Movies you've just watched

[soprano1]

Point Break (1991)
Nice movie, except for Keanu's flat performance. The escalating violence towards the last part of the film was a bit weird, maybe a bit tacked on?

Johnny Utah fucking rules. Love Point Break. Weirdly enough it was on TV last night!

Well, his name does, at least.

[rapoon]

Although I understand your critique, it makes me love Wells all the more. He was ridiculously talented. He was also an accomplished grifter . Watching him shit-faced, giving "art" a kicking in a film about fraud, always added to the flavour of the thing, for me

I vehemently agree. He was brilliant. As I previously wrote, I enjoyed the documentary, but Welles should have been secondary to Elmyr de Hory (an enigmatic character) but he's not (as EmpIng pointed out). Maybe even a bit of time devoted towards Hory's forgery-peddler,Fernand Legros

On topic - Watched one of my favorite 'documentaries' Street Thief again. 9/10.

[WelshMegalodon]

HOMECUMMING

It's official: I'm the only person on the Internet that finds Holland's Spidey irritable.

No complaints about Tony Stark as the father figure? Or the complete absence of characters like Jameson or Harry Osborn?

[Skykid]

HOMECUMMING

It's official: I'm the only person on the Internet that finds Holland's Spidey irritable.

No complaints about Tony Stark as the father figure? Or the complete absence of characters like Jameson or Harry Osborn?

If you want to get down to stuff not being faithful to the comics we'd be here all day, but I've come to accept that Marvel Studios much prefer to reshape the comics around the cinematic versions rather than stay true to the source material. The only thing about Homecoming is that it was actually fairly entertaining in-spite of those omissions.

Vulture not a scientist.

Alien technology.

Parker's suit a multi-billion dollar Stark outfit.

No Spidey-Sense whatsoever.

Spider-Man literally saves no actual people apart from his friends as a cheap way for the scriptwriter to validate decisions made in a later scene.

He isn't a photographer.

The Shocker changes ethnicity in the space of 20 seconds.

The Shocker is no longer a guy who built his weapon using science and magnets - instead it's (you guessed it!) alien technology.

Flash Thompson is a scrawny dweeby guy from India

Aunt May is a milf.


So yeah, forget about historic accuracy, that stuff is old news.

[WelshMegalodon]

If you want to get down to stuff not being faithful to the comics we'd be here all day, but I've come to accept that Marvel Studios much prefer to reshape the comics around the cinematic versions rather than stay true to the source material. The only thing about Homecoming is that it was actually fairly entertaining in-spite of those omissions.

Ah. In that case, we're in agreement. I thought the film worked well on its own as an alternate interpretation of the Spider-Man character (Ned Leeds notwithstanding, though I'm entertained by the idea of a fat Asian Hobgoblin) but deviated too far from the source material even for a film adaptation. (This is coming from a guy that adores the Raimi films despite the lack of quip and liked the Batman film where the Joker killed Wayne's parents. I also think Corman's Fantastic Four is better than any of the FF movies released after it.) While Holland's Parker is a better character than Maguire's was, and certainly better than Garfield's was, he isn't enough like Ditko's teenage Parker to be the definitive film Spider-Man. I mean...

No Spidey-Sense whatsoever.

EDIT: And apparently they did borrow quite a bit from Spider-Man comics... just not always the ones I had in mind. While some of the references mentioned in the article are overreaching or mere coincidence, a considerable number (like the fat Asian) are not.

I'm hitting myself for not remembering that Mac Gargan was the Scorpion.

[Durandal]

Flash Thompson is a scrawny dweeby guy from India

I digged it because he always resembled Chad Warden to me

[Skykid]

DUNKIRK

Nolan like clockwork. Beautiful visuals, fantastic audio, intriguing concept and tone; all marred by terrible dialogue, poor acting, bad casting.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good movie and I'd recommend it. There are some historical inaccuracies, and more importantly a little insensitivity in the script, specifically because Nolan omitted almost everything to do with the men who stayed behind in Dunkirk to hold back the Germans so that the evacuees had time to escape, only to be abandoned by their commanding officers. This was the real story of the battle, and he instead chose to focus on a fraction of it; but from an artistic standpoint that's ok, he can handle the story any way he sees fit.

To be absolutely accurate, Christopher Nolan is not a great director of our times. He is a great novelty director, has a knack for finding and executing a fresh tonal approach to well-worn genres, and is a gifted, at times, cinematographer (let's forget Batman Begins and its fight scenes). Generally speaking he can handle pacing and makes entertaining movies, if nothing else. Dunkirk is both entertaining, cleverly constructed, beautifully photographed, and scored by god himself, Hans Zimmer. Zimmer with his genius, despite Nolan being unable to let any single scene exist without a musical intrusion (which isn't necessarily a good thing at all) has elevated Dunkirk considerably. It's a fantastic score that brings a huge tonal quality to the film, complementing its bleakness and colour correction perfectly.

What Nolan can't do well on his own - and this has been firmly established - is write. And despite failing as a writer time and time again, for some reason he keeps doing it. Nolan is a concepts man: he genuinely conjours good ideas. But when it comes to putting those ideas on paper, he is the equivalent of a 17 year old film student with little to no experience. And this is where Dunkirk is a real shame, because it could have been a really great movie, if he had only handed writing duties to someone who is professional at writing scripts.

As it stands, the only bearable dialogue between any characters in the film is between the pilots, because they speak in a limited true-to-life technical format. Everyone else sucks shit. The dialogue is horrible, the casting is amateurish, the exchanges are clumsy in every respect. And it's jarring.

Mark Rylance is the best actor in the film, obviously, but even he finds it difficult to say "That's a [something something] plane. Has a Merlin Rolls Royce engine, best in the world. Listen to that sound" in a serious movie that's not been written by Michael Bay. It's just an embarrassing 'look at me, I know something' interjection from Nolan.

The rest of the dialogue is equally flat, completely without humanity, and delivered poorly by everyone involved. Issues here are further compounded by Nolan's unwillingness to ever have period characters speak in a fashion true to the period they're in. It's an awful oversight and one he keeps making, when these characters of the 40s speak like people of the 2010s. They sound totally out of place and at times, actually reduced the film from being a cinematic spectacle to feeling almost exactly like a TV soap opera.

Finally, because Nolan knows nothing about actors, his casting and direction of his players is always in peril. Sometimes he survives with a Ledger, other times he burns with a Branagh. Choosing unknowns for your cast is all well and good, but not if you don't have the ability to direct them well enough to turn in decent performances.

And let the record show that Kenneth Branagh is undoubtedly, 100%, the world's first and foremost, leading amateur actor. He ruins everything he is in. It's incredible that the man has any work at all, but he can thank friends in high places for that. He has no emotional depth whatsoever, no ability to internalise anything. His performance is so superficial in every respect that he's barely in the movie at all. It feels as though, when uttering dialogue, he can't ever get beyond his ego, and as such is speaking from somewhere within the audience while the rest of us are watching the film beyond the screen.

If anyone wants a certificate in acting criticism, when you finally can see how poor Branagh is, you'll have graduated.

Anyway, Dunkirk then. A good movie, a great soundtrack, and worth watching. It's certainly one of Nolan's better movies and I enjoyed it, but you can't help feeling some element of sadness for how good it should have been, instead of how half-decent it ended up being.

[soprano1]

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 (2017)
Good stuff, loved it as much as the first one. Too much on the late 70's/80's references/art direction, but it shouldn't stop you from enjoying it.

[GaijinPunch]

Mark Rylance is the best actor in the film, obviously, but even he finds it difficult to say "That's a [something something] plane.

Obviously Harry was the best actor in the film.

[emphatic]

Point Break (1991). 4/5

This thread is really great for realizing important films you've missed. That chase scene after the robbery!

[Skykid]

Mark Rylance is the best actor in the film, obviously, but even he finds it difficult to say "That's a [something something] plane.

Obviously Harry was the best actor in the film.

Oh yes, sorry. Harry Styles was by far the best actor in the movie. Who knew? Straight off the street, into X Factor, chosen by blind luck, suddenly a movie actor, and lo, he's the best actor since Laurence Olivier.

Who says capitalism doesn't produce genuine talent?

Point Break (1991). 4/5

This thread is really great for realizing important films you've missed. That chase scene after the robbery!

Fuck yeah.

[BrianC]

Obviously Harry was the best actor in the film.

For moment I forgot you guys were talking about Dunkirk and was thinking of Harry and the Hendersons.

[Vurpa]

The Terminal

It was just so predictable and stupid..."phoning it in" is that the expression? Tries way too hard to be quirky, manages to be more annoying than anything. The side characters are absolutely awful, their stories lead nowhere, and they should all have been cut out or received a lot less screentime. Hanks is obviously "good" playing grown eastern european Gump 2.0. but yeah it's nothing new. It probably felt dated even at time of release. 3/10

Things I didn't like:

- Donnie Yen's performance
- Zero character development
- Forest Whittaker being the shittiest 'character' ever
- People dying for no reason
- Ludicrous plot developments
- Outrunning exploding planets
- Idiotic everything
- Unlikable protagonists
- Awful acting
- A face-punchingly useless lead with a dour face, zero charisma and zero acting ability
- A Spanish guy with an unintelligible accent who couldn't act
- An unfunny sarcastic robot
- A bad guy who couldn't act with unintelligible speech
- Shoehorned endless tributes to the OT
- Carrie Fisher's Toy Story CGI mugshot ending the movie
- Chronically awful script and dialogue
- Being bored
- Not being able to remember anybody's name, not caring if they lived or died
- Modern shaky cinematography that didn't fit the Star Wars universe
- Two massively underdeveloped shoehorned Chinese characters with no purpose to be in the movie except to appease Chinese audiences
- Gareth Edwards


"As good as the OT". What a fucking joke.

Agreeing 100% on RO...and incidently the Spanish guy is the same actor that's playing the largest secondary character in TT (he sucks in that too but unsure if it's all on him or the script(s)).

[GaijinPunch]

Oh yes, sorry. Harry Styles was by far the best actor in the movie. Who knew? Straight off the street, into X Factor, chosen by blind luck, suddenly a movie actor, and lo, he's the best actor since Laurence Olivier.

Hahah... my gf said, "there's a guy in a boy band in this" and when I saw him I go, "is it harry?" And that was the moment that I knew, I really needed to punch myself in the dick for knowing who he was.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The Terminal

It was just so predictable and stupid..."phoning it in" is that the expression? Tries way too hard to be quirky, manages to be more annoying than anything. The side characters are absolutely awful, their stories lead nowhere, and they should all have been cut out or received a lot less screentime. Hanks is obviously "good" playing grown eastern european Gump 2.0. but yeah it's nothing new. It probably felt dated even at time of release. 3/10

Things I didn't like:

- Donnie Yen's performance
- Zero character development
- Forest Whittaker being the shittiest 'character' ever
- People dying for no reason
- Ludicrous plot developments
- Outrunning exploding planets
- Idiotic everything
- Unlikable protagonists
- Awful acting
- A face-punchingly useless lead with a dour face, zero charisma and zero acting ability
- A Spanish guy with an unintelligible accent who couldn't act
- An unfunny sarcastic robot
- A bad guy who couldn't act with unintelligible speech
- Shoehorned endless tributes to the OT
- Carrie Fisher's Toy Story CGI mugshot ending the movie
- Chronically awful script and dialogue
- Being bored
- Not being able to remember anybody's name, not caring if they lived or died
- Modern shaky cinematography that didn't fit the Star Wars universe
- Two massively underdeveloped shoehorned Chinese characters with no purpose to be in the movie except to appease Chinese audiences
- Gareth Edwards


"As good as the OT". What a fucking joke.

Agreeing 100% on RO...and incidently the Spanish guy is the same actor that's playing the largest secondary character in TT (he sucks in that too but unsure if it's all on him or the script(s)).

Yep, that same actor in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Diego Luna, will be in the upcoming Flatliners sequel as well.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Leandro]

Just watched Spiderman Homecoming.

Apart from Michael Keaton (the scene inside the car before the prom was the best thing in the film by far, and maybe the only good moment) and sexy Aunt May (Marisa Tomei looks delicious in this role), the movie was pure shit. If this shit is a John Hughes tribute then it completely fails to be as engaging and captivating as a John Hughes movie. I also found all the action to be super boring but the girl who went with me disagreed.

Seems like the film was aimed at a target audience of 12 years old and younger, or I must be getting too old for this shit.

HOMECUMMING

It's official: I'm the only person on the Internet that finds Holland's Spidey irritable.

no you aren't

[WelshMegalodon]

Seems like the film was aimed at a target audience of 12 years old and younger, or I must be getting too old for this shit.

Who do you think consumes most of this superhero stuff? The comics may be aimed at adults, but all the money-making adaptations are and have been kiddie fare.

[Leandro]

Seems like the film was aimed at a target audience of 12 years old and younger, or I must be getting too old for this shit.

Who do you think consumes most of this superhero stuff? The comics may be aimed at adults, but all the money-making adaptations are and have been kiddie fare.

fair enough... I still enjoy super kiddie and dumb stuff though, don't know what happened here

[soprano1]

Tron Legacy (2010)
How the hell did I forget to watch this?!
Better late than never, great movie with delicious neon lights and a wonderful score by Daft Punk (who even show up in the movie!). CGed young Jeff Bridges looked bad, but hey, it can't be perfect.

[GaijinPunch]

Tron Legacy (2010)
How the hell did I forget to watch this?!
Better late than never, great movie with delicious neon lights and a wonderful score by Daft Punk (who even show up in the movie!). CGed young Jeff Bridges looked bad, but hey, it can't be perfect.

For 2010 the young Jeff Bridges looked pretty amazing. Just think, that's 6 full years before the CGI'd Princess Leia which doesn't look much better (although is in brighter environments). I'm with you on the film. For entertainment purposes, it delivers. Lots of cool action, and Quora in a jump suit... holy smokes. I own the BR and play it w/ the volume up every now and again. For the record, I've never been a fan of Daft Punk, but I give them kudos for doing different things... for this, I think they nailed it.

[emphatic]

Tron Legacy (2010)
How the hell did I forget to watch this?!
Better late than never, great movie with delicious neon lights and a wonderful score by Daft Punk (who even show up in the movie!). CGed young Jeff Bridges looked bad, but hey, it can't be perfect.

For 2010 the young Jeff Bridges looked pretty amazing. Just think, that's 6 full years before the CGI'd Princess Leia which doesn't look much better (although is in brighter environments). I'm with you on the film. For entertainment purposes, it delivers. Lots of cool action, and Quora in a jump suit... holy smokes. I own the BR and play it w/ the volume up every now and again. For the record, I've never been a fan of Daft Punk, but I give them kudos for doing different things... for this, I think they nailed it.

Loved this too, except for the night club owner, who's a cringe-worthy sunovabitch.

[Stompp]

Finally got around to spin Bright Lights, Big City last night. No masterpiece by any means but a piece of the 80's I missed out on back then.

[BryanM]

Just watched this new and exciting film bursting with new ideas: Alien: Covenant.

lol'ed at the beginning with the super smart ultra smug robologist cringing his little fists about what kind of magic god wizard made humans. So absurd - such a person would be too busy conquering the world and setting up a Running Man type TV show with the survivors, to waste time on such games of pretend.

Annoyed at the middle for wasting my time by not putting me to sleep like Godzilla Snoozers Edition (also known by its theatrical name, Godzilla: Malcolm in the Middle Edition) or Goozbusters Whatever. 0/5 nap points.

lol'ed at the end with all the goofy head-bursting action we've all come to know and love

Spoilers since the movie is fresh and new~

Spoiler

Fuck you Ridley Scott.

FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Where do I even start. Jesus christ.

Okay... high level stuff. The Alien series is no longer about an incomprehensible ghost that wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat.

It is now little vignettes that have nothing more to say besides: "David is a dick." Nothing more.

I mean really, man. Is this how it's done now. We didn't need four hours to explain the backstory of Jason Voorhees, Mikey Myers, or Frederick Krueger. Their backstories weren't the point.

The biggest question that's never going to stop haunting me: okay. He has these tiny little spores. Break them open, and you get these tiny little microbes that can magically fly through the air and impregnate any living thing in the universe. Most excellent. Super efficient. He then proceeds to... make the process a million billion times less energy efficient and effective by breeding into them the convoluted giant over-sized egg -> tiny face seX0r arachnid -> baby ghost life cycle. Why. Why. Why.

Now, the Walter v. David fight. When they didn't show the conclusion, I assumed "sigh.... they're going to do the switcheroo." But then I looked at the time remaining and thought maybe the movie was just going to end. Maybe they realized that doing the swicheroo, in such an obvious, open-handed manner, would be the act of hack frauds. Maybe they realized their movie was bad and didn't need to try to do anything exciting to finish it off. (God knows they didn't do much with the rest of the hours it had.) I wasn't completely sure.

But no. Ridley Scott looked at the statue of David one day and thought "disgusting apes, he should be wearing some pants." For you see, my dear readers, in the end it is not David who is the dick. Oh no.

It turns out.... it turns out that Ridley was the dick all along.

What a switcheroo!

I'm absolutely horrified that the Neil Bumcamp's Aliens sequel was cancelled, and eight million more episodes of this shit is what we're gonna get. Ridley seriously wants to bring this franchise into Jason X territory.

I actually had some hope for Aliens 3: Version 2. The prospect of possibly getting something I actually want, and also the horrible schlock that makes me angry, made me happy. Fucking Hollywood.

Time to watch the Half in the Bag eppy on it, now.

[Skykid]

Going Places

A French film from 1974 starring Gérard Depardieu. Was described to me as one of the most controversial movies of all time, but I found it to be generally lighthearted even though the theme is hedonisitic criminality.

It follows two wanderers who have no scruples whatsoever as long as it serves their interests and they have a good time. This includes auto-theft, murder attempts, hold ups, robberies and rape - but somehow it's funny enough and playful enough that it manages not to offend. It's quite a trick, and props to the director for doing such a superb job of balancing the film tonally and consistently so that the events never become distorted. It's also incredibly entertaining and moves at a wonderful pace.

Someone mentioned this after I mentioned 120 Days of Sodom, but it doesn't quite fit in the same ballpark. I'd recommend this, it's a very funny film, despite its provocative nature.

[boagman]

"War For The Planet Of The Apes"

The kind of movie that makes you wish you didn't go to the movies. How in the *world* this thing is well-reviewed, except for the CGI work, is completely beyond me. I've seen worse, but having paid $0.00 for this, it takes some of the sting/stink out of it. It cannot in any way redeem it, though. Basically, crap.

[Skykid]

Get Out


Good, but not the 99% review aggregate achiever that Rotten Tomatoes would have you believe.

It's a good idea, well executed, with okay to good performances. It's got a genuine level of intrigue and suspense, and it works well during its unravelling. Moments of realisation and horror drop well, and it earns thriller status well (horror, less so).

Sadly Peele made a few mistakes, which I'm happy to point out.

Get Out is flawed by the studio system it comes from. It's potentially an absolutely brilliant movie for our times with a sledgehammer subtext of racial discrimination and class division. But those effects are muted by the fact that this wasn't made independently and was shackled by the producer system. Here's what's wrong:

Casting is a mistake. It should have been unknowns throughout, which would have made the fiction several times more intense. Familiar faces like the mother, the blind art-dealer and most importantly Lil Rel Howery as Chris's friend hurt suspense levels.

And following on from that, Lil Rel Howery was not only miscast but applied in error. His comic demeanour absolutely ruined a very important aspect of the film, and was entirely unnecessary. Without him, Get Out could have been a salient satire, since it's already got darkly humorous qualities - but it absolutely did not require an injection of base comedy, or a 'comedy friend' to strip the movie of that quality. Sadly that's exactly what it did.

If the unfunny and unnecessary comedy was removed and the violence ramped up to absolute explicit extremes, the movie would have managed a feat rarely seen in film these days, achieving suspense, a pressing subtext, retribution and catharsism while maintaining a blackly comic undertone.

Finally, I had an idea for the ending that I was fully expecting, but didn't occur. When checking the Wiki info, I found that the almost exact same ending was filmed or written, but not used. The one that's used instead is completely perfunctory and almost ruins the movie to some degree. The fact that the writer/director had the correct ending in his hands is saddening, and I can only blame the producer system for swaying him in the other direction.

Get Out is a good thriller and better than many. If you are interested in something a little different, check it out, but prepare for disappointment at the glaring missed opportunities.

I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

[Ixmucane2]

Monolith

A little adventure in the desert: a futuristic "smart" car accidentally locks a small child and all phones inside and his mother outside. Dehydration ensues, but thanks to the mother's courage and determination everything ends well.
Set "near" Los Angeles (the car's navigator reports hundreds of miles), actually filmed in astoundingly beautiful places in Mojave and Utah.

The story isn't very dramatic; the simple premise offers few threats and few resources. Worthwhile for the general atmosphere and for the natural scenery.

[Ixmucane2]

The Dark Tower

An excessively simple good vs. evil fantasy plot in which good is stronger and therefore good wins.

Roland the Gunslinger and Walter the evil sorcerer have been fighting for a very long time, with Walter trying to destroy the Dark Tower that protects several worlds from bad things from beyond and Roland defending it. Then Roland teams up with Jake, a psychic boy from New York, and together they easily end Walter's attacks on the Dark Tower and his life. Maximum score!

Low on bullshit, but also low on moral depth and plot subtleties to the point of being boring. Good casting, some good action scenes.

[emphatic]

Baywatch (2017). 3/5

If you think the trailer makes it look fun, you'll probably enjoy this.

[soprano1]

Baywatch (2017). 3/5

If you think the trailer makes it look fun, you'll probably enjoy this.

Does anyone from the old cast make a cameo or something? Use spoiler tag if you need to. Thanks.