What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

The Favourite - Only other movie I've seen from this director was The Lobster which I liked except I found it too cryptic like it was purposely trying to hide the plot from the audience. The Favourite has a more straightforward plot while still keeping things weird and somewhat symbolic so its a much more accessible film. I loved the long shots and fish-eye lenses in this movie and really just enjoyed the cinematography all-around. Acting was top-notch so not surprising all three main actress' received Oscar noms (and a win for Coleman). There's kind of a de-romanticization of period dramas here that served the story well too. The goofy dance scene left me with a giant smile and its almost worth watching the movie just for that. Also had one of the best endings I've seen in a while.

Mortal Engines - Entirely spectacle over substance, but the spectacle is admittedly very good. Although I think the best scene is probably at the beginning when London-on-Wheels attacks a smaller city. Not much else to say as its ultimately another YA post-apoc thing that I thought we had moved on from cinematically.

X-Men: Apocalypse is a hot mess. Too many characters, too many powers, and none of it adds up to a good story. James McAvoy is fun, but he comes across more like Bono of U2 than Professor Xavier. I only enjoyed two scenes. First, Evan Peters steals the whole movie with his Quicksilver scene, casually and playfully saving everybody in the X-Mansion from a big explosion. Second, there is a scene where Cyclops, Jean Grey and Nightcrawler are talking about the original Star Wars trilogy after seeing Return of the Jedi. Their brief commentary about the Star Wars movies is on target, but applies equally well to the first three X-Men movies. I liked the meta-commentary.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the best of the X-Men movies (I'm not counting Logan or Deadpool) and probably deserves a 7 at best on a 10-point scale. The cast is still a bit too sprawling, but it's fun to see two different Xaviers and Magnetos. Hugh Jackman dominates as usual, but this is a star-studded cast that includes Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Anna Paquin, Halle Berry, and Evan Peters. Dinklage rocks an awesome porn-stache, and Peters steal another scene as Quicksilver. And there are actual actors named Bingbing and Booboo.

The Last Lovecraft was free with my Amazon Prime subscription, and I still want my money back. The fx budget was comparable to an average episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the acting was larp quality. The story goes to serious lengths to get the Cthulhu Mythos right, but this feels like a movie made by affluent Call of Cthulhu roleplayers.

X-men Apocalypse was bad enough for me that it not only was bad in and of itself but made me like the earlier ones in the series less and not want to see Dark Phoenix, not that the trailers haven't helped with the latter (not to mention this being the second take on it already). As the trailers for Dark Phoenix remind us, these movies are all fundamentally the same: Charles speechifies, Magneto is both antagonist and reluctant ally, Mystique is torn between good and bad, etc.

Anyway, on a sweeter note, Shazam! ended up being pretty good after what I thought was a disastrous opening fifteen or twenty minutes that made me wonder whether I was seeing the same film that had gotten a 91% "fresh" rating. Thankfully, the middle is light and airy enough and the ending appealing enough (at least to me, as someone who has some fond remembrances of the older comics) to overcome the false start and maybe the weakest villain in recent memory.

The only good thing I can say about the Pet Semetary remake was that John Lithgow gave a good performance. The part that stuck to the book (and the previous movie) was rushed and felt like a Cliff's Notes version, where people feel certain ways because we're told they do, and the "expectations-defying" part was generic.

Bumblebee - They actually made a really good Transformers movie. Shame a lot of people won't watch it because of the bad Bay movies over the past decade turned people, including me, off the franchise. If you do decide to take the plunge its a sort of prequel/reboot that takes place in the 80's but isn't full of nostalgia crap and instead emulates the kind of movie we'd have gotten if it was made back then.

Had a Redbox coupon. Figured Aquaman was worth a shot for fifty cents. It was, I guess.

There were some great visuals, especially when the Trench attacked Mera and Curry, and some gonzo stuff like an ocean at the earth’s core and drummer octopus that I wish they would have leaned into more, but there was so much distracting nonsense and bloat.

Two different characters literally say, “Call me [villain name].” Unnecessary mythology and politicking. Manta’s introduction and motivation were great, but they really didn’t need to bring him back for an action scene. Didn’t Aquaman indiscriminately kill a whole pile of people when he popped out of the ground on the back of that octopus-crab? Why did they cast Nicole Kidman as his mom when she hasn’t visibly aged in twenty years? Maybe a mistake to have so many underwater scenes which are just like open air scenes except the hair is floating?

Wrote something on Us yesterday: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2019/04/they-us-were-tth.html

There are spoilers, so if you're still planning to see it, you might want to wait to read.

I loved Bumblebee! It was a complete about face from the dreadful Michael Bay shit- sweet, good natured, and the Transformers didn’t look like someone was throwing a toolbox at your face the entire time. They looked like modern takes on the G1 designs. They had actual personalities and their action was clear and real neat.

The opening on Cybertron almost had me in tears- THAT was the Transformers movie I always wanted. I was calling out all their names and Scarlett was like “how do you know all of them”?

Shockwave and Soundwave on the same screen...Jesus!

The story was light and fun- very 80s, a “girl and her car” sort of thing. Some lovey humor throughout, nothing cynical, condescending, or vulgar. It reminded me quite a lot of Iron Giant.

There were lots of fun references- “The Touch”, Memo reading a Go Bots magazine and tossing it, etc...only thing I didn’t like is how Cliffjumper got done so dirty.

What a nice surprise...I think having a female writer made a huge difference as did bringing Travis Knight on to direct- he’s usually with Laika, the studio that did Coraline, Box Trolls, Kubo, Missing Link, etc.

I watched Layer Cake on Netflix last night. It was good! It's a British crime film in the spirit of Snatch or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. You'll even see some of the same faces. The star is Daniel Craig, and one of his buddies is a very young and fresh-faced Tom Hardy.

Looks like I’m the only one to see Shazam!. That should not be the case. It was a lot of fun and moved a lot faster and purposefully than a modern superhero film does, especially for an origin story.

Zachary Levi was a delight. His performance didn’t feel that different from a lot of his time in the spy TV series Chuck, but it worked. He felt like the child actor in the adult body. Mark Strong’s villain had a backstory and personal stakes without resorting to a sky beam. The “foster family is the real family” storyline could have made me roll my eyes, but the writers and director put in the work and earned it.

It just did a lot of the fundamental stuff right and was fun. Can’t ask for much more.

Amazon Prime has some different old movies available this month, and I finally got around to watching a couple of them.

Starship Troopers was fun. It's basically Archie Goes to War, with Johnny Rico as Archie and the girls as Veronica and Betty, and also some obvious analogues of Reggie and Jughead. Yeah, I know that it's based on the Heinlein novel, and I even own the Avalon Hills wargame Starship Troopers that is more closely based on the novel. But it's been decades since I read the book, and I suspect that director Paul Verhoeven was trolling the natural fan base for this movie with a sly mockery of fascism and nationalism. He was seven years old and in the Netherlands when WWII ended, so he likely has strong personal feelings against fascism. At any rate, Starship Troopers serves perfectly well as a science-fiction action movie, and the humor is also there for those who have the awareness to see it. There was one bizarre moment when a couple of the main characters are engaged in a senseless fistfight while Mazzy Star croons her hit in the background, but otherwise the whole movie holds up well.

Next up was Bloodsport. I vaguely remember watching this kung fu movie back in the '80s, but it didn't leave a strong impression. The concept of an illegal international martial arts tournament in Kowloon City is great, but chunks of screen time are expended on an optional romance sub-plot and some stupid thing involving federal (American) agents trying to arrest Jean Claude Van Damme's protagonist for being AWOL or illegally participating in an illegal tournament or Zzzzzz who cares. Forest Whitaker is wasted on that fed thing. The fight scenes are actually fairly poor aside from some individual impressive feats. There is cheesy '80s synthesizer music, but thankfully no saxophone.

Today, I celebrated Easter Sunday by watching a horror movie about battling angels called The Prophecy, featuring a young Christopher Walken in a legit and non-hammy performance. The movie touches briefly on some interesting ideas and fumbles all of them, stumbling towards an anti-climactic climax. Perhaps there was a better movie that got left on the cutting room floor.

Starship Troopers, along with RoboCop, are the definitive visionary statements about what the future actually looks like. People don't give those masterpieces enough credit.

I laughed just as hard through Starship Troopers as I have through any comedy. Verhoeven was totally trolling the super-patriots out there, among others. The scene where the bug is eviscerating the cow and they put the CENSORED box over it, even while the gore sprays in all directions from behind it, still cracks me up, even after having seen it a dozen times. It's a great film because it's begging you not to take it seriously underneath the serious facade. It's easily Verhoeven's best work.

"What's it thinking Colonel?"

[Neil Patrick Harris in straight up SS uniform]

"It's... it's afraid. It's AFRAID!"

[MASSIVE CHEERS]

One great thing about Starship Troopers is the CGI still looks good so all the bug battles hold up. I've read Verhoven adapted his own original sceenplay to the novel after the studio got the license which explains the disconnect from the Heinlein story. Too bad he didn't get to make the original one but this movie, RoboCop, and Total Recall are all scifi classics, imo.

I watched Romper Stomper on Amazon Prime. See a young Russell Crowe run around as the leader of a gang of skinheads. It's well done, but certainly not enjoyable. Well, I was pleased any time one of these assholes got what they had coming.