Haven't even seen the first

Copperfield is magic.

Now you don't.

Finished off the sci-fi anime Godzilla trilogy with Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018). Unexpectedly, a death cult betrays humanity by summoning the omnicidal monster Ghidorah to Earth. With even the mighty Godzilla floundering in the face of Ghidorah’s power, how will humanity prevail?

While this is still an adequate romp, I think these films got progressively worse as they went on. In this one, Ghidorah is so overwhelmingly powerful that it is basically an entirely fantastical creature. So not only does the social commentary, which by the end of the second film was already hanging on by a thread, pretty much entirely disappear, but the sci-fi element i.e. this trilogy’s entire reason for existing, goes out the window as well. The human characters do very little in this and spend most of the film just reacting to things. On a positive note though, the ending is genuinely quite interesting and pulls things back.

First film was a low four stars for me, second film was a high three stars. This one was a low-to-mid three stars.

Like I said with the others, these films are interconnected enough that it isn’t worth bothering with any unless you’re going to commit to all three. Overall, the trilogy was OK. If you just want some rompy Godzilla sci-fi anime fun then you’ll be fine. If you watch these hoping for something on a par with Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One then you’ll be disappointed.

Wheelman on Netflix is pretty good. The whole film is basically set in a car and it's a little bit B movie in all the right ways.

Ritchie does Inglorious Basterds? Oh go on then.

Good guy, good guy, wank...

Just watched King Kong (1933). I honestly think it’s a real triumph of filmmaking - only five years after the first full-sound film and three years after Hollywood phased out silent film, you have this - a film that’s as spectacular a special effects fest as anything you’d see today, just rendered with the techniques they had at the time instead of CGI. Kong and the dinosaurs are dynamic and they interact convincingly with their environments and the human characters. Kong is a fantastic villain - he fucks up dinosaurs, throws half a ship’s crew to their brutal deaths in a ravine, tears people’s heads off and even derails a subway car and murders its passengers just to be a dick. It’s weirdly engaging for such an old film - perhaps because there was no formula for special effects films at the time so no way for it to feel formulaic or tropey. Well worth a watch - it’s aged much better than I thought it would. ★★★★★

Missed All Of Us Strangers on Wednesday cos had to take mum to hospital. Today, the cinema had technical fault so was closed and I got a refund. No idea if it’s still snowing next week. 

Took me 3 attempts recently to see a movie in the cinema.

FML.

EvilRedEye wrote:

Just watched King Kong (1933). I honestly think it’s a real triumph of filmmaking - only five years after the first full-sound film and three years after Hollywood phased out silent film, you have this - a film that’s as spectacular a special effects fest as anything you’d see today, just rendered with the techniques they had at the time instead of CGI. Kong and the dinosaurs are dynamic and they interact convincingly with their environments and the human characters. Kong is a fantastic villain - he fucks up dinosaurs, throws half a ship’s crew to their brutal deaths in a ravine, tears people’s heads off and even derails a subway car and murders its passengers just to be a dick. It’s weirdly engaging for such an old film - perhaps because there was no formula for special effects films at the time so no way for it to feel formulaic or tropey. Well worth a watch - it’s aged much better than I thought it would. ★★★★★

Watched it a year or so ago. Its.a superb film. Imagine seeing it in the cinema back then. Its influenced so many tropes too.

Watched No Hard Feelings with Jennifer Lawrence, what a terrible movie, going for an adult comedy, and was so flat and dull.

Worst part being:

Mathew Broderick plays the Dad of the young boy being seduced by Jennifer, just watch Ferris Bueller instead, trust me.

Yup, spoiler bit sounds absolutely terrible. I'll add it to my watchlist.

Still, it has a role for Prince Achileas-Andreas of Greece and Denmark, so there's that.

Just watched The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953). In terms of production, this is a bit like King Kong: The Next Generation - the effects on this film were done by Ray Harryhausen in his first job as lead effects person. Harryhausen was the protege of Willis H. O'Brien, the special effects pioneer who created the effects for King Kong.

Following a nuclear test in the Arctic, a dinosaur is unleashed alive from its tomb of ice. Causing a trail of destruction down the east coast of Canada and America, the dinosaur eventually terrorises New York City in the climactic scenes. The plot of the film notably foreshadows that of the legendary Godzilla, released 18 months later.

It has to be said that, despite being released over 20 years later, this feels more of an incremental rather than generational step forward from King Kong. The effects are slightly more fluid and feel more in keeping with the frame rate of the live action, and there is a sequence where the dinosaur shares a shot with a blazing inferno, which was presumably technically difficult to produce. But the effects shots feel more sparse than King Kong and the interface between the animation and live action doesn’t feel as strong - there are lots of shots of the live action characters reacting to the dinosaur in complete separate shots instead of the frequent hybrid sequences that King Kong had.

The plot is also more of a generic yarn than King Kong with fewer ideas and less emotional intensity. The cast are good though and the love interest, Lee Hunter, has lots of striking high-contrast outfits that look great in black-and-white.

In 2024, this has the luxury of being able to coast along on its 1950s charm. I’m not sure I would have been overly impressed with it had I watched it at release. ★★★★☆

Watched The Marvels (2023). Slightly worried I’m going to be ridiculed… for thinking this was… OK, actually? It’s pretty fun, the narrative is reasonably coherent despite the conceit of the characters constantly switching places and it had some perfectly cromulent emotional beats and ending.

Some pretty major caveats - I think this does kinda require the audience to be reasonably up-to-date with their Marvel stuff, to its detriment as a standalone film (at one point a character from a different Marvel story thread randomly shows up with literally no context provided for the casual viewer, which I think is indicative of where these things have ended up). And I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever about not seeing this in the cinema.

But it’s nowhere near the worst MCU project, nor the most deserving of bombing at the box office - it’s at the lower end of good, for me. I think the people who were saying they planned on watching it in the superhero thread will get what they wanted from it. They need to cut down on the required reading though - it’s not surprising a lot of people found this a hard sell given you genuinely need to watch a bunch of other stuff first to get the most out of it. ★★★★☆