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

John Wick Ballerina (Amazon) - 5.5/10
Not because it's inherently bad, it is entertaining, but because it's a bad cash-in with some very unsound set pieces. I reckon you can always tell a good fight scene by what's happening on the fringes and in this case, people are standing around waiting for the next kick/punch/bullet, exiting vehicles to face a gunman and just standing there waiting, coming up face to face with the very people/person they're tasked with killing and then just pausing for half an hour to eyeball each other etc.. Poor. So I've docked it several points as a result.

And that's not to mention...

Spoiler

...the Harry Potter-esque "wand battle" between a military flamethrower and a fire hose and the "surprise" reappearance of a dead guy at the end to tie everything up in neat familial fashion. FFS.

You always know what's going to happen in these films - no surprises, it's the journey that counts - so it doesn't exactly score heavily for plot. But when I say this was unrealistic, bear in mind I mean "unrealistic for the John Wick hyperbolic universe". The gunplay was pretty decent, which makes it all the more confusing as to why the hand to hand stuff was so poor. The nightclub to-do being a prime example. They might as well have passed each other Post-Its detailing the next move they were going to make.

It does have Catalina Moreno in though. She's the dog handler lady from my previous post, so that gets a stamp of approval.

 

Ballerina what @ModSquid said/10

Afterburn started watching, stopped watching/10
Samuel L Jackson and Dave Bautista were in the short amount of the film I perservered through.

I gave up. It made Ice Cube and War of the Worlds look like a masterpiece of writing and stage craft.

I've never seen Jackson act so bad, nor an empty plot be so badly written.

Honestly, if you told me it was AI generated based on the 'AI' analysis of the stories of a school class of 6 year olds I could easily believe it.

Awful.

 

Blue Velvet - wtf?!/10 (Cinema)
Bizarrely, I get the plot, which having never seen it before I was expecting not to. Dude and bad guy cross paths in a night of chaos, is pretty much it. HOWEVER, it is a mental trip of a journey and it hasn't aged well at all. It's another one of those odd Emperor's New Clothes jobs (where I have no idea what must have gone on in the storyboard meeting, just the director going "And then, right, there's this bit yeah, where xxxxx" and everyone round the table just nods and agrees because they're too nervous to speak out, so the film gets made) crossed with the acting skills, script and budget (possibly) of a sixth form film project.
I'll be honest - I'm glad I ticked it off the list since it's got that cult label, but if you're not interested enough in that sense, don't waste your time.

 

LOTR (extended Editions) in the Cinema - "You bow to no one" / 10

It's been 25 years since the release of the Fellowship of the ring so they decided to re-release all of the extended edition Lord of the Rings movies in the cinema. Over 3 nights my 12 yr old daughter and I watched the complete trilogy. A first time for her and a long time since I've seen them (both at home or in the cinema)

It was equal parts epic and emotional for me. Its been many years since I carved out the time to watch movies and seeing it on the big screen just hits different (even versus home projection). The Balrog scene remains one of the finest in all of cinema, the visuals, sound design and emotional impact hit me right in the feels.

I maintain that Fellowship is the best of the 3 movies as it stays the closest to the books and has the least "Hollywood" moments (Legolas mounting horses and oliphaunts at full speed can piss right off for breaking immersion) and I was in tears several times. I still thoroughly enjoy the other movies, but Fellowship has the leading place in my heart (essentially a perfect movie in my opinion). That said, scenes such as the King Theodeons speech before the battle of pelanor fields still give me goosebumps.

For fellow LOTR nerds, your local cinema may still have limited showings of the Trilogy for the next few weeks and it is well worth making the time to go.

 

The only movies where you still have to change disc halfway through... on Bluray!

 

This line still and will always choke me up

 

I still think they did Aragorn’s character dirty, but that scene still gets me misty eyed.

As does: “I would have followed you, my brother… my captain… my king…”

And one that still makes my hair stand on end:

“You cannot pass! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. Dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udûn! Go back to the shadow. You shall not pass!”

After so much lore was excised, I am so glad they kept every detail of that line in the film. So much is conveyed in a few short lines, and Gandalf finally reveals his true divine nature to one of the most dire of foes he could face. 100% kick ass.

 

I forgot to say about this - should you actually decide to watch it, pay special attention to the robin at the end. In fact, even if you don't watch it, see if you can find the end scene somewhere - with the robin on the windowsill.

Fking hell, it is JARRING.

 

Mercy (Cinema) - Chris Crapp/10
I don't get it. Not the film, just how it got made. Again.
"AI is fallible, beware" is basically the message, driven home by half a dozen actors in a pretty much non-existent set (it's all on video screens and playback. It can be summarised as "a bloke in a chair going through internet history for other people." Reminded me a bit of that game Herstory except this was utter, utter dross. Chris Pratt is half decent and it's got Bex in, so it gets a point for her (even though they seem to have square-ified her head), giving it a grand total of..........1.

Avoid. Even if it comes to Sky (or more likely Amazon, since it was an Amazon MGM production).

 

Predator Badlands 9/10
I love the alien movies, love the predator movies, but the predator ones always felt like a wolverine movie, the character is amazing but they just couldn't ever nail the story telling with it on the screen leaving most of them slightly lacking. Not with this one, the sound track alone was absolutely perfect, the story was great, i felt gripped and wanted to keep watching, hope there will be a sequel on this, as its by far the best predator movie.

 

Hahahahaa! I did wonder what Gunny's response would be!

 

Unfortunately Chris Pratt's last few films have left a lot to be desired.

 

I agree, and a crucial element for me is that the first film was the only scary one. The pursuit of the hobbits by the Nasgul was a properly terrifying section, like something out of a D&D horror campaign. Later films had peril and pathos, but not really fear. Helm's Deep came close but it was undercut (like so many of the 2nd and 3rd films' tense moments) by silly comic relief, like Aragorn throwing Gimli and Legolas surfing on a shield. Weird dumb ****. They're some of the best films ever made but we can admit that and also admit that these little moments were dumb and bad decisions. Film 1 didn't shove them into the midst of the fear; it got them out of the waay early, with all the Shire bumbling about and laughing, and once the wraiths showed up, all that got dropped because the situation was too scary to warrant it. That abrupt shift in tone emphasised the peril. Film 3 was the most dischordant in tone; as much as I love the individual ingredients, going back and forth between main character deaths and goofy CGI shenanigans was just whiplash-inducing.

 

The Wrecking Crew - all I will say is mamoa and a cheese greater. not going to score only half way through

 

If they’d included more from Book 1 - and I mean “Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings”, not “The Fellowship of the Ring” - then that peril would have been brought much closer to home in The Shire and its immediate borders.

Actually the most “whiplash-inducing” part for me was the Hobbits returning to their idyllic, untouched paradise of The Shire. Had “The Scouring of the Shire” plot line been kept intact, it would have given much more weight & gravitas to the hobbit characters. Particularly Merry & Pippin, who largely remain comic relief in the films, but by the end of the book they’re shown to have grown so much more. After the end of the books, Merry & Pippin end up becoming the most famous hobbits in The Shire, and when they die they are laid to rest in the hallows of Minas Tirith, among the Kings of Gondor, as honoured heroes. Sam is elected Mayor for seven consecutive seven-year terms, and eventually, because he too was a ring-bearer for a short time, is allowed to sail into the West and spend the rest of his days in Valinor. I know a lot that is in the appendices and not the “main narrative”, but for me these are some of the most poignant aspects of the whole story.

 

I assume you didnt like it lol

 

Is This Thing On? (Cinema) - No, It's Not/10
This film really isn't sure what it is. It's about a couple with two kids, heading for divorce because they've run out of steam, yet is neither poignant, heartfelt or heart-rending. The guy goes off to take up stand-up, yet it's not funny either. It's not particularly poorly-written in terms of script, it's not badly acted, it's not embarrassingly-filmed. It just does nothing very well at all. It has no depth, maybe. And a lot of superficial characters. I don't go too deep into this stuff, I just want to be entertained or made to feel emotionally involved otherwise, yet I really didn't give two hoots what happened to these people. It's just really boring and does nothing it markets. So don't even bother when it hits the lounge.

I'm taking my dinner to watch Shelter in a bit. I'll know what I'm in for with that, at least and may even end up pleasantly surprised (but if I'm not, then my expectations will have been met).

 

Shelter (Cinema with dinner - not free dinner, though) - The Statham Identity/10
Maybe it's a coincidence they're both Jason. Maybe it's the strange accent where in every film, J can't seem to decide if he's British or American. Maybe it's because I was still wondering why MI6 were operating domestically (unless there's a clause or a restructure I don't know about) and didn't pay too much attention, but this really is a low-rent version of Bourne, which is kind of a shame as I was hoping for a no-brainer solid action flick. It's one of those where the trailer crams all the good bits into a couple of minutes, but those have loooooong gaps between them in the film, which is a lot slower as a result. Bit of a mis-sell.

It wasn't doing too bad, until:
"Don't tell me you're getting sentimental in your old age"
"She's just a girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time"
"Christ, Mason"

Unless again, I'm missing an homage or a reference to something else, it's as if the tea boy snuck those lines into the dialogue whilst the actual scriptie was having a pee break. And is it me, or have I been spoilt by 4k OLED TVs, because films these days look kind of blurry, a bit faded and......old? Oh well. As a Jason film, it's okay, absolutely zero ground being broken, but it's not awful. As a film in its own right......nah. By the numbers. One you press Play on when the missus has fallen asleep on you to Downton Abbey and you don't want to move her in case she either starts talking or puts the Abbey back on.

 

It's a common theme with recent films - they're over-lit so that they'll compress well for streaming services. Streaming doesn't like darkness, so everything is too bright, and clothes are all just ... beige.