June Movie Thread

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 Blue Straggler 12 Jun 2019

I've seen Godzilla: King of the Monsters and X-Men: Dark Phoenix

I can't be bothered to write anything about these films. 4.5 or 5/10 and 6 or 6.5/10, in the latter case I am being generous due to The Good Acting. 

 

Removed User 13 Jun 2019
In reply to Blue Straggler:

Saw Rocketman last night and it's hugely entertaining. I was expecting it to be in the same vein as Bohemian Rhapsody (Dexter Fletcher on both). I'm sure it's a very loose retelling of events, but it's entirely unflinching in its showing of Elton John's addiction issues, and a reminder of what a great body of work he has behind him.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

> I've seen Godzilla: King of the Monsters and X-Men: Dark Phoenix

> I can't be bothered to write anything about these films. 4.5 or 5/10 and 6 or 6.5/10, in the latter case I am being generous due to The Good Acting. 

I watched Godzilla last night .

I really enjoyed it.   Yeah it's giant monsters, yeah its silly, everything is convenient and the motivations are just daft but I just accepted this aspect and enjoyed seeing some stunning creature effects and proper  homage to the source material.   There is lots of easter eggs for fans the first one I noticed in the opening scenes when a protester was holding up a placard with the phrase " Destroy all monsters" on it.    

Compared to the 2014 its vastly better , Godzilla gets plenty of screen time .

The rubber suited originals use to have me in stitches when I would watch them late night as a teenager.    

Them were the days.

TWS

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Are you going to watch the Matrix and Jaws flashback in July ?

I definitely am.   

I'd like them to show the original "terminator" sometime to.

In reply to Removed UserTonyOD:

Went to see this last week (Rocketman) & was pleasantly surprised.

Quite dark in places but an interesting watch.

More excited for The Blue Brothers re-run at my local next month though 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

> Are you going to watch the Matrix and Jaws flashback in July ?

The Matrix most probably. Wasn't aware of Jaws, I'll check dates, often these things run nationwide for one night only so it depends on availability, I missed the Tim Burton Batman double bill recently. 

I saw the first Terminator on the big screen about three years on a very well thought out "apocalypse" triple bill that didn't go for the obvious. It was Dr Strangelove, The Terminator, and Shaun of the Dead. A good way to spend a quiet Sunday!

The Terminator stands up REMARKABLY well. 

 alan moore 13 Jun 2019
In reply to Blue Straggler:

Aladdin. Fairly rubbish. Will Smith's comedy role was the high point.

I Am Mother. Quite good with some unforeseen twists on the Artificial intelligence theme.

Love and Death and Robots. Gratuitous fun.

The Highwaymen. Slow.

In reply to Removed UserTonyOD:

I just saw Rocketman, thankfully a good friend surprisingly recommended it as I had written it off as "not for me". Elements of it were still "not for me" (I don't tend to do musicals, biopics, and least of all musical biopics, and I gave Bohemian Rhapsody a begrudging 4/10...) but I really enjoyed Rocketman despite not being a fan of Elton and not even being that familiar with his biggest hits, not in the same way that I know Queen, Abba etc. 

The LA Troubadour Crocodile Rock sequence was brilliant feel good stuff, and the cast was really good. I'll put a better review up in the next few days. For now, 8/10 or even 8.5/10 not so much for my enjoyment but because it clearly hit all its targets. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Because of the poor reviews I hadn't thought of seeing it; now you've made me want to! Of course, I can't quite get out of my head just how electrifyingly good Elton was doing Pinball Wizard in Ken Russell's Tommy. It kind of exploded out of the screen at you, and stole the show really. (And what an amazing, virtuosic piece of film editing it was too: I've just looked at it again on YouTube.)

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Tommy trivia. The only film in which a lead acting Oscar nomination has been granted to someone for a role that is ENTIRELY sung. 

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Don’t forget my scoring system incorporates an assumption of what the makers were trying to achieve. Personally because I am not a fan of the genre etc maybe it would be more like a 7 but I try to be objective and wonder whether the makers achieved their aims. There is little I would change in this film. I didn’t so much like the “classic musical” moments where characters break into a song and dance number as part of the narrative, but that’s my problem not the film’s! The concert music sequences whilst short and at times truncates and for sure fantastical, were preferable. You admired the craft of The Greatest Showman. This is t quite up there (lower budget) but there’s some good stuff. A definite influence from Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe 

 Offwidth 18 Jun 2019
In reply to Blue Straggler:

A whimsical black comedy with the conceit that god is a miserable and nasty sod who lives in Belgium and spends his time on a computer in an enclosed flat,  causing chaos in the outside world. He lives with his compliant wife and dissatisfied daughter (his son having rebelled, escaped and died doing good). Great fun and very memorable despite being silly (eg. The route to the outside world is a long link between a washing machine in the flat and one in a launderette).

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_brand_new_testament

 Tom Valentine 18 Jun 2019
In reply to Offwidth:

Belgians seem to have a knack for dark comedy, if their TV shows are anything to go by.

 buzby 18 Jun 2019
In reply to Blue Straggler: I rented "THE KID" on sky a 2019 western. its dire and a real snooze fest , give it a miss. 

In reply to buzby:

Shame, another nail in the coffin of Dane Dehaan's career. I did spot this on the "straight to DVD" racks in Tesco and wondered if they made it on the cheap in between takes on the 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven, given the involvement of three major players from that film  

 Stichtplate 19 Jun 2019
In reply to Offwidth:

I really liked this too. God as a miserable Belgian seems more in accord with how the World’s turned out than some of the competing theories.

I finally got round to seeing “Kajaki: the true story”. Utterly compelling and very realistic. I really can’t recall seeing a more harrowing piece of film. Well worth watching on iPlayer (BBC2, 23:00, 15/06/19).

In reply to Stichtplate:

> I finally got round to seeing “Kajaki: the true story”. Utterly compelling and very realistic. I really can’t recall seeing a more harrowing piece of film. Well worth watching on iPlayer (BBC2, 23:00, 15/06/19).

I think I own this on DVD and when I tried to watch it last year I didn't get very far into it, it didn't engage. Thanks for prompting me to give it another try. 

I might be confusing it with some other similarly-named British film set in the same setting though. 

 Stichtplate 19 Jun 2019
In reply to Blue Straggler:

It’s fairly mundane (deliberately so) until the mine is triggered, from that point on I was totally gripped.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Brightburn
A generous 6/10

A well made, well acted inferior pretender to "Chronicle" (child has mystery superpowers, chooses not to become a superhero)
It tries to hard to keep the source of the power, and the motivations, a mystery. It's as if they wanted to be all enigmatic like last year's Hereditary and indeed Chronicle. But those two films do it well, whereas here it's just annoying. Still worth a look if in need of something to pass the time. The four or five main performances really are quite good for this sort of glossy B-movie. 

 Offwidth 20 Jun 2019
In reply to Blue Straggler:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/foxcatcher

Painful viewing of a 'car crash' in slow motion. Steve Carell is superb. 

Also quite liked this, but the new much sillier TV series is more fun:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/what_we_do_in_the_shadows

 aln 20 Jun 2019
In reply to Offwidth:

Is Ruffalo any good? I've been underwhelmed by him so far.

1
In reply to Stichtplate:

Thanks

 Offwidth 21 Jun 2019
In reply to aln:

Yes, he's hardly playing a hugely complex character but the physicality in the role is tough to carry off and he looks right in that.

In reply to aln:

> Is Ruffalo any good? I've been underwhelmed by him so far.

What have you seen him in?

He does seem to spread himself across high-end quality projects (The Kids Are Alright, Foxcatcher, Spotlight etc), blockbusters (Marvel), interesting little indie stuff (You Can Count on Me, Reservation Road), and questionable stuff (Now You See Me, The Brothers Bloom, Begin Again, 13 Going on 30)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Child's Play (2019)
A remarkable 6.5/10

Manages to throw in plot-relevant (as opposed to visual gags) references to ET, Terminator, Robocop, Hardware (nice one there, that's relatively obscure), Runaway etc.

Good performances, does the right thing by playing it pretty straight in order to MAKE it humorous i.e. it has a sense of its own ridiculousness therefore doesn't need to over-egg the whole "look how silly and funny this is" thing, and doesn't just rehash the first one (not that I've seen any Child's Play films, but this new one is about an Alexa-type thing run amok, rather than spiritual possession, and arguably is more - ahem - "believable" for it )

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Toy Story 4

6.5/10

Overall I enjoyed this, especially not only the return of Bo Peep but giving her a very prominent role. Her absence from Toy Story 3 (which I think went totally unacknowledged in the screenplay) is something that irked me about that film. I am not sure why I always liked Bo Peep as it is so long since I saw the first two films. Either it's because she is incongruous (a ceramic decoration amongst Andy's more boyish play toys) or maybe just because I always had a thing for Janine in Ghostbusters  Anyway. Lots of Bo Peep in Toy Story 4, so that is GOOD. And her scenes with Woody are the great emotional ones for this film. 

BUT (trying to avoid any story giveaways)

It feels awfully rushed and a lot of aspects are incoherent/inconsistent. It throws a bunch of new characters in but only really gives two of them any back story at all. One character starts out seeming like a very important one but very soon takes a back seat to proceedings, literally. The prominence of Bo Peep does come at the expense of the other characters, all of whom (aside from Buzz) seem relegated to token one-liner cameos. 

Back to some good....and this is something I changed my mind about after sleeping on it. Careful not to do any spoilers here but last night I thought there was a lurching inconsistent character change with the ostensible antagonist, but looking back, this character was actually pretty consistent; I think a second viewing might cause a different reading of that character through the first half. 
The voice casting was very good (especially this ostensible antagonist character)

And back to some bad! There is little tension in this. I wonder if Pixar pulled back a little on the peril, after that conveyor/incinerator scene in Toy Story 3 messed up so many people?

AND there was no short film accompanying it. Something to do with "Disney +" taking them all...


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