Last movie you saw?

[h=3]Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)[/h] Finally watched this one the other night. I would put it about on par with The Force Awakens, which makes it a million times better than The Last Jedi, but still inferior to Rouge One.

It was definitely a watchable movie, but being a Star Wars fan since childhood, the character on the screen didn't seem like Han Solo to me. In fact, I think the actor was doing his best to copy Chris Pine's Captain Kirk from JJ's Star Trek movies. Maybe he watched the wrong movies when researching the character, I don't know. It also didn't help that he seemed a foot shorter than Harrison Ford.

I found it cringy that Han Solo kept calling himself a bad guy in the film, since he never did anything bad. In fact, he seemed to act in selfless ways continuously. The character didn't come off anywhere near as jaded as the Han Solo from the original trilogy. But it did seem like the film was setting up a sequel, or seven, so maybe they were planning some terrible stuff for this character to go through, which will impact his personality. Who knows. I can't say that I've been overly impressed with the haphazard, dazed and confused way that Disney has been handling these Star Wars movies. There doesn't seem to be any bigger picture vision that binds anything together. It seems to be amateur hour over there, so I'm not going to get my hopes up.

5/10
 
Sicario: Day of the Soldado

I really liked the Dennis Villeneuve directed first installment of Sicario, and I was afraid this second chapter would be a complete let down.

And I was right :(

Clichés, stupid plot holes, typical gutless bad guy politicians, ending tailor made to make room for a third episode. At least the action was good :|
 
Bohemian Rhapsody.

It was epic, I haven't enjoyed a movie this much for a long time and I regret not seeing it on the big screen.
 
Captain Marvel

I enjoyed the (Nick) Fury origin story. Gotta love Sam Jackson. The rest was pretty decent with a touch of bland. The big storytwist wasn't a twist at all if you've payed a bit of attention during the guardians of the galaxy. Yeah, those guys aren't the good guys. We know. Maybe just don't tell us their name in the first minute? According to wikipedia, they also had a different Name they could have used - why not use that to not make this so obvious?

Loved all the 1990ies references ...

7/10
 
Couple of long-haul fights in the last few weeks gave me a chance to watch some movies.

55 Steps - Helena Bonham Carter and Hilary Swank. Based on a true story.

Peppermint - Jennifer Garner is a badass. Movie isn't that great though.

A Star is Born - Not bad, until Ally (Gaga) turns into the manufactured pop tart. Much like her actual music. The jazz stuff she does is great. The ridiculous pop/electronic music is shit. At that point I just got annoyed. And fuck the guy playing her manger too.

Oh and Deadpool 2. Not as good as the first one.
 
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I, Tonya (2017)

A very entertaining movie and even though I'm sure there was a lot of creative liberties, it does give a completely different perspective on Tonya Harding. HIghly recommend. 8/10

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The more Wes Anderson movies I see, the more I like him as a director. This was also a much more entertaining film than I was expecting. It was a real adventure, with plenty of interesting eccentric characters. It's a lot of fun. 9/10
 
Oh yeah, I also sat through I, Tonya. Not sure how accurate it was with the events surrounding the Nancy Kerrigan incident though...
 
Star Wars VIII The Last Jedi

That movie is a mess. There's so many random threads thrown together but the overall plot is basically a slow space car chase. 5/10.
 
Avengers: Endgame. It was as expected.

About 7/10ish. A bit below perhaps.
The grand finale of the MCU movies suffered from complications as well as solutions dropping in out of nowhere, just so that everything leads to that mega-fight off seemingly all the heroes against the army of evil (paraphrased... :D ). Which looked exactly like every mass-fight in every MCU movie before. It really doesn't help having characters who are so omnipotent that you have to make up random shit as to why they just can't save the day with the snap of a finger (pun intended).

Best thing was Natasha letting herself go out of desperation after their failed first attempt to get the stones. That was, for me at least, even better than The Big Thorbowski, because it was played a lot more subtle.

In retrospect, the pair of Infinity War/Endgame couldn't handle having to deal with all the heroes being shoenorned in. In earlier installments, the strong suit of the MCU was pulling the "superhero movie" out of silliness corner by actually having deep character interaction and development (that's why the "origin story" movies were probably the best). Having awesome battle visuals was just a bonus.
But the writing in the finale failed to accomodate most of the characters. Of course, knowing in advance that just about everybody will watch your movie anyway perhaps isn't so good with respect to making an actually good movie. ;)
 
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Avengers - Endgame.

I have to go against both critical and nerd consensus here. This was sub-par for a MCU movie. Let's start with the opening, which was so many "deep character moments" and "emotional catch-up" scenes glues to one another that none of them made any emotional impact. Marvel did not manage to keep their trademark balance of over the top fun / witty banter and real character development here, but tried to pull a Dark Knight, which to me always falls on hollow ground since I do not accept caped superbeings as relateable people with real problems.

But moving on, it was obvious that we can't keep these people in such bad shape, so after a bunch of "getting the band back together" vignettes the solution has to be... TIME TRAVEL. Seriously? Time Travel?
Here a general rule of filmmaking comes in - if you do put in a bunch of faux-Tarantino/Wheadonesque dialogue about how each and every time travel movie got it wrong, for god's sake, do it better. The mechanics and logic of time travel were worse-defined than in most of the films made fun of and felt very much like a sub-par Doctor Who episode, especially since...

...we not only get treated to a completely useless highlight reel/clip show from every climatic battle in every MCU movie (and DanRoM is right, they all look the same), but the film also drops each and every character back into a emotionally super-charged moment from his or her past, leading to a bunch of saccarine-sweet sequences no one asked for that almost cried for David Tennant showing up and giving a huge speech about how love saves the day.

Also, the Tony meets his dad scene just cried for a comparision with Young George McFly/Marty-interactions (the film brought that upon itself!) but never could stand it's ground.

But let's get to the real downers now. Hawkeye and Natasha battling out who was going to sacrifice oneself for the greater good felt flat in several ways: Firstly, these super-beings really don't know how to solve conflict but with a fight? Second, it dragged on much too long, thirdly, with Haweye's family reunion being the emotional core of the setup, was there ever any doubt how it played out?

And then, the final battle. So long. So dragged out. So has-been-seen. To make a long story short, Captain Marvel clearly beats Brienne in the haircut department but this in every other aspect has not been the strongest on-screen battle I saw this week, by a margin. Additionally, Tony Stark's self-sacrifice was both predictable and very... mechanical from a plotting point of view, killing the character who started the MCU - but at least his funeral was a real, emotional moment and would have been a great way to end the film - BUT...

...The film makers had to treat us to a bunch of "what happened next" happy end montages, including absolutely ruining the underlying drama and tragedy of Captain America by allowing him to live out his life with Peggy Carter.

And, as a final observation: The film felt dragged out from the beginning and it did not go better. I do not have anything against long films, but if your superhero extravaganza feels more dragged out than a black and white hungarian arthouse film of similar lentgh, something went wrong.

EDIT: How could I forget to mention that NONE of the setup made any sense? Bringing a bunch of people back after five years without warning would have serious consequences for all those who moved on. Also, why is there no Baseball and no garbage collection even after five years?


Some stray positive observations:
  • I really want to visit St. Abbs, where "New Asgard" was shot.
  • Thor evolved from "how Viking Metallers want to look" to "how they actually look"
  • I want to see a Shaft-Style "Black Captain America" spin-off
 
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Just to make it explicit, the Cap going back in time to marry Peggy Carter creats a plothole of EPIC proportions, as it means that Peggy Carter in the same timeline only meets the Captain again in old age after he got de-iced, doing all the Agent Carter stuff in the meantime, while also living a full life as the wife of slightly older Captain America.
 
Any time travel fuckery always creates plot holes. I bet you could even find a couple in Primer if you tried hard enough.
 
Predestination.

Somehow this had managed to fly below by radar since it came out. Really glad to have stumbled across it.

If you haven't seen it I can recommend it. Based on a short story by Robert A Heinlein and much of the dialogue is lifted directly from the source material. Hell of a story and very well executed. 8/10.
 
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

Fun action movie, I liked it more than the Chapter 2, but less than the first installment.

My main complaints are:
  • Why would you leave a bunch of guns on the floor while fighting multiple bad guys. Of course the answer is to force a cool knife and horse fight.
  • Why would your goto weapon of choice to defeat body armor be 12 Gauge shotguns. To plug in more Taran Tactital products of course!
  • Keanu's dialog being reduced to "Yeah" on multiple occasions. There are other ways to convey tiredness or similar feeling. I know this is an action movie, you can still have your actors read from a decent script.

We'll see what Chapter 4 brings to the table.
 
Same movie, similar feelings. Definitely better than chapter 2.
Your second and third bullet point bothered me as well, especially the last one. In terms of dialogue, this was definitely weak.
But the hilarious action - and they went out of their way to really have fun with it - made more than up for it.

Chapter 4 will certainly come - that last scene was the mother of all sequel hooks. Alas I am afraid that it won't get better as the novelty of the series has by now definitely worn off.

My highlights:
  • the use of horse-kicks - predictable from the moment he stepped into thos stables, but hilarious
  • the whole audience saying "lots of guns" together with Keanu to complete the Matrix shout-out
  • the first fight in that... museum or something, with the lots of knife-throwing
 
Same movie, similar feelings. Definitely better than chapter 2.
Your second and third bullet point bothered me as well, especially the last one. In terms of dialogue, this was definitely weak.
But the hilarious action - and they went out of their way to really have fun with it - made more than up for it.

Chapter 4 will certainly come - that last scene was the mother of all sequel hooks. Alas I am afraid that it won't get better as the novelty of the series has by now definitely worn off.

My highlights:
  • the use of horse-kicks - predictable from the moment he stepped into thos stables, but hilarious
  • the whole audience saying "lots of guns" together with Keanu to complete the Matrix shout-out
  • the first fight in that... museum or something, with the lots of knife-throwing

I agree with your highlights, and will add this one.

I liked the way he shot the armored baddies in the neck/base of the skull by pulling on their helmets.

How did that movie only got a 14 age rating?
 
Don't you dare try and show intimacy and naughty bits!!! That is what porn is for.
 
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