Boiling Point - now on Netflix (certainly in UK...not sure about other countries)
Corker of a film, stars Stephen Graham as a head chef - having one of the most stressful nights of his life whilst at work. Nice 90 minute length, and remarkably the entire film is shot in ONE TAKE (!).
Really great, very grounded and some terrific performances. The drama is very very tense, and even moreso for the movie being grounded in 'realism'.
I liked The Batman a lot, but it definitely had its issues. Tonally, it evens out a bit over the course of the film, but it opens HARD with the moody goth vibe. That, combined with Batman's Rorshach-esque narration and that sequence where he's beating up the thugs in the subway or whatever with booming music, actually cracked me up at first. It was all a bit much.
The Riddler is... I dunno. I'm fine with a gritty take on the character, to an extent, but he just felt like something out of a Saw film or Se7en. This director feels like they want to be David Fincher.
Everything after they catch The Riddler is pure rubbish, too.
With all that said, the central mystery is mostly pretty good, and the film's tone evens out into something more acceptable as it goes on. This is also probably my favorite cinematic version of Selina Kyle to date. She really nailed the character.
TDK and Batman Begins will probably never be topped for me as far as Batman films go, but this was a VERY nice treat after years of same-y, crowd-pleasing Marvel rubbish and terrible adaptations of DC's other properties (I kinda like Wonder Woman, but the sequel has mostly poisoned my feelings about the first one).
@LN78 Riddler stuff aside, the thing is there's already a lot of ways in which the tone of a dark Batman story overlaps with the tone of a Fincher film, so it wasn't that offensive to me. I found the Scorsese fan film 'Joker' to be much more ripe for ridicule at the end of the day.
Although we did get this gem out of it, at least:
Also, I liked what this film did with its Batman/Catwoman dynamic, and the mystery storytelling itself was good.
Penguin wasn't bad, either.
And the cinematography is frequently VERY nice to look at.
@Ralizah Unless I missed it, I would love to read what you thought of WW84 in more detail. I'm willing to suspend disbelief up to a certain point, especially when it comes to super hero flicks, but this one went a bit too far for me.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Encanto - I wasn't sure if it'd appeal to me going in, but I had a fun time with it. A good number of the songs are stuck in my head if nothing else, lol.
X Men Origins: Wolverine - There seem to be a few possible continuity discrepancies based on the other X Men films (though I know the latter Days of Future Past acts as sort of a slate cleanser), and then there's whatever the heck it did to Deadpool, but overall it's a competent action movie on it's own. Not the greatest thing in the world or anything, but there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.
@LN78 Logan is basically what I wish The Last of Us had been. Although my admiration for it, and X-Men in general, is still rather distant. I can say it's a good movie, but I didn't have any sort of emotional reaction to it.
See, here's the thing. Despite the painfully obvious Fincher influence, The Batman still feels like a batman story. It's not like Joker, which was a prestige film (and non-self aware parody of an early Scorsese film) disguised as a comic book movie.
I haven't seen HBO's Watchmen, because the impression I have, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that the IP is being used as a vehicle to deliver a largely unrelated ideological screed about American racism.
@JohnnyShoulder I'd love to go into more detail on the criticisms I had of it at the time, but, perhaps somewhat damningly, it turns out the film is forgettable. My memories are hazy at best.
What I can say is this: the film's entire first... 20 or so minutes?... are totally pointless. The film should have started with the fight in the mall.
The film never commits to a tone and fleshes it out.
The narrative momentum of the plot falls apart as the film goes on.
The 1980s setting is so underdeveloped it doesn't even serve as good window-dressing. As such, it doesn't even succeed as nostalgia bait, which is what it was heavily advertising itself as.
I also recall most of the fights being boring.
@Sorteddan I generally hate SNL, but every once in a while, one of their skits really lands. Although I'm sure it helps that the marketing for Joker was dancing on the edge of self-parody as is.
@LN78Yeah, how Bruce didn’t sustain any injuries standing so close to the explosion didn’t make sense at all. Not to mention, how he still managed to get up and walked away after that serious crash when he was using his wingsuit to escape.
Lupin III: Napoleon's Dictionary - 90's Film in the ever present long running anime franchise. It was okay, but never really elevated itself above feeling like an overly long episode of one of the TV series (even the animation felt like a half step between TV series & movie quality).
I was hoping for some sort of "Whacky Races" type antics given that the setup was supposed to be Lupin entering a classic car race across Europe in order to win Napoleon's dictionary (which is said to hold a clue to Lupin's family treasure) with the CIA (and other intelligence agencies) trying to capture him along the way, however you practically never even see any of the other contestants. It's largely just Lupin's gang getting chased across Europe by said intelligence agencies which could have easily been done without the race setup.
It sure has it's moments if you're already a fan of the franchise, however I can't see any reason to watch it otherwise.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
Not sure why I chose to, but I watched “Death on the Nile” recently. Exceedingly average would be my assessment.
Some of the acting is wonderful. Some of the cinematography and art direction is really beautiful. And the story is fine, but it veers into the ridiculous at times, and it definitely took too long to get going. There is just some weird pacing issues here. And by the end there’s the feeling of “okay, okay… let’s just get on with the twist and get this thing over with.”
@LN78 Yeah, I really liked that. And (…here I go with the interpretive analysis… 😅) I appreciated the symbolism there of the mustache being his attachment to his former life and love and now shedding it representing him finally moving on.
Branagh is a divisive personality, but it’s hard to deny the guy’s got talent. I always seem to enjoy watching his performances even when I’m not enjoying the movie itself.
Surprisingly, I thought Gal Gadot was pretty ‘meh’ in this one. Maybe it’s because I kept waiting for her to whip out her golden lasso.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@LN78 My experience with Gadot is limited to her role as Wonder Woman, which I enjoy. But in a movie like “Death on the Nile” it becomes pretty clear that there’s a lot that action sequences and CG shenanigans do to compensate for her one-note acting.
As for the egocentricity of Branagh, it seems to be An epidemic in Hollywood. It makes me wonder — does the performing arts attract that kind of personality, or does it create it (since these people get hoisted on a pedestal all the time)?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
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