I Just Watched (Films)

[ManBearSquid]

Just Friends

I needed some no-brain, daft entertainment one evening before bed and decided to give this early 00's comedy a go, mostly just to see Ryan Reynolds be Ryan Reynolds and to relive my crush for Amy Smart after I saw her in Road Trip as a young teen.

It was exactly what I expected, which was entirely ok with me. Chuckle worthy and very much of its time, but not something that I'd go around imploring people to watch as once you've seen one of these kind of movies then you really have seen them all.

Lockout

It was really fun. Old school action movie that was a very enjoyable yarn.

Shout out to the inexplicably worst bit of cgi during a motorcycle chase that I've ever seen that you have to see to believe. It's genuinely baffling how it made it in, especially compared to the rest of the movies fx which are entirely reasonable for a 2012 movie.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Cage's new movie as himself.

Honestly, it was great fun. Pascal was great in it too. Maybe slightly over-long for what it is, but I recommend it for a fun time.

[Animalmother]

I remember seeing Lockout in the cinema and everyone laughed during the motorbike bit. Fun film though.

[Raid]

American Gangster

If I'm honest, I was so disinterested in this by the half way point that I nearly turned it off. At 2h36m, it's about an hour too long, and I didn't enjoy a single performance in it.

It's entirely possible I simply wasn't in the mood for it rather than it being anything wrong with the film itself, I've been struggling to find films that grab my attention recently.

[Alan]

Calamity Jane
Kinda loved this. Doris Day is so great. It’s just incredibly cute, fun and daft. My only main criticism is that it feels like it’s building to an I don’t need a man, lesbian ending then takes the typical way out but then for the era it sadly had to be that way.

[Animalmother]

Calamity Jane
Kinda loved this. Doris Day is so great. It’s just incredibly cute, fun and daft. My only main criticism is that it feels like it’s building to an I don’t need a man, lesbian ending then takes the typical way out but then for the era it sadly had to be that way.

Isn't that how they portrayed her in Deadwood as well? I don't mean cute and daft either..

[Wrathbone]

Mulholland Drive

Well that was... I don't know what. It's about as David Lynch as David Lynch gets and it certainly had a number of impacts on me, but that's about all I can say with any certainty. When the credits rolled I snorted with laughter because the ending was so flamboyantly pretentious. But there is something there! In between all the bollocks it feels like there's something worthwhile trying to make itself known. I can piece together something resembling a plausible narrative from what was shown, even though so many parts of it are left flapping in the wind. It's not so much a case of Chekov's Gun as Chekov's Arsenal, strewn about the place and never mentioned again. I haven't yet decided if it was a good film that requires effort to appreciate or simply a bad film throwing curveballs around to confuse everything and make it appear to have more depth than it actually does.

Spoiler

So as best I can tell, Diane Selwyn was an actress who had a relationship with Camilla Rhodes; they broke up and Diane went into a spiral and hired someone to murder Camilla. She then dreams most of the film with her as Betty and Camilla as Rita, and she imagines herself as a success who is loved, but then all the talk of illusions at the cabaret club makes her realise it's a dream and she remembers what she's done. She then wakes up and kills herself.

Assuming any of that is a reasonable interpretation, what in the name of Jebus was the deal with any or all of the following? :

- The studio execs and "This is the girl" (possibly Diane's subconscious explanation for why she didn't get a part?)
- The guy sat in the dark in a sealed room
- The Cowboy
- The blue box and key
- The homeless troll thing?!
- The tiny prancing elderly couple?!?

Are any of these meant to have some tangible relevance to the plot, or are they meant to just be points of weirdness because half of it's a dream?

If I ever meet David Lynch and get to tentatively shake his hand, I fully expect that I'll discover I don't have hands, and that it turns out I never had hands and I am in fact an imagining of David Lynch that then collapses in on itself due to implausibility.

?/10

[Achtung Englander]

Operation Mincemeat

Its a film.

5/10

[Alan]

Mulholland Drive

Well that was... I don't know what.

Now…. have you seen Lost Highway?


I think MD is good but it suffers from it being reworked from a TV pilot. It feels a bit basic and obvious, with the caveat - for Lynch

[Wrathbone]

Now…. have you seen Lost Highway?

I have not, and I’m not sure I dare now.

[Alan]

Now…. have you seen Lost Highway?

I have not, and I’m not sure I dare now.

It’s my favorite movie. It has some similarities to MD but I think it’s leagues above it.

It’s Inland Empire you should avoid, it’sutter batshit

[Raid]

Gosford Park

Downton Abbey meets Cluedo. The former isn't terribly surprising given that it was actually conceived as a spin off from this, with several of the same cast members and the same upstairs/downstairs production style. It has such a phenomenal cast; Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Charles Dance, Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi, Richard E Grant, actors and actresses that have so much screen presence, but sadly there are so many that some of them don't really get a lot of screen time, and I think it's a bit of a waste. It's a fun film though, particularly once Stephen Fry's character shows up. It's worth a watch, but wasn't as good as I was expecting.

[Animalmother]

Ad Astra
Not sure what to say about this really. Not a bad film by any means but neither was it great. It all just kind of plods along with brief bursts of action (some of it confusing..). It also had one or two WTF moments

Spoiler

space baboon

Worth a look but not going to be remembered as a classic. Very nice music though.

[Wrathbone]

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Surprisingly enjoyable! It's mostly trash with some atrocious acting (not least from Sam Worthington who brings a certain Aussie twang to the Ancient Greek legend), and half the cast seem to be from Game of Thrones which is a little distracting. But if you take it as a no-frills sword-and-sandals adventure with monster-slaying and god-meddling, it's perfectly watchable. Liam Neeson does a good job of hand-waving the fact that he (Zeus) changes his motivation every few minutes like a toddler in a playground, though it is disturbing that ultimately the film shrugs at Zeus having raped Perseus's mother as means of petty revenge against a king and then half-heartedly zapping the king and doing nothing to help Perseus and his mother when the king rage-launches them off a cliff in a coffin. But Zeus decided not to actively wipe humanity off the face of the earth at the end, so I guess it all washes out?

[ManBearSquid]

I didn't hate it back whenever I watched it, but the original is still so great that it felt pointless. I doubt it'd stand up to a re-watch, I'm sure the CGI would annoy me.

The sequel, however, was absolutely shit.

[Wrathbone]

The CGI is a strange mixed bag. The monsters range from pretty good to shoddy (Medusa is particularly bad), but it’s the overuse of pointless slow motion CGI that’s the worst. There’s a shot of a coin slowly skimming across water that serves no purpose at all and looks horrendous. A deeply weird choice of shot.