Last OK Movie You Saw

[deanb]

"it could have been a lot worse"

 

A lot worse how?

[TCP]

Have you seen Suicide Squad?

Edited March 12, 2018 by Ultra TCP

[Mister Jack]

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

 

I watched this at a friend's insistence and it was actually pretty alright.  I mean, it's not great and the plot is predictable but it got a few pretty good laughs out of me and the chemistry between the leads is quite enjoyable.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed the Rock's performance the most.  He really sells the idea that he's a nerdy, insecure little dweeb trapped in a beefcake's body.  It was honestly kind of adorable.  It's corny as hell, but it's a charming kind of corny that isn't taking itself too seriously and just likes to have fun with a goofy premise.  I still like the original film more, but this isn't bad for a movie night with your friends.

[Mr. GOH!]

Annihilation.

I liked the movie, but I truly love the book and the compromises and changes Garland made to make a shorter, less interesting film made it, well, less interesting. If it weren't for the super dumb ending (which is NOTHING like the book), I probably would have put this in the good movie thread.

[Mr. GOH!]

Ready Player One

 

It was slick-looking as all hell, but so very mediocre and, of course, Spielberg can't help but fuck up the ending. 

 

This is a movie I will forget all about in a month because it was 100% fluff. 

[Thursday Next]

Ready Player One +1!

Read the book, enjoyed it at the time, read it again, thought to myself "why did I like this book?". The film is much better, Parzival is less of a prick. It's still problematic in so far as it touts the concept of the fan as gatekeeper which is (imho) the root cause of a lot of fandom toxicity. At least the references (while still prominent) don't take up anything like as much story space as they do in the book. It's obviously a lot easier to throw a bunch of recognisable characters in the background of a scene than it is to write a list of all the recognisable things. One of the people I went to see it with chuckled at every reference he got, I think that is going to be par for the course at any public viewing. The references are thrown out thick and fast to the point where you almost stop noticing them through saturation. 

 

As Goh says, it's almost instantly forgettable. The plot (even if you haven't read the book) is always 100% predictable. A popcorn movie, enjoyable, but ultimately unsatisfying.

[Hot Heart]

The Great Wall

Actually kind of enjoyed this, maybe because my expectations were so low. It's a decent enough story but what I'm really drawn to is Zhang Yimou's direction. The sets and costumes are all gorgeous with the various types of forces on the wall being colour-coded and based on different animals. So, there are black bear-themed spears and armour alongside blue crane-inspired outfits and red hawk-looking archers, etc. It's full of really cool visuals even if some of the CGI is a little ropey (but, again, not anywhere near as bad as I'd been led to believe). So, overall, I'd maybe rank it "good" but to most it's probably just okay.

[CorgiShinobi]

Batman Ninja

 

If you like Batman, it's an alright flick. I enjoyed most of the film, especially the visuals and voice acting. The story suffers here and there though it had the potential to be a more epic tale of Batman & Co. in feudal Japan. There's specifically a character and scene that are just weird. Like, I watch anime and I've seen things, but it's a weird tonal shift compared to the rest of the film. I would say, if you're more of a casual fan of Batman, this is a fun rental. I love Batman so I wanted to own it, and I am a sucker for ninjas.

 

I want to post this because on Amazon there are quite a number of sour customers who are trashing it with 1 Star reviews. This wasn't going to be Mask of the Phantasm or Return of the Joker. It's just a fun animated DC film; about the only thing DC can get right for the last decade.

[deanb]

Batman Ninja

 

I'll agree on it being the weaker of the current DC cartoon crop but not terrible my any stretch. Its main flaw is that it's a pretty cool premise but doesn't really execute it well at all. It's like a weird mish mash of styles from ukiyo-e mixed in with more kind of absurd anime giant robot battles to some house of flying daggers type emulations. It really would have been much better if it just stuck to one instead of trying a mish-mash of styles.

The main styling reminds me a lot of Street Fighter, with the 3D models in a painterly fashion and that's fair enough.

Storywise it's fair enough, would never work in a more traditional batman run I think.

 

If you're into batman give it a watch, if you're into anime...probably skip it.

[Mal]

Godzilla Planet of the Monsters

 

It's Godzilla but CGI. It's alright. If you know the themes of most of the films then you know what's generally going to happen. With that said, there's a post credit scene which serves hint to a sequel that will be coming out soon.

[toxicitizen]

X-Men: Apocalypse

 

Finally got around to watching it last night. Yeeesh. I mean, it was alright but how did they follow up the amazing Days of Future Past with this? There were some cool character moments in it but Apocalypse himself was terrible and he barely did anything in the movie. Everything about him just kinda fell flat and the b-plot/second act was the best part of the movie.

 

Not gonna get my hopes up for the next one. Especially since it's Dark Phoenix and I thought Sophie Turner was kinda bad in this one.

[Mr. GOH!]

Xmen-apocalypse is utter garbage and belongs in the bad movie thread.

 

Solo: A Star Wars story. 

 

Spoiler

Darth Maul is fucking dead and bringing him back to the movie universe is stupid. Emilia Clarke should only be Danaerys Targaryen. Chewbacca would never eat a sentient creature. Donald Glover as Lando was great. Alden Ehrenreich was pretty good as Han. Beckett's original pilot (Rio?) was  neat, but clearly added in re-shoots since nobody ever reacted to his one-liners. The space monster was gratuitous. I liked bringing the Maw back into canon. The heist stuff was pretty good. The constant references to OT dialogue was awful, especially when they gave Luke and Leia lines to Beckett and Solo. The movie should have stood on its own. The only good references were "I have a great feeling about this!" and when Han immediately starts bragging about doing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. It was nice that, after the first scene with him, Chewie was a real character and not Han's bipedal pet. Overall, the film was a serviceable Ron Howard joint that didn't really dazzle me.

 

Edited June 12, 2018 by Mr. GOH!

[CorgiShinobi]

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

 

In short, it's like if you combined Dino Crisis and Resident Evil together.

 

At this point, you know that some greedy asswipe of a human wants to financially profit off the dinosaurs. At least with the third film it was just survival, while the rest of the films are about putting money over safety. Unless the dinosaur is genetically designed to be a weapon, I really can't see how you could develop the remaining dinosaurs into weaponized death machines. To emphasize, Isla Nublar does in fact become uninhabitable, so there's no going back there. It's implied on the promotional websites that dinosaurs on Isla Sorna were shipped off to Isla Nublar when Jurassic World was established. However, it seems like Isla Sorna was still of some use, but this film acts as though all the dinosaurs are on Isla Nublar. That this is all or nothing for dinosaurs in our time.

 

Anyway, the film spends most of its time in Northern California at the Lockwood Estate. Ergo, surviving dinosaurs in a mansion in the middle of a forest. There's quite a bit of suspension of disbelief, but what's frustrating is how both main characters and side character act so unnaturally. For example, there's this woman who knows about this deadly dinosaur and both she and a few men are actively hiding from said dinosaur in the same room. Yet, when she sees the damn thing once more, without it knowing she's there, she screams at the top of her lungs alerting the dinosaur to the location of everyone there.

 

I think this must be a Jurassic Park/World trope. That a woman or little girl stands, screams, and makes the situation worse. There are more offenders, but that one really got my goat. Otherwise, Chris Pratt is still fun and a highlight of the film. The question of whether we protect the dinosaurs as living creatures, or let them die as failed experiments is an interesting one. I mean, they're not machines to be scrapped, but dinosaurs were never naturally meant to coexist with humans. The idea that they would have the same impact as say the atomic bomb is ridiculous as I think any well structured military could take out a dozen or so dinosaurs.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I've enjoyed his web series and shorts then out of the blue there is an entire  feature film on his channel. I don't know why I'm not putting it in good movies, tbh it was enjoyable and well paced and didn't feel like you were watching a youtuber making a film.

 

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

A Quiet Place.

 

It was fine, although the ending was kind of dumb. I don't understand what everyone thought was so great about it though.

[deanb]

Venom

 

This was much better than expected. It has plenty of clunk to it, it weirdly has a lot of things taking mere seconds to resolve in the final third, but it was pretty enjoyable. The trailer cut a lot of the dialogue quite weirdly to how it is in the film and it works much better in the film with the relationship between Eddie and Venom. It's pretty funny at points. My mum spent most of the night quoting "pussy" in a gruff voice.

 

There is a bit at the start where I'm trying to take one of the scientists a tad more seriously because my mind is playing "money please".

(why the fuck they named the female scientist "doctor skirt" in 2018 I'll never know)

 

Also they start out with a black, blue and yellow symbiote and the final fight is between the black symbiote and a dark grey one. Which has a kind of neat part of the fight where the symbiotes are fighting/fusing n the hosts inside are fighting too that's all just a bit splodgy mess because the symbiotes are practically the same in the dark. I understand why they didn't have a red symbiote (cos of Carnage n all that) but there's plenty more colours that could have lead to a much clearer fight.

 

So yeah, it pales in comparison to the likes of the MCU fare, but easily surpasses much of the DCCU stuff. This month has a wealth of cracking looking films though, so maybe hold off a bit if looking to save your movie money.

 

[Mr. GOH!]

Venom was terrible. The character motivations make zero sense.

 

Dr. Skirth is, IIRC, an established Life Foundation character from the comics. Jenny Slate was a good choice for the thankless role.

 

Edited October 7, 2018 by Mr. GOH!

[CorgiShinobi]

I put this very low on the OK list.

 

Venom

 

Outside of Eddie and Venom, all these characters are forgettable. They're flat with no development and so they serve a single role. I want to commend Jenny Slate for her role as Dr. Skirth because it must have been unfulfilling work. Anne, Brock's girlfriend/fiancé, is okay but the writing behind the character gets muddled halfway through the film. The doctor is absolutely pointless outside of, "Durr, the symbiote is killing you!" (which we never get a concrete answer on). Life Foundation CEO is just obsessed with space colonization that he does evil things.

 

It certainly is mindless fun, but in my opinion if you have any knowledge of the comic book Venom, this isn't exactly how he should be. You'll get people you claim he's true to character, but the reality of that is only in the basic sense. Yeah, he's scary and big and doesn't understand humanity. He's not suppose to be a man-eater who is part of an alien posse. Granted you're making a Spider-Man film without Spider-Man, but it gives Venom such a basic backstory and motive. Not to mention there's so much wasted potential in the other symbiotes because in this film there's compatibility issues with hosts.

 

You know how many people have had the Venom symbiote on them in the comics? Not to mention Riot, the antagonist symbiote, didn't have any issue. Of course, spoilers

He oddly picks terrible hosts and for some reason it takes Riot

SIX MONTHS to get to San Francisco! Think about it this way; if Riot had stayed in John Jameson's body, he might have very well made it back to Life Foundation sooner. Nope, gotta crash the van you're in, grab the driver as your host, walk miles to some Malaysian village to transfer into an old woman, trek across South Asia until you reach Hong Kong, transfer into a little girl who fortunately is on a flight to San Francisco, and ultimately sneak into a research lab where you obtain the CEO as your final host.

 

If it wasn't for the rather good and entertaining back-and-forth of Eddie and the Venom symbiote, this would be utter garbage. The writing is still questionable for Venom because there's a few contradictory moments. Almost as if the writers spit-balled some scenarios for Eddie/Venom to go through to make up for the lack of Spider-Man. On an arbitrary scale, I'd go with a 5/10 as I still was entertained, but it could have been better even with the lack of a key character.

[Mister Jack]

The VVitch

 

This is...a horror drama, I guess?  The titular witch probably has less than two minutes of screen time in the entire film.  The drama is mostly focused on the puritan family being bedeviled by said witch in the woods and how they become increasingly unhinged and paranoid as bad things keep happening with no rational explanation. I know this movie is critically acclaimed but it's a mixed bag for me.  For starters, all the characters speak in Old English.  I don't know if this is historically accurate or not, but even if it is it's very distracting and can make the movie hard to take seriously at times.  Even if you're willing to look past that, the first half of the movie is straight up boring.  They spend way too much time establishing the characters.  It's good to set up your characters in a horror movie so they're not completely flat, but almost nothing interesting happens in the first 45 minutes.  The last 45 minutes, however, are when the movie gets good and shit actually starts going down.  I'm glad I hung in there for the second half, but I was tempted to turn it off more than once during the first half.

[TheMightyEthan]

Re: The VVitch

 

Spoiler

That scene with the brother dying was some of the best acting by a child I have ever seen.

 

[Mister Jack]

Yeah, I can agree with that.  In fact, I think that scene right there is when the movie starts to get interesting.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Mister Jack

[deanb]

Bohemian Rhapsody

 

Somehow managed to take a film about Freddie Mercury and Queen and make it kinda dull. It kinda feels like they took a Wikipedia article as the script (and part of the script is just "insert Live Aid here"). The main thing keeping it going is the music is obviously pretty good, and the acting is pretty good too (despite what they have to work with). The Brian May guy was pretty good (though I'm to understand Brian May was directly involved with the film).

 

I'm interested to see how Rocketman fares and if that might have been the better option of "A True Fantasy" to tackle Queen.

 

[Mr. GOH!]

Aquaman

 

It was a mess, sure, but at least Khal Drogo had fun and it had very little of that leaden teenager's-idea-of-edginess and muddy visuals the pervious DC movies suffered from (though the heroes still move about in very unnatural ways in a lot of it).  

[Mal]

Dunkirk

 

How the narrative was split up is a bit confusing. You constantly have to reorient yourself to which timeline you are watching. With that said, this might age better with subsequent viewings.

[TheMightyEthan]

1 hour ago, Mr. GOH! said:

teenager's-idea-of-edginess

 

 

It's funny cause it's true...