Rate the last movie you've seen...

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Now that was a fun fuckin' movie! I'm sure there's plenty of bits of stuff that aren't 'accurate' to the true story, no doubt, and it certainly takes the WW2 action movie angle on things - but it was entertaining as all get out. Yeah, a little bit of trimming here and there at script stage wouldn't have gone amiss (e.g. a couple of times we were essentially being told the same info twice in different ways to different characters). It's a bit curious to have Mexican actress Eiza González playing Marjorie Stewart, mind you ... she's quite good in the role, but not exactly an ethnic or cultural match, eh (in this day and age)? Anyway, it was a ruddy good watch and I could easily see myself giving it another couple of viewings in due course. Well worth checking out for a fun evening in front of the telly.

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Mosquito (Gary Jones, 1994):
http://deadshed.blogspot.com/2024/07/mosquito-gary-jones-1994-review.html

Your common or garden mozzies have sucked the blood of an alien lifeform that has crashed to earth, and now they've mutated into giant man-killers and they've got a mad thirst on for some juicy human haemoglobin. So who's gonna save the world? A park ranger, a meteor hunter, and a chainsaw-wielding bank robber, that's who!...

Dead Pool 3 - Deadpool & Wolverine
The long awaited bromance finally arrives. IMHO not as solid as 1 & 2, and a tad convoluted/messy in places, but still a damn good Deadpool romp with plenty of action and great one liners.

8/10

Spoiler:

I was just talking with LouCipherr about this movie. We both loved it.

I think I'd probably put this as second favourite of the three Deadpool movies. DP2 had a bit of the 'difficult second album' syndrome about it, whereas DPW feels sufficiently different to what came before while still maintaining all the essential DP ingredients.

Loved the cameos and small role surprises they put in there (certainly giving the fans what they want and enjoy).

I was surprised by just how sharp and biting the film was in regards to Disney Marvel's recent slew of failures, quite justifiably.

Apparently there's been a lot of people fired on the Marvel side of the Disney operation, so rumours have it at least, with some of those being folks who steered the ship in the wrong direction during phases 4 and 5. But it takes a lot more than DPW and a couple of firings to right the ship. With other troubled productions still underway (e.g. the new Captain America movie, which is set to be the most expensive Marvel flop thanks to its endless, giant-sized reshoots), there's still dreck to come no doubt.

But at least DPW shows how its supposed to be done! And the audience are turning out for it in droves. Gosh, who'da thunk it?

Twisters
Did this movie need to be made? No.
Is it as good or slickly-paced as the original movie? No.
Did I still have a good time watching it? Yes.

It's a little slow to get into gear, but as soon as Glen Powell hits the screen the sparks and banter between the two leads gets underway. It's basically a re-quel, so there's a lot of familiar beats or elements, but there's also fuck-all pandering or lecturing - it's just here to entertain and it does a solid job of that. Will I watch it as much as I have done the original over the years? No, but I will re-watch it in the future for sure.

Prey (2022)
Yes, I'm late to the party with this one. What risked being yet another DEI - strong women out doing men - Hollywood affair, actually turned out to be quite a nice tight scifi action romp! Finally a nice use of the genre/cannon.

7.5/10

Spoiler:

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
I watched the RLM review of it where they said this movie is like Kill Bill Volume 2, while Fury Road was like Kill Bill Volume 1, and that's a pretty good way of putting it.

There's some deeper and broader world building at play in the familiar sandbox of Fury Road, but there is also a noticeable increase in CGI. Some of it is fine, but even the practical stuff has so much CGI 'touch-ups' slapped on the shots can end up feeling a little disconnected from reality, unlike Fury Road which mostly went hard on the practical side and kept it looking as such with the CGI mostly there for wire removal and creating the background scenery, which was pulled off in a pretty convincing manner.

Furiosa is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to CGI and compositing. There are certain shots that scream blue screen from the mountaintops, and there's one particularly bad composite shot of Dementer in his monster truck - back and forth, back and forth - the stitching together is clear and it just looks so weird.

However, there are other shots that look beautiful (in a post-apoc wasteland way), very strong visuals, but you can tell an awful lot has been done inside a studio. Perhaps Fury Road was a bit too gruelling, especially with Miller now getting on in years (we're ten years on from Fury Road)? There's also the fact they shot the movie in Australia - so you've got access to big studio spaces and a whole filmmaking industry, whereas Fury Road was shot on location somewhere in Africa IIRC (Namibia?) - so they had to be out there in the sun and sand doing it for realsies and then stitching multiple real plates together when the most dangerous chaos was underway.

Anyway - back to Furiosa. Yeah, it's not got the impact or thrusting aggression of Fury Road, but it's still a jolly good movie in its own right. It was never going to live up to Fury Road, and it's a different style of film anyway. Furiosa is much more focused on telling an epic tale of vengeance as Furiosa comes into her own. Does it make you think differently about the character? Er ... no. So was it really necessary? Hmmm...

I'm yet to watch the making-of doc on the Blu-Ray, so we'll see what that has to say as to the production (e.g. real vs CGI).

Did I enjoy the movie? Most certainly, even though it can't match the sheer ball-grabbing eye-popping gusto of Fury Road. Best to enter a viewing of it with modest expectations.

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Neil wrote:Prey (2022)
Yes, I'm late to the party with this one. What risked being yet another DEI - strong women out doing men - Hollywood affair, actually turned out to be quite a nice tight scifi action romp! Finally a nice use of the genre/cannon.

It's been a while, but I remember enjoying it well enough. There was a whiff of 2020s about the story, but it wasn't hammered in with a sledge, so it wasn't too gross about it and allowed the film to just get on with its business.

Was it a necessary sequel/prequel/whatever? Not really, but it was enjoyable ... even if my memory of it is a bit hazy. I could see myself re-watching it sometime, mind you, which is a positive in itself.

Sorcerer
I've been on a bit of a Friedkin kick lately (To Live & Die in L.A., Cruising, and the docs Friedkin Uncut, The Poughkeepsie Shuffle), and I went back for a second viewing of this flick. Now, first time around I liked it, but I was a bit off-balanced by the structure in the opening 30-60 minutes of the movie (I was waiting and waiting for the nerve-wracking journey to start) ... anyway, this time around I enjoyed it much, much more and settled into the structure quite nicely this time around.

That bridge crossing sequence still gets the hairs standing and the brow sweating, no doubt about it. A classic.

Most importantly, the score is by Tangerine Dream

Aye, great soundtrack - very atmospheric at times, like when the trucks are 'lighting up' for the first time, these ragged beasts cobbled together and setting out in the bleak darkness of pre-dawn, lights skewing at angles into the blackness and rain.

MinionZombie wrote:Twisters
Did this movie need to be made? No.
Is it as good or slickly-paced as the original movie? No.
Did I still have a good time watching it? Yes.

It's a little slow to get into gear, but as soon as Glen Powell hits the screen the sparks and banter between the two leads gets underway. It's basically a re-quel, so there's a lot of familiar beats or elements, but there's also fuck-all pandering or lecturing - it's just here to entertain and it does a solid job of that. Will I watch it as much as I have done the original over the years? No, but I will re-watch it in the future for sure.

Yeh, agree with each of those points. And makes me have a slightly higher appreciation of the first one too

Hot Spur
Stumbled across this 1968 indie western on Prime the other day. It's certainly a scruffy production - lots of dialogue is dubbed in later while the actor is off-screen, conspicuous day-for-night shooting, an incessant use of 'Mexican-sounding guitar' tinkling on the soundtrack because the foley track is quite sparse, some rather ropey performances at times - but it's also an interesting curio. The production code had only just been turfed out the year before in America, so the harder edge to 'grown up films' had just got underway, and this one certainly slings a whole heck of a lot of nudity and gritty violence at the screen with a bit of a strange story.

Spoiler:

And that's about it, really. I mean, you could've easily hacked out ten minutes worth just from all the long, padding shots of people walking from A to B, or removing things from bags and putting them back in other bags etc etc. This could've been a lean and super mean 75-80 minutes, rather than a slightly plodding 90 minutes. A large portion of the remaining run time is focused on nudity and sex ... I mean, at times it's not far off porn, to be honest.

All said and done, though, it was a kind of interesting movie. The whole thing is on YouTube, actually.

Neil wrote:Yeh, agree with each of those points.  And makes me have a slightly higher appreciation of the first one too

The sense of pacing and the pin-sharp editing on the original movie is tip-top. There's not an ounce of fat on that movie, it's all purpose and drive - and that helps keep it feel fresh all these years later.

In A Violent Nature (Christ Nash, 2024):
https://deadshed.blogspot.com/2024/09/in-violent-nature-chris-nash-2024-review.html

Taking the typical story of a slasher movie and inverting the POV to instead focus on the monstrous killer, debut feature writer/director Chris Nash sets out with a bold hook, but can it be sustained over 90 minutes?...