Movie review rant 2019

littleRedPanda

littleRedPanda

Well-Known Member
Has anyone else interacted with Bandersnatch on Netflix yet?
I put it on the other day and tried to let it run without selecting the options, but it gives no indication of how long it will run, so I gave up on it. I put it on again today and interacted. I generally like the Black Mirror stuff, but not this.
 
I just watched 2018's The Predator. I have been putting off watching this because of all the bad reviews (and I mean all the bad reviews) but finally my curiosity got the better of me. How bad could it be?

There are no actual spoilers below, but even if there were, who cares. It's The Predator. If you're watching it your soul is already damned.

Like any sensible person I love the original Predator from 1987. It's a classic. Can't say I was a big fan of Predator 2 from 1990, but some people like it. Alien vs Predator from 2004 was just a mess. Predators from 2010 was much better than the 2004 film but that's like saying that raw meat is better than maggoty meat. (I did quite like Predators but it was pretty dumb).

Then there was a 2015 fan-made short film (see it on Youtube) called Predator: Dark Ages which was better than either the 2010 or 2004 movies.

And finally we come to 2018. There were high hopes for this, especially given that it was directed by Shane Black who was actually in the original Predator movie. Unfortunately, it turns out that Shane Black is an idiot. This movie starts out okay, but the longer it goes on the more it plays like it was made as a joke by someone who was actively trying to make the worst Predator movie possible. There's bad acting, bad dialogue, a nonsensical script, a character with movie autism and another character with movie Tourette Syndrome.

There are some nice Predator kill scenes, which should always be a focus, but the movie as a whole is more or less played for laughs instead of tense action. You can almost see Shane Black behind the camera directing the actors "Now you really need to sink this movie! Make it suck like nothing has ever sucked before!"

Yvonne Strahovski (from Chuck) is utterly wasted, appearing in only a few scenes where she never leaves her house, and so the role of heroine is filled by frail little Olivia Munn playing a biologist who is also inexplicably a trained soldier, can pick handcuff locks, and can - apparently - teleport. They never even attempt to explain any of her skills. Possibly she was also telepathic or something because after seeing the Predator for the first time she somehow then knew the species' entire back-history from all previous movies.

And the end scene with the opening of the pod containing "the Predator Killer" ... good grief, as Charlie Brown would say. It is horrible and cringey. I wanted to turn it off but had to keep watching to see how bad it really was. Apparently they filmed an even more ridiculous ending where the pod contained Ripley from Alien. Just... how would that even make sense?

I'd probably rate this as a 2 or 3 out of 10.


Here's a better Predator movie than the one I just watched:

 
I've been going over this movie in my head (I wrote the review above literally as soon as I finished the movie). It is a fairly watchable movie if you shut your brain off I guess, but the more I think about it the more plot-holes and idiocies there are in it. It kind of gets worse the more you think about it rather than the usual scenario where you gloss over the worse bits and remember it as better than it was. I think the humour really kills it too - it is basically made almost as a comedy, with everybody cracking jokes and one-liners all the way through.

I'm going to have to watch something else to cleanse my palate.
 
Chlidonias said:
I'm going to have to watch something else to cleanse my palate.
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And so I did.

Johnny English Strikes Again.

Typical Rowan Atkinson comedy - part funny and part silly-stupid. Mainly I watched it because it has Olga Kurylenko in it, and realistically anything with Olga Kurylenko is automatically better than whatever you watched prior. You could watch The Shawshank Redemption followed by Vampire Academy and the latter would be better. True story.
 
We're not in 2018 anymore, but Andy Serkis' Jungle Book was so bad, stupid, lazy, offensive, and plagiaristic that it's actually insulting. I WANTED to like that movie, because as well as loving the Jungle Book remake in 2016, I love the source material of the original books, but Andy Serkis (As much as I love the man and as much as I love the ape movies) completely and utterly botched it. I could write a spiel that would take about an hour to read about why but I just don't have the energy
 
Scottish Wildcat said:
We're not in 2018 anymore, but Andy Serkis' Jungle Book was so bad, stupid, lazy, offensive, and plagiaristic that it's actually insulting. I WANTED to like that movie, because as well as loving the Jungle Book remake in 2016, I love the source material of the original books, but Andy Serkis (As much as I love the man and as much as I love the ape movies) completely and utterly botched it. I could write a spiel that would take about an hour to read about why but I just don't have the energy
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How did it plagiarize anything?

~Thylo
 
Despite claiming to take source completely from the books, Andy Serkis ends up "borrowing" a really uncomfortable amount of elements from both Disney movies. This wouldn't really be a problem if he didn't make such a big deal about it being different from the Disney movie in like every interview
Here's a short list:
  • Bagheera finds baby Mowgli. The wolves do this in the book
  • Baloo teaches Mowgli to use his hands and human "tricks"
  • Bagheera chases the young wolves through a jungle as part of a training exercise and Mowgli has to behave like a man to escape him
  • The monkeys don't talk
  • The monkeys are serving a ruling figure (it was a major point in the books that they were without a leader)
  • Kaa is a female (I think this is a good change, but it just comes so fresh off of Disney's tail)
  • The elephant does not speak and is a vaguely god-like deity which Mowgli uses to fix the conflict in the final act
I'm sure there's more. It really pains me to be so harsh on this movie too because I was so ready for a full-on adaptation of the books
 
I feel as though some of these aren't so much ripped-off from Disney as they are changes to make the story more "tight". Baloo teaching Mowgli and the monkeys serving someone for good examples. Also bare in mind no non-carnivore animals talk in this version, and the monkeys are supposed to be simpler, lawless individuals so it makes sense that they don't talk.

~Thylo
 
Exactly, they wouldn't be a problem except that Disney did the same thing two years earlier. Good point about the non-carnivore animals not being able to talk, but I think that was a boring decision, the book presented this huge world of different animal communities that could all understand each other, and its a shame that we haven't really got from any adaptation (other than the animated movie, funnily enough)

The thing with this movie is that it would've worked so much better as a miniseries in the style of the new Watership Down. That's the how the original books were structured (a separate little story for every "episode"). That would've made the monkeys more relevant, at least, and would somewhat excuse why Baloo and Bagheera are completely dropped in the last third
 
Jurassic Games

This movie is said to be a combination of The Hunger Games and Jurassic Park/World, which I though was kind of interesting so I watched it. It is n interesting nor is it a cross between those two movies. It is a bad Hunger Games ripp-off without sufficient backstory (read: without any backstory) and no character development or depth. And as the "Jurassic" part implies they stuffed in a couple of badly animated T-rexes, a Ceratopsian who's only job is to explode and a sabre-toothed cat (!?) that can't even jump properly. But it gets worse: the "Velociraptors" are so wrong that they make the original JP raptors look accurate! The games themselves are unclear and uninteresting. The only reason why you should watch it is if you want to see the mess for yourself.

It is actually kind of a shame how it turned out. I think the idea of having a Hunger Games-like setting but with a prehistoric wilderness as arena could be interesting.
 
Mr. Zootycoon said:
Jurassic Games

This movie is said to be a combination of The Hunger Games and Jurassic Park/World, which I though was kind of interesting so I watched it. It is n interesting nor is it a cross between those two movies. It is a bad Hunger Games ripp-off without sufficient backstory (read: without any backstory) and no character development or depth. And as the "Jurassic" part implies they stuffed in a couple of badly animated T-rexes, a Ceratopsian who's only job is to explode and a sabre-toothed cat (!?) that can't even jump properly. But it gets worse: the "Velociraptors" are so wrong that they make the original JP raptors look accurate! The games themselves are unclear and uninteresting. The only reason why you should watch it is if you want to see the mess for yourself.

It is actually kind of a shame how it turned out. I think the idea of having a Hunger Games-like setting but with a prehistoric wilderness as arena could be interesting.
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Was this a made-for-television movie? I just watched the trailer and that's what it looked like (and I definitely don't mean that in a good way!).
 
Chlidonias said:
Was this a made-for-television movie? I just watched the trailer and that's what it looked like (and I definitely don't mean that in a good way!).
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I don't know. I saw it on Netflix.

By the way, a new season of ZOO is on Netflix too. I rather enjoyed the first season, still liked (parts of) the second season, but the third one... let's say I have difficulties going beyond the first episode.
 
Mr. Zootycoon said:
By the way, a new season of ZOO is on Netflix too. I rather enjoyed the first season, still liked (parts of) the second season, but the third one... let's say I have difficulties going beyond the first episode.
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I made a point of not watching this since it came out, but gave in recently ... bareable until season three and can't get through the first episode either.
Is there an existing thread for it, as the leopard cub is certainly worth a mention :D
 
John Wick 3 trailer!!



I loved the first movie, and while I liked the second movie very much I do feel like they painted themselves into a bit of a corner by making it clear that 90% of the world's population are members of this assassin group. And now they've gone and given John Wick a sidekick. And even worse, it's Halle Berry. Just why?

Still going to go see it though.
 
Chlidonias said:
John Wick 3 trailer!!



I loved the first movie, and while I liked the second movie very much I do feel like they painted themselves into a bit of a corner by making it clear that 90% of the world's population are members of this assassin group. And now they've gone and given John Wick a sidekick. And even worse, it's Halle Berry. Just why?

Still going to go see it though.
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I really need to watch the John Wick movies..

What others see: Academy award winner Halle Berry
What I see: Razzie award winner Halle Berry ;) Catwoman- never forget, never forgive

~Thylo
 
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