41. The Way Way Back
Gentle coming of age comedy that doesn't really stir too many emotions until the end, but is well played and amiable. 7

Fell asleep during Venom 2. Just shite

Paul the sparky wrote:

I watched a video game movie tonight too, the new Resident Evil one, Welcome to Raccoon City. Was a decent stab at a Resi 1 and 2 combo, some great scenes and sets lifted straight from the games. Fuck knows why it took them so long to get round to it instead of all the piss poor stuff they've been churning out since the first awful stab at it. Not going to live long in the memory but it was fun enough and did what it set out to do, entertained while tickling my Resi nostalgia gland in a pleasant way

Yeah, skipped through a bunch of it and there's some decent enough zombie silliness, chock full of "thatguy/thatgal from that thing" actors, and they at least made an effort to have a spooky mansion antics, but felt like a waste of effort TBH. The animated Resi films are more true to that kind of "feels like cutscene from the game" style and canon, with the scope of huge underground Umbrella bases that a low budget B-movie just can't match.

Video game movies have got so bad Super Mario Bros sits near the top of the quality list.

The first Resi movie is OKish, scenes in the later ones are laughably bad which is a form of entertainment. Same goes for the first Silent Hill movie.


That new Mortal Kombat is Ok. Old one is a nostalgia-fest and amusing in its shitness.

Street Fighter is fun.

Hitman, Need for Speed, Assassin's Creed, Max Payne, Tomb Raider (Jolie not seen the new one), Rampage all boring.

37. The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
Another time loop comedy where guy and girl find they are both stuck in the loop. It's much more standard romcom fare but the leads are likeable, there's fairly consistent laughs and it keeps to a pretty trim run time. It probably suffers from the far superior Palm Springs being fresh in the memory but even that aside, the ending was weak and overly schmaltzy. Enjoyable but forgettable. [6]

40. Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore
Yeah yeah JK is the devil and these movies are average at best but usually the production design is nice enough but this is definitely one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's a Beasts movie that start with two animals being killed, one of them a baby. What the fuck. Don't even care about spoilers on that because it's just a dispicable story choice. The film looks like desaturated mud, none of it is explained or set-up so things just happen 'just because', and the tone is all over the fucking place. I nearly walked out and definitely would have if the gf wasn't there. Why couldn't they just tell a light-hearted fantasy adventure story about the cool magical animals?
[0]

How old is she?
The first two at least have some sense of whimsy and brightness with the animals and the costumes. This one has Madds Mikkilson (playing a version of Hitler/Trump) slitting the throat of a baby-deer-like creature, as well as a dark prison where people who possibly don't deserve to be there get skewered and melted by a giant scorpian thing quite graphically.

It isn't it's own movie either, it definitely just goes off from the last one with no preamble.

I'd say you could show her the first one, which is not terrible, and probably the second even though it's not great at all. This one made me feel anxious and on edge because I was just waiting for them to do something else horrible in a movie for kids.

I didn’t think the Fantastic Beasts films were meant to be for kids? I thought they were intended to be more adult, mostly because the kids who enjoyed the OG Harry Potter films are all grown up now. And, y’know, in big-budget Hollywood moviemaking there’s often the dumb assumption that adult = grimdark, violent, nasty.

Not trying to defend what sounds like a shit movie, anyhow. Just thinking aloud.

ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:

How old is she? The first two at least have some sense of whimsy and brightness with the animals and the costumes. This one has Madds Mikkilson (playing a version of Hitler/Trump) slitting the throat of a baby-deer-like creature, as well as a dark prison where people who possibly don't deserve to be there get skewered and melted by a giant scorpian thing quite graphically. It isn't it's own movie either, it definitely just goes off from the last one with no preamble. I'd say you could show her the first one, which is not terrible, and probably the second even though it's not great at all. This one made me feel anxious and on edge because I was just waiting for them to do something else horrible in a movie for kids.

She's going to be 12 soon.  Doesn't sound entirely child friendly!  But some of the scenes in Harry Potter were kinda grim and gruesome and dark.

Paul the sparky wrote:

Which ones are good? I've seen a few recommend (on Netflix I think?) but never bothered to watch one

Sorry, can’t remember which ones which TBH they all kinda blur into one. I think the more recent ones have some fun, extremely silly choreographed animated action in them - corridor fight in Vendetta especially. I think that one’s got an amusing close quarters fight against human baddy who’s rather good at bullet-dodging as well.

Cell  I read the book quite a while ago and enjoyed it. It even had a good ending.

The film version squeezes too much in over the first half and dulls the epic feel of the novel. Maybe the edit just isn't good. King had a hand in the screenplay which might explain that too. The ending is different from the book and in a way is just as good as the book - won't say any more so not to spoil.

A fine cast but it somehow feels lacking and rushed. It clocks in at 1'37'' and I think an extra 20mins might have been well spent stretching out the period of discovery a tad.  This would have been better served by a 3 part mini-series. It's OK.

38. Boiling Point
Technically impressive, Stephen Graham is great and some solid support but overall it was simply good. The big thing was so overly telegraphed that it diminished the impact and it didn't really stick the ending for me. An interesting film more than a memorable one. [6]

X

Ti Wests' latest horror movie set in 1979 with a group of people making a porn film at an old couples farmhouse.
Things go bad quite quickly.

Some fantastic gore effects, really tense moments and getting to see Chloe from Pitch Perfect in a very different role

Thumbs up from me

The Matrix Resurrections
A pointless, overlong, weak nostalgiafest. Features almost the entire cast of Sense8 in barely-even-sketched supporting roles.

One of my all-time favourites. The Raglan Road scene is perfect.