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I'll agree that the commentary was very well done, unfortunately some parts of it were ruined for me by the audience, when the most obvious twist I'd ever seen happens and someone audibly gasps... that's just annoying... aside from that, In my opinion, they should have kept the hypnosis aspect, because that's unique and hasn't been over hashed and over used. granted, what they settled with was fringe science, but it certainly felt forced

Just came back from seeing Life, let'sa let lets talk about it uhuh!

I thought this movie looked dreadfully boring in the trailer but the opening scene surprisingly got me out of my so-bad-its-good mood and actually did a pretty passable job at introducing the plot, characters and setting, and I had reason enough to be interested - Astronauts capture the first living creature of Mars and intend to return it back to Earth. Every space movie is about Mars right now because of the excitement about potentially traveling there, yet somehow no one's made a movie exploring about real potential (Even The Martian didn't seem to care about it), so I liked seeing the scenes of them studying this hypothetical creature and talking about it.

Unfortunately that's pretty much where any of that ends, and the remainder of the movie is basically Alien meets Gravity, with space machinery colliding into each other and people fighting spoopy extraterrestrial life. It's schlock, but in an entertaining enough way. Shock horror movies are admittedly a guilty pleasure and I thought for the most part the movie was imaginative enough when it came to painting all the horrid scenarios, they did a good job at making it gross and panic-inducing but never making it tasteless "torture porn." I just wish the movie felt like a dumb popcorn movie from the start, so I could've gone into it with that mindset and not felt a little pissed off when talk about life on Mars got replaced with [a tiny starfish alien snapping a device and using the sharp edge to cut a hole in the cage it was held.].

Watching characters survive in the various scenarios was entertaining enough and I also liked the The Blob element of the movie, which was kind of ridiculous but, again, plausible if you're willing to watch dumb fun. I also liked that instead of the Alien approach, the alien life in this movie had a genuinely freaky touch to it and made for some unnerving scenes (although later in the movie it kind of lost that element and felt more like shittier Alien, which could've been really easily avoided). Yeah, the cliche flamethrower and space tech failing was retarded, and I'm not gonna pretend this is at all a good movie, but it was on the more competent end of a bad genre.

The characters were kind of problematic. I liked them, and the movie was able to balance their screen time, but none of them felt developed enough. There were a couple times I went "Oh wait, they're in this movie too" with a cast only six people, and it felt like the actors were trying their best to naturally convey a lackluster script. I just wanted to see them do space missions and eat dinner, not "Hey George Clooney was so cool in Gravity let's put that in here too!" One thing that also bothered me was that the main theme of the movie wasn't explored much, and it constantly contradicted itself. [The movie is about "life", as in survival of the fittest. There were a couple times when the characters acknowledged that the alien's actions were only nature, but then in another scene they have contempt for it and the second half portrays it as a genuinely evil creature.]

tl;dr stupid space action movie but kinda fun

I went to see it last night and I thought it was all right. Of course, from a scientific point of view that wasn't very convincing (why did the creature have to grow a fucking face?) but at least they were able to keep a tense atmosphere without resorting to jumpscares and other cheap techniques. Nothing great but it was entertaining and I didn't feel bored at any point. I was a bit disappointed that the creature, being made of the same cells, didn't start dividing itself to create an army of clones, but I guess it made sense given the scarcity of resources. Smart Calvin.

Oh, the end was predictable, too.

I just watched "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
At first I thought it might be a bit cheesy, but by the end I thought the acting and the whole theme was perfect for the movie and the visuals (especially the colours) were spot on. Probably one of the best films I've seen this year

Beauty and the Beast remake is effin awful.

Well you're awful, so does that mean you liked it?

I was surprised to see The Discovery pretty much universally hated by critics, I thought it was pretty good. Most of the criticism was apparently due to the movie not "wrapping up" properly, but I thought it did a pretty good job and I've certainly seen others do it worse (the ending of Westworld for example I hated, the foundation was there for a really great show but there was so much unexplained by the end).
Also I tend to like quite "contained" movies, so the fact that the whole thing took place on an island with a relatively small amount of different settings and characters was a plus for me.

hey i watched more trash!

Ghost in the Shell

With all the visual spectacles and action I'm really surprised to say this is the most boring movie I've seen this year. Everything felt incredibly sterile, like as if it was almost intentional (maybe it was?) and blocked me from even remotely caring about any of the characters. I saw it two weeks ago and I can barely remember anything that happened, it was just like a really dull blur of scenes that were either characters talking in rooms or another shot of the same CG city they kept reminding us looks impressive.

This almost felt sort of like it was more about just creating an atmosphere and aesthetic than it was trying to tell a story. That's not necessarily wrong, I kinda like how something like Samurai Champloo is essentially that but with these quirky stories and battles to set the scene, but here it just came across as really half-assed and dissected by Hollywood trying to market it to dummies. Dialogue would get so bad at times it felt like characters were just at random bursting into explaining the themes of the movie, and sometimes seemed really calculated ("this is the scene where the audience will be shocked!")

Sucks because I've heard the anime show is actually great and the concept is really fascinating, the idea of people trying to find their humanity and purpose in a future where it's more convenient to transplant your brain into a robot is something I'm actually interested to see explored but the movie didn't delve into that at all, instead making it just kind of a generic "the government fights the people who are different" story.

Unforgettable

I don't think anyone even knows this movie came out or exists besides me but, it's not worth it. It's a typical "creepy person stalks family" story, which I don't hate (The Gift was one of my favourite movies in 2015) but they weirdly gave much of it away very early on and the creep (in this case the guy's ex-wife who's jealous of his new girlfriend and tries to derail their relationship in increasingly extreme ways) of this movie was never scary of even mildly unsettling.

In fact, the movie has a retarded tendency to spoil itself. The first scenes spoils part of the climax, we're given details about the ex-wife that already clearly foreshadow what she'll do, and the movie even goes as far as to completely show and detail what she's thinking and doing. So like, you'll get a scene where she's being weird and you're supposed to be unsettled, but the scene prior clearly already lays out that she's going to do that, ehh? In the first half of the movie she's not even that scary or mean-spirited, she just seems very upset about the relationship and her eventual downfall seems weirdly out of character and extreme - she just becomes a crazy person out of nowhere.

The only thing I liked was some of the sets. The overly perfect and neat interior of the ex-wife's house and the slight tension whenever a scene took place there was more competent that anything else.

The Cirlce

This movie almost pissed me off a little. I'm a pretty open advocate for sucking Edward Snowden's dick and criticising monopolies, corporations, NSA spying, etc, but The Circle is probably the worst way you can handle this subject. There's interesting questions posed here - whether sacrificing freedom for safety is a good thing, if big corporations are improving or worsening our lives, and if social media and data-collection marketing is making people obediently give up their freedom. The problem with The Circle though, is that its decided that these are all bad things, and rather than let people decide that for themselves and have them think about those questions the movie forces scene after scene of "THIS IS BAD! THIS IS BAD! NOTICE HOW THE CORPORATION SAYS IT'S GOOD BUT IT'S ACTUALLY BAD!" down your throat. If that means extremely exaggerating the things you're supposed to think are bad to the point where it bypasses the actual real issues it comments on, whatever we don't care emma watsons and iphones are in it gonna make a billion trillion dollars hnghghhg

And I mean like, really really desperately. Things get so fucking silly and over the top I couldn't take anything seriously, and I doubt anyone uninformed about this got swayed by the movie. This would've worked as a satirical comedy though, when the movie actually starts bringing in characters saying insane things along the lines of "but isn't giving up all control to a company, and being watched 24/7 by everyone great?!" with a smile, and you're supposed to be taking this seriously, holy fuck.

It didn't even do a good job at that either - yeah, people were creepily in favour of giving up all their power, and the supposedly life-improving tech of the corporation kinda fuck up sort of at the end, but for the most part the movie doesn't even portray any of this as particularly bad. Mae Holland (played by Emma Watson) never actually acknowledges that she dislikes that people are watching her 24/7, she seems very happy that there's a chip inside her, and while she's hostile at first she very quickly makes a complete turnaround and falls in love with the company - something that's never really countered. No gradual succumbing, it takes characters only 5 seconds to completely change agenda back and forth in The Circle. Mae will go from being doubtful and hostile to completely mindlessly loving corporate control, whatever is convenient for the scene. She never gets any shit from other characters who she betrays either, except for one who then apologises for it and suddenly is just scrapped from the rest of the movie. Another who hates The Circle decides he trusts sharing his secret opposition to her, right after she faithfully pledges her support to the company.

Of course it is anti-corporate at the ending, but there were so many plot problems and issues that it didn't make any fucking sense. The movie just kind of ends, randomly, like seriously as if the movie just stopped and cut to the credits. It feels like there's an entire subplot that just isn't in the movie but gets addressed in the last 20 minutes, there's a subplot about like a rogue Mark Zuckerberg that seems completely pointless and rushed and I had no fucking clue what anything he did or said was supposed to imply. I really think this movie was either unfinished or the plot got changed up halfway in filming and they just kept scenes from the previous one in. Tom Hanks was at least awesome though, he did a great job at playing creepy Steve Jobs.

If you really wanna watch a movie about the effects of data collection/spying just go watch Snowden, which did a much better job and is an actually directly relevant movie.

I'm watching season 5 of samurai jack, which Adult Swim has just picked up, it's amazing.
I'm also watching the new and ongoing season of Prison Break, which was pretty mediocre until last night's episode which was actually pretty great.
In terms of movies, I would fucking LOVE to watch the new Kingsman movie "The Golden Circle", the first movie was a solid 10/10 imo.

I saw the new Pirates movie which is basically just elements of the original trilogy mashed together making it more of a remake in disguise than a legit sequel. I guess because the previous one changed the direction of the series a bit and people didn't like it as much they chose to play it safe with this one, but it ends up suffering from a lot of the same problems that one had, namely being that the characters just fail to carry the movie. It all feels very formulaic and tired, and like there was no creative energy behind any of it - the plot, the characters, the dialogue, everything in this movie is a recycled idea.

The movie didn't really have a main character. I guess the two new characters, Henry and Carina, got the most screentime, but both were completely undeveloped and had almost no dialogue that wasn't them just explaining their role in the plot or what's happening in a scene. When they're not doing that they're trying to very obviously just be Will and Elizabeth from the trilogy, to the point where I don't get why they didn't just bring those characters back. The movie just kind of juggles the cast around, never really focusing much on any of them. And what made it even stranger is that Jack Sparrow seems kind of irrelevant here, only serving as a plot setup and then just being comic relief during the rest of it. At least we got to learn where Jack got his hat from, a very important reveal that we were all dying to know.

Also there's a scene where Paul McCartney makes a cameo and the joke is it's Paul McCartney, and he's in a Pirates movie. There's not like a Beatles reference or anything, in fact the costume and makeup makes it hard to even notice its him, but that's the joke. Paul McCartney everybody, laugh. There's also a scene where for no reason at all the movie pauses the plot to make a joke where Jack gets forced to marry an ugly woman, and the joke is she's ugly. It has nothing to do with anything and after a long back-and-forth of "I don't wanna marry her cause she's ugly!" and "You gotta marry her!" over and over, Jack escapes and its never referred to again. This is a very good movie.

The fact that the series has become formulaic is baffling to me. The first two Pirates movies were so unhinged and full of great ideas, and while the third one was better than the fourth for me, it started to take itself way too seriously. I remember literally nothing about the fourth. How do you fuck up so bad as to make a series about pirates going on crazy adventures boring and formulaic??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????


ok here's some weird choice in movies:


Lego Batman
I was disappointed, since the trailers made it look like it was going to be a lot more adult-oriented than it ended up being. The humour usually hovers between cute (harmless, but the kids would laugh), unfunny, and sometimes funny-funny (I did laugh a couple times). There were quite a few creative ideas, the premise of the story was great, and the inter-medial villain cameos pay off for the most part, but compared to the original Lego Movie it definitely felt more geared towards children. Honestly, it's good and I'd give it a second watch if I were babysitting my stepsister or something, it just wasn't really what I was expecting.


Boss Baby
The last few years have given way to quite a slew of animated movies about families learning to get along, and while this movie does fall into that category, it's not a genre I've grown tired of, at least not yet. I often find that the characters in these movies are surprisingly well-written, with interactions that make you genuinely care for them and put you on the edge of your seat when things go south, and I felt that here too. While it wasn't the funniest thing ever, it was more hit than miss for me; I got quite a few laughs.

The animation though - the animation in this movie is ridiculously good, like, every movement draws you in. There were these abstract/surreal sequences that played out every now and then as well (simulating the kid's imagination), and they were visually remarkable, a lot more so than you'd think.

However, one thing animated movies need to not fucking do are those gay-ass chase sequences. It sucked in the Lorax, and it sucked here. Weirdly enough, you'd expect chase sequences to be packed with creativity and fun action, but they usually end up being the most methodical, boring and lifeless parts of any animated film like this.

Was it good? Maybe? I was expecting it to be really mediocre and it pleasantly surprised me, so kind of.


Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Wow, this was way better than the first movie in every way. The jokes were consistently funny (as opposed to being forced to death in the first), the plot, though not the most original thing ever, was way more enticing than the first's, the visuals retain the colour of the original but evolved past its cheap, gimmicky look to provide something way more stunning and dynamic, the choice of music was fitting (as opposed to the first's which I found to be downright cringey), and the highlight of the movie: the characters and the way they interact. The first movie kind of required them to relish in their stereotypes, but as they've finally established themselves as a team, here they've been given room to flesh out, and boy do they do that. Every time I saw any combination of the movie's main cast have a scene, I got legitimately excited, because I knew it would deliver.

The only thing I thought they kind of botched was the twist. I didn't mind it being sort of predictable, but it goes from good -> evil in a split second.

I went into this movie expecting and wanting to dislike it, but man, I would've had to have been stubborn as hell to come out feeling that way.

hey I, me? I saw more movies !

Eraserhead
This is one I absolutely recommend, it's David Lynch's debut movie and holds up ridiculously well. It's more abstract than a regular film but I wish more directors opted for storytelling through sound and visuals like this, there's hardly any real "scares" but the atmosphere keeps it consistently tense, unsettling, and completely immersive. I'd recommend watching this late at night by yourself, it's a kind of movie you want to focus on and think about as it goes along. Nothing is explained and it doesn't have to, it feels really refreshing for a movie to just put these ideas and themes out there and encourage you to make your own conclusions on what it's supposed to be doing, I love interpretation and how personal it can make something - for example, I thought the movie was about social anxiety and isolation, but I've also read many people talking about the hardship of parenting, not wanting to settle, conflicting with religion, etc.

If anything, watch it for the amazing presentation. The sets all feel otherworldly and claustrophobic, and most of the practical effects are still great (though there is one sequence that's a bit dated). But mostly I love the constant ambient background noise, it plays throughout the entire movie and fades to the back of your mind until it suddenly builds up to make a scene more tense. It's even worse in the rare moments it stops playing, it makes those scenes feel suddenly uncomfortably quiet and is usually when something particularly freaky happens.

Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz
These are both great comedies. Simon Pegg is a really solid actor, and while I like the sort of dimwitted British character he plays in a lot of movie (including Shaun) I actually liked seeing him take on a different role in Hot Fuzz better. There's not really anything I can say about these movie that hasn't already been said, but I would really recommend them if you haven't seen them yet. I don't think they're quite as hilarious as people say, I was more just consistently amused with a small caps lol here and there, but it's all really clever and I liked that everything in these movies has a payoff or some witty joke behind it. Good parodies that still pay respect to the cliches they're addressing, and Hot Fuzz's climax was actually pretty fucking funny.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Yeah, this movie fucking sucks. I hated the editing, every shot was shaky and jittery and not appealing to look at. It's something I could see like a Bourne movie trying, but in a medieval setting it felt out of place. All characters except Arthur are completely forgettable and even Arthur seems like a "guy everyone can like" figure at best, also he has a modern day haircut. How Arthur's sword was supposed to function didn't make sense to me, and it seemed like Arthur could've skipped half the movie if he just used it earlier, but whatever. The last half hour of the movie is basically just a CGI shitshow that was never exciting even in a dumb way.

Wonder Woman
This movie really surprised me, I was expecting a really fatigued "Look, feminists! Female lead!" movie and it being from DC also didn't promise anything, but it's actually one of the better superhero movies I've seen. It's much more focused on just telling a good story and the characters in it than the visual spectacle and universe tie-in subplots a lot of these movies get lost in, and none of it felt forced even when doing cliches. The characters setups were to the point and didn't feel like the movie had to justify them coming together, and the humour largely relied on the silliness of this larger-than-life magical figure in the real world which is a mediocre staple of the genre, but it was genuinely funny and creative here. Usually these movies think that just acknowledging that contrast is funny because, self-awareness is lol? Even the cliched "we're gonna pause the action and have an intimate moment now" scene just worked, it was my favourite part of the movie.

The side characters weren't anything amazing but they were good enough, and the villains were easily the weakest part of the moment (a really silly casting choice, and a retarded twist near the end), but overall I think this DC's best effort yet.

Alien
This is one of those movie I've seen in YouTube clips but I decided to watch it and it was really even better than I thought, it might become one of my favourite movies. Nothing about it felt aged at all, the tension and atmosphere is still just as captivating today which is surprising given the premise and genre.

Like Eraserhead, the presentation is really my favourite element here - it's actually ridiculous how much better the ship in this movie looks than, almost any modern sci-fi movie's portrayal? Everything looks like it has a logical purpose, and something I found that people don't seem to talk about much is the ship's appearance prior to it becoming so claustrophobic in the second part. It looks more hopeful in these shots: the brightly lit room they sleep in, the pretty lights in the space they talk to Mother to, etc. But then there's also a scene where two characters go down in the ship and everything looks much darker and colder, like really subtle foreshadowing. And the planet they land on is so interesting too, the foreboding shot of the alien ship and just how ominous and strange the whole area looks is exactly how you'd picture an alien planet. More movies need to opt for that approach, it looks way fucking cooler than Covenant's "like Earth but it's a different planet" bullshit.

Keane wrote:Simon Pegg is a really solid actor

Meh, he looked like a fucking slob in Star Wars 7. He acted like one, too...

I went to see Wonder Women today which I thought was pretty good although the middle had times where it was pretty eh.

I saw The Mummy and it was dreadful and terrible and also litcherally self my kill. It was so, so obviously a product of marketing, "how do we appeal to all audiences", etc, it didn't feel like there was even an inch of creative energy behind any of it. It felt like a movie made by people who don't have any idea how to produce or write movies and just figured they could wing it - Ya like action? Here's a scene where people yell and run around, that's like that movie stuff ya like, right? Here's a scene where characters talk, they're bonding. Notice, this is the scene where the characters develop, que the bonding music.

It didn't know whether it wanted to be lighthearted fun action or something more like the edgier end of Marvel movies, and it ended up being a weird juggle of the two. Characters respond to situations as if they read the script and know what's gonna happen in this very immersive movie - Tom Cruise, who was a terrible pick for the role, seems not at all surprised or confused when his dead zombified friend appears in a mirror and starts talking to him.

Everything about this movie is just, it's so unbelievably retarded and saturated in Hollywood tropes - The constant "Let's have a character directly explain what is happening in the plot" dialogue, dedicating a scene purely to introducing a character that'll be part of future "Universe" movies, imitating Marvel, etc. It's like a movie made in a dystopian future where machines can create movies with all the checkmarks for an inoffensive box office hit to spawn more sequels for. It was so fucking silly when they had the DARK UNIVERSE logo on the screen to signal to us moviegoers that we now have another just as hip movie series to love like Star Wars and Marvel!

There was literally a seen where they animated a green hue on Russel Crowe's face and there you go everyone, it's Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hide. No creativity, no attempt at anything, just make him green and, it's a character! That's the design!

I've just watched Ferngully and Care Bears II - need some good old cartoons in my life. And good french movie
The Sense of Wonder (Le Goût des merveilles).

I saw John Wick 1 and 2 recently, your typical Keanu Reeves action movie to be honest. It even featured Morpheus. I didn't think they were bad, and while the humour was somewhat hit and miss the action was fun. The 2nd was better I thought as it had more of a story to it, but they were both alright.

Despicable Me 3: This was disappointing, the trailers looked surprisingly decent and the plot sounded good on paper, which made me a lot less cynical going in even though I didn't really care for the previous one or the Minions movie. But it's just kind of a mess - the movie tries to juggle a seemingly infinite number of subplots, constantly rotating them around and putting no real care or focus into any of them. There's a villain, there's a mom/daughter thing, the Minions want to be evil again, unicorn subplot, gru's twin brother, holy shit. Just throw everything in, see what sticks with the audience.

The whole 80's villain thing was a funny idea but gets old past the opening scene, every joke boiling down to an 80's reference doesn't work for an entire movie. The idea of a villain turning against Hollywood was interesting but it never really got developed past just the setup for the character. Most of his scenes seemed to revolve around just regurgitating that setup, or reminding us he's still in the movie after we've been watching the 30 other plots. I would've much rather had the whole pointless Minion subplot replaced with some scenes where they maybe explored some sort of theme about moving past your prime, but like their other recent efforts Illumination seems set on keeping their movies void of any depth beyond just being silly and easily digestible.

I found the rest of the plots to not be that great either. The subplot with Lucy trying to be a good mother had just a couple moments to establish and resolve itself, none of it done in a very clever or interesting manner. I think my favourite part was the twin brother Dru thing, but even that seemed unfocused and rushed. There wasn't even a clear idea of what Gru and Dru's relationship was supposed to be: initially Gru dislikes Dru, being too cynical to enjoy his happy-go-lucky vibe and jealous of his success, but then almost immediately that idea just kind of fades out. Basically what you see in the trailer is all that the movie ever does to explore that concept. There's also a thing about Dru being a really shitty villain with no experience, but that's just another one of the billion ideas that was thrown into the pot with no rhyme or reason behind it.

Eventually Gru does do something to piss off Dru and you would expect that as the cliche goes, the two characters will eventually put their differences aside and come together over some cause they both care about and then that resolves their fight. Instead, this movie resolved that conflict literally 2 minutes after it's presented (in a horribly lazy scene) and then has the two characters coming together for one cause. I have no idea how such an obvious mistake made it into the final cut.

There was also this weird thing where Gru conducts a plan to use Dru to help him get something for his personal gain, but not until after he conducts that plan do we get a scene where we see Gru's reasoning for it - as if we hadn't figured it out yet. Why didn't that scene happen while he was conducting it?

One interesting thing I noticed was that the Minions seemed a bit toned down here, unlike the 2nd movie where they practically overtook the spotlight. I won't criticise them for focusing more on actual characters rather than just silly gags, but silly gags seems much more Illumination's specialty than writing something that requires more complexity.

Overall, this movie unfortunately reinforced to me again just how sloppy, lazy and charmless Illumination movies are, and how their business model (tiny budgets for the movies, and then a gorillion dollars for marketing them) gets in the way. Characters don't have chemistry, things often don't have payoff, and it all just feels like they had a checklist of things that they figured as long as they were put together into a movie it would equal success: Pause the plot for a moment to have the Minions do a silly song, check. Lucy has to have a moment with her daughter for the awww moment, check. They clearly put no real effort forward in trying to make all these elements work together effectively, but they sure as hell made sure to compromise the fuck out of the budget. I really hate that Illumination is actually so successful, because it sets a bad example for other studios: Spend minimal money on the actual product and use it instead on aggressive advertising.

It's even little things like this movie's scene where the Minions go into a studio running an American Idol show, and the show is just called "Sing", and outside the studio theres posters on the wall advertising really generic looking TV shows. Why not make like a joke poster so people paying attention to that little detail will be rewarded, or the show is called just a little more clever than the first thing that came to their minds? Or in the actual movie Sing, why not have the characters being animals actually contribute something to the comedy or the plot? It really pales in comparison to a movie like Zootopia, oozing with visual gags and detail. I guess the only parts that really matter are the ones you can sell merchandise of. Oh well!

The trailer made this movie look like it was going to be packed full of legitimately hilarious gags, and while it wasn't utterly devoid of them, it wasn't packed enough to make up for the thin character development, and if they wanted to do with fewer gags and go with the character development thing, they didn't devote nearly enough time to it. The villain was the most disappointing part for me (his opening was pretty funny, and Trey Parker is naturally hilarious), but he had almost nothing going for him after the first little bit of the movie.

My favourite parts of the movie were actually the minion sequences, which I thought were all pretty creative and funny. I also kind of gushed over the mom-daughter subplot a tiny bit, because I'm a piece of shit. Actually, on the note of the minions, I thought Minions was actually pretty good. My stepsister was laughing her head off in the theatre, and I was smiling through the whole thing.

The first Despicable Me felt like a really fresh, well-written movie (especially given that Pixar was the only studio making good animated movies at the time), and Illumination seemed very promising. It's a shame they got so lazy with the series.

Keane wrote:Or in the actual movie Sing, why not have the characters being animals actually contribute something to the comedy or the plot? It really pales in comparison to a movie like Zootopia, oozing with visual gags and detail. I guess the only parts that really matter are the ones you can sell merchandise of. Oh well!

Now that's a really bizarre comparison, because aside from there being animals in a city (an aesthetic they were obviously trying to capitalise on), they have nothing in common. Sing is probably my favourite Illumination movie, and to me, it proves they are a talented studio with a good vision that can successfully tie a number of well-written character arks together into a single, very well-paced movie, provided they don't let other garbage get in the way, which they didn't in Sing.

With that said, I actually do like Illumination a lot, they just have a pretty meh ratio of good-to-mediocre films. The only one I can't speak for is the Secret Life of Pets, though I heard it wasn't very inspired. Heck, I even thought Despicable Me 2 was surprisingly decent.


Spider-Man: Homecoming

This was actually really good. It felt a lot different than recent Marvel movies, which is a really good thing. It felt fresh; the direction was different, the action was kind of different, the tone was different, and it nailed Spider-Man. I thought he'd be annoying, but he wasn't at all! I really like how they managed to make Stark feel wise and intimidating despite him having already been in pretty much every other Marvel movie to date. I really hope this is the start of something new direction-wise for Marvel, because I found the second phase of their cinematic universe to be unbearably drab.

I would go into more detail, but I'm not really sure what to talk about. I guess I don't see the need to spoil a good film!

Spider-man: Homecoming - great

Baby Driver - amazing

War for the Planet of the Apes - phenomenal