My gut reaction is to say “how dare you” but I’m interested, what made you hate it so much
Sucks like a Boss!
I would watch it again any day, any time.
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Snowpiercer is certainly not the best movie. But it’s still a barrel of fun. And it is a sequel to Willy Wonka, dead stop.
Golly, where do I begin? The biggest problem I have with the movie is just how… stupid so many of the decisions the characters make are, but there’s a lot of other, spoiler-heavy stuff that I feel was just poorly done.
I certainly enjoyed Snowpiercer well out of proportion to how good it was as a movie. I see many of its flaws, but sometimes a movie or book just clicks with me and I can go along with the ride.
It is not a sequel to Willy Wonka. It merely exists in our world as a form of entertainment and Willy Wonka also exists, and there can be deliberate connections without having to force it into the same fictional timeline.
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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs 2018
★★★★
I thought this would be a movie, and it is, but it’s more a short story compilation. 6 stories, set in the movie version of the Wild West. Some funny, some touching, some horrific, some adventurous, some touch. ALL with bloody cartoon violence.
Also included: some amazing performances by both big-name and less known actors. The Coen Brothers know exactly how to get the most out of their cast, in all their movies, and this is a masterclass.
Avengers: Endgame 2019
★★★★½
There are two ways to judge this movie; as a movie or as the final chapter in a decade-long movie experience.
As the former, it’s competently made but not special. The movie part of the movie is mostly the middle hour with fun time travel shenanigans.
On the other side, the opening hour and the closing hour all rely on you having emotional investment from seeing previous movies and TV shows. And I did have that investment.
It’s the first massive pop culture phenomenon that I’ve followed along with in real time. I wasn’t around for the original Star Wars trilogy, and didn’t get sucked in by the other Star Wars movies. I was too old to catch the wave of Harry Potter books, and the movies were so delayed that I couldn’t experience it. I don’t keep up with TV shows live, as I like them to be a complete story before watching.
So this was it for me: my first time watching a movie (Infinity War) and knowing that I can’t get the end of the story for a whole year. I had to stew in the emotions and knowledge for the entire time, based on emotional connections made over 20 other movies, and then have it all pay off. And it worked.
Anyway, there’s a whole discussion about this phenomenon and experience on my podcast, SFBRP episode #397.
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Riddick 2013
★★★½
For some reason I got this confused and thought it was the second movie after Pitch Black. Turns out, nope, there’s an entire movie in between. But I didn’t see that, and to be honest didn’t miss it at all. Some weird stuff about him become a king of a planet and then looking for a different planet? Whatever.
This movie might as well be called “Pitch Black Two But With More Gunfights.”
Riddick in Pitch Black was a dangerous killer mercenary type guy who had an accidental run-in with aliens, plus some other humans as cannon fodder. What if it was the same setup, but the cannon fodder was other mercenaries and bounty hunters who could shoot at each other and at Riddick… and be actual cannon fodder?
And I’m totally cool with that.
The opening is weird. It’s about 30 minutes of Riddick having adventure, but it’s a silent move opening that brought to mind Wall-E. Instead of a robot alone on an entire planet with a cockroach his only friend, it’s a man who can see in the dark and a CGI alien dog as his only friend.
And I’m totally cool with that too.
So if you like aliens and guns and killing and bad guys who are bad, this is the movie for you.
The Wandering Earth 2019
★★★½
Netflix told me I’d enjoy this movie… and I did!
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I got was a movie that in one way was very silly, and another very intelligent.
On the silly side is all the disaster movie tropes, things like driving vehicles away from the destruction of cities/mountains/etc always just out of reach of the collapses or explosions. It’s sticking very close to the Roland Emmerich playbook! Also people hanging off things and falling and being caught. And someone sacrificing themself to get the other to safety. You know the kind of thing.
On the intelligent side is a story with huge science fiction ideas, that then plays pretty straight with what it sets out. Once you accept the premise, that the sun is growing and we can move the Earth to a different solar system, then you are treated to some mind-blowing ideas that you’ve never seen before on film. The Earth sling-shotting around Jupiter, and igniting the atmosphere of the planet to boost it into space? There’s some really high level hard science fiction concepts. I mean, it’s not often you see an in-movie diagram with the label “Roche limit” and that’s just an expected and accepted part of the world. It’s treating me, as a viewer, as though I’m a science fiction reader.
There is a story of a guy with daddy issues, because of course there is. And there are badass crews with guns, for reasons I wasn’t so sure about. And a crazy guy guy in prison. And a drunk Russian cosmonauts. But the people are there mostly to be either a way to move to the next plot point, or to be squashed by a falling thing.
The space and planet special effects are amazing. The outside shots of the trucks driving around are less convincing, but stylised in a way that meant it wasn’t so important for them to be completely realistic. I had some issues with light sources and thermodynamics, and that it took as long to cross 100m in a space ship as it did to drive a truck from Shanghai to Jakarta… but a movie like this is always going to play fast and loose with half of physics. You’ve kinda got to, to make the images of the Earth blasting through space acceptable.
Is that the one with the teacup?
I don’t recall any tea cup.
Space Jam 1996
★★★
I expected this to be super dated and not stand up after more than 20 years. Turns out it was way better than I expected! Quite charming and continually funny. Sure, a lot of the green screen stuff is a bit shoddy, but nothing to distract from the fun of the animated characters.
The thing that is most dated? The basketball! 90’s basketball has almost nothing in common with what I’m seeing now in the 2019 playoffs.
At the end, demonstrate that the five NBA players have their skills back, each one dribbles a bit then dunks the ball. And that’s it?!?!? That would never fly today. Now to demonstrate high level skill there would be a behind the back pass to step back three pointer from the half court line.
Michael Jordan can’t actually act, and there’s very little I dislike more in a movie than a Bill Murray cameo, but overall Space Jam really entertained me.
That’s Chronicles of Riddick.
It’s not a good movie, but I really enjoy it. Lots of good over-the-top-cheesy quotes.
That is why I get them confused. But that teacup…
Sometimes people (Scott) complain about horror movies not being actually scary, or relying on cheap BOO scares to get you. I think Horror is the wrong genre for scary. It’s like “classical” music - it has evolved to a particular set of tropes, but may or may not have the thing that word originally meant.
I say scary movies aren’t necessarily horror, because Sicario knocks it out of the park. The amount of tension is off the charts. When they’re sitting in traffic? Scary. When they walk into the tunnel? Super scary.
Also the movie is gorgeous, and the score fits perfectly.
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One of my favorite horror stories is just about someone who hiked too far out on a beach birdwatching and gets trapped by the tide.
Not a movie, but from my perspective the Chernobyl series is en example of something that brings far more terror and horror than a classical horror story, despite just being based on very real shit. Intense levels of radiation is way more fear-inducing to contemplate than some fantastical setting with beasts and ghouls and fantasy that is obviously fake and made up. In part because it is a real thing, but also because it really is an invisible killer. Not to mention the imagery of nuclear industry and catastrophy has been well played up in the years since the atomic age.
Men in gas masks, the sound of geiger counters, those are scary things in any context.
But one thing that I remember from the show, the image of a man looking down into an exposed melting nuclear core, and knowing what that means to the one viewing it, is pretty awe-inspiring and terrifying all at the same time. That’s not just the invisible specter of radiation, that’s looking the monster in the face and seeing it breathe at you.
I would say that horror is like comedy, different people have different tastes. But it’s endlessly frustrating when people conflate something not conforming to their own taste as bad quality.
The scariest movie I have ever seen is Sanctum. Its about cave divers who through a little bad luck and a lot of stupidity and hubris get trapped in a flooded cave system.
it looks like a good movie but I don’t know if they could have made the trailer any more generic
I’d never seen the trailer until now. The tone of the movie is NOTHING like the trailer.