Topic: The Movie Thread

@JohnnyShoulder Honestly hadn’t heard of that movie before, it’s a shame it seems to have been drowned out by The Matrix though. I do love Rufus Sewell, I’ll give it a look!

@nessisonett Definitely worth 2 hours of your time. It's shame cos i think Sewell has been negative on his performance since, but it did kind of ruin his career. Also has the perfect casting of Richard O'Brien as the main antagonist Mr Hand.

I watched Knives Out and despite the teething problems trying to run 4K movies through my laptop onto the TV, it was really something special. Honestly one of the best mystery movies I’ve seen in a long time. Amazing to think it was Rian Johnson considering I hated both Looper and that Star Wars movie.

@Arugula I've preferred the spin off films to any of the last trilogy films , although not seen Rise yet. But shame doesn't look we will be getting any more. At least th tv shows have gotten off to a good start, and we will be getting more of those.

I really liked Solo to be honest, it tried way less than the sequel trilogy and so it felt a lot more laid back and fun. Donald Glover was great as Lando and it’s kinda funny that Fleabag is seemingly making dirty jokes inside the Millennium Falcon for all eternity.

I watched Excalibur, everyone, highly enjoyable film. I thought the evil character of Mordred was a cool piece of writing for a villain, and everyone acted their parts appropriately, Excalibur itself is a great symbol of England and Ancient Legend, and the battles were something out of an action RPG!.

Just saw Gemini Man. What a naff movie. Didn't realise it was shot at 60fps which made everything look a bit low budget, even though the actual visual quality is really good in 4k. V strange and glad it is not the norm.

Watched I, Tonya tonight. It was really great, both Alison Janney and Margot Robbie were brilliant and sold those performances. I really liked the way it was filmed too, muted colours combined with the horrid ice skating outfits. It’s not something I really knew about but my mum remembers watching the coverage at the time so it was pretty funny reading up on what was an absolute disaster from start to finish. I do think the movie portrayed Tonya Harding in a slightly better light than I expected, you really understand the reasons behind what happened but it’s still not fully known if she was complicit or not. It’s definitely worth a watch.

@JohnnyShoulder What did you think of Independance Day?

@nessisonett I love all the Star Wars films in the original trilogy, I think that they should do a sequel to Jedi Fallen Order as well, hopefully one is in the works, but I have no idea about that.

Well, no going back now. I have started watching the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Iron Man is one of its entries that I've seen before, but a long time ago, so it felt fresh enough. I was worried because, at the beginning, I kinda hated Tony Stark's character; it was only as things progressed, and I remembered more about where things were headed, that I realised I was supposed to. His redemption arc (reactor, lol... hurrah for finally being able to make MCU jokes) was well-realised and smartly directed by Jon Favreau, so by the end I was rooting for him. Also nice to see seeds being planted; if I'm honest, Agent Coulson was my favourite part of the entire film, which now has me considering whether or not to add Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to my Disney+ watchlist.

One step at a time; let's see how I get on with a film per day first. Interesting to see that Iron Man 2 will be up next, before anybody else joins in (I'm skipping The Incredible Hulk because... well, because I think even the MCU itself does, right?). I won't write up essays for each one, don't worry, but I'll periodically pop back in to offer up general thoughts, perhaps at the conclusion of each phase.

But yeah, great start. A very watchable, well-made superhero flick. Here's to many more!

I watched the first eighth or tenth of Berserk: The Egg of the King on DVD today, marvelous rendition of Guts and The Band of the Hawk so far, committed to the cinema-screen, live-action just wouldn't work - breathtaking.

@Draco_V_Ecliptic I've not seen that film in a age, but yeah it's a good popcorn leave your brain at the door action flick.

I watched Nosferatu tonight (yes, lockdown means I’m watching basically a movie every day). It was extremely unsettling and got under my skin way more than I was expecting for a movie that old. There’s just something about the way Orlok moves and his weird wee face that gets to me. It’s kinda funny to me how they couldn’t use Dracula’s name because of the rights. Like, the book was 25 years old then, same as Northern Lights is today. I find that crazy!

@RogerRoger I’ll be interested to see how you fare! As you know, I think it’s a great series as a whole and I’m really curious how you’ll end up ranking them. Yeah, skipping The Incredible Hulk is probably a good idea. The post credits scene is about the only part that seems to relate to the MCU in any meaningful way. Are you doing order of release or by thematic groupings, or by story chronology? 😅. Looks like you’re going for release order since Captain America would be first otherwise.

Also, I’m not sure if the library is the same in the UK, but a couple of the movies like Ant-Man and the Wasp and Infinity War aren’t on Disney+ yet due to contracts with Netflix for a few more months. You probably know about that already, but you’ll need to bounce around in the late series between Netflix and D+.

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As for me, I watched The Greatest Showman. I have always liked Hugh Jackman. He’s one of my favorite actors. I really wasn’t that jazzed about this movie but the music really sold it for me, so I stuck with it. The portrayal was interesting enough for me to look up the life and true story of PT Barnum and Jenny Lind. I was surprised at how much truth there was to the rendition of events in the movie, but there was also great liberties taken to tell a more dramatic story. Anyways, it was quite enjoyable, even for me, who is by no means a fan of musicals. I have to be in the right mood.

@Th3solution Thanks, buddy! I'm going in release order; as much as I've heard chronological works well, I prefer to see the universe built as others did, so as to get all the references and callbacks (which, if viewed differently, would become call-forwards to which I'd be oblivious). I'll get clever in future re-watches, of which I'm certain there'll be a few!

We have the entire MCU on our Disney+ save the two standalone Spidey films, as they were Sony Pictures co-productions and so are currently elsewhere (but, since Spidey helped spark all this, I grabbed a snazzy double feature Blu-Ray of them last week). Thanks for the warning, though; licencing has really made this whole thing an international minefield for Disney, hasn't it? Very surprised that the US (the home of Disney and the MCU) hasn't got the whole collection available yet.

I'm treading lightly, though, because the Disney+ app on PS4 is appalling. Yesterday was okay, but this morning it would skip big chunks every ten minutes during Iron Man 2 (which was twice as annoying, considering I was enjoying the film a lot). I'm gonna try an Amazon Fire TV Stick before allowing frustration to click "add to basket" on the expensive Blu-Ray collections.

Oh, and I'm with you; not a fan of musicals in the slightest, but a grudging viewing of The Greatest Showman kept me surprisingly engaged throughout. Again, I think that's thanks to Hugh Jackman, who I reckon is one of the 21st Century's most consistent talents.

@RogerRoger incredible hulk is worth a rewatch, i always get sucked into it whenever it's on, it's one of those films that's a lot better than you remember it to be when you're actually sat down watching it. Also William hurt's thunderbolt Ross makes a reappearance later in the MCU.

I way prefer ruffalos hulk, well at least his early appearances but a simple recast won't make me enjoy the incredible hulk any less.

Also I personally feel agents of shield and by extension the rest of the TV shows are worth watching but it will exponentially increase the viewing time of this marathon. AoS is one of those that sort of started out a bit naff, but became great because of the plot twist in Captain America The Winter Soldier, I haven't seen all of season 6 yet but it has kind of petered off a bit for me. Probably because endgame and Spiderman far from home were such good endings and im gutted that the netflix series have been cancelled and forgotten about.

I'm really looking forward to black widow though as she is one of my favourite characters (as of the winter soldier - I thought she was a bit lame in iron man 2 and avengers) but it's probably the first MCU film I won't see in cinema as I doubt I'll be going to the cinema untill we are all vaccinated. Predictably though, the corporate suits will just see this as people not wanting to go and see a female led film which makes me feel sad because I am genuinely excited to see it and would like to see more black widow films in future

@RogerRoger I haven’t used my PS4 to stream on D+, it works perfectly on the smartTV app and on my phone.

@RogerRoger I only used the app on my TV for Disney+ so I could watch stuff in UHD, but it kept buffering when I tried to watch Thor Ragnarok. It worked fine for The Mandalorian and a couple of animated films I watched though.

@Th3solution @JohnnyShoulder Thanks, guys. My television has Netflix baked in, but everything else is a bit of a nightmare to use. I'm happy to report that this new Amazon Fire TV Stick that showed up this morning works an absolute treat, though; it's like night and day when compared to the PS4 app. I guess it reinforces my old mantra of having a specific device for a specific function, one all this modern interconnectivity had somewhat eroded... anyway, back to the MCU with me!

@ralphdibny Thanks for your thoughts on The Incredible Hulk and the Marvel TV shows. I'll definitely save Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for after the films, if I'm not completely burnt out. That's a good point regarding the Black Widow film as well; however, if anything can get people back into theatres this year, it'll be the power of an established brand like Marvel.