Rayman Pirate-Community

Just watched Snow White and the Hunter or whatever it's called. Visually, very impressive. The writing, acting and plot were total shite though. I think it would have been much better if it followed the original story to be honest because I liked the dwarves, they reminded me almost of the time bandits, but they didn't get much screen time or involvement. Instead the story just spiralled into nowhere and left lots of random things unanswered.

I saw Kubo & The Two Strings earlier tonight and holy fUFCK this movie is good. The animation is some the best I've seen, and the storytelling felt very much on par with some of Pixar's best efforts. Easily the best movie I've seen this year and probably my favourite animated movie since Up, there's nothing I can even really nitpick about it.

This is exactly how storytelling with depth and undertones should be done in a kids movie, while never compromising on the adults either. Just ditch Suicide Squad for this.

Ambidextroid wrote:Just watched Snow White and the Hunter or whatever it's called. Visually, very impressive. The writing, acting and plot were total shite though. I think it would have been much better if it followed the original story to be honest because I liked the dwarves, they reminded me almost of the time bandits, but they didn't get much screen time or involvement. Instead the story just spiralled into nowhere and left lots of random things unanswered.

The sequel was pretty shitty too, I think they would've been better movies if they amplified the comedy and downplayed the attempts at being an action/drama kinda thing.

Saw David Brent: Life on the Road. Was hilarious, but I had a few gripes with the movie. Wasn't a fan of the band members analyzing Brent's awkwardness and mishaps; as an audience we don't need this explained to us, as it's extremely evident by the reactions of the characters within the scene what they're thinking. Also there was a message that felt very forced. Some elements of this worked whilst others, one scene in particular, felt more cringey than any of Brent's antics.

Jurassic Park (VHS)

Sausage Party is the best movie ever.

Just watched ant man, well half of it, I had to stop watching because it caused me too much pain

What do you think about Robert Downey Jr./Tony Stark appearance in Spider-Man Homeback?

gamerz31w wrote:Homeback?

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actually let's give more space for that






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Jason Bourne

*Movie Trailer: The Movie


Pete's Dragon

A pretty standard entry into the genre, but a pretty solid one. A lot of it was predictable given what the story is about, but I was happy about the lack of overt clichés. In typical Disney fashion, they don't shy away from showing what are essentially on-screen deaths, but I never find them too forced. They always add to the emotional impact of their work.


Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life

I saw this with my little sister. Nothing special or original, it's clearly for kids. I knew exactly what was going to happen (or, for the most part at least), but it was still mildly entertaining. The visuals were pretty nice, but the battle scenes were rather slow and stunted. The only part that actually bothered me was the ending: Throughout the entire movie he's trying to figure out how to get back to England from the island he was washed up on, and yet for some reason, after he escaped the pirates, he just decided not to do that anymore and live happily ever after on the island, and it just ended. I'm pretty sure they ran out of budget due to poor planning, as the credits are filled with a bunch of freeze-frame aftermath shots. As a whole though, I don't think it deserves a rating as low as 16% on RT, because, as commonplace as it was, I didn't find anything about it to be remotely offensive or really that bad at all.


Kubo and the Two Strings

I was looking forward to seeing this movie for a while, it looked utterly breathtaking. When the movie started, I wasn't disappointed - not to sound like Bar1x here, but it was beautiful, deep, complex and emotionally mature. As dark as Disney has gone in the past, I'd never seen a character like Kubo's mother portrayed so well. From the beginning you could feel that there was something off about her, and over time you begin to understand more and more. It was a real work of art.

Then, as soon as everything went to shit (in-universe), the movie kind of did as well. The brilliance of the first act was dashed away entirely.

The pacing became awful, inconsistent and rushed, which gave virtually everything that happened little to no impact. All the humour consisted of the most miserably dated kids' humour tropes you could possibly think up; not a single joke even made me grin, save for The Sword Uncomfortable, which I'm almost ashamed I found funny. All of the characters they built up in the first act turned out to be stereotypes even more shallow than those you'd find in most cynical, heartless cash-ins, which I find to be a pretty huge crime given how emotionally connected to them I was at first. I'm almost in denial over the rest of the movie. The ending turned said seemingly complex plot and villain one of the most shallow and just plain unintelligent plots/villains I'd seen in an animated movie in a long time. I almost laughed during the ending; it was so awkward and rushed that even the healed villain seemed sarcastic about it.

The voice cast for pretty much every character after that point I also found irritating, especially the monkey. Not only was her writing unspeakably bland (masquerading as a flawed but driven protector), when it's revealed who she actually is, I felt pretty much nothing as they reminded me nothing of each other. So many of the voices, hers included, were so painfully white - I don't normally speak out against whitewashing too much, but this was a sorely missed opportunity. I love Matthew McConaughey, and I'll give him a pass as, while I thought the writing in general was bad, his deliveries were great. Kubo himself and the old lady were also alright. Everyone else was just bad.

The animation throughout the whole movie was outstandingly beautiful. It's just such a shame, because aside from the first act where everything else was on par with it, it just stuck out as being too good for the rest of the movie. And I'm not saying that the rest of the movie is just "less-good" than the first act, I found it legitimately "not good".


Snowden

Excellent movie. Levitt embodies these characters so well, I think this is probably the most realistic geek character I've ever seen portrayed on-screen. From beginning to end the movie was consistently intriguing and varied, and his adventure was more thrilling than any other I'd seen in a movie in a while. Every single moment allowed you to feel exactly what Snowden himself was probably feeling, and I'm not just referring to emotional impact, but rather the casualness of some scenarios as well.

The Nicolas Cage cameo was also awesome.

Despite it constantly being in my head, I don't really have a lot to say, it's just a fantastic film. One of the best I've seen this year.

I personally enjoyed Kubo. The story and narration are great, the universe amazing, and most of the ideas pretty clever. The humor is indeed not as great as in Paranorman, but it's still okay, and at the least not invasive.
True, character and story wise it might be just good but not astonishing. But the quality of the animation and the music make completely it up! Maybe like Fantasia, it's a movie enjoyable mostly for its amazing visuals?

I've also seen Amadeus (1984) recently. Wow, this is truly great!

My point was that I found it horribly invasive, in addition to a number of other things. As a whole I liked ParaNorman more, but I had a big issue with the moral, that being that people are wrong for not believing someome who sounds crazy.

Why do I feel concerned here ?

Just watched 3 of my favorite films; The Lion King, Laputa and Sherlock Holmes, in a row with my family whilst eating yummy chocolate cake.
It's been a good day

Re-watched Neds. A gritty Scottish flick about youngins up to no good in Glasgow.

Ambidextroid wrote:Just watched 3 of my favorite films; The Lion King, Laputa and Sherlock Holmes, in a row with my family whilst eating yummy chocolate cake.
It's been a good day

1) That was literally the whitest thing I've ever heard. 2) That semicolon made me die.


I saw Storks a few days ago. You know what? I was going into this expecting something mediocre and try-hard, but it was the opposite. It was funny. It was really fucking funny. It was actually hilarious, and I laughed out loud so many times I lost count. The animation and pacing was spastic, but rather than being annoying, it was lively and quick-witted. The facial animation on the storks themselves was also very expressive, leading to some great visual gags. Probably the funniest moment for me was when the two main characters cut down the bridge so the wolves couldn't follow them, making the wolves mashed together to form not a practical bridge, but a fully-ornamented wolf-suspension bridge with cables and supports, and then afterward morphed into a number of other vehicles and contraptions to keep up the pursuit. I mean, the movie is jam-packed with stuff like that. What drama there was in the movie I found to be quite genuine, because the dialogue, for what it was, was actually surprisingly well-written.

Adsolution wrote:

Ambidextroid wrote:Just watched 3 of my favorite films; The Lion King, Laputa and Sherlock Holmes, in a row with my family whilst eating yummy chocolate cake.
It's been a good day

1) That was literally the whitest thing I've ever heard. 2) That semicolon made me die.

None of these were actually my choice but they're still some of my favorites. Then again I'm not a big movie watcher so most of my favorite films are from my childhood.
So yeah, apologies if my movie gauge is particularly white
Retrospectively the semicolon was a mistake but I couldn't think of anything better to use instead...

Bump (sorry for the double post)
Just watched Arrival. Incredibly well done aliens, great twist, couldn't find any obvious loopholes, and the time aspect was really well done too. I especially liked the bit where she learns the phone number and the words to convince that chinese man to make peace from him in the future, in a similar way you learn the song of storms in Zelda OoT. That's definitely one of my favorite time travel tropes, where information comes out of nowhere through a time loop.
Usually not a big fan of alien movies, but this one pleasantly surprised me.

Watched the 2016 Ben Hur, and it was crap. Felt like watching the one from 1959 again, and it was still great. Gotta love the music.

Ambidextroid wrote:Bump (sorry for the double post)
Just watched Arrival. Incredibly well done aliens, great twist, couldn't find any obvious loopholes, and the time aspect was really well done too. I especially liked the bit where she learns the phone number and the words to convince that chinese man to make peace from him in the future, in a similar way you learn the song of storms in Zelda OoT. That's definitely one of my favorite time travel tropes, where information comes out of nowhere through a time loop.
Usually not a big fan of alien movies, but this one pleasantly surprised me.

Yeah that was probably my favourite of the year, I expected sort of an average alien warfare movie but it effectively spun itself into a different direction. I really liked the presentation of everything - the dreary setting and lighting, limited insight on the public's reaction, and the soundtrack has so much tension to it. I love how they used all these drawn out, slow noises to instill an uneasy feeling, and then that explosive noise when they first entered.

Keane wrote:limited insight on the public's reaction

I just realised, this is probably another reason I liked it so much. I don't know why but I really like films that are sort of contained in a small bubble, where it either focuses on a small group of people or takes place in a relatively small amount of space. If they introduced a whole new element of the story to show how the public reacted I'd probably not have enjoyed it anywhere near as much.

Saw Fantastic Beasts. It was aight -- 7/10