I just hated the massive swerve towards Hollywood and cinematic.
We didn’t need a global threat level villain. This is a series that once produced incredibly tight drama and terror from one bloke with a hammer in an office building.
The London to Iceland in a Volvo scenes irked me so much more than it should have. Luther is a Londoner. The TV series is practically a love letter to the East End. By all means abandon that, Idris can be Luther on holiday in the Bahamas, or become a cop in NYC and I’ll watch it. But don’t put an international lair, with ice walls, a frozen lake of bodies, and mountains… a Volvo ride away from Bow.
Alright Zodiac-esque flick, with Keira Knightley in the lead as a reporter investigating the links between the BS murders. It's a good enough retelling, but very darkly lit which makes it hard to watch at times - even the daylight scenes are dark in most cases. It's on Disney+
Ava (2020), starring Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Colin Farrell.
You've seen this one before. It's a cross between La Femme Nikita and Salt. I am disappointed in myself for watching this, as it's not the kind of film I enjoy. It was riddled with cliches, very weak plot. It was woefully miscast. The rapper Common is in it, and his entire role is ludicrous. Very silly, disappointing film.
Ava (2020), starring Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Colin Farrell.
You've seen this one before. It's a cross between La Femme Nikita and Salt. I am disappointed in myself for watching this, as it's not the kind of film I enjoy. It was riddled with cliches, very weak plot. It was woefully miscast. The rapper Common is in it, and his entire role is ludicrous. Very silly, disappointing film.
He gets a ''cool'' fight scene but overall the character is such a fecking nerd. There's been stereotype in Hollywood of the asian man who always plays the sidekick or the one who never gets the woman and
EEAAO by accident almost plays into this. It's like the Daniels took all the bizarre shite right wing arguments about the decline of masculinity and responded by saying er...yeah it's all true and also good. By the end of the film, the Waymond character pretty much sounded like this
''Please can we just stop fighting'' ''I know your all fighting because your scared and confused'' ''Somehow it feels like it's all my fault'' ''Please be kind''. At that point I just wanted Michelle Yeoh to unleash a drop kick into his head and unload a full uzi clip. Plus Yeoh character is a petit bourgeois immigrate struggling to keep her business afloat, there's no alternative universe where this woman embraces ''love'' and ''kindness'', it's pure brute power all the way, as it should be.
The Daniels seem like nice blokes but it's shite art.
Whale was such a disappointment. I have enjoyed Aronofsky's works. Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan are iconic movies, Mother too though not as good as the aforementioned was a solid flick.
The Whale was mediocrity all around. Sadie Sink was annoying and I don't understand why the priest character was even in it.
The whole Moby Dick thing was too on the nose.
Fraser's eating binges were horrifying, reminiscent of Requiem for a Dream. That probably scared me more than a horror movie ever could.
I thought it maybe missed some Oscar cut off point but nope, Paul Mescal was nominated for best actor. Aftersun didn’t even win the main prize at the BAFTAS(Instead got some weird best British debut shite).
I think with Parasite the awards shows had one last go at trying to give it to an actual film(Although people still can’t get over the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles).
This year is seem to be the start of a transition into nominating big mainstream films. And tbh it’s the only way these awards shows will get any viewers and survive.
To be honest I laughed at that comment. When was being the best film ever relevant to the oscars?
They definitely need to shake it up because it feels like a weird relic from a bygone era.
Did you read the book? It wasn't the best novel I ever read but I did find it interesting and culturally relevant. Also read it back to back with Rob Hart's The Warehouse, another look at a very similar topic.
Unrest. A lightly shot, comedic ode to the machine age and Modernist social upheaval. Whirring time pieces and camera flashes serve as a backdrop to perilous collectivist organising. I liked it.
Not the most brilliant film but notable for not being a film made by artless arseholes for the modern arsehole audience.
The Raid 2 (2014) with Iko Uwais.
Indonesian Martial arts action film written, directed, and edited by Welshman Gareth Evans.
Plot briefly, undercover cop spends 2 years in Jakarta prison to befriend the son of a crime boss. Upon release, he goes to work for the crime boss, who is currently in a state of detente with a Japanese gang and some other gang (possibly also Indonesian). Things go to shit.
If you are new to the silat form of martial arts, it's a lot like Jeet Kundo, with a lot of quick punches, leg sweeps, joint manipulations. Most martial arts films you could condense all of the good fight scenes into about 15 minutes, in a 90 minute film, with the rest being bad acting. This film flips that ratio on its head. It is about 150 minutes, and I'd say probably 125 of the minutes are Iko beating the shit out of someone, often in very imaginative ways. There are a couple of (way) over the top scenes that are still fun, like when Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl tear through about a dozen members of rival gangs using the eponymous weapons. I will admit that at a very early point in the film I stopped caring at all what the "plot" was, and just went along for the insane fights. I like Jackie Chan films, and the fighting in those are generally very creative and fun, but they are never very serious. This film's fights are serious, and often as good as Chan's.
Some of the best martial arts ever on film. In terms of pure Scorsese cinema quality it's pretty low, but in terms of genre, it's ace.
9/10 (genre weighted). I don't know what a 10/10 would look like.
Nah they actually seen to make the effort to watch stuff. I'm talking about the lot that decided the cinema was just another dumping ground for their worthless meme shit. Because everything must be poisoned beyond repair.
Took my daughter to see Shazam: Fury of the Gods. She loved it (she’s 7). The best part of the film was her excitedly holding onto my arm and being so happy for a daddy daughter day. The movie itself is a fecking abomination. Just predictable, pointless nonsense, full of holes in an already wafer thin plot. None of the charm of the original. Hot garbage/10
Took my daughter to see Shazam: Fury of the Gods. She loved it (she’s 7). The best part of the film was her excitedly holding onto my arm and being so happy for a daddy daughter day. The movie itself is a fecking abomination. Just predictable, pointless nonsense, full of holes in an already wafer thin plot. None of the charm of the original. Hot garbage/10
First one was funny at least. Wasn’t the hook that the superhero was a kid who became a big man when he did his magic Shazam phrase? It seemed to have the right vibe for a superhero movie, not the tortured, nihilistic, pompous shit served up by Marvel. Like, Shazam remembered that these are movies made from comic books written for kids.
The Raid 2 (2014) with Iko Uwais.
Indonesian Martial arts action film written, directed, and edited by Welshman Gareth Evans.
Plot briefly, undercover cop spends 2 years in Jakarta prison to befriend the son of a crime boss. Upon release, he goes to work for the crime boss, who is currently in a state of detente with a Japanese gang and some other gang (possibly also Indonesian). Things go to shit.
If you are new to the silat form of martial arts, it's a lot like Jeet Kundo, with a lot of quick punches, leg sweeps, joint manipulations. Most martial arts films you could condense all of the good fight scenes into about 15 minutes, in a 90 minute film, with the rest being bad acting. This film flips that ratio on its head. It is about 150 minutes, and I'd say probably 125 of the minutes are Iko beating the shit out of someone, often in very imaginative ways. There are a couple of (way) over the top scenes that are still fun, like when Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl tear through about a dozen members of rival gangs using the eponymous weapons. I will admit that at a very early point in the film I stopped caring at all what the "plot" was, and just went along for the insane fights. I like Jackie Chan films, and the fighting in those are generally very creative and fun, but they are never very serious. This film's fights are serious, and often as good as Chan's.
Some of the best martial arts ever on film. In terms of pure Scorsese cinema quality it's pretty low, but in terms of genre, it's ace.
9/10 (genre weighted). I don't know what a 10/10 would look like.
Just finished watching The Battle of Britain for like I dont know how many times. One of the best movies ever made. No CGI. I can never get bored of watching this movie. Glad the movie is on Youtube.
It’s good, isn’t it. I read that Iko Uwais was a delivery truck driver when the director saw him and out him in his first film. Pretty amazing. Tonight I watched 22 Miles, also with Iko Uwais. Netflix is recommending anything with him in it now.
22 Miles (2018), with Iko Uwais, Mark Wahlberg.
This one is a Peter Berg choppy action high tech CIA secret mission thing. The Berg style has so many unnecessary, unmotivated edits that it goes right past distracting and into the land of glitches. Like, is the director a crackhead with the attention span of a gnat? I get why they do it, to constantly remove the sense of complacency from the audience, to never let them think aanything mundane is happening, but it ends up feeling like they lost confidence in their own movie to hold your interest. It gets really tiring, fatiguing, because there are no rest beats in the film.
Anyway, plot: a secret CIA team must exfiltrate an Indonesian cop who is turning against his country because of 5 discs of missing cesium , dirty bombs something something.
Iko is the cop. Wahlberg is the motormouth leader of the CIA unit. Or sort of. I guess the real leader is John Malkovich, who is quickly becoming a meme into himself. This time he’s wearing a flat top wig that just makes him look silly. It’s a good action film. Once they get things set up (it’s 22 miles to the place where the plane is meeting them), it gets really good. Lots of car stunts, auto weapons fire, shit blowing up. Good supporting cast.
They frame the narrative with a post-operation interview, by Wahlberg, and they really tried hard to make him some super genius, but it’s like doing blow with someone who thinks they are Smart. It’s entertaining, much better than AVA, but exhausting. I think you could accurately say it’s a very American action film with very American morals. There’s an early mission in the film where
they break up a terror cell, but instead of bringing them into custody, they execute all of them.
Wahlberg talks about how sometimes you need an extra degree of violence to get things done, which is exactly the rationale offered by the CIA agents who ran Abu Ghraib and water boarded people who were never charged with a crime. It’s also the lie told in Zero Dark Thirty that torture (extra violence) results in actionable intelligence: it doesn’t. The US committed war crimes with that shit, and to hear it casually referenced without contradiction made me angry with Wahlberg and Berg for this insidious poison message in this film. The idea that “we’re the good guys so we can kill anyone we want” plus this undiluted fanboi attitude towards the military and/or CIA is distasteful.
The only full feature made by Cuban director Sara Gómez. A communist woman goes to work in the poor slum of Havana as a teacher and starts up a relationship with a local worker.
Brilliant film that is a mix of neorealism and a documentary, highlighting the complex difficulties of trying to build a new society. Great performance from both lead actors and banging soundtrack.
Took my daughter to see Shazam: Fury of the Gods. She loved it (she’s 7). The best part of the film was her excitedly holding onto my arm and being so happy for a daddy daughter day. The movie itself is a fecking abomination. Just predictable, pointless nonsense, full of holes in an already wafer thin plot. None of the charm of the original. Hot garbage/10
Just finished watching The Battle of Britain for like I dont know how many times. One of the best movies ever made. No CGI. I can never get bored of watching this movie. Glad the movie is on Youtube.
Biggest load of tripe I have ever watched. Watched it for 30 mins a few years ago and tried again last night and managed 1hr 20. Maybe I just missed ‘it’ but couldn’t see no conclusion or direction of the film.
Johnny Depp plays a great nut job off his tits on a cocktail of drugs and his sidekick (Frankie Four Fingers from Snatch) played their parts well but I just wasn’t invested in the film in the slightest.
One of those that you either love or hate and maybe I missed the point of the film but was complete garbage for me
Biggest load of tripe I have ever watched. Watched it for 30 mins a few years ago and tried again last night and managed 1hr 20. Maybe I just missed ‘it’ but couldn’t see no conclusion or direction of the film.
Johnny Depp plays a great nut job off his tits on a cocktail of drugs and his sidekick (Frankie Four Fingers from Snatch) played their parts well but I just wasn’t invested in the film in the slightest.
One of those that you either love or hate and maybe I missed the point of the film but was complete garbage for me
Its (apparently) a true story by a real life journalist called Hunter S. Thompson (johnny depp). His sidekick was his lawyer. He had an interesting view of the world and a fairly unique way of writing. He'd kind of in that Che Guevara poster territory. I dont think theres a point beyond 'that guys a bit of a degenerate'. Or 'this movie has a cool soundtrack'.
Luther (whatever the subtitle was) Not totally unwatchable as Idris Elba is still good as Luther. But if you loved the early Luther series you will likely not like this that much. The film seems to have been mainly made to transition Luther into some sort of secret service type operative (Bond meets The Kingsman maybe?) for the inevitable streaming TV series that wil surely follow. 4/10 (Mrs Wibble liked it a bit more 6/10 but I suspect anything with Idris Elba in it would get a 2 or 3 point boost)
Its (apparently) a true story by a real life journalist called Hunter S. Thompson (johnny depp). His sidekick was his lawyer. He had an interesting view of the world and a fairly unique way of writing. He'd kind of in that Che Guevara poster territory. I dont think theres a point beyond 'that guys a bit of a degenerate'. Or 'this movie has a cool soundtrack'.
I used to read some of his stuff way back when. Yeah, according to him he was off his tits most of the time. Any normal person would have been dead with with the amount of stuff he claimed he was taking.
I have been called worse