Movie Record 2024 Edition - The Bear and Badger

djchump

Madame Webb is just an incoherent nothingburger. At least Morbius was a bit of daft fun. MW just cant handle writing a script around “seeing the future” as a superpower.

Olimite

Dear lord it is truly terrible.

EvilRedEye

This was my review:

Madame Web (2024) - Dakota Johnson is Cassie Web, a woman who, unbeknownst to herself, was born in Peru immediately after her mother took the bite of a special powers-giving spider. After a near-death incident, Cassie develops the ability to see the future. An evil guy who killed Cassie’s mother also has spider-powers and has recurring dreams of being killed by three women. Using implausible technology, he tracks them down but comes across them while they are coincidentally in the presence of Cassie, who attempts to save them.

Where to start? Dakota Johnson gives a wooden, Razzie-worthy performance as Cassie, a character who is also terribly written with awkward, bad dialogue throughout the film. The concept of the film does not work. Watching Cassie’s precognition is boring. She can’t really do anything and doesn’t even understand the context of her own film for a huge part of it. The whole middle section of the film with Cassie and the three girls is just excruciatingly written.

Chunks of the soundtrack are distractingly similar to the Spider-Man game soundtracks. I laughed repeatedly at the climax of the film as the film awkwardly attempted to pay off extremely contrived set-up. There are no themes and no character development other than an attempt to suggest Cassie and the girls have become a team which they already essentially were the entire film as soon as they met. Also, it’s been said before but where did the budget go? Only the villain really has superpowers so there isn’t that much money tangibly on the screen.

All that said, it isn’t the worst film ever - it’s at the top end of one star. ★☆☆☆☆

P.S. I forgot to mention the blatant Pepsi product placement throughout Madame Web. Oh no, I had a near death experience and can’t drink, guess I will have to have an ice-cold Pepsi with the logo perfectly aligned to face the camera at all times!! What’s that, I was having premonitions of a giant old Pepsi Cola sign that turned out to be key to the climax of the plot throughout the whole film?! What a coincidence!!

acemuzzy

Also Dune 2, glad Cos has beaten me to the "I think I preferred the first one" chat which seemed to run against the grain of what I'd heard from everyone else.

Still a good watch, builds nicely, great list 45 mins, and production quality up the wazoo. But yeah I think the first one has the novelty value of the world / worms / voice etc.

Enjoyed Javier as ever, agree with most of what cos wrote on the last page, will very happily watch Part 3. My DV Top 3 remains unchanged.

ShabbyMcCrabby

I know I shouldn't be surprised by the effort that went into just one sequence but considering how most other movies would be saying "yeah we just shot a couple of things on green screen and CG'd the rest" it's very impressive. Don't have a sand dune that faces the right way for the lighting you want? Well I guess you just make one then.

Even just the fact they used a helicopter with a long lens to fly by for the wide shot of him riding the worm making it look like he was travelling fast. Like of course you do.

acemuzzy

Circle is not a good movie

(Not too be confused by The Circle which wasn't great either but was at least better than this.)

Gremill

14. Goodfellas
I mean, what can you say that hasn't been said already? An absolute stone cold classic and maybe the best mafia film ever made. Watched it with my eldest son, who really liked it, and it was interesting to see his reaction to the style of film making - his generation don't seem used to slower pace with denser plotting. I'm sure, like I did, he'll appreciate it more on repeat views. It's an amazing piece of film making, with everyone firing on all cylinders and Ray Liotta never better. 10

b0r1s

Yep it’s a banger. I recall when I watched Casino that I questioned whether it was better than Goodfellas but after watching both again last year I realise it’s nowhere near. Probably an 8.

nick_md

Goodfellas hands down best mafia film for me, it's just such a more enjoyable ride than the godfathers.

Casino is fine, I'd go an 8 also, but Goodfellas is a masterpiece.

Olimite

Road House

Delightfully terrible. McGregor is glorious(ly bad).

acemuzzy

Tremors (OG)

Obviously pretty shit. But still mildly entertaining.

Spoiler:

Moot_Geeza

There might be a queue. It's obviously not as good as other films you don't rate, such as The Thing, but mildly entertaining is harsh.

b0r1s

It’s a great silly film and I love it. Another hot take from Muzzy.

acemuzzy

Siigh. At least you lot are predictable in your enjoyment of shit movies.

hylian_elf

What. The. Fuck.

Wookienopants

Can we ban him now?

Wookienopants

Tremors is excellent. It's perfect B Movie trash. It knows what it is and does THAT very well.

Paul the sparky

Class film, Tremors. Fun as fuck

b0r1s

I think at this point he must just be trolling.

hylian_elf

No, he really is an absolute moron. I thought we all always knew this.

tin_robot

acemuzzy wrote:

Tremors (OG)

Obviously pretty shit. But still mildly entertaining.

Spoiler:

Now waiting for Wookie to tell me it's "the best movie ever" or some bollocks

I would genuinely say it’s the greatest B-movie ever.

ShabbyMcCrabby

17. Dark Harvest
Usually David Slade makes good things. This was complete and utter garbage. It's making me real sick of all the shite that gets made for streaming platforms. There's so many elements in this that scream that streaming, quick turn around, low effort filmmaking. The fact that you can see the big floodlights in so many shots, or if you can't it's really obvious where they are and it makes no sense and doesn't look real. Seems they didn't have time to figure out how to film the monster well and so it just is shot the same boring way everytime even though the design is pretty cool. There's multiple instances of terrible editing but the main one was the people in the little bunker that the heroes try and get into, the way it plays out doesn't make any sense and the door just gets unlocked by someone who doesn't seem to have a key. Just lazy shite. I hated it. No idea why I finished it.
[1]

18. Saltburn
Weird how when someone makes a movie that hates men it seems that everything else they do gets scrutinised as soon as it gets released. Means I went into this knowing how it was going to play out because everyone just HAD to talk about it in detail. I don't know if not knowing would have helped any anyway seeing as it's a bit of a mess. The rich characters don't have any real character so there's no connection to them. Shifty Barry is doing a weird accent and changes what he's like from scene to scene. And it's just too damn long.
[4]

19. Argylle
This was a fun one until it went too long and kind of ruined it's own premise. But that first hour is great and shows how good Sam Rockwell can be when given centre stage. It also just looked like shit at times. Again, it's that quick and no care streaming platform filmmaking, "let's just do it in post!". Except it then looks proper terrible and it takes you out of the movie.
[5]

20. Dune: Part 2 Again
I'd booked in to see the IMAX film version (the only print in the Southern Hemisphere is here in Melbourne) and the demand was so high I could only get acceptable seats a few weeks after release. It was good seeing it again, it was just as watchable although it is still a bit too long. Interesting to see the film version too, kind of like comparing vinyl to CD/mp3. It might not be the perfect image but the slight softness and darker image makes it feel more filmic I think. Interesting to read they printed the film to film stock and then scanned it back in when doing the original colour grade to give it that filmic look in the first place.
[8]

21. Love Lies Bleeding
I was so keen for a new Rose Glass movie. This one shows she has a knack for visceral imagery with a few sequences making me squirm a bit. I think with this one she might have just been telling a few too many stories in one, I think cutting it down to one of those ideas would have tightened it up. I can name 3 movies I was thinking of as I was watching it and it doesn't quite hit the heights of those. Still a good watch though and I'm keen to see what she does next.
[7]

Cos

I hadn’t heard of Dark Harvest but I love reading a good tear down.

acemuzzy

So if a movie is good at being not good does that it good or not good? Maybe I just wasn't in the mood...

Dark Soldier

acemuzzy wrote:

Tremors (OG)

Obviously pretty shit. But still mildly entertaining.

Spoiler:

Now waiting for Wookie to tell me it's "the best movie ever" or some bollocks

Fuck off

RedDave2

What do you think it did wrong out of curiosity or was it just the overall concept or tone that didn't grab (pun intended)

I think it's a tremendous film, the way it builds the concept and seeds and payoffs the key moments. It's not high class cinema but if more movies had the care put into them that tremors had I think cinema would be in a much better place.

Wookienopants

Plus it's not a 3 hour butt numbing slog like so many movies nowadays.
It's just fun

Moot_Geeza

I reckon Muzzy's working from a spreadsheet titled 'how can I make the forum forget that time Cos gave Once Upon a Time in America 3/10'. Next up: The Princess Bride.

b0r1s

acemuzzy wrote:

So if a movie is good at being not good does that it good or not good? Maybe I just wasn't in the mood...

It's not good at not being good, it's just good.

EvilRedEye

I think so-bad-it’s good films can have aspects that are outright good. Like The Room is bad but the reason it has cult status is because it actually has good pacing - each thing that happens is hilariously bad but the film briskly moves from one thing to the next and is never boring. If you’re talking about a film positively at all then it must be doing something right.

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