Be Excellent To Each Other

This week I've seen two films on Netflix that have very good reviews and good acting but neither of which I enjoyed.

Hard Eight. Great cast, acting and atmosphere, but the barest of plots. When it finished I was just left feeling 'Er, is that it?'

The Babadook. Again, good acting, but I couldn't wait for the film to end. According to IMDB - "William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist (1973)) said "I've never seen a more terrifying film than 'The Babadook'".". Umm, it bored the hell out of me.

I quite liked Babadook, I think. I thought the book itself was wonderful.

I do remember thinking that if had just stayed as a film about a single mother trying to bring up a troubled child it would have been better, though.

I realise I'm coming perilously close to suggesting that some people 'are watching the Bababook wrong' but I honestly think you need to understand where it's coming from, and my personal feeling is that it'll work better if you're a parent.

I've yammered on about it before. (Which is unusual for me, I know.)

Of course it could well be that people totally get it and just don't like it, which is fine too

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I agree. It's a little uneven in tone, I'd say, but it's still much better than any review I read of it.

Indeed - you're absolutely right on the slightly variable tone (one can perhaps blame Depp to a degree) but overall it's jolly good fun, and made me grin quite a bit. When the theme tune finally kicked in it was absolutely joyful.

In other "not as bad as the reviews say" news, A Million Ways To Die In The West was good fun - made me laugh a fair few times. Some of it fell flat, but it's always compensated for by Charlize Theron who is just sublime generally.

Suicide Squad: better than expected but not as good as it could have been.

The ending was rubbish and most of the best bits were in the trailer, and there's a lot of straight up exposition, but while the Squad were doing their merry thing it was quite entertaining.

Two hours (two hours!) into Batman vs Superman and I can't make up my mind about it. I want to like it, I really do.

We've just finished watching Room and it was absolutely brilliant.

It's about a women who has been kidnapped and is being kept in a room. She has a 5 year old son who has never left the room and has never experienced the outside world.

I'm not going to spoil anything else but trust me, it's great and definitely worth a watch.

Yes I watched this earlier in the year, really great film. I'd take it over any of your standard issue Batman vs Whofuckingever Idiotothan HOLLYWOOD BRAINATTACK shite any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

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EDIT - Sorry just realised that looks like a direct response to MrChris's post above, but it's not intended as such, it's just that the SUPERHERO VS SUPERHERO thingy is the latest movie BLAMATHON that I'm aware of, and I tend very much to not like them. When I was a lad one superhero per film was quite enough, thank you.

Yeah I thought Room was pretty good, but not quite as good as The Room.

I liked it. Got the BlurRay with extra bits. Will try and watch it later

Central Intelligence. Good Friday night fun.

Finally watched Prestige too, enjoyed it, but I think I was expecting it to be more like Now you see me after watching the second installment (great fun) a couple of days before.

Just watched the new independence day.

Absolutely terrible.

X-men apocolipse, I quite enjoyed it, it felt a bit like an episode from a soap though, what happened to Wolverine? Will Magneto find out? Etc.

Tune in next week to find out!

Oh.

Hell or High Water. Fab - bank robbers in modern-day Texas, against a background of poverty, debt and foreclosure. Lovely piece of Americana, Jeff Bridges chewing it up. And my, American society may be fucked up but I wish Brits were as polite.

I really enjoyed the scene with Quicksilver whizzing about all over the place, that was cool.

Agreed.

That scene was great, but the movie as a whole was a mess. I think they need leave Xmen alone for a bit, do the third Wolverine, keep doing Deadpool and then probably do X-Force or Mew Mutants or something.

Recently, I've watched the following.

The Jungle Book. This is brilliant. Watch it. I'd advise caution showing it to children under, ooh, I dunno, say 8. But brilliant.

Cap America: Civil War. Still think the Cap America movies are the best in the MCU. This is great too.

Eye In The Sky. Really rather well done treatment of the morals and ethics of drone warfare. Alan Rickman's last movie as well. Enjoyed it a lot.

Midnight Special. This is really quite low key and obviously small budgeted. I enjoyed it; HC found it very tedious.

The Nice Guys. I enjoyed it, but it isn't as good on first viewing as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

I rewatched Civil War at the weekend. I am even more convinced that Stark is in the right.

Also, is it just me or in the big battle scene there are loads of moments where you're sitting there and going 'wait, you just met this dude, it's a good job his superpowers, which you have no idea the extent of, saved him from being horribly killed by that'

They do a far better job of being even-handed in the movie than they did in the comics, for sure.

The same thing happens in the first Avengers movie. Thor gives Cap a full on hammer blow without knowing anything about him. He had no idea about the shield. Thor straight up tried to murder Cap

Where Stark is still in the right, you nutter.

[edit] To start with, at least. Then it all goes to shit and both of them go insane.

Stark is a tosser.

Stark cool.

I still don't understand making it a Captain America film instead of an Avengers film.

Could you split the IP into 2 different production companies so you could balance the books advantageously?

Coz it was mostly about Cap and Bucky, and had no Thor or Hulk.

Well no, it was about Cap and Stark.

Bucky is the point of the movie though, really, and it's directly continuing the storyline of Winter Soldier more than of the Avengers storyline re: Infinity Stones and stuff.

Maybe it could be Cap vs IM, but it seemed to me to fit more into the Cap movie series than the Avengers one.

Well then you're a crazy person.

I agree with Curio.

It was literally a civil war within the Avengers, and you don't think it was an Avengers film?

Bucky was a trigger, that's about it.

If it had been shown equally from the perspectives of Thor, Hulk, Cap, Hawkeye, Widow, IM, and the newbies, maybe.

Instead, it was mostly about how Cap dealt with Bucky, and the threat of Hydra. It has far more direct storyline continuity with Cap1 and Cap2 than it does with the Avengers movies. It has great swathes of the film about people who aren't even in the Avengers. It's far more Cap than Avengers, stylistically too (a few scenes aside).

I can see where you're coming from, but if it had been Avengers: Civil War, I can imagine people equally saying, "Shit, that was almost entirely about Cap and Bucky and loads of people who aren't Avengers! Why didn't they call it a Captain America movie?"

Not typing 'Iron Man' was lazy, so I'll assume IM is short for Imelda Marcos instead, with her ability to hurl shield-piercing shoes.

Vs Caprice, who batters people to death with her terrifying lips.

I think Civil War is sort of halfway between being a Captain America movie and an Avengers movie.

You couldn't really take the three Captain America movies as a standalone trilogy. Watched entirely in isolation, with no familiarity with characters that were established in other Marvel movies, I don't think Civil War would really work.

Whereas all the other Marvel sequels don't really need you to have watched anything else for the story to make sense, even if they do have nods and references to stuff from other movies.

Yes (to both). I felt more closely aligned with Stark's view on matters too.

I agree with what you are saying - it's kind of rough dropping a truck on the head of a young opponent. I also found that the big battle, whilst cool to watch, did also seem to make the characters a little... ineffective. It certainly didn't look like they were holding back, yet only one character gets a little bit* hurt.

*relatively: given all the pew pew and the bang bang going on, to have that as the only injury (while severe to the individual) kind of makes it clear how little actual risk there is to the majority of the characters.

I enjoyed the film but it did seem to just parachute characters into the film (and into the thick of the action) a little too readily. But there were some nice humour moments too, and they didn't seem too forced.

I really really enjoyed though. I look forward to the next proper feature film with him as the focus.

I recently watched 'Knowing' with Nic Cage again as it was on telly. It features that wonderful part of Beethoven's 7th symphony that was also in Xmen apocalyspe (and many other films I'm sure). It's quite a moving piece of music.



I both enjoyed it but also found it a bit tedious. I like Michael 'concerned face' Shannon, I think he plays a good part, especially when he needs to look concerned (no, genuinely I do like him as an actor).

Bad Moms - A fairly reasonable often a little twee and predictable film. Nicer than you might expect but still quite vulgar in language much of the time.

Michael Shannon is one of my favourite actors, and I loved Jeff Nichols' previous films, but Midnight Special didn't do very much for me.

Talking of Marvel movies, this is a very good indictment of how bland their scores are, that then goes on to explain why this happens (in Marvel and other blockbusters.)

I watched that video last night. Hadn't really thought about the music, so I guess it has a good point.

The Captain America fabfare is aceballs though.

Russell has watched both Footloose and Dirty Dancing these last few days. At first he thought Footloose was the better film, but then he realised he was wrong.

Both terrible. But Footloose is just... weird

Woah woah woah

All the years of stick I got for Save the Last Dance?

Save The Last Dance is excellent because of Julia Stiles.

Yes, i agree with the music, i suppose i only remember the ACDC Ironman music

I want to watch Save The Last Dance next because Julia Stiles is very pretty, and the film is MaliCool.

Julia Stiles is awesome.