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John Wick Chapter 2 (why are they chapters?)

A worthy follow up. I saw a review for this complaining about desensitization to violence and everything becoming a blur, but I didn't get that. What this movie does, and the first one did too, is punctuate the action with little moments that catch your eye and keep you engaged. When John Wick is just running through a corridor shooting people you can start to lose focus because everything is so fast, but the little breaks in the pacing to linger on something cool really make the difference.

I'd say it has a bit more humour than the first one too. The world that John Wick inhabits is ramped up to ridiculous proportions, and by the end seemingly everyone in New York is some kind of super assassin. There's a great scene in a subway too, where Wick and another assassin are quietly walking through the crowds, discreetly shooting at each other with silenced pistols, and no one notices.

One of my only complaints is that it's maybe too self-indulgent with the world it creates. In goes from mysterious to plain silly. That, and the reason for John Wick to get involved again was very dull. He owes someone a favour from way back, and after he does what they ask they of course try to kill him, and it goes from there. It's uninteresting, whereas the setup for the first film felt fairly unique, as far as revenge plots go. That setup made John Wick a different kind of character, and it gave the story a greater drive and focus. Chapter 2 meanders and drags it places. But the action is still good.


Kingsman

Really good film. Kind of a classy Grimsby, about a kid called Eggsy who gets recruited to be a Kingsman, an independent intelligence agency based on England full of gentlemen spies. A lot of the movie is the kid in training with other recruits, while Sam Jackson sets up ludicrous villain plan and the spies go a-spyin'. But in the end it comes down to Eggsy to save the world. There's a couple really fun action scenes and set pieces.

The only problem is that Eggsy's home life is so depressing and played so straight that it brings down the tone of the whole film slightly. It feels like it's from a different movie. The finale is so over the top, but it also involves Eggsy's mum (for spoiler reasons), and it's just an odd mix.

The final shot of the big climactic fight looked really shit too. Shockingly so. Kind of ruined it. But otherwise a lot of fun.

But how good is that church scene in Kingsman? Completely made the film for me.

Skip wrote:

But how good is that church scene in Kingsman? Completely made the film for me.

Haha, I was about to say this again for like the 3rd time in this thread possibly.

Logan was the best comic book movie since The Dark Knight.

Logan was indeed pretty good. Saw it yesterday, I think they handled it well. Lots of people are probably going to moan about the ending, but I think it was nicely done.

No after credits scene either, but I think that's fine, there's really not much else you could've put after it and putting one in would kind of be a disservice to the closure of Wolverine's story imo.

Kaio wrote:

Logan was the best comic book movie since The Dark Knight.

I must be the only person in the world who thought Dark Knight wasn't the second coming of Christ. It was a good film, yes, and Heath Ledger was outstanding, but I always felt Batman Begins was the stronger film.

I tend to favour TDK the most nowadays. I find TDK to be great all the way through while my enjoyment for Begins starts to decline after Bruce has become the Bat. The Dark Knight Rises is just dull.

The Dark Knight Rises was interesting but not the kind of film i'd watch again and enjoy. Batman being non existent in the film isn't what I expect form a Batman film.

Rises was enjoyable enough but the story was utter guff, Bane is unintentionally funny, Batman's barely in it, and given the very positive reviews it got critically I think a lot of people were disappointed with it.  It's clearly the weakest of the Nolan trilogy.

Warcraft

I've never played the game so can't comment about how well it utilises any story or lore elements, but it does at least manage not to be totally generic by virtue of showing that not all Orcs are bad and not all humans are good.  The CG Orcs and such looked excellent, but the ending was very clearly set up to serve a franchise, so there's not really any pay off for the film taken as its own thing.  It spends a lot of time setting up a climactic battle, moving between a group of half a dozen key characters and just when things are starting to get interesting, it ends.

Watchable, certainly, but by no means essential.

TDK gets better as it goes along. Begins kind of fizzles out into a silly plot to evaporate all the city's water to spread fear gas, and the Scarecrow just gets tazed by some lady.

Logan was great, but not without flaws or inconsistencies. I'll wait a while until I discuss them, for fear of spoiling anything for those who've not yet seen it.

Kong: Skull Island.

'salright. It was entertaining. Kind of a prequel to Godzilla just by way of being set in the 70s, and featuring Monarch. They say in the film that Kong is still growing so 40 years later when he fights Godzilla he should be a lot bigger. Looking forward to that.

Story and characters were very basic. Monarch is like "We think there are monsters on this island!", so they go to the island and there are monsters. They fight the monsters, the monsters fight the monsters, everyone has a good time. They were nods to Kong and Godzilla history thrown in. The big spider thing looked similar to the big spiders Son of Godzilla. There's a part where the tape player is making distorted noises, and it sounded just like how Godzilla and Anguiras talk to each other in Destroy All Monsters (I think it was that one). When Godzilla picked up a tree near the end I was hoping he would shove it into the monster's mouth like he did to Godzilla in Godzilla vs King Kong. I like that Kong was shown to be fairly intelligent, using tools and weapons and such. He walks upright the whole time too, like old Kong. He's not just a scaled up regular gorilla.

So basically if you want to see King Kong fight a giant octopus and blow up helicopters, go see it. It gets into the action pretty quickly, and it's not as long as the Godzilla movie. Not as good either, but that's me. I love that movie far more than most.

I really enjoyed Godzilla. Aaron Taylor-Johnson isn't the most charismatic or interesting hero, but he did a serviceable job of being where he needed to be to move the story on and every time the monsters showed up they were spectacular.

Gods of Egypt

Strange film.  Apparently it got a critical kicking and bombed at the box office, in addition to stirring up some controversy as the cast are predominantly white and the theme is very Egyptian.  It isn't egypt though, they made that pretty clear and it's not our earth either, as the world is flat and the sun is towed behind a ship that sails the sky over the flat earth.

Plot wise, gods live among men - they look the same as us for the most part, only they're nine feet tall, bleed gold and have special abilities, whether it be to transform, to create unlimited copies of yourself, to fly, yadda, yadda yada.  Gerald Butler doesn't exactly go against type as a gruff bearded warrior who kills his brother, the reigning king, defeats Jaime Lannister (the would-be king) and declares himself King.  What follows is two hours of nonsense as Jaime Lannister (sorry, it's easier than typing his real name!) is pulled out of a defeatist stupor by an impossibly fortunate thief looking to revive his improbably attractive recently deceased beloved, fighting Leonidas Set every step of the way.

It's visually spectacular, creative and poorly acted in equal measure, but if you watch it knowing that its tongue is firmly in its cheek there is a fair bit of entertainment to be had.  It's like watching a massive budget pantomime, it's a bit crap and campy but that's almost the point.

Kong Skull Island

I won't lie, I enjoyed this a hell of a lot. No, it's not likely to win any awards for the complexity of its story telling but you can tell that from the trailer. There's perhaps fifteen minutes of introducing the main characters, then it's straight into the action. Kong isn't hidden away, saved for a big reveal, he's front and centre from the get go.

Sure, you could argue that some of the deaths (and there are many) are perhaps a little too gratuitous, but for the most part it was simply just very entertaining. As though watching huge monsters smash stuff - and each other - into paste could be anything else.

Logan was great. I kind of like where Fox is with X-Men now. Seems like they're just doing anything and completely disregarding continuity. There's been enough of these movies that people know the characters, so they can just pick a good story and do it without it having to be a sequel or prequel or reboot or whatever. The only sticking point is recasting Wolverine. They'll probably resist that for a few years at least.

Fist of the Northstar (1986)
I get the impression they took bits from the show, put them together, and this was the end result.

Toy Soldiers
I like this movie, the dean might be my favorite character.

Sock wrote:

Well, wouldn't it be better to try and remake a weak movie into something watchable instead of needlessly recreating something that's already a classic?

With how people in Hollywood work I'm not sure. At least they succeeded in making a watchable remake.

saw Split, didn't go in with the highest expectations, but I really enjoyed it. McAvoy is great in it, especially that part of him that plays the little kid, I thought that was great and funny.

As in all of Shyaramalamadingdong's movies, there's the obligatory supernatural thing, but I didn't mind.

Really loved that neat little touch at the very end of the movie as well.

Beauty and the Beast was pretty good. I thought the changes they made were largely to the improvement of the story, the cast was fantastic aside from Ewan MacGregor's 'french' accent. Luke Evans and Emma Watson look as much like Gaston and Belle as physically possible, it's almost scary. Josh Gad is an absolute champion as Lefou. Emma Watson can't really sing apparently, but her autotuning didn't break my immersion at all. Some of the scenes felt so much like a Disney cartoon movie that I almost forgot I was watching live action. Overall: very impressed.

Dirty Harry movies 1 and 2.
Harry Callahan is a likable character, I anticipated a jerk, which we will probably get if this story ever got a remake.

Batman The Killing Joke

I'm not really much of a Batman man, so to speak, so I wasn't aware of the history behind the initial one-shot this is largely based on. I'll save the spoilers for those who - like me - are going in blind, but it feel very much mean spirited in places, and the ambiguous ending probably felt like it was making a bold statement twenty or so years ago when it was written. Presented here though, it just felt somewhat unsatisfying.

High Rise

In a dystopian future, people live in high rise apartments, the higher up you go the higher class of people you'll find living there. Tom Hiddleston plays a guy living on the 25th floor who finds himself invited to a party at the top, where he is humiliated and ridiculed. He takes it out on a work colleague, who then kills himself by jumping to his death from the 39th floor. It all spirals very quickly downwards from there, feeling somewhat like a very British take on the excellent Karl Urban version of Judge Dredd. Decent film, with a good cast but will be a little slow and too considered for some tastes.

The Killing Joke is a comic that hasn't aged well, but the movie seemed to go out of its way to amplify everything that was bad about it.

I ended up watching John wick a while back and man that film made we want to get a dog.

Also ended up watching cult classic the Warriors and I have to say its a damn well made film despite the hilariously camp and theatrical exaggeration of the gangs (which possibly makes it better). Considering its age its a brilliantly made film.

Superbuu3 wrote:

I ended up watching John wick a while back and man that film made we want to get a dog.

Also ended up watching cult classic the Warriors and I have to say its a damn well made film despite the hilariously camp and theatrical exaggeration of the gangs (which possibly makes it better). Considering its age its a brilliantly made film.

Yeah John Wick is great, I'm really looking forward to the sequel. Just such a fantastically put together film.

I remember really liking The Warriors when I watched it when I was much younger. I think it was the first R rated film I watched with my mum - she had it on tape. I'm glad it holds up though, might be worth a rewatch soon.

Fight Valley

You guys remember that post simian put up about mass effect andromeda being a great game and then and writing an essay on what was wrong with it? well this post isn't like that one, this film is by far the worst film i have seen for a long time.

It's a vengeance film, where a young girl gets killed in an illegal street fight so her sister steps up...

It starts off with Meish Tate driving to an illegal street fight where she is competing, now, as i said before, young girl gets killed etc etc, thing is, although Tate appears to kill the girl she is fighting, it is NOT the sister.
The sister is then intruduced as a young girl who fights for minimal cash and is trying to get Tate to train her, Tate wont train her though as she is "too old".

30 mins into the 90 min film and the sister finally gets killed, although you dont actually see it happen so you dont give a shit. In steps big sister who really cant act and just fumbles her way through her scenes pouting enough to make bioware cast her if they ever make the aforementioned andromeda game into a film.

Big sister cant fight either which is a horrible premise for this film as it is about fighting so Tate offers to train her, no idea why she wouldn't train little sister as she had a bit of knowledge of fighting.

Anyways, we later find out who killed little sister, it just happend to be christine cyborg (genuine UFC fighter),

I'm sure wardrobe had an off day for this film also as cyborg was actually wearing her own real life t-shirt, complete with web address.

Lets get to the big end of film fight scene, so big sister has to pay $60,000 to fight cyborg (usually fighters get paid), then, when they get there it turns into the worst free for all you have ever laid eyes on where big sister just hides at the side looking for bioware execs. Finally she gets to throw 3 or 4 punches at the self styled cyborg before a short cut scene comes out of nowhere to show big sister can tell when people are lying by reading body language and eye contact. Cyborg then apologises and all is right in the world, yep, you read right (that is, if you're still reading) cyborg, killer of little sister and genuine nasty girl just says sorry and alls well n big sisters world.