Topic: The Movie Thread

@FuriousMachine My wife and I both loved the movie and have our fingers crossed a follow up gets Green lit. Having the trilogy fresh in my mind the opening scene was very moving as hours earlier I watched Ceaser keel over in front of the tree with Maurice by his side.

I really enjoyed the Eagle clan culture stuff at the beginning and Noa's journey. Much like Rise I feel this was a great chapter in setting up a new arc with fantastic characters we will get to follow, including 2 that were left open for a return 😉.

I liked the ending it didn't put me up nor down like it has some viewers. Let's just see where they take us next!

@Malaise 100% agree with you there and I also wanted to see over her shoulder at the end... my imagination made it suitably horrible, though
As for tracking down Madame Web, I feel I should warn you: There are plenty of "good crap" films out there, but I would venture that Madame Web is not one of them It was just completely devoid of entertainment, in my opinion, and I so wanted to like it.

@MightyDemon82 So happy to hear that you both loved it!
I liked the ending fine, unlike some critics out there, but I do worry a little bit about where they take it from here
It seems like it's gearing up to another War for the Planet of The Apes, and we've already seen that. It's also almost impossible to tell that conflict better than they already have, but hopefully they will choose a more interesting direction for the sequels (fingers crossed that this is successful enough for that greenlight) Oh, and more Dichen Lachman will always be welcome, and I hope to see the return of characters that seemingly drowned

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Cinema) - 2 & a half hours of monkeys with no poop throwing 0/10! Seriously though, it could be a bit slow in the first half, but it ended up being pretty good. Definite sequel bait at the end, though.

Grave of the Fireflies (Blu-Ray) - Absolutely gut wrenching stuff. Still don't entirely understand why the kid didn't ultimately suck it up & go crawling back to his aunt though. She was a bit of a donkey's behind, but it's not like she actively kicked them out or anything (though maybe it would have gone against the "polite" sensibilities of Japanese society for her to physically kick them out, and her behavior was the "polite" way of telling the kids to get lost, I dunno).

I treated myself to Aliens on 4K. I've said before it is one of my favourite films, so it was a matter of when and not if. I had a bit of an unexpected refund from Amazon, so I used that towards it.

@JohnnyShoulder Sounds like a good use for the refund to me
I suppose you haven't received it yet, but I'm interested to hear what you think of it, as it seems quite divisive (The Digital Bits review said that they expect that many people will hate it, but that they themselves got used to it and didn't mind it)

@FuriousMachine I ordered 4 pairs of socks, and one pair was not in the packet. When I reported it, they refunded me for the whole lot! 😂

It's being delivered on Saturday with some other stuff. When I get round to actually watching it it another matter though. I think I'm fairly up to date with watching anything I've bought.

watched half of Club Dread on Tubi last night. Still have the rest of the movie to watch tonight

Back to School (Blu-Ray) - I'd seen bits & pieces of this before on TV, but realized I'd never seen the whole thing (or much of anything else with Rodney Dangerfield, other than Caddyshack), so I decided to pick this up on BD (a double pack with another of his comedies, which I also watched). I don't think Dangerfield is quite up there as Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Chevy Chase, or John Candy when it comes to big 80's comedians, but this was still a pretty fun watch, as he plays a wealthy business owner with a working class mentality who decides to attend college with his son (he skipped out when he was younger to work for his father's clothing business, which he inherited & expanded into a national chain).

Easy Money (Blu-Ray) - the other Dangerfield film in the double pack. This time in the role of a middle class father who has a weakness for various vices (gambling, drinking, smoking, gluttony, etc), however when his mother in-law passes away she leaves the family her $10,000,000 retail empire, but only if he can straighten himself out & refrain from partaking in any of his vices for a year. I didn't much care for the subplot involving his daughter's marriage, but other than that, I'd say I enjoyed this one a bit more of the two films.

Paprika (4K UHD Blu-Ray) - Anime film in which a small group of scientists & a detective get caught up in a case where someone steals a device that let's them go into/merge people dreams, and people start dying after being afflicted with delusions while awake. It's a pretty twisty & trippy tale, and also very gorgeous. Interesting watch.

Easy Money has its funny moments, especially with Dangerfield's signature one-liners and physical comedy. I found it funnier than Back to School, even though the subplot with his daughter's marriage felt a bit off to me but overall a good movie

Saw Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga last night and I couldn't help coming away a little disappointed (and it's funny, but I sort of feel a little bit guilty about it). I can't point to anything that's really wrong with it, but I made the mistake of watching Fury Road literally right before leaving for the theatre and was sort of expecting more of the same. The leads are good, the action sequences are excellent, the world-building fantastic and yet I was never fully engaged with it. I believe it may have been a case of going in with wrong expectations, so I'll probably activate my movie-pass power and go see it again.

It also tied surprisingly well into to Avalanche's waaaay underrated video game. I think I read somewhere that the game isn't canon, but a couple of characters made their way into this movie, notably Scrotus and Chumbucket. Not sure if they've appeared elsewhere before, but I was pretty sure at least Chumbucket was created for the game.

@FuriousMachine

I felt the same. The action scenes were once again spectacular, but the film felt unnecessary somehow.

Not to say that I did not enjoy it. I did, and it was good to see Gastown, and more of the wasteland.

Anya Taylor-Joy is a fantastic actress, so anything she is in is worth seeing, in my opinion. But the whole film did not add very much at all.

Also, I agree with you about the game. I could have written your comment myself.

Have to go back and replay that game, now.

@Matthewnh Yeah, absolutely a good time at the movies.
Been thinking about revisiting the game too, but as it stands there's too much on my backlog to really justify it right now. Won't rule it out, though, as I really enjoyed it all the way to the platinum and even felt a bit sad when it was over (which is rare, I'm usually pretty done with a game by the time I get to the platinum, if I even get that far)

@FuriousMachine @Matthewnh I saw it over the weekend as well. I absolutely loved it even if it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I felt it was much more in the vein of the original trilogy, which is to say it was a great Mad Max film if not quite the lightning in a bottle that Fury Road was. I may never mechanically understand Dementus’ motorcycle chariots or the war rig’s rear drive axle on the B train but I still really hope we get another one of these! When the action is in high gear, there’s nothing else quite like them.

@FuriousMachine @Jimmer-jammer

And those two films would make an excellent double-bill.
Watch Fury Road, right after Furiosa.

Not that have that luxury, right now. Everything is in storage, until I move house, at the end of July. Then I can unpack.

And on a completely different note. The next movie for me at the cinema is the re-release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, tomorrow.

This is probably my favourite of all of the HP movies/books. Never seen it on the big screen before. So I will take this chance before I miss out. It is how a movie is supposed to look, after all.

@Matthewnh Nice! I agree, Prisoner of Azkaban is the best film of the bunch. I would’ve loved to have seen Cuarón’s take on The Half-Blood Prince. Enjoy your movie!

@Matthewnh @Jimmer-jammer I also agree; Azkaban is the best one. I managed to catch them all in the theatre in their original run, but I would dearly love to see Azkaban again on the big screen. There doesn't seem to be any planned anniversary screenings over here, unfortunately.
Enjoy!

@Malaise I think I've seen that, but can't remember a thing about it. That either says something about my memory, or how highly I regarded it.

Went to a screening of Tarot yesterday, fully expecting a sub-par dime-a-dozen horror movie, but it wasn't all that bad.
It should be said, "pretty young things meddle with things they shouldn't and gets horribly killed one by one" is my favourite sub-genre of horror movies, so not seeing this was never an option
The premise is properly silly and the movie seems to be aware of this; the scene where one of the characters figures out that they are all getting killed according to their tarot readings has the other characters rolling their eyes almost as hard as the audience, but it's all good fun.
It's a shallow story with shallow characters and it doesn't offer anything new, but it is elevated by a likable cast, some nice kills (the magician sequence is brilliantly evil) and some truly excellent creature designs. In fact, I would say the entire movie has a great look about it, from the aforementioned magician sequence to the requisite scary manor to the surprisingly effective "origin" flashback.
I saw one reviewer call the movie "entry level horror", which I think is quite apt; this is a movie that won't wow die-hard horror fans, but may very well be one that recruits a few new devotees to the genre.
So, by no means an exceptional movie, but it is good, but simple, fun and, to my mind, the overall design and the great "heavy metal mascot" creature designs are worth the price of admission alone.

Just back from seeing Furiosa, fantastic film, felt a little long in places but those action scenes are just superb. A great time at the cinema.

Godzilla minus one has suddenly appeared on Netflix. Guess I'll be watching as I loved it first time around!