What movies are we watching: B-Movie Blitz

[I am Belch II]

Surprisingly i liked the 2nd robocop more than the first, but both still beat out the reboot.

I like it more then the first also. Just don't even try and watch the 3rd Robocop movie.

[garhkal]

That was the bad Chuck Norris Karate Kid rippoff, wasn't it?

Surprisingly i've always had a soft spot for it..

I like it more then the first also. Just don't even try and watch the 3rd Robocop movie.

Ahh, you mean the abomination that shall not be named.

[Kidd]

Game Night.

Okay so I just got it because Jason Bateman is such a nice guy and Rachel Mcadams is smoking - how the heck does she look 25 at 40?!

but this was very well done. Plot's thin but very entertaining. 8/10, would recommend renting.

[Wrangler]

1955's To Kill A Mockingbird. It was on Netflix other night. This was the first time I had have ever seen the film. I was not big on watching dramas growing up. It was a great movie and still can get emotionally to you despite its age. How the turbulent times of yesterday and it can teach you lessons that are still relevant today.

The version of the film i saw was restored completely. It certainly opens ur eyes to a long lost era. I was struck by opening how clear it was. How crayon looked or the 1900 dated coin was placed.

[Jaim Magnus]

Interesting. We had to watch that in high school here in Canada. After reading the book of course.

[ColBosch]

I re-watched Dunkirk with a friend last night. She hadn't seen it before, so I was poised to answer any questions she might've had due to the complicated plotting of the film. Happily, she twigged that it wasn't all in "real time" quickly, and she seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

[mdauben]

I just finally got a chance to watch Black Panther tonight.  I have to say I came away a little disappointed.  Don't get me wrong, it was a really good movie.  It's just from all the hype and reviews I was expecting a great movie, and I don't think it hit that level, at least for me. )

[ColBosch]

I just finally got a chance to watch Black Panther tonight.  I have to say I came away a little disappointed.  Don't get me wrong, it was a really good movie.  It's just from all the hype and reviews I was expecting a great movie, and I don't think it hit that level, at least for me. )

I am waiting to forget it exists before I watch it, so maybe another year or two. I'll probably catch up on all the MCU flicks I've missed at the same time. Right now, though, I am completely burnt out.

[Kidd]

I just finally got a chance to watch Black Panther tonight.  I have to say I came away a little disappointed.  Don't get me wrong, it was a really good movie.  It's just from all the hype and reviews I was expecting a great movie, and I don't think it hit that level, at least for me. )

The hype and associated issues was really self-defeating for me, because on its own it was a decent flick and one of the better Marvel "origins" movies. We've come such a long way in cinematic technique that its genuinely getting harder to do better and better. By most standards therefore BP is good enough. Its just that it has been unfairly praised to the heavens and that has set itself up for a fall, IMHO.

[Wrangler]

I found most of the Marvel origin stories/first movies more watchable than the serial stuff.

Don't get me wrong, i like well written interconnected stories, but sometimes it's too much for movie to do it, television on other hand perfect medium for it.

[Banzai]

One of my problems with Black Panther was it is a rehash of Iron Man's first movie, which is fine, but it is only two years after the latest rehash of Iron Man's first movie, Doctor Strange.  I have a lot of other issues with it as well.  It is a fine comic book movie, but the comments of it being the Best Comic Book Movie EVER don't hold up. 

[Banzai]

And speaking of comic book movies, a friend lent me The Losers (2010.) Hated this movie.  It is the kind of movie Tropic Thunder was making fun of, with every shoot-em-up, blow-em-up cliché in place.  A black ops team is betrayed by their mysterious handler and has to go underground to try to get revenge and/or redemption.  Add in femme fatale with a mysterious past.  One of the Losers wife is going to give birth at any moment.  Tension in the team.  Hijinks ensue.  It almost went as parody, but it never seemed to be sure what tone it was taking, jumping from serious to Silver-age comics level of goofy, complete with sonic bombs out of a 60’s Bond knockoff which can make an island…disappear? Or something.  And Max the Supervillain Black Ops Mastermind, who is trying create a fake attack on US soil to frame…someone?  Or is going to sell the weapons to terrorists.  Or is trying to steal a billion dollars (cue Dr. Evil) from the CIA.  Or something.  It is not only unclear, but changes like the wind.  But he murders kids, shoots a woman who is carrying his sun-protection parasol because she slips, and breaks com security to gloat.  He is a BAD MAN who seems to be in control of every clandestine intelligence agency in the US.  Or something.

 
The rest of the cast is fine, and I really enjoyed Chris Evans playing against type as a goofy intelligence expert/hacker, but the film is really uneven.  You can pull off that mix of funny and violent and tense, like RED did (also a comic book movie), but The Losers didn’t have the cast RED did, and their script was all over the place.  It seemed like they didn’t really know where they wanted to go, and the ending, (SPOILER ALERT) where MAX escapes on…a city bus?  Really?  A guy who can call up planes at a whim, a security force of ex-SF operators, and has buildings for his minions, escapes on a bus?  And gets his watch stolen?  A guy who murdered his sun-shade gets jacked by two punks?  Sheesh.  It felt like the Simpsons episode with all of the spin offs, in the Chief Wiggum and Skinner team up where the bad guy gets away and the Chief says “I have the feeling we’ll be seeing him again…each and every week.”   It was an unsatisfying end to an unsatisfying movie, so at least that was consistent.

[garhkal]

One of my problems with Black Panther was it is a rehash of Iron Man's first movie, which is fine, but it is only two years after the latest rehash of Iron Man's first movie, Doctor Strange.  I have a lot of other issues with it as well.  It is a fine comic book movie, but the comments of it being the Best Comic Book Movie EVER don't hold up.

Strange, i never though/saw dr strange as a rehash of IM1..
Nor black panther.


As for both Red and the losers, i never REALIZED they were comic movies, til i got told about it..  I laughed at some of the hyjinks that the losers got up to in the film, but otherwise it was just "ok".  BUT i absolutely loved RED.

[Triptych]

Deadpool 2: better than the first movie. It's now got a plot, though still somewhat very simplified. More of the same, just with a bigger budget lol. 6/10

[Kidd]

Pop Culture Reference One: Classic Spielberg in many ways. Goonies for the 00s kids. But the constant refrain/obsession with marginal trivia is tiresome. As a background to the movie it would have been cool. As central premise, macguffin, character development (such as it is) AND resolution... it is extremely irritating.

I can only think development must have gone like the first studio scene in Wayne's World: "I guess kids like this?" "oh, they love it."

Throw in a good dash of pointless dystopia and drone scare and Chosen one-itis ("trust me Mr Spielberg, kids dig this") and here we are. Speaking of Chosen ones, the "hero" is uninspiring at best and frankly off-putting. The real heroes imo are Artemis and H - they put in more work winning than he did, the former for a far more noble cause.

Bonus points for having the hypocritical gall to play straight the scene where the Evil CEO(tm) tries to impress the hero with his pop-culture references as relayed via earpiece by his advisors - I felt like that was truly the movie talking directly to the audience.

No Battletech Mechs that I could see. But the action was so frenetic it was hard to see anyway.

[pheonixstorm]

Watched Power Rangers yesterday with my son. Not bad for a PR flick. Much better than the series imo. Looking at watching some of the youtube red movies if I can find the ones I remember seeing trailers for a few years back.

[Banzai]

Strange, i never though/saw dr strange as a rehash of IM1..
Nor black panther.

In Doctor Strange and Iron Man you have powerful, rich, arrogant main characters who lose it all, end up with a major physical infirmity, then come to understand power by learning to serve rather than be served.  Similar arcs with both love and respect growing for Christine/Pepper.  It has a bit of a pay off in the antagonism between Strange and Stark in IW.  They grate each other because they are both basically the same guy, just one went mystical and the other engineering.

In Black Panther it even riffs on the structure of Iron Man: The original villain is replaced mid-film by the real antagonist.  The real antagonist is a family member (for all intents and purposes) who usurps the main character’s leadership position, leaving them for dead.  The main character needs to take back his position by fighting the antagonist in a dangerous, industrial setting, both using similar powered suits.   (Oh, and Killmonger's death is a copy of Nyssa's death in Blade 2, yet another Marvel film.)

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I was just looking up movie times since I'm planning to go see Deadpool 2 on Monday.

Black Panther is still in the theater here, despite already being out on video.  This is, I think, the first time that three different Marvel movies have been playing here simultaneously.

[Banzai]

Deadpool 2.  Sick, twisted, and got me listening to Celine Dion. 

[garhkal]

Deadpool 2.  Sick, twisted, and got me listening to Celine Dion.

I couldn't stop laughing near the end of it..  LOVED the music too, even Celine.. 
Though why is it we didn't see one instance (to my knowledge) of Cable using ANY of his TK or telepathy powers??

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Presumably because they wanted to focus on the "uses ridiculously oversized guns" aspect of his character to keep him more on Wade's power level.  And play up the silliness of the 90s anti-hero.

[Banzai]

I couldn't stop laughing near the end of it..  LOVED the music too, even Celine.. 
Though why is it we didn't see one instance (to my knowledge) of Cable using ANY of his TK or telepathy powers??

It was subtle, but happened a lot: The Gun jumping back onto his back (where it stayed, without a holster), things jumping into his hands, and a few times on the prison bus.  They never called attention to it, but it was there.

[Banzai]

Presumably because they wanted to focus on the "uses ridiculously oversized guns" aspect of his character to keep him more on Wade's power level.  And play up the silliness of the 90s anti-hero.

The whole movie is a love letter to the 90's extreme movement.  A beautiful beautiful love letter. Of beautiful love. And...other things. But mostly love!

"What crazy person would come up with that power?  Probably someone who can't draw feet!" - My favorite line. 

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

It was subtle, but happened a lot: The Gun jumping back onto his back (where it stayed, without a holster), things jumping into his hands, and a few times on the prison bus.  They never called attention to it, but it was there.

It wasn't really clear whether that was TK or the gun being magnetically drawn to him, since it stuck itself to his back.

[garhkal]

It wasn't really clear whether that was TK or the gun being magnetically drawn to him, since it stuck itself to his back.

I too, thought that scene was more his gun had a magnet or such in, so he could call it back.. Much like Capt's shield in avengers 2 and beyond did.

[Banzai]

They way it jumped onto his back when he moved on, and the distance it jumped to his back during his fight in the Ice Box, and knowing his mutant power, said TK to me.  And in AoU they specifically shouted out the magnets.  Here they didn't.  By YMMV, as always. 

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Usually, movies have a character look at the item they're TKing or make some sort of gesture to show that they're using their powers.  Given that Cable didn't do any of that, and his powers weren't mentioned anywhere, I went with it being a high-tech "magnetic" effect of the gun itself since most viewers aren't going to have the slightest notion that Cable normally has telepathic and telekinetic abilities.

[garhkal]

Usually, movies have a character look at the item they're TKing or make some sort of gesture to show that they're using their powers.  Given that Cable didn't do any of that, and his powers weren't mentioned anywhere, I went with it being a high-tech "magnetic" effect of the gun itself since most viewers aren't going to have the slightest notion that Cable normally has telepathic and telekinetic abilities.

Yup.  That's why i wondered "So if his gun's being called back cause of magnets, WHEN is he gonna pump out some uber TK he has"??

[Banzai]

As I said, YMMV.  But considering this movie is chock full of jokes that are never explained, it seemed all in the same vein.

[Kidd]

John Wick and John Wick Chapter 2.

The first was thin on plot, heavy on the action. The second checked quite a few boxes on what a good sequel should be - a lot more plot, a lot more world-building, a lot more complications, and an ending that decently sets up the finale. Nice.

Mindless 1-man action rampages are not my thing, but I like good gunplay too, so what the heck. I would still have stopped halfway however, but for the presence of some of my favourite actors - Ian McShane, John Leguizamos, Willem Dafoe, Peter Serafinowicz, even Common from Wanted. They're not A-list, but do great work in the limited time they're usually given, so its always nice to see them and they kept me going.

Will be waiting eagerly for Chapter 3.