Movies We've Seen Recently

[Sherman Tank]

Rented The Big Short this weekend. It's a really good film that manages to be a damning indictment of the finance industry without becoming one of those Message Films where Hollywood actors who make eight figures a picture give tendentious sermons about how This Thing Is Bad.

[Mu.]

I saw Anomalisa today and I really enjoyed watching it, even though one could semi-accurately sum it up as 'Synecdoche, New York Versus Lost in Translation'. I mean that wouldn't do justice to all of it, especially the master-craftsmanship in the stop motion animation and the tenseness of seeing the protagonist's mental state, but it did remind me of both of those films very strongly.

EDIT: I'll just edit this in, but I saw 'Hail, Caesar!' today. I liked it, a lot of very funny individual scenes. Felt like a pretty standard Coen Bros. farce, not that novel if you've seen The Big Lewbowski or Burn After Reading, but some of the best scenes in this were better than some of the better scenes in those. For being about big Golden Age Hollywood personalities, it did feel kinda toned down compared to those two. I was surprised how many big stars were playing bit parts in it. The character writing was pretty tight, and everyone played well. Overall, it's good.

[chai tea latte]

Fuuuuuuuck is Ex Machina ever good.

[Nikaer Drekin]

If it's still in theaters around you I highly recommend checking out 10 Cloverfield Lane. In many ways it's a total opposite of the first one- instead of a chaotic, found-footage Godzilla it's more of a deliberate, composed b-horror movie, almost like a Twilight Zone episode. No element is wasted, the storytelling is perfect in its economy. On top of all that, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman give fantastic performances, and considering they're essentially two-thirds of the entire cast that's kind of important!

[Bobsterfest]

Fans of Blue Ruin should see Green Room at their earliest convenience. The less squeamish among you who haven't seen Blue Ruin should see Green Room at your earliest convenience. It's dirty, icky, violent, tense, and great.

The Nice Guys goes wide in two weeks  I expected nothing going in, but came out pleasantly surprised. Gosling and Crowe work pretty well as misfit detectives. The movie has some problems balancing tone shifts, and some of the plot's kinda stupid, but there's more hits than misses overall.

[Nikaer Drekin]

Fuuuuuuuck is Ex Machina ever good.

I finally watched this not too long ago and it so, so is. One of my absolute favorites of last year.

I saw Too Late starring John Hawkes yesterday- it's a crime story told out of order in a series of long takes. It was solid, but nothing incredible. Maybe I'm more sensitive too it than most because I'm a giant Tarantino fanboy, but it is PAINFULLY clear how badly this guy wanted to make a Tarantino movie. And granted, he did a better job than most people with the same ambition do, but the dialogue and characterization wasn't nearly as strong as it needed to be. On the plus side, I saw it as part of a limited 35mm tour, and for the most part it was a good reminder of how gorgeous a movie shot and projected on film can be.

[Nifty Nif]

On the plus side, I saw it as part of a limited 35mm tour, and for the most part it was a good reminder of how gorgeous a movie shot and projected on film can be.

If I'm not a film buff, would I notice the difference?  Thanks for sharing your opinions!  As a reluctant Tarantino fangirl, I might have to check out Too Late, if only so I can snipe at it from my couch.

[Nikaer Drekin]

On the plus side, I saw it as part of a limited 35mm tour, and for the most part it was a good reminder of how gorgeous a movie shot and projected on film can be.

If I'm not a film buff, would I notice the difference?  Thanks for sharing your opinions!  As a reluctant Tarantino fangirl, I might have to check out Too Late, if only so I can snipe at it from my couch.

Well, 35mm projection was how all movies were projected until maybe 5 or 6 years ago, so you see more scratches and flaws whereas the digital projection that's now the standard is basically pristine. You also tend to get more rich, natural color and sharpness with film, since you're seeing light shone through a strip of celluloid instead of pixels projected on a screen. Think listening to vinyl records vs. mp3s- theres a subtle but noticeable difference. Most people don't really care one way or the other, but there are some hardcore traditionalists who think watching an the projection of an actual film print is the "true" cinema experience. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I like that film projection is still around. It's strange to think how quickly it's gone from the main way to watch movies to what's basically a novelty.

[chai tea latte]

My favourite character in Captain America: Civil War was the 3d Futura title cards. The rest of the movie was also good I guess!

[Ambious]

Justice League - Flashpoint Paradox is still one of the best (if not THE best) DC animated movie.
Great story, very well told and beautifully animated - great action with good pacing, interesting takes on familiar characters in an unfamiliar setting (DC Animated's specialty).
Definitely worth a watch, along with "New Frontier" which isn't as good, but the artist who frontlined the comic series died this week so watch it in his honor.

[LowBatteryLife]

Deadpool was fine. Plot is nothing and exists just to put the scenes in order, the character is hollywoof'd to not be an actual crazy person and drive the plot, but in regards to a viewing experience, it's fine. They keep the jokes coming, so even if one falls flat, you don't have to linger on it.

But fuck that shit. THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES 2 (1985) is a fucking film. Götterdämmerung, it's awful. "EY WE GOT A  MEDUSA TURNING PEOPLE INTO STATUES. SO YOU'S GONNA BE PAINTED GRAY AND STAND REAL STILL, SEE?" Being an extra on that set must've been the worst. Hot damn.

[lazzer grardaion?]

You know what? I think the original Underworld is a pretty solid movie. At its heart, it's a cop drama. There's a war between the vampires (cops) and werewolves (gangs) that's been raging for centuries, and the rookie cop on the vampire side is starting to get suspicious about all the equipment and support that the werewolves have been getting. She's hotheaded, but dammit, she gets results. Anyways, she uncovers that the police chief vampire she's been working for is corrupt, so she goes to the mayor (head vampire dude), only to discover that the mayor has been in on it the whole time. Plus she discovers that it was actually the crooked cops/vampires who killed her family, and not the gangs/werewolves like she'd been led to believe. So it's her against her old family in a fight to bring down corruption (plus there's some mythology shit with the progenitors of the vampires and werewolves: one dude a thousand years ago or whatever had two sons, one of whom got bitten by a bat and became a vampire, and the other got bitten by a wolf and became a werewolf. There was also maybe a third son whose descendant ends up becoming a vampire-werewolf hybrid.)

So, anyways, that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the sequel, Underworld: Evolution, which I think I will do by taking the wikipedia synopsis and adding in for no fucking reason wherever it's appropriate.

In 1202, an army led by the three vampire elders (Markus, Viktor, and Amelia) arrives at a Lycan-ravaged village. Viktor and Amelia capture their target, Markus' brother, William Corvinus, the first and most powerful werewolf. Despite Markus' defiance, Viktor orders that William be imprisoned in a secret location forever.

In the present day, vampire Selene takes Michael to a safe house so that she can confront the vampire regent Kraven; she knows that Kraven intends to kill Markus for no fucking reason and plans to stop him. However, Markus has awakened for no fucking reason before Kraven arrives. Markus kills Kraven and his men. Lorenz Macaro, an elderly man, sends in a team of "cleaners" to investigate the aftermath from the battle in the Lycans' lair. When Lorenz Macaro examines Viktor's corpse he finds a metal disc inside it for no fucking reason (seriously, it's embedded in his sternum. How did it get there?) which is the match to a pendant originally worn by Sonja (who?). The other half of the pendant is now possessed by Selene and Michael after the deaths of Viktor and Lucian.

Markus tracks Selene and Michael down and attacks them, but they evade him and hide in a warehouse. There, Selene and Michael share their feelings (not true) and engage in sexual intercourse. Now knowing that the pendant is important to Markus, Michael and Selene set out to discover why Markus wants it. Selene recalls that she saw it as a child, but does not know its significance. They travel to the hideout of the exiled vampire historian Andreas Tanis who reveals that Markus was the first vampire (which all of the characters already knew); one of the three sons of Alexander Corvinus, the first immortal. Markus was bitten by a bat and became a vampire, while his twin brother William was bitten by a wolf and became a werewolf. The third son remained human and gave rise to a line of mortal descendants including Michael who became the first Lycan–Vampire hybrid. The first werewolves created by William were entirely animal and unable to assume human form. Due to William's destructiveness, Markus approached Viktor, who was a dying mortal warlord at the time, and offered to turn him and his army into immortal vampires in exchange for tracking down and stopping William, and in destroying those he had infected.

Viktor did not kill the brothers because he was deceived by Markus into believing that doing so would result in the immediate extinction of all other vampires and his Lycan slaves (this should read: Markus said a thing and nobody ever gave the slightest thought to whether or not it was true because all of the characters in this movie are idiots). Tanis reveals that Selene's father was the architect who built William's prison and that the pendant is a key to the latter. Viktor killed Selene's family as they knew the prison's location, but turned Selene into a vampire so the memory of the prison's location would be kept in her blood for no fucking reason . Tanis then refers Selene and Michael to Macaro for help. After Selene and Michael leave Tanis' residence, Markus arrives and drinks Tanis' blood to learn Selene and Michael's location, killing Tanis.

Selene and Michael visit Macaro and discover that he actually is Alexander Corvinus. Alexander reveals that he has devoted his entire immortal life to keeping the Vampire-Lycan war a secret for no fucking reason . However, he refuses to assist Selene in killing his sons for no fucking reason . Then Markus arrives, impaling Michael for no fucking reason  and learns the location of William's prison by drinking Selene's blood. He mortally wounds his father for no fucking reason and obtains the other half of the pendant, after deriding his father's refusal to help William and revealing that he intends with William to rule the world as the god-like master of a race of vampire-Lycan hybrids. On Alexander's bidding, Selene drinks his blood, enhancing her physical strength and healing abilities to a level equivalent to that of a hybrid. Afterwards, Alexander blows up his ship, killing himself for no fucking reason .

Selene, aboard Corvinus' helicopter, leads his cleaners to the prison to confront and destroy Markus, but he has already freed William. A battle ensues in which William bites the cleaners who, as a result, are turned into werewolves. Michael, who is presumed to be dead and is carried aboard the helicopter for no fucking reason (seriously, why would you tote a corpse around in your helicopter?) , regenerates and joins the fight in his hybrid form, killing William by ripping his head off. Selene engages Markus in hand-to-hand combat, killing him by kicking him into the rotor blades of the cleaners' crashed helicopter. After the battle, Selene realizes that Alexander's blood has made her immune to the lethal effects of sunlight on vampires.

Not included in the Wikipedia synopsis is the long sequence where the character who has recently been turned into a vampire-werewolf hybrid is told that he has to drink blood to survive now, and he's handed a Red Cross-style blood bag. He thinks this is icky, and refuses to do it for no fucking reason. Then he leaves the safety of the bunker where he's laying low for no fucking reason, goes out to a pub and orders some food, and then punches some Ukranians for no fucking reason.

I think the movie's greatest sin is that it gives us no idea of what the stakes are. For the first 75% of the movie, all we know is that the first vampire dude wants to free his brother, the first werewolf dude, because they're brothers and love each other. Then we throw in some half-hearted 'gonna kill the world because I'm gonna be god' bullshit, and that's supposed to be the villain of the movie.

for no fucking reason
for no fucking reason
for no fucking reason
for no fucking reason

There.

[STOG]

A Haunted House is flat-out garbage. Andy Daly is in it, but he's in it for the money.

[Mu.]

I saw that Warcraft movie today. (A guy I know (who's a friend sort-of) works at the local Cineworld so he got the tickets for free - I didn't pay to see it and wasn't going to otherwise.)

I ain't never played no Warcraft (or any Blizzard game in general) but the film was okay. It just drops you into the fantasy world to sink or swim. There isn't really any character that we, the audience, follow to learn about the World of Warcraft. Everyone character has some knowledge of what's happening although no one knows everything. I couldn't keep the names straight, I just went by the faces ("That's Young Good Wizard, that's Old Good Wizard, that guy in the crown is The King. That guy who looks really evil is The Ork Wizard"). Actors were fine, nothing bad about their performances but nothing really exceptional. The Half-Ork Lady's story got a bit close to the 'Teach me about your Human-love' territory at points but I didn't see the twist coming at the end of her arc. (Note: For all I know, it might be a really common fantasy twist. I never read the genre.) I didn't get why she and the Head Knight were into each other, they didn't seem to have any chemistry I could perceive. (Note: I am not very good at seeing that in films anyway.)

Once I got to grips with who was who in a very basic sense (not too hard, for example the Old Good Wizard is called The Guardian) then I followed along just fine. I enjoyed most of it, it was definitely better than Hobbit 3. My mum liked that film but she's an old lady and not used to modern blockbuster spectacle film-making. (I saw all 3 Hobbits with her, actually, she was a fan of the books and films and enjoyed all the Jackson movies. I thought Hobbit 3 was pretty dull in a lot of ways but I wouldn't tell her that.) She probably wouldn't like this because she wouldn't know what the fuck is going on from the start. She finds current Doctor Who and Sherlock confusing enough but she likes those regardless. Baseline knowledge probably helps. Maybe Warcraft would be derivative enough to work though? I wouldn't say I 'turned my brain off' but I did have to let stuff like proper nouns just wash over me and just roll with what was going on.

What impressed me was how far Prequel-era George Lucas-style film-making has come. That is, how far using about 5 human actors, some mo-cap and V.O., and like a billion computers has come. The orks, magic, and other fantasy elements looked seamless with the humans and the film has none of those wierd ass fake looking environmental lighting problems the prequels have.

To be honest, the best part of the movie was how the orks were handled as a group. At first I thought they were going to be a typical mindless horde with a demagogue, imperialist ruler but they're actually a group with internal politics, customs, and norms. This is probably one of the few times I've been watching a blockbuster and I've felt that it's a shame that the humans and their invaders couldn't just talk it out. If anything, the human faction was written more flatly but not in some dumb 'IT TURNS OUT IT'S MAN' way. The humans were good, dutiful, were willing to talk to the orks, and had a clear motivation of wanting to defend themselves. They had little internal conflict, except for when the Head Knight disagreed with the King over military tactics and suddenly didn't trust the Old Good Wizard for no reason (even though he's totally right). It was nice to see that all the sides in the conflict had some motivation beyond 'We're the Good Army' and 'We're the Evil Army'.

I did smirk at couple of the lighter moments and character interactions. The hero characters were likeable. There's a lot of stuff about parenthood, specifically fatherhood, running through the film (as Mark Kermode pointed out). I guess that's meant to be the emotional anchor, and it half works at times, but I guess I'm not that bothered about ork families, as I'm a horrible racist, or the linage of the Head Knight, as I'm way too young to be a father. The very last scene (especially the last shot) is the worst kind of 'tune in for the sequel' crap, it's cringe-worthy,  but the main plot of the film feels resolved so I wasn't too caught up on that. Action scenes are well-directed, the quieter scenes are well-directed too.

The film would probably be better if it did a better job establishing what the fuck is going on from the start (it's not very complex) and having one main character that we (or I) could really get emotionally invested in but it does actually do a lot of things really well. It definitely does not deserve the 27% slamming Rotten Tomatoes score it has. I think a 50% score would be fairer. Reviewing films with a percentage is bull anyway. You'll like it if you can get on board with its schlocky unapologetic fantasy-ness and don't get confused watching a movie where you can't remember anyone's name where characters just name other Important Things and Stuff at the drop of a hat.

I'd recommend it if you can also see it for free, or if it's on TV, or if the DVD or Blu-Ray is on sale. It's A-OK.

[Mu.]

Double posting as I saw The Nice Guys today. Surprisingly, I have less to say about it than Warcraft. This is because The Nice Guys is unequivocally really good and I cannot not recommend it. Seriously, go see it.

Crowe's and Gosling's performances are great. Crowe does a great hard-boiled tough-guy and Gosling is a great mixture of a devoted but questionable father, an decent detective occasionally capable of some great detecting, and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo (if Shaggy liked booze and tail instead of Scooby snacks). The (slightly) shifting cast of villains, hired hits of course, are all really entertaining too. I was going to say that Matt Bomer and Keith David stood out to me as the best ones but looking back, that'd be vastly unfair to Beau Knapp and (big twist spoiler, don't click without seeing the film!!!) Yaya DaCosta. Also, the film has a few child actors and they're all actually really good. Angourie Rice (who play's Gosling's daughter) seems like she could be a rising star.

The comedy was consistently funny, I can't think of a single flat joke. Gosling clowns very well in this. Crowe, by the nature of the character he plays, has a much more subdued performance which can get quite tense at first. The action also thrilled me.

There's clearly a lot of 'themes' and 'ideas about serious stuff' in it, but I'm too dense to articulate what fiction for adults says half the time, so I'll just say it does have a lot sub-text (is that the word?) about innocence, corruption, and idealistic ethics against cynical, noir detective ethics. The 70s style is really well realised, nothing seemed out of place to me (a person who wasn't around until a couple of decades later).

All in all, great film. Go see it.