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I'd just like to pop in and say that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was absolutely phenomenal. The cinematography, the acting, the emotion, it was all top notch, and if you haven't seen it I HIGHLY recommend you do so, you will not regret it. Hands down the only movie where my breath was actually taken away with how good the acting was at this one portion, omg omg omg it's just soooooo good.
 
Another weekend, another bunch of films at the cinema. Widows was really good, if a bit dull at times. There's an incredible twist towards the end that actually got audible gasps from the audience.

The Grinch was very bright and looked amazing (the textures on his scarf <3 ). It was actually pretty fun and the Minions short beforehand was fab.

Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindleward - Won't say anything as it was an early screening but intrigued to hear what people think when it comes out.
 
Free Solo (documentary) is pretty phenomenal and inspiring. Free soloing is evidently when a mountain climber climbs without ropes, a dangerous feat climber Alex Honnold had achieved many times before. However the mountain El Capitan is a different story.. pretty insane as well as fascinating to me, even climbing it with ropes (3,000+ feet)! Overall the documentary is paced well and has just enough jargon I could understand it even with a limited knowledge of climbing. It has some very well done parts and I recommend it. Also, see it on the biggest screen possible for those drone shots!
 
I have a bit of a love-hate thing with free soloing, actually. I understand the appeal, and I appreciate the skill (and nerve) to do it, but I think it's an extremely reckless thing to do. Not so much for the climber themselves, it's their risk and their life, but you impose a risk to others. You force other people to become part of your risk taking. I don't want to see people falling to their death, or indeed be struck by someone falling. I've been around a fair number of people who have been free-soloing in the Peak District, and I always get quite uncomfortable about the whole thing.

All that being said, the cinematography in that movie is going to be spectacular and the climbing feat is incredible, so fair enough. :p
 
Went to see The First Man recently, which is a biopic about Neil Armstrong, and Apollo 11. Didn't feel overly dramatised, in fact it felt very low key in some points. The scenes of the prep missions were the highlights, with lots of very claustrophobic POV camera shots. I appreciated that they didn't shy away from showing the ugly side of the Moon mission. It did feel like it was dragging towards the end. I shouldn't be bored on the bit where they actually go to the moon.
 
kenny cook said:
I'd just like to pop in and say that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was absolutely phenomenal. The cinematography, the acting, the emotion, it was all top notch, and if you haven't seen it I HIGHLY recommend you do so, you will not regret it. Hands down the only movie where my breath was actually taken away with how good the acting was at this one portion, omg omg omg it's just soooooo good.
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Agreed, it's a brilliant movie, easily one of the very best of 2010s for me. It's now been exactly a year since I first saw it at Ljubljana's film festival.

Speaking of the film festival, I went to see Leave no Trace yesterday. It's a pretty good movie, if a bit uneventful at times. The pace stays pretty steady throughout, but I never felt bored, which I think is a good sign. I have to commend the direction, but the real stars were the acting performances of Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie. Considering Debra Granik's previous movie propelled Jennifer Lawrence to stardom, I can't wait to see what the future holds for this young lady.
 
kenny cook said:
I'd just like to pop in and say that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was absolutely phenomenal. The cinematography, the acting, the emotion, it was all top notch, and if you haven't seen it I HIGHLY recommend you do so, you will not regret it. Hands down the only movie where my breath was actually taken away with how good the acting was at this one portion, omg omg omg it's just soooooo good.
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Meh. Uneven. The first half is quite superb but it makes the mistake of ditching the dark comedy towards the end.

Maybe I was just expecting too much from the writer of In Bruges, a film that doesn't put a foot wrong.
 
Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald

Whilst the first film was a charming little thing with a fun set of characters, this sequel sucks all of that out to instead deliver a whole lot of exposition and set up for future instalments. However, the film's worst aspect is easily the fact that, despite only being about 2 hours long without credits, feels like it goes on forever, thanks to way too much going on, yet none of this being interesting. I am very convinced Rowling's writing process for this entry was that she had an idea for an ending, then realised she had to get there first, and ended up writing a boring few sub plots to get between the end of the first film and the third act of this one.

What this film also does is make it very clear there's not enough content for another three of these. In fact, I don't even understand what this franchise really is; everyone involved in it clearly just wants to tell the story of Grindelwald and Dumbledore, yet decided that the best place to start with that was a comedy where a quirky Brit try and catch his beasts in New York, which now means Newt, Tina, Queenie and Kowalski now have to come along for the Grindelwald story as well, even though none of them fit there. In fact, to justify both Newt and the Fantastic Beasts name of this new franchise, a couple of beasts are clumsily thrown into the story wherever it's possible.

And speaking of Grindelwald: God, he is boring. It's just Johnny Depp sleepwalking through the role, delivering unmemorable monologues in a monotone voice and wandering around his fancy new French flat.

Overall, this is clearly a film that's main purpose isn't to entertain, but just to bridge the gap between the first film and the next. It's a boring slog to get through and easily the worst of the Wizarding World films by a mile.
 
^ Weirdly I enjoyed it.

It was almost fan fictiony, and terribly paced, un balanced and full of plot hole that should've been addressed.

But I enjoyed it, I liked Grindlewald too.


But also, would understand why it infuriates fans.
 
Yeah Crimes Of Grindelwald was dreadful. There were so many things wrong with it I don't even know where to start. JK Rowling has lost her touch.
 
Saw Crimes of Grindelwald last night and f**king hated it.

I'm not up to speed with the whole Harry Potter world, but that didn't matter in the first one which, while obviously having a few connections, was very accessible as a whole new "world" within that universe.

This doesn't follow that at all - it's now turned into some Potter prequel with almost nothing to do with the first film.

Depp was obvious, and very dull.

I will never watch another film with Eddie c**ting Redmayne again. He's awful in everything, but even more infuriating than normal in this. The man doesn't act; he gurns and simpers his way through every f**king role.
 
Jamesss said:
JK Rowling has lost her touch.
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Definitely. You wouldn’t even think this was written by the woman who created Harry Potter, considering how tight continuity in this franchise used to be, and CoG creates continuity issues on the standard of the X-Men franchise, which is saying something.
 
Ralph breaks the internet - I enjoyed it, I don't think it works as well as the first one. Lots of meta jokes (especially in the two end credit sequences) and the soundtrack is fun.
 
Mortal Engines - This was so mediocre, some great visuals with some poor writing/editing/camera work. There was a scene fairly early on with so many slowed down shots that just looked naff on a big screen. So much of the film didn't make sense, sounds like the books explain things a lot better. Just generally disappointed as I think the concept is really interesting.

Spider-Man: Into the spider-verse - Excellent! So unique with brilliant visuals that bring the comic book style to life. Some very funny moments and the soundtrack is pretty great. I think the only downside is to how little we get to know some of the alt-universe spider peeps and some things are a little rushed. I wanted to spend so much more time with this film (and it's not exactly short at over 2 hours) but they really crammed in a lot. Highly recommend, my favourite film for a while.
 
Re:Mortal Engines - I read about the film ages ago and thought it sounded interesting, then as more pre-launch stuff came out I was reading a bit more about it (mostly in Empire) but it still sounded good and I was looking forward to it..... then I saw the trailer a little while back and went "oh that looks awful" and totally forgot about it. Will watch it when it comes around on $ky or Netflix I guess.
 
Can You Ever Forgive Me

Sooooooo good. No bells and whistles, just a great story, well written and well performed.

Richard E Grant is great, but kind of predictable as he always kind of plays to type, but Melissa McCarthey was amazing. Totally unexpected.
 
Just got around to watching COCO. I knew that people had said it was one of the best movies Disney has done, and I totally agree, I was blown away by it!
 
Keep forgetting to post a few updates in here.

Aquaman - I saw this in 4DX which was an experience. I have to pay a £5 upcharge for this screening type and I'm glad I waited for this film to come along as I think I got my monies worth out of it. Several storm sequences resulting in actual chaos occurring in the room, snow machine was used a couple of times and there was an action scene about a third of the way through in which the seats moved about for a good 15+ minutes. The whole experience was exhausting but incredible.

So the actual film? Enjoyable enough, stupid with some awful dialogue but the action scenes were decent and I never got bored.

Bumblebee - This might be my favourite of the Transformers films, the vfx are brilliant, the action is great and overall it's quite fun.

I also saw Mary Poppins Returns twice. Both times to check out a newly opened cinema. First was the Odeon in Leicester Square which has been given a very expensive makeover. All the seats are huge comfy leather seats with most also having the ability to have foot rests/recline. I was surprised to see they refurbished the cinemas original organ where a dude played tunes from the original film, I was over the moon about this! They've also updated the screen and audio system with the UK's first Dolby screen + atmos.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1076095713497489410

The second time was at my old local town's new Vue which also has recliner seats. Screens are a bit small but nice to know that now I've moved the town finally has a semi-decent cinema.

The film itself is wonderful, feels exactly like the old Disney films with the sets etc. The score is amazing and maybe my favourite thing about the film, the songs don't feel quite as catchy at the time but the next day I found myself humming along to a couple of them. The cast do a great job with Emily Blunt doing a brilliant job of feeling like Poppins but with her own unique twist on the character. It was also great to see Dick van Dyke and Angela Lansbury back on the big screen.
 
Couple of recent watches:

A Nightmare Before Christmas - It was good, had iconic imagery, and some memorable tunes, but it was perhaps not quite the ground-breaker I had expected from its iconic status. For the moment, I consider it a 2/3, might change more with hindsight.

Muppet Christmas Carol - Another one I had heard about, mentioned around in passing a lot, and this one delivered much more closely to my expectations. Great performances, great story, great jokes, and even though the Muppets weren't really ever on TV over here, the characters were relatable to me in their own way, while also staying true to the book. Great movie, 3/3.

Pokémon - I Choose You - The twentieth Pokémon movie is titled the same as the first episode of the anime, and in the beginning it follows the same plot too. This is also the best part of the movie, as it makes up a new plot after that. Our hero, Ash, meets two friends, has some encounters with legendary Pokémon (at least those are pretty well done), and meets a plain cookie-cutter villain, one who only cares about strong Pokémon and who discards those he deems weak. The hypocrisy shines through here, as official Pokémon competition practically requires you to behave just like that if you want to have any sort of success. Building a team that can win the Pokémon Video Game Championships involves obtaining and discarding literally thousands of Pokémon, depending on your luck with randomly generated numbers. Of course this villain reappears in the end, makes a terrible mistake that makes a legendary Pokémon appear right out of nowhere and go amok for no reason except "we really need a cool battle for the climax!", then is redeemed afterwards and convinced that friendship means more than strength. The writers also felt the need to include Team Rocket, whose appearances are all ten seconds long and end with them getting blasted away, they add literally nothing to the movie. All in all, the only good bits of the movie were copied from something else, and then it changed between cheap Hallmark-card lessons and making no sense, as if it was written using a checklist. 1/3.
 
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