Topic: The Movie Thread

@ralphdibny recently had the dreaded covid myself mate… still not quite myself if I’m honest. Also, without wanting to worry you, the mother-in-law who also contracted it the same time has just been taken into hospital and she’s still testing positive! Crazy s**t.

I’ll be sure to tag you when I get around to a rewatch 👍

Oh yeah I forgot to say that Wanda's heel turn is handled really well in this movie. It's clear that Elizabeth Olsen is enjoying chewing the scenery and it's so much more fun to watch than Wanda's roles in previous films. I know that plot point gets a lot of heat but I really like where they went with her and the performance it allowed her to give. Not every great character has to be a hero!

@colonelkilgore oh dear, I am sorry to hear that. Wishing you and your mother in law all the best! I hope I don't come down too bad with it. My partner has been ill all week and it's only really hit me this morning when I woke up with full body pain. Feeling a bit better after a Lemsip though

@RogerRoger cheers mate! Had to do something passive this morning because I could barely pick up the controller. So a two hour stroll through the Multiverse of Madness is just what the Doctor ordered!

@ralphdibny Definitely one that improves on second viewing. I thought it was rubbish in the cinema because I was focused on the wasted potential of all the cameos and the somewhat messy story. It’s a lot more fun when you just turn your brain off and enjoy it as a horror-tinged action movie.

What I've watched since my last post.

National Lampoon's European Vacation.

It's still worth a few laughs, but it really isn't as good as the first. I think it's actually stronger towards the beginning (particularly during the England & French segments), but falls apart towards the end. Absolutely worst version of Audrey (the daughter) though (she just spends the entire movie complaining about getting fat, in the laziest teenage girl writing ever).

Moonraker.

The big space battle with the astronauts floating around blasting each other with their chest mounted lazer blasters was the most (unintentionally?) hilarious thing I've seen in quite some time. Other than that, I really didn't think it was that bad (really not all that out of line with the other Moore era Bond films). Granted, there was WAY too much "Jaws" for my liking (the more of them I see, the more I think he's my least favorite part of these Moore Bond movies, & he shows up sooo much here. The way the movie ends they should have just written him out after this).

X-Men: Apocalypse.

I've always bounced off it every other time I've tried to watch it (usually just catching it on cable), but actually making the point to watch it & I have to say I liked it more than I thought I would. Still not as good as First Class & it was a bit overly long, but a decent enough superhero action (would have liked to see more Psylocke though).

Thor: Love & Thunder (3D).

It was pretty decent. I think the humor leaned a bit TOO quirky for my tastes, but it still wasn't enough to ruin the serious moments IMO. I think the explanation behind Jane (Mighty) Thor was well done, and quite sad.

As for the 3D, I don't think it was as consistently excellent as Multiverse of Madness, however I thought the scenes on that (black & white) moon looked really good, and the final battle was an absolute tour de force in 3D effect, IMO.

City Hunter the Movie: Shinjuku Private Eyes.

City Hunter has been one of my favorite personal anime discoveries in recent years, so I made a punt on ordering the newest movie on Blu-Ray and wasn't disappointed. Pretty much a long episode of the old TV series (but with modern animation), but that's no bad thing! Fun movie that calls to mind the action romps of the 80's.

@nessisonett oh yeah, Raimi's grotesque comedy style of horror movie really fits the tone of the MCU without it being as cookie cutter as some other entries. I love when the jump scares make you laugh instead of cry. It also feels like this film has a higher death toll than something like Infinity War, in terms of on screen deaths at least. I love how gruesome it can be, especially one of my favourite scenes when one of my favourite characters implodes themselves. Surely Black Bolt still exists in the main universe. Unless they decide to decanonise Inhumans. I suppose we will find out just how much of the Netflix/AoS shows remain canon when Daredevil Season 4 hits 🤞. Hopefully it's all of it 😅 even if they have to drop certain aspects of it and not adhere completely to it for the sake of moving the plot forward.

@RR529 I wish they'd release MoM and Last on 3D blu ray. Both films I'd love to see with an extra dimension but sadly my local cinema doesn't have 3D capability. I highly doubt they will unfortunately 😔

I'm a huge fan of all the X Men films, including the young cast ones. They are just so much fun. I know they get slated and First Class is definitely the best of them but I still love DoFP, Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix

@ralphdibny, yeah, since home 3D is largely dead I make sure to see 3D movies in the theatre when I can, just because once it's run is over it's pretty much lost to time these days.

Since the 3D versions already exist there's no reason Disney shouldn't slap them on Disney+, if only for the benefit of the small number of people who have VR headsets (I mean, it'd be better than them practically vanishing).

@RR529 yeah it's kind of sad that in the back end of the 3D era that more people aren't making enough of a stink about film preservation for these niche and novel experiences. Except of course people like us!

I suspect they will get revived, if not in full when 3D has its next renaissance in a decade or two. Maybe we will get some releases of these lost 3D titles. I think the plus side at least, if 3D does become popular again, is that films could be reconverted if the source files are lost or mired in corporate beauracracy. There are very few films where I think the 3D was essential and unique and should be preserved as is (The Lego Movie springs to mind) and I'd be quite happy for the more cookie cutter 3D blockbuster flicks to get any kind of added dimension on any eventual re release. Some of them could even be improved upon because I have seen a few films with some shockingly pointless 3D effects in.

I finally watched The Batman last night. It was quite good as it goes.

@ralphdibny I finally bit and rented it a couple of nights ago. I quite enjoyed it, I liked it tried things a bit differently than previous versions. I'd be curious to see where it goes if it gets a sequel.

I’ve finally got around to starting the trek through the Daniel Craig Bond films. I’ve completed Casino Royal and Quantum of Solace so far through Netflix. I have plans to gradually make my way through with Skyfall being next. I’m really annoyed that apparently Spectre is the only one not on any of my streaming services. I have both Skyfall and No Time to Die on Amazon Prime. Not sure how I’m going to watch Spectre, but I guess I’ll figure that out later. (I may have to rent it, which goes against my principles when I’m already paying a mint every month for all these blasted streaming services)

For now I’d say I’m relatively pleased with the first two movies. I’m surprised that I liked Quantum just as much as Casino. I had seen CR before and remember liking it, and I think that I saw parts of QoS in passing, but wasn’t really paying attention. Watching them back to back helped keep me engaged, because I didn’t realize how much each of these movies relate to each other. They really are direct sequels to one another, which I never realized before. I thought each Bond film was an independent stand-alone and could be watched a la carte, but watching Quantum without understanding what happened in Casino would really make things even more confusing than they already are. There’s too many double and triple agents and knowing friend from foe is hard enough, much less just having a solid foundation of Bond’s duties and mission. It’s all quite complex. So I feel like I’m prone to get the most out of these movies if I watch them in close proximity to one another.

The film direction and editing (especially with Quantum) doesn’t do it any favors either. There’s a lot of jumping around from a 10 minute action sequence all of a sudden to a plot point where you can’t be clear how we got from point A to point B.

Speaking of the action sequences and film direction — my biggest complaint of QoS was the hectic and hyperactive action scenes. It was kinda ridiculous how they edit these chase scenes and fight sequences with a couple thousand one-second dynamic blurred clips one right after the other. It’s like a visual representation of a migraine headache. You can hardly see what’s going on, just a quick flash of a speeding car or boat or a flying elbow to a villain’s face. The clips are just too fastly paced during those segments and they come too often. These movies shine the most when Craig has time to show off his steely blue eyes and actually give us some meaningful plot direction. Hopefully Skyfall’s action is paced better and edited in a less frenetic fashion. Casino wasn’t as manic as Quantum, which I appreciated, but it still suffered from a few weird plot jumping issues where I kept thinking “Now, how did we get here?”

Skyfall seems to be the most beloved, so I plan to get to it soon.

Persuasion is possibly the worst movie I’ve seen all year. I don’t know who thought ‘Jane Austen if she was a girlboss’ was a good idea. Utter, utter tripe. I’m all for modernised adaptations of classics (Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is great for example) but this movie felt like an AI was asked to generate a wine mum English teacher’s attempts to engage a bored class. Lines such as “I’m an empath” are beyond cringey. Persuasion is a beautiful story that relies on an understanding of social roles in Georgian England and the way that spinsters’ lives were fundamentally over before they were 30. This Netflix movie completely and utterly misses the point. Anne Elliott is not ‘single and thriving’ as she nauseatingly says in the movie, nor would she sit about drinking wine and crying hysterically. The whole point is that for basically everyone else, she’s ‘past her prime’ due to not marrying young after rejecting Wentworth. So the whole point is her getting a second chance at happiness with Wentworth at an older age. It’s a love story, not a weird ‘wink at camera’ slapstick comedy where she pees on trees and falls over.

I watched Stephen Kings IT the other day for the first time , not the original one , but the remake or whatever ; i don’t know anything about penny wise but my first impression of the movie is that it’s overrated as hell . the acting is so bad whenever the clown is on screen but i guess it’s hard to pretend to be shocked or afraid when you’re just staring at or running from a green screen i guess ….

@BearsEatBeets yeah me too, even though at the beginning and end of the film I told myself I'd be fine if I never see another Batman film. I am morbidly curious about what a sequel might hold 😅, especially as a quasi-adaptation of Zero Year.

In some ways, I don't want to give it too much credit but I think that's just me being stubborn. I do enjoy a slow burn film, one that's deliberate in every movement and bit of dialogue. Very Fincher-esque. The aesthetics were somewhere between Burton's films and Batman Begins too, with a little bit of Snyder's Watchmen thrown in for good measure.

I went in with low expectations but I think as a sum of all it's influences, The Batman is actually a decent film.

@ThereThere Except Fleabag is good. And witty.

@RogerRoger I’m looking forward to seeing how the whole thing ends up with Craig’s Bond. And I don’t mind lots of action in my movies, and in fact welcome it. The actual car, motorcycle, plane, and boat chase scenes are good in many ways (until they ran out of modes of vehicular transport 😂) as are the fight scenes, but they ruined some of the good stunt and effects work by making the shots too choppy.

The other observation I’ll make is that I wasn’t really sure what to think of M when I watched Casino Royale years ago. But this time, I think I’m beginning to understand her character. Before, I didn’t really like the awkward relationship with Bond, but now I think it’s quite brilliantly constructed (and performed).

@ThereThere Hopefully you find something that clicks with you soon! Usually I go for something I would not normally watch when I'm in a similar rut.

@RogerRoger Oh, the overlap of M may have been what confused me about her at first, thanks for clarifying that. Coming back to Bond films after several years of hiatus from them effectively washed the preconceived relationship with the Brosnan Bond from my mind so maybe that’s why the character clicked better this time around.

I was also confused because the ending of Casino seems to suggest that M is killed but obviously she survives and the plot weaves are clearer to me after paying attention to Quantum.

And with a name like Skyfall, if there’s not a jump from a skyscraper with Bond fighting the villain through an extended mid-air free fall sequence I’m going to be sorely disappointed. Or maybe jetpacks in the air? They haven’t tried that yet. Pogo-sticks? A battle in an antigravity chamber maybe?

@ThereThere I get like that sometimes, I'm on a run of films (Matrix Revolutions, Eternals, Scream, Murder on the Nile) which have not been great. I'm hoping something on Apple TV+ might do the job. Got my eye on Coda, which is not something I would typically watch.

@ThereThere I looked at my list of movies and it goes back further than that too. Yeah hopefully something on the service sparks any kind of interest for me.