Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh good lordy lord. Is that a student film? He should learn to deliver lines before taking on a patois

Just watched Parasite last night. What a great film, you can see why it got a lot of awards.

I am 100% certain that this will end well for Peter Andre, with no chance at all of any negative reactions or bad publicity.

I'm sure you're right, I've always thought that there's a fellow who makes consistently excellent decisions.

A prefect record in life. Never had to pay the Price for bad decisions

I see what you did there.

Spelled "perfect" wrong is what I did

Mother of the Bride is a Netflix rom-com type of film that Lady T and her sister chose to watch yesterday evening. I was expecting to really hate it and was totally planning to fall asleep quite quickly, and even missed the first few minutes as I decided to go and put a load of laundry into the washing machine instead.

Once I'd settled in I didn't fall asleep at all, perhaps because I was sat in a different spot on the sofa to usual and was therefore a little uncomfortable, or perhaps because somehow, despite being a bit shit really, it turns out that I enjoyed the film.

It all seemed a bit rushed and half baked, Brooke Shields is a bad actress in this, it was entirely predictable to the point of many cliches, with uneven and awkward dialogue in many places, and the overall premise was a bit off (and it got terrible reviews) but I just found myself enjoying it as an uncomplicated and simple film that required nothing from me other than not getting annoyed or hung up on any detail (at all). The cast and the scenery were all in general rather easy on the eye.

Thunderbolts* I wasn't sure about it at first, but the camera lingers on Florence Pugh and she elevates every scene she's in (beyond just this, I'm sure). There's a metaphor to the badguy that you can see from space, but it works well enough, and I enjoyed it and the two post-credits.

Warfare is ducking intense. An incredible movie, but it’s a tough ride.

Alex Garland just doesn’t miss.

Yep, a nice 4/5 film.

Really looking forward to now.

Lady T was really keen to watch The Six Triple-Eight.

It was a good film, stirring and with a fair bit of drama. I really enjoyed it and am glad we watched it.

At times I did feel emotion swelling, and yet I didn't feel it was overly heavy handed given the subject matter. The end did seem a bit rushed and I would have liked a bit more time spent on how they solved the problems and achieved their mission as that aspect seemed to not be given all that much screen time.

I saw this also and it was everything I hoped it would be. Because it was real time and based on real events I had zero ideas what would be happening next.

One of those where watching at the cinema is a huge part of the experience, no phone to escape to and the sound kicks you in the stomach pretty much solidly for 2/3 of the runtime.

Yeah, it definitely wouldn't hit the same on anything but the best home theatre system.

I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like in IMAX.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr7e2z1rxyo

Maga Movies for Maga people

It's crazy and completely unworkable unless you are only going to make films set entirely in the USA.

This two sections are particularly chilling. Calling foreign-made films propaganda whilst also saying that their existence is a National Security threat is quite Kim Jong Trump.

He’s also demanded that Alcatraz be reopened as prison, even though there is plenty of capacity in existing jails, and it closed because it cost three times as much as somewhere on the mainland.

I unplugged my brain last week and had a bit of a Statham-fest.

20 - A Working Man. By-the-numbers modern Statham. He's a regular guy with a regular job. People he likes are attacked. He breaks out his special skills and kills everybody. It was good though. Essentially the same film as The Beekeeper but just a lot better in every respect. 4/5

21 - Wrath of Man. Makes you think it'll be by-the-numbers modern Statham but he's a bit of an anti-hero. Really enjoyed it. Guy Ritchie directed it apparently. 4/5

22 - Crank. I've always loved Crank. It's Statham's best work. 4.5/5

23 - Crank: High Voltage. Not as good but still a lot of fun. I think it tries a bit too hard and the camera work makes it look cheaper than it is. 3.5/5

Crank is as brilliantly stupid as a Jason Statham film should be, but I think The Meg is his finest work.

I watched that Novacaine which I thought was a like a modern Crank. It was pretty middle of the road but quite enjoyable.

oh no! I hated The Meg so much. I actually saw it in the cinema and couldn't believe that a film about giant sharks had zero blood in it. The follow up had the misfortune of trying to convince the audience that you could walk along the ocean floor if you broke your nose first. Of course this was in the same year that that submarine with the billionaires in it got squished. The Meg 2 was particularly awful.

I had the worst run of going to the cinema.

The Predator, The Meg, Terminator Dark Fate.

I rarely go the cinema because of how insanely loud it is (fun fact: I got actual Tinnitus from that shitty third Matrix film. Well that combined with a fireworks display on the same night). I left it a few years after that run and then ended up seeing Alien Romulus in the cinema. The run was only broken by seeing some animated Transformers film which wasn't as terrible as any of those films but isn't something I'll ever watch again.

EDIT: that said, I would consider seeing the new Final Destination in the cinema because that series rules. But I probably will just download it instead.

I loved The Meg! Wasn’t keen on Meg 2, but the first one was gloriously stupid.

I don’t remember there being no blood, but isn’t that similar to Jurassic Park in that sense? I don’t mind it because it’s so daft.

The last two films I saw in the cinema were Little Women, and before that ‘Joy’, a film about a woman who invents a new type of mop head, and that was a special cinema for people with babies under 12 months old.

TBH I can't remember much about it. I just remember thinking how safe it all was. I thought the combination of Statham and sharks was going to be amazing. That said, I'm not sure I've ever truly enjoyed a shark movie. I wasn't even a big Jaws guy back in the day (although I can enjoy it if it shows up on TV now).

I think there was one that was set in a supermarket (literally a shark trapped in a supermarket) that was okay. Might have been called Bait.

That sounds incredible

Have you seen Sharknado?

I've seen bits of some of them but not one all the way through. I think they're probably a bit of a stretch even for me and I love low budget nonsense!

I thought Dark Fate was somewhere between "okay" and "good".

I watched the first one and didn’t think it wry good, but the other day Russell was bemoaning the fact that we hadn’t watched all eighty of them.

Yeah it was alright

An unaltered T-800 started selling curtains and learned to change nappies in a sexless marriage. That actually happened in Dark Fate. Man, fuck that film.

And Sarah Connor looked like Katie Hopkins.

I did rate the Grace character though. She was alright.

I remember enjoying Dark Fate, but it's not one I desire to watch again. Much better than the previous one though, Genysis. That was bad

You know what, I've just read the plot outline to Genysis and I don't remember it all All I remember is it was bad

If Spike Milligan was still alive I'd have put money on him writing that script. He has history on this sort of thing.

It was awful. It started off okay. A beat for beat remake of the opening of the original Terminator which then pivots when an asian cop T1000 shows up. At that point it was looking good. But then Amelia Clarke shows up as the worst Sarah Connor possible. The T800 is called 'Pops'. And there's some mad robo-John Connor running about. It was just such a big mess. And so boring.

The last good one was T3. That's underrated and has aged pretty well considering what's followed.

The Surfer. Gosh.

(I think I'd recommend it. If you've enjoyed Nicholas Cage before, anyway. There's a lot of him here.)

I love Nicholas Cage and haven't heard of this film. I'll definitely check it out.

Went to see it last night and agreed.

The sound design really added to the intensity of it.

We went to see the Minecraft Movie (for mother's day, happy Mother's Day Lady T!) and it wasn't cringe, not like I was expecting, not at all. It also wasn't much good either.

It looked pretty good, there were plenty of callbacks and meme references and in-jokes, and I enjoyed the vice acting for the main pig-witch-lady baddy..... but..... the story was kinda boring and I didn't care all that much for what was going on, and I don't really like Jason Momoa's performance in it, and so much of it was just really forgettable. It also seemed really quite rushed.

Lady T fell asleep during it, but had the wherewithal to commit a tiny portion to memory so she could give a proper response when the kids asked 'so, mum, what was your favourite bit of the film?'

My favourite bit was that Jason Momoa was driving a red Pontiac Firebird, I still think they are cool cars.

24 - Screamboat. The latest old IP to get defiled thanks to expired copyrights. It's kind of fun though as stars David Howard Thornton as Steamboat Willy as he goes on a murderous but cheery rampage on the Staten Island ferry. Lots of good practical effects and some bad CGI (because he's meant to be very small in it). 3/5

The Accountant 2 has Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal fucking shit up in a very entertaining fashion.

25 - Ash. Sci-fi horror thing. Woman wakes up on a base on an alien planet and all her colleagues are dead. The lead is an absolutely 10p Gal Gadot and just as wooden. Aaron Paul is in it though and he does okay. Some alright effects work and some bad examples too. The timeline jumped around a bit too much for my liking. I rate these things on how much I like them, not how well made they are so 3/5. But that's probably generous.


I very much want to see the new Final Destination film but I'm done with the cinema. I expect it to be absolutely fantastic.

I watched Mission Impossible : The final Reckoning in IMAX yesterday. It's a feast of nonsensical exposition followed by two standout sequences. I'm glad I saw it on the massive screen but for home viewing I'm going to just fast forward the first hour.

It feels like they asked ChatGPT to summarise everything so far and just used that as the script to tack on to the front of the film.

Baggy, but still worth a watch.

Baggy, Trousers?

Very much so, compete madness

And to go one step beyond, the cinema we saw it in was like an oven.
Chocolates in the bottom of Helen’s bag had completely melted into a puddle.

That was a long three hours

Please Hollywood stop trying to have tightly-interwoven franchises with pointless call-backs and just do standalone adventures. I'm looking at you in particular, Bond.

I'm looking forward to watching Wes Anderson's latest this weekend, The Phoenician Scheme. I'm not expecting greatness, I'll be happy with a fun caper movie in the old tradition. I'm also not looking for Wes Anderson to break away from his Wes-Andersoning. To do so would be a bit like hoping that Hitchcock doesn't do another movie about a blonde, a MacGuffin and a man on the run with a bad case of mistaken identity when he really excels at repeating that sort of thing. And although I didn't like The French Dispatch overly much, I utterly loved Asteroid City on second viewing and view it his best work, so I don't really think he's repeating himself. Anyway, thoughts after I've seen it.

I liked MI4000 because I completely switched my brain off beforehand.

One to see in the cinema for sure. The plane bits were insane.

I watched The Fountain of Youth on Friday evening on Apple TV+
Don’t bother. Poorly scripted, poorly shot and rubbish editing. Even the cast appear to know they’re in a stinker and are either angry about it or not bothering
Everybody looked like they were phoning it in for the money