Recently watched movies!

[lhb412]

[canofhumdingers]

Maybe that’s the problem. My only knowledge of doc savage is the art on the book covers I’ve seen in antique stores.

[eabaker]

Finally got around to Ready Player One last night.

What the hell was that? The script was incredibly sloppy; the world made no sense whatsoever, in ways that were glaringly obvious; the dialogue was awful; nothing was earned, no decisions the characters made felt particularly motivated by anything.

Spielberg was a terrible choice to direct that story. The only way something so ludicrous could have worked was as very, very broad satire; broad comedy is not a strength of Spielberg's, but he also seemed to treat this with delusions of heavy drama. He's also incapable of mustering the kind of raw energy and rapid-fire pacing that a story this intrinsically hyperactive requires.

With a massive re-write, I could imagine either Kevin Smith or Edgar Wright doing this concept a lot more justice.

[lhb412]

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Geez, how long have hese movies been this good? I mean, I remember seeing the first two as a kid and they didn't strike me as anyting... too special, right? Anyway, this movie contains lots of plot threads from previous Mission Impossible movies, but even though I haven't seen them it was pretty easy to follow along. Ethan Hunt is like if James Bond was a nice guy and had friends, and this movie is like a Roger Moore James Bond movie mixed with a Jackie Chan movie and turned up to 11 and had the dial broken off.

So, it's good as what I'm saying.

The plot is that Tom Cruise and Friends are constantly in the most precarious life or death situations, and then they get out of the situations by the skin of their teeth, and then after they are out of those situations they realize that they've actually fallen into it even more deadly more precarious situation, and it just keeps going from there. Escalation, escalation, escalation. Skydiving, nuclear bombs, car / motorcycle chases, fist fights, knife fights, gun fights, double crosses, reversals, running, lots of running, and some really amazing location work.

I suppose I should really watch the rest of these.

[eabaker]

[lhb412]

DEBATABLE!

[Dr Kain]

Red Sparrow - If you are going to make a spy thriller, maybe you should make sure you have two vital ingredients in it. Espionage and suspense. Good god this movie was so damn boring. Easily one of the worst movies of the year, if not the worst thus far. Not to mention the characters are more wooden than a forest. 2/10 stars. Oh yeah, and there was this like random moment where the movie started playing some heavy metal music for about 3 seconds for some reason. I guess it wanted to wake its audience up.

Truth or Dare - Well, at least it was better than Red Sparrow, but good god was this movie dumb. There was not a single lick of suspense, tension, or atmosphere. Not to mention the one interesting character, a dude who was afraid to tell his dad he was gay and was forced to do so due to the game, had all of his scenes off screen, so we never got to see anything develop from him. All of the actors were more deadpan than they are on the CW shows they have appeared on. Come to think of it, the movie was basically Final Destination but without any originality to the death scenes one bit. Every death scene was generic and unispiring. Most of all, it was just boring to sit through. I give this one a generous 4/10 because there were some good ideas to be had.

The Meg - I went in with low expectations and ended up having a good time. This movie was far superior to Pacific Rim 2, Jurassic World 2, and Rampage combined. It was nothing original, it was cleary pandering to the Chinese box office, Jason Stathem continued to play the same Mary Sue character he plays in every movie, but it knew what it wanted to be and it did it splendidly. It was fun, had some funny dialog, but god damn did it follow every cliche imaginable. Still, it was a good time, the little girl was hands down the best character, and this was probably the best way to end the summer blockbuster season. Probably a 7/10.

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

I thought RPO was great. I was expecting nothing but reference galore and that was it but there was actually a story involved to go with it and it made sense. Sure, it's not even close to being the best movie of the year, but it's definitely far better than a lot of what has come out, including The Meg, Rampage, Pacific Rim 2, Jurassic World 2, Truth or Dare, Solo, Tomb Raider, Annihilation, and Red Sparrow. It's what Tron Legacy was a few year's ago.

[jellydonut25]

Annihilation is the best movie of 2018....and though I have yet to see The Meg or Jurassic World and won't bother with Red Sparrow, or Truth or Dare, Ready Player One is FIRMLY in the bottom of my 2018 movie list, along with rancid sacs of garbage like Cloverfield Paradox and Godzilla animes, though it's admittedly "better" than those, it's decidedly NOT better than Annihilation, A Quiet Place, Incredibles 2, Paddington 2, Avengers Infinity War, The Ritual, The Endless, Revenge, Game Night, Cargo, Deadpool 2, Black Panther, Alex Strangelove, Blockers, Strangers Prey at Night, or even the lackluster Isle of Dogs.

[eabaker]

Stayed in and had a pretty movie-heavy weekend. I already talked about my disappointment with RPO on Friday, so continuing from there...

Saturday:

A Quiet Place - Meh. Overhyped and overpraised to the point that it's hard to judge it apart from that. Technically well-executed set-pieces, but those only barely formed what I'd consider a plot, and ultimately didn't really coalesce into much of a story. A co-worked described it as "a great student film," and that feels about right to me. And that entire opening sequence should have been left out; everything we need to know is revealed in more interesting ways later, anyway.

Man of Steel - Boy, most of the events of that movie don't happen in any particular order, do they? About, I dunno, a quarter of the way in, they get to what actually might have been a really interesting way to approach a Superman story: from Lois's point of view, discovering the existence of this individual, tracking him down, and learning his history. But why had that history (including some pretty irrelevant chunks) already been shown to the audience? Terrible structure plus tiresome Objectivist rambling does not an engaging narrative make.

Sunday went better:

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - This one did live up to the hype. The billboards were a nice catalyst for a lot of different interactions, which gave us good windows into a number of different interesting characters. I loved that way that the comedy disrupted the rhythm of the movie.

Finally, just to make sure I'd end the weekend having a good time, I allowed myself a re-watch (for the I-don't-know-how-many'th time) of Beneath the Planet of the Apes. God, what a stark dichotomy between first and second halves. You have a re-cap of the first movie's ending, then about 40 minutes of rushed, inferior re-make of the first movie (and why keep the truth about the planet a secret from Brent through this, when not only does the audience know it from the first movie, they also know it from the re-run of the first movie's ending that opened this movie?!), then a little bit of filler... and then it just dives into being its own crazy, delightful thing for the remaining 45 of minutes or so, and, for me at least, all is forgiven!

[Benjamin Haines]

Princess Mononoke (1997) - This is only the third Hayao Miyazaki picture that I've seen after My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. I should really check out more of his films. My girlfriend got the newest BRD edition of Princess Mononoke and it's a marvelous fantasy adventure. I didn't know anything about it beforehand, I knew Miyazaki's style but I had no idea what to expect of the content and I was just enthralled with it. I'm interested to learn about what traditional Japanese folklore and myths (if any) were the basis for the concepts and themes on display in the movie. The idea of giant animals acting as gods to different species of wildlife and potentially transforming themselves into gnarly, grubby demons is just awesome.


Annihilation (2018) - It's been more than a week since I watched this and I'm still thinking about what I saw and what exactly it all meant. I love movies like that and Annihilation is loaded with tension, atmosphere and genuine dread. I didn't watch the trailer past the moment when they start to enter the Shimmer so I had no idea what was coming. It's a very primal kind of horror that gets at the heart of what it means to exist. This is the best movie of the year so far.


Extinction (2018) - It probably wasn't fair to this flick to make it the next new movie I watched after Annihilation. Extinction is a decent invasion thriller with some cool twists but it never really pops the way it should, with rudimentary characters and dialogue. Worth a rental, or in this case a Netflix viewing, but I'm not in any hurry to watch it again.


Wind River (2017) - A slow-burn murder mystery set in the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Jeremy Renner plays a local US Fish and WIldlife Service tracker who finds the frozen body of a young Arapaho woman and Elizabeth Olsen plays the FBI agent sent to investigate. It's a brutal, powerful drama with strong performances and resonant themes. It's a real modern-day western. Check it out while it's on Netflix.

[EricDent]

A Quiet Place (via Redbox) was decent, but the weakness for the creature was pretty dumb.
Not to mention where they stayed was a pretty bad location.
You would think somebody would have tried that already (especially with all the tech out there).

Hotel Transylvania 3 was fun, and the new girl was cute.
Though it didn't really seem quite as good as the previous 2.
Plus a Macarena dance to save the day? REALLY?

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

[lhb412]

[jellydonut25]

What Happened to Monday - 7 Noomi Rapaces? 2 Noomi Rapace boobs? A world where siblings are illegal? Color me super interested. And then I watched it...and it's FUN, don't get me wrong...and well-acted, and well-directed, and has good action set pieces and a great score....but the first half hour sets up something that would be SUPER memorable and special and interesting, and it winds up just being a really fun semi-unique sci-fi action movie. I'd recommend throwing it on your Netflix queue though and watching when you're a little bored. 3.5/5

Before I Wake - Mike Flanagan has done some really great and/or interesting and/or impressive stuff in his young career. Oculus is a solid movie about a killer mirror, Ouija 2 is a successful follow-up to a truly atrocious film, and Gerald's Game successfully adapts what I might have called an unfilmable book...it's a shame then that when he has a premise that's truly interesting (namely, a traumatized little boy's dreams - and nightmares - literally come to life while he sleeps) that he ultimately seems like he doesn't know what to do with it. The movie goes along nicely for a while until just before the final third, at which point something pretty huge happens, and it's just brushed past in seconds and never given any amount of the gravitas it deserves. From then on it just barrels towards a finish. Hopefully just a speed bump in the road for Flanagan. 2.5/5

These Final Hours - A meteor crashes into the North Atlantic, immediately wiping out Western Europe, Eastern North America, and North Africa. Australia has 12 hours until the firestorm created from the atmosphere itself igniting reaches them. In this hopeless situation a young man who's just trying to get to a big party so he can get wasted and not feel the pain of the end rescues a young girl from an unspeakable situation and reluctantly tries to reunite her with her family. It's really good and heartfelt and kept me gripped throughout. 4/5

[MekaGojira3k]

Teen Titans Go to the Movies! - Honestly pretty fun, I've only watched a little of the show, (specifically during a family vacation which had my GF's niece and nephew tagging along), and this is pretty great. The time traveling sequence was really fun (cartoon murder = fun?) and it's weird that since the Dark Knight (2008) my favorite DC movies are this and Lego Batman.

The Last Starfighter - Saw the VHS of this in stores a ton as a kid but never sat through it. The lead is...well...he is a person who says things. It's a neat concept, and as fun as the weird shenanigans with the duplicate and hunters on Earth is the whole movie feels like it goes back and forth too much. The build up to going to space is kind of undone when he just goes home.

[lhb412]

^ For a lot of folks The Last Starfighter was some sort of childhood favorite, but it never was for me. The most interesting thing about the movie, for me, is the fact that it was the first to use all CGI for the spaceships. Of course, it looks primitive now, but that was pretty revolutionary for the time. I read that the makers of the special effects we're disappointed they didn't have just a little bit more time to work on it, as they were about to have access to far more computing power and would have been able to add greater rendering power and more realistic motion blur to the spaceship scenes. It's funny to think how movie history would have been different if they had been able to pull off something far more impressive. Would the growth of CGI in movies have accelerated and in this altered history would we have had a Jurassic Park style breakthrough a few years earlier?

[O.Supreme]

You know there are a lot of "childhood favorites" that I don't really count myself part of either. Top Gun (basically any 80's film with Tom Cruise), The Karate Kid (and it's sequels), Hook. I mean, I really don't care about any of these films. But the Last Starfighter, when I saw it on Blu Ray a few months back, I had to have it. I guess there's something that resonates with us all a little differently. TLSF was definitely a core movie for me in the 80's.

Duck Duck Goose - Netflix 2018 - I started to watch this animated film simply because I enjoy Jim Gaffigan as a comedian. But it was so dull I couldn't make it past about 15 minutes. I think I spent more time researching online why this went straight to Netflix and had it's theatrical release cancelled (I did see previews in the theater). I'm not sure if it did well in China or not, but if it didn't, that would have been a HUGE waste, considering it was a co-produciton with Wanda, and all the characters seemingly were made to have Chinese names.

[jellydonut25]

No love for Hook?

[eabaker]

I was 12 by the time Hook came out, so I was a little too old for it to connect with me.

The Last Starfighter, on the other hand, caught me at age 5, and managed to completely win my heart forever, despite my then-and-now near total disinterest in video games.

[O.Supreme]

[Dr Kain]

I love Hook. I don't remember how old I was when it came out,though, that's pretty irrelevant since your age does not determine a movie's quality. The Honest Trailer was hilarious, but anyone that says Hook is Spielberg's worst movie has never seen AI.

[eabaker]