Last OK Movie You Saw

[deanb]

On leaving there was certainly mixed reactions on the 700 jumps

[Hot Heart]

This guy always does a good "script notes" analysis of things (he's a script editor), and his thoughts on GotG2 pretty much sum up my issues with it. I didn't mind the slapstick sort of stuff and I liked the thematic stuff, just that the execution wasn't so great in some areas.

[Mr. GOH!]

I like it when my opinion is confirmed by experts!

[deanb]

La La Land

Watched this with my mum. Chatting with her about it after I think we both expected a bit more from a film with so many awards. Plot was pretty plodding, Gosling n Stone weren't exactly brilliant and the songs pretty boring too (like I only 'remember' City of Stars because I knew it was meant to be kinda good).

(We also watched Logan which was still good, and also the whole 'oh god 17 years')

 

[Hot Heart]

A couple of films that I got really cheap on Blu-Ray, and I guess I can see why...

14 Blades

A Donnie Yen film set in olden Ming dynasty days about a special sort of "secret police" (Jinyiwei), but without the negative connotations as such. The title comes from a box full of blades with all sorts of mechanical shenanigans, so he can shoot them at people and stuff. He can also grapple like a crappy version of Batman.

Anyway, the story is decent enough, as Yen's character is involved in a secret rebellion plot and betrayed by someone in his ranks. He goes on the run but won't rest until he fulfills his duty to the Emperor. Therefore, you get him working to unravel and disrupt the plot while getting into some fights along the way.

It all sounds pretty good, except the actual editing of the film is so poor that you might be confused for the first ten minutes and the the fight scenes are equally a bit of a mess. There are moments where you'll suddenly zoom into the box of blades just to watch some poor CG renderings of cogs turning. Overall, it's an alright watch but disappointing in some aspects.

The Emperor and the White Snake

First of all, the title is dumb and misleading. Why they changed it from the original "The Sorceror and the White Snake", I don't know. Even that's not entirely accurate but at least it cues you into the magical nature of it. Anyway, I sort of knew what to expect going in. It's based on a Chinese legend about a snake demon who falls in love with a human. She can take human form, obviously. Problem is, it goes against "the laws of nature" and there is a highly capable group of monks, led by Jet Li, who hunt and imprison or destroy demons.

It starts off as an almost lighthearted romantic comedy, where it shines, albeit with some ridiculously bad CGI and eventually turns into a romantic tragedy, action fest with ridiculously bad CGI. There are some neat moments in the action and I kinda dug the whole mystical thing, but it's got so much dumb stuff in there.

[Mr. GOH!]

Alien: Covenant. It's way better than Prometheus, even though it's rooted in the events of Prometheus. It's creepy and gory and the main characters are somewhat interesting. The CGI aliens look cartoony in places, which is disappointing given the visceral feel of the practical effect creatures from the first Alien movies. The movie also very clearly establishes the direct origins of the aliens as they are in the original movies; it did not feel like a particularly satisfying origin to me and the lack of mystery going forward he's reduced my interest in any sequels.

 

[Mister Jack]

I haven't seen Alien: Covenant, but I did have the alien origin spoiled for me, which is so stupid that it actually fucks up the entire timeline and turns it into a big, jumbled mess that makes no sense.  I think it's about time for people to stop hyping up this franchise so much.  Only the first two movies were ever any good anyway.

[Hot Heart]

I haven't seen Prometheus or Covenant but this confirms that I really shouldn't.

 

[deanb]

Beauty & The Beast (Live Action)

Watched this with my mum n sisters. Nothing terrible, nothing really special but better than I expected. My only major issue is that Luke Evans is a terrible Gaston, mainly in physique which is a big part of the character.

Beast could have been more grotesque, Belleville is alright, Maurice was pretty great. It's weird that you feel for most part of it that it retreads stuff with many elements and songs but also dislike it when it puts in new songs (some plot elements, such as the advanced age of the Prince was welcome change given original he's like 12).

 

As for Alien Covenant yeah seen the RLM vid, and seems to ring with a lot of reviews that the characters are idiots and it kinda screws with the lore.

[Mr. GOH!]

Wonder Woman. Sure, it's leaden, kinda overstuffed, full of Snyder-esque slow-mo action shots, and joyless, but Gal Gadot is a pretty good Wonder Woman and a mid-movie action sequence is the best of any in the DC movies so far.

Spoiler

The ending was obvious, unoriginal, and dumb. The two-CGI-people-fighting scenes were not very interesting and nothing we haven't seen before. Of course Thewlis was gonna be Ares from the beginning. And his Palpatine-trying-to-convert-Luke plan to recruit Diana was stale. The scenes in which Diana charged across the no-man's-land  and ended up liberating a Belgian village from the Germans were fun and exciting, as were the ridiculous Amazon fight scenes.  The way Diana moved and fought felt very consistent with how Supes and Diana moved and fought in BvS. Generally, it felt like a Snyderverse movie, but not necessarily in a bad way. 

 

2

 

[Hot Heart]

Bad Moms

It has Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn and they are bad moms.

[Hot Heart]

True Legend

A Yuen Woo-ping film so you know the action won't disappoint in terms of direction and creativity but it's an odd beast. There's an okay dramatic story with some mystical elements, like the villain who learns the Five Venom Fist style, which apparently involves holding his fists in bowls filled with spiders, scorpions, etc. (to... keep him topped up?) and stuff like "The God of Wushu" (albeit, inside the protagonist's mind). It makes for a decent "final" fight where the hero has to almost completely prevent the villain from touching him with his hands.

I say "final" fight because then there's a really odd section tacked on the end. Once the initial personal story ends in tragedy, the protagonist, now during colonial times takes up a literal drunken fighting style and goes the route of "Chinese fighter takes on allcomers in East vs. West fights" (as already seen in Fearless and Ip Man) in order to redeem himself. There's a neat touch in that the "God of Wushu" reappears in disguise but it all makes for a very weird contrast to the rest of the story.

[Mal]

Train to Busan

This would've been in the good movie thread if there seemed to be some consistency to the infection and how the survivors dealt with zombies (Busan got it right though). Everything else is pretty ace. I love the characters and how some of they grew and played off each other. For example, the MC and the CEO. The MC is/was pretty much the selfish CEO until he grew out of it. It was an interesting to see. Are the characters a bit stereotypical? Yes but they are well done.

[CorgiShinobi]

Despicable Me 3

I think this will be the movie that will stand as a measurement of judging movies between good and bad. This is the very definition of "OK" where I'm okay I spent money to see it in a theater, but I doubt I would ever buy it for home viewing. It has such a bare-bones plot that isn't special. It doesn't do anything memorable, just serviceable. There are some good moments with Lucy bonding with the girls, and at times Gru bonding with his twin brother Dru is entertaining.

But my goodness does Steve Carell's voice for Dru gets tiresome. It's Gru, but higher pitched. Ergo, there are many moments where it's Steve Carell talking to himself. And the movie's villain, Balthazar Bratt, is an okay villain because he does his role, but that's it. He's more of a plot point than a character, even with backstory. The Minions are also strictly Plot B material in the movie. They don't really have any focus besides being Minions in a separate plot.

At the end, there's only one question:

 

So Dru wants to be a bad guy and Gru gets to be a good guy agent once more. But the Minions prefer being with bad guys so they join Dru. So, I guess Gru no longer has Minions and it's presumed Gru and Dru just have this cat-and-mouse professional relationship now. Well, while still being good brothers.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Atomsk88

[Hot Heart]

I was thinking of putting this in "Good" but having gone over it, I'm going with "OK"

Baby Driver

It's a decent thriller with a cool soundtrack. I feel like the initial introduction to Baby is misjudged and undermines the core emotional element. I'd even say Ansel feels too wooden at times, while the romantic stuff is nigh on cringeworthy to begin with.

I dunno, while Wright can nail the action and larger than life characters it just feels like his flare isn't a great match for the smaller, sincere stuff. I'm sure there's even more cool little things to spot on a second watch, as is Wright's style, but I'm not in a hurry to see it again.

[TCP]

Saban's Power Rangers
More like Krispy Kreme's Power Rangers. amirite?
No but seriously it was literally as good as it could have been. Power Rangers was the first thing I ever got into growing up, so, even though it's kind of shitty, it'll always have a special place in my heart. This was a good adaption, better than the source material. Though the best part was when they played the theme song.

[Hot Heart]

Haywire

I'd heard good things about it as "Soderbergh doing an action film" and, in ways, it's good because you get some alright action and there's no real camera fuckery. It plays to Carano's strengths in that the action looks sort of "realistic" in how people might actually duke it out, with grappling and elbows and such. Plus, she's real pretty.

Since it's from the writer of The Limey (an old, good film of Soderbergh's) I was expecting something a little simpler. Instead it begins in medias res and concerns a convoluted conspiracy that is gradually revealed (until they lay it all out in one sequence late on). Basically, it's The Limey mixed with The Bourne Identity.

There's some interesting uses of location though, with part of it set in RoI, along with all sorts of familiar faces (Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas).

[deanb]

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Pretty much: It's fun romp and visually fantastic but the two main leads are absolutely shit. I also think it should have been "Valerian & Laureline" (as in the comics) since they're pretty equal. So having played the mobile game a bit I'm somewhat familiar with some of the lore (though I'd say it's quite well shown). I think plot wise it has a couple stumbles in having two opening sequences when really the first prologue (the development of the ISS in 1975 to the Alpha: City of Thousand Planets of ~2800) could have been put into a title sequence thing or something maybe. Some of the dialogue is tripe, but so is much of the dialogue in Fifth Element so with stronger leads it'd have been much better pushed out. 

It kinda came out much how I'd expected with DeHaan and Delevigne just being kind of weak. DeHaan while being 31 just doesn't look old enough to be a Major and a respected agent. Rihanna, a singer, acts both of them under the table (I quite liked her character, even if I feel her introduction was overly long, especially for a film that Odeon are marketing in their "family summer films" thing).

It had a lot of interesting elements to it, such as the interdimensional "Big Market", the feast sequence, all of Rihannas stuff, and for the most part things flow well into each other though a couple sequences are of questionable import (e.g the feast sequence and Rihanna stuff) and for a chunk of the film you're left a little bit confused (or at least I was). But it does all come together at the end (in a kind of cliched way).

It's disappointing because it's a premise with lots of promise and potential for all kinds of fun (though they don't cover the time travel aspect of their jobs in this one, though do hint at a couple times) but Delevigne and DeHaan are so flat it's fucked. (also there's the degree of being quite close to GotG and Star Wars, which is unfortunate given they draw from the same source material). It's weird cos they've got John Goodman, Clive Owen n Ethan Hawke in here so it's not like they were struggling to find established actors to give it a bit of life.  Oh n fun thing: the emperor of one of the main races is voiced by Ayesha from GotG2. Which'd be why he/she sounded familiar (I'd thought maybe Cluadia Black, but I'd also thought one of the guys was Russel Brand so I was a bit naf at noticing who was who).

 

[TCP]

The Dark Tower

Here's a tip! When Hollywood adapts one of your favourite book series into a film and you hear it's bad, go in with VERY low expectations and then the film will kind of ...be ok?!. Yeah, it was OK.

First, Elba and McConaughey were excellent casting choices. They were so on point I really feel like at one point this movie was on track to be great. There were great action scenes that yes, were cheesy Hollywood versions of what King wrote, but as far as cheesy Hollywood action scenes go, they worked and really gave the audience insight into Roland's capabilities.

Similarly to what I mentioned in the Crap topic with Assassin's Creed, this is a film that has studio exec interference written all over it. It's clear that the studio executives got nervous about the Mid-World stuff so they cut it down. Which would explain the short running time. In their defence, Roland being a fish out of water in NYC was actually some of the best scenes in the film but I don't think a non-book reading audience really got a sense of what Mid-World is. Plus a guy from another world not understanding Earth isn't exactly new territory but as far as I'm aware a post-apocalyptic fantasy western world is not something we've seen in film before. With a book series that's so much about world building it's strange that they cut out almost all the world building.

Then there was the choices in what they adapted. We went in knowing this would NOT be a straight adaption but still, I feel like they took more elements from the 7th book than the early books. Most of the film's content seemed only loosely based off anything in particular from the books and there was virtually no scenes that came close to being a 1:1 adaption.

Ideally, this should have been an HBO / AMC / whatever TV series. Or if they insisted on doing a film series, this should have been a Fellowship of the Ring style film, epic and grand with an ending that leaves you dying to find out what happens next. Instead we got a 90 minute film from a huge 7+ book series that sort of just stands alone without really accomplishing anything the books do. And because it's so underwhelming we're probably not getting a sequel (not to mention the fact that I saw it on it's first Saturday and the theatre was maybe 1/5th full soo...). Great. Thanks Sony.

[Zeo-Gold92]

I saw Blown Away for the first time the other day. It's an older John Travolta movie that I had never even heard of before coming across it. It starts off pretty promising, had some great pacing and intriguing moments plus Travolta's performance was very good. The problems start to show up a bit over halfway, it's not that it turns into a bad movie, it just gets boring and falls off the rails. 6/10

[deanb]

Colossal

 

Enjoyable, but not quite what I expected. Kind of feel that it "blew its load" early as it were then kind of span its wheels for a while until it could hit the 90 minute mark and wrap up the film. It's a neat idea kinda squandered on crappy pacing. I think if they'd maybe held off a bit on the "reveal" (even though it's in the trailer, and heck poster too) they'd have helped develop the characters a bit. Some weird changes in behaviour for a couple characters.

It wasn't wasted time, and it's otherwise enjoyable just feels the pacing is a bit clunky.

YMMV

[deanb]

Kingsman: Golden Circle

 

Watched this one with my mum, so just like in Atomic Blonde there's a sex scene isn't there. I wonder if I was to go see Thor with her (she's like zilch interest mine) then the universe will align to end up with an 18-rated cut.

 

Anywho, it's a perfectly fine film but I feel it tried to repeat a bit too much of the first one. Didn't help we'd watch the first one before heading out, and it was a lot smarter film. This one was a bit sloppy in its structure and a few too many bad guys, robotic arms are a bit old hat at this point compared to sword prosthetics. In fact on the "old hat" thing the music choice was a bit sub-par with the era of GotG and Baby Drive I guess I just expect a bit more thought in songs than multiple covers of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and various ill-fitting Elton John songs. The first was pretty good on this front, especially with "Bonkers" and the Dire Straits opening.

 

There's also like zilch mention of the massive attack in the first film which lead to likely thousands dead, if not more, a bunch of heads of states no longer with heads. And yet weirdly loads of people using old iPhones still despite phones being the primary cause.

 

The Stateman opened up new doors, but the bad guy never really ever felt like a threat and some of the beats to it (par one unexpected one) were pretty by-the-numbers. There was a baddie in it who I felt would have been a bit more effective and interesting but mainly just a henchman.

 

Charlie from the first film. Assumedely he'd have wealth and likely inherited a chunk of stuff. Could have had him as your main villain after being mocked and defeated in the previous instead it's just petty vengeance and a robot arm that's easily vanquished.

 

Anywho this is a slight spoiler but a relevant gif for a bit of the film:

Spoiler

 

[CorgiShinobi]

Wonder Woman

 

I'm being honest here when I say I got bored during the film. I'm starting to wonder if part of the movie's praise is that it's actually good compared to BvS, so let's elevate it a bit more because it didn't turn out a failure.

 

I think one of the main gripes I have with the film is how it resembles Captain America: The First Avenger during its second Act. The problem is you're basically tagging a ragtag ethnically diverse group to a Greek superhuman. I mean, she's not just 10x strong, she full on has powers. Hard to make the group dynamic work aside from them introducing her to the world known as Planet Earth.

 

And then you find out:

Nah, in this take of Wonder Woman, she's Greek Jesus fighting her brother 

British Satan Ares, God of War.

 

And I saw the twist coming, though I didn't know who would be the true antagonist. I enjoyed the first Act as it's self contained and interesting to have Diana's origin shown to us for the DCCU. My only gripe is that a few times Diana's mother mentions to her how she's different from the others, but Diana never follows up on that assertion. Maybe we're suppose to rationalize it as Diana thinking it means she's a princess.

 

The acting itself is good, but the writing gets lazy near the end. Things start being convenient for our heroes until they hit a power wall. And I mean a massive power wall. Not to mention Diana ends up at times acting like a child rather than a grown woman. I get perhaps they meant for it to be about Diana learning more about humanity, but it comes off immature. Overall, if someone was forcing me to watch a non-Batman DC film, it would be this one. 

[deanb]

Murder on the Orient Express

 

It was okay. I don't really do these kinds of films which probably explains some of my ambivalence and also why I didn't know the ending, but you do see it coming fairly quickly. It's got some nice shots, especially given much of it takes place on a train where you're pretty limited to how you can shoot. Though there is one rather on-the-nose scene that's basically everyone sat out along a table Last Supper style.

With the cast it has it's pretty hard not to be at least "okay". I'd say go see Thor if your local cinema is showing it.

 

Oh the moustache is pretty impressive, practically gets its own credits.

[Hot Heart]

Hello, My Name is Doris

 

My grandfather passed away on Friday, so we were keeping my mum company that evening and we needed to find stuff for the family to watch on Netflix. Hence, this.

 

Sally Field is always great and does a very good job here of carrying the character of Doris. It's an unconventional romantic comedy in that she's an old woman who becomes infatuated with a young man at work. It plays it equal parts twee and cringey without going overboard and is entertaining enough. It just never quite escapes the creepy early development on which it hinges, where she creates a fake "Facebook" profile to befriend the man and learn more about him; which probably could've been played a little bit differently and still worked.

 

Also, Doris' brother and his wife are so ham-fistedly written as the "antagonists" that the development that happens there feels uneasy.