DVDs and Films You Have Watched Recently 3 - The Final Insult

[SuperBacon]

I will preface this by saying that I am a huge Linklater fan as we discussed a few pages back, I know he's not for everyone.

Watched Everybody Wants Some last night and thought It was excellent. Don't get the misogynistic criticism that was thrown at it, as that's exactly what he's parodying but there you go.

[Devon Malcolm]

The problem is that when you try and parody something like that, and fail, then it can easily be written off as misogynistic.

 

The fact that it was neither bawdy enough or funny enough to be anything like the 1980s comedies he was supposed to be paying homage to left him open to that criticism.

[SuperBacon]

What were people expecting a shot for shot remake of Porkys?

[Devon Malcolm]

Pretty sure that's not what I said.

[SuperBacon]

Pretty sure that's not what I said.

Yeah I know. I'm not having a pop, (it's a film ffs) I just dont understand where that criticism comes from. I didn't find it misogynistic that much. I thought it was actually quite sweet by the end a decent character dissection of that type of person in that period of time.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I've probably seen all the new films I plan to see this year* so here's my usual annual roundup of everything I've seen, done to give me a sense of what my favourite and least favourite** films of the year are. As a word of warning, here and for every year after this one, it's probably going to be a Star Wars film at the top. Sorry. I can't help it.

 

Overall, I saw 35 new films this year, and I liked most of them. I think there was probably only 4 that I didn't, actually, which isn't bad going.

 

Anyway, January was a month full of awards contenders, and I managed to cram in The Hateful Eight, The Revenant, The Big Short and Spotlight. The other half was working in a cinema at this point so I didn't have to pay for any of them, which was a nice bonus. I liked Hateful Eight, came out of it thinking it'd make a good stage play. It's long, but it's good - could have done without so much violence to women though (I know Daisy Domergue's a baddun, but it doesn't sit right to be happy watching Kurt Russell smack her across the face so often). Big Short was alright, can't pretend I understood much of it, but 'bankers = bad', so yeah. The only bit of it I can really recall is Margot Robbie in the bath which probably wasn't the intention of the filmmakers. Oh, and Schmidt from New Girl was in it.

 

Spotlight was bloody excellent, however. Fantastic performances across the board, great drama created out of the littlest things, a compelling story, I was hooked to it all the way through.

 

The Revenant, though, the bloody Revenant. I did not like The Revenant. The opening section's good, the end's alright, but I really could have done without the eighteen months or so that the middle part lasted. You could have cut a fair chunk out of it just by removing the 'lovely sunlight through trees' shots. I know Lubezki's an incredible cinematographer but Inarritu really let him indulge too much here. DiCaprio's silly method acting I covered in the Twatlist thread (THERE WAS A FIRE RIGHT THERE, FUCK'S SAKE LEONARDO), and just felt so much like "give me awards give me awards give me awards" that I didn't believe in the character at any point. I might have actually laughed when they recreated the Tauntaun scene from Empire Strikes Back with a horse. Aside from that, I had no sympathy whatsoever for what the character was going through seeing as he brought all his misfortunes on entirely by himself. Okay, so you want to shoot a bear who's trying to look after her cubs, and you get mauled a bit. You're alive, the bear wanders off to her kids. What do you do? Wait til she's gone and call for help? Quietly crawl away? Try and shoot her in the face? If you picked the last answer, congratulations, have an Oscar! So he gets mauled again, and fucking deservedly so by this point. He's alive again, the bear starts to head off again. Now what do you do? If you thought 'try and STAB the bear this time', have another Oscar! FUCK'S SAKE. He deserved to die. No sympathy. And as for Tom Hardy, one of these days a director is going to HAVE to ask him to just speak clearly. He had this big monologue by a campfire and the other half and I just looked at each other halfway through it and shrugged because neither of us got a word of it. Bloody Revenant.

 

February! Deadpool! I liked Deadpool. Not as much as some on here, but I liked it. I'm not familiar with the character so this served as a nice introduction to him, and it stands up to repeat viewings, and I loved that it didn't go overboard with mass-spectacle finalegasms. Ryan Reynolds was great, Morena Baccarin served her purpose, Negasonic Teenage Warhead is a great name. But I couldn't escape the fact that if Deadpool was a wrestling fan, he'd definitely be Wan of Dem. Anyway, it's a good fun superhero film and by 1000000000 miles the best X-Universe movie this year. We also watched Goosebumps in February, for the nostalgia. I grew up with those books and if I'd got this film when I was eight or ten or however old I was, I can't describe how much I would have loved it. I still really liked it - what a brilliant way to do a Goosebumps film, by having the books come to life! Jack Black's best film in forever, too. Felt like the kind of young person's film you just don't get these days, and how nice to have a live-action aimed at younger people that doesn't take place in a future dystopia.

 

 

Rankings Jan-Feb

1. Spotlight

2. Deadpool

3. The Hateful Eight

4. Goosebumps

5. The Big Short

6. The Revenant

 

 

Onto March, which may or may not have begun with Hail, Caesar! because I can't remember what month that came out in. It's very very good, whatever month it came out in. Alden Ehrenreich's the standout, and almost gives me faith that a young Han Solo film's a good idea, but I just love the old studio Hollywood system, I find it fascinating and always enjoy films set within it. Channing Tatum's great too, it's just an extremely fun 'day in the life' kind of film. I think reception to it was mixed but it's probably among some of my favourite Coens films. But then I loved Llewyn Davis so what do I know. 

 

Also saw 10 Cloverfield Lane in March, which should have been excellent but was let down so, so badly by the last bit.

 

 

That bit where she gets out of the bunker and has the CGI-fest fight with the alien monster thing.

 

 

Cut that bit out and you'd have a much, much, much better film, but what actually happened had me leaving the cinema with a bit of a sour taste, it felt like a letdown. And I saw this a couple of times, the letdown gets worse on repeat viewing. It's so great up to that point as well. 

 

On a plus side, I'm pretty sure it was in March where we saw Zootropolis as well. I can't thank Onyx2 of this forum enough for the final shove it took to go and see this, because it's bloody outstanding. The originality, the invention, the ideas, the creativity pouring out of this film all the way through were just great to watch. So many jokes and gags and characters and set pieces and designs and … yeah! I raved about Zootropolis to anyone who'd listen afterwards and my girlfriend now lists Judy Hopps as a role model. The comparison between Judy and classic Disney princess types is obvious, but I watched Frozen the other day and even the difference there between her and the insipid pair in that film is marked. Love Zootropolis.

 

April was all about Captain America: Civil War which lived up to its hype and my expectations. It juggled all its characters and plot lines extremely well, it let you pick your own side and didn't judge you for it (I went in Team Cap, I left Team Tony), the airport sequence was phenomenal action, Spider-Man was the best he's ever been in a film, every character got a 'moment', and it was a hell of a lot better than Age Of Ultron. Top 5 MCU, probably.

 

I didn't get around to seeing Room until May, but the other half had been praising it since it came out. I can see why, phenomenal stuff. Brie Larson was excellent, but the little boy even more so.

 

 

The scene where he gets out and he's in the truck and it all kicks off and he escapes and … the heart races and the lump appears in the throat just thinking about it!

 

 

Also saw Everybody Wants Some!! in May, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in a cinema which was pretty much just me. It's been talked about a bit on here recently, and I'll have to disappoint Devon and Scott and say I really liked it. It was just hanging out with a bunch of guys for a couple of hours, and I loved that about it. No stakes, no pressures, just hanging out with some characters that you got to knew and, in my case, got to be quite fond of. Maybe I was just in the exact right mood for it, because another time that might have been the reason for disliking it, but it captured something for me when I saw it and thought it was great. I'd seen reviews bemoaning the lack of female characters, and I get that (I've been more aware this year than I ever have before of how woefully underserved female characters are in pretty much all films) but in this case I didn't think it was a problem; it was just a story that didn't have females figuring into it. It didn't really get into LADLADLAD territory for me, but even so, if I'd seen it with the g/f I think it would have been tutted for being so man-centric.

 

June was a shit month for films. X-Men Apocalypse is dire. I quite liked the opening bit in ancient Egypt. There were other bits I quite liked, but six months down the line, I can't remember any of them, so fuck them. What I do remember are a scene set at Auschwitz which is one of the most spectacularly tasteless things I may have seen in any film. Aside from the hideousness of putting actors in purple spandex and prosthetics in that setting, the ending of the sequence defies everything that Auschwitz in the 21st century is meant to represent. It's there so that we never forget the horror and senseless brutality that took place there. What they do in that film is throw that out of the window to give Magneto a bit of a moment. Fuck the other 6,000,000 people who died, as long as Magneto feels a bit better. I can't begin to begin to begin to imagine to torment that must go through the mind of anyone who was connected to that camp, or who knows anybody who was, so I can't say if they'd want to act as Magneto did or not, but it just. felt. wrong.

 

The other bit was the finale. We're getting far too used to cities and environments being destroyed in these sorts of films. Avengers got away with it (and the MCU's trying to subvert it now which is good), Man of Steel ruined it, and Apocalypse takes those ruins, fucks them, spits in their faces and fucks them again, then buries them completely. MILLIONS OF PEOPLE must have died when all those cities get blown up. MILLIONS. None of the heroes give the slightest shit. It's awful, it means nothing, it's completely irrelevant to the plot, it's just absolutely terrible and the epitome of meaningless CGI destruction. The worst thing is, the writer knows this. I heard an interview with him and he defended it! Fucking shit.

 

Somehow, though, Apocalypse wasn't even the worst film I saw in JUNE, because I saw Warcraft. A mate of mine who's a big Warcraft fan wanted to go and I said I'd go with him. It's SO BAD. It's just appalling. SO BAD, I can't even believe how bad this film is. He tried to defend it afterwards but gave up. IT'S RUBBISH! But, the key thing here which means it won't be bottom of my year-end list, you could see how much love had gone into making it. It was clear that the people involved in Warcraft bloody love those games, and that is the only - literally the only - thing that saves it. But it's really bad, guys. Really bad.

 

 

Rankings Jan-June

1. Zootropolis

2. Spotlight

3. Captain America: Civil War

4. Room

5. Hail, Caesar!

6. Everybody Wants Some!!

7. Deadpool

8. The Hateful Eight

9. Goosebumps

10. 10 Cloverfield Lane

11. The Big Short

12. The Revenant

13. X-Men: Apocalypse

14. Warcraft

 

 

Blockbuster season! Kicking off with July and Ghostbusters. I liked Ghostbusters. I even wrote a tweet to that effect, which attracted me no bile from internet twats but did get a like from Paul Feig, which was neat. I have to admit that at the very initial stages, I wasn't in favour of it. Not because the Ghostbusters were women, not at all; I didn't like the idea of a remake/reboot at all. When it was announced that it was going to be women, I quite liked the idea - I'd much rather that than just sticking Seth Rogen and his crew in there. Now that would have been awful. Each trailer warmed me to it more and more, and I was looking forward to it by the time it came out. I liked all the characters, it felt like a proper Ghostbusters film right from the opening - it was just a couple of minutes in when I found myself nodding and thinking 'yep, they've got this'. The effects were fine, the cameos were fun, and Kate McKinnon was just brilliant. So yeah, I ended up really liking it.

 

Not as much, though, as The BFG, which is just magical Spielbergy magicness. I read the book on a train the week before it came out so Dahl was fresh in my mind, and to me, they did him justice. Mark Rylance is extraordinary, just extraordinary. Virtually every sentence he says as BFG makes me well up a bit because that book and I go back a very, very long way. It's one of the first 'proper' books I remember, and my god, Rylance IS the BFG. It's as close to perfect as I could hope to get. The Buckingham Palace sequence - it's almost exactly as Dahl wrote it. The girl playing Sophie gets less 'precocious' and more 'annoying' on a repeat viewing, but she's fine - she could have been a lot worse with another director. I'm really crushed that the film bombed in American and is therefore considered a failure, because it's five stars from me.

 

Oh, and watched Star Trek Beyond in July as well. It's fine - loads better than Into Darkness, a good fun couple of hours. I like this incarnation of Star Trek, I'd always be happy to watch this crew in another adventure.

 

The same mate who I went to see Warcraft with lent me the extended blu-ray of Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice in early August, and I think the film's still going on now. What an absolute waste of my short time on Earth that film is. It's abysmal. Absolutely abysmal. It's as bad as Warcraft, but it doesn't have that sense of affection for the source material that Warcraft did. In fact, you get the feeling that everybody associated with Batman vs Superman must hate it, because there's no other reason why such a dour, grim, appalling film would be the end result of their work. And I apparently watched the better version!

 

Suicide Squad has its problems too, but it's way better than Batman vs Superman. I actually quite like it. Take out Jared Leto (see the Twatlist again) and fix the stupid music choices and it'd be fine. Finding Dory was a birthday cinema trip (sod you all, it's Pixar, I love Pixar) and that was also fine. Not their best - I probably enjoyed 'Piper', the little short before it, more than the main film - but Pixar-fine is still much better than other people's 'fine'.

 

Rankings Jan-Aug

1. Zootropolis

2. Spotlight

3. The BFG

4. Captain America: Civil War

5. Room

6. Ghostbusters

7. Hail, Caesar!

8. Everybody Wants Some!!

9. Finding Dory

10. Deadpool

11. The Hateful Eight

12. Goosebumps

13. Star Trek Beyond

14. 10 Cloverfield Lane

15. Suicide Squad

16. The Big Short

17. The Revenant

18. X-Men: Apocalypse

19. Warcraft

20. Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice

 

 

It was September before I saw Sausage Party, which isn't very good but made me laugh a lot twice.

 

 

The Meat Loaf bit, and the ridiculous orgy at the end

 

 

We also saw Hunt For The Wilderpeople in September. Hunt For The Wilderpeople is sublime. It's glorious. It's majestical. It's hilarious, it's moving, it's compelling, it's touching, it's fun, it's - it's just everything you could possibly want from a film. It's basically perfect. If you haven't seen it you just have to. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's out on iTunes now, I think, and DVD on the 16th of January. See it. It's wonderful, it's beautifully New Zealand. It's magnificent.

 

What's not magnificent (see what I'm doing here) is The Magnificent Seven which we saw the following week. Ethan Hawke's quite good, the Western aesthetic is very well done, and Vincent D'Onofrio clearly decided to just show up and do whatever he felt like knowing nobody would question him because he's Wilson Fisk. That's all the good bits. They try to do a 'strong female character' but she's awful, the bad guy shoots six people at the start so is super evil but the first time the Seven team up they kill at least four times that many and yet they're the good guys, and the film succeeds in making the innately likeable Chris Pratt into a right cock you can't wait to see die. It's a bit crap overall.

 

Right at the end of September I got to see Eddie The Eagle and I honestly wasn't expecting to think much of it, but I was very happily proved wrong. What a lovely happy joyful surprise of a film! Proper feel-good stuff you can only get from a British underdog story. Really nice. You can see it being a 'whole family sat round the living room at Christmas' sort of film in the future and that's meant as a big compliment.

 

Into October, then, and… erm… Inferno. Florence looked nice.

 

 

They changed the bloody ending though! That was the best non-Florence bit of the book!

 

 

I think it was around October that Mascots turned up on Netflix as well. Bit of a turgid first hour, but the last half-hour was funny enough to make it worth watching. And the British guy, as I think I mentioned on here at the time, was like Ricky Gervais but if he wasn't a twat, which was a surreal thing to watch. My Scientology Movie also came out around this time. I find the subject of Scientology utterly fascinating - if I see something to read or watch about it, I always will, it's just… well, fascinating, and Going Clear was one of my favourite films last year - but I have to say I was a tiny bit disappointed with Louis Theroux here. There were big chunks of the film that were completely compelling (the Tom Cruise section is one that comes to mind, and the people who follow you around if you badmouth Scientology) but it was mixed in with little bits that didn't quite work for me. I get why Louis wanted to ask the tough questions of Marty Rathbun but it got so prickly when he did that I sort of felt they were at risk of losing the wider insight into the world for the sake of this more particular one.

 

Doctor Strange! Another superhero, like Deadpool, who I didn't know very much about. Origin stories may be played out in general, but in this case it worked very very well indeed. Really fun, super effects, another success for the MCU. They've got people hooked into their wider story as well - there were audible reactions for a certain key reveal at the end which was really cool to hear. They've got this 'shared universe' thing down pat.

 

Rankings Jan-Oct

1. Zootropolis

2. Spotlight

3. The BFG

4. Captain America: Civil War

5. Room

6. Ghostbusters

7. Hail, Caesar!

8. Everybody Wants Some!!

9. Doctor Strange

10. Eddie The Eagle

11. Finding Dory

12. Deadpool

13. My Scientology Movie

14. The Hateful Eight

15. Goosebumps

16. Star Trek Beyond

17. 10 Cloverfield Lane

18. Mascots

19. Suicide Squad

20. Inferno

21. Sausage Party

22. The Magnificent Seven

23. The Big Short

24. The Revenant

25. X-Men: Apocalypse

26. Warcraft

27. Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice

 

 

Don't worry, I'm nearly done.

 

Didn't see much in November - the only cinema trip was for Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. I wasn't sure about this originally - the first trailer didn't grab me, it seemed like a bit of a stretch, and five films?! Again, happily proved wrong. From the opening scenes I was sucked back into JK Rowling's world. I didn't know how much I'd missed the magic but my god, I'd missed the magic. This really was magic. I loved the creatures so much. The sequence inside the briefcase was, going to use the word again, magic, with music to match.

 

I 99% loved Fantastic Beasts. The remaining 1% was

 

 

Johnny Depp. There was a little bit of chat about this in this thread last month, but he just took me right out of it. I've never felt that way in a Potter film, there's never been a piece of casting where I couldn't see the character first and the actor second, but I did here. It wasn't "Grindelwald!" It was "oh. Johnny Depp. And he looks weird again. I hope he doesn't ruin the sequel." I'm willing to give it benefit of the doubt because David Heyman didn't put a foot wrong with casting in Potter, or Paddington for that matter, but casting Depp in anything these days is an uphill struggle.

 

 

Meanwhile, Victoria had appeared on Netflix. g/f had been talking about this since she'd seen it back in March and she loved it - it's probably in her top 3 for the year, but we'll never know because she doesn't really rank films she's seen like what I do - so I was excited to watch. It's all done in one shot, so technically it's a bit of a masterpiece, it's an amazing bit of filmmaking. The film itself is very good too, but I was blown away more by the one-shot thing than what was happening within it.

 

 

I also suspect something more sinister is going on in the story. If you're reading this you've either seen it or don't plan to, but the idea is 'girl meets guys outside club, gets friendly, gets involved in bank robbery, everybody dies, she leaves with the money'. I get the feeling this is not the first time this has happened to Victoria. In fact, I think she's been on a tear around Europe for some time now, hit after hit after hit, and getting away with it every time. There's something up there.

 

On a slightly more serious note, I was a little unnerved just by the start. She's been in a Berlin nightclub until 4am and sees these lads not being allowed in. She leaves the club, alone, and they're outside and start following her. So she makes friends with them and goes back to their flat. I obviously can't speak for women walking home alone in the middle of the night but that sort of screamed alarm bells at me and while it's obviously excellent that she can feel safe enough to be able to do that, that could have ended badly for her in so many ways. Yay Berlin for being so friendly I guess!

 

 

We're really nearly there now. December.

 

Moana is Lin-Manuel Miranda + The Rock + Disney + Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, so I loved it. It also features the world's most idiotic chicken, who is hilarious and voiced by Alan Tudyk, making the end of this year a pretty good one for him! I caught Anomalisa on Netflix the other week and mentioned it on here - found it a bit weird in the early going but got hooked and found it very compelling and, by the end, quite moving.

 

Then we get to the big one - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I fucking LOVE Rogue One. I had a couple of issues the first time I saw it. Those just evaporated on repeat viewing and now I just love it. Everything about it - the action, the characters, the expansion of the mythology, the callbacks - everything. I'm totally biased and I don't know. Love it. It gets better each time I see it. I want to go again.

 

Almost finally, I had missed the Eight Days A Week Beatles documentary in cinemas (ultra limited release, I found - one screening in Newcastle - just one - and none in Edinburgh) but managed to see it the other day. It's never less than interesting, but really catches fire when the music hits. GodDAMN The Beatles were good. It's like lightning, it's… 'volcanic' is the wrong word, maybe 'monumental' or something like that. But FUCK they were good! 

 

And finally finally, I saw this morning that Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was on Netflix so that was my Boxing Day viewing. This one is a bit fresh in my mind so I might mellow on it a bit but I really, really enjoyed this. I had heard overwhelmingly that it was a bit crap, so my expectations were low and maybe it was just that the film exceeded them. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit, maybe it was because I've never read Pride & Prejudice. Maybe it's just because I love an alternate history story. And maybe it's Lily James.

 

My goodness, Lily James.

 

There was some chat on here recently about top lips. You want to talk top lips? Lily James. I'm in love.

 

Anyway, P&P&Z isn't a bit crap, it's actually kind of good and I had a lot of fun watching it.

 

Lily James.

 

 

 

Which means...

 

 

 

My films of 2016

1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

2. Hunt For The Wilderpeople

3. Zootropolis

4. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

5. Spotlight

6. The BFG

7. Captain America: Civil War

8. Room

9. Eight Days A Week

10. Anomalisa

11. Ghostbusters

12. Hail, Caesar!

13. Everybody Wants Some!!

14. Doctor Strange

15. Eddie The Eagle

16. Moana

17. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

18. Finding Dory

19. Victoria

20. Deadpool

21. My Scientology Movie

22. The Hateful Eight

23. Goosebumps

24. Star Trek Beyond

25. 10 Cloverfield Lane

26. Mascots

27. Suicide Squad

28. Inferno

29. Sausage Party

30. The Magnificent Seven

31. The Big Short

32. The Revenant

33. X-Men: Apocalypse

34. Warcraft

35. Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice

 

 

 

 

So Rogue One claims the top spot (though only after multiple viewings), with Hunt For The Wilderpeople and Zootropolis in the top 3, and Fantastic Beasts and Spotlight rounding out the top 5. Down at the bottom, it's Apocalypse, Warcraft and Batman/Superman, with The Revenant and The Big Short just above (in the latter's case it's more it being totally unmemorable than bad, necessarily). I did like almost everything I saw this year, though, so that was good.

 

And that was my 2016 in film. If you read all of that you're a better person than me but it helped me out to write it!

 

 

 

 

*we might see Passengers this week, but I don't really fancy it, and given the choice I'd rather go to Rogue One for the fourth time

 

**I should emphasise that this is very, very much personal preference, don't get annoyed at me please!

[Devon Malcolm]

I was going to do a point for point round-up like this as well but I can't be arsed so here's my 2016 rankings:-

 

http://letterboxd.com/settingsun/list/films-made-in-2016-that-ive-seen-in-2016/

 

I didn't count The Hateful Eight in mine but if I had it would be somewhere near the bottom, Tarantino's worst to date, for me.

 

I don't understand the criticism that some have had that 2016 was a bad year for films. There's never been a bad year for films ever. Every single year since popular cinema began has at least a handful of truly great films in them, you just have to know what you're looking for.

[SuperBacon]

I was going to do a point for point round-up like this as well but I can't be arsed so here's my 2016 rankings:-

 

http://letterboxd.com/settingsun/list/films-made-in-2016-that-ive-seen-in-2016/

 

I didn't count The Hateful Eight in mine but if I had it would be somewhere near the bottom, Tarantino's worst to date, for me.

 

I don't understand the criticism that some have had that 2016 was a bad year for films. There's never been a bad year for films ever. Every single year since popular cinema began has at least a handful of truly great films in them, you just have to know what you're looking for.

Sorry I've never been on this site and might be a bit blind...are your reviews in the comments under Steve G?

[Devon Malcolm]

Links to all the reviews:-

 

http://letterboxd.com/settingsun/list/films-made-in-2016-that-ive-seen-in-2016/detail/

[waters44]

Thanks HG i'll be bookmarking that post and tuck in when i get a spare few minutes

[Onyx2]

Good read HG, thanks. And thanks for the nod on Zootropolis. Having children I've seen it twice since and happily sat through it again. Still the sloths steal the show.

So Rogue One. It's fair to say I bloody love it through multiple viewings. Bit there's a whole chunk of it annoys me, and I'd raise it in /r/starwars but I don't have the patience to deal with all their defensive bullshit. Spoilers abound for the middle section, so:

Saw Gerrera. None of his plot makes any sense or contribution to the overall thread.

He gives Jyn the message so she can pursue her dad. Yet, she meets her dad before he dies and the Death Star vulnerability can be communicated then. Saw also thinks Jyn is going to kill him, for no reason. And he "bor gullets" Bohdi, mutters about brain damage, and that whole sequence doesn't serve any purpose. And in his final scene, Saw just shrugs and says, "never mind, I'll just die." It reads like the whole Jehda stuff was decided to be excised but it was too integral to structure of the film to bin.

Did you hear the rumours of heavy reshoots? I guarantee it's around him. He's been chopped to pieces. I'm not saying every scene must drive a plot forward, but he's built up HUGE with no payoff.

 

Edited December 29, 2016 by Chest Rockwell

[HarmonicGenerator]

Rogue One chat

 

 

The gullet thing does stick out a bit, true, but I hadn't really thought about the rest of it. He's kind of a medium through which the Rogue One gang get together. There'd have been other ways to combine them all, but Saw's pretty handy because it's by trying to find him rather than Galen that Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze end up with Cassian, Jyn and K-2. He's not essential for that to happen, but he's a handy way for it to have done so. He's also a good demonstration that the Rebellion at this point isn't the cohesive Alliance we know it as - it's fragmented, there are some very different viewpoints within the same wider cause, it's not all squeaky clean goody two shoes stuff like we once thought. Those are good enough reasons on a basic level for me but you may not agree!

 

Yeah, I heard about the reshoots but didn't think too much of it - most big films have them at some point. I had fleeting contact with a few people who'd worked on it, or who knew people who did, and word on the street as of September was that Edwards had "messed it up" - so if there were reshoots, they must have been for the good because the final result is pretty great! I expect the 'insurgency' of the Jedha rebels might have been striking a bit too close to what's going on in the real world at the moment and they probably needed to smooth it up a bit.

 

And I don't like to think of it from a 'brand synergy'/shared universe point of view, but maybe they felt it was important to make him feel important because of his past ties to Clone Wars and future ties to Rebels, which he's been confirmed to appear in next year voiced by Forest Whitaker...

 

 

 

apologies if over zealous tagging, but doing it without reading the content as I haven't seen the film yet - ed

Edited December 29, 2016 by Chest Rockwell
tagging

[stumobir]

Brilliant read HG, cheers for that. Couldn't agree more on your points about My Scientology Movie and Fantastic Beasts.

 

The hype around My Scientology Movie and the fact that it was years in the making and it being Louis' first cinema released feature length had me thinking we were going to get something. In reality, it was little more than Weird Weekends episode with some bloke that used to be a Scientologist, so disappointed with it. It's obviously a completely different style of documentary but Going Clear pissed all over it, much more informative and done a far better of job of showing them to be the nutters that they are.

 

Echoing your comments about the casting of HP, they nailed it with every character in the first eight movies. It was full of absolute megastars in Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes to name just a few but you're spot on in saying you seen the characters before the actors everytime. Even when Richard Harris passed away and Michael Gambon was cast as Dumbledore, he slotted in seamlessly and you remained firmly in JK's world. I know nothing about casting but I'd have thought it would have been an easier job to cast Fantastic Beasts, most of he characters had never been introduced before so noone had built up the same affection or knowledge of them the way we had from the original movies through the books. They got it close to right with Redmayne et al, even Colin Farrell done the job, then that clanger happened. I look at him and I don't only see the actor before the character, I see his other characters before I see the character he's supposed to be playing. I'll reserve my full judgement until I see him in then next one as this wasn't much more than a cameo but I just think his presence will be far too distracting to enjoy them, bit of a shame really.

 

 

EDIT: I loved Rogue One, I was high af when I watched it so don't ask me for details but I know I loved it. Everything except for Saw Gerrera, I didn't get the point of his character, I didn't know who Bor Gullet was until I looked him up and I don't see why his character had to die? Forrest Whittaker was pretty shite I though, horrendous case of overacting.

Edited December 27, 2016 by stumobir

[Kaz Hayashi]

I watched the new Jungle Book last night.

 

I heard it was shit... I actually enjoyed it. It's strange though, because I wouldn't really say it was a kids film, it's fine for the kids, but I think it's more appropriately aimed towards nostalgia. As a kid I was a big fan of the animated movie, but I also had a knock off series which was one of my favourite tapes. So I suppose I didn't care if it wandered too far away from the original.

It didn't though, it did it's best to stay on track and I think it did so considerably well.

It is what it is, a child who can talk to animals, we know the story and this is that.

 

Not a bad film at all.

[Nick Soapdish]

I watched the new Jungle Book last night.

 

I heard it was shit... I actually enjoyed it. It's strange though, because I wouldn't really say it was a kids film, it's fine for the kids, but I think it's more appropriately aimed towards nostalgia. As a kid I was a big fan of the animated movie, but I also had a knock off series which was one of my favourite tapes. So I suppose I didn't care if it wandered too far away from the original.

It didn't though, it did it's best to stay on track and I think it did so considerably well.

It is what it is, a child who can talk to animals, we know the story and this is that.

 

Not a bad film at all.

Whoever told you it was shit is a knob.

 

Had very little interest in it, even with Jon Favreau directing it, but I thought it was a very polished film with spectacular effects. All the voices were spot on and the kid playing Mowgli was alright, not too annoying.

 

Just watched Alice TTLG. It's style over substance and got torn to shreds. But it's no more so then the first one so don't know why that one was well received and this one wasn't. Both of them are meh films though both have some fun with the 3D