Recently watched movies!

[Dr Kain]

Aquaman - Took a leap a faith and ended up being rewarded. Don't get me wrong, the story is as generic as it can be, and the actor who played Black Manta was terrible, but it was colorful, entertaining, and I felt like I was watching Aquaman on the big screen. Congratulations DC, you finally have yourselves a movie that is able to match the early MCU films. 8/10

[klen7]

Spider-man Into the Spider-verse - Wow. This may be the first main stream animated film i have seen in a LONG time that took full advantage of the medium. Kudos to Sony for just embracing this style. There was also some seriously good sound mixing as well (like how incredible menacing they made Prowler) -- Do your self a favor and enjoy this on the big screen, it is a visual delight. I would easily rank this above Homecoming. Just really impressive, high quality animation and sound. It also takes more chances than most comic book movies

[lhb412]

Cinderella

This is the live-action version Disney made a couple years ago, and I have to say it's one of the best of the live-action remakes I've seen from them! I've got to put it right up there with The Jungle Book, and for similar reasons: instead of copying the animated versions they're more like new adaptations of classic tales with just a smattering of details from the animated versions for color. That's the way you do it.

Cate Blanchett is oddly compelling as the evil stepmother. They don't overdo it, but I like the implication that her cruelty is the result of being all too aware of the precarious nature of being a woman who's station is dependent on her man and who suffers two dead husbands, plus Cinderella reminding her of the first wife she couldn't measure up to.

Modern Times

Almost finishing my pile of unwatched Criterion Collection releases before Christmas brings a bunch of new movies into my collection. It's really fascinating how Chaplin eases into talking pictures after an entire career in the silents: for most of the movie the people are still silent with intertitles transcribing the important dialogue, but electronically reproduced voices like radios and intercoms are heard, and when the time finally comes at the end of the movie to hear the Little Tramp speak he ends up singing a nonsense song with gibberish words! I can see where he was coming from, though; the Tramp was such a universal figure for people of all languages I can see how Chaplin thought it would be limiting for him to open his mouth and English to come out.

[O.Supreme]

Took the family to see Bumblebee on Saturday Night. After seeing Spiderverse only a week ago, I was definitely not planning this. As big a fan of Transformers that I am, I was willing to wait for this to go to the local discount theater in a couple months, but we were invited by other families with kids, and made an event out of it. It warms my heart to see so many kids into Transformers, even though it's not the Transformers I grew up with. No pun intended, but I'd give Bumblebee a solid "B+". It truly is from a story standpoint better than any of the Michael Bay Directed films. I hear a LOT of people saying THIS should have been the first TF movie over a decade ago, but THAT would not have worked. Ten years ago, Nobody outside of TF fandom would have known or cared who Bumblebee was. If you can say anything, Bay Films made Optimus Prime, BB, Megatron etc... household names.

I can only go by Critics and other non TF Fans when they say that this is the first film where the Transformers actually felt like "real characters" in the film, (even though there are only 3 predominantly) not just lifeless hunks of metal. I don't agree with this sentiment, as I've always identified with the TF characters, but that's just me.

For families with kids, this movie is definitely *safer* than all the others, I only caught one curse word in the whole film, no gutter humor or innuendo. Also it seems like the *new thing* to do if you want to destroy a human onscreen in a "non graphic PG-13 way" is to have them turn to ash, or non descript "goo". which occurs twice in this film.

I can't blame audiences though, after a decade of mostly bad films, we finally get a good one, and it will probably have the lowest box office of any. Positive word of mouth, or IBO might push it past TLK, but I doubt it, which is sad. Should have got off the Bay Train after movie #3 Hasbro.... Also, just for the record, the All Cybertron sequences were AMAZING, even if it was just blatant pandering to old fans like myself. I've been pushing since 1986 to have a full movie solely set on Cybertron, or other alien worlds, THAT would be truly amazing.

[EricDent]

Saw The Mule on Christmas Day.
I liked it, and Clint Eastwood is still great.

Will be seeing Aquaman for almost free on Friday at a local Alamo Drafthouse thanks to buying LEGO DC Supervillains.
That game had a $10 fandango ticket, so I paid about $2.

[lhb412]

Candyman

Hey.

This is a good movie.

As always, I'm dangerously behind on my classics. Thankfully, I've caught up on this one at least a couple of years before the Jordan Peele produced reboot/spiritual sequel comes out.

Phillip Glass' score really is incredible. Amazing that they got him. Tony Todd is fantastic, but really the entire cast is fantastic. I would have been 4-5 years old when this movie came out, and I avoided all contact with horror like it was the plague, but I know at some point in my young life I saw the image of Candyman and the bees and seeing the movie now has brought back the fact that I was quite terrified of that image and that it lead to me elaborating my own versions of the image in a few quite memorable nightmares I had as a small child.

[Dr Kain]

[lhb412]

Creed II

It isn't the revelation that the first Creed was, but that doesn't really matter, because what this is is another decent Rocky sequel; a sequel into what has surprisingly been one of the most consistently good franchises! It is, as always, a soap opera about some people that box. If you like the previous Rocky movies you will almost certainly like this one as well.

What is surprising here is just how much an impression Dolph Lundgren makes. I mean, he's an important character, but he doesn't have too many scenes nor does he have a tremendous amount of dialogue, and yet he was probably my favorite thing about the movie.

[O.Supreme]

Ralph Breaks the Internet I was pleasantly surprised, as I thought with all the product placement, this would be another soulless emoji movie. Disney actually managed to put together a somewhat decent story. All the in-jokes, and cross promotion was fun to see. This is a film that probably requires multiple watches just to catch everything...but I'm content for now. Honestly though, while there were a few mildly amusing moments throughout, the most hilarious moment of the film has to be at the end, during the mid-credit sequence.

[EricDent]

Aquaman was really fun & looked amazing.
Also saw Bumblebee on Monday, it was fun & heartwarming, and proves the G1 designs would have looked good in live action.

[canofhumdingers]

Aquaman - Cool! It’s a little corny, but in a good way. And I feel like it’s self aware of it’s corniness but rather than trying to be ironic or meta about this self-awareness, the filmmakers just decided to roll with it because it’s fun and entertaining and who cares if it’s corny? I’m glad we’ve reached a point again where a film can be corny with no apologies and people love it for what it is.

The armor, costumes, and production and set designs were all fantastic. I loved the art direction of this movie. It’s also one of the few movies where I can honestly say, “I bet this is pretty amazing in 3-D.” I saw it in 2-D, but I bet it’s actually worth the extra cash for a 3-D show.

And the story was well done. I expected the final fight to end differently, but I was pleasantly surprised by the resolution.

Overall, this movie nailed it. Now bring on Wonder Woman ‘84!!

[lhb412]

Battle in Outer Space

When I rank the Honda canon this one is... well, not one of my favorites. Still, I probably only watched this once before (when Sony's original DVD came out) and I liked it more the second time just appreciating Tsuburaya's effects and such. Got to say; of all the incompetent aliens in Tohodom these have to be near the top in the screw-ups scale. They have all this incredible technology to bring the Earth to its knees and yet they failed to execute their invasion on any level.

Zatoichi (1989)

15 years after the last movie and 10 years since the last episode of the TV show Shintaro Katsu returns to his most famous role for a swansong. He's an incredible, dynamic performer as always, and the film, which he also directed, has a really great moodiness to it, in addition to some rather nice visuals. As for the movie as a whole? These Zatoichi movies often feel like a collection of vignettes, and none more so than this last one. You get the feeling that individual scenes were all little ideas that he had had in the previous decade, and it all doesn't add up to something more than the sum of its parts like the best movies in the series do. Indeed, I feel that you probably have to be very familiar with the rhythms and cliches of the series in order to understand some of the plot here. Why is this happening? Because this is what always happens one of these movies!

There's just something very appealing about seeing Zatoichi having a traveling montage with an English language R&B inflected pop tune playing over it. It really gives you the sense of "this is an '80s movie!"

[Dr Kain]

Princess Bride - New Criterion disc looks amazing. 9/10

[lhb412]

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

One of the most influential science fiction movies, heck, science fiction stories of all time. Looking back on it two things really jump out: how lean, mean and economical the movie is (it packs of enormous amount of stuff and just 80 minutes), and how sexual the chemistry is between the two leads - not something you typically find in a science fiction film released in the mid-fifties.

[EricDent]

The Predator was better than I thought it would be. It was better than Predators IMO.
Of course nothing can touch the original IMO.

Venom was OK. Though it's obviously getting a sequel.

Daimajin (Mill Creek Blu) looks GREAT. Hopefully (most likely knowing Criterion) this is the kind of polish we will see on the Godzilla stuff.

[Dr Kain]

[O.Supreme]

Solo- A Star Wars Story Oh Boy...where do I start. I suppose with, (despite repeating myself), I never thought I'd see the day where I was nonchalantly watching a SW film for the first time on Netflix, much less, not even watching it all in one sitting (chose to view it in 2 parts). It seems wrong in so many ways, but alas, here I am. Now in Truth, I did not find this film to be horrible. Wholly unnecessary, sure, but not terrible. In fact, take out Lando's droid, and all the weirdness with it, and this might actually be a decent film. Unfortunately it sets up a lot of world building that will likely not have any payoff, unless you read the accompanying books, or watch the animated series. The actor who played Han (a thankless task from the start) was dare I say good?...Lando was spot on, when he wasn't having an out-of-character droid fetish. Chewie, was Chewie... and the rest, were typical characters I feel would exist in the SW Universe. Paul Bettany was a pleasant surprise (had no idea he was in this). Also, it still irks me that, Disney chose to kill the EU, but then will pick at it's dead carcass things it *thinks would be neat* to now make *canon* (Teräs Käsi anyone? -A terrible PlayStation game) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA2borlKZA4 . Sure I know they can do whatever they want, but it still dosen't make it right...

If we could use the time stone however and go back to October 2012, and stop Disney from acquiring Lucasfilm, and render everything from that point on, non existent, the ONLY portions I would sorely miss would be Rogue One, and to a lesser extent SW Rebels (but I still think this would have come about, even without Disney...). Those, in my opinion, are the best things to come of this new era, the rest is just *blah*.

[Dr Kain]

[O.Supreme]

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

Lando's droid is a militant freedom fighter who is then made an eternal slave as a navigation computer.

And I'm almost 100% certain nobody writing this movie saw the irony of that.

[Dr Kain]

[klen7]

Isle of Dogs - Not sure who the target audience was for this other than "Wes Anderson fans" -- I did enjoy the cinematography. Wes Anderson loves symmetry and i think it makes for a lot of beautiful shots, you wouldn't normally see in a film. I think this was on my most anticipated list, but it's not a movie I see myself revisiting

Ragnarok - Not the Thor one, but the Norwegian creature adventure flick from a few years back. I watched it dubbed this time, unfortunately whoever they got to dub the girl just read the lines without any context so the emotion is almost always wrong when she's speaking. Otherwise, i still really dig this and think its a seriously underrated family adventure flick

The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King - This is probably what caused me to revisit Raganrok. It's based on classic Norwegian folk tales. Plenty of adventure, witches, trolls, princesses etc. Better than expected

[O.Supreme]

[lhb412]

Started my Godzilla research with Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla Raids Again. Added a few thoughts about those movies to their respective threads.

Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh

The first Candyman was a wonderfully self-contained movie that didn't need a sequel. As a matter of fact, the ending of the first seems to rule out any conventional follow up. Nevertheless, with this movie they try to strike out and make it into a franchise to compete with the Jasons and the Freddies of the world. Not a terrible movie, but overall it feels like simply a more conventional remake of the first film. It follows the structure of the first film so much, and it only tries to differentiate itself by having more emphasis on the Candyman's origin and when all is said and done you can't help but feel that the more ambiguous way that it was handled in the first film was far superior.

Nice art direction, though. The mid-90s seem to have been a golden age of getting that smokey, golden-hued sort of retro old Hollywood glamour look.