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Post by buffyholic on Mar 28, 2017 2:19:55 GMT -8
I haven´t seen Logan yet but it´s coming. But do you need to watch the other Wolverine movies before this one or we can enjoy only this one?
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Mar 28, 2017 7:39:30 GMT -8
Nope, not really. As long as you know the basics of his character, you're good.
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Post by nathan on Mar 30, 2017 23:44:49 GMT -8
Arrival (2016) I had heard that it was good with a twist and it had it. I was expecting a mind-blowing experience with all these questions and from a first viewing it took a while to get anywhere and the twist was okay but nothing that special. It was interesting and I liked the feel of the movie with the dullness in colour. Okay.
X-Men Original Trilogy (2000-2006): I will go out on a limb and say I enjoyed the third movie. I know it gets torn to shreds from people who know about the characters and storylines and it helps that I don't. I enjoyed all three movies and, like most reviews, would put the second film as best with the first and third about equal. I can see why they kept putting Wolverine in most of the prequels and stand-alones as he is the standout character. The prequels are good also, with the exception of 'Apocalypse'.
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Post by nathan on Apr 4, 2017 0:18:32 GMT -8
John Wick (2014): Keanu Reeves goes around killing a lot of henchman that after a while you think 'how many people are employed and how rich is the employer and what are the benefits like'. Pretty solid action movie about revenge.... of course it is.
The Shallows (2016): Deadpool's wife is attacked by a shark and is stranded on a some rocks with the shore in sight. The shark stays around because she is bleeding a little and in its territory. A suspenseful shark-feature which does its job well.
Passengers (2016): Chris Pratt is in a futuristic space ship heading toward a new planet 120 years away so he, and over five thousand other people, are in a sleep-pod to awake in over a century. Something goes wrong and Pratt's character is awoken with many decades still left before arrival on the new planet. After doing all the 'last man on earth' stuff he starts to think about waking another person. If he does this he will doom them to his fate of dying before reaching the planet. This movie got some bad reviews because of the silly people who only see gender and missed the actual story. Sure, it is a bit of love story/creepy story but I, like most viewers, ended up asking myself the same question: would I wake someone. I would have to say I probably would. I don't know how long it would take before I did but odds are I would. Not fantastic but worth a look.
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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 7, 2017 12:44:31 GMT -8
Jackie features a pretty studied performance by Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy (Onassis) in the hours and weeks after the assassination of JFK. It's mostly about how she's trying to keep up appearances, and preserve what she perceives to be their legacy (right down to a memorial service mimicking that of Abraham Lincoln's), while trying to figure out her future roles in life. Jackie had a very particular, breathy and deliberate way of speaking, and Portman probably gets it about 85% right (which is pretty damn good), but you really do find yourself scrutinizing that other 15%, where the shape of her speech patterns isn't quite there, and seems a little robotic. This is a very claustrophobic film, and her slow, restricted way of speaking very much plays into that, particularly given how shell-shocked Jackie is for the majority of the film. It's a solid film, but it isn't given much room to breathe, which may be the intent, but limits the level of emotional engagement.
Passengers isn't a particularly offensive film. In fact, it would've been more interesting if it took the creepier elements of the lead character's psychology and went to a more twisted place, in a smaller-scale arthouse format. As it stands, it just feels thematically and emotionally thin, and pretty routine by the time it reaches a traditional action/disaster climax. And Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest would probably relate to what Jennifer Lawrence goes through in this film, with the plot requiring her to remove various articles of clothing at regular intervals.
Moana is fairly formulaic Disney "princess" fare that springs to life the moment Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's character appears onscreen, all full of bluster but incredibly self-conscious at his core, with dancing tattoos to boot. And he and Jemaine Clement (channeling Davie Bowie's vocal stylings, in "Shiny") easily have the best musical numbers, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate given that the film wants to be female-centric. Regardless, it's cute, colourful, enjoyable, and on an increasingly long list of recent Disney animated features that are better than Frozen.
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 7, 2017 13:30:48 GMT -8
I actually haven't seen any new films in the past month. Busy times and all. But I'll try catching up with DVDs.
I honestly thought Clement's song, while somewhat lively and energetic, was the weakest in the film. None of the songs in Moana were masterpieces, but "Shiny" just felt tonally confused and out-of-whack with the rest of the film.
I enjoyed Moana overall, but still found it to be among the lesser Disney flicks of the current decade - probably the second-weakest, after Big Hero 6. (But hey, the 2010s have still been far kinder to Disney than the 2000s.)
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Apr 7, 2017 14:32:53 GMT -8
Hoo boy, Moana. I think it's telling that Moana herself is only the third-most interesting character in a film with only two characters.
I don't know, I wanted to like the film a lot because it was pretty and Moana and Maui were so cute but like. It was kind of not great and I can't put my finger on why. Maybe it's because more than half the film is set in the middle of the ocean?
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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 7, 2017 15:10:46 GMT -8
I think that's why I liked the Clement song so much: BECAUSE it was out-of-whack with the rest of the film. He was totally vamping it up, like Bowie mixed with Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and it was hysterical. The other songs were fine, but too standard-issue "inspirational" to stick with me.
It's not a great film by any measure, but I was entertained well enough, even though I knew where it was going from frame one.
And I think it reminded me a tad of the Zelda: Wind Waker game, which I'm quite fond of.
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 14, 2017 5:50:40 GMT -8
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
I love a great many animated Disney films, but none quite so much as the 1991 Beauty and the Beast. It's my favorite animated film ever, excelling in its characters, story, music, and animation. So the idea of a remake seems ridiculous - how can you fix something that isn't remotely broken?
The answer: You can't. Of course you can't. The new live-action Beauty and the Beast has no non-financial reason to exist, and it shows. This film is a mess - lazily written, poorly directed, and awkwardly paced. Apart from a couple of added elements (more on that in a moment), it follows the 1991 film to the letter. And that makes the film not merely uninspired, but clunky.
In a cartoon, fanciful characters like Lumiere, Cogsworth, and the Beast himself vibrantly come to life, blending with the human characters in a world of eye-popping wonder. But when a very human Emma Watson starts conversing with a candelabra that looks nothing like an actual candelabra, even the impressive CG can't hide the seams. Attempts to redo the film's impressive musical setpieces just feel restrained, lacking the unlimited visual wonders of animation.
And when the film tries to build on the original, it only exposes more weaknesses. Chief among these is the rewriting of Le Fou (played here by Josh Gad) as having a crush on Gaston. The idea of putting a gay character in a Disney film is just as complicated as it sounds, and from one moment to the next, the film never figures out if it wants to treat Le Dou's pining for Gaston as a serious character detail, or as merely a joke. (There's nothing too overt about this crush, although there's one certain visual during the "Gaston" song - you'll know it when you see it - that shocked me in its inclusion.)
And yet - and yet, and yet, and yet - I still enjoyed it.
No matter how badly you botch these characters, nothing can erase their everlasting charm. Nothing can erase the joy I feel upon hearing the title song or "Be Our Guest" or any of the other soaring musical numbers. Watson and Dan Stevens (yes, the guy from Legion) don't have much chemistry, but the roles they play are still, as Mrs. Potts puts it, a "tale as old as time." Compared to 2015's Cinderella - competently made, but thoroughly boring - Beauty and the Beast has the entertainment edge. It's a mess, but it's a fascinating mess to behold.
It doesn't look like live-action Disney remakes will be going away anytime soon, so I may need to curve my expectations for future films. Beauty and the Beast is not a good film, but at least it's bad in all the right ways.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Apr 14, 2017 9:29:00 GMT -8
The second act of the 1991 version felt very rushed to me, and the main romance got very little screen time. I appreciate that the live action one at least attempted to improve on that, even if it is a worse movie.
What did you think of last year's The Jungle Book? It was a lot better than the 2017 Beauty and the Beast, though it helps that the original Jungle Book isn't that great, while the 1991 Beauty and the Beast is pretty damn good.
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 14, 2017 9:44:30 GMT -8
The Jungle Book is thus far the only one of the live-action remakes I really liked. (Though I didn't hate Maleficent the way many others did.) It looked great and retold the story in a way that was respectful without just feeling like a copy-and-paste.
I'm also looking forward to next year's Mulan remake, though I can't be sure if excluding the songs is a good or bad idea.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Apr 14, 2017 10:25:38 GMT -8
The Jungle Book is thus far the only one of the live-action remakes I really liked. (Though I didn't hate Maleficent the way many others did.) It looked great and retold the story in a way that was respectful without just feeling like a copy-and-paste. I'm also looking forward to next year's Mulan remake, though I can't be sure if excluding the songs is a good or bad idea. I guess McDonalds now has an excuse to bring back Szechuan sauce.
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 14, 2017 11:42:39 GMT -8
I'm also looking forward to next year's Mulan remake, though I can't be sure if excluding the songs is a good or bad idea. What?? No "I'll Make a Man Out of You?" Can I sue someone?
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 14, 2017 12:21:14 GMT -8
I guess McDonalds now has an excuse to bring back Szechuan sauce. I hope it tastes as good as Rick says. (Then again, it's probably not kosher, so I'll never find out.) What?? No "I'll Make a Man Out of You?" Can I sue someone? I rewatched Mulan with my mom earlier this week (she'd never seen it) and now have "I'll Make a Man Out of You" stuck in my head. Again.
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 15, 2017 20:54:40 GMT -8
The Boss Baby
The funniest moments in DreamWorks' latest animated diversion come through its juxtaposition of the young and old. The film has fun with the way innocent baby toys (building blocks, pacifiers, teddy bears) can turn imposing when given an adult twist. The title character is literally a baby businessman (voiced by Alec Baldwin, which makes the Trump jokes even easier) who reads the Wall Street Journal and wishes to climb the executive ladder. Just think of how much comic potential we have here - this film could be an ingenious satire of corporate business, filtering highbrow marketing through an infantile world.
But this is a DreamWorks cartoon. So instead, we have poop jokes.
The Boss Baby crosses the line of good taste on multiple occasions, often involving the main character's oft-seen tush. (There were lots of kids in the theater. I felt weird.) It also moves at a frenetic pace, jumping from one beat to the next with little regard for subtlety or nuance. The story? Well, it involves babies and puppies and brotherly love. There's a villainous scheme that doesn't make much sense and a car chase involving a little red fire truck that makes even less sense. The emotional material hits all the predictable buttons, but slides right by without leaving any real impression. After all, we need to make room for more poop jokes.
The babies are cute, and the actor voicing Tim (the boy who's stuck with baby Baldwin) does a commendable job. But there's so little that sticks with you five minutes after the credits roll. Compared to Baby Geniuses, it's brilliant - but why would you compare anything to Baby Geniuses?
I would caution bringing kids to this film. Partly because of the crude humor, but mostly because they will have questions. Questions about where babies come from. And be prepared with a good answer: This movie goes out of its way to debunk the stork and the cabbage patch theories.
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