The film does not do anything REALLY new, as it wears it's influences proudly, but it does it very well. The fight scenes are freaking amazing.

And def better than Ringu 2, which I thought was the weakest of them. This borrows more from Akira and Elfen Lied and has a very Stranger Things feel given the common influence and fuses that with stuff like Old Boy and I Saw The Devil.

The sequel should be very, very interesting as they will likely lean into Elfen Lied a lot more.

Guy is REALLY into trilogies, so I also expect a final film.

Secretary (2002) - Maggie Gyllenhall and James Spader were great together in this, pretty amusing - though way too many people seem to think it's an amazing romantic comedy and you know their relationship isn't amazingly great through the majority of the film. Didn't realise how much this probably influenced Fifty Shades of Grey though given his name is literally MR GREY and it's about BDSM. AND SHE WORKS FOR HIM. 

Cleveland Abduction (2015) - This is based on true events, so it does make the story a bit hard to watch at times, but the performance by Taryn Manning was fantastic. Definitely not a movie I could watch again due to the themes, and the ending while positive was also pretty depressing where the main character Michelle Knight is concerned.

Jackass 4.5 (2022) - Behind the scenes of the making of Jackass Forever essentially. There is a few extra stunts thrown in but most of it was how they came up with some of the stunts. If you love Jackass/enjoyed Jackass Forever definitely give it a watch. It is pretty sad that Bam wasn't even in this either though. I know they had a massive falling out and he probably would've tried to sue them if they kept his scenes but damn it sucks.

The In Between (2022) - Pretty cute/sweet/funny movie though. I really enjoyed it, but it was really hard to get attached to the couple/boyfriend when you knew how it was going to end. The story and performance was really good though. Again it's probably not the right audience where males are concerned but I did enjoy it a lot. 

Top Gun:

Only watched it for the first time last night, streaming probably doesn’t do it justice but I enjoyed it for what it was. Very smart move making it apolitical and it’s never really shown who the enemies are.

Every one in this film looks uncomfortably hot.

Top Gun Maverick:

Fantastic, just like the original just a straight up action film. Enemies are nameless again, no setting up an ultragigaverse or anything of that nature. Incredible to watch in the Titan lounge, VERY bass heavy which adds to the atmosphere.

I ended up watching a couple of movies over the weekend, the first was finally seeing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
in theatres. Unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed the movie, in my opinion, it's the second-best movie of phase four (Spider-Man: No Way Home being my favourite). I also watched Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers with the kids, they loved it, I thought there were some cool cameo appearances, however, outside of that, I didn't care for the movie at all.

Watched Mitchells vs. the Machines on Netflix tonight. Kids pick but I’d wanted to see it after a few good reviews. Strongly recommended for the dads here especially. It’s funny, cute, and has some real punches in the feels too.

Top Gun: Maverick- No lie, this is probably now my favorite sequel. Like Creed II/Rocky IV it elevates it's predecessor giving it more weight. The flying scenes, while not as nice to look at are far more dramatic and intense, you can feel the G's and the final mission has so many layers to it. A lot of callbacks and juxtapositions to the first movie as well and we feel a journey coming full circle at the end. This is how you do a sequel and it totally exceeded my 36 years worth of expectations. 10/10

Watched Ambulance the other day. Brilliant movie. Michael Bay doing absurd Michael Bay things. Gyllenhaal dialing it up to 11. I couldn't really ask for much more than maybe someone more pronounced to play opposite Jake.

Still though it was a blast to watch.

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

A film of two halves. I say two halves, but the second half, which takes up two thirds of the film, is by far the less interesting "half".

The first section, and the section I knew something about going into the film, is all about the drill sergeant and his retinue of privates, training to become soldiers. Killers. The entire 45 minutes is pure brilliance, and if the film had ended there, it would have received my full praise. 10/10, the Dave Meltzer five stars, the works.

There is barely a single word of normal dialogue spoken in this 45 minutes. All the words spoken are the drill sergeant yelling at his barracks, and the privates shouting back at him, with around 50% of their words being "Sir". These dialogue scenes are interspersed with action sequences and montages of their training. Somehow this long sequence of shouting and montages is able to tell a wonderful and captivating story centred around three characters. The drill sergeant, the private we know as "Joker" who becomes one of the leaders of the group, and Private Pyle. Pyle is an overweight and kinda stupid private. He tries his hardest, but he lacks the physical stamina and intelligence of his comrades, so he falls behind. We witness his struggles and his mental decay first hand. Joker tries his hardest to mentor him with empathy and understanding, and he succeeds, to some extent. This sequence ends tragically yet inevitably, with Pyle killing the drill sergeant and then himself in one of the most dramatic and heartbreaking sequences I've ever seen.

We then go straight to Vietnam and 90 minutes of pretty boring and generic "war bad" content, with barely any connection to the previous 45 minutes. The connective tissue is Joker, who was a pretty unremarkable character to begin with, and continues to be so. For me there was nothing to latch onto in this second section. Very little interested me. The characters, the dialogue, the action. It was all just so blah.

One third masterpiece, two thirds garbage. Overall, it's a negative.

The second half of Full Metal Jacket is definitely a grower, I have much more appreciation now for the second half and I can find things in it that are equal to or better than the first half.

Something I forgot to mention: there's no mention of Private Pyle shooting the drill sergeant and them himself. It's all swept into the rug, never mentioned again. I'd have liked to see some kind of commentary on that, but nope, straight to generic Vietnam war stuff. The most interesting part of the story thrown away.

May 28, 2022 18:25:11 GMT Emperor said:

Something I forgot to mention: there's no mention of Private Pyle shooting the drill sergeant and them himself. It's all swept into the rug, never mentioned again. I'd have liked to see some kind of commentary on that, but nope, straight to generic Vietnam war stuff. The most interesting part of the story thrown away.

It is kind of what you do in the military though, compartmentalize (literally and figuratively put him in a box) and move on.

Top Gun Maverick
I loved every single moment of it. It was crazy fun, the action/cinematography was amazing. It was a good balance of funny/emotional for obvious reasons with Goose/Rooster plot and Iceman. Tom Cruise looked like he was having the best time of his life filming this. The same with Miles Teller and Glen Powell. Great chemistry and acting by everyone.
Also praise the person who made sure to include the beach scene again. Because that was heavenly 😍

Absolutely can’t wait to see this movie again!

Top Gun Maverick was great fun. I don’t know if any of the mission made much sense, but who cares? The movie was exactly what it was supposed to be. Cruise is still crazy, the young pilots were perfectly cast, and the action was great. It was even funny at times.

Perfect time at the theater.

I should have used better words for the flying scenes. They weren't as stylish as the first and of course they were touched up in post production which made them feel less authentic. It by no means deterred from the movie. Inside the cockpit though was way more intense. Also the F-14 in the first film had way more stage presence than the F-18E/F. Just a bigger airplane with those variable sweep wings gave it a flare of it's own.

So watching "Threads" was a pretty fucked experience. Can't imagine the POV of being a kid who's actually from Sheffield watching this in the 80's, fuuuckkk...

Pretty sure that scene with the lady holding her baby is going to stick with me.

Ugh. Thanks, BBC!

EDIT: Scratch this. The Belarusian film "Come and See" was so, so much worse. I think that definitely wins "best horror movie" for me.

This was so much more terrifying than any slashers, ghosts, ghouls or zombies. Simply the lengths to which humanity is willing to dehumanize itself creeps me out far more by comparison.

War movies should always be filmed like this. I don't think it's tasteful or even fair to be able to sit back and watch a Disneyfied propaganda piece. War is hell and should be depicted as such. Maybe we'd have less of it in real life (or more likely, less idiots clamoring for it) if that was the standard.

Threads is an absolute classic. As glad it is available now as it used to be a bitch to get a hold of.

Never did get around to seeing Come and See.

Jun 3, 2022 21:50:00 GMT c said:

Threads is an absolute classic. As glad it is available now as it used to be a bitch to get a hold of.

Never did get around to seeing Come and See.

It's free on Youtube actually, if you don't mind dealing with subtitles or ads. I highly recommend watching it at least once, I think you'd appreciate it.

Will have to take a look one day. Threads is on youtube as well these days. So much easier than digging out my old PAL DVD player to watch the damn thing.

The Legend of La Llorona - it was so so so BAD. I don’t get how a simple horror movie could be made so bad. I also like the actress Autumn Reeser and even then she was horrible in this. Honestly nothing redeemable about this POS.

Separation - an interesting premise to show how the mind deals with grief, but it was so slow and boring, and honestly all over the place. Even with the decent cast, they seemed bored out of their mind.

I need to stop watching the horror movies mum gives me I think
Hahaha

Interceptor. God this movie is BAD.
The dialogue is corny and painful. The action is very slim pickings. The acting - usually I like Elsa and Luke but JESUS this was bad. It seemed like they were having fun and they just accepted yeah this is shit. Chris Hemsworth cameos were fun, but super out of place. They did not fit the film vibe at all.

The storyline was average at best, and of course all the best parts happen in the last 10 minutes. Which I know it’s a movie and you have to just accept they aren’t realistic, but the ‘countdown’ to the conclusion of the movie and everything the lead pulls off is so far fetched it makes it near impassible to just ‘enjoy’ what it is.

Lastly, the sound mixing was done horribly, and I understand this was the directors first time, but surely it wasn’t everyone’s first time.

I was excited for this movie, and now I hate myself for watching it.

Jurassic World: Dominion

I don’t know why I was expecting anything mind blowing, but it’s enjoyable for what it is. Didn’t care for it being centred around locusts more so than dinosaurs nor did I care for any of the human characters which is the problem with most movies like this.

Dinosaurs were cool when shown though.

I’m sure all the tin foils will latch on to this that’s its a hint the government really is destroying crops across America 🤦🏻‍♀️.

Seemed like an amazing concept with dinosaurs everywhere now and humans adapting to living with them, but felt the execution was poor.

The tin foil hats too would be correct, one of the influences for the film was the DARPA Insect Allies program. DOD did studies on whether on use they could deploy viruses via insect transmission to that would gene edit plants to allow for widespread gene editing of crops without needing to replant. Would be a rapid way to respond to blight or bio-attacks on our food supply, as well as, engineer a bioweapon to turn the tide in a long war.

Torn Hearts was a mixed bag (you could apply that to Blumhouse in general, really) at times but I enjoyed it. Katey Segal pulled a lot of weight with her role here, but the remaining cast certainly kept pace better than I expected.

It's not as campy as one may expect for a Blumhouse production but it has its moments, too. A little bit too formulaic but nothing criminal or insultingly cliche either.

Most of the original music is god awful here, but then again I'm not the biggest fan of bubblegum country. All in all it's a fun enough time waster. Somewhere between 5-6 out of 10 if I had to rate it.

Last Seen Alive: one of the most run of the mill films I’ve ever seen, something you’d just find on streaming and flicking through channels and be ok with it. Leave this genre to Liam Neeson

Though

SPOILER: Click to show

The cop should have turned on him at the end, so many hints towards this happening it would make sense.

Him being mad at the guy in the car when he says the girl is dead:
He’s annoyed he’s screwed up the kidnapping.

“I’m on a cop salary, not on a developer salary”

Why he is friends with all the crooks in town.

I’m not even fully convinced that wasn’t the original ending & they changed it :lol:

Jun 9, 2022 15:35:23 GMT System said:

Jurassic World: Dominion

I don’t know why I was expecting anything mind blowing, but it’s enjoyable for what it is. Didn’t care for it being centred around locusts more so than dinosaurs nor did I care for any of the human characters which is the problem with most movies like this.

Dinosaurs were cool when shown though.

I’m sure all the tin foils will latch on to this that’s its a hint the government really is destroying crops across America 🤦🏻‍♀️.

Ugh. Of course. I haven't seen it yet but figured this would happen; all hype, no real substance. It's been that way since the new series started.

First movie: "HEY! 'Member the ORIGINAL!? Too bad we're not that movie!"

Second movie: "HEY! We got Jeff Goldblum for FIFTEEN seconds!"

It's not just childhood nostalgia making me say that, more so the lazy writing and lack of imagination. And definitely the unlikeable hoo-mons.

Chris Pratt is the only one I give a damn about but that's mostly because he wrote a song about the greatest pony who ever lived.

R.I.P. Lil' Sebastian

Saw Jurassic World last night. It sucked. Dinosaurs are fun, but there was literally no reason to bring back the original cast, they recreated the clone girls mythology just to make her important, and it really felt like a giant swing and miss on any potentially entertaining stories.

The first of the Jurassic World’s was entertaining despite having too many political themes, the second one was less entertaining with even more politics, so it shouldn’t be surprising that this one was another political statement that wasn’t particularly interesting and unfortunately was only mildly entertaining.

I hated the “dinosaurs are free to roam now” idea from the second, but really felt like they could’ve done something interesting with it. But instead they did monster locusts and gmo’s in farming in order to get Sadler and Grant back and oof.

Six Jurassic movies and I still think only one is super good, two are entertaining, and three of them are ones I wouldn’t watch again. Feels more like a sharknado success ratio then one of our most beloved IP creations of last 30 years.

I was going to write the same thing about Jurassic World: Dominion, saw it Friday and was completely underwhelmed.



You could have really dealt with the ramifications of dinosaurs roaming free in the world but instead they are just side dressing for political themes and a half assed Mission Impossible storyline. I felt sorry for Sam Neil, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum that they were wasted on a film like this. Plus Chris Pratt's character could have died at any time, tired of seeing him being the Raptor whisperer. We needed the vicious Raptors from the first movie. 6/10

My hot take ranking of the franchise:

Jurassic Park

Jurassic World
The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park 3

Jurassic World: Dominion

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World Dominion - was fun enough but the storyline was severely disappointing. I was expecting something more from it. Especially the ramifications about dinosaurs being in the real world, definitely wasn’t expecting controlled locusts destroying small business food? It sounds so unbelievably stupid that is what they went with. I loved the original cast being back but they could’ve been used much better and also he was Alan was in love with her for that long and they didn’t even slightly keep in touch? Riiiight.

I like Owen and Claire as a couple/their characters in general but I just felt like there was too much happening all at once but very little development from anyone. The timeline doesn’t make sense. The villain was predictable (especially with the characters name).

The best part about it was the ending tbh. I did like that it was a ‘happy’ ending for the dinosaurs/humans but it still doesn’t address the ramifications of dinosaurs living with humans that I expected this movie to do.

Not really disappointed by the movie, just a bit meh about it.

Wish You Were Here - Australian movie with a great cast. Decent story? Or so I thought. It was so bad. The cast is good but they clearly didn’t give two flying shits about this movie. It was BAD. The story was bad, the timeline/editing was somehow worse. It was short thankfully but god damn it was painful.

Saw Top Gun Maverick again. Loved it just as much the second time as much as the first. Was incredibly fun. Love the cast, story/action.
Phenomenal movie.