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Films watched in 2019


Raylenth
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9 hours ago, nicky said:

Basic Instinct (1992) is a pretty good (almost Hitchcockian) mystery-thriller and one of the most significant films of the 90s thanks largely to Sharon Stone's famous leg-crossing scene. Its in my DVD collection but admittedly only because I'm a Paul Verhoeven fan but its still a decent film with Micheal Douglas on top form. It's actually very similar to Verhoeven's previous Dutch film, The Fourth Man (1983), with Jerone Krabbe which I actually prefer over Basic Instinct.

I haven't seen the 2nd film but can't imagine its any good.

Hugh is the only reason I got BI2 so I get it, though like you say at least BI1 has some redeeming value given that it is a significant film, however I'm thankful that Hugh's mysterious disappearance from the 50 Shades casting/filming happened as it means I don't have to watch them!

 

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1922.  I'd read the novella a while ago so had a vague memory of the storyline and it's pretty faithful to it.  It's a Stephen King short story and it's been well adapted - films of his works are a mixed bag, so many are really good, and some just aren't.  This one is a decent film, it's not going to go down in the record books or anything but it's an enjoyable watch, though a couple of scenes were not train friendly.

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YESTERDAY (2019)

3/5* (No spoilers)

When I first saw the trailer I thought, "What a great premise. But I wonder how they'll explain how a simple electrical black-out made everyone forget the The Beatles ever existed?" After watching the film, I still don't know the answer to that question. It was the one glaringly obvious and distracting question that just wouldn't go away as I watched the film. 

YESTERDAY is comparable to GROUNDHOG DAY (1993) or a lighter episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE where everyone changes by some magic force apart from the main character. But instead of focusing on the fantasy elements of the plot, YESTERDAY goes and turns this idea into a romantic-comedy mid-way through the film - something it didn't really need to do. The film already has an interesting premise but its spoiled by Richard Curtis's re-written screenplay (the original script came from someone else) turning it into another one of his soppy rom-coms complete with the usual stupid tropes such as irritating, unfunny family members and woefully bad attempts at comedy. There's even the cliche dumb friend character, Rocky, who is just a carbon copy of 'Spike' from Curtis's NOTTING HILL (1999). A lot of the film tries to be funny but fails miserably (eg. any scene with the dad or Rocky). Its clear Curtis has no idea how to create humor or balance it out with emotion; he just inserts irritating, interfering characters into important scenes between two other characters thereby disrupting the pace. In other words he cockblocks his own scenes and ruins the flow.

The script's problem here is logic and a severe lack of explanation. How is a global electrical black-out connected to people's memories? Why does the world forget The Beatles specifically? And how is it the band are erased from the Internet as well as people's minds? Even Beatles records magically disappear from people's collections, that took the biscuit that one. The film makes no f***ing sense and expects us to just go with it, a BIG ask in this case. It would have been more believable if the main character, Jack (Hamesh Patel), was just transported to a parallel universe instead of trying (and failing) to base the story in reality.

Even the love story is stupid and is not given enough back-story or justification when it eventually comes half-way into the film. What's worse is that the love story comes to the forefront of the plot and over-shadows the main premise and Jack's goal in the story. Its as if the film changes genre mid-way from fantasy to rom-com. Plus it would NOT take 20 years for a man to know whether he was attracted to his best friend or not (she's hardly a minger) or for one of them to finally make a move.

YESTERDAY is mildly entertaining purely because of its premise only (and the music), not for the characters or the romance and definitely not the comedy or logic.

WTF MOMENT: When Jack meets you-know-who. A complete mind-f**k of a scene that makes even less sense. SPOILER: ***John Lennon.  In the film the world suffered a black-out and forgot The Beatles in 2019. Any sign of evidence (physical or otherwise) of the band had been erased from the face of the Earth including records, memorabilia, photos or graffiti at Penny Lane etc. So why is John alive?! In a parallel universe he could be alive but this is not an alternate reality, the world simply forgot The Beatles in 2019 and all signs of them disappeared. This isn't time-travel so how the f**k is John  alive after his death in 1980????!!!?*** END SPOILER.

Yesterday_(2019_poster).png

Edited by nicky
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I haven't seen Yesterday, but if I was in Curtis's position I wouldn't even attempt an explanation, just ask the audience to accept the premise.

I never thought I'd hear of Himesh Patel again after he left EastEnders as I thought he was not a good actor but he has clearly learned a lot and good luck to him.

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Ghost Stories.  It was OK, one thing in particular felt obvious to me but it was a clever story.  There were a couple of moments where I jumped a little but that was it, I didn't think it was particularly scary or anything.  There's lots of foreshadowing and little clues throughout it that might make it a bit more fun to watch, but it was an average film to me.  I'd certainly suggest people watch it but I'll not bother again.

Stars Martin Freeman and Paul Whitehouse.

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Joker was terrific. In a year of very high comic adaptation standards this certainly stood out. Fantastic performances all around and another great addition to the Batman universe.

Edited by Daniel
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CRAWL (2019)

3/5* (No spoilers)

Short, sweet and very simple, CRAWL is the kind of low-budget creature-feature that would normally catch your eye in the straight-to-DVD pile... and that's where it would probably be if it wasn't for Sam Raimi (THE EVIL DEAD) producing and Alexandra Aja (THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake) directing. Obviously those two big names attached to a horror film would make any fan of the genre excited. 

It's a fun film with some great alligator-action but it's a little too straight-forward. The writers try to beef-up the story and make it more emotional by inserting the usual family-drama between the two leads, a common trope in many survival-horror films. However, in this film the family-drama thing is over-done and really obvious especially in one particular heart-to-heart scene. I also would have liked to have seen more people get eaten and more characterization given to the alligators - it's almost touched upon but eventually goes nowhere. SPOILER: *** When Hayley finds the alligator's nest and eggs I was hoping for a big momma alligator showdown but it didn't happen.***

CRAWL isn't a total disappointment but it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be either but at least it wasn't as bad as I feared.  I was actually surprised to see how positively it had been received by some critics. But despite its surprisingly generous praise its definitely not a great film and will likely be quickly forgotten.

220px-CrawlMoviePoster.jpg

Edited by nicky
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The Day Shall Come was an entertaining comedy crime film. It had some laughable moments and another great performance from Anna Kendrick. It just wasn't consistently funny enough, but still worth a watch.

Edited by Daniel
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I've seen a lot of films for the first time this year (older films) but the newest film I've seen is Midsommar and I absolutely LOVED that. Everybody warned me against it, saying I wouldn't like it, it's too gory, it's too disturbing... nope. I was blown away. Florence Pugh is an absolute gem. Stellar performance. 

On the flip side everybody said I had to watch Hereditary and that I'd love it, and I didn't really get on well with that... 

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JOKER (2019)

3.5/5 (No Spoilers)

I initially had no interest in this film until I heard all the good word-of-mouth on social media praising it as a "masterpiece". My biggest fear was that it would be as boring as THE DARK KNIGHT trilogy but thankfully unlike those films JOKER is less of an intricate crime film and more simply about mental illness and the dark side of society. I still didn't think it was a "masterpiece" though.

Yes, we've all heard by now that Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck/Joker gives a great performance but you also have to give credit to the writers giving him such a unique role to chew on in the first place. Arthur is a great character who really drives the film forwards so its really satisfying that we learn so much about him as it makes it easy for the audience to root for him. As such more than anything JOKER is a character-study.

I did enjoy the film and I really wanted to give it 4/5 BUT what was missing was a PLOT. The film is basically just a character-study and neglects telling an actual story or having a plot to push it forwards - it lacked direction. What was Arthur's motives and what was his objective? I don't know. But the character is so rich you can be forgiven for being distracted by the need for a plot....although having said that I did ask myself half-way through the film, "When are we gonna get to what the point of this film is about?" Even when I watched the trailer, I had no clue what the film was about. 

Also I'll say that, there isn't much about the film that makes it specific to The Joker. Its almost as if the Arthur Fleck character could be anyone and not necessarily The Joker, Batman's nemesis. Of course there's some nods to certain characters linked to Batman but not The Joker directly himself. If you replaced The Joker with any random mentally ill man it would still be the same film, just change the names of some of the other characters and set it in New York instead of Gotham. JOKER is essentially a psychological-thriller disguised and re-branded as a comic-book movie. Using the DC Comics branding and calling the film "Joker" could easily be interpreted as a marketing ploy. In fact director Todd Phillips (THE HANGOVER trilogy) said he wanted the film to be a stand-alone film with no sequels or connections to future DC films (which makes the 1981 setting redundant) and has refused to make comic movies in the past. 

Still I think Phillips has a great directing career ahead of him in this genre and I'm eager to see a follow-up film (even if he refuses to do one). I just hope it has a plot though and isn't just another character-piece.

WTF MOMENT: Arthur and the fridge. Very random and not sure what that was about. Also when Arthur's fat colleague came to pay him a friendly visit, why would his colleague visit him after what he'd done?

Joker_(2019_film)_poster.jpg

Edited by nicky
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Kong: Skull Island (or Marvel .5, the one where Loki and Captain Marvel made friends with an ape and Nick Fury got a bit angry)

I actually quite enjoyed this.  I like a monster flick and enjoyed Godzilla but after the crapfest that was Godzilla KOTM I was a bit apprehensive about this but am happy to say it was good.

 

 

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