What film did you watch last night?

Caporegime
Joined
30 Jul 2013
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28,822
Isle of dogs 8/10

I loved the start, it's bloody weird as you would expect from the director but I personally lost interest in the middle a bit. Nice ending.

Not a kid's film at all even with PG rating it will just go over their heads. We had kids in our showing. Stupid parents....

My 7 year old niece enjoyed it. By all accounts it does work on that level as well, so a bit much to call the parents stupid.

Stupid is taking very young kids to a 12A
 
Associate
Joined
7 Oct 2013
Posts
1,302
Ready Player One - 7/10

Not read the book, so no idea if the story is more complex, but I enjoyed it for what it was and the visuals were great.

Den of Thieves - 6/10

Borrows a lot from Heat, but it was entertaining and I always like a heist film.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
29 Jun 2004
Posts
21,490
Location
Oxfordshire
The Ouija Experiment - 2/10

Fancied a horror film and found this on Netflix, the preview looked ok and I fancied something supernatural. Wow....It was horribly low budget and the acting was terrible. There was one part of the film that I'm guessing was meant to be its real creepy yet emotional twist...but it was just hilarious, proper laugh out loud moments (the really bad portrayal of a very mentally slow old man was probably it). I only stuck with it because I was kind of hooked on the bad effects and attempts at horror

Avoid
 
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Soldato
Joined
26 Apr 2004
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6,165
Location
Wrexham
Had the pleasure of taking the kids to see Early Man yesterday

Really nothing to shout home about, very average. Kids loved it, and the various football puns were enough to stop it from dragging too much for me. Thankfully quite short! 5/10.
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Jul 2007
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Stoke/Norfolk
12 Strong - 7/10 as a fictional "Hollywood War Film" but 2/10 for accuracy (see spoiler) - Soooooooo, long story short, if you know absolutely nothing about the real story and treat this as an entertaining fictional film, full of old school Hollywood clichés like never ending magazines, goody boss fighting the baddy boss 1 on 1 end at the end and the "heroes" being able to perform miracles on the Battlefield then it's quite an enjoyable film, with some good inter-personal relationships between the characters in the US Army SF ODA Team and a good tension filled dynamic between the Team Leader and the Afghan General. The visuals are very good with the scenery looking amazing in particular. Overall it passed a few hours of time enjoyably.

However, as is typical with Hollywood war films based on a real story, it's around 75% fictional because apparently a real life/death struggle isn't "entertaining" enough for movie studio's so the real story needs "sexing-up" to make it into a film. The reason I give it 2/10 is in this spoiler, only read if you're interested in the real story rather than the film -

Wow where to begin? Well there's so many areas of fiction in this film that knowing where to start is a tough one so lets start at the beginning. I bought the Horse Soldiers book way back in '09 when it was released and the reason was that during my time in the RAF I was sent to Oman in Oct '01 as groundcrew on the AWACS aircraft which was co-ordinating all the ground-strikes in Afghan so I got to listen to these missions as they happened and wanted to know more about these guys on the ground.

Anyway the book is the actual story of what happened and it's against this that the film is judged. TBF everything up to their actual insertion into Afghan is accurate but from the minute their boots hit the ground the fiction starts but the biggest single issue is that Nelson (Hemsworth), for the last 1/2 of the film, wasn't alone with the Afghan General Dostrum as the film shows and for most of the last 1/2 he wasn't even within a mile of him. Instead Nelsons superiors Lt Col Bowers (played by Rob Riggle) and Major Mark E. Mitchell (not shown in film) were airlifted into Dostums camp about 5 days after Nelson arrived and it was Major Mitchell who accompanied the General everywhere earning himself the Distinguished Service Cross (the 2nd highest bravery award) for doing so, the first issued since Vietnam. So Nelsons ODA team were not alone there were infact around 50 other US SF troops embedded with Dostrum, who also had no problem with the "other" warlord who had an embedded US SF team (in the film he has a hissy fit and leaves when he find out about the other SF team), the SF troops didn't engage the enemy in a cavalry charge (although they did engage the Taliban directly), Michael Shannons character never was wounded by a surrendering Taliban (complete fiction) and the list just goes on. What these guys did IRL is amazing and I just don't see the need to Hollywood to think "Nah, not brave enough, lets make some stuff up for drama" with a story like this!

This is my problem with Hollywood - ****IF*** the story they tell is based on a real one ***AND*** they are portraying the real life guys then they have a responsibility to be honest. The real people involved are now going to have friends and family etc asking them "did you do that" after watching this film and for almost 95% they'll have to say "nope, it's all made up". The story is amazing enough without having to sex it up with lies! I had the same problem with Blackhawk Down which makes the film version of Sgt Eversmann into the focal point and the main hero while IRL he wasn't there for 2/3's of the action as he went back with the first convoy, yet in the film he's shown doing all manner of stuff and being in situations that just didn't happen, and the real person will have to live with the fact that people who have only watched a film will think he is someone he's not, which has got to be very tough.

Anyway thats enough of a rant about Hollywood changing facts to fit a narrative they want to tell, regardless of the effects of the real people involved
 
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Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
Posts
25,658
12 Strong - 7/10 as a fictional "Hollywood War Film" but 2/10 for accuracy (see spoiler) - Soooooooo, long story short, if you know absolutely nothing about the real story and treat this as an entertaining fictional film, full of old school Hollywood clichés like never ending magazines, goody boss fighting the baddy boss 1 on 1 end at the end and the "heroes" being able to perform miracles on the Battlefield then it's quite an enjoyable film, with some good inter-personal relationships between the characters in the US Army SF ODA Team and a good tension filled dynamic between the Team Leader and the Afghan General. The visuals are very good with the scenery looking amazing in particular. Overall it passed a few hours of time enjoyably.

However, as is typical with Hollywood war films based on a real story, it's around 75% fictional because apparently a real life/death struggle isn't "entertaining" enough for movie studio's so the real story needs "sexing-up" to make it into a film. The reason I give it 2/10 is in this spoiler, only read if you're interested in the real story rather than the film -

also watched 12 Strong recently and it was decent, but Hollywood really can't help themselves, even when it comes to real life events.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
24 Sep 2005
Posts
35,487
A Quiet Place - 9/10

Terrifically suspenseful. Really good fun watching in a full screening. Emily Blunt was brilliant.
Is she the female lead in this? Because I literally burst out laughing at how bad one of her lines was (during her ‘surviving’ monologue) :p
 
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