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

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Daveycandlish

Sat down and watched Solo - a Star Wars story yesterday.
Honestly think it's the best Star Wars film for 35 years. Don't know why it didn't do better business.
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!

repoman

Quote from: Daveycandlish on 05 June, 2020, 08:42:25 AM
Sat down and watched Solo - a Star Wars story yesterday.
Honestly think it's the best Star Wars film for 35 years. Don't know why it didn't do better business.

I agree.  I'm not a huge SW guy.  I've seen them all, mostly in the cinema, but I can take or leave it as a series.  I tend to treat each film as a separate entity and judge it on how entertaining it is and how good the action and setpieces are.  Solo completely delivered on all of that.

Oddly, my least favourite has been Rogue One.  Mainly because the first half was so boring, the lead actress was far less charismatic than the lady from the recent trilogy and they completely underused Forest Whittaker.  The battle sequence was really well done but felt like it was just too much, kind of like a Marvel/DC film where they just go CGI crazy for an hour.   The Darth Vader bit was great though.

That said, I really need to rewatch it.  I've only seen it once.

wedgeski

Quote from: Daveycandlish on 05 June, 2020, 08:42:25 AM
Sat down and watched Solo - a Star Wars story yesterday.
Honestly think it's the best Star Wars film for 35 years. Don't know why it didn't do better business.
I didn't like it at the cinema, bought it for cheap during one of HMV's many 3-for-2 Blu Ray deals, and have watched it several times since. It is definitely a grower. Part of my disappointment initially was simply the shadow thrown by Rogue One, which for me is the best Star Wars film since Empire, and my disappointment with Last Jedi, which after Force Awakens and Rogue One, took the shine off the new movies once and for all.

shaolin_monkey

Quote from: Daveycandlish on 05 June, 2020, 08:42:25 AM
Sat down and watched Solo - a Star Wars story yesterday.
Honestly think it's the best Star Wars film for 35 years. Don't know why it didn't do better business.

I bloody love this film!  It's a cracking sci-fi heist movie with some Star Wars in it.  I thought the folk brought in to represent a young Han and Lando were pitch perfect!!

I could totally see that young Han turning into the jaded mercenary we saw at the start of Star Wars.


von Boom

Demolition Man. One of Stallone's best films IMO. And now the absurdities of not touching and 'be well' greetings are spot on.

pictsy

I watched Solo around the time I was watching a lot of Red Letter Media videos, trying to decide whether I thought they were good or not.  They really seemed to be the focal point of negativity towards the film from my perspective of wider reactions.  I really thought I was an outlier in actually liking it as a fun romp.  I don't get why the film was shat on so much and why it didn't do very well.

2010
The sequel to the wonderful 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I like 2010.  I think it's horribly overshadowed by its predecessor to the point I'm not sure how many people even know that film got a sequel.  I like a little space mission in our solar system.  The mystical oddity and cold war stuff added flavour.  It's very good.  Looks good, too.

wedgeski

Quote from: pictsy on 05 June, 2020, 06:26:29 PM
I watched Solo around the time I was watching a lot of Red Letter Media videos, trying to decide whether I thought they were good or not.  They really seemed to be the focal point of negativity towards the film from my perspective of wider reactions.  I really thought I was an outlier in actually liking it as a fun romp.  I don't get why the film was shat on so much and why it didn't do very well.

2010
The sequel to the wonderful 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I like 2010.  I think it's horribly overshadowed by its predecessor to the point I'm not sure how many people even know that film got a sequel.  I like a little space mission in our solar system.  The mystical oddity and cold war stuff added flavour.  It's very good.  Looks good, too.
2010 is an overlooked classic IMHO. It took a mostly okay book and transformed it into a tense, political sci-fi thriller with a real dedication to not shitting on its predecessor. I'll watch Scheider in anything, but he's brilliant in this, as are most everyone else.

TordelBack

#14212
Quote from: Daveycandlish on 05 June, 2020, 08:42:25 AM
Sat down and watched Solo - a Star Wars story yesterday.
Honestly think it's the best Star Wars film for 35 years. Don't know why it didn't do better business.

Because customer reaction was swayed by relentless aggressive negativity from the same kind of overly vocal edgelord pricks that helped us into Comicsgate, Brexit, Trump and #AllLivesMatter, who were angry this time because some other Star Wars film now had ladies and worse, asian ladies (but not the f**kable kind).

Most charitably, it just sounded like a really bad idea for a movie.  It's a testament to the original developers, a spectacular cast and some very clever halfway reworking by Howard that it's so bloody watchable. There is no SW property that I would be more interested in seeing than Solo 2. Alas,  it forever nestles beside Dredd 2 and Hellboy 3 on the Blu-Ray shelves of Lucien's library.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: TordelBack on 06 June, 2020, 02:45:22 PM
Because customer reaction was swayed by relentless aggressive negativity

Although I don't doubt that this played a part, certainly in a lacklustre opening, I'm still convinced that a really big factor was sticking the film out in May during the two weeks between Deadpool 2 and Avengers: Infinity War. Any idiot could have seen where all the cinema-goers pounds/dollars/euros/yen were going to go a week or so after it was released. There was no time for any good word of mouth to rally the film's fortunes before Infinity War sucked up all the box office cash in the world.

Which was made doubly baffling by the fact that Disney had no Star Wars movie for Christmas that year, and the only 'tentpole' movie scheduled for that December was Aquaman, which no one had any expectation of being any good.
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pictsy

I didn't get why Disney didn't release Solo in December.  I find it a shame that Infinity War didn't tank instead, because that film was utter crap.  I would much rather have Solo 2 than Endgames as well, because Endgames was utter crap too.

Hostage The Bruce Willis negotiator film.  It's not good.  Presenting a lazy, Hollywood world view of social issues to an almost problematic level like many a Bruce Willis vehicle.  It's like Die Hard, but crap.  Not 4.0 crap, but still crap.  I found it watchable, all that said.  I don't think it ever crosses the line and it is pretty much serviceable.  I would have probably preferred to watch The Negotiator but I'm not sure I'm ready to return to films starring Kevin Spacey (if I ever will be).  I'm pretty certain I'll never be able to enjoy The Usual Suspects again for it's double whammy of Spacey and Bryan Singer.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: pictsy on 06 June, 2020, 03:32:03 PM
I find it a shame that Infinity War didn't tank instead, because that film was utter crap.  I would much rather have Solo 2 than Endgames as well, because Endgames was utter crap too.

If your mouth was full of any more wrong, your head would explode.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

TordelBack

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 06 June, 2020, 02:53:27 PM
Although I don't doubt that this played a part, certainly in a lacklustre opening, I'm still convinced that a really big factor was sticking the film out in May during the two weeks between Deadpool 2 and Avengers: Infinity War.

No question about that,  my feeling has always been that it was effectively dumped  into a doomed slot just 6 months after TLJ (too small a gap even for me,  and my SW appetite is strong indeed) to get the perceived unpleasantness out of the way. Nobody had any faith in this film.

Professor Bear

Blowing Up Right Now - a nuclear attack on Los Angeles makes a young couple's breakup even more awkward than it has to be.  Very low budget, and the script, direction and performances don't quite deliver on a cute but admittedly threadbare central theme, but it does its job and is a good addition to the mumblecore comedy genre.

The Fast and the Fierce - another Asylum knock-off of a famous franchise, but a gallon of petrol costs more money than the Asylum is willing to spend on a movie - yet they could still afford Adrian Paul - so the actual film is set in the world's most unconvincing airplane interior.  If the plane goes below 50 miles an hour it will explode!  Or is it less than 50 feet in height?  Fuck it I don't care, and neither should you - Adrian Paul certainly doesn't.  Sometimes it is entertainingly bad, which is basically the best an Asylum movie can ever hope to achieve, but mostly it is just dull.  I expected better from the Asylum etc

The Invisible Man - I liked it when he was a metaphor for trauma, but less so when he was an actual man that was invisible.  I had seen absolutely nothing of this before watching it and that was for the best, as I got to feel like my mate must have done that time he finally watched the Terminator movies and was surprised that Arnie was the good guy in T2 and Robert Patrick was the baddie, which I had never noticed as a bait-and-switch the first time I watched the movie because everyone knew Arnie played the good guy months ahead of the movie's release.  Anyway, The Invisible Man is actually quite good, but do yourself a favor and try to see it cold.

Apestrife

Let the bullets fly Bit like a Sergio Leone western (think "Fistful of Dynamite") set in China. A Robin Hood-ish gangster poses as a mayor in order to swindle some big money of a noble man. A bit too long, but I had a good time watching it. Has some wonderfully absurd scenes.

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFoLfRA5ghw

Creature From The Black Lagoon A b/w horror classic. First time watching it. Mostly out of curiosity since I like Del Toro's Shape of water (which it inspired) so much. Wouldn't say it's a scary by today's standards, but I think it had a good atmosphere. Even got a bit invested in the monster. It's presented well and feels otherworldly. Very impressed by some of the underwater scenes. Diving around in the monster suit couldn't been easy.

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svyPswixryM

Robin Low

I first watched The Breakfast Club in what I estimate to be 1986, possibly 1987. It had quite an impact on me at the time, but until last night I'd never rewatched it. I joked to the colleague who lent it to me that I'd probably end up shouting at the screen, "Oh, you bunch of whiny teen wankers!" As it turned out, I still enjoyed it, and a lot of things that had stuck in my head over the decades were pretty accurate, although I'd forgotten a lot of other details. It feels a bit disjointed, but that kinda makes sense given that we're only seeing snapshots of a day crammed into an hour and a half. The stand out scene has to be Emilio Estevez's character explaining why he's in detention.

Big mistake, though, for me to go online and look up all the actors, which only served to reinforce my ongoing resentment of growing older and mortality. Part of me ends up wanting to see that riskiest of all projects, the where-are-they-now? movie. I suppose I ought to watch the sequel to Gregory's Girl. Or maybe not.


Regards,

Robin