Films The Official bit-tech Movie Thread - What have you seen lately?

I kinda gave up on the 3rd season after 2 episodes... the smell of cheese and bad acting kinda got to me even though it was kinda nostalgic for the 1st and 2nd seasons... will try and get through it again methinks!

 

Ghostbusters Afterlife - For Harold/10

A 2 hour love letter to every 80's kid. The plot wont win any awards but the nostalgia trip had me grinning like a child.

 

Girlfriend's Day with Bob Odenkirk on Netflix.
Ridiculous premise but Odenkirk just about keeps it watchable.
And it's mercifully short at 1 hour ten minutes long.

 

That new Spiderman thing.

It was good. It was more cohesive and confident than most of the Marvel efforts. However, it depends almost entirely on the audience having seen no less than five previous Spiderman films to fully appreciate and enjoy it, and that amount of interdependency is at odds with the purpose and format of cinema. My biggest problem with the cinematic universe concept is that it compels audiences to do homework, to keep up. If I want that kind of pressure I'll buy HBO Max and dive into whatever deep broody 400-hour masterpiece they're most recently proud of.

 

Bondy McBondface - No time to golden tomorrow diefall/10

It's Bond. It made my OH cry a little.

A few Bond dad jokes, car chases and shooting. It's Bond, worth a watch (we got it for free from a perk from somewhere so that was good).

No real surprises but, yeah, very happy to watch it for free.

 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Well worth the 2 hours, definitely agree with Gunsmith about the love letter to 80's children - you can see the plot a million miles off but this somehow doesn't detract from the film. Made my wife cry at the end!

Watch the credits to the end for a second post film scene.

 

Last Looks - ????/10

I mean. I expected it to be ****. It was pretty ****. I don't know if that makes it good because I got what I expected, or bad because it was ****.

 

Eternals
Umm, WTF?

 

Seconding the Ghostbusters film - was meant to see it at the cinema with the family for birthday in December but had to isolate due to everyone but me getting ye ol' C of VD.

Thoroughly enjoyed myself with the score, visual cues and Easter eggs to the originals... I don't care what Mark Kermode said, it's a nostalgic trip down memory lane that works regardless of the contrivances!

 

Yep.

Intro: boring/seen before.
Rest of film: had to check the run time to see how far in I'd made it before writing it off. 22 mins, although the feeling started much earlier. And I'm a big Marvel fan.
Cast: miscast.

Fell asleep just after the fight in the woods and feel no urge to watch the rest, although I'll probably force myself to, just for Marvel completeness.

 

Interesting. I haven't tried Eternals but my friend, who is obsessed with Marvel and DC and has religiously watched every spin-off, TV show and other tat they roll out of the money machine, quit on Eternals after 40 minutes. So it must be either so bad that even a fanboy can't hang in there, or so good but out of step with the franchise that a fanboy can't hang in there.

To find out I'd have to watch another thing made by Marvel, and for me the doors closed with Endgame. That was the natural closure point; the biggest and best it could logically get; superhero **** is outstaying its welcome at this point.

Speaking of which, wife and I watched Legion and it's kinda crap. You hang in there because, like Lost, it does a good job of being weird and leftfield and making you think it'll have some really intense substance further on. But it hasn't. It's just not very good and at times it's really cringeworthy. Some of the S3 episodes are literally a total waste of your time. (Oh yeah - not a movie, but I was already here, so.)

 

You know what? I never thought I'd say it, but I agree with this. It's as if the Infinity Saga pushed things to the absolute limit and everything since (yes you, Eternals) just rehashes the stuff we saw before, but inexplicably in worse fashion. We decided last night that Covid has strangely resulted in the deterioration of the CGI industry. To use an example, they couldn't put together a credible fight on a tram in Shang Chi or a single explosion in Black Widow, yet The Matrix still holds up. As does, oddly, the dragon bit at the end of Shang Chi, so I don't know if that helps my criticism or not - how can you make a mythical creature believable, but not an everyday scrap on an everyday object?

However, that doesn't account for the awfully generic plots that seem to get signed off. Black Widow - secretive, supposedly shady backstory where someone that was trusted was actually a bit naughty. Shang Chi - turns out someone he trusted was being a bit naughty. Eternals - I fell asleep just before proclaiming "I bet he turns out a bit naughty" and woke up to the kids going "He's turned a bit naughty". Seems the age of surprises like Usual Suspects has passed.

I will end on Sator though - 8/10
Very slow to move, but freaky enough to keep you glued until the "Oh! Erm...!" ending. (We are still doing the one-line review, right?)

Is this the Marvel/DC/Whatever one where he goes nuts every now and again and the kitchen stuff hangs in mid-air? If so, I think I'll delete it if it's as bad as you say. Life is getting shorter.

 

The Matrix contains a shockingly tiny amount of CG effects. Like the Helicopter crash, only the ripple in the glass is CG, for the rest of the scene they built a model skyscraper and smashed a model helicopter into it, then blew it the hell up. Or the entire lobby sequence, the only bit of CG in that is the elevator door riding the explosion, even the explosion is real.

I reckon that Disney slashed the budget of it's movie being made through 2020/21. They knew cinemas would be closed and they'd have to settle for tiny returns via Disney Plus and limited screenings, so they just cut everything to bone.

 

Yes. He's supposed to be the secret love child of the X-Men's Prof Xavier, and in the comics, each of his dozens of personalities has a different superpower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_(Marvel_Comics)

 

Agreed. They've had a near 14-year run at it now, can we have some other big-budget films now, please?

Oh, and whatever the hell is going on with DC films/series/etc, please...

 

Matrix Resurrections: Different/10

I've been having a hard time explaining my feelings about the movie which probably means it wasn't a very good movie. But equally it wasn't a bad movie. I went in with very low expectations and knew nothing about the premise (apart from the previous movies) and was fearful of a cheap reboot/ cash in. It isn't a cheap cash in and in general the writing and story were compelling but something about the way it was filmed and the action felt decidedly uncinematic and the story seemed to meander.

It would probably have benefitted from a tighter story line with less side characters as it felt like they were trying to world build. However, lots of the introduced concepts and characters went no where meaningful by the end of the film.

Plus there is a healthy dose of political correctness which felt forced in and dropped me out of the world/story by how "Hey aren't we super woke" it felt. I'm not against representation in movies but I am against it being driven home with 'witty' dialogue.

Overall I think its a solid movie but it didn't really feel like a matrix movie.

 

Crivens. That's my morning derailed - thanks Ian. I've ended up on dueling scars and Operation Barbarossa on the 'pede, somehow... There should be a productivity warning at the top of every page. It does sound interesting though - shall I bother with the series or is it ultimately unsatisfying?

I read an article (that I have no chance of retrieving) that suggested it was made as a rebuttal to the fact the studio were going to do it anyway. It apparently was better for everyone to have been involved and have their say than to let the studio do it their own way, hence the first part is supposedly a non-veiled dig at studio money-grabbing. I haven't seen it though, so that may just be one writer's opinion.

Seriously?! In that case - wow. I have the behind the scenes DVD in the cupboard, but have never got around to watching it in entirety. I will now!

 

The first 30mins was probably the most compelling as its not obvious which way things might go and it had an interesting spin on tieing back to the trilogy but then it fell into a somewhat formulaic affair after that.

 

https://beforesandafters.com/2019/03/28/anatomy-of-a-crash-the-matrixs-stunning-helicopter-scene/

 

For those who do not know, the Wachowskis that made the Matrix trilogy took their money and both underwent gender confirmation surgery. This "woke" you refer to is the fact that LGBTQ+ is WAY more prevalent than people give credit for. And people want to see themselves represented in films. It's more apropos to say that we're finally getting some recognition. The world is not all cishet white males. And representation matters.

All right, rant over.