Movie Record 2022 Edition - The Bear and Badger

Gremill

78. Deadpool 2
Peak Reynolds with some very amusing stuff sitting alongside some extreme violence and choice language. Had some regrets letting my 13yo boy watch it, but it's nothing he hasn't heard before. 8

78. Home Alone
Still the best last 30 minutes of any family film. Christmas classic. 8

79. Avengers: End Game
Culmination of maybe the most ambitious series of films ever made. It's amazing that it hangs together. Love it. 9

LivDiv

Barbarian

Not bad but a bit disjointed. It felt like they wrote it, realised it was too short than kept tacking another 10 pages onto the script until it reached the required run time.

Wookienopants

Gremill wrote:

78. Deadpool 2
Peak Reynolds with some very amusing stuff sitting alongside some extreme violence and choice language. Had some regrets letting my 13yo boy watch it, but it's nothing he hasn't heard before. 8

78. Home Alone
Still the best last 30 minutes of any family film. Christmas classic. 8

79. Avengers: End Game
Culmination of maybe the most ambitious series of films ever made. It's amazing that it hangs together. Love it. 9

IMO Both Infinity War and Endgame are still absolutely incredible feats of filmmaking and I cannot believe that Marvel pulled it off. The 8year old Marvel comic fan in me is absolutely giddy that they even exist.

tin_robot

Spirited
There's a running gag in my family that I hate musicals, yet have seen more than anyone else they know. The truth is that I really love good musicals, but think the majority are shit and...well this is a fine example of the latter.

Within it lies a fine kernel of an idea. "A Christmas Carol from the perspective of the Ghosts" could be fun. "What if a benevolent Christmas Spirit finds itself gradually corrupted by the influence of the very individual it's meant to be saving?" sounds even more fun.

Instead we get this.

When moaning about musicals I often complain that the plot is lost in subservience to the music, and the music is lost in subservience to the plot. This movie could almost be the poster child for that argument. As I say, the idea is a good one, but it's drawn out well beyond its welcome as the movie's dragged out by the songs - and yet still doesn't actually manage to explore any of the themes terribly well.

As for the songs themselves? They're bland, and almost indistinguishable from each other. I couldn't remember a single one of them afterwards, and nor did I want to.

Vast sums of money have been spent on the musical numbers, but all this razzamatazz is wasted on identical dances to identical songs. So it ends up being flat.

It is the idea of a musical, with no concept of what actually makes a musical work.It feels like no-one had to fight for anything to happen in this film, just a series of decisions signed off in a boardroom somewhere, and acted out with rictus grins all round.

Sigh. I wanted to like it. I really did. But no.

Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio

This, on the other hand, I did like. It's a film I can imagine plenty of people not warming to. (I asked my kids if they fancied watching it, and they replied with "no thanks, Pinocchio's creepy" and I can understand that.) It is, however, fairly clearly a labour of love.

It's another musical I guess, though the songs are invariably short - and whilst unlikely to be hummed up and down the land, they don't outstay their welcome, are suitably varied, and integrate nicely with the score itself.

Pinocchio purists (which I can sometimes be guilty of) may complain that this deviates too far from the source material (and takes bits from subsequent adaptations too). Which is fair criticism, but unlike many attempts at Pinocchio, this is alteration with purpose. Whereas Collodi's story is a reality play, this has other themes in mind - touching instead on some of Del Toro's frequent touchpoints - fantasy, fascism and mortality. Collodi's Pinocchio needs to learn to be good, in Del Toro's telling it is everyone else who has a lesson to learn.

I that sounds a bit much for a kids movie then, yeah, it might be. I'm not entirely sure who this film is for - but that's also to its credit. This is a film, I suspect, made by its makers because they wanted to see it, and is all the better for it.

I fear it's too odd to become a classic, but it's a vast improvement on Disney's recent disastrous attempt to revisit the story, and will, I imagine, find a small audience who adore it.

LivDiv

I binned off Pinocchio.
I just found P himself to be weirdly stupid, like beyond naïve and into simpleton. It was when he was begging to have his legs set on fire again it lost me.
Its hard to want a thing like that to live its dream of being a real boy.

tin_robot

LivDiv wrote:

I binned off Pinocchio. I just found P himself to be weirdly stupid, like beyond naïve and into simpleton. It was when he was begging to have his legs set on fire again it lost me. Its hard to want a thing like that to live its dream of being a real boy.

Yeah, I can see that. He takes the wide eyed naif to extremes. There's a certain logic to it though - they're clearly riffing on the idea that he's only just popped into existence and knows absolutely nothing about anything. Del Toro's Pinocchio is genuinely, irritatingly, innocent. He's a long way away from the (initially) selfish, entitled, violent prick that Collodi wrote about. (Or the weird half way house that Disney settled on.)

Gremill

80. Captain America: Winter Soldier
Easily the best of the Marvel movies - a tight, taut spy action-thriller with superb set pieces and with a reveal of the WS that at the time I did not see coming and totally blew me away. 9

Wookienopants

It's the best marvel by a mile. Absolutely love it

poprock

Tin, you’ve nailed exactly how I felt about Spirited but articulated it better than I did. Thanks.

ShabbyMcCrabby

tin_robot wrote:

LivDiv wrote:

I binned off Pinocchio. I just found P himself to be weirdly stupid, like beyond naïve and into simpleton. It was when he was begging to have his legs set on fire again it lost me. Its hard to want a thing like that to live its dream of being a real boy.

Yeah, I can see that. He takes the wide eyed naif to extremes. There's a certain logic to it though - they're clearly riffing on the idea that he's only just popped into existence and knows absolutely nothing about anything. Del Toro's Pinocchio is genuinely, irritatingly, innocent. He's a long way away from the (initially) selfish, entitled, violent prick that Collodi wrote about. (Or the weird half way house that Disney settled on.)

Spoiler:

The whole thing kinda frustrated me. But then again so does nearly every Del Toro film. Personally I don't think he's a very good storyteller. Amazing visual ideas and attention to detail in the visual side of things but his stories are very clunky to me. After Pan's anyway

Moot_Geeza

Risking ridicule here, but I didn't think Pan's was that good. I remember preferring The Devil's Backbone (It's been ages but I thought that one was great).

b0r1s

Pan’s is a classic 10 film if ever there was one.

hylian_elf

b0r1s wrote:

Pan’s is a classic 10 film if ever there was one.

acemuzzy

I haven't seen it but still, classic moot

Kow

The Devil's Backbone suffers from having Eduardo Noriega in it, who can't act his way out of a paper bag. Pan's Labyrinth is a masterpiece of magical realism horror.

Moot_Geeza

Can't love all the best films I guess. I thought the kid was annoying. [8]

Kow

You're confusing Pan's Labyrinth with The Phantom Menace, obviously.

Moot_Geeza

Underrated child actor - he was great in Sonic Adventure.

LivDiv

I liked the bit where Anakin took the grape off the table and Darth Maul was blind but had a double light saver with eyes in it.

davyK

Fanny and Alexander 3hr cut, projected. Hauled Wifey along who enjoyed it but was somewhat bemused. I get the impression had she known it was a 3hr Swedish film with subtitles it may have been a harder sell.

The Ekdahl mansion looks superb on the big screen, as does the starkness of the Bishop's Palace. The 3hr cut really reduces the Christmas Party screentime though which is a bit of shame , and we lose the confrontation between the Bishop and the two brothers, but still something to see anew with each viewing.

ShabbyMcCrabby

147. Terrifier 2: Electric Grossaloo
Not sure why I watched this considering I hated the first one. I guess to see the effects. I mean it's over 2 hours! There was a little part of me that thought maybe it was that long because they had a good story. Alas, they did not. It is that long just because he's a terrible director/editor. There's nothing as heinous as what was in the first one but the effects are as gross as they are impressive. A film like this just shows that gruesome horror special effects don't mean anything if you don't care for the characters or the story. At least Wolf Creek 2 tried to tell a story with real characters before it went all icky. If you're going to make your film look like a film from the 70s why not watch some of those to see why they work.
[2]

148. Avatar 2: Electric Bluegaloo
So here we are. A weird one really considering the long gestation. Considering it's been in the works so long you'd think they would hire a script-writer that could make use of what little dialogue there is. There's some really basic stuff in here it's actually a little embarassing and it's all extremely heteronormative too, so much "bro" and "cuz" that just doesn't work as well as old school gender role type stuff. Due to it being in English instead of Na'vi it also strays into some dangerous cultural appropriation/imitation and other iffy areas. Script [4].
The story itself is okay but also considering how long it's been in the works you'd hope that maybe they could have done something a little more nuanced, especially with the military side which is just pulled straight from the first where they are genuinely evil. Not saying you needed to care for them but maybe just a little more than "hoorah" all the time. The flow and editing of the story is a bit weird too, cutting away too soon or going between multiple stories when it should have stuck with one. Did people in focus testing say they got bored seeing just one story at that time? Weird choice to me and the mid-section would have been much improved just showing the Sully story. Story [5]
Also weird that the soundtrack is absolute garbage. The original themes pulled from the first movie are still great but all the new music is 100% Micky Mousing it's way through each sequence, another missed opportunity [3]
Finally, the visual and tech stuff and cinematic experience. Well this is where all the money and effort went and fuck me it's stunning. IMAX 3D and it makes you remember what you thought 3D movies were going to be after Avatar 1 came out. So much depth and immersion. Add onto that the high frame rate of this one and it really does transport you at times. I feel like they should have held onto the HFR until the water to make it a Wizard of Oz moment as it makes a lot of the early stuff look like a video game but once you're in the water you can see why they did it. Really is a technical marvel and impressive all the way through. [9]
Ultimately, I feel like it's a bit of a missed opportunity as they had so long to really nail the story elements but there's also a part of me that sees this as the setup to, potentially, more interesting storytelling going forward. I also didn't feel like I watched a 3 hour movie and that counts for something. Damning with faint praise.
[6]

149. Near Dark
Hmmmmmmm, I really like how dark the night is in this. I like how violent it is because it makes the vampire stuff seem much less sexy than it can in other movies. But I found the half-baked storytelling to be a little bit too half-baked for me, especially with the central relationship. And I also didn't really like how they tied it all up in terms of the vampire stuff. Neat to see so many Aliens peeps together though.
[5]

The Daddy

Shabby with the old 4-5-3-9-6 score rollercoaster.

Moot_Geeza

I'm not watching Near Dark again then, just in case it's crap now.

Paul the sparky

The Daddy wrote:

Shabby with the old 4-5-3-9-6

I'll never understand Aussie Rules formations

ShabbyMcCrabby

Formations? Them fancy words you using. You just grab the ball and kick it.

Moot_Geeza

The Batman.

Huh. I was expecting to really like this, but it didn't happen. The cast is great and there's a good film in there somewhere, but it's also a bit dodgy? I thought the

Spoiler:

stuff was a bit too Mister Enigma/what do you put in a toaster?, and Pattinson's brief gun struggle with Catwoman amused me too. As did some of the flash-of-light corridor fighting, which almost moved into spoof territory at one point. Plus almost everyone's silly voices sounded too similar.

Spoiler:

Maybe I was in the wrong mood for it. A slightly miffed 6.5.

Dark Soldier

It's the best superhero movie but that's just the same as saying the shite I took this morning was better than yesterdays.

Kow

Funnily enough, I expected it to be mediocre and ended up liking it a lot. I especially liked that the Batmobile was some kind of 70s muscle car with jet engine stuck on it. Not really a fan of Batman having all this sci-fi level military grade hardware at his disposal.

Moot_Geeza

Dark Soldier wrote:

It's the best superhero movie but that's just the same as saying the shite I took this morning was better than yesterdays.

You've never had a shit anywhere near as glorious as either Superman II or Ninja Turtles '90.

Moot_Geeza

The Batmobile bit was crap too. He gunned the thrusters before the truck in front of him handily turned into a ramp. At least have him react to it rather than pre-empt it.

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