No, I enjoy a good buddy cop movie - love 48 hrs - but with Riggs and Murtaugh it's almost as though the actors were just told to ad-lib all their dialogue. Neither of them every say anything - especially Murtaugh. It's just him with an exasperated /panicked look on his face saying, "H-h-h-h-h-hey, Rigs! Whadya mean let's just get in there... H-h-h-hey, Riggs!" - cue the saxophone wail. And don't get me started on Pesci's Leo Getz. He has to be the most intentionally annoying (but supposedly funny so it's okay) genuinely annoying characters in cinema history. And Chris Rock's introduction was the franchise's biggest mistake. But the first two I love.
Just finished watching War for the Planet of the Apes. I said in an earlier post about Jurassic World that I thought CGI had hit a ceiling. I was wrong. There’s one scene where Caesar and his mates are talking with Bad Ape (a zoo escapee who has only ever been addressed as such) which is genuinely jaw dropping. It was hard to believe what I was watching was generated by computer. The film on a whole is brilliant and I can’t recommend it enough.
I thought it was the most disappointing of the three. Still watchable, but maybe I was expecting more after the fantastic Dawn. I do not dispute its technical brilliance on the CGI front, but the plot was flawed and underwhelming. And most of that relied on escaping from captivity. When it happens once, it is forgivable. but when it happens several times, and those captors are supposedly the remnants of the US military, it's just frustrating to watch.
I can't say this is something I've ever given much thought to, other than 'captured apes' being a running theme. I enjoyed Dawn much more than Rise, but the CGI in War was breathtaking, and for that reason if nothing else it's my favourite of the three.
I too really enjoyed War for the Planet of the Apes. The effects were so good that I forgot I was looking at effects and just got caught up in the story, which, for me, is the real test of great effects. But what I appreciated most was that the arc of the film was entirely with the apes this time; you really get the sense of them as an emerging culture, and how they experience the human race's decline. When I think of the big blockbuster film franchises of the past decade for some reason I never think of this one, which isn't fair to it. It really is pretty great.
The conversation scene with Caesar and Bad Ape in the zoo's cave was mesmerizing, and showed off just what CGI can do in the right hands. There were a few scenes with Bad Ape that had me laughing quite hard (especially when he pokes his head out of the tunnel entrance) Possible spoilers
Can anyone confirm if the dvd release of Blade Runner 2049’s opening (the studio idents and text on the history since the original) is purposely distorted in both sound and vision? I bought the film today, pre-owned, and thought I must have been given a damaged disc or something, but the instance the film begins properly everything was fine.
Blade Runner 2049 Not particularly impressed. It manages to capture the look and feel of the original in a lot of ways, but I found it over-long and rather tedious on the whole.
Batman: Gotham By Gaslight was freaking awesome. Victorian Batman is amazing, and the twist, well you gotta see it. Definitely not a movie for the kiddies, despite it being animated.
The flame-broiled dullness of Deepwater Horizon. I've seen enough Mark Wahlberg for one lifetime. Kurt Russell is wasted in this. So is John Malkovich - he's just kinda phoning it in. Lots of fire, though.
Marky Mark and, unfortunately, Tom Hanks are becoming the kings of the "ripped from the headlines" genre of big-budget forgettable crap. Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day, and to a lesser extent All the Money in the World for Wahlberg, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Parkland, Captain Phillips, Sully, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, and The Post for Hanks. The last two are at least historical, but it's still a boring trend.
I liked Captain Phillips well enough. I blame The Post on Spielberg; when he tries to get serious, he usually sucks. Most of the others on your list I haven't seen.
There hasn't been anything half-decent showing at my local Cineworld (or any Cineworld I'd want to travel to) these past two months, so not to continue paying for nothing I think I'll go see Sicario 2 tomorrow. My expectations are really low, I'm pretty much going for Benicio Del Toro's sake alone. I liked the original Sicario a lot.
What I caught on Netflix recently which I thought were good: Other People, Results, The Fury of a Patient Man, My Happy Family (my first Georgian film, I think). I'm home today and thought I'd try to catch a good comedy but I couldn't seem to find any (suggestions welcome). So I think I'll be watching Faults now, which doesn't look like a funny film.
We watched the second and third Purge movies last week. I'm not complaining about the acting, or filming, or how well or poorly plotted they are, but I found them hard to enjoy based on how close they strayed into what's happening now in America. Not that anything that over-the-top would be allowed, but still... Thirty-five people were shot in Chicago last weekend, someone just shot up a newspaper office, and that's just one week. Debate Room territory, I'll stop.
Ehem... So I've literally just posted something in the "Things that annoy me but shouldn't" thread and I PROMISE I only read this message right afterwards... Now I feel very awkward... My comment definitely related to someone I know. ... Why (oh why) do these things seem to always happen to me?
