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Started by SmallBlueThing, 04 February, 2011, 12:40:44 PM

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Radbacker

Just back from the other Captain Marvel (Shazam).  Lots of fun just on the right side of cheese.  I don't really know too much about the character except what I e caught on the J.L cartoons but overall a fun little romp.  Don't know a lot about the legal hassles but oh my I can see the similarities with the other other Marvel Man (Miracleman).  [spoiler]i clapped when the rest of the Marvel family showed up[/spoiler].
D.C. Seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment, Aquaman was more fun than it should've been now this, maybe they should give the big two a break for a while and concentrate on the also rans.

CU Radbacker

Apestrife

Quote from: Radbacker on 07 April, 2019, 03:36:28 PM
Just back from the other Captain Marvel (Shazam).  Lots of fun just on the right side of cheese.  I don't really know too much about the character except what I e caught on the J.L cartoons but overall a fun little romp.  Don't know a lot about the legal hassles but oh my I can see the similarities with the other other Marvel Man (Miracleman).  [spoiler]i clapped when the rest of the Marvel family showed up[/spoiler].
D.C. Seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment, Aquaman was more fun than it should've been now this, maybe they should give the big two a break for a while and concentrate on the also rans.

CU Radbacker

Saw it yesterday. Had a blast. Lots of laughs and some "feeelz". A bunch of kids behind me were talking quite alot during some scenes, but I actually enjoyed it. One of the kids was whispering "Shazam... Shazam..." when she thought it was a bit scary, and at one time when Billy said it she loudly proclaimed "BEST MOVIE EVER!" :)

Mattofthespurs

Just got back from Shazam! too.

Good film. Nice bit of feel good. DC still not got over that their endings are far too long. Decent start, very strong middle, so-so ending [spoiler]bar the last shot.[/spoiler]

There is one post credits sequence. You'll need to know your DC lore to understand it though but it does come pretty quick into the credits sequence.

A fun film. Big meets Superheroes.

Mattofthespurs

Hotel Artemis on SKY premier last night.

Really enjoyed this. Foster and Bautista are very good. Recommended for a slice of John Wick/ Bladerunner fun (and by that I mean it's set slightly in the future).

Eamonn Clarke

Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 04 April, 2019, 03:30:27 PM
Pet Sematary (2019)

Just got back from the first showing today. First half is standard fare if you have either read the book or seen the original version of the movie and it's fairly dull if I'm honest.

However, the 2nd half ramps things up in style and veers quite a bit from the source material and if you thought King's original ending was downbeat then you ain't seen nothing yet.

I'll leave it at that.
Managed to avoid all trailers and spoilers and really enjoyed the changes they made. Technically a much better film than the original, although some of the scares from the 80s version were better.
Nothing earth shattering but an enjoyable romp.

Keef Monkey

Reached Resident Evil: Retribution (the 5th one) on my rewatch, and it definitely takes the Silly Crown from the second film. It's absolutely bonkers, but as with all of them it's quite fun. There are a couple of particularly good fight scenes where the choreography is pretty impressive. It struck me how little the films are really concerned with cast continuity between installments, this one ends on a typical cliffhanger but by the time the next film starts that's been forgotten about and a bunch of the characters are just...gone, with no explanation that I can recall, and that happens to people on and off through the series. Dumb as hell but had a good time.

Also rewatched Halloween (2018) because a friend hadn't seen it, he loved it and I was still really into it on my third watch. Still think they did a great job with it.

Watched The Crazies (2010) and it's a pretty good (rare) example of a worthwhile remake. I thought the original had some great ideas but was pretty messy, here I thought everything was executed way more solidly and made for a pretty thrilling action horror romp. The one thing I missed from the original was the [spoiler]whole thread about them trying to find a cure, and the leads realizing they were immune and how that panned out, but it had some new ideas of its own and knowing how the previous film ended didn't set me up for what I thought was a great closing moment in this one.[/spoiler]

Went to Pet Sematary, always loved the book and the previous adaptation (I even find Pet Sematary 2 pretty fun) and thought for the most part this was a decent adaptation. As others have mentioned it does veer off from the source material pretty heavily after a certain point and I personally didn't find the changes quite as effective. [spoiler]Having an older child come back meant the interactions between her and the dad came off as more goofy than creepy (in my opinion). Also I always found the ending of the book quite beautifully tragic while this ending had more downbeat shock value but a lot less meaningful impact for me - it's a horrible event to leave an audience with so lingers in that regard but doesn't have the same fatalistic melancholy as the 'waiting' ending in the novel and original film.[/spoiler]

It feels like it's very conscious of the fact that people will have read or seen the story before though, using moments you're familiar with and things you're expecting but subverting them so that they still surprise, so there's some self-awareness there which is probably why they felt they needed to change things up storywise too. For me it wasn't that successful and I enjoyed the more faithful first half way more than the second half, but I think if someone went in not knowing the story they'd have a very different (and probably better) experience. I'll probably enjoy it way more on its own merits when I rewatch it at some point.

Speaking of rewatches, my wife hadn't seen the prequel to The Thing so we watched that last night. I hadn't enjoyed it at all on my first watch and some of those complaints remain (it doesn't have the patience to allow any real prolonged paranoid tension to creep in, and the CG isn't scary and looks charmless) but I think I probably judged it too harshly first time round, because we enjoyed it quite a lot. It's not a bad monster movie, and the effects aside it's a well made movie that looks pretty great.

I do often find horror movies that didn't faze me on a first watch are way more effective when I rewatch them with Amy, I tend to overthink films as I'm watching on my own sometimes (I definitely did that with this as the original is a Joint First Place Greatest Movie Of All Time number for me) but she's way less of a pretentious jaded horror buff so having her freaking out and getting really into them is always infectious and I wind up getting way more tense and scared as a result! Maybe that's weird, I guess horror movies are supposed to be scarier on your own.

Was glad to give it a revisit, I'd written it off pretty harshly on release and I actually think much more highly of it after that watch, just a shame they couldn't have used the physical effects. It could never match up to the original (which remains an absolutely perfect movie in my eyes) but that would have at least helped.

Keef Monkey

Me again (I do seem to be watching a lot of movies lately!), watched Cam yesterday on Netflix and thought it was really good. About a cam girl chasing after higher rankings for her stream and before long very creepy things start happening. The obsession with her place on the chart and the focus on chat-rooms and live streaming make it all come across a lot like a feature length Black Mirror, and not in a bad way. Genuinely pretty unsettling and well executed.

Also gave Riddick a rewatch as I still have a real soft spot for that universe even if Riddick himself can be a real knob at times, particularly in this one. I can almost take the way he treats Katee Sackhoff's character as just him being the mean-spirited jerk we know he is, but [spoiler]the fact she's set up as a real take no shit lesbian character who is basically reduced to a notch on his bed-post by the end suggests that someone (Vin Diesel?) thought all that stuff would come across as genuinely seductive, and that part is a tad bothersome.[/spoiler] That aside, and the fact that it's pretty slow and ponderous at times, I did enjoy it.

Daveycandlish

So, Hellboy.
Darker (Literally. Put a light on, man!), bloodier and swearier than previous movies. You could have not had the intestines falling out and still told the same story.
David Harbour makes a good fist of the title character but his colouring was all wrong; Hellboy wasn't Demon Red, he was more Ginger Caught in the Sun Red (and I know that colour!) and he mumbled through his make up. Enunciate, dear chap!
I'm not keen on Ian McShane so felt he was miscast as Prof Bruttenholm - didn't that character die in the last film?
On the plus side, the script has funny moments - Stephen Graham as the Gruagach - and exciting moments such as Lobster Johnson turning up.
If you go in wanting to hate it, you will. If you go in with an open mind you'll find enough in there to enjoy. If the Del Toro/Perlman movies were four star, this one's a three.
An old-school, no-bullshit, boys-own action/adventure comic reminiscent of the 2000ads and Eagles and Warlords and Battles and other glorious black-and-white comics that were so, so cool in the 70's and 80's - Buy the hardback Christmas Annual!

Mattofthespurs

Hellboy (2019

Whilst I did not find it as dark (literally) as Davey I did find it slightly overlong. Overall though it's a decent romp that won't live long in the memory.

What I did find interesting is the changing of attitudes at the BBFC. This film includes many graphic depictions of violence (all CGI it must be said) including many that would not have been out of place in The Exorcist, The Evil Dead, and Hostel (something that Kevin Mahler points out in his 1 star review of the film in The Times today (it's not a 1 star film. 2 at worse, but probably a 3 just). The point I'm making is that Hellboy is a 15 when 25 years ago this would have been an 18 all day long. Whilst films like An Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman, which have overtly sexual scenes, were the equivalent of a AA or a 15 would not be an 18.

So we now live in a society where dismembering someone (many people actually), an unnatural act, is worthy of a 15, but sex (a completely natural act) would earn a film an 18.

Weird. We are slowly turning into America.

Tiplodocus

Well me and Mrs. Tips right enjoyed SHAZAM. It doesn't have the pyrotechnics of the bigger superhero movies but has nice arcs for the main characters, lots of laughs, thrilling if relatively low key action, the plot isn't overly complicated but still has plenty of surprises (the trailer actually gives little away) and more heart than every other DC movie put together.

Might be the best DC yet.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Mattofthespurs

Quote from: Tiplodocus on 13 April, 2019, 11:30:38 PM

Might be the best DC yet.

2nd best for me. Wonder Woman, I think, tops it.

Tiplodocus

It's deffo between this and Wonder Woman (though the sheer bat shit bonkersness of Aquaman was also great) but WW ending let it down. SHAZAM was just more consistent for me.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Keef Monkey

We enjoyed Hellboy for what it is, it doesn't have the same kind of class as the Del Toro movies (and I did watch it with a twinge of heartbreak that we'll never see him finish his trilogy) but it did feel like a splattery scattershot fun time to me. It's messy as hell, but it's a bit of a mad fun mess. So, nowhere near as good as GDT's movies, but I still had a pretty good time with it. The gore didn't bother me, but the swearing got tiresome, just because after a while it was pretty clear they thought that having the big warthog guy swear in every single line was somehow enough to make his lines amusing, and it really wasn't (imo). Other than that most of it landed, and I thought David Harbour was really good in the role, especially impressive because Ron Perlman personified the part so much. Perlman will always be my Hellboy, but with massive shoes to fill I can't really fault Harbour's take on it. Would watch it again for sure.

Rewatched GDT's first Hellboy as well, and it struck me how much that for all the talk about the new film being more faithful to the comics, what it doesn't nail is the look, tone and atmosphere of them. It's way more of a literal adaptation of the books where GDT just sort of took it as a base and did his own thing with it, but he definitely captured something from the comics that the new film doesn't.

Speaking of things Del Toro did that were then picked up by someone else, we rewatched Pacific Rim: Uprising and still found it a real hoot. Still a great fun sequel that I'm really happy happened.

Headshot was good for a bit of The Raid style action, it's not on that kind of level (is anything?!) but it's got some good bone-crunchingly violent fights and it's always a thrill to watch Iko Uwais kick and punch people. I met him once actually, he was about half my height but I have no doubt he could have killed me with a thought.

And finished the weekend with Keanu, which was okay. It was enjoyable, but it probably only got a couple of real out loud laughs, and we love the Key and Peele sketches so much that we expected it to be pretty hilarious. Maybe the core joke just wasn't enough to carry it, or maybe the mood wasn't right but it just didn't click too much unfortunately. Those big laughs were good mind you, and the whole thing was fairly low-key amusing, just expected more big guffaws based on the talent involved.

broodblik

I watched First Man this weekend and it was an excellent movie, anyone that likes the whole saga about the moon landing must watch this
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Apestrife

I also saw Hellboy this weekend. Reminded me a bit about Sam Raimi's 90s films, as well as a bit of Spawn. I think if they'd cut it down to 90min I think it'd feel like a really solid and fun gore movie.

One thing I could not understand were the constant rock song montages. Bit like with the swearing. Wore out it's welcome quite quickly.

Regardless. I got to watch another solid Hellboy with David as well as on screen rendtions of Baba Yaga and Lobster Johnson. Started reading the recent omnibuses right after I came home from the cinema. Not a bad thing really :)