[Film] Film 2023

Picked up The Mist on Blu-ray last week for 5p (!) at the car boot. Watched the black and white version included and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the better Stephen King books made into a film. Hadn't realised it was the same director who did The Green Mile and Shawshank (both shite imho). Recommended (the black and white version).

John Wick 4, 2hrs and 50mins of boring tripe. One film too far in the franchise in my opinion. The fighting was bland, obviously no story to speak of, and he may be the nicest man in Hollywood but Keanu's acting is atrocious. 3/10

Hatching. This is a subtitled film from Finland about a young gymnast who has a complete twat of a mother. The movie centres around the young girl caring for a birds egg which ends up hatching into a large bird/humanoid thing. For a while me and the Mrs thought it was quite a deep film about mental health, bulimia and the harm stress can cause a young mind but it wasn't, it was just an odd film. Somewhat enjoyable but a little too stupid for my liking. 5/10

Just thoroughly enjoyed Zee van Tijd, or Sea of Time.
Inspired by true events, a tragedy of a lost child, enduring love and a 30 odd year old secret.

Not the quickest of fillums, but gripping enough and lovely if you're in that sort of mode.

Grab a decent, chewy red, close the curtains and put yesterday's loss behind you

I watched the remake of Papillon last night, absolutely brilliant. Very interesting story, and all because he tried ripping off his boss.
Malik is amazing in just about everything, Hunnam was very good, as was Møller. 8/10

Just finished watching Ben Affleck's new film, Hypnotic. What a dribbling pile of shite. Thankfully only an hour and a half long but even that felt like a chore. Nothing of any interest happens and the characters constantly explain the plot to one another so you know what's going on. Horse shit, 2/10

Gabbafella said:

Just finished watching Ben Affleck's new film, Hypnotic. What a dribbling pile of shite. Thankfully only an hour and a half long but even that felt like a chore. Nothing of any interest happens and the characters constantly explain the plot to one another so you know what's going on. Horse shit, 2/10

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I don't know what your expectations were like. I saw the trailer and had very low expectations. I'm not saying it was good. But it was not as bad I was fearing, or maybe I was in the right mood. But still not good. It felt like the sort of film I would enjoy making fun of with a friend if we were watching at home 20 years ago. There were some early moments where it felt almost 1950s noir-ish. But it was clear from the trailer Ben’s story wasn’t quite what was being presented, with so many references to not trusting what he’s seeing, the ‘twist’ isn’t really as surprising as the film thinks it is. I mean, it may not be exactly what you first predict, but that a 'twist' is coming isn't surprising in th slightest.

Go in expecting the worst film ever, and you might not completely hate it.


The Little Mermaid
I generally liked rather enjoyed it (though was disappointed they have cut 'les poisson'). And the audience in my screening gave a small ripple of applause at the end.

The cartoon is probably my favourite Disney cartoon. I think I saw Basil the great mouse detective in the cinema, but this is the first I have a clear memory of watching (and going to McDonald’s and getting the happy meal bath toys related to it - flounder water squirter!).

I think my biggest worries were whether they would mess with the existing songs too much, and if they would add one ‘for the Oscar’. Part of your world was mostly untouched. Slightly different performance in parts, but not annoyingly so, or crazy pop starlet runs, so it was fine. Under the sea was reworked a little more significantly - instead of Sebastian be backed up by a chorus of sea creatures, Ariel is the backing singer. They added a ballad for Eric where he pines for his mystery saviour. Scuttle gets a rap song when she arrives to share the news that Eric is getting engaged (got a good reaction from the audience). There was an added song Ariel ’sings’ on land (it clearly is intended to be her thoughts singing, what with her not having her voice at that point).

The photo-realism of the animals was fine, mostly went with it. I did miss Flounder being so big in comparison. Eric was not as bland and forgettable as I was expecting (though was still kinda bland). Some choreography/photography felt amateurish and cheap at points, like it was clear some bits were on sets/in water tanks. Eric felt a bit too old for Ariel.

There were some other changes, some might annoy people (she drives the boat into Ursula). It took its time between some songs. Generally, I thought everyone did ok in their roles. No one really annoyed me.

Acker79 said:

I don't know what your expectations were like. I saw the trailer and had very low expectations. I'm not saying it was good. But it was not as bad I was fearing, or maybe I was in the right mood. But still not good. It felt like the sort of film I would enjoy making fun of with a friend if we were watching at home 20 years ago. There were some early moments where it felt almost 1950s noir-ish. But it was clear from the trailer Ben’s story wasn’t quite what was being presented, with so many references to not trusting what he’s seeing, the ‘twist’ isn’t really as surprising as the film thinks it is. I mean, it may not be exactly what you first predict, but that a 'twist' is coming isn't surprising in th slightest.

Go in expecting the worst film ever, and you might not completely hate it.

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I think the thing that bugs me with films like this is the constant step by step narration from the characters explaining their every move and back story. To me that says that the film makers don't trust that their story is strong enough to explain itself along the way or they think their target audience is too thick to figure it out for themselves so they spoon feed you.
Me and the Mrs both agreed that there's a good film tucked away behind all that, but it certainly wasn't the film that we watched and it was a waste of good actors.

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse
A follow up to 2018's Into the Spider-verse, which introduced Miles Morales and the multiverse. The films saw the peter parker of 'Earth 1610' get killed by Wilson Fisk while trying to stop Fisk from starting a device that allowed connections between different universes. This happened on the day Mile s Morales got bit by a spider, so he took up the spider-man mantle, with a little help from various versions of spider-man from across the 'spidervese'. They saved the day, destroyed Fisks' machine, the alternates went home.



Across the spider-verse picks up a year or so later. We meet one of the alternates, who is recruited to a special agency composed of (almost) all of the spider-men across the spiderverse, who have developed the technology to move between universes, and are using that to clean up the mess caused by the machine in the first movie. They didn't want Miles for... reasosn, and yet he ends up there.

I won't say any more than that, to try to avoid spoiling. I really enjoyed it. Heard a lot of people talking about going to see it again as I left (understandably so, like the first there is so much going on that it's easy to miss so many jokes, references, details.

Crazy animation, with a range of animation styles

The only downer for me, was that I forgot they had intended to tell a two part story, so it ends with a cliffhanger. 'Beyond the Spiderverse' is due out in March 2024. Other than that, I really enjoyed it.

How To Blow Up A Pipeline is now available to rent online.

If the title intrigues you and you're not #TeamPipeline, I suggest you give it a go.




It might lose a bit by not being on the big screen, but it'll give your speakers a good work out.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.

Apart from some good kit spotting, Maxpedition and Mechanix are present, this is fairly dull fare.

Plodding, boring and one dimensional, a decent half hour section where they are evading the Taliban, can’t save this White Saviour tale dressed up as honour and “paying your debts” from being little more than military porn.

Some enjoyable moments but overall a bit shit.

65

Shit.

My film man Fennessey is all over Past Lives.

It doesn't really sound like my thing, a 3 act, the path not travelled, romance, but he's talking Oscar nominations and it being the ultimate 'film then dinner' night out, as you'll need time to talk it through.

The Little Mermaid. I thought this was charming and Halle Bailey is going to be an A List star. She was superb. Great fun and a couple of belting songs. 84 out of 100

Acker79 said:

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse
A follow up to 2018's Into the Spider-verse, which introduced Miles Morales and the multiverse. The films saw the peter parker of 'Earth 1610' get killed by Wilson Fisk while trying to stop Fisk from starting a device that allowed connections between different universes. This happened on the day Mile s Morales got bit by a spider, so he took up the spider-man mantle, with a little help from various versions of spider-man from across the 'spidervese'. They saved the day, destroyed Fisks' machine, the alternates went home.



Across the spider-verse picks up a year or so later. We meet one of the alternates, who is recruited to a special agency composed of (almost) all of the spider-men across the spiderverse, who have developed the technology to move between universes, and are using that to clean up the mess caused by the machine in the first movie. They didn't want Miles for... reasosn, and yet he ends up there.

I won't say any more than that, to try to avoid spoiling. I really enjoyed it. Heard a lot of people talking about going to see it again as I left (understandably so, like the first there is so much going on that it's easy to miss so many jokes, references, details.

Crazy animation, with a range of animation styles

The only downer for me, was that I forgot they had intended to tell a two part story, so it ends with a cliffhanger. 'Beyond the Spiderverse' is due out in March 2024. Other than that, I really enjoyed it.

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I loved the first one. I’m still on the fence about the second one - I think a lot will depend on the outcome of number 3 in 2024.

Gabbafella said:

John Wick 4, 2hrs and 50mins of boring tripe. One film too far in the franchise in my opinion. The fighting was bland, obviously no story to speak of, and he may be the nicest man in Hollywood but Keanu's acting is atrocious. 3/10

Hatching. This is a subtitled film from Finland about a young gymnast who has a complete twat of a mother. The movie centres around the young girl caring for a birds egg which ends up hatching into a large bird/humanoid thing. For a while me and the Mrs thought it was quite a deep film about mental health, bulimia and the harm stress can cause a young mind but it wasn't, it was just an odd film. Somewhat enjoyable but a little too stupid for my liking. 5/10

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I felt the exact opposite about John Wick 4. Probably the best action film of its genre in years for me, and comfortably the best of the JW films after the dogs dinner that was the third film (a film I would struggle to rate as highly as 3/10).

sussex_guy2k2 said:

I felt the exact opposite about John Wick 4. Probably the best action film of its genre in years for me, and comfortably the best of the JW films after the dogs dinner that was the third film (a film I would struggle to rate as highly as 3/10).

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A work colleague agrees with you, says it was an amazing film, another work colleague agrees with me and says it's a tired franchise that should've been put to bed a while ago.
I'm sure you've probably seen them, but watch The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2. The former is better but imo better than the last two John Wick films by a country mile.

Watched Sharper on Apple TV+ last night and a decent, interesting thriller, with Julianne Moore, Justice Smith, et al. Having just watched the trailer, the morning after, I suggest you avoid it as it reveals FAR too much. Best to do as Mrs D and I did - go in just knowing it was a thriller! Enjoyable watching the things unfold and be revealed. The sort of things the trailer seems to give you on a plate...

sussex_guy2k2 said:

I felt the exact opposite about John Wick 4. Probably the best action film of its genre in years for me, and comfortably the best of the JW films after the dogs dinner that was the third film (a film I would struggle to rate as highly as 3/10).

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Nobody with Bob Odenkirk was the best action film of that ilk - Closest a film has come to the first John Wick (light story, insane action set pieces), although I think it was written by the same guy.

I think way back when Michael Bay started making them, my friend and I convinced ourselves that the live action transformers films were actually ok, at least the first couple. I recently re-watched them. At the time I think there was a frantic energy about Shia Lebeouf's performance that carried the film to a degree. Going back and re-watching after everything that followed with him, that ha taken some shine off.

I rewatched them a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of the recently released Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. While compared to the last three, the first two are ok, that is only by comparison to the latter movies. Take that away and they are not great. The 6th film, Bumblebee really is the best of them, and it's probably no coincidence that it centred on a human character and how getting involved in the autobots struggled impacted her and her life. Paramount pretty much refused to confirm Bumblebee as being a reboot, constantly referring to it as a prequel, but it didn't really fit that well, and has now been followed up with Rise of the Beasts, which fits even less well. Bumbelbee was set in the late mid-80s, and there is a bit of a time jump to mid 90s for this one. New human characters, and their relationship is forged through another autobot, Mirage. With Bumblebee taking a backseat through most of the movie.

It is not as good as Bumblebee, but not as bad as the Michael Bay directed 5. Some moments of amusement, the autobots have kept their more cartoon-adjacent look that they had iun Bumblebee. Joined this time by the Maximals from the Transformers spin off Beast Wars - tranformers who transform into animals instead of vehicles, basically. They need to stop a bad henchman from collecting a doohickey that would be used to bring evil boss to destroy earth.

Not likely to convert anyone into a transformers fan, but if you're already one, there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours. Like watching any of Bay's efforts...

I went to see The Flash today. It has had quite the production story, taking in the collapse of a Snyder-led DC expanded universe of movies, changes in power at WB resulting in this movie being thought of as a reset for the DC movie-verse. Then more changes with James Gunn and Peter Safran taking over DC movies and resetting everything, largely wiping the slate for DC movies. Then also off-set issues with Ezra Miller and the criticism to proceed with this movie and cancel the Batgirl movie instead.

I don't expect it to be a major hit, which is a shame, because despite all of that, I thought this was a massive amount of fun.

This is not an exact retelling of the Flashpoint Paradox comic story, but takes that basic premise and some key points. In both, the Flash goes back in time to save his mother, which would also save his father from being wrongly blamed for her murder. But this simple act has a knock on effect, not just on what happened after the moment, but what came before (there's a scene where this is explained fairly well enough with spaghetti), and the result is devastating for earth.

After saving his mother, Barry starts to return to 'now' but is disrupted and kicked out of the speed force as a point in his life when he is 18, and thus we end up with two Barry Allens, and this is where we see the ripple effect his butterfly has wrought.

Those changes mean instead of the standard Batman of the 'snyderverse', Ben Affleck, we see Michael Keaton return to the role. Instead of Superman landing on Earth, his cousin Kara Zor-El arrived, and was locked up by Chechnyan rebels. Zod shows up in the way he did in Man of Steel and tries to enact the plan to terraform a new Krypton on Earth. Barry, Hs younger version and batman have to save supergirl, and convince her to help save earth from Zod, before Barry can return home. What will he have to, or what is he willing, to sacrifice to save everyone?

It is packed with references, gags, easter eggs, nods, etc to previous versions of multiple DC superheroes. But more than just superheroes, there's a running gag about the star of back to the future, and so many things you might only get if you are a film nerd (or even a comic book film nerd). There's a moment that is a reference to a story Kevin Smith has told about his efforts to write a superman movie (just google 'kevin smith superman' and it comes up). That's the level of references I mean.

There is some dodgy CG. Some deliberately - there's a repeated set piece as Flash discovers he can travel through time more than the few seconds he does at the end of Zach Snyder's Justice League), then does so. This involves a "wall" of images from his life that are almost cartoonish in their appearance. It's jarring at first, but you get used to it, and I think it maybe helps with the film's big final set piece. But then there are also moments where it's meant to appear real - face superimposed on stand ins (there's a few scenes with two Barry Allens, I'm not sure Keaton and Shannon were overly happy about getting back into full costume.

I don't know if it will be held up as a great film, I've not seen any feedback that isn't praise retweeted by the flash twitter feed, so not sure what more neutral audiences are saying, so I don't know if I need to argue it being a good film, but I definitely thought it was a fun film.

Don't read the cast list before watching it.

Acker79 said:

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse
A follow up to 2018's Into the Spider-verse, which introduced Miles Morales and the multiverse. The films saw the peter parker of 'Earth 1610' get killed by Wilson Fisk while trying to stop Fisk from starting a device that allowed connections between different universes. This happened on the day Mile s Morales got bit by a spider, so he took up the spider-man mantle, with a little help from various versions of spider-man from across the 'spidervese'. They saved the day, destroyed Fisks' machine, the alternates went home.



Across the spider-verse picks up a year or so later. We meet one of the alternates, who is recruited to a special agency composed of (almost) all of the spider-men across the spiderverse, who have developed the technology to move between universes, and are using that to clean up the mess caused by the machine in the first movie. They didn't want Miles for... reasosn, and yet he ends up there.

I won't say any more than that, to try to avoid spoiling. I really enjoyed it. Heard a lot of people talking about going to see it again as I left (understandably so, like the first there is so much going on that it's easy to miss so many jokes, references, details.

Crazy animation, with a range of animation styles

The only downer for me, was that I forgot they had intended to tell a two part story, so it ends with a cliffhanger. 'Beyond the Spiderverse' is due out in March 2024. Other than that, I really enjoyed it.

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Back from seeing this and thoroughly enjoyed it. For me, a much more serious and darker film than the first, which is no bad thing. More concentration on the story than the (dazzling) mixture of animation styles. As @Acker79 says, difficult to discuss it without spoiling stuff. Oh and no mid or post credit scenes, although worth hanging around to watch the first part of the titles which felt like an animated Bond opening title sequence to me!

Funnily enough, it was so dense (as noted above "there is so much going on") that I, and my two boys (both 21) couldn't remember seeing ANY trailers before the film (although eventually remembered there was an interesting one for the Disney/Pixar Elemental. If there were any others, they obviously made no impression on us!