UKC

Some seen in July but I didn't have time to post reviews. 

The Incredibles 2.
7.5/10
Mildly discombobulating seeing a sequel taking place almost immediately after the original, but separated in real time by more than a decade. Rather tedious opening action scene but it picks up and provides a non-preachy, no-agenda "feminist" slant on things as Elastigirl becomes the dominant protagonist. NOt much to say about it other than that it is simply pretty good. 

Hotel Artemis. 6/10
Enjoyable-enough nonsense but it felt like it was originally intended as perhaps a 4 hour mini-series and we were just watching the final episode bringing a bunch of characters together for a grand finale, as there was so little character background which you really felt was absent. Poor Sofia Boutella seems destined to do nothing but high-kicking action support roles. Jodie Foster was a decent lead, Jeff Goldbulm phoned in his cameo.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout
8.5/10
Seen this twice now and the score stands. Quite probably the best in the whole franchise, which is surprising for a sixth film 22 years after the first. It barely puts a foot wrong (all the predecessors suffer from at least one major flaw). Great to see the return of Sean Harris as a bad guy. Splendid twists and chicanery and good rubber-mask use. Stupendous lengthy Paris sequence....but interestingly the memorable parts are not the massive set-pieces but some smaller stuff such as Ethan and "White Widow" exiting the nightclub.

Ant-Man and The Wasp
9/10
I gave the first Ant-Man film 9/10 and said it might have been 10/10 if I'd seen it in 3D (just for the "quantum realm" sequences).
I saw this one in 3D and it wasn't as effective as I'd hoped, but never mind that. 
This is a great sequel, maintaining the comedic tone (and the somewhat in-your-face mocking of The Avengers) of the first film. Great chemistry between all the leads, and actually a nice complex and sympathetic antagonist (indeed it only loses a point because I thought the protagonists should have dealt with the antagonist(s) differently, and I'd hoped for more conflict with another major character). 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

last night I watched "The Night Strangler" for the first time since the 1970s, the strangest murder investigation story I've ever seen and one which I remember vividly seeing 40 years ago.   Strangely I did a search looking for the film a few days ago, without knowing its name and found its name and a day or so later it turned up on the TalkingPictures freeview channel when I was flicking through the obscure late night schedule.

I found it highly entertaining, strangely engaging and an odd mixture of humour and crime which reminded me a bit of the much later Dragnet film. Worth a viewing.

In reply to wercat:

Is that a Kolchak film?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Two on netflicks

The hateful eight - hateful! 1/10

For a few dollars more - the perfect antidote 9/10

In reply to Blue Straggler:

yes

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Rewatched The Quick And The Dead with my eldest the other day.  An almost perfect rainy afternoon film; action, drama, pathos, humour and tension. It looks great, has an all star cast and doesn't ever take itself too seriously. Can't understand why it never quite made cult status. 9/10.

In reply to Stichtplate:watched Calibre last night on Netflix which was very captivating. 8/10

 

In reply to Stichtplate:

I do like it but it suffers from - despite as you say never taking itself TOO seriously - simply not being actually comedic anywhere. Crowe is a bit too moody in it etc. But yeah what a cast, imagine DiCaprio and Crowe getting third and fourth billing these days.

 

i read an interview with Sam Raimi who said it didn’t quite work as he’d wanted - do you remember all the weird angular shots of the clock tower? He said they’d hoped that clock tower would almost become a character in itself but they could never really make it work.

 

love the scene of Crowe buying a gun from Leo

”this gun shoots straight, I wouldn’t sell it if it didn’t” , and you do (correctly) believe him

 

will have to revisit it soon, it’s been a while. Cheers

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yeah, great scene. Almost on a par with this...

youtube.com/watch?v=SR3aIzfNMXM&

Edited to get a clip in English.

 

In reply to JJ Krammerhead III:

Thought it was shite too. When is Quentin Tarantino's mental age finally going to reach 18?

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I thought Reservoir Dogs and Inglourious Basterds were masterpieces

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Hotel Transelvainia 3. 

3/10

Terrible film but a great option if you fancy a nap!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Two excellent contrasting films, about two of Britain's most successful bands, that I watched back-tto-back...

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_beatles_eight_days_a_week_the_touring_...

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_rolling_stones_ole_ole_ole_a_trip_acro...

Ron Howard's film charts how the Beatles grew to hate touring and puts the band's changes in the context of the politics of the time (but could do with more on the the later years when they were musicakly at their best) whereas the Stones movie charts how they are still going and thriving on touring, with the first ever major rock concert in Cuba (maybe with too much focus on their friendship than the context...still intimate and hard to dislike).

In reply to Offwidth:

Thanks. I knew about the Ron Howard one but did not know about the Stones film

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Bet you haven't heard of this one either:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/we_are_the_best/

3 girls on the edge of teenage life form a Punk band in 1982 Stockholm. Pitch perfect like their lead guitarist.

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I saw the wonderful, gentle, thought-provoking Leave No Trace last week. I see you reviewed it last month and gave it 8.5/10. I think I'd give it even more than that. 9+. It's really hard to find anything about it to criticise, and just about everything to praise. It makes no 'Hollywood'-style mistakes. What an amazing director Debra Granik is. Certainly a film I'd like to see again.

In reply to Offwidth:

I HAVE heard of that one, it arrived on the UK arthouse circuit a few years ago with a fair amount of fanfare, although I did not manage to get to a screening as there were none that were particularly convenient for me so it was looking like a £30 night out to see it!

 

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Glad you enjoyed it Gordon. Out of interest, what is a 'Hollwood'-style mistake?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I dare say that you would like the films of Kelly Reichart, notably her first collaboration with the continually astonishing Michelle Williams, “Wendy and Lucy”

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Typo. I meant Kelly Reichardt

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Exaggerating everything, tweaking everything upwards to increase 'the drama' (and also aesthetically: ordinary people depicted as very good-looking/beautiful; ditto jungles/woods - here truthfully shown to be rather repulsive and very unamenable). There was plenty of suspense as it was, and almost none of our worst fears were fulfilled. We hear gunshots, see main character inert in stream, think he may have been shot. He hasn't; he's simply fallen and hurt himself very badly. We see and hear bears, and continually expect a bear attack. It doesn't happen. Also, I was rather certain it was going to end with a huge conventional 'showdown' between protagonists and authorities/police. Didn't happen. The end, though sad, was nice in a gentle way. As were most of the characters. Was there really one single nasty character in the whole story? No. The dramatic psychological plight of the main character was quite enough.

Extra point. Why 'Hollywood'-style mistake? Because it makes the story less believable, thus less convincing and less effective.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

 

thanks for your considered reply. I think I mentioned Captain Fantastic as a reference point in my review of Leave No Trace.

although still a good film, Captain Fantastic pretty much makes all the mistakes you describe ! And they were very much “cliche” mainstream types of mistakes , incongruous in a film that appears to have an independent edge. That’s why I bristle at the age old pejorative use of “Hollywood” when non-studio films fall back on old tropes (I don’t know if Captain Fantastic was a studio film)

I digress!

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yes, it was possibly a bit cheap of me to use the term 'Hollywood'. Not really necessary.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

 

The thing is, when the Hollywood studio machine/formula works, it works so very well indeed. 

A daft little fun film called Game Night was released earlier this year. Aside from exceptionally well shot and edited, with a lean screenplay and good comic performances, it offers nothing new, nothing subtle or nuanced, no deep insight into the human soul etc....

 

 

Yet it is the most purely enjoyable thing I’ve seen in years. Aside from some frankly forgivable plot holes, it’s a film in which everything just WORKS and in many ways it feels like something that only the Hollywood machine could turn out.

I would actually like to know your thoughts on it. I’ve seen it three times in the cinema and once on DVD!

 

In reply to Stichtplate:

Thanks, After 10 seconds of the clip I turned it off as you have inadvertently reminded me how embarrassingly long it is since I watched The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, and I should watch the whole thing before enjoying clips from it...

 

In reply to Stichtplate:

Thanks, After 10 seconds of the clip I turned it off as you have inadvertently reminded me how embarrassingly long it is since I watched The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, and I should watch the whole thing before enjoying clips from it...

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The Lego Movie

Excellent fun but not quite as outstandingly so, or as adult friendly, or as 'fan' tastic as Lego Batman. The short Will Ferrell live action bit was the only disappointment.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lego_movie/

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The Equalizer 2
3.5/10

I didn't exactly expect greatness or even "goodness" but I thought it would be a decent 6 or 6.5/10, solid unoriginal action to fill a couple of hours where I needed to switch off and have full escapism after an overlong work day. 

It was however way beneath my modest expectations. A few interesting glimmers here and there have saved it from an even lower score, but my goodness it was so bad. I don't want to spend time writing about it but the main criticism is that was pretty incoherent and all over the place - essentially I spent 70 minutes waiting for it to get going, then 50 minutes willing it to end

In reply to Blue Straggler:

For those who like zombies and foriegn language output, Train to Busan is a must see.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/train_to_busan

Also enjoyed the steam punk craziness of Castle in the Sky... the subtitled Japanese version of this:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/castle_in_the_sky_1989/

In reply to Offwidth:

Castle in the Sky (or, as I've always called it, Laputa the Flying Island) is one of my all time favourite films and after much deliberation I've decided that it is the best of Miyazaki's Ghibli films simply due to not getting bogged down with any preaching, yet still packing in a lot of story and characterisation.
The whole sequence that starts with the awaking of the robot and finishes with Pazu plucking Sheeta from the ramparts, is for my money the greatest single action sequence ever put together regardless that it is "only" cel animation. 

It's one of the few posters I have hanging in my house, a French poster of it (from the mid 00s re-release)

Gorgeous theme music too. And that opening credit sequence showing the entire history of man taking to the air and coming down with a crash. And that pre-credit sequence. And the depiction of mine work. And the car/train chase. And the utterly insane body count for a childrens' film (thousands of soldiers falling out of the clouds....)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Indeed... the psychopathic king remarks on the falling army: "just like rubbish". 

Have you seen the English language version?... I struggle to remember an example of anime that I didnt think was better with subtitles.

In reply to Offwidth:

 

I have seen the 1989 English language dub (incidentally Rotten Tomatoes listing it as a 1989 film refers to this dub. It was produced and released in Japanese in 1986) which I recorded from an ITV 3am(!) screening in early 1993 having seen the last 40 minutes of the film during a more sensible ITV midday screening in 1992. 
That 1989 dub is actually pretty acceptable for a kids' film. 
I could not get through the Disney dub with its name actors, not that they were bad but it was that Pazu had such a deep voice and he is meant to be 10 or 11. I've seen it subtitled. 
I think some of these anime films actually work better with a good dub because there is so much going on visually that you are bound to miss stuff through reading. 
Howl's Moving Castle, with Emily Mortimer and Christian Bale voicing it, was very good. I haven't seen it in Japanese. 
I think it's largely a case of "which version did you see first", as to whether a dub is more effective. I would never apply a blanket "the original is always best". For one thing, I don't understand the vocal nuances of spoken Japanese, so I am bound to lose some dramatic impact. 
I attended a talk once by Gary Rydstrom, a legendary Hollywood sound engineer who also worked hard on overseeing the big-name Disney dubs of the Miyazaki/Ghibli films. A lot of care, love, respect and effort goes into this work. Yes the overall aim is commercial, to get them seen by more people, but there is really an art to it. 

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

You really are a treasure at times.

In reply to Offwidth:

Mining community depiction inspired by a visit Miyazaki made to Wales in the early 1980s where he learned about the pit closures, strikes and desperation.

Original title Laputa The Flying Island inspired by Swift's Laputa in Gulliver's Travels; Miyazaki didn't know the "pun" of "Laputa" (la puta being Spanish for the whore/bitch); he simply liked the word.

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

It's still August.  One word - Blackkklansman.

In reply to Deadeye:

Have you seen it?