The Movie Thread....what are you watching?

[juansolo]

Rented Ghost in a Shell last night. Yeah...well...I didn't rent it for the quality of the movie. I don't recommend it unless you like staring at Scarlett for 2 hours   

That's the only reason I would watch this movie! 

Has anyone seen the movie Life? It has Ryan Reynolds in it. Just looking for a review before I rent or buy it,

We went to the walk-in and saw it. I liked it. I like certain sci-fi flicks and this fit my bill. I can recommend it if you like the outer space genre of flicks.

Grab a beer or two, if you drink, get some Skittles, I like to mix sour with tropical, turn up the TV and kick back. Have a pizza ready at the half way point 

Cool Thanks! looks like i'll rent it tonight. Event Horizon is one of my favorites, sounds like this is of the same genre.

-Mike-

What's the word? You can say it sucked. I can take it 

I am the opposite way on both these films. Though you have to bear in mind that I'm a huge anime nut that thinks the original GITS and it's sequel are overrated. Sure they have some iconic scenes in them, but they're overshadowed by the excellent Stand Alone Complex series IMO.

I thought the live action film managed to bridge those two works nicely. Scarlett was fine as the Major (who is a cyborg, so I have no issues with her being caucasian). It also threw in some of the cooler scenes from the original anime. I've watched it twice now and I enjoyed it more the 2nd time around. I genuinely thought it did as good a job as a western production ever could of it.

Life... Oh god where to start. It was better than Alien Covenant I suppose... But other than having lovely effects and an enthusiastic decent cast, it's a poor imitator of the films that inspired it (John Carpenter's The Thing and Alien). It's well made. But ultimately I've no interest in re-watching that.

[juansolo]

I suppose I'll mini-review some stuff I've watched recently that I can remember:

Black Panther - More Marvel. I really liked Andy Sirkis in that, my interest in the film jumped whenever he was on screen. Shame he was wasted. I also liked the scaling down of the threat level. It's all getting a bit silly when it's always about the end of the world/universe. When they scale back these films they become a lot more interesting. Still you've got to have that Marvel Epic Battle (tm) at the end of the film to remind you that if it's had great stuff up to this point, you're fighting now, wooo! Yeah! By the numbers, shallow entertainment.

Dr Strange - I like Cumberbunch as Strange, but please, dude, don't try to do an accent. I am not American, and I was cringing, so I've no idea what you guys were doing. Again, good cast. Mads is one of my favourite actors, but here he's not really used. Tilda is doing her thing. Again I just found it all to be another Marvel movie as we've come to expect them. It should have been so much better.

Thor: Ragnarok - Now this is how you mix it up. Space viking wizards is a ridiculous concept (I loved the Thor comics BTW), and they totally embrace this. They even added extra Goldblum just for spice. It's realigned itself into the sort of area Guardians is in terms of humour and it really worked for me.

Blade Runner 2049 - Ridley Scott please take note; this is how a sequel is done. Manages to retain the tone, feel, pace, and themes of the original, while continuing a story that until seeing this, I didn't realise could be continued. It does so mostly masterfully (spoiler: I'd make one tiny change to the film. It should end with K on the steps. You don't need to know what happens afterwards. This was K's story, not theirs, and if you've been paying attention, you know what happens next).

Brawl in Cell Block 99 - Possibly the most violent film I've ever seen. Think the elevator scene in Drive was a bit nasty...? Bah. I like Vaughn, I think he's seriously underrated as an actor, and this expands on his more serious chops much like True Detective did. However, this is pure grindhouse. This is the film Tarantino should have made, if Tarantino could wind himself in and actually make a grindhouse movie without it being self indulgent. If you dig grindhouse stuff you'll love it, if not, you really won't.

Spider-man Homcoming - I... really... liked... it... After the travesties of emo-spidey, the reboot and the reboot's sequel, I'd lost hope of there ever being another good spidey flick. But, you know, this is. Again, scaled back. A bad guy who isn't, played with both sympathy and menace by the excellent Keaton. A spidey who feels right as both spider-man and Peter Parker. It just worked for me totally.

Man I've been watching a lot of comic book movies!

Atomic Blonde - Great soundtrack. Is (tries to be) a little bit too clever for it's own good and ties itself in a knot with it's own logic by the end. But it was entertaining in that hipster-bourney sort of way.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets - Luc Besson flicks the switch firmly over to style and away from content. This is not a bad thing for him as he can do style sooo well when he wants to. To me this is the spiritual successor to The Fifth Element, which if you liked, you'll likely like this. It's mad, has a very French sense of humour, and pretty as hell. The dude in it is so channeling his inner Keanu it's untrue.

Colossal - A study of alcoholism and abuse through the eyes of a woman who's inner demons manifest as a giant monster in Korea. If you can handle the concept, go for it, you've definitely not seen anything like it.

Spy - Who ever knew that Jason Statham was a comedy genius?! A far funnier film than it has any right to be.

American Ultra - Stoner finds out he's a programmed killer (Manchurian Candidate stylie). Actually quite amusing, if clunky as hell. For some reason that gave me the urge to watch...

Adventureland - Same people (Eisenberg and Stewart), better film. Basically a slice of life coming of age film.

Logan - Masterpiece. The Road meets The Last of Us, with claws. The bad guys are largely irrelevant, this is a story about family and growing old. A comic book movie with a very different tone. Much like The Last of Us, made me weep in places.

Free Fire - Ben Wheatley, so expect some off-kilterness. Sharlto Cropley once again proves that adding him to any film makes it much better. Feels a bit like a play in that it's all in one location with a single cast of chars. But it's very much not taking itself seriously. I quite liked this.

I've watched loads more... but those were the more recent stuff I've been catching up on.

[matmosphere]

Your insights are always a good map. No Star Wars?

[juansolo]

Couldn't bring myself to watch The Last Jedi. I know enough about it to know I really wont like it. I think the failure of TLJ counted against Solo's poor take up as I suspect many others are starting to feel the same way I am in that, I just want new stories with new characters in that world. I have no idea if Solo is any good or not... I just have no urge to see it.

[matmosphere]

Couldn't bring myself to watch The Last Jedi. I know enough about it to know I really wont like it. I think the failure of TLJ counted against Solo's poor take up as I suspect many others are starting to feel the same way I am in that, I just want new stories with new characters in that world. I have no idea if Solo is any good or not... I just have no urge to see it.

I really enjoyed Solo, but strongly dislike Last Jedi. I'm not going to claim Solo was a great movie, but it was fun to watch. Skip Last Jedi but give Solo a chance.

[juansolo]

That's fair, I'll give it a go. I think it definitely needs someone who understands the universe to come up with some new stories though. They've been doing it in gaming and books forever, but Hollywood likes to rinse and repeat until we're sick of something rather than try something new. That said, it'd probably just end up like current Marvel which now they've perfected the formula, all the films (with a couple of exceptions) are the same.

[sonnyboy27]

I enjoyed Solo but was distracted by the fact that the actor doesn't really look at all like a young Harrison Ford. He got the swagger of the character down pretty well though and it was fun to watch the worlds they built for the movie. Didn't feel like a ton of green screen.

As for TLJ, I really enjoyed certain aspects of it, such as the character development of Rey and Kylo, but thought they put way too many jokes that didn't fit in the Star Wars universe in it. Basically they Marvel-ified it too much for my liking. But, I'm a little more confident in them making future Star Wars movies because of the backlash they received for TLJ. It was too much of Marvel movie (a formula that was very stale) and I feel like they've stepped their game up in the latest movies (Black Panther and Infinity War) and broke out of their rut a little bit.

I completely agree with juansolo about wanting more movies in the universe with new characters. I'm really looking forward to what they do when they've finished the Skywalker saga and start exploring that universe more. I loved all of the worlds they briefly showed in Rogue 1 because it gave me hope that we'll see more of them in the future.

[midwayfair]

I really liked Solo, so for the third year in a row likely my only movie in the theater is a Star Wars movie.

In fact, I couldn't figure out what any of the supposed complaints about the movie could possibly have been. It's a good movie, period, short on philosophical nonsense. It's just a serial heist caper in space, basically.

I've liked all the new SW movies, though, so what do I know?

[flanagan0718]

On a different note I just finished "I Kill Giants" it was fantastic. I read the graphic novel Years ago and this was just as amazing. Just Incase any one is wondering...


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[juansolo]

Geostorm - By choice... Basically I needed some brain off/out entertainment. It's worse than you can possibly imagine. Not so bad it becomes good sadly, but if you want to do a bad film drinking game as they rack up the clichés, you'll be properly mashed by about 20 mins in.

That said, still better than Alien Covenant.

[EBRAddict]

Sicario Day of the Soldado. If you liked the first one you'll like this one, but it's less dark and the second half slows way down.

[somnif]

Saw the new Antman today. Enjoyable, though think I was in mild heat shock during the viewing (115F outside to ~60F inside, I was bloody freezing).

I think I preferred the first one a bit more, but I had fun.

[matmosphere]

Saw the new Antman today. Enjoyable, though think I was in mild heat shock during the viewing (115F outside to ~60F inside, I was bloody freezing).

I think I preferred the first one a bit more, but I had fun.

I really enjoyed the first one. Paul Rudd is a funny man, and it was stylistically so different from the other marvel movies that I thought it really worked.

I'm almost disappointed they felt the need to tie Antman into the bigger marvel universe, don't think there will be much room for what made that movie great in a bigger avengers movie unfortunately.

[Willybomb]

How clever was the toy train fight in the first one though?

[davent]

For years we had a nearby rep theatre playing different double bills of non mainstream movies every night so watched a couple movies per week. When it was squeezed out of business the Art Gallery became the next option, runs biweekly movies in conjunction with the Toronto International Film Festival. At home we'd pick a director and grab every movie the library had of their's and have our own mini film festivals, movies all the time, most out, some at home.

In the last seven years i've watched two plus maybe half a dozen documentaries. I just can't sit long enough to get through one and there's zero interest in even trying.
dave