Topic: The Movie Thread

@JohnnyShoulder Oh man, I’m very much looking forward to this one. Not just for that shot of Alexander Skarsgård wearing a loincloth covered in blood 😂

@nessisonett I always get the Skarsgård's mixed up. He is the one that played Tarzan and not Pennywise, right? 😄

@JohnnyShoulder Yep, he’s the Tarzan/True Blood one! Bill Skarsgård is his brother and was Pennywise. I find it mad how many kids Stellan Skarsgård has knocking about 😂

@nessisonett They could do Swedish Family Skarsgård film with them all in! 😆

FINALLY watched No Country for Old Men. And it was... alright? I've had kind of that same reaction to Cormac McCarthy's novels in the past, so I'm not really surprised this didn't blow me away. It's an effective, well-directed crime thriller with authentic acting. Clearly a "good" movie. But I didn't really walk away from it with anything that I didn't already go into it with. Characters don't really grow at all. There's not much of a plot to unravel. Thematically, I didn't get much from it other than the pointlessness of violence and a reminder of the omnipresence of evil in the world. It's two hours of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to other unpleasant people, and less unpleasant people circling the periphery of the plot's events, not wanting to get too involved in a deeply unpleasant mess.

Don't regret watching it at all, but you can add this to the list of films I've seen where the buzz around them largely evades me.

@Ralizah I tried to watch NCFOM several months ago and I never finished it, so I see where you’re coming from. Actually, until I just read your post I had forgotten that I left it unfinished. 😅 So another vote for “it was fine but not particularly mind-blowing.”

Actually, now that I think about it, I think what happened was I started the movie on one of the bazillion streaming services I have and only made it halfway before I had to take a break and by the time I went back to it a few days later it had been yanked from the service.
…which is one of my concerns with GamePass and PS Now too.

@Th3solution Dunno about PS Now, but Game Pass at least gives you a half-month warning on which games are going to vanish.

But yes, GP desperately needs to be updated to tell people exactly how long games are going to remain available on the service, because there doesn't seem to be a set amount of time for anything other than first-party exclusives.

For the record, I watched it on HBO Max.

I'm guessing you weren't gripped if you had to take a break and stopped watching it for days.

@Ralizah PS Now states how long a game has left on the service normally as soon as it arrives. Think there have been a few examples of games leaving service more suddenly, but that could my memory playing tricks on me.

Finished watching Alien 3. What an awful sequel, easily the worst movie of the original trilogy. The premise was so dumb, making the movie take place in a prison with only men along with the female protagonist was so unnecessary. Like why focus on that stuff when people want to see unknown worlds, technologically advanced structures and you know, aliens? One of the things that impressed me about the first two movies was how they portrayed the future with all the technological stuff. Alien 3 didn't have any of that stuff, it was the most "present-day" Alien movie of them all.

Then we have the first half of the movie where barely anything was happening. People were constantly talking and characters were being developed, which you think would mean that some of these guys would survive but nope. Everyone died, so what was the point? And that's another thing that bothered me about this movie: they just killed off all the survivors from the second movie. So again, what was the point then of having them survive just to kill them all off in this movie?

Subsequently, I barely cared about any of the characters this time around. Most of the characters in the second movie were memorable and stood out, while in this one, almost everyone is a white male with a shaved head. The only character that stood out was the medical officer and I was actually starting to like him because he's the actor who plays Tywin Lanister in Game of Thrones and I thought it was cool to see a "young Tywin" lol.

The thing is that after you've watched the first two movies, you'll realise that it was only downhill from here. Not only because the second movie was so good, but because the whole reason these movies are interesting is because you don't know anything about the aliens and you want to find out more about them. After you've watched the first two movies, you'll already know all there is to know about them, so nothing will be new and interesting from here on out. And just as a I thought, Alien 3 didn't introduce any new facts about them.

So yeah, I have no idea how the fourth movie is going to be any better unless they start to expand on the "Company" aspect of these movies, i.e. the Umbrella Corporation of the Alien universe. I wanted to see more of them but unfortunately, they only briefly showed up at the end of Alien 3. Would be cool to see them get hold of the aliens and mass produce them only for everything to go wrong. Now THAT would be a great premise!

Just got back from The Matrix Resurrections, and I'm conflicted. It's 70% the film I wanted it to be. Almost the Wes Craven's New Nightmare of the franchise, but it falls short at the end, which devolves into formulaic superhero fluff like the original did (although the original did a better job of actually building to to that).

Still probably one of the best films in the franchise, though.

I actually like Alien 3 and would still consider this to be an almost obvious statement. The first two films in the series are deservedly legendary.

I understand why it's a marmite film, especially compared to the first two, but it's still at least a nicely moody and atmospheric picture. Alien Resurrection, on the other hand, is just a mess, and the prequels are forgettable, apart from certain hilariously homoerotic character interactions in Covenant.

Stepped away from this thread for a while and wow was catching up brutal, and risky as I still haven't seen Dune.

Anyway just a few quick shares to no one in particular because it's too much to keep up with who said what...

So really been looking forward to two films and that's Passing and Don't Look Up. Don't get me wrong I've wanted to see other movies but these were day-one watches for me. While I found Passing to be interesting but ultimately disappointing, Don't Look Up was amazing. Incredibly entertaining and percipient just start to finish. Great performances throughout as well.

Anyway finally saw Old also. It was terrible. I much prefer the one where the plants attack over this and I dislike that movie.

I didn't think much of No Country For Old Men either but idk it really haunted me that first viewing and I've gone back to it a couple times and appreciated more each time. For what it's worth. Strangely similar experience with Brokeback Mountain also.

Alien 3 is imperfect but I think the premise is solid. Could have definitely been better and the effects have not aged well but still one of the more thought provoking Alien movies imo. Maybe that's why it doesn't fit so well with the others.

I know very little about the Bond films other than I know they aren't really my thing.

Shang Chi, which I had absolutely no interest in seeing, was actually really enjoyable. I like both leads. Awkwafina is a hard person not to like imo but y'know, everyone has different tastes. Kinda same for Simu Liu. Didn't so much love the cgi fest at the end but what're you gonna do?

No Way Home additionally was really good. Entertaining and touching (but not overly saccharine). Helped to watch all the other Spiderman's a couple days before. Also made me realize how much I prefer the current take on the character. It's to the point I had a quasi argument defending this newest iteration on Peter and MJ in the comic shop the other day. Idk, I think they really work despite the unconventional pairing. Maybe I'm just a Zendaya stan. Anyway, I'm a grown man and cried in the theater on like two different occasions whilst also being excited to see it all unfold so... idk... good stuff if you ask me.

Thor Ragnarok is just a good time movie imo. I really like 1 and think 2 is rubbish but 3 is easily the most enjoyable. But I can see being frustrated with how they treat the character in that one. Feel the same with Endgame. I'll probably never get over my anger over THAT Thor. Ah well. It's in the books now. Or the can. Whatever.

Malignant was terrible. Paper Spiders is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Uhh, No Sudden Move was... kinda boring. Bit of a let down. Re-watched It Comes at Night to realize it's just a damn good movie. Horror or otherwise.

Probably forgetting some things but this post is long enough anyway.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

@Ralizah The first movie had great atmosphere, while the second one had great action. The third one doesn't really exhibit any of that. The area that they're in is too large and there are too many people compared to the isolated spaceship with a small crew in the first movie, so the encounters aren't really that tense. Not to mention that they don't use any weapons at all compared to the second movie. So I don't know, I definitely didn't watch this movie to listen to a bunch of people talk for an hour.

I mean, just look at the first hour of the second movie. There was stuff happening all the time and constant tension/action until the end of the hour. When they were about to leave the place, I genuinely thought that was the end of the movie due to how action-packed it was. But that was only the first hour! And the movie just kept getting better from there.

I’ve been on a bit of a queer cinema binge which has finally led me to actually watch Shortbus. I’ve been avoiding it for years due to the ‘unsimulated’ nature of well, the entire movie. Bizarrely, it’s actually an incredibly cute and life-affirming movie. I love John Cameron Mitchell’s work but I could never bring myself to watch this one so I’m glad I did. It’s a movie I couldn’t ever recommend to people though! It’s always refreshing to see sex treated matter-of-fact and Shortbus basically takes that concept to the absolute cliff edge. Couldn’t imagine watching it at the cinema 😂

Watched Predator (1987) yesterday and overall, it's not that good. But it's iconic as hell, there are so many things that I recognise hearing throughout the years that I had no idea they were from this movie. This meme for example:

And of course:

And lastly:

So I'm glad I watched it for that.

Ooooh Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is currently on Amazon Prime in the UK. If you are after a twisty noir, with a couple of top performances by Val Kilmer and (a pre-Iron Man) Robert Downey Jr, I highly recommend it. I'll be giving it watch this week.

Finished watching Alien Resurrection and holy crap, that was easily one of the best Alien movies. I think I liked it even more than the second one.

For starters, great premise and it was much better than the third movie's. Just as I thought, the movie was going to be about the Company and them trying to create xenomorphs of their own but everything backfires. More importantly, it took place on a spaceship, which we haven't seen since the first movie. This definitely felt like a true Alien movie.

Further, they made Ripley very badass in this one (even though it's not actually her). I've always thought that they should've made her that as the movies went on, but sadly they didn't. Maybe it's because they wanted to portray her as "a normal human-being who's managed to overcome all these obstacles without being anything special". But yeah, glad to see they changed her dramatically in this movie.

There were lots of memorable characters this time around and some managed to actually survive, which I was pleased to see. I also really liked that they introduced new things about the xenomorphs. Apparently they're great swimmers, they can spit their acid and they're quite intelligent. That scene where they killed one of their own in order for the acid to corrode the floor so that they could escape was absolutely brilliant. Not to mention that we got to see a new type of xenomorph at the end, which I guess was a mix of human and xenomorph? That scene where it died was absolutely HORRIFYING. If I had watched that as a kid, I would've had nightmares for days. Good lord, I don't think I've ever seen a death that brutal and detailed in a movie, on top of the sad moment between it and Ripley. And the way that it screamed! Absolutely brilliant scene, now that's how you make a memorable movie.

Well, I've finally watched the first four Alien movies and overall, they were great. Definitely looking forward to playing the games now more than before!

@RogerRoger Well I figured that since I have Disney+ and all these movies are on there that I'd finally watch them. Sadly I grew up in a household that didn't care much about movies and such, so I've missed out on so many classics. For example, I watched the Indiana Jones movies for the first time a couple of months ago since they were on HBO.

I'm definitely interested in watching Prometheus, Alien: Covenant and the Alien vs Predator movies. I saw that Commando is on Disney+, so I might watch that too. However, my Disney+ is running out today so I'm quite unsure if I'll watch any of them today since I like to take my time with these sorts of things. But I'll definitely watch them eventually!

@RogerRoger I think I’m lucky in that my mum’s an 80s kid therefore we were relentlessly exposed to Indiana Jones, Top Gun and other 80s/90s movies from a relatively young age. In many ways they’ve influenced my tastes more than most movies that came out since I was born! Although I had to watch Star Wars whenever she wasn’t in the room, she’s never been a fan 😂

Finishing up the rush hour trilogy and the matrix trilogy...quadriology?

@RogerRoger I probably didn’t take advantage of the PS2 being a DVD player as much as I could have actually! We had a wee rubbish TV in our room without even an aerial but mostly used it for the Cube and PS2. It’s only really the PS5 having 4K Blu-Ray support which has opened my eyes to just how useful the video playback is. I watched Spider-Man in 4K last week while wrapping presents and it was a really fantastic upgrade from how I remembered it!