What film did you watch last night?

Dogman (2023)

Luc Besson film about a child who grows up with an abusive father who locks him up with the dogs he keeps for dog fighting. The dogs then protect him and become a sort of super power he uses to help people after he and the dogs are rescued.

Quite a good film to be honest.

6/10
 
The Ring (2002)

Second time I've watched it since it was released and I still find it a bit dull. It's not particularly scary and I think Naomi Watt's performance almost falls in to over acting at time. Which is a shame, because I thinks she's good in every thing else I've seen her in.

Not my bag.

4/10
 
The Ring (2002)

Second time I've watched it since it was released and I still find it a bit dull. It's not particularly scary and I think Naomi Watt's performance almost falls in to over acting at time. Which is a shame, because I thinks she's good in every thing else I've seen her in.

Not my bag.

4/10
But why would you watch the remake twice?

Tell me you've seen the original?
 
Continuing my Transformers series watchathon:

Bumblebee - 8/10

Absolutely loved this. Such a refreshing change from the typical mess of a franchise.

It's a teenager befriends an autobot movie set in 1987. Hailee Steinfield absolutely shines is this, and her friendly nerd friend is good. John Cena is there to try and portray a dumb, yank commander and does an amicable job too. It is a fun movie that doesn't go overboard with an angsty teenager for once, and just focuses on relationships with her and Bumblebee, her family and said nerd.

Being set in 1987 meant a very low reliance on tech ie mobile phones etc and the era just made the film a lot more enjoyable for me.


Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - 6.5/10

This was a strange film. Mirage was hilarious and Optimus was a grumpy old fart. The intro made my jaw drop. I'd been waiting since Transformers - The Movie to see Unicron come alive.

"Dude, you were inside of me" from Mirage literally made me burst out with laughter, not done that in a while and the line delivery was perfect. The film didn't really do much of a job of showing us the full potential of the Maximals though, hell the Cheetah and Rhino maximals have a single line between them. The main human character has a lot of cringey moments, especially with his brother - I ended up fast forwarding those bits as they add nothing to the film.

Overally Mirage steals the show in this film, though a superb LL Cool J track for Bumblebee at some point in the film was awesome.

Finally, this watchathon can end! :o
 
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The Zone of Interest

Only vaguely knew what it was about beforehand - I found the execution effective - sometimes surprisingly so. There were moments when I just felt sick to my stomach with the everyday moments happening right next to such atrocities, and the sound design was genius. Virtually no music, but the way you can hear it faintly in the background makes it more harrowing. The end scene when he's on the stairs reminded me of The Act of Killing, which was a bit of a random association I wasn't expecting, but at the same time makes perfect sense since both people are involved in murder. The jump cut at the end was also very memorable.

8/10.

-edit- Turns out Act of Killing was a direct inspiration for the ending.
 
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Wish

Disney's latest computer animated affair. There's some songs, none of which really grabbed me. Some funny moments, and visual jokes, and a functional enough plot that actually feels like it could be the basis for a fantastic dark fairy tale in other hands. But overall I found it quite flat and predictable. Now, obviously, I'm not the target audience for Disney movies but if you watch a lot of the older movies they're still made to be enjoyable for adults as well. I'm sure the kids will still enjoy this a lot.

Merely okay 5/10.
 
Thats a pity, you've missed some absolute belters of foreign films over the last few decades but I guess its not that uncommon for people to dislike subtitles

I think the last one I watched was Parasite (2019), which to be fair was good. We are also currently watching Shogun on Disney, so maybe we'll give a few more for foreign language films a try in the future.

I quite fancy watching The Raid (2011), see if I can convince my wife she needs to watch it.
 
Baghead

A similar take to Talk To Me, but not anywhere as good. 4/10

Suzume

I will forever hold every anime film against the standard that Your Name set, making Suzume an ok watch.

Story is fine, what happens to Souta is funny, but it lacked the emotional gut punch from Your Name.

I will say, it was GORGEOUS. 7/10

Dune: Part 2

I found this ok, didn't feel it drag, enjoyable enough set pieces, but not massively memorable.

6/10
 
Arthur the king - a story loosely based on a true story, a few liberty's taken for artistic measure but what Hollywood film doesn't, im just glad it was made as i've never heard about this story and what a testament to man and his dog. Having read more of the back story its a shame they missed out on some of the closing journey (without adding to much of a spoiler) and some of the character building was a bit woolly but on the whole i did enjoy it.
But fairplay to those people who take park in this sport, thats one grueling race!
 
Thats a pity, you've missed some absolute belters of foreign films over the last few decades but I guess its not that uncommon for people to dislike subtitles

It's a bit tragic to think that someone might only ever watch inferior US remakes of certain classic foreign movies.

And there's some great series too. I watch more foreign stuff than British.

Or even stories such as Shogun, where the use of different languages is a central theme. Can't see how that would make sense without using subtitles.
 
Return of the Jedi. Went to this https://www.mso.com.au/performance/2024-star-wars-return-of-the-jedi#about-this-performance

No idea how many times I have seen it now, 10, 20 maybe. It's the weakest of the trilogy but it's still great. The orchestra were absolutely brilliant, there was about 50 of them. In fact they were so good I kept forgetting they were actually there. Playing the Imperial March for the first time as Vader drops in to witness the optimistic appraisal of the situation was epic.

Couple of downsides for me. The screen wasn't big enough. They used the remaster / re-edited version with the extended singing and dancing of the CGI characters in Jabbas palace. There's really no need, adds nothing to the film except perhaps the ability to generate revenue for some new funky looking dolls. Went with my mrs who is a real life movie goldfish, shes only seen it once during a 8 movie (no Phantom Menace, obvs) COVID weekend marathon we had and she said WTF is that bit with the CGI. The orchestra didn't play those bits either.
Whatever method or process they use to remove the music has dulled the sound somewhat. Dialogue was fine but some other sound effects were poor in particular the speeder / biker scout chase in the forest.

Entertaining thing to do on a Wednesday night nonetheless. There's a similar thing with The Terminator starting in May with some synth band. Might give that a go too.
 
Return of the Jedi. Went to this https://www.mso.com.au/performance/2024-star-wars-return-of-the-jedi#about-this-performance

No idea how many times I have seen it now, 10, 20 maybe. It's the weakest of the trilogy but it's still great. The orchestra were absolutely brilliant, there was about 50 of them. In fact they were so good I kept forgetting they were actually there. Playing the Imperial March for the first time as Vader drops in to witness the optimistic appraisal of the situation was epic.

Couple of downsides for me. The screen wasn't big enough. They used the remaster / re-edited version with the extended singing and dancing of the CGI characters in Jabbas palace. There's really no need, adds nothing to the film except perhaps the ability to generate revenue for some new funky looking dolls. Went with my mrs who is a real life movie goldfish, shes only seen it once during a 8 movie (no Phantom Menace, obvs) COVID weekend marathon we had and she said WTF is that bit with the CGI. The orchestra didn't play those bits either.
Whatever method or process they use to remove the music has dulled the sound somewhat. Dialogue was fine but some other sound effects were poor in particular the speeder / biker scout chase in the forest.

Entertaining thing to do on a Wednesday night nonetheless. There's a similar thing with The Terminator starting in May with some synth band. Might give that a go too.

That's pretty epic - but £90 a ticket?!
 
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