I Just Watched (Films)

[Raid]

Elysium

Imagine Robocop but without all of the subtlety, and you'll get an approximation of how this film presents its message. It's the future, all of the rich people live on a lovely space station, and all of the poor people toil away in misery on Earth. The rich people all have miraculous healing machines in their living rooms that can fix everything from childhood diseases to having your face blown off with a grenade within seconds. These machines are not available to the poor. RICH PEOPLE BAD, DID YOU GET THAT RICH PEOPLE ARE BAD YET? HOW ABOUT WE THROW IN A HORRIBLE BOSS WITH NO REGARD FOR THE WELFARE OF HIS EMPLOYEES?

Subtlety isn't everything, Robocop is one of my favourite films afterall, but this really doesn't have much going for it. I was bored at points.

[Animalmother]

Yeah but the violence was glorious.

Peninsula (Train to Busan 2)
It's a follow up to Train to Busan but is only set in the same world and makes no reference to the previous film. Takes place 4 years after the zombies have completely overrun South Korea and a small group of Korean refugees return to grab a truck full of money and get out again. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as good and is very run of the mill. It's basically a film adaptation of a video game that was never made. You have your stealth section, fighting zombies, fighting humans, all interspersed with numerous driving sections. The car effects actually look like a game cut sequence. The last 10 minutes drag on so much I ended up skipping ahead several times to get to the end.
Not a bad film just a very disappointing follow-up to such a great film. It also seems to be a running theme were western actors in Korean films are just terrible.

[Sly Boots]

Yeah but the violence was glorious.

Peninsula (Train to Busan 2)
It's a follow up to Train to Busan but is only set in the same world and makes no reference to the previous film. Takes place 4 years after the zombies have completely overrun South Korea and a small group of Korean refugees return to grab a truck full of money and get out again. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as good and is very run of the mill. It's basically a film adaptation of a video game that was never made. You have your stealth section, fighting zombies, fighting humans, all interspersed with numerous driving sections. The car effects actually look like a game cut sequence. The last 10 minutes drag on so much I ended up skipping ahead several times to get to the end.
Not a bad film just a very disappointing follow-up to such a great film. It also seems to be a running theme were western actors in Korean films are just terrible.

I bailed on it after less than half an hour, really poor.

[Wrathbone]

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

This is the classic Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone (no namesake ¬_¬) adventure which I'd never seen before, but is often cited as the definitive Robin Hood film. First, it looks fantastic! Not just for an 84 year old film - it looks like it could have been made in the 60s or early 70s. What with the vibrant tunics, hammed-up melodrama and almost non-existent character development, it's all rather silly by modern standards, but it works in its favour as an unapologeticly entertaining tale of derring-do that holds up better than I ever imagined it would.

Special mention has to go to the frequent shots of people getting hit by arrows. Usually in that era of cinema (and long after) you'd expect to see a brief cut where they attach the arrow to the actor and then start rolling again, but I couldn't see any cuts in this and couldn't figure out how they'd done it, as it looked really convincing. No wonder, because it turns out all they'd done was padded up the actors and actually shot them with arrows. Apparently they paid actors $150 a shot. There really was nothing like the insanity of classic Hollywood.

9/10

[Raid]

Snatch

I watched Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels a few weeks back. That is a great film, and I was expecting to think much the same of the follow up. It's probably a decade since I'd watched either of them, and in my head they were equally good. What I was forgetting was that Snatch is a masterpiece. The dialogue was probably pretty funny just written down in the script, but it's delivered so well by every single member of the cast that the entire film is just hilarious. Statham, Jones, Pitt and particularly Alan Ford who plays Brick Top are all magnificent. And other than a couple of uses of a homophobic slur, it's aged extremely well.

Also, as an aside, I went back through the last few pages of this thread to see if I'd posted when I watched Lock Stock, and realised how wildly incoherent some of my film reviews are. I have to stop writing them when drunk.

[Sly Boots]

Snatch

I watched Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels a few weeks back. That is a great film, and I was expecting to think much the same of the follow up. It's probably a decade since I'd watched either of them, and in my head they were equally good. What I was forgetting was that Snatch is a masterpiece. The dialogue was probably pretty funny just written down in the script, but it's delivered so well by every single member of the cast that the entire film is just hilarious. Statham, Jones, Pitt and particularly Alan Ford who plays Brick Top are all magnificent. And other than a couple of uses of a homophobic slur, it's aged extremely well.

Also, as an aside, I went back through the last few pages of this thread to see if I'd posted when I watched Lock Stock, and realised how wildly incoherent some of my film reviews are. I have to stop writing them when drunk.

At the start of this I thought you were going to say Snatch wasn't as good as Lock Stock, and I was all poised to come in guns blazing, so glad it then took the turn it did

I didn't actually think that much of Lock Stock, but Snatch is fantastic. I still quote "I fuckin hate pikeys" fairly regularly to this day

[Rusty]

This is so weird. I've both these films lined up to watch with my son next week!
Is this a case of when my phone listens to my conversations and somehow makes adverts appear from topics I've talked about..

[Snowy]

Snatch

Great film. I prefer Lock Stock I think but there is a gnats pube separating them

[Maturin]

I think Snatch is the more enjoyable film to re-watch, but Lock Stock always felt a little more authentic. Haven't liked any other Guy Ritchie films though.

[eny]

Always watch them both together, and at least twice a year....great capers.

[Animalmother]

I think Snatch is the more enjoyable film to re-watch, but Lock Stock always felt a little more authentic. Haven't liked any other Guy Ritchie films though.

I think that's due to Matthew Vaughn not working with him anymore, you can tell who had the real talent there.

[Rusty]

Haven't liked any other Guy Ritchie films though.

I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes
The Gentlemen was pretty good.
The Wrath of man was cringe and shit

[Raid]

I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes
The Gentlemen was pretty good.
The Wrath of man was cringe and shit

I haven't seen Wrath of Man, but I agree on the other two.

[Wrathbone]

Eternals

Well that was shite. A disaster from start to finish that is by far and away the worst film in the entire MCU. Even The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World had redeeming features like a mostly coherent plot, and while Shang-chi wasn't great, it was at least entertaining. Eternals is strangely po-faced and miserable for no reason I can discern. You know when you go to someone's house and there's obviously been a row that nobody wants to address? It feels like that. It's even visually dark, with some scenes rivalling the Battle of Winterfell in terms of not being able to see what's going on.

I could forgive its glum tone if it served the story, except there isn't one to speak of. Or rather there's no dramatic arc or character motivations beyond whatever whims they arbitrarily side with at any given moment. It's just a load of stuff that happens. And good fucking grief does it drag on, for 2 hours and 37 painful minutes which it does nothing to earn. The first 50 minutes are wasted with endless, frustrating flashbacks that could have been handled with 5 minutes of exposition. It's so boring that the love triangle introduced at the start between Gemma Chan, Jon Snow and Robb Stark is flat out forgotten by the end of the film, so little do any of the trio care about it. I burst out laughing near the end at the unintentional stupidity of it:

Spoiler

when Robb Stark realised he was being a dick and so wordlessly fucked off and flew into the sun.

It's a total mess. It feels much more like a DC film than a Marvel one - like the first Suicide Squad with any shred of personality stomped out of it.

3/10

[Achtung Englander]

Nobody

That was fun, completely nuts but very much a great waste of time for 90 mins.

7/10