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

Seconded. The sound mixing is awesome, especially towards the end

Spoiler

when he gets his cochlear implants

Glad they got an Oscar for that.

 

The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud - 3/10
I get the idea, a retro movie about videogames, why not?
well, because it only caters to a certain generation, videogamekids from the eighties.
Badly done, badly acted in bad sets with even worse effects.

All of this is on purpose I suppose. But it is not bad, or ironic, or over-the-top enough to be good again.
It's just bad.

The decay of Mel Gibson, part two:

Fatman - 5/10
Again, not a bad idea, Gibson as a grudging Santaclaus.
But, the movie just doesn't know what it wants to be.
Plot thinner than a tissue, just not funny enough to be a funny movie, to explicit for kids, too lame for adults.
That said, it's a lot better than "Force of Nature" but that isn't a feat.

 

I hate 2020-2021....I'm rapidly running out of movies!

 

Love and Monsters 8/10

Just watched this on a hunch, wasn't expecting anything and was pleasantly surprised. It won't be everyone's cup of tea as the plot is a bit annoying, but the monster VFX is great and Dylan O'Brien is a perfect fit for the lead role IMO.

Palm Springs 5/10

Awful movie, but funny enough in places to get 50% from me. If you just want to laugh, this movie will deliver.

 

Invincible season 1 8/10 really enjoyed this animated super heroe series, just dont watch it with the kids. last ep was insane

Falcon & The Winter soldier 5/10 first few mins of the first ep is good but its pretty much meh since then. bucky with his super serum abilitys and years of training after being brain washed and who went toe to toe with the orignal cap cant hold his own in a couple of fist fights. this should have been a spectacular action series but gets very bogged down trying to be like lethal wepon type buddy movie at times other times trying to be like netflix's gritty marvel series. it had some good bits but those had little to do with either of the title leads

Love & Monsters 7/10 if any likes the last kids on earth series will really like this movie

 

Thor
You know what? I still like it.

I like the glitzy old-school high fantasy design of Asgard. The CGI holds up. The costumes and design are great. The action is fluid, well-shot and clear, free of the dreaded Bourne virus of shaky overcut obfuscation. The plot is tidy and satisfying, if small in scope. The mashup of Norse myth and modern-day attitudes is the core of the film's tone, and it riffs on it to great effect.

I like the silly supporting characters, played not quite straight and not quite parody. Idris Elba is a hulking monosyllabic celestial guardian with a big-ass sword, which is about the least subtle way imaginable to use Elba's presence and rich voice. Thor's warrior friends are ripped so directly from pop culture tropes that the script is obliged to hang a lampshade on it when they visit present-day earth, with one SHIELD operative radioing in the appearance of "Xena, Jackie Chan and Robin Hood..." He omits Gimli, possibly for copyright reasons. Jane's assistant Darcy is a sarcastic hipster kid with eyeliner, a detached obliviousness and a knack for occasionally insightful remarks.

They aren't characters you're meant to feel much for. They're true supporting characters - storytelling architecture to prop up the main cast. Foils. Scoobies. They set up jokes, react to things, get in peril, console, caution, protest, figure things out. They're one-dimensional but fun(ctional). I appreciate that the Thor franchise doesn't waste effort trying to make its supporting characters much more than that. It directs your attention to where it should be, on the main cast drama and plot.

The main cast is the hook for me, and they're rock solid: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgard. They smash it, no thanks to the at-times hokey script. I can't imagine young Tom Hiddleston's reaction upon seeing [screaming]TELL ME! in the script, nor how many takes they did to get it right, but somehow he manages to make it stirring, rather than cringe. They all pull off magic tricks like this with the hammy dialogue. (Side-note, it's weird seeing Tom Hiddleston as a young and inexperienced actor; he kinda fumbles it a couple of times here trying to find the film's tone, which is strange to see if you've seen him in The Night Manager.)

Anthony Hopkins, as always, elevates things just by being in the room, and manages to make Saturday-morning-cartoon lines sound epic and earnest without breaking a sweat.

Chris Hemsworth is loveable and funny as Thor. He and Hiddleston are as much fun as I remember bouncing off each other, but it's the angst in their characters that has aged better than I expected. Their masculine crises as rival princes beneath their father, one arrogant and impatient to take the throne, the other overlooked and desperate for recognition, is more moving than I remembered.

To balance out the melodrama, there's humour sprinkled throughout, but not in-your-face tedious quipping like Age of Ultron or Ant-Man; just light, occasional joking, like...Princess Bride, or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Like those films, Thor does a weird, subtle balancing act between theatrical melodrama and wry satire, never quite becoming either. It's tongue-in-cheek and sincere at the same time, light-hearted yet full-stakes. (Guardians of the Galaxy would continue in that vein.)

The sets and budget are a bit minimal - when you stop and reflect, basically the whole film is either in a green-screen or in a small stretch of New Mexico desert. But it manages to chop and change between them, and pace the plot so briskly, that you don't really notice at the time.

I still haven't figured out how to wrap up film reviews but that's all I got. Thor is good basically, and I like it. I like that weird sincere-humorous-drama-not-quite-satire emotional space that it, Princess Bride, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and some of the Pixar films like Toy Story occupy.

In totally unrelated news,

Castaway is still a hell of a film but I don't think I need to explain why, everyone knows it's ****ing amazing.

 

Cosmic Sin.
I can't give it a rating, I only made it 40 minutes in before binning it

 

Mitchells Vs The Machines 8/10 fun animation on netflix about a dysfunctional family some how surviving a robot uprising

 

Bohemian Rhapsody.

Thoroughly recommend it, especially if you're not much into Queen and don't know much about them. To a turbo-fan it's probably a bit thin and superficial compared to what you can already glean from documentaries and such, but to a newcomer like me, knowing nothing beyond Freddie's name and all the biggest hits they produced, it was fascinating. Rami Malek is one of my favourite actors after Mr Robot (also stonking and worth a watch), doubly so after this.

 

Those Who Wish Me Dead
4/10

Spoiler

80's style action flick, feels like Stallone should have been in it though

 

Men In Black: International (2/10)

Terrible movie. Some of the FX are real nice, but that's about all. Watch it if you are too stressed to care how terrible a movie it is -- that's what we did.

 

The Illusionist.

7/10, exactly the right amount of intrigue, plot and good casting to keep you entertained on a weeknight, but short, sweet and self-contained enough to not be overly taxing. I love Edward Norton. And thingy Giamatti. And it's refreshing to see a film about magic where the magic is actually plausibly technically possible (vs. Now You See Me, where "magic" means like actual CGI magic, rather than craftsmanship and clever tricks).

 

Jupiter's Legacy 8/10 pretty decent superhero series about a superman type geezer trying to uphold a "batman" type code among his fellow justice league and teen titan types. nice and steady pace wise

 

Going through it myself at the moment (just watched episode 5). Obviously a counter to Amazon's The Boys, but a welcome one with its more serious nature.

 

Army of the Dead 8/10 Zynders does zombies again with heavy I Am Legend vibes, i was expecting this to have comicy vibes like some of his other films but the action is brutal and pretty unforgiving, only thing i got against it it gave away the "twist" fairly early on then in the middle

Spoiler

during the " stuck in a time-loop" moment

 

I went in thinking it would probably be at least twice as bad as MIB3, I was so far away from how terrible it was.

 

Also this film, and also 8/10.

It's dumb fun, IMO. I feel like it was maybe .. 20-30 minutes too long, but yeah. Lots of fun. I especially enjoyed the only smart character in the film. Favourite character, even if only for like.. 10 seconds of screen time. Second favourite was Tig Notaro's character. For being chopped into the film, she did a sterling job and her delivery really sold that character.

During the early stages of the film I made a handful of predictions, fairly specific ones, and only one turned out to not be close. It's not a particularly cerebral film, although I'd love to have a deepdive on the zombie-head-bullet-magnets that seemed to be prevalent throughout. Like. Even accounting for 'heroes' having unnaturally good aim, this was waaay out there for how good everyone was at headshots. Except when it mattered, of course.

Spoiler

I read a clickbait title to the tune of 'this will make you want to watch army of the dead again' or something equally unclickable. I thought I was going to have to keep an eye out for subtle, but thankfully Snyder's subtle is a brick through the window.

 

Not a movie but I'm currently watching The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan. Brilliant, simply brilliant!

 

Can't beat classic TV or movies

 

You can still visit the set. It was filmed in Portmeirion, North Wales.