Amph What was the last movie you saw?

I liked Alien Covenant quite a lot in comparison to the other crap that I sat through this summer.


Oh and I forgot, but Baby Driver might be the best film of the summer or as good as War.

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black pearl (2003) - Plot; A pirate teams with a blacksmith in an attempt to rescue a young woman from the cursed crew of his former ship.

Having not watched this since it originally hit DVD four... teen years ago (gulp), I was surprised by a number of things. For one, why did I wait so long to revisit it? I remember thinking it was fun (and at the time, refreshingly different), and the former certainly still holds true. Perhaps more surprising is Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. Over the years I've watched the various sequels (save for the latest one), and there was--if memory serves--a severe level of diminishing returns. But even more, I remember Depp's Sparrow being a total buffoon. Seeing him here I realize that what happened was that Sparrow became a caricature of the character Depp created in the original. To be sure Jack Sparrow's got some quirk to him, but he's not the ever-slurring gag-a-second clown I'd pegged him to be. He's got an edge here. A swagger. And he wears it well.

Though it's a tad too long for its own good, it still moves by a brisk pace and has a tight focus. Its enormous success spawned a "Bigger is better" philosophy for at least the next two sequels, and that's a shame. I'll eventually get around to revisiting the rest of the series and seeing this Summer's sequel, but my memory says that fun walks the plank at the sword tip of spectacle. - 7/10

 

Not to mention Barbossa was an excellent blackhearted fiend, before he became the anti-hero ally in the other films.

 

PCCViking agreed. Rush sinks his teeth into the part, but not to the point where he undermines the character's menace. He's having fun. Depp's having fun. I was having fun. Barbossa and Sparrow also have nice, colorful motley crews and I liked that Commodore Norrington has more shades to him than such characters typically have in these sorts of movies. Both Knightley and Bloom are a tad bland and vanilla, but such are their characters I suppose.

Forgot to mention in my review that I really enjoyed the score. Fits the spirit of the movie perfectly.

 

Even as an anti-hero, Barbossa is still a lot fun, which is why Blackbeard didn't really work that well in On Stranger Tides. Barbossa, particularly in Curse of the Blsck Pearl was heavily influenced by the mythology that has grown up around Blackbeard.

 

Blade Runner (1982)
My 32 inch tv died, so I bought a new 40 inch model and needed to try it out, hence my re-watching of my Blade Runner Blu-Ray (Final Cut). It has taken me years to really appreciate Blade Runner. The first few times I saw it it was the original theatrical release watched on a 20 inch cathode-ray-tube screen in pan & scan in mono, and that really isn't the way to see this film; this is a film that relies on atmosphere, the strengths of the visuals, the great moody soundtrack, and the conviction of the performances. The script is not perfect - having listened to a BBC Radio adaptation of the original story I'm now aware that several of the plot points that I never really understood (but assumed made sense) are actually just holdovers from the novel, and they make little sense in the context of the film's world. That doesn't really matter, though - just sit there with a bottle of wine and the lights turned off and soak up the atmosphere. It's been maybe 34 years since I first saw this film but I can finally say I love it.

 

Soul of the Sword (1978) So Nameless (Ti Lung) wants to beat the #1 Swordsman, Lu and take his title King of the Swords. What's slightly different about this Shaw Brothers wu xia is the roles the women play particularly, that of Hu Lien (Lin Chin-Chi.) Apparently, she committed suicide over the corpse of the previous young man who died challenging Lu. Now, she manifests as a ghost as Nameless makes his um...no name...through the martial world. The brash young man eventually winds up at the royal court where Lu serves, challenging Lu (yes, a pattern here.) Along the way he makes quite a few enemies, all jostling for that #1 title, and two of whom, will make Nameless regret he ever went on this quest. Hu Lien seduces Nameless, distracting him: which is good for Lu and everyone else.

The whole subplot about Hu Lien still does not click for me four viewings in. While there is some nice sword fu, beautiful visuals (it's Shaw Brothers before they started pulling the plug on their budgets), and Ti gets to be cute, I do not 100% jive with this wu xia. Not terrible by any means, but an occasional watch for me.

 

Atomic Blonde. Smart. Sexy. Stylish. Atomic Blonde is a very well made film, but is harder to follow than a jaguar in a cornfield. I was lost for a lot of the film, but it didn't stop me from enjoying it. I feel like if they simplified the plot or put a bit more focus on it, it could've been better. I love films with style, and this had a lot of it. Charlize Theron was fantastic. The use of music was very well done, with the way they incorporated it into each scene. The action was really thrilling, especially in that long one-shot fight towards the end. The fight choreography was fantastic, and was up there with John Wick in terms of how real it felt. 8/10.

 

Herbie Rides Again

The first sequel to The Love Bug: Herbie must help stop a greedy businessman from kicking an elderly woman from her home to make room for the tallest building in the world. The villain is Alonzo Hawk, the same antagonist from The Absent Minded Professor.

 

Predator (1987) - Plot; A mercenary team is tasked with a rescue mission that ends up as a fight for survival when they encounter an alien who hunts them for sport.

Predator is a film that actually has less fat than any of its chiseled stars. Always moving briskly forward with zero wasted motion, it executes its simple premise with textbook precision. With no time (or desire) for character development or arcs, what we get instead are skilled performers who each grab a little section of jungle and make it their own. This represents Arnold at the absolute zenith of his Arnoldness, but he's far from the only standout. Co-stars Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, Carl Weathers and the late Sonny Landham all manage to take wafer thin characters and make them compelling, often upstaging the star.

The film looks great, with the Predator camouflage effects still impressive, and Stan Winston's work on the Predator itself outstanding. Following up with Die Hard, few directors have ever had a 1-2 punch quite like director John McTiernan. Composer Alan Silvestri completes this gourmet action meal with a big, bold score the equal of the film and the men who occupy it. - 7.5/10

- Contains several famous lines like "If it bleeds, we can kill it.", "Get to da choppa!", "I ain't got time to bleed." and "You are one ugly mudda...".

- The original actor hired to play the Predator was none other than Jean Claude Van Damme. He was let go early on when it was determined that he wasn't physically imposing enough when matched against his giant co-stars (he'd also apparently complained about a variety of things, making him a nuisance).

- The Predator's "voice" was provided by none other than Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen.

 

Juke Skywalker - still think the Predator is one of the most ugliest, creepiest looking alien makeups ever done. The movie is very entertaining, but for me, that story with the Predator is completely done in one.

I agree with your review.

 

Master_Lok I haven't seen the AVP movies, and the more I see and hear from the upcoming The Predator the less confident I am, but generally speaking I believe there's a level of diminishing returns w/the sequels. Predator 2 had the right idea, trading jungles (actual for urban), but the execution is middling. Predators sorta goes back to basics, but that cast just can't pull it off.

 

The2ndQuest gah! I'd actually never seen the previous suit/design before. It looks a bit like BrundleFly, but not nearly as well done. Good call on the change.

 

Spider-Man Homecoming

It was really good. Not sure if I'd say it's better than Spider-Man 2 because the films are both good in their own ways. I can safely say though that this has the best post credit scene of any Marvel film.

 

Colossal


In a word: Disappointing

The trailer and the poster makes it seem that Colossal will be a fun spoof or parody of the Kaiju genre. It's not. Instead the film is a built on bitterness and jealousy in which the characters dance around for the first act of the film, but reveals its ugly head going into the second act of the movie.

The characters aren't really likable, as the script doesn't give the audience any real reason to do so. The only real empathy for the characters are the Koreans suffering under the mishaps of the Anne Hathaway Kaiju. The story and plot meanders for two-thirds of movie, with nothing much of interest or entertainment value.

Thumbs down.

 

Sith_Sensei__Prime yeah, I saw the trailer earlier this year and it promises a film that it clearly doesn't deliver. I've heard some good things about it (from critics, who appear to like it more than audiences if the %80 RT score vs. the 6.2 IMDb rating is any measure), but even many of them temper their remarks by saying this is not the film the trailers make it out to be.

 

You know Van Damme would have found a way to do the splits in a tree, though.

 

Starship Troopers Traitor of Mars. It wasn't bad, but I also didn't have high expectations for it from the get go.

 

Hmm. I loved Colossal. But this is why I don't watch trailers. I think it's a really compelling character piece and an interesting meditation on things like the cycle of violence and abuse. Sudeikis is like career best. I've never seen such a likable actor play such a repellent character, I don't think. I think that dark element ultimately really works. But mileage varies; it's been a divisive film. I think it's a small, strange masterpiece myself.




Baby Driver (2017) – Edgar Wright

With Baby Driver, the always excellent Edgar Wright has pulled off the ultimate caper; he’s waltzed right into his own filmography and boosted the “Best Movie” award right out from under all of his others. Hmm, that was a tortured metaphor. Baby Driver is Wright’s best movie, OK? That’s what I’m getting at. The cast is really great. I’ve been an Elgort skeptic in the past (I thought he was a big problem in The Fault In Our Stars), but he’s very good here. Lily James is typically wonderful and Kevin Spacey is good as always. And a word for Eiza Gonzalez who exudes a serious sexy, slinky vibe as Darling. Jon Hamm & Jamie Foxx are the standouts, I think. Foxx gives his best performance in a very long time, one of his best ever, as the unhinged Bats, a character genuinely menacing and scary while also being surprisingly minimal. Foxx plays him pretty quietly, not like a cartoon psycho, and it works. He’s central to a couple of the film’s most suspenseful scenes, a gripping scene in a diner and a face off in a warehouse. Hamm, meanwhile, gives his best cinematic performance as the affable Buddy; his character has a real arc in the film and Hamm manages to slowly strip away his natural charm to take the character in some surprising directions. I’ve been kind of bummed at the movies Hamm has gotten since his Don Draper days, but this is finally a role worthy of him and he kills it.

Wright pulls something off here that most filmmakers seemingly can’t; he crafts a balls to the wall, pure energy action film and then imbues it with real emotional heft. The film is the romantic story of a 1940s tragic film noir told through the haze of an all-encompassing sugar high. Some of the action scenes here are just astoundingly great. The climactic bank robbery leads into a chase that seems to go on for an insanely long time and yet it never flags or loses energy. The soundtrack to the film is fantastic; it’s also, and I think this is key, not just the same old hits that usually underscore action scenes. Even with the same old selections, Wright could, I think, bring something new to the game with the way he lines the movie up to the beat of the music, but he chooses to go with songs you don’t hear as often and that really works. Something as simple as Baby delivering coffee gets turned into a delightful ballet by Wright’s interplay with the music and the action gets amped up too. But amidst action sequences that could easily feel cartoonish, Wright finds real suspense and intensity specifically because these characters feel so fully realized that you’re constantly wondering what they’re going to do and, anyway, you actually care about them. It’s a great action movie but the character work is very well done. Against all odds, I found the story of Baby and Debora to be one of the most compelling “young love” tales in recent cinematic memory and Hamm & Wright create a masterful supporting character in Buddy and imbue him with a compelling amount of emotion. Wright takes his camera on a crazy ride and gets our hearts to go along with it. Quite a feat. This is a filmmaker operating at levels of near perfection. 4 stars.

tl;dr – Wright is at near perfect level with this intense, amped up action-thriller that boasts great characters, great music & a singular, beautiful vision of what an action movie should be. 4 stars.

 

'Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer'

It's a well made and well acted film but I wasn't quite as enthusiastic about it this time. The whole draw to the film is that it unflinchingly explores it's title monster with the minimum of theatricality in that exploration. I felt uncomfortable with it this time and was sort of wondering if it was because it showcased it's horrors well or if it was because 'Henry' is just an exploitation film that is good at minimizing the exploitation. It's a "good" movie in that the performances and the staging of everything is effective and creepy but I don't know if that's enough for a full hearted recommendation.

One other thing I appreciate about Henry it is it's utter de-romanticization of the city of Chicago on film. It shows the city as a very cold ugly mean place. Chicago is easily the most over romanticized city on film and TV. New York and Los Angeles are allowed to be seedy on film but even with our history of crime and corruption and in films about our history of crime and corruption Chicago still is not condemned on a visual level.

 

The2ndQuest that was great. Thanks for sharing. I can remember JCVD being on Arsenio back in the day and telling him that he had been "in the outfit of da Prehdahter.", but he neglected to mention he was let go. Doing some more digging, seems no one can quite agree on why he was let go (funny article here).

CT-867-5309 taken from said article...

Visual effects supervisor, Joel Hynek: I was in Joel Silver’s trailer, and he had called for Jean-Claude to come see him. And he comes in the trailer and Joel starts saying, “You gotta stop kickboxing!” — because [Jean-Claude] wanted to kickbox — and he was telling him, “Look, the Predator is not a kickboxer.” And Van Damme was like (Van Damme voice), “I must do that; that’s how I see the Predator.” And Joel said, “Well, you’re fired. Get out of here.” And Van Damme says, “Kiss my balls!” and walks out, and that was the end of that.

Yeah, that's the problem with trailers in a nutshell I suppose. They either misrepresent or give everything away.

 

Juke Skywalker LOL. "You gotta stop kickboxing..." Priceless.

Thanks for posting that.

 

Ghost World (2001)

A modern masterpiece. I loved it. A movie that should've kickstarted Thora Birch's career to superstardom but sadly didn't, and she's kind of faded into obscurity. She's fantastic in this btw.