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

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Coyote vs Acme

... or the film Warner Brothers didn't want you to see! Basically after spending $70m making the film they decided to write it off as a Tax write off! After fan backlash they agreed to sell the rights to a 3rd party... so here we are!

This is a live action/animation hibrid starring Will Forte, John Cena, Lana Condor and Luis Guzman.

After years of putting up with malfunctioning gadgets supplied by ACME in an attempt to catch the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote has had enough and decides to sue ACME for providing shoddy goods. He teams up with a Personal Injuries Lawyer (Forte) and take on Big business, who have big shot lawyers (Cena).

The film as a whole is very predictable, but it is done so well, there are many LOL moments and the integration of the animation with the live action is pretty seamless. It's not Who Framed Roger Rabbit good but it well worth watching. 7.5/10



Spa Weekend

Old school friends decide to go on a spa weekend, and "hilarity" ensues! Utter garbage (the girlfiend loved it!). I would give it a 1/10 but I'll give a 2 because I quite Leslie Mann and Isla Fisher.

[Typhon]

The Contractor (2022)

After being involuntarily discharged, a U.S. Special Forces soldier (Chris Pine) decides to support his family by joining a private contracting organization alongside his best friend (Ben Foster) and under the command of a fellow veteran (Kiefer Sutherland).  Overseas on a covert mission, he must evade those trying to kill him while making his way back home.

A good story, great acting and plenty of Charger-type action.  9/10

[Charger]

ONCE UPON A TIME IN VENICE

A Happy go lucky Los Angeles Private Detective Steve Ford gets mixed up with some drug dealers while searching for his sister's stolen dog. Things quickly get out of hand and Steve soon has more to worry about than just the dog.

Bruce Willis shines as Steve channeling some of his classic roles and meshes 'em up in this rather peculiar action/comedy.

The cast is nothing short of brilliant...John Goodman as Steve's closest friend, Jason Momoa as the drug dealer, Famke Janssen as the sister and Adam Goldberg as Lew the Jew.

There isn't all that much action but the comedy gets pretty wild at times...the story takes a twist or two but all is sorted out nicely in just little over 90 minutes.

Not a masterpiece but certainly not bad either.

*  *  *

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Pressure - 2026

WW II drama set on the eve of D-Day. Starring Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon and Chris Messina.

The film starts 72 hours before D-Day and Eisenhower (Fraser) needs an accurate weather forecast before giving the go ahead for the forces to land in France. There's one problem, he's getting conflicting forecasts from the British forecaster Stagg (Scott) and the American forecaster Krick (Messina). In the meantime Eisenhower's PA Summersby (Condon) acts as the go-between and voice of reason.

It's a fairly run-of-the-mill war drama, nothing wrong with at all really. It's just a little predictable with a complete absence of twists and tension. I don't know what Eisenhower looked like or sounded like, but apparently Fraser is neither if some commentators are to be believed!

As I say, there's nothing wrong with the film, but nothing out of the ordinary either. 6.5/10

[Charger]

^^
As soon as I saw Frasier's name as Ike I thought that was a wrong choice...Not sure that's my kind of movie anyways but I might check it out if it comes on one of my straming platforms.


As far as The Contractor goes...have not seen it...but honestly I am not a Chris Pine fan..still kind of annoyed by what he did to our beloved Captain Kirk...

[Typhon]

As far as The Contractor goes...have not seen it...but honestly I am not a Chris Pine fan..still kind of annoyed by what he did to our beloved Captain Kirk...

I don't know about Kirk, but CP is very good in this film.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Resident Evil (2026

Another reboot of the video game franchise... BUT this time it's with a pretty good budget ($75m) and a well respected director (Zach Cragger) who did last years breakout horror hit Weapons. This stars Austin Abrams - there are other actors but he's the only one who's on screen for more than a few minutes!

Bryan (Abrams) is a courier and has just delivered an organ to a hospital. While there he's persuaded to courier another package to a hospital in nearby Racoon City... it's a snowy, icy night and the road is nearly impassable when he hits a pedestrian who just steps in front of his car... and when he goes to check on them they are not there having crawled away... and so the fun begins!!

I've seen all the RE films, some are good, some are weak, my favourite was always the first one, but rue its lack of budget. Now my favourite... is this one! It doesn't follow the game at all, the characters are original, but what it does do is capture the spirit of the game. This film is gory, relentless yet funny and while Bryan is hapless and accident prone he continues as best he can to deliver the package.

Great visuals, nice scares, good humour and doesn't out stay its welcome at 94 minutes. 9/10

------
It has stayed on my mind since I saw it last week, I may need to go and see it again!

[Vyn]

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)

Kim Darby, Jim Hutton, and William Demarest do their thing in this made for TV movie. I saw this as a kid and it was scary as all get out. Rewatching it just now and the spook factor is still there but is buried under so many dated tropes and TV movie acting dynamics that it gets lost. Holy cow it's not good.

3/10 but in 1973 it would have garnered a 10/10 from me.

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
There is a 2010 theater version.  I have not seen it, so I don't know if it is any better.  Just letting you know.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

^^^

The remake has a lower IMDb score than the TV version, so that might speak volumes!

[Charger]

JFK

New Orleans District Attorney jumps into a rabbit hole after the assassination of the President and begins to realise that things might not be quite what they seem and is soon convinced that a larger conspiracy is at play. He goes the extra mile to try and find out just what happened and who was really to blame.

Oliver Stone's masterpiece mixes fact with fiction with surgical precision and with wonderful dialogue and suberb acting.

The cast is formiddable to say the least. Kevin Costner in the lead is suberb and the support roles include Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Michael Rooker, John Candy, Jack Lemmon, Walther Matthau, Gary Oldman, Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Laurie Metcalf and Kevin Bacon among countless others.

The movie's running time is over 3 hours but the pacing and the masterful dialogues and monologues make the time fly by. Stone's direction is on point as well and it combines actual archival footage with acted out flashbacks seemlessly in a way that you can't really tell which are which...

Stone's career has been full of ups and downs..well honestly more downs than ups but this movie still remains an absolute masterpiece and his best movie.
I wanted to see if the movie had lost any of it's marvel as it had been nearly 30 years since I've seen it before...and no...no it has not. We still do not know the truth of what happened that day, nor do we know if Oswald acted alone or not...but honestly after seeing this again it's quite hard to believe that he did.


*  *  *  *  *

[Vyn]

^^^

The remake has a lower IMDb score than the TV version, so that might speak volumes!

Surprised Del Toro could fuck something up THAT bad.

[Charger]

I never look at the IMDB scores...they're quite often full of shit. I judge the movies by myself, not what some trolls online say.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

IMDb filters out troll votes and to some extent "10" posters and weight the results in favour of people who have posted over many years. I find the IMDb scores are generally consistent with my opinion give or take a point... but I'm not saying that's always the case!

[Vyn]

The thing I've found with critics/scoring services is that consistency is the key. I don't really care if I agree with them so much as if I can trust that if they say something sucks, I'll like it or if they say it's great, I'll like it. I have read Robert Christgau for decades, and most of the time I do not agree with him on music. Which works out great for me. He's consistent. Consistently wrong