Be Excellent To Each Other

I agree.. Dreadful

I have to agree.

I'm not entirely sure what it was about Insurgent but it just failed to really connect with me. Divergent was enjoyable, which surprised me at the time so I looked forward to part 2. Sadly not to be...

I'm not a fan of superhero films. The Avengers, yes, I really liked that one, but the rest are nothing more than noise: sometimes enjoyable, always disposable.

Against that background, I've watched The Watchmen again. I'd never heard of the comic but I remember reviews saying how highly regarded it was. But the first time I watched it I recall it was overly long and a bit boring. I did feel as though I was missing something so I watched it again once before but got distracted. Finally, I've sat down prepared to concentrate hard.

I really fucking enjoyed it.

It's much better third time around. Much easier to follow having a vague idea what it was about and I could sit back and evaluate it. Not being steeped in masses of lore and fan spaff, it's such a nice insular story. A real start-to-finish with nothing left out with no worries that something might be sat on the cutting room floor for the sequel. It's directed well by Zack Synder and I was surprised how good the fight sequences were. They were easy on the eye with no crazy camera cuts, looked stylist and each punch and kick had mass. Very impressive stuff. I've suddenly got high hopes that Batman v Superman won't be another Batman Begins. I particularly liked the genesis of each character interspersed told by a variety of different ways that felt very natural within the story. Visually it holds up very well indeed with only the CGI alien cat hybrid thing and President looking a bit shit and the rubbery face on President Nixon looking so terrible that I can't believe they didn't change that. One close up looks awful and amateurish. The acting is great, Rawshank guy was particularly good especially before he explodes, lovely visceral violence and, damn, there's some sexy in here too. Side boob and front boobs replete with nip nip. Leather and nip nip.

Anyway, Watchmen, I like it suddenly 7 years after release.

Yeah I loved Watchmen a lot more the second time I saw it too.

Never mind all that. *7 years*?! Holy cow.

Read the graphic novel, it's amazing.

I haven't read a comic since Aliens v Predator. I quite fancied picking up The Walking Dead but when my mate brought a few of them I just flicked through, like, 50 pages at rapid speed and felt quite meh about the whole graphic novel thang. Maybe I wasn't reading them properly or something.

That's like saying you haven't watched a film since, well, Aliens vs Predator. At least read something that isn't utter trash before you take against an entire medium.

Fuck you, man, Aliens v Predator was the tits. The drawings in the alien's storyline in those first few magazines were lush. They got me drawing when I was a wee lad and probably account for why I can only draw heads exploding with gore rather than fluffy bunny rabbits.

He's not wrong. I loved those books.

I now really wish this was his name.

If we're talking Aliens related graphic novels, Labyrinth is fucking brilliant.

I will watch this again at the weekend.

I like the bit where the Muppets take their heads off

I watched Bone Tomahawk. Though some of it through part-closed eyes. Bleurch. But it was good - and if you can tolerate the gore and also like a slow-burning story, you'll like it even more than I did.

Cloverfield. I hadn't really watched this because of two things. One, it's a POV film (or whatever this type is called) and two, it's about aliens (JC really isn't into that sort of stuff). However last week when Mrs JC and I were away we saw a trailer for the new film with John Goodman in it. Both Mrs JC and I are huge Goodman fans, so we booked cinema tickets. Then I found out it was loosely based on this Cloverfield and only then did I decide to watch it.

And I was really taken by surprise. I thought it was excellent.

Watched High Rise last night. It was bonkers. Enjoyed it a lot.

Lauren Laverne had the director chappy on her show last week on Radio 6. He seemed like a nice bloke.

I really liked Kill List, I should watch his other stuff really. High Rise is on my TO WATCH list already.

I watched it this afternoon and it followed the standard Ben Wheatley arc of 'start weird, ramp up the weirdness throughout and end on a weird note'. It was very good.

I got some extra comedy from the fact that there was an aggressively baffled elderly couple sitting beside me in the cinema who really just didn't know what the fuck was going on. Their confusion even made up for the fact that man one's whisper was bizarrely louder than his normal voice. God, I'm really not looking forward to being old, it looks pretty miserable.

Sightseers is by far his most straight forward film and is very funny; highly recommended.

A Field in England is, well, it's more of an experience than a film and it's barely got a narrative to speak of. Whether you'd like it or not depends on your tolerance for 'weird for the sake of it' kind of stuff.

I haven't watched Down Terrace so can't comment there.

Watched 'Zootopia' today with the child.

It's actually brilliant.

Man of Steel loads better than I was expecting. Glad they didn't do the same old tired origin story.

The only good thing about MoS is Toby Ziegler

Danny John-Jules voices two of those! Trufax!

I'm very confused as that isn't a scantily-clad lady only in the film to appeal to the male gaze. Are you feeling ok?

Toby Ziegler is fit.

Bald and bearded is the new hotness

(I hope)

We watched 10 Cloverfield Lane last night and thought it was great. Very tense all the way through.

You guys should totally watch this film "Deadpool". It's brilliant.

Huzzah!

We watched Cloverfield before going to see the next one. I totally cheered when

FINALLY

Mockingjay Part 2 is a bit of a disappointment.

I'm watching it now and I'm finding it equally as good as the others in the series.

I enjoyed it but yes it's not Mockingjay part 1.

Close encounters of the third kind. Yeah, I know, slap me....

When it first came out my mother was worried it would scare me (and tbh it probably would have given I was only about four years old). Then as I started to grow up I realised I wasn't really into space or science fiction at all really. I did watch the Star Wars films but they never really had a huge impact on me as I preferred funny films and documentaries.

Well last night I decided to watch it with Mrs JC (Oh OK I will be honest, Mrs JC decided to watch it and I watched it too ) and I thought it was brilliant.

Talking of Star Wars I also watched the new one of those last night and thought it too was excellent. It did feel a bit rushed, but I hadn't read any reviews (nor the thread on here) so I was genuinely surprised at the two main twists.

Tonight it's White Noise. Never seen that either.

Close Encounters is still a fantastic film. Well worth the time to watch it. I think it's one of the few films where my parents' taste overlapped with mine.

It was very tense. It's a shame it was a Cloverfield film though, as you know what the truth was (re. the outside) all along.

Russell just decided to watch Inside Out with Darwin. Russell cried so hard.



Aw xxxx

Me too!

I've just been subjected to Ferris Bueller's day off having never seen it before. Now I just want to stay up and watch 80s films all night!

What should we watch first??!!

Breakfast club

I didn't as I've never seen Cloverfield so the last part came as a bit of a surprise.

10 Cloverfield Lane: Very tense stuff with good performances all round. The ending is a little bit odd because it massively shifts the whole tone of the film but I realise it's a setup for future stuff and I do quite like the idea of doing a smaller story like that within a wider univers.
Batman v Superman: Not as bad as the reviews would have it, but definitely not a 'good' film. There are good aspects to it no doubt, but the bad outweighed it and it was definitely much less than the sum of it's parts.

Watched Man of Steel in preparation for seeing BvS.

Was better than I expected. Cavill doesn't really do much in the way of acting, and the final fight was silly, but quite a lot of it was entertaining enough.

Could have done with a couple more moments of humour though.

That's something I meant to pick out about BvS in my comments above; it's all so fucking humourless. In BvS they give Alfred a load of one-liners but they drop like fucking stones because they overall atmosphere is just so constantly grim and Cavill's performance sucks any lightness out of the entire film. I mean they don't need to go all Iron Man and have them cracking jokes all the time but Jesus, it's unrelenting.

Separate spoiler-y question about BvS:

Avatar. I had already seen it but Mrs JC hadn't so we decided to watch it last night.

White Noise. I was really hoping for better use of EVP in a film if I'm being honest and it could and should have been a lot better than it was. It was like watching one of those films about hackers where the voice chat makes a sound every time it's used and made all simple and stupid.

The reviewer at Pajiba really doesn't like BvS....



http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/ive- ... ustice.php

I thought BvS was a pile of poop as I came out of the cinema, but after having a few days to mull it over it's starting to warm to me.

Much of this is down to Ben Affleck's portrayal of Brucey Batwayne, but other parts are good too.

I'm going the other way, I thought it wasn't totally awful at the time but the more I think and read about it the worse my opinion is getting.

Saw BvS and really enjoyed it.

Not as good as Marvel films, but still great.

Will be seeing it again.