Movies you've just watched

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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by brentsg »

Watched Justice League and Thor Ragnarok this weekend. Thor was a very entertaining romp, while Justice League sucked even when going in with low expectations.

I don't understand why DC Struggles so much.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Ya Annihilation is good.

Been going through the City Hunter movies/oavs lately. Good dirty entertainment.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by GaijinPunch »

Annihilation

Any profit the studio makes off of this they will owe a serious debt of gratitude for BR2049 taking it up the ass. The studio made the right call to have Netflix buy it internationally. I really enjoyed it, the critics do too, but that really doesn't mean shit these days. Looking back a few pages at Skykid's worry that Tessa Thompson might ruin it, I found her quite subtle. (You could argue the role more than the actor in this case). Another actor in there was quite annoying, but whatever. Easy to get past. Jennifer Jason Leigh was great.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Skykid »

I trust in Garland.

Thompson was poor in Thor RGNRK; a repertoire of smirks. It was a Marvel movie though, so I wouldn't write off her ability entirely - I'm just not holding out a great amount of hope that she's going to suddenly become thespian grade.

But Thompson, Leigh, Portman, side by side? Yeargh. That IS bad casting, even if the film is good (as I'm expecting it is).
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by BrianC »

Skykid wrote:I trust in Garland
Me too. Meet Me in St. Louis is good stuff. :D
Skykid wrote: But Thompson, Leigh, Portman, side by side?
What about Alec McCowen as Ken Thompson, Vivien Leigh, and Eric Portman? ;)
Spoiler
Joking Aside, I'm interested in seeing Dredd and a few of his other movies sound interesting as well. I'm not a fan of Natalie Portman either, though her last name sounds like a promising name for a Mega Man robot master.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Mischief Maker »

Jonny2x4 wrote:He directed Dredd and Ex Machina too. The latter was a much better Terminator prequel than whatever the hell Genisys was supposed to be.
Alternately, Dredd was a much better Robocop reboot than the official one.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by soprano1 »

brentsg wrote:I don't understand why DC Struggles so much.
Try the DC animated movies they release direct-to-video, more interesting stories on those.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by GaijinPunch »

Skykid wrote: But Thompson, Leigh, Portman, side by side? Yeargh. That IS bad casting, even if the film is good (as I'm expecting it is).
Not convinced there is bad casting with a good director... just safe/unsafe casting. Rarely would I go see something b/c Jennifer Jason Leigh is in it, but I can't think of anything I've seen that she makes me think ill of her. The opposite even, especially with the trashiest of trash she played recently in Twin Peaks.
Spoiler
Only one character I found somewhat annoying, which is the girl, ironically, from Chicago. So extrapolate that as you will...
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by blackoak »

I saw Annihilation over the weekend too. Ultimately, I was disappointed. It sounded like a mash-up of Solaris and Stalker, and while I waas expecting neither Tarkovsky's aesthetics nor Lem's intelligence, I didn't realize the mystery would be hung on the frame of a rote survival horror movie. Then there's the new "true feels" genre of sci-fi, it seems, where any interesting idea _must_ be buttressed with an "emotional" plot. Thanks Arrival, Gravity, Her... who else can I rave at? haha

Overall it felt like the kind of movie a bunch of stoned art designers dream up, because many of the visuals were neat in and of themselves--though the camerawork, outside of the picturesque, was workmanlike as ever. That's been a Hollywood thing for a long time, and I'm not 100% sure why (other than to say that good use of the camera probably "tracks with" intelligent ideas in general). Art design--by which I mean the costuming, sets, special fx, are all of a high caliber... but the camera has no subtlety, oscillating sharply between M. Night Shyamalan self-consciousness and the absolute bare utility of everything else.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Skykid »

All The Money in The World

A fine, simple, entertaining movie. No CGI, just a plot, a script and some actors. Obviously because it didn't have people in neon leotards farting about the screen nobody went to see it - brain and attention are on short supply these days - but for those who did I'm sure they found it interesting.

Some of it is a bit superficial in places, but it gets the job done. Nothing wrong with its 80 year old director everyone keeps badmouthing. Hope I have that kind of creative energy at his age.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Xyga »

blackoak wrote:Then there's the new "true feels" genre of sci-fi, it seems, where any interesting idea _must_ be buttressed with an "emotional" plot. Thanks Arrival, Gravity, Her... who else can I rave at? haha.
I was going to add Ex Machina but no, how it ends pretty much says fuck to that.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Jonny2x4 »

blackoak wrote:Then there's the new "true feels" genre of sci-fi, it seems, where any interesting idea _must_ be buttressed with an "emotional" plot. Thanks Arrival, Gravity, Her... who else can I rave at? haha
Interstellar had that whole "love transcends time and space" bullshit that foreshadows the film's ultimate plot twist. I thought it was just Anne Hathaway spouting pseudo-philosophical platitudes when I first heard that line and not an actual plot point.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Mischief Maker »

blackoak wrote:Then there's the new "true feels" genre of sci-fi, it seems, where any interesting idea _must_ be buttressed with an "emotional" plot. Thanks Arrival, Gravity, Her... who else can I rave at? haha
Tarkovsky's Solaris?
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An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by boagman »

Skykid wrote:All The Money in The World

A fine, simple, entertaining movie. No CGI, just a plot, a script and some actors. Obviously because it didn't have people in neon leotards farting about the screen nobody went to see it - brain and attention are on short supply these days - but for those who did I'm sure they found it interesting.

Some of it is a bit superficial in places, but it gets the job done. Nothing wrong with its 80 year old director everyone keeps badmouthing. Hope I have that kind of creative energy at his age.
I think the whole stink of Spacey's garbage and the whole pay disparity between Wahlburg and Williams thing kind of steered a lot of people away from the project as a whole, regardless of how well it was done.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Zen »

Annihilation (2018) - Alex Garland

So,
Spoiler
a version of the Genesis Device from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) - Nicholas Meyer, crashes to earth, goes about its business and silly ego-people are stuck in a loop asking "why?".
That's about it, I reckon?

I was wary going in that Portman would ruin it for me but incredibly, it turns out her performance should have been the least of my concerns.

This is Tessa Thompson? Jesus! First time seeing her and I can confidently say that, in this film at least, she could not act to save her life.
She appears to be an uber darling of "current year-ism" though, so that would explain a lot.

If the idea of four damaged, crazy women going ever more annoyingly crazy, floats your boat then by all means go for it.

On the plus side, the way the film executes the Bear idea, was pretty badass.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Skykid »

Zen wrote: This is Tessa Thompson? Jesus! First time seeing her and I can confidently say that, in this film at least, she could not act to save her life.
Those professional movie critics though

"Tessa’s performance is euphoric and emboldening"
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by GaijinPunch »

Zen wrote: This is Tessa Thompson? Jesus! First time seeing her and I can confidently say that, in this film at least, she could not act to save her life.
She appears to be an uber darling of "current year-ism" though, so that would explain a lot.
First time i'm seeing her, too, but she had like... single-digit minutes of speech, so I wasn't bothered in the least. The lesbian was far more annoying.
On the plus side, the way the film executes the Bear idea, was pretty badass.
The stuff of nightmares.

So while everyone is here, are the books worth reading? They seem to get mixed reviews, which is probably more of a good sign.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Zen »

Skykid wrote:Those professional movie critics though

"Tessa’s performance is euphoric and emboldening"
On the bright side, persons like "Hunter Harris", bring accelerant to the whole farcical conflagration.
Simply put, "Hunter" is antivenom.
GaijinPunch wrote: The lesbian was far more annoying.
Pretty distracting for sure.
Like mapy-map-maperson in Prometheus (2012), you ask yourself why someone so emotionally immature and unstable, would be part of a mission.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by GaijinPunch »

Zen wrote:
GaijinPunch wrote: The lesbian was far more annoying.
Pretty distracting for sure.
Like mapy-map-maperson in Prometheus (2012), you ask yourself why someone so emotionally immature and unstable, would be part of a mission.
In the creators defense, she is from Chicago, which is technically more dangerous than inside the shimmer.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Xyga »

Since we recently mentioned Cameron, there's still no clean HD release of the full version of The Abyss.
While I'm not crazy about the movie, the once every 5 years or so where I feel like cooking mollusca and watch it again, I think the long version is better with the minutes of 80's camp added, but nah, it's not available, only old shitty dvd and nasty rips around.
Gave up...found a decent rip of deep star six in place.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by soprano1 »

The African Queen (1951)
Bogart and Hepburn play a light, almost comedic story in the cusp of World War I in Central Africa. Nice, dark tone Technicolour.

Cat People (1942)
Hmm, interesting the way the director used various "tricks" to keep the suspense and never show the creature stalking Alice. I'm pleasantly surprised to see this in a wartime movie.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by xxx1993 »

Saw Tomb Raider. I think Alicia Vikander really does hold up to Angelina Jolie.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Jonny2x4 »

There was a new Tomb Raider movie?
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by GaijinPunch »

Jonny2x4 wrote:There was a new Tomb Raider movie?
It looks exactly like you think it would.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Jonny2x4 »

I knew it was coming to be honest, but I didn't expect it would be out now. In fact, I was under the impression it was still in production.

Yet, the MGS movie is still in development hell after all these years.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by emphatic »

The Lego Ninjago Movie 4/5.

Not as funny as the brilliant Lego Movie or the crazy The Lego Batman Movie, but hysterical enough to make me grin stupidly while my kids watch it.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Skykid »

ANNIHILATION

WITH SPOILAZ

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh... It's not perfect.

Damn I'm good at calling em cos the worst part of this thing was indeed the casting. First up Benedict fucking Wong. Why? The guy can't speak or act for toffee, stop putting him in movies, he just ruins whatever dialogue and screen time afforded to his useless form.

Everyone else was garbage or thereabouts bar Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, both of whom managed to bring some semblance of believability to their portrayals of hugely underfed entities.

Tessa Thompson surprisingly and against prediction, was as Gaijinpunch put it: subtle. Subtle enough not to be offensive, anyway, in that her meagre acting skills were hardly called upon and therefore she sort of faded into the background. The other two grunts were fucking awful, but Jesus Christ above, Jennifer Jason Leigh... Wowee. Wow-fucking-ee. Up there with some of the worst excuses for actors I've ever seen in my life. She's like Terence Stamp's female doppelganger.
GaijinPunch wrote:Jennifer Jason Leigh was great.
Fella, you need to ease up on that pipe.

Jennifer Jason Leigh single-handedly dropped the overall quality of this movie by approximately 30-40%. She was akin to a hobo smack addict that had been pulled out of an alleyway behind the Paramount lot, thrown in some skivvies and given a few lines. She stank up every scene she was in by an impressive margin, uselessly drawled her way through every line as incorrectly as one could possibly utter them considering her character and the situation that character was in. I was *literally* shaking my head in disbelief at some of what was allowed to be committed to camera in her name.

Now I remember being a bit wary of her performance in Hateful Eight. It was one of those tilted-head analyses where I was trying to get a handle on whether or not she was totally shit - and I blame Tarantino being a finer director of actors for somehow obsfucating the fact.

But let it be known and call it from the treetops: the woman is god damned, god awful. I have no idea why she's being cast in movies when she would be far better suited to punching tickets in a car park kiosk.

Now, with that out of the way, the movie was only half successful. I was disappointed by Garland, to a degree. Some of the dialogue was both poor and poorly delivered by its very lacklustre cast. The direction too, irked. I found it incredibly difficult to believe that, faced with a world threatening issue, and after losing several teams of people within 'the shimmer', they would then send in the equivalent of five 12-year-old girls with matching temperaments and aptitude to deal with such a colossal unknown entity.

They went into the thing about as casual as a human being possibly could. They literally didn't seem to give a fuck it was certain death, at all. There was no dialogue to ascertain levels of anxiety or fear, only feeble injections about "nothing to lose" and chicks with shitty life circumstances. It was, by all accounts, completely retarded, and borderline embarrassing. It was so stupidly handled, in-fact, that it was coasting on a fine line of parody at points. I was getting recall flashes of the Ghostbusters female cast watching the way they went about things.

When token butch idiot chick decided to tie her fellow cohorts to chairs because someone had a secret husband and then went on a badly acted rant, I was thinking the entire movie was beyond saving.

But Garland did save it in places. What's good is this:

The horror element is beautifully visually realised. The bleakness of it all and the body horror DNA mutation is genuinely harrowing, recalling The Andromeda Strain and other successful sci-fi plague-em-ups. I got a heady sense of the aesthetic being well married to the idea of cellular disturbance, and I felt as though the world within the shimmer actually existed. So big up to the production designers and Garland for making it feel fairly original in that respect.

The last half an hour improves hugely on what was a borderline wreck early on, not least because pretty much everyone is thankfully dead by that point and only Portman remains. The ending was nicely handled, scary, well-scored, and enough to let you contemplate its ambiguous aspects. It has enough weight to at least partly gloss over how stupidly other areas were handled - and since it contains almost zero dialogue there's not much to cringe at until fucking Benedict Wong turns up in the closing scene just to throw it back into the shitter real quick.

So really I'm torn about it. I want to like it more, but there are some seriously dreadful elements in it. I wish Leigh and Wong were the only dreadful elements, but sadly they're just the most dreadful; and she more than he. There were too many errors in the handling of the characters who you didn't care about, whose names you couldn't remember, and who seemed to be entirely the least best human beings to be doing the job you were trying to buy into them doing - and that hurts.

As a sci-fi piece though, both conceptually and tonally, there's some success here - to the point where it deserves a second viewing perhaps. It's just sad that no matter how many times it's repeated, you'll never get away from the glaring and painful flaws borne mostly of its cast, the performances of that cast, and the silly dialogue and idiotic behaviour of its characters.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

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This post reserved for The Quare Fella

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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Zen »

Skykid wrote:
Spoiler
ANNIHILATION

WITH SPOILAZ

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh... It's not perfect.

Damn I'm good at calling em cos the worst part of this thing was indeed the casting. First up Benedict fucking Wong. Why? The guy can't speak or act for toffee, stop putting him in movies, he just ruins whatever dialogue and screen time afforded to his useless form.

Everyone else was garbage or thereabouts bar Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, both of whom managed to bring some semblance of believability to their portrayals of hugely underfed entities.

Tessa Thompson surprisingly and against prediction, was as Gaijinpunch put it: subtle. Subtle enough not to be offensive, anyway, in that her meagre acting skills were hardly called upon and therefore she sort of faded into the background. The other two grunts were fucking awful, but Jesus Christ above, Jennifer Jason Leigh... Wowee. Wow-fucking-ee. Up there with some of the worst excuses for actors I've ever seen in my life. She's like Terence Stamp's female doppelganger.
GaijinPunch wrote:Jennifer Jason Leigh was great.
Fella, you need to ease up on that pipe.

Jennifer Jason Leigh single-handedly dropped the overall quality of this movie by approximately 30-40%. She was akin to a hobo smack addict that had been pulled out of an alleyway behind the Paramount lot, thrown in some skivvies and given a few lines. She stank up every scene she was in by an impressive margin, uselessly drawled her way through every line as incorrectly as one could possibly utter them considering her character and the situation that character was in. I was *literally* shaking my head in disbelief at some of what was allowed to be committed to camera in her name.

Now I remember being a bit wary of her performance in Hateful Eight. It was one of those tilted-head analyses where I was trying to get a handle on whether or not she was totally shit - and I blame Tarantino being a finer director of actors for somehow obsfucating the fact.

But let it be known and call it from the treetops: the woman is god damned, god awful. I have no idea why she's being cast in movies when she would be far better suited to punching tickets in a car park kiosk.

Now, with that out of the way, the movie was only half successful. I was disappointed by Garland, to a degree. Some of the dialogue was both poor and poorly delivered by its very lacklustre cast. The direction too, irked. I found it incredibly difficult to believe that, faced with a world threatening issue, and after losing several teams of people within 'the shimmer', they would then send in the equivalent of five 12-year-old girls with matching temperaments and aptitude to deal with such a colossal unknown entity.

They went into the thing about as casual as a human being possibly could. They literally didn't seem to give a fuck it was certain death, at all. There was no dialogue to ascertain levels of anxiety or fear, only feeble injections about "nothing to lose" and chicks with shitty life circumstances. It was, by all accounts, completely retarded, and borderline embarrassing. It was so stupidly handled, in-fact, that it was coasting on a fine line of parody at points. I was getting recall flashes of the Ghostbusters female cast watching the way they went about things.

When token butch idiot chick decided to tie her fellow cohorts to chairs because someone had a secret husband and then went on a badly acted rant, I was thinking the entire movie was beyond saving.

But Garland did save it in places. What's good is this:

The horror element is beautifully visually realised. The bleakness of it all and the body horror DNA mutation is genuinely harrowing, recalling The Andromeda Strain and other successful sci-fi plague-em-ups. I got a heady sense of the aesthetic being well married to the idea of cellular disturbance, and I felt as though the world within the shimmer actually existed. So big up to the production designers and Garland for making it feel fairly original in that respect.

The last half an hour improves hugely on what was a borderline wreck early on, not least because pretty much everyone is thankfully dead by that point and only Portman remains. The ending was nicely handled, scary, well-scored, and enough to let you contemplate its ambiguous aspects. It has enough weight to at least partly gloss over how stupidly other areas were handled - and since it contains almost zero dialogue there's not much to cringe at until fucking Benedict Wong turns up in the closing scene just to throw it back into the shitter real quick.

So really I'm torn about it. I want to like it more, but there are some seriously dreadful elements in it. I wish Leigh and Wong were the only dreadful elements, but sadly they're just the most dreadful; and she more than he. There were too many errors in the handling of the characters who you didn't care about, whose names you couldn't remember, and who seemed to be entirely the least best human beings to be doing the job you were trying to buy into them doing - and that hurts.

As a sci-fi piece though, both conceptually and tonally, there's some success here - to the point where it deserves a second viewing perhaps. It's just sad that no matter how many times it's repeated, you'll never get away from the glaring and painful flaws borne mostly of its cast, the performances of that cast, and the silly dialogue and idiotic behaviour of its characters.


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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by LichbannMejolaro »

I watched Annihilation as well and to be honest I'm surprised in a positive way.

Even though I have full faith in Garland's abilities, I didn't thought that he was able to make a acceptable screenplay of such a bad novel. Comparing with it, the movie is really good.
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