What was the last movie you watched ....

Justic League.

As you know, I'm a Batman and Green Lantern fan. So.....

Not terrible but not great either. DC films has been slated before by critics and fans for being "too dark" and "grimey/gritty" . "Should be like Marvel etc"...

well here you go. Jokes every minute, which to me breaks character a bit with certain characters. But the fighting is not too bad, Batman just seems to get his behind handed to him a bit (but he is up against Steppenwolf and Parademons to be fair)

Underwhelming in many important plot points. However, an hour was cut from the film and it feels it. So will see with the super duper extended cut.

 

trainspotting 2

A pretty good dollop of nostalgia with this one. It came back to me just how big of a film the first was and how it really captured something of the british culture of the day. Whilst not being quite up there, it does do the first justice and is decent in its own right. An enjoyable 8/10. The nostalgia alone is worth an extra mark.

 

Watched King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Guy Ritchie's latest.
I've got a background in personal study of the Arthurian legends, so I'm usually interested in quite how a filmmaker ruins the stories.

This one takes one or two ideas from the original semi-pagan Celtic stories as found in the Mabinogion. It takes more ideas and the pronunciation of names from the medieval courtly French versions of the stories. Camelot is medieval, the armour is mostly 15th century-ish, the archery and most weapons earlier, and Londinium is a mix of Roman and late medieval.

Mostly, however, Ritchie has done away with almost everything and made it all up. Which, surprisingly, I liked. I see this more as a fantasy film that has borrowed Arthurian names and ideas than a version of the Arthur legends. There are visual nods to artist Frank Frazetta, pre-Raphaelite paintings, the Lord of the Rings films (Oliphaunts in particular...) and Game of Thrones.

Mostly I watched it because a bunch of BJJ guys from Carlson Gracie London had parts as extras, including one of my instructors, Sam Gibson.
Simon Hayes of Carlson Gracie London, who is Ritchie's sound engineer and life long BJJ training partner, even had an actual acting/speaking part.

Overall, I liked it. Plenty of well choreographed action, mostly unfeasibly handsome/beautiful humans, great sets and locations, typical Ritchie dialogue, great soundtrack.
Utter tosh but the kind I like!

 

The grand master - Major disappointment - dont know about the win chung but the baugwa was poor, the hung gar was a joke (although possibly intentionally as a swipe back to the hold hung ga movies) . setting aside the martial arts their a lot of meaningless dialog. The story was made up of several episodic parts that did not make a whole and nothing to hold it together as a single story.

 

I can't quite match up Lock Stock or Snatch dialogue with King Arthur, but I'm intrigued

 

There's some banter between characters who are Londinium street people and blacklegs (police). Also our heroes and some vikings. Plenty of opportunity for insults and repartee!

 

Never Go Back. Better than the first film but not as good as the book. The third act replaces the tense thriller story with action set pieces.

 

That time period , mixed in with current cockney like speech. Beckham sounding ridiculous.

And pretty sure Guy Ritchie was playing God of War when he was thinking... "Wonder how I'm going to finish this movie?"

A bit of brain-off fun.

 

Watched X-men Apocalypse. Bit up and down but enjoyable enough.

 

On a recent trip to the far east, and being not able to sleep on planes ever, I peeped myself a bagful of movies. Granted, these movies have been modified to fit the teeny tiny seat back screens and have been edited for content (yes, badly dubbed over swearing still exists, what the frog?), but I viewed the following:

Ghost Story
A bit of an oddity this one, very slow moving, but thought provoking. Stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as a couple, the former of which is killed, but his ghost rises, complete with white sheet and black holes for eyes, as he attempts to maintain a connection with his wife. The ghost sounds like a dumb idea, but it works SO well, and the movie is at times heartbreaking. 3/5 stars

Baywatch
Starring Dwayne Johnson and based on the TV show that I watched purely for the acting and engrossing storylines, it is an utterly rubbish movie, yet strangely inoffensive. Played for laughs and very referential to the source material, it's almost likeable (mostly because of Johnson), but you could happily go through life having never watched it. 1.5/5 stars

Reset
This was a Chinese film, produced by Jackie Chan no less, and involves time travel and multiple/parallel universes. Essentially a scientist is being blackmailed, something happens which forces her to go back in time in order to correct the event . I can't say too much for fear of spoiling it. Not that there's too much to spoil mind, the film is mostly "meh", but it was nice to see a Korean/Chinese sci-fi flick involving parallel universes, time travel, all kinds of sci-fi tropes we take for granted over here. 2/5

 

Have you seen the Japanese film The Returner?

 

The name sounds vaguely familiar... I think I might have seen it, but I don't recall much, if anything at all from it. I'll have to look it up again. Thanks.

 

Chimpcheng I'd be curious if you noticed any differences in theme about time travel.

 

I think you're referring to the often quoted "fact" that China banned movies/telly shows with time travel in it. As far as I can tell this was never true (I'm happy to be proven wrong though). There's a popular TVB show (I don't know the name, as I generally hate TVB's output - they're incredibly poor quality and looooooooooooow production) that has time travel in it that's also shown in China (my mother-in-law watches it in Guangzhou).

Anyway, the film 'Reset' I think covers ground that western films have covered countless times. Something goes badly wrong, there's a need to go back in time to correct it, doesn't quite work, parallel universe is created, different versions of the same character meet, rinse and repeat...

I love me a bit of time travel, and the film was engaging enough to keep me involved until the end.

 

Nah I was kinda thinking like... Our time travel conventions in science fiction usually revolve around going back in time to alter it. Terminator, X Men Days of Future Past, etc. H G Wells The Time Traveler kind of stands on its own. I was wondering if that was a similar sort of plot, and I guess that's the answer.

 

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

(**Spoiler Free**)

Really enjoyed this next instalment, despite it being worlds away from Ep 7 - There were more than a few points that I could not have predicted, leaving me with absolutely no clue as to where Ep 9 might be headed.

I'm gonna need to see this one again I think, not just for the sake of entertainment, but to process a lot of my inaccurate prediction going in.

8/10

Travess

 

I'm watching it next week and hiding from the mound of people on my social media feed who have seen it

Taking my daughter, who doesn't know yet, first time using her to a new Star wars movie on the big screen

 

Yeah, good luck with that...

Travess