What films have you watched recently?

phil_b

BigBearKris said:

Extraction on Netflix.

Chris Hemsworth doing the very extracting. Action packed and really well shot. Plot is predicable and acting could be much better, but it was enjoyable 2hrs imho. Switch your brain off and enjoy the shooting/fighting/car chasing scenes.

6/10

Saw this a couple of days ago. I liked it but all the way through the film I was thinking it would of been much better if there were a team of extractors instead on an indestructible one man army

historyisjunk

Watched Nebraska again. Bruce Dern & everyone else doing a great job, bit like The Straight Story in tone, but maybe better.

Basic plot is old guy thinks he's won $1M in a prize draw. Rest of immediate family know he hasn't, younger son drives him from Montana to Nebraska to collect his "winnings" & they revisit some of the family & dysfunctional past on the way. Thoughtful, downbeat & genuinely funny. (Nothing to do with Bruce Windscreen album)

Also it's in Black N White & was made in Cinemascope, so really good in cinema, or possibly on the right kind of TV.

Cosmicblue

Watched The Healer on Netflix - decent cast, no one gets killed...likeable story.

Longtallronnie

We’ve started watching the marvel films in chronological order as there’s some I’ve never seen. 

Captain America - The First Avenger
Very enjoyable, skinny Steve Rogers was just plain weird though. 

Captain Marvel
Had some good bits but the first half hour was so bad we nearly switched off. Not one I’d rewatch. 

Incredible Hulk

Usually a fan of Ed Norton but didn’t really feel this one. Read that he was hoping to do a trilogy in a similar vein to Dark Knight - maybe it would’ve been interesting? Ultimately prefer Mark Ruffalo in the later films. 

hollywoodrox

A quiet place . It was ok 

family live in silence To avoid sharp eared alien beings eating them 

EricTheWeary

hollywoodrox said:

A quiet place . It was ok 

family live in silence To avoid sharp eared alien beings eating them 

I think ok is kind. Bag o’ shite with a completely ridiculous ending. 

EricTheWeary

Speaking of bag o' shite: Jason Bourne. 

In the earlier Bourne films he is an innocent caught up in something he doesn't want but now, on an unlikely pretext, he's just running around killing people willy nilly. 
Looks good, some good set piece stunts but it's a poor film. 

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

Speaking of bag o' shite: Jason Bourne. 

In the earlier Bourne films he is an innocent caught up in something he doesn't want but now, on an unlikely pretext, he's just running around killing people willy nilly. 
Looks good, some good set piece stunts but it's a poor film. 

I still haven't seen it, although I noticed it was on Film 4 this evening. My brother told me it was shite and I guess I believed him. 

I still find it strange that Greengrass and Damon decided to return to the series nearly 10 years later if they didn't have a good story to tell.  Maybe it was just an error of judgement.

boogieman

Talking of shite, we’ve just watched Knowing. Nic Cage proving yet again he’s mostly rubbish at acting. 

EricTheWeary

Philly_Q said:

EricTheWeary said:

Speaking of bag o' shite: Jason Bourne. 

In the earlier Bourne films he is an innocent caught up in something he doesn't want but now, on an unlikely pretext, he's just running around killing people willy nilly. 
Looks good, some good set piece stunts but it's a poor film. 

I still haven't seen it, although I noticed it was on Film 4 this evening. My brother told me it was shite and I guess I believed him. 

I still find it strange that Greengrass and Damon decided to return to the series nearly 10 years later if they didn't have a good story to tell.  Maybe it was just an error of judgement.

I find it quite hard to engage with. There are no relationships, there is no humour, there's no depth of character, no depth of plot, it's just one action sequence running into another. 
It feels like they had a meeting which said what people like in the Bourne movies is fighting and car chases so let's make one that has nothing else in it. 
I quite like the franchise, the first one in particular is great, but this adds nothing to it. 

ICBM

The Sense Of An Ending

Jim Broadbent in a mystery/drama about an elderly man who reconnects with his first love and finds out something he didn't want to. Broadbent is very good as usual - his character is obsessive and massively annoying (which explains nicely why he's divorced! From the equally good Harriet Walter) but he does it so well he remains uncomfortably watchable. Charlotte Rampling is listed in the opening credits, which is unfortunate as it's a real spoiler for who she later turns out to be. The rest of the cast are good, but some of their ages don't quite work given the timeline of the story. It's well-made, but a bit pedestrian - and the twist is somewhat predictable, of two possible options... you'll work out both of them fairly early on and just need to find out which it will be.

6/10

equalsql

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Wow..way better than I imagined it would be. Beautifully filmed and incredibly poignant. I was expecting a bit of whimsical fluff but this was both enchanting and deeply moving. Good performances all round but notably, an outstanding and heartbreaking  performance from Penelope Wilton.

HAL9000

Dunkirk. Despite a multitude of inaccuracies it was still way more watchable than expected. Main lesson to be learnt is that if you happen to be stranded on a French beach whilst surrounded by enemy forces, it's a good idea to stay as far away as possible from Harry Styles.

EricTheWeary

equalsql said:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Wow..way better than I imagined it would be. Beautifully filmed and incredibly poignant. I was expecting a bit of whimsical fluff but this was both enchanting and deeply moving. Good performances all round but notably, an outstanding and heatbreaking  performance from Penelope Wilton.

Just spotted that on iPlayer, will try to have a look. 

ICBM

EricTheWeary said:

equalsql said:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Wow..way better than I imagined it would be. Beautifully filmed and incredibly poignant. I was expecting a bit of whimsical fluff but this was both enchanting and deeply moving. Good performances all round but notably, an outstanding and heatbreaking  performance from Penelope Wilton.

Just spotted that on iPlayer, will try to have a look. 

I watched that last night. Understated but brilliant. If I have a criticism it’s that the story is rather too predictable, but it’s extremely well-made and acted - as equalsql said, Penelope Wilton especially. She’s probably more associated with light comedy, but she’s in a different class here.

9/10

munckee

I finally watched Once Upon A Time In Hollywood last night.  I had read mixed reviews about it and thought it would be one for me.  Ultimately it reminded me of Layla.  When you're not listening to it you think its really cool, but you forget about the half of it that's just rubbish.

Not sure what the purpose of weaving in the true story element into the fiction really didn't seem to add anything.

That being said I loved the bruce lee bits.

Haych

Taken 3

Thought I’d seen this before but I didn’t remember any of it. 

Not a bad plot and certainly a better film than the rather meh second taken film. Mostly predictable although I didn’t see the twist right at the end coming, I must admit. 

It was rather ruined by the action sequences, though. I’m sorry but the portrayal of one man being soooooooo special forces that he’s invincible and has a mind that works faster than Gary Kasparov is ridiculous. 

A car is seen jumping Six feet in the air over carriageways on a motorway but is still drivable. The same car gets hit by two other vehicles and is not only still drivable but is seen minutes later racing around the city without a scratch. 

Later in the film, Liam Neeson calmly leaps out of a car which is summersaulting down a hillside and sustains not a bruise or scratch. The car then spontaneously explodes for no other reason than it’s finished its stunt. 

Neeson can evade capture, dodge rapid machine gun fire, he wins every punch up against gangs of armed thugs and is an expert marksman who could shoot a gnat of a donkeys back at 100 yards with only a 9mm pistol. 

It’s all just a bit beyond the realms of possibility, never mind plausibility. I get that it’s an action film and they are generally a bit over the top but I just found this scene after scene of wouldn’t-ever-happen-in-real-life. 

Despite being a decent movie I can’t bring myself to score it higher than 5/10 just because the action ruined an action movie. 

Philly_Q

Extraction

There's nothing remotely original about it but it's good entertaining stuff with lots of fighting, shooting, helicopter explosions etc.  Good effort from the first-time director to make something on such a big scale.  But I have to say, less than 24 hours later it's already starting to fade in my memory.

Haych

21 Bridges

The lad wanted to see this at the cinema but for one reason or another we never got round to it. Last night he and I stayed up late to watch it on Prime after everyone else went to bed. 

In hindsight I’m glad I didn’t pay to watch this after all. 

The plot: there isn’t much of a plot at all and what plot there is becomes obvious after the first 15 minutes, I could see the ending coming from that far away. 

The acting is non existent. Half the movie is one big chase, the other half a series of shoot-outs between the perps and the cops. I don’t follow the Oscars or Academy Awards or anything like that but if this won any of them for acting the judges want their bumps feeling. 

The dialogue is awful, truly awful. I think the production company were trying to raise the budget or bring in some extra income by running a swear jar among the cast. More “fuck” than a marathon gang-bang at an orgy in a whore-house. Completely unnecessary and just grates on your nerves hearing it so often. 

Don’t get me wrong, I expected some language, but when it’s every other word it’s unrealistic and loses its impetus as even a cheap way of emphasising the gravity of the line being delivered. It’s just swearing for the sake of swearing and actually it only highlights how bad the plot and the script are. 

All in all it’s joined the list of films I wished I’d never watched, including this film there are only four on the list: Armageddon, Cruel Intentions, Accidental Tourist and this bag of garbage!

0/10

boogieman

Hidden Figures. Three brainy black women in segregated 1960s US help to get America back in the space race after those pesky Russians keep beating them. It was rather good, all based on a true story too.