[QuickTidal]

Saw PASSENGERS...it's funny, but I've never seen a movie before that goes from promising for almost its entire runtime...to complete and utter copout in the last 10 minutes that ruins the movie.

Spoiler

The whole movie you dwell on the choice Jim makes to wake up Aurora (aptly named, RE: sleeping beauty) and how it's basically a death sentence for her. Your brain thinks up ways the movie can end and make that choice palatable...like Aurora is a figment of Jim's imagination brought on by a full year awake by himself on the ship and he couldn't cope...or the company that sent the ship was not on the up and up...or perhaps Arthur the robot was bad...there were literally a bunch of scenarios where this could have worked...but nope. It's literally just "she forgives him for essentially death sententcing her, and even after he finds a way to put her back into hypersleep...she rejects that becasue she once again loves him"...and they live together on the ship till their deaths...and the film just ends.

Like I could not believe that was how it ended...or that the whole story was so straightforward...and predicated on what is pretty much the stalker-like decision of a guy gone full-creep after a year by himself.

Bad, bad, bad.

We also watched the first 20 minutes of INFERNO (the latest Ron Howard-directed Robert Langdon mystery...a book which I only got 100 pages into)...and no amount of the excelent Felicity Jones was going to make that film watchable, so we turned it off.

And in a trifecta of dick-punches I'll be administering to myself movie-viewing-wise...we will also be checking out ASSASSIN'S CREED later this week.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 26 March 2017 - 02:26 PM

[QuickTidal]

Goddamn, I love the look of this....it looks like THE FIFTH ELEMENT on steroids!

[Tiste Simeon]

They've been teasing that film for ages I'm really excited about it!

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 29 March 2017 - 04:17 PM

[HoosierDaddy]

Holy shit the IT teaser is AWESOME.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Briar King, on 29 March 2017 - 04:28 PM, said:

Let's hope it's not a Jupiter Ascending sibling

It's doubtful — it is a Luc Besson film...but, he did direct Lucy...

[Primateus]

QuickTidal, on 29 March 2017 - 02:44 PM, said:

Goddamn, I love the look of this....it looks like THE FIFTH ELEMENT on steroids!

I love the Valerian comicbooks. My one hope for this movie, and I don't think it's too much to ask, is: "Please don't suck!"

[Silencer]

Finally got around to seeing Logan this weekend. It was excellent, just really well done overall. Makes the rest of the Wolverine movies seem even worse by comparison, though. XD

Also caught Ghost in the Shell, which I liked much more than I had expected. It stands by itself well enough, even though it did have a few generic Hollywood traits (like taking down to your audience and doing an origin story), and there's the whole war over it being whitewashed or not (by itself, I don't see it an issue given the source material - in the wider context of Hollywood it adds yet another tally mark to the ranks of movies which have been given the treatment), but it was a great effort and had some epic moments (Aramaki especially was really well done and had some standout moments), the effects were well befitting the effort Weta Workshop put into them too.


And as an aside seeing as I saw a slightly different trailer for Alien: Covenant at the screening of Logan, does anyone else think that the movie looks both horrifically generic and yet also like it's jumped off the deep end at the same time? Kinda put off by the trailer I saw, tbh.

[Hairshirt]

Briar King, on 04 April 2017 - 07:06 PM, said:

Showtime has been on a Rocky kick. I've rewatched them all mostly except 4 and a bit of 5(ugh).

I had never watched Rocky Balboa until just now. The credits are rolling as I type. This was a damn fun movie. It is more on the lvl that 1 was on to me.

I loved the last two Rocky movies (yes I count Creed as a Rocky film). I think they're so much better than the others is it's more about characters than boxing.

Have you seen Creed yet?

[Hairshirt]

Briar King, on 05 April 2017 - 02:29 AM, said:

Hairshirt, on 05 April 2017 - 02:23 AM, said:

Briar King, on 04 April 2017 - 07:06 PM, said:

Showtime has been on a Rocky kick. I've rewatched them all mostly except 4 and a bit of 5(ugh).

I had never watched Rocky Balboa until just now. The credits are rolling as I type. This was a damn fun movie. It is more on the lvl that 1 was on to me.

I loved the last two Rocky movies (yes I count Creed as a Rocky film). I think they're so much better than the others is it's more about characters than boxing.

Have you seen Creed yet?

Nope. Isn't there another after Balboa and then Creed?

Nope, 2006 was Balboa, then Creed in 2015.

[worry]

A Monster Calls -- excellent. I can see why it was PG-13 rather than PG. It actually has almost no swears and not much violence, but emotionally it's absolutely brutal. This movie deals with hard truths. I can see some younger folks still loving it, but parents of young ones shouldn't go in blind. There's not really any weak spots, but a school bully subplot is on the overly-familiar side. There are animated bits that are super beautiful, like something between Secret of Kells and cartoon part of Deathly Hallows.

Anyway, as some may have noticed I'm not a huge Liam Neeson fan, especially when he's in Milquetoast Dad Hero Fantasy mode, but his voiceover work is really stellar. He should do audiobooks if he hasn't already.

[amphibian]

I saw The Last Witchhunter. It feels like a bad video game or DnD session. This movie was lazily written and there's zero buy in to Kaulder as a person to respect or care about.

This movie shouldn't have been made.

[Morgoth]

I watched Life over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised, though that's partially (if not mainly) because I am very forgiving when it comes to sci fi horror.

[worry]

Train to Busan - pretty decent South Korean fast-zombie flick that mostly takes place on a train, so it's like a horizontal version of [REC] minus the found footage angle. Nothing new to say about zombies but there are a few really cool/novel individual shots and situations given the train gimmick. It's not scary but it is tense. Not five stars by any means but given the new binary Netflix ratings I definitely gave it a thumbs up.

[Tiste Simeon]

Saw The Nice Guys. Good entertaining mystery.

[Malankazooie]

Watched Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Not much to say other then I wish I could get my 90 min back. I guess I laughed a little bit during the massage scene.

I give it 1 1/2 Kumail Nanjiani butt-to-butt massages out of 5.

[amphibian]

Malankazooie, on 11 April 2017 - 06:47 PM, said:

Watched Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Not much to say other then I wish I could get my 90 min back. I guess I laughed a little bit during the massage scene.

I give it 1 1/2 Kumail Nanjiani butt-to-butt massages out of 5.

I liked this movie. It never pretended to be a stellar, win the Oscars type of movie, so it went for laughs from a silly premise and managed to get the characters actually relating to each other and being funny without it being a tittyfest or grossathon.

[Malankazooie]

amphibian, on 11 April 2017 - 07:16 PM, said:

Malankazooie, on 11 April 2017 - 06:47 PM, said:

Watched Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Not much to say other then I wish I could get my 90 min back. I guess I laughed a little bit during the massage scene.

I give it 1 1/2 Kumail Nanjiani butt-to-butt massages out of 5.

I liked this movie. It never pretended to be a stellar, win the Oscars type of movie, so it went for laughs from a silly premise and managed to get the characters actually relating to each other and being funny without it being a tittyfest or grossathon.

I see your viewpoint, but it was just "meh" to me, to be honest. The premise is pretty cool: flipping the script and making the duo of Aubrey Plaza's and Anna Kendrick's characters the outlandish party fiends that ruin every thing, and Zac Efron's and Adam Devine's characters attempting to keep their party raging ways under wraps for their sister's wedding. I mean there is a lot of fertile comedy ground to explore there, but it just doesn't deliver, imo. Also, for some reason Anna Kendrick bugs me.


I stick to my original rating of 1 and a half Kumail Nanjiani butt-to-butt massages out of 5.

[Khellendros]

Morgoth, on 10 April 2017 - 07:17 AM, said:

I watched Life over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised, though that's partially (if not mainly) because I am very forgiving when it comes to sci fi horror.

That film was so bad. The characters were so insufferably stupid that we were rooting for the alien to kill them all by the end. Still, like all bad films it gave us a lot to discuss over food afterward, so in that sense it was great.


Going to watch F8 of the Furious tonight. So excited!

[Macros]

I wonder if they're finally going to jump the megasharkoctopus in this one.
And what length of a runway it will take to get up to speed

[Khellendros]

Fast 8 was completely utterly ridiculous - and super fun. That was seriously the fastest 2 hours and 40 minutes of my life. There were a couple of missteps, especially near the end (that submarine bit is a little meh) but otherwise I really enjoyed it (but I also love the F&F franchise in general).

Highlights: The beginning sequence brought back memories of old-school F&F; Statham and The Rock odd couple; revenge of the zombie driverless cars.

Lowlights: Scott Eastwood's New Brian. Ugh. Also

Spoiler

Why call the baby Brian? It doesn't make sense because in the universe fiction Brian is still alive. So either call the baby Paul if you want to do another shoutout to Walker, or better yet, go with my idea: Call the baby Han, because that way Statham's character, who killed Han, now also saves a Han's life, thus redeeming himself.

Where would I rank it? Probably fourth, after 5, 6 and 7 - it's mostly on a par with 7 but 7 just edges it because of that ending sequence for Paul Walker. On the other hand, my girlfriend pronounced 8 her favourite film of all time.