What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, Prey was....alright. I'm seeing people heaping praise on it, and granted, yeah, it is easily the best Predator movie since the original. Of course, that isn't exactly saying much considering the quality, or lack thereof, of all of them in-between. It's nowhere near as good as the original, of course, but I will say that it managed to be genuinely engaging at key moments and did have me at least invested in the main duo of the film. I also loved the setting and thought it made for probably the best possible set-up for a Predator movie since the original. That said large chunks of the film feel like filler to keep the story at movie-length, and the movie did feel like it dragged during the first half without much real build-up. It was pretty well-shot, though, and I can't say that I didn't at least enjoy myself overall, so it's probably worth a watch if you like the first Predator.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Pearl was fun. Really liked Mia Goth's performance.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Saw Elvis and RRR. Elvis felt like somebody took a 20-episode show and cut it up into a 2-and-a-half-hour movie. The pacing's so bipolar, and I don't know if anybody with no prior knowledge of Elvis Presley would understand it because it speeds through tons of major details, but it certainly wasn't boring. Especially with Tom Hanks channeling the Danny DeVito Penguin for the entire movie.

Meanwhile, RRR was fun and I echo the same compliments everyone else already made.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just saw Halloween Ends....that was definitely a movie with Halloween in the title....

I honestly didn't really care for the 2018 movie but at least it felt somewhat competently made. Kills was bad but had some unintentionally funny moments. This movie was just bizarre with the story it tried to tell. I'll say that it's actually a bit more entertaining than Kills in terms of how much I found myself unintentionally snickering at several scenes that were supposed to be scary, but as an overall movie it was maybe one of the most terrible pieces of shit that I've seen in a while. I mean it's actually impressive how bad it is compared to even some of the other really shitty Halloween movies.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Even worse than Curse or the Rob Zombie ones?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Curse of Michael Myers was more consistently entertaining in it's awfulness for me. Like, it's impossible to take Paul Rudd seriously and the movie stretches the bounds of absurdity past it's limit for even a Halloween movie that it's just kind of admirable how bad it is on every level. Ends certainly has elements of that but not as consistently. It's more a case of the movie trying to be a psychological thriller (and doing it badly) that has nothing to do with Halloween until the final act suddenly remembers what movie it is. Like, people have been joking about this online, but I legitimately wouldn't be surprised if I heard that they repurposed the script for another movie into a Halloween sequel. It just feels like it's own bad movie that loosely ties into Halloween rather than an entertaining bat-shit insane flick like Curse.

It's still not as bad as the Busta-Rhymes one, but that one does at least have the "Trick r' treat, Mothafucka" line going for it.

Admittedly, I barely remember anything from the first Rob Zombie film and I never saw it's sequel, so I can't really make an accurate comparison there.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The second Zombie film was on TV a few days ago, so I had that on as background noise, and maybe it's been a while, but it's so cheap-looking. Like I know it's Rob Zombie, and Halloween movies don't have big budgets anyway, but this one looked like a DTV film compared to all the others. And then it gets worse by doing shit like spending the first 15 minutes on a fake-out dream sequence, having Dr. Loomis go on a talk show with Chris Hardwick and Weird Al, all the white horse scenes that try to be David Lynch but fall flat, or that scene where Danielle Harris' character dies and they play archive footage of her when she was a little girl almost like Zombie's going "See! I gave you guys a real Jamie Lloyd death unlike the one in Curse!" It's such an incoherent mess of a film, and it's no wonder the 2018 one was welcomed with open arms because the standards were just that low.

[Avaitor]

And I see people try to reappraise the Zombie films all the time.

I sat out Kills last year, although I'm considering getting to it and Ends before Halloween just for the hell of it. I thought that the 2018 film was good at the time, but I'll probably cool on it if I watch it again, as I'm getting weary of horror films that are about trauma.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Saw Ends. Yeah... I didn't care for the Corey plot at all, and that's the meat of the movie. It all felt like the creative team went "We want the Stranger Things audience!", and I guess people who wished ST had Eddie or Jonathan snap and kill the cast might like this film. Bemused that just searching "Halloween Ends" on Twitter gives me a ton of people simping for Corey.

And then they had to play the cowbell version of Don't Fear the Reaper at the end. 

[talonmalon333]

So, No Time to Die...

Spoiler

I wasn't expecting a thematic sequel to On Her Majesty's Secret Service but with the roles reversed, and I'm very pleasantly surprised it went that route.

It's so bittersweet watching this. Unlike every other last Bond film like Diamonds Are Forever, View to a Kill, License to Kill, Die Another Day, this movie absolutely knows this is a finale and milks that for all it's worth. And for Daniel Craig, who thanks to film delays across his time as Bond, is the longest-serving 007 in film history. A 10-year-old who watched Casino Royale in cinemas would be in their mid-20s now. Which you can also apply to Roger Moore since he also played Bond uninterrupted for over a decade, but his era never had the multi-movie character arc Craig's bond had. While not all his films have been stellar, none of them have been boring, all setting up pieces of the puzzle. And while it's obvious there was little planning involved in Bond's arc throughout his run, Quantum's seeming omnipresence in Quantum of Solace devolved into nothing in further installments, while Spectre's involvement here is so easily swept under the rug after the previous film, and you can tell they wish they could have done a lot more with Vesper, I still liked his story throughout the films. Going from a killer far too primal and fierce to be the traditionally dashing film Bond, to a man run through the gamut and whose existence asks if the adventures of James Bond still have a place in today's world, and then to someone saving the day not because of duty but love, and his journey turning into myth passed on from generation to generation. Critics of the Craig era often accuse his run of repeating the same "How does someone like James Bond fit in today's society?" question a little too much, but I argue that's the point since it's the running theme of his era that No Time to Die is very willing to play with, such as with Lashana Lynch's character. And yeah, the Bond films have been fighting off cultural irrelevance for quite some time, remember in Goldeneye where M accuses Bond of being a misogynist dinosaur from the Cold War, but these films know that's a pressing concern and apply it to Bond's character: A man trying to persevere while the passage of time and the whims of his superiors have other plans for him, ultimately learning the best lesson any human can learn is how to ensure the generation after theirs can prosper. I love how this film in particular takes the bombast and extravagance of the James Bond mythos and converts it into both tragedy and something uplifting. Within the 007 universe, there will always be world domination plots or global heists organized by eccentric supervillains, but there are also people willing to step up and stop them. While the history of one such person becomes wistful but affirming tales told to a child.

It's almost unfair to Craig's successor that this film was so good. I struggle to see how the next Bond, whoever they are, will top this. Die Another Day's awfulness and the Austin Powers movies turning the standard Bond tropes into jokes gave people such low expectations for the series that even if Casino Royale weren't a great film, it still would have blasted them away. But this was an end on a high note. And as I said earlier, this is the first time a Bond actor is allowed the chance to bow out gracefully than to abruptly leave due to creative differences or contract disputes.

[close]

I too thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I saw it in theaters (again, I'm catching up on old conversations right now  ) and though it was a tad long, it felt like a satisfying ending to this Bond series.

It's not my favorite of the bunch though. Casino Royale is probably my all time favorite Bond movie, and Skyfall was also one of the best Daniel Craig James Bond movies.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Speaking of, I rewatched a couple of the Brosnan-era films recently. Kinda strange he's gotten a reputation as being one of the campier Bonds since his movies actively attempted to freshen up and modernize the franchise, the "What purpose do spies have now that the Cold War is over?" theme hanging over the Craig era was already a common topic in Brosnan's movies. Maybe it's because Brosnan's are more straightforward fun while Craig's are "Fun... but at what cost?", and of course Brosnan came after Dalton who was also a dark, introspective Bond, so he's sandwiched between the two contemplative ages of the franchise. It leaves him and his tenure in a weird place in history, since he's absolutely one of the most iconic Bonds thanks to 90s kids and/or Goldeneye players, but almost too composite to be an era with a clear vision in the way some of the others were.

And it didn't occur to me until rewatching that Nolan stole all of The World Is Not Enough's plot for The Dark Knight Rises.

[Dr. Insomniac]

So I watched that one James Cameron movie where he goes underwater, which really opens your eyes on his pure obsession and fascination with the sea. It's easy to mock it, so easy that there's been backlash to that mockery, but Cameron's just a guy who's genuinely in awe of the sides of nature most people haven't gone out of their way to see. And it's something I respect. I also think aquariums are pretty cool, while he takes it to another level and drags his crew along to explore the depths with him. You can see it all throughout his prior films like The Abyss and Titanic that he's just so in love with the ocean, even in his first film Piranha 2 that he admits was little more than a hired gun job, so it's fascinating to see him go full circle here.

And that's why Aliens of the Deep was a fun documentary. Anyway, Avatar 2 was fine.

[Avaitor]

Water is to Cameron what planes are to Miyazaki and bad men in suits are to del Toro.

I had fun with Avatar, but I'll admit that whenever we spent time with the commandos, I was thinking of how much better Aliens is, and how I wish he could get closer to that mode again. We get parts of that throughout, but a lot of it is spent doing world-building that I don't think is ever totally justified. Still, it does have more personality than the first film, and better action, which is enough for me.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, Avatar 2 felt too much like a greatest hits of Cameron's previous films. Sinking ship climax, marines with power loaders, villains transformed to resemble the heroes, that scene in True Lies where the bad guys are threatening Eliza Dushku's life, man-eating fish, it's very Cameron playing to his usual tricks. And fair enough, Avatar as a franchise is basically what he's going to do for the rest of his life, so why not indulge? And over time, I've grown to see that a lot of the old stock criticisms for Avatar were a little dumb ("You can't remember any of the characters' names" is an odd one to apply when Get Out was one of the most beloved movies in the last decade and I can't remember the name of Daniel Kaluuya's character, and "The movie made no cultural impact" makes no sense if execs at Disney saw enough interest to build all those Pandora theme park attractions). Just wish it was more concentrated than what we got.

[Avaitor]

I do find the arguments on both sides tiring. No, I didn't recall a lot of the original film before seeing Way of Water, but I also remember jack shit about Home Alone and I see people talk about all over social media. Sometimes, it's just you (even when "you" is me in this case), and clearly enough people still have interest in the Avatar brand.

But I similarly think that a lot of the people who are riding the hype train for Cameron are doing so to ensure that something, ANYTHING becomes a hit besides super hero shit, and that's just tiring. For one thing, you're not sticking it to Marvel by seeing Avatar, they're both going to the same studio's revenue. Additionally, supporting something out of spite is stupid. Do you actually want to see this, or want to stick it to cape shit? Why not just see Tar or The Fabelmans or something instead?