Sunday 17 November 2019

The Big Easy (1986)

A tonally mismatched film that seems to mainly want be a sweaty police corruption crime drama, but also wants to be a Howard Hawks comedy and a sappy romcom. This flip-flopping works against all the charm the cast desperately try to bolster the film with, and results in unlikable leads in a weightless story.
Rating: Bad

Robin Hood (2018)

Skimmed through the last half hour of this. It's a charmless collection of tropes that don't make sense in this movie: the training montage (where he learns to be good with a bow despite having fought with one for years); all the rich people dressed like people from Panem in The Hunger Games (despite this being set in the 12th century); the hero not telling the love interest about his plan to steal from the rich to give to the poor (despite her having been doing that before he ever was). The Will Scarlett character doesn't make sense for most of the movie until you realise that in what is now standard overly-optimistic franchise-seeding, he's being set up as Sheriff Of Nottingham Mk II. Most bizarre of all though is that it not only lifts the idea of an Arabic sidekick from Prince Of Thieves, it also casts an African-American in the role!
Rating: Bad

Friday 15 November 2019

Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

A bland script full of zero-dimensional characters that makes the original look like Shakespeare and makes some major bone-headed mistakes, like being a mechs vs kaiju movie with almost no kaiju in it, and pissing away its one cool idea, which actually makes the dreadful over-used scientist characters from the first movie interesting, by *under-using* them.
Rating: Bad

Monday 11 November 2019

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Fucking terrible. No craft, no physical weight to any of it, terrible dialogue, nothing new or exciting. It feels more like a shitty X-Men movie than a Terminator movie. The only good bit in the entire film is when they play a clip from Terminator 2.

For my own records more than anything else, some specific things I didn't like:

The new future AI baddy. This is a total Starkiller move, a lesser version of an iconic thing. It's also just frustrating because it feels like the heroes will never be allowed to win because the franchise demands it.
The way all the characters, human and cyborg are either Flubbering all over the place or doing cool 'superhero landings'. In the first two movies, the Terminators tumbled around like the big bags full of metal that they are, they had weight and physicality to them. Here, even Sarah Connor is getting flung about like a CG ragdoll and not even getting bruised.
Another comedy/tragic self-sacrificing model 101. Ugh.
The painfully obvious '*Danni* is the future leader' twist.
Saying 'fuck' a lot is not cool.
Why bother with this 'enhanced human' bullshit? Just make her a terminator, there's no functional difference. She's got her neck ripped open, it's all just wires, she doesn't notice. In fact, why is she there at all? Just have it be Sarah and Carl (or preferably a different model for once).
If you're going to ignore T3 onwards and bring Sarah and a 101 back, why kill John off and get rid of Skynet? Get Furlong back in!
Rating: Awful

Sunday 10 November 2019

Happy Death Day (2017)

Good fun, even if it's fairly predictable (though to be fair it caught me a couple of times with some nice fake-outs) and occasionally warrants yelling obvious advice at the screen. Will deffo watch the sequel at some point.
Rating: Good

The Lost City of Z (2016)

Looks gorgeous, strong performances. The pacing is a double-edged sword - it's deliberate and conveys the passage of time well, but it can also be a little frustrating to watch this guy go out to the Amazon and return over and over without ever achieving anything (until the ambiguous ending, perhaps).
Rating: Good

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

A masterfully gripping portrayal of a ten year operation. Although in its efforts to keep the story moving, it does get a little "24" at times (the lone agent pushing against her superiors in her quest for revenge, the extended enclosure sequence at the end which gets close to fetishising the military precision) and also muddies the waters in its stance on torture, overall it manages to maintain a realistic and critical eye (Chastain's character slowly becoming accustomed to and implicit in torture, the soldiers who kill Bin Laden portrayed as man-children holding model helicopters like toys).
Rating: Good

Friday 8 November 2019

You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Very slick atmospheric thriller which is basically a grimy remake of the first Sin City story. That's no bad thing, it's a visceral tale, but aside from a bit more thematic depth (lots of American flags, red blood on blue and white outfits, and flashbacks to traumatic moments either in service of the country or dealt out by those who are) it's also just as lightweight.
Rating: Good

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

A rich, soulful, yet (intentionally) frustrating film. Looks gorgeous and full of great performances.
The only reason I've not rated this higher is because it's (a very well-told version of) stuff I've seen a lot before - strong African-American community in 70s Brooklyn, get fucked over by the white man.
Rating: Good