I'll be happy if I can ever do one, just one scene half as good as the Russian Boss calling the Stolen Cars Mechanic. Man, turning clichés on their heads like that... that's frikkin' mastery!! =)
Just finished watching The Ritual, which was interesting. Not 'the best' in terms of characters and plenty of cliches, but wow, it had a really awesome monster. They managed to make a moose into an even more terrifying hellbeast!
Rampage (2018) 8/10. Just pure fun. Dwayne Johnson being himself and giant monsters on a rampage, with a drawling, twinkling Jeffrey Dean Morgan thrown in as a bonus.
So we went to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I'd probably give it a 7/10. The plot was kind of lacking. It was mostly just "cool effects" and things exploding and dinosaurs running amuck. Chris Pratt was his usual humorous self and did a lot with his relatively limited lines (not that anyone did much talking). So in all, pretty enjoyable if you go in just wanting to see the movie "look awesome" and didn't expect too much character development (which I didn't).
Finally saw Jumanji... >_<''' I really wanted to like it. I was rooting for it. But... there's just too much cringe-worthy moments. Can't believe it's over 75% on rotten... They should have not called it Jumanji and not have it based on the old movie and just do a cool video game movie.
I agree with you. It was a decent movie. I liked the nod to the old one, but it just wasn’t as good because of its legacy.
A Quiet Place (2018) 8/10. A great example of how good writing, directing and casting can overcome the handicap of a small budget. Okay, it helps that Krasinski is married to Emily Blunt so he had a good lead actress from the start. But this should get him noticed as a danged good director.
You can watch it with me: I'm thinking about doing a Monkey Online series of shorts/novelettes before publishing Nightmare Online entirely because of all these kung fu and wuxia movies I've been watching.
I see these things and after I get over my "How do we have [Tech X and Y] but not [Tech Z, A, B, C, and D]?" autism, I always think about how such tech would be used in different situations than the usual "gun-drawn action thriller" Hollywood always goes for in literally every sci-fi story. When it comes to augmented/mixed reality, the possibilities for psychological terror are endless. AR is basically digital schizophrenia, but controllable— this trailer shows such a situation.
Yes, reality is literally slipping out from under our feet. Everyone else got very excited when Magic Leap released its first set of AR glasses. I felt a shiver go down my spine, and not a good one.
New Jurassic Park. Compare it to the old films and I can see why people hate it. The new films are popcorny, dumb and injected to the brim with over the top CGI action. This franchise has been pulled from the grave and beaten over the head with the 21st-century-hollywood-treatment. Story? Let's put that to one side. Give some machine guns to these raptors first and put them in a helicopter chase sequence. (Note, that doesn't actually happen). The film is dumb, plain and simple, but I did enjoy it. Go into it with the mindset that it's a mindless action film with dinosaurs and it's pretty entertaining. Don't go in expecting the charm and whimsy of the old Jurassic Park films. Gone are the days of action-horror. Welcome the days of action-"comedy". The most iconic scene in the old Jurassic Park is when a raptor opens a door handle. I think I read once that the dinosaurs only have 16 mins of screentime in the original film. Compare that with the new film. Dinosaurs chase people down hallways, they jump through glass windows, they soar out of water and eat people out of the air. The dino-drama has dialed up to a 100 in the new films, but it always fails to recapture the emotional investment and tension of one door handle scene. It's an adrenaline-fuelled fuckfest from start to finish, and it's probably why it suffers. Stakes don't feel real because characters roll 20 luck in every scenario. Cyborg T-Rex just appeared and she's got two samurai swords? Eh. Doesn't matter. Protags will find their way out somehow.
In the mood for a nice cartoon, I watched "Little Door Gods" last night. I probably missed a lot of the significance of things because I'm not terribly familiar with Chinese culture in regards to spirituality (imagine watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer having never heard of Santa Claus) but the basic story was simple enough and enjoyable. The premise is that since humans don't believe in gods any more, the Celestial Bureaucracy is re-assigning them to new tasks, and firing them if they don't comply. The titular door gods are firey-tempered, resentful Yu Lei and rotund, easy-going Shen Tu. They're holding on to relevance by the thinnest thread - the only place to still have images of them is a struggling won ton shop, which has just been taken over by young Raindrop and her mother after her grandmothers passes away. Making the soup the same way as they have for 100 years, they can barely compete with the fancy new fast food place around the corner, whose sleazy owner is determined to drive them out of business and marry Raindrop's mom. Yu Lei decides that if he releases an ancient monster called the Nian and fights it, it will make humans impressed with and reliant on gods again and sets off to break the three seals holding it while Shen Tu desperately tries to keep anyone from knowing where his brother went. In the human world, Yu Lei saves Raindrop from a pack of feral dogs and gives her a protective jade amulet, and later Shen Tu, trying to track his brother down, ends up making friends with Raindrop and her mother as well. When Yu Lei finally succeeds in releasing the monstrous, shapeshifting Nian and realizes it's true nature, the human world and the spirit world come together to defeat it. The animation is very well done, right up there with Disney/Pixar although maybe closer to what they were doing a few years ago as far as human facial expressions. The spirit world was fun and colorful, and the human world was convincingly rendered, all with lots of nice detail. The won ton soup was real enough looking to make me crave some, for example. Compared to Western films the editing was a bit more frenetic and fast-paced, but it never got too difficult to follow. It was also a bit surprising the mother character was so easily pushed around and inert (her very young daughter runs off into the night in a strange city and she just . . . sits there looking sad? Doesn't look for her or even call the cops?) although I suppose that's cultural. No matter the culture, the moral of moving forward to embrace the changes of the future while still honoring the past, and the themes of family togetherness, are good for any kid and I'll definitely be passing this on to my niece and nephews.
Saw two great movies this weekend. Shaolin (2011) 8/10 After ambushing and killing his rival, losing everything in the process, dispirited warlord Hou Jie turns to a Shaolin monastery seeking salvation. Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993) 8/10. A prepubescent chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.
I've been strengthening my kung fu this week by visiting a couple of old favourites starring Donnie Yen. After Shaolin (2011) 8/10 (mentioned above, starring Andy Lau) I watched Ip Man (2008) 8/10 and Ip Man 2 (2010) 7/10. Since I'm on the Ip Man trip I've also got The Grandmaster (2013) lined up for this weekend. I saw it when it came out but I never got around to rating it. It was nominated for two Oscars: Cinematography and Costume Design. Then I'll return to Donnie Yen with two I haven't seen yet: Painted Skin (2008) in which he fights a vampire and 14 Blades (2010) in which he's James Bond for the Ming Dynasty.
Watched the Director's cut of Nightbreed. Some interesting changes, like Decker not rising from the dead in this version. The restored footage matches very well with the original, so kudos to whoever did the digital restoration. I think this is one of those that's up for (ugh) rebooting - it'll be interesting to see what they do with monster designs. The original was a combination of good, just plain weird, and terribly disappointing (Boone and his stupid tattoos-scar things . . . . oooo, scary). They'll never find a better person to play Decker than Cronenberg, tho.
I finally convinced myself to watch Alien: Covenant last night. It had the same meh factor as Alien Resurrection and Prometheus. 4/10. Last movie I saw in the theater was Ant Man and the Wasp which was fun if a bit too much of a popcorn film for my tastes. It didn't feel like as much of a superhero movie as other Marvel films, even the original Ant Man. 6/10.
