Recently watched movies

[besleybean]

Anyway, I saw Mowgli last night.

Predictably Benedict nailed it as Shere Khan.

But I am interested to hear what anybody thought about the message of the film.

[Arcadia]

Well …. fudge. It's only available through Netflix, or a 3 hour drive. Insert curse words of choice here.

[besleybean]

I kept checking Amazon to see if I could pre-order the DVD, until somebody pointed out it's on Netflix.

Thank goodness my son paid for Netflix for us as a present years ago, I hardly ever use it.

[Carol the Dabbler]

12 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Ah. I was confused too, but it comes from not clearly understanding the difference between 'wonderland' and 'looking glass.'

Yeah, me too.  I mean, I can tell the books apart easily enough.  But it's my impression that screen adaptations generally combine the two.  And I haven't seen the Depp version, so didn't realize that it came in two parts.

[besleybean]

I didn't even realise I'd orderd both parts!

[Artemis]

Green Book.  Really good!

 

[Fantasy Lover]

Mortal engines 6/10

I was worried about this movie because A. Peter Jackson was involved and I still haven't forgiven him for the abomination that was The hobbit and B. It was just another adaption of another book series of a bunch of teenagers trying to survive a post-apocalyptic dystopian wasteland. My worries were largely unnecessary, as they made a pretty good faithful adaptation of the book and it was a solid end enjoyable movie.

And I finally got around to watch Hotel Transylvania 3, it was predictable but fun, I give it a 7/10.

[Arcadia]

Mortal Engines is a book? Somehow I thought it was a video game! Maybe I got it confused with Mortal Kombat. (That's a game, right? )

[Van Buren Supernova]

Watched a couple of movies during my holiday.

Aquaman. Some parts are cheesy, but I did enjoy it. Aquaman was my chosen superhero power to have beside Flash back then, it would be nice to breathe underwater and communicate with fish, and I could mess with annoying land dweller as well. I hope DC will pick up more from here because I think I'm more of DC fans. The costumes seem different with Justice League which I'm grateful, because I remember hating Aquaman's costume in JL. Could remember wrongly though. 7.8/10

Bumblebee. Didn't know I would catch another transformer movie, haven't watched any since falling asleep in the first one. But we had time and mood for movie. It's not as bad and as dumb, I guess they changed the director, because it's not Michaelbayish anymore. Cliche, predictable and repeated joke though. 7/10

Seven Psychopath. Hey, I like this one more  Entertaining, unusual and original enough. I like the casts and the madness. 8/10

The Voices. Another fun quite unpredictable crazy. Dark comedy, quite sad if you think about it but entertaining. Ryan Reynold is great here. 8/10

 

 

[Arcadia]

I'm so out of it; I've never heard of any of those.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Me neither.  But I've been so disappointed in the recent movies that I have seen that keeping up with them just isn't a high priority for me.

Just noticed that the online buzz says the fourth Trek reboot has been shelved.  I will say they'd have been fools to make it without Chris Pine, so if they're not willing/able to pay him what they're contractually obligated to pay him, they're better off just forgetting the whole thing.

[Artemis]

^  That’s a bummer.  I agree, though.

 

[Hikari]

Nominal Benedict Cumberbatch mention:

Last night I revisited from my collection The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) in which BC has a small supporting role as William Carey, the poor unfortunate slob who had his newlywed bride stolen by King Henry VIII when the King took a shine to her and thought she looked capable of producing an heir for England, despite the inconvenience of her being married to another man.  'She' is Mary Boleyn Carey (Scarlett Johannsson), younger sister of the infamous Anne.  After Mary was confined to bed with a high-risk pregnancy, the King lost interest in her and turned his attentions to Anne.  We all know how that worked out for her.  

When one is a man who is being cuckolded by his sovereign all the while being forced to witness it as a member of the King's privy chamber . . what can one do about it?  Nothing except suffer silently unless one wants to be executed for treason.  Everything belongs to the King, in the end, including all of his subjects' wives, if he fancies them.  Benedict, on the cusp of international stardom but still 2 years out from Sherlock here does what he can with a nominal role, and looks suitably tortured while wearing feathered caps rather fetchingly.  Also appearing as another courtier and childhood friend of the Boleyn girls is Eddie Redmayne.  Little did he and BC know at the time that only 6 years later, they'd be battling head to head for the 2014 Oscar.  (Win to Mr. Redmayne for his Stephen Hawking.  The Academy goes for a wheelchair every single time.)

This movie is sumptuously shot.  It looks really awesome and the costumes by Sandy Powell (who also did Shakespeare in Love, among others) are sublime.  Ms. Powell really excels at this period.  Kristin Scott Thomas is Lady Boleyn and Mark Rylance is Sir Thomas Boleyn.  David Morrissey plays the scheming uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who is determined to play Queenmaker and advance the fortunes of his family by putting a Boleyn girl in the orbit of Henry Tudor.  The screenplay is Peter Morgan, the King of British royal historical dramas (The Queen; the current Netfix series The Crown).  Given the excellence of his other work, I was surprised that Mr. Morgan devised such an ultimately limp, soapy and melodramatic take on this era and these people.  

Ms. Johannsson comes off the best in this twisted triad as the sweet, nurturing Mary, an obedient daughter and wife and a devoted sister, who is forced into a relationship with the King through the machinations of her rapacious uncle and equally greedy but weak-willed father in a time when women were the property of their male relatives by law.  Mary did as she was ordered because she had to, not because she was a morally loose woman later embittered to be cast aside in favor of her sister, as she is portrayed in that other Anne B. potboiler Anne of the Thousand Days.  Natalie Portman emotes her little heart out but she is strangely non-compelling as Anne, despite having the right coloring for her.  But the winner of the Razzie for 'worst casting/limpest acting' here must go to Eric Bana.  Mr. Bana is suitably tall and athletic and has a beard.  But the same might be said for a life-size cardboard replica of himself, for all the passion or even signs of life which he displays here.  He flounces through these proceedings in Henry's trademark huge-shouldered ermine embellished capes virtually monosyllabic and seeming embarrassed to be there at all.  As he should have been.  Never has such a large and otherwise masculine guy made so little substantial impression as one of history's most substantial men that he might as well be made of fog.  Or marshmallows.  He is a clotheshorse and that's about it in this movie.

************

The reviewer for the Mercury News, Bruce Newman, summed it up so well in his review at the time that I'm going to let him tell you what he thinks . . .

As Anne, Portman attempts to transport her reign as Queen Padme Amidala of the planet Naboo in “Star Wars” to 16th century England. The only satisfying distinction between the two performances is that this time she’s executed for it. Portman has been quite good in pictures such as “Closer” and “Garden State.” But she can also be dreadful, as she’s been recently in “Goya’s Ghosts” and “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” and as she is again here. You can see her acting all over the place, and while Johansson is more subdued as her sister, she’s not much better. The picture is directed by Justin Chadwick, whose emergence from a well-deserved obscurity he is now ready to resume. Chadwick and Morgan have cooked up a potboiler, the sort of thing that might have been fun to watch with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as the Boleyn sisters, while Charles Laughton lasciviously eyed the backs of their necks as Henry.  Instead, we get Eric (“Hulk”) Bana, flouncing around in red velvet, his royal hopes for an heir to the throne extremely high, his Y-chromosome count apparently very low. When his first wife delivers a stillborn son, the king is fortunate enough to have among his courtiers England’s leading pimp, the Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey, the star of “Basic Instinct 2” and “The Reaping,” a bill of indictment to which one more unforgivable sin is now added). Norfolk is not only a pimp, but brother-in-law to a rural pimp with a learner’s permit and a stable of daughters – Sir Thomas Boleyn (Mark Rylance). Norfolk and Sir Thomas conspire to exploit the queen’s spotty record birthing babies and replace her with a mistress they control: AnneBut before Anne can assume the royal position, VIII gets an eyeful of Mary and decides Norfolk has procured the wrong Boleyn girl. This is slightly inconvenient because Mary is a recent newlywed, but only slightly. Hubby quickly signs onto the pimp apprenticeship program that evidently is the mark of manhood in the Boleyn family.  All of this requires the forbearance of tedious plot details and historical exposition before we ever get to know much about the characters, principally the sisters. Morgan’s script dishes up melodrama instead of the sort of tart, intelligent power struggles we’ve come to expect from him. The roistering of this particular royal has been treated with far greater panache in the Showtime series “The Tudors.”

[Sheerluck]

Solo: A Star Wars Story. Pretty much a waste of film.

[besleybean]

This isn't really my thing, but I actually really enjoyed this film and loved Benedict's character.

[Carol the Dabbler]

10 hours ago, Sheerluck said:

Solo: A Star Wars Story. Pretty much a waste of film.

 

10 hours ago, besleybean said:

This isn't really my thing, but I actually really enjoyed this film and loved Benedict's character.

I assume the two of you cross-posted -- though now I'm trying to picture BC as Han. 

 

[besleybean]

Nice though that image is...my daughter's in love with Harrison, so maybe not.

Yeah sorry, I was referring to The Other Boleyn girl.

Is the SW film the latest one?

Not seen it.

I've liked all of the others.

[Carol the Dabbler]

It's one of the recent sidebar movies, not part of the final trilogy.  I assume it's backstory, because Han is played by a different (I assume younger) actor.  I haven't seen it, but from what I hear he doesn't have the Ford touch.

 

[besleybean]

Yeah, kind of got that...

Or would have done, if I'd taken more notice of my SW obsessed daughter!

[Sheerluck]

I saw Star Wars back in the cinemas when it was first released. Han was a cad and a rogue but redeemed himself in the end. His history was shadowy and dangerous and you wanted to know more.

The new film makes him out rather insipid and uninspiring never mind some of the ridiculous things that are said and done throughout the film. I would only recommend seeing it if you are a Star Wars fanatic and then only if there isn't anything better to watch.

[besleybean]

Yep, I'm that old, too!

[Hikari]

This is not a movie review; this is a vent.  Or Rant, I suppose.

In recent years I have sworn off the Academy Awards show as a big waste of time, especially since I so rarely see any of the nominees beforehand.    This year, however, I had a horse in the race.  I went to I think three first-run feature films in 2018:  Fifty Shades Freed, Book Club & A Star is Born.  Of these, only one is contending for Oscars, to nobody's surprise.  I was rather anticipating the Oscars telecast a bit more than usual as a result . . to see if ASiB would sweep its nominated categories.  Best Picture, Best Actress for Gaga, Best Supporting Actor for Sam Elliot and Best Actor for Bradley Cooper . . Best Song, possibly Best Adapted Screenplay as well, though I'm not sure about that category.  Following Bradley Cooper's Golden Globe nomination for Best Director . . He  has been shut out of the same category by the Academy.   I'd sure love to know how a Best Picture of the Year nominee can direct *itself*, which is what the Academy is essentially saying when it nominates the picture and not the person behind the camera who directed the whole shebang, including Best Performance nominations for his co-stars and himself, incidentally. 

How does that happen?

Ben Affleck has a Best Director Oscar for Argo  (another freakish phenomenon that makes me rhetorically ask the universe, How did *that* happen?) but it looks like Bradley Cooper is just gonna have to step up and direct another picture if he wants a gold statuette.  I predict a win for Gaga as Best Actress but my bet is that ASiB will go down to 'Vice' in all other categories.  If it does not, won't that be a pleasant surprise.  I am not expecting it . . which is why it would be a surprise.  A big one.

If it's any consolation to Mr. Cooper, Orson Welles did not receive a Best Director for Citizen Kane, either . . and A Star is Born is no Citizen Kane.  Mr. Welles was at least nominated, though both he and his picture would go down in favor of 'How Green Was My Valley'.  'Kane' is widely acknowledged as the best motion picture ever made, and Welles, its boy wunderkind director, one of the visionary auteurs of all time.  If Brad bides his time, the appropriate recognition may eventually come his way . . though perhaps we will all be dead before that happens.  The Academy screws up routinely . . not just this year.  But this year was kind of a doozy.  'Bohemian Rhapsody' for Best Picture . . really?!  From all the reports I have heard, it's a stinkbomb.

[Artemis]

21 hours ago, Hikari said:

'Bohemian Rhapsody' for Best Picture . . really?!  From all the reports I have heard, it's a stinkbomb.

I’m quite happy to hear that, myself.    As I believe I said a month or two back, I think it deserves it, and I’m not the only one on the forum who didn’t think it was a ”stink bomb”!  So that’s a couple of contrary reports, anyway.  I’m sorry you were disappointed though.

 

[Hikari]

1 hour ago, Artemis said:

I’m quite happy to hear that, myself.    As I believe I said a month or two back, I think it deserves it, and I’m not the only one on the forum who didn’t think it was a ”stink bomb”!  So that’s a couple of contrary reports, anyway.  I’m sorry you were disappointed though.

 

The actor playing Freddie Mercury is contending with Bradley Cooper for Best Actor, though I predict that both will lose to Christian Bale for 'Vice'.  Given the climate in Hollywood, I'd say Spike Lee is a likely winner for Best Director, though the Best Picture winner is still hard to call.

I have not seen Bohemian Rhapsody, though I will probably check it out on DVD when that is released.  I like some of Queen's music, including the title song and Who Wants to Live Forever? but I do not consider myself a fan per se.  I'm mostly interested to see what Gwylim Lee (Midsomer Murders) looks like as a member of the band.

Film enjoyment is so subjective.  Over on Rotten Tomatoes,  BR is rated 62% Fresh; A Star is Born is ranked 90% Fresh.   No fewer than three music bio-pics in the Best Picture category this year.  We will see how it shakes out.

[HerlockSholmes]

As a lifelong Laurel And Hardy fan I wonder if anyone has seen Stan and Ollie yet. I’m looking forward to seeing it about a thousand times more than the Holmes And Watson movie which everyone appears to say is a  pile of you-know-what. I think I’ll be buying Sherlock Gnomes before I shell out anything for that one.