Jump to content

The Film Thread


DeadlyDirk

Recommended Posts

The Sixth Sense (1999)

I really enjoyed watching this film .I thought Bruce Willis was great in it.As far as i can recall i can only ever recall him playing the hard man role in films,so i was surprised to see  him play in this kind of role .Would recommend watching 8/10 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 Cloverfield Lane was decent. It was tense but fairly predictable (odd, I know, but there is a certain joy in knowing what is going to happen and seeing it unfold anyway) and the less said about the ending the better.

Despite my misgivings (and because someone else paid!) I saw Batman v Superman. It literally gave me a headache. I wish I was joking. Too loud, too much going on and none of it of consequence, and really **** long. A chore of a film. In fact, the best thing about it was Eisenberg. People seem to hate his character but my word he is the only source of fun in an otherwise joyless heap of shite.

 

Edited by CarewsEyebrowDesigner
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, CarewsEyebrowDesigner said:

10 Cloverfield Lane was decent. It was tense but fairly predictable (odd, I know, but there is a certain joy in knowing what is going to happen and seeing it unfold anyway) and the less said about the ending the better.

Despite my misgivings (and because someone else paid!) I saw Batman v Superman. It literally gave me a headache. I wish I was joking. Too loud, too much going on and none of it of consequence, and really **** long. A chore of a film. In fact, the best thing about it was Eisenberg. People seem to hate his character but my word he is the only source of fun in an otherwise joyless heap of shite.

 

It's the weight of it having to set up even more movies, they're basically trying to do what Marvel spent X amount of movies setting up.While I'm not against a "serious" hero flick it sounds like Eisenberg is almost the only thing "fun" in the whole thing...& it makes him stick out like a sore thumb. I watched Angry Joe's review & he said Eisenberg is almost playing a joker character.

 

I was meant to go today, had booked tickets but the wife had her afternoon pregnancy sickness....can't say I'm at all bothered we didn't go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lasted 2 minutes after the opening credits (so about 7-8 minutes) of Ted 2 before my eyes and ears bled too much and I had to shut it off.

What an appalling attempt at humour...... Ted (1) had some funny moments but the sequel (from the 8 minutes of viewing) was just a teddy bear shouting f*** every two seconds.

Lame.

So, watched Everest instead and midly surprised it wasn't about double glazing salesmen. Based on true events in 1996 it was pretty decent viewing, with stunning cinematography and a good cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Jason Clarke, Emily Watson and Keira Knightly (not one for you then MightySasquatch ;))

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why do people keep going to watch Batman Vs Superman? I'm a big comic book fan, but it looks really bad, and most people say it's really bad. So I have no intentions of going to watch it,

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lasted 2 minutes after the opening credits (so about 7-8 minutes) of Ted 2 before my eyes and ears bled too much and I had to shut it off.

What an appalling attempt at humour...... Ted (1) had some funny moments but the sequel (from the 8 minutes of viewing) was just a teddy bear shouting f*** every two seconds

Give it another shot and last longer. I assure you (as will others in here) that it has far more laugh out loud moments than the first one. It is a funnier film.
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In The Heart Of The Sea. The true story that Melville based Moby Dick on. I believe it's good. Will definitely bang at some point. But how does 7/10 equate with 'great film'? :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, BOF said:
2 hours ago, theboyangel said:
Lasted 2 minutes after the opening credits (so about 7-8 minutes) of Ted 2 before my eyes and ears bled too much and I had to shut it off.

What an appalling attempt at humour...... Ted (1) had some funny moments but the sequel (from the 8 minutes of viewing) was just a teddy bear shouting f*** every two seconds

Give it another shot and last longer. I assure you (as will others in here) that it has far more laugh out loud moments than the first one. It is a funnier film.

Interesting to hear but have to take your word for it. Most likely not in the right mood for it last night either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Saw BvS.

Er.

I dunno what to make of it. I don't think it's as bad as Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of reviews would have you believe, but it certainly isn't a masterpiece.

There's problems with it everywhere. Throughout the film characters do things for no reason other than the plot requires them to. There are literally dozens of these moments, and they aren't the kind that you notice the next day, you'll notice them sat there in the cinema. Entire plot elements hang off characters doing something that simply doesn't make sense. 

The movie also writes itself into a corner in a pivotal moment and the way it gets out of it will nearly make you laugh instantly. It's all the more funny when you realise some of the implications of that narrative escape hatch - the idea isn't a completely awful one (it isn't a good one either), but they do it completely brainlessly which makes the entire thing absurd, it also makes a certain character look like a complete clearing in the woods.

It's immediately obvious that the script is going to the hobble the movie and that comes to pass. Affleck is actually decent as both Bruce Wayne and this take on Batman, but this is pretty much Batman in name only and is again undermined by the script. He acts like the Dark Knight Returns take on Batman, but this is undermined wholly by his willingness to kill. Batman in this movie must have a body count in the dozens. He quite literally murderers someone at one point, and wracks up the rest of the body count by happily shooting at and blowing up things filled with people. It's also established early on that he brands some criminals which the film gleefully tells you amounts to a death sentence in prison. His entire motivation for the movie is he wants to kill Superman. Batman isn't a murderer. Even in his most brutal interpretation, he doesn't kill anyone, he will go out of his way to not kill. The film nearly grasps the wider characterisation of Batman but then misses. He moves like Batman and fights like him, in some ways he thinks like him, but he does stupid illogical things, and the script ultimately makes him out to be a stupid right wing meathead. It's at one and the same time the best modern era comic Batman, and also the worst as it betrays fundamental elements of the character.

Superman is joyless in the film, actually does very little in it, and at one moment acts in a manner completely at odds with the character they've established because otherwise the movie doesn't work. Wonder Woman is on screen for at best 10 minutes total, and has dialogue that could fit on postage stamp, but is a good interpretation of her from the finale's showing. Lex is a weird take on the character, and intensely irritating, with muddied motivation, but kinda works overall. Amy Adams could be replaced by some wood and nobody would notice.

There's also the completely bizarre dream sequences. Back to back we get 2 dream sequences that come completely out of nowhere. Both have a purpose but both should have been cut. The first tries to explain Bruce's mindset with a nightmare of a world where Superman has gone unchecked and everything has fallen to disaster. I could hear people completely confused by this, and I would have been too has I not seen some merchandise refer to this Batman as Knightmare Batman. It doesn't need it, by that point we've established Bruce's motivation and distrust of Superman, reasonably successfully, all this does is confuse things. I suspect it's also a premonition of a Justice League movie but can't confirm that. Then we get an absolutely bizarre, and jarringly obvious nod to the Justice League. This serves no purpose in the movie beyond setting up those movies, and is completely odd. It doesn't fit at all, is never referred to again. Very strange.

I could go on with the problems. There's loads. All of them relate to the script missing the mark. The script obviously wanted to do a certain story and then it's fit the characters into it, and it also wanted to have a very specific take on some characters that are controversial - Batman for example you feel they wanted to do a comic true version of the character but also wanted to up the grit and they've decided the best way to do that is make him more eager to kill. It rushes to get to moments it hasn't earned. And it's been edited with a hatchet.

But there is some good in this. I think the story is cackhanded, and was never going to be a masterpiece, but it fundamentally could work with a more intelligent approach. The main narrative works - Batman hating Superman absolutely works for the reasons they establish. It works too well though and they then struggle to overcome it, a smarter script would work better. The imagery is a bit on the nose (the opening invokes 9/11 far too heavily) and often just copied from the page (the montage of Superman 'doing good' has an image that is ripped from the cover cover of All Star Superman, for instance, and is one of the better in the film). There are some lighter moments, fleeting lines offering some relief from the gloom. The action is good, the highlight being Batman taking on a room of goons and actually, for the first time on screen, fighting like he should. And if nothing else it's entertaining enough.

So I don't know really what to make of it. It isn't a particularly good movie, but it's also not without merit. As a comic fan it pisses me off in many respects, in other respects I quite like it. It's intensely stupid in some respects, full of holes and requiring leaps of logic your brain won't allow you to make without question. It develops plotlines it hasn't earned. It has thrilling moments, good action scenes, some emotion, but all founded on idiocy.

I suspect this will be liked by audiences more than critics, but it's never going to be more than a 6/10 movie, and for some people is going to 3/10.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There seems to be a lot of talk about the 'Ultimate Cut' of the film, and while the thought of a three hour long, R-rated version seems bizarre, and one does get the sense that Snyder was apologizing for the theatrical release, I am interested to see it simply because Watchmen's Director's cut (or whatever it is called) was significantly better than the theatrical. I'll make sure to turn the brightness of my screen up if and when I watch it, though, because that film is dim. In fact a lot of films seem that way now, or perhaps my vision is going.

Speaking of directors' cuts, I've decided to give Kingdom of Heaven another go today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm interested in the Ultimate Cut simply to see whether the extra 30 minutes is just chucking more stuff in, or whether it smoothes out some of the editing. It certainly adds in characters - Jena Malone was cut entirely and rumour was played a pretty significant character - but I'm hoping it'll develop things a bit. It won't fix the script though, when one of, if not the, significant moments in the movie was so stupid the immediate reaction is absolute bewilderment, no amount of extra scenes are fixing it.

Incidentally the Kingdom of Heaven Directors Cut makes that into a genuinely decent movie, it makes it into a more obviously ensemble piece and fleshes out whole plotlines to the extent the movie actually makes sense where previously it didn't at all.

Edited by Chindie
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I watched The Force Awakens again last night. Third viewing. I enjoyed it almost as much as the first two times.

I'd avoided a lot of the trivia stuff when the film came out, so I didn't realise until last night that the Stormtrooper that Rey does a Jedi mind trick on was Daniel Craig.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, BOF said:
13 hours ago, theboyangel said:
Lasted 2 minutes after the opening credits (so about 7-8 minutes) of Ted 2 before my eyes and ears bled too much and I had to shut it off.

What an appalling attempt at humour...... Ted (1) had some funny moments but the sequel (from the 8 minutes of viewing) was just a teddy bear shouting f*** every two seconds

Give it another shot and last longer. I assure you (as will others in here) that it has far more laugh out loud moments than the first one. It is a funnier film.

Sorry BOF. Couldn't disagree more.

Loved Ted. Ted 2 pales in comparison. A really bad film, imo.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...
Â