What films have you watched recently?

Haych

goldtop said:

Haych said:

Salting the Battlefield

Part three of the Johnny Worricker trilogy.  Better than Turks & Caicos (Pt2) but still not on a par with the first of the three instalments, Page Eight.

(Penny drops) I didn't realise Page Eight was the first of a trilogy when I wrote the stuff above. This probably explains the plot device that was strangely dropped. I'll watch the others...

Not really sure what you mean, although I've slept a few times since watching Page Eight, what was dropped?  On the whole I did enjoy the trilogy but if they'd left it as just the first film I would still have enjoyed it.

fretmeister

Bad times at the El Royale

First time I've seen it.

Loved it. Great cast, particularly good performance from Jeff Bridges, and I really like that the mystery of the identity of the person on the thing was not revealed. Not everything needs to be explained. The time line of the film allows 2 or 3 educated guesses as to what the answer could be and that's great.

Excellent set design too, had a really good look about it.

8.5/10

bobblehat

Love and Monsters  - Enjoyable scifi action romp. Nice idea for a movie and probably could have been better 7/10 (Netflix)
American Assasin -  Good but not great .  7/10 (Netflix) 
Trial of the Chicago 7 - Excellent courtroom drama , surprisingly fun given the subject matter. 9/10 (Netflix)

axisus

I got rather burned out on Animations some years ago, so I don't watch them much any more, however, we sat around with a family takeaway and put of The Mitchells vs the machines yesterday (Netflix) and I have to say that we all really enjoyed it! Yeah, it's not an amazing film or anything, but it was just a lot of good old family fun.

I find it hard to score stuff like this but it's currently on 8/10 with imdb and 98% with Rotten tomatoes, very good scores.

The pug is wonderful!

axisus

Philly_Q said:

Wonder Woman 1984

Unfortunately about halfway through they introduce the invisible jet, and then it all gets increasingly stupid.  The ending is quite sweet in a sappy sort of way, but the whole thing is just way too bloated.

Blueingreen

Rocketman.  Elton John biopic. Reviews have been patchy but I had quite high hopes for this.  I ended up thinking it was more watchable than most terrible movies, but it was still a terrible movie.

The first (but far from the last) problem is Taron Egerton. At no point did I suspend disbelief enough to think I was watching Elton John rather than a completely different bloke wearing his clothes. And his singing was nowhere near good enough.

That might seem unrealistically pernickety, but I thought Jamie Fox managed a convincing impersonation of Ray Charles in “Ray” and Joaquin Phoenix did the same for Johnny Cash in “Walk The Line”.  Elton should have been easier (less idiosyncratic voice, the outfits do a lot of the work for you) but Egerton doesn’t get close.

I could pick other holes, but this kind of project needs to start with good casting of the main man. Without that you’re holed below the waterline before you start. 4/10

Snap

@Blueingreen ;
I thought Rocketman was truly atrocious, as bad as the Queen film, actually, no, worse.

EricTheWeary

axisus said:

I got rather burned out on Animations some years ago, so I don't watch them much any more, however, we sat around with a family takeaway and put of The Mitchells vs the machines yesterday (Netflix) and I have to say that we all really enjoyed it! Yeah, it's not an amazing film or anything, but it was just a lot of good old family fun.

I find it hard to score stuff like this but it's currently on 8/10 with imdb and 98% with Rotten tomatoes, very good scores.

The pug is wonderful!

Oddly enough just hear a review of that, sounds good. 

Snap said:

@Blueingreen ;
I thought Rocketman was truly atrocious, as bad as the Queen film, actually, no, worse.

I’ll have to watch Rocketman now as I struggle to imagine a film worse than Bo Rap. 

Dopesick

The Stoned Age

Slacker Gen X style movie from the mid 90s. Think Waynes World, Airheads, Dazed & Confused etc. In fact, the review tagline on the front cover says ‘Better than Dazed And Confused’. Yeah...that’s not true at all. Two loser metalhead guys try to score with hot chicks and get drunk. That’s the premise. This sucked pretty bad.

Kidulthood / Adulthood / Brotherhood

That’s right, I ran the gauntlet of all three Noel Clarke (yes yes we know the stories) rudebwoi movies about gangs, youth culture and personal development. Remarkably I managed to watch through all of them quite easily, and by the third installment Brotherhood, they did ease up a bit on the old yoot speak which was beginning to drive me insane. Kidulthood is definitely the darkest, but there were some proper comedy moments in Brotherhood.

Philly_Q

I also feel like I should watch Rocketman, if only for comparison with Bohemian Rhapsody.  Is it on Netflix now?  I don't want to have to pay for it.

goldtop

Haych said:

goldtop said:

Haych said:

Salting the Battlefield

Part three of the Johnny Worricker trilogy.  Better than Turks & Caicos (Pt2) but still not on a par with the first of the three instalments, Page Eight.

(Penny drops) I didn't realise Page Eight was the first of a trilogy when I wrote the stuff above. This probably explains the plot device that was strangely dropped. I'll watch the others...

Not really sure what you mean, although I've slept a few times since watching Page Eight, what was dropped?  On the whole I did enjoy the trilogy but if they'd left it as just the first film I would still have enjoyed it.

I'll watch the other two before discussing, as I don't like to find out about plots in advance, but there was a sudden detail in Page Eight that seemed suspiciously like a 'plant or payoff' plot device. (See here: https://screencraft.org/2019/11/28/17-plot-devices-you-can-use-to-elevate-your-story/ )

I can't remember how to do spoiler tags here, otherwise I'd mention it now.

Moominpapa

@Blueingreen ; I haven't seen Rocketman (and have zero wish to), but I'm sure you're probably right about it. One thing I would disagree with, though: I think Elton John has one of the most immediately recognizable voices in modern popular music. It has an odd, nasal quality to it. I haven't paid any attention to his work for about forty years now, but even if I don't recognize a song I'll know right away that it is him singing.

fretmeister

I thought Egerton did a great job as Elton (as did Elton) and unlike the Bo-Rap movie, Egerton did the singing at EJ's insistence.

LastMantra

Philly_Q said:

I also feel like I should watch Rocketman, if only for comparison with Bohemian Rhapsody.  Is it on Netflix now?  I don't want to have to pay for it.

I thought rocketman was alright. I didn't know anything about Elton though and it never really crossed my mind while watching it that he didn't look or sound like the man. For a fan or someone that knows a lot about him it might not hit the mark but as a film in it's own right I actually quite enjoyed it. 

EricTheWeary

@Philly_Q yes it is. 

ICBM

Blueingreen said:

That might seem unrealistically pernickety, but I thought Jamie Fox managed a convincing impersonation of Ray Charles in “Ray” and Joaquin Phoenix did the same for Johnny Cash in “Walk The Line”.

Really? I thought Phoenix was unwatchable in Walk The Line - just completely unconvincingly wrong, I only managed a few minutes of it - but Egerton was really quite good in Rocketman. I haven't seen Ray but Foxx looks pretty good in stills.

SPECTRUM001

chillidoggy said:

equalsql said:

Badlands (1973)   Amazon Prime rental

 Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen in a film about a young girl bewitched by a cool but murderous binman. A chase movie set in the Badlands of Montana directed by Terence Malick.

Beautifully filmed, stunning cinematography and a relaxed dreamy vibe. Spacek  is brilliant as the young besotted teenager who is detached from the reality of the situation she has gotten herself into whilst Sheen manages to play a character who is not only incredibly cool, but is magnetic and likeable but a completely cold blooded killer.

An amazing, slow burn hypnotic masterpiece.

10/10

Absolutely agree 100%. 

It is a truly marvellous film. I particularly find its emptiness quite intoxicating.

Legend has it (so I don't know if this is entirely true) that after release, Badlands was considered so good, that Malick had free reign from the studios to do anything he wanted.

And then a slightly absurd rumour started he was making a film about a Green Awning. And that the term "Green Awning" became synonymous for creative control.

Philly_Q

SPECTRUM001 said:

Legend has it (so I don't know if this is entirely true) that after release, Badlands was considered so good, that Malick had free reign from the studios to do anything he wanted.

And then a slightly absurd rumour started he was making a film about a Green Awning. And that the term "Green Awning" became synonymous for creative control.

I've never heard that Green Awning story before!  I do know that he only made one more film after Badlands then disappeared for 20 years.  And then he suddenly became very prolific in the 2010s.  I think I've only seen Badlands, The Thin Red Line and The New World, all fascinating in their different ways.

LastMantra

+1 for badlands. One of those movies I caught a bit just as I was going to bed and ended up having to watch it to the end. Mr sheen was super cool.

Big inspiration on tarentino especially true romance which even has the same xylophone piece throughout. 

Philly_Q

So, I did watch Rocketman.

And I quite liked it.  I liked the approach, it's more of a musical than a biopic so it matters less if it's historically inaccurate.  I never really believed in Taron Egerton as Elton - he looks more like Alan Carr a lot of the time - but I think he has a bloody good stab at the singing.  Almost all the actors sing at some point, whether they're any good or not, and they do OK.

It's really just the story of a boy who desperately wanted to be loved... and it doesn't do much more than labour that one point for two hours, but it does so entertainingly enough.

I'll probably have forgotten all about it by tomorrow.  But it's definitely better than Bo Rhap.

(Oh, and I never realised it was Bryce Dallas Howard playing his mum!)