rare that I fully pay attention to films, they're more background to another activity, like painting. I fully expected to work on some termagants while I watched it, but... never did.
The baby was a bit creepy though.
More honest emotion in it than I expected, too.
I thought it was pretty good up until the ending.
The film joins a now lengthening line of popular media where someone (namari) is an absolutely horrible person who feths everything up, and is then forgiven despite having done nothing to really earn that forgiveness. I feel like it started with Zuko in Avatar, but Zuko had three seasons of heavy character development to earn his redemption. Characters like Catra in the latest She-Ra interation and Namari in Raya on the other hand, however sympathetic, are basically forgiven after realizing how they fethed up and the story then glosses over entirely that hurting people hurts people and an 'I'm sorry' is weak consolation when the thing you fethed up was the world and the person you screwed over was everyone.
Spoiler:
I got to the end of the film and the "you're just as bad as me line" and I laughed, because feth no Raya ain't, her mistakes were nowhere near as stupid as Namari's and acting like Raya's errors in judgement were just as responsible for everything as Namari's idiocy is a serious moral cop out. The really fethed up part, is that movie plays off Raya's sin as being willing to believe Namari will make the right choice when Namari constantly makes the worst choice, so the moral is...That Raya never should have trusted Namari? The ending of this movie is a completely mixed signal that completely undercuts the supposed point of the film. The only good thing Namari does in the entire film is save herself after she doomed the world. That's not trust, that's desperation and Raya and her friends were the ones to actually make a sarifice.
The movie wants to be about unity and trust, but Fang spends the entire movie showing itself as completely untrustworthy and it's the constant attempts to trust them that cause all the problems in the film. Had people simply not trusted one another, the gem never would have been shattered in the first place. It's not like the plot couldn't have worked, but as written it doesn't.
I'm also going to say I raised my eyebrow at the combination of plot elements that Dragons do water magic, the evil monsters hate water, and the Dragons lost a battle against them...Like, why didn't that one Dragon just make it rain? How was that not an instant win, except that the plot required all the Dragons to be gone even if their powers make losing a plot contrivance?
The evil monsters were a weak point. I mean, yeah, they're obviously plot contrivance with no motivations or even a clear cause, but they aren't worth thinking about hard or the whole thing falls apart. They're alternately described as fire and the opposite of dragons, leaving nothing but ash in their wake (probably metaphorically, since they... don't...actually... burn anything and leave nature completely untouched), but are the product of human discord (but weren't there when humans were completely disunited, but were around when humans were previously united, and only came back because magic was disrupted), but also magic just poofs them, and the dragon super magic has nothing to do with human harmony at all, but that's what works... but then water... and wait? What's metaphorical, what's real and how does magic actually fit in here?
And the stone offering pose of the 'statues' is obviously really symbolic but... no one ever remarks on it. Especially since the last few... don't do that. I was really expecting that to matter in some way.
--
I don't really agree with you on the antagonist thing though, partly because the protagonists aren't quite that innocent, and 'all the problems' is really overstated. But that would be a really long discussion for this particular thread.
I couldn't help but think this would make a great RPG adventure.... light on combat, but high on sleuthing and socializing. There are literally 5 NPCs to play as the DM. Easy.
Corman and company manage to make a movie out of a few snippets of Poe. Impressive. Barbara Steele is always fun to see on screen, and Price is such a fun watch too.
Corman, Price and Poe are a winning formula for me. Vincent Price is just so good, isn't he.
I watched Table 19 again, this time the original English audio. It's still perfectly nice. Shorter than I remembered, but of course things always seem longer the first time you see them. This time I also watched it on a tablet with the light turned WAY down, which is a horrible way of watching a film, but I was positive towards it anyway.
Spoiler:
My favourite story's still the Lisa Kudrow/Craig Robinson one. Mostly because it's complicated and probably the most realitistic and most common one. The kid's story is a bit meh. It's just universal, so shut up, you'll figure things out. The Steve Merchant story is unsettling. The June Squibb story is really nice and sad, but ultimately just a kickstarter to help the plot at a point where it flounders, isn't it? The music still is detestable. I wish some hollywood films would manage to be brave enough NOT to use music all the bloody time. Human beings are able to experience emotion even if some editor doesn't tell them exactly which one to experience at that point in time. Maybe it'll even get people to think about the situation and thus make them more invested.
It's a nice little film.
edit: I just saw that the film actually didn't get very good reviews. Are people insane? At least it got overall better reviews than The Ugly Truth, which is my benchmark for repulsive romantic comedies.
I couldn't help but think this would make a great RPG adventure.... light on combat, but high on sleuthing and socializing. There are literally 5 NPCs to play as the DM. Easy.
Corman and company manage to make a movie out of a few snippets of Poe. Impressive. Barbara Steele is always fun to see on screen, and Price is such a fun watch too.
I watched this recently too. Definitely one of the better Hammer films, Vincent Price is on top form for it.
There is a fair amount of this kind of stuff on Amazon Prime actually at the moment, or films that go on and off free to view on Prime. Recently watched The Mummy (Christopher Lee), also The Terror (which I believe is based on an Poe story) featuring a very, very (very!) young Jack Nicholson.
I am watching The Mummy with Boris Karloff right now. Tubi has a lot of older stuff for free.
It is interesting to see how the reincarnated Love story-line originally started with The Mummy, but in 1974's Dracula IIRC started to get caught up with Vampires too.
I finished up Locke and Key a slow burn horror series featuring teen protags and their younger kid. Wow, this series has some really dumb moments, and then sign posts how dumb they were; and then proceeds to have them do dumber stuff again! It was actually frustrating to watch.
Perhaps that is a trope of horror that protags are dumb and they only make the situation worse. Might be why I can not watch that genre.
The best part was a cameo from Tom Savini AFTER one of the characters made a big deal about who Tom is in a previous episode.
Easy E wrote: Jet Jaguar you say! I have not seen that in ages.
I finished up Locke and Key a slow burn horror series featuring teen protags and their younger kid. Wow, this series has some really dumb moments, and then sign posts how dumb they were; and then proceeds to have them do dumber stuff again! It was actually frustrating to watch.
Perhaps that is a trope of horror that protags are dumb and they only make the situation worse. Might be why I can not watch that genre.
The best part was a cameo from Tom Savini AFTER one of the characters made a big deal about who Tom is in a previous episode.
I was likewise baffled and wasn't sure if it was meant to be serious or not, or just horrifically young adult, Echo was distracting mind
Sorry I know I'm probably the 9th person to review this but..
Army of the Dead
Why did this receive such poor reviews? I wonder if it's because it was massively mis-represented by the trailer, which almost made it look like a Zombieland or arcade-game type Zombie slagging fest?
And it isn't that type of film (although it does contain it!)
I enjoyed it. A zombie heist film. Interesting characters, your good guys and bad guys (one in particular being especially delightfully villainous).
Dave Bautista did well in the lead role, the big man showing some acting chops in the sensitivity he put across (when he wasn't slamming zombies.)
A bit of the '...Living Dead' films in it with the Z's as more than just mindless hungry people. Which I thought was handled better than Land of the Dead (the 00's Dennis Hopper one). The 'animal' (I won't give any more away), in the context of where the action takes place, is excellent too.
I know some complaint about the film being too long, but I enjoyed the exposition and character development that was added in the moments in-between the action.
I know it's a low bar but I would say probably one of the better zombie films I have seen over recent years.
Whilst I’ve not seen Army of the Dead (I ditched Netflix for other reasons, like never really watching it)….
I do wish to declare Dave Batista a hidden treasure of acting. Does the dude have a massive range? No. Is he hired for his sheer and frankly staggering stature? Well, partially.
Guardians of the Galaxy shows he is really, really, really, really good as a movie star.
I saw it at a press screening. Long time Dakkanauts might remember I’ve said that before. They might also remember I expected the film, based off a frankly Z-List, barrel scraping Marvel property to be the straw that broke the MCU Camel’s back.
As we know now, my concerns were utterly unfounded, and the film itself is still very well regarded to this day, despite its frankly ropey and unconvincing premise (bunch of dysfunctional tosspots save the day).
Dave Batista knocked my socks off that day. I’d only known him from WWE. In the bits I saw of that era, I don’t remember him working the mic much. Instead, he was just a physical aura of menace that buttered Faces up and down the canvas.
To see him display brilliant comic timing, and an almost self depreciating sense of humour (really capitalised on in the second for my money) was a genuine revelation.
The result of that performance is that I’ll now happily watch anything he’s in.
The big man may never win an Oscar for his roles. But he’s constantly Good Value. And given how wanky the Oscars can be (and indeed all other award ceremony circle spanks), that is NOT faint praise.
I believe one of his early roles was in The Man with the Iron Fists which also has Lucy Lu and Russel Crowe! Check it out and be both amazed and appalled at the same time!
@Mad Doc Grotsnik: I think what he does really well is choosing his roles right. He doesn't show up in low-budged, direct to dvd films (if possible), he's gone straight to pretty high-profile stuff.
Oh yes, Masque of the Red Death was great. Corman also did an anthology film with Price and Peter Lorre. Also of course: The Raven. It's pretty colourful and silly, but it's got a proper magic duel between Price and Karloff. What's not to like. In the same vein, I recommend Comedy of Horrors. No Poe, but Price and Lorre, and thus just a joy to watch.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I didn't see much of it, but I think it was pretty darned convincing - Rangers (2000).
Wow. Woooooooow. I didn't even know they made things like this up to 2000, and I didn't think they'd do that with Western films too. It's a hilarious action film with no action scenes (I nicked that one from a review on imdb). Instead, they lifted scenes from Red Heat, Invasion USA, Delta Force, and so on. It's a unique sort of trainwreck.
Just watched the end, but I was amused. Imagine Invasion USA (already a pretty mean-spirited film), now take out the little stories about how the terrists try to split society and take out Chuck Norris. What you're left with is Rangers. I'm pretty sure it's similar with the scenes nicked from Delta Force.
What the film brings to the mix is a token black guy who spouts one-liners and dances.
Sigur wrote: @Mad Doc Grotsnik: I think what he does really well is choosing his roles right. He doesn't show up in low-budged, direct to dvd films (if possible), he's gone straight to pretty high-profile stuff.
Ummm.. will just leave this here..
To be fair, I think he must have accepted this role prior to getting the GofG and Blade Runner parts.
I haven't actually watched the film, but am content to know that apparently JCVD apparently appears from time to time in a fedora
A stoner comedy that is set in a fantasy realm. The premise is so good..... but it just can not deliver on the laughs.
I have no idea how they got Natalie Portman, James Franco (not Jess, that is someone else), and Zoey Daschenel (sp). Zoey is totally wasted in this film.
Robert Redford is a disgraced Lieutenant General sent to a military prison run by a Colonel who occasionally bumps of his inmates by "accident".
I remember watching this many years ago and enjoying it. On re-watch, James Gandolfini's performance is still brilliant. In the final third of the movie he succumbs to the pantomime villain script he's been dealt, but for the most part he plays a complex commander who is playing a balancing game with his career aspirations, his emotional attachment to the military, his pride in his authority, self doubt when confronted with a clear superior and a philosophy that the ends justify the means.
Redford's character on the other hand is supposed to be portrayed as a commander that all under him would love. Over two decades worth of military experience I've seen a lot of different types of commander and I really despise the type of preachy morality gaslighting that is presented here as being noble.
Plus the final act is just fantastical nonsense. It ain't as good as I remember but still a fine way to kill an evening.
I'm a sucker for a horror anthology, and this is exactly what you're getting here. They frequently avoid the traps feature length horrors fall into, either over explaining or needless padding killing the momentum and/or tension.
Clearly "inspired" by the likes of V/H/S, the viewer gets a number of shorter found footage stories tied together with an overarching story (although in this case there's no real relationship between them.)
To review each story would defeat the point of a mini review, but competent would be the overall keyword that links all the sections. There's little new, or at least what tries to be subversive is such a short throw from original as to still be obvious, and the FX vary between early Dr Who to really quite compelling. Camgirls is probably the creepiest, less about what's on screen and more about what must have happened off, but each section has enough merit to be worth spending 90 minutes or so watching the whole thing.
Robert Redford is a disgraced Lieutenant General sent to a military prison run by a Colonel who occasionally bumps of his inmates by "accident".
I remember watching this many years ago and enjoying it. On re-watch, James Gandolfini's performance is still brilliant. In the final third of the movie he succumbs to the pantomime villain script he's been dealt, but for the most part he plays a complex commander who is playing a balancing game with his career aspirations, his emotional attachment to the military, his pride in his authority, self doubt when confronted with a clear superior and a philosophy that the ends justify the means.
Redford's character on the other hand is supposed to be portrayed as a commander that all under him would love. Over two decades worth of military experience I've seen a lot of different types of commander and I really despise the type of preachy morality gaslighting that is presented here as being noble.
Plus the final act is just fantastical nonsense. It ain't as good as I remember but still a fine way to kill an evening.
Seeing James Gandolfini in a big role is just nice, isn't it. And the bad guy in this film clearly is the much more interesting character. I'm sure Robert Redford would have loved to play him, but ...well, he's Robert Redford. He can't do that.
I just watched this one for the first time a few years ago and I remember being pretty impressed with the helicopter scene in the end.I think there's a making-of of that one on the internet somewhere, and pretty interesting.
It's got nothing to do with films, but I just learned that Netflix changed bits about Evangelion? This upsets me way more than it should probably (because I got it on dvd of course), but everything about Evangelion upsets me way more than it should.
Sigur wrote: It's got nothing to do with films, but I just learned that Netflix changed bits about Evangelion? This upsets me way more than it should probably (because I got it on dvd of course), but everything about Evangelion upsets me way more than it should.
Still - streaming platforms are gak.
It wasn't Netflix exactly, or at least saying they 'changed bits' is kind of missing exactly what happened.
When Netflix redubbed the series for re-release, they actually made a number of lines more faithful to the original Japanese voice work or cleared up some ambiguous lines resulting from poor translation. This included removing nearly all cursing (which was unique to the original English dub), cleaning up a lot lines that were goofy in the original translation, and making Kaworu's flirting with Shinji more intentionally ambiguous (fans say that the redub tried to hide how gay Kaworu was, but the lines in Netflix's dub really are more accurate to the original Japanese). Ironically, all these changes made the Netflix redub more faithful to the original Japanese, but a lot of series' image was its goofy lines and several actually read better in English with cursing than without. Netflix seemed to set out to want to redub the series with more accurate and faithful translations, but fans it turns out don't really care XD Definitely, some of the lines do read better in English in the original translation, even if they are less accurate translations.
Beyond that, the only real issues are that Netflix didn't pay the licensing fees for the series' original ending theme (which a lot of fans really liked I guess) and a few names are inconsistently pronounced.
Saw Raya and the Last Dragon.
Pretty fun, nice little adventure movie. It does seem like the movie was not originally going to end with all humans coming back(The one warrior guy and the baby looked like they where going to form a family). With the IDea that Dragons where the ones to trust last time so humans cam back and then vice versa, and humanity needing to come together to recover from a tragedy. But IT ended the way
Disney would end their movies.
@LordofHats: huh, thanks for the breakdown. I thought they'd messed way more with it. Just a knee-jerk reaction of mine, I suppose. Never heard the English dub, but German dubs of Anime shows usually are pretty annoying too (again, adding weird amounts of cursing. Not a fan of that.). I thought Netflix cut something (because I'd seen them do it on other shows).
@Flinty: They better!
I watched Hudson Hawk again. What an odd film, but I'm glad it exists. Oddities are good.
Sigur wrote: It's got nothing to do with films, but I just learned that Netflix changed bits about Evangelion? This upsets me way more than it should probably (because I got it on dvd of course), but everything about Evangelion upsets me way more than it should.
Still - streaming platforms are gak.
It wasn't Netflix exactly, or at least saying they 'changed bits' is kind of missing exactly what happened.
When Netflix redubbed the series for re-release, they actually made a number of lines more faithful to the original Japanese voice work or cleared up some ambiguous lines resulting from poor translation. This included removing nearly all cursing (which was unique to the original English dub), cleaning up a lot lines that were goofy in the original translation, and making Kaworu's flirting with Shinji more intentionally ambiguous (fans say that the redub tried to hide how gay Kaworu was, but the lines in Netflix's dub really are more accurate to the original Japanese). Ironically, all these changes made the Netflix redub more faithful to the original Japanese, but a lot of series' image was its goofy lines and several actually read better in English with cursing than without. Netflix seemed to set out to want to redub the series with more accurate and faithful translations, but fans it turns out don't really care XD Definitely, some of the lines do read better in English in the original translation, even if they are less accurate translations.
Beyond that, the only real issues are that Netflix didn't pay the licensing fees for the series' original ending theme (which a lot of fans really liked I guess) and a few names are inconsistently pronounced.
It's even more complicated than that. The Dub Director of the original Evangelion dub came out recently and said that the new netflix dub uses the same script that Gainax originally provided him back when they were making the original dub, he just apparently had the will to stand up to gainax and say "Hey 'First Children' being used to reference a singular person isn't proper english, we are going to change this stuff to better fit US culture." My guess is that Gainax made using this original script part of the deal for netflix to obtain the rights in the first place.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The Wish Dragon (2021, Netflix)
So this movie is basically Aladdin, steeped in Chinese culture (especially the crazy rich Asians vibe). But they completely removed the "I'm using my wishes for LOVE and RICHES" part of Aladdin and made it more of a focus on friendship, family, and enjoying life to it's fullest regardless of station or wealth.
That makes it sound like a pretty basic movie, but I genuinely enjoyed it. The visual comedy is awesome, and the writing is just slick enough to entertain both adults and kids (or least adults that still enjoy kids entertainment like my wife and I).
I started watching Corman's The Raven but I just could not get into it.
I switched over to Karloff's The Mummy instead. It kind of surprised me how much of the Brendan Frasier movie actually stuck with the original story line. There is a Van Helsing-esque character in Dr. Muller, one who basically admits he is no match for the Mummy. How the Mummy ends up coming undone was a bit of a surprise to me.
There is one shot of Karloff's face, where they slowly add light to his eyes that is very powerful. So good they use it three times or so. There is also some fun model work and neat sets. Definitely tries to cash in on the Egyptology craze, about two decades too late! I ma guessing it is based on a book from that era instead.
Flinty wrote: Do they still have 165,000,987,56382’!!1!1!!111 versions of Fly Me To the Moon?
Unfortunately no, the Netflix version does not include Fly Me to the Moon. It was a weird choice to redub the show, since many of the original voice actors are still recording lines for the Rebuild of Evangelion movies and when reached for comment they said Netflix never contacted them. Shame really.
If you want the Fly me to the Moon you'll have to rely on the DVDs. GKids recently announced they've gotten the rights to the Bluray & digital release which should be released sometime in 2021.
But IT ended the way Disney would end their movies.
Somewhat. Few too many surviving parents for a 'real' Disney ending.
I am trying to think, what disney movies have parents dying at the end? Not many? or at all.
Alot of the classic parents are there at the end or just, not present in the movie.
Aladdin - Orphan
Lion King - Dad dies
Frozen - Parents die
Sword in the stone - orphan
Cinderella - orphan
Up - Wife dies
Jungle Book - Orphan
Bambi - mum dies
Big Hero 6 - I think orphan again
Peter Pan - the Lost Boys are all pretty tragic.
Rogue 1 - Mum dies, then Dad dies
Fair point that many of the orphan types just don't have parents, but there are still quite a few on-screen deaths.
Worse than that - Orphan at the start, older brother who was parenting him dies in the movie.
You also forgot:
Sleeping beauty - parents dies while unconscious
Oliver and Company - homeless, presumed orphan
101 Dalmatians - 84 puppies forceably removed from their parents and never reunited
Disney really hates it when a family stays together.
The Heights
Musical film based on... the Musical about... the Washington Heights
Wife loved it. I could not stand it after about 7 minutes.
It struck me that this was the current millennium version of a musical. No rise and fall of pacing to let the audience catch its breath, just GO GO GO. Its effectively a musical with 90% of the singing cut out and strictly just the dance routines, and a little bit of sorta rapping.
Flinty wrote: Do they still have 165,000,987,56382’!!1!1!!111 versions of Fly Me To the Moon?
Unfortunately no, the Netflix version does not include Fly Me to the Moon. It was a weird choice to redub the show, since many of the original voice actors are still recording lines for the Rebuild of Evangelion movies and when reached for comment they said Netflix never contacted them. Shame really.
If you want the Fly me to the Moon you'll have to rely on the DVDs. GKids recently announced they've gotten the rights to the Bluray & digital release which should be released sometime in 2021.
....or you buy the soundtrack cds, like the cool kids do. ;-) Good to hear they're re-releasing the dvds (or whatever).
Netflix are weird and Evangelion is not to be changed.
Frazzled wrote: The Heights
Musical film based on... the Musical about... the Washington Heights
Wife loved it. I could not stand it after about 7 minutes.
It struck me that this was the current millennium version of a musical. No rise and fall of pacing to let the audience catch its breath, just GO GO GO. Its effectively a musical with 90% of the singing cut out and strictly just the dance routines, and a little bit of sorta rapping.
In defense of the musical. They aren't written for film. If you watch the "real" version of the in heights, it's a live performance with breaks between every song so they can swap out scenery/costumes, and a 15-20 minute break in the middle for everyone to get up and pee.
A feature length documentary, and when I say feature length, we're talking 4 hours per volume plus, so it's not an undertaking for the casual viewer.
But if you're a fan of horror or cinema history, this tour of what many may argue was the golden era of the genre, the 1980s, offers insights from actors, directors, writers, SFX guys and fans to a level that I'd doubt any other era of any other genre has reached.
By necessity it's a shallow dive into a huge pond, but the sheer breadth of titles covered makes it certain that you'll find some additions to your watch list or some unknown nugget of information about a long held favourite.
But IT ended the way Disney would end their movies.
Somewhat. Few too many surviving parents for a 'real' Disney ending.
I am trying to think, what disney movies have parents dying at the end? Not many? or at all.
Alot of the classic parents are there at the end or just, not present in the movie.
I wasn't thinking of dying at the end at all. Just that the classic Disney protagonist is an orphan, or is quickly orphaned, and at best has an aunt/uncle/step-parent. So two main characters with a living parent each is really quite unusual.
I was legitimately surprised today to find that Owl House (season 2) has at least 6 living and (mostly) present parents for its 4 teenage characters.
---
I mean, I get it, its an easy storytelling shortcut where you can bypass steps and just limit a character's important connections to people they meet in a film, but its also lazy trash writing to skip out on writing characters and/or backstory. Especially when you get to the abusive guardians angle (which is also way too common in general, not just Disney).
Well, up to the ~1940s/50s is was way more common for children to lose their parents at an early age, as was the abusive guardian, and most classic stories stem from way before that. So maybe there's that playing into how disney films / fairy tales in general are designed.
Finally got the chance to watch the full movie trilogy. I have to say it's a bit disappointing. Fate is generally good at two things; surprisingly deep and insightful philosophical exposition on human nature, and action scenes. These films really feel like that come up short on both accounts. Until the third movie, each film only has one note worthy action sequence (the first film imo has very lackluster action all around). Much of the exposition on Shirou's idealism (which is the main undercurrent by which these plots work as more than generic anime stuff imo), has been cut so short that a lot of films big moments feel like gibberish.
Of the three divergent plots in the original virtual novel, Heaven's Feel is probably the one least suited to a film adaptation as even a trilogy is too short for all the heavy ground the arc originally covers. The only thing it does really well is establish the relationship between Shirou and Sakura and that part does work (though it has aged extremely poorly in the last 20 years and is very cringey now) but with all the other parts cut short the adaptation is just lackluster.
I feel like this adaptation has the catch-22 problem, where only the original fans will actually pick on everything that's necessary to understand the plot but the films adapt that plot so shallowly that even they won't be satisfied. I think the only part that's really really great is everything with Rider, who only really shines in the Heaven's Fell arc of the original VN, and is one of the best parts of these movies (though I suspect I only get her because I know all the backstory about her and her relationship with Sakura the films never bothered to explain).
Technically the 2nd Riddick film after Pitch Black, there was even a 3rd which doesn't seem to be on any of my streaming services. Mostly OK. Probably the closest to a Chaos Space Marine film we're going to get. Good painting/cooking/lying around film.
Chronicles was so-so. Lots of nice settings and Vin-Diesel does his thing well, but the movie feels less than the sum of it's parts. The third film is more stripped back and is pretty enjoyable for it.
Pitch Black though sits alongside films like Aliens and Event Horizon, on a tier just below Alien and The Thing. It's a classic sci-fi set up of creating interesting characters, put them in a rediculous situation and see what comes out the other side. Love it.
By Dad this show needs to die, its gone from spooky proxy Sherlock to insufferable gibberish wink soap opera, really surprised Netflix fronted up the money for yet more of this
American Gods s3
And this one is thankfully dead, it was a bit of a rambly book but adding yet more ramble didnt help
Love, Death & Robots
Bit more hit and miss than season 1 but as a short anthology show was alright with more hits than misses
hotsauceman1 wrote: Saw Raya and the Last Dragon.
Pretty fun, nice little adventure movie. It does seem like the movie was not originally going to end with all humans coming back(The one warrior guy and the baby looked like they where going to form a family). With the IDea that Dragons where the ones to trust last time so humans cam back and then vice versa, and humanity needing to come together to recover from a tragedy. But IT ended the way
Disney would end their movies.
The constant, CONSTANT teenager talk (or at least what a middle aged screen writer thinks kids today talk like) just ruined it for me. It wasn't funny, it kept knocking me out of the story (seriously, a reference to the 80s martial arts film The Last Dragon?) and instantly dated the film.
Gorgeous visuals, maybe it would be better dubbed into Thai.
By Dad this show needs to die, its gone from spooky proxy Sherlock to insufferable gibberish wink soap opera, really surprised Netflix fronted up the money for yet more of this
American Gods s3
And this one is thankfully dead, it was a bit of a rambly book but adding yet more ramble didnt help
Love, Death & Robots
Bit more hit and miss than season 1 but as a short anthology show was alright with more hits than misses
Ooh… more love death and robots? I loved the first season. I remember when it dawned on me why the first short seemed so familiar when I realised it was the Peter F Hamilton short story. And the transport aircraft one was just gorgeous.
Someone should option more of Hamilton’s work. The Greg Mandel series could be done quite well I think. Although having said that the reason why I really like his books are the tech descriptions, and a studio would only ruin my headcanon
It's a Pixar film, less heart than most, but still endearing. It's about two mermaid boys who run away from the ocean and try to earn enough money to buy a Vespa so they can travel the surface world.
A lot of people on the internet are trying to sell it as a gay allegory. I didn't see it, and that is an argument for another place.
"We need an idea for a new horror movie, but we don't have much cash."
"How about we rip off Blair Witch Project? That's what, over 10 years old now? Nobody will remember it!"
"I don't know, Blair Witch was pretty famous, I think another found footage horror set in the woods would be too obvious."
"Ok.. how about.. we rip off pretty much every plot beat and visual trick, but set it in an old mental asylum instead? Olde worlde mental health facilities are scarier than the woods anyway."
"What are you waiting for?!! Get out there and hire actors that are reasonable, but not quite good enough to sell being deathly afraid without coming across as whiny, screechy and/or annoying!"
What is the nature of the “monster” in the asylum? The setting feels more limited in terms of what kinds of terrors you’d be afraid of running across. Part of what made the Blair Witch work for me is just how much it used my imagination against me.
Got to admit, as much as I’m yet to not enjoy a Will Ferrell film, I have to watch them sparingly because Hollywood Laziness lead to overexposure.
He’s yet to do something I’d consider a truly solid classic, but he’s always good value for money. Because if you’re going to be in mediocre movies, you might as well go the whole hog. Kinda like Nic Cage.
Only maybe 15 minutes in, and enjoying it perfectly well.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: What is the nature of the “monster” in the asylum? The setting feels more limited in terms of what kinds of terrors you’d be afraid of running across. Part of what made the Blair Witch work for me is just how much it used my imagination against me.
There isn't really a single entity as such, so much as it was an asylum where mentally ill people were treated badly and did bad things to themselves, the staff and each other. So therefore it is a haunted and terrifying place. Perversely, there is more to it than that, but it is simultaneously extremely obvious to anyone who's seen a horror film and kind of a spoiler, so I won't say more.
You know how good this is. If you've never seen or heard of this before what are you waiting for? Most movies that are based on a specialist subject get ridiculed by professionals in the field but this is the one courtroom movie that lawyers have used as a training aid, it's that good. It's stupidly funny with Joe Pesci projecting his Goodfellas aggression through an ill prepared lawyer and there's a damn good reason Marisa Tomei earned an Oscar for this.
I'll second Henry, its an awesome film although I always pegged it as a chrimbo movie for some reason but given The Event it's December 171st so go for it
Parks and Rec
Gave this a miss at the time as looked kind of officey and to a degree it is but having been subjected to the innane ways of the civil service this was amusingly spot on
Highlander
Wonderfully 80's with shonky acting, silly accents, wonky swordplay and a glorious soundtrack, admittedly there should have only been one and the rumbling of a remake are worrying, disengage thinking and enjoy
Easy E wrote: Usually a racy scene at the beginning is the ultimate sign of suckage to come!
In the words of Tom Baker in Blackadder The Third?
That’s where you’re wrong!
It was perfectly enjoyable for a Tigon production. Competently shot, decently acted. Yes it’s all daft and very hokey. But if I wanted sensible, I wouldn’t be watching 60’s/70’s British horror starring Christopher Lee, would I, Clever Trousers!
Humph!!!!!|
*all indignation in this thread is meant to be comedic. Because tone of voice and Young One’s references don’t translate well online or through time*
hotsauceman1 wrote: Saw Raya and the Last Dragon.
Pretty fun, nice little adventure movie. It does seem like the movie was not originally going to end with all humans coming back(The one warrior guy and the baby looked like they where going to form a family). With the IDea that Dragons where the ones to trust last time so humans cam back and then vice versa, and humanity needing to come together to recover from a tragedy. But IT ended the way
Disney would end their movies.
The constant, CONSTANT teenager talk (or at least what a middle aged screen writer thinks kids today talk like) just ruined it for me. It wasn't funny, it kept knocking me out of the story (seriously, a reference to the 80s martial arts film The Last Dragon?) and instantly dated the film.
Gorgeous visuals, maybe it would be better dubbed into Thai.
You are actually bringing up something. The reason why they talk like that and written like that is so jokes can be easily translated, mostly into chinese. Saying something like "Im kinda a Dragon Nerd" is easily translated then a joke requireing cultural context.
ITs going to be like that from now on, with china and other asian countries becoming the prime market for these shows.
I mean, it's fairly obvious that Disney is taking a run at the Chinese market, but they've struggled to get any real traction.
So unless they have some sort of breakthrough, they're just as likely to concentrate on the markets where they're already successful and just take anything they get from China as a bonus.
It's a Pixar film, less heart than most, but still endearing. It's about two mermaid boys who run away from the ocean and try to earn enough money to buy a Vespa so they can travel the surface world.
A lot of people on the internet are trying to sell it as a gay allegory. I didn't see it, and that is an argument for another place.
You know I saw that one with my boys. Definitely didn't catch any gay allegory. To me, it was like if you took The Little Mermaid, made it Italian (witha a capital a 'I') and then lowered the stakes from dominion over the sea to a child's race. Very silly, very pretty, very much equivalent to the kids Netflix movie of the month.
I mean, it's fairly obvious that Disney is taking a run at the Chinese market, but they've struggled to get any real traction.
So unless they have some sort of breakthrough, they're just as likely to concentrate on the markets where they're already successful and just take anything they get from China as a bonus.
I think they're massively investing into getting into China (and take money from China in return). Certainly won't help with Disney's depiction of 'the good life' and things to aim for getting any more progressive over the next decades...
It's a Pixar film, less heart than most, but still endearing. It's about two mermaid boys who run away from the ocean and try to earn enough money to buy a Vespa so they can travel the surface world.
A lot of people on the internet are trying to sell it as a gay allegory. I didn't see it, and that is an argument for another place.
You know I saw that one with my boys. Definitely didn't catch any gay allegory. To me, it was like if you took The Little Mermaid, made it Italian (witha a capital a 'I') and then lowered the stakes from dominion over the sea to a child's race. Very silly, very pretty, very much equivalent to the kids Netflix movie of the month.
Needless to say, the boys loved it.
Funny you mention The Little Mermaid because alot of LGBTQ+ find that movie as much of the same, with ariel forbidden from pursuing who she loves. and then once she does is treated weird.
But like i mentioned to my fellow LGBTQ+ while it can be read that way and it valid, the theme is SOOOO broad it can be applied to alot of people
I happened to see on TV last night that Keira Knightly won't let her kids watch TLM because she objects to the idea that a woman gives up her voice for a man!
And yet it is her lack of a voice that allows Prince Eric to fall in love with her.
Not because she cant talk, the entire montage of her at the castle shows she is very forceful and still communicating and isnt a wallflower.
If she still had her voice, prince eric would have been enamored with her and not learn the real Ariel.
I just watched Motherless Brooklyn. I quite enjoyed it. It’s a bit longer than it needs to be, but was a pretty good modern take on private detective noir.
Edward Norton plays a private detective in 1950s New York with supporting roles for Willem Defoe and Alec Baldwin and a minor part ( barely more than a cameo) for Bruce Willis.
Azreal13 wrote: I happened to see on TV last night that Keira Knightly won't let her kids watch TLM because she objects to the idea that a woman gives up her voice for a man!
after being tricked into it by another lady whilst ignoring the wisdom of the lobster chap
hotsauceman1 wrote: And yet it is her lack of a voice that allows Prince Eric to fall in love with her.
Not because she cant talk, the entire montage of her at the castle shows she is very forceful and still communicating and isnt a wallflower.
If she still had her voice, prince eric would have been enamored with her and not learn the real Ariel.
And then he marries another woman and she decides not to brutally murder him, dies and turns into seafoam.
But at least its better than the constant agony she endures walking on land, and she'll earn a soul of her own one day, by golly.
Fun story, really.
----
But honestly, if she could speak... he'd learn less about her and she'd be more of a wallflower? Magically bound not to speak is the real her? That seems... unlikely.
Being a famous person (in acting and similar things) must be weird. Being the kid of a famous person must be even weirder.
It's also funny what people consider a danger and what they don't. But then maybe she won't let her kids watch any Disney films, which then again might be a good thing.
Post-apocalyptic dark comedy. A young man (Don Johnson) roams the deserts of post-apocalyptic (2 nuclear world wars) North America, accompanied by a dog whom he has a telepathic bond with, so they can talk to each other. The dog is a well-educated misanthrope, but he needs the boy to help him get food. In return the dog sniffs out women for the boy, who are a rare but not well-preserved commodity in that world.
Of course I'd heard of the film, but just now I watched it for the first time. Boy, 70s films are interesting. Of course the depiction of the post-apocalyptic world is very striking and inspired all the things people like. It's also depicted as being extremely violent and entirely anarchistic. Several threatsa the film implies (but which would have been expensive to actually show, like the Screamers, stray androids, irradiated insects, etc.) are left to the imagination, but that's okay. It's probably even more effective seeing people be the baddies.
It's an entertaining film. At the very least it keeps you guessing where things are going, and there are some clever (some less clever) points the film makes. The female protagonist's character is very interesting.
Watch It, it's one of the genre classics, and all the things reference it.
Also: did you know that they did a Predator film in 2018? Turned on the tv last night, saw a lady running along some scaffolding or something, above her ran a predator. Craziness. I turned it off.
Fear Street Part 1: 1994
So I never knew the books existed, but when I saw the trailers and saw that it was an adaptation of an RL Stine book series I got interested. This movie straddled a weird line between goosebumps camp and legitimate slasher film. Based on the trailer for Part 2 they played at the end, it will begin toeing the line even closer to a slasher movie.
I recomend this film to anyone who thought the trailer looked interesting. It was a good film and my wife and I are excited for part 2 to drop on friday.
balmong7 wrote: Fear Street Part 1: 1994
So I never knew the books existed, but when I saw the trailers and saw that it was an adaptation of an RL Stine book series I got interested. This movie straddled a weird line between goosebumps camp and legitimate slasher film. Based on the trailer for Part 2 they played at the end, it will begin toeing the line even closer to a slasher movie.
I recomend this film to anyone who thought the trailer looked interesting. It was a good film and my wife and I are excited for part 2 to drop on friday.
I Understood That Reference (nephews being big goosebumps fans), saving it for spooky season
So it turns out the J Jonah Jameson is Star Lord's dad! They don't get along, but that ultimately doesn't prevent them taking part in what is a sort of reverse Terminator plot where humanity is being sent forward in time to help to destroy the machines aliens.
Despite initial reservations about the generic sci-fi nature and the hefty running time, it turned out to be decently entertaining and moved along at a reasonable pace.
The aliens (sort of what the offspring of Giger's Alien fething a DnD Displacer Beast might look) carry a decent threat, the set pieces arrive regularly and with variety and the whole affair is underpinned with a suitably rousing score.
Criticisms are largely that there appears to have been a redemption arc intended for Chris Pratt's character that doesn't really work, I suspect due to rewrites softening his character in early scenes, and as per for time travel plots, it's best just to accept it as presented and not pull the thread.
It also carries a large percentage of generic action movie DNA in its makeup, but when well executed it's harder to criticize it for that.
Difficult one this. Firstly, if you've ever seen an "outsider arrives in insular, isolated community" style film, Wicker Man being the clear elephant in the room, then you know what you're getting. A fact that the director (Ari Aster, Hereditary) has acknowledged.
So then it becomes a question not of "what happens" but more "how does the film realise and play with the tropes that you're expecting."
Broadly, our main protagonist Dani (Florence Pugh) suffers a family tragedy, which, without spoilers, is both bleak and harrowing, but it needs to be for her arc to make sense. In order to try and come to terms with her grief she accompanies her (somewhat reluctant) boyfriend and his mates on an anthropologic academic summer trip to their Swedish friend's remote community to study as they celebrate the coming of the summer equinox.
This will almost certainly be the brightest and most colourful horror you'll ever watch, set at the height of summer in a part of the world where the sun seldom sets, and while the film adds little new to the genre, it has left certain imagery (and sounds) in my brain that I'm sure will be there for a while. This was enhanced by subsequently learning that significant parts of the ceremonies depicted are either factual or draw heavily from history.
A two and a half hour horror isn't an easy recommend to everybody, and equally the pacing could well lose people too. But I think if you stick with it, by and large, you'll watch a film which will ultimately make an impression and stay with you.
There's a sequence in it at the cliff that I think trumps Kill List for most graphic meaty thumping ever put on film, if you didn't make it that far then you probably didn't see everything it has to offer, but your assumption isn't far off, we all knew that's where it was going when we took the mushrooms.
Difficult one this. Firstly, if you've ever seen an "outsider arrives in insular, isolated community" style film, Wicker Man being the clear elephant in the room, then you know what you're getting. A fact that the director (Ari Aster, Hereditary) has acknowledged.
So then it becomes a question not of "what happens" but more "how does the film realise and play with the tropes that you're expecting."
Broadly, our main protagonist Dani (Florence Pugh) suffers a family tragedy, which, without spoilers, is both bleak and harrowing, but it needs to be for her arc to make sense. In order to try and come to terms with her grief she accompanies her (somewhat reluctant) boyfriend and his mates on an anthropologic academic summer trip to their Swedish friend's remote community to study as they celebrate the coming of the summer equinox.
This will almost certainly be the brightest and most colourful horror you'll ever watch, set at the height of summer in a part of the world where the sun seldom sets, and while the film adds little new to the genre, it has left certain imagery (and sounds) in my brain that I'm sure will be there for a while. This was enhanced by subsequently learning that significant parts of the ceremonies depicted are either factual or draw heavily from history.
A two and a half hour horror isn't an easy recommend to everybody, and equally the pacing could well lose people too. But I think if you stick with it, by and large, you'll watch a film which will ultimately make an impression and stay with you.
I enjoyed it, certainly made me look away a few times! Kind of a good modern version of the Wicker Man, and I thought played with similar themes of the outsider coming into a community.
One criticism I had was that the cliff jump sequence and resulting (really, horribly graphic) sequence came too early in the film. And the subsequent attempts at shock/revulsion horror (because really, where do you go from that?) felt a bit contrived.
The whole film was really unsettling though, it was a well-made horror.
“The mallet, we did a replica of the mallet from a museum we saw in Stockholm,” he said. “When they jump from a cliff that was the custom until not so long ago, for elderly people. But they mainly got pushed. And many of the cliffs are now historic sites for everyone to see. So it’s true, all of it. And that’s the scary part.”
I think the introduction of it so early is because the director felt that, as an audience, we already know what's coming, so delaying the inevitable is a bit pointless. Plus I think for the characters it creates a sort of false sense of security, when they're talked back from the edge they think they've seen the worst and now the partying can get started.
If one were to take the film as a metaphor for a break up (which Aster explicitly says it is) then I guess it lines up with the immediate aftermath of realising that you're not with someone anymore? Therefore it needs to be near the beginning.
Dad (Viggo Mortensen) raises his many many children in the wilderness because he (and mom) don't agree with how the United States turned out. It's a comedy-drama about how this family travel the US to attend the mom's wedding (who was bipolar and committed suicide), and how they clash with the US.
First off - the kids are good. None of them's annoying, the casting works, they don't get overly cutesy. Mortensen of course carries the film, with his magnificent hair and his big, scruffy beard. I like how he communicates with the kids and how the family life is depicted. He's a cool dude, but especially after his wife's death, obstinate in his beliefs because that's all he's got left, the kids and his beliefs. Problem is that the film is too much in love with the dad character. He's drawn as a somewhat ambivalent character, but not enough so in my opinion.
I liked the clash between Mortensen's family and his sister-in-law's as they visit for dinner. Okay, the sister-in-law's kids are brats, but overall it was interesting to see the different sort of communication. Still, a bit heavy leaning towards Mortensen's side overall.
The thing is that with time it becomes painfully obvious that the film very much knows its audience and in my opinion does a bit much to appeal to them. And I think that's a bit of a problem, as there is NO flexibility what so ever on either side, mostly Mortensen's. I know, that's kind of the point of the film, but still - it all feels very monolithic and instead of actually critisizing that the film seems to put all its sympathies on Mortensen's side. The ending
Spoiler:
(when they go out and steal their mom's body)
thing feels a bit tucked on, unnecessary, and makes the dad (and the kids in a way) seem incredibly selfish and draws a very weird, romantisized picture of their life and what they do. I did not like that.
The film seems to have a hard time deciding between citizism of what the US turned out to be and presenting an all too idyllic picture of a family of people who opt out (well, the parents did, the kids have no choice).
Depite it being a totally different beast, this film of course reminds me of Little Miss Sunshine. While LMS is a bit cartoonier it feels more real in a sense and not the least the arc is a MUCH more interesting one. While in LMS the family start out entirely convinced or rather not even questioning 'american values' (except maybe for the uncle, but that's a given with his background and emotional state), they come around very much putting into question what happens around them and what they subscribed to. The family in Captain Fantastic on the other hand start out being basically prisoned in their own upbringing/beliefs (much of which of course I agree with, but the execution is just odd) and THEN come around, realize that they should integrate (by means of conveniently very rich granddad, played by Frank Langella, who's always good to see) and in the end they sit at the breakfast table, awaiting the school bus.
I wonder how the film played out if the sister-in-law's family and the granddad weren't as well off materially.
Take it or Leave it. It's a perfectly fine film with an excellent cast. Feels a bit long in the end (I think it's 2 hours for some reason), but it's entertaining and well made. The only problem is that with time it's starting to feel a bit weird in terms of how the problems are presented and solved. Maybe that's just me though. Oh, and the soundtrack is revolting, but that's a given now with widely released US films with the indie label I'm afraid.
Bit of an oddity this one, tripped over it while browsing and decided to give it a go.
Its in the found footage style, although rather than "found" the film is presented as the result of making a documentary. The twist is that the host of said documentary is real-life film maker Adam Green (Frozen (not that one,) Hatchet, Holliston) playing himself, as are many of the other people on camera.
In fact, pretty much the only person with meaningful screentime not playing himself is Ray Wise (if you don't know the name, Google him, you'll have seen him in something) who plays Decker, an ex-cop with a ludicrous story he claims he can back up.
What follows is an investigation into something not unlike the idea behind Clive Barker's Cabal/Nightbreed, a hidden society where all the freaks retreat to when they're too disfigured to live on the surface.
This is a fun movie, light on scares but an entertaining premise which barrels along at a decent rate (89min runtime) which, once it pulls back the curtain actually delivers enough of a punch to actually be a little chilling at the end of the final act.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and there's cameos of proper horror royalty playing themselves for the big horror nerds out there.
Cabal was the book, Nightbreed was the movie. I had never got around to the movie until quite recently, but there's an extended/directors cut that was the version I watched which is apparently a significant improvement as the original suffered outside interference.
A thriller/fright film about a journalist investigating something in a small town in the US. Turns out they population of 436 people hasn't changed since they started tracking that, which is a bit odd. Strange things happen and whatnot.
But they take a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to do so. It's a weird film, that, in that it seems to try to work heavily with atmosphere and being a 'slow burner', but also has two jump-scares in it. However, very, very tame one. As if the film embarassed of having to resort to that sort of gak. And it should be. But anyway, there's a pretty effective scene
Spoiler:
the execution of the lady at the festival
because it's kept short and casual.
Fred Durst is in the film! At first I didn't recognize him. Turns out Fred Durst is a very unremarkable looking fella (had a look about what he's up to the past 6 years. Sheesh...), and not a very good actor. Maybe he got weird instructions for the sake of 'atmosphere'.
It's a boring, unremarkable film. Don't Watch.
Turner & Hooch (1989)
Sure, you've seen that one. No, it's not the Belushi one, that's the other one. Yeah, this one's the Tom Hanks one, with the big dog.
Anyway, I'd forgotten that Reginald ValJohnson was in that one. His third big role as a good-natured policeman friend that year! Die Hard, Turner&Hooch, Family Matters (yeah, that started in 1989, I looked it up). And I'm pretty sure he hasn't played anything else since.
The ending surprised me, then I read up on it. There's one or two interesting interviews with producers/directors about why they chose the ending.
Watch It. You've seen it anyway, and it's a staple. Might as well know it. You can't run from it anyway.
A pair of incompetent producers concoct a get rich scheme to kill off the star of their next film and cash in on the insurance. Imagine a mash up of The Producers with Wile E Coyote but no where near as good as either. It's a moderately entertaining flick with some humorous set pieces and is immediately forgettable.
Bit of an oddity this one, tripped over it while browsing and decided to give it a go.
Its in the found footage style, although rather than "found" the film is presented as the result of making a documentary. The twist is that the host of said documentary is real-life film maker Adam Green (Frozen (not that one,) Hatchet, Holliston) playing himself, as are many of the other people on camera.
In fact, pretty much the only person with meaningful screentime not playing himself is Ray Wise (if you don't know the name, Google him, you'll have seen him in something) who plays Decker, an ex-cop with a ludicrous story he claims he can back up.
What follows is an investigation into something not unlike the idea behind Clive Barker's Cabal/Nightbreed, a hidden society where all the freaks retreat to when they're too disfigured to live on the surface.
This is a fun movie, light on scares but an entertaining premise which barrels along at a decent rate (89min runtime) which, once it pulls back the curtain actually delivers enough of a punch to actually be a little chilling at the end of the final act.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and there's cameos of proper horror royalty playing themselves for the big horror nerds out there.
I can get that on Shudder, via Amazon. That’s tomorrow’s train ride south largely sorted then!
Island of Terror
Scottish Island! Bone Eating Bogies! Peter Cushing!
A really quite superior 1966 Hammeresque horror movie. If you can find it, watch it. Ideally a late night film, as that’s when I first saw it as a schedule filler back when telly wasn’t completely rubbish.
I can get that on Shudder, via Amazon. That’s tomorrow’s train ride south largely sorted then!
Got 3 months for 99p a month, I'd been tempted at full price so it was a no brainer.
Was surprised at how much of the non-exclusive content I'd seen, at least that appeals, but some of the non fiction stuff and Creepshow have been worth it by themselves.
I'd been aware of this one for a while, and it went live on Netflix UK as of yesterday, so I gave it a watch.
A young woman receives a call from her sister, worried that she hasn't been able to contact their father ahead of the imminent arrival of a severe hurricane. Living far more locally than her sibling, she promises to check on him in the face of a stay in place warning.
She ultimately tracks him down to the now abandoned family home, he's trapped in the crawlspace under the building, and he isn't alone...
We'd be in solid 5/10 territory here, but some of the creature effects are good enough to have no business in a film this cheap, which I'll give it a bonus point for. Unusually it is the practical effects, rather than CGI, which let it down, although there's nothing immersion breaking.
My biggest criticism is that exteriors are clearly filmed on a soundstage, not obviously, but there's some sort of variation on uncanny valley at work where because it looks almost right, it somehow becomes more noticeable. I daresay to undertake this movie on a real life location would have required a lot more cash, and it doesn't ruin the film.
Worth praise are a strong female lead character who strikes a nice balance between pragmatic and terrified, the effects, as mentioned, and Sugar the doggo, who is a good girl and spends most of the film shouting at her humans to stop going back into the place where the Gators are.
If you watch Casino, Quantum, Skyfall, and Spectre all together, they actually line up thematically really well. There is a clear character arc for Bond. Even if some of them are better than others.
Ron Howard makes his entry into the notoriously crowded 19th Century Whaling Film market.
What we have here is the "true" story of Moby Dick, as told to a young Herman Melville by the last living survivor of a notorious shipwreck.
Featuring Chris Hemsworth in the lead, supported by Cillian Murphy and Tom Holland, once you've got over the vague sensation that Batman or Thanos is about to leap out of the ocean, you get the story of a whaling vessel that pursues a story of herds of whale as far as the eye can see, only to discover that they're under the protection of an enormous white bull whale with apparently unusual degrees of aggression and intelligence.
For me, Ron Howard seems to have a habit of taking a story that at first glance doesn't grab me and turning it into something engaging. While ITHOTS doesn't do this quite as successfully as say Rush which is amongst my favourites, the visuals here are exceptional, the story and acting all excellent and the pacing about on the money.
There were a few moments where I reached for my phone, but overall I was immersed for most of the 2 hours.
Note for anyone who may watch it. Look out for how reasonable the whale actually is, there are a number of occasions where he has the opportunity to utterly destroy the crew where he holds back. I wasn't sure I was reading this right, but given the "moment" it shares with Chris Hemsworth's character towards the end, I think it's entirely intentional.
My buddy wanted to watch it to celebrate the anniversary of the film. It still holds up, A great movie, the extra scenes in the special edition are really nice, showing how the colony got infected in the first place and including smaller interstitial scenes that help to show the marines are genuinely good at their jobs and further highlight how terrifying the aliens are and unprepared the marines were to face them.
The Colonial Marines weren’t incompetent (as the original cut can make them look at certain points, like Hudson freaking out at the drop of a hat), but had no way of being properly prepared for facing a swarm of Xenomorphs.
After all, it’s really only Ripley who knew anything about them - and even she had only encountered a solitary example, giving no knowledge of their hive mind control and that.
While on a rideshare home from the airport, a young woman and her Über driver break down and become stranded on a little used road through the woods, while a series of increasingly weird events unfold.
Near miss this one, it succumbs a little too much to cliche and lazy storytelling, but has some redeeming features.
Probably the two worst elements are that the initial mistrust and paranoia between the two leads (prior to anything odd happening) doesn't seem earned and feels a little forced. Especially as the narrative does plenty to foster mistrust as it unfolds, it might have worked better if there was a simple comradeship between passenger and driver. There is some retrospective explanation of their attitudes to each other, but I think there was a better way here.
Secondly, the rough and unlubricated insertion of an exposition bot at about the 30 minute mark. This was just clunky, but necessary because of the other choices made. There should have been a more natural exploration of their predicament. Even the same bot arriving a little later in the movie might have felt better.
On the positive, the Toll Man is a genuinely creepy creation, something like a hybrid of the Slender Man and a cenobite, with hints of other influences. His schtich has huge potential if sequels are made (it's sort of a riff on Freddie) and the fact he's used sparingly on screen is refreshing and impactful. The performances are solid and it doesn't hang around plot wise, it's just a shame that the ending is perhaps just a little too signposted.
If this is the last time we see the Toll Man on screen it will be a shame.
The elevator pitch for this movie is clearly something along the lines of "what if we ripped off Scream, but also ripped off Stranger Things and gave it a modern period setting?"
The result is an attempt to offer a slasher movie with a twist, which is so drenched in horror movie cliché that it's difficult to take seriously. If the intent was to make a horror film, then it fails miserably, it's light on scares, light on gore, light on suspense. It's much easier to take (and to like) as a sort of high-camp love letter to the genre, much like American Horror Story but without the darker edge.
It's worth noting that it's only part 1 of what has been developed of a trilogy. The flash forwards to part 2 suggest it'll be Friday 13th to part one's Scream.
I'll be watching Part 2 more as a symptom of a current lack of fresh and interesting things to watch and a dislike of walking away from a story half told than any hope for a great movie, but I'm not completely pessimistic that it won't be at least entertaining.
Easy E wrote: If you watch Casino, Quantum, Skyfall, and Spectre all together, they actually line up thematically really well. There is a clear character arc for Bond. Even if some of them are better than others.
Ha, that's pretty cool. Never seen Quantum of Solace, come to think of it...
I thought that it was quite well know that the Craig Bonds follow a thread?
Anyway, don't watch Quantum Of Solace, it was a casualty of the writers strike and has nearly zero redeeming features beyond the pre-credits car chase.
I've watched that film twice, the second time because I couldn't remember anything other than a big explosion and a can of oil at the end. After the second take that's still all I can remember. The title song is one of the worst Bond themes too, also completely forgettable.
But at least I made it through QoS (twice!). I couldn't even get half way through Spectre, it was that bad.
Azreal13 wrote: I thought that it was quite well know that the Craig Bonds follow a thread?
Anyway, don't watch Quantum Of Solace, it was a casualty of the writers strike and has nearly zero redeeming features beyond the pre-credits car chase.
Also was a very short turn around release by MGM, who had released a couple of films that had bombed in the box office at that time and needed something that was a guarantee ticket seller.
It's definitely by far the weakest of the Craig Bond films I think.
Well, what a difference a near total change in cast and setting makes!
As fairly obvious from anything connected to the movie or its marketing, 1978 is the Friday XIII to 1994's Scream.
Set against the background of the Summer Camp Slasher trope, we start to get more information about the Witch, the series' big bad and architect of all the bad things that have happened in the town of Shadyside.
Framed as a flashback in the immediate aftermath of part 1, this installment seems all round better acted and written. Many of the (relatively few) deaths in part 1 felt rather arbitrary, even for characters with a lot of screen time. Here, what are in fact quite arbitrary deaths feel brutal and impactful.
There's little point in talking about the story, it is either wholly familiar already or a spoiler. But suffice to say the whole affair is more engaging than part 1.
Part 3 looks interesting, as while the period witch hunt genre isn't completely unexplored, this will be the first story that isn't set in the context of a retread of an iconic film.
Hopefully the series can end on a high and provide a satisfactory conclusion to the Shadyside Witch arc.
And, as will come as no surprise to anyone paying even a modicum of attention...
Fear Street, Part 3: 1666
Or, but nowhere near as catchy, Half 1666, Half 1994 Part 2.
As we enter the final act of the trilogy, we get to see behind the curtain and relive the events that spawned the legend behind parts 1 and 2. In 1666, the still fledgling settlement of Union is afflicted by a series of disturbing and tragic events. Looking for someone to blame, the puritan population turns to poor unwed Sarah Fier, who appears to spend a lot of time with girls...
Once again told as a flashback, as in Part 2, once the events of 1666 play out we return to 1994, where our heroine now understands what she needs to do to defeat the evil in her town and save her girl.
The first half is entertaining enough, peppered with dodgy "historic" accents and fairly predictable (a criticism to be levelled across the whole trilogy) but it's the return to 1994 where the wheels come off.
What we end up with is some sort of weird Frankenstein of Home Alone, any number of slasher pics and, I don't know, Clueless? (It's set in a mall.) There's also a weird decision to light the climax as if it's illuminated by blacklights, which, unless I missed a crucial line of dialogue, has no in-universe justification.
Needless to say, events reach a resolution, balance is restored and baddies are vanquished. But with a post credits sequence to rival Flash Gordon's, who knows for how long?
I absolutely loved the Fear Street films. I would like to point out that these movies are based on an RL Stine Book Trilogy that was squarely aimed at the Teen demographic. So these movies were basically aimed at teenagers. I think as far as Teen horror these movies succeed very well in that regard.
Im making my way through pixar films i never got around to watching during the late 2000s because i was a big boy to old for cartoons.
Just watched Ratatouille.
God that film is so sweet, not overly saccharine or filled with cheap emotional moments meant to manipulate you(Looking at you opening of up) but genuine moments of closeness.
Also a romance that develops naturally over time.
balmong7 wrote: I absolutely loved the Fear Street films. I would like to point out that these movies are based on an RL Stine Book Trilogy that was squarely aimed at the Teen demographic. So these movies were basically aimed at teenagers. I think as far as Teen horror these movies succeed very well in that regard.
I'm aware they're by Stine, but without doing further research I had no frame of reference as to whether they had been written targeting the Goosebumps crowd or skewed older. Nothing on Netflix gives any clues either, they're in fact rated 18 in the UK which is approximate to R in the US I believe. While it's clear they're not going after the Hostel crowd, there's nothing to suggest that they shouldn't be taken as films aimed at adults either.
My wife and son are really getting into cooking shows, so…
Nailed It! A comedy cooking show that will make you feel really good about your own half-assed cooking.
Sugar Rush: A cooking competition where three dubiously skinny pastry chefs judge which sophisticated dessert the average viewer is least likely to appreciate.
Film by Takashi Miike. A family fell on hard times, based on the promise of a big road built to make a rural region a tourist destination they open a small guesthouse. Unfortunately the building of the road is delayed over and over and no guests show up. At some point they do though, but the Katakuris soon wish they hadn't.
It's a musical pitch-black comedy which makes use of a LOT the medium film offers. It's not extremely coherent or even, but it's always fun and keeps you guessing. The way I saw it is that it makes use of a lot of Japanese tropes.
The cast is excellent, and despite everything that happens it's an upbeat film with some (to me) genuinely funny moments and ideas. I could well see somebody not liking this film if they aren't too keen on Japanese pop culture presentation, or insist in an even tone or logic. But this basically is a fun ride and in the end we can have a good think whether this film goes along with the "family is the superest!" thing so many films do or subvert that very basic catch-all idea. Overall I'm inclined to go with the former, but only to have a little fun with film conventions.
Watch It. It's interesting and most likely you'll find it to be good fun. At the worst you'll get to claim you saw a Takashi Miike film without having to deal with too much trauma.
I think I saw another film too, but I can't remember it.
Other than that I've been watching some DS9 again. Oh, I'm also giving Brooklyn99 another shot as background noise when videogaming. Turns out the show is almost passable if I don't have to see Andy Samberg's face. Also started watching Parks&Recreation with a friend. I see why people like Ron Swanson. The acceptable face of US Libertarianism, good hair, and funny too. And I see why this is the only way people are willing to watch Chris Pratt. His is a delightful character.
Nailed It! A comedy cooking show that will make you feel really good about your own half-assed cooking.
Sugar Rush: A cooking competition where three dubiously skinny pastry chefs judge which sophisticated dessert the average viewer is least likely to appreciate.
Check out Crime Scene Kitchen on Hulu if you have it. First Season just wrapped up. A bunch of bakers have to go into a dirty kitchen and determine what was cooked there and recreate it. It was really fun to try and follow along and guess who was right based on what clues were and were not found by the different groups.
How enjoyable one finds this movie is almost certainly going to track very closely with how enjoyable the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies were.
Substitute the Amazon for the Caribbean, Germans for the English and undead jungle Conquistadors for undead oceanic Pirates and you're getting really close to describing the overall foundation for Jungle Cruise.
One way it does depart is by making Emily Blunt's Lily and Jack Whitehall's McGregor brother and sister, which does change the dynamic between the 3 leads (the other being The Rock's Rick.) But otherwise I firmly feel the leads from PotC could be substituted in and barely anyone would notice.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, those films, also based on a theme park ride, were massively successful, and copying this formula still produces a solid, well paced family action film with largely excellent effects and production values and perfectly decent performances from the lead actors. I have seen better CGI animals than Proxima the jaguar though, which lets things down a bit.
Overall, everything is fine, although there's little new here. But this isn't really the area to be experimenting. This is a McDonald's of a movie, it's by no means the best, but it won't offer any unpleasant surprises either.
Not a fan either, but as his character is a hapless fop, it plays to his strengths. That aside, it might be the best I've seen him act in anything regardless, there wasn't one moment where I felt he was going to wink at the camera and make a crack about Freddie Flintoff's knob or something.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays actor who doesn't fit into New Hollywood and his career is on its downturn. Brad Pitt plays his stuntman-come-chauffeur-handiman-confidant-friend. The Polanski/Tate couple moved into the neighboring house. Hijinks ensue.
Or not. It's a perfectly fine film, written, shot, presented and acted very well (great cast top to bottom. And it was great seeing Luke Perry again one more time.). Better than the average blockbuster, that's for sure, but that's also a given, isn't it. I'm sure I missed about 120,000 references to things Mr.Tarantino likes. DiCaprio's/Pitt's lives are depicted as a weird mix of hustling/unsure prospects and a well-off boredom.
But we see that everything seems to come to an end. We constantly see the protagonists' ageing faces, despite a cool or dramatic demeanor. I think what we see here is less of a story and more Mr.Tarantino telling us "that's it". Not just with his film career, but also with the whole Hollywood thing altogether. Because if he believed that there was something left to do this film would be less of a nostalgic slideshow of what things used to be like in the late 1960s, and less doctoring DiCaprio into old TV serials and even The Great Escape.
It does go on a bit, that film. But Tarantino had himself a Hollywood of his childhood built and he'll gosh darn play with it for as long as he can! Can't blame him. As I said, there's nothing bad I can say about that film. It's as inconsequential as the life of DiCaprio's character is. However, parallel with this whole feeling of impending doom we of course have the horrible Tate murder coming up, which gives the film a two-layered sort of tension which slowly builds.
Spoiler:
The ending is very, very reminiscent of the one of Inglorious Basterds. What Tarantino does there is pretty darned clever: We know historically something really bad happened, but in film HE is in charge and in a weird moralistic twist, he won't allow for that horrible thing to happen in his domain. Instead he presents a pretty infantile revenge/alternate version in which the good guys win in graphic fashion.
Firstly, I'm a fan of cars, when the first movie came out it was a time when I was driving the sort of vehicles that might have appeared in the film. While I never spent £££ on Nos or anything, I had a personal connection to the film and the culture it portrayed. So I am not predisposed to hate this film.
But.. gak..
What do you do with a movie that cost $200m+ and can't even get the sound of British police sirens right? That plays so fast and loose with physics that Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner would be embarrassed? That is clearly so determined to give all its friends at least a cameo so they can pick up a cheque that it warps the movie into a great lurching Frankenstein's monster of plots and sub plots? That reduces two characters (Tyrese and Ludacris) to essentially a double act like Jar Jar and Scrappy Doo? That apparently cannot give any of it's characters a peaceful death, including, I have an awful sense of foreboding for X, those played by people that are _actually_ dead?
I'd give a summary of the plot, but the people who wrote it clearly don't give a gak so why should you?
But do you know what the utter tragedy of this film? The tragedy is that buried within the ridiculous space plot that makes Mookraker's look plausible, and all the other random nonsense, is what appears to be a story about a young Dom that deserves its own movie. A good movie, one that could recapture the spirit of the first film.
Azreal13 wrote: Fast 9 But do you know what the utter tragedy of this film? The tragedy is that buried within the ridiculous space plot that makes Mookraker's look plausible, and all the other random nonsense, is what appears to be a story about a young Dom that deserves its own movie. A good movie, one that could recapture the spirit of the first film.
Don't you find all franchises get like this? I loved the build up to Endgame, but the movie itself was a wet fart with too much crammed in. X-men kept adding more and more, but their better films are the likes of Logan and New Mutants, stripped back to show off the characters. The later Star Wars films are garbage examples of how to stuff films beyond the brim with everything except plot, but Rogue One showed that a focused script can deliver a rewarding story.
I haven't watched the F&F films in general as there seems nothing to appeal to me, but I found Hobbes and Shaw entertaining. Your review sounds like they're back to bigger, bigger, bigger, which means once again I have no interest.
Edit: also, I've read your posts for years and I'd have never picked you out as one of the Max Power crowd. For some reason I find that so funny.
No, no. Not gakky Hondas with neons and shiny pointless gak. I was not driving anything with stickers on it, nor was I standing around in car parks looking at it because I couldn't afford the petrol to actually drive anywhere.
I just liked to drive fast cars fast, back when I had the money. I have the insurance claims history to testify to many of my learning experiences!
But I bought fast cars, I didn't buy gak cars and try and make them faster, which is what the Max Power crowd always seemed to be doing. Buddy of mine used to be management at Halfords, I've witnessed that gak close up and it isn't for me.
As to the film, one has to remember that this franchise has been on this trajectory for some time now, and even allowing for that, the space shark has been jumped.
Estranged son returns to his late mother's house to (I think) sort through her effects and prepare her house for sale.
This movie feels like it's been made by someone who's seen a lot of horror films (it has) but only seems to understand that some things are considered scary without understanding why they're scary, so simply putting them on screen and pointing the camera at them doesn't actually do anything.
He also breaks the Chekhov's Gun idea on multiple occasions which is frustrating. For instance, the protagonist discovers something on VHS tape which would seem impossible. His reaction is to destroy the tape, and despite those events being captured in the same house, it isn't referred to in any context from that point.
But, disjointed narrative aside, this film commits the cardinal sin of simply being boring for long stretches. The director seems to think, as mentioned, filming an actor for long periods looking at things intended to be spooky while playing spooky music is enough to build tension. Once or twice, maybe, but you can't build a film out of it.
There's also some sort of message here too. It's muddy, but there seems to be some commentary on religion here, as well as some sort of idea about young people not caring for the elderly, and the resultant loneliness makes an appearance as an erratically realised CGI were-cat.
Perhaps the messaging is clearer with more focused viewing, but the movie never draws you in sufficiently to notice.
I can't decide if Dynasty Warriors is the best or the worst adaptation I've ever seen. The movie is good awful. At the same time, it is what it says it is XD
It’s 13 years old. It’s the first of what would become the cinematic juggernaut that is the MCU.
And it still holds up today. The plot moves along at a decent clip. There are no real filler moments, and some great fight scenes (especially his first mission. Always nice to see bullies get their comeuppance). The effects are still pretty great.
I checked this out to see if it's something for Kyoto Secunda and her Clone Sister Kyoto Secunda Prime to see if it was kid safe and matched their interests.
Think about the upper limit and ceiling for how good a She Ra reboot could possibly be, especially for an adult. I mean I have vague memories of He Man and She Ra from back in the day, and even in grade school I thought they were piss poor toys and shows.
So think of how good this could be. Now double that number. Now triple that. That's how good it is.
I went to check out the first 2 or 3 episodes and ended up binging it. Then seeing it again with the girls.
It manages to be a good adventure story and a parody of magic girl stories and an inclusive LGBT friendly update. 's good.
You know how some movies have really cool ideas, a decent cast, and look like you're really going to enjoy it but then the movie bends over backwards to keep the plot going for no reason?
This movie kind of blows its own brains out around the 45 minute mark when the villains seem to realize that if the cast ever escaped Giligan's Island it would end the series and they can't end the movie at the 45 minute mark so they have to just blow off their entire plan to go chasing red herrings to keep the film going.
was in a movie kick today while completing some model bases and generally relaxing
Justice Society WW 2- like most dc animated, a solid film, i believe I've seen it commented on in this thread before. as per usual, gak goes weird when flash runs real fast
Guns Akimbo- silly levels of violence, some funny lines tossed out during gun fights and such. I often find myself enjoying the weird ass projects Daniel Radcliff does since he
has that harry potter money and can thus pick odd stuff
Batman Soul of the Dragon- batman meets 70's kung fu movie. I enjoyed it, the music really helped set the tone. rather light on actual batman at times
I'd been waiting for this to come out, only to realise it had released months ago.
This is a Ben Wheatley film, and his first return to true horror since 2011's Kill List
In many ways this acts as a companion piece to that film. It shares many characteristics such as shots that linger on things when other films would cut away, when Wheatley does gore it's always impactful and it stays with you because of this. Also, both films play with the idea of whether things are paranormal reality or simply a case of bad people and (in this case) hallucination. There's also seldom a frame wasted. No doubt a product of low budget film making (and in the case of In The Earth being produced during a pandemic, something which the plot leans into) every cut away is laden with symbolism and foreshadowing
To discuss the plot in detail is hard without spoilers, but suffice to say it may alter your view of the safety of the British countryside, and has its roots (pun intended) in a legitimate scientific theory, just taken (hopefully) beyond the scope of what is possible. Or none of it happened at all and they're high all the time. But the ambiguity is part of the fun.
This won't be for everyone, at times it is literally hard to watch (no film deserves a photo sensitivity warning more than this) and events aren't necessarily laid out neatly like a trail of breadcrumbs for the viewer to follow. But if bleak, brutal, disconcerting British horror is your thing, it's worth your time.
Sorry about the hammer thing. And all the nightmares the final act will give you.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Fun fact: The "hammer thing" in Kill List was sufficient to put my ride or die horror movie buddy off the genre more or less for good. She's now the sort that yelps at jump scares in the middle of a crowded cinema.
A Fantasy flick that I am surprised has some big names in it such as The Dude, Jigsaw from the Punisher series, and Julie Anne Moore. I do always enjoy Julie Ann Moore.
This was better than any movie in the Dragonheart series, but that is not saying much. It is pretty much just generic fantasy, and I kept calling out how much it references other, better movies. This is no great shakes, but it is fun to hear The Dude's Gandalf impression.
Azreal13 wrote: Sorry about the hammer thing. And all the nightmares the final act will give you.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Fun fact: The "hammer thing" in Kill List was sufficient to put my ride or die horror movie buddy off the genre more or less for good. She's now the sort that yelps at jump scares in the middle of a crowded cinema.
I’m made of odder stuff. At the risk of sounding condescending, I’ve got a solid ‘this isn’t actually real, so don’t worry about it’ filter. It certainly holds up to horror and psychological films really well.
The hammer scene was visceral right enough, and impressive in terms of the practical effects, but it doesn’t upset me as such. Not a macho flex or owt, just the way I’m wired.
Though…..
Dark City
A more interesting take on the same concept as The Matrix, and for me a superior film. Unfortunately last time I saw it I was in a very odd mental health space, and kind of half disappeared down a rabbit hole.
I’m now genuinely scared about watching it again, because such episodes aren’t constructive, pleasant or welcome.
But everyone else should give it a whirl - ideally in trusted company, just in case it does to you what I did to me last time I watched it!
And for clarity? I’m not claiming it to be a mental health trigger. There’s nothing gory or singularly unpleasantness within it.
I just found it a head weasel when I watched it when I wasn’t in a good head space.
A world controlled by Richard O'Brian and his cloney looky-likes is unsettling on the level of that music demon from Buffy (am fairly immune to spooky and bloody but musicals are another level of bafflement )
I saw the first 2 minutes of that one, but turned it off because it looked too dark. Also was around the beginning of the year and it featured US insurgency or something like that, and I don't care for that stuff.
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
It was surprisingly alright when I caught it at night on TV a bunch of years ago, so I guess that's one category. Not sure I'd seek it out to watch again. I'd rather watch Girl Next Door again (which to me for some reason feels like a very similar sort of thing). I think it's even on Netflix. I might watch it again? Let's see.
) drive their car, it breaks down in the middle of nowhere, before that they almost collide with some local's truck,they have a few words, etc.
