Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Discuss past, present, and future releases. This is the place for news, reviews, and your 'best' lists.

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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by transformers2 »

Quick write-up of the films I've seen over the last few weekends

Kong: Skull Island 8/10
If this Warner Brothers way of apologizing for the story-driven snoozefest that was Godzilla, I accept. The film solely exists to be an exercise in giant monster movie excess and thanks to the film's cleanly-edited, slo-mo heavy action scenes, the audience gets to soak in every ounce of destruction that Kong and the other inhabitants of Skull Island commit.

T2: Trainspotting 2 7.5/10
I had some fun watching these characters return to the big screen after 20 years and there's some really great moments spread throughout the film, but it largely lacks the bite of the original and to be honest, there's not really much of a reason for it to exist.

Ghost in the Shell 8.5/10
Well this greatly exceeded my expectations. The visuals are stunning, the fight choreography is excellent and Scarlett Johannson does a terrific job of bringing Major to life. One of the better blockbusters I've seen over the past few years.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by Buscemi »

Gifted 2/10

Manipulative and anti-intellectual family drama that aimed to warm the heart but ends up frustrating the viewer with its unlikable characters, dead weight pace, and Lifetime movie plotline. Marc Webb proves once again that he's nothing more than a hack who got lucky with one film and the script is a short film padded to feature length. The only character you really care (outside of the one-eyed cat) for is Jenny Slate's character but she's only in it for short bursts. The two characters fighting for custody of the kid (the most annoying child character since the kid from Extremely Loud and Incredible Close) are cheap cliches (rugged everyman and random English villain), Octavia Spencer is kind of there (and did a better custody battle film with Black or White a few years back), and everyone else is everyone else. In addition, it tries too hard to be idealistic when it needed to be a cynical and bitter film about how genius is ignored by society and how it often drives those into insanity.

If this didn't have Captain America in it, this would have never gotten a wide release. It wants to be Capra but ends being Gabriele Muccino on a bad day.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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The Fate of the Furious - 9/10

This may just be my favorite installment of the franchise. There's the requisite number of brawls, car chases, and death-defying stunts, sure, but I found the under-story to be quite compelling. Jason Stathan's character takes on a whole new light, and Charlize Theron is actually pretty chilling as the villain who manipulates Dom into joining her posse. There wasn't a moment in the film that my eyes weren't glued to the screen. Not often I can say that when a franchise reaches its eighth installment.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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The Fate of the Furious 9/10
The most consistently entertaining franchise in Hollywood delivers once again. Every frame of this film is delightful and the decision to have Jason Statham join the main team was a stroke of genius. Bring on Furious 9!
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by numbersix »

Been a while

Get Out: 6/10
Disappointing but culturally significant Blumhouse horror. No need for me to recount the plot. But my problem is that we're led to believe that the film is about race, but once all is revealed the race issue is actually a little arbitrary, and actually has little to say about modern society. But it has a good lead performance and sense of weirdness it well built. The climax is a little disappointing too, particularly in the way the main character responds.

Free Fire: 6/10
My least favourite Ben Wheatley film. While High Rise was an honorable mess, this film is disappointingly dull at times. It's a great and simple premise - an arms deal in a Boston warehouse goes wrong, and a shootout ensues. And that's the film. There's wit in the dialogue and good action at times, but the characterisation is lacking and it's not compensated by raised stakes or any significant climax, instead opting to peter out.

Ghost in the Shell: 4/10
What a disaster. This guy cannot direct long-form cinema. You can tell he comes from ads, because it looks and feels like a very long ad. Characters are shallow, dialogue is awful, but even the action sequences lack true tension, particularly the final one, which feels like the start of something rather than the end. And while the whitewashing issue doesn't really bother me, it is strange that ScarJo's character is given a Japanese name. Just make her a whitey and be done with it! But yeah, hollow, forgettable stuff.

Aquarius: 7/10
Interesting drama about a retired woman who defends her home against property men who want to build over her building. It sounds familiar, but the director certainly has his own take, particularly in the sexual longing and desires of this cancer survivor as she resists the pleas of her children and those around her to sell her home, and her memories. A great lead performance carries the somewhat slow moments and the rather abrupt ending.

The Love Witch: 5/10
A strange homage to Hammer Horror and genre films of the 60s, in which a young witch tries to recover from her husband's death by putting spells on men to make them fall in love with her. The film tries to make pertinent points about modern feminism, but the film is incredibly slow, long,repetitive, and the intentionally poor performances irritate more than should. Probably because it wasn't the awful acting that made those films good, it was the elements besides that.

I also rewatched Raw, which remains top of my films of the year, and still deserves its place in my Top 100 of the Millennium.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by W »

I don't know where to put this, but gofobo.com has free screenings of King Arthur two weeks early. If I remember right they fill up quick in some markets. I got two tickets even though I don't know if I'll make it. Just a heads up.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by Chienfantome »

Thanks for the heads up, W. I'm not sure I'll be able to go ;)
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by undeadmonkey »

I forgot about GOfobo. I used it all the time in LA. There are free screenings all the time, if you don't mind waiting in line for a few hours .

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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by W »

This one is at my local theater, so I'm pretty sure they're everywhere.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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There's not doing it near me. The only films that seem to get advance screenings here are religious films or films where groups are expected to buy the tickets in bulk.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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They're doing a few screenings in my area, but they're all on the same night as the NFL Draft, so I'm not going to be able to attend any of them.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Born in China 8/10

The latest Disneynature installment takes us to China and focuses on a year in the life of five families (cranes, snow leopards, antelopes, monkeys, and pandas), shown as kind of ensemble film. I guess you could say it's a Robert Altman-like nature documentary. It's not the high water mark of the series and John Krasinski is not the first choice you would think of to narrate but it's a serviceable entry that runs a quick 79 minutes. There are plenty of baby animals to bring out the fuzzies and the crew shows the beauty of the untouched wilderness very well. And as usual, you get to see the crew making the documentary during the end credits (including one of the monkeys getting some action behind the camera).

These might not be big moneymakers for Disney but the continued support (both cinematic and environmental) of the series is a plus for the Mouse House and I hope we get more in the near future (Dolphins arrives next year and there are others done for home video and Netflix).
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Their Finest 8/10

World War II homefront comedy/drama is also perhaps one of the truest films about filmmaking in recent memory. The struggle for the characters to get their project made without the constant problems they run into (as well as a war going on in their work) is so real and it's amusing how much of the studio interference and artistic liberties in the film-inside-a-film happens in real life (from changing the events of the story and changing the nationality of a major character for international sales, it parallels heavily altered historical films like Argo and the UK film industry in general). In a way, it comes as no surprise that this was not made or distributed by a major studio.

Individually, this might be the best performance Gemma Arterton has ever given as well as the best film Lone Scherfig has directed. The rest of the cast manages to stand out as well (even Jake Lacy, who just might be a good actor at playing bad actors). Scherfig also deserves kudos for managing to recreate that 1940's Technicolor look without it looking fake. STX Entertainment (now named STX Films beginning with this release) deserves some credit for rescuing this film, along with much of the other EuropaCorp USA project, from the purgatory that is Relativity Studios. It's a likable historical film that is fully aware of what it is and doesn't reduce itself to "good old boys save the day" and pure black-and-white morality. It's a film about people who simply want to help, no matter how hard it gets.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by Buscemi »

Your Name. 10/10

Perhaps one of the finest films ever to come from Japan. A mix of fantasy, romance, body-switching comedy, sci-fi, and disaster movie, this story of a girl from the country and a boy from Tokyo is moving cinema that never lets go and its power is something rarely seen in narrative cinema today. Director Makoto Shinkai and his crew fills the action with excellent visuals but he also understands that the most important element of film is the characters and Mitsuha and Taki are two characters whose unusual journey is one worth seeing happen. It manages to both a crowd-pleasing blockbuster (it was one of the biggest box office successes in Japan and has done decent numbers stateside) and a meditative, thinking man's animated film.

A masterpiece of animation and a film I hope doesn't get remade. Any attempt would be hollow and unable to recreate why this film turned out so well.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Saw the new King Arthur. To paraphrase the late Denny Green, "It is what you think it is." Of Richie's films I've only seen Snatch and Lock, Stock, but it's obviously his. The cockiness of the main character, two steps forward/one step back storytelling, and Zach Snyder-lite action sequences give it away. I got to the showing a couple minutes late so I had to sit in the front and the action sequences hurt my head a bit and many were muddied (on purpose I'm guessing). Also, I assume they explained a bit in the first couple minutes I missed that fleshed out the story. Either that or it was overly convoluted (probably both).

Charlie Hunnam was basically ye olde Jax Teller and Jude Law really hams it up.

So all in all it was ok, but I give like 90% of movies a pass.
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