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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2023 15:33:12 GMT -5
I mentioned it in my TTRPG thread, but Mrs. MRP and I finally got a chance to go see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves on Sunday. A very fun and entertaining movie, that captures the spirt of D&D. Sure there are nots to pick, but I am not going to do it, and it is a fun movie even if you know nothing about D&D. Fun characters you can root for, entertaining story, and some great action sequences. And a chonky dragon! -M I'm looking forward to seeing this, happy to hear it hit the mark in terms of fun! I'm all about the creatures I saw in the trailer. |
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Post by berkley on Apr 11, 2023 19:18:05 GMT -5
I've never played Dungeons and Dragons - it wasn't a thing at all where I grew up - but I saw the preview a few weeks ago and it looked like it could be fun.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2023 14:02:43 GMT -5
Just saw the Super Mario Bros. Movie, it was killer. Clearly made with extensive love and knowledge of the actual video games. SO many classic game references, this was the most fun I've had with a new movie in a long time.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2023 7:56:58 GMT -5
Just saw the Super Mario Bros. Movie, it was killer. Clearly made with extensive love and knowledge of the actual video games. SO many classic game references, this was the most fun I've had with a new movie in a long time. Pleased to read that. I shall see it when it comes to Blu-ray. There’s been a lot of snobs (film critic snobs) showing disdain for this. Like their wrestling equivalents, these critics are joyless and probably sit in a cinema with a notepad and pen, writing down every minor complaint. It’s fine not to like a film. But be fair in your evaluation. Don’t impress people with big words and treat a film based on a video game as if it must be akin to Citizen Kane. Quite frankly, it’s ridiculous when you see joyless, stoic film critics on TV, or read their words in the newspapers, being deathly serious about lighter films. Some narcissistic film critic on the BBC - who doesn’t even greet/say goodbye to the viewers when a programme begins/ends - is like that. Sorry, but these critics (and their wrestling equivalents) bore me. I’m certain Super Mario Bros. Movie will be fun for those of us who played the SNES games. I’ll approach it with that mindset, not pick it apart as if it was meant to be akin to Gone With the Wind. I hope some of these critics who are being deathly serious about the film now feel stupid about the money it’s making so far. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2023 9:01:33 GMT -5
Just saw the Super Mario Bros. Movie, it was killer. Clearly made with extensive love and knowledge of the actual video games. SO many classic game references, this was the most fun I've had with a new movie in a long time. Pleased to read that. I shall see it when it comes to Blu-ray. There’s been a lot of snobs (film critic snobs) showing disdain for this. Like their wrestling equivalents, these critics are joyless and probably sit in a cinema with a notepad and pen, writing down every minor complaint. It’s fine not to like a film. But be fair in your evaluation. Don’t impress people with big words and treat a film based on a video game as if it must be akin to Citizen Kane. Quite frankly, it’s ridiculous when you see joyless, stoic film critics on TV, or read their words in the newspapers, being deathly serious about lighter films. Some narcissistic film critic on the BBC - who doesn’t even greet/say goodbye to the viewers when a programme begins/ends - is like that. Sorry, but these critics (and their wrestling equivalents) bore me. I’m certain Super Mario Bros. Movie will be fun for those of us who played the SNES games. I’ll approach it with that mindset, not pick it apart as if it was meant to be akin to Gone With the Wind. I hope some of these critics who are being deathly serious about the film now feel stupid about the money it’s making so far. I can safely say any critic who doesn't like this never actually played a Mario game. This movie is first and foremost a love letter to the entire Mario franchise, NES, SNES, N64 (including DK), Gamecube, up to even the Switch. There are no nauseating Hollywood tropes here set to a "Mario theme", it's MARIO all the way. And they didn't "mess up" any of the characterizations, Peach is perfectly on point, Toad is a scene stealer he's so awesome, Bowser is hilarious but still menacing, and of course the brothers themselves. And you can't go more than a couple of minutes at any point going "YES, they included that!!" in terms of game references. Side references galore, I can't wait to rewatch and catch what else I missed, there was so much going on in the best way possible. As of this morning on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score is 96%, and the so-called "critics" are at 58%. Talk about being irrelevant in your chosen field of employment...I think they honestly believe at times they have a clue. It's so sad really. Oh, and it's a visual delight on top of all that. Spectacular animation throughout, total home run. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2023 22:38:39 GMT -5
This movie is 10 years old, so not exactly new and upcoming, nor old enough to be a classic, but worth watching either way, I finally got around to watching Dear Mr. Watterson, the documentary on the impact of Calvin & Hobbes on the lives of several people (cartoonists & civilians) that came out in 2013. It was certainly a delightful journey through memories of Calvin & Hobbes, with some interesting discussions of the impact it had and its legacy, but its coverage was uneven at points, and in a lot of areas it was a shallow survey rather than any kind of in depth exploration of the topic. It looked like some of the excerpts form interviews could have been from conversations that could have been of that type of deep exploration, but we only got snippets and tips of the iceberg and not the meat of those conversations. I did enjoy seeing some behind the scenes glimpses of the Billy Ireland Museum and its holdings, and seeing glimpses of some of the cartoonists interviewed at work (though not of those glimpses were long enough to provide any real insight into techniques), and as a whole that reflects my takeaway from this. It was nice and gave us lots of nice little tidbits, but in the end it didn't give enough or do enough with those to leave a deep lasting impressions. But it was a pleasant diversion for 90 minutes while I was bagging and boarding comics and waiting on the washer and dryer to run through their cycles.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2023 4:48:55 GMT -5
I watched Kong VS Godzilla last night. What an uneven and poorly-scripted movie it was.
The battles it in it were fine, although I do feel the one flaw of some CGI is how you don’t always see what’s going on. Decades ago, guys in gorilla suits, or animatronics, at least allowed a viewer to breathe and take it all in. That skeleton scene in Jason and the Argonauts would not be served well by CGI today, I feel.
I thought the film lacked heart. There were plot holes. It could have used a good script editor. Characters’ motivations often felt contradictory.
Some reviewers (I checked Rotten Tomatoes) seem to think that a monster fight movie doesn’t need a story. I disagree - a lot. You have to have a reason to care. Much like while watching wrestling. I mean, I want to see two WWE wrestlers go at it, but I need to know why they are fighting. What’s the story? Is there a championship on the line? If not a championship, is it a grudge match? If so, what’s the grudge about? I need to be emotionally invested in why two WWE wrestlers are battling, championship or no championship.
So I apply that logic to Kong and Godzilla. The battles are fine. Who couldn’t enjoy an ape and a lizard going at it? However, the film was 113 minutes long. You can’t have 113 minutes of two entities duking it out. There needs to be something in between. Something for me to care about. This film didn’t have it.
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 27, 2023 9:22:56 GMT -5
I saw John Wick 4 yesterday.
It is hilarious. I hope the other patrons weren’t mad at me for laughing almost continuously.
It is almost three hours long. It is three hours of the most wonderful nonsense.
If John Wick 4 doesn’t turn out to be my favorite movie of the year, then 2023 will be a very good year.
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Post by berkley on Apr 27, 2023 16:47:27 GMT -5
I saw John Wick 4 yesterday. It is hilarious. I hope the other patrons weren’t mad at me for laughing almost continuously. It is almost three hours long. It is three hours of the most wonderful nonsense. If John Wick 4 doesn’t turn out to be my favorite movie of the year, then 2023 will be a very good year.
Hoping to see this some time soon, big fan of the series.
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Post by berkley on Apr 28, 2023 3:44:55 GMT -5
Last new movie I've seen was one I think many here will want to check out: Mad God, a stop-animation work by Phil Tippett, an animation artist I'd never heard of until now but who has won awards for his work on famous things like The Empire Strikes Back. This was a personal project of his own that he started way back in the late 1980s, I think I read. Anyone interested in Harryhausen-style stop-animation will want to see this, it's really amazing as a visual spectacle.
In some ways it isn't an easy thing to watch: the imagery is very visceral, at times literally, as in a scene with a weird surgeon ripping out the guts of a patient/victim, but more generally in the actual set-designs, the environment in which the action takes place. I'm not particularly squeamish but at the same time this isn't a kind of imagery I'd usually seek out for pleasure. Also, there's little or no dialogue and the gist of the overall narrative isn't immediately apparent, although there's no trouble to tell what's going on at any given moment. I've avoided reading the wiki article because i want to let it percolate in my subconscious for a while before trying to figure it out what it was all abut.
But I bring up these negatives (and they might not be negatives for everyone, I'm just giving my personal reaction) only in an effort to be up-front: the movie is so inventive visually and so painstakingly wrought that I think this is something any film-fan will want to see and make up their mind for themselves.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 28, 2023 14:23:31 GMT -5
Chaos Walking just showed up here on Netflix. It's a SF film with Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley and Mads Mikkelsen, so it sounded good enough to be given a chance. The film is pretty interesting at first, in that it introduces many concepts suggesting a lot of world building. We're on an alien planet where a small group of colonists (from a "first wave" of colonization from Earth) seem to eke out a meager living farming the land, with the additional threat of a native, primitive hostile species. No one knows why, but something on this world makes men unable to keep their thoughts to themselves; these are emitted telepathically for everyone to hear (and to partly see). However, no one can forcibly "read" someone's thoughts; it's really like everyone is thinking aloud.
Women were not affected by the phenomenon, but we're told that all women were killed by the aliens a little more than a decade ago.
Then a scout ship from a second wave of colonizers shows up, and crashes... leaving only one survivor, a young woman. The local mayor sees the incoming new wave of Earthlings as enemies come to steal the land, and wants to hijack their ship. The woman naturally means to warn her people, and a young lad helps her escape.
So far so good, but then the film defaults to a standard quest/chase/narrow escape/new quest/climax scenario.
About halfway through, I figured that this must be the adaptation of an actual novel (due to the richness of the world-building) but that the screen writers had used the original concept and applied it to a shorter story line. Wikipedia informs me that this is actually based on a trilogy (mostly the first book) and that the material might have been better served by a series. I mean, we touch on many very important themes (religious zeal, peer pressure, genocide, rewriting of history) but each of them is merely brushed more than seriously explored.
I didn't dislike it, but the ending felt a little rushed (and it does have a strong "young adult fiction" vibe). Still, the world we're introduced to is pretty interesting.
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2023 15:14:19 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2023 15:21:55 GMT -5
And apparently there is a Babylon 5 animated movie in the works...  JMS posted this: -M |
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Post by berkley on May 9, 2023 17:06:13 GMT -5
I saw John Wick 4 yesterday. It is hilarious. I hope the other patrons weren’t mad at me for laughing almost continuously. It is almost three hours long. It is three hours of the most wonderful nonsense. If John Wick 4 doesn’t turn out to be my favorite movie of the year, then 2023 will be a very good year. Finally saw it this afternoon and thought it was a lot of fun, as all the John Wick films have been. I wasn't expecting all the nods and references to so many other famous action movies and I thought they were mostly a nice additional touch. Only once or twice did I think it was overdone, e.g. the music to the climactic duel scene was a little too close to Morricone's for the famous 3-way stand-off in Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - so much so that my mind's ears kept expecting it to keep going into Morricone's music. The scene itself was otherwise very well done, however.
My only other quibble is that maybe the long sequence right before the final duel, when the henchmen and bounty hunters are trying to kill Wick before he gets to the duel could have been just a little shorter, not so much for the length of that sequence in itself but for the overall rhythm of the movie, which I think could have used a just a bit more breathing space between those two big action scenes, the long, running battle and the climactic duel itself, though they are very different in style, so probably the director and editor thought 'a change is as good as a rest'.
But these are only observations, the movie is great entertainment, if you like this kind of thing. I'll be watching for what the film-makers do next.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 18, 2023 10:12:16 GMT -5
Trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon dropped. The book was absolutely fantastic. And Scorsese, De Niro and DiCaprio. This will be a must see even at 3 hours and 26 minutes.
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