You might also want to check out Best F[r]iends. It’s Wiseau’s newest movie, but it’s not directed by him, so it’s more competently made.
I can’t get over how dull the final boss fight was in Wonder Woman. It’s a fight with Aires, the god of war, who you’ve heard about for the whole movie. But then he is revealed, and there’s nothing about what he can do, what his powers are, where he gets his power, where he gets his weapons or amour or anything.
The way to make a bag guy interesting or scary is to show them doing bad stuff throughout the movie. Then when they fight at the end, you know what might be possible. It’s not even clear why he isn’t way more powerful, or what his weakness might be.
And there are two other bad guys who we DO see being set up in the movie as big boss villains. One is killed too easily, and the other one is just forgotten. Literally I can’t remember what happened to the second one.
Even the worst, most forgettable villains in Marvel movies don’t just suddenly appear at the end with no buildup, and have at least one or two little factors explaining their powers or strength levels. A literal god of war should have every single weapon ever invented right at their fingertips… right? That’s how I’d have played it.
Sigh.
2 Likes
He’s a god. Isn’t that reason enough?
No. That’s not enough. I had to think back to the exposition at the start of the movie to try to work out what that actually meant in this fictional world. And I couldn’t remember.
The Beauty and the Beast remake was mostly fine… except for the Beauty and except for the Beast. The Beast was way too bland, and hardly had any facial expressions due to it being rendered “realistic”. The Beauty was cast for being a famous actor, not for being a good singer (autotuned to hell and back)… but unfortunately, also not a good enough actor to make up for it.
The rest of the cast was good. Gaston was a highlight. Most of the servants were good, and the musical numbers hold up pretty well past the translation from animation to live action.
I must admit I fast-forwarded through quite a bit of it.
One of these days, I want to cosplay as Gaston and show up at my local Bass Pro Shop (for those of you unfamiliar with the store, it’s a chain of giant hunting/fishing/camping supply stores). I particularly want to hang around the section where they sell home decor as they have many items made out of antlers (“I use antlers in all of my deeeeecorating…”).
Y’know, this has irked me for a while too. The movie is great, but the ending really is sorta trite and dull.
I think my largest problem was actually that I had a hard time actually buying David Thewlis as Ares.
Like.
His head didn’t really fit into the helmet correctly. The armor was sloppy and haphazard rather than coherent and intimidating. He looked like a skinny nerd in goofy-ass cosplay instead of an actual villain.
It really stood out next to the otherwise excellent costuming. Everyone else was killer, the Amazons looked amazing, and the period pieces were solid. But Ares just didn’t look like an all-powerful god who actually posed a meaningful threat.
Building him up as a shadowy manipulator was fine. I think that went alright. It was their attempt to transition him to a powerful warrior that fell flat.
And seriously, Magneto-esque hurling of vehicles? Dumb.
2 Likes
The second villain was the “totally not a nazi” scientist woman. And in the big climax of the ending, Ares points at her uncovered face which has a hole in her cheek due to experiments, and says something to the effect of “look at the ugliness of humanity!” Which came off to me as just hilarious and more rude on Ares’ part than demonstrative of any flaw in humans.
Wonder Woman was the best of the DC movies, which still makes it terrible.
I, Tonya isn’t just a good movie, as I’d heard it was a good movie, but a really funny comedy. And, weirdly, it’s a comedy about domestic violence, which could have gone wrong in sooooo many ways, but somehow keeps to the right side of okay.
The acting by all involved was so good that when there was a bit of dodgy CGI to put Margot Robbie’s head on a real ice skater’s body, I didn’t mind at all.
Certainly highly recommended.
I also watched Avicii: True Stories, which is a BBC documentary about Avicii, but mostly about Tim Bergling and how he suffered from anxiety, mental health issues, alcoholism and organ failure over four years of world-wide touring.
I’m not sure if it would be so powerful if he hadn’t committed suicide recently. I think anyone who had seen the documentary before he died would think “Oh right, that makes a lot of sense” rather than “Oh shit, wow he was young!” He says at multiple times things like “If I keep going on like this it’s going to kill me” and those moments hit hard now that you know it did kill him.
1 Like
I am really bad at spotting face-replacement CGI. It all looks great to me. So after I saw I, Tonya, I actually looked up whether Margot Robbie did those ice skating moves, and the answer really surprised me. There was nobody available who could do Tonya Harding’s moves. There was literally only one skater in the field who could pull them off at the time of filming, and they were busy prepping for the Olympics, not looking to risk injury on a film set. Tonya was legit.
I highly recommend the Tonya comic by Katie Skelly.
Here’s a preview:
You can buy the PDF here:
John Wick Chapter 2 might as well be called John Wick Kills EVERYONE Again. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, as I’d heard mixed things about this second movie. It’s not as good as the first, and doesn’t have the same personal journey compared to the first, but there’s enough crazy shit and weird underworld material to keep me interested between the John Wick violence.
2 Likes
I too really enjoyed it. Some of those set-piece fights were just so fun to watch I watched them again after I finished the movie.
1 Like
Besides just having awesome action set-pieces, I find the world of John Wick to be really cool and interesting. They barely scratch the surface of it, but I would love a deeper dive into that setting.
Good news for you! There is a mini-series planned that is set in the network of Continentale Hotels:
1 Like
That’s actually really cool!
Saw Avengers: Infinity War last night. Without wanting to delve into spoilers, I thought it was good and I’m looking forward to where they go from here.
I will say that after being teased for the past 10 years, Thanos was sufficiently terrifying and powerful to be the antagonist for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
2 Likes
A Quiet Place is a good horror/suspense flick. Had me jumpy. Also kids are dumb.
1 Like