Seen any good films lately? [3]

Watched Doom.
Never played the game but film was ok.
Seen it 4 times now

Seen it 4 times? That's a review in itself.

To me Legend always had this overwhelming sense of being shot entirely on sound stages, so I could never take it seriously. Hell just felt like a basement to me. The claustrophobia makes it feel like watching a school play.

Anyone seen Troll on netflix yet? 
The fossil dig site was filmed near here.

Watched Doom.
Never played the game but film was ok.- Chris

{{ That the one with the Rock in it as Sarge? If so its a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine even though its a pretty mediocre B movie style thing. Think I can just watch anything starring Karl Urban, well except the ST reboot films but hes best thing about them too.
As to how close to the game, it really isnt, its closest visually to Doom 3 and it has nods to the game, the fireball chucking imp demons, the BFG (Big Fucking Gun), the pinky demon are sort of there as nods or references, but the premise is very different. In the game the facility on Mars doesnt find some ancient civilisation and weird DNA, they open portals, and open one literally into hell. Why the film dumped the entire Hell and demons thing when its the whole point in the game Im not sure. The closest the film gets to the game is the first person view shoot out, which is probably also the best action sequence in the film. }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Watched Doom.
Never played the game but film was ok.- Chris

{{ That the one with the Rock in it as Sarge? If so its a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine even though its a pretty mediocre B movie style thing. Think I can just watch anything starring Karl Urban, well except the ST reboot films but hes best thing about them too.
As to how close to the game, it really isnt, its closest visually to Doom 3 and it has nods to the game, the fireball chucking imp demons, the BFG (Big Fucking Gun), the pinky demon are sort of there as nods or references, but the premise is very different. In the game the facility on Mars doesnt find some ancient civilisation and weird DNA, they open portals, and open one literally into hell. Why the film dumped the entire Hell and demons thing when its the whole point in the game Im not sure. The closest the film gets to the game is the first person view shoot out, which is probably also the best  action sequence in the film. }}

A bit of a guilty pleasure for me as well.

I saw it late at night while babysitting.

Just saw Babylon - the one with Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.  Critics largely disliked it, probably because it would have done better cut into a consistent tone.  It's basically a comedy: brilliantly so in parts, over the edge of good taste in other parts; and then in the last 10 or 15 minutes it decides to go dark and eventually meaningful, which doesn't fit together.  But the brilliant parts are so brilliant I'm willing to forgive its loss of control to give it a thumbs up.   They could afford to lose about 45 minutes and add back a more comedically appropriate ending.

The Boston Strangler.

Don't usually go for these kind of films, but this was pretty good.

This animated adaptation from '79 is surprising in how much better it is as an adaptation than Walden Media's live action version.


I was giving it a bit of a watch last night. I like Fenris especially lol.
And the music isn't bad either.

Although, this digital rip of whatever original they had has rather poor sound quality.

Watched Guardians of the Galaxy 3 yesterday. If you like any of those MCU movies I wouldn't proclaim the franchise is back on form, but it is a lot better than most of the shit since the last Spiderman movie.

I just saw it. Lots of big effects, but to me something of a yawn fest because it has little of the cleverness that made the original such a gem. Gunn seems to be bringing things to a close with this one, and we get Rocket's back story which is nice....but the freshness ain't there.

I think writers should plan on writing scripts that can stand without any special effects that weren't available before 1980 or so. THEN we might get a script worth the hundred million dollars of CGI thrown at something like this.

Just watched 'Everything Everywhere' and it was really boring. The sound quality was crap, too many thick accents that I couldn't hear because the soundtrack seemed too loud and clunky. It was either frantic or slow and dull.

I mainly enjoyed watching the two lead actresses playing against type and nailing it. And there were two running character gags I liked (mousy husband is a superhero and wife ain't got time to be a superhero), but I wouldn't watch it again. I can do without the hotdog fingers.

Mrs Figg wrote:Just watched 'Everything Everywhere' and it was really boring. The sound quality was crap, too many thick accents that I couldn't hear because the soundtrack seemed too loud and clunky. It was either frantic or slow and dull.

Try watching it in the front row (stage right) in a massive cinema! It gave me a heck of a headache.

Saw Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.  The only memorable part was the music playing over the end credits.  Bundy by the now defunct Norwegian band Animal Alpha.  The video the band put together was more thought provoking than anything in the damn film.

Did anyone watch the recent Dungeons and Dragons film? I saw it a few weeks ago and thought it was rather good (as far as game adaptations go) a simple plot and rather generic characters but quite funny, good sfx, and a High Laurie stole the show as the sleazy conviving villian, I no nothing about the game so can't speak to how accurate it is to the lore etc but the film did a pretty good job at explaining things to the watcher and didn't bog the plot down with uncessary lore dumps, I also appreciated the refreshingly colourful tone of the film (both in terms of cinematography and dialogue) I've got a bit bored with grimdark and grey fantasy every so often it's nice to haver a throwback to something a bit more outlandish and high fantasy.

It won't win any awards but worth watching i.m.o, shame it flopped at the box office.

{{ Hold my buckie Malick (no sneaky sipping it!) I saw the Dungeons and Dragons film and may not quite fully agree with you on all points!

I'm going to look at this in two different ways, firstly as just a generic Hollywood fantasy film, and secondly with my over 30's years as a DM hat on.

Warning, it may have made me crabbit!

So first as a general fantasy film, how is it? Not very good. Generic dull characters that fit simple stereotypical roles- so we have wisecracking charisma filled lead, female barbarian badass, a shape-changer and a wizard who isn't very good but you know will come through in the end when needed.

But for me the worse thing about this film is its structure and pacing, they are awful. Half the film consists of flashbacks, the way it works is simple, and annoyingly and increasingly repetitive the longer it goes on, first they introduce a character/place/item then they you get a flashback explaining character/place /item. At times it feels like there is more flashback than present story. And its relentless, it begins right at the start when you are introduced to our two main characters in prison pleading for their parole, and then we get a lengthy flashback about how they got there. Then shortly after they introduce another character, so we get another flashback to explain them, and then we find out about the bad guys and they get a flashback to explain them too and so it goes on, and on, this is still happening three quarters of the way through. Its painful, its boring and it feels like this probably went through at least 6 different writers and the end result is cobbled together from different versions and duct taped together.
A good example of this duct-taped feel is the scene where the two leads go back to Barbarian womens ex-husband, who is a gnome? Halfing? Again seemingly for humorous reasons as his new wife is even larger fiercer looking. But this little seque into a bit of her past serves no purpose in the plot or her character, never gets mentioned again, and the two main characters themselves brush off the whole scene by just exiting stage left singing together. It feels like a leftover from a different script, worse that script was probably more serious and character focused, but to make it go in this film they have just injected it with the same humour tone the rest of the film has, making the entire scene a complete mess whose purpose is so mudded as to no longer serve one. Yet its still in the film.

The plot is thin, not really worth recapping, dead mother, estranged daughter, bad guys have magic gizmo, old friend is a traitor who betrayed them and turned daughter against father (in a ridiculously undercooked subplot that exists solely so some conflict exists). There is nothing here not seen a million times before and often better.

The best thing in it is Hugh Grant chewing up the scenery as the friend who betrayed them, but frankly go watch Paddington 2 - its exactly the same scene-stealing, scenery-chewing performance he gives here only that film is made with imagination, heart and respect for the source material. This isn't.
Other performances are, well not quite phoned in, but much exactly what you'd expect from these actors its not so much instantly familiar as instantly dull because of it- Pine is charming and humorous and a little vulnerable at time, Rodrigues in a shocking casting twist is a female action fighting badass, I don't know what wizard bloke usually plays in stuff but from this I'm going to go out on a limb and say geeky, insecure types, and the shape-changing girl cute, quirky but a little odd outsider characters, Hugh Grant just plays his character from Paddington. There isn't a single moment of originality in any performance, character, piece of dialogue or situation. No character is fleshed out out or deep enough to engage any sort of attachment with them or their story.
Overall then I'd sum it up as boring, generic,and badly paced with shallow uninteresting characters who move through a series of loosely interlinked 'D&D' style scenarios with little sense of narrative imperative or interest.



And now with my DM's hat on, oh Eru its got worse!

OK this first complaint is more of a personal one, for me the joy of D&D has always been in its simplicity, all you need is a few friends, a few bits of paper and some pens and a handful of dice (and you can even improvise them at need) and your shared imagination, that's it.

The film is set in the Forgotten Realms, which is basically D&D as money making machine- the forgotten realms is an official D&D world, its where tons of books, comics, and games have been set. So I get why they choose it, and I get it gives them an excuse to fan-please by dropping in place names people will know who are fans, and even people who have never played a table top game but maybe a computer game might know, like Baldurs Gate. But its cheap and lazy.
My issue with it is that it gives the impression D&D is set somewhere, like Lord of the Rings is set in Middle Earth. And D&D proper is not set anywhere, its worlds created in the imaginations of the players and the DM. And one group of players will be as different in their world and setting as the next. Imagination is the only limiting factor. By setting it in this pre-established world it for me misses getting across a fundamental about D&D, that creating worlds aspect, the flight of imagination this film so sorely lacks.

My next issue is with the classes of the characters, some are clear, the Paladin for example, though I was disappointed he seems expunged of any religious devotion, aspect or motivation, he's just a good guy and square as can be. He seems to be playing a version of what in game would be a DM'd NPC, a character the DM brings into the players group to help them out, lead them to the next bit of the story, or put them back on track if they are really struggling. As such he comes into the story, takes then to where they need to go and helps them get the thing they are after, then buggers off out the story once done. They get a point here for at least trying to incorporate a game aspect into the narrative, shame they play him more for laughs at his stiffness than as a serious character.

Next up the Druid, she is a rule breaker frankly, she can shape-change seemingly endlessly and at will, whereas the actual game character is limited by level on how many changes in a period of time without rest. She likewise is stripped of any religious aspect, odd for a Druid!
She is super overpowered and in reality would break any game she was in.

The Sorcerer, or wizard, think he's a sorcerer as he doesn't seem to need spell books, not all the time anyway. He seems high level from what he can do but plays it like he's level 1 for some reason.

The Barbarian- she fights, she grunts a fair bit, has rough charm and doesn't do much emotion. As generic as they come. A five year old could write her character.

The Rogue- more just Hugh Grant chewing up scenery, we don't see him much in action as a rogue so hard to judge. In film terms his role is more just generic conman.

The Bard- the worst one and he's the main character. I thought he was a Bard, then I thought he might be a rogue, then I thought he was in fact not even a class at all. In film he describes his own role as the one who comes up with plans, and I guess he's supposed to represent the one player in a group who tends to come up with plans? But even that type of player is still playing as a class. I mean they give him a lute, and officially when I checked he is listed as Bard, but he has no spells, uses no magic and his music doesn't seem to do anything an ordinary person playing a lute wouldn't be doing. So I don't really get what they were going for here- why make him a Bard if he never does any Bard stuff?


On the bad guy side we have the red Wizards, they are wizards, shaved heads, tattoos, red robes, do very powerful magic, are a stable of the Forgotten realms thing. Boring if you ask me. They do boring very typical villain things for villain reasons. Id be ashamed to have come up with such bland enemies in any of my games.
Oh and they tease a big bad, a lich, but that seems to be in the hope of sequels I doubt it will get.

Story wise, its dull, its go get gizmo stuff, there's a dungeon to crawl through that's a combination of jokes about traps, redoing the falling staircase scene from PJ's Moria sequence, only more elaborately and about five times in a row, and because its a Dungeons and Dragons film there's a dragon there. An enormously fat one, for humour reasons? Why its enormously fat and played for laughs I don't know, but kind of imagine the dwarves running about being chased by Smaug in Pjs awful Hobbit films and make Smaug fat and rolling about the place instead and you've basically got the horrendous idea.

As to the action itself, most of its rule breaking or at the very least rule stretching, a lot would break any game, and most of the rest would get your character killed almost instantly.

Lastly, tone. The entire thing isn't so much an adaption of the game D&D as a humorous take on it, its not quite a parody of D&D and its not quite taking the piss out of it either, but nor does it at any point treat its subject matter with any degree of seriousness, the entire film start to finish insists on the same light-hearted, slightly cheesy tone.

Afterthought- there is a cameo appearance in the background of the characters from the 80's animated tv series of D&D. This was a mistake as all it did was remind me of how much better, and more inventively that adapted the game- it put the DM into the show as a character who would give the quest out and cryptic clues along the way. The DM of a game is also a player of the game representing them therefore is important. The premise of the cartoon, a bunch of everyday high-school students go to a funfair and find a D&D roller coaster ride and while on it get zapped into a D&D world (one they made up not one they set in a pre-existent world) is a good way of adapting the actual experience of a normal player, they are an everyday person who takes on the role of someone in a different world. Oddly enough, whilst not without humour and a deliberate appeal to children (it was a cartoon after-all) it still took its subject matter more seriously, and treated it with more respect than this film does. So go watch an episode of it instead you'll have a much better time. }}

Dungeons and dragons was pretty disappointing. Thought it was going to be a lot better.

Didn't mind this film. Watched it twice. So can't be that bad.
Watched one spider man film. Didn't like it never watched another.
Never watched a Batman film either.
Avengers films only once.
Never watched Rocky but I like Sylvester Stallone. Watched first blood at least a dozen times.

You may have seen I mentioned Hansel and Gretel above. It wasn't bad so much as not memorable.

As is my duty as a one-time physicist I went to see Oppenheimer last night.  My short take is that it would have been more powerful if he had done a linear plotline.  Instead he had to be Christopher Nolan (the semi-independent theater I was in helpfully put up a list of characteristics of Nolan films) and jumped all over in time, making more of a pastiche than a narrative.  Because of this jumping around I thought it was simply okay.  I feel Oppenheimer deserves a more objective, less artistic approach.

(This is a theme with me for "historical" films. I was annoyed with 300 because it took a cartoonish/artistic approach to one of the most interesting events in history. I don't want my favorite parts of history messed around with.)

{{ Dune 1984 Alernative Edition Redux. A fan reediting of Lynch's Dune following lynch's own script and shooting schedule, it restores lost scenes (there is some visual discrepancy between these and the rest but its worth it) and fixes the chronology in the film back to the original Lynch script (a lot was done its editing which Lynch had no part in, and is why he took his name off the film, resultingin such things as Baron Harrkonen being inside the Atriedes compound and capturing Paul and Jessica BEFORE the Sadukar have even attacked the place yet).
If you have an affection for Lynchs version (as I do) this is the best version of it in my view and a notable improvement on the official theatrical release) }}

I'll have to come back to watch that. Until somebody edits out that stupid voice amplifier I'll always be annoyed with the Lynch version, but it was visually splendid, and there will never be a better Feyd Ruatha than Sting.

{{ Well it doesn't change everything Halfy, but it is far better structured, paced, the bulk of the additional scenes are needed and flesh out necessary plot or character elements and this means even the Baron gets one or two quieter moments he isnt just over-the-top the entire time. The third act still suffers from only making one film and having to condense everything into a satisfying movie ending, but those allowances aside given a choice I'd not watch the theatrical version again, this is now my go to version of cinema Dune. }}

{{ I had no idea they made this, its off the Watchmen Ultimate Cut DVD (long but the best version). Its an in-universe documentary about the original Night Owl and his book Under the Hood, about the original group that started the masked vigilante heroes fad. What I really like is that in the original Watchmen comic this book pops up throughout breaking up the normal comic stuff with a few pages of straight prose, extracts from the book. This is basically that done as if a documentary made at the time, complete with period advertising.
I'm almost tempted to see if there is way to make a Super Ultimate Cut and put this into the film the same way the Under the Hood book appears in the comic. }}

Tried to watch Spencer, about Diana, it was almost impossible to understand a word they said. Stewart spoke the dialogue as if she was a ventriloquist dummy and hardly opened her mouth to enunciate her words. It was like listening to a group of posh snakes hissing at each other. Ludicrous.