Be Excellent To Each Other

Just back from watching Ex Machina. A brilliant 10/10 film marred only slightly by one of the audience possibly dropping dead mid way through.

How big was the audience? I want to work out the odds.

Half full. Mid size screen.

not so much this

Interesting. The trailer made it look like a proper by the numbers dullfest.

I'd seen almost nothing about it before the showing - just a poster and the tail end of the review on the BBC film review - so didn't have any particular expectations or knowledge.
It does score on the Craster Scale too

My, but Battleship is awful.

Ex Machina is indeed good. Tight performances all the way through, and it has an intensely claustrophobic feel to it all, especially at the end.

I saw Ex Machina yesterday and indeed wonderful film. Top notch stuff. Excellent effects but best of all the direction and acting are incredibly tense. Considering it's pretty much 3 people for the entire film it grips incredibly well.

Also saw The Gambler which I was decidedly antagonistic toward at the start due to being no fan of Wahlberg (who desperately acts his inept heart out in this and fails as usual to convince) and having trouble really dealing with the setup. But ultimately it was kind of fascinating to see a character with such a self destructive streak and after letting go of my prejudice I mildly enjoyed it.

Just watching Antichrist. Started off okay, bored now.

*ponders if Jazzy knows what the film is famous for*

It's got better.

No, I'd never heard of it before. Should I be looking out for something?

Cor, Whiplash is bloody good.

I'm watching Ronin which I thought was a film with a Jean Reno in it and a French girl and some stand off at the end with the French swat. Turns out it's Jean Reno and Robert De Nero in France. With an Irish woman? I'm confused. What the hell was I thinking about. I'm confusing Jean Reno films. Still watching it though; goddamn, I'm sure I've seen this before. Must have.

Might be Leon or Nikita, according to the Internet, that I thought I was sitting down to watch.

Both great films.

I was about to say it's Leon (Aka Leon: The Professional), but I've not seen Nikita.

Everyone should watch Leon by the way.

Everyone.

You should watch Nikita.

I was just making a plan to do exactly that!

Reading both plots on Wikipedia the film I thought I wanted to watch could have been either of them.

Mind you, Ronin's car chase sequence was most awesome. Loads of shit cars get banged up real good. They don't make them like that anymore.

Yeah Ronin is a great movie too!

Yeah, kinda!

I've seen it, but I don't think I know what you're taking about.

A quick peek at Wikipedia reveals I haven't seen it at all.

Huh.

I've still got half an hour left to go (Joan's came home), hopefully I'll finish it off tonight.

James Franco's overacting is making The Interview damn near unwatchable. What a dickhead. He's fucking me right off.

I made it like 15 minutes into The Interview before switching off.

Nightcrawler is pretty fantastic. Reminded me a little of Man Bites Dog, but not as brutal. Fantastic performance from Gyllenhaal.

I watched all of The Interview and it's one of the worst films I've ever seen. It started off pretty well then descended into some utterly embarrassing shit. I don't watch a lot of that kind of comedy films but are they all that bad? I did really enjoy This Is The End to be fair.

Finished it now. Absolutely dreadful. The controversy it courted is entirely proportionate to how shit it was. The best actor in the entire film: Eminem, and he's in it for about 5 minutes.

There's not a single joke in here worth a chuckle, a smile or a knowing nod. It's strictly farts and poo gags and bum jokes. "Kim Jong Un is it true you don't wee or poo?" - an actual joke. And it's repeated about 10 times throughout. Maybe for the age of the young boys would might laugh at it his travesty? I dunno. It's dreadful.

Remember when Adam Sandler did Waterboy and a load of films that were good (like the golfing one I love) and then he kept doing movie after movie and they got increasingly worse so that he became a joke himself? That's Seth Rogan's career trajectory.

Oh and Gyllenhaal needs a fucking Oscar nomination for this. He's absolutely brillian and the story itself is very good too. Gyllenhaal's showing reminded me of Robin Williams performance in One Hour Photo. Probably better. Certainly creepier.

You wanna watch a peformance? Nightcrawler is where it's at. Great film.

He's been on top form over the last few years.

Source Code, End of Watch, Prisoners, Enemy and now Nightcrawler.

All fantastic films, almost entirely held together by his acting (and in the case of End of Watch, his chemistry with co-star Michael Peña).

All worth a watch if you've not seen them. Particularly Enemy.

Spoilers on Enemy:

End of Watch is amazing.

It's basically a movie version of Southland, you should definitely give that a go since you liked End Of Watch.

I shall, ta.

I watched Automata last night on Netflix. It's a film about robots developing higher intelligence and becoming 'alive'. It tries to be a bit I, Robot and Blade Runner but really doesn't have any characters or enough story to drive it for the 1h50m it lasts. It means well but it can't be escaped that it's really tedious to watch. Which is a real shame.

I took Mini Fop to Big Hero 6 yesterday. Ghibli-beautiful in places. Some genuinely funny gags, largely at the expense of Baymax, the big Michelin Man-style robot.

I felt like there were nods to anime/Manga that I didn't fully understand because they're not really my fing. I also felt that didn't matter.

I blubbed. My wife blubbed. My daughter loves Baymax.

If you have a child, it's mandatory you see this.

If you don' have a child, don't rush into it. They're very expensive, your life is no longer your own, and you really are in it for the long haul. Make your choices.

Yeah. It had some interesting elements, but it just didn't go anywhere with them. Wasted potential.

What age children is it good for? Looks like it might be aimed a little older than my 3 and 3/4 year old.

Minipaz enjoyed it and she's a month off 4.

To give more detail (now I'm back at my desk), although the movie is aimed at older kids, there is much to enjoy in it. There's a huge emotional climax about a third of the way through that might go over a younger kid's head and the motivations of the villain might remain a mystery.

But cool robots and flying about and cute Baymax.

Mini Fop is 3 years old. Some 'moments of peril' for sure, but nothing scarier than in something like Book of Life, say.

Unless your daughter has an innate fear of cartoon nanotechnology, she should be fine.

Cool. She has seen Book of Life and various other films. She's a regular at the cinema. Oddly, the main things to terrify her have been the nasty cat in Sleeping Beauty (?) and Ursula (and the chef) in The Little Mermaid.

And the fox from the recent Peter Rabbit show, but he is a sinister mofo, so I agree with that.

MiniPaz was scared of the Chef too.

And the geese in Aristocats.

The only thing that seems to have terrified Mini Fop was Far Cry 3.
Which is fair enough.
She woke up from her afternoon nap right towards the end of a mission, with no save point in sight.
I had to see it through.

Actually, new Scooby Doo seems to have upped the scares significantly since we were young'uns.

I watched a movie!

"John Dies At The End"

I read the book, which was very entertaining, and am halfway through the sequel, which is better. They're kinda Charles Stross Laundry stuff meets stoner dropout comedy.

Anyway, the movie clearly didn't have the budget for the effects to do as much as they would like, but they gave it a good go. The guys playing Dave and John were good, and seeing some of the bits from the book made me very happy. It does, however, cut about two thirds of the book out, which I guess was necessary, but makes things feel a little disjointed and rushed at times. That might not happen if you haven't read the book.

It's not the best movie ever, but I liked it. Also towards the end it has a spectacularly gratuitous star on the Craster scale (that was, admittedly in the book).

I saw Big Hero 6 the other day and I have to say it was something of a disappointment for me. The trailer we saw many months ago had nothing to do with the film whatsoever. That it was ultimately just a superhero film was a little bit dull. Not a particularly interesting one at that.

Though I did like the methods of movement with the microbots involved. Very good there.

Never as funny, creative or heartwarming as the likes of Tangled for me. Just a kids film.

I also saw Kingsman which had moments of excellence but was marred slightly by an obsession with swearing all the time, being excessively violent and somewhat bawdy. Seemed a bit of a mess really. Not an entirely unenjoyable one but a mess all the same.

ex machina was cool but the ending let it down along with some stupid explained whispery stuff.

I did watch that there John Wick last night and thought it was very good but not great.

IN THE PLUS COLUMN - Proper action (i.e. swearing and blood and headshots and breaking bones and stuff, none of this neutered PG-13/12 crap), the correct length being in the 90-100 minute zone, very lean and businesslike screenplay, moved along at a right old rate of knots, very well shot, action sequences were quite exciting. Story had a beginning, a middle and an end. Great soundtrack. Cool cars.

IN THE MINUS COLUMN - Pretty weak cast I felt, Keanu was good but the bad guys weren't really super mega-bad enough. Since we're allowed to have Russian baddies again after all that getting along together rubbish phase we went through, let's have it done properly. The Equalizer (the new one with Denzel) had far better psychotic Russian baddies in it. On top of that the supporting cast, despite being of a largely high calibre, weren't given much of a chance to shine IMO.

And then you've got the fact that John Wick is effectively indestructible and is introduced as such, so there's never really much of a sense of 'How's he going to get out of this then?', it's like he's superhero but in human form.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fine Friday night action film but in terms of a kinetic, exciting action film, I'd say I'd prefer something like The Rock.

7.5/10

I took our 6 year old to watch Big Hero 6 last week - we both loved it, and now our 8 year old is jealous and wants to see it. Utterly brilliant stuff. Only tangentially related to the Marvel thingy, but better for it. Funny, blarty, warm, lovely, awesome.

Second Born was hugely amused to realise that the rich dosser chap was Snotlout from How To Train your Dragon.

22 Jump Street is pretty good.