Topic: The Movie Thread

@RogerRoger which HMV you using?

@RogerRoger fair enough, I nipped into the Shepherds Bush one today, only a handful of them left, actually I don’t really understand how any of them have remained open. Still, it tends to have quite a good selection.

@kyleforrester87 @RogerRoger Still got a HMV in Swindon. It did close down when they went into administration a couple of years back, but then it reopened. I did but something from there quite recently but I forget what it was. I've not bought any blu rays for ages now so it was not that. It might have been an emergency pair of ear phones when the current ones suddenly stopped working.

@RogerRoger Somewhere in the UK there's a HMV which contains nothing but DVDs and Blu-Rays of Dredd.

Anyone remotely pumped for the next Rambo film? It looks.. alright (better than Dark Fate, anyway!) but I thought the last one was pretty cool.

@kyleforrester87 I dunno. Rambo’s getting a bit old for this. He could be in a retirement home if he wanted to lol.

Speaking of which, watched First Blood last night. Quite a good movie. Honestly I prefer the whole troubled war hero angle over just being an unstoppable b****s. Not to say he isn’t in this movie, but it makes the character a bit more interesting.

So... Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Cute premise, the actress chosen to play Dora pulls off the role well, and there are a number of cute references to the TV show. Unfortunately, the movie is unfocued and never seems to know what it wants to be: it starts off as a basic deconstruction of the TV show concept, transitions into a Tarzan-esque fish out of water story, then becomes some weird mashup of a family film and a Tomb Raider-esque adventure story, and it never really feels like it finds its narrative focus. The humor is often terrible and the film oftentimes doesn't seem to know when to let a joke go before it gets actively annoying. The script was bad enough in this regard that even the very funny Michael Peña becomes actively irritating because of the material he's given. Dora is forced to team up with a group of children from her school (along with a childhood friend), but I never really bought the evolution of their group dynamic from 'a bunch of strangers forced into a bad situation together' to 'a group of tight-knit friends who will risk their lives' for one-another. It feels like the characterization rapidly shifts from one mode to the other when the plot demands it, and it took me out of the film. There's a bizarre sequence in the film where Dora and the others hallucinate that they're characters from the cartoon, but it never really amounts to anything. There's a similarly bizarre and random scene later on involving Boots the Monkey.

Not a terrible time overall, but I feel like the film was off to a good start and, with the likable central actress, it could have gone places. Unfortunately, it squandered that potential.

Kudos to the film for recreating the cartoon opening in live-action and ending with a "We did it!" song. It's the little things.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy haha well it’s the 2008 one so not exactly “new” anymore, surely you know about that one though? But there is another coming next year or something. Last Blood I think they are calling it.

@Ralizah

Isobela Moner is a great young actress (she was excellent in Sicario 2 if you haven't seen it).

Thanks for posting the Dora review though, haven't seen too many out there for it yet so I was wondering if it was actually any good or not. I quite liked the trailer as it looked like a goofy Indiana Jones/Goonies type film, but as a 40-something childless dude I'm not sure I've got the cajones to walk into the cinema to see it as I'm obviously not the target audience (and have never seen the TV programme), so will probably catch it on home rental in a few months instead.

@RogerRoger September, you're right. I'm surprised it's so soon. That's cool!

@RogerRoger @Strathnaver1 The film is probably worth seeing for the first 30 minutes or so, which functions as a fun family film where the pure, untainted-by-modern-civilization Dora innocently butts her head against the morally inferior norms of modern American civilization.

Keep in mind I'm a notoriously picky person. I am, for example, the only person I know who saw the recent Lion King remake and disliked it.

Anyway, I'll see anything in theaters. I took my nephew to see the My Little Pony movie, too. Although, I have to say, there weren't nearly as many kids in my showing of Dora as I would have expected.

I actually did see Sicario 2 on opening weekend, since I was a big fan of the intelligent, subversive original, but I wasn't a fan. I actually didn't recognize the actress, though, so thanks for that. I'll be looking out for her if I ever rewatch it on TV.

Clearly it’s 1,3,2...4...........5

I do not dislike 2 as much as some people do. 3 starts strong but gets worse once they drop all the Simon Says stuff. Love the bad guy though.

@RogerRoger But nearly photorealistic video game visuals from developers like Naughty Dog (not there yet, but they'll get there eventually) don't freak you out?

Anyway, the ultra-realistic animation worked well in The Jungle Book, especially since Mowgli was a constant presence in most scenes. Also, that movie actually took an interesting, darker direction than the notoriously mediocre cartoon. The style just saps the Lion King of all its beauty and personality, though.

@LN78 Honestly, that's a good thing. They need to let the franchise rest. Everything after Die Hard With a Vengeance wasn't very good anyway. Hollywood is so scared of original ideas that they'd rather try to tart up a frail, mid-70s Stallone as some sort of action hero than give us something new.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy The Lion King has a very high audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and Cinema Score, aligning my opinion with the consensus of professional film critics, which honestly makes me wonder if I should re-evaluate my assessment of the movie. The wrongness of professional film critics is so reliably consistent that I'll often feel relieved when a film I want to see is scoring poorly.

I'm not that hype for the latest Rambo movie but props to Stallone for starring in an action movie in his 70's.

Same goes for Schwarzenegger. My question is do Terminators age? Seems like they do in the latest Terminator trailers.

@LN78

You're not wrong about mainstream Hollywood being out of ideas..

There are also way too many "Based on a true story" movies and tv series.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Die Hard 2 is a bit mean-spirited and lacks the levity of 1 and 3. I especially loved how DH1 went to pains to emphasize the basic humanity and mortality of almost everyone involved.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I've always had a soft spot for 2 - it's just a fax - but allot of that comes from the game being my favourite of the Trilogy, too.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Hey the driving one was fun!

The Detective: Last Blood?

@WanderingBullet Well, yes they do the outside anyway. In T2 the T-800 states that it's living tissue over metal endoskeleton when John Connor asked him if he's alive but a machine but on the inside.

Also.it would make sense for a T-800 to age so it can blend in with humans.

Now something like the liquid metal (T-1000) since the can take on the appearance of anyone and anything of equal mass and volume barring complex machines and objects. They probably don't age since they can appear as old or as young as they want as evident from the T-1000 in T2. Also I don't think the liquid metal Terminators are composed of living tissues so to speak.

And now I want to watch The Terminator 😂😂

That's because it was a bad joke and you're too nice to call it out.