★★★★★
The first time I watched this movie, I loved it so much partially because it was the opposite movie to The Incredibles 2, which I’d just quit watching half way though. Lego 2 held up on the second viewing, though I was less emotional about it, probably due to watching it at sea level, not on an airplane.
★
The previous Godzilla movie wasn’t bad. Not amazing, but not terrible. I really enjoyed the Kong movie. So, to prepare for the upcoming Kong vs Godzilla movie, let’s check out King of the Monsters!
Actually, let’s not.
The movie was so nonsensical, and the acting and directing so bad, we fast forwarded through huge sections, playing it again only when we spotted some action. The final battle sequences were dramatic, I guess, but I had sooooo little interest in whatever was going on with the humans. How can Hollywood be so bad at writing motivations for the baddies?
Also, STOP PUTTING HUMANS WITH RIFLES IN THE SAME ROOM AS BUILDING-SIZED MONSTERS!!! For fucks sake…
Tagged with “Ultimate Disappointment” for being worse than I’d been warned in advance.
No rating for this movie, as I didn’t so much watch it as it having played in the same room/apartment while I did something else. It looked fun, and seemed to be a colourful retelling of Aladdin with a dragon instead of genie.
But, Future Luke, it didn’t look interesting enough to watch again, so if it comes up, don’t bother. Instead just look up the scenes with the “hands in pocket only uses his feet to fight” bad guy on YouTube.
★★
Back in 2014, all the hype was about the “fight scene in a church all shown in a single shot” and I was hyped to watch it!
Until I got to that scene, and discovered it was EDITED OUT OF THE MOVIE!!! Ah yes, I was watching it on a plane, and “the movie has been edited to fit the screen, and for content”. Oh cool, the only reason I’d put the movie on, cool fight scene, was missing. I stopped the movie in disgust, and from that moment on, never watched a movie on a plane that had been “edited for content”. Lesson learned.
That was back in 2014, so to catch up before watching Kingsman 2, and because Juliane had previously watched it all the way through, I gave it another go.
The first half of the movie was much as I remembered it. The fight scene in the church is actually very good. It goes downhill pretty quickly after that though. A movie that knows it isn’t taking itself seriously is usually a strength, and I admired the effort to be sillier than even the silliest Roger Moore Bond movie, but I couldn’t quite let go and enjoy it.
Also I’d heard the last gag in the entire movie was super inappropriate, and it was. Again, committing to a gag can be a strength, but a movie literally ending on an anal sex scene? Well, sure, if that’s the note you want to leave on on…
So the main character of the first movie is now in a long-term relationship with the anal sex princess? Even for a followup to a movie which included exploding heads, this pushes credulity a bit much for me.
Human burgers. Elton John. Stuff I wasn’t enjoying. I kept watching because Juliane picked it to watch.
Then a scene starts where, if I understood correctly, the screenwriter had artificially created a situation where two men begin a competition with the goal: at a music festival who can finger a woman’s vagina first?
I made the executive decision to stop the movie before that scene progressed any further. I had to do literally anything else but let this movie take any more of my time and attention. I kinda resent even writing this review right now.
Tagged as “ultimate disappointment” for ending up far, far, far worse than I expected of a sequel to another already disappointing movie.
Finally watched Turning Red and cannot say much beyond what others have about how great it is but will say I love that Abby is basically just a Slayers character in a Pixar movie.
Also watched Turning Red tonight. I am probably the wrong audience here, but I am glad there are more coming of age stories that aren’t just about white dudes like myself. It was definitely a fun romp and I was entertained, though the cringe factor is very large. I guess that is the point though.
I also found the animation and art style interesting, but kind of a bit weird. It does remind me a lot of claymation in the way proportions and facial expressions were created for the human characters, but it clearly being computer generated instead of physical clay somehow pushes the “uncanny valley” center of my brain in a strange way. Perhaps that is personal preference though. At the very least it makes the large fur creatures stick out even more.
To me she is more a combination of Mable Pines and Wario.
★★
Ho hum.
I mostly enjoyed a lot of this movie. Florence Pugh is great! Johansson and Rachel Weiss are good. David Harbour is trying really hard and is usually amusing.
On the other hand, Ray Winston is terrible. And so is the plot. And so is quite a lot of the “spectacular” stuff. Can’t a Marvel movie just stay at a smaller scale? Like a family drama in a cabin? I enjoyed all of that bit.
But who built a prison in an avalanche zone? And that’s not even the most ludicrous action location!
So the good guys have been searching all over the world for a secret base, and they find it FLYING IN THE CLOUDS ABOVE RUSSIA? It’s inane and insane at the same time.
How inane? At one point, someone fire a gun into the air, and it hits something important, and that explodes and THE WHOLE BASE FALL APART AND OUT OF THE SKY!!!
That’s the evil base! A fortress so strong it can be taken out by a single stray bullet. Not even a crazy plan to shoot a missile down a vent shaft by an expert pilot using plans stolen in a previous special operation.
A single bullet. Fired in a random direction. TOOK OUT THE ENTIRE ENEMY BASE!!!
Anyway. Two stars and filed under “disappointment”.
★★
I don’t understand American universities!!!
I mean, I’ve got absolutely no idea what is happening in this movie. Is the crazy stuff that happens based on real world experiences at American universities, or based on, you know, a fantasy world populated by monsters!?!?
I really can’t tell the difference!
In Monsters Inc, when something didn’t match up to my expectations of reality, it was explained away by dialogue or exposition or by funny characters being shocked by it.
But in Monsters University, weird stuff kept happening, and it wasn’t explained, and all the characters went along with it, and I was dumbfounded and confused. I kept having culture shock whiplash, over and over.
It’s utterly baffling to me. Is it a bad movie that makes no sense? Or is life at actual American universities literally so monstrous?Is everything non-Monster-related in this movie so recognised by Americans from their university days that it needs no introduction, and no explanation?
Do the children this movie is targeted at also understand all the college life material? Or are they confused like me?
And it wasn’t all that funny, either.
Same, regarding the animation. I really liked the story, but I really didn’t like the animation style. I got a weird Wallace and Gromit feel but CG and it just kinda hit my senses in a not good way. I’d like more stories like this to be out in the world (especially as a new uncle to a niece), just animated differently.
Yeah, I feel like this one came out like 10 years too late. Red Sparrow is a much more interesting version of this character’s movie without all of the explosiony bullshit. It just feels like rote plot maintenance that was ultimately disappointing because we know how everything was going to go? Idk. I mean I like the marvel movies but given the change in release schedule because of the pandemic and the lackluster writing, this one in particular is a big meh for me. Some of the reasons for that are not the movie’s fault, some of them are. If you’re on a marvel kick sometime, I liked Shang Chi and Eternals, but ymmv on the latter one.
Well that was interesting. A highly enjoyable film. Great pacing with an easy to follow plot that does not fuck about. The acting is superb and the chemistry between the 4 primary characters is goddamn beautiful. I really could not guess how things would end up till the final several minutes of the film. Cinematography is great for the most part, except for the scenes depicting the environment and landscape, which I thought could have been a bit more majestic. Still, really good shit. However, the fact that it is billed as a dark comedy is, to me, a bit misleading. I have no idea how this film is supposed to be even darkly humorous. The handful of gag jokes or scenes of awkward violence offer a very thin veneer of comic relief in an otherwise tragic crime odyssey.
The recent Satoshi Kon documentary (and all his films if you haven’t seen them for some reason) are available for free right now. Just watched the doc, it’s quite good. The Legacy of Satoshi Kon
★★★★
I was waiting for the moment when she would sing for her family, and sign at the same time, so they could get the meaning of the song too.
Okay, here’s the concert scene… nope! She didn’t start signing.
Okay, her father says “Sing for me”… but nope! No signing yet.
Right, we’re at the audition. Surely THIS TIME she’s FINALLY going to start signing for her deaf family… yup!
That’s how you win an Oscar for best picture, folks. Don’t have just one but instead THREE musical climaxes in your movie… and make me cry at ALL THREE!
Okay, back to Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
I stopped watching at the obvious point in the movie to stop watching: “A scene starts where, if I understood correctly, the screenwriter had artificially created a situation where two men begin a competition with the goal: at a music festival who can finger a woman’s vagina first?”
I was curious to see if the scene played out as I imagined it would (and why I didn’t want to see it), and to see if anyone else objected to it like me. I checked out some one star reviews of the movie and found these choice quotes:
THE FINGERING??? Hello why is that not talked about more cos that’s truly disgusting and in such bad taste (so invasive and rapey) Matthew Vaughn get ejected from Hollywood and never direct another movie again.
The camera pans into a woman’s vagina as she is sexually assaulted by the movie’s hero.
Having the main character fake ask for consent when he’s about to have sex with a super hypersexualized female character and then the film proceeds to have the most objectifying shot ever that was ENTIRELY A CLOSE UP SHOT OF HER VAGINA AND HIS FINGER GOING INSIDE LIKE HOW TH FUCK???
The rest of the stars got lost along with that vaginal GPS tracker (yes, that’s a real plot point).
crazy when he had to finger that girl to get the chip inside her. couldn’t just stick it in her drink or something
Literally my eyes are aching. I can’t wait to read sexual misconduct allegations about matthew vaughn though.
the fingering scene with cgi vagina is literally my cinematic nightmare
An absolutely disgusting piece of film making involving the Kingsman Boy trying to have sex with a lassie to insert a tracking device into her where both he and Pedro Pascal’s character fight for the right to entrap and shag this lady, who is of course depicted as the reviled free spirit drug taking music fan that seems to be the aim of so much “comedy” ire.
Rape, if not sexual assault.
And my god do I mean contrivances; one tediously drawn out plot point requires a character to plant a tracker on someone’s girlfriend, something which in this film can only be done by fingering her at a music festival.
There’s one scene in this film where our protagonist has to implant a GPS tracker onto a female target using a finger condom that must make contact with a ‘mucous membrane’. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the setup to a ‘dirty mind’ joke and they actually meant something else. Nope. He goes into a tent with her and he fingers her, and you the unfortunate viewer get to see it all.
Had the male lead insert something into a female character’s bloodstream through her vaginal mucus without her consent. Yes, I’m serious.
Matthew Vaughan should be banned from making movies. I thought I was having a hellish nightmare during that Glastonbury sequence
The House is a netflix original, stop-motion anthology horror film.
Three tales separated by time and different entire realities are linked by a cursed house. It’s hard to talk about much without giving it all away, but I really enjoyed it. There’s themes of how we must contend with our own ancestry lest we be consumed by it. About how our obsession with holding onto the present seals away our future. It’s a very abstract kind of haunted house movie. It’s been sitting with me a lot longer than I expected it to.
Munich Colon Edge Of War - who financed this, the Chamberlain estate?
Also, you knew it was the sequel to 1917:
But did you realize it’s also the prequel to Inglourious Basterds?
The New Dr. Strange plays and feels like a sequel to Army of Darkness or Evil Dead more than another MCU film.
I short-handed the review I gave some friends by saying Evil Dead 4 was a fun movie.
Slow clap for the GOAT Michelle Yeoh and a continued applause for the rest of the cast.
Especially the familiar faces from the stunt team. Great job as per usual.
Go see.
I like the direction of media getting very meta, existential and comical.
Some of pop references that stuck out for me, The Matrix, Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, Dr Strange, Rick and Morty. There’s plenty more but, the shared plot devices were used very tastefully.
Very unlike, Ready Player One, the VR Chat of movies.
https://screenrant.com/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-easter-eggs-references/
The pacing was a bit janky. 80% of the time the pacing was spot on, the other 20% maybe a bit too slow/ drawn out for me.
The visual were great. The props were so basic, which worked for the humour in most cases, a miss in some.
Unfortunate for me, the plot went how I expected it to go. Still easily the most entertaining film for this year so far.
