Last movie watched...

[Keef Monkey]

Twister, which I've never seen but is one of my wife's favourite films from her youth so whenever it came up she was incredulous that I'd ever watched it. Finally sorted that, and it's pretty damn good! Always love Paxton and him and Helen Hunt are both excellent, pretty much all the effects hold up surprisingly well, properly exciting and also very touching in places. Glad I finally saw it!

It is great fun, and I'm sad that I'm unlikely to ever see it in the cinema again. Feeling your sternum vibrate to the roar of the wind adds to the experience!

Regards,

Robin

I imagine it made a fantastic big screen big soundsystem movie! Wish I'd seen it at the time myself now.

[Apestrife]

Beverly hills cop Roughly 20 years since I watched it last time. Not sure why haven't watched a 20 times since. A really good action comedy. One thing I really like is how there's almost a buddy cop dynamic between Axel and everyone he meets. I'm guessing that Eddie Murphy is a  really cool dude to be around having a reason to do with it. Just feels like like they all had a really good time making the film.

That said. I've actually never seen his 48h. Gonne try hunt it down at some 2nd hand store.

[wedgeski]

That said. I've actually never seen his 48h. Gonne try hunt it down at some 2nd hand store.

You won't regret it. A fantastic film, and maybe his best performance.

[Robin Low]

Twister, which I've never seen but is one of my wife's favourite films from her youth so whenever it came up she was incredulous that I'd ever watched it. Finally sorted that, and it's pretty damn good! Always love Paxton and him and Helen Hunt are both excellent, pretty much all the effects hold up surprisingly well, properly exciting and also very touching in places. Glad I finally saw it!

It is great fun, and I'm sad that I'm unlikely to ever see it in the cinema again. Feeling your sternum vibrate to the roar of the wind adds to the experience!

Regards,

Robin

I imagine it made a fantastic big screen big soundsystem movie! Wish I'd seen it at the time myself now.

Yes, and now I think about it, it wasn't just the physicality of the sound, it was almost a feeling you were there. When the characters are inside the vehicles looking out through screens, you're kind of looking through the screen with them, with the rain spattering on the window and roof around you.

Funny, I've seen a lot of really good films since then, but I still feel strongly about this one. If ever there was an argument for the cinema experience, Twister is it. Similarly, I saw Naked Lunch in a little fleapit of a cinema in Dublin, and a more perfect venue I cannot imagine. It could never be the same in, say, a modern flat furnished in Ikea sterility.

Regards,

Robin

[pictsy]

The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot

I watched this because of its ridiculous title.  It sounds like a stupid but entertaining film.  It is not.  It is good.  Totally unexpected.  If you haven't seen it I'm going to recommend you do.  Whilst watching it I was reminded of the more esoteric story telling that has been found in the pages of 2000 AD.  I'd say its a calmly paced character study with a narrow scope and a welcome amount of depth.  It was also shot really well, with great lighting and framing.  This contends with Birdboy for the film that I have watched this year that has pleasantly surprised me most.

What is it about?  It's about the man who killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot.

[Apestrife]

That said. I've actually never seen his 48h. Gonne try hunt it down at some 2nd hand store.

You won't regret it. A fantastic film, and maybe his best performance.

Saw it this morning. Was good! Murphy was really good in it!

[von Boom]

Father Ted: A Song for Europe. You say that's a television episode? Well someone at Netflix saw it and redid it as a film but set in Iceland. It now goes by the title Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Will Farrell and Rachel McAdam are a terrible duo that become Iceland's entry after all the others are killed in a mysterious explosion.

Typical Netflix stuff; overlong, not very funny and ultimately disappointing. The one bright spot is Pierce Brosnan as Farrell's very ashamed father.

[von Boom]

Twister, which I've never seen but is one of my wife's favourite films from her youth so whenever it came up she was incredulous that I'd ever watched it. Finally sorted that, and it's pretty damn good! Always love Paxton and him and Helen Hunt are both excellent, pretty much all the effects hold up surprisingly well, properly exciting and also very touching in places. Glad I finally saw it!

It is great fun, and I'm sad that I'm unlikely to ever see it in the cinema again. Feeling your sternum vibrate to the roar of the wind adds to the experience!

Regards,

Robin

I imagine it made a fantastic big screen big soundsystem movie! Wish I'd seen it at the time myself now.

Yes, and now I think about it, it wasn't just the physicality of the sound, it was almost a feeling you were there. When the characters are inside the vehicles looking out through screens, you're kind of looking through the screen with them, with the rain spattering on the window and roof around you.

Seeing all the talk about this film I decided to watch Twister again myself. I've watched it at least once a year since I first saw it in a cinema that had recently upgraded its sound and it was frankly incredible. The sound is half the experience. You can't duplicate that in a flat at normal volumes, but the film is too good not to watch over. It's a favourite of mine and my wife's.

I think Twister may be the greatest action film of all time where science is the star.

On a tangent, if you love this film I would recommend the book Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling. An ecopunk novel about storm chasers.

[Apestrife]

ju on the grudge had a moment or two in the beginning which got me thinking "this is a bit creepy", but then it got lost on me. Never found the kid painted white scary at all. Still, I enjoyed the film's atmosphere. Has a nice little weird vibe going for it. Just wish it could'v been scary as well.

[Tiplodocus]

ZOOTROPOLIS is a rather fun animated feature that adults can enjoy even without youngsters around. It's more than a little bit relevant just now and delivers a much more nuanced message than the usual "just be yourself!"

[Colin YNWA]

ZOOTROPOLIS is a rather fun animated feature that adults can enjoy even without youngsters around. It's more than a little bit relevant just now and delivers a much more nuanced message than the usual "just be yourself!"

Probably my favourite modern Disney, a genuninely wonderful film with such a good heart.

[TordelBack]

ZOOTROPOLIS is a rather fun animated feature that adults can enjoy even without youngsters around. It's more than a little bit relevant just now and delivers a much more nuanced message than the usual "just be yourself!"

Probably my favourite modern Disney, a genuninely wonderful film with such a good heart.

I absolutely, unapologetically, love it. Funny, warm, visually inventive, strong message,  catchy tune, Idris Elba as a Cape buffalo. One of the best movies of the last 20 years in any genre, along with The Incredibles.

And by coincidence I finally watched The Incredibles 2 last night. Definitely lots to like, good action and some fantastic design, but for a movie that took 14 years to make I do wish they'd come up with a plot that wasn't the exact same as the first one. A little more character development for the main cast, and a lot more fleshing out for the new heroes would have been nice. It starts very strongly, but then hands about half of the runtime to Jack Jack, which was probably a mistake, however funny his slapstick antics. The result was a fistful of abandoned threads and a weak and implausible conclusion.

Still fun, but falling short of its magnificent predecessor, which remains the high watermark of superhero cinema.

Also watched Artemis Fowl, against my better judgement. As with Frozen 2, Josh Gadd just walks away with this film, and I kept thinking I'd much rather be watching a Mulch Diggums feature, much as I'd have preferred an Olaf adventure to the F2 we got. Great character concept, wonderful performance and disturbing CGI visuals! 

I haven't read the books, so have no opinion on where things gang aglae, but it was definitely a terrible burden to place on such an inexperienced child actor to have to play a character as utterly insufferable as Artemis was written here. Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen had it easy compared to this.

That said, the world established was fun, I can certainly see the appeal, and some of the action set pieces were good. It does however finish about 30 minutes before the credits roll.  Aerial shot if Dunluce aside, quite why such a fuss was made about shooting this in Ireland when what's on screen makes it hard to believe anyone involved in the production design had ever even Googled the place, let alone set foot there, I don't rightly know. Considering the same was true of Hellboy 2, I wonder what the problem is?  If you can't make the Causeway Coast look magical with a bit of Second Unit footage you're in the wrong business.

[Jim_Campbell]

Rise of Skywalker.

Skipped this at the cinema, at which my wife expressed mild disappointment... so I relented in the absence of any consensus on last's night's viewing, and the film being included in my shiny new Disney+ sub.

What the fuck did I just watch?

I mean, Palpatine, who we have been given no indication, not one tiny hint, is involved at any point in the previous two movies is resurrected in the opening crawl. At only one point does anyone say "How can Palpatine be back?" and they literally get the answer "Cloning? Magic? I dunno."

The opening, what — quarter? Third? — of the movie is spent chasing after plot tokens that have absolutely no bearing on the plot, and genuinely make no sense into the bargain... it was awfully lucky that Rey happened to stand in the exact and only spot where the Death Star dagger would point to the gizmo, for example.

Rey gets, then loses, a Wayfinder gizmo, gets another one, uses it to go somewhere other than the place we've been told the fate of the galaxy depends on the Resistance finding, then destroys it. Except, oh, it's not destroyed, and then... GAAAAAH! FUCK!

Abrams continues his Star Trek habit of taking existing plot devices and deciding they can do whatever he needs them to do, regardless of any repercussions for story logic. Teleporters can send people halfway across the galaxy in Into Darkness (presumably instantly rendering spaceships obsolete) and here the Force can *takes deep breath* heal people, bring people back from the dead, bring down large flying vehicles, blow up large flying vehicles, allow Rey to detect the presence of Chewie on a massive starship when the plot requires her to go and find him, but not to tell whether he's on the much smaller ship she just blew up and the plot requires her to think he's dead, teleport objects across vast distances... I'm sure I've missed something, but by this point I just didn't care.

You have to completely disconnect your brain to watch this movie and treat each scene (all of which are beautifully visualised and realised) as some little mini-movie with no real relevance to what precedes or follows because, placed in sequence, most of it makes absolutely no sense.

To be fair, it wasn't a terrible way to pass an evening while you're knocking back a few G&Ts but I'm very pleased I didn't see it in the cinema, which is a fairly awful indictment of $275M movie. A noisy, empty spectacle devoid of logic or any real emotion.

[Eamonn Clarke]

Freaks on Netflix.

Pretty good, I could imagine this as a 2000AD limited series.
Although it is a bit similar to Stephen King's Firestarter. 

[TordelBack]

Rise of Skywalker.
You have to completely disconnect your brain to watch this movie and treat each scene (all of which are beautifully visualised and realised) as some little mini-movie with no real relevance to what precedes or follows because, placed in sequence, most of it makes absolutely no sense.

Not a word of a lie there, Jim, but I still enjoyed it - perhaps because I did find the emotion in it. The otherwise pointless treasure-hunt storyline was there to give the main trio a decent chance to have adventures together, so I can understand why they went for it - and it gave Threepio his many moments to shine too, which I appreciated

Some of the unprecedented Force stuff you refer to is down to the unique circumstances of Rey and Ben's bond, and some of it is set up pretty well in The Last Jedi (teleporting things, for example): and I don't see a problem with the power of the Force being extended beyond the rather dull routine of fightin' real good, moving stuff and sort-of seeing the future. It's always worth remembering that Force telekinesis, acting across distances (Vader choking the Sheard), telepathy and super-speed were all introduced without warning in Empire Strikes Back, plus the Jedi in the Prequels keep muttering about how their ability to use the Force is diminished: so plenty of room for expansion. 

And as to Palp's return being down to 'cloning, dark science, magic', well, that's what a lot of SW has been down to thus far: even the 'technological terror' itself the Death Star turns out to have been powered by holy rocks. The problem for me is his presence in this trilogy full-stop, and allowing that it was inevitable the failure to properly seed his involvement in the previous two movies (although Ren's apparent communion with Darth Vader, a character we the audience know not to exist any more, was a decent hint). 

Other stuff is pure Abrams baloney, no question.  The hyperspace skipping-gibbberish, the dagger map, the starship-based planet-killing weapons... ugh, makes shite of the existing universe, same as his Star Trek.

But it could definitely have been a lot worse.