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

+1 for The Mask, absolute 90s comedy perfection. Several jokes just live on in my head 24/7 and recur at the slightest prompting, like the "I think he wants to communicate!" which I parrot all the time when e.g. the cat's shouting his head off next to his food dish, or a white van man is tailgating.

Cameron Diaz was indeed the biz, but curiously I had the earliest of my fairly rare man crushes on the bad guy, played by Peter Greene. I can't have even been pubescent yet but I remember thinking he was hot. Incidentally he died this December just gone, so sorry, child me, you missed the boat on that one.

 

Alto Knights (Sky) - 1/10
A de Niro vanity vehicle that does absolutely nothing new at all. Made doubly worse by him playing two parts in it. Nothing happens. At all. Don't waste your time.

 

Sisu: Road to Revenge https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31844586/

Not as good as the original flick, but still ultra violent with no regards given to the laws of physics, did not disappoint.

 

What's that on, bud?

 

DVD

 

Oh, blimey. I thought it had only just come out...

 

Project Hail Mary

I really liked it. It's a very heart warming buddy movie at it's core, which is not usually something I go for. However, Mark Kermode nailed it when he referenced Silent Running - a film that had a huge impact on me as a child; and maybe that plays into why I liked it.

Straight up for the space fans, there are a number of pretty ****ing big gimmes you just have to set aside if you want to enjoy this film. I haven't read the book and I know the Wier usually roots his work in a fair bit of hard science, or the working theories at least and I don't know if the telling of that was a step too far for this film and they perhaps took a huge chunk of artistic licence instead. Either way, set it aside because dwelling on it will take the shine off.

Easy recommendation.

 

A lot of stuff is definitely… “glossed over” for the film. But there are subtle details there; for example, when you briefly see shots of Grace scribbling on a whiteboard, those calculations are all correct - Andy Weir was insistent on it.

Definitely read the book - or better yet, listen to the audiobook - if you want all the gory details. There are definitely some “liberties” in the book as well, though one of them is at least understandable. It was suspected that Tau Ceti had exoplanets, part of the reason Weir chose that star in the first place, but by the time of the book’s release, newly published studies cast strong doubt on the possibility of exoplanets orbiting Tau Ceti. There’s also some issues with the calculations for the volume of “fuel” that would be required for the journey - it would have actually needed at least an order of magnitude more. But the biggest issue - aside from the existence of extra-terrestrials - was at the level of quantum physics; Weir himself has said that this was the one major “fudge” he had to make in order to make the story work. I won’t spoil that because it is a relatively interesting, if minor, plot point in the book.

But your reaction @David definitely underscores my initial impression that the PHM film adaptation is not really a sci-fi film in the way that The Martian is.

Having said that, there are a couple of major “fudges” in The Martian, too. “Storms” on Mars wouldn’t have had enough force to risk tipping the ascent vehicle. There are storms in which the “winds” can reach really high velocities, but there isn’t that much atmosphere, so the wind wouldn’t actually impart that much force. The biggest risk with “storms” on Mars is the dust they kick up. The other “fudge” is radiation shielding. A Mars habitat would require radiation shielding, as there’s no magnetic field to protect against solar radiation like we have on Earth. We don’t have the technology for a “canvas”-like skin for the Hab that could protect against that radiation. That was another point where Weir’s rationale was basically “I need this to make the story work, so let’s just assume that this technological problem has been solved”.

 

F1 The Movie.
Surprisingly didn't suck / 10

 

Drop (Sky) - ...Dead/10
Utter, utter sheeyite. Just don't. I thought the cute chick might have carried it, but it turns out she was just really annoying, holding up the truth that no matter how good she looks, someone, somewhere will be fed up with her bull$h1ttery..

Like my soon-to-be ex.

EDIT (to add):
Darkest Hour (Sky) - 5/10
Really wanted to like this and Gary the Old Man is good as ever, but it just felt like an introduction. I'm, not sure they even got to the darkest hour itself. Was more about Churchill's election and how his secretary couldn't understand him. No character flaws revealed as such, nothing ground-breaking or new. Mildly interesting if you're into war history, but nothing exciting going on.

 

Apparently it's Karl Urban week this week, because apart from The Boys (fkg awesome stuff - anything where the lead baddie is Superman with a breast milk addiction is full of win), I've also seen:

Pathfinder (Disney+) - 5/10
Bit weird and tough to describe, this one. It's one of those dark and moody jobs that's light on dialogue and heavy on effects and tone. I can't put it into words, but it reminds me of others I've seen that I can't for the life of me remember. I watched it on the treadmill, so it might have been better on a bigger screen than my phone, but it was watchable. Again, nothing new (I'm starting to think I'm looking for a film-icorn) and you'd do well to crank the brightness up, but it was okay.

The Bluff (Amazon) - 5/10
Again, entertaining enough. Full of clichés and somewhat predictable, nothing new (again!) but it was something diverting whilst on the treadmill once more. You won't miss anything by not watching it, but it'll do as a violent Pirates stand-in if the kids are old enough.

 

Project Hail Mary.
Heart-warming and just what you need right now.

 

TIL - Current Oscar rules allow for Rocky's puppeteer to be eligible for Best Supporting Actor.

 

As I understand it… Ryan Gosling got used to the main puppeteer providing the voice on-set, so the same guy did the “final” voice work.

Andy Weir also had a cameo as one of possible voices when they were flicking through options on the laptop.

 

Spoiler

So, you have a mate. How long have you been together?

One hundred and eighty-seven point three years.

Ah. The honeymoon period.

Do not understand.

It's a joke, it's...that's a long time.

Not long enough.

Watched it last night in one of these revamped 'deluxe' theatres, holy mackerel, I like the cinema again. Seats actually comfy, Joe Public not crammed right into your elbow space, foot room, nobody's head in front of your vision. God it must have cost a fortune to fit out these places but it makes my local look like the dark ages. Very saddening but there it is. This actually was better than being at home; this made me want to go back to the cinema again.

Project Hail Mary? Absolutely delightful. Everything sci-fi could and should be. A triumph. Couple of special effects failures, like hair in space (surprising in the era of War of the Planet of the Apes that we still can't realistically model zero-gravity hair) and some of the ship movements, but otherwise the film was very well made. Script was flawless. Screenplay ran the gamut of emotions from genuinely dreadful scary moments, to deep grief, to laugh-out-loud comedy. It also managed to be genuinely fascinating and made me feel endlessly curious, desperate to understand the unknown, which surely is the litmus test of sci-fi that about 95% of sci-fi films fail.

Oh ALSO I specifically avoided knowing aaaaaany plot elements beyond "space, Andy Weir?' and it was a joy and now I'm really stubbornly sticking to the going-in-blind approach with films.

 

And last night, A Haunting In Venice (2023).

Loved this one the most of the three Branagh Poirot adaptations, this one had a really tight screenplay, no wasted or clumsy writing, no special effects blunders, less of Branagh's signature weird vertigo-inducing camera angles, and really good night cinematography. There are some exterior night shots in the rain where you can see the rain, you can see the rooftops in the moonlight, the stormy water in the canals. Obviously a ****ton of digital wizardry happening in post, but you can't feel it, it's seamless. It's funny going from the 90s Poirot episodes and films to this one and seeing just how much difference the camera/post-processing tech has made.

Branagh's Poirot is far more in-tune and refined in this one, and I feel like if he made another 4 or 5 of these I'd be there for every one. He's finally hit the right chord with both his interpretation of the character and his accent.

I'm not a fan of Christie's self-insert character, the lady detective writer who shows up in a dozen of them. Always painful in the Suchet adaptations when she appeared; felt masturbatory. This one treats the character unkindly and with a heavy dose of cynical disapproval, which I liked a lot. Writers writing themselves into their novels as writer characters is cringe. Kenneth Branagh and Michael Green slapping the character about in the script and the direction was satisfying to see, and Tina Fey visibly had a blast playing her. Whole cast was great, in fact, and no glaringly famous faces distracting you with their famousness (a la Thursday Murder Club).

This film also rides the line of being a murder mystery you can actually spot and solve ahead of the characters if you're paying attention - I'd forgotten the story entirely (if I ever knew it), but spotted early clues and put together at least half of the answer. Allowing audiences to do this without making it too obvious is a perilous highwire act, and this gets it just right. It's bloody annoying where nothing is obvious and you're shown nothing relevant, just misdirection, and then the detective pulls the solution out of their arse; equally it's boring when the answer is glaringly obvious. The middle ground is about as thick as a spacecraft re-entry angle and just as hard to hit.

Finally, it's in the top percentile of Poirot adaptations, and perhaps murder mystery as a whole genre, by having a deep, soulful theme of introspection and spirituality. I liked this about Wake Up, Dead Man as well. The genre got really cynical and acerbic by the 2010s, particularly on TV, and a more emotionally intelligent and gentle form of murder storytelling was overdue, especially in the current climate. This film has a fairly low body count and treats every one like a confounding tragedy, rather than an exciting development (the only character to treat a murder as exciting is swiftly shut down by other characters and by the plot itself). I like this about Branagh's films across the board. He's got a big heart.

 

“Masturbatory”…? Are you sure you were watching the right version of “Poirot”…?

 

Maleficent!



Pretty sure I've mentioned it before in here, but rewatched it and it's okay. A solid okay/10, special effects driven generic fairy tale taking no risks. Only elevated to significance by Angelina Jolie's overall glory and by the excellent visual design. Some of the visuals are just ace, it really leans into the classic fairy tale vibe.

The score is crap though. Not often you notice film music - only when it's really good, or really bad. This was really bad.

 

Heretic (Amazon) 8/10 (until just before the ending), 6.5/10 (after the improbable ending)
I'm not sure why I score this so highly, but I rather enjoyed it and that's what counts, I suppose. Hugh Grant is fantastic and it does its best to try and keep you guessing, with the only negative coming at the end when the absolutely improbable happens and it just wraps things up. Shame, but up till then it was good.

 

Gladiator II https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9218128/

Steamin' sack of manure / 10
All style over substance and the style fell a long way short of the original, yet another cynical Hollywood sequel money grab