Last movie watched...

[TordelBack]

Bohemian Rhapsody has sprung up on Amazon Prime and after it getting a lot a great reviews and being a big Queen fan of old I sprung at the chance to watch it...

[Much sage comment deleted for brevity]

I'm fine with movies playing with truth for the sake of story. But to remove the truth so you can tell a less interesting, less important and utterly cliche story is utterly unforgivable. Mind at least the key performance of the band were pretty good to great.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Bohemian Crapsody more like.

So I'd said I wouldn't bother watching this based on reviews, but I was outvoted this evening and here we are.

Everything Colin said above.

Look, Rami Malik gives a fine heartfelt if ultimately unconvincing performance, Gwilym Lee certainly looks like Brian May, and the Mike Myers gag is... okay. And as Frank might have said "we liked the music".

But beyond that, good grief, what cackhanded nonsense. This is Freddie Mercury's life as rendered by someone who vaguely remembered overhearing someone reading aloud excerpts from a letter in The Sun while on the bog. Utter garbage, terrible hair, makeup and costuming, incoherent chronology, childish story-making: a crime against both reality and fantasy.

It's also many,  many hours long, and yet somehow, somehow, they left almost all the magic of Queen and Freddie out. Go watch a concert instead,  any concert.

[pictsy]

Nobody

I really like this.  Just this minute finished watching it and had a massive smile on my face throughout the film.  Was really trying to nail it down and I think I got it.  This film is a wonderful collection of action film cliches strung together in a satisfying narrative with a wry sense of humour.  I can see the comparisons that have been made with John Wick, but I also saw so much more here that it would be harsh to compare it with any one film.  This is a true genre film that knows it's genre.  I also love the juxtapositions.  In any other film the soundtrack would have been too on the nose with what it is doing, but I think in this film it works.  There is so much that is on the nose that I can't help but assume that is the point.

Then again, I may have had slightly too much wine and got a bit over excited about the shooty bang bang.  Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

[Hawkmumbler]

But beyond that, good grief, what cackhanded nonsense. This is Freddie Mercury's life as rendered by someone who vaguely remembered overhearing someone reading aloud excerpts from a letter in The Sun while on the bog. Utter garbage, terrible hair, makeup and costuming, incoherent chronology, childish story-making: a crime against both reality and fantasy.

This for me was the most insulting of this awful movies many sins. Deliberately and consciously manipulating the timeline of Mercury's life to bring his diagnosis forward by years just to give Live Aid more 'punch'.

Awful, disgusting movie.

[Mardroid]

Thunder Force

++BEFORE WATCHING++

Two overweight women in superhero costumes suggests that this will be one of those scream-a-lot US comedies that's probably not very funny. Like an 80s sitcom, there'll be a moral message strapped in somewhere, accompanied by some hugging. There will be a scene, played for laughs, focused on how difficult it is to get into the tight costumes. Because Melissa McCarthy's in it, there'll also be some gross-out humour.

++AFTER WATCHING++

They didn't do a scene about the difficulty of getting into the costumes - instead it was about how difficult it was for two people that size to get into a Lamborghini.

A comedy of no laughs.

I liked the fact that the film was centred on two overweight ladies. You don't see that very often. It's good to see films centred on people of different physical types, just as we see (and are) all different types in the real world.  Diversity in film is improving, but it's decidedly wanting in certain areas...

... but yeah, I didn't find the film very good either. The crab guy was very amusing in that initial fight scene though, when he [spoiler]scurries out of harm's reach sideways.[/spoiler]

[Tiplodocus]

The Live Aid bit was great. And there is a great story to be told about Mercury and the fantasy existence he created for himself but this certainly isn't it and I fear has scuppered any chance of it being made. Still it got me revisiting Queen's back catalogue after nearly 25 years so I thank it for that.

[Mardroid]

Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. Watched this for the first time since the first time, when I was too sophis...sofistic... old to do any more than cringe.  And... I actually enjoyed it.

It does a hell of a lot with what was obviously a budget consisting of a fiver and a family bag of crisps, and while its retelling of The Hobbit with furry onesies is distinctly dumbed-down, it's also quite surprisingly pretty, and dare I say it, engaging. The hunting-beast stop motion (and prop) is quite scary, the Gorax is a neat bit of bluescreen, and there are some stunning matt paintings. The Towani kids aren't nearly as irritating as I remembered (their parents are morons,though), and the only real letdowns are the profusion of terrestrial animals (stick a horn or some googly eyes on those ponies fercrissakes) and the painful lack of movement in many of the Ewok masks: even this is made up for by some solid physical acting. 

It was particularly cool to see Logray strut his stuff,  although I do wonder why the Ewoks were so wowed by specifically the levitating of their Golden God Threepio (this is a Prequel to RotJ) when this is a power their own mystics have.

Anyhow, it's been added to my personal canon with no regrets. Can you believe that there's never been any official SW figures of any of the new characters? I'd pay good money for Chucka-Trok on his pony.

Should I risk Battle for Endor, a film I do not think I've ever seen?

I watched them both for the first time recently and I think I actually preferred the sequel. Warning: [spoiler]Something happens at the start that reminds me of Alien 3.[/spoiler]

[CalHab]

In nearly all of the world, Coca-cola is the number one selling drink. In Scotland, however, it's Irn Bru.

I suspect you would get a similar situation if you asked about the greatest movie ever made. Most of the world would go for CITIZEN KANE whereas Scotland would vote GREGORY'S GIRL.

Respectively eighty and forty years old they share a common theme of trying to find love in all the wrong places but otherwise are as far apart in style as you can imagine. Despite the age, both are still brilliant.

Even the few lines in GG that might be considered dodgy now aren't too offensive, more a document of the times.

"Tits, bum, fanny... the lot" still makes me laugh. Can younger boarders guess which of the two it is from?

Local Hero is by far my favourite Bill Forsyth film. It's balm for the soul.

[TordelBack]

Still it got me revisiting Queen's back catalogue after nearly 25 years so I thank it for that.

Yes, I did dive straight for my MP3 player afterwards, so there is definitely that it its favour. In fact it was my kids' boundless enthusiasm for Queen that led to the regrettable democratic decision to watch it.

The Live Aid sequence itself was undeniably good, atrocious Geldof and Freddie's Offstage Pals Club scenes aside, but really only because it was the least-tampered element: actual footage would have been (is) better. This was brought home by the only genuine footage of the band, "The Show Must Go On" playing over the credits immediately afterwards, which in a few minutes of grainy video delivered everything the pastiche failed to.

[TordelBack]

Grrr, the footage I'm referring there is (obviously) "Don't Stop Me Now". "Show Must Go On" plays after that.

More positively:

Local Hero is by far my favourite Bill Forsyth film. It's balm for the soul.

Oh yes indeed, I don't think I could ever tire of this masterpiece.

[Hawkmumbler]

Calm down man, its just the northern lights.

[JayzusB.Christ]

The Wicker Man, for the millionth time.  On May Day this time though, in my neighbour's big and wild garden beside the canal, with a bonfire and beers.  It's not the best film ever made, nor by any means the best film I've ever seen, but it's still my favourite.

It's Nicolas Cage shouting about bees that makes it, of course.

[CalHab]

The Wicker Man, for the millionth time.  On May Day this time though, in my neighbour's big and wild garden beside the canal, with a bonfire and beers.  It's not the best film ever made, nor by any means the best film I've ever seen, but it's still my favourite.

It's Nicolas Cage shouting about bees that makes it, of course.

Ba dum tsh.

[Funt Solo]

"Happer is a muthafunster"

[milstar]

The Wicker Man, for the millionth time.  On May Day this time though, in my neighbour's big and wild garden beside the canal, with a bonfire and beers.  It's not the best film ever made, nor by any means the best film I've ever seen, but it's still my favourite.

It's Nicolas Cage shouting about bees that makes it, of course.

Lol, why I think I've been successfully trolled?

[The Legendary Shark]

Space Sweepers. Pretty standard flashy sci-fi gubbins but it does ask one really good question - if Mars, a planet entirely hostile to life, can be Terraformed to act as humanity's second chance, why not use that superduper technology to fix the still (just about) habitable Earth instead? Surely our disposable culture can't extend to the whole planet? Oh, and there's a little girl who farts.

Godzilla v Kong. It's rubbish, but it's spectacular rubbish so that's fine by me.