Last movie watched...

[JamesC]

I picked up the Blu Ray of Troll Hunter for £2.50 in a charity shop.
I'd seen it when it first came out and remembered enjoying it so I watched it again last night.
It was even better than I'd remembered. I just love the way they totally embrace the folklore elemements of the Trolls and the creature designs are fantastic and really stand out amongst the host of generic looking CGI beasties we usualy see these days.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Watched Iron Man (the first one) last night.

10 or 11 years old, but still fun. The plot is really simple compared to yer average superhero movie nowadays

[Mattofthespurs]

Witness For The Prosecution. Directed by Billy Wilder, starring Charles Laughton delivered by Eureka Masters of Cinema on blu ray.


Never seen it before but it's a master class in court room drama. Funny, witty, suspenseful and with a couple of great twists. I loved it.

[Colin YNWA]

By George I do love Escape from the Planet of the Apes, it really is probably my favourite of the lot. It's not without its faults and contrivanes - I mean Cornelius does kill that fella in a fit of rage and folks are very quick to forgive that - but I can move past that as the overall tone of the movie is so wonderful.

The initial comic tone deftly revealing it's darker undertones, the creepy nature of events building at pace as events develop and fear tightens it's grip. That early lighthearted surface help this all the more. The other thing that really works is to the benefit of this is the villain of the piece Doctor Hasslein, he's played wonderfully. No meladramatics, no evil plans, just a calm polite real world fear hidden beneath his elegant surface. Just fantastic. As are the performances by Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter as our lead apes, magnificent to get so much from under such heavy prostetics.

And the story just builds and builds to what is one of the all time great conclusions, worthy of a sequel to the original classic. I'm never quite sure why this one isn't hailed more, is it just me?

[rogue69]

Thanks for your suggestion of WIZARDS Rara Avis, it was a good fun watch & you can see how he used this animation style as a warm up for his work on his version of Lord of the Rings a year later. Also I noticed that the concept art was by Mike Ploog & Mark Hamill voiced one of the characters.
You can play game with this film, what is stock footage & what films did they use for the painted over live action parts [spoiler] Zulu, El Cid, Battle of the Bulge, Patton and Alexander Nevsky[/spoiler]

[Steve Green]

The Kid who would be King - had some cinema vouchers to use up, and also a cold - so thought I'd give it a whirl.

Pretty good although the main villain's whispering schtick got old fairly quick.

A few really well done set pieces, and had a kind of charm which reminded me a little of Joe Dante's Explorers.

[Keef Monkey]

We went to see Alita: Battle Angel and really, really enjoyed it. Helped that it was an IMAX showing but it looked and sounded absolutely stunning, and I thought the designs were really cool and the action was very well executed, it's rare I actually feel excited by action scenes these days (maybe a bit numb to how overblown things have gotten in this CG age?) but even when things got pretty wild the confrontations in this still felt meaty and grounded. It helped that for a 12A they've really not been shy about making the fights feel pretty bone-crunchingly impactful (and they also used [spoiler]their one 12A F-Bomb very effectively I thought)[/spoiler]. The Motorball sequence was really thrilling in particular.

The fact she's completely mo-capped wasn't as distracting as I feared from the trailer, yeah her eyes are massive but the performance capture is pretty exceptional and the performance underneath is really strong so I was won over early on and just stopped thinking about it. I do wonder why they felt they really needed to do it though, as introducing that kind of uncanny valley element for no reason other than I guess to replicate the anime look is a weird choice if it's maybe going to put some people off. I thought it was perhaps because she's not supposed to look entirely human, but then people interact with her as if she is human until they see her cyborg limbs, so it just strikes me as a bit unnecessary, but not particularly bothersome.

It really is about as close to a live action anime as I think I've seen, and the kind of cyberpunky anime that I particularly enjoy, so I had a great time with it. We came out of it chatting giddily about how fun a sequel would be, and a bit bummed about how unlikely that is given it seems to have been tarred with the turkey brush before release so will probably flop pretty hard.

Also got to Resident Evil: Extinction on my RE rewatch, and Cosh was right about it being the closest thing to an objectively good film that the series has. Maybe it's coming off the really poor looking Apocalypse, but this just feels way more visually confident and focused than the others. It's all staged pretty well, the story is intelligible, the desert gives it all a great post-apocalyptic Mad Max With Zombies vibe, the action scenes are pretty great and with the duster and knives combo it has maybe Milla's most badass look of them all. Really enjoyed it, and not even in the guilty pleasure way that I enjoy some of the others.

[Mattofthespurs]

Bad Times AT The El Royale

This film is a hoot. Funny, gruesome, and full of intrigue.

Anyone thinking of watching this should try to go into it without knowing too much about it.

Which is why I shall now shut up except to say it's very, very good.

[Sinx]

Saw Alita : Battle Angel recently and it was not too bad at all - probably preferred it over Aquaman. Seeing it in IMAX definitely helped, the cinema shakes when ever there's a big impact. Just scraping a 3/5 from me.
The only thing about the film though was every time I see Ed Skein now, before I actually register who it is, I just remember that scene when Ryan Reynolds is trying to guess his name in Deadpool and says "Is it Basil Fawlty?" in his faux Cockney accent  Just can't take the fella seriously any more!

[Hawkmumbler]

Yup, Alita Battle Angel is the sci-fi manga movie i've wanted for years. Slick, quick and visually wicked. Will probably see again this week.

[Keef Monkey]

Got to Resident Evil: Afterlife on my rewatch and it holds up pretty great! The action scenes at the start and end are pure CG assisted over the top craziness, but the main meat of the movie in the prison is surprisingly restrained (for Resi) and a tense, and feels a lot more like the confident pace of Extinction than the ADD onslaught of something like Apocalypse. It looks great too, I own the others on regular Blu-ray but this one was 4K and the difference was stunning in places. It borrows a fair bit (landing on the roof is pure Escape From NY) and as soon as they set up the shower room it's hard not to roll your eyes at how obviously they're craning to set up a 'soaking wet hot women fighting big hammer wielding beast thing' situation but when it happens it does look fantastic so it's hard to mark it down for it.

After that the Wesker fight doesn't really impress too much, although it is (I think) the first time* they use the Danny Lohner remix of 'The Outsider' by A Perfect Circle to soundtrack a fight and that's one of my favourite pieces of music ever so I've always got a real thrill out of hearing it there.

Still enjoying this Resi-rewatch, and thought on a revisit this stands pretty comfortably alongside Extinction as maybe the best couple in the series. I can't remember a great deal about the next film so curious to see how it holds up.

*The remix was actually done for the second film, but despite appearing on the soundtrack album I've still to spot it appearing in that movie, so I guess it's particularly nice they finally found a spot for it! I'm sure it pops up again in subsequent films too. That drum sound is the BEST.

[Colin YNWA]

There's no way Conquest of the Planet of the Apes can be seen as an objectively good movie but by heck its a fun if frustrating one.

The budget cuts really begin to tell, while it doesn't lack ambition for that, it does fail to land that ambition. Its too short to really explore any of the ideas it has with any conviction. Its too short for the plot to hang together well in fact. So many corners cut with in the first 50 minutes or so to get to the uprising the posters and trailers promised audiences that it struggles to hold together and I stuggled to suspend disbelieve...

...but somehow I did. As the ideas, if not executed or fleshed out enough, are very good. There's some really effective performances and while everything's a little 'comic book' I after all love comic books and this film does rather play out like an early 2000ad story... and that's probably why I really enjoyed it.

The final 30 minutes that really shouldn't work - after all they're entirely inconsistantly realised apes, clubing human to pieces in ever increasing escalation capped by overwrought speeches and dialogue - somehow works quite magnifcently. To be fair is at times very effectively shot and the lighting creates brilliant menacing atmosphere.

Okay so it is immense fun, it is also a wasted opportunity and so we are lucky that the modern movies have sort to put this right and re-imagine this part of the apes story and done it so well. I'm very glad this film exists but I'm also very glad they thought to redo it properly this time!

[Magnetica]

Zootropolis - my 7 year old daughter chose this as a family film for us. I watched the first 5 minutes and then had to take a call for half an hour and then came back to watch the rest.

I was pretty much caught up after 5 minutes and wow it was great. Really looking forward to watching it again, all the way through this time.

Have to admit I didn't think I would like it after that initial 5 mins but it was really entertaining.

[Colin YNWA]

Zootropolis - my 7 year old daughter chose this as a family film for us. I watched the first 5 minutes and then had to take a call for half an hour and then came back to watch the rest.

I was pretty much caught up after 5 minutes and wow it was great. Really looking forward to watching it again, all the way through this time.

Have to admit I didn't think I would like it after that initial 5 mins but it was really entertaining.

Possibly my favourite Disney animation. Love this movie.

[I, Cosh]

Surprised to note I've seen fully 50% of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees.

The Favourite is by far the best of them. A smart script full of brutality and black humour combine with disorientating cinematography and deadpan absurdity to make something quite extraordinary. It's a period drama detached from my preconceptions about what that means. A power struggle between three women in an era where most power lies with men. Through costume and makeup all the male characters are made to seem ludicrous even while we still see their authority is an ever present threat to at least one of the leads.

Taking a more  a more grounded, wordy script and shooting it through with the absurdist elements of the director's previous films like Dogtooth was a stroke of genius. I was left staring wide-eyed in joyous disbelief as the final scene faded into the credits.

Of the others, A Star is Born was watchable. No big surprises but both Bradley Cooper & Lady Gaga were good and the music could've been worse.

Haven't kept up to date with the Marvel empire in recent years, nor is Black Panther a comic I've ever read, but this was a great one. It's hard not to think of it in political terms but so I wont. It's actually a small sign of progress to live in a world where at least one huge company can say: fuck it, we don't need to pander to your racist bullshit anymore and we can still make a billion dollars. I hope Sun Ra would be proud. It's refreshing to see something visually different in a blockbuster and, despite the inevitable horde of CGI monsters, the final showdown has an emotional and thematic heft that most of these don't.

A bit too easy to bracket Blackkklansman as a companion piece to this - in Oscar terms at least - but it surely has one of the most sympathetic portrayals of the Black Panthers on film! It's not up with his best, but it's great to see Spike Lee on the way up again. The real story behind this is obviously ludicrous enough but I think it takes a fairly idiosyncratic voice to throw his film nerd juxtaposition of Gone with the Wind and Shaft into the mix of odd couple comedy and brave 70s styles. Fortunately, he never loses his confrontationl edge and the sucker punch denouement is the unarguable counterpoint to my T'Challa inspired optimism.