Movies you've been watching...

[Bloody_Inferno]

Thor: Love And Thunder

Taika Waitit is never one for subtlety. It's safe to say that the Thor series going goofier as time goes on has become better for it. Waititi understood this in Ragnarok and pushes even harder with Love And Thunder.

The lightning doesn't always strike twice though. There's 3 overarching strong plots all fighting over each other so it gets messy and each plot remains under developed. The abundance of both comedy and some of the dark, serious and sad themes makes the tone shifts flail wildly all over the place in similar issues with JoJo Rabbit, but Waitit was always good at flailing humour and emotional narritive together.

What makes Thor Love And Thunder work is its blatantly unapologetic of its identity. It's as colourful as a comic book movie should be while taking cues from classic prog rock albums. The cast are all game and well aware of their roles: Natalie Portman is having a lot of fun, unsurprisingly Christian Bale is fantastic but surprisingly Russell Crowe is amazing, both completely hamming it up.

The jury is still out whether it's better than Ragnarok or not, but as blockbuster movies go, Love and Thunder is pretty much a blockbuster in its purest form.

 

[mmr007]

Lol. Once I found out that no only was everything but H1+H2 was retconned, but even H2 as well, I was done. That plus "What is the best horror film" polls always resulted in unanimous votes for Halloween. It is played out to me. H20 was bad enough ignoring 4-6. Now we have 40 years, not 20, between films, and only 3 kills to base the trauma on. Really goofy. I think H20 would've worked ignoring the Thorn shit, which would be easy to do, because Laurie has no clue about that. You could have her knowing about the "copycat" killings, as she's trying to convince herself they are, but trying to pretend it is over. Meanwhile she is dealing with the abandonment and death of her daughter Jamie. That makes for a much better story.

Instead, we got John and Laurie arguing like a bad fucking drama show from ABC or whatever. Boring.

I totally agree. I would pay $12 ticket price to see a michael myers screen saver but the whole redux retcon was bullshit. Why was Laurie Strode spending a lifetime preparing for the return of a serial killer who barely killed anyone and seemed more interested in her friends than her

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

I totally agree. I would pay $12 ticket price to see a michael myers screen saver but the whole redux retcon was bullshit. Why was Laurie Strode spending a lifetime preparing for the return of a serial killer who barely killed anyone and seemed more interested in her friends than her

Yeah, really. H20 was bad enough, but Halloween (2018) was awful on paper. I refuse to watch knowing how much I disliked that in H20. They didn't NEED to get into the Cult aspect (in H20), because Laurie would not have known that. It was the perfect excuse to ignore elements while still acknolwedging key parts (her daughter, for instance, as well as repeat occurrences she's trying to convince herself was the act of copycats). No, instead we get Screamoween from Disney with horrid looking masks (sans H6 mask in the intro), Josh's fucking eternal cowlick (which has its own contract, I'm sure of it), and a finish that, as a kid, I knew how they'd retcon it for HR.

At this point, I'm pretty much "fuck Michael Myers" all day, every day, and I 100% support Rob Zombie's fucked up portrayal of Michael in RZH. I also love seeing people hate RZH2 when they didn't even get it. I didn't either the first time, but felt absolutely stupid when I rewatched it.

 

[Drew]

I would NOT say this was a good movie by any means, but we just watched that new Sandra Bullock flick, "The Lost City" or whatever, on a flight. It was fun if kind of mindless, but the Brad Pitt cameo was unexpected comic gold. It's referenced in a scene in the credits too, so you'll want to at least jump forward to that.

 

[manu80]

I really don't get the hype on Waititi...as usual he 's the trendy guy of the moment so everything he does is great with the critics. Read some bad/mixed reviews of thor L&T so far on some movie sites and as I found Ragnarok boring and not funny, I won't go...I didn't enjoy Spiderman or DS2, and Marvel didn't do Moon Knight justice either.
Same problem as James Gunn to me. Good directors for sure, but too much in their own trip and they forget the public. Peacemaker was fun but sometimes half the episode was useless....

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

I really don't get the hype on Waititi...as usual he 's the trendy guy of the moment so everything he does is great with the critics.

If you're exposure ti Waititi is just the Marvel movies then fair enough. The hype is namely because that outside Marvel he's an indie auteur film maker at heart and even after Marvel somehow still remained that.

Discounting a few episodes of Flight Of The Conchords, What We Do In The Shadows was my gateway to his work (and a lot of others), then Boy. Both very different to exch other. I'd argue that his Thor movies are actually his weakest work.

 

[mongey]

Got around to sitting through the new dr strange movie. May just be the worst movie in the entire franchise. The story , if you call it that , is just an excuse to do a bunch of multiverse shit. Some of those scenes were
Cool , but didn’t carry a whole movie.

Zombie!! Wtf

 

[Steo]

Last weekend I watched:
The house that Jack built. Lars Von Trier's serial killer film. Different take on that trope.
The Sadness. Taiwanese "zombie" / infected populous film. Heavy on the violence/gore, all practical effects, not cgi rubbish.
Titane. Need to rewatch this. Very odd, dark film.

 

[Mathemagician]

I'll never forive the Blair Witch Project for making the whole found footage thing popular. God damn have there been some absolute horrible stinkers released as found footage movies. And most of them wouldn't have been made at all if they had to have a real budget because somebody would have read the script and went, "Ah, how 'bout you try again, dumbass."

Found footage also gave us the REC series, and the english Quarantine series. And those are so so good.

I like REC more though.

 

[spudmunkey]

I'm super excited about the new Predator movie,  Prey. Much more so than any Predator movie since the original AvP.

 

[nightflameauto]

Seven Psychopaths: A fun little romp through the Hollywood lens of Hollywood making fun of Hollywood tropes, with Christopher Walken and Woody Harrelson hamming it up for the camera.

"Put your hands up!"
Casual: "No."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to."

Walken's deadpan was on-point during that exchange.

Highly recommended for the goofiness of the situation alone.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Thor Love and Thunder: typical Watiti film, mostly goofy and fun but there are some serious/ dark moments that kind of cause the fun to come to an immediate halt. Not as bad as Jojo Rabbit in terms of dramatic tonal shifts though. Christian Bale is excellent as Gorr. He's the most interesting villain since shang chi's antagonist.
Russell Crowe absolutely steals the show for the few scenes he's in. There's a lot of stylized bloodshed/gore that reminded me of Samurai Jack where they just color swap the blood, and I am all for it.


worth a watch imo.

 

[TedEH]

The story , if you call it that , is just an excuse to do a bunch of multiverse shit. Some of those scenes were
Cool , but didn’t carry a whole movie.

Maybe it's just me, but that's kinda the box I put all comic movies into at this point. I enjoyed the new Dr. Strange 'cause it did just that: delivered a bunch of multiverse nonsense, special effects, interesting shots to take in, and strung it together with just enough story that I don't need to have followed every detail of the MCU to follow the main plot. I personally don't care enough about all the comic-book-guy-esque details to ask for much else in a movie at this point. I guess that's disappointing in it's own way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Started Jupiter ascending last night, got about 45mins in before bedtime. I already hate it, but an old lady bar regular who is basically a surrogate grandmother/auntie recommended it very highly to me so I can't not finish it.

It's working with a lot of good ingredients, but so far they're coming together in an extremely insufferable way. Perhaps unsurprisingly, everything I hated about the Matrices is here in spades and seemingly turnt to 11.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Started Jupiter ascending last night, got about 45mins in before bedtime. I already hate it, but an old lady bar regular who is basically a surrogate grandmother/auntie recommended it very highly to me so I can't not finish it.

It's working with a lot of good ingredients, but so far they're coming together in an extremely insufferable way. Perhaps unsurprisingly, everything I hated about the Matrices is here in spades and seemingly turnt to 11.

quit while you're ahead. That patron has awful taste and that film is one of the worst thing the wachowskis have ever made

 

[nightflameauto]

quit while you're ahead. That patron has awful taste and that film is one of the worst thing the wachowskis have ever made

Channing Tatum is never more Channing Tatum until he plays McBride's gimp in This is the End.

I remember people being pissed Bean doesn't even die in JA. I dunno, I seem to have an affinity for the Wachoskis. I've been able to enjoy them all except the latest Matrix failure. I feel like I should write them and say, "Uh, ya lost me. And I freakin' loved Speed Racer and liked Jupiter Ascending, so you know ya dun goofed."

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Channing Tatum is never more Channing Tatum until he plays McBride's gimp in This is the End.

I remember people being pissed Bean doesn't even die in JA. I dunno, I seem to have an affinity for the Wachoskis. I've been able to enjoy them all except the latest Matrix failure. I feel like I should write them and say, "Uh, ya lost me. And I freakin' loved Speed Racer and liked Jupiter Ascending, so you know ya dun goofed."

Speed Racer is actually fun. JA is just bad tryhard scifi like matrix 3+4.

Channing Tatum's bad english accent in JA made me want to to sudoku

 

[wheresthefbomb]

quit while you're ahead. That patron has awful taste and that film is one of the worst thing the wachowskis have ever made

after seconds of careful consideration based on feedback here and how much it already sucks I decided to lie and tell her I watched it, and then redirect the conversation to what she liked about it. Sorry, Auntie. Still love you.

This reminds me of the time I accidentally started Iron Man 2 halfway through. It seemed sort of odd that there was a bunch of scantily-explained plot development, but it was literally not until the credits rolled 45 minutes later that I realized what had happened. In hindsight, I think my friend who was sharing our netflix acct started watching it and got bored. I, on the other hand, skipped all the stupid bullshit and got to watch the sweet action scenes. Highly recommended way to watch Iron Man 2.

 

[Noisy Humbucker]

Started watching The Dark Knight Rises for the umpteenth time since it’s on Netflix, then remembered I hadn’t seen Tenet yet so I switched over to that.

It was fun - this is one case where I feel like having been exposed to spoiler-ish stuff long beforehand helped me keep up the whole way through (without ruining anything for me). I couldn’t help but think of John David as “baby Denzel”, but an apple could certainly have worse trees from which to fall. Thought Branagh was solid too.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Started watching The Dark Knight Rises for the umpteenth time since it’s on Netflix, then remembered I hadn’t seen Tenet yet so I switched over to that.

It was fun - this is one case where I feel like having been exposed to spoiler-ish stuff long beforehand helped me keep up the whole way through (without ruining anything for me). I couldn’t help but think of John David as “baby Denzel”, but an apple could certainly have worse trees from which to fall. Thought Branagh was solid too.

I was very disappointed with Tenet but I was on a time travel movie kick and it was much more focused on being an action flick. I spent most of the movie being distracted by trying to rationalize the inconsistent time travel mechanics. I was never the target audience but all the same, a big miss for me.