What are you watching?

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

The whole MCU feels alienating to me, like I can't just watch a random one, I have to watch all of them. I'd like to just dip my toe in whenever a particular one interests me, but I'm worried it'll be incomprehensible.

[Spaghetti Monkey Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Spaghetti Monkey]

For what it's worth, the ones I've seen have been fine as stand alones.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

I've barely seen any MCU movies (although I have seen the first ANT-MAN) but I'm curious about THOR: RAGNAROK. It looks fun. Is it easy to follow if you haven't been watching all of them?

I don't think any of the films require pre-knowledge. They all reference each other a lot but it's rarely integral. How you'll go with Ragnarok depends on your tolerence for Watiti. Mines worn thin. To my way of thinking Watiti only has one gag and that is that you take, say, a vampire or a pirate or a god of thunder and then you have them do the dishes in an apron while hey chat about how they haven't done their tax return yet or something similarly mundane. It was funny the first time but that was a long time ago.

[Spaghetti Monkey Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Spaghetti Monkey]

Props to Captain Marvel because it had Samuel L Jackson with a cat. I enjoyed that.

And hence, the origin of Fury's eye patch.

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

Excellent. Thank you both! I won't feel as intimidated if I want to check one out.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

I wasn't watching in any sort of order but am I right in thinking that the MCU still hasn't introduced its Thanos replacement? I'm surprised. I would have thought first movie after he was offed they would have shown what's next.

It'll be Kang in the coming Avengers movies in a few years, just announced at SDCC two weeks ago.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

A page back I was talking about The Rescue. Just found the Ron Howard/Virgo Mortensen film on Amazon.

It was obviously inevitable that they would make a film of this story and equally inevitable that Ron Howard would get the directors gig. To be fair he seems the right man for the job. Have to say though, I expected a lot more from the film. The docos a stunning piece of work. As tense and suspenseful as any feature. The film on the other hand is flat. The emotion from the documentary is just not there and, oddly, the drama is actually dialled back from the real thing.

100% skip it and go for the doco on Disney+.

[killer must kill again Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close killer must kill again]

knock off (1998)

van damme and rob schneider in a heroic bloodshed movie featuring green explosions and a title song by sparks! this was even wackier than double team.
glad I can finally cross it from my watchlist, totally worth it! but beware this might induce brain cancer with repeat viewings.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Prey. This is currently being hyped as maybe the best Predator movie. That's hard for me to get my head around. There's a definite feel here that the Predator is slumming it. After all we've seen him rip through a heavily armed commando unit led by Schwarzenegger, tear Aliens apart with his bare hands. Here he's hunting wolves, snakes and some dudes with nothing but hatchets and bows. Mr Predator surely you're better than this?

Because of the mismatch there's a lot of bullshit trick's played to keep our heroine alive which makes everything feel stakeless.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Day Shift: This is essentially, more or less, alright. Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco team up as buddie cops who aren't cops but actually vampire hunters. Foxx is the grizzled vet, who's seen it all and Franco is the by-the-book newbie. Moves fast, has a couple jokes, a couple decent action scenes, is just lacking a decent villain. Karla Souza is the villain and a deeply underwhelming one she was too. The brief is just commanding, sexy, South/Central American woman who's going to look good in a suit. That's close to the easiest brief to fill imaginable as pretty much all of the Hollywood actresses from that region fit the bill. She's has the charisma of a tire iron. Franco and Foxx are good enough though and even Snoop Dog is a bit of fun in a cameo.

Points deducted for setting up a franchise throughout the first movie. Core crew keeps talking about how much more dangerous El Jeffe is than the vamp they're hunting. El Jeffe doesn't make an experience. The final showdown with El Jeffe is, I'm guessing, booked for film 3. I'm watching a film not a tv show and when the 2 hours are up I want closure god dammit.

Anyway...

[Alison Jane Girl Boss Jane Find all posts View Profile Close Alison Jane]

Prey. This is currently being hyped as maybe the best Predator movie. That's hard for me to get my head around. There's a definite feel here that the Predator is slumming it. After all we've seen him rip through a heavily armed commando unit led by Schwarzenegger, tear Aliens apart with his bare hands. Here he's hunting wolves, snakes and some dudes with nothing but hatchets and bows. Mr Predator surely you're better than this?

Because of the mismatch there's a lot of bullshit trick's played to keep our heroine alive which makes everything feel stakeless.

We really enjoyed it. I thought the main actress was excellent. And I don't really care about the original all that much.

[Randy G Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Randy G]

We really enjoyed it. I thought the main actress was excellent. And I don't really care about the original all that much.

She's also good in the excellent psychedelic Legion tv series.

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME! - This TV movie from John Carpenter is pretty standard thriller/stalker fare except for one notable exception: Lauren Hutton's performance. She plays a likeable, confident woman who realizes that she's being stalked by a psycho. The thing I found fascinating (and somewhat heartbreaking) was witnessing her become more paranoid and frightened as the harassment escalates. You really feel for her and I can't recall another film of this type with such a unique and realistic characterization.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Everything Everywhere All At Once. This is the longest movie ever made. I didn't actually check the clock, so I can't give you a definitive runtime, but it seemed to run for about 8 or 9 hours. I damned near died watching this fucking film. The worse film since at least Batman versus Superman which puts it well in the running for the title of the worst film ever.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Well it's a full on crap-o-rama at my place as I follow up EEAAO with Moonfall, one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. $150 million budget, $60 million at the box office. Ouch! Emmerich tests his belief that the proles will pay for anything as long as stuff blows up real good with one of the dumbest stories ever committed to film. Your $150 million doesn't buy the effects it used to either. They're pretty ropey. I momentarily felt bad about an independent film losing that much money and then I recalled the absolutely shameless Tesla product placement in this and all of a sudden I wasn't feeling sorry for them at all. Hopefully Musk paid out the nose for this.

Followed it up with Uncharted. This almost looks good next to the two previous movies. Low level Iniana Jones-esque shenanigans are generally paasable. A lot better than any of the Lara Croft movies that tried the same thing. I don't get Tom Holland as a star. He gives you nothing. Here he's blown away by, of all people, Mark Wahlberg who, in my eyes, has always been lucky just to have a job. As soon as the action starts Holland gets replaced with a CGI double who flips around in gravity defying ways so I guess you're not actually watching him that much.

It's tough being a movie watcher at the moment...