Movie Reviews 2.0

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah it's not a new technique at all. I've also seen it in Gladiator, in the first battle scene with the barbarians; and curiously also in some skiing footage on Eurosport many many years ago.

 

[Malo]

It was strange though for me at the cinema. It was somewhat disorienting in the first action sequences but the airport scene seemed fine. Maybe my brain got used to it by then.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I have to say I'm quite surprised by the amount of VFX work in this movie. There were a lot of things that obviously relied on CG, like the Iron Man and War Machine suits or Falcon's wings; but the fact that most of the airport scenery was completely virtual, or Black Panther was practically never a man in suit, or Caps' shield getting replaced like all the time, is still quite impressive. I guess it's all about having the movie take place in a contemporary setting, instead of the more fantastic worlds of Guardians and Thor, or the alien invasion in Avengers.

But I'd still put Lola's work at the top, the de-aging stuff they do is utterly amazing and completely convincing; the only drawback being that you still know that they can't get a young Downey or a slim Evans or such to film. And most of that stuff is practically hand-crafted, it's almost like they'd have to paint a photorealistic human being frame by frame.

 

[Orion]

Just saw Civil War. Enjoyed it a lot, but the Winter Soldier was a better movie. The overall storyline for Civil War is good, but it's padded with a lot of extra stuff at 2.5 hours, where Winter Soldier seemed like a lot more of a concise movie. Black Panther is cool, and so is Spiderman, but their part in the whole thing is really just to setup more movies, rather than contribute to the story in any meaningful way. While that's not necessarily bad, I thought the movie was a bit long and had a bit too much spectacle. Still, I'd put it ahead of the Avengers movies. It has a much better story, more emotional range and makes much better use of the actors. Captain America might come across as a dick if I hadn't watched Winter Soldier, but I think viewing the series as a whole his motivations are understandable in a situation where right and wrong are ambiguous. Winter Soldier just had a great story that seemed perfectly suited to the character, and was based around a political issue that's very relevant. Civil War is also a well structured story, but maybe doesn't have the same relevance as an issue. Honestly have no interest in the infinity bullshit that's coming, but the Russo brothers at least give me some hope that it will turn out. I just think that story is destined to be style over substance.

Infinity bullshit is going to be epic if they don't nerf the villain. I've waited a long time for a

Spoiler

reality warper

to properly appear on film again in a non comedic way.

So I saw Xmen Apocalypse last night. What can I say. Not as bad as BvS but really one of the worst Marvel things I've seen since, maybe, Xmen Last Stand. Good ending, some great moments, Quicksilver steals the show completely - again- but really all over the place.

I saw X-Men today. Went in with low expectations so maybe that helped as I thought it was fairly entertaining. There were issues here and there, but cool stuff as well.

I think it was decent, liked it better than days of future past.

My main problem with the movie was the final battle.

Spoiler

It was a straight out of a tv show everyone simply shoot energy beams and stuff at the villain, who mostly just blocks it. The battle should've been far more epic like either civil war or BvS, with the characters trading several blows, the villain had the powers of likely dozens or hundreds of mutants, likely the strongest of their time.

Also xavier is full of BS, never felt power like this, and has jean around whom he should have some idea what her power levels are. After all he counts on it trumping apocalypse.

BTW, the trailers are very misleading... OH my god he can control all of us, no he can't. Giant apocalypse, no. Never felt power like this, but I'm pretty sure Jean is more powerful and he knows it, another lie.

 

[Grall]

Yeah it's not a new technique at all. I've also seen it in Gladiator, in the first battle scene with the barbarians; and curiously also in some skiing footage on Eurosport many many years ago.

It's quite common in TV sports photography. Golf, football (the real kind), track and field events and so on. Maybe motorsports racing too sometimes? All the strobing made the fight scenes feel cheap and TV-like, IMO. And very jerky and staccato-like. I didn't like it at all.

As a gimmick in a specific moment (or moments), alright, I can accept that. But not everywhere, throughout an entire action sequence, or worse yet, all action scenes in an entire two hour action movie. This wrecked Civil War a little for me personally.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, make no mistake, I mostly agree with you on the overuse of this effect. I do have to commend the directors and choreographers though, as I've still been able to follow the majority of the action in the movie- there's obviously a huge effort there, to make sure that the spaces and the characters' positions and actions are set up as clearly as possible. Neither Gladiator nor Private Ryan was as thorough in this. But with all that said, I still liked the action in Winter Soldier a lot more. That was really something, I still remember my reaction when Bucky just tore off the steering wheel in the middle of that car chase, that was pure genius

 

[Billy Idol]

Saw the Warcraft movie and am actually really surprised: was a great experience!

Also, the CGI characters worked really well for me. The orcs are very cool and reminded me of the Hulk movies.

Also, the griffin was quite well animated imo.

Only downside: only 3d was available. I hate movies in 3d...tec is just bad and movie makers really don't know how to use it on top.

 

[homerdog]

I wanna see Warhammer real bad. Is it really serious or do they play it for laughs?

 

[Billy Idol]

No, it is imo good with a serious tone-fantasy like lord of the rings! There were of course only nerds in the audience (which was actually great) and it seems that most enjoyed it. Nice movie.

 

[Grall]

Went and saw Warcraft today, myself. Wasn't overly impressed TBH; even though the orcs, and especially the griffins look great (the griffins are just fantastic), there's also some truly shitty CGI in there (as in totally obviously a guy standing in front of a green-screen, with a poorly rendered static CG background with different lighting compared to foreground element pasted in behind him), with some embarrassingly poorly choreographed swordfight scenes added for good measure.

Okay, swordfighting is always hard, unless you want your actors maiming and/or killing each other for real by mistake - because obviously they're never going to be masters of swordfighting because that thing just isn't a thing anymore. So I don't really blame the movie makers for this - swordfighting almost always looks bad or awful in movies, except for the Duel of Fates sequence out of Phantom Menace, which was probably the all-time-high watermark for me personally.

Warcraft's plot felt disjointed and sketchy. There's too many people introduced and too many locations either visited or namedropped. Medivh spent most of his time seemingly travelling to and from Karazhan, which was just bizarre. And who's the real badguy? Without spoiling anything for anyone who hasn't played WC3 or WoW, there's two of them, and we don't really know who's the bigger threat.

While the movie isn't terrible on the whole, there's a bunch of issues with it, and I don't care about any of the lore retcons - such things happen when you need to make a movie out of a story. It's unavoidable. Still, there's issues which stops this movie from being awesome. It passes the time, sure, and especially so if you're a fan of fantasy movies (which we aren't exactly inundated with), so you'll probably still want to see it.

5/10

 

[Rurouni]

I like the new TMNT. It was a fun ride.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I feel obligated to watch Warcraft just because of the CG technical stuff, and yet I find it really hard to actually spend the time and effort. Every review like the above is sort of an excuse for that.
Poor me.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Finally saw Zootopia. Haven't seen Finding Dory yet, but I'll risk this: Disney is the new Pixar. I may have underestimated Lasseter's powers

 

[tangey]

Saw batman v superman last night.

First 1/2 of the movie, was un-engaging, confusing, and I felt absolutely no empathy for any of the characters, nearly gave up.

Last hour or so, where something of substance actually happened, was a lot better, felt much more comfortable.

As someone who knows zip about the rest of DCs characters, the entirely weird dream that batman has that gives him some sort of future vision, just landed out of nowhere, and made no sense whatsoever. I see some reference to darkseid upthread that is relevant to this apparently, I'm sorry but if you need to know a lot of back story to make sense out of otherwise confusing scenes, don't include the scenes.

Also I'm guessing the badass guy at the end is something called doomsday...who knew ? And yes how he came into existence made no sense whatsoever. I'm aware this is after all, a fantasy movie, but it can't be too diffiult to have crucial story points make some sense.

Overall it wasn't great, terribly dark, even depressing. I hope the others that it sets-up are better.

 

[homerdog]

Finally saw Zootopia. Haven't seen Finding Dory yet, but I'll risk this: Disney is the new Pixar. I may have underestimated Lasseter's powers

I thought Disney owned Pixar? They still operate as separate entities?

 

[Mariner]

I think Pixar is considered to have a bit of autonomy, so their movies should hopefully remain the same quality as much of their older stuff - just with lots of extra merchandi$$$ing.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Actually some friends and I believe that there's a noticeable change in quality since Lasseter has moved up to Disney - Pixar's movies aren't as good and they're making lots of sequels, which they never really wanted to do in their first decade. I'm not sure how much it has to do with his abilities and how much is just the natural life cycle of any studio.

 

[Mariner]

Well, I certainly didn't rate Inside Out as highly as most of the reviewers, but there isn't necessarily anything too bad with sequels per se as TS2 and TS3 have shown. Not Cars sequels, of course, as the original was pretty weak and the follow up was just rubbish. Didn't mind Monsters University which I think was pretty good, just like the original.

Hopefully Finding Dory will be decent as FN was very enjoyable. The Incredibles was probably my favourite film of the year it was released so I hope they don't screw up that sequel!

I suppose that the main thing is that even mediocre Pixar movies are generally pretty good so hopefully the quality will remain high, even if we get less original material.

 

[upnorthsox]

Hopefully Finding Dory will be decent as FN was very enjoyable.

If you didn't like Inside Out you probably won't like Finding Dory.

 

[Gerry]

Actually some friends and I believe that there's a noticeable change in quality since Lasseter has moved up to Disney - Pixar's movies aren't as good and they're making lots of sequels, which they never really wanted to do in their first decade. I'm not sure how much it has to do with his abilities and how much is just the natural life cycle of any studio.

As you're probably aware, Pixar have just announced they're going to stop doing so many sequels.

And Zootropolis (they couldn't use the much better Zootopia in the UK) is indeed excellent.