Be Excellent To Each Other

It's the 6th, and it did arrive today.

S'not bad at all. It is rather different watching a filim not knowing that you're pretty much guaranteed a happy ending.

Although I imagine the amount of untranslated written text might have annoyed me if i coulcn't read it.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Wotsits.
Shaping up to be a so so 5.5/10 film, but ohmywordAgentLaureline.

Call for Bamba. Paging Bamba to the courtesy rage phone.

Was Bamba in the film?

I got one hour in and gave up. Holy shit it's a bad film. What happened, Luc? What happened?

This is the correct opinion. Well done.

Steven Soderbergh:

From the context i thought it was luc besson, and then everything would make more sense. Speaking of Soderberg, i have to watch S2 of "The Girlfriend Experience". The first season was brilliant.

I also enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok. Culturally a different experience-first time I've been asked to stand to 'respect the national flag' which was then pictured on screen (actually, all citizens were asked to stand, so maybe they'd have let me off). And no great prohibition on taking phone calls, though the takers were quiet and quick. Perhaps less worried about because the film is in English with no subtitles, so some people are there for the action. A simple line like Odin's 'oh shit' got a decent laugh. Princely price of £1.97 for your 3d ticket. £2.86 including crisps and pepsi. Decent audience, but presumably low ticket prices prevent places like Myanmar contributing much to a film's gross take, even if they pull people in.

Every time i travel i try to go at least to a concert to feel the local culture. I should add going to the movies. Seems like an interesting prospect.

It can be. Not always, mind-can just be similar only annoying (an interval in Iceland, during which teens jump from seat to seat). Concerts sound more likely to have a cultural thing.

I avoid cinemas without intervals, so that's fine for me.

Ha! So I watched Baby Driver last night, in which Kevin Spacey plays a major role, and he basically portrays a bullying, intimidating, thoroughly unpleasant crime lord type who forces a young man with issues to do things he really doesn't want to for a couple of hours, and is quite happy to threaten to put the young man's girlfriend in a wheelchair by chopping her legs off, or something, if the young man doesn't do what he wants to.

If we try to disassociate that side of things from the proceedings (which quite frankly I was unable to do, and I found myself wondering who on the set he'd try to shag, as well as how much playing the role was actually an artistic stretch for him), it's not a bad film but nothing special either.

The action sequences are great and the car chases are good, but I don't think it was all as clever as it thought it was, and tonally it was a bit of a mess as well, the story wasn't up to much and whilst I get pretty much everyone apart from Baby and his girl is supposed to be a slimeball who deserves to get killed, I didn't find myself massively rooting for them either - well apart from his foster dad dude who unlike Baby hadn't turned to a life of crime.

I didn't think the soundtrack was that amazing either, there was some good stuff on it, but they couldn't find room for Jethro Tull track, eh? Bank heist with an improvised flute solo, now that'd be something.

Absolutely defines what a 7/10 film is for me. But that might be Kevin Spacey's fault, I don't know, he's in it so much it's hard to be sure.

As such, 700/1000.

The Hitman's Bodyguard is basically two hours of Jackson and Reynolds shouting at each other. It's highly entertaining.

What We Do In the Shadows. Fucking amazing. Loved it.

Baby Driver. It was pretty good. It felt like it wanted to be more stylish than it was.

I watched The Expendibles 2 last night. It’s bloody marvelleous and terrible in equal proportions. Man alive though, that cast! The cast was amazing and made my little jollies retract inside myself. What a shame they weren’t in a better movie.

Pros:
AA-12 (with a drum magazine no less) wielding Arnie is my favourite thing ever.

Cons:
Stallone runs like Barry from the Goldbergs. It’s fucking hilarious how badly his “action acting” is. And his makeup made him look like a transvestite with a silly moustache.

It's called a Scrake Cannon.

And Chuck Norris made a Chuck Norris joke.

My brother in law is a video editor and he idolises Edgar Wright. Apparently his directing is full of little amazing details filled with flair that us mere cinema watchers don't appreciate as much. Anyway, i also like his movies and will try to check this one.

This is a great youtube channel that i've seen some videos but haven't seen this one before. There's one about the over-editing in modern actions movies that is specially poignant. Also like the video about "Bayhem":)

Sadly not making any new videos though.

Yes, this deserved a lot more videos. The one about action scenes that i was referring to, it's the one about Jackie Chan. Just watched it all over again. Great video.

That was brilliant!

Looks like Daredevil is still somehow Affleck's most critically acclaimed superhero movie.

Burn it down and start again.

I watched THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD last night.

It's 30 minutes too long and is moderately entertaining. Seriously, who fucking edits films these days, is two hours the 'target running time' or something?

Not as good as BABY DRIVER, which wasn't great either.

In fact, if ever a film were a straight 6/10, THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD is it.

As such, 601/1000, it gets an extra point for having a Ford Focus C-Max in a car chase.

This is the correct opinion. It was a 2/5 movie for me at one point, but redeemed itself a bit in the last section (which was also where most of the trailer was cut from, non-coincidentally.) It badly wanted to be The Bourne Identity mashed up with Die Hard 3, but it was barely a cover band for most of it, and without the easy charisma of the leads I might have turned it off.

This is nonsense and you're a terrible person for writing it.

I feel you both wanted more out of Hitman's Bodyguard than it ever promised. It was always from the start going to be exactly what it was, a Jackson/Reynolds enemies-turned-friends buddy movie and it delivered exactly that. Did it need a bit of a trim? Probably. Still great though.

I wanted more funny lines and less long stretches where nothing happened and it didn't make me so much as chuckle. Doesn't seem too much to ask.

See I found it pretty much constantly amusing. I think I'm easier to please though.

Jesus Christ blade runner was a tedious slow, predictable pile of shit. Very pretty though.

You fucking what?

You heard fuckface.

God some of it I was just willing the director to cut to the next shot or something... It just dragged like a dog with worms' arse. But no, let's have the wrong Ryan just keep walking into camera or watching the cringeworthy performance of the joi thing. Jesus.

Mr Chris making a bold opening gambit to retain his title as Captain Wrong for 2017, it seems.

I...I. ..

Wow.

Christ.

You're just pissed cos I could see the emperor's winky.

To hold this opinion you'd have be as soulless as a corporate lawyer and as shallow as someone who likes the Star Wars prequels but when called upon to defend that opinion thinks it's enough to say "pew pew pew."

Oh, it's MrChris. As you were.

Ahahahah.

Bear in mind I liked the original. I just thought the pacing was massively off, and it was relying on its own (admittedly gorgeous) imagery to carry the length of a film that was a good thirty minutes too long.

I like films that make you think, but this was genuinely hr first film I've been to in ages where I was willing it to come to its rather obvious conclusion.

I like the star wars prequels as uninvolved visual candy (and happily skip the boring Anakin bits) not films that are trying to create a treatise on the nature of being.

As my kids say - different people like different things.

Also - not a corporate lawyer.

Well, whatever mask you wear by day, we all know your real identity is what you do at night: MURDERLAWYER.

And in that role I have a very good grasp of what makes a person go.

Primarily their pulmonary system.

The way to a man's heart is through his chest!

That is my least vulnerable spot.

It is known.

Watching Star Wars Ep I with the opinion that Jar Jar is a Sith Lord is a far more enjoyable experience than just watching it.

Although I didn't really hate it in the first place.

Justice League: isn't great, but isn't total horseshit either, so it gets a 'meh' out of 10. There's a good film in there somewhere with some decent character beats and moments of the proper kind of teamwork in a battle that you want to see from a super-team. There's also still the usual load of pointless shit crammed in that you just don't care about plus Wonder Woman is the only one of the trinity that they haven't just totally fucked up. Batman is boring as shit and almost completely superfluous and despite all the talk about Superman as being a shining light of inspiring humanity his actual characterisation as shown is still "aloof and frankly fucking terrifying alien god". It's like Snyder just doesn't understand that having characters saying a thing isn't enough, you also need to follow through and show that a thing is true as well. This time around at least the quippy dialogue does land most of the time, as opposed to the cringey lead-ballooning that BvS was stuffed full of but I imagine that's Whedon's input more than anything else.

What? I thought Superman was dead. Spoilers.

My boy wants to see Paddington 2 this weekend, so I thought I better watch the first.

Why has it taken me so long to see it? It was brilliant, every one needs a bear with a hard stare and marmalade sandwiches....

Yeah, I've heard really good things about Paddington 2 but I should probably watch the first one.

Went to see Justice League the other night. It's a bit of a hot mess tonally (you can really see Whedon's influence, and I'm not keen on it) but I really don't think it's as bad as people are saying - it's certainly not as bad as the Rotten Tomatoes scores suggest.

Yes I thought I had to watch the first..

Is JL ok for an 8 year old?