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Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews
- Thread starter Rascally Badger
- Start date
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- Tags
- movies
Isn't that basically Into the Spider-Verse? Which, to be fair, is something we all want more of.
Spiderverse was mostly like, Miles with his mentor. And then Miles with his bae. And then Miles with a whole squad. I want the buddy cop. Just a 1v1 rapport where the two are equals. Maybe Joe Pesci can tag along as comic relief or something, but yeah.
Mmm, not really
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Hell yeah, it's great. It knows exactly what it is, and bloody revels in it
I don't see how one gets more reactive than 2017 Justice League. Joss Whedon delivered a product exactly tailored to overcorrect for the complaints about Batman v. Superman, down to the exactly 120-minute runtime and more saturated color palette.
Also:
In real life, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem never met. Tollywood, however, is a magical place where film directors can dare to ask, "What if they had met, and then teamed up in a ludicrously over-the-top buddy action movie?" The result of such inquiry is RRR, an intense and massive drama about friendship, betrayal, devotion, and sticking it to the British Empire, containing at its core one of the most well-realized bromances in the history of cinema.
I suspect that if I were more knowledgeable in the contemporary politics of India, some of its patriotic pan-Indian themes may have a questionable edge. Who was incidentally slighted, misrepresented, excluded, whitewashed, etc.? However, I'm not, so I have no choice but to take it at face value.
Its unprecedentedly wide release for an Indian film means you've likely got a good opportunity to see it, and I strongly recommend you do.
In real life, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem never met. Tollywood, however, is a magical place where film directors can dare to ask, "What if they had met, and then teamed up in a ludicrously over-the-top buddy action movie?" The result of such inquiry is RRR, an intense and massive drama about friendship, betrayal, devotion, and sticking it to the British Empire, containing at its core one of the most well-realized bromances in the history of cinema.
I suspect that if I were more knowledgeable in the contemporary politics of India, some of its patriotic pan-Indian themes may have a questionable edge. Who was incidentally slighted, misrepresented, excluded, whitewashed, etc.? However, I'm not, so I have no choice but to take it at face value.
Its unprecedentedly wide release for an Indian film means you've likely got a good opportunity to see it, and I strongly recommend you do.
It's del Toro's 3rd best 'superhero' movie.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Aferim! is referred to in several reviews as a comedy and "scathingly funny" but perhaps it's my bad habit of watching movies while too tired to think straight but I didn't get that, really. It is very good satire, though, and unrelentingly bleak. The film is set in Wallachia in 1833 where a Roma slave is hunted by a foul mouthed constable and his less-than-worldly son for the crime of sleeping with his master's wife. But as they catch him to be punished, they realize he might not be guilty.
And you can see that there won't be any cathartic Tales from the Crypt-style punishment or epiphany for our horrid protagonists, even as they inch to the verge of realizing this all might be bad. It's a world where most everyone is hateful to everyone, trying to put them in boxes and constantly debating about how to define and categorize people while on their mission, only to perpetuate a world that hurts everyone but the very few and comfort themselves that they've "committed no crime" as a way to allow injustice to happen. I can't find it funny per se (again, maybe if I was less worn out) but I certainly is astute in its observations about a chilling willful ignorance and unwillingness to change based on not only hate but after that seems to ebb to a half-hearted attempt to do the right thing, fear and inconvenience.
And you can see that there won't be any cathartic Tales from the Crypt-style punishment or epiphany for our horrid protagonists, even as they inch to the verge of realizing this all might be bad. It's a world where most everyone is hateful to everyone, trying to put them in boxes and constantly debating about how to define and categorize people while on their mission, only to perpetuate a world that hurts everyone but the very few and comfort themselves that they've "committed no crime" as a way to allow injustice to happen. I can't find it funny per se (again, maybe if I was less worn out) but I certainly is astute in its observations about a chilling willful ignorance and unwillingness to change based on not only hate but after that seems to ebb to a half-hearted attempt to do the right thing, fear and inconvenience.
Olli
(he/him)
Top Gun: Maverick was a completely fine sequel to the original; it would probably have worked even without any knowledge of the original. One of its biggest wins was that it wasn't too ambitious from a story point of view. It's a movie about fighter pilots, nothing more or less.
In anticipation of not going to see Jurassic World Dominion, tonight I rewatched the only good Jurassic series movie, Jurassic Park. It's still great! Did you know the raptors are only in it for a total of 15 minutes? Aside from the baby that hatches from an egg early on, the first time we see one is at the 1h43m mark, and they're done at 1h58m. Everybody spends the whole movie hyping them up, so I guess their presence feels larger than it actually is.
My favorite detail of Jurassic Park is the photo of a donut Nedry has on his desk.
I like to think that every time he sat down to start his day, he touched it gently and said “I’m doing this for you, babe”
I like to think that every time he sat down to start his day, he touched it gently and said “I’m doing this for you, babe”
I wonder if Dominion will have any scene half as tense and thrilling as Grant and the kids trying to get out of a tree before a jeep crushes them
I wonder if it’ll have any scenes as tense as the one where Hammond loses his place in the script with the Hammond on the TV
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Yeah, this movie does a lot of off-screen dread with them. I love the raptors and had them as #2 on the puppet list earlier this year. The opening scene is raptors but if I remember correctly you only see an eye, feeding with the cow is raptors but there's just rustling grass and the shredded cloth, I guess you don't see them during the vent parts with the arm falling or much of them during the hunt/clever girl setup, but their looming presence is a lot of what works. And technically the fossil at the beginning too? Man now I want to re-watch this too.
I still love the toe tap, ridiculous though it might be.
The only good Jurassic movie?
Are you aware that one of the Jurassic movies features a mansion with a secret dinosaur auction and a gun that puts a target on someone and then dinosaurs attack that someone?
Y'know, that moment really stood out to me when I thought about it. Seemed like Hammond was going to show up for EVERY tour to do his little introduction. Just how many times a day would he have to do that?
Thinking things like that through was not Hammonds strongest quality.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
The Lost City is... fine. That's about it. I've heard genuinely good things but as charming as the stars are and charming they are, it never rises about "pretty watchable". I will say, it's nice to see a film where the notable age difference between the characters is an older woman with a younger star (though 15 years is nothing compared to the reverse we've so often seen).
I had fun with The Lost City, though I'd be lying if I said I thought about it at all since I watched it. I thought there'd be more Brad Pitt, but the joke works.
Jagged – A biography of Alanis Morrisette featuring a lot of archival footage, home movies and recent interviews with her. She…did not have an easy time of things, and we got amazing music from that, but she had to live it. (The internet claims that Glen Ballard, Morrisette’s longtime songwriting partner, was married to a woman for a while. Seeing his interview clips I have a very hard time believing that man is straight. Which may also be why Morrisette was so comfortable working with him, given the way most men in her life were treating her.) The phrase “shot out of the fame cannon” is a great takeaway from this.
Spider-Man: No Way Home – The need to have seen the earlier movies is pretty real, here. Granted, I saw them all and I was really happy to see Maguire and Garfield in the suits again, not to mention all the returning villains. Also, this is clearly the last Spider-Man movie they intend to have Holland headline, given that they broke all the toys so that no one else could play with them. Completely cut off from his entire supporting cast, Spider-Man is now only good for supporting roles in other films…or yet another reboot. Maybe Miles Morales and/or Spider-Gwen this time? (Beowife noted that Holland is growing into his babyface and becoming less suited for the role, which is fair.) Spectacular for big Spider-Man fans and ongoing MCU fans; for anyone else I’d send them to watch Into the Spider-Verse instead.
…And then I got covid, so I decided to watch a lot of stupid movies in a row.
Eternals – One of the best Justice League AUs I’ve seen in a while. An alien god sends Superman, Wonder Woman, Indian Green Lantern, Steel, Martian Manhunter, Gypsy, gender-swapped Flash and Firestorm, and generic-strongman Gilgamesh to Earth 7000 years ago to destroy evil alien monsters; and they gradually discover the truth of both their origins and their mission. The whole thing has a Jack Kirby style to it; similar to Thor in the sense of “He wouldn’t have drawn this, but he’d think it was really cool.” Oh, wait, this was actually a Marvel movie that was supposed to fit into the MCU? Yeah, that part doesn’t work at all. The worldbuilding opens up a ton of giant plotholes and doesn’t mesh with the cosmology established in Thor or Moon Knight; or even the portrayal of Ego (a Celestial!) in Guardians 2. It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here, because they were clearly expecting a sequel but I’m going to guess they won’t get one and will have to shove the plot points into a bloated teamup movie down the line.
Wonder Woman 1984 – Wow, this movie has no goddamn idea what it’s trying to be. Is it a comedy? A dramatic superhero story? A romance? The 80s? Diana’s competence (including her people skills) is all over the map, the “Steve as fish out of water” doesn’t work at all, they can’t decide how sympathetic to make any of the villains. Cheetah wasn’t actually necessary for the movie and she muddled the message; she went off the rails in order to make the fight scenes work and really should have gotten some dénouement with Diana, but the movie was already too long. The overall synopsis feels like it should have worked, but the tone and the characters never really gel. It feels like the actors were filming scenes for half a dozen different movies at the same time, and couldn’t keep track of which they were in at any given point. If I had to guess, it’s that Patty Jenkins was left alone to make the first movie, but this one was designed, written, directed, and edited by a committee.
Red Notice – It’s a shame this wasn’t made during the era of NES movie tie-in games, because this would have made an excellent multi-genre NES action game. Plot-wise, it’s total fluff heist/action film, with the three leads taking turns being pretty and badass as they team up, betray each other, and team up again.
The Adam Project – Where the heck did they find this amazing mini-Ryan Reynolds? Like, the patter is perfect, you could really believe this kid was Reynolds at age 12. The plot is relatively standard timey-whimey action, but the emotional beats are solid and I’m a sucker for father-son reconciliation stories (which this turns out to be, in a complicated way). And yeah, the wisecracking is really that good.
Suicide For Beginners - I watched this specifically because my cousin is in it, but it’s also a horror/comedy film of the style I often enjoy, which was a nice bonus. It’s about a grievously incompetent man who kidnaps and attempts to murder the woman he had a crush on, but repeatedly fails on all fronts. (He eventually does manage to murder a lot of people but, spoiler, barely any members of the main cast.) Low-budget but it generally doesn’t feel cheap; the fact that it doesn’t take itself at all seriously is the main attraction.
Sonic the Hedgehog – I finally gave up on Babywulf wanting to watch this with me and just watched it. It’s the best attempt to make the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie for Sonic, completely ignoring any resemblance to actual video game (and comic, and cartoon) continuity in favor of “Hey, let’s make a movie with the blue fast guy!” The guy who plays Dewey on Ducktales is great as Sonic (Ben Schwartz, who also plays Leo in TMNT—he’s consistently the cartoon blue guy.) and Jim Carrey, who was paid to chew scenery, earned his keep. I think it’s aimed at people my age who owned a Genesis but never watched the Sonic cartoons and their children; nostalgia value plus hokey kid-friendly comedy. And it’s good enough at that, but I still have a bag of the Archie comics somewhere in the basement and a list of differences between the two cartoon continuities rattling around in my brain.
Spider-Man: No Way Home – The need to have seen the earlier movies is pretty real, here. Granted, I saw them all and I was really happy to see Maguire and Garfield in the suits again, not to mention all the returning villains. Also, this is clearly the last Spider-Man movie they intend to have Holland headline, given that they broke all the toys so that no one else could play with them. Completely cut off from his entire supporting cast, Spider-Man is now only good for supporting roles in other films…or yet another reboot. Maybe Miles Morales and/or Spider-Gwen this time? (Beowife noted that Holland is growing into his babyface and becoming less suited for the role, which is fair.) Spectacular for big Spider-Man fans and ongoing MCU fans; for anyone else I’d send them to watch Into the Spider-Verse instead.
…And then I got covid, so I decided to watch a lot of stupid movies in a row.
Eternals – One of the best Justice League AUs I’ve seen in a while. An alien god sends Superman, Wonder Woman, Indian Green Lantern, Steel, Martian Manhunter, Gypsy, gender-swapped Flash and Firestorm, and generic-strongman Gilgamesh to Earth 7000 years ago to destroy evil alien monsters; and they gradually discover the truth of both their origins and their mission. The whole thing has a Jack Kirby style to it; similar to Thor in the sense of “He wouldn’t have drawn this, but he’d think it was really cool.” Oh, wait, this was actually a Marvel movie that was supposed to fit into the MCU? Yeah, that part doesn’t work at all. The worldbuilding opens up a ton of giant plotholes and doesn’t mesh with the cosmology established in Thor or Moon Knight; or even the portrayal of Ego (a Celestial!) in Guardians 2. It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here, because they were clearly expecting a sequel but I’m going to guess they won’t get one and will have to shove the plot points into a bloated teamup movie down the line.
Wonder Woman 1984 – Wow, this movie has no goddamn idea what it’s trying to be. Is it a comedy? A dramatic superhero story? A romance? The 80s? Diana’s competence (including her people skills) is all over the map, the “Steve as fish out of water” doesn’t work at all, they can’t decide how sympathetic to make any of the villains. Cheetah wasn’t actually necessary for the movie and she muddled the message; she went off the rails in order to make the fight scenes work and really should have gotten some dénouement with Diana, but the movie was already too long. The overall synopsis feels like it should have worked, but the tone and the characters never really gel. It feels like the actors were filming scenes for half a dozen different movies at the same time, and couldn’t keep track of which they were in at any given point. If I had to guess, it’s that Patty Jenkins was left alone to make the first movie, but this one was designed, written, directed, and edited by a committee.
Red Notice – It’s a shame this wasn’t made during the era of NES movie tie-in games, because this would have made an excellent multi-genre NES action game. Plot-wise, it’s total fluff heist/action film, with the three leads taking turns being pretty and badass as they team up, betray each other, and team up again.
The Adam Project – Where the heck did they find this amazing mini-Ryan Reynolds? Like, the patter is perfect, you could really believe this kid was Reynolds at age 12. The plot is relatively standard timey-whimey action, but the emotional beats are solid and I’m a sucker for father-son reconciliation stories (which this turns out to be, in a complicated way). And yeah, the wisecracking is really that good.
Suicide For Beginners - I watched this specifically because my cousin is in it, but it’s also a horror/comedy film of the style I often enjoy, which was a nice bonus. It’s about a grievously incompetent man who kidnaps and attempts to murder the woman he had a crush on, but repeatedly fails on all fronts. (He eventually does manage to murder a lot of people but, spoiler, barely any members of the main cast.) Low-budget but it generally doesn’t feel cheap; the fact that it doesn’t take itself at all seriously is the main attraction.
Sonic the Hedgehog – I finally gave up on Babywulf wanting to watch this with me and just watched it. It’s the best attempt to make the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie for Sonic, completely ignoring any resemblance to actual video game (and comic, and cartoon) continuity in favor of “Hey, let’s make a movie with the blue fast guy!” The guy who plays Dewey on Ducktales is great as Sonic (Ben Schwartz, who also plays Leo in TMNT—he’s consistently the cartoon blue guy.) and Jim Carrey, who was paid to chew scenery, earned his keep. I think it’s aimed at people my age who owned a Genesis but never watched the Sonic cartoons and their children; nostalgia value plus hokey kid-friendly comedy. And it’s good enough at that, but I still have a bag of the Archie comics somewhere in the basement and a list of differences between the two cartoon continuities rattling around in my brain.
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Yeah, I remember enjoying it as funny fluff and I liked the dynamic between the jaded older woman and the total himbo. It got some laughs and smiles out of me, then I forgot that I watched it until I saw you guys mention it again. Still, worth a watch if you're in the mood for some light-adventure romantic comedy.
