I Just Watched (Films)

[Animalmother]

RIPD
Christ what a shit show. The CGI creature effects are that bizarre rubbery looking mess you saw in the early 2000's. I'm not sure there's a single practical effect in the entire film. Poor visuals aside it's also just a bad film with everyone just going through the paces. Reminded me of the Ghostbusters remake.

[Achtung Englander]

Army Of The Dead Netflix

Crap 2/10

Not scary. I was actually bored. Watched it just to be in the zeitgeist (listening to podcasts about the film). Nothing original about it. It is a carbon copy of Aliens. Added nothing to the genre. Very predictable and thoroghly pointless. The actors are perhaps the redeeming feature but the dialougue was aweful. The direction and principle cinematography was done by Zack Synder and it was terrible.

It even used Die Hard's classical overtures for the safe/money scenes. I mean come on for fuck sake.

Just go play Left 4 Dead or World War Z.

One last thing - the entire zombie army is made up from dancers. I thought Las Vegas was populated by old people or fat people.

[Achtung Englander]

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

to be honest THAT is most impressive thing about this farce of a project

[Wrathbone]

Zack Snyder's Justice League

Good flipping grief. Imagine watching your film be butchered and mocked due to tragic personal circumstances, only to be given the chance to realise your vision again with studio backing and public enthusiasm, and then to release the greatest, steaming spiral turd of your career that is not only twice as long as the original version but twice as bad. I despair for Zack Snyder, once capable of wonderful, intricate comic book drama in the form of Watchmen, and now so far up his own arse that he thinks black and white title cards announcing each chapter of a film makes it grandiose.

The theatrical cut, while obviously shit, was at least fun at times and mildly entertaining. The Snyder cut surgically removes all humour, because we can't permit any silliness to sully our furrowed brows as we spend five whole minutes panning round Lois Lane looking sad to some sad music while being sad and remembering all the reasons to be sad. Oh, and colour isn't allowed either. Everything has to be grey, or we might start enjoying it when we're meant to be serious and sad. This is drama you see. You can tell by all the frowns and the serious Nordic women singing dramatically for no reason.

Bruce Wayne now seems completely unconcerned with hiding the fact that he's Batman. This is hilarious considering that there's a new scene at the end (spoiler, I guess, does anyone care) where it's revealed Lex Luthor knows he's Batman as if that's a huge reveal, followed immediately by another new scene where a random new superhero presents himself at Bruce's house because he knows he's Batman.

Regarding the ending, which is totally different from the theatrical version (they've binned the sprint race between Flash and Superman), the final 20 minutes are nothing but trailers for future DC films. It's utterly, revoltingly cynical marketing which serves no purpose to the film.

Perhaps the biggest insult in this hateful crotch-punch of a film is that it's presented in 4:3 aspect ratio. Yes, it's 1995 again. I immediately paused the film upon starting to google this and ensure I wasn't going mad. No, apparently Zack Snyder had a big hissy fit and insisted upon 4:3 so that it could fill a full Imax screen. Firstly, fuck you, Zack Snyder. Secondly, I can count the number of people who will ever see this at an Imax on one hand. Thirdly, fuck you, Zack Snyder - if you're going to be a dick about aspect ratios for extremely limited cinema viewings, have the bloody decency to produce a version that's suitable for everyone else. When I foolishly shell out cash to watch a film that's supposedly 4K, I don't expect to feel like I'm watching a sodding DVD of Frasier.

What a total mess.

2/10

(The only reason it's not 1/10 is because there's a scene where Alfred makes tea, which is nice.)

[Raid]

Hah. I assumed the "4:3" marker on the NowTV app was just a mistake. I'm used to streaming services not taking advantage of my 21:9 monitor, because despite the content being in that ratio, the black bars to make that 21:9 content fit a 16:9 monitor are baked into the video file, but just imagine purposefully alienating 99% of your audience with a format that hasn't made sense since the nineties. Shoot it in 4:3 by all means to suit your IMAX dream, but christ, give everyone else something watchable.

The seriousness is what really puts me off the DC films - it's just all so po-faced despite the fact that superheroes are inherently quite a silly concept. Marvel know how to have fun with their properties, and I suspect it's what has made them such an incredible success.

[Wrathbone]

The seriousness is what really puts me off the DC films - it's just all so po-faced despite the fact that superheroes are inherently quite a silly concept. Marvel know how to have fun with their properties, and I suspect it's what has made them such an incredible success.

Precisely this. I think the irony of DC films is that they seem to be under the impression that the only way to be fun with superheroes is to go back to being campy, but by taking themselves so seriously they come across as incredibly silly. Ultimately Bruce Wayne is a man dressed as a bat, and the more you pretend that's not even a little bit funny, the stupider it gets. You can go too far the other way, and Marvel's toyed with that approach at times, but DC resist it to the point where the films feel like an angsty teenager trying too hard to be taken seriously.

The MCU works (for me, at least) because it understands how to tell stories that are both fun and meaningful. They reconginse that those two things are not mutually exclusive. It's not that they're dramatic masterpieces, they're just damn good comic book stories brought to life.

[Hatredsheart]

Hah. I assumed the "4:3" marker on the NowTV app was just a mistake. I'm used to streaming services not taking advantage of my 21:9 monitor, because despite the content being in that ratio, the black bars to make that 21:9 content fit a 16:9 monitor are baked into the video file, but just imagine purposefully alienating 99% of your audience with a format that hasn't made sense since the nineties. Shoot it in 4:3 by all means to suit your IMAX dream, but christ, give everyone else something watchable.

The seriousness is what really puts me off the DC films - it's just all so po-faced despite the fact that superheroes are inherently quite a silly concept. Marvel know how to have fun with their properties, and I suspect it's what has made them such an incredible success.

I know someone with bad Internet that spent a whole day downloading this and then deleted it and wasted another day redownloading as he thought the first copy was faulty.

[Wrathbone]

I know someone with bad Internet that spent a whole day downloading this and then deleted it and wasted another day redownloading as he thought the first copy was faulty.

It's crazy, isn't it. In the realm of daft, pretentious directorial choices, this one really takes the biscuit. What's next, Justice League 2 to be on VHS only?

[Raid]

Ultimately Bruce Wayne is a man dressed as a bat, and the more you pretend that's not even a little bit funny, the stupider it gets.

I think the biggest success of the Chris Nolan Batman films was that they made me completely forget how ridiculous Batman's design is. I still think Dark Knight is one of the very best superhero films, so clearly there's scope for a serious thriller that revolves around the world's greatest detective who happens to dress up as a tiny, harmless, flying rodent on an evening, but the recent DC films just don't hit the mark for me. The fact that they have the most hideously obvious CGI doesn't help - it's difficult to get behind the fantasy when you're constantly being pulled out of it by the painfully obvious fact that everyone's acting in front of a green screen.

I actually quite like Affleck's Batman, but Justice League went to great lengths to show just how stupidly outmatched he is by his teammates. It was a similar story with Hawkeye in the first Avengers film, so much so that they even lampshaded it in the sequel, but in a way that was just funny. Hawkeye knew how silly it was for him to be fighting an army of robots on a flying city with a bow and arrows while surrounded by invincible suits of armour and a man that's 10,000% muscle and a machine powered by a remnant of the creation of the universe and the God of Fucking Thunder. I don't recall Affleck's Batman having that same level of introspection.

And no, there are too many VHS players left in the world. Justice League 2 will presumably be released on Laserdisc or UMD.

[Maturin]

I still prefer Batman Begins (and to a lesser extent TDK) to all the Marvel films, so I don't think there's a problem with a serious take on the man dressing as a bat concept. It just needs to be done properly.

The problem is 100% Snyder. He disappeared down some rabbit hole of terrible decision-making years ago, never to return.

[Wrathbone]

I do like the Nolan Batman films, but I find them very po-faced at times. They work because they’re well written, acted, directed and produced. I think you’re right that Snyder is the problem, especially as Wonder Woman is the only recent DC film that I think is any good and he wasn’t involved. I’ve still not seen 1984, actually - not sure I dare now.

[Raid]

Unforgiven

I feel like I've seen a lot of humourless films recently, and every 90s film I've watched that isn't considered a classic has been really disappointing. Unforgiven sadly wasn't a departure from this schema, and I don't recall a single part that raised so much as a smile. I suppose expecting anything else from Clint Eastwood was foolish. Painfully expositional dialogue, badly produced audio where dialogue was difficult to make out, and shots so dark I assume nobody dared tell director Eastwood that fire had been invented by 1879.

It wasn't terrible, it just didn't grab me at all.

[Mantis]

I watched Unforgiven not too long ago and thought that it was quite amusing. It kind of felt like there was almost a sense of self awareness with the dry humour, particularly with Eastwood's character in how he portrays him as clearly far too old and past his prime.

It seems like something of a dark introspective movie for Eastwood's past characters. There's some sort of poignant point in there about the folly of all his past heroics I'm sure.

[Raid]

I did consider the fact that Eastwood doesn't play an unkillable badass as a departure from the norm, but then the last scene has him killing five men without moving, despite all five men shooting at him. The only character development he seems to have is that he returns to alcoholism. He doesn't come across as remotely sympathetic.

Eastwood's particular brand of manly stoicism doesn't really do it for me without a Morricone soundtrack.

[Mantis]

The ending definitely is a bit jarring considering the vibe of the rest of the movie. I get that it was reinforcing the point that to win in a gunfight you've just got to be the one to keep your nerve, and the reason his character was so unbeatable was because he was just an ice cold monster, where the others in the bar had probably never been in a proper gunfight and were terrified so all fudged their shots.

Overall I don't think the aim of the movie was to have sympathy for Eastwood's character. The movie shows on multiple occasions how killing a man is actually a horrific thing to do, and how there's something really wrong with the people who are good at it or find it easy. None of the gunslingers are really made out as likeable characters.

I can see how the ending might be easily intepreted as just another Eastwood being a stoic bad ass moment though. From the way it was shot it looked like they were all in such close quarters that you've really got to suspend your disbelief that all of them somehow managed to miss him. When I watched that scene I was certain he was just going to get gunned down, so when he was the last one standing without so much as a scratch I was a bit like "Wait, what!?".

It's certainly no Tombstone thats for sure, but I did like it.