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Even on the TV show she was really unmemorable. The other girl had a funnier face (Beverly whatsherface), the elder brother (Barry Watson?) had better stories (AND I think I even enjoyed that bogeyman film more than any of Biel's films) IIRC she was together with Justin Timberlake(?), which gave her come publicity and the starred in several really underwhelming films (I remember the film in which Nic Cage can look 3 seconds into the future, which is an interesting concept, but ended up meh and some Texas Chainsaw Massacre film directed by Michael Bay[?] which was very, very meh). And Blade 3 of course, which was crap.

...which brings us back to the Blade discussion!


Btw, that Academy Awards show had some serious wtf moments, didn't it? Celebrating the 30th anniversary of "white boys can't jump"!? Also, they can't tell me that that was Rosie Perez and not her daugher or something.
The whole thing with the one presenter calling some dudes back for testing and whatnot was really backwards and tacky (switching one gender for another is NOT making it any less backwards or in any way clever. It's like remaking hollywood films with the main cast switched for women. It's not empowering or anything, it's cheap, it's morally, conceptually and dramatically devoid of any idea or spark).

Did not watch, and it sounds like I made the right decision.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
James Corden?

That’s him, that’s the Unmentionable One.

God how I loathe him.

Arguably he would have improved both AvP films.

Man I am not going to be able to get over that other thread of yours

Manborg

This is the movie Space Cop wishes it were. Tons of low budget charm, sharply-stupid dialogue, so-bad-it’s-brilliant acting, excessively over-the-top gore, intentionally awful dubbing, all the post-apoc/dystopian tropes, stop motion mixed with CGI…Manborg has it all. If you like Kung Fury, you need to see Manborg.

PS: The TIE Advanced panels on his armor really cracked me up.

PPE: After the credits there is at least one fake trailer. I don’t know if there are any after that because my wife had enough after 30 seconds of the BioCop trailer. (Fortunately, it’s on YouTube.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Never mind: looks like Youtube removed the BioCop trailer.

Master

A movie about a young black girl going to a highly prestigious university and there's some spooky stuff too.

I like this movie. I appreciate that the horror elements are atmospheric more than jump scary. There's this brooding sense of dread to it. That something is not right. Unfortunately, it's a bit hindered by otherwise using a lot of generic scenes. Lights go out. Weird shadows. Inexplicable stuff. Honestly, a lot of stuff that seems like it's a set up to a jump scare but then there is no scare. Or at least, not the one you were expecting. It's clever at times but I think the set ups overplay themselves too much for their underplayed payoffs to really payoff.

I hesitate to call Master good because in a lot of parts its kind of clunky, but it's got some moments man. A bit of a hammer on an anvil sometimes but still. It's a movie that'll make you think. Big on that is that there's a severe air of authenticity to this film's themes. They're not hollow and they don't feel cheap even if the set ups don't always work. There's a sense that the makers of this film are speaking very much from personal experience. I think the hindrance is that, a lot of the time, Master feels like two separate movies. One, a drama about the intersection of expectation and circumstance, and a spooky ghost story that substitutes discrimination where the jump scares should be.

I appreciate how very much like Get Out this movie is. It's not as good as Get Out, but it's maybe a bit easier to wrap your head around what the film is trying to say. If you liked Get Out, I'd suggest trying Master.

Crimson Peak

Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston get together with Del Toro to get together to make a classic Gothic horror movie.

It is good, but not quite there because if you have ever seen a Hammer horror movie, you pretty much know what is going to happen in this flick.

That said, sometimes the journey is the fun and the movie looks gorgeous, and the acting is top notch. However, the pay-offs are just not there.

That one kinda had me wanting to watch it. It looked very pretty in that half of the trailer I've seen.

Someone mentioned Bourne a couple of pages ago so let's do it!

The Bourne Identity
This is it. The big one. The one that changed cinema history!

That's not me being hyperbolic, this literally changed the shape of action cinema. This came out the same year as Die Another Day, Brosnan's last hurrah as James Bond and a spectacular disaster of a movie. DAD was a mess of a film. The plot didn't matter - Bond is here, now he's here, now he's going to who cares where. Bond went where the script needed him to go for no reason other than they wanted cool visuals. And the action was laughable. With all the budget in the world they managed to make the biggest explosions seem small due to poor framing and forgetting the basics of cinema.

Now look at Bourne Identity and you have a tightly scripted plot. Bourne goes places because it makes sense for him to go there - this happens therefore Bourne goes here, which causes this to happen meaning Bourne now goes here. Everything flows.

And the action! Physical, grunty, close up and dirty. This was three years before Batman Begins boasted about it's up close and dirty fighting. And the framing! The mini scene is a masterpiece of action. All action when being filmed is done as safely as possible and that means the director has to create the illusion of tension and danger in a safe working environment. Good directors frame the shots so you feel the pace and speed without breaking the illusion, bad directors make fast chase scenes look slow and big explosions look tiny. The Bourne Identity feels fast throughout due to great framing.

And then, just before the credits roll, we get the two beats of synthesised strings that come to symbolise the end of magnificent action cinema. The Bourne Identity is by no means flawless, but it is damn good throughout and an important part of cinema history.


The Bourne Supremecy
It would be difficult to be a better film than Bourne Identity so it's not a damning criticism to say that this doesn't quite live up to the original. While the plot and Bourne's actions do work there is a feeling of guided force, as though the writer couldn't quite get it to flow. We're encouraged to ignore the fact that some of the CIA's finest couldn't work out for themselves that an assassin they trained to the highest ability wouldn't make the stupid mistakes that lead them on to him.

Our lead antagonist is also pretty damn annoying with her behaviour and mannerisms in the situation room, acting like she's barely any better than the cheesy cack handed script that passed for fake tension in the "24" series. Until at the half way point Brian Cox' character gives her a one line put down that puts it all into context. It's pretty good writing.

Sadly the film doesn't quite stick the ending. Once we're finished in Berlin that's the plot wrapped up, but we end up heading to Moscow for a lengthy action sequence that doesn't really add anything of value. It isn't helped by the shonky camera work of the car chase scene making the action hard to follow and inducing headaches. Still a good film but has many obvious flaws.


The Bourne Ultimatum
Picks up where the predecessor left off in both story and style, and that leads it towards being ok but nothing outstanding. We have to put up with the two cocks of the CIA preening at each other with more of the laughable "24" dialogue, in front of what, in the previous films, was a crack team bought together to overcome a formidable foe, but who have now been replaced by a faceless group of nobodies whacking away at keyboards, doing little more than being the target of that same inept "24" script. We get some good set pieces (Waterloo) and the plot is functional and a step above Bourne Supremecy.

So it's ok and little else.

And then we hit Tangier. This huge segment of the film is excellent from start to finish. Whatever came before is forgiven for its mistakes and everything that comes afterwards can ride the coattails, sticking the fingers up at whoever it likes, because this segment makes the film. It's brilliant.


Overall the first three Bourne films are highly recommended viewing. The sequals never hit the heights of the first, but they also don't ever drop below being good films. Go and rewatch them, they're well worth it.

 Henry wrote:

The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Ultimatum


Overall the first three Bourne films are highly recommended viewing. The sequals never hit the heights of the first, but they also don't ever drop below being good films. Go and rewatch them, they're well worth it.

IMHO, the 2 sequels fall short of the original film for one big reason: the deviation from the source materials.

Now, we all know that at times there are necessary deviations from book to film. Sometimes its because something just does NOT translate onto the screen at all. Sometimes its because the novelist left a giant gaping plot hole, and the film can sort of patch that up.

So, Bourne Identity is indeed a tight bit of story telling. The book is largely the same in that regard. . . However, the film scriptwriters (mind you, this is before the big period fun piece came along, such as Man from UNCLE, or Atomic Blonde, so that formula for making period spy flicks work in the modern age work just wasnt there yet) deviated from what was, at its heart, a cold-war era novel. I kinda feel like the film has been out long enough, and I know the book has as well, that I won't hide this in spoiler text (I'll also refrain somewhat from too many spoilers). . .

So, In Identity, you have a CIA super spy who has a classic video game trope happen to him (the God of War trope, ya know: do the tutorial section of the game in a godlike state, full abilities, etc. then have The Thing happen where the game releases you into the "real" game with nothing). . . he has "The Thing" happen to him, wakes up with no memory at all (obviously, he has muscle memory and all the skills, so bit different from video game protagonists) and as soon as people start coming after him, he has to reacquire his memory. . . Now, in the book, he was created specifically to hunt Carlos the Jackal. Which is a very, VERY cold war bit of novelist stuff. Movie goers at that time were no longer in the cold war frame of mind, so they changed him to this super assassin dude operating in a modern, non-bipolar world.

And because of that one huge change, it kind of makes the rest of the series hard to adapt to. . . I mean, you basically just cannot pick up book 2 of the trilogy books and write the script straight from it. You have to do some major tweaks because all of that cold war stuff is gone. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like the films, and will on occasion watch them, but having grown up on the novels well before the films came out, it was somewhat disappointing the direction the overall films went, so I am not as enthusiastic as some folks.

Speaking of books vs films...

Harry Potter and the Secret Room

Another Kyoto Secunda request (she's currently plowing through Order of the Phoenix) and I'll go with the consensus here. A perfectly serviceable adaptation of the book but not its own thing. Even at nearly 3 hours (we had to watch it over 2 nights) it feels like a lot of the plot does not get its due. The shocking reveal of who had the diary is not shocking since we've barely seen her. The shocking reveal about the Dark Arts teacher is not all that shocking since he's barely a tertiary character. They both had more presence in the book, I read it more than 15 years ago and even I could feel this as an abbreviated version.

It's a great example of why films are adaptations and you can't just use the novel as your script. Had Director Chris Columbus more freedom to adapt the book he might have changed the diary holder to a main character to give it more impact, or cut the twist entirely.

Thinking back to LotR it's strange they didn't do extended DVD versions of the films, it's not like they didn't have the audience to support them.

Kyoto Secunda's main complaint was that they changed the entrance of Dumbledore's office from 2 gargoyles to a griffon statue, and changed the password. To which I have only one thing to say...

Carry on Screaming

For anyone not British, the Carry On films are something of a National Institution. Often shown as filler on TV, very fond of their innuendo and typically cheaply made.

This is their send up of Hammer Horror, and it’s really quite brilliant. Perhaps not the funniest of the bunch (that’s Carry On Dick if you ask me), but it’s a very solid Hammer spoof.

Plus, Fenella Fielding’s role as Valeria might’ve left quite the impression on me when I was wee!



Watch it if you get the chance, because it’s bloody good fun!

Good choice, sir.

I found the following (satirical) article to be insightful about the social issues that surround the series

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-entertainment/carry-on-films-found-to-be-sexist-20190913189007

The Guardian provides a somewhat more cerebral assessment

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/04/carry-on-films-working-class-heyday

Oh to the modern mind the Carry On series most certainly has a wide variety of problematic comedy tropes.

However, as much as I’m a dirty lefty social justice warrior, I still think it’s of value to remember such things were acceptable at the time, and quite often comedy from that period was in fact punching upwards.

The best examples of that I can think of right now are the Goodies episodes South Africa and the episode the name of which escapes me sends up The (massively racist and frankly inexcusable) Black & White Minstrel show.

Both of those episodes, when viewed without their historical context are just outright offensive. But when you look into it, you can see they were coming from the right place, and attacking what they were sending up.

Social context is important.

Khyber will always be my favourite.

"Oh dear, I seem to have gotten a little plastered."

Carry On Up The Khyber is superb.

They’re very silly movies from a different era. Anyone seeking them out from these posts? Prepare for some genuinely in the modern era offensive material though. Just, don’t knock them for it.

Don't Lose Your Head is my favourite, but it's only the last three (England, Emmanuelle and Columbus) that I would say are actually bad.

Even when Carry On… is bad, they’re still fun.

I know I saw Carry On Columbus around the time it came out. I know it has Julian Clary in it. But I’ve not seen it in decades.

Hopefully it’s on BritBox!

I saw several of them when Austrian tv showed'em some time in the early 90s in the afternoon. Of course I'm sure that a lot of the innuendo and fun is lost in translation. Even though ....back then German dub studios were really good at adding their own jokes. Who knows.

Either way - I approve of enjoying old things.


The whole thing about context is very important indeed.

Carry on Cleo is a special one - they followed the hollywood epic Cleopatra around and borrowed some of the sets, then when they both came out together the Carry on out sold the epic in the UK by a long way!

For clarity? My argument of Context isn’t to deny that things weren’t offensive at the time, nor that people weren’t offensive.

More that the comedy of any given period works because it lampoons and jabs at the social norms.

Now. Some old comedy is absolutely lazy and plied it’s trade embracing negatives. But a lot of it punched upwards. Using the offensive tropes to point how utterly ridiculous given social norms can be.

And that is where the context comes in. The Goodies “South Africa” episode still has a significant level of cringe. But at the time? It was spot on,

Caught the last 15 minutes of Drive on TV last night. What a film. One of my all-time favourites for certain.

See You Yesterday

(Netflix film)

Two high school students develop time travel. When one's brother is shot by police she tries and tries again to set things right.

It was... OK. Mostly watched it because the kids go to my old high school and their teacher is Michael J Fox. Lots of Guyanese characters too if, like me, you have an attachment there.

Otherwise... I mean it was OK. OK isn't bad right?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
When one's brother is shot by police she tries and tries again to set things right.

So it's another one of those recurring time loop films? I find those to be pretty hit and miss. The likes of Happy Death Day and Vantage Point (not a time loop, but the same thing being repeated) drag on a bit too much in the early part of the film, repeating what we've already seen with just too little of a change to be engaging. They usually pick up in the second half when the writer stops leaning on the gimmick and actually moves things forward.

I think Edge of Tomorrow is the gold standard for how to do the time loop trope. Enough similarity with previous loops but plenty of changes to keep the movie progressing.

 Henry wrote:

So it's another one of those recurring time loop films? I find those to be pretty hit and miss. The likes of Happy Death Day and Vantage Point (not a time loop, but the same thing being repeated) drag on a bit too much in the early part of the film, repeating what we've already seen with just too little of a change to be engaging. They usually pick up in the second half when the writer stops leaning on the gimmick and actually moves things forward.

Nah not so much, it's more of a character piece, the 2 leads are reasonably charismatic.

It's also the sort of film that some folks would call woke, Spike Lee produced it and other than Michael J Fox I think every speaking character is black, Latino or Caribbean and of course part of the whole point is 2 kids from Brooklyn inventing time travel in their garage

But that's OK, it makes perfect sense, cause they went to the f'ing Bronx High School of Science and kids there can do that!

Suck it Stuyvesant!

Sonic

Like Paddington but with robots, splodes and s/fx in place of quirky charm, s'alright, which seems a recurrent theme with everything I've watched lately and would make a good slogan for Netflix, also it's not Jim Careys good film for this decade

I watched three films on the plane home and they were a mixed bunch.

Judas and the Black Messiah

A phenomenal film and one I wish I'd been able to see at the cinema. Great cast and well brought together. The pacing is really good and they stick close to real events. Of course it's a depressing film because it's based on real life. I think the worst of it was that Fred Hampton was only 21 when he was assassinated. I'm excited to see how Shaka King's directorial career progresses. I hope he continues to work with Lakieth Stanfield as they have collaborated in the past.

Next up was: Godzilla vs King Kong and you know what, it wasn't quite as bad as I thought. Was it good? Hard to say because my expectations were so low. I had watched one of the previous new Godzilla movies and I hated it. Godzilla was in it for 2 minutes. Nobody watches one of those movies because they give the slightest gak for the tiny little miserable humans down below. This one did a good job of having the giant creatures bashing each other. That's all I can ask for.

The last one was Suicide Squad ...

Bleughk. I have reached the stage where I dislike superhero movies almost as much as I hate Vikings. I didn't think that would be possible. Viola Davis was the one good thing about that film. Her character was at least interesting. Will Smith was okay as well, he can at least act. I don't fault Margot Robbie because it was her script and also being anything to do with Jared Leto which ruined that. I can't wait for superheroes to die. I don't think it will anytime soon because there's so much money in that genre now that it'll last for decades. I say this as someone who was even an extra in Avengers End Game. At one point years ago I liked Superhero movies. But that ship has sailed and sunk and is lying in the bottom of the Black Sea. is completely fine and operational.

 Olthannon wrote:
... I have reached the stage where I dislike superhero movies almost as much as I hate Vikings....

Yeah, I think we can be friends.

As a person from Minnesota, I have a very complicated relationship with Vikings.

Dune

What a pretentious, pointless, vacant piece of nothing. A ghastly film purely on account of the gaping chasm of emptiness taking up the space where the purpose of the film should have been.

 Henry wrote:
Dune

What a pretentious, pointless, vacant piece of nothing. A ghastly film purely on account of the gaping chasm of emptiness taking up the space where the purpose of the film should have been.

Which one? New or old one?

I'd completely agree if your comment was about the new one, it's massively overrated and I'm a huge fan of Villeneuve's. Old one is even worse, much worse.