It was kinda weird they basically reset Venom and Eddie's character arc between movies.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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The Guilty: Good / Great
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a disgraced cop who's been relegated to the 911 dispatch call center who finds himself entangled in a ongoing event when he takes a call from an abducted woman calling from a moving vehicle.
Not unlike my take on 7500 that takes place solely from the cockpit of a hijacked plane, this is a unique film in that it takes place primarily from a desk in an office; the intrigue comes form the tense conversations from characters you never meet. Worth the watch, but might not be to everyone's liking. Gyllenhaal pulls off some genuinely convincing dramatic acting that draws you in. It's a pity but also the point that you don't learn much about his situation as you see his passion for righteousness unfold over a series of telephone calls.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a disgraced cop who's been relegated to the 911 dispatch call center who finds himself entangled in a ongoing event when he takes a call from an abducted woman calling from a moving vehicle.
Not unlike my take on 7500 that takes place solely from the cockpit of a hijacked plane, this is a unique film in that it takes place primarily from a desk in an office; the intrigue comes form the tense conversations from characters you never meet. Worth the watch, but might not be to everyone's liking. Gyllenhaal pulls off some genuinely convincing dramatic acting that draws you in. It's a pity but also the point that you don't learn much about his situation as you see his passion for righteousness unfold over a series of telephone calls.
That's a part of the character, though. I like how this film actually focused on it, the idea of having a constant companion with its own thoughts, opinions, ideas and motivations in your head... it'd drive anyone insane. But yeah, the inexorable power he possesses is the offset.
I hate that Venom is being dragged into the MCU. He's now officially a piece of a very uninteresting and convoluted puzzle when I ran to his films (and Deadpool's) for a reprieve from that nonsense.
Its funny, but I have word-for-word the exact opposite opinion. Im glad he's in the MCU now because the stand alone Sony and Marvel movies are all convoluted nonsense of overlapping characters and retcons, Im glad the MCU will finally force them to have a story and character arcs and stick with it.
To me its the thing Marvel has going that DC still can't get right - canon. Suicide Squad 2 they kill off Rick Flagg, and in an interview the actor Joel Kinnaman said DC would absolutely bring him back, and ignore his on-screen death if audiences wanted it and that functionally every DC movie is an alternate reality. To me that's just slopping story telling.
Marvel may be some great big cosmic blob absorbing everything in its path, but at least its a structure of some sort and I can follow it, horribly written TV shows not withstanding.
Been thinking of checking that one out, might give it a shot this eve. If that minimalist set-up does t put you off (it does a lot of people, unfortunately) and you appreciate Tom Hardy, the film Locke may be of interest. It's set just in his car as he drives somewhere after work, and is kinda impressive how a single performance can portray so much, alongside a Welsh accent.
I'll definitely check out Locke, then. And I'd recommend 7500 with Jason Gordon Levitt to you if you've not seen it.Been thinking of checking that one out, might give it a shot this eve. If that minimalist set-up does t put you off (it does a lot of people, unfortunately) and you appreciate Tom Hardy, the film Locke may be of interest. It's set just in his car as he drives somewhere after work, and is kinda impressive how a single performance can portray so much, alongside a Welsh accent.
I agree to the extent that theres actually been problems with writing and directing a few of the MCU films specifically because the studio makes demands like "These films will ultimately lead to fighting Kang in phase 4 so you have to run every piece of the script by this council." and then you get into this weird spot of deluding a films quality to fit into a large complicated franchise. It would be nice if we could have some comicbook movies not made on a factory line at Disney.
I'm sticking by my guns that this venom is not appearing in the MCU. Keep in mind Sony still owns venom. I'm still a 100% confident Sony finagled a spider-man reference to sell tickets and either they legally got away with it or Marvel got some trade out of it, but Disney doesn't want this Venom. No offense to Tom hardy, great actor, but Disney will design their own venom when they're good and ready. At best I could see a Tom Hardy cameo in the background.
The fact that they teased Spider-Man: No Way Home in the post-credits pretty much solidifies this Venom in the MCU. Why else do it? Unless this was a drop-the-mic end to Hardy's Venom and a passing of the torch to Disney to do their own thing which doesn't make any sense either. My only hope is that it was tease as is common in the Deadpool films, where they just nod to the MCU and go about their merry way, but that post-credit scene was too on the nose to be so readily dismissed.
What really jumps out at me is that in the teaser it's just some clip of spider-man on TV, it was clear this was not a collaborative effort between Marvel and Sony. It screams no one got Tom holland out of bed and had him go film a scene for Venom. I'm not privy to the details, but I believe theres a licensing colab between Sony and Marvel. Marvel films spider-man, sony contributes to the budget and advertising and they get a cut of the proceeds, but Disney has complete creative control.
With Venom thats a Sony specific property and Marvel wants nothing to do with it
1. Because they cant maintain creative control
2. It doesn't really make them any money.
3. Because it makes Sony money which in turn make it more difficult longterm for Disney to buy the IP back.
Now the big caveat is Multiverse. Could venom make a non-impacting cameo no way home? *shrug* maybe, idk. I suspect not. Disney don't want no scrubs. With Raimi going to Marvel and the Fan nostalgia for the spider-man movies version of Doc Ock and Green Goblin I can see Disney saying something like "ok you can teaser Spider-man as part as our deal to let us use Doc Ock and Green Goblin for a Cameo", but this version of Venom doesn't exactly have rabid fans ready to give Disney money. This is my personal opinion, but I just don't see it.
Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre
None really blew me away. Whilst Casino Royale was my favourite, and Quantum of Solace was probably my least favourite, none were really significantly better or worse than each other. Though watching them all mostly back-to-back did result in the series basically merging into each other, so maybe it was just that.
Bond is fine. Perfectly watchable, and often enjoyable.
Probably watch No Time to Die tomorrow.
None really blew me away. Whilst Casino Royale was my favourite, and Quantum of Solace was probably my least favourite, none were really significantly better or worse than each other. Though watching them all mostly back-to-back did result in the series basically merging into each other, so maybe it was just that.
Bond is fine. Perfectly watchable, and often enjoyable.
Probably watch No Time to Die tomorrow.
The Protégé: Ok / Great
Maggie Q plays Anna, a Vietnamese orphan raised and trained in the art of assassinary by Samuel L. Jackson who find herself on a quest to avenge her mentor's murder.
It's pretty much what you'd expect from the premise, though less John Wick-y in that it doesn't go much over-the-top. Decent film, not noteworthy, but a nice enough watch.
Maggie Q plays Anna, a Vietnamese orphan raised and trained in the art of assassinary by Samuel L. Jackson who find herself on a quest to avenge her mentor's murder.
It's pretty much what you'd expect from the premise, though less John Wick-y in that it doesn't go much over-the-top. Decent film, not noteworthy, but a nice enough watch.
6 Bullets - 8/10
The quickest way to explain this movie is, a nastier and dirtier version of 'Taken'. And I do mean that although the characters are mixed up a little. Jean Claude Van Damme plays, and I swear this is true: Samson Gaul. Former French Legion badass turned mercenary rescuer of captured child sex slaves.
The plot proper concerns the kidnapped daughter of an American couple who are in Moldova for hubby to have an MMA bout. From there you can basically plot the rest of this out easy enough but its got grit, some neat twists and turns and some oddly compelling performances. Won't change your life, but if you like your action movies a bit darker and dirtier, then its good enough.
The quickest way to explain this movie is, a nastier and dirtier version of 'Taken'. And I do mean that although the characters are mixed up a little. Jean Claude Van Damme plays, and I swear this is true: Samson Gaul. Former French Legion badass turned mercenary rescuer of captured child sex slaves.
But when I say this sucker is nastier and dirtier, I mean it. The opening act has Samson - and never let it be said Van Damme looks unsettling in glasses and with a pencil moustache and beard - rescue a ten year old boy from said slavers and escape under cover of explosions. Very awesome, very standard.......until his police chief friend calls him the next day and shows him two bodies among many of other underage slaves who died because the criminals running the place panicked and shoved all the underage girls and boys into the building's crawl space but the fire from the exploding cars set the building on fire so they just legged it and left them to die.
The plot proper concerns the kidnapped daughter of an American couple who are in Moldova for hubby to have an MMA bout. From there you can basically plot the rest of this out easy enough but its got grit, some neat twists and turns and some oddly compelling performances. Won't change your life, but if you like your action movies a bit darker and dirtier, then its good enough.
7500 on Netflix? Will review, thanks for the recommendation. Really appreciate JGL and looking forward to it.
Locke is brilliant. I got to see it streaming for free years ago. Still can be rented on Prime.
7500 is on Amazon Prime, but included with a Prime subscription (you don't have to rent/buy it if you've a Prime account.)
That was a tough watch!
I did keep asking myself where the passengers were to take these guys out. While we'd like to think ourselves brave, that in a pinch, we would do the right thing. And many of us are wrong. But today, we understand today's hijacking is not like the ones in 1970s that were just using this tactic to get ransom money and/or transportation: they're out to murder us all. So you don't even have to be brave. You just have to want to survive. The mad shoe bomber learned that, thankfully. Still, a really terrific movie, thanks for recommending.
So glad you enjoyed it as much as I did; it really is a great film. Can't believe I just stumbled upon it while looking for something to watch during a restless session at 3am. Go tell the others!
And yes, I was also wondering why the passengers didn't just take those guys out, but when putting myself in their shoes, I'm no hero. It's hard to appreciate the advantage of numbers when you're only looking out for #1.
Finally watched Free Guy with the family.
It's a Ryan Reynolds movie, the end. Full of jokes, ones that hit more than missed. Had a weird blend of somewhat realistic representation of game development and totally bullshit Hollywood hacker nonsense. The romance is... weird, but whatever. I could ignore it.
But goddamn, the parts of the movie with real life YouTubers and streamers felt like pure, concentrated cringe injected straight into my eyeballs. Was reallllly not a huge fan of that.
Still had fun watching it, and that's all I ask.
It's a Ryan Reynolds movie, the end. Full of jokes, ones that hit more than missed. Had a weird blend of somewhat realistic representation of game development and totally bullshit Hollywood hacker nonsense. The romance is... weird, but whatever. I could ignore it.
But goddamn, the parts of the movie with real life YouTubers and streamers felt like pure, concentrated cringe injected straight into my eyeballs. Was reallllly not a huge fan of that.
Still had fun watching it, and that's all I ask.
Watched Free Guy, but I couldn't finish it cuz it's luke warm dribble.
This movie is 50% outdated, cringey internet humor, and 50% boomer 'hah ha, look at the nerd' comedy. It's very telling too, because they'll have moments where they call out toxic masculinity, like when what's-her-name tells Ryan Reynolds not to tell derogitory gay and disabled jokes, or when the hot girl NPC realizes she doesn't need to hang around all these dude-bros or any man, but then it casually shames someone for being a virgin (twice I think) and a 22-year old kid for still living with his mother - all men in this case of course.
This is like if The Lego Movie was written by Chuck Lorre and had Ryan Reynold's stupid face.
This movie is 50% outdated, cringey internet humor, and 50% boomer 'hah ha, look at the nerd' comedy. It's very telling too, because they'll have moments where they call out toxic masculinity, like when what's-her-name tells Ryan Reynolds not to tell derogitory gay and disabled jokes, or when the hot girl NPC realizes she doesn't need to hang around all these dude-bros or any man, but then it casually shames someone for being a virgin (twice I think) and a 22-year old kid for still living with his mother - all men in this case of course.
This is like if The Lego Movie was written by Chuck Lorre and had Ryan Reynold's stupid face.
It's the kind of movie i can totally see Ryan Reynolds being attached too. And at the same time, i'm perplexed about Taika Waititi being in it.
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