Agreed heavily on Beauty and the Beast 2017. 75% of the new stuff they added was really bad including the additional backstory to Belle, the extra context for the Enchantress, and the new songs which were all blah. It’s really only worth seeing the new movie for Luke Evans’ Gaston and Josh Gad’s Lefou. They have a new dynamic going on because Lefou has a crush on him, but they add a lot more complexity in small ways to how Gaston is viewed in public and him being involved in war.
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them was a good plane movie. I like that is was Potterverse magic movie but without child actors or long running storylines. That said, there were a few character names and exposition bits that I’m sure I would have recognised from the books if I’d read them. Also nice to see what a movie with a Hufflepuff protagonist is like. I mean, he must be Hufflepuff, right?
Moana was really good fun. A bit long, but sooo beautiful. Why can’t all movies look that good? I’d listened to the soundtrack already, so knew the music, and it’s one of those times where the music works so much better in the movie than not, unlike, say, Lion King, where I’d now much rather listen to the Broadway cast album than watch the movie.
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[quote=“lukeburrage, post:174, topic:73”]
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them was a good plane movie. I like that is was Potterverse magic movie but without child actors or long running storylines.
[/quote]It really was some nice touches and fresh new aspects to the universe. Since it was a movie dealing with experienced adult wizards, rather than children, we got a bunch of things that just didn’t fit in with the original books or movies - for example, apparating around willy-nilly, the rapid-fire (And often silent) spellcasting, the ability to touch on wider politics than just who gets to be house head this year, more varied spells than the things that are useful for schoolkids(magic cooking, yo! How cool was that?), magic being applied on a larger scale than seen before outside of things like great hall setpeices, we got to see a part of the magical world where people actually move in and interact with the muggle world rather than effectively denying it exists(Arthur, you’re in the misuse of muggle artifacts office, and you don’t seem to have the faintest clue how anything in the muggle world works, for god’s sake man.)
All in all, a very interesting expansion to the universe.[quote=“lukeburrage, post:174, topic:73”]
That said, there were a few character names and exposition bits that I’m sure I would have recognised from the books if I’d read them.
[/quote]Nah, mostly just things relating to Newt’s book(ie, that it exists, or rather, will) and that Grindelwald was basically Wizard Hitler who was mates with Dumbledore when they were basically magical uni students.
[quote=“lukeburrage, post:174, topic:73”]
Also nice to see what a movie with a Hufflepuff protagonist is like. I mean, he must be Hufflepuff, right?
[/quote]I looked it up, and he is.
I guess I knew the book existed, but that there is a Grindelwald reveal at the end meant literally nothing to me, as I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name before, nor guessed who he might be. In fact it was worse than nothing, because it suddenly detracted from the moment of someone who was otherwise an interesting maybe bad, maybe good good.
Spy is a a stupid comedy which had a lot of laughs, but those laughs were spread out over a waaaay too long movie. It could easily have been 40 minutes shorter. The main joke seemed to be “Hey, a spy, but what if it was a fat woman spy?” but I was laughing more when it wasn’t about that. Like the bragging of Jason Statham. Not sure why so many British people were working for the CIA.
I still think the best of part of the movie is when he takes off on the boat at the end and the other characters just watch him for a bit and then say “Do you think he know’s it’s a lake?”
Kubo and the Two Strings was absolutely great. Loved the style, the animation, the story, characters, everything about it.
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Your Name is a stunning, beautiful movie, easily my favorite of Shinkai’s films that I’ve seen (which includes all but his last two) and probably just one of my favorite anime movies period. It was delightful, intriguing, and hit me in the feels multiple times. Would absolutely watch again and again.
The only thing that made the movie kinda “bleh” was the guy sitting right next to me. I’ve been next to worse people, but dude, seriously, shut up.
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Arrival was ok. It felt a tiny bit dumb in terms of what kind of scientific response there would be to alien visitors. I’m sure there’s a coherent plan out there that isn’t what happened in the movie. The soundtrack and cinematography were trying too hard in spots.
Rewatched Shaun of the Dead. This second viewing I was a lot better at noticing the callbacks, and I enjoyed it much more than I remember because of it. Shaun feels like a springboard for the dense, clever humor in Hot Fuzz.
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fate of the furious I haven’t watched a movie in the series since Tokyo Drift but I has heard good things about the most recent ones so I went to see this one sight unseen and I came out of a fun action movie with a lot of heart.
Vin Diesel, Dwyane Johnson and Jason Stathem all give good and funny performances with a lot of good set pieces action scenes through the movie.
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Jodorowsky’s Dune is a great little documentary about a movie version of Dune that was never shot. However so much pre-production work had been done that it became an influential movie in its own right, as the creative team went on to work on other projects, and new script ideas and story boards were re-used in other projects.
To be honest, if I was a major studio, I wouldn’t have let Jodorowsky direct such a project either. But one of the best moments of the movie is Jodorowsky recounting his reaction to seeing the David Lynch Dune adaptation. So good.
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I really do want to watch his version of Dune, It just sounds so imaginative and out there. Maybe one day someone can get their hands on that book and just do it up in animation or cgi.
You’re missing out. Fast Five is my favorite. The lines from the Rock are the best. I’m also very biased because I love the Rock and Vin.
But yeah, I was not expecting an 8th film and was wondering what else are they going to do? And as always it exceeded my expectations and they are making TWO more.
Order of best FF movies:
The Fast Five (5th movie)
Furious 7 (7th movie)
The Fate of the Furious (8th movie)
The Fast and The Furious (1st movie)
Fast & Furious 6 (6th movie)
2 Fast 2 Furious (2nd movie)
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (3rd movie)
Fast & Furious (4th movie)
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Until they launch a car from space back to Earth, while having a knife fight inside that car and ANOTHER car is hurtling through the atmosphere chasing them, and then both cars land on an aircraft carrier, there’s still work to be done.
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s/Earth/Cybertron/g
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Watch FF1 and that’s it.
[quote=“Dazzle369, post:189, topic:73, full:true”]
Watch FF1 and that’s it.
[/quote]I did rewatch it recently, in fact. Jesus, it’s so 90s it hurts. And Paul Walker was WAY less likable back then, he was like the casting call for generic bro-tastic so-cal surfer dude.
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Only part of FF4 I could Stand was Paul Walker recreating the Market Scene from Ghost in the Shell.
In the Paul Walker montage at the end of 7 (which was an unexpectedly poignant ending to a FF movie), some of the clips were jarring in how old they looked. Both in film quality and how young Paul Walker looked.
Incidentally, watching the movie was a lot more suspenseful than it would have been otherwise, expecting Paul Walker to die at any second.