[JuanseAmador]

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them: 5/10




Brief thoughts:

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

The plot is substantially misleading and undercooked in my opinion, we get drawn into the film with Scamander's fascination for magical creatures and changing popular opinion about them. This is somewhat of a waste of time since it's just a facet of Redmayne's character which felt as if its only reason to be involved with the film was so Graves had a scapegoat to blame for the destruction Credence was doing.

Since I already mentioned Credence and the long winding participation of Newt's pets, I want to talk about his storyline. This is the part I was referencing when I spouted out the word "undercooked". The plot dwells for so long, and with overbearing importance, on getting the creatures back in the case, that the only real interaction we have with this possessed boy is tiny scenes where he meets up with Graves, or when his mother (who is an absolute bitch) mistreats him. This little backstory ultimately leads to an extremely thin character who has no importance or meaning to us, whose death is handled in less than 5 minutes and seems to offer no real effect on the story itself. Well, I think I get my point across, the plot is incredibly flawed and PREDICTABLE; The cliches of exchanging suitcases without noticing, having to wipe someone's memory because they shouldn't have found out about certain things, the man who takes advantage of a troubled child to gain from his power, etc.

I must mention, that I'm secretly an Eddie Redmayne admirer, and even though this wasn't a good movie, he saved a lot of it for me, I thought his acting was deserving of praise and should be excused from the movie's flaws. My only complaint could be that when he had scenes with his giant eagle, you could tell he actually wasn't talking to his pet eagle, and it was a CGI bird, but I can see how that scenario would trouble Redmayne, as he's one of the more methodic actors alive, so having to work with an empty green screen isn't his best habitat.

Oh yes, and Yates' cinematography is great most of the time, although some scenes appear to be dull at times, but still, I give it a thumbs up.

 

[Hutnicks]

Allied (2016)  3/10          Whereby Zemeckis proves he's hit the sell by date as a director.
 
  My continued streak of dismal thrillers continues on with this poorly constructed yawnfest that manages to get just about every possible thing wrong in a film. Painfully slow in pace. Brutalizes the facts of the era in a way only hollywood could. Manages to try and sell you a love story with two actors who have no chemistry whatsoever, so bad in fact I wouldn't be surprised if Brad was CGI'd in to the scenes in this one while negotiating his divorce back home. Plotwise this is dumb as a box of hammers. Slow exposition and dull as it gets.  As it unfolds by the time any surprise arrives you have already lost interest or better yet decided to hang out at the confection stand hoping an espresso might wake you up for the drive home. The dullness would be bad enough to put one off but the actions of the hero are so over the top self centered and outright stupid it proves once again there is no  finite answer to the question of "how dumb can it get?". Possibly this script IS that result of the hundred monkeys at typewriters we have all been waiting for.
 
 At least the camera is pointed in the right direction most of the time and the aircraft are swell to see
 
A bad horror film can be entertaining in a good way, there is, it seems no such ability for a bad thriller to achieve even some redemption. They are just painful to watch and really, now with IMDB you don't even have to wait it out for the credits to note the writer who goes on the "Mailed in script in crayon" list.
 
Spoiler time. For anyone interested in the "details"

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

OK so we have Bratley playing an Ontarian in the RCAF. My home so I get a little perturbed that they figure an american need to no work to play a Canadian, but thats just a personal peeve.
So we go to Casablanca and meet up with MS Detail in cover but then we go out to the desert to wait for the sunrise. Casablanca was under curfiew in the war an that would tend to draw attention to one. What with being the only car on the road at that time and all. So much for deep cover. They of course decide to knock on off in the car during a sandstorm after sunrise. Great idea except that is the type of storm that moves dunes so you would be buried.Good agenting there uber spies.
We get back to England and of course the girl is fully vetted before he brings here over to marry. So when it turns out shes suspected of being a spy of course the first thing out of his mouth is NOT well how did that slip by the vetting process? What with the SOE running the supply chain to the resistance it would not be so hard to check as Brat himself tries to do.
The whole subterranean bowels of the building secret ops scene was a bust, and here is where the plot fell right apart. One of the reasons British Intelligence is still one of the most highly rates services on earth even after the Philby's and Burgesses is the rep they made in the second world war. Virtually every single spy put in Britain by the Germans was either arrested or turned. A surprising number were turned and used to feed bad information back to Canaris. So this whole kill your wife **** is nonesense. It would be the last thing you would do to a potential asset when you had the leverage of the child. You'd have him sit on her play dumb and tag the whole network and have them feed bogus info back to Berlin.
As for the go off half cocked to try and clear your wife. That would have lasted about 3 minutes after the visit to the hospital. He'd have been locked away for the duration while they dealt with the wife. Things were dealt with a little more expediently in wartime so being a loose canon was not a good thing on the home front.
As far as anything plausible in this plot there was nothing.
They should have just filmed a Ken Follet novel.

 

[tdockweiler]

The Abyss - 9/10
 
Haven't seen this since I was maybe 16! Now 36 and I can barely remember much of it. I liked it then and now it's even better. I watched the special edition this time. Only negative is that the whole alien thing is a bit hard to believe, but oh well.
 
BTW the special edition made me think that "The Arrival" borrowed a few ideas from this movie!
 
Wonder if there is a blu-ray of this? Doubt it.
 
I'm no fan of James Cameron movies but I love this one and especially "True Lies".

 

[Hutnicks]

  The Abyss - 9/10
 
Haven't seen this since I was maybe 16! Now 36 and I can barely remember much of it. I liked it then and now it's even better. I watched the special edition this time. Only negative is that the whole alien thing is a bit hard to believe, but oh well.
 
BTW the special edition made me think that "The Arrival" borrowed a few ideas from this movie!
 
Wonder if there is a blu-ray of this? Doubt it.
 
I'm no fan of James Cameron movies but I love this one and especially "True Lies".

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=19501
 
Least they haven't 3D'd it.  I think the alien part would have worked much better if they had not gone for such a grandiose ending. If it had been some small ship stranded looking for help or something it might have played out well. Big over the top endings were the thing though back then and showcasing digital effects was just beginning.

 

[oqvist]

  The Abyss - 9/10
 
Haven't seen this since I was maybe 16! Now 36 and I can barely remember much of it. I liked it then and now it's even better. I watched the special edition this time. Only negative is that the whole alien thing is a bit hard to believe, but oh well.
 
BTW the special edition made me think that "The Arrival" borrowed a few ideas from this movie!
 
Wonder if there is a blu-ray of this? Doubt it.
 
I'm no fan of James Cameron movies but I love this one and especially "True Lies".

Yeah it´s awesome. I didn´t mind the big ending either it would been worse if they tried to make it realistic. It´s sci fi expect the unexpected. 
 
A shame the source material is destroyed. I would love to see abluray 3D version of this in my scuba gear (Oculus Rift). Due to cinavia crap it would have to be a ripped version though. Realizing I have to revisit it now again for a 5th time or something lol

 

[Subhakar]

Captain Fantastic (6/10)
 
Just in case you were wondering what would've happened, if the character, Christopher McCandless hadn't died in "Into the Wild" but rather lived on to even raise a family of as many as six in the same woods, "Captain Fantastic" would've been it. *****, they even celebrate "Noam Chomsky Day" on a random day. As unique as they come and a perfect pitch for homeschooling.
 

 

[Subhakar]

"Southside with You" (7/10)
 
Just when you thought they couldn’t better it than “Before Sunrise” for a best-first-date-movie-eva’, comes a smooth-talking charmer of a li’l film, “Southside with You” proving reality could just might be a hell lot more persuasive than fiction. Two of the finest portrayals of real life characters by Tika Sumpter (Sista’ Michelle) and Parker Sawyers (Brotha’ Barack), they couldn’t have been more at ease doing their acting gig on the wrong side of Chicago. Almost makes you wish that that old nut Roger Ebert was still alive and kicking to do a gem of a review of a gem of a film from his beloved city. A must-watch. Comes with everything - a slice of pie, a cone of chocolate ice-cream, Nat King Cole, Patsy Cline, a glimpse of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” that he takes her to (at, perhaps, the same time when Ryan Gosling was walking Emma Stone to Nick Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause” in good ol’ LA in “La La Land?”) and a generous dose of Ernie Barnes’ paintings and Gwendolyn Brooks’ poems. All set?! Pleasure is all mine.

 

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.

 

(“We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks)
 
 
 

 
 

 

[WraithApe]

 
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul - 7/10
 
The first of José Mojica Marins's infamous Coffin Joe movies doesn't disappoint. Especially for its time, this is one dark, brutal horror with more than a little of the Grand Guignol about it. Director Marins, the consummate showman and impresario, also plays the main role of gravedigger Zé do Caixão (AKA Coffin Joe) and he really carries the entire film. His screen presence, the glaring eyes and malevolent grin, is up there with any of the great Hammer villains. The maniacal, misanthropic but hugely charismatic Zé seems to be on a mission of malice from the start, tearing into a leg of lamb on holy day with gleeful abandon. As it transpires, he wants a son to continue his bloodline and will stop at nothing to fulfill his genetic destiny.
 
What the film lacks in finesse, it more than makes up for in spirit. You can tell this is Marins' passion project, which he's dragged kicking and screaming to the screen against the odds and in spite of many difficulties in production. Considering there must have been practically no budget, the cinematography is laudable - the atmospheric sets, the lighting and even the special effects, have a definite style. It is all about Coffin Joe at the end of the day though; a man once seen, never forgotten!

 

[Hutnicks]

 
 
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul - 7/10
 
The first of José Mojica Marins's infamous Coffin Joe movies doesn't disappoint. Especially for its time, this is one dark, brutal horror with more than a little of the Grand Guignol about it. Director Marins, the consummate showman and impresario, also plays the main role of gravedigger Zé do Caixão (AKA Coffin Joe) and he really carries the entire film. His screen presence, the glaring eyes and malevolent grin, is up there with any of the great Hammer villains. The maniacal, misanthropic but hugely charismatic Zé seems to be on a mission of malice from the start, tearing into a leg of lamb on holy day with gleeful abandon. As it transpires, he wants a son to continue his bloodline and will stop at nothing to fulfill his genetic destiny.
 
What the film lacks in finesse, it more than makes up for in spirit. You can tell this is Marins' passion project, which he's dragged kicking and screaming to the screen against the odds and in spite of many difficulties in production. Considering there must have been practically no budget, the cinematography is laudable - the atmospheric sets, the lighting and even the special effects, have a definite style. It is all about Coffin Joe at the end of the day though; a man once seen, never forgotten!

Yes yes but is it a musical.
 
I rib you here because (as do we all on this thread) you weave a balance between the spolier and expressing just what one can expect from a given (largely unknown to the masses) director etc.
Asking you to do the work for me of course Is it possible to preface a "genre" director specific review with some kind of stock intro. I mean with DeLaurentis we expect visual art over substance. With Spielgerg we expect confection, with Coppola we expect great talent there to flesh out (literally) his dialogue, with Lean we expect genius, with Cameron we expect plagarisim in a visualy stunning form. With Kubick, expect the best of all the above and tolerate the occasional miss, almost the obverse of Carpenter where you expect the mediocre and are delighted by the occasional brilliance.
 
Ed Wood was god, of course
 
 In order to draw those unfamiliar into our web of preference we need a preface that gives an inkling of the expectation.

 

[WraithApe]

 
Yes yes but is it a musical.
 
I rib you here because (as do we all on this thread) you weave a balance between the spolier and expressing just what one can expect from a given (largely unknown to the masses) director etc.
Asking you to do the work for me of course Is it possible to preface a "genre" director specific review with some kind of stock intro. I mean with DeLaurentis we expect visual art over substance. With Spielgerg we expect confection, with Coppola we expect great talent there to flesh out (literally) his dialogue, with Lean we expect genius, with Cameron we expect plagarisim in a visualy stunning form. With Kubick, expect the best of all the above and tolerate the occasional miss, almost the obverse of Carpenter where you expect the mediocre and are delighted by the occasional brilliance.
 
Ed Wood was god, of course
 
 In order to draw those unfamiliar into our web of preference we need a preface that gives an inkling of the expectation.

 
I'm not sure I totally follow your slightly oracular gist @Hutnicks 

Are you saying you would like more context in future?

 

[Hutnicks]

   
I'm not sure I totally follow your slightly oracular gist @Hutnicks 

Are you saying you would like more context in future?

I think at this point it is savougnocular. But yes. More of "if you are of the bent to apreciate X, then this may appeal. Short take here is I think we assume too much of the public (mirroring the studios it would appear) and do not put that context out in front where folk who would obviously dislike a film may be taken in.
 
I personally am full to the brim with A) Zombie flicks and B) Dystopian, where teemage big breasted or overly cute females lead the world into the light against overwhelming odds flicks. I might be tempted to watch one if the genre or director is not mentioned up front.
 
 Granted there are exeptions to every rule but it costs the author little to include that info in the review.
 
EG   My review of Shin Gojira. If you are not a fan of the previous (original ) TOHO efforts, give it a pass. It will play as an under produced mess for the first half and leave you not interested for the second. If on the other hand you grew up with the Japanese Monster Movie scenario, you will cut this a lot more slack and overlook the almost amateurish beginnings and obvious miscastings as they were a part of the genre and almost an unintentional integral part at that. Will it play to new NA audiences, not really, they would rather look at the underperfroming ShayleneLebouf with a puch up bra overcoming all odds even thought they are well aware she is incapable of overcoming a hangnail. It's expectation setting over substance.
Where the Japanese ran away with it is simply the ability to trigger the imagination where america constantly insists on telling you that your imagination is what we feed you.
Mind in neutral, which is where both audiences are expected to be at the start the JapMoFilm gives you wide berth, the AmTeen effort is more of an advert for the superiority of youth over age, stifles the imaginagtion and makes everyone over 20 wish they had bought depends on the way in.

 

[WraithApe]

 
I think at this point it is savougnocular. But yes. More of "if you are of the bent to apreciate X, then this may appeal. Short take here is I think we assume too much of the public (mirroring the studios it would appear) and do not put that context out in front where folk who would obviously dislike a film may be taken in.
 
I personally am full to the brim with A) Zombie flicks and B) Dystopian, where teemage big breasted or overly cute females lead the world into the light against overwhelming odds flicks. I might be tempted to watch one if the genre or director is not mentioned up front.
 
Granted there are exeptions to every rule but it costs the author little to include that info in the review.

 
A-ha! I thought you were even more loquacious than usual today. 

 
The reason I prefer to be a bit more circumspect in giving context isn't so much that I'm assuming prior knowledge on the part of anyone who might be reading a review, more that I'm aware that folk like to feel they are discovering things for themselves. IMO it's better to spark an initial interest and then for people to embark on their own small voyage of discovery. There's also a danger that if you provide too much context, people might go into a film with preconceptions as opposed to expectations, which isn't so good. I try to convey the essence of a film in the review and also normally use the original movie poster too, with the old aphorism that a picture tells a thousand words in mind. With the previous one, it should be clear that it's an outré no-budget horror flick of considerable vintage and if people aren't into that, then they will likely skip it. I'm not sure I need to add a caveat to that effect. Still, to be clear, in the case of Coffin Joe, only fans of the genre need apply.
 
I'm with you on B by the way. I would also add C) Superhero films to the list.

 

[bavinck]

   
A-ha! I thought you were even more loquacious than usual today. 

 
The reason I prefer to be a bit more circumspect in giving context isn't so much that I'm assuming prior knowledge on the part of anyone who might be reading a review, more that I'm aware that folk like to feel they are discovering things for themselves. IMO it's better to spark an initial interest and then for people to embark on their own small voyage of discovery. There's also a danger that if you provide too much context, people might go into a film with preconceptions as opposed to expectations, which isn't so good. I try to convey the essence of a film in the review and also normally use the original movie poster too, with the old aphorism that a picture tells a thousand words in mind. With the previous one, it should be clear that it's an outré no-budget horror flick of considerable vintage and if people aren't into that, then they will likely skip it. I'm not sure I need to add a caveat to that effect. Still, to be clear, in the case of Coffin Joe, only fans of the genre need apply.
 
I'm with you on B by the way. I would also add C) Superhero films to the list.

So sick of superhero crap.
 
Going to give A Serbian Film a spin tonight. Guys on the metal thread suggested it...so you know...

 

[WraithApe]

  So sick of superhero crap.
 
Going to give A Serbian Film a spin tonight. Guys on the metal thread suggested it...so you know...

 
I saw 

 That's been on my watch list for ages. Regularly makes #1 in most extreme horror lists. Off the top of my head, others worthy of a mention in this context are Salo (this is a different kettle of fish entirely - serious, political and deeply anti-exploitation, which makes it ironic that appears on lists alongside luminaries such as Lucifer Valentine, though that would no doubt have only confirmed Pasolini's view of humanity), Angst (highly recommended if you've a strong stomach - with a great soundtrack by Klaus Schulze to boot) and the films of Marian Dora, such as Cannibal and Melancholie Der Engel. I really couldn't recommend the latter, but it is full on. I noticed [REC] was on that list you mentioned. As much as I think [REC] and its sequel are great examples of found footage zombie movies (A), I wouldn't really call them extreme. Maybe that's just me though. 

 

[Hutnicks]

   
I saw 

 That's been on my watch list for ages. Regularly makes #1 in most extreme horror lists. Off the top of my head, others worthy of a mention in this context are Salo (this is a different kettle of fish entirely - serious, political and deeply anti-exploitation, which makes it ironic that appears on lists alongside luminaries such as Lucifer Valentine, though that would no doubt have only confirmed Pasolini's view of humanity), Angst (highly recommended if you've a strong stomach - with a great soundtrack by Klaus Schulze to boot) and the films of Marian Dora, such as Cannibal and Melancholie Der Engel. I really couldn't recommend the latter, but it is full on. I noticed [REC] was on that list you mentioned. As much as I think [REC] and its sequel are great examples of found footage zombie movies (A), I wouldn't really call them extreme. Maybe that's just me though. 

Yeah. I missed the uberhero genre in the list of "avoid like plague" films. Exception there for me was the X Men franchise and I have no idea why I like those.
 
I actually liked REC, was that really a Zombie film? The sequel(s) sort of disappointed though.
 
So exactly what is this film who's name shall not be printed? Or do we have to go a digging through the site to find it?