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Post by berkley on Dec 9, 2023 2:07:26 GMT -5
My reaction at the time was that it was a pretty solid SF movie with nice visuals and decent acting but overlong and really didn't need to be a sequel to Blade Runner - the movie was always going to suffer by comparison with the original no matter how good it was. My enjoyment was also hampered a bit by the lead - not that I actively dislike his screen persona the way I do, say, Tom Cruise's, but it hasn't been a plus for me in anything I've seen him in so far. Another problem I remember having at the time was a lack of compelling characters - the only really striking screen presence was Ana de Armas and that was mostly because of her looks rather than the character she played - and again, this was in stark contrast to the original, in which even the minor characters (and almost all of them!) were sharply drawn and memorably cast and performed. In fairness, I think the original is one of the best movies ever made, in this as in so many other respects, so the bar is set about as high as it can go.
But I'm open to giving it a reassessment and I'm sure I'll watch it again some day. I admit I was a bit prejudiced against it going in because I instinctively view projects like this with the suspicion that they're motivated by commercial rather than artistic goals, as unfair as that may be to the film-makers. But, unjustified as this feeling may be, it's a spontaneous gut-reaction and such films have to be extra-special to overcome it. Perhaps I can be a little more clinical next time, now that those feelings have had time to fade; and after all this time, I find I don't remember much about the story, so in that regard it'll be like seeing it fresh.
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Post by berkley on Dec 9, 2023 2:33:03 GMT -5
The latest newish movie I've seen was Une Belle Course (Driving Madeleine), with Dany Boon and Line Renaud, directed by Cristian Carion. A slightly disappointing production for me. Not that it failed to entertain but I found it just a shade too blatant in its emotional button-pushing - a Disney or Hollywood type of movie in the most negative sense in that respect, though perhaps not in terms of some of the subject matter (much of the content is Renaud's 90+ year old character recounting her life story to the cab driver played by Boon). It's possible I'm being a little over-critical because I don't see as much of this kind of thing as often in French compared to US films in general, whether that's because they don't make them in the same proportions or they just aren't shown in the cinemas here. I haven't seen Driving Miss daisy, so I don't know if the English title is meant as a reference to that movie.
I really want to see Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon and Ridley Scott's Napoleon but won't get a chance for a few weeks, so I hope they don't leave the theatres too soon.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 9, 2023 16:01:36 GMT -5
I watched indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yesterday, and I was surprised by how I didn't hate it.
I wasn't looking for yet another Indiana Jones movie, but as long as it was there, I tried not to hold its base mercantile origin against it.
The overall format was, again, wrong (although that's a strictly personal opinion). The first two films were action movies told by people with a sense of humour; the last three were comedies with lots of action scenes. I like that approach in a Jackie Chan film, but for Indy I think it comes too close to self-parody at times. (Him meeting Hitler by accident? Really?) Still, a good action comedy can be entertaining, even if it fails to engage me as much as a more straightforward adventure story.
I actually liked the Helena character that part of the internet seemed to hate; she had a good character arc, and I never felt that she was groomed to start a new franchise that would usurp Harrison Ford's role. She was a well-written and likeable scoundrel, and a good foil for the main character.
Seeing Salah again was a welcome bit of fan-service; everyone loves Salah. Yes, it added to the depressing reality of getting old... Salah, once a wealthy man in Cairo, is now a cab driver in New York just as Indy, once a famous archaeologist, is now a cranky has-been nobody listens to. If we had dwelt too long on that, I would have started looking at my watch... but thankfully we didn't, and getting Indy to come out of his funk actually turned out to be a major theme of the film.
Indy's family problems could have been a simple excuse for not having Shia LaBoeuf or Karen Allen around, which would have greatly annoyed me continuity-wise, but said problems were also an important part of the plot. And they made for one heck of a smile-inducing ending! (All right, all right, I admit I shed a tear. But I had drunk a dram of whisky, so my defences were down).
My two major gripes would be that the time-travel aspect of the story was as out of place as the aliens from Crystal Skull, and that I really, really, really don't like stunts done by CGI. It wasn't as bad a situation as the ridiculous jungle chase from the fourth film, but still. (Gotta give credit where credit is due, though: de-aging Harrison Ford really worked in most of the scenes).
Would I see it again? Probably not. But I don't want my time back.
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 9, 2023 16:51:26 GMT -5
So spot-on, Roquefort Raider, which I guess means you expressed so nicely what I've been trying to say about this since I saw it a couple of weeks ago. I was so glad I didn't hate it and that it further obscured the memory of that alleged fourth installment/monstrosity. I disagree slightly that the third one screwed up the formula , but I certainly take your point. I thought the first half or so (around the yet another car chase in Morocco) didn't capture enough of the brio and adventure story-feel of the original three, but I have to say that the second half made up for what the first half lacked. We may tend to forget just how surprising, delightful and unique the first Indy movie was and how audiences were "ambushed" by its tone and style because so much of what it accomplished have been imitated, subsumed and incorporated into scores of successors/ imitators. And I know what you mean about the ending. It ain't easy getting old or watching others we see as eternally young joining us. Excellent review, RR! |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 9, 2023 17:00:17 GMT -5
I watched indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yesterday, and I was surprised by how I didn't hate it. I wasn't looking for yet another Indiana Jones movie, but as long as it was there, I tried not to hold its base mercantile origin against it. The overall format was, again, wrong (although that's a strictly personal opinion). The first two films were action movies told by people with a sense of humour; the last three were comedies with lots of action scenes. I like that approach in a Jackie Chan film, but for Indy I think it comes too close to self-parody at times. (Him meeting Hitler by accident? Really?) Still, a good action comedy can be entertaining, even if it fails to engage me as much as a more straightforward adventure story. I actually liked the Helena character that part of the internet seemed to hate; she had a good character arc, and I never felt that she was groomed to start a new franchise that would usurp Harrison Ford's role. She was a well-written and likeable scoundrel, and a good foil for the main character. Seeing Salah again was a welcome bit of fan-service; everyone loves Salah. Yes, it added to the depressing reality of getting old... Salah, once a wealthy man in Cairo, is now a cab driver in New York just as Indy, once a famous archaeologist, is now a cranky has-been nobody listens to. If we had dwelt too long on that, I would have started looking at my watch... but thankfully we didn't, and getting Indy to come out of his funk actually turned out to be a major theme of the film. Indy's family problems could have been a simple excuse for not having Shia LaBoeuf or Karen Allen around, which would have greatly annoyed me continuity-wise, but said problems were also an important part of the plot. And they made for one heck of a smile-inducing ending! (All right, all right, I admit I shed a tear. But I had drunk a dram of whisky, so my defences were down). My two major gripes would be that the time-travel aspect of the story was as out of place as the aliens from Crystal Skull, and that I really, really, really don't like stunts done by CGI. It wasn't as bad a situation as the ridiculous jungle chase from the fourth film, but still. (Gotta give credit where credit is due, though: de-aging Harrison Ford really worked in most of the scenes). Would I see it again? Probably not. But I don't want my time back. I didn't hate it...so it had that going for it over the fourth installment. But it was completely unnecessary. It really didn't add anything to Indiana Jones or his world. I didn't hate Helena. But I also didn't like her. She was like very lightly toasted bread with just a small amount of butter. Unsatisfactory in almost every way...but not offensive. I hadn't really thought about it, but you mostly nailed the issues with the direction the films went. I do tend to think of them as Adventure films and not Action films. The distinction is subtle, but important. I do think that Last Crusade was able to mostly hit it, though a ton of that had to do with the chemistry between Ford and Connery. I actually got what they were trying to do with Crystal Skull. They were attempting to move Indy forward from the serial adventure genre to the next prevailing pop culture filmland of 50s sci-fi. But they did it incredibly poorly. I think I'm just tired of the same stuff we've been getting for decades. Ford hasn't done anything interesting as an actor (at least in movies) in at least 25 years. Which is a shame. I give it a clear and convincing...Meh! |
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Post by berkley on Dec 9, 2023 17:49:24 GMT -5
I still haven't seen the last few. Even the one third one, the one with Connery playing Jones's father, I saw only on video around 15 years after its original release, so it didn't have much impact on me. I thought the second was was quite good at the time but haven't seen it since.
I just watched the first one again this past year when it was re-released to some theatres and it was great seeing it on the big screen again, and after a lapse of decades. It was as brilliant as I remembered. The female lead was still a bit of a weak point, though I liked her better this time around than when I saw it as a kid - not that she was a bad actress but for me she didn't have the kind of screen presence needed to hold her own with Ford.
Favourite scene that I had forgotten all about: Indiana Jones trying to fight the big German airplane mechanic.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 10, 2023 8:30:09 GMT -5
Favourite scene that I had forgotten all about: Indiana Jones trying to fight the big German airplane mechanic. That scene (which I love too) is a perfect example of the difference in tone between the first two movies and the last three. In RotLA, when Indy starts getting his ass whooped by that big but still normal-looking mechanic, I as a viewer was genuinely worried: how was he going to escape? The serious tone of the film made a normal brawny man look like a genuine threat. By contrast, in the most recent film, Indy jumps from a moving car to a motorcycle that's machine-gunning him, fights two nazis while the bike gambols through the countryside, jumps again on a moving train and starts throwing bodies around. And yet, at no time did I get the feeling he was in any kind of danger. It's not that it makes for a bad film necessarily, but I find that way less engaging; if we don't worry about the outcome of a long fight scene, it becomes sort of irrelevant to the plot and devolves into a simple choreography. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Dec 30, 2023 4:08:57 GMT -5
Got around to watching John Wick: Chapter 4 last night... And... it was good for what it was. I have to say - as I suggested in my recent(ish) review of Nobody upthread - I kind of wish the first John Wick film had been the only one. It's such a simple, hypnotically violent and wonderfully satisfying revenge flick. Nothing that followed even came close to offering the same kind of viewing experience - none of them had that same emotional heft; rather, they were mainly an excuse to string together a whole bunch of admittedly amazingly choreographed fight scenes. I kept watching them because of the goodwill created by the first movie and I really like Keanu Reeves, as well as some of the other recurring characters as played by Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne and the sadly departed Lance Reddick (it was nice that they dedicated this movie to him). That said, and despite its excessive length (over 2 and half hours!), I think I liked this one better than chapters 2 and 3. I agree with Hoosier X, who noted in his review that he was laughing through most of it. The over-the-top violence indeed takes on an almost surreal humorous tone here. And I appreciated the homage to The Warriors in particular, with Wick being stalked in the streets of Paris by apparently every hitman in Europe (a lot of job openings in that field after that night) and a DJ announcing his movements over the radio. Otherwise, I have to admit that in all of the indiscriminate killing that went down, the one time I had that involuntary 'oh, no!' response was when that one character's dog got hit by a car during the street battle (don't worry, though, the dog shook it off, it's about as tough as Wick himself). |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 31, 2023 9:29:06 GMT -5
The Door in the Woods (2019) has a dismal score on Rotten Tomatoes, but I thought it was all right. Certainly less pretentious than many recent and better-rated scary movies with bigger budgets. The plot is pretty conventional, but we are spared the cheap jump scares its competitors are rife with, and the ending surprised me.
I don't know if I'd actually recommend it, but I liked it better than the Conjuring series.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 6, 2024 18:13:39 GMT -5
Watched a couple over the last two weekends while my boys were here. Younger son wanted to watch Barbie. Older son and his girlfriend had done the Barbenheimer thing in D.C. It was enjoyable. A nice comedy with some actual thought behind it. While it was based on a property at least it wasn't a damn sequel or a remake or reboot.
Last night we watched Asteroid City. I'm generally a Wes Anderson fan and I enjoyed it, but it was a fairly modest effort for him, I thought. The sets and the look of the film were incredible though. It vied with Barbie for being just a joy to look at.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 8, 2024 12:31:15 GMT -5
The Creator (2023) by Gareth Edwards. Let me start by praising this film for not being a sequel, nor being the adaptation of a comic-book, an old TV series, a video game or any kind of cereal box-related merchandisable character. Nor is it the first chapter in a seven part trilogy (if you count the spin-offs). It is its own thing and tells a story from beginning to end, something that's all too rare in the modern SF/fantasy genre. More praise can be lavished on it for its really nice visuals. It actually showed a few things we hadn't seen twenty times before in other SF movies. I especially liked the fake retro opening showing robots operating in what looks like the early '70s; it brought me back to the TV documentary series "Here come the seventies", which showed how technology was going to change our lives. Unfortunately, despite these good points, the film never rises above the dumb popcorn action movie level. The war between humans and A.I. that is at the core of the story is hardly a war; the xenophobic western humans (booh! Hiss!) keep killing peaceful robots and any human ally with no retaliation. No subtlety, no ambiguity here: it's basically the Empire vs the Rebel Alliance. Except that the Rebel Alliance sometimes attacked the bad guys. Remember the philosophical questions raised by films like Blade Runner 2049 or Ex Machina? You won't find that stuff here; the film doesn't even try to fake it. There are robots, they're just like people only nicer, and that's it. The plot suffers mightily from holes that are paved over just so the movie can happen.We are also treated to face-slapping clichés again and again.
Take this old and tired trope. The hero's wife, along with a few rebels who include Ken Watanabe, try to escape a western attack at the opening of the film. Their little boat is hit by a MASSIVE explosion that seems to be just this side of a nuke. Are we really supposed not to know that they'll turn up again later, miraculously alive? Ken Watanabe is there, for crying out loud!
Or this one. Our hero lost his unborn child. Then he's sent to find the A.I.s' "ultimate weapon". Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that said weapon will turn out to be a robot child, with whom he will paternally bond?
Or another one. We need to end such movies with some kind of countdown; some do-or-die situation which forces all involved to reach the film's climax very soon, otherwise all is lost. Here the "countdown" (there isn't actually a countdown, but it's the same idea) is caused by the west's fancy helicarrier firing nukes at all the A.I. bases in Asia, for fear that the robot child, who has just boarded said helicarrier, will manage to render it useless (that's what the "ultimate weapon" does: it controls computers with its mind). Sure, that puts our heroes on a timetable... but if the west had that capacity all along, why was it pussyfooting for the whole movie, sending individual squads here and there? Nuke them from orbit, said a wise man once.
And that's just skimming the surface... "But why..?" is the most frequent question asked by the viewers.
Did I hate the film? No, I actually enjoyed it; it's a brainless action movie, but it delivers the action and the visuals (as well as the easy pathos). It felt, however, like something that should have been way better, and could have been with just a few tweaks in the script. (It also felt like a movie with some kind of message, but apart from "we should just be nice", I don't quite know what it is).
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Post by berkley on Jan 8, 2024 12:53:51 GMT -5
The Creator (2023) by Gareth Edwards. Let me start by praising this film for not being a sequel, not being the adaptation of a comic-book, an old TV series, a video game or any kind of cereal box-related merchandisable character. Nor is the first chapter in a seven part trilogy (if you count the spin-offs). It is its own thing and tells a story from beginning to end, something that's all too rare in the modern SF/fantasy genre. More praise can be lavished on it for its really nice visuals. It actually showed a few things we hadn't seen twenty times before in other SF movies. I especially liked the fake retro opening showing robots operating in what looks like the early '70s; it brought me back to the TV documentary series "Here come the seventies", which showed how technology was going to change our lives. Unfortunately, despite these good points, the film never rises above the dumb popcorn action movie level. The war between humans and A.I. that is at the core of the story is hardly a war; the xenophobic western humans (booh! Hiss!) keep killing peaceful robots and any human ally with no retaliation. No subtlety, no ambiguity here: it's basically the Empire vs the Rebel Alliance. Except that the Rebel Alliance sometimes attacked the bad guys. Remember the philosophical questions raised by films like Blade Runner 2049 or Ex Machina? You won't find that stuff here; the film doesn't even try to fake it. There are robots, they're just like people only nicer, and thats it. The plot suffers mightily from holes that are paved over just so the movie can happen.We are also treated to face-slapping clichés again and again.
Take this old and tired trope. The hero's wife, along with a few rebels who include Ken Watanabe, try to escape a western attack at the opening of the film. Their little boat is hit by a MASSIVE explosion that seems to be just this side of a nuke. Are we really supposed not to know that they'll turn up again later, miraculously alive? Ken Watanabe is there, for crying out loud!
Or this one. Our hero lost his unborn child. Then he's sent to find the A.I.s' "ultimate weapon". Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that said weapon will turn out to be a robot child, with who he will paternally bond?
Or another one. We need to end such movies with some kind of countdown; some do-or-die situation which forces all involved to reach the film's climax very soon, otherwise all is lost. Here the "countdown" (there isn't actually a countdown, but it's the same idea) is caused by the wests fancy helicarrier shooting nukes at all the A.I. bases in Asia, for fear that the robot child, who has just boarded said helicarrier, will manage to render it useless (that's what the "ultimate weapon" does: it controls computers with its mind). Sure, that puts our heroes on a timetable... but if the west had that capacity all along, why was it pussyfooting for the whole movie, sending individual squads here and there? Nuke them from orbit, said a wise man once.
And that's just skimming the surface... "But why..?" is the most frequent question asked y the viewers.
Did I hate the film? No, I actually enjoyed it; it's a brainless action movie, but it delivers the action and the visuals (as well as the easy pathos). It felt, however, like something that should have been way better, and could have been with just a few tweaks in the script. (It also felt like a movie with some kind of message, but apart from "we should just be nice", I don't quite know what it is).
Very much in agreement: if anything, my reaction was more negative than yours. I did think some of the visuals were impressive - especially the bad guys' ships raining down destruction upon the innocent. But even some of the visuals didn't work for me - one crucial one, because it plays a huge part in setting the overall atmosphere of the film and, more specifically, our feelings towards the AIs, was the visual design of those same AIs, with the human face slapped on the front surface of an old-fashioned metallic robot frame: I found that ugly to the point of revulsion. In a better movie, it might have been used as the sign that some evil or misguided AIs were incapable of understanding or sympathising with anything human.
As a dumb action movie, I would normally overlook a lot of the flaws on display as long as I was entertained, which I was: but The Creator so obviously had pretensions to be more than just an action movie that those flaws become fundamental rather than a relatively unimportant side-issue.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 9, 2024 10:44:14 GMT -5
My friend Mark, who smokes a lot of pot and watches a lot of horror/action/sci-fi movies, saw The Creator and said it was passable, which for him is a roaring condemnation because he’s always recommending “great” movies that are average at best.
He told me I probably wouldn’t like it because I have rather high standards for plot and structure and things making sense and stuff like that.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 9, 2024 13:30:36 GMT -5
My friend Mark, who smokes a lot of pot and watches a lot of horror/action/sci-fi movies, saw The Creator and said it was passable, which for him is a roaring condemnation because he’s always recommending “great” movies that are average at best. He told me I probably wouldn’t like it because I have rather high standards for plot and structure and things making sense and stuff like that. The plot sounds interesting. It sounds like the kind of thing that I might like even if it’s not so great. Unless it overstays its welcome. I just checked the run time. It’s 135 minutes. I’m a lot less forgiving for films that are much over 100 minutes. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 14, 2024 4:50:24 GMT -5
Not necessarily a new film, but certainly not a classic; anyway watched The Foreigner (2017)...
It's about the aging owner of a Chinese restaurant in London, a Chinese Nung from Vietnam named Quan (played by Jackie Chan), whose teenage daughter is killed in a shop when a bomb goes off in a bank right next to it. A group called the 'Authentic IRA' takes credit for it. When Quan goes to the police for more information about who is responsible but gets stonewalled for the most part, and he eventually goes to Belfast to confront the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, a Sinn Fein politician and former IRA militant named Liam Hennessy (played by Pierce Brosnan). When he gets more or less the same song and dance from him ("sorry for your loss, can't help you, that's not the way we do things"), Quan decides to take a more direct approach, first by setting up a bomb in Hennessy's office building that doesn't harm anyone but serves as a warning. (At this point, viewers realize that Quan has a dark past, as some kind of commando/assassin during the Vietnam War.) Things escalate from there.
First, the pros: this is a very watchable and gripping film. Both Chan and Brosnan are pretty masterful. Chan in particular is very convincing as an almost broken, grieving father, and the fight scenes are far from the comical, over-the-top performances that everybody expects from him. Here, he shows that he's an old man - still dangerous and capable, but also vulnerable. And when he takes hits - and he takes a lot of them - he looks like he's in genuine pain. Meanwhile, Brosnan excels as a corrupt and scheming politician. These two are what make this movie worth watching.
The cons: at times it seems like whoever made the movie wanted this to be a political thriller as well, and Brosnan in particular sells this aspect. However, the whole IRA angle was a bit dated by the time this movie was released (it made more sense for the novel on which it's based, The Chinaman, which was published in 1992). Ultimately, it's a pretty predictable action thriller which is carried by its two main stars.
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