[asksunny]

Manchester by the sea (6/10): no idea what all the fuss and awards are about. Pretty boring.

 

[WraithApe]

  Manchester by the sea (6/10): no idea what all the fuss and awards are about. Pretty boring.

 
Yeah, sounds like it from the synopsis. The various awards panels have always loved these plot-less films though, where they can cream over the realism, the naturalistic acting etc. It's all about vaguely worthy, middle-of-the-road fare - wallowing in Hollywood's shallow waters.

 

[Hutnicks]

Theeb (2014) 9/10
 
 
   An Arabian film about a young boy set during the First World War. This is more of a slow burn character study with a minimal cast and sweeping panoramic cinematography of the David Lean variety.  This could easily be seen by westerners as the other side of Lawrence of Arabia or how and what motivated Bedou at that time. Fascinating if you give it the chance the juxtaposition of King and Country vs Family allegiance gets explored subtly and driven home with the end.
 
 Recommended for those who do not need the adrenaline rush of an actioner but have a desire to explore a personal view of a cultures reaction to the European War show coming to the vastness of the desert.

 

[oqvist]

Moana. Don´t understand the hype it´s still just Disney.
 
6/10. Looks good. Moana is quite and all and dwayne johnson make his deepest character ever

 

[tdockweiler]

Kong - 7.75/10
 
Not as much fun as it could have been. It scored some points more towards the end.
There's some comedy in it but nothing too funny. I don't think anyone in the theater laughed once.
They were totally silent the entire movie which is pretty rare.
John C Reilly should be in more movies BTW. He was one of the few interesting characters in the movie.
The movie would be better if he was in the entire movie and they added more comedy!
 
BTW I'd rank this as being better than King Kong (the remake) and "Jurassic Park".
It's better than most super hero movies too.
 
It's worth seeing at the theater, but just barely.

 

[Hutnicks]

The Space Between Us  (2017)   6.5/10
 
 
  What starts out as a wholly implausible SciFi film winds up as a teen angst vehicle that could have gone miles to explore some really hard hitting issues. Instead and much like the dribble fed to the audience with Passengers we get a relationship film with little hints of what could have been.
 
 I don't know what the deal is with setting these things in a SciFi scenario unless that is hip with the teen crowd right now,, and no mistake there will be no one over twenty in the theatres for this one unless they are die hards that have been misled (like myself). The premise falls apart from the word Go. Astronaut on first mission to Mars boards the spacecraft concealing pregnancy. As if... Further goes on to stretch credibility with a zero time lag in communications between Mars and Earth. As if.. By the time our kid gets back to Earth the only thing of interest is the fish out of water scenario. That and of course the ever delectable and under appreciated Carla Gugino running around through farmers fields and beach sand in heels

 
Some segways of Gary Oldman piloting a sub orbital craft are as ludicrous as could be imagined. Apparently in the not to distant future there are no qualifications, medicals, or minimum skill sets required to become an astronaut. Ed Wood would have loved it.
 
Suspension of disbelief here failed worse than the Canadian Brewery trying to pass it's Lowenbrau off as the real thing.
 
 Someone read Heinleins Stranger in a Strange Land and thought it might be a cool idea to do a John Hughes take on it.
 
What you wind up with is more of a teen Tarzan from outer space vehicle with Tarzan being raised by geeks on Mars instead of Gorillas in the jungle. Jane here is of course the alienated streetwise chick who teaches Tarzan the true meaning of being human and the wonders of Earth. What is really missing is the penultimate act where Jane finds out she is actually the long lost illegitimate child of Bill Gates and heir apparent to his billions.
 
 Skip this and go fetch yourself a copy of The Man Who Fell To Earth and follow it up by reading Heinlein. Or if by some miracle you can find the animated miniseries Red Planet get that too.
 
Jeebus even Podkayne of Mars was better.

 

[Redcarmoose]

  Kong - 7.75/10
 
Not as much fun as it could have been. It scored some points more towards the end.
There's some comedy in it but nothing too funny. I don't think anyone in the theater laughed once.
They were totally silent the entire movie which is pretty rare.
John C Reilly should be in more movies BTW. He was one of the few interesting characters in the movie.
The movie would be better if he was in the entire movie and they added more comedy!
 
BTW I'd rank this as being better than King Kong (the remake) and "Jurassic Park".
It's better than most super hero movies too.
 
It's worth seeing at the theater, but just barely.

Nice!

 

[WraithApe]

 
Heat - 7/10
 
A good film, but not a great one - at least not in my estimation. Despite having more of a film noir sensibility and a darker, edgier feel to it than your average actioner, it's still basically your average actioner. Hard boiled LAPD cop, Lt. Vincent Hanna (Pacino) goes head to head with career criminal, Neil McCauley (De Niro) in a personal vendetta to end them all, as he tracks him across LA, like a predator stalking its prey.
 
As an action film, it's entertaining, but I think it's aiming higher than that and therein lies the problem. With nearly a 3 hour run time, I think Mann is aiming for Scorsese territory; aiming to expose the existential angst at the core of his protagonists' beings, where both Hanna and McCauley are revealed to be shells of men outside of the world of work, which is everything to each man. Their families (or in the case of McCauley, his hastily found girl - a vain attempt to buy himself a slice of the 'normal life' Hanna talks about in their one meeting) suffer as a result of their twin obsessions, to the point of implosion. Unfortunately, it's a case of style over substance. The revelations on offer don't really justify the epic scale and it's all a bit one note - the women in the film really are peripheral, passive and in some cases, their motivations hard to buy. The rapidity of Eady's transition from aspiring graphic artist to compliant gangster's moll defies belief.
 
The much anticipated meet-up between Hanna and McCauley feels as much like an exercise in adversarial admiration between the actors, Pacino and De Niro, as it does the characters: two heavyweights sizing each other up and conceding their mutual respect. It's the classic super-villain vs super-cop scenario; no different really to McClane vs Gruber in Die Hard or Archer vs Troy in Face/Off (both films I actually think are tauter and more enjoyable than this one). As much as they're on opposite sides of the fence, they're personalities cut from the same cloth.
 
I think Mann wanted to make something more than a typical actioner with this film, that has something to say about the human cost of obsessive behaviour, but it can only paint in the broadest of strokes and seems limited to a palette of genre tropes. The best moments of Heat are still the action set pieces - such as the heist gone wrong, which escalates into a pitched battle on the streets of LA - great (if highly improbable) moments. Where it tries to go deeper, I think it's in danger of overreaching.

 

[Hutnicks]

Logan (2017)  8/10
 
 
  For unknown reasons the X Men franchise was the only one I ever really warmed up to as far as superhero stuff goes. This one may shock the devil out of a lot of fans. It is dark and brooding and not terribly uplifting. Logan is pretty much at his wits end existing in a semi post apocalyptic world and taking care of Xavier who, it would appear has gone slightly batty with the strain over the years. It follows the Nolanesque tone but with a dirty grimy Mad Max vibe rather than slick stylings.  R rating is well earned here and I for one was always thinking c'mon Wolverine, tell us what you really think. This films goes there and a little further.
 
 This is a story about ends and beginnings and if it has any flaw that stands out it is a set up for a "next generation" series of films.

 

[Redcarmoose]

Heat - 7/10

A good film, but not a great one - at least not in my estimation. Despite having more of a film noir sensibility and a darker, edgier feel to it than your average actioner, it's still basically your average actioner. Hard boiled LAPD cop, Lt. Vincent Hanna (Pacino) goes head to head with career criminal, Neil McCauley (De Niro) in a personal vendetta to end them all, as he tracks him across LA, like a predator stalking its prey.

As an action film, it's entertaining, but I think it's aiming higher than that and therein lies the problem. With nearly a 3 hour run time, I think Mann is aiming for Scorsese territory; aiming to expose the existential angst at the core of his protagonists' beings, where both Hanna and McCauley are revealed to be shells of men outside of the world of work, which is everything to each man. Their families (or in the case of McCauley, his hastily found girl - a vain attempt to buy himself a slice of the 'normal life' Hanna talks about in their one meeting) suffer as a result of their twin obsessions, to the point of implosion. Unfortunately, it's a case of style over substance. The revelations on offer don't really justify the epic scale and it's all a bit one note - the women in the film really are peripheral, passive and in some cases, their motivations hard to buy. The rapidity of Eady's transition from aspiring graphic artist to compliant gangster's moll defies belief.

The much anticipated meet-up between Hanna and McCauley feels as much like an exercise in adversarial admiration between the actors, Pacino and De Niro, as it does the characters: two heavyweights sizing each other up and conceding their mutual respect. It's the classic super-villain vs super-cop scenario; no different really to McClane vs Gruber in Die Hard or Archer vs Troy in Face/Off (both films I actually think are tauter and more enjoyable than this one). As much as they're on opposite sides of the fence, they're personalities cut from the same cloth.

I think Mann wanted to make something more than a typical actioner with this film, that has something to say about the human cost of obsessive behaviour, but it can only paint in the broadest of strokes and seems limited to a palette of genre tropes. The best moments of Heat are still the action set pieces - such as the heist gone wrong, which escalates into a pitched battle on the streets of LA - great (if highly improbable) moments. Where it tries to go deeper, I think it's in danger of overreaching.

Heat was a block buster in it's day. If you lived in LA then you remember how they blocked off the streets to film it. Not many movies could block off the streets they used. Of course many movies have blocked off streets though with Heat they blocked off the biggest streets for awhile which gave the film respect even before it came out. So ahead of release Heat had "heat". To top it off it had a legendary shoot out which was enhanced with the sound of real gunfire. If you saw Heat in the theaters the movie was renown for the sound of the gun battle. I happened to see it upon release at the largest screen on the West Coast in Newport Fashion Island.

 

[Redcarmoose]

Damaged Goods 1961


8 out of possible 10

Maybe the best movie ever made about VD in the 1960s?

 

[mutabor]

  Logan (2017)  8/10
 
 
  For unknown reasons the X Men franchise was the only one I ever really warmed up to as far as superhero stuff goes. This one may shock the devil out of a lot of fans. It is dark and brooding and not terribly uplifting. Logan is pretty much at his wits end existing in a semi post apocalyptic world and taking care of Xavier who, it would appear has gone slightly batty with the strain over the years. It follows the Nolanesque tone but with a dirty grimy Mad Max vibe rather than slick stylings.  R rating is well earned here and I for one was always thinking c'mon Wolverine, tell us what you really think. This films goes there and a little further.
 
 This is a story about ends and beginnings and if it has any flaw that stands out it is a set up for a "next generation" series of films.

 
I prefer [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.870588)]X-Men: Apocalypse ( 2016) to Logan. Sinister God who was resembling one from Egyptian mythology was convincing and closer to reality of the world that he overpowered main positive protagonists. There is something in Apocalyptic message which is severely criticizing flaws of humanity ( inherited flaws which will never change, original sin) that is close and important to reality.[/color]

 

[WraithApe]

Heat was a block buster in it's day. If you lived in LA then you remember how they blocked off the streets to film it. Not many movies could block off the streets they used. Of course many movies have blocked off streets though with Heat they blocked off the biggest streets for awhile which gave the film respect even before it came out. So ahead of release Heat had "heat". To top it off it had a legendary shoot out which was enhanced with the sound of real gunfire. If you saw Heat in the theaters the movie was renown for the sound of the gun battle. I happened to see it upon release at the largest screen on the West Coast in Newport Fashion Island.

 
I did see it on the big screen as it happens. The sound system is a good one and yeah, the impact of the gun battle scene and many others was very visceral!

 

[WraithApe]

Get Out - 4/10

Game-changing horror with incendiary racial agenda? Er, no. This is more Society or The Man With Two Brains than Mississippi Burning - total B-movie territory. How anyone could suggest it has anything relevant to say about black identity or the legacy of slavery in the American psyche is beyond me. It's not a reflection of simmering racial tensions in modern America so much as a reflection of the current trend in Hollywood for massive overcompensation, following the storm at last year's oscars. To say why would be a spoiler, but this film will be accused of racism in the other direction. I don't think it is personally - it's Crayola level; too dumb to be taken seriously - but if you simply flip the script and have a credible white lead surrounded by ridiculous black stereotypes, the accusations will fly.

As a horror, it's barely adequate but gets a few points for keeping me intrigued for a while before I clued into where it was headed and my eyes gradually rolled further and further back into my sockets. I get the distinct feeling I wasn't watching this with a seasoned horror crowd tonight either - I can't remember the last time I heard people screaming with such little provocation and oo-ing and ah-ing at the most obvious of plot points. As a comedy, it's mildly amusing. Humour is a very subjective thing though of course - if you find Chris Rock's stand up hilarious, the chances are you'll be rolling in the aisles at this too.

 

[mutabor]

 
 
Get Out - 4/10

 
Before reading your review this film has attracted my attention by amazingly high score 99% on Rotten Tomatoes ( also 8.2/10). It is a result after 182 reviews.
 

 The film received praise from critics and has grossed over $113 million worldwide, against its $4.5 million budget.