Amph What was the last movie you saw?

I love this movie. My favorite John Carpenter film. Infinite rematch value.

Ezon Pin, I like The Village. That was the last M Night movie I liked, though I suspect I'm not alone in disliking the movies that followed.

 

The new 'Ghostbusters'



It is all and all a pretty decent matinee Summer movie. It does have some very annoying things in it(there isn't a single good remix of the original theme song and Slimer's girlfriend is horrific) but it also is very funny and as far as remakes go one of the most original. It's tone is completely different from the original film. It doesn't have that dry sense of humor as it goes for very big and outlandish characters and set pieces. It also has a great deal more physical humor. And so the biggest so called complaint about it ruining the original film is pretty much completely null and void as this is a completely different approach to the same set up. I'd give it about ***/****.




(The one missed opportunity is even the writers couldn't be aware of the horrible people that were going to whine about it. The main villain of the movie is a socially awkward nerd trying to use ghosts as a means of revenge for being a socially awkward nerd. It's a real shame they didn't have the foresight to make him a caricature of the ‪#‎Gamergate‬/MRA crowd that thinks this movie is the end of the world. It would have given the movie more of an edge and made those losers even more furious)

 

Robbery, a cracking British thriller based on the great train robbery of 1963. It's also got a fantastic a car chase that lead to the director Peter Yates being hired to make Bullitt with Steve McQueen.

 

Interstellar
Christopher Nolan only becomes more complex with his story telling as he progresses as a director. Yet, although building upon his complexity as a story teller, Interstellar is also drastically different from anything he has done in a while because it is rooted in real theory while films such as the Dark Knight Trilogy or Inception were mostly works of fantasy. Interstellar is rooted in various theories of quantum physics with specific focus on the Event Horizon phenomena which exists in interstellar black holes. Hence, Interstellar is pure science fiction because of its grounding is science and nods to films such as Space Odyssey, The Right Stuff, and Apollo 13. But the science is also kept somewhat grounded because of the dramatic subplot which runs throughout the film. Apart from the scientific aspects of the story, Interstellar is a story the echoes which flow from one generation to the next as exhibited by the father and daughter relationship featured in the film. Also, Interstellar is also about the ironic selfishness that can be found in the most bounteous of endeavours. It is the type of story that is constantly trying to be told and retold in shows such as Doctor Who where the affections of the audience is ushered through the stakes posed by the McGuffin of the story.

But, unlike Doctor Who, Interstellar takes its story telling seriously in that each moment is layered and build without the need to be smug or proving to the audience as being clever. In fact, Interstellar is so unique it even avoids the Nolan-ism of having a production that is too explosive or busy. The planets explored feel absolutely alien but not because of other inhabitants or colour filters to give a particular effect. Instead, it is the stillness and sparseness in the imagery along with the eerie silence of those worlds. Additionally, much like the film Gravity, the soundtrack also isn't too "grand" or loud in that it is very radiophonic and minimalistic. Interstellar is an experience. The only real flaw to the film are the performances. Not that they are particularly bad, but there is not too much that is memorable (especially between McConaughey and Hathaway. Yet, Interstellar never stops feeling human which is why even the most minor of flaws are forgivable.

5 out of 5

 

Mission Impossible

 

Half of BFG.

 

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

 

Clear and Present Danger. Rather cynical for a Jack Ryan movie, but solid. It focuses on Jack as an analyst, an investigator, and as someone now forced to move within political circles, rather than an action hero. The plot isn't complex, but it unfolds well, and there are some nice setpieces. I liked the cat-and-mouse computer duel, viewing and deleting files, a lot as a new twist on pulling information out of the bad guy's office. The performances are good; James Earl Jones is always a highlight of the Jack Ryan films, and Ford himself is at his best, giving Ryan authority but also, as an analyst feeling out of his depth, a charmingly dorky awkwardness. I wish they made more action movies like this these days, with that certain sense of old-school stateliness. There are a lot of explosions and shakycam, but not that much gravitas and patience.

 

That is probable my fave Jack Ryan film Havac behind The Hunt For Red October. I like Ford in that role more than Baldwin but the first is made by Connery.

My film:

Bone Tomahawk.

Uhh….

WTH?!








That's basically the movie via emojis.

 

Did you read the book version? They made Cortez and Ritter more villainous than their book counterparts. Yes, Cortez was the main villain in the book, but he didn't plan the ambush on the U.S. officials, recognizing the need to not screw up his source like that. Of course, the movie counterpart planned on killing his source anyway, so there's that. Also, Ritter was a much bigger slimeball in the movie than in the book. In the books (Red Rabbit and Cardinal of the Kremlin), he doesn't like Ryan, but only because he thinks Ryan's rising too far, too quickly, and not because he thinks of Ryan as a Boy Scout.

 

Swiss Miss, which is in my opinion one of the worst films that Laurel and Hardy ever made. There a few inspired gags, but for the most part I found it quite boring.

 

The film wears it's flaws on it's sleeve, but the more I watch it the more I find it works. It isn't the masterpiece people thought Nolan would make, but it's a damn great movie. I think the years will be kind to it.

Awesome soundtrack.


THERE WILL BE BLOOD: "Give me the blood"

 

No, I've read quite a bit of Clancy but I never did get to the book.

Mad Max. I'm not sure there's ever been a more bizarre blockbuster. Miller's vision, a mishmash of fifties car-culture nostalgia, pseudo-future punk that really just looks like 1970s Australia with a few bizarre props and outfits, and gay S&M subtext so blatant it's basically text, is so singular and incomprehensible, receiving no real explanation within the film, that you hardly know what to make of it. The thing is, though, it works. Miller is raw, making his feature debut with no budget, but you can tell that he has an eye, with some great framing and incredible action sequences. It might be almost impenetrably strange, but it's fun, and clearly the work of a talented filmmaker finding his voice.

 

'Road to Peredition'

It's a mixed ordeal. I love movies about the mob but this one really has trouble coming up with it's own thematic philosophy about the characters and their relationship to organized crime. Newman and Hanks are portrayed as big complex pussy cats who never quite have their Michael Corleone moment where we see that their souls are black. I don't buy Hanks in this part at all. He is just incapable of having any menace.

 

Hanks' character is absolutely not supposed to have a "Michael Corleone moment," his soul isn't black because he cares about his son too much. That was the ultimate point of Lone Wolf and Cub (admittedly 20-odd volumes of comics gives you more time to develop than a film) - the guy spends the majority of the series claiming he's an assassin going down a rogue path to hell, and his son just happens to be along with him, blah blah blah, but it's all actually a bluff in the end. If Michael Rooney is a remorseless killer even down at his very core, the entire theme of the film falls apart. Similarly, Newman's character can't have a "Michael Corleone moment" because he's also a dad and is torn apart by his conflicting loyalties to his family and his profession when Michael Rooney goes rogue. This helps to reinforce the central themes regarding fatherhood because we then have the competing lenses of fatherly concern towards a loyal son and fatherly concern towards a disloyal son.

So, basically my argument is that a movie based on a lengthy comic book about a samurai assassin dad actually isn't a mob movie.

 

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice [Theatrical cut] (2016) - Overstuffed and consequently undercooked, Snyder's ponderous and joy free launch of DC's Justice League saga moves with the élan of a race car with square wheels. The best part of the movie--and I can't even believe I'm saying this--is Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman. As the slapdash "narrative" zipped around like a fly at a picnic, all I kept thinking was "I wish this were simply a Batman movie.". - 5/10

 

Star Trek Beyond. I found it to be an enjoyable romp, which felt much more like classic Trek than the previous two. However, I couldn't help feeling a twinge of sadness whenever Chekov was onscreen due to the untimely death of Anton Yelchin.

 

Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

 

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
I think this series has got better as its gone along. However I'm not so sure that I enjoyed this one as much as I did Ghost Protocol. Everything was in place, elaborate methods of deception and robbery, good performances again. The intrigue of the Syndicate. But I can't quite put my finger on why I thought 4 was better. Maybe the story didn't flow as well and it seemed like a series of setpieces. I'm not sure. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed it, it kept me hooked but there seemed something missing.

 

Shaft (1971). I was worried that this would be horribly dated, but it holds up quite well in my opinion. I also like how the story felt like something out of an old 1940's hard boiled detective film.

 

The 12 year old was outraged about Leslie Jones being victimized by Twitter trolls, so he demanded that we go see Ghostbusters to show solidarity. The whole family went this afternoon -- almost too hot to do anything else today -- and the theater was packed.

The plot seems a bit rushed, and Bill Murray has one of the worst cameos I've ever seen, and Hemsworth has all the comedic charm of Glenn Beck, but overall a harmless and fun movie, and the kids loved it.

 

Super underrated movie. Surprisingly ambitious character piece.




Love & Friendship (2016) – Whit Stillman

Whit Stillman’s an interesting filmmaker. He made three films from 1990 to 1998 (Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco) that formed a loose thematic trilogy and were incredibly acclaimed. He then didn’t make another film until 2011, a gap of some thirteen years. This is his second film since his return from exile. In this film, he leads a solid ensemble in an adaptation of a never before adapted Jane Austen work, Lady Susan, a novella Austen never submitted for publication during her lifetime. Kate Beckinsale plays the title character, a scheming widow who is out to get her daughter married to a rich guy & herself married to a rich guy and she’s not at all concerned with the havoc she wreaks in the process. It’s interesting to see a character that is very much an Austen character but who is also very different. If you’re one of those people who finds Emma unlikable, steer clear of the good Lady Susan; Emma is the closest thing we’ve had before to an anti-heroine in an Austen book and she causes problems because of ignorance, not malice. But Lady Susan can be malicious, cutting, controlling, manipulative, deceptive and quite cruel really. Beckinsale is marvelous in the part and, though I’m not a pig, it really must be said: at forty-two, she’s more gorgeous than she’s ever been in my opinion, almost unbearably so really. It feels like maybe her career to this point hasn’t really given her an opportunity to be very good, but she has a surprising gift for nimble verbal comedy and for very precise expressive comedy. The character, ultimately, is what lets both her and the film down. By the end of the film, I was simply tired of Lady Susan; the character is one note from start to finish and she ultimately becomes really quite predictable. She’s always going to do and say what benefits her without any care for the effect it has on anyone else; that’s how the film starts, she never changes, and that’s how it ends. There’s a moment toward the end of the film where I briefly perked up because it appeared that she might have done something selfless for once, but, no, it turns out not. I was aching for some kind of ambiguity to the character by the time the film was over, but there’s none to be found.

That’s too bad because the script is certainly witty in a very Austen manner and the rest of the cast is quite good. Chloe Sevigny is typically delightful as an equally amoral American friend of Lady Susan’s. Morfydd Clark is brilliant as Lady Susan’s whipped puppy of a daughter. But the show is very nearly stolen away from even Beckinsale by Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin, a typical Austen buffoon in the vein of Mr. Collins from P&P. Bennett’s performance is a comedic masterpiece, awkward, silly and hilarious. He’s unfortunately not in the film very often, but when he’s on screen, the movie really flares to life. It’s too bad then that the film does have the flaws that it has. With a slightly more ambiguous main character and, it must be said, some sort of a satisfying ending (which this film certainly doesn’t have), this film might have joined the upper echelons of Austen adaptations. As it is, it has to be happy a bit farther down on the ladder. 3 stars.

tl;dr – a cardboard cutout of a main character detracts from a fine ensemble and a script that’s as witty as it is aimless; not among the best Austen adaptations, but it has pleasures. 3 stars.

More Movie Reviews!

 

Ant Man

I'm not a big fan of comic book movies at all, I can watch them and I think they're instantly forgettable, formulaic, large scale CGI effects end battles that have got boring. But wow Ant Man was the comic book movie I've been waiting for. Inventive, funny, thrilling, I loved it.

First of all the performances throughout were excellent, Paul Rudd is instantly likeable, Michael Douglas adds weight to the film and everyone else I thought was the perfect support.

The story is simple yet engaging. A man can shrink in a special suit and control ants..... The premise is so ridiculous yet it's fantastic.

The action scenes with the everyday items as props and environments were its strength, very inventive. No need for the fantastical settings and visual overload of other comic book films, just a simple Thomas train set, some keys, an iPhone, a model building, water pipes. Brilliant. The effects throughout were very good, but how did they de-age Michael Douglas so convincingly?

The humour was spot on from the 3 bumbling side kicks to the ant man gopher in the gardens. I really thought it worked. Even the giant tank, giant Thomas and giant ant sat well with the tone of this film. Sounds crazy.

One of my pet hates with the marvel films is the knowing wink to the audience as they set up a link to another series of films. This was no different with Ant Man meeting Falcon and also the set up of the beautiful Angeline Lilleys future alter ego. However I didn't find it too intrusive and it didn't detract for me and overall this film was really good. In a strange way it was large scale but on a small scale without making it as over the top and crowded as some of the other marvel films. Can't wait for a sequel.

 

After Drumpf's nomination speech I watched Sun Ra's, Space is the Place