The Film Thread

[Xela]

On 4/26/2017 at 15:26, Stevo985 said:

I wouldn't say terrible, but bang average would be about right.

First one was good. I personally didn't think it was deserving of the hype it got.

I was also one of the apparent minority who didn't think the soundtrack worked.

Same. 

GOTG was enjoyable but the praise it got was OTT in my opinion. 

[Xela]

Expendables 2. 

Hadn't seen this before. Was a decent no brain action flick. Good to see some of the old 80's stars together. 

One annoying thing:

Spoiler

The amount of Terminator quotes Arnie shoehorned in got on my tits. 

 

[sne]

This sorta explains some stuff from the previous trailer.

Still holding a slight hope it won't be terrible.

 

[AJ]

Skulked out of work early to go see Guardians of the Galaxy 2 yesterday.

I thought it was pretty good. They upped the humour from the first one, and there was a dull lull from the action in the middle, but overall, I thought it was one of the more enjoyable Marvel movies.

[HanoiVillan]

8 hours ago, Rodders said:

The Trouble With Harry

Very very very underrated. 

[LakotaDakota]

3 hours ago, sne said:

This sorta explains some stuff from the previous trailer.

Still holding a slight hope it won't be terrible.

 

Never mind the trailer, Look at these..

https://hypebeast.com/2017/4/reebok-alien-stomper-final-battle-pack

Reebok has just announced the upcoming release of the Reebok Alien Stomper “Final Battle” Pack. The collectible kicks, slated for a July release, are inspired by the last showdown between the main character Ripley and the vicious Alien queen from the 1986 James Cameron flick, Aliens. The yellow iteration channels the design of the Powerloader machine Ripley used to go into combat mode. The black pair, on the other hand, is inspired by the colossal Xenomorph Queen.

These special kicks will be available in unisex sizing starting July 18 (the date of the ’86 Aliens film) at the cost of $325 USD. Those in New York City can visit the Union Square Reebok FitHub to register for the ‘Final Battle’ pack before the July release date.

[Designer1]

Fincher set to direct World War Z 2.

Erm..ok 

[villa4europe]

I thought the first film was ok, it's not the book which upset a lot of people but it didn't bother me, I liked the world it set up, number 2 could easily set itself apart from the first film and just tell more stories from that world, it does t need brad Pitt (although I'm assuming plan b are still producing it)

[Ginko]

Not sure how you could do a faithful adaptation of the book. The format is just not film-friendly. An anthology-style TV show maybe?

[kurtsimonw]

Thought Guardians 2 was decent. The humour was fantastic throughout and the first hour or so was great. After that it did get worse and I wasn't really taken in by the villain of the piece. I did see the double feature though, so I think it was always going to pale in comparison to the incredible first film. 

[maqroll]

5 hours ago, LakotaDakota said:

These special kicks will be available in unisex sizing starting July 18 (the date of the ’86 Aliens film) at the cost of $325 USD.

Probably costs Reebok about 50 cents to make a pair of those.

[wazzap24]

19 hours ago, kurtsimonw said:

Thought Guardians 2 was decent. The humour was fantastic throughout and the first hour or so was great. After that it did get worse and I wasn't really taken in by the villain of the piece. I did see the double feature though, so I think it was always going to pale in comparison to the incredible first film. 

I pretty much agree with that. 

I thought it was funnier than the first and the chemistry between the cast was on par. Big Dave Batista stole the show for me, but all the characters were excellent. I thought Baby Groot was used really well too, they didn't overkill it. 

The main story arc is where it fell short imo and I definitely agree on the villain. 

I still really enjoyed it, the characters and the humour are what makes it, just like the first.  

 

[Zatman]

Except for Loki, Marvel does seem to struggle to work the villains out on screen

I enjoyed GOTG2 and agree Batista did steal the movie

[stewiek2]

Batista was great and had most of the comedy lines, but for me Rooker's Yoondu stole the show for me. They gave him lmeat to the bones of his character. There is more heart in this one than the first, but this at times felt more forced. I thought it jumped around too much at the start before finding its feet for an hour, then in the "lull" allowed each characters backstory to flesh out before a good ending.

I need to see it again to really take it in as it's full of stuff, but yeah, Marvel does it again

 

[theboyangel]

Just watched The Shallows, a decent surfer vs shark movie that isn't overly long so keeps your interest as there's only one main character and minimal dialogue.

Nicely shot with some tense moments and pretty decent effects for the great white tormenting Blake lively. 

 

Taking my 11yr old to watch gotg2 tomorrow as his sister has a party to go to. He watched the first one today for the first time and loved it (he likes most sci fi and is obsessed with Star Wars!)

[sheepyvillian]

Just watching " Cool Hand Luke " for the 100th time , let's ave it right ,it's up there with the best . I love the line Luke utters to the screw , whose trying to absolve himself from the responsibility of putting him in the cooler , " calling it your job boss, don't make it right " , your absolutely bang on Luke . How can you not love a man who can eat 60 boiled in an hour , just for a bet ,and win ?

[Designer1]

14 minutes ago, sheepyvillian said:

Just watching " Cool Hand Luke " for the 100th time , let's ave it right ,it's up there with the best . I love the line Luke utters to the screw , whose trying to absolve himself from the responsibility of putting him in the cooler , " calling it your job boss, don't make it right " , your absolutely bang on Luke . How can you not love a man who can eat 60 boiled in an hour , just for a bet ,and win ?

Masterpiece. Simple as that.

[sheepyvillian]

On 27/04/2017 at 22:53, LakotaDakota said:

Never mind the trailer, Look at these..

https://hypebeast.com/2017/4/reebok-alien-stomper-final-battle-pack

Reebok has just announced the upcoming release of the Reebok Alien Stomper “Final Battle” Pack. The collectible kicks, slated for a July release, are inspired by the last showdown between the main character Ripley and the vicious Alien queen from the 1986 James Cameron flick, Aliens. The yellow iteration channels the design of the Powerloader machine Ripley used to go into combat mode. The black pair, on the other hand, is inspired by the colossal Xenomorph Queen.

These special kicks will be available in unisex sizing starting July 18 (the date of the ’86 Aliens film) at the cost of $325 USD. Those in New York City can visit the Union Square Reebok FitHub to register for the ‘Final Battle’ pack before the July release date.

Them trainers look like something Gary Nonce Glitter wore in the seventies .

[Chindie]

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

How do you follow a smash success created from nothing?

The first Guardians of the Galaxy came out 3 years ago to a buzz - Marvel doing something very different, a space opera romp, with characters nobody has heard of, who have never been particularly popular, scored with 70s and 80s tunes and made by a director most associated with darkly humourous fare like Slither. And it was a smash hit. Expectations have justifiably risen with a sequel, could Gunn match them? Or does familiarity tarnish the unlikely groups' shine?

Like the first film we open with a flashback, to Earth in 1980. Meredith Quill, Starlord's mother, is driving with a young Kurt Russell. Kurt takes her to a quiet wooded area where he shows her an alien plant, whilst she quips about having fallen in love with a star man. Cut to 2014 and we find the Guardians mid mission in a contract to kill an interdimensional beast intent on destroying some important and powerful batteries owned by a race of genetically perfect beings, the Sovereign. We learn that the Sovereign do not look kindly on any slight against them, and of course immediately the Guardians do exactly that. Elsewhere, Yondu, Starlord's kidnapper and boss from the beginning of the original film has his Ravager crew on downtime on another planet, but trouble is brewing...

GOTGv2 is effectively Guardians of the Galaxy: the Backstory.The film picks a few characters to flesh out a little from the first movie, which somewhat admirably did next to no explanation of itself. The driving force is Peter Quills' origin. The movie is so open about this Gunn felt happy to answer the question from the end of the first film, who is Peter's dad, at the end of a trailer, simply stating the mystery isn't really who Peter's dad is, that theres more to it than that. And he isn't wrong. The initial 'plot' of the thing is completely secondary to exploring this story, and everything else is hung off the framework of it. The first film took the McGuffin of another Infinity Stone and then hung the characters off that, this baits and switches the McGuffin for Peter's history and what that means about him. Off to the side we get Yondu's story, with nods and winks to who he is, what his relationship to Peter is ultimately, and he gets his own little side quest to complete. Everyone else is wallpaper, and they tart things up with a few new elements to mix the formula - we add Mantis to the team (a character with a genuinely weird history if you've nothing better to read about one evening), Baby Groot is a different beast to his grown self, and we get some expansion of the Ravagers in cameo parts that will mean nothing to 99.9% of the people watching.

Of course the first film had a plot so thin you could cough through it, and the joy came from how weird it was, how funny it was, and a great soundtrack. A little of that weirdness is gone. We know these characters now, we know how whacky the Cosmic side of the Marvel universe can be. We add some new strangeness to the proceedings, most obviously with Mantis who is portrayed as a quirky shut in who doesn't understand social interaction (but read about it once in a book), who can tap and channel emotions, and it uses the Sovereign to sardonically look the modern elite and make some barbed comments about the world of 2017, slapping you in the face with something that initially feels like a gag but instantly dawns on you as a damning indictment of the world. But the main stays here are well established.

The jokes come thick and fast. And they suffer for it. Few are funny enough, in my view, and whilst there are some great ones there are equally a few that just don't work - a running gag of Drax's comments on Mantis culminates in a scene of him dry heaving and the film seems to think this is hilarious, and it isn't. Drax's character is also just slightly changed. In the first film the gag that his people were purely literal and thus didn't understand metaphor was a great source of cheap gags, here it's less he is purely literal and more that he is someone without a 'filter'. A very early gag concerns Rocket threatening Quill by putting Drax's shit in his bed, Drax laughs and exclaims 'I have famously huge turds!'. Its not quite funny enough and it's not quite right for the character imo. All this isn't to say the movie isn't funny however, it is. But not as much as the first, which has it's own misses of course too.

There's another issue with the humour, that many reviews have picked up on. The tone is all over the place. We bounce from a cheap sex joke to genuinely heartfelt moments. More than once a joke is followed by sadness - during a quiet moment with Drax and Mantis, Drax makes a series of comments about Mantis that draw a smile, but which is followed instantly with Mantis, who can feel emotions, instantly being struck with grief at Drax's loss of his family. Another scene is genuinely emotional but Gunn chose to punctuate that with cheap jokes, like he couldn't let the movie breathe with sadness for a moment. Gunn has a talent for the heartfelt - the scenes in the first film dealing with Peter's mother are, for comic book stuff, incredibly affecting. I can still recall seeing the first film only a month or 2 after my own mothers death and that opening was a gut punch, but it wanted to be, and it's simply but beautifully done. That moment with Mantis feeling Drax's pain is a throwaway few seconds, but still done so well... except it is part of a scene that before was designed to raise childish giggles. 

It's not just sadness that is an undercurrent sitting slightly uneasily with the humour. The film has an ever so slightly cruel, nasty tone too. We have scenes of a mob gleefully forcing someone out of an airlock and mocking them as they die in the vacuum of space, only for the camera to pull back and see space littered with other bodies that met the same fate. Later Groot is bullied, played with, in a fairly cruel way. All of this sits slightly oddly with the humour, the tone swerving from bawdy comedy to sorrow on six pence, from playground laughs to cruelty. The whole run time has this undercurrent of sadness and slight anger for me, making it a much more emotional movie, which is fine, but I'm not sure how well the humour fits in and around that.

The soundtrack isn't as good either. Theres a few great choices (anything that features Cat Stevens can't be all bad) and it opens with Mr Blue Sky in a cracking set piece, but I don't see this being the iconic soundtrack the first is. It even suffers a little with Suicide Squad syndrome in a couple of places, that feeling that the editor just left his playlist on and hit record.

The cast is as good as ever, the new additions do the job well with special mention to Pom Klementieff as Mantis, who immediately settles in, and Kurt Russell brings a strange weary hippy gravitas to things. Elizabeth Debicki has nothing to do, and only stands out as the make up manages to make her, usually otherwordly beautiful, look weird. Chris Pratt  also stands out. This character is his at this point and he does everything the film throws at him with aplomb. He has one particularly well done, and somewhat affecting, scene that will stick long in my mind I think.

It looks great, and the actions' fun with everyone getting a 'hero' moment or 2, and it barrels along despite being one of Marvel's longer movies. I can't deny it's entertaining. But I have to say it slightly disappointed me. The first was so good, everything so perfectly hanging together and so new that it rides over it's weaker moments, and this isn't. It isn't as interesting, the humour misses more and feels more forced, the soundtrack isn't as good, the tonal swerves are strange, the plot isn't particularly great (but is admittedly well done for what it is)... There is nothing bad about this movie, in many many ways it's very good, but the first movie, even as someone who doesn't love it like some others, sets a bloody high bar, and this doesn't quite get to it. It does feel like something that will improve with further viewings though, and might in time settle a little further up the list than I'd place it at now. For now, it's good but just misses how good it could, should have been.

There are 5 post credit scenes, scattered throughout the credits. They mostly feel like little ideas Gunn had then just chucked in for a final laugh rather than anything important, bar 1, which should be incredibly important for where the Marvel universe goes in future.

[theboyangel]

So what did you think of it Chindie?

 

Just back from watching it myself with my lad. Very enjoyable and probably more comedic than the first. 

Great set pieces and the final 'baddie' didn't bother me as it has others. 

Spoiler

Loved the hasselhoff cameo but thought the Stallone appearance was unnecessary.