Films You Have Watched

[Neon Ignition]

Mission Impossible III
So, I've always been a bit mixed on this entry. It's the slickest made of the original trilogy and bets grounded in terms of Ethan's character and personal stakes but it's not as strong on memorable set pieces and has a very flat ending. It's broadly recalled for people worshipping Philip Seymour Hoffman in it and I still don't get it. It's not at all a slight against him as an actor, I just think he's hugely underserved by the material and has little to no real point. Whereas characters in other films are never amazing villains, PSH's character gets kidnapped by Ethan for 20 minutes so kidnaps Ethans missus as revenge and then is beaten, that's about it, it's more a minor personal spat than major IMF threat and the low key finale makes this one slump over the line. It's better than the second film but not as smart as the first.

[wakka]

Mission Impossible III
So, I've always been a bit mixed on this entry. It's the slickest made of the original trilogy and bets grounded in terms of Ethan's character and personal stakes but it's not as strong on memorable set pieces and has a very flat ending. It's broadly recalled for people worshipping Philip Seymour Hoffman in it and I still don't get it. It's not at all a slight against him as an actor, I just think he's hugely underserved by the material and has little to no real point. Whereas characters in other films are never amazing villains, PSH's character gets kidnapped by Ethan for 20 minutes so kidnaps Ethans missus as revenge and then is beaten, that's about it, it's more a minor personal spat than major IMF threat and the low key finale makes this one slump over the line. It's better than the second film but not as smart as the first.

Yeah, I agree. Flat is the word. Or bland. It's also quite bland. A bowl of mashed potatoes of a film. Edible but lacking in flavour. And texture. As it were.

Hoffman is good in it, but as you rightly point out, the material he's given to work with is mostly lame. I do think the scene where he dunks Cruise's head out of the bottom of the plane is good, but it's all generally by the numbers stuff and they could have done a lot more with him.

It's a much, much worse film than Mission Impossible and I prefer the total wackiness of MI:2 to it, also, which is at least a hell of a lot more interesting (if cringemaking at times, like any time Cruise has dialogue with Newton).

Then Pearl ... the sequel/prequel to X. Instead of a grimy 70s Texas Chain Saw vibe this has a 1930s Technicolor sheen ... set during the early years of the naughty nana from X. It's great. Original and entertaining. Mia Goth is brill.

It doesn't quite reach the heights of X for me but I really liked this too. A very original style I thought, and we just love Mia Goth in our gaffe. She is so cool. My partner showed a photo of her in X to her hairdresser when she was getting her hair done

I'm really looking forward to the third part. I'm hoping it goes really balls to the wall.

Actual spoiler for Pearl:

->Open Spoiler<-

The one thing that let me down in this one was that I felt that the pacing and structure were a bit off.

We see her kill the man from the cinema, and then she tries out for the role and doesn't get it, and then we see her kill her friend. But the problem is we already saw her kill in cold blood so this is less of a climax and more of a repetition.

It would have made more sense to me for her to totally explode, Carrie-style, after not getting the role, and go really bonkers - burning down the church hall they were auditioning in with everyone in it, or something.

Still good, though. And it is so menacing when she's pacing after her friend at the very end.

[Atticus]

Actual spoiler for Pearl:

->Open Spoiler<-

it is so menacing when she's pacing after her friend at the very end.

Yeah, that whole scene is so well done.

Hopefully by the time MaXXXine gets a home release there'll be some kind of nice trilogy box set. The blu releases of X and Pearl have been pretty underwhelming it must be said.

[wakka]

Yeah, that would be really cool. A24 have done some pretty fancy releases previously for stuff like Midsommar so I think it could definitely be on the cards.

[Neon Ignition]

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Onto the fourth film and the viewing experience was a welcome wash of goodness. The series has been discussed of late on Era and there have been some eye scraping takes that there is only one terrible entry in the franchise and that it's this one. It's hard to imagine trying to come up with a take more wrong than that one as it's all to clear why this entry was the one that broke the franchise out of its prior form and set it on the road to the success it enjoys now. Whilst it still suffers from the franchises issue of lacking a memorable ending, the action is a step up (highlighted by the Dubai sequence alone), the rest of the team serve a greater role and function in events and it brings in an element of levity that stops there being any risk of dry moments like MI3 struggles with at times. Whilst it's not a thriller like MI1, meaning I can understand some still liking that one more, this is easily the peak of the initial four films.

[QualityChimp]

Chimpy's aliiive!

Confess, Fletch (2022 via NowTV).
Always thought Chevy Chase was breaking the 4th wall in the original, so enjoyed this slightly straighter take with Jon Hamm. Fun and funny little mystery.

Asteroid City (2023 via cinema).
I enjoyed it, but it felt whimsical quirky characters for the sake of whimsical quirky characters filmed in a whimsical quirky setting.

Inception (2010 via cinema).
Part of my local cinema's warm up to Oppenheimer and they're showing some choice Nolan films.
This is still an astonishing piece of cinema and possibly his best because his usual plot holes can be waved away with "maybe it's all a dream?"

Threads (1984 via Archive dot org).
Seemed the right day to finally watch this!
Harrowing and unrelenting. Depressing not just for the content, but that it's still relevant today.

[Neon Ignition]

Predator
As slick and enjoyable as ever, no chance of this one lower in anyones esteem - it doesn't have time to bleed

[fallenangle]

Channel 4 are showing A Quiet Place 2 for the first time this weekend (9pm Sunday).

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/a-quiet-place-part-ii

Looking forward to seeing that as the original was one of my favourite survival horror films I've seen on UK terrestrial TV in the last five years or more.

[CMcK]

Asteroid City (2023 via cinema).
I enjoyed it, but it felt whimsical quirky characters for the sake of whimsical quirky characters filmed in a whimsical quirky setting.

Threads (1984 via Archive dot org).
Seemed the right day to finally watch this!
Harrowing and unrelenting. Depressing not just for the content, but that it's still relevant today.

I take it you haven’t seen a Wes Anderson film before…!

Threads is a hard watch but I think it’s worthwhile. Can’t imagine the BBC making something like that nowadays.

[Cassius_Smoke]

The Whale

Brendan Fraser deserves the Oscar for this. He out paces everyone in every scene he shares, including Samantha Morton, which isn't easy.
Because of his shear size, his physical acting was clearly more limited so he's acted much more with his expressions.

As for the film. It's obvious it's based on a stage performance, with clear 'Enter stage lefts' happening. The sub plot with the religious guy seems a bit pointless and shoehorned in. It kind of misses some of the emotional beats too. But it's a good film.

[fuse]

I watched The Whale recently too, and really didn't like it. The cast are generally fabulous and give some very sincere efforts to make things work, whereas I think everything else is very weak, unsubtle, and emotionally manipulative tosh. Aronofsky's been guilty of cranking up the melodrama plenty of times before and it's worked to some degree for me before, but this one totally lost me.

Have been in Italy this past week, and in Bologna - where we were for most of the week - has just had a film festival on. We missed that unfortunately, but there's still a big open-air cinema set up in the centre of town showing a free film each night that you can just rock up to and grab a seat for. I was a little bummed to learn that we had just missed two films that I genuinely love (The Straight Story and Persepolis), but on the good lady's birthday we went out and had a great night, watching From Here to Eternity. It's centred around a group of soldiers around the time of the Pearl Harbour attacks, yet is perhaps best known for a scene with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr smooching on a beach. There was a brief intro to the film too which provided some useful context - such as the impact of the book it was based on and why it was quite subversive for the time, what had to be altered in order to make the film (of particular note: they needed the army's go-ahead), and the current star trajectory of its cast. There's enough of an anti-war undercurrent that the "the army is great and army life is fabulous" moments jar a bit, but knowing why they're there helped. Still, I found it quite enjoyable nevertheless. The inevitable pivot to you-know-what is very sudden quite brief at the end, and having that going on very loudly in a town square at midnight is certainly quite a memorable way to spend an evening.

[QualityChimp]

That's a really cool and memorable way to watch that, Fuse.

Felt like Asteroid City was the most uneventful of the Anderson films I've seen. Can take the whimsy if it goes somewhere.

Double-bill at the cinema today.
Dunkirk followed by Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Interesting seeing them back-to-back as Nolan uses so many practical effects, but the latest Indy is practically a cartoon there's so much CGI, which is fine but you need to adjust to it.

Dunkirk was better than I remembered and that Zimmer score with the constant tick tock just ratchets up the tension.

Indy was okay. Perfectly enjoyable, fantastical romp, like a greatest hits with a couple of new tracks.

Also saw Jurassic World: Dominion (2023 via NowTV) and despite having some interesting ideas and a couple of good sequences, on the whole I found it disappointing.

[Brad]

Extraction 2: very disappointing after the surprisingly good first film. If [MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION] watches it though I’d like his thoughts on how they did what appears to me an at least 15 minute scene, spanning multiple locations with no cuts. I get that some cgi must have been used to join parts together but it seems impossible to pull off to me.

[Neon Ignition]

Shaun of the Dead
Been a fair few years since we last watched this and to be honest it still generally holds up really well

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Fifth one in and I do like it but it's not as good as Ghost Protocol. I think the effort to make a plot that begins to tie the franchise together works well and Cruise doing huge stunts is still impressive but this always felt like a film that pulled its punches, like it was wary of feeling like it was trying to top GP an in doing so never manages to even nudge past it. Still better than MI2 and 3 at the minimum but the plane intro that feels like it ends halfway through, the bike chase that also ends just as it gets going and a smart but again low key ending keep this back a little.

Mission Impossible: Fallout
Whereas this strikes a better balance with the fakeout intro, the bathroom brawl and the first big finale in a long while. Funnily its plot is a complete repeat of GP's but the continued threading of the franchise and a callback to a character in MI1 make it feel a bit fuller again.

[Neon Ignition]

Re: Extraction, I liked that scene and the attempt to outdo the one in the first film, there are some complex long shots in it but I felt I could see the cuts and CG too easily for it to impress as much as some in other films. Always appreciate the effort to do one though