Paid Members Lorne Malvo Posted May 14, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 14, 2023 Return To Seoul - A strong drama about identity and finding your place in a world where you feel like an outsider. The general story is about a Korean woman raised in France who decides to track down her biological parents on a whim. The character work and lead performances are really strong, but there are a few too many 'really?' moments of incredulity for it to land as well as it should've. Still worth a watch, though. Harka - I thought this was tremendous. A story about injustice, corruption and living on the poverty line in Tunisia, the whole film just has this really uncomfortable sense of dread just bubbling under the surface. It could almost be a horror film in some scenes. Adam Bessa is brilliant in the lead role, really getting across the feeling of someone who could just self-destruct at any moment. The Laureate - Some poets shag around then get pissed off at each other for shagging around. I never believed any of the relationships or performances. I'm a sucker for a literary drama too so it should be right in my wheelhouse, but it's a bit crap. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3 - MCU back on form. Easily their best since Endgame. If they are insisting on releasing 8 films a year, more of this and less of Love And Thunder please. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Alan Grant Posted May 15, 2023 Share Posted May 15, 2023 I’ve been working my way through various film franchises lately, and watched some truly terrible films. The Twilight Saga. Oh boy. The one in the middle (Eclipse) was passable. The rest are dreadful. I’m glad that Pattinson and Stewart managed to shake these films off, move on to better things and prove they had some talent. Taylor Lautner has rightfully disappeared off the planet. The climactic battle was vaguely entertaining, but then a revelation that it was nothing but a vision pissed me right off. I’ll stick to The Lost Boys for any future vampire fix I need. Fuck Twilight. Next up was Jurassic Park/World. First is obviously the best. Lost World is still great fun. 3 has William H Macy, so it’s not a complete dud. I think I’m in the minority of people who like Chris Pratt, so I enjoyed the second trilogy for the most part. The third act of Fallen Kingdom with the dino auction is utter shite though. I had reasonably high hopes for Dominion if only because of the original cast coming back. It was dragging along until they finally all got together and there were some nice callbacks. They introduced a new character, a pilot. I’ve never seen her in anything before but I immediately wanted her to have her own spin off. DeWanda Wise is her name and she was delightful. Could have done without the annoying kid though. Official ranking is 124365. Also, Bryce Dallas Howard ❤️. Finally, I’ve begun the Fast and Furious mega saga. There’s 11 of these in total. 11. Jesus Christ. I’ve seen 1-5 previously, and I’m vaguely aware that they become increasingly ludicrous as they go on. First one is pretty standard, and the silliest moment was Vin Diesel pulling a wheelie in his muscle car. 2 Fast 2 Furious tonight. Can’t wait. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members ReturnOfTheMack Posted May 15, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 15, 2023 1 hour ago, Dr. Alan Grant said: Taylor Lautner has rightfully disappeared off the planet. I thought he was great in Cookoo with Greg Davies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Alan Grant Posted May 15, 2023 Share Posted May 15, 2023 I only watched the first series with Andy Samberg. Maybe it’s time for a Taylor Lautner renaissance. A Lautnerssance if you will. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted May 15, 2023 Share Posted May 15, 2023 1 minute ago, Dr. Alan Grant said: I only watched the first series with Andy Samberg. Fucking hell, it was wasn't it???? I completely forgot about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lorne Malvo Posted May 15, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 15, 2023 Nobody will ever convince me that Lost World isn't the worst Jurassic Park film. A load of shite. Most of them other than the original are crap to be fair, but 3 has a bit of a B-movie charm to it, Fallen Kingdom has some fun horror-movie esque visuals and Dominion is entertainingly daft in a 'throw everything but the kitchen sink at it' kind of way. Lost World has that one good scene with the van hanging over the cliff but other than that it's so dull. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members FLips Posted May 15, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 15, 2023 45 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said: Nobody will ever convince me that Lost World isn't the worst Jurassic Park film. A load of shite. Most of them other than the original are crap to be fair, but 3 has a bit of a B-movie charm to it, Fallen Kingdom has some fun horror-movie esque visuals and Dominion is entertainingly daft in a 'throw everything but the kitchen sink at it' kind of way. Lost World has that one good scene with the van hanging over the cliff but other than that it's so dull. I haven't seen the new ones but agree whole-heartedly about the original trilogy. The original is what it is, stone cold classic. 3 is cheesy fun. Lost World is absolute miserable junk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cobra_gordo Posted May 16, 2023 Share Posted May 16, 2023 I love The Lost World because of what it is- a daft dinosaur film. Postlethwaite drags it in to being an enjoyable romp and thinking about how great he is in this really makes me miss him. Do we need the awkward scenes between Ian Malcolm and his raptor fighting gymnast daughter? Probably not, but other than that you've got the fantastic cliff scene, Pete and gang trying to catch dinosaurs, Peter Stormare doing Peter Stormare things and that awesome bit where they're being chased through the tall grass by the raptors. I don't even mind the third act where the T-Rex eats a dog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted May 16, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 16, 2023 10 hours ago, FelatioLips said: I haven't seen the new ones but agree whole-heartedly about the original trilogy. The original is what it is, stone cold classic. 3 is cheesy fun. Lost World is absolute miserable junk. I have seen people ask the question "What is Steven Spielbergs worst film". There is only one answer and it's The Lost World. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted May 16, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 16, 2023 The Jurassic Park / World code is 1. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted May 16, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 16, 2023 1 hour ago, cobra_gordo said: I love The Lost World because of what it is- a daft dinosaur film. Postlethwaite drags it in to being an enjoyable romp and thinking about how great he is in this really makes me miss him. Postlethwaite delivers every line in that movie at double-speed, as if he can't wait to get it all over with and get home, and who can blame him? I have a soft spot for The Lost World, because I saw it at the cinema on release and was a dumb enough kid to love pretty much any film you put in front of me; I was equally impressed by the '98 Godzilla, for fuck's sake. Seeing it was what got me to read both Jurassic Park books, and there's a lot of nostalgia tied up in it all. But most of it is bloody dreadful. Even the book basically opens with "hang on, isn't Ian Malcolm dead? Well, he got better", so you can't hang it all on Spielberg. Worst part of it all is that they have the mother T-Rex manage to track them across the whole island because it can smell a bit of its baby's blood on a shirt, long after the blood has dried. If their sense of smell is that good, then who cares that they can't see you when you don't move, you're obviously fucked either way! 3 is fine. It's just cobbling together the bits left out of the two books, and trying to go some way to try and incorporate more up-to-date science on what dinosaurs looked like. It's the most disposable of them all, though. Jurassic World, I actually really enjoyed as a bit of a fun romp on first viewing, then watched it back and found it unbearable. I like the basic premise of the park now being up and running, and how much scarier a dinosaur break-out will be now that it's full of people, and while I hate all the genetic modified super-dinosaur stuff (are actual fucking dinosaurs not big and impressive and scary enough?), there's at least something to the idea that, after the park's been open for a few years, the novelty of dinosaurs being brought back has worn off and they need to try something new. There's even a nice line of dialogue in there about how they're justified in making up new dinosaurs, because none of the dinosaurs in the park are genetically accurate - they're all patched together with frog and lizard DNA, and none of them look the way they're supposed to; it's a good way of getting around the fact that we now know most of these dinosaurs would have had feathers, and stuff like that. But mostly, it's dire. It's incredibly mean-spirited, the character archetypes (and particularly the gender politics of it all) are lazier and more dated than the characters in the first film, and it does this "have its cake and eat it" thing of making fun of the stupid name of the new dinosaur but still calling it that name, and poking fun at product placement but still being a movie full of it; it's just an incredibly shallow, lazy bit of film-making to go for the laziest, most obvious decisions, but then have a line of dialogue poking fun at them, to say "yeah, we know it's a bit shit too, actually", rather than just writing something that isn't a bit shit. And then there's the velociraptors. The worst part about the progression of the series is how raptors have moved from, "they're smarter than you'd expect" to them being super-intelligent, capable of communication, and all the rest of it. That's even more annoying than the ending of World, which I'm absolutely convinced went through at least one draft that included the T-Rex giving a thumbs-up to camera. I hated Fallen Kingdom, but in retrospect I don't really know what directions the series can possibly take that aren't as silly as "a velociraptor reenacts Nosferatu", or "this character is a clone, which is treated as a significant plot point, but actually has no bearing on anything at all". I haven't watched the last one. It sounds awful. They should have just gone down the route of the Lego series, which has Dennis Nedry's cousin plotting to open a rival park while searching for buried pirate treasure on Isla Nubar. That, or the old comics that featured a raptor going to space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cobra_gordo Posted May 16, 2023 Share Posted May 16, 2023 Reasons why Jurassic Park 3 is worse than The Lost World: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted May 16, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 16, 2023 The Jurassic Park franchise suffers a lot from the fact that its first film was Jurassic Park. Follow *that*. They've tried different ideas throughout but maybe that's the main problem. They've tried too much and didn't really learn anything from the Japanese kaiju films in that you don't have to come up with really original ideas or change things up from film to film. Just stick to the basics and don't try and outdo what is so difficult to outdo. Jaws 2 was really good because it went for the same ideas with slightly different execution, threw in a decent spanner in the works, and played off the emotional fallout of the first one. At no point did it try to be better than Jaws because what's the point of that. Almost the whole Jurassic franchise has been a missed opportunity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted May 16, 2023 Share Posted May 16, 2023 45 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said: Jaws 2 was really good because it went for the same ideas with slightly different execution Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted May 16, 2023 Paid Members Share Posted May 16, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Devon Malcolm said: The Jurassic Park franchise suffers a lot from the fact that its first film was Jurassic Park. Follow *that*. They've tried different ideas throughout but maybe that's the main problem. They've tried too much and didn't really learn anything from the Japanese kaiju films in that you don't have to come up with really original ideas or change things up from film to film. Just stick to the basics and don't try and outdo what is so difficult to outdo. They get it wrong by following the wrong threads, I think. They get hung up on the genetic engineering stuff, which is a big part of the story, and a more widely applicable "don't interfere with forces you don't understand"/"man shouldn't play God" story, but they seem to forget that it's ultimately about dinosaurs. Which should be something really difficult to fuck up! I don't care about human cloning, genetic hybrids, crop failures or locusts, I want dinosaurs. It doesn't help that the only characters to get a full trilogy were the ones introduced in World, who are all shit and unlikeable. Edited May 16, 2023 by BomberPat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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