Rate the last movie you watched.

Basic as a first language. With a strong Spanish accent. Makes no sense. An accent doesn't come from nothing. It comes from the words.

That galaxy far, far away is completely fantasy, so I don't know why you're even asking. It's not supposed to be our universe. Though, they might not even be speaking English. Perhaps English is just the translation of the most common language and humanoids in Star Wars.

Paprika - 7/10

Took me too damn long to watch it but it was great. I gotta check out Satoshi Kon's other movies now.

Watched The Handmaiden this evening. Twas my first Park film and I really loved it. I was not expecting the twists and turns in the storyline and I loved the interactions between the two female leads.

@mage_ said:

Kon is my favorite anime film director. His movies are great with Millenium Actress being my personal favorite. Perfect Blue is miserably depressing, but great. You might want to clear your schedule up for "crawl into a ball and feel miserable time" after watching that one.

@jiggajoe14: I have to see them all. And paranoia agent.

But what about regional accents in the same country?

@ezekiel: This is completely absurd. You write everything off as "it's fantasy" and then complain about a guy having an accent. And FYI, there are plenty of people that speak English as their first language and still have a strong foreign accent. I don't know why you think it would be impossible.

Still affected by the words. You can't get the Spanish sound from English words.

Species. Worm creatures aren't sexy, no matter how hot your lead actress is. 2/5

@ezekiel: These are some weird problems to have with Rogue One.

I have plenty more, but I already shared most of them when the movie came out.

Alien Covenant. Bad movie 2/5

Escape From New York doesn't hold up well at all, especially when compared to Big Trouble in Little China. 2/5.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was ok. Kind of a fun beginning and the ending was pretty good, but that movie has a slow middle. Between splitting up the group, having half of them sitting around and the other half in prison made it feel like the movie was stalled for an hour. Overall it was fine. 3/5

I did manage to see it in D-Box, so experiencing the vibrations and the seat movement for myself was some good dumb fun. For the first 20 minutes, I kept laughing and whispering "This is so dumb".

ATM (2012) - 2/5

Pretty good premise ruined by HUGE, NUMEROUS plot issues. Many times I was saying to myself "Why don't they do this?" and "Wait, why don't they just...?" and it made it really hard to get into the movie when the people in it were so unbelievably dumb. Also, the ending was a big let down. No reasons for what happened or why, no cleverness, no intrigue. Really disappointing.

The Caller (2011) - 3/5

Pretty cool, certainly spooky, but a little uneven overall. I really liked this quite a bit even with it's faults. I didn't really love the ending, but there were a lot of really creepy moments that I found left an impression on me. I would say keep an open mind and don't read anything about the movie!!! This is one where you want to go in completely blind.

Logan (2016) - 4/5

This was a really good end to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Hopefully they stick with it because I feel like they really put a bow on that character. It's a hard watch in that it's really bleak. I got major Last of Us vibes from it (of course). But, in the end, I really liked that they had the guts to do such a serious story with such a kind of sad ending to a lot of fan favorite characters. Really good, so much so that I want to watch it again and really just take it in. Plus, X-23 is the bomb. Awesomely realized from the comics.

Yeah, I definitely call bullshit on Star Destroyers being able to fly in high gravity. They're too big. Why would they build them in space if they could do that?

Gallery

Why don't the Star Destroyers around Hoth fly closer to the battle? Why would they even need to send down AT-ATs in drop ships?

A walk to remember, only because I was forced and half an hour in, the chick started crying like a torture victim, which kept on going for the remaining of the movie. I'd say a solid 1/5, and that's only because I made it through the movie.

PS I'm not calling her back.

The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

Meh, it was okay, I was not expecting much anyway. I think the movie had too many characters, it could have done with the cast being cut in half. That way teh focus could have been on a few animals with a more intertwined relationships and that would have allowed for a tighter story. The nice parts is it on Netflix if you even have a mild interest it is there to watch.

It had some funny parts but it's forgettable. My kids love this movie though.

My kids are finally getting into some stuff that I like, which is both a blessing and a curse. So here's what I've seen with him recently, including the number of times I've watched it with them; there's also some stuff in here that's not amazing, but is alright,

Ponyo (Probably about 9 times now) - I still think this is a top 3 of Miyazaki. The other two would be Porco Rosso and Castle in the Sky. Just a perfect movie for kids, brisk, inoffensive, fun, and beautiful. 5 out of 5

My Neighbor Totoro (Probably 5 times) - Good movie, but I remember there being more Totoro when I saw it originally. It's good, not great. 4 out of 5

Sing (The whole movie once, the last 20 minutes about 15 times) - It's not a bad film but it's pretty boring until the last 20 minutes. That's the part my kids love. 3 out of 5

Angry Birds (Probably 10 times) - My kids lovvvvveee this movie. I was really really worried based on the trailer that it would be terrible but I think it gets a lot of unnecessary hate. It's not some high-minded thought piece, it's just a slapsticky fun film. 3 out of 5

Logan - Lived up the hype, i think the movie would have been just as good pg-13 but i'm glad they went all out with the character in a movie. Best movie i've seen in a while, haven't seen the last x-men movie yet so not sure how it ties into the actual movie canon. Also best use of Charles xavier in anything i can remember.

10/10

XXX: The Return of Xander Cage

This movie was over the top and dumb and I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than I expected. It helps that it is very self-aware. The inclusion of martial arts action stars like Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa definitely made some of the action scenes exciting. The writing is very cheesy and downright terrible at times but it does suit the overall tone of the movie. Some of the scenes rely too heavily on CG that is not very well done. If you like dumb action films then you might just find yourself enjoying this one. 3/5

@banefirelord: watched Escape for the first time a few months ago and man that was rough to watch. It's weird to me how highly regarded this is amongst the film critics I follow. It's unanimously praised, and as someone watching it for the first time with plenty of context it feels like it's all nostalgia fueled.

@sloppydetective: it's a pretty low budget movie of the time. I don't think it's Carpenters best, but it's enjoyable. If you're younger and didn't see it years ago I can understand why it might not hold up. I had a recent experience with my wife and The Goonies. She's actually older than me but had never seen it. As we were watching, I was having a good time and laughing a lot while she just looked confused. Afterwards she had me explain why I liked it because she just didn't get it at all. It's a product of it's time I guess.

Guy Ritchie's take on King Arthur is surprisingly enjoyable entertainment with a pretty basic plot and some good Jude Law chewing the scenery. I like the look of the film - namely I like the way Camelot looks and the way the bad guy looks in his crazy flaming skeleton man form. Solid action sequences and some moments of the snappy sort of dialog one expects from a Guy Ritchie film. I wouldn't call this a great movie, but I'd call it a lot of fun. 3/5

As a side note, this was the first film I've seen since I moved to Germany. I'm very impressed with the quality of their dubbing! The dude who voiced Jude Law's character was particularly good.

I think dubbing is quite an interesting area of film and film history. I'm not a fan of watching dubbed films either but I think we might be victims of our era on that one. Films from the 60s and 70s, particularly European ones, seem to frequently have been dubbed in all versions. I think this is partly due to the limitations of technology. I believe I'm right in saying that the reason Herzog had to redub all the dialogue in Aguirre: The Wrath of God is because they couldn't get a good recording on site due to the noise of the river. Supposedly, neither the German or English versions feature the voice of the star, Klaus Kinski, because he demanded too much money to go back into the studio.

There were also occasions where films were dubbed over because the international nature of the production made it necessary. In Once Upon a Time in the West, the female lead (Claudia Cardinale) had all her lines dubbed over by someone else for the English release, along with a number of other actors. I think I'm right in saying that in a number of spaghetti westerns, Italian actors would actually say their lines in Italian and have the English dubbed over.

Even now, lines will often be switched in the edit, usually by inserting the voice from a different take, or perhaps a later ADR session, and putting it on top of a reverse shot of the actor. It's hard to disagree that you lose something of the performance in those older films, though.

I watched two films today: John Wick which I thought was OK. Maybe not as revelatory as the reaction to it suggested. I quite enjoyed the silliness of the weird, super sophisticated and regulated criminal world that it created, but thought the action sequences got quite samey. It was fun, and on Amazon Prime so I can't complain.

Also watched Bad Moms, which I remember thinking looked OK when it came out, if only for Kathryn Hahn. I was very wrong because it's actually complete trash. Part of it is just that I find Mila Kunis a very irritating presence at the best of times, but it's not just that. It totally dodges any of the hard questions about its subject matter, giving them the most milquetoast treatment possible, whilst still having huge stretches of heavy handed moralising. The "villains" of the piece are so cartoonishly horrible that the struggles of the protagonist(s) never feel real or relatable. Their problems never seem to actually be stopping them doing what they want to do, and when they do decide to become bad moms, they do it in the safest, most PG-13 way possible. At the end of the film it tries to "rescue" the main villain by giving her a bit of human emotion, but this comes literally out of nowhere and seems like a cynical attempt to copy the format/structure of Bridesmaids almost exactly. That is something of a running issue with the film, but it never comes even close to getting past the very surface of what makes Bridesmaids great. It feels like a germ of an idea desperately scrabbling around for a plot, papering over the cracks with a lame attempt at right-on politics. I honestly enjoyed Dirty Grandpa more than this film.

I don't know how anyone can tolerate dubbed live action. I really don't.

Yeah, I refused to go to the cinemas when I went back to Europe. Well, at least in Brussels, they kept the original audio, with subtitles. I was invited to The Dark Knight and Wall-E. But in Germany, Puss in Boots (which I went with a class to) was re-dubbed, and after that I just stopped going.

@ezekiel: I admit I've watched some of those old Godzilla movies dubbed because those already have a super cheesy charm.

Not the original one though. When I finally get around to watching Gojira, that'll be sub

@horseman6: it's funny you mention The Goonies. A movie podcast I like (Quarter to Three) does a fund raiser where they randomly watch one of the films their donors suggest, and last year it was The Goonies. None of them had seen it before and they all pretty much hated it. A lot of viewers that grew up with the film were surprised to hear this. I skipped watching the movie and just listened to the podcast because I remembered watching it on tv in the mid 2000's and not being into it then. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.

Someone reminded me on another forum that the Star Destroyers (or their predecessors) in Attack of the Clones are landed. So I guess the visual in Rogue One does make sense, if you accept the prequels.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.952072-Does-Cassian

Germany, Year Zero (1948) - 7/10

Hacksaw Ridge - Pretty good. I'm glad Mel's directing again.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) - Temped to give this a perfect score.

Logan-5/5

I don't like Wolverine as a character and most of the X-men movies are steaming turds but Logan was fantastic and might be the best comic book movie ever.

Lego Batman

Loved it. Loved the references and call backs and the humor, the Lego movies also look amazing, they do some spectacular work with the lighting.

@ravelle: I agree with you about the Lego movies, but are you at interested in Lego Ninjago? I don't know how that movie will work, but I hope it is great.

The Girl With All The Gifts.
It's another zombie movie, so you might stop reading right there depending on how you feel about that. It went the way of The Last of Us with it's zombies, having it be a fungal infection that turned everyone. Obviously The Last of Us didn't invite the idea of zombies coming about from fungal infection, but the comparison matches.
It plays with the zombie genre which I personally like. I know a lot of people stick to the George Romero definition of a zombie, but showcasing the same type of zombie again and again and again becomes ridiculously boring to me. So I like when someone finds a way to change it up. There are a few moments that play with the zombies really well in this, to the point where I don't want to mention what that is for fear of ruining genuine surprise.

The movie looked like it was working with a limited budget but did a very good job of working around that constraint. The same movie in the hands of someone less skilled probably would have wound up a bad cgi, bad greenscreen mess, but the people who made this movie hid the flaws and showed the strengths well.

The characters are unfortunately the worst part of the movie. The minute someone is on screen you've figured out their entire character, if not their entire arc from beginning to end, and a few of them die of stupidity rather then any meaningful reasons. The actress playing the main character is good enough though, that I was able to wave most of that away without being too distracted.

Long story short, it was alright, the newness it brought to the genre mixed with some really cool moments outweighed the cliche characters long enough that it felt worth watching. Also, hey look, Glenn Close is in something, hi Glenn Close!

6.7/10

The Dark Crystal 3/5

Don't be fooled by the twisted, surreal exterior; this is pretty much a straight-up Hero's Journey.

Ninjago became a thing when I became an adult so I'm not really familar with lego ninja's but if has the same quality as the other two I'll surely check it out.

Everybody Wants Some

4/5

I thought it was really solid. Liked the characters and liked how they showed off the different styles of the 80's.

@ravelle: Right there with you!

Have you seen Dazed & Confused, and if you have how do you think they compare?

I've seen both, and enjoyed them both, but it's just a question I'm interested in. In a lot of ways Everybody Wants Some!! is a more restrained and mature film - although it is more consciously funny. At the same time, I think something about Dazed & Confused relatively immature (or maybe I should say youthful) outlook captures something more universal.

Ratchet & Clank 2/5 (A slow opening, no middle and rushed ending)

Good Will Hunting 5/5 (Robin Williams does it again)

We recently had a bad movie night, where we each picked a movie. Whichever movie lasted the shortest amount of time before we agreed to turn it off was the winner.

The Room - Hilariously bad. Four awkward sex scenes in the first 30 minutes, two of which focus on the star / writer / directors leathery ass for way too long. Awful dialogue, awful "plot," just complete garbage all the way around but a great movie to laugh at.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie - NO. NOOO. NOOOOOOOOO. Not even bad in a way that's funny.

State Property - A turd of a movie that plays out as a rappers power fantasy, but with some "so bad it's good" moments.

Alien - Covenant; 7/10. Okay addition to the series. Looks and sounds great but the plot and cast is kinda disappointing. Fassbender saves the rest of the unforgettable cast. Maybe Scott should have given the reigns to Blomkamp already.

Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle; 7/10. Lots of bang for the buck. Great fight scenes with exploding bits and blood fountains.

For some reason me and my wife rented the Assassin's Creed movie today.

Even with our expectations set somewhere in the mariana trench, it was disappointing.Somehow the first half an hour manages to boringly rehash stuff you already know about from the games, and also completely fail to adequately set up the story. It's like they started out thinking they'd need to ease in the non-gamers, and then decided that they didn't care about that section of the audience. The characters are absolutely tissue thin. Some time is spent establishing the motives of Jeremy Irons' villain, and some of that is then unceremoniously moved onto Marion Cotillard's character as well, but almost no effort is given to giving the audience any sense of Fassbender's character or motivations, beyond a strand about his resentment of his father that goes basically nowhere. That's before you get on to the numerous supporting characters who drift in and out of the movie with almost no impact. It felt like once every 5 minutes we would be sarcastically yelling "oh no, not that guy" as another nameless character is killed, in a way the film seemingly wants us to care about.

Some of the action is OK, but the past and present are frequently laid over each other in a very confusing way. It's an ambitious way of trying to represent the confusion of the main character, but given the total collapse of the narrative about 5 minutes in, it just ends up spoiling any chance that the film might be enjoyed as a straight action adventure movie.

The ending is perhaps the worst element of it all. The climactic action sequence barely registers; look away for a second and you'll miss it, just in time to see Marion Cotillard tell you to come back for the sequel. It's a wet fart of an ending that feels like they just decided to pack it in at the point where cast lost patience with turning their considerable talents on this absolute dross.

I'd love to see some behind the scenes inside baseball on the making of the film, tbh. I thought Justin Kurzel's Macbeth had a lot of vision, even if it was a histrionic, overly macho presentation of the play. A very small amount of that vision is present in the - sadly too few - historical scenes, but in a very muted way, but it doesn't say great things about his future prospects as a director, really.

The mist. 3/5

Enjoyable but a bit heavy handed when it comes to the social comentary. That ending though!

Star Trek: Beyond

Passably entertaining but lacking in character arcs or thematic direction which kind of just relegates it to sci-fi adventure movie # 457. Felt sort of like an overly long episode in that way. The Fast and Furious guy did not seem like a good fit for director but he did manage to solve the Scotty problem. Still there was nothing to hate about it.

3/5

The Mist for me as well.

I couldn't find the director's cut to rent (black and white version), so I turned my saturation all the way down and watched it. I tell you, that made the CG stuff pop so much more, and gave a classic Universal feeling; plus, fire looks so good in B&W, making that scene much more effective.

All the characters are split into two simple camps at some point -- logical problem solvers and the terrified congregation -- but there are a dozen main ones who are very different from each other and likable, from a badass, pea-slinging older woman with a sound mind, to a quiet store clerk full of surprises.

It's like a more serious Tremors, another flick I love. It was nice to see a creature movie with a more modern social angle. It's more about the latter, of course; society becoming its own worst nightmare, spitting in the face of reason and getting into bed with primitive beliefs. Really well done from Mr. Darabont; less sentimental than Shawshank and Green Mile, though, almost surprisingly. The ending didn't do it for me at all, but it is a better one for a movie than the novella's would've been.

Solid 7.