Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Watched the film Dunkirk and was underwhelmed. Beautiful cinematography for sure, with sweeping views of the beaches and ocean, but mostly boring. (for me)
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Terminator Salvation.
Probably best known as the movie where Christian Bale rants at some guy on set. It's an OK movie.
The year is 2018, and the war between the humans and the machines are at a turning point. The humans have discovered an embedded control signal in Skynet's communication, and they think they can turn off its defenses long enough to destroy it.
This is complicated by a teenage Kyle Reese getting taken by Skynet into the facility the humans are about to destroy, and a resurrected criminal (he sold his body to Cyberdine system on his execution) with unknown motivations coming to help John Connor rescue Reese.
It's nothing special. It's got decent action and an OK plot. It's better than the reviews would have you think, but not by much.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
I watched Anon, which is a middle-budget, mediocre, high-concept science fiction film on Netflix. Apparently, Netflix is the new dumping ground for these types of movies - and I'm a sucker for them.
Clive Owen is a detective in a world where everyone's eyesight is recorded and the government has access to your records. Amanda Seyfried is a sexy hacker who can edit your experience, both live and recorded, and her clients are getting killed. Is she the murderer? Will you care?
Pretty slow overall with bits of interesting moments and concepts. It doesn't live up to its promise, Owen is mostly sleepwalking, and Seyfried isn't given a lot to do, but she's working with what little she's given. The effects are well done, IMO. It's a realistic depiction of something like this, which was a plus.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome
First time seeing it, and it was weird.
I actually liked it well enough. The action is pretty good, the story is OK. Mel Gibson and Tina Turner are watchable in it. Honestly, I was expecting it to be much worse, which is why I never saw it before.
My biggest problem with the movie is that it tried to be jokey, rather than just weird. The Road Warrior is a relentlessly weird movie and it doesn't try to be funny, even though it sometimes is. This movie didn't find that balance.
I had avoided this for so long because I was afraid it was just too cheesy. It is, but at least I don't regret watching it, which is better than I was hoping for.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Mystery Team
Boys who became locally famous for being "kid detectives" need to grow up quickly when they decide to take on a double-murder case.
Starring Donald Glover and a few other people who are also still working comics, but not as famous. Aubrey Plaza is the survivor/love interest.
This was cute and sometimes funny, but not much of anything. I think my main problem with this movie is that men stuck in childhood aren't really all that funny anymore.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Saw the new version of It. It's still not scary at all, but at least it's better in p. much every way than the TV miniseries (or the edited movie-length version, was that a thing? Don't remember). Damning with faint praise, I know.
There are enough laughs and decent performances to keep it from being a total waste of time, but that's about ... It.
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hide, witch, hide / the good folks come to burn thee / their keen enjoyment hid behind / a gothic mask of duty - P. Kantner
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
I just watched Inception and was underwhelmed. I guess my expectations were too high after Interstellar.
It's a technical masterpiece (effects, music, etc.) but the story is convoluted, piling on more and more ad-hoc plot devices. Look, I forgot to tell you, there's this other really implausible thing that complicates everything but the story doesn't work otherwise. Leonardo DiCaprio is too much of a babyface for my taste, he doesn't really belong there. Like in Interstellar, there's the professor, again played by Michael Caine, who sends his student to this place where time passes much more slowly, only this time it's some magical psycho thing instead of relativity. Then you have all these nested levels ticking at different rates and somehow they can bring another magic anesthetic thingadoodle into the dream that works exactly like in reality. Suspension of disbelief is okay, but this takes the cake. Add to that the task at hand which is morally repugnant. It's a really good and really stupid movie.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Quote:
Originally Posted by But
I just watched Inception and was underwhelmed. I guess my expectations were too high after Interstellar.
Then you have all these nested levels ticking at different rates and somehow they can bring another magic anesthetic thingadoodle into the dream that works exactly like in reality. Suspension of disbelief is okay, but this takes the cake.
So much of Inception doesn't make sense if you over think things,
Like a dream is a highly waking state, your brain is doing quite a lot during one, so anesthetizing drugs or other downers that reduce brain signalling make no sense. Not to mention the idea that even if they can work on the brain inside a dream as if real life, that applying them again and again would somehow increase the brains ability to process years in what is only minutes in the real world. Frankly this would have worked much better about connecting into some sort of computer neural network instead but they wanted to go with something less done.
Also part of people's love for Inception was the visuals of the cities moving and being built being the first time seeing something like that, whereas in the future we have plenty of angle shifting block building houses and castles.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Three Amigos is pretty middle, for sure.
I watched this all the time as a kid and loved it, but it was on recently, and while it is classic 80s-90 comedy and has its moment, it really let me down on almost every front past those.
Not horrible or even bad, but very eh in every level.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them: Meh. Since a new one is coming out I thought I would finally see the first. It really should be up my alley, a fun story of a goofy bumbling scientist that cares about crazy creatures but it doesn't really work, for two big reasons. But! It's not a bad film, just meh. First is that it feels like two different movies. It feels like a story of loose beasts that need to be captured because of the bumbling scientist, and a political story about the witching world, glued onto it because some didn't think the hunting creatures aspect was enough. This means we don't really get much development on the political characters and I don't know why I should care or not about them. So it seems like a movie that might be more enjoyed by those that've read all the material and understand some of the background better.
The second issue is the scale of the monsters that are being chased down. Some of these things are utter destruction and chaos, and some are just goofy little critters and that they are all kept under the same half locked case. If they were all found in the time period of the movie then there's no way they could have stayed secret and not known by the muggle world. Where as in a book it's much easier to play up the nerding about each creature so medium and lesser destructive creatures could be described with aww. In a movie, either it's cute, goofy and puppy like, or it's big and massive, because anything inbetween doesn't phase post 'throw all the shit at the screen' transformers era movies.
Also can we talk about:
What kind of archaic authoritarian (or ham-fisted writer) system is the Wizardry community?! Sentenced to death for letting muggles see, by one judge guy, with no appeal, to be carried out immediately, no last meal, just off to the back room for ya! Where we then find out they don't even just death zap spell them because that would be 'evil' oh no, they pull out your happiest memories and toss them into a vision pond that convinces you to walk into black acid lava under your own volition so that you are in fact happy you are killing yourself. How is this normal procedure? Especially since we know there are whole big high security magic prisons for the craziest and most violent wizards. Either something's out of balance here or Azkaban is actually full of people who littered or ran a magical red light.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Fantastic Breasts Crimes of Grindlewald.
I would have expected more beasts.
Great sets and effects and costumes. Every character is a backpfeifengesicht. The most eyerollworthy reveal I've seen lately. Fascist overtones fitting the 1920s.
Popcorn mandatory. Brain optional.
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
*door slams open*
"Stop this meeting of the witches council at once I have something everyone should see!" *Case hits the table with a thump latches pop open* "Come forth!"
*Pair after pair of bouncing boobs comes popping out of the case, over flowing the table hopping towards the high council*
...
...
...
"...Yes, but your text said!!"
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
The House with a Clock in its Walls: Now here's a film that this thread was meant for. This is a perfectly reasonable kids film, but less so as a film and frankly if you were to consider the audience new to tropes than the quality of this film goes up quite a bit as many of my complaints are just how tropey it was. This film tells you it's a kids film part way through with a poop joke, and then reminds you it's a kids film by ending the movie on a call back to that same joke. If you guessed the clock in the wall is
A real clock that's a doomsday device to do with aligning something
you're right. If you think the one rule set forth by the uncle with no reasoning behind it will
be broken by the kid under spell causing a liar revealed scene to come in and stall out the action
you're right.
My other big complaint was that it seemed like a couple different story ideas that got stitched together causing it to feel long and meandering for a not very long run time. One of the keys to Harry Potter was the magic and wizardry and school social stuff could run together, but since he's a secret wizard at a normal school it causes hard breaks with the story that aren't well dealt with. I kinda want to see a whole film about the kids, and a separate whole film about the adults, but the mix means we don't really get enough time to really care about either. But the actors are fine and help keep the stuff on the screen interesting.
If you've seen posters and images for it and like the aesthetic, they do a great job of keeping it up throughout the film, the art design and direction is great and save for some bad CGI composites and using CGI when makeup would have been better the look of the film is quite nice. I suspect there will be many art designers growing up in the future with a soft spot for this film rewatching it to discover the story was shit but the pictures pretty.
Some of my dislike is my own want for some complex weird films. I know it's based off a book and the book had a doomsday device too, but it was also written in the 70s and only famous because Edward Gorey did the illustrations. With such a strange title why not mix it up a bit and have the clock do things to the people or house depending on the hour, there's got to be more evil things for demons from hell to do than to destroy the world. It takes all of 5 minutes to think of more interesting things a demonic hidden clock could do.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Knock on Any Door, with Humphrey Bogart and John Derek. It's one of those 1940's social problems movies. Bogart plays an arm waving paper throwing lawyer defending a jaydee played by Derek. He loses. The real crooks in this movie are the cops with their intimidating and torturing witnesses. Also never hire Bogart for a lawyer. Sam Spade would have been embarrassed to see this.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
The Purge
The premise of this movie is bone-headedly stupid. America has an annual Purge, where all crime is legal for 12 hours. Americans are supposed to use this day to let go all of their anger and hatred. Yet, if you accept that premise, it's not a bad movie.
Ethan Hawke is a top seller of security systems. He comes home to his wife (Lena Headey - her talent wasted until nearly the end), disaffected kids, and McMansion. Planning to spend a quiet Purge night in lockdown. Those plans get all messed up when the youngest lets in a homeless person who was attacked by a gang.
Not too much later, the gang finds the house, and gives the family an ultimatum: surrender their intended victim, or become targets as well.
The filmmaker doesn't trust the audience - the victim is black and homeless, the gang leader is a well spoken white man in a nice suit, but the script ensures you don't miss the implications. The gang leader assures the family that all they want is God given right to Purge their sins with their chosen target, and that the family are exactly the "kind" of people they want to leave alone.
Also, Ethan Hawke literally says, "We can afford protection, so we'll be OK." Not exactly going for subtlety.
So, the bad: The premise is patently stupid, the message is blunt, and the action is confusing at best. Hawke is firing off a shotgun at the same time Headey is stalking down a quiet hallway on some other floor/section? Not even in a house that big would the ruckus not be heard.
The OK: There's a few "twists" in the movie, but they're very telegraphed. If you accept the premise, the execution in this movie is reasonable.
The thing is does right, and I think why the series had some staying power: The visuals of the suburbanite Purge gang. Seeing a masked woman in a flowing white gown skip down a hallway with two machetes is a great, disturbing image.
So, it had its moments, I felt it was a pretty tense home invasion movie, which tickles a particular fear of mine, but I also spent a lot of mental capital trying to figure out how a Purge would *actually* work vs. how the movie showed it.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
I binged the remaining Purge movies. (pun intended)
They don't get any less ridiculous, but they get better.
"The Purge: Anarchy" is about a police officer planning to get revenge for his son's death during the Purge, but runs into a bunch of complications, which include saving a young white couple who get stranded in the city and a mother and daughter whose building get raided by a very organized force.
This was a tense action movie right until the very end, when it reminded me that this script thinks we're stupid, and so it has to spell out what was obvious through the entire movie.
Otherwise, this movie ladles on the crazy - Anarchy is a good subtitle.
"The Purge: Election Year" is a more coherent story. A Senator is running for President on an anti-Purge campaign, so of course, the government plans a hit on her during it.
The police officer from "Anarchy" is now her head of security and he saves her from the initial attempt, but then they're on the run in the middle of the city during the Purge. They run into some well meaning people and the anti-government resistance, and eventually America is saved.
So, I enjoyed both of these more than they kind of deserve. Still, they serve up a lot of effective imagery throughout the movie. There's a lot of gruesome fun in there, too.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
@binge.purge
Ralph Breaks the Internet
I had its moments but I found it pretty meh overall.
The fucking Disney princesses had me dying. I literally covet all their PJs and if that was a blatant ploy to get me to buy those PJs at the Disney store, then well done!
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
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@binge.purge
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