Topic: The Movie Thread

@Th3solution exactly. I noticed during the trailers and pre film adverts when watching Guy Ritchies Aladdin, you can buy a years pass for £170 adult / £130 child at my local cinema. There are some stipulations to use when I asked about it - such as it can't be early access screening, you can only watch a film once, you can only reserve seats on the day you are going and its the basic seats (which are always good anyway in this cinema). Basically it's a good deal but you are at the back of the queue when a super popular film comes out - there are also some stipulations around 3d films which you can only view during off peak weekdays Mon-Thurs and Sunday morning. That last rule is fine by me as I work Weekends and am off every Tuesday!

Anyway for £170 and 7 free hours a week I can watch 156 brand new films in their entirity. Do I really need reviews when they are so cheap to consume on every level?

@KALofKRYPTON Yeah, I liked the first movie even though Godzilla hardly featured in it. So I was happy when they said Godzilla will have more screen time in the sequel.

@themcnoisy Yeah, that’s a good deal if you do take the time to go to the theater every week. I got something similar to that a couple years ago — won it in a raffle. It wasn’t a whole year, it was like 6 months of unlimited movies at a certain theater. I saw some lousy movies that year because, as you say, the only barrier is the time to go and watch it. The local theaters don’t do that program anymore around here. Your problem is going to be that you’ll run out of movies to watch. Do 156 movies even come to the theater in a year? Lol

In following my summer ‘movie series re-watching plan’, I gobbled up another favorite series of mine this week, The Lord of the Rings.
I re-watched the 3 Peter Jackson The Hobbit films a few months ago, and although I do enjoy them, I can’t deny they are full of so much fluff and extraneous storyline so as to detract from the real story of Bilbo, the ring, and the journey to the mountain.
...But despite The Hobbit’s shortcomings (see what I did there), The Lord of the Rings movies really nail the delivery. To me they are a real masterpiece in film and a joy to watch. As is always the case, I can’t help but compare the movies to the books, but aside from a few deviations, I just really love what Jackson did with this trilogy. Some things pop out on watching them after so many years — how fake the hobbit and elf ears look at times, how Saruman and Gandalf’s hair doesn’t match the color of their beards, how a scene will cut from day to night immediately in order to bring the foreboding mood required, the occasional last gen look of the CGI (although in general the special effects hold up very well), the recurrent use of the slow motion close ups to emphasize sadness or foreboding, the occasional cheesiness in dialogue.... and so on and so forth.
But as a whole, what a great ride this is. Watching all three (of the extended cut versions I might add) in close succession over several days gave me an appreciation of the impact of the ending. The Fellowship of the Ring opens with the wonderful party atmosphere in the Shire and you feel a warmth of the community - a quiet and happy place where the biggest problems are the mundane squabbles of relatives and nurturing one’s crops. A real serene and safe place. By the end when you return to the very same place, you feel as if you look upon it differently, just like Bilbo or Frodo does. You’re seeing the Shire through a different lens now. Like the hobbits, after seeing the horrors of the world, they have a hard time being comfortable at such an innocent and naive place. They have changed through their adventures and trials. And as a viewer, I felt changed as well. Emotionally impactful, chock full of wisdom and symbolism — it’s a series I will be able to watch over and over again.

Next up: Harry Potter. The big project later is the entire library of 22 MCU films.

Ever wonder how Godzilla can fully submerge himself while swimming but when he stands up you can see like 80% of his body?lol Just seems like a lot of times the depth of the sea changes for story convenience.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the only movie I've ever genuinely struggled to stay awake during. Took me three attempts to finally get through it.

I spent like 8 hours in the cinema watching all 3 Lord of The Rings films back 2 back 2 back. And the first two were the extended versions. Suffice to say I did not want to to see the inside of the cinema for awhile or have any popcorn.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godzilla_king_of_the_monster...

90% audience score. About what I expected. The kaiju fans who are going to see this are loving it.

Movie critics, once again, are demonstrating their own irrelevance.

@RogerRoger @Ralizah Definitely the pace of the LoTR series can crawl at times, just like the books do, but in a different way. In the movies it’s excessive battle scenes and long scenes showing scenery and vistas while lutes and flutes play classic music in the background while you watch elves and dwarves running from point A to point B. In the books it’s pages and pages describing said vistas and old kings and historical context. It’s a preference thing, I suppose. First off it’s high fantasy which is already a personal preference issue. Secondly, it’s steeped in high symbolism, which is also not always what some people care for in a movie or book. Thirdly, (and this relates to being of the fantasy genre) there is loads of back story and history that can make following the narrative a chore, especially with a bunch of strange foreign sounding names and creatures to try to follow.

But every time I see the movies I just adore the message of the strength of will trumping out sheer brute force. In the small and simple lies great power to affect and change the world. That the world is not won or lost on the battlefield and with large armies and heroic deeds, as much as it is won in the heart of men where the largest battles rage, where power and corruption’s seeds are sown. And the simple everyday man (or hobbit) can be stronger in spirit than the mightiest of warriors.

@RogerRoger Haha, oh just wait until I come on here and report on how life changing the conclusion to Harry Potter is! 😜

No surprise there, the sequel's got a lot of epic monster fight scenes which is exactly what fans wanted to see in the first movie. On the other hand, I didn't care much for the human characters. Not to say the performances were bad but for the most part it felt like they're in the movie just to provide expositions. Interested to see if Godzilla vs. Kong will have both of them eventually teaming up to fight another monster.

Bought and watched Mandy on Blu-ray the other week.....crazy and beautiful movie starring Nicholas Cage. Great concept, stunningly shot, directed and scored, very trippy, but......the latter half doesn’t deliver what the set up intimates: Cage going full rage-crazy. Still very good though, definitely worth a watch...........👍🤪

@jacobia I agree, the second half (all the revenge stuff) is disappointing to be honest but the set up is fantastic and on the whole it’s an awesome game. The soundtrack throughout is amazing and those title cards are the nuts. Love the last scene with Cage in the car too.

Rim of the World (Netflix Original Film) - A callback to the 80's youth adventure genre (with a few other references, such as a nearly blatant copy of the Jurassic Park kitchen scene), that sees a group of young teens at summer camp end up on an adventure to save the planet from an alien invasion. It mixes comedy (these kids can have some potty mouths, particularly Dariush) with more tense moments. Overall it's mostly dumb fun not to be taken too seriously, and while the CGI isn't the best, due to the tone of the film I didn't mind. If you know what you're getting yourself into it can be a fun watch.

I only found out about it after I ran across a Yahoo article talking about how it was causing an "uproar" over racist jokes (and they even managed to scrounge up 4 or 5 negative tweets as proof!). Admittedly It does rely on a lot of established tropes & cliches (in all aspects), but it's all in an effort to capture the vibe of said 80's films, and while that may mean it has some humour that doesn't gel with with a certain very socially minded segment of today's population, the second coming of Birth of a Nation this is not.

Just got back from Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and it's official: I will never, ever trust the critical consensus on any film ever again. That was an experience. Which isn't to say it was perfect (the "comic relief" character who kept making fun of the monster names can go die in a ditch, please), but it was pretty much everything I could have ever expected from a Western-made Godzilla film: it was incredibly well-paced and never really had a "down moment," the effects and fights were absolutely spectacular (I love how Ghidorah is almost literally a force of nature, and, from a distance, you can see his spooky silhouette amidst a rumbling bank of storm clouds; they might have overdone Mothra's radiance a tad, but she was quite elegant and scene-stealing the few times she did show up), the human story perfectly supplemented the monster side of things without ever drawing attention away from it, and a LOT of personality was added to the monsters themselves. The score was great, too, especially near the end when they incorporated a lot of remixed but imminently recognizable classic Godzilla tunes.

Not as good as the best Japanese films, if only because the creature is uniquely Japanese and is much more meaningful in that context, whether it be the incarnation of American atomic death in the original, the representation of Japan's sins during WW2 in All-Out Monsters Attack, or a constantly looming threat that exposes the incompetence of Japan's government during crisis situations in Shin Godzilla, but it's absolutely tops when it comes to the more Creature-Featurey installments. This beats the pants off of something like Destroy All Monsters; just sayin'.

The human characters... are OK. Certainly more interesting than the non-entities in the 2014 film. Vera Farmiga's character is a bit much, but she's a stellar actress and does the best she can with what she was given. I feel like Ken Watanabe's character needed more... exploration to make his pivotal scene in the film really connect. In general, I do agree that more could have been done on the human side of things. But it wasn't nearly the train wreck it was made out to be by critics, and, more importantly, it integrated perfectly with the larger plot.

I really, really dig the stark, apocalyptic vibe of the final hour or so of the film. It was really well-done, and they did a great job selling Ghidorah as a terrifying threat.

Definitely my favorite non-documentary film of the year. It's not off to a super start in the States, but it seems to be performing well overseas. Hopefully it does well enough to justify continuing the development of this big-budget kaiju franchise after Kong vs. Godzilla next year.

I saw Aladdin yesterday. It was fantastic. It was a faithful renake of the original, and I don’t understand why people complain about how it is as shot for shot the original movie in a lot of ways. It’s supposed to be that. It’s a remake not a reboot. It’s a good thing.
They did make enough changes to fit live action. They say they handled Aladdin being a thief and a rogue was excellently done. The stealing and parkour were really cool. They also changed enough to allow for Will Smith’s Genie to shine while still being faithful.
Speaking of which, Will Smith is a perfect live action genie. He did it so well and exceeded expectations. He was hilarious and made it his own role.
The parade scene in particular was fantastic and was a complete and total joy to watch.
The new song, “Speechless” I think it’s called wasn’t the best. It felt a bit heavy handed and kinda like they’re trying to make Let it Go 2.0. They definitely changed Let it Go. A small complaint though.
Overall it was a amazing adaption and I highly recommend it

@Ralizah Cool! Hopefully I get to see it while it's still in rotation.

@Jaz007 Are there any 'trademark' Guy Ritchie moments/quick cut, quick fire 'this is the plan' explanation scenes?

@KALofKRYPTON No, there aren’t any of those actually.

@Ralizah Is the movie worthwhile for someone who hasn’t followed the lore and genre of the Godzilla movies? I think I’ve seen one of them a few years ago, and I don’t even know what it was called.

@Jaz007 Colour me surprised!!

@Th3solution It's a direct sequel to the American 2014 film, so beyond that it should be alright... actually, even without seeing that I'm assuming it'll be alright