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

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

IF

Family film -- a mix of live action and CGI -- about "Imaginary Friends" starring Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski (who also wrote and directed), Caillee Fleming, Fiona Shaw with the voices of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Steve Carell.

Bea (Fleming) is sent to stay at her grandmother's apartment (Shaw) when her dad (Krasinski) is hospitalized for some unspecified reason and it would appear that her mother has died some years previously.

Whilst staying at her grandmother's she starts to explore and meets Cal (Reynolds) in an apartment upstairs. Cal has several mysterious creatures staying with him including Blue (Carell) and Blossom (Waller-Bridge) who are Imaginary Friends (IFs) of children who have forgotten them.

The film then follows Cal, Bea and the IFs as they try to find new homes for them. Spoiler...

: show

I realised quite early on that Cal was Bea's IF because no one else except Bea and the IFs interacted with him... a bit like Sixth Sense!.

It was a better film than I expected, it's nothing super original but what it does is done quite well. 7/10

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Inside Out 2

A follow up to 2015s Oscar Winning animated original. This is a Disney/Pixar film starring the voice work of Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Phyllis Smith, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Kensington Tallman, Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane.

Once again we delve into the brain of Riley (Tallman) as she turns 13. The pre-existing emotions from the first film - Joy (Poehler), Disgust (Lapira), Sadness (Smith), Fear (Hale) and Anger (Black) are somewhat surprised to find that as she becomes 13 a slew of new emotions arrive and reek havoc - Anxiety (Hawke), Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui.

Riley goes to ice hockey camp where she tries to impress older players while ignoring her friends and giving her parents (Lane and MacLachlan) more grief. Things don't go as well as they might, and anxiety becomes a big part of her emotions and it banishes the old emotions to the back of her mind.

The original Inside Out is my favourite Pixar film and maybe my favourite animated film period. Inside Out 2 isn't that film... but it is a very good film. Much better than we had a right to expect. This is the best animated film in a very long time. 9/10

[Charger]

RUNNING SCARED


Two hot-shot Chicago cops try to catch a wiley drug dealer as their last case before an early retirement but things don't go as planned.

Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines star in this 80s action comedy classic that has stood the test of time better than some.

Tons of great action accompanied with top notch humor and both Crystal and Hines are on fire and their chemistry is off the charts!

Jimmy Smits is in one of his earliest roles as the mean drug dealer and does a great job...as does Dan Hedaya as the police Captain.

This is somewhat of a forgotten gem of the 80s buddy comedy action flicks and although it might fall bit short of other classics like Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon but it's still a stone cold classic and probably is one of Crystal's best ever preformances and director Peter Hyams (2010, Outland) does a great job pacing the action and the comedy.

*  *  *  *  ½

[Zzzptm]

^ I remember that one, and, yeah, it was overshadowed by Cop/Weapon movies.

[Charger]

It is a real shame that so many great 80s action flicks got overlooked by the mass public and are now pretty much forgotten...that being one of them.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Every Which Way But Loose

Action / Comedy from 1978 starring Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis and Beverly D'Angelo and not forgetting Manis the Orangutan!

Philo (Eastwood), Orville (Lewis) and Clyde the Orangutan roam the country looking for cold beer, fist fights and country music. Philo is a good fighter and Orville promotes his bouts from which they earn money. Philo sees a singer Lynn (Locke) who he immediately falls for. When it gets too serious Lynn takes off for other parts and a heartbroken Philo goes lookng for her with Orville, Clyde and Echo (D'Angelo) who Orville has picked up... pursued by a biker gang they crossed paths with earlier.

I saw this many, many years ago and really enjoyed and while this time it is still quite good it does feel terribly dated and the production design is somewhat lacking. But it does have some funny moments and the biker gang are wonderfully inept.  6/10

I have the sequel to watch this weekend!

[Zzzptm]

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

It's a Wes Anderson film, and I loved it, as I tend to love Wes Anderson films. If you don't love Wes Anderson, this one will confirm that direction in taste for you. Bill Murray gets the whole lead role to himself and does a fantastic job showing a man coming to terms with his limitations arising out of both age and unclaimable aspirations. In so doing, he gets over himself and chooses to be vital as opposed to self-pitying. It's like a Great Gatsby, but Gatsby sobers up.

[Charger]

I'm carrying on with the 80s classics.

DELTA FORCE


A group of purely evil islamic terrorists hijack a plane and take hostages and force the plane to land in Beirut. A team of Delta Force operators led by Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris is send in to save the hostages and taking out the terrorists.

The movie starts out quite slowly and shows both the terror and islamic evil of the hijackers on the plane and surely makes so want to see them die a horrible painful death...The events of the movie are inspired by the real life events of a hijacking in the mid 80s...It's only about half way through the movie when the action starts as the Delta Force team gets to work. Quite unusual pacing for an 80s movie but I liked it. And it's great that you really start to hate the bad guys...that's when something is done absolutely right.

This was sadly Lee Marvin's last ever movie preformance as he passed away shortly after. But he does a great job here sharing the lead with Chuck Norris...and Robert Forster does a fantastic job as the lead terrorist.

An absolute classic although again bit forgotten by the ages...eventhough the story is quite ageless as extremist islamic terrorism hasn't gone anywhere.


*  *  *  *

[Charger]

Well finally got around watching both DUNE's back to back and had to go back in time to get my review of part one here

DUNE

Denis Villeneuve takes on the mammoth task of telling the story of Frank Herbert's classic. The story begins with House Harkonnen losing the hold of planet Arrakis and the production of the precious Spice to the House Atreides. But everything is not as it seems and soon the house Atreides is brought down and the battle for the future of Dune begins as the Duke Leto is killed and his son Paul and his concubine a Bene Gesserit witch Jessica flee to the desert to look for protection and alliance with the native people Fremen.
Paul who is believed to be the messiah, the chosen one begins to see his greater fate through series of visions and dreams brought on by his Bene Gesserit side.

The story itself is massive and ofcourse cannot be told in a single movie (and this was meant to be a movie series with sequal/s coming) but this does drag on a bit too much. Villeneuve takes more than 2,5 hours to tell the same ammount of story than the 2000 miniseries told in it's first 90 minute episode! It is rather strange. This could have easily been edited down to that same length without losing too much story.

The acting was very good and even the bold choice to cast an unknown to the role of Paul Atreides did not hurt as Timothee Chalamet did a fine job as did Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. Bigger stars were actually given a much smaller roles like Dave Bautista as Rabban Harkonnen, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck and Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho...but as to be expected the grand role of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen played by Stellan Skarsgard took the center stage when ever he was on screen...sadly his scenes were far too short and few...but his make up was great, could barely recognize him. The under use of the Baron was a bit of a travesty as he is one of THE great villains.

One thing that irked me the most though was the pronounciations of the names...especially Harkonnen...but there has been a lot of debate on how they are pronounced although some recordings of Herbert telling the right way do exist.

The visuals were great, the Harvesters looked the part, and the thopters were very cool but the Worm was also rather under used which was a shame. But we should se much more of them in part 2...hopefully.
Also the Space Guild Navigators were never shown...and they are a rather large part of the story...again hopefully more in the next part.

The movie did justice to the story but it did drag on bit too much for my liking. It felt that Villeneuve was putting bit too much effort in trying to create a space opera rather than a proper sci-fi epic. Also for a budget of over 160 million one would have expected bit more grandious space visuals. Now too much time was spent on close quarters.

It had much good but also bit too much fluff. But it did make me anxious for part 2.

*  *  *

Not much had changed...I think I stand by everything I said about it the first time. Would also give it the same rating this go around.

Then off to part two


DUNE Part 2

The plot resumes directly where part one ended.

Paul and Jessica go live with the Fremen while the Harkonnen's take hold of Arrakis. Paul reluctantly becomes the Mahdi and not only seeks personal revenge against the Harkonnen but also unites the Fremen to fight under him to free Arrakis.

The first part was slow but this doubles down on the slow. But there is enough action to keep it going. There are few things that are very different from the earlier adaptations (both Lynch's and the mini series) and some that are same.

Visually the movie is nothing short of gorgeous. All the vehicles and the scenery are brilliantly done. Although the scenes at Geidi Prime were just waaay too weird looking. I guess they tried to capture the whole "Black Sun" effect but it just ended up hurting my eyes.

The cast did not introduce too many new characters but Christopher Walken joined as the Emperor, Florence Pugh as his daughter and Austin Butler as Lord Feyd Rautha Harkonnen. They all did a fairly good job but Walken was just bit too old and he didn't really put any effort in the preformance which is rare in his case...

But then for the big irk...the final battle which was supposed to be this huuuuge clash between the Harkonnen and the Fremen was over before it even started. For a movie that laster over 2hrs 45 mins they spent like 5 minutes on this massive battle! What a joke! Even in Return Of The King the final battle took like nearly 30 minutes of screen time and was spectacular...but this was a travesty. All was going pretty okay up until that point. I can't even imagine what was Villeneuve thinking here...can't imagine that they would have just simply ran out of money...
They could have cut 20 minutes of useless jibber jabber in favour of this epic battle...but no...we got next to nothing.

The ending was left open like in the novels and there have been talks about doing the Messiah part next...I'm okay with that but I'm also okay if nothing else comes...

All in all this was a bit of a letdown...both parts could have benefitted from a heavier hand in the editing booth but it wasn't terribly over long either.

Same rating for this one as the first one...had there been an epic battle in the end as there should have been one more star would have been awarded..

*  *  *

[Zzzptm]

Glengarry Glen Ross

Hadn't ever seen it, except for the ABC scene at the start. Well, I got COVID, so it's time to watch movies I shoulda seen by now.

Arthur Miller gave us Death of a Salesman. This one is Death of a Fuckin' Salesman. Not only is there great acting, start to finish, but there's the real pain of doing a sales gig in those characters. I was watching a lot of The Office (USA) and there was an episode where they get new leads and the manager decides to not hand them out to the sales staff that are grinding on everyone's gears. That reminded me of GGR's plot, so after that episode, I watched the movie.

It's strong stuff, well worth watching.

[Zzzptm]

Starship Troopers

Lots of big space kablooie in this one. Also lots of grim irony underlying the "kill alla dem bugs" narrative. Reminds me of Joe Haldeman's Forever War novel, but that book was more overtly antiwar than ST. I remember this movie getting tagged as prowar when it came out, and that's certainly what a surface viewing comes across as. Basically, these troops all trained for the wrong war but they have to go and fight the damn thing, anyway.

I think I'll watch All Quiet on the Western Front next.

[Zzzptm]

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

I was thinking I might see Idi i Smotri (Come and See) after this. About 30 minutes in, I realized that's what I'm watching, but in German, and in WW1. It's harrowing and brutal.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Just to catch up on a couple of films I've seen lately, starting with...

DESPICABLE ME 4

The fourth in the main franchise (a 3rd Minions spin-off is in works too), returning cast includes: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin and Steve Coogan with new cast including Will Ferrell, Sofia Vergara Ste[hen Colbert and Joey King.

Gru (Carell) and Lucy (Wiig) along with their adopted daughters and new son Gru Jnr are forced to go assume new identities and sent into Witness Protection after a villain from Gru's past - Maxime (Ferrell) and partner Valentina (Vergara) - seeks revenge on him. Gru's boss Silas (Coogan) takes most of the Minions (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) and starts experimenting on them. Whilst in Witness protection Gru tries to make friends with their new neighbours the Prescott's; the father (Colbert) looks down on Gru while the daughter Poppy (King) has ideas of her own to become a villain and thinks she can get Gru to help.

I'm going to say that this is probably better than the 2nd and 3rd films but still not a patch on the first. 8/10

[Charger]

Went to the movies again!! Been a while...last one being Bad Boys For LIfe back in 2020!


ALIEN Romulus


On a mining colony a group of young workers and an android dream for a better life and they find their chance circling their planet in shape of a seemingly abandoned space station with useable cryo chambers. The group finds that there's something very much wrong in the station and that there is a threat present unlike anything they've seen. Fight for survival begins.

This is a direct sequel to Alien, taking place only few years after the events on Nostromo. The visual feel is very similar to the first movie which is pretty great. All the computer tech is almost the same...just with the difference that the old monitors are just lcd monitors now but all design and style is very much the same...that was a great stylistic move.
Visually this is quite stunning and the sets look amazing.

The cast is very young...or looks to be anyways...Cailee Spaeny looks like she's under 20 but in fact she is 26. And she does a great job channeling her inner Sigourney Weaver here.

What the movie does best is it takes something from each of the original Alien movies, confined spaces of the first one, pulse rifles from the second, some character schisms from 3 and a bit of curve ball surprise at the end very similar to Alien Resurrection and makes it all work.

The creatures themselves ofcourse look very familiar but in the end they are even bit under represented. Could have used maybe bit more gore in some spots but there were few good scares in the movie.

A good and very faithful continuation to the saga...much better than the Scott abomination that was Prometheus! And a clear step above Covenant as well which too was a huge disappointment.

Not quite as good as the original Quadrology but still a very very enjoyable addition. I wouldn't mind seeing more from Fede Alvarez and the team.


*  *  *  ½

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

^^^
Hoping to see that next week. It's had solid reviews

=========

I had meant to review this a few weeks back!

Deadpool & Wolverine

The third of the Deadpool films, this time with an added Wolverine. The film stars Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Moreno Baccarin, Leslie Uggams with the baddies being Emma Corrin and Matthew McFadyen. Plus there are loads of cameos!

I'm not entirely sure I can explain the plot! It's a mess involving the TVA (Time Variance Authority) a resurrected Wolverine who hasn't technically died yet. There's a slew of cameos from the likes of Wesley Snipes, Jennifer Garner, John Favreau, Dafne Keen, Chris Evans, Channing Tatum and Henry Cavill!

What I can say is that it' great fun with loads of action. Emma Corrin as the main villain and Matthew MacFadyen as a TVA operative with his own agenda are clearly having a hoot. I did feel the humour sometimes veered a little too "toilet based" and there wasn't enough humour which was actually "adult" but it didn't matter too much.

Overall it wasn't as good as the first Deadpool but was better than the second one. 7½/10