What is labelled as "trailer 2" for the new Terminator movie is out. Really it's the same trailer with the addition of Sarah saying "I'll be back". I wish they'd let that particular line die. However there is a bunch of stuff after the trailer showing some making-of-the-movie, and at 1.17 you can see Arnold with part of his head and most of one arm covered (where they will add in CGI metal later), so he's definitely a T-800. (There's also a very brief shot in the first trailer of the T-800 punching the new Terminator underwater). I hope they give a good explanation of his presence...
Heh, I just watched the Kill Count video for Fallen Kingdom. It looks utterly ridiculous. I refuse to watch the movie itself, but I almost want to just to see how bad it is (like I did with last year's The Predator and regretted it).
His first mistake is referring to this movie as a horror film instead of a comedy I think he missed a lot of the glaring mistakes throughout the film such as the mosasaur tank changing locations, but he also pointed out some stuff I never caught onto such as the prices for the animals being so low and the hallways changing from having the Indoraptor at the end to the dumbwaiter. I think you should watch it eventually just for how stupid it is. I promise you it's dumber than this video makes it sound. I will say I appreciated the increased use of practical effects. ~Thylo
A double hitter of reviews to come, but over the weekend I watched a couple of films I haven't seen for a while so here' they are to get started with. Thor (2011) - I caught this on TV yesterday and I enjoyed it more than I thought, unfortunately it's still not a patch on the sequels. A good introduction to the character but a very "meh" Marvel movie. Oh yeah, and the eyebrows can never be unseen! The Imitation Game (2014) - Absolutely brilliant film, I forgot just how much I enjoyed it hen it came out. If I re-jig my top 10 then this film will probably get a place. Benedict Cumberbatch is compelling as the tortured maths genius Alan Turing during WWII, struggling with his secret homosexuality and also with trying to win the war. A very poignant ending, this film deserved to sweep the board at The Oscars, just a shame The Theory Of Everything came out the same year. And now new releases. Detective Pikachu (2019) - A someone who has never been a fan of Pokemon I went into this film with a sense of "God, this is going to be awful!" sort of feeling. Having watched the trailer before leaving the house I was still unconvinced... And it wasn't awful, not great but acceptable. If (like me) Pokemon mean nothing to you then that doesn't matter as it's a fairly straightforward buddy cop movie that just happens to have Pokemon in it. Ryan Reynolds as the voice of Pikachu is really off putting tough, especially after his stint playing Deadpool. I think this has been reviewed in-thread already but I just wanted to throw in my 2 pence worth as a none-fan of the source material. 5/10 Not a film but an Amazon mini-series, Good Omens (2019) is a work of genius with Hollywood quality effects and an absolutely brilliant cast of A-listers and lesser known actors. Based on the novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman it follows the events leading up to Armageddon with catastrophe and misunderstandings around every corner. David Tennant excels as the demon Crowley, whilst Michael Sheen does a fairly good straight man as the angel Aziraphale as they both try to influence the "Anti-Christ" whilst maintaining their secret friendship and trying not to get into trouble with their respective head offices. The cast is great, a special mention for the 4 young kids who get to steal the show in a few key moments, and all can act to a fairly decent level. Not always the case with child actors. I'd recommend this to anyone, not just fans of the book. And the start of episode 3 is probably the highlight, you don't even get the opening credits until 35(ish) minutes in. 10/10 no debate from me.
I had to google "Thor eyebrows" to see what you were talking about, but now I know why I thought he looked so much better in the later movies!
Once you've noticed them you'll never be able to not notice them. I've probably ruined that film for anyone who never spotted it before, my apologies.
I really enjoyed this too it didn't completely live up to my hopes, naturally, but it was never going to given the fact it is based on one of my favourite books of all time and has been in development hell for 20 years now!
The book is brilliant, one of my favourites as well, but the changes made didn't detract from the series in my opinion. The addition of Gabriel was great, Jon Hamm clearly loved playing him and, as I said earlier, the whole opening sequence of episode three was truly great. A shame Terry Gilliam never got to do his version and even more of a shame that Terry Pratchett never got to see this get made, but I'm glad that we got to see this version in the end. Bring on the Ankh Morpork City Watch series...
Another long weekend of house-sitting, so more movies on Netflix (I don't have a tv so I only watch Netflix when places other than home). Escape Plan Stallone and Schwarzenegger get together to plan an escape from a boat-based high-security prison. I did a review of this three years ago (here: Movie review rant 2016) so I won't bother re-doing it, but in brief it is quite adequate and a good way to pass a couple of hours. Land of the Lost This was really dumb. Unfortunately I have a problem where once I start watching a movie I almost always have to continue to the end, possibly in the hope that it will magically become better. This movie did not. Released in 2009, it is based on an old tv series of the same name. I'm not sure if we got it in New Zealand - I don't remember it at all - but I googled it and the plot for the series was (surprisingly) exactly the same as that in the movie. Probably they should have changed it, because the plot was stupid. Will Ferrell is good in some movies and not so much in others. This was one of those others. The whole thing was unfunny, tiresome, and boring. I would recommend avoiding this one. CHiPs This 2017 movie was also based on an old tv series, about two motorbike cops in the California Highway Patrol (the CHiPs of the title). It was very popular in the late-70s to early-80s, running for six seasons. I guess you could classify it as a light-hearted action-drama (a typical style for most of the popular series of that era). There have been a lot of 70s/80s tv shows remade as movies - it saves Hollywood writers thinking up new ideas - and they usually turn them into full comedies no matter what the original intent of the series. This CHiPs movie does the same although it's not particularly funny for a comedy. On the other hand there's not really enough action for it to be an action movie, and if there was any drama I missed it. And the amount of nudity in it means it isn't for kids either. It's okay for passing time, but I wouldn't watch it again. This video shows the opening title sequence of the tv series - in the late 70s all the tv shows had music like this. It was a great time to be alive. Miami Vice Third movie based on a tv series (from the mid- to late-80s this time). I never really got into the tv series - I objected to Crockett having an alligator tied up on his boat - but I thought I'd watch the movie. The tv series stuck to straight action-drama without the fun bits to keep things light, and surprisingly this 2006 movie does the same. Unfortunately that just makes it really grim and boring. If you know the sort of dead-serious action movies that Jamie Foxx does - like that. Even Colin Farrell as Crockett couldn't lighten it up. Here's the title sequence for the tv series (very mid-80s music), with absolutely nothing about the show being given away by the stock footage used. Pee-Wee's Big Holiday I didn't even know that Pee-Wee Herman was still a thing! I thought he was in prison or dead or something like that. But there he was, having a holiday, in 2016 (!!), so I watched it. Joe Manganiello was a main character, playing himself. He looks familiar, I googled him, and I vaguely know him from here and there (mainly random episodes from different tv shows). The movie is a typical Pee-Wee movie. Once again, it's okay for passing time but I wouldn't watch it again. Dinosaur Island The worst of the bunch. I did watch some good movies (they are below) but I also watched some real stinkers. Like this one. It's made for kids but still, the acting was awful, the dialogue was awful, the plot was awful, the CGI was awful. I did like that the dinosaurs had feathers though - the raptors looked like cassowaries and the T. rex looked like a giant multi-coloured chicken. The Hitman's Bodyguard I have a strange relationship with Ryan Reynolds. I thought he was fine in Two Guys and a Girl (on tv) but I don't see the attraction of him as a movie star. He is smarmy and repugnant. And yet there are movies I like him in, like Deadpool obviously, but also certain movies like this one where he works really well alongside Samuel L Jackson. This is a 2017 movie, and unlike all the ones above I would recommend it (if you like action comedy movies). It has Salma Hayek in it too, here and there. Here's the trailer, although it gives a warped impression of what the movie is actually about: Seven Psychopaths I'm not sure how to describe this 2012 movie. It's sort of all over the place. It's trying to be stylish while also trying to be a comedy of sorts, and it's pretty violent. Colin Farrell is a writer, trying to create a movie script to go with the title he has thought of, "Seven Psychopaths". Turns out his best friend (Sam Rockwell) is a psychopath, as is his friend (Christopher Walken), and they all run into trouble with another psychopath (Woody Harrelson). Olga Kurylenko is in it too, very briefly (only enough time to die, really). Trailer below. (Just... if you're trying that hard to make your trailer quirky then you have failed your mission; also, 2, the Olga Kurylenko scene in the trailer is almost her entire appearance in the movie) Polar I really liked this one. It was released at the start of this year and has had - shall we say - mixed reviews (currently it has a 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, for instance). I watched the Cinema Sins video for it a little while ago and it seemed like a weird movie, but that's because he was doing his usual thing of taking scenes out of context in order to sin them for no reason. Mads Mikkelsen plays a near-to-retirement assassin who has been targeted by the assassin organisation in order to gain his retirement fund (it reverts to the company if the assassin dies after retirement). The movie kind of reminded me of John Wick but whereas John Wick is deliberately stylish in a "realistic" way, Polar is deliberately stylish in a very "graphic novel" way. You might say it is self-conciously stylish, which isn't a good thing in my book because it feels forced, and it does jump about in tone a lot as if two or three different movies were just spliced together. A lot of stuff in the plot made no sense if looked at logically - many elements are there purely because "it looks cool" - and Mads' character basically becomes a Terminator at the end. However, I definitely 100% recommend this movie. Trailer below (it has an owl in it!): Train to Busan By far the best movie I watched out of all of the above. The only horror movies I like are zombie movies and this South Korean one from 2016 is totally awesome. The premise is simple: a zombie outbreak occurs, an infected girl escapes onto a train bound for Busan, and then the zombification begins. Part of the fun of zombie movies is wondering who will survive to the end. The two main characters, opening the movie, are a small child and her inattentive workaholic father who are travelling to see the girl's mother in Busan on her birthday. Then there is the pregnant lady and her husband; the boyfriend and girlfriend (not really seen much in the trailer, but the girl is played by Sohee who used to be a K-Pop star); a homeless man; the two old ladies. Who will survive and who will become a zombie? Trailer below (that scene of the zombie horde forming a tail behind the departing train was neat):
John Wick, Chapter 3: Parabellum I watched the first and second John Wick movies last Friday, back to back. It's funny seeing the same goons in both movies. I saw a video at some point (I think it was the Honest Trailers for the first John Wick) where the directors were saying that they had limited numbers of stuntmen so they used the same people repeatedly but in descending stages of hairiness (from full beard and hair through to fully bald and clean-shaven) to disguise it, and that you can basically tell the order they shot the action scenes by how bearded or otherwise the goons are. So in the second movie you see the same guys as were used in the first movie, portraying different goons all over again. Today I went and saw the third movie in the saga, subtitled "Parabellum". I thought the first John Wick was amazing - I rated it nine out of ten when I wrote a little review of it on one of these movie rant threads. It was tightly focussed and knew exactly what it was. The second movie was also pretty fantastic but moved somewhat away from a plausibly-realistic scenario to one where you needed to suspend your logic circuits a bit. The third movie goes even deeper into the assassin world and it just becomes stupid. There are some brilliant set-pieces still, most notably the scene where Halle Berry and her assassin-alsations join John Wick to take out a veritable horde of bad guys in Casablanca. Another scene where Wick is having to take on armour-wearing goons using guns which cannot pierce the armour is also fun. But then there is the absurd swords-on-motorbikes chase scene, and the ridiculous ending. There are also a lot of extended fight scenes which just become boring, which was never an issue in the first two movies, and movie-fight cliches have made an unwelcome appearance. This is particularly noticeable near the start where a couple of times Wick is being pursued by five or six guys in a group, and yet when the fighting happens they only appear one at a time - and where more than one opponent is visible the extra ones are clearly bobbing about on the outside waiting for their cue to enter. And, even though they obviously all have guns, they still come at him with knives! He's John Wick for Pete's sake!! The two guys from The Raid are in the movie too, and it really feels like cameo material. Especially distracting was the bizarre turn the movie takes when it brings in Zero, a quipping John-Wick-fan-boy assassin, who seems to have been dropped in from a Ryan Reynolds movie. I reckon this might have been a great movie if it was a stand-alone movie, but coming after parts one and two it is a severe let-down. I don't know that I'll be bothered to see the fourth movie at the theatre if it gets made (they've announced a release date of 2021). But I guess I'm in the minority because it has made tonnes of money and critics are raving about it (89% on Rotten Tomatoes!).
Weirdly, a trailer just came out today for a sequel to Escape Plan... EDIT: huh, after posting that I scrolled through the comments under the video and found out that this is actually the third Escape Plan! Apparently the second movie (subtitled Hades) came out last year, straight to DVD, and grossed 16 million against the 20 million production budget. It got theatrical releases in Russia and China. (That was all from Wikipedia). The third movie (the one with the trailer above) is also straight to DVD, but will be released theatrically in Russia this month. I wonder how much money this one is going to lose, and why they would even bother.
Game Night (2018) is a bit of an oddball comedy with a hint of mystery, and it's a high quality film to boot. The film follows a group of friends who enjoy a weekly game night (surprise! ) as they play for a chance to win a sports car, rather than just playing for fun as they normally would. The game is one of those murder mystery things with a proper cast, but unfortunately it gets mixed up with a real gang land situation, and lots of misunderstandings and comedic hilarity ensue. Jason Bateman leads a relatively low scale cast, and they appear to have had a lot of fun filming it. The film is a great romp, well worth watching if you get the chance. 7/10 And now a newer release. Dumbo (2019) is an abomination, an insult to the legacy of the original, a further descent into blandness for Tim Burton, and it p*ssed all over a big chunk of my formative years! Now that's off my chest I shall continue... This film is over long, underwhelming, wastes a pretty good cast, and really makes a balls up of the Pink Elephants scene, which is now charming rather than terrifying. As far as I'm concerned the film should be close to over when Dumbo learns to fly, but what's this? He's flying around the ring and there's still an hour left? Hmmm, taking liberties there but as long as the rest of the film is good then okay... Wait, what? What the Hell is this crap, the mouse isn't even talking...? Jesus Christ, this film was a chore to sit through. absolutely awful, and not helped by Colin Farrell's attempt at an American accent. Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton do try and make it watchable but even they can't pull this mess above mediocrity. The film even failed on the kid-friendly scale as my daughter bailed after half an hour, in fact the only person in my house who enjoyed it was my mother, who (philistine that she is!) doesn't like the original. To end on a positive, Dumbo may be the cutest animated elephant in the history of animated elephants, but that still doesn't help overall. 2/10
Granted that's a bonus, and in this day and age you'd expect them to learn from their mistakes. But removing racial stereotypes is one thing, removing everything else that genuinely did make the original great is just a step too far!
True. And admittedly, getting rid of the crows was a double-edged sword since it also meant cutting the best song in the original: When I See an Elephant Fly.
Anyone bothered to go watch Dark Phoenix yet? I personally can't even be bothered to watch it when it comes to TV, it looks absolutely terrible. And Sophie Turner as Jean Grey/Phoenix? No thanks.
Go see Yesterday. Good film And can I just say I'm thankful that... Spoiler ...it didn't end with him waking up and finding out it was all just a dream. I freaking hate endings like that.
