W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

Post by W »

I realized I forgot one that was hidden in Mojo's limited release section:

Eye in the Sky 8/10: A pretty excellent thought provoking movie about modern drone warfare. The cast can't get too much better (Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi, and of course Alan Rickman in his last live-action role). It takes on many ethical issues on the nature of modern warfare such as the when it is ethical to strike, is taking one innocent life yourself worth stopping someone else taking many more, who's best to make these judgements, and what does it do to those who have to actually pull the trigger? It's a really tense political thriller much more than a war film. Hopefully Gavin Hood makes more movies like this and Tsotsi and less like Ender's Game.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

Post by undeadmonkey »

I thought Winter's War was much better than the first. This time we get Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt hamming it up. I kinda see these as big budget B films, i really like them, I hope we get much more.

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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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5/13, 5/20

Money Monster 7/10: Good, not great. Colonel plays Jim Kramer, Julian Roberts plays the person that runs the show... Jack O'Connell is a working class eastern seaboard blue collar down on his luck guy. The kind you see all the time in movies. It should be better, but it just doesn't feel plausible most of the time and I personally didn't really care about anyone. It's mostly ok as a corporate mystery.

Angry Birds 6/10: A pretty basic kids movie with a decent cast. Not much to be said one way or the other and you're not missing much if you skip it.

Neighbors 2 8/10: Better than the original. This one is pretty much the same but instead of focusing on the frat guys like a typical film it focuses on outcast-type girls that don't want the typical sorority thing, but still want the sisterhood. While the first one had no redeeming qualities besides the comedy (which is fine with me), this one deals with the expectations of girls compared to boys as well.

The Nice Guys 7/10: A pretty good movie that tries to be an LA Confidential, but more fun and it reminds me a bit of the video game LA Noire. It's fun. There's decent chemistry between Crowe and Gosling, but Gosling's character's kid really steals the show.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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5/27, 6/3, 6/10

I figure I'll just finish it up.

Alice Through The Looking Glass 5/10: It's a spectacle for sure, especially in 3D. But Johnny Depp is in it doing another impersonation of whatever he's going for, but doing it worse and much more whiny. Sascha Baron Cohen does another French-ish accent. Helena Bonham Carter screams a lot. Ann Hathaway is very cardboard-y. And Mia Wasikowska is ok, I guess. They really weren't given much to work with anyway. But like I said, it is a spectacle.

X-Men Apocalypse 6/10: A real letdown after the first two in the newest series were pretty excellent. Magneto will always be a better villain than Apocalypse, but is his underling here. A lot of the new characters seem miscast, but that just may be me.

Popstar Never Stop Never Stopping 6/10: Hopefully these guys get another chance after this bomb. This was decent and funny, but I really haven't been into newer music since high school and not even big into it then. It's got about a thousand guest stars that mostly poke fun at themselves. The songs are actually good, the best one being "Humble" which you've heard a thousand times in the trailer. The end is just as good as pretty much any of their digital short videos.

Now You See Me 2 7/10: It's a magical, twisty, turny Oceans-type but with David Copperfield type magic. It's the definition of a popcorn flick. Daniel Radcliffe hams it up and is pretty amusing. It's got so many characters (maybe too many), even letting Woody Harrelson play two of them. Please don't bring his second character back. His original character is great, but the second one was downright awful. This movie may have gotten an 8 or even a 9 without it.

Warcraft 8/10: I really liked this movie. I tried to play Warcraft a couple of times but only lasted about five minutes, so I have really little experience with the game. I do play Hearthstone, which is a card game based on Warcraft so that helps just slightly with me figuring out who is who. Anyway, I saw it as Lord of the Rings meets Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (the second new one, from 2014). The orcs were like a mix between the apes and the evil LOTR army. I considered it a really fun movie, but I know a lot of people won't. I don't think it bodes well for the games I want to see remade as movies.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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Now I'm caught up.

Central Intelligence 8/10: It's a lot like this year's "Spy". Nothing substantial, but a very funny movie with The Rock pretty much playing his Fast and Furious opposite and Kevin Hart doing his "little guy, fast talking, big mouth" thing to a tee. Just a whole lot of fun and a great popcorn movie for just about anyone.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

Post by Buscemi »

Hopefully the visual effects are a lot better (Spy had probably some of the worst looking effects for a big budget studio film in recent memory, one of my main thoughts while watching it was, "Did they release this unfinished?").
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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I can say that the visual effects where they make them younger aren't great. Specifically The Rock as a fat high schooler from the trailer. Otherwise I can't remember too much more obvious CGI.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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Finding Dory 9/10: Definitely in the top half of Pixar films, which makes it pretty much in the top 1% of animated films. I liked it much better than the first. Every character is pretty excellent in their own way. Love Hank, the sea lions, and Destiny/Bailey. It's both funny and pulls on the heart strings. There is an end credits scene that I didn't know about, so I missed. Supposedly it's excellent.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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I've been wanting to see Me Before You and I've seen everything else at our theaters that I'm remotely interested in. I know no one that would conceivably go see this movie with me and really would feel weird watching it by myself. So I decided to drive an hour away and go to my favorite restaurant (bbq... very manly) and hit the theater around there where nobody knows me. Anyway...

Me Before You 9/10: It'll take you through the emotional gamete. Three really great performances by the leads (Emilia Clark, Sam Clafin) and Janet McTeer (Clafin's character's mother). And it's nice to see Tywin Lannister on screen again. I don't know what would be considered spoilers in this case, but suffice to say it deals with various levels of family tragedy and hardship very well, delves into what sporadically becomes a hot button political issue (right to die), what is selfishness, and goes into issues of the physically disabled. It's also (obviously) a story about love and friendship.

I thought it was excellent. It's pretty comparable to The Fault in Our Stars, but I think if you didn't like Fault you could still like this. I don't really see anyone not liking this one but I could see if people don't like Fault.

Also, is it just me or has this been a pretty great year for "mainstream" movies so far? So far there's been a superhero movie that may end up changing the genre (Deadpool), one of the better Pixar films, possibly the next step in Disney animation (Zootopia), excellent live action from animated source material and the return of Jon Favreau to huge budge films (Jungle Book)... My top two films so far (Green Room, Cloverfield) can be considered horror films along with a couple other that really intrigue me (The Witch and maybe Conjuring 2) and horror is easily my least liked genre. Even the middle of the road stuff that is typically braindead fluff (Central Intelligence, Neighbors 2, Eddie the Eagle, Nice Guys, Kung Fu Panda 3) has been great.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

Post by Buscemi »

It's probably you. The best widely released film was a Russian import (Hardcore Henry) that otherwise wouldn't have gotten a wide release while many others have either been overhyped, was exactly what was expected, or disappointed. If anything, the best is yet to come (or won't as Hollywood is stuck in a rut with the same concepts, same actors, same behind-the-camera talent, etc.).

And I really don't think Deadpool changes the face of comic book movies. All it did was pander to the fans and comic book movies have been doing that for years. Besides, Deadpool was done better years earlier as The Mask.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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I'm completely with W. At this point last year, I was completely disheartened by the slate of films that had been released so far. Basically every movie I was excited about (Avengers, Chappie, Get Hard, Ted 2, Jupiter Ascending) except for Furious 7, Kingsman and Dope proved to be letdowns (I didn't watch Ex Machina-which ended up being one of my favorites of 2015-until the end of July). This year, I'm thoroughly satisfied as there has been a number of movies that I've outright loved (The Nice Guys, Popstar, Keanu) or grossly exceeded my expectations (10 Cloverfield Lane, Now You See Me 2, Central Intelligence) and only a couple of true disappointments (Deadpool and Zoolander 2). Best of all, I still haven't seen some of the more acclaimed stuff (Green Room, Everybody Wants Some!, Eye in the Sky) to come out over the first 6 months of the year.

On a related note, this year's summer slate has already kicked the living shit out of last year's and it's not even halfway over yet. If the rest of the heavy-hitters end up delivering, this could end up being one of the best summers in a LONG time.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

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Buscemi wrote:It's probably you. The best widely released film was a Russian import (Hardcore Henry) that otherwise wouldn't have gotten a wide release while many others have either been overhyped, was exactly what was expected, or disappointed. If anything, the best is yet to come (or won't as Hollywood is stuck in a rut with the same concepts, same actors, same behind-the-camera talent, etc.).
I think this means I'm probably right.
transformers2 wrote:Best of all, I still haven't seen some of the more acclaimed stuff (Green Room, Everybody Wants Some!, Eye in the Sky) to come out over the first 6 months of the year.
You do at least have access to Green Room for free right now on our VUDU. Highly recommended.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

Post by JohnErle »

I haven't even watched anything I would consider truly mainstream this year. Sure, The Nice Guys, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Money Monster, and Hail Ceaser! all had well-known stars, but the projects were never intended to set the box office on fire. Add them all up and they probably made less than Finding Dory's opening weekend.

I do intend to see The Conjuring 2 and probably X-Men Apocalypse at some point, but maybe not in theaters. The Belladonna Of Sadness is getting a handful of screenings at my neighbourhood theatre this weekend, so that's a higher priority for me.

We've almost reached mid-year, so I assume someone will post a thread about that soon, and I'll post a top 10 once someone gets the ball rolling.

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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

Post by W »

I figure mainstream as stuff that my theater gets. We're a smaller town, but we do have multiple colleges which probably skews the theaters slightly more arty than a traditional megaplex. That's what I meant at least because I couldn't figure an easier way of saying it.
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Re: W's 2016 in Film (So Far) Thread

Post by transformers2 »

transformers2 wrote:Best of all, I still haven't seen some of the more acclaimed stuff (Green Room, Everybody Wants Some!, Eye in the Sky) to come out over the first 6 months of the year.
You do at least have access to Green Room for free right now on our VUDU. Highly recommended.[/quote]

PM me the login info. I haven't used the VUDU account in ages.
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