[rooster]

Well, yes. I won't dislike every single movie. But I'm pretty picky because overall, I don't like them. I'll go for a really really long time without watching a single one and then I'll catch up on the ones that I thought looked interesting - hence the list I posted recently.

[honk]

I'll just end up sounding like Saddam ranting about Iron Fist sooner or later

[Snupes]

Sword Art Online (Tomohiko Itō, Season 1 Episodes 1-12, 2012)

Holy shit. This is actually the worst anime I've ever seen. My nephew rants about it all the time and finally made me start watching it with him and it's like the anime version of Suicide Squad in its awfulness; every second is terrible but I can't stop watching and laughing and making fun of it with him.

I'm suffering but I'm hooked.

[rooster]

Oh god, the harem trope too! So bad. I enjoyed the idea but pretty much hated all the characters except for the main girl. Also, after they leave the game it gets bizarre and so much worse.

[honk]

capeshit capeshit

Logan (James Mangold, 2017)

This was great. My one gripe with it was the Wolverine clone. The idea of giving Wolverine an evil counterpart has been played out (in one form or another) by the franchise to death now, it was an unwelcome dose of goofiness to a movie that was clearly making a point of staying on the gritty end of the capeshit spectrum, and most importantly of all, it just wasn't necessary. Logan's deteriorating physical condition and diminishing healing already provided all the stakes and tension needed for the fights. Everything else was solid, though. The acting was good from everyone (even the guy playing the villain, whom I was dreading after how obnoxious I found him in Narcos), the music was nice, and overall, the film was a worthy finale for the titular character.

[Snupes]

Double Down (Neil Breen, 2005)

I...I want to write a summary of this film, but I honestly don't know what happened. I just...I don't know. That was somehow the worst and greatest experience of my life. I would defer an explanation to Crudblud, but I don't know if he can help any more than I can. It was a thing that kind of vaguely happened and I think I'm retarded now.

[Crudblud]

Double Down (Neil Breen)

I am 100% with Snupes on this one.

The best explanation of the plot, such as it is, that I can manage, is as follows: Neil Breen is an elite hacker/soldier/agent/spy/assassin who can literally do anything except prevent his wife from getting shot to death, and that makes him angry, though you can't tell because his superpower is not being able to convey any sort of emotion or recognisably human trait, so he hangs out in the desert with her corpse, a bunch of flip phones, broken laptops (his other superpower is the ability to use non-functioning and/or outright broken communications technology to... do something... possibly...), empty cans of tuna, vials full of drugs etc. and plots his revenge on someone whose identity is never made clear (this is a major element of the film: at no point do you have any fucking clue who anyone is or what they're doing) through means which are never really specified. There's also a side "plot" about him assassinating random people for some guys he apparently works for, possibly the CIA, it is not exactly clear, but this goes nowhere and doesn't seem to serve a purpose other than to give Neil Breen more time to narrate what he's doing and thereby make everything more confusing than it already was.

Reading the above probably makes this film sound terrible (it is), but in Neil Breen's clumsy, incoherent, thoroughly ugly and uncomfortable style there is something unique and compelling. Compared to a lot of low budget, badly made films, Neil Breen's productions have a kind of weird blockheaded sincerity at their core, and no matter how brain-meltingly awful they are, they bear the mark of something that was made by someone who believes in what they're doing, furthermore that they are the only one who could have conceived of it and brought it to fruition. I can think of plenty of well-made films that have no heart in them or any remarkable features, this is the exact opposite. A film so singularly, amazingly bad as this should not exist, yet here it is.

[Snupes]

The Americans (Joe Weisberg, Season 1, 2013)

It started a bit slowish, but I've come to love this show quite a lot by this point. The first handful of episodes rely a bit too much on relationship problems and bickering amidst sneaky spy work and disguises, but once it finds its groove and gets into a good rhythm, everything flows a lot more naturally and is handled a lot better than most shows. The subterfuge and intrigue feels a lot less forced and hamfisted, character motivations feel real, people react to things the way you would expect them to...that's a really low baseline for liking a show, I just realized, but so much other TV has made me cynical at this point.

Also there's a fair amount of speaking русский in the show, which makes me happy and means I get to listen to that beautiful accent and language and practice hearing it.

Anyway, even though I liked season one a lot, season two and three are supposed to be drastically better (I found the show because season three is one of Metacritic's highest rated seasons of television), so I'm very excited to get started on those.

[rooster]

American Gods episodes 1-5

I love it. Neil Gaiman never disappoints.
Ian McShane steals the show, IMO. I just love that man.

[Lord Dave]

Sword Art Online (Tomohiko Itō, Season 1 Episodes 1-12, 2012)

Holy shit. This is actually the worst anime I've ever seen. My nephew rants about it all the time and finally made me start watching it with him and it's like the anime version of Suicide Squad in its awfulness; every second is terrible but I can't stop watching and laughing and making fun of it with him.

I'm suffering but I'm hooked.

Watch the abridged series by somethingwitty.


Fluffles....

[Snupes]

Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

Watch this movie. Seriously, it's worth a watch by basically anyone. However, if you're determined not to or you really just don't care, read on.

That was the most fucking frustrating thing I have ever seen in my life. This movie was so, so, so close to being one of the greatest films I've watched, so close to being an incredible work of art, and then the whole fucking thing is split apart by one motherfucking character named Rod Williams. Fuck. The whole Goddamn movie has this amazing atmosphere that only gets more and more tense as it goes on, so many times it had me literally leaning forward, heart pounding, completely absorbed, then motherfucking Rod Williams bursts into the scene all "HEY AM FUNNY MAN" and fucking shatters the entire illusion. Always at the worst fucking parts, when the film's at its darkest and deepest, he reminds you this is a fucking movie and he's a fucking awfully-written character who has no fucking place in such a good fucking film and is going to make sure that you don't fucking enjoy yourself to the fullest and don't get too fucking enamoured by the film because he's going to yank you right the fuck out of it and rub your face in the fucking dirt while making you listen to and watch his wacky fucking antics that have no place in SUCH A GOOD FUCKING FILM. FUCK.

So yeah, it was great. Just had one flaw that might have ruined it for me. Oh well.

[Crudblud]

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Max Landis)

Since Showtime decided that it would release four episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return digitally on the premiere date, but only broadcast the first two, leaving the next two for the following week, I've had two whole fucking weeks without Coop and Friends and have been in need of something to tide me over. Cue Dirk Gently, Douglas Adams's "holistic detective", who solves bizarre crimes basically accidentally, based on his philosophy that all things are connected, and that simply doing whatever will inevitably lead him to the solution. I don't know the original novels, so can't say how good it is as an adaptation, though I'm given to understand that many things have been changed or "updated".

The overall presentation and mood feels kind of like Terry Gilliam doing a modern crime show. It's quirky, fast-paced, full of deliberately confused banter, occult conspiracies, and strange technology, with some fun action sequences and a healthy dose of bloody violence. The show takes Gently's mantra "everything's connected" to heart, and heaps amusing fabulism over an mostly real-world foundation, just about managing to hold the two together without breaking itself. Don't really feel like going into detail on performances, but Elijah Wood, Hannah Marks, and Fiona Dourif (daughter of Brad) are all very good, for quite different reasons.

I enjoyed it quite a lot. The story gets kind of retarded towards the end, as pretty much any story trying to wrap up a complicated and weird set-up with lots of different threads inevitably does, but it does so with a kind of knowing tongue-in-cheek humour. It's a pretty inventive piece with a good balance of light and dark elements, all of which play well against the supernatural elements of the setting, and while it didn't exactly fill the void while I wait for more Twin Peaks, it was very entertaining and I'm glad the show has been picked up for another season.

[Crudblud]

Terminator: Genisys (some guy idk)

The fifth film in a series that was perfectly fine ending with its second instalment, Genisys is a retelling of the original story. Kyle Reese is sent back in time by John Connor to protect Sarah Connor from a deadly cyborg, only the cyborg has already been killed and there's another cyborg protecting her. The timeline done changerino'd, thus yet more money is squeezed from the sagging teats of Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you now feel nauseous, I'm truly sorry. The film is not that bad! I mean, I expected it to be a dumb cashgrab with dumb jokes and kid friendly violence, and it definitely has more than its fair share of bad action movie humour and mediocre CGI action, but considering the previous two entries were either a) straight garbage or b) so far removed from the series that if you took the terminator stuff out it wouldn't make a difference, it's not hard to call it the best new entry since 1991.

The story is an ambitious twist on the first two movies, but doesn't quite come together, and this is mainly because it has no characters to carry it. Between Arnie's wisecracking oldster terminator (it's like the banter in Terminator 2 only really, really grating), Sarah Connor played as a pale and doofy imitation of Linda Hamilton's kick-ass warrior from Terminator 2, and Jai Courtney being somewhere between a generic meathead and a slightly less generic meathead, the story is essentially about the movements of things that are very hard to give a shit about. But I think it's more the writing than the cast that is at fault here, even J.K. Simmons can't do much with it, and he's great no matter what he's doing. Parts of the story are neat, and there are a couple of decent twists here and there, but without good characters to make any of them meaningful, it's just so many setpieces waiting to explode.

I guess what makes it ultimately inoffensive is that it's actually trying on some level to do something interesting with a very tired series, and I can admire that, but too much blockbuster stupidity keeps it from being anything more than mediocre.

[honk]

Free Fire (Ben Wheatley, 2016)

Not bad, but I feel like it could have been a lot better. There's a gritty, lo-fi feel to the chaotic shootout that takes up the bulk of the movie - the gunshots sound like real gunshots, the characters spend most of their time either lying still or slowly crawling around, the wounds they accrue continue to hamper them for the rest of the movie, etc. - which is all the more reason why it drove me nuts that it incorporated the trope where everybody can just spew bullets endlessly and only ever run out when the plot specifically needs them to. I know this seems like an odd thing to criticize, but it really, really stood out in a movie that was clearly trying so hard to deconstruct action movie tropes and portray its characters as violent buffoons rather than badasses. My other issue is the presence of two extremely obnoxious characters who should have been killed off early in the movie, but inexplicably survive until the climax, where they distract from, you know, the actual plot, and the characters we care about.

[Snupes]

Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017)

It happened, folks. This movie was really really good. Not only is it the best DC movie yet (not that that's much of a hurdle), it was honestly better than a lot of Marvel films, IMO. Gal Gadot was fantastic as Diana, and the whole idea of the "male gaze" in superhero films (and, well, a lot of movies) never smacked me as hard as it did here from the utter absence of it. Diana and all the Amazons were absolutely gorgeous and there were times quite a bit of skin was exposed, but the shots never lingered on them in a sexual way, and even when you did see it it lacked any tension, just showing reality. I'm sure that'll get some people frothing (at the lack of it, at the idea that it's a thing, at the idea that it matters, etc. etc., people will find a way), but I could not have appreciated it more. It was super nice just to see a woman kick ass and be herself without having to impress anyone.

Plus, with this movie, Diana is the only hero so far that's really about justice and protecting people. For the most part. And Patty Jenkins did a fantastic job showing her reactions to mankind's fuckups and the horrors of war. There's a moment where she's completely overwhelmed with cries of help and realizing she can't save everyone at once that's completely heartbreaking, I could almost feel exactly how (I imagine) she felt.

Lastly, those action scenes, hoo boy. A tad bit more slow-mo than I'd go for, but the choreography was wonderful, hits had impact, you could see very clearly what was going on, cuts added emphasis rather than hiding hits. It was great. That movie was great. I can't wait to see Diana ruined in Justice League.

[Dither]

Hoping to see Wonder Women this week. 

[Crudblud]

her reactions to mankind's fuckups

So good! The scene where she stands next to a wind farm and monologues, while staring into space, about how disappointed she is in the humans and their lack of progress, is so moving. I didn't get why she had to hypnotise a junkie in the desert and steal his clothes beforehand but whatever.

[honk]

John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelski, 2017)

Largely more of the same satisfying action from the first movie, along with a more in-depth story and an increased focus on the intriguing (albeit ridiculous) secret society that apparently governs the underworld. The villain is kind of lame and comes across as a poor man's Antonio Banderas, the final battle is a little underwhelming, and I wish they had done some more with the returning side characters than have them just pop up to confirm that they still exist. The return of the cop who seems to have an understanding of what it is that Keanu does and turns a blind eye to it especially bugged me, because it's literally a repeat of the exact same beat from the first movie. What's the story with this guy? Is he an honest cop who's just too scared of Keanu to take any action against him? Are they old friends? Is he even really a cop at all? Give us something new about him! Anything!

In any case, the movie is still a lot of fun.

[Snupes]

The Mummy (Some Guy, 2017)

Whelp, my computer randomly shut down as I was seven paragraphs in, so now I'm frustrated and y'all get the hyper-condensed version.

This was very ok. Similar the Brandan Frasman's original, it's exceedingly underwhelming, has a couple of funny moments but is mostly really unfunny, technically is action-packed but not much of it is memorable, stars brown-haired white dude and white archaeologist woman having little chemistry but we're told they do, they find a thing and do dumb things and big ol' generic baddy attacks. The only "saving grace" of the film is that Tom Cruise, insane and awful as he may be, is very good at being energetic and likeable in movies. Doesn't exactly carry this two-hour forced shared-universe advertisement, though. Well, that's not fair; the middle 40 minutes are an ad inserted into the middle of a film called The Mummy. They took their cues from Zack Snyder.

Really, I can see why it was reviewed badly, but can't really see how anyone thinks it's better than Fraser's because neither were very good. There ya go.

[rooster]

I do really enjoy Tom Cruise in movies.

That said, I won't see this. I was a HUGE fan and still am of the original, but I never liked any of the sequels. It helped inspire me a tad (I had a lot of other inspiration) to get into history/archaeology. My Egyptian archaeology course was one of my absolute favorites. And Brendan Fraser was one of my first celebrity crushes so will always hold a special place for me cause I'm sentimental like that. Rick O'Connell is still one of my favorite characters.