First Man
Story of Neil Armstrong's life from being a test pilot to walking on the moon. It's a very measured and thoughtful telling with almost no flag waving bullshit that definitely would have ruined the film. Very understated but great effects and fantastic sound design with the pant shitting sounds of space craft stretching and warping as they're launched into space. The music is beautiful and not at all bombastic as you'd expect. You also learn not to get too attached to characters as they get Game of Thrones'd by the reality of space exploration. Buzz Aldrin comes across as a bit of an asshole which is funny because he was an advisor on set
Great film and really worth a watch. I think it leaves Netflix in the next couple of days so watch it quick.
Lovely little bits of music like this play throughout the film
Yeah, First Man is a belting film. It nails the feeling of stark isolation, not just in terms of distance from home or his grieving but in terms of the terrifying situations Armstrong found himself in during testing. You watch some of them and wonder how the hell anybody could get out of that and back to safety, and how utterly alone he must have felt up there knowing that nobody was coming to help.
On the same subject (but a very different film), Hidden Figures is also fantastic.
Read his Wikipedia page, the man was indestructible. He survived multiple accidents and crashes without serious injury. He eventually died after a possible botched surgical procedure, no natural causes for this man!
Clint Eastwood shows that age is no reason for him not to make great films. He plays an old irascible horticulturalist who has travelled the US all his life and never once been stopped, he and his old truck are basically invisible, but who needs money. He gets introduced to members of a Mexican drug cartel who get him to drive packages for them and the story goes from there.
I really enjoyed this, another slow burner from Clint that is full of charm. His character is frequently hilarious, having no filter at all. Well worth watching.
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
I've never really rated Kong as a giant movie monster. He's just a big gorilla, there's nothing particularly interesting to him. He's capable of using things as impromptu weapons, so he's a bit like a big toddler. It's no nuclear fire breath, is it? Still, the film does what it can with the source material, pitting him against other big things. There are big spiders, big buffalo, big lizards. Is man the true monster? No, it's the big lizards. Does beauty kill the beast? No, again it's big lizards. The effects are fairly impressive, with most of the scenes involving the giant monsters taking place in full daylight and being really quite beautifully animated, but there's nothing to match the glorious halo drop scene or that atomic charge-up scene that still gives me goosebumps every time I watch it thanks to the absolutely phenomenal sound design.
Honestly next to the first entry in the Monarch series, it's just not very interesting. It's not bad, it just doesn't have much of a hook. The human characters are probably more interesting, but does anyone really go to a Kaiju film for the human characters? Sam Jackson continues to stop everyone realising quite how old he is (68 at the time of filming this) with a pretty good showing as a soldier who can't quite let war go, John Goodman plays John Goodman, who continues to have more screen presence than a hundred foot ape, and Tom Hiddleston isn't typecast, honest.
It's a bit of silly fun then, but it doesn't have a tenth of the beauty or mystery of Godzilla.
I think the 2014 Godzilla movie gets an unfair rep. The sequel wasn't quite on the same level, although still enjoyable, but I thought the first retake on it was genuinely a great movie. Yes there was too much screen time in the second half for a human cast that nobody cared about and the action was a bit too fast cut and dark at times, but overall the movie had a great vibe. I even really enjoyed the first half suspenseful build up with Bryan Cranston's character.
My only real issue with Godzilla was that Bryan Cranston isn't in it for the majority of its runtime; his character's son that fills the lead role is just a boring military type that can't carry a scene half as well. I can only imagine how amazing it would have been for Cranston and Watanabe to be offering their very different opinions from the side-lines. Otherwise it's a fantastic film; it's a real shame that it didn't get the credit that I think it deserves.
I always thought it had good visuals but the pace and the writing were pretty iffy. Now let me palate clense with some masterpieces.
Hellraiser 1-10
1-8 was a rewatch, 9 and 10 were first watches.
Original 4
1.
Still love it. The reconstitution scenes are just fabulous practical effects. Always hated the light effects in the finale but its a thing of its time.
2.
Its fairly bad. Its like Hellraiser crossed with Labyrinth but not well executed. The make up and effects are great (except the external hell shots) but the pace and the writing is gash and the complete ineptitude of the cenobites to defend their own lair is just daft. I love the Julia skinless makeup, its one of my favorites of all time...
3.
Its also fairly bad but it has some merit buried in there. Theres some more fab skinless makeup for a 4 second shot that I find amazing but when you have a Cenobite that shoots CD's and one that uses a telephoto lens to skewer people.... yeah.... its rough.
4.
I liked this a whole lot more than I did the first and only time I watched it. Its set in space because why not? Then it goes back in time to see the origins of the Lament Configuration. I'm not going to say its great but its okish.
1>2>4>3
The Hellraiser Is Smart trilogy
5, 6 & 7.
These are all pretty similar in their themes, execution and a love for OMGTWISTS that are fairly telegraphed. They have good ideas, they have bad acting, they have some rough writing but theres enough good stuff in them to actually be worth watching.
6>7>5
Hellraiser 8
This stands alone in a pile of its own diarrhea. Its about an MMO called Hellworld with some of the worst computer representation you can imagine. It has Lance Henriksen throwing a weird Hellworld fuck party at his mansion. It thinks its part of the "hellraiser is smart" group but it is so fucking bad. For a start, and I found this hilarious, they refer to the Lament Configuration as the Lamont Configuration which just makes me think Norman Lamont was behind it all from the start. The acting is the worst, the absolute worst of the entire series (saying something) and the twist is painful. Its an absolute travesty of a movie and its a shame this was the once Lance was in because I could see him being a fun Cenobite.
Hellraiser Post Doug Bradley
Yeah Doug Bradley, the best thing about the whole series turned down the roles here on out.
9.
The Pinhead guy is just awful buuuut its not bad. Its very low budget, it has about 2 sets, the acting is bad but the effects are good (very nice practical ones too) and it pays a lot of homage to The Hellbpund Heart. Its almost a home invasion style schock but with pinhead. Massively rough but it could have been an ok film with a bunch of different choices.
10.
Weirdly pretty good but like 9 falls short because of poor acting and some poor directing/editing. The 15 minute introduction scene is really good in an almost Cenobites do Saw kind of way. I was really expecting 9 and 10 to be really bad but they surprised me, 10 especially. The ideas are there and it has neat visuals and originality. The Pinhead actor in this is slightly better than 9 but only slightly.
10>9
Overall..... 1>6>2>4>10>7>5>9>3>8
A man who could tell more truth and eat fewer pies.
Ehh, it's alright. I find Fox's X-Men series to be a little lacking, I'm not sure what it is exactly. Maybe it's the fact that every single film seems to involve characters so unbelievably powerful that it ruins the suspension of disbelief. This one is probably the worst yet for this, with Magneto powerful enough to affect every bit of metal on the planet with a bit of a boost from... did the main villain actually have a name?
The story feels like it's a setup to something more exciting. The main villain is utterly uninteresting, and this entry in the franchise doesn't really feel like it's moving the series in any meaningful way. It's almost like it's a petty squabble between the rest of the characters, and although it looks like the entire world is destroyed, the stakes just don't feel very high. Hell, at the mid-point of the film the villain commands every nuclear missile on Earth to be launched into space... and that's it! There's no plot of make them come back down again, they're just sitting there in orbit by the end of the film. The mutants just have a bit of a scrap in a ruined Cairo and then the film ends.
It's fun, I guess, and it has another brilliant Quicksilver montage that made me properly grin, but despite all of the whizzbang effects and fire blasts and explosions, nothing really happens.
I loved that Magneto is personally responsible for millions of deaths but they pretty much just forgive him for being such a little tyke and pinch his cheek at the end.
On the Town
This is one of those things thats rarely true but it is in this case - they really dont make them like these anymore! When about the closest you can get in modern times is the rubbish (imo) Lala Land its a sad state. Its just so fun, its so positive, its funny, its sweet, its daft, its colourful, its just a joyful thing. Every time I see Gene Kelly in something I'm reminded that I might be a wee bit in love with him. Hes sickeningly talented; singing, dancing, even his face acting is great and hes a handsome bastard to boot.
A man who could tell more truth and eat fewer pies.
I can't think of many films I've watched in the last few years that actually made me exclaim "Wow." as the credits began to roll. This is a masterpiece of film scoring and tension building. I don't think there's a single moment where the soundtrack lets up until about 90% of the way through the film, and when it finally does you can almost feel the tension releasing through your eye sockets. It's almost overwhelming. I don't know how it was composed, but it's 80 minutes of constant pocket-watch ticking and Shepard Tone, until it suddenly breaks into the first few bars of one of England's most patriotic pieces of music, elongated until it's barely noticeable. My description is a ridiculous reduction of an incredible piece of work.
I'm hoping that over the years you lot have noticed that I'm not exactly a union-flag-waving, commemorative plate of the Queen-displaying, Churchill-quoting patriot. I think it probably suffices to say that the finale of this film made me swell with Gammon-flavoured pride. It's that well made.
This isn't so much a story as an experience, and one I can't recommend enough. Watch it with headphones or the volume up.
I assume I either missed a film or this one expects you to know the kong and godzilla backstory. I didn't know any of the characters, non of them were introduced, I didn't know any of their motivations. The 'bad guys' didn't seem like bad guys.
The loss of life in this is soon forgotten by everyone - The destruction of Hong Kong alone must have resulted in millions of deaths - with no discussion of the aftermath.
But having said that it was a brain switched off fun movie that filled a Saturday night popcorn flick slot.
On a better note; tonight is either going to be: Dunkirk (thanks Raid), Commando (thanks to pictures seen earlier), Casino (why not?) or Se7en. As it's half term I think we'll get through most of these anyway during the week.
I went into this with such low expectations that I'm surprised I actually ever hit play. What I got was exactly what I expected; a run-of-the-mill bloated special effects film that I'll have forgotten every part of come tomorrow morning. What I wasn't expecting though was just how poor the acting would be. Nobody in this film seemed to care, not even Jeff Goldblum who only had to play exactly the same role he's been playing for 30 years. Every character was so one-dimensional that I suspect they could have just gotten green-suited mocap actors wearing paper masks of the original film's cast and done the entire thing in CGI. Brent Spiner had the only character that probably got more than a single line description in the script. I get the feeling the on-set direction was piss poor, and nobody knew how to react to anything because it was all green screen.
It's not terrible, but it just doesn't feel like there was any passion involved anywhere in its production.
