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The Films You Watched Thread V: Dead Men Watch No Movies

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    I'm also MNS fan, approaching his work as extended Tales of the Unexpected/Twiglight Zone/Outer Limits episode, rather than best film evah.

    I enjoyed Signs and thought the build up was really resourceful.
    Loved the ending too, personally, rather than just say it was a gas from the corn that made everyone hallucinate or something.
    "Swing away"

    The Village is also a clever idea and going in cold, is best.
    Funnily enough, I was reading a retrospective on its 15th anniversary a couple of days back



    With any film like this, the film hinges on whether you think the Final Boss is acceptable.
    Jaws, Friday the 13th, Blair Witch, Apostle, Annihilation, The Ritual, Sleepy Hollow etc.

    Oh, it was really Old Man Smithers who used to run the now abandoned amusement park Vs. Oh, it really was the ghost of Capt. Cutler in a deep sea diving suit.

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      It was trendy for a while to bash MNS as a one trick pony. He has a signature style, that’s all.
      It was also the done thing to say ‘oh I saw the twist from a mile off.’

      Good for you! Medal is in the post etc.

      I really enjoyed his first 4 films and saw none of the twists at all. Especially The Village. When I saw that at the cinema the audience was totally hypnotised. I can see why he divides audiences. He’s doing the cinematic equivalent of a magic trick, and some people don’t like the sensation of being deceived. Also, being films with twists, some people won’t accept the validity of the build up, and find so many ‘faults’ that they end up hating the films.

      I prefer to start the film with my mind empty, and refuse to speculate throughout. I just accept and absorb scenes. This makes the endings far more powerful and satisfying.

      I think he’s a decent director.

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        The only one I guessed the twist on was The Sixth Sense. The 'twist' in The Visit ain't the best. It is holier than Jesus's sandals. But it's at least a ruddy entertaining one and kinda has a great comic feel to it.

        I like the fact he pretty much always makes goofy movies. And gets them in cinemas.

        I even wanna see the "bad" ones...Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Arsebender, After Earth. All supposed to be cacky but I wanna see em all.

        He is mental.

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          M.Night shalashaska pulled it back with split. Great film. Haven't seen Glass yet.

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            Yeah I quite liked Split. Maybe one of the only one of his I do like actually.

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              I watched half of Pineapple Express last night. I like movies with those guys but had never seen this one. But it felt like kids putting on a school play who had forgotten the words and, while I cracked a smile a couple of times, it didn’t justify sitting through the rest of it. Maybe it’s just a stoner movie and you need to be stoned?

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                Watched Captain Marvel last night with the wife.

                I've seen it before but she hadn't. She enjoyed it quite a bit.

                I love it. It's one of my fave MCU films.

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                  Furious 7

                  I thought the cgi to recreate Walker was wicked, and I liked the tribute at the end.

                  The Fate of the Furious

                  And now we arrive full-circle, and I don't mean the F&F storyline. We watched this a while back and then decided to watch the series properly in the run-up to Hobbs & Shaw. This is a great film anyway, but it was even better this time around because we knew the backstory.

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                    Progress!


                    Rocky VII: Creed
                    Still - Still the weakest one for me. It's such a well made film but it just doesn't hold together for me like the others because Adonis has absolutely zero heart to him, a fact not helped by the personality vacuum that is Johnson. Rests on the Rocky elements.

                    Rocky VIII: Creed II
                    Finally got round to this one and... enjoyed it much more. The increase on all the Rocky stuff makes this Rocky IV Part 2 and it's that aspect that lifts this one.

                    Dumbo
                    The remake, the missus absolutely adores the original and after this weekend kind of see's this reboot as a crime to cinema - despised it. I'm not that bothered about the original so sat through this easier but it's still a pretty dull film that shrink wraps Dumbo's story into the first half hour so it can kind of sequelize the rest with a tale of the fame of being a flying elephant, a tale that doesn't engage. More a lesson I think that not every one of their films needs this treatment.

                    Fast and Furious: Hobbs and Shaw

                    We're past the point now, there's just no reality left in this. The film is fun, immensely dumb and literally succeeds purely on the strength of Johnson and Statham. There's an inescapable feeling that the mileage on the pair is being burnt up fast during the course of the film, they wouldn't get more than another film or so in before it grew old unless they find new spins on the dynamic. There are a few surprises which are nice except one that starts off amusing but grows incredibly tired by the end of the film. Better than the likes of clumsy Fast 8 but weaker than the main series at its best, it also makes me very wary that any other Furious spin-off based on other characters will work.

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                      I also watched Creed II last night. Pretty good but I found myself thinking that, ultimately, we had seen better versions of this across most of the seven other movies. I hate judging movies based on what’s not there rather than what is but the movie at about a third of the way in had set up much more potential than the movie we got and a couple of what seemed like crucial elements never got developed. Lungren was superb though. I feel like he has become something better with age.

                      Also watched The Other Guys. It was pretty funny in places but almost everyone in the movie was better than Marky Mark in this case. Still, enjoyable enough.

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                        Yep, I liked that they set Drago and his son up on this mission to win back his mother etc but they never got anywhere near the screentime they needed to flesh that out for the ending to land right whereas Creed got quite a lot of the screentime (unsurprising given the title) yet his story literally was Rocky III/IV reheated. If the rumours are true that Rocky IX moves on from the current scenario I'll be happy with that, they hardly have Rocky fit to fight in the films at this point but having undone his send off in Rocky IV, if they insist on making another, I'd rather it brought it back to where the arc really lies.

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                          Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
                          Yep, I liked that they set Drago and his son up on this mission to win back his mother etc but they never got anywhere near the screentime they needed to flesh that out for the ending to land right whereas Creed got quite a lot of the screentime (unsurprising given the title) yet his story literally was Rocky III/IV reheated. If the rumours are true that Rocky IX moves on from the current scenario I'll be happy with that, they hardly have Rocky fit to fight in the films at this point but having undone his send off in Rocky IV, if they insist on making another, I'd rather it brought it back to where the arc really lies.
                          Yeah, I think that Rocky IV kind of overshadowed the movie but they didn’t fully take advantage of it. Early on, one big factor in the movie was Creed obviously being rattled by reminders of his father but that never played a role later - it’s not something he ever tackled. Instead, what we got was training montages, like Rocky IV. And one really interesting thing with the Dragos early on was that I got the distinct impression that Jr didn’t even want to fight. It was all about Sr. Again, that was kind of discarded in favour of a much simpler element and Rocky IV callbacks (we were one step away from bringing in the robot). I feel like there was a more interesting movie to be found there.

                          But yeah, I think Lungren is superb and Stallone is always lovely to watch. He fills Rocky with so much heart. I reckon I could have watched a movie of those two characters hanging out and making a connection all those years later.

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                            Yeah, I think you guys are spot on when you say that Creed II placed the emphasis in the wrong place. For me, we had lots of time focused on the story of Creed's relationship and the birth of his daughter, and much much less time on the far more interesting dynamic of Drago living vicariously through his son.


                            When Ivan throws in the towel for his son, and there's that redemption where he cares about him more than this win - that should've carried a lot more weight than it did. I would much rather have had more build up to this, and less conversations between Creed and his mum or Creed and Bianca.



                            It was also a bit overlong. I found it dragged at points. A little disappointing, since honestly I consider Creed 1 one of the best Rocky movies.

                            I watched The Yakuza, a 1974 Sydney Pollack joint about a former soldier and sometime PI who's asked to go to Japan to broker the release of a friend's daughter, who's being held hostage by a Yakuza clan after a deal gone wrong. Our hero has history with the country - formerly stationed there in WW2, he soon finds himself reawakening both old friendships and old rivalries.

                            A nice film. Not a classic, not a barnstorming must watch, but a neat, slick little piece with a solid story and some interesting characters. Action is sparing but well executed. The whole thing is a little lightweight, but it's a very enjoyable view of 70s Japan through a western lens. At times it feels a bit like a travel brochure (bullet train - check, onsen - check, hostess bar - check, dojo - check), but it's tense and atmospheric enough to hold it all together.

                            Recommended if you like 70s films, people getting their arms lopped off by katanas, or Robert Mitchum looking almost impossibly craggy.

                            I watched it on the 'Premium Collection' Blu-Ray (£6 in Cex) which had a very nice transfer indeed. Sound was supposedly DTS-MA but wasn't much of a mix up from the mono, I'd imagine. A bit beefier is all.

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                              The scene where Drago meets with Rocky at the restaurant sells so strongly the missed opportunity there, they really should have spent so many more scenes together exploring the dynamic between Drago who feels he lost everything and Rocky who's managed to move past the anger he once had.

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                                Potter 2: Electric Boogaloo.

                                Continuing to watch the Potter series with my son in anticipation of going to Potter World next year.
                                Not seen Chamber of Secrets for yeeears, so it's nice to re-watch.
                                Emma Watson's acting has really improved from the first film, as has the CGI!
                                Love the sequence in the woods with Aragog.

                                We need to watch Prisoner of Azkaban so we can play Year 3 of Hogwarts Battle!

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