What was the last movie you saw...? Part IV

[Zzzptm]

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE

I enjoyed this film. It's a family drama where the family is an extended group of blood relatives and friends, and they just so happen to deal with the supernatural. There are comic moments, but the film is overall a serious piece, much in the vein of the previous film. It's a sequel to Afterlife, not a sequel to the first film.

I laughed, bought into the story, and got chills in the boss fight scenes. It's PG overall in tone, very kid-friendly. Worst swears are fudge and hell. No gore. I had a great ride and wouldn't say no to seeing it again.

For action, there are about a half-dozen fights sprinkled through the film and I had fun with each. The boss fight looks a lot like something out of BG3, very nice.

There's a lot of critical panning, but I'm wondering if they're missing the point of the film. Afterlife got similar treatment from critics. Both movies have overall favorable audience reactions. I'm one of those with favorable reactions and if you enjoyed Afterlife, you'll like this one, too.

[Charger]

Good to hear that! I am rather sure I will enjoy it immensly!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

I need to catch up, recently I've seen Dune Part II, Wicked Little Letters and Annie Hall


Dune: Part 2

The second of (I believe) 3 parts, directed again by Denis Villeneuve, it stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte Rampling.

Paul Atreides unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee (copied from IMDb... it's been a few weeks and I can't remember the plot!!).

Good things about this film are the visuals, the sound and some really solid acting and action. The story is slow, slow, quick, quick, slow but in a good way.

Bad things are Christopher Walken really looks out of place here as the Emperor, I doubt he knew what was going on... I usually like his work.

A good film overall, 7.5/10


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Annie Hall

The 1977 Woody Allen film which won the 1978 Best Picture and Best Actress Oscars. Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton with support from Carole Kane, Paul Simon, Shelley Duval and Christopher Walken (with a misspelled surname in the credits... as Wlaken!)

Allen plays a comedian who reflects on his failed relationships particularly focusing on the most recent with Keaton's Annie Hall an aspiring nightclub singer.

I blame the girlfiend as she found out this was the favourite film of an actor she likes... the film is rubbish, thank God it's 90 minutes long!! Look the 70s were a great decade for films... except 1977 seemingly. How the hell did this shoddy romantic drama win Oscars. It looks dreadful, the flashback scenes are confusing and ughh! I could go on... maybe it's just aged badly! 3/10


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Wicked Little Letters

A very British film starring Jessie Buckley, Olivia Colman, Timothy Spall, Anjana Vasan and Eileen Atkins.

In 1920s Littlehampton in West Sussex some residents start receiving profanity strewn letters including religious spinster Edith (Colman) the blame falls on rowdy Irish lass Rose (Buckley) who gets arrested. WPC Moss (Vasan) has suspicions and enlists the help of locals to investigate the true source of the letters.

This comedy drama is quite funny... and explicit as the content of some of the letters are read out. The story is a little far fetched (although based on true events), the WPC can see gapping holes in the investigation that her male colleagues miss or dismiss as irrelevant. Despite this being set in a seaside town in sleepy Sussex the casting is "colour blind" with way more black people being involved than you would actually have seen in the area at the time. For instance the WPC is rare enough but a black WPC - or black male PC for that matter - would have been rare even in large towns or cities. It doesn't bother me but it did stick out somewhat.

It's very enjoyable but I suspect it won't get much of a release outside the UK. 7/10

[Zzzptm]

Annie Hall has *not* aged well, not at all...

[Vyn]

Have never liked Annie Hall. I watched it on the recommendation of a friend combined with having heard about Woody Allen being some great comic genius.

Nope. I never watched another Woody Allen film because I thought Annie Hall was so bad. I distinctly remember forcing myself to stay for the entire movie just in case the ending was so awesome it made the rest worth while.

Nope. Horrible movie.

[Charger]

I have never seen a Woody Allen film I've liked!

[Charger]

LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY

A Hobbit's epic journey to destroy a ring of power.

I have not seen these in over 20 years so I thought I'd spend my vacation with them. Over 9 hours of material in 3 nights is a lot to take in for sure.

Fellowship Of The Ring still remains the best one. It opens the story brilliantly and eventhough it runs for nearly 3 hours it manages to hide the length in epic story telling and well balanced script. It doesn't take too long to introduce the characers and the comeradery is brilliant and the cast is just stellar. Even Liv Tyler somehow makes it work.

The Two Towers is where things get bit more tricky and the 3 hours start to work against itself. There is waaay too much needless stuff including some weird dream sequences and Pip and Merry travelling with a walking tree for about half the movie. This could have easily been 30 minutes shorter and it would have been much easier to watch. The epic fight sequence at the end saves a lot though.

The Return Of The King picks up the pace again a bit but still manages to linger on bit too long in scenes that make no difference to the end result...mainly ones featuring Arwen and her father. But the fight scenes are incredible and there are plenty of them. But the final 30 minutes is pretty much just waste of the viewers time. The ending could have easily been done in 10 minutes and it would have been great. Can't believe there's an over 4 hour version of this!

I had thought that the visuals would look dated by now but in fact part from few of the mass scenes and golum they do not. The trolls the nazguls the ghosts the weird elephant-thingys all look rather amazing still.
And ofcourse the story is epical there is no doubt about it and the cast does an amazing job. Sure couple of roles could have been cast better but Viggo Mortensen and Ian McKellen are SUBERB. Orlando Bloom, John Rhys Davies, Elijah Wood and Sean Astin do a great job as well.

Has time changed my views on the trilogy? Not much. I remember having the same issues with the movies back then than I had now. I remember sitting in the movie theater during the Return Of The King and waiting for it to end...there were so many black screens that I though oh great now it ends...but no...another pointless blabber blabber scene came.
And I also remember being in awe at the same scenes in the theater that I was in awe now. Maybe even more so now as taking into consideration that 20 years have passed and visual effect have gone to a whole new level...

Had there been little more aggressive editing been done especially in The Two Towers and the ending redone in Return and bit more thought gone to spacing this would be an amazing trilogy. Now it's just a brilliant one.


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[KiloDeltaCharlie]

If I'm honest the LOTR trilogy are probably my favourite trilogy of all time. I prefer the extended editions... about 12 hours in total if I recall. I remember watching all the extras and being fascinated about how they put it all together.

Yes The Two Towers has that middle film feel to it but there are some very important moments in it. I didn't mind the ending of the 3rd film, but I had read the books... there was a lot more ending they skipped over!

[Zzzptm]

Honestly, The Scouring of the Shire would make for an excellent animated feature. It's an overall lighthearted good vs evil battle with a WTF moment when we see Saruman - I thought he was beaten! But the Hobbits do it for themselves and win the day.

[Charger]

I never had much interest in the extended editions myself....As I am expecting not a lot of action scenes were added!

And 4 hour movie is just too much...3 is pretty much the limit for me.


The fate of Saruman was left open in the movies. He was left in Isengard with the Ents watching over.... I have to say that was a bit of a letdown as an epic battle between him and Gandalf would have been nice, but I'm assuming the reason for it was Christopher Lee's high age at the time. There was no way he could pull off much of an action sequence...naturally they could have used stunt doubles there as it's not like Sir Ian was a spring chicken either!

[Charger]

DEATH RACE


Jensen Ames is wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife and is then forced by the prison warden to take place in a deadly car race inside the prison. It turns out that the warden played a role in his wife's death so not only must Jensen win the race but he must avenge his wife in the process.

Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson brings a 70s cult classic to the modern era with a furious touch. The action is immense and the races are brilliantly shot and executed.

Jason Statham is great in the lead and legendary Ian McShane shines as his racing coach and Joan Allen does a great job as the ice cold warden.

The movie is 100% fun times. There is some unexpected gore and a whole bunch of insanely good car stunts. All done in real life, very little CGI which adds to the immersing feel of the races.

A bit of a surprise this one, wasn't expecting it to be THIS good!


*  *  *  *

[Zzzptm]

Russian Ark.

[Charger]

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT!


A master trucker named Bandit takes on a commission to get some beer from Texas to Alabama (which is illegal) and picks up a girl on the way who is chased by a strong headed sheriff because she left his son at the altar. A massive ammount of funny things and car chases occur before they make it back.

A classic of all car movie classics. Burt Reynolds is suberb and the action is great and the humor is totally out there at times which is brilliant.

Hadn't seen this in about 30 years I'd say...still the laughs were plentiful!

They sure don't make movies like this anymore.

I'm giving this one

 

[Zzzptm]

I remember seeing it as a kid and having a great time wishing I was Burt driving that muscle car. But I only tolerated the smooching, yecch!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Just catching up again! This month I've seen Kung Fu Panda 4, The Fall Guy and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Kung Fu Panda 4

It's a few years since the last film, plenty of time to produce a decent film. It has the returning voices of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Ian McShane and James Hong with the new characters voiced by Awkwafina and Viola Davis.

It's your typical plot, megalomaniac chameleon (Davis) tries to steal the essence of various Kung Fu masters and uses those skills for her own ends. Po (Black) has to stop her with the help of untrustworthy fox Zhen (Awkwafina) while ShiFu (Hoffman) looks on disapprovingly wanting Po to seek out his successor.

It's... ok. Disappointing but there's lots of action and the various different locations can be quite interesting. A lot of the humour is weak and I'm not even sure kids will find it that funny. As an animation it looks pretty good, but that is no substitute for a good story. 5.5/10

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The Fall Guy

Based on the 80s TV series starring Lee Majors as a stuntman, this will be a let down if you were expecting it to reflect those stories! Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Hannah Waddingham. Directed by David Leitch who was previous involved with films stunts (as well as directing some great action films such as Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, Hobbs & Shaw and Atomic Blonde!)

An action film is in production and Coll (Gosling) is the stunt double of actor Tom Ryder (Taylor- Johnson). Jody (Blunt) has a romantic past with Coll and is the films director and Gail (Waddingham) is the producer. Ryder has gone missing and Coll goes to find him getting sucked into mysterious events which lead to him being framed for murder. All the time they have a film to make and no leading man in front of the camera!

I've seen bad things said about this film, but I really enjoyed it. It's not perfect and maybe could have been 15 minutes shorter, but there is a lot of action and the stunt team do a lot of fine work in the film. There is chemistry between Gosling and Blunt, but some of the plot is a little shaky, oh and the villain of the piece is so obvious from quite early on. But leave your brain at the door and watch some fun film making. 7/10

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

If you saw Mad Max: Fury Road you will know that Charlise Theron played a character called Furiosa... this is a prequel to that film and tells how Furiosa became the warrior of that film. This prequel stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Brown and Lachy Hulme.

30 years before the events of Fury Road we find young Furiosa (Brown) playing with a friend in the idyllic Green Place. Some of the Dementus' Biker Horde gang come upon them by chance and kidnap Furiosa. She it taken to the main Biker Horde camp and presented to Dr Dementus (Hemsworth) who thinks she could be useful to him. When they come to the Citadel ruled by Immortan Joe (Hulme) he swaps her for supplies. From there she escapes and pretends to be a mute boy working with the mechanics until many years later shes grown into a young woman (Taylor-Joy). She becomes involved with the supply trips on War Rigs beteewen the Citadel, Gas Town and Bullet Town alongside Jack (Burke) who she becomes close to. Then Dementus' Biker Horde come back on the scene....

It really is a very good film, maybe slightly behind Fury Road but not by much. The ageing of Furiosa from Brown to Taylor-Joy is quite subtle and I'm not quite sure a what point the actresses swapped! Both are excellent, Taylor-Joy has always been excellent and this performance is no different. It's also Hemsworth's best performance (outside of Thor anyway) as the loud, charismatic villain of the film. This film has some quiet sections but there's plenty of action here to satisfy Mad Max stallwarts. 9.5/10