Main Menu

Last movie watched...

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

Previous topic - Next topic

Tiplodocus

Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Colin YNWA


Hawkmumbler

The "Hello There" scene has become something of a long running meme on social media, it's generally just mixed in with anything random for the sake of nonsense humor.

My standards of comedy must really have slipped recently!  :lol:

TordelBack

#13443
Detective Pikachu.  What a bizarre film. The Pokemon themselves are beautifully realised, and some (some) of the scenes of them bustling along through the streets and skies of Ryme City are magical (in other later scenes the budget seems to have mandated that they were all elsewhere, and Ryme City appears to just be London): so on that score you get what you came for. The human cast is just about okay on a Transformers/TMNT scale, with Chris Geere a disturbingly spot-on Milo Yiannopolous clone, and Bill Nighy continually looking like he's about to doze off, as usual. The ostensible plot is daft but quite fun, there are some nice action set pieces, the villain-swap is obvious from the beginning, but what were you expecting.

However there is one enormous, extraordinary problem: Detective Pikachu himself.  He's an adorable-looking chap, and Ryan Reynold's All-Ages Deadpool schtick isn't the worst thing ever, and certainly the best performance in the movie. The problem is that MASSIVE SPOILER IF YOU CARE AT ALL [spoiler]the character doesn't actually exist: it's just Justice Smith's amnesiac father Ryan Reynolds' mind in Pikachu's body. So after following this cute caffeine-raddled talking Pokemon through the whole film (and potentially the game too, as my daughter had) he gets split back into ordinary Ryan Reynolds and a bog-standard Pikachu whose original personality we never see. That's right, there is no Detective Pikachu in Detective Pikachu. This concept might fly in the vastly superior Kubo and the Two Strings, but here it just feels like a cruel con job.  In fairness to Reynolds, he has the decency to look utterly mortified by this outcome.[/spoiler]

Anyway, if you can get past this betrayal, there are some very pretty effects, and it passes the time.

sheridan

Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 09 September, 2019, 05:37:00 PM
It appears that whenever I go into a film with expectations I am often disappointed but when I am expecting nothing I find myself far more relaxed and enjoy what is presented to me.


I know that - I try to go into films adapted from other works with which I'm familiar with low expectations.  In this way I enjoyed Tank Girl.  I'd have enjoyed a film more closely based on the comic more, but watching it without expecting it to be in any way good helped.

MacabreMagpie

For me, the trend is I'll watch a movie that everyone hated and then think it's decent because my expectations were lowered. As will hopefully be the case when I see Ad Astra today...

TordelBack

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011).  I really must be getting cynical in my old age, because I didn't think this was great either. Yes, the stellar cast is almost unbelievably good, yes, the sombre music and grimily dressed (although surprisingly unsmoky) 70's rooms are atmospheric, the washed-out panoramas of London, Budapest and Istanbul are evocative.  The sole action sequence is tense to a fault.

But at some level the story just doesn't amount to anything much in this very compressed format: it's hard to engage with the core who-is-the-mole problem when we don't really know anything about the main players. That we learn far more about the more active side characters, like Ricky Tarr and Jim Prideaux, than we do about Smiley's suspects seems unfortunate. For example, I struggle to recall a single thing about Ciarán Hind's appropriately named Bland. As a result I didn't really engage with the revelation and resolution as much as I wanted to. I enjoyed Oldman's frowning, I greatly enjoyed Kathy Burke poshing it up, I liked Tom Hardy's broken menace and Mark Strong's rather fey schoolteacher turn.  I wanted to enjoy Toby Jones (I always do) but never really got a chance. And I did admire the restraint in the interrogation scenes. 

But overall a bit of a non-event.

Tiplodocus

More like TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SHIT  then?
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Hawkmumbler

Fortunately, the original BBC Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy with the irreplaceable Alec Guinness just got a blu-ray release, so thats reminded me to nab that masterpiece!

Radbacker

Just back from Ad Astra, nearly fell asleep twice!! Exceptional looking film I'm no scientist but I don't think some of the space science adds up to well.  The previews sell it as something different than what it is though.

CU Radbacker

MacabreMagpie

Ah, I really enjoyed Ad Astra. Got a bit bored during the climax but the first hour flew by. I thought it a very good, if not quite great, film.

broodblik

So for anyone whom liked Downton Abbey the series, the movie is more of the same.
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.

Keef Monkey

Really enjoyed Ad Astra, but I'm very partial to big scope sci-fi with that kind of languid pace. I love that kind of ponderous space stuff (and it looks and sounds particularly great) which is why Steven Soderbergh's criminally underrated Solaris is one of my go-to rainy Sunday movies. I didn't like this as much as that, but it'll fill some of those rainy Sunday slots for sure. Also found parts of it hit me on a very personal level so I had a bit of an emotional experience with it. Can see why people wouldn't like it, but it very much connected for me.

Also found out at the weekend that I've spent most of my life living a lie - I've always been certain that I've seen When Harry Met Sally, but my wife hadn't so she picked it for a watch and turns out I hadn't seen it either. I guess it's just one of those movies you see clips from so often and references to that it just feels familiar, it's dug in the public consciousness in that way so I just assumed I'd watched it.

Anyway, it's brilliant and one of the best relationship movies I've ever seen, so it's place in movie history is definitely warranted. Glad to have finally (actually) seen it.

broodblik

Enjoyed Ad Astra as well. The last hour the pacing felt little bit slow.
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.

TordelBack

#13454
The Princess Bride.  Nah, apparently I've not become as not as cynical as I feared, because this was still absolutely ace.  Everyone here enjoyed every bit of it, yet again, and there isn't a dud line or a flabby performance in the thing; every relationship is believable, every motivation clear. Count Rugen may be the greatest villain in cinema, Christopher Guest is mesmerising the whole time he's on the screen (although not quite so distracting as the McMahon t-shirt). And goodness, Andre the Giant really was immense.

It's instructive to compare Princess Bride with the superficially-similar storybook fantasy Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from only a few years later.  Despite another great villain performance from Rickman, and the dawn of the age of Ubiquitous Freeman, that one is now virtually unwatchable.