The Official Review Thread of 2018

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Precious Doll
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by Precious Doll »

Well, $630 million worth of ticket sales worldwide in 5 days can't be wrong. Or can they be?

Anyway a free ticket wouldn't get me to watch this. I only ever saw the trailer once and thought it looked more of the same. Only hope it doesn't score a technical Oscar nomination next year....
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by OscarGuy »

Good in parts, but a bloated mess it still was. It was also a massive cheat. Marvel fans should be cheated.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by anonymous1980 »

They've been setting up and teasing this story line since at least the first Avengers way back in 2012 so I would've been surprised if they just offed Thanos in one movie. I knew going in this was going to be a two-parter. What I didn't expect was how they're going to do it.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by Greg »

Titanic is over three hours, although they did not postpone the ship sinking for Titanic II: The Water Edition.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by The Original BJ »

Mister Tee wrote:
The Original BJ wrote:But of course, it is 100% my own fault for putting myself through this interminable THREE HOURS when I obviously know better by now!
Three hours??????? This is getting to punishment level.
Technically, 2 hours and 40 minutes... and it's still only part one of an essentially two-part story!
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by Mister Tee »

The Original BJ wrote:But of course, it is 100% my own fault for putting myself through this interminable THREE HOURS when I obviously know better by now!
Three hours??????? This is getting to punishment level.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by Greg »

The Original BJ wrote:But of course, it is 100% my own fault for putting myself through this interminable THREE HOURS when I obviously know better by now!
At least with the three-hour run time, they were able to make more use of its $300million+ budget.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

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anonymous1980 wrote:When I first heard of this, I was concerned that it was gonna be an overlong, bloated mess with all those dozens of characters
I was very concerned about this before, during, and after I was watching it. (Surprise!)
anonymous1980 wrote: One thing I would give credit for this one is the ballsy ending. Wow, they must really trust the audience enough to be able to pull off an ending like that.
I'm not sure we should launch a full discussion about this, simply because to do so gets into super spoilerific territory... but I found the ending completely groan-worthy. I keep hearing comments like this -- that it's super risky, that it requires so much of the audience -- but I can't wrap my head around that sentiment in the least. The ending for me exemplifies exactly what Mister Tee wrote about these movies in the Black Panther thread -- that they just don't have that much emotional impact -- and I was almost actively annoyed the film was asking me to be moved by [REDACTED EVENTS THAT HAPPEN AT END OF MOVIE] when we all know that in a couple movies from now [REDACTED EVENTS THAT WILL UNQUESTIONABLY HAPPEN A FEW MOVIES FROM NOW].

But of course, it is 100% my own fault for putting myself through this interminable THREE HOURS when I obviously know better by now!
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by anonymous1980 »

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Brolin, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Don Cheadle, Anthony Mackie, Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Benedict Wong, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, Idris Elba, Letitia Wright, Tom Vaughn-Lawlor, Carrie Coon, Winston Duke, William Hurt, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders.
Dirs: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo.

Supervillain Thanos wants the Infinity Stones in order to attain absolute power so he could wipe out half the population of the universe and it's up to the Avengers (a couple of dozen of them, give or take) to stop him.When I first heard of this, I was concerned that it was gonna be an overlong, bloated mess with all those dozens of characters so I was pleasantly surprised that I thought they managed to pull it off for the most part, despite the fact that I thought the parts were better than the overall film. One thing I would give credit for this one is the ballsy ending. Wow, they must really trust the audience enough to be able to pull off an ending like that. I happen to generally like Marvel movies and for me, this is mid-tier so I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who hasn't enjoyed the vast majority of the films and this is the first Marvel movie where I feel you should have seen at least some of the previous films in order to completely understand certain plot points and character moments.

Oscar Prospects: Visual Effects is possible. So is Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

Grade: B+
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by flipp525 »

Michelle Williams give an absolutely hysterical performance in the latest Amy Schumer movie I Feel Pretty. I literally burst out laughing when she had her first line and pretty much was any time she was back on the screen. The movie has some problems bit she steals the entire thing.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

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BEIRUT
Cast: Jon Hamm, Rosamund Pike, Dean Norris, Shea Whigham, Larry Pine, Mark Pellegrino.
Dir: Brad Anderson.

After a horrific tragedy befalls him while working as a U.S. diplomat in Beirut, a professional negotiator is called to negotiate the release of an old friend who happens to be a highly valuable CIA agent. This kind of feels like a rejected storyline from a season of Homeland. That's not necessarily a bad thing but I think it would've been a more exciting and compelling narrative had it been done in that format. As it is, it's a fairly decent if wholly unremarkable drama. It's not quite as xenophobic and Islamophobic as the trailers suggest though. The script by Tony Gilroy actually has a bit more nuance than that. Jon Hamm is great, as usual. I fail to understand why he's not being utilized in more leading man roles. All in all, it's a not-bad-but-rather-middling effort.

Oscar Prospects: None.

Grade: C+
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by Sabin »

I’ll write more on A Quiet Place soon, but this is definitely a high water mark in the horror renaissance. It is one of the most suspenseful films I’ve ever seen. If I didn’t quite respond to the emotions of the story (which are totally earned), it was because I was too caught up in my admiration for how well-woven the story/character elements were. Smart fucking writers. Plot holes? I’m honestly uninterested. This is an enormously satisfying piece of entertainment. The audience I saw it with erupted in applause twice.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

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A QUIET PLACE
Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe.
Dir: John Krasinski.

After the Earth (or at least parts of America) is overrun by alien creatures who hunt their prey by their sound, a family struggles to survive the best way they can. Though it's not a transcendent piece of filmmaking, or even a transcendent piece of horror filmmaking, it is an extremely well-crafted and gloriously fun creature feature in the vein of all the classic monster movies. The performances of the four actors are all outstanding. They ground the crazy goings-on with plenty of heart and humanity and this just intensifies the scares and even ups the emotion. This is an exemplary film overall. John Krasinski is a promising filmmaker, I must say.

Oscar Prospects: This *has* to get Sound Mixing and/or Sound Editing nominations. Those elements had to be outstanding for this film to work. I wouldn't mind a Best Actress nom for Emily Blunt either.

Grade: B+

RAMPAGE
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman, Jake Lacy, Joe Manganiello, Marley Shelton.
Dir: Brad Peyton.

Apparently, it's loosely based on a video game, this film is about a secret scientific genetic experiment which results in giant, aggressive organisms. Three animals, including a friendly sign-language fluent albino gorilla grow large and start their...well, rampage. This is the second monster movie that has sign language as part of the plot in so many days. This is one is not as good as the other one. But there's still some fun to be had. This kind of spoiled what would have been the inevitable King Kong vs. Godzilla movie that's sure come down the pike in the next few years but what can you do? It's not an awful film and it's quite entertaining but it will forgotten a few weeks from now.

Oscar Prospects: None.

Grade: C+
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by Mister Tee »

I have roughly the same response to The Death of Stalin that BJ did, though I'd change the emphasis a bit: yes, it's not as consistently gut-bustingly funny as In the Loop or the best Veep episodes, but I'd say, rather than it being "more smile/chuckle-funny, clever from beginning to end, but in a more low-key way", there were in fact scenes I found just as riotous funny as in the earlier works -- but that they alternated with scenes that were more serious/horrifying.

And I believe that was intentional; I think Ianucci was aiming for something a but more impactful than usual. As much as I've enjoyed In the Loop and much of Veep, the borderline-nihilistic "they're all venal boobs" kept me from taking them completely seriously -- I brush them off as super-cynical parodies. Here, because he's dealing with settled historical events, there's a gravity that goes beyond his earlier work. Even if the characters are mostly just as venal and buffoonish as anyone on Veep, the deep impact they had on millions of lives -- worldwide, but especially in the Soviet Union -- make the work inevitably more serious...as does, of course, the omnipresence of sudden death.

Watching the film, I had an odd flashback to 12 Years a Slave, specifically the Michael Fassbender/Sarah Paulson segment. I said when I saw that film that the Fassbender plantation section wasn't so much about the overall evils of slavery as about the terror of being in the control of two people involved in a toxic marriage. Here, I had a similar feeling about Stalin vis a vis Communism. It's long been accepted writ for many (universally held on the far right) that Stalin was what happened if you implemented communism as governing philosophy. But I got the notion watching this film that the deeper tragedy of the Soviet Union in the 20th century was that a vengeful sociopath ascended to the head of this system and infected it with his poison, to the point it lived on in his successors. We don't really know what might have been the result had a visionary leader -- a Mandela -- been there to lead the way post-Lenin.

And, of course, the fact that having a sociopath in charge can have such far-reaching results is why watching the film is such an uncomfortable experience for those of us living in 2018 America.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2018

Post by anonymous1980 »

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING
Cast: John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Charlie Day, Jing Tian, Burn Gorman, Rinko Kikuchi, Adria Arjona, Zhang Jin, Karan Brar, Ivanna Sakhno.
Dir: Steven S. DeKnight.

The sequel to Guillermo Del Toro's robots vs. monsters...oh, excuse me...Kaijus vs. Jaegers movie. This time, the evil aliens who are unleashing the giant monsters found a way to get back in the game so robots have to fight the giant monsters again. The first Pacific Rim was a really fun film. Director Guillermo Del Toro was able to fuse imagination and child-like wonder in the concept of robots and monsters fighting into a big, fun action movie. A change of directors really gave this all the difference....and for the worse. What was once a novel, fun concept infused with pure fun, imagination and joy has sadly devolved into just another generic action movie that lacks the sense of wonder and fun the last one had and it really goes to show how big of a difference between someone like Del Toro and someone like DeKnight who just delivers just another slam-bang action movie. It's not offensive but kind of disappointing and more than a little bit dull.

Oscar Prospects: None.

Grade: C
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