This Old Neon Forum

On Friday night, I watched 10 Cloverfield Lane.
It was good for what it was trying to do. Overall, it was a strong concept, well-executed. It had bunker suspense (why are we in here? what happened, if anything?) and John Goodman being creepy. Goodman's character was obviously supposed to be a creep, but he played it really well, with lots of layers and subtlety.

I feel the weaknesses of the film—trying to be vague here to avoid spoilers, so bear with this weird couple of sentences—were that it was somewhat trapped by its own structure. It was paced well, but you knew certain things had to happen at certain times, so when they happened, their impact really depended on which way the writers decided to go with them. I felt that some of the ways the writers went with those moments weren't ideal. But that's subjective, ultimately. So is this number!
6.6/10

Saw Captain America 3.... The First Avenger: Civil War.
Spoiler free feedback... it was good. Actually it was pretty good and kinda impressive.
The cast is large, the time to set up new and old characters is short and it does a very solid job at it. In this regard we're pretty close to the Avengers movie, though it may still be a bit messy for Marvel newcomers (though not as messy as the terrible Xmen Apocalyse trailer placed before this movie).
Also:

Spoiler

Hot Aunt May

Just saw Captain America: Civil War.
It was excellent. It lived up to the hype and the glowing reviews. My main worry was that the central conflict was going to be unconvincing: how do they carry an actual narrative through Avengers fighting with each other? But they did a nice job of navigating the good guys and the bad guys with their various motivations. Everyone seemed to get good screen time.

Kiwi the Tortoise wrote:The cast is large, the time to set up new and old characters is short and it does a very solid job at it.

Yep, I actually thought they did a really good job of this, especially with Black Panther. Instead of trying to give him a whole origin story and explain everything about him right at the start, they managed to let his story and personality unfold as the movie progressed, even without him dominating in screen time. Wakanda was at least setup in Ultron, so he was able to hit the ground running, and now I think more people are going to be excited to see what a Black Panther solo movie looks like.

This is going to be the top movie of the summer for sure.
9.21/10

Edit: Damn, looks like I forgot to rate Star Wars (which I think I at least talked about somewhere in this thread or another one) and Deadpool...

The Big Short

Unfortunately I can't have a full opinion on this movie since I watched it with very loud friends, so I missed a decent amount of the dialogue, but I still enjoyed it. It was presented in a funny way and was paced well. The ending was more gloomy than I expected, but maybe it's what I should have expected considering the content. It's easy to get caught up in the buzz of it all and forget the Big Short involves millions of people losing their jobs and many big corporations getting off relatively free.

Captain America: Civil War

I saw this movie having missed a great deal of its preceding films, but I still had a great time with it. Fun movie, and as others have mentioned handles its absolute swarm of heroes with grace.

Most of all, I was excited to see the return of Spider-Man to the MCU. I have a soft spot for Spidey; he's easily my favorite Marvel hero. I enjoyed his persona in Civil War (although I'll admit I thought a one-liner or two fell pretty flat, particularly that Empire Strikes Back line), and I'm really looking forward to his solo debut into the MCU next summer.

The Shoemaker wrote:It's easy to get caught up in the buzz of it all and forget the Big Short involves millions of people losing their jobs and many big corporations getting off relatively free.

Well, hopefully, that's the takeaway from this: that it's not just a movie, and big corporations/banks were able to screw lots of people with relative impunity.

Claytone wrote:I'll admit I thought a one-liner or two fell pretty flat, particularly that Empire Strikes Back line

The people I see criticize this line (not including you in this—yet) seem to think it's just a clunky line meant to indicate he's a kid. They don't seem to get that Peter is taking a furtive swipe at his new friends. I deliver lines like this to my work friends all the time.

I need to say something about:

Jodorowsky's Dune
Primer
Conan the Barbarian
Special Correspondents
Only Lovers Left Alive

...but I can't write much with this head cold. This'll serve as a reminder to me when I get back.

Kong Wen wrote:

Claytone wrote:I'll admit I thought a one-liner or two fell pretty flat, particularly that Empire Strikes Back line

The people I see criticize this line (not including you in this—yet) seem to think it's just a clunky line meant to indicate he's a kid. They don't seem to get that Peter is taking a furtive swipe at his new friends. I deliver lines like this to my work friends all the time.

Mmm... that's really not the tone I got from the line, and if it's fallen this flat with this many people, I'd say there's a reason for that. It was doubled down on by one of the cast, who immediately asked Tony "how old is this kid?"

Like you, I make jokes of that nature frequently, but with my Dad (eg, if we're watching a football game and they highlight a 40+ year old player, I'll say something like "wow, what a geezer!"). The tone of voice and inflection Parker used in this line really came off to me as a boy who somehow thought Empire Strikes Back was an "old movie" that people *might* be familiar with, not as a way to be sly with his elders. The fact that he didn't really ham up or exaggerate the world "old" is mostly why I feel this way. Rather than sounding like a jab, it sounds legitimately inquisitive.

This is all not to mention that choosing a movie like Star Wars Ep 5 makes about as much sense as choosing say, Goldfinger, another movie from a franchise whose cultural impact is still completely palpable today despite its age.

In any case, not really much of a way to definitively prove it, so I reckon I've said what I'll say on the matter. Shrug.

Claytone wrote:In any case, not really much of a way to definitively prove it, so I reckon I've said what I'll say on the matter. Shrug.

Yep, I disagree on pretty much every point!

As promised:

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013, Documentary)

This documentary successfully accomplished its two main goals: it made me feel sad, wistful, rueful that this weird, psychotic epic will never get made, and it made me pretty damn creeped out by H. R. Giger. Obviously, it was great to have Jodo there to do many of the interviews (over some span of time), although at times I felt like this took away from the documentary nature of the film due to his auteur grandstanding, but I guess you know what you're getting with him. The whole works actually managed to somehow not spoil much of the book, too.

8.98/10

Now You See Me 2

I really liked the first movie, I was sceptical coming into the second because I thought the first movie finished fine on its own. It was a good self contained story that didn't need much more information as the more you explain the magic stuff the more it falls apart. The sequel handled it better than I thought it would, I think. I thought the first half felt a little bit odd considering where we left off in the first movie, but that might be due to where I was expecting the story to go. By the end everything came together and I was a little more satisfied with it.

In general it's a fun movie, lots of cool magic scenes just like the first one, with a bit more goofy comedy this time. It's sort of a sequel that didn't need to happen, but it still works. It's about as good as the first movie, but not quite. If you weren't into the first movie and suspending your disbelief to the magic tricks, this one only goes even further with it.

Finally saw Mad Max Fury Road. it was better than I thought it would be! Just a very engaging movie to watch, can only imagine how long it took to pull off all of those sequences.