Films I watched this week

[Pickled]

phazed 11.83 said:

Atomic Blonde, worth a look?

From the trailer I deduced a lot of running around and wham bang thank you mam!

Opinions?

The trailer is basically the first 10 minutes of the film- the rest is a snooze fest, despite Ms Theron looking stunning in every scene

[Halb]

Eddie Strohacker said:

Alien Covenant. Lots of: You'd think they'd have learnt by now + why are they doing that? Why would you do that?

You on about Ridley Scott?

[ClockworkCupcake]

Halb said:

You on about Ridley Scott?

[Eddie Strohacker]

Halb said:

You on about Ridley Scott?

Yes & no. He makes sweeping panoramic movies that are great to look at but the same old tropes pop up again & again in Alien movies. This one is overly expository, clumsily banging on about creation, standard retarded infection control, gung ho space pilot, gung ho expeditionary force, flawed authority figure. It could have been any one of the films except the first & plenty of that is in there.

I ended up liking Prometheus, straining to overlook it's weaknesses but this is like the annual new Star Wars. Is it blowing up the Death Star? Yes, it's blowing up the Death Star. It's always blowing up the Death Star.

[fttm]

robemcdonald said:

Deep water horizon.

Pretty decent actually.

Only a couple of negatives.

At the beginning they show two of them characters at home prior to going to the rig. One is the main protagonist, but the other not so much. It felt a bit odd they only did two. You'd think they'd give everyone a bit of back story. Making a much longer and probably worse movie or just get on with the story. You could get most of that stuff through the video calls they did.

The exposition.... trying to explain how things work in simple terms. Either your audience knows and understands or they can work it out themselves. Do we really need them to say "that's enough pressure to cut your car in half" ten times?

If you cut those elements you could get the movie down to a much tighter 90 minutes or so at which point it would go from good to great.

7.5/10

In my top ten , superb effects and also quite close to the true events

[LuS1fer]

The Mummy

Bits stolen from so many films yet missing the mark by a million miles. Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise and, as my girlfriend summed up, it was like a piece of old cheese you can't swallow. Maybe it was really a hidden message about Mormons but it was certainly tosh.

1/10

[AMG Merc]

fttm said:

robemcdonald said:

Deep water horizon.

Pretty decent actually.

Only a couple of negatives.

At the beginning they show two of them characters at home prior to going to the rig. One is the main protagonist, but the other not so much. It felt a bit odd they only did two. You'd think they'd give everyone a bit of back story. Making a much longer and probably worse movie or just get on with the story. You could get most of that stuff through the video calls they did.

The exposition.... trying to explain how things work in simple terms. Either your audience knows and understands or they can work it out themselves. Do we really need them to say "that's enough pressure to cut your car in half" ten times?

If you cut those elements you could get the movie down to a much tighter 90 minutes or so at which point it would go from good to great.

7.5/10

In my top ten , superb effects and also quite close to the true events

I enjoyed it too - I doubt BP did though.

[bullfis7]

Clockwork Orange
Put it on around 3 months ago and turned it off after an hour because it got really weird. I was expecting strange but just did not understand any of it. Curiosity got the better of me and put it on again this week. Enjoyed it in a strange way. Some great quotes. I'm sure its a controversial one
7/10

[AMG Merc]

bullfis7 said:

Clockwork Orange
Put it on around 3 months ago and turned it off after an hour because it got really weird. I was expecting strange but just did not understand any of it. Curiosity got the better of me and put it on again this week. Enjoyed it in a strange way. Some great quotes. I'm sure its a controversial one
7/10

Controversial for sure. You probably now that Stanley Kubrik, the director, banned his own film due to public outrage at the time - ban lasted 25 years.

It's a simple story once you think about it: Government intervention into antisocial behaviour fails (but only because Alex gets beaten up after the treatment - as he now abhors violence. So what I say, he was a murdering git right?)

Apparently the name derived from an old English expression "Queer as a Clockwork Orange", meaning something very strange.

Anyway, back to things petrol - we spent ages looking for a mythical 'Derango 95' as teenagers. Think it was based on a Probe kitcar.

And I can still quote Droogspeak

[LuS1fer]

poing said:

Interesting reviews. I have some spare time on Wednesday and was considering going to the cinema, the only thing I liked the look of was Spiderman. I also have the option to watch Beauty and the Beast for free at home, freebie from Sky.

I'm really struggling to bring myself to watch B&TB because it really isn't my kind of thing, even if all the reviews were great. Is there singing in it? If so it's an easy choice to make and I'll go watch the spider.

It's not so bad but there is a scene of table dancing that looks and sounds like a terribly OTT musical stage show. Horrific in the extreme and filling time.
The singing is also badly dubbed for the main characters.
As I have said before, a film that never needed making, the cartoon was just fine.
Cinderella similarly.
Jungle Book rather pointless as they have to CGI the animals...cartoon way better.

I hope to god we don't get a live action Aristocats.

[Jonesy23]

LuS1fer said:

The Mummy

Bits stolen from so many films yet missing the mark by a million miles. Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise and, as my girlfriend summed up, it was like a piece of old cheese you can't swallow. Maybe it was really a hidden message about Mormons but it was certainly tosh.

1/10

Might have been a lot better if they hadn't spent 80%+ of the film trying to launch their monster movie franchise.

The actual Mummy storyline was squeezed out of the way by everything else, shame as what there was seemed reasonably dark and nasty.

[grumbledoak]

bullfis7 said:

Clockwork Orange
Put it on around 3 months ago and turned it off after an hour because it got really weird. I was expecting strange but just did not understand any of it. Curiosity got the better of me and put it on again this week. Enjoyed it in a strange way. Some great quotes. I'm sure its a controversial one
7/10

It's a very good book; well worth reading. Clever too - you get slowly taught their language.
I didn't think much of the film. It lost me around about the rape scene treated as a Benny Hill chase...

[poing]

LuS1fer said:

poing said:

Interesting reviews. I have some spare time on Wednesday and was considering going to the cinema, the only thing I liked the look of was Spiderman. I also have the option to watch Beauty and the Beast for free at home, freebie from Sky.

I'm really struggling to bring myself to watch B&TB because it really isn't my kind of thing, even if all the reviews were great. Is there singing in it? If so it's an easy choice to make and I'll go watch the spider.

It's not so bad but there is a scene of table dancing that looks and sounds like a terribly OTT musical stage show. Horrific in the extreme and filling time.
The singing is also badly dubbed for the main characters.
As I have said before, a film that never needed making, the cartoon was just fine.
Cinderella similarly.
Jungle Book rather pointless as they have to CGI the animals...cartoon way better.

I hope to god we don't get a live action Aristocats.

You sound suitably grumpy old man, just like me. I'll avoid it as I would only turn it off at the first sign of the singing.

[FourWheelDrift]

I caught the recent Dad's Army the other day.

Terrible. Whoever wrote it lost the plot completely, we should never see or hear Mrs Mainwaring. I liked seeing the original vicar but they missed the opportunity for the other original Ian Lavender as the Brigadier to say to Captain Mainwaring "you stupid man".

Boring, wrong idea to set it in 1944, it was all originally about defending Britain from a German invasion and should have been kept to that.

IMDB ratings.
2016 Dad's Army film - 5.2/10
1971 Dads's Army film - 6.9/10

My rating
2016 Dad's Army - 3/10

You can't beat the original.

[CooperD]

I watched the 1958 version of Dunkirk directed by Barry Norman's father Leslie earlier today. It was a typical 1950's very British stiff upper lip style of film. The special effects obviously now look dated but the acting was very good from a cast including John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee (M from the early James Bond films).

[glazbagun]

Saw John Wick (first one) for the first time a while ago. Don't know how it passed me by- just the right amount of pot before the braindead killing begins, lots of cool unexplored areas/murky history, some comedy and I am one of those who actually enjoy watching Keanu Reeves.

8/10 as an action film, probably 6/10 if you like things a it more brain-in.

[GM182]

AMG Merc said:

Savages, Oliver Stone Mexican drug cartel film. Wasn't expecting much but enjoyable.

I wasn't expecting much either but was still disappointed - probably the worst film I've watched this year.

Salma Hayek brought a bit of class but Del Toro and Travolta phoned in their performances and the three leads were dire as was the script.
Oliver Stone is getting very lazy - couldn't even decide on the ending so gave us both!

[CoolHands]

The new Spider-Man movie. I thought it was brilliant! I enjoyed the humour and the feel of the film, it was a bit different from previous Spider-Man films. However, I don't like the linking up with ironman and all that 'marvel universe' bullst that I suppose they're trying to build.

[ajprice]

Valerian. As others have said, it looks great but the lead two had the personalities of wood. As acting goes, the film got better when Rihanna was in it. If you've seen Battleship you'll know what I mean by that.

I'm not sure if it was me, the 3D effect or something else, but the lip syncing on the, err, white sparkly aliens (?) was a bit off in places.

[Halb]

https://youtu.be/S0cM6tBQlho

A Postmortem of Valerian - Why Did It Flop?