What film did you watch last night?

Watched Begin Again (2013) last night after a few beers. It was on telly last week. Thought it was quite good, and I enjoyed the music too. Who knew Keira Knightley could hold a tune ... 7/10
 
Star Trek - Beyond 4/10 complete gash of a story...cant remember anything about it!

Xmen - Apocalypse - 7/10 watched it a few weeks back. Pretty good and imo all the better for not having Wolverine in it(mostly)...though i hated Sansa as Jean Grey

Raiders of the Lost Ark imo is the best film of its type pretty much of all time. Everything is nigh on perfection. I felt that Last Crusade even though excellent sorta imitated Raiders a bit. Is there a better Indiana Jones bit than this bit in the entire quadrilogy? (temple idol scene in Raiders and magic hat scene in LC come very close) Even his enemies love this guy :cool:


Basically i think Raiders has more pure IJ scenes which exemplify the character and soul of Indiana Jones. Last Crusade is more comedic which while fantastic (esp the duet with sean) imo detracted a little bit from the path. Also felt it was a bit more formulaic. Im sure i read an essay on t'internet describing in detail why Raiders was better hrmm... I love all 3 of btw. Temple of Doom the weakest but still awesome.
 
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Room - really quite powerful film of a 5 year old boy and his mum living in a room told from his perspective. When I say living in a room I mean he has lived his whole life in the room and never seen outside. It really had me rapt from the get go and held me tense for a long time. Best child acting for a long time. 4/5
 
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Inferno (2016) - 4/10

Good use of misdirection in the beginning and the fantastic European architecture and artworks throughout, but the film just fizzles along through its lacklustre plot.

It over-explains the plot twists, the action scenes are too frantic, the chase scenes are rarely exciting or thrilling, and overall, it just feels as though it is lacking.

The characters are mediocre at best, and the film runs for a bit too long, becoming boring before the thoroughly predictable ending.
 
Inferno - while not really my cup of tea was probably the best out of the 3 imo. 7/10 Tom Hanks carries the film quite well.
 
Nitefly said:
Ok - so further to my previous posts over the last couple of pages, I have watched Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull... concluding my epic Indy-fest!

I remember coming out of the cinema and thinking 'meh' and, prior to watching this evening I thought my visions had been unfairly clouded by general criticisms laced at the film. Whilst I still think it's very meh, there is quite a lot going for it... but there 3 potentially forgivable setbacks and one major unforgivable flaw that amplifies the other negatives... so very frustrating. With these first 3 points, I feel they could have easily corrected them with just subtle tweaks in their approach.

Potentially forgivable drawback 1: Russians aren't as fun bad guys as Nazis. In terms of modern history, nazis are surely the ultimate bad guys. They are so universally identifiable as the enemy, and so obviously evil, the Russians in this film (and in possibly every other context) come across as ultra hammy and stereotyped. I suppose a follow up question is "can you unfairly stereotype a nazi?" - maybe not in terms of lighthearted action / adventure... but the Russians feel really cliche here. Obviously with timelines they couldn't go for nazis again but maybe they just could have made them more menacing / less camp.

Potentially forgivable drawback 2: Two rubbish supporting characters. There is nothing further to say other than Mack and Oxley are crap characters. Zero character development. Zero cares given. Worse still - they pass from bad into objectively annoying and dumb. "Henry Jones Junior...." / "Jonesy!!!" - **** off! Simple rewrites could have fixed this. In contrast - Shia "le-buff" is quite fun and certainly passable at worst. Marian and the villain (the Russian) are a bit obvious / hammy but not comparatively annoying.

Potentially forgivable drawback 3: Surprisingly confusing plot. Unless you focus your mind it's easy to miss how Oxley and Jones know each other and how the other two leads are connected to Oxley. It becomes irrelevant quite quickly but I recall thinking to myself "wait... how does Indys old flame know Oxley and why did Indy's son care?" - granted I didn't have my game face on whilst watching but it should have revisited this vital info at least once.

Just before the fatal flaw, aliens. I'd add that most people seemed to have a beef with this but really, it didn't bug me too much. Indy has always been about the supernatural so, to my mind, this is sort of in keeping with the theme. The ending is a bit goofy (with the spaceship) but not entirely fatal. Maybe making it less bombastic would have been preferable.

Absolutely awful flaw that ruins the whole thing and makes you focus on the other points - why o why o why did they have to put so much unnecessary CGI in this film. Right from the bat - we have a CGI prairie dog. Why. Every two seconds it was "why is that CGI?!?" - a CGI box?!? Really?! The greatest offender to me was when they drove through some gates and they flew off... in CGI!!! WHY! Just use metal gates. Terrible. Possibly the worst use of CGI and green screen ever. Even the fridge nuke would be bearable, could have been somewhat plausible, if they didn't show the fridge flying across the landscape in CGI - which surely would have liquified his whole body. Not saying it's possible but... jeez. I'm including the other dumb CGI moments with this, monkey swings and jeep off a cliff / waterfall.

Take out those things (arguably the whole film!) but they'd still have Indy, some decent action, a new fun adventure in a different setting with a fun way of passing the torch. Such a mishandling of what could have been great on paper.
3/10
Click to expand...

Tummy's guide to starting an argument in his film lecture.

'Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (Spielberg, 2008) is 'better ' than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg, 1984)..'

<Insert Joker 'here we go' picture from The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008) here>
 
ARQ.
Wasn't to keen on the ending, but was an okay film, shame there wasn't a better conclusion. 5/10.

Capsule.
I forced myself to 30 minutes in watching the same bloke with terrible acting being called Guy every 5 seconds, I'd been wanting to turn it off for the last 20 minutes so I done well getting that far.

Not knowing, and not caring how it ended I can only rate on what I saw, maybe it got better, but for me 2/10.
 
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