I avoided all reviews of the movie. So my expectation of the movies is very low. I knew most of Queen's hit songs, but I would not call myself a fan of the band. I also knew next to nothing about the history of the band. I knew that Freddie Mercury was a Persian from India, but I never looked at his etnicity as anything more than a trival fact. The racial aspect of the movie was new to me, especailly his family and Freddie's character looked very "Indian" in the beginning of the movie. Of course, I was aware that he is gay. Is it a good movie? It is a formula movie, but all movies are formula movie in the modern days. I do not know enough about the history of the band to critize the accuracy of the plot. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. Why I post about this here? I just read someone critizing that Rami Malek was lip syncing Freddie Mercury's songs in the movie. Come on. Fredde Mercury is one of history's greatest pop singers. Can you find an actor who can sing as well as Freddie? Or I should say close enough to match the fans' expectation. This is about Freddie's legacy. If they found a good singer who could not act, it would be an insult to Freddie Mercury. This movie is about his life as a human. Val Kilmer did a great job with Jim Morrison..... his singing was perfect. I do believe Freddie Mercury's singing is above Jim Morrison in terms of singing. I know who Jim Morrison is.... I knew why his fans love him.... his singing is not the only thng, but as a lead vocal, singing is still something. Vince Neil once said that he was irreplaceable for Moltley Crue because his voice was liked a "trade mark". Van Halen is a different band from David Lee Roth to Sammy Halger. What I am saying? It is actually sad for Jim Morrison that Val Kilmer easily "replaced" him.
I haven't seen the movie, but Mike Myers' appearance as a record company executive reluctant to record "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a pretty damn brilliant idea.
Just saw this and thought it was pretty good. You're right, not as good as either of the Raid movies, but hold its own. The fight scene b/w the Lotus girls was amazing.
Ruin Me (2017) Dir. Preston DeFrancis Alex gets dragged along by her boyfriend Nathan to a so-called "Slasher Sleepout". The idea is for horror movie enthusiasts to be put through a weekend of thrills by paying the company in question to scare the crap out of them slasher movie style. She is the only one of the participants that weekend who seems to lack a deep knowledge or affinity for the genre. The other members of their small group are a goth couple who have done these weekends before, a genre nerd who cannot stop quoting horror movies and a quiet man whom the rest of the group immediately tries to figure out. After a first day of solving clues and getting a few jump scares in the process, they arrive at their camp for the night. There, the nature of their experience takes such a turn that all of them wonder if they are still in a safe artificial horror environment or if they are being stalked by people who truly mean them harm. The basic idea of this isn't bad, but the last twenty minutes so badly ruins everything that it went from a half-decent genre exercise to a preposterous mess. Marcienne Dwyer is an good final girl. I also liked the supporting work of Eva Hamilton (something of a deconstruction of the mean girl horror trope) and Chris Hill (a completely straight version of the nerdy horror geek trope).
Overlord (2018) Dir. Julius Avery One the eve of D-Day, a unit from the 101st Airborne is to parachute into France, along with many thousands of their peers. Their objective is to destroy a radio jamming tower within a small French village. Unfortunately their unit is decimated when their plane is destroyed in midair and then the surviving members are picked off by German troops once they hit the ground. In the end, only four men survive, their de facto new commanding officer, a Corporal, insisting that they still try to complete their objective. When they successfully get to the town, they meet a young woman who informs them that the Germans have turned the old Church into some sort of laboratory in which they conduct strange and cruel experiments on the towns people. In spite of terrible odds against them, they decide to expand their original mission to also destroy said lab. Unfortunately they might be biting off more than they can chew in the process. This was a lot of fun. It's precisely the kind of high-grade nonsense that is directly in my wheel house. The closest equivalents I can think of for this are not movies but rather video games: the CoD zombie mode as well as the recent Wolfenstein reboot. Both in terms of themes and tone. Jovan Adepo is a fine lead but I especially enjoyed the supporting cast: Mathilde Ollivier as the Frenchwoman, Iain De Caestecker as the artistic soul among the soldiers, Pilou Asbaek as the stereotypical German villain and John Magaro as the wise-cracking Italian-American soldier. Do not go into this movie expecting any sort of realism. There are some visually pleasing segments in there as well. The shot of the soldiers walking through the red-light drenched forest with some of their comrades hanging from trees was very well done. Oh, there were some rumors that this was supposed to be another entry into the "Cloverfield" franchise, but if there were tie-ins or references to J.J. Abrams monster movie series, I certainly missed them.
I also saw it last night and enjoyed it a lot. I got into a bit of a friendly debate about the way the movie ignores how the Army was segregated during WWII-- there are black officers and soldiers in the 101st Airborne when in fact there were not. On the one hand, this is obviously a fantastical, silly, zombie B-movie so why should the revisionism of having an integrated military matter at all? On the other hand, tons of people learn most of what they know about WWII from movies, and there's a risk that people will come away not understanding the degree to which Jim Crow still dominated the USA at that time. I think I'm more in the first camp. I think it's an interesting debate about what the different standards for historical accuracy in movies are/ought to be.
I didn't care about the 101st Airborne being integrated. I always find stuff like that a weird hang-up in things like this. I think your point matters more in movies that aspire to historical accuracy. "Overlord" definitely does not fall in that category. Complaints about the presence of African-American soldiers actually remind me most of the people who complain about playable female soldiers in "Battlefield V". If that is the one thing that you single out in a piece of art that is totally unrealistic to begin with, the problem is not the inclusivity. You have reminded me of another supporting player I enjoyed though: Bokeem Woodbine as the Sergeant.
First man An unconventional biopic and imho vastly superior to Apollo 13 (of 1995) that turned space vehicles into seamless Apple devices (well, until the 'problem' started). Not every stylistic choice will be liked and the editing can be suggestive (I actually don't agree with this review, but agree with the parts on the montaging and editing). The movie starts with exploring Armstrong his personality and background (I already knew a few bits about this) but then it departs from that focus. In the end I was not sure what the director really wanted to tell us. What are the themes of the movie? The final scene suggests there are none.
Hour of the Gun (1967) Dir. John Sturges A confrontation with the Clanton gang at the O.K. Corral leads to a gunfight in which the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday kill three men. Ike Clanton tries to use bribes and threats to get the brothers and Holliday convicted for murder in a court of law, but this fails. Instead, he tries to murder the Earps, succeeding in injuring Virgil and killing Morgan. After this, Wyatt Earp forms a posse with Doc Holliday and some other men to track down and either apprehend or kill the men responsible. The story is familiar thanks to the many adaptations of the same narrative. This is still a well-made film in its own right with a great cast, including James Garner as Wyatt Earp, Jason Robards as Doc Holiday and Robert Ryan as Ike Clanton. A young Jon Voight plays Curly Bill Brocius. The dynamic between Wyatt and Doc is a bit different here than in "Tombstone", with Robards' Doc almost acting like Wyatt's conscience throughout the film.
xXx: The Return of Xander Cage (2017) Dir. D.J. Caruso The long presumed dead Xander Cage is recruited back into the Triple X program after his former mentor Gibbons is killed in the middle of recruiting a new asset. The means of assassination was a satellite which was crashed into his location remotely using a device called Pandora's Box. The NSA successfully retrieves this device only for it to be stolen by a quartet of highly skilled individuals who disappear like ghosts in the aftermath of the theft. Xander Cage's mission is to track these people down and retrieve Pandora's Box. To that end, he recruits a new team around him. This was fairly entertaining dumb fun in the "Fast & Furious" mold. It does fall short a bit for me held up against the charm of the original film in this franchise. I think the main problem is the character of Xander Cage. He is basically id personified, a man fueled by bravado and hubris, which looks better on a 35 year old man (Vin Diesel's age for the original film) than a 50 year old man (his age now). This is made up for somewhat with an excellent supporting cast which includes Donnie Chen (terrific as always), Deepika Padukone (fierce), Rory McCann (amusing), Sam Jackson (Sam Jackson) and Toni Collette. Ruby Rose is in it too and my one issue with her presence is that she has now essentially played this same character in like 5 movies. I know that Jack Nicholson played Jack Nicholson for the entire second part of his career, but at 32, Ruby Rose seems a bit young to ease into such a role.
The Death of Stalin (2017) Dir. Armando Iannucci In the aftermath of Joseph Stalin's death, the other members of the Central Committee scramble to assert their dominance in the power vacuum left in the wake of their leader's demise. The two factions eventually center themselves around the figures of Lavrenti Beria and Nikita Khrushchev with each trying to sabotage the other as they make their own cynical chess moves for control. Amusing and entertaining satire. There is something about the dark humor here, its very sharp edges, the feeling of you thinking 'actually this is terrible' even as you are laughing. Which, you soon realize, is the entire point. The cast is terrific all around, though for my money the four stand-outs are Steve Buscemi (Khrushchev), Jason Isaacs (Zkukov), Michael Palin (a hilarious Molotov) and Andrea Riseburough (Svetlana Alliluyeva). Somehow, I still feel this movie did not properly convey what an incredible creep Lavrenti Beria truly was.
The Breaking Point (1950) Dir. Michael Curtiz Years after returning home to be feted as a war hero, Harry Morgan has turned his PT boat war experience into a boat chartering business. Unfortunately for him, this endeavor never took off in the way he believed in his post-war dreams. The reality is that he is up to his ears in debt and his family - a wife and two young girls - is living hand to mouth. The last chance for him to make back some of the money he owes is to take a wealthy client on a fishing trip to Mexico. Also along for the ride is the man's younger girlfriend, who has an immediate fixation on Harry. When said client stiffs Harry out of payment after their arrival in Mexico, he is now so desperate for money that he takes a job from a low-life lawyer who puts him in contact with a Chinese criminal who traffics Chinese immigrants into America. To that end, he wants to hire Harry's boat. Harry reluctantly agrees reduced as he is in terms of options, but when this job also goes south, he is in the hole even further and forced to take on an even shadier assignment for considerably more dangerous men. A good little film noir with a decent lead in John Garfield. To a certain extent, this is about a man set in his ways whose inability to change forces him into situations he perceives as inevitable but which are only such due to his unwillingness to compromise (e.g. his reaction to his wife's suggestion to go into business farming with her father instead). This movie works best in the scenes between him and Patricia Neal, which is somewhat weird considering that this subplot never truly goes anywhere. The final scene gives a level of importance to an African-American character that was still rather rare for that era.
The Lure (2015) (original title "Córki dancingu") Dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska Two young sirens are found at the water's edge by a three man band who perform at a nightclub. They are taken back to the nightclub and soon perform at the place themselves, both as singers and burlesque performers. Whilst one of the two sirens adapts easily to the world of the humans and even falls in love with the band's bass player, her sister can't and has no desire to suppress her species' naturally murderous tendencies and soon is feeding on some of the patrons which frequent the nightclub. This is basically a Polish horror-musical about two sirens and even though I wouldn't go as far as to say it works 100%, it still works like 87% which is more than should be possible considering the wonderfully absurd core concept. This is hyperstylized and very well shot. A veritable tour de force by the two leads, Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska. Agnieszka Smoczynska is a young director to keep an eye on.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) Dir. Ethan Coen & Joel Coen A singing gunslinger fueled by hubris finds himself faced with a strangely familiar foe. A wannabe bank robber has rotten luck following him around. A traveling showman starts to look elsewhere once the star of his enterprise, a disabled monologue delivering actor, is no longer a huge draw. An old prospector still hoping to find his bonanza sets up camp in a beautiful valley intent on and certain of the fact he will find a huge deposit this time around. A young woman and her brother join a wagon trail to Oregon only for tragedy to follow them. An eclectic group of people share a very strange stagecoach ride. Six stories, all connected by a common theme: life, loss and death. This was very well done but I'm not sure if it'll be everyone's cup of tea. The tone of the stories also vary greatly, from very light (the titular segment) to quite grim (the segment with Liam Neeson and Harry Melling is genuinely moving and depressing). It's well acted throughout, which is to be expected with the names involved. The references to other westerns are relatively subtle here, but I'm pretty sure Joel and Ethan had a good look at "The Naked Spur", to name just one classic of the genre.
The Nun (2018) Dir. Corin Hardy In a secluded convent in rural Romania, a delivery man discovers a nun's body on the doorstep of the entrance, seemingly a suicide. The Vatican sends a priest to investigate, mostly due to the convent's dark past. They also send a young novice with him, supposedly because she has knowledge of the convent in question, but when she denies this to the priest, he realizes his superiors likely have a different, secret reason to have assigned the young woman to this task. Upon their arrival in the convent itself, it is immediately clear to Father Burke, the priest, that they are dealing with an ancient and powerful evil. Another entry into the "The Conjuring-Annabelle" universe. I mostly like this franchise. I thought "The Conjuring" was great and "The Conjuring 2" was good. "Annabelle Creation" was okay. "The Nun", apart from a good performance from Taissa Farmiga, is a bit of a step down. The titular character is the one briefly glimpsed in both "The Conjuring 2" and "Annabelle Creation" but the mythology they create behind the creature is weird and not really consistent with the rest of the universe. Neither is the way in which they deal with it. There is something a bit more grounded about the movies that center around the Warrens. The fact that this still delivered a worldwide gross of 364 million and counting, a record for this franchise, is a testament to how solid a property it has become.
Peppermint (2018) Dir. Pierre Morel Five years after her daughter and husband were killed in a drive-by shooting ordered by a local cartel boss, a bereaved mother who never got justice in a court of law returns in a different guise, as a vengeful angel of a vigilante, doling out ultra-violent justice of her own. This is basically "John Wick, only he is a suburban mom". I wish I could say that the movie is as stupidly fun as the concept but it's all too formulaic to be memorable and I can't really say that there were any action sequences I would deem original. In that regard, I guess the best scene is the shoot-out at the money laundering operation but even that is a bit underwhelming compared to other set pieces in similar films. Jennifer Garner is still a good lead but the quality of the material as well as her supporting cast lets her down a bit here. Only if you are a huge fan and completionist of the "one man army gets his/her revenge" sub genre would I recommend this film.
Galveston (2018) Dir. Mélanie Laurent Roy, a career criminal, is a Texas native who now finds himself working for a crime boss in New Orleans. On the day that he gets some shocking health news, he is also ambushed by three men belonging to the same crew he does, during a job his boss sent him on. Due to a combination of dumb luck and skill, he manages to get the upper hand and escapes with his life. He flees together with a young prostitute who was also there, a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. With the potential for retribution from his former boss a real possibility, he runs away to a familiar place, his former home town. Along the way, his relationship with his impromptu companion complicates. I read the Nic Pizzolato novel this was based on years ago. This is a very faithful adaptation with two stellar lead performances by Ben Foster and Elle Fanning. This is the first of Mélanie Laurent's movies I have seen. She has a level of control and confidence that belies her limited experience as a movie helmer. This has certainly piqued my interest to see some of her earlier films. I enjoyed this and was left wondering if the movie might have made a bigger impact if I didn't see the handful of gut punch moments coming due to my familiarity with the source material. As it is, it is still worth seeing if you have read the book if for no other reason than the genuine quality of the performances. Even Lili Reinhart's one-scene cameo appearance is memorable and impactful.
Lifeforce (1985) Dir. Tobe Hooper The Churchill is a joint NASA/ESA space craft on its way to study Haley's comet from close proximity. When the craft has matched the comet's speed and course they detect a large shape within its coma, which they soon discover is an ancient-looking vessel. After they board it, they find that it is filled with hundreds, possibly thousands of bodies belonging to a humanoid race that had vaguely bat-like features. Deeper into the ship, they also find a trio of pods, not belonging to the bat-like humanoids, but containing what appear to be three young human beings in suspended animation: a woman and two men. The commander of the mission immediately feels a strong attraction to the woman. Shortly after they bring the bodies back on board their ship, they go radio silent. Mission control realizes something has gone badly wrong when the ships re-entry course is off and they send another shuttle up there to investigate, which finds the ship destroyed by a fire and the crew deceased in the blaze. They also find the three pods, still intact and take them back to earth... This was not very well received critically and matched the critical reaction by a luke-warm box office response. What is basically a story about space vampires borrows heavily, at least at the start of the story, from Alien. One of its problems is the shift in tone, somehow ending up at what feels more like a Romero-like zombie movie in the third act. I cannot say that I still did not enjoy some scenes, however cheesy things occasionally get. Features a very screamy performance by Sir Patrick Stewart in a relatively small supporting role. Considering that this is one of Mathilda May's few English-speaking projects, I wonder if this experience turned her off Hollywood the same way that it did for her countrywoman Isabelle Adjani after she did "The Driver". Henry Mancini's soundtrack is terrific and probably worthy of a better film.
Yeah, this was essentially 5 movies in turn (hard sci-fi, vampire, succubus, exorcist, and zombie apocalypse) with very clear and separate styles and themes. This was Golan Globus's one big budget attempt at a blockbuster, and it looked like they threw everything they could think of into it.
Parts of it also reminded me a bit of "Quatermass and the Pit", only with a much bigger budget obviously.
The Predator (2018) Dir. Shane Black Two predators arrive on earth in quick succession. One crashes down in Mexico and interrupts an operation against a drug cartel in which a U.S. Army Ranger and his team are attacked by the predator. Both the predator and the soldier are captured by members of Project Stargazer and brought back to their secure lab. The soldier is meant to become the patsy for the annihilation of his team, but an attack by the second predator allows him and a group of similarly disgraced soldiers to escape, along with a biologist who was studying the creature. The group return to the soldier's ex-wife home because he had sent some of the predator's equipment to them for safe-keeping before the men from Project Stargazer got to him. His son, who is on the spectrum, has managed to decode some of the device's operating system. This was a bit of a letdown. I wasn't expecting anything to eclipse the simple charm of the original. I was hoping for another good Shane Black film, especially since I had loved his most recent release, "The Nice Guys". This feels more like a Shane Black fanfic. The one liners are there, the amped up bravado is there, the humor is there... But it all feels slightly subpar. The cast is okay but won't make anyone forget about the Arnie ensemble. Worst of all, Black is guilty of the "bigger is better" fallacy that haunts so many of these sequels. It's not a terrible film by any means, but it does not rise above the level of a mediocre action flick, which is more than a bit of a letdown. Adding the depressing sexual assault story-line that plagued this movie's release to the equation and Shane Black returning to this project has left a mostly sour taste.
Venom (2018) Dir. Ruben Fleischer Eddie Brock is a reporter who has trouble following the rules. When his editor-in-chief sends him to interview Carlton Drake, an Elon Musk-esque figure, he cannot help bring up dark rumors about experiments conducted on vulnerable individuals. He loses his job in the aftermath and so does his girlfriend, due to the fact that he used privileged information she got during her job as a lawyer as his source for the accusations. On his end, Drake is working on a very secret and morally dubious research program, trying to find suitable hosts for three alien entities that were brought back one one of his spaceships. To this end, he indeed is using the homeless and desperate and when most of the experiments end with the host's death, one of the doctors feels guilty and sneaks Brock into the lab so he can document the abuses. Only in the process, Brock gets a much closer look at the symbiote-host relationship. This was far from the best Marvel property I have seen in the last couple of years. I still mostly enjoyed it thanks to Tom Hardy's completely bonkers performances in the second half of the film. I was surprised to see Michelle Williams in such a limited role. I guess her four Academy Award nomination only buy her so much clout. Riz Ahmed is reliably good though I feel like he was playing with the handbrake on a bit here. Especially compared to Hardy who was allowed to let loose a lot more.