It's Back: Exceelent Movies I've Seen Lately

[Fresno Bob]

watched Goodnight Mommy yesterday, Austrian film with English subtitles, slow burner horror flick filled with dread, worth your time....

[revo]

I saw a lot of good reviews about "Everybody Wants Some," but man did it suck ass. I watched the whole movie waiting for something to happen, and it just didn't. What a waste of a great 1980 soundtrack!

[johnnya24]

Jason Bourne - I quite enjoyed it up until the final half hour, then it just fell apart IMO. The last sequence in Las Vegas was ridiculous, even by Michael Bay standards.

Spoiler!

Whoever thought it would be a good idea to do the equivalent of assassinating Mark Zuckerberg while giving the keynote speech at CES Las Vegas, live on TV should be shot themselves ... and the absurd armored car chase ... everything about the ending was the antithesis of what made the original Bourne movies the greatest action movie trilogy ever.

And let's have Mark Zuckerberg meet the head of the CIA in a public restaurant to discuss spy shit. Sounds legit.

But the real thing that bugged me thoughout was the lingering feeling that ...

Spoiler!

...they were going to replace Nicky with a newer, younger, more attractive female lead. And that is exactly what happened. That left a really sour taste as I left the cinema. They just ripped all the character out of the franchise with this movie IMO. The Bourne Legacy was better than this.

[TranaGreg]

Jason Bourne - I quite enjoyed it up until the final half hour, then it just fell apart IMO. The last sequence in Las Vegas was ridiculous, even by Michael Bay standards.

Spoiler!

Whoever thought it would be a good idea to do the equivalent of assassinating Mark Zuckerberg while giving the keynote speech at CES Las Vegas, live on TV should be shot themselves ... and the absurd armored car chase ... everything about the ending was the antithesis of what made the original Bourne movies the greatest action movie trilogy ever.

And let's have Mark Zuckerberg meet the head of the CIA in a public restaurant to discuss spy shit. Sounds legit.

But the real thing that bugged me thoughout was the lingering feeling that ...

Spoiler!

...they were going to replace Nicky with a newer, younger, more attractive female lead. And that is exactly what happened. That left a really sour taste as I left the cinema. They just ripped all the character out of the franchise with this movie IMO. The Bourne Legacy was better than this.

Agreed. Good action scenes but it was a movie with no soul. I sure hope this ends the franchise, the original trilogy needs to stand by itself.

[johnnya24]

Some others:

Demolition - IMO the best movie of 2016 so far. Saw it 3 times in the cinema ... and bonus points for using my favourite song ("To Be Alone With You" by Sufjan Stevens) as the relationship / wedding recap background music. That should not work, but it totally did. This movie struck a cord with me on so many levels. Jake Gyllenhaal is probably my favourite actor right now.

Star Trek Beyond - Kinda meh. It was OK I guess. Getting a bit sick of all the JJ Abrams love. His movies have a real nostalgic bent, with appealing / likable characters, but they are generally so full of plot holes and riddled with absurd coincidence in place of real believable narrative. It's like movie fraud. I leave the cinema thinking, "not bad", "I've seen worse", "decent" ... then I watch it again, and I can never make it to the end because the nostalgic novelty and audience mollycoddling has worn off, and all that is left is nonsense stories and absurd coincidence. All 3 Star Trek movies are really hard to rewatch. All the flaws jump off the screen second time around ... not to mention the Star War Prequel quality of The Force Awakens, which only really becomes apparent on a second watch ... first time around the nostalgia really sucks you in.

That said:

10 Cloverfield Lane was very good I thought. Then again, JJ Abrams had little or nothing to do with the creative side of this project.

Independence Day: Resurgence - terrible. In order to be important, talented, respected and influential in future, all it takes is a good breeding. Because apparently in the future, all the important people in all fields will be the children of people who were important in those fields. Good to see humans have evolved beyond the need for royalty and worshiping elites.

The Nice Guys - Crowe and Gosling in good form. Felt it dragged on a bit towards the end, but entertaining nonetheless.

Green Room - horror-thriller set in a neo-Nazi skinhead bar. Travelling punk band witness a murder, and things fall apart. Lots of great performances and Patrick Stewart with a great turn as the neo-Nazi cult leader. Though I felt they killed off some of the characters for shock value alone, and it didn't fit well with the narrative.

Midnight Special - strange, intriguing, different. I'm a sucker for any serious above-average sci-fi fair. Seemed to recall it tailing off at the the end, but I still think it worked well.

Hardcore Henry - novel for the cinema, but not if you own a console. Fun to watch for a while ... the action at times was amazing ... but then got a bit boring and the plot descended into nonsense. But it did demonstrate the possibility for a good movie in this style. This wasn't it though.

The Finest Hours - old fashioned cinema (in a bad way). A movie set in the 50's and made in the style of a 1950's movie. Didn't work for me, despite the stellar cast and potentially exciting disaster storyline - tanker splits in half in a massive Atlantic storm, heroic coast guard risk life and limb to come to the rescue. Really corny.

Deadpool - probably already mentioned this (I must have) ... thought it was terrific. Ryan Reynolds made himself a superstar (deservedly).

Central Intelligence - I really enjoyed this. Dwayne Johnson has turned himself into a modern day Arnold Schwarzenegger. Has a real self awareness to his performances (and life in general if you see his social media stuff).

Captain America: Civil War - I hated this so much I couldn't bring myself to watch the Superman v Batman movie or the Xmen movie. The actual story in this movie occupies about 10 minutes of the 2 1/2 hour runtime. the other 2 hours 20 minutes is this pointless superhero "civil war" which has almost no relevance to the plot, and is just an excuse to CGI slam superheros against one another. Oh ... and BTW ... all superheros have apparently become Wolverine, because they are now indestructible. The actual story was fairly interesting, and could have made a decent movie.

A bad year so far for big movies (apart from Deadpool). But I feel I've seen more good movies this year despite some obvious (and expected) disappointments.

[DMT]

Agree that Star Trek was meh. I thought the first two were great.

[johnnya24]

Agree that Star Trek was meh. I thought the first two were great.

I liked them also. There is definitely a lot that is good about the reboot.

But on second viewing they were nowhere near as good as my first impressions. This seems to be characteristic of a lot of JJ Abrams' stuff. He nailed the casting, the humour, the characters, the nerdy nostalgic stuff that we all love ... but the movies were at times ridiculous (even by casual sci fi standards). Wasn't there a scene were young Spock was abandoned on some random planet, and as luck would have it (or a JJ Abrams approved script), he happened to bump into to older Spock. Take all the atoms in the universe to the power of 100, and you still aren't getting close to the odds of that occurring. Dumb shit like that pervades all his movies ... The Force Returns is full of stuff like that, and it stands out on rewatching especially ... but you don't notice on first watch because of the warm fluffiness of the characters and humour.

IMO he churns out so much content, and he doesn't get called on the failings because of his obvious fanboyishness ... and that leads to laziness.

It's hard watching shows like Breaking Bad which have this crazy attention to detail that persists over 50 hours of programming, and then you watch a 2 hour movies that can't even hold a basic story together without absurd coincidence.

I dunno ... just an impression that's grown on me.

[revo]

Recent Viewings:

Everybody Wants Some! - I thought going in that I'd love this movie -- early 1980s comedy, great soundtrack, Richard Linklater, kind of like a Dazed & Confused sequel, how could it go wrong? -- but it was boring as shit. I knew as soon as at he 15 minute mark I should've shut it off, but I stuck it out and was not rewarded. Somehow it has a high rating on IMDB, but I suspect this will plummet like Drumpf's polling numbers as many start to watch it on DVD.

Eddie the Eagle -- very amusing and entertaining look at the British ski jumping star from the '88 Olympics. Recommended.

Race -- another Olympic biopic, this one of Jesse Owens. Also very well-done and entertaining.

In the Heart of the Sea -- another re-telling of the Moby Dick classic. Like 'Everybody Wants Some' with the good reviews, I don't know how this one is getting such negative reviews.

The Finest Hours -- I disagree with Johnny, I liked this tale of the largest Coast Guard rescue in history, which took place in the mid-1950s.

Gods of Egypt -- absolute dreck.

13 Hours -- the whole political bent notwithstanding, I thought this was a great action movie. And yes, I'm voting for Hillary.

The Revenant -- absolutely amazing. Best film I've seen all year.

Hunger Games, Mockingjay Part 2 -- please let these be over with.

[GwynnInTheHall]

I liked them also. There is definitely a lot that is good about the reboot.

But on second viewing they were nowhere near as good as my first impressions. This seems to be characteristic of a lot of JJ Abrams' stuff. He nailed the casting, the humour, the characters, the nerdy nostalgic stuff that we all love ... but the movies were at times ridiculous (even by casual sci fi standards). Wasn't there a scene were young Spock was abandoned on some random planet, and as luck would have it (or a JJ Abrams approved script), he happened to bump into to older Spock. Take all the atoms in the universe to the power of 100, and you still aren't getting close to the odds of that occurring. Dumb shit like that pervades all his movies ... The Force Returns is full of stuff like that, and it stands out on rewatching especially ... but you don't notice on first watch because of the warm fluffiness of the characters and humour.

IMO he churns out so much content, and he doesn't get called on the failings because of his obvious fanboyishness ... and that leads to laziness.

It's hard watching shows like Breaking Bad which have this crazy attention to detail that persists over 50 hours of programming, and then you watch a 2 hour movies that can't even hold a basic story together without absurd coincidence.

I dunno ... just an impression that's grown on me.

Just watched it yesterday and I'll agree to a point, it could have been better, but when you base a film on a series that wrapped up every crisis in 60 minutes, you get movies that do the same. It's funny how we'll accept ships flying in space and gorgeous green women but find issues with the improbabilities' of a sci fi flick. I've learned to accept those as easily as transparent aluminum.

I absolutely love the re-boot, even better than the original cast movies. I love the subtle shout outs to the original cast and franchise and really like all the current actors.

Could it have been more substantial? yeah, but I'm not expecting Spotlight when going to see Star Trek.

[DMT]

I liked them also. There is definitely a lot that is good about the reboot.

But on second viewing they were nowhere near as good as my first impressions. This seems to be characteristic of a lot of JJ Abrams' stuff. He nailed the casting, the humour, the characters, the nerdy nostalgic stuff that we all love ... but the movies were at times ridiculous (even by casual sci fi standards). Wasn't there a scene were young Spock was abandoned on some random planet, and as luck would have it (or a JJ Abrams approved script), he happened to bump into to older Spock. Take all the atoms in the universe to the power of 100, and you still aren't getting close to the odds of that occurring. Dumb shit like that pervades all his movies ... The Force Returns is full of stuff like that, and it stands out on rewatching especially ... but you don't notice on first watch because of the warm fluffiness of the characters and humour.

IMO he churns out so much content, and he doesn't get called on the failings because of his obvious fanboyishness ... and that leads to laziness.

It's hard watching shows like Breaking Bad which have this crazy attention to detail that persists over 50 hours of programming, and then you watch a 2 hour movies that can't even hold a basic story together without absurd coincidence.

I dunno ... just an impression that's grown on me.

I haven't seen any of those a second time. Maybe I shouldn't ever

[johnnya24]

Just watched it yesterday and I'll agree to a point, it could have been better, but when you base a film on a series that wrapped up every crisis in 60 minutes, you get movies that do the same. It's funny how we'll accept ships flying in space and gorgeous green women but find issues with the improbabilities' of a sci fi flick. I've learned to accept those as easily as transparent aluminum.

I absolutely love the re-boot, even better than the original cast movies. I love the subtle shout outs to the original cast and franchise and really like all the current actors.

Could it have been more substantial? yeah, but I'm not expecting Spotlight when going to see Star Trek.

I'm all for silliness. Transport me anywhere you like, any time. But the world you take me to has to be, at the very least, coherent. It's not that difficult. For me it's a question of good and bad film making. Having young Spock meet old Spock on a random planet at a random time without any consideration of the absurdity is plain bad film making. The whole sequence in The Force Awakens when they infiltrate and destroy the Death Star planet was mindbogglingly stupid.

In the latest movie:

Spoiler!

... the bad guy is the former Starship captain, who crash landed on that planet within the nebula. Doesn't know where his own Starship crash landed.

... and everyone of course crash lands on a random place on the planet, that happens to be within walking distance of locations critical to the plot ... of course.

An average episode of Scooby Doo had more convincing plot development

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Abrams films are both. His movies have really good bits, and really bad bits. And he gets away with the bad bits because he does the good bits so well.

Thinking about it a bit more ... I'd say that Abrams spends too much time with the familiar characters doing familiar things - the stuff we like ... Kirk and Bones being best buds, Bones and Spock being friendly rivals, Scotty being Scotty ... then he doesn't have time to develop the movie plot naturally, so he is forced to inject absurdity in order to make time for the elongated action sequences, which we also expect.

Story has to come first if it is long term legacy you are concerned about. The long terms appeal of the movie will come down to the quality of the story to be recycled time after time. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen Die Hard, Aliens, The Bourne Identity, Terminator 2 etc etc. JJ Abrams does not have a single movie on his resume that comes close to these genre classics. Gonna say Armageddon doesn't make the list

[GwynnInTheHall]

I'm all for silliness. Transport me anywhere you like, any time. But the world you take me to has to be, at the very least, coherent. It's not that difficult. For me it's a question of good and bad film making. Having young Spock meet old Spock on a random planet at a random time without any consideration of the absurdity is plain bad film making. The whole sequence in The Force Awakens when they infiltrate and destroy the Death Star planet was mindbogglingly stupid.

In the latest movie:

Spoiler!

... the bad guy is the former Starship captain, who crash landed on that planet within the nebula. Doesn't know where his own Starship crash landed.

... and everyone of course crash lands on a random place on the planet, that happens to be within walking distance of locations critical to the plot ... of course.

An average episode of Scooby Doo had more convincing plot development

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Abrams films are both. His movies have really good bits, and really bad bits. And he gets away with the bad bits because he does the good bits so well.

Thinking about it a bit more ... I'd say that Abrams spends too much time with the familiar characters doing familiar things - the stuff we like ... Kirk and Bones being best buds, Bones and Spock being friendly rivals, Scotty being Scotty ... then he doesn't have time to develop the movie plot naturally, so he is forced to inject absurdity in order to make time for the elongated action sequences, which we also expect.

Story has to come first if it is long term legacy you are concerned about. The long terms appeal of the movie will come down to the quality of the story to be recycled time after time. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen Die Hard, Aliens, The Bourne Identity, Terminator 2 etc etc. JJ Abrams does not have a single movie on his resume that comes close to these genre classics. Gonna say Armageddon doesn't make the list

I like the familiar stuff, it makes the movie for me.

[johnnya24]

I like the familiar stuff, it makes the movie for me.

Yeah ... that stuff he does great. The recasting of the Star Trek crew was top notch.

[GwynnInTheHall]

Yeah ... that stuff he does great. The recasting of the Star Trek crew was top notch.

I guess I've just seen so many of them (Star trek) in every capacity (every series and movie multiple times) That I tolerate the credibility stretch because the other stuff hits home so well.

I loved the first and second movies, this one was good, more like a tribute flick with a plot wrapped around it, but given the circumstance surrounding the franchise, I understood why.

[johnnya24]

I guess I've just seen so many of them (Star trek) in every capacity (every series and movie multiple times) That I tolerate the credibility stretch because the other stuff hits home so well.

I loved the first and second movies, this one was good, more like a tribute flick with a plot wrapped around it, but given the circumstance surrounding the franchise, I understood why.

Of the 3, I think I definitely liked the 2nd one best.