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[MOVIE] JANUARY 2016 DISCUSSION


RIPPA

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Just because I am home from all our Christmases - doesn't mean the watching of the kids movies has ended

 

I see Inside Out and Minions in my future before the weekend is up.

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Watched Minions with the kids last night. I pretty much hated it. A quick run over to Rotten Tomatoes tells me I'm not exactly alone. It has a 55% on RT yet virtually every review on the front page is positive. I was done with this movie before the first scene was over. 

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In my experience: avoid the front page of RT reviews. Click on the "Top Critic" option; that tends to cut out the illiterate bloggers and take you right to the actual professionals who do this for a living. You get a better spread of reviews from them than you do from the larger overall critical world.

(Or: just go to Tim Brayton's "Antagony and Ecstasy" blog. For my money, Brayton is the best movie critic alive, mixing deep academic analysis with an omnivorous populist edge. He's the kind of hardcore masters-degree-in-film-theory fellow who still has notions such as "y'know, I should review all the Disney animated features" or do a special "obscure slasher flicks" series every summer. And he didn't like Minions either.)

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So I Married an Axe Murderer:  Literally, every time I see this movie on television, I am reminded: "Oh, this is a great, fun little movie!"

 

Then I forget about it again. Till it's on again.

 

Because it just is that type of film.   

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Wreck it Ralph was on the telly, and my lad said he hadn't seen it in a few years (his big sisters liked it, but they grew up and moved out of the house, and he's a bit too Boy to voluntarily load a Disney movie into the DVD player (I have taught him well)). I hadn't actually seen it before. Sowe watched it, and...

 

Wreck it Ralph was every saccharine Disney Princess movie ever, cloaked in a thin patina of videogame history to try and trick you into thinking you weren't watching a Disney Princess movie. But if you're watching it to see loads of old videogame characters out of character, turn it off after the first five minutes. I think The Lego Movie basically stole this concept and did it so much better, and so much less formulaically, that it basically erased Wreck it Ralph from the collective memory.

 

I also watched the first half of Red, with Bruce Willis and them. It was really good. This is probably more like what the Die Hard movies should have turned into, rather than what they actually became, except Willis in this is a Jason Bourne unstoppable killing machine guy, and John McClane was more of a guy who's only exceptional quality was his never say die never give up attitude - but he wasn't the invincible, invisible can do anything superman guy that Willis is in Red. Even though McClane does become that unstoppable force in the later, suckier Die Hards... right when the interesting thing to do with the character would be to have him slow down and start showing his age and how carrying the weight of the world has worn him down, instead he's a fucking Terminator now.

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Wreck it Ralph was every saccharine Disney Princess movie ever

I think having the movie's "princess" be a dirty homeless urchin, voiced by Sarah Silverman, tended to cut way down on the saccharine factor. Especially when she plays that mean joke on the other little girls at the end, making them think that they're all going to be executed.
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Being totally honest - I actually got a little misty when Ralph is going over his "Bad Guy Oath" as he loads up that last punch. He feels as though he is a total screw up and so all he has left is to sacrifice himself for his best friend to make sure that she survives. I'm pretty soft though. I cried at the end of Terminator 2 when I was like 12 because I didn't understand why Arnie had to die. I kept saying: "He could go and be a lumberjack or live on an island and no-one would ever know he was a robot!"

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Wreck-It Ralph hired Jerry Buckner to write a "Buckner and Garcia"-style song about Ralph, so I can never hate it.  I was disappointed that all the wacky video game stuff kind of evaporates after Ralph lands on Sugar Rush, but it's goofy fun and Jane Lynch, John C Reilly, Sarah Silverman and Alan Tudyk are all awesome. (Though it's a little weird hearing Tudyk do Ed Wynne playing the Mad Hatter, and do it so well).

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I loved Wreck It Ralph and I typically hate anything Disney related.

 

The Revenant was pretty great.  It could have been a bit shorter, but it's one of the best looking movies I've seen in a while and DiCaprio went full Daniel Day Lewis in this.  If he gets the little golden statue for this he'll totally be deserving.

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I just finished up with Bone Tomahawk and there are several things to say. 

 

1. It has the best (and funniest) dialogue I've heard anyone since Tarantino put in a film in a long time. 

 

2. S. Craig Zahler is automatically my boy, being an ex-writer of Metal Maniacs, so I am kinda biased, 

 

3. This movie is FUCKING. GREAT. 

 

It may not hit all your expectations, it may not be exactly what you figured, it may flip your wig or piss you off sometimes (there are moments in this that Tarantino himself I'm sure jumped up and down in his personal theater's chair watching). If this is the first film I've seen this year, and having planned on Hateful Eight and Revenant next, I'm already standing in some high cotton, especially as far as so-called Westerns. Do yourself a favor, don't read a review, just rent it. It's got Kurt Russell and the owl guy from Watchmen and a completely unrecognizable Richard Jenkins in the desert. What more do you need to know?!

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Also a completely unrecognizable "Jack from Lost", and nice cameos from Sid Haig and James Tolkan (where the hell has THAT guy been hiding for the past twenty years?!). Also, if you've gotta book David Arquette in a movie, this is exactly what you should do with him: make him a total schmuck who gets pushed around by everybody (and you'd think he'd have learned his lesson about fucking with savages in the old West after Ravenous, but, uh, not so much).

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I was pissed that 

Sid was the one to be killed instead of that goddamned Arquette

even though I knew that's how things were gonna go down. But yeah, at least he was a complete punk bitch, which is the only way to make David Arquette work in my eyes. Robert Rodriguez couldn't even make that guy work as someone not being a weenie in a role. 

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You know what movie is pretty damn good?  Spider-Man [2002].  I picked it up last night on cable right around the scene with Macho. Good stuff. Now I've owned the DVD for years and years but I haven't watched it since probably '08 (holy fuck is time flying or what! Fucking hell).  Anyway, Tobey and Dafoe are just terrific in this. Tobey is better than I had remembered. Even Kirsten Dunst is better than she was ever given credit for.

 

I was not a hater of the reboot. I thought they were perfectly okay. I was and still am a hater of Spider-Man 3. But Spider-Man is still very good and captured what a superhero movie should be better than most of the stuff I've seen recently. It had a great balance of comedy AND drama. 

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You know what movie is pretty damn good?  Spider-Man [2002].  I picked it up last night on cable right around the scene with Macho. Good stuff. Now I've owned the DVD for years and years but I haven't watched it since probably '08 (holy fuck is time flying or what! Fucking hell).  Anyway, Tobey and Dafoe are just terrific in this. Tobey is better than I had remembered. Even Kirsten Dunst is better than she was ever given credit for.

 

I was not a hater of the reboot. I thought they were perfectly okay. I was and still am a hater of Spider-Man 3. But Spider-Man is still very good and captured what a superhero movie should be better than most of the stuff I've seen recently. It had a great balance of comedy AND drama. 

 

 

Agreed. Big fan of that one and I loved Kirsten Dunst in it. Very memorable experience watching it for the first time back when it came out.

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I just watched BONE TOMAHAWK tonight and loved it. That and SLOW WEST were two really good under-the-radar, offbeat westerns that came out last year.

What's crazy is that while the movie with the cannibals is plenty gory, SLOW might be meaner in the end.

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First two are great. I never could believe people  when they said the two ASM's were better

 

Wow I don't know anyone who was brave enough to say that. I'd rank them

 

1. Spider-Man 2

2. Spider-Man

3. Amazing Spider-Man 2

4. Amazing Spider-Man

5. Spider-Man 3

 

I think Fowler will probably disagree with me on that but I really hate Spider-Man 3. I think if you leave out Topher Grace who was brutal and the whole Venom arc then maybe we would have a solid movie. BUT that and the dance scene crap totally ruins it.  I think all the Sandman stuff is pretty good.

 

Now why would I say Amazing Spider-Man is better?  Emma Stone. She fucking kills that role man. In fact, I would not be at all upset if they brought her back though that won't happen now. She is so great as Gwen and her and Garfield have 'amazing' chemistry too.

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Thanx for reminding me of Slow West again, much appreciated. 

 

Not to overtake the thread with Marvel talk because there's a place for that, but I have to say I don't know whether Spider-Man 2 or X-Men 2 are better than the other. I haven't seen every Marvel film but if you're talking sequels, those two are the top. 

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Shit, I was unsure if I should post it here or "Marvel, Not Marvel" because that thread is currently dominated with Apocalypse and Deadpool talk.

 

With that in mind, I also watched PROMETHEUS again and I stand by it being a really good sci-fi flick.  I think it's THAT trailer that messed it up for everyone because the trailer was so fucking great that everyone was expecting a 10/10 classic.  It was not a classic but still very good. It had some problems but I think a lot of the gripes such as "don't run in a straight line" are way overblown. It's a beautiful movie. The deleted scenes also clear up some other issues so maybe the theatrical cut isn't edited as well as it should have been.  It's tense. Very spooky, that "surgery" scene is amazing. I think its a movie I'm going to fight over for the next decade.

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