Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Glass .

ok what the hell was the point of this film?
When I think back to Unbreakable and Sixth Sense and how those films have all these interesting scenes and incidents , but this is just tedious (and it's long), even the camerawork is dull - flat and horrible compositions .

 

Mommy Dead and Dearest
This is about the true story that the first season of The Act is based on. I was interested in both, so I started with this documentary. Holy crap what a story. I'd heard about it some on local Missouri news, but hearing about it from the inside was even crazier. I think this is also a case where the outcome, though only 10 years in prison, was probably just. The things this girl endured were remarkable. And she herself is a piece of work, though that's not her fault largely.

 

Currently watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (the 1961 film, not the TV series) on one of the movie channels.

 

Any of you Crouching Tiger fans catch up with the sequel a couple of years ago? I was mildly curious, but it seemed to get a very mixed response and the controversy surrounding its release didn't really help things.

 

I watched it, and it was not of the same quality. I seem to remember everyone talked English, for starters.

 

I believe the movie Memoirs of a Geisha is the same way. I did like the movie (and book for that matter), but it was just strange watching a film set between the 1920s and 40s in Japan where all of the actors and actresses only spoke fluent English.

 

Rocky IV

It's been almost 30 years since I last watched the original series all together but I remembered so much of this film. Even back then, when the soviets were still the baddies in the west's eyes (let's not get modern politics involved) it came across as a bit dumb with the audience and Gorbachev rooting for him at the end. Now it looks beyond ridiculous.

Fortunately, the plot is bested in dumbness by Paulie's futuristic robot girlfriend who's like a cross between Alexa, L3 and a dalek.

Salvation: the brilliant juxtaposition of the James Brown/Creed circus entrance followed by Apollo being beaten to death. Brutal and still makes me really sad.

The Rocky training montage is very good, contrasting tech with nature, although Rocky's only sparring partners appear to be logs of wood which is stretching things too far, even for this film. Unfortunately it's one of several other montages, all pretty awful.

Compared to the beautiful love story in the original Rocky, and now the excellent Rocky Baboa and Creed movies, this is a C-grade experience at best.

 

It's a really bad knock off.

 

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Harryhausen was a genius, and his work here is the real star of the film; the bronze Titan Talos, the creepy skeleton warriors... absolutely magical. Todd Armstrong is the lead, but is less well known to me than a few of the supporting players: Patrick (Doctor Who) Troughton, Nigel (The Ipcress File) Green, and Honor (The Avengers) Blackman.

Brick (2005)
Hadn't watched this in a while. Still love it.

Avengers:Infinity War (2018)
I think this might be the masterpiece of the Marvel films for pure acting talent/action per scene. The Russo Brothers juggle all the pieces so well, and the cast is so strong, and playing characters we already love, you can forget that many supposedly sure-fire megastar blockbusters have floundered under less organised direction. It really is something of an achievement.

Also, got to say I love seeing the different hero franchises meet for the first time... Stark and Strange, Thor and the Guardians, Groot and Cap... all lovely moments.

 

House of Traps (1982)

So a throne desiring Prince hires the countries best thieves (including Venoms baddie Lu Feng) to help retake the throne (so he can rule over Song-era ancient China.) The wicked royal has these thieves steal court valuables to prove their worth to him. He stashes these and a list with his accomplices’ names in the gruesome House of Traps.

His opposition, Lord Bao, sends scholarly officer Yan (Sun Chien) into the Prince’s dominion to foil the royal usurper’s plot. Yan is not without accomplices, including two undercover agents, thief Black Fox (Kuo Chui) and the ninja-esque Lord Shen (Lung Hsiang-Tien). The four remaining Rat clan brothers (including the awesome Chu Ko as Sky Rat) will also help the heroes when they get the news of their fifth brother’s death in the House of Traps. Number five was trying to discover if the Prince was hiding the stolen loot and list there.

The remainder of the film sees the heroes versus the nefarious Prince and fiends as the good guys work to prevent the coup.

The humor works in this movie, Kuo is taking the piss out of Lu Feng constantly and both men play that up quite well.

I am finally okay with Sun Chien only having a dramatic role here*, while the insane end fight is only more nuts with each viewing. I was so floored by Wang Lik’s hook sword dealing baddie when I saw this movie on the big screen almost 3 years ago. It was amazing to see him, Kuo, Lu, Lung Hsiang-Tien and Chu Ko just go for it. And Lu gets a so bad-it’s-good

Spoiler

-demise

too.

This is one of those deep dive Venoms films that gets more fun as you rewatch and spot all the players. I’d love a movie with the Rat clan (a.k.a. The Righteous Five) myself.

Okay, so the titular House is kind creaky and delivers O.T.T. gore in a goofy way unlike the previous years’ Venons flick, The Masked Avengers which is quite mean-spirited.

*When Sun Chien and Lo Meng were not in the films with the operatic Venoms, the movie suffered for it. Their traditional fu and acting added an additional kick to the stories.

As for House of Traps, it’s good fun. I enjoy it more each time I see it.

 

Hanna (2011)
A rewatch for me. I'll talk more in the "Hanna" thread.

 

The First Sleigh-Ride (1897) – James H. White

A horse drawn sleigh jingles its way down a snow covered street. The snow is kinda cool. I guess. 0 stars

tl;dr – 0 stars.

 

Joe vs The Volcano (1990)
Someday, the day may come when I don't find this movie ridiculously funny and wonderfully heartwarming. But it is not this day.

 

Stop torturing yourself with these reviews and instead let us know how much you hated Glass.

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp. It was awesome.

 

Yeah I really liked that. Marvel has really been on a roll. I think that, Black Panther, Infinity War, and Spider-Man Homecoming are the best Marvel films ever and they were all in a row.

 

i caught up on the marvels in anticipation of seeing endgame with my boys tonight.

ant-man and the wasp. this was pretty good. scott lang is one of the more human marvel heroes, and rudd and lilly have pretty good chemistry. the plot was a slight departure from the usual marvel formula, which i appreciated.

captain marvel. i guess i should have expected a movie called captain marvel to be the marvelest of all marvel movies. it had some fun moments (goose was cool), but i never really felt the stakes.

 

Yeah I was underwhelmed by Captain Marvel. And also pretty certain that you don't actually need to see it before you see Endgame. I told my bro a three sentence summary of what happened in Captain Marvel and I think it'll be enough for him to be able to understand where she's coming from in Endgame.

 

yeah, i agree. one of my coworkers gave me a recap in case i didn't see it in time. it was, "all you need to know is she's really cool and was the inspiration for the avengers". after watching it i think that really was all i needed to know.

 

Yep. I was basically like "She's a fighter test pilot who got super powers. She teamed up with Fury to fight some bad guys, then headed off to help some good guys. She's back now and met up with the Avengers." That's basically it. It was the only Marvel movie in the last year and a half that I didn't absolutely adore.

 

I was also slightly underwhelmed by Captain Marvel, but Ant-Man & the Wasp is the weakest one of all of them that I've seen. It's like the first MCU movie since I started watching them seriously that I would just not recommend at all. Hannah John-Kamen was about the only good thing in it.

 

I think Captain Marvel is suffering a bit due to Marvel's own success. It really is a very solid origin story and overall a very entertaining movie. Was it great? But overall I really enjoyed it and I think the vast majority of people were too. But because it's a MCU movie, that seems to be not enough anymore. As I told my buddy the other day, if that were a DCEU movie everyone would been like, "That was great, one of the best ones they made so far!". But because it's in MCU everyone is like "Ehhhhhhhhhh it was okay but nothing great. Middle of the pack for MCU" LOL!

Far as Ant Man & the Wasp goes, I thought it was really good. Not as good as the first one mainly because it didn't have a very good villain (really did it have a main villain in the end...perhaps Wolton Goggins as Sonny Burch?) but overall really enjoyed it a lot as I think (just my own personal theory) it is really meant to set up End Game more then anything else hence how it ended. So perhaps that it is why there isn't a traditional main villain as the events of Ant Man/Wasp are help set the table for End Game??

Hopefully I will get the answers in about *check clock* in about 7 and half hours as long as everything goes right *knock on wood* we should be walking out of End Game a bit after 1 AM waving to the nuts are watching the 2 AM showing.

 

Yeah, I think you're right about Captain Marvel. I think it was Quest who said that it was kind of a Phase I movie dropped in here in Phase . . . are we in IV now or does that start after Endgame? Still, I think that's pretty incisive. I still give it a high rating, but, yeah, for the MCU, it might not even make the top ten, just because they've put out so many that are truly amazing. But the action is just not very good so that's a problem that isn't related to it being more of a Phase I movie.

And I remarked after seeing Ant May & the Wasp that Marvel had finally found a way to overcome the fact that the villains were often the weakest part of their movies: have no villain at all! It kind of doesn't, honestly.

EDIT: I just say that "Ant May" typo above, but I love it so much that I'm leaving it in. Maybe Marisa Tomei puts on the shrinking suit in one of the next movies?

 

Phase 3 ends with Spider-Man: Far From Home.

 

Avengers end game for the 2nd time. Going again tomorrow.

Just great. Stuck the landing and enriched everything that came before it. I was talking to my co-workers last week about sequences or sayings that we haven’t really got but hoped we would some day, and end game gave than all to me. Amazing