Watched any good movies recently?

[Kong Wen]

Infinity War was good, y'all.

If you still haven't seen Thor: Ragnarok, though, you owe it to yourself to check it out, mainly as a Taika Waititi vehicle. The man is a genius.

[Zyzyfer]

Infinity War was good, y'all.

If you still haven't seen Thor: Ragnarok, though, you owe it to yourself to check it out, mainly as a Taika Waititi vehicle. The man is a genius.

Piss off, ghost.

(Totally agree!)

[Dong Zhou]

Tried Carnival of Souls, an old horror but the visual and sound quality seems so poor now that it undermined its attempts at horror and seemed to be going at such a low pace. Tried Stephen King's 1922, creepy opening scene but the set up feels like it isn't setting up relations of the James family well particularly given the big decisions about to be made. Thomas Jane's heavy accented performance meant I was straining to understand dialogue at times

Watched coming of age Kings of Summer. Premise: Joe Toy (Nick Robinson) and best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso) are on the verge of adulthood but are deeply frustrated by their parents. After a party Joe and the strange Biaggio (Moisés Arias) find a clearing in the wood where Joe decides to build a home for the three of them to spend the summer, living off the land.

This is a film that manages to be better then its individual parts. A "hey I recognise" cast like Joy's family having Nick Offerman (as father) and Alison Brie as sister while Patrick's parents are Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson, they all start ok but grow as the film goes on. Once the three young men get to planning the home, their charm, friendship and sense of teen revolt carries the film. It has a sense of humour, it builds Joe well including his flaws, nice side characters like love interest Erin (Erin Moriarty). It had a bit of fun, it had characters we warmed to, a coming of age atmosphere and foolishness. We left it at the end with "that was fun" and a smile, we had a warm, nice time.

We also left with a "but", that it could have been even better, that there was some "wait, it didn't deal with" dissatisfaction. Cast was good but not great, romances were poor with main one making sense with likeable characters involved but a rushed build up and was never developed fully as a romance, secondary romance just happened involving a girl we barely knew. A lot of characters who turn up but get dropped and you only realize at the end they are not coming back even though it feels like strands unfinished. Even Patrick suffers from this, a likeable figure whose reason for joining the plan is well built up but he himself is a bit underdeveloped and gets dropped. This felt like an ensemble film but it turns out to be very much focused on Joe and his issues, this does lead to a well developed lead with his family issues and his own considerable flaws. However when those flaws combine for a scene that should have ramifications

his misogyny slipping out to Erin and his jealousy of Patrick

, it has the immediate impact... then he gets away with it for rest of film, instead of him dealing with the fall out, the others are "wrong." When it is 100% solely his fault.

Two things really lift with their humour. 1) Biaggio's is that of the strange figure whose answers or actions tend to be unexpected and throw both the audience and other characters off. Moisés Arias delivers his lines to perfection and the script provides entertaining baffled replies from those around him. 2) The police. Captain Davies (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is the sanest person in the building, that good sense provides humour in the craziness while Thomas Middleditch as her deputy engages in the crazy. When the police are on screen, the film goes to another level but they are rarely on screen.

Both: 6.5

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Watched western The Homesman. Premise: 1850's small town of Loup in the Nebraska Territory, three wives deemed to have gone insane. With the local men reluctant to take them back east to be returned to their families, the very capable but unmarried Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) decides to take them. Hiring drifter George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones, also directs), they have a long journey ahead...

Set up sees Cuddy with her desperation and her impressive confidence really laid out, while Swank's excellent performance leaves one wondering why she doesn't get big lead roles. Good scenes with preacher Reverend Dowd (John Lithgow) but one thing that keeps marring the first half is they do a bad job setting up the three wives, at one point I thought Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter) was two different people. The wives cast (Grace Gummer and Miranda Otto) do a good job and the basic ideas of why things went wrong for them are potentially intresting but they are never developed as characters and the way they are introduced is very confusing.

For the main part, tempted to say western road-trip with beautiful camera work by Rodrigo Prieto and a well made film. The main segment is of the carriage with the non-wives on the outside making the long journey, Brigges and Cuddy feeling their way around each other, dealing with their cargo (as it were), unexpected events either from the wives or from outside factors. The events tend to be intresting, the wives add something as observers and an unstable force, the main pairing have a very good chemistry and build up well with their differing attitudes with Cuddy a driving force.

The end phase does a big twist that doesn't have the impact it should

Cuddy's suicide, the acts that led to it well done but the death just... left us cold. Without Cuddy, Griggs leading is fine but it lacks that same driving spark and double team chemistry

and the film loses a bit of power. Then it gets to a bit that is meant to be full of lessons but they are coming in very near the end, done in little snippets and not tied together, it is drifting a little rather then ending strongly.

Both: 7.0

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Watched 4th Mythica franchise Mythica: The Iron Crown. Seems bigger budget then third film while it gets better balance between action and character (still too many action scenes!), introduces some steam punk style things like airships which feels odd given past films were more conventional fantasy with no such machines.

Enjoyable dynamics between the main group, a rival group has fun with mage Caia-Bekk (Ashley Santos) and Thorsten (James Gaisford) providing good sparks and exchanges, some great comedy with Paris Warner's princess. The big bad has his best role in the franchise so far and benefits from that, and a new big bad that came in saw Eve Mauro really really go over the top which didn't work. There is humour, some good surprises, a decent adventure but some of the dramatic moments don't quite work, too much action.

Both: 6.0

[Zyzyfer]

Watched Deadpool 2. I felt the first one was better all-around but this one was still very serviceable and a good watch for those who enjoyed the first one. Stakes felt a bit higher, Brolin and Zazie Beetz were great as Tha - errrr Cable and Domino, respectively.

[Sakae Wu]

Infinity War was probably the best MCU movie I've see yet.
But, I haven't yet seen most of the phase 3 ones(BP, Thor Ragnarok, Cap, Spiderman etc)
So, some parts were a little hard to figure out. All in all, pretty entertaining though!

favorite parts

Thanos/Brolin. Great job with him, star of the film imo.

Strange and IM's end fight with Thanos. Really good battle, even though they lost I give them an A for the effort.
Thor finally shows what a badass he can really be too.
Vision and the Scarlet Witch should have been waaaaay more powerful. SW is considered one of the strongest in Marvel comics. For Cap and Nat to have to save them just seemed off. (small complaint)

Drax the Comedian and the Guardians banter with Thor. Some pretty funny moments there I thought. I'm starting to really like Mantis but kinda getting tired of Rockets schtick. Groot comes through big time once again!

Ebony Maw. What a great villian, gave the heroes everything they could handle. He made the other 3 henchmen kinda forgettable from my viewpoint.

hoping to see in the next Avengers

Yeah, Captain Marvel's due up...but hoping for this guy done right>

Overall 8.5/10

[Zyzyfer]

Watched Brad's Status. Stars Ben Stiller as a middle-class white American man who feels envious of his upper-class white American male former classmates because they are more successful than him. If you want to get a glimpse into what that entails, this movie is for you. Otherwise, aside from a quirky soundtrack, this is pretty terrible stuff. What particularly bothered me was that, just when it seems like the film's underlying message is making that move toward something positive and wholesome...

...that obtaining wealth and fame often comes at a personal cost...

...it dips its toes in to test the waters, then scurries off in another direction entirely.

One line summed my feelings about the protagonist up perfectly: "Do you even know poor people?!?"

Verdict: Steer clear.

[Dong Zhou]

Watched Casablanca for the first time. There was a lot I liked after a slightly expostiony start, the music either by Max Steiner off screen or sung by Sam (Dooley Wilson), the easy charm and wit of Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) but most of all the world building. Casablanca felt like a place with lots of little stories that they followed through or giving fleeting but wonderful glimpses, all sorts of refugees, desperation, careful balance of power between French authorities, Germans and those underneath. The best moments resolved around those sort of things like the song-off or seeing the hopes of the German refugees and the desperation of the Bulgarians. Has an enjoyable ending

In the first half, there is a sense of constantly being really drawn in for a scene but then immediately afterwards feeling empty. The famed romance is a bit of a let down, I like Rick (Humphrey Bogart) as the saloon owner, those bits are really enjoyable, I like LaszloxIlsa as a couple but the Rick/Ilsa thing... there are a few moments of spark but Rick's general attitude towards females feels very dated now and very much the wrong partner. Also "Here's looking at you kid" is a really bad line for a romance.

[Gray Riders]

My brother and I went today to see Solo.

I really enjoyed it! Not a perfect movie (I feel it tried to cram too much of what he know about Han into a narrow time frame) but I found it very fun. I enjoyed recognizing some references to "Expanded Universe" material (I recognized a few things from some of the old Star Wars games, for instance).

I wonder if they're going anywhere with Darth Maul's appearance or if it was just a reference to the Clone Wars cartoon?

[Zyzyfer]

Watched Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom last night. It's pretty, but there isn't a whole lot else that the movie has going for it. I wouldn't quite go so far as to say it's hit Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen levels of burying critical regard for a franchise, it's more like one of the later Aliens franchise entries? Like it's taking the lore and potentially going in vaguely creepy and really stupid new directions with it?

Other points of note. It jumps on board with the trend "started" by the new Star Wars stuff of mirroring an earlier film in the series, it's not quite as blatant as Force Awakens had been, but this does have some pretty obvious parallels to the second Jurassic Park film. At least the last film felt like a "bigger and more explodey" version of the original film, y'know? They patched up the plot point that bothered me about the previous film (T-Rex and Blue bro'ing out at the end) but then beat the explanation over the head with plot. And speaking of beating the audience over the head, they also do that with some moral dilemmas presented in the film, which I don't think are going to resonate at all with viewers. They certainly didn't with me! Villains are also total caricatures, which has its pros and cons.

All that said, if you can overlook a lot of the stuff in the middle of the first act (beginning and end of it are actually spot on, it's just the middle of it that drags), and the ending...while the movie is definitely over the top, there are enough fun bits to make it an enjoyable cinematic experience if you go in with low-ish expectations.

Oh, and another thing that stunk, in my case specifically. The film shown in Korea had a few of the more violent scenes cut, which bummed me out, but was probably the right decision, because our theater had tons of kids there to see the film. Because dinosaurs, naturally.

[Kong Wen]

I watched Lawrence of Arabia (1962). I'm not familiar enough with films of that era to know whether some of the weird stuff it does is common or creative. It did manage to convey a complicated personality in a subtle way, which is an impressive achievement regardless.