I Just Watched (Films)

[Lenny Solidus]

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

We have most certainly reached a point in cinema in which the visual quality on screen when it comes to CGI has reached such lofty heights that it's also kind of plateaued with how much it can impress you visually, it's an expectant at this point that new movies will and do look fucking amazing with so much literal eye candy you always have minute details you can pick out in a single scene and an individual object that you pinpoint seems to have had as much attention given to it as the main overall aspect. It's impressive, it really is, and yet almost not at the same time due to how used to it we have become. I've studied rocks sliding down a collapsing mountain, and they have zero flaws visually. Again we've just reached a level where it's all there perfectly encapsulated almost realistic looking, yet somehow it just feels generic and samey right along with it, and that's a shame. It's true today that the CGI you don't realise is being used in any given scene in a modern movie release is now the most impressive technique on display.

Every single character's screen moments are made up mostly of distant object gawking and pretty dull exposition dumps x50. The action while adequate never struck me as particular memorable in the same way as say Pacific Rim did in general.

I expected a Kong and Godzilla combo up there on the big screen together to be a highly memorable viewing experience and I honestly wish I viewed it differently than I do, the action while impressive looking just didn't impact me in the way I hoped it would and the culmination of what I wanted to happen all came about far too late in the entry.

I honestly had way more fun and far more investment in characters watching Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Godzilla: King of the Monsters is far better, even though the human characters severely drop the ball in that one too. I may sound very harsh here given it's intended as just a popcorn flick without the added emotional weight of say Peter Jackson's Kong, but my popcorn kinda turned stale on this one after I left.

4 Roars out of 10.

[Raid]

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

This is the first of the Jurassic World series I've seen. Are.... are they all this bad? I knew it didn't have a stellar reputation, but I really wasn't expecting something that had more in common with Sharknado than it did the original Jurassic Park film. It has absolutely no respect for its audience, and no respect for the animals that it's recreating. The first one at least had a sense of wonder among its commentary on capitalism and hubris. This is absolute garbage.

[Sly Boots]

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

This is the first of the Jurassic World series I've seen. Are.... are they all this bad? I knew it didn't have a stellar reputation, but I really wasn't expecting something that had more in common with Sharknado than it did the original Jurassic Park film. It has absolutely no respect for its audience, and no respect for the animals that it's recreating. The first one at least had a sense of wonder among its commentary on capitalism and hubris. This is absolute garbage.

Well, put it this way, we watched the first JW film and didn't watch any subsequent ones. I just couldn't get past the underlying premise that people are bored of dinosaurs now apparently. WTF?

[Wrathbone]

Well, put it this way, we watched the first JW film and didn't watch any subsequent ones.

Same here. The original Jurassic Park was a lesson in how playing god is a bad idea (and one of my favourite films of all time), whereas in the first Jurassic World everyone was just incredibly stupid.

[Raid]

Yes, playing god and man's hubris are at least fun concepts for a sci-fi film to explore. Fallen Kingdom is not about that. In this they're attempting to sell dinosaurs as the ultimate military weapon, for $30million, when not half an hour earlier, someone manages to mortally wound one with a single rifle round - because of course that's what would happen. Christ, they market an ankylosaur as the "ultimate armoured dinosaur", as if *any* modern military hardware would struggle with one. It's preposterously stupid, and it's leaps of logic like that that show it's disrespect for the audience. I'm alright with the odd "turn your brain off" moment in a film, but in this you need to be basically comatose for any of the plot to work.

That they dare to use John Williams' majestic score from the first film over the end credits is an outright insult to the original.

[Animalmother]

I think after I saw Jurassic World I was done with the franchise and it seems to have been a good call.

Godzilla Minus One
Now this is how you make a monster film. It's set in Japan just after the war and deals with the aftermath of that and the arrival of a giant radioactive lizard. The budget was apparently a pretty modest $15 million but the effects are fantastic, it won the Oscar for best visual effects last year. Godzilla just ploughs through building and wreaks shit with wild abandon. It's a tad long-winded at 2 hours and there just not enough Godzilla but it's definitely worth a watch.

[Lenny Solidus]

Abigail.

Simplicity is the master of everything, give an audience nothing more than they need, then let it all play out and at some point effectively subvert expectation. I'm so very disappointed this movie bombed in the manner that it did - I myself wasn't really sure what to expect and given the well known premise prior to going in I can honestly say it surpassed expectations. I will say this however that it for the majority comes down to a singular role, that being Abigail herself in actress Alisha Weir. My god is she brilliant. Going from musicals to what she manages to pull off here is kind of crazy, and she only becomes considerably better throughout, a particular scene that honestly had my mouth ajar. Perhaps we are all just so starved of receiving something akin to intelligent acting in general releases I could well be over stating her said talents, but I maintain she was brilliant all the same.

A genuinely good time was had with an amazing cast ft some of my personal favourites in Dan Stevens and the always awesome Kevin Durand. Melissa Barrera continues to convince me she has everything that makes her a true Scream Queen and I can't wait to see what projects she chooses in the future.

8.0 tiny dancers out of 10.

[Animalmother]

Ah cool, I was going to watch Abigail but was a bit out of by the wishy-washy reviews. Will give it a look.

Sting
Saw a trailer for this a little while ago and thought it looked fun...it was fine. A young girl living in a New York apartment block finds a weird spider and keeps it as a pet. Said spider seems to be unusually smart and keeps getting bigger. Pets then people start going missing and it's pretty gross in places, not exactly gory but "there's a spider climbing inside your mouth" gross. It kind of plods along for most of it's running time then realises there's only 10 minutes left and cranks it up. The creature effects are mostly practical and great. Worth a look but could have been so much better.

[Alan]

Yep Abigail was good fun. Same directors as Ready Or Not and it really shows to the point of “oh we’re doing that again” at times. Still great fun though Ready Or Not was much better.

[Animalmother]

28 Days Later
There's a Danny Boyle festival on at the cinema so went to see this with the gf last night. She'd never even heard of it so I was really hoping it held up. So this was filmed in 2001 with a handheld digital camera and as a result looks like utter shit. 480p resolution does not translate well to a modern cinema screen. It's still a very enjoyable film but it's aged so badly and I doubt any upscaling could fix it. The completely empty London in the earlier scenes is still very impressive and looks like a Covid lockdown prediction. I know there's some very basic cgi to enhance the effect but it's still very iconic. It's also pretty brutal in places and oft heard my gf muttering "Oh fuck!" at some of the scenes

Still worth a look but it's just aged very poorly in visual department.

[Alan]

Lamb (2021)
A lamb is born with a deformity, the couple take it inside to hand-rear it. I feel like that's about as much as you should know going in though I'm sure trailers spoil it. I knew nothing and I loved it! It has a feeling of The Witch to it though with less constant intense foreboding. It's weird in all the best ways. Very much recommend it if any of that appeals to you!

It stars Noomi Rapace from the original Dragon Tattoo movies (and that Prometheus shite -_-). You can watch it on Amazon Prime with a Mubi trial.... or on mubi.com with a free trial too :p


edit: skipped through the trailer, it ruins SO much. Fuck trailers. I fucking hate them.

[Wrathbone]

Dazed and Confused

I first watched this about 15 years ago and didn't rate it at all, but given how much people fawn over it, I thought I'd give it another chance. I still don't like it.

I get that it's a 'slice of life' film and in that respect it's very successful and captures the time and setting with what I assume is a high degree of accuracy. And it's fun watching McConaughey drawl out his famous "alright-alright-alrighhhht". But would it really have killed them to have added some kind of a plot to it? Some kind of story beyond "kids finish school; stuff happens"? If the characters had anything to do beyond portraying the social dynamics and tropes of the era, I might care what happens to any of them, but I don't because there are no meaningful stakes.

As a snapshot of 1976 America, it's great. As a film, it's pointless.

5/10 (and most of that is for the excellent soundtrack.)

[Animalmother]

Dazed and Confused is definitely a better nostalgia peice than an actual film. It's enjoyable enough but kind of dull.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
After the reviews here I had to watch it myself. Christ what a waste of my time, I should've heeded the warning! A dull, soulless wad of shite. Everyone is a fucking asshole (and a fucking idiot), do some incredibly stupid things just because the terrible story needs it to progress. An auction for one of a kind, utterly unique dinosaurs and we'll start the bidding at $4 million? They get excited when one sells for $10 million. The bidding should have started in the billions range at the very least. Dinosaurs as the ultimate weapon! Give a bunch of chimpanzees a rail of coke, a crack across the arse and drop them into an enemy trench, the results would be utter carnage and much cheaper!
On the only upside I could watch Dallas Bryce Howard jiggle about the screen for 2 hours without complaint.

[Raid]

Yeah, FK wasn't even the fun kind of bad film, it was just a massive waste of time. It's an entirely unnecessary, soulless cash-grab, being dragged out of the concept stage because it's refusing to let go of the the coat-tails of the 90s original. It's one of the worst blockbusters I've seen in ages.