Topic: The Movie Thread

@kyleforrester87 I see it on there now, sweet! Cheers for the heads up! I will probs wait until it is available with Prime though, or at least on offer.

@JohnnyShoulder fair to be honest, I do bloody love the amazon app though. Few quid here, few quid there.

Watched Goldfinger the other day. This is the third James Bond film, which was released in 1964 and stars Sean Connery as James Bond.

This film has a different feel to the previous two films, as it is less about spying and counter-spying, and more about secret agents and fancy gadgets. This film excels at the whole secret agents and fancy gadgets aspects that the series is known for. There's various things introduced that later become staples of the James Bond series, such as the Aston Martin containing containing various gadgets like the ejector seat and the oil slick.

There's plenty of iconic moments in this film, which makes it one of the more memorable movies of the series. It contains that scene where Bond is tied to a table and is about to be spliced by a giant laser, and it also features the enemy henchman known as Oddjob. Despite being depicted as a small person in some video games (such as Goldeneye on N64), Oddjob is actually a big, bulky fellow in the film. His hat can be a deadly weapon when thrown at opponents, and he is powerful in a fist fight.

Goldfinger is also quite an interesting villain. In some ways he is the stereotypical supervillain, being ruthless and having a complex plan to fulfil his evil goals. But he stands out from other supervillains by not giving off that supervillain vibe. He doesn't look like a mad scientist, and he spends a lot of the film relaxing at his farm whenever he's not doing supervillain stuffs. But despite all that, he is still a sinister person and not someone to underestimate.

The plot is decent enough minus some minor issues, and the pacing is rather good.

I'm always a fan of the cool gadgets and over-the-top supervillain lairs and their complex evil plans, so overall I really enjoyed this movie.

@crimsontadpoles Looove Goldfinger, it’s a great movie!
"Do you expect me to talk?"
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"
Classic!

Images of the new Batmobile:

Hope that exposed engine is bulletproof.

The car does look cool, though.

Also, No Time To Die has been delayed amid coronavirus fears. November's the new release date. I can see this happening with other big films as well.

I was planning to go watch Birds of Prey last month but changed my mind because I had some concerns regarding the coronavirus.

@WanderingBullet I'd be surprised if Mulan wasn't delayed. The Chinese market is a huge part of why that movie was made in the first place. Losing them entirely, while probably not catastrophic, would be a huge dent in the movie's box office. You could release it in the west and China separately, but I think Disney would rather not opt for that. It's the one movie I feel like is guaranteed to be affected and moved, depending on how against the idea of a delay Disney is this far into the process.

@WanderingBullet Oh... That's certainly a bold decision. It looks like a Ken Block via Mad Max cobble-together.

Can't say I'm enamored with the design work of this film so far.

@Tjuz I think Mulan will bomb, coronavirus or not.

@Tjuz Totally forgotten that Mulan's releasing this month. The Jungle Book was the last live-action Disney movie that I've gone to the cinemas to watch but I'm actually quite interested in Mulan since it's not a musical and also a shot for shot adaptation.

@KALofKRYPTON Affleck's Batman has set the bar for me fighting wise. He's also a pretty good Bruce Wayne and I'm not even a fan of him as an actor. As for the new movie, I'll be very disappointed if it's similar to the choreography and fight scenes we saw in the Dark Knight Trilogy.

@WanderingBullet i hope it's not too much like The Dark Knight Trilogy, this might be a unpopular opinion but i wasn't a fan

@WanderingBullet Batfleck is the bomb! Best on-screen Batman in so many ways - especially the brute force fighting.

Bale's arms up pirouette thing was always a bit meh.

@FullbringIchigo Hahaha, I went through my disdain for the Nolan trilogy last week, you’re not alone!

So I went to see the new adaptation of The Invisible Man and... it was pretty good! It's practically a one-woman show as we watch Elizabeth Moss gradually descend into madness and paranoia over the course of the film. Unlike a lot of Hollywood media, it does a good job of embedding its themes within the context of the narrative. A bit like Verhoeven's 2000 film Hollow Man, this explicitly descends into the realm of horror as the titular character abuses his ability to harass women; unlike that film, though, this is rooted in a female perspective of abuse, so the focus isn't voyeuristic so much as it is paranoid. The main character is abused throughout the film by an invisible force that seems to focused on isolating her by making everyone else around her think she's nuts.

It's difficult to say the film is enjoyable, but it is a really solid horror film, even if you ignore the themes completely. The film does an amazing job of building an insane level of tension by focusing on negative space and effectively controlling the sound design to build a sense of almost relentless paranoia. The unpredictability of never knowing when Moss' invisible assailant will strike again is terrifying. In a big way, this feels much more like a spiritual successor to a sadly underrated 1982 horror film titled The Entity, which also features this dynamic of a woman being abused and terrified by an invisible force that she is helpless to defend against.

If I had to offer criticism of the film, I'd say it's unfortunately too reliant on genre tropes at times, and, while very effective, I didn't appreciate the abundance of jump scares. The climax and denouement are also kind of disappointing insofar as they don't fit well with the rest of the film. Still, a really effective piece of horror cinema overall.

@Ralizah If I weren't already enthused by your review (I was), your mention of The Entity should elevate anyone's interest!

Shame about the conclusion of the film then, but I'll stick it on the list.

@KALofKRYPTON i'll be honest i still prefer Keaton over all the others, Affleck was good though although i feel he needed batter material, Val Kilmer wasn't that bad really but the movie sucked and Bale never felt right to me, the whole thing felt forced and as for Clooney well he can go do one as far as i'm concerned,he was terrible in the role, terrible Bruce Wayne and a Terrible Batman

i'm not counting Adam West in this because his Batman was supposed to be silly and campy and he played it well

@LN78 Go watch it.

I saw it when I was a kid. Scared the crap out of me then and is still a genuinely creepy thing to watch in my adulthood.

@LN78 I feel like I should put a disclaimer on Streets of Fire, but i won't - I thoroughly enjoyed it!

@KALofKRYPTON The last half hour or so of the film isn't really bad or anything, it's just... I dunno... more conventional? It felt like the film lost a bit of its spine at the last second. But it doesn't take away from the rest of the experience.

I watched The Entity when I was a teenager, and someone pitched it to me as "a horror movie about a ghost rapist lolol." I didn't exactly get the titillating, exploitation movie thrills out of it that I was expecting, but it did burrow itself into the back of my brain and has been there ever since, especially when I'm alone in my shower . Now I have to wonder if that person ever even watched the film!

@LN78 I've never seen Repulsion (or even heard of it), but I guess I'll need to add it to my ever-growing list of horror films to watch!

Doctor Sleep is fantastic. Just don't go in expecting a horror movie, even if it does have at least one genuinely frightening and repulsive sequence in it.

@FullbringIchigo I enjoyed the first two movies even though I wasn't a fan of Bale's portrayal of Batman. Quite liked him as Bruce Wayne, though but the Batsuits, the fighting and his boogeyman voice just didn't work for me. At least the stories were good and Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger were great in their respective roles. I even thought Anne Hathaway was a pretty good Catwoman. Not to mention, both the Tumbler and Batpod were pretty cool too.

If Matt Reeves's going for the whole "grounded in realism" approach then I really do hope they take some notes from Netflix's Daredevil. At least, the fight scenes in that series were awesome and memorable.

@WanderingBullet being honest i liked Batman Begins but i just feel as a whole the trilogy wasn't that good, especially the 3rd film i mean Bane steals all Batmans money in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses and gets away with it?

the ENTIRE police department goes underground to catch him, what kind of idiot would make that decision there is no way in hell they would do something like that, now sending the military in maybe i can get that but the whole of the GCPD? nope

then there is the bit at the end, first there was no way Batman had time to escape that bomb blast radius it was a nuke not a stick of dynamite and second Bruce Wayne was a famous man all round the world and not one person in that restaurant recognised him?

of course then there is the fact that you couldn't understand a damn thing Bane said

as for the actors yeah some of them were good and Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson are always great in whatever roles they do although if i'm honest i didn't think Ledger's was as legendary as people make out, it was good don't get me wrong but i think the main reason it's so "beloved" is because of the actors untimely death and the media that surrounded it

as for Bale i'm sorry but i just didn't buy his Bruce or his Bat, he did get the spoilt rich git down though but then again if the gossip to be believed that's what he is like IRL anyway so that wouldn't be hard for him

i did like the Tumbler though, i even still blast around Gotham in it on Arkham Knight from time to time

@FullbringIchigo I agree that the third movie was bad and I wasn't a fan of Bane either. Hardy does like to talk in different and sometimes weird accents.haha

I do have to say that the voice actor impersonating Hardy's voice is pretty spot on and funny.