Last movie watched...

[Buttonman]

Went to see Logan last night and have to join the chorus of approval. Pared right back but in a good way. Few nods to the comics, costumes and sideboards and a breathy pace with plenty of gruesome deaths.

[spoiler]The idea of Eden wasn't really explained - did they build the meet up point on the coordinates suggested by the comic or was the comic writer in on the deal? Seemed a bit opportune they just stumbled across it. Guess the phone sat-nav in ten years will be better than today's! Also though Stephen Merchant was a bit miscast and distracting but loved the bad Wolverine X-24 who was out the box mental.[/spoiler]

Great stuff and a fitting climax.

[JOE SOAP]

Great stuff and a fitting climax.

You or the film?

[Rara Avis]

I also saw John Wick 2 and I was a tad disappointed. As an action movie it was awesome but there were so many holes in the plot ..

[CalHab]

Finally sat down and watched Dead Man, Jim Jarmusch's 1995 western, not an adaptation of the Wagner/Ridgway classic. There's a stellar cast, most of whom only appear for one scene, including John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne, Robert Mitchum (!!!), Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop and various others. Johnny Depp is impressive as the titular anti-hero. Watching this, I started to realise how influential this film has been on modern takes on the western such as Slow West and the Coen's True Grit. Well worth a view, and up there with Ghost Dog as my favourite of Jarmusch's work.

My wife (not normally a fan of westerns) was impressed by the sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of First Nations peoples, and there's a fascinating scene set in a Salish (I think) village at the end.

[Theblazeuk]

I watched Swiss Army Man on a plane. What a strange, strange movie.

[CalHab]

I forgot to mention the excellent Neil Young soundtrack for Dead Man. It's worth watching (listening?) for that alone.

[Tiplodocus]

BIRDMAN - Great fun performance from Keaton and some tricksy "one-shot" stuff but, despite some good laughs, it was all a bit slight really.

THE NICE GUYS - Cracking stuff. Shane Black knows how to balance action and comedy and also how to do violence funny and ugh!

LIFE OF CRIME  - An Elmore Leonard thing with an out-of-her-comfort-zone Jennifer Aniston. Full of the expected low-lifes, criminals whose competence does not match their ambition, betrayals and switches.  And generally quite fun.

WHIPLASH - Only caught the second half of this but that was intense and abusive enough. FULL METAL JACKET meets GLEE. Great idea.

LA LA LAND.   More like SHIT SHIT LAND.  And I actually preferred John legend's stuff to Ryan Goslings. Does that make me a bad person?

The last two don't exactly give you much hope of pursuing a career in the performing arts and having a social/love life.

[Mardroid]

Night of the Living Deb.

I hadn't even heard about this pun-tastic RomZomCom before I encountered it on the Horror Channel a couple of nights ago.

I didn't like it very much although it had its amusing moments. Other parts that were probably supposed to be funny, I found irritating. I think maybe someone wanted to capture the gold of the equally pun-tastic Shawn of the Dead, but I think they failed.

[spoiler][And the declaration of love speech during the broadcast at the end was cornier than a cornfield, full of bioengineered triple yield corn after harvest that was cooked up, slathered in butter and dipped in corn-flour.

Yeah I'm a bit rubbish with my similes.[/spoiler]

The main character was cute and quirky though.

[radiator]

Moonlight
Predictably great. Soulful, raw, mature, affecting and with some of the best performances I've seen in a long time. Had no idea Naomie Harris and Janelle Monae (whose music I love) were in this! I appreciated how certain things were left ambiguous and how the film trusted the viewer to be able to join the dots themselves. I was genuinely gutted when each 'act' ended as I thought it was just getting going.
5/5

Captain Fantastic
Blew me away, loved everything about it. Funny, beautifully shot, heartfelt with an amazing cast. Already looking forward to watching it again. Had no idea that it was filmed around where I live until we were watching it, so that was a nice surprise. Your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for quirky indie road movies like Little Miss Sunshine (which I personally like), though I think this film has a fresh energy about it and mostly avoids the usual cliches of the genre.
5/5

The Edge of Seventeen
Massively overrated. I've heard many critics compare this movie to the work of John Hughes, which is just laughable to me. It's bland, predictable, tiresomely cliched ('being a teenager is so hard!' - give me a break) and what comedy there is is desperately contrived. I think they're trying to angle the lead character as a sort of snarky, witty precocious antihero type, but the limp, unsophisticated and unfunny script just isn't up to the task. Astonished that this has an RT rating in the high 90s - it's disposable pap at best. Avoid like the plague.
1/5

[Spikes]

Doomwatch is an odd little movie, and I can't help but feel I woukd apprciate it a little more if i'd ever seen the TV series this spin's off of. It feels polished, and has some solid shocks but ultimately feels like an overly long TV movie.

I DO find the core concept of a dusaster squad come strange happening investigation set up very promising, mind.

Doomwatch is a grand little movie, and one that comes from a time when TV series would often get a cinematic release.
And it's odd in the sense that the cast from the TV series only appear in what amounts to an extended cameo, and that's it for them. The main character in the film - played by Ian Bannen - never featured in the series.

Last year a boxset for the surviving TV episodes was released. As with so many TV programmes from that period, a good few were wiped and are lost forever. But still well worth tracking down.

[Radbacker]

Kong - Skull Island, well that was a different Kong movie, not bad, nice design and the whole Apocalypse Now vibe was pretty well done.  He's biggest kong seen yet and still a growing lad so he should be able to measure up to Godzilla by the time they get around to meeting.
Got to say for a big CGI fight fest at the end I quite enjoyed it.  Inevitable links with the Godzila universe were fun but not too in your face except the end credit sting, oh well if your going to have a shared universe you could do worse than one thats going to inclufde Godzilla, Kong and [spoiler]thats definitely Monthra in the sting[/spoiler]

3.5 out of 5 from me.

CU Radbcker

[TordelBack]

Lego Batman. Ah to have lived so long that I got to see the best of all possible Batmen fight Sauron, the Kraken and the Daleks British Robots. Young me would never believe old me if I were to tell him. An ambitious, committed and greatly enjoyable film. PEW! PEW! PEW!

( Although there is something rather unsettling about having Ralph Fiennes in the cast, but Eddie Izzard is playing Voldemort..)

[dweezil2]

As expected Kong: Skull Island was ultimately forgettable with characters spouting exposition being rarely an enjoyable experience, making the film feel mechanical, also there were some glaring contrivances getting the characters to do what the plot needed them to do.
The action sequences were well staged, but there were distinct feelings of deja vu during them.

However, in its favour, the film did have an appealing visual style and a superb use of songs on the soundtrack, so full marks to the music consultants.
The 70's setting also allowed the filmmakers some interesting artistic flourishes-including the well documented allusions to Apocalypse Now.

John C. Reily was good value with a character that managed some genuine poignancy, making him a nice contrast to Tom Hiddleston's bland and frankly unconvincing protagonist.
It was certainly a vast improvement over the insipid Jurassic World and risible Godzilla.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Double bill last night

Suicide Squad. Better than I expected

Passengers. Jeezo, Chris Pratt's character was so stalky it was off-putting. Didn't finish watching him groom his victim.

[Steve Green]

The original ending to Passengers is even stranger.

[spoiler]All the passengers are jettisoned in a malfunction, so the two leads use DNA samples to repopulate the ship from the now dead donors[/spoiler]