I Just Watched (Films)

[Maturin]

Unforgiven is amazing and fully deserving of all its oscars; a genuine modern classic. Brilliant script and flawlessly directed, unlike much of Eastwood's later work. The film also contains a lot of mythic symbolism - it can be interpreted on different levels.

The confusion in the dimly lit saloon is wonderful, since it pisses all over the fantasy Hollywood depictions of gunslinging which were always a load of bollocks. Hand guns used by the majority when suddenly taken out of holsters were about as accurate as a drunk guy trying to get his keys in the door. Most hired muscle were for show, not for actual marksmanship.

[Raid]

Oh, it won best film and best director.

I sometimes wonder whether watching these films for the first time some thirty years after their release means I'm missing the context that made them classics. I'm used to westerns where the hero isn't particularly likeable, and the West is depicted as a cold, desolate place instead of an arid desert, but I know that wasn't always the case in this genre. I suspect it may have been the case with Heat last week. It's either that or I simply wasn't in the right mood for it (I only watched it because it's been on my list for months, and I noticed it's being removed from Prime on tuesday).

[Raid]

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

This still has plenty of charm, but it's just not as good as the first which was a superb film. I can't quite place my finger on why, maybe it's just not as fresh, or it could just be the writing not being quite as entertaining. It's a distant third to the original and the Lego Batman movie (and I can't decide which of those comes first).

But jesus christ, this song's gonna get stuck inside yo this song's gonna get stuck inside yo this song's gonna get stuck inside yo heeeeeaaaaaaaddddddd. It's utterly mesmerising. The soundtrack is every bit as good as the first.

[2Channelwonder]

Godzilla vs Kong

Kong I saw back in 05 but missed Skull Island and this is my first Godzilla film not on DVD since 1998. Once you set aside the ten or so moments where you will say "that is just BS" this is good enough hokum when the film gets on with the monster smash and destruction by the wholesale ton that you're waiting for. In between you have to put up with the occasional BS homage to the modern Planet of the Apes films but the monkey still has his muse

Spoiler

who is a little kid just for that Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom connection

just to keep up the 1930s aspect of the whole Kong thing. Naturally from the title of the film you do get the action on the screen when it happens but it's structured in between one character who can

Spoiler

run faster than the Flash when the plot demands it

, more 1950s adventure quest film homages and of course making sure the action has the angle of showing you exactly what inspired the Pacific Rim films.

So as long as you're not laughing and groaning at the videogame-inspired parts of the film then it's brain-off entertainment that was worth catching on the big screen. Godzilla King of the Monsters from two years ago is verbally summarized and spoiled if you haven't seen it but otherwise glad I watched GvK for a discount six quid. At full price, I'd have let it go to Amazon Prime but because of missing Skull Island and King of the Monsters I haven't grown tired of monster smash-em-up films yet.

[Raid]

Shin Godzilla

This is the first time I've spent money on an individual film since (I think) Avengers Endgame, and thankfully it was exactly what I was expecting. It's a very traditional Godzilla film, much closer to the fifties Japanese originals than the high-budget American films from the 2010s. It takes the form of a quickfire fly-on-the-wall documentary showing the government response to a Godzilla attack, starting from scratch with no prior knowledge. It's very much a B-movie, with particularly terrible effects, and I wasn't able to decide whether Godzilla was CGI or a man in a suit, but it all adds to the charm. It's worth noting that Amazon's copy of the film is the English dub, with no option to select Japanese audio, so it's difficult to judge the acting, but it's.... not exactly deserving of "classic" status.

Honestly I really enjoyed it, but this is coming from a pretty big fan of Kaiju movies, so I'm perhaps not a reliable source.

[Achtung Englander]

The Seven Ups (1973)

This is like an unofficial sequel to The French Connection because it has half the same actors and the music is done by Don Ellis. Both films (and Bullitt) were produced by Philip D'Antoni. It has the same beats as The French Connection, like an amazing car chase and a shootout but the direction is more stodgy and the story not as compelling. Its good though if you are partial to a 70s crime film.

7/10

[Animalmother]

The Dead Don't Die
Boring Load of Shit

[Achtung Englander]

In This Corner Of The World

A heartfelt two hour anime about a young wife coping with tough conditions during the second world war. Quite touching and beautifully told.
8/10

[Raid]

The Gentlemen

I'm a huge fan of Ritchie's other British Gangster films, but this doesn't hit the same highs. It's not quite as stylish and perhaps a little bland. It's more Layer Cake than Lock Stock; perfectly entertaining but not riotously funny. Still, it's probably my favourite role for Hugh Grant and it's almost worth the watch just to hear Lady Mary Crawley utter "There's fuckery afoot."

[2Channelwonder]

Bumblebee

So happy I watched this on Film4 and didn't pay cinema money for what turns into ET with a car and they deliberately made sure it was a VW Beetle for anyone who remembers the Herbie films, thankfully the action scenes are properly in focus although there's only two major scenes with more than three Transformers on screen at once so the overall impact isn't lost on a TV screen to the same extent as if you were watching one of Michael Bay's Transformers fims. Monster Trucks from 2016 has the same issue with effects that feel made for TV rather than a big screen and extra vehicular action to keep male viewers awake but that doesn't stop you just thinking "this character would end up dead in real life" a few times. It doesn't help that the lead character is written as a teen version of the girl from Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom except it isn't a dinosaur she gets to befriend.

Unfortunately all the teen comedy fails miserably and when restarting to watch it the second time I was laughing at how far the family drama is heavily edited to the point of not having much emotion including two dropped continuity moments (a moped that acts like a TARDIS and a house which like the Transformer, can reconstruct itself) so if they were aiming for 80s cheese and naivety then they succeeded but John Cena and his sidekick are the only two characters whose jokes actually work aside from when Bumblebee gets his voice and there are two music gags. Cena's character is actually serious but turns out funnier than anyone actually written as telling jokes every five minutes. They threw in a chase near the end for anyone who hadn't fallen asleep or changed channels. So as a prequel it's a draw between this borefest and Transformers The Last Knight for how badly the franchise fails when trying to deliberately focus on a Mary Sue can-do-it-all super-whitegirl character.

[Achtung Englander]

The Highwaymen (Netflix)

Pretty decent film that sometimes wanders into Hollywood cliche. Good cinematography. Not sure the real people spoke or acted this way.

7/10

[2Channelwonder]

F9 (The Fast Saga)

Money's on the screen, trailer gave away too much plot, half an hour weighed down with flashback to explain what's straightforward when you see it the first time and the action scenes revolving around introducing one of the final new characters jumps the shark in its unrealism when trying to outdo Alias/Agents of Shield on TV or Kill Bill. There are several "these characters would be D-E-A-D Dead" moments to the OTT action scenes including the one where there's no-one on a street to get killed by a flying car. So it's just about barely scraping average compared to nos.5-7 and 8 had the crazy ending action scene but there was some danger to the action and the characters had stakes but not this film, they will get one more sequel and maybe one more spinoff but they should leave it where it is if they're going to have shark-jumping moments requiring suspension of disbelief and too many flashbacks to nail the family meme into the brains of the audience.

If the cinema wasn't cheaper than both Netflix and Amazon Prime then it would've been tempting to leave it to a fiver DVD but it's watched and out of the way for less than both streaming services. No.8 compared to F9, now wasn't anywhere near as bad as I remembered it despite having some of the same allusions to videogame cutscene action where realism went out the window five films before. If they give away half the story again for no.10 in the trailer then I'll watch the spinoff and flip a coin over Prime/Netflix.

[Raid]

Akira

Another one of those films that should be right up my street but that I've somehow never seen, Akira came to Netflix this week and I was enormously excited to finally see it. I was quite amazingly in the dark for what it was actually about (considering it's almost as old as I am), all I knew is that it had a cool bike and was incredibly good looking for an anime.

I'm not going to lie, I was actually quite surprised at how little I was enjoying it at the halfway point. I could appreciate the incredible backgrounds and mechanical design, but the character designs, particularly the faces, are often pretty ugly. It's surprisingly difficult to tell Kaneda (male) and Kay (female) apart, because the faces and hair are so similar. Every single character has a massive forehead, and the majority also have a massive chin, making their facial features appear small. It's not an art style I appreciate.

The worldbuilding is good, if maybe not explored as well as it could have been. It takes place post-World War III and a nuclear attack on Tokyo, amid civil unrest and the build-up to a Tokyo-based Olympics (disturbingly prescient really considering Japan's lacklustre response to the pandemic and the unpopular decision to continue with the real world Olympics). And the story? Well it's a mysterious yarn that's never fully explained, based around the manifestation of superhuman abilities. The destruction wrought is seriously impressive to look at for a traditionally animated film, and the final 30 minutes are quite the spectacle, but it doesn't quite hit the heights I expected it to.

[Animalmother]

Agree with you there on Akira. I'd imagine when it first came out it was groundbreaking and very impressive. It still is extremely well made but the story makes fuck all sense (to me anyway..) and like Raid I kept getting the characters mixed up. Still thought the design and animation of the vehicles and weapons is amazingly good.

[Mantis]

As is usually the case with movie adaptations, I think you really need to be a fan of the medium and have read the original manga to properly appreciate Akira.