I Just Watched (Films)

[Sly Boots]

The animated one Achtung mentioned, Seoul Station, is worth a watch as well. It acts as a prequel to Train to Busan.

[Wrathbone]

Was it Red Heat that he drives a bulldozer though a pub with a big shit eating grin on his face? I love that scene so much!

Raw Deal he drives a tow truck through a gambling den after kicking the shit out of half the patrons

I have no memory of this (probably 20 years since I saw it), and now I'm sold on a rewatch.

[Achtung Englander]

One Night In Miami (Prime)

A very good drama. What I liked a lot about it was the fact it reminded me of how family arguments start, get heated and than resolve themselves when steam goes out of the debate. In that aspect it felt very real. There is some very interesting dialogue and thought provoking aspects to it. Superb acting. Not sure I would want to see the play as the film had all the right beats.

Recommend
7/10

[Raid]

The Foreigner

Imagine for a moment that the BBC orders a high-budget prestige drama piece about a resurgent IRA. And then for legal reasons they have to cast Jackie Chan in it. Yeah.

It's not bad at all, in fact I quite enjoyed it, but it doesn't feel much like a Hollywood film. The music is ripped straight from a TV crime drama series, which is to say it's effective, but it's probably a single guy with a DAW and some high-end instrument packs rather than an actual orchestra. Pierce Brosnan makes a pretty good Gerry Adams stand-in, and Roose Bolton is there too. Chan's character doesn't really feel like a significant part of the film despite his star billing, and his part is basically lost for the second half until the finale. He's there doing stunts that a man of his age probably shouldn't, but it hardly feels like an appropriate part for one of cinema's most entertaining actors.

[Animalmother]

Army of the Dead
Remarkably dull considering the subject matter. Too much talking and not enough zombie killing.

[Raid]

Heat

I was surprisingly bored throughout most of this. The famed street shootout is good, sure, but there's an awful lot of talking amongst characters that aren't really developed, nor that interesting. Pacino's good, yet despite the slew of recognisable faces, I can't say I found a single other character to be worth the time. It's far too long for the amount of actually entertaining content, with for example the lengthy introductions for characters that only last seconds in the pivotal moment before dying unceremoniously.

Really quite disappointing, I'm afraid.

[Wrathbone]

Have to agree. For all the acclaim it gets, the one time I watched it I thought it was aggressively dull.

[Maturin]

Yeah, it's a very well-made & well-acted film with some incredible moments, but there are an awful lot of plot strands buried in there which don't tie together particularly well. It's like an RPG with some minor optional sidequests that can be skipped.

Despite being an imperfect film though, it contains enough impressive elements to be regarded pretty highly.

[2Channelwonder]

Army Of The Dead (Netflix UK version)

For a film reputed to have an additional character separately shot, edited in and then edited back out again we end up with a Zombie film that could have the same two versions as Snyder's 2004 DVD era Zombie predecessor but with a 100million+ budget allows anyone with the Netflix HD package to get as close to UHD as possible if their equipment can upscale. With the director taking the cinematographer's job, the rest of the undeclared budget went on making sure the CGI was join-free and didn't stand out against the background and basically all the potential of the location, first suggested in 2007's Resident Evil Extinction, is fully realised in AOTD even though some of it is just a deliberate opening title credit montage.

The other problem is some elements are less spoilers than off-screen continuity errors such as

Spoiler

These would-be casino robbers not being shown carrying the money bags they just appear when they reach the safe and of course the person giving the mission doesn't make it clear that they might as well just take what they can carry, rather than the whole amount. Also the final final ending element before fading to black - isn't telegraphed in the Netflix version so you wonder whether it was cut out because of one death before it being offscreen, but the character's reaction is also similar to Dawn of the Dead 2004 except in the older film, it wasn't the very end

.

So whilst you were expecting slight similarities to Peninsula, you weren't expecting allusions to Aliens, Platoon, Rogue One, Spectre and AVP Requiem plus Resident Evil's animal Zombies resulting in a similar-but-not-the-same comparison in CGI with The Revenant and a quick aside comparing killing Z's in the world of the film, to a videogame - Contagion to name just one, Zombie Panic Source in terms of the "boss" zombies who are white and taller and stronger than the standard Zs like ZPS's lead "Whitey" zombie.

As commented by Animalmother nearly all the deaths are much slower and drawn out until the end when all hell predictably breaks loose but then Zack Snyder and the co-screenwriters very cleverly insert

Spoiler

A character actually speaking for the audience and saving their own life with commonsense

but for this one groundbreaking character moment in a Zombie film we have a dozen or so Scary Movie level stupid horror film decisions including saddling Dave Bautista's lead character with a bunch of crazy misfits who frankly attract the best brutal wisecracks by the second character who speaks for the audience

Spoiler

in ranking these misfit characters in both importance and likeliness of death

so there is both witty written and unintentional humour alike in this version of the film. As far as I'm concerned, they deliberately varied one scene because of worries that it would have looked too similar to The Walking Dead on television but frankly that led to deliberately wasting a character whose development only lasted as long as the villain needed to be defined. Plus when you look at the animal Zombie you're left wondering if this is some horror film allusion/homage to the animal cameo in one of the Hangover sequels.

One of the "rules" feels more like Gremlins than a Zombie film and once again in this Netflix UK version of the film that story element is dropped. That puts Army of The Dead in the same setting as the 2004 film when it comes to the Z's,

Spoiler

only bites bring people back and only headshots keep them down but once again despite the intro and teaser before the credits setting up the montage, the Netflix cut doesn't tell you what happened to the secondary Alphas created by Patient Zero over the 14 year time jump.

As far as I'm concerned the use of these other films' and other games' character archetypes and action settings actually helps elevate it above that of Peninsula which deliberately goes for a more optimistic outlook towards the end just because whilst they actually both go for a buildup to an ending that puts the characters into trying to get away from more than just the Z's, Army of the Dead basically has a much more nihilistic outlook with frankly an execution also as mentioned before, like Platoon which is the problem with only two characters in the ensemble being defined as having seen military action both before and during the Z outbreak. The cheesy lift/elevator music approach to two Elvis songs works at the beginning but irritates by the end, thankfully there's a decent 15-30mins of score for the central emotional relationship between Dave Bautista's character and his relatives which is where some of the extra running time taking the film over 2hrs comes from, as is the extra 15mins of establishing the ensemble. As you can see back in 2004 it took a bunch of jump cuts to put everyone together and the time wasn't spent establishing individual characters in the vein of AOTD.

So at the end of the day unlike Peninsula I will be streaming Army of the Dead again before quitting Netflix and then my third viewing will be any different cut presumably on a UHD version because this dropped backup character might not change the story but unlike Blade Runner 2049 and Prometheus the extra footage didn't find its way into the Youtube marketing. So there's a Snyder Cut of this film out there to be watched and I look forward to watching it later this year (unless it all ends up as deleted scenes like Prometheus).

This was also the first time that I deliberately stopped watching the half-hour making-of because I didn't want to see the strings behind the puppet show, at least not before watching it those two more times.

[Animalmother]

So there's different versions of the film depending on the region? Didn't know that a character had been removed either.

[2Channelwonder]

OK I was talking ahead a bit, Film news sites specifically mentioned in all the hype and general updates due to Covid delays that they shot scenes with a completely different character who was meant to be at least introduced using a smartphone but whether that character would join the ensemble, all other details were naturally not publicised to protect against spoilers if the film was technically in the can before Covid.

Then one of the actors was accused of sexual harassment (any other degree of misconduct unknown) and whilst I thought he'd been cleared and re-edited back into the film, one allegation was dropped but there were others so a different actor was green-screened in for all his scenes but what I don't know is whether the replacement actor had all the same lines. That's what has led to the potential for different versions considering this is some kind of World War Z-style budget overrun leading to Netflix eventually taking over from Warner but still giving the film an opening weekend on the big screen in America at the same time as sending it to Netflix in the rest of the world - like I said I'm hoping any deal with Netflix won't stop Warner putting out at least a Blu Ray if not the whole UHD with more than a promo half-hour making of special.

[EDIT] Although right on cue, Movieweb reports that basically if there was ever going to be another version it wouldn't be on Netflix which suits me fine I'm not staying subscribed after making sure I watch the Netflix version twice because Warner wouldn't be stupid enough to walk away from the non-subscriber market if they saw how much cash the DVD and Blu Ray of the 2004 film made for Universal.

https://movieweb.com/snyder-cut-army-of ... d-netflix/

[Animalmother]

Read up a bit on it and the guy they replaced seems to have been a real piece of shit. The fact that the replacement actor was never on set with Dave Bautista even though they share multiple scenes is pretty amazing. Will have to rewatch at a later date to see if I can spot the cgi.

Still not a great film though

[elgaucho]

Watched a couple of films this weekend:

Army of the Dead - Exactly what I expected really... average everything, but passably entertaining for a couple of hours. Don't spend time trying to justify the plot or some of the scene edits because plot holes aplenty!

Riders of Justice - I watched this Mads Mikkelsen film on a recommendation from a friend. From the title I expected it to be awful. For having Mads Mikkelsen I was willing to give it a go. Turns out it's a surprisingly solid film, dramatic at times, funny at times, with some VERY quirky characters, but overall original enough to stand out from the crowd for its Danish influences. Recommended watch when you're in the mood for a drama film.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11655202/

[Rusty]

Yup, I liked Riders of Justice. And because it was subtitled it actually made me concentrate on it rather than being something on in the background while I work

[2Channelwonder]

Spider Man: Far From Home

Took an hour to get going and then pulled an Iron Man 3 with its main storyline and ends like Iron Man 2008 with the mid credits sequence, end credits sequence makes a side reference to Captain Marvel but basically the other arc reference alongside twisting Civil War from the comics, is being filmed for Disney+ television. Nice to have a live action reference to Spider Man Noir from comics and Into The Spider-Verse so this is at least, the least childish of recent Spider Man appearances.

However the comedic best friend can't hide being in his 20s, next film might end up being Spider-Man channelling The Inbetweeners as everyone except Zendaya looks older than their characters' ages. Also glad I didn't pay 3D money in the cinema because there's clear greenscreen from a 2K digital intermediate when we have characters standing on or fighting next to the bridge in the trailers and walking back through the location that's supposed to be an American airport - or maybe that was just my upscale through a games console and it looked OK on the cinema screen (you'd hope so for the money it cost). Am also assuming that this was the version including the extra seven minutes that they chose to make a re-release in America and which just went straight to home formats in the UK.

Due to the Iron Man 3 major bait and switch on the premise after an hour, there's not much rewatchability but handily, the next film is out this Christmas and I might just catch it rather than waiting two years if there's no more digital rentals below a fiver for Spider-Man films.