Collateral remains to this day the only film I ever went to the cinema to see on my own. I fell asleep before it started, and woke up suddenly when the jazz club scene started to find a lot of people in the cinema glaring at me (I’m a snorer).
Never again.
The wife and I went to the theater yesterday and saw Matthew Vaughn’s latest offering Argylle.
Is it a great movie? No. Does it provide some great underlying message? No
Is it action filled, humorous, and over the top fun? We thought so.
I’m sure it’s a decent action flick but I refuse to see it simply because I was forced to see that god damn trailer so many times 
Did go to see The Iron Claw today. Thought it was brilliant 
That trailer was everywhere!
Absolutely. Great movie!
Finally saw it today in 35mm and it was f***ing awesome! I still like Thief more but this was its own beast of a film.
Saw the bob Marley movie. Pretty solid but they could have done more with it… Still, plenty teary eyed folks in the audience when the credits came up
Dune Part 2 which I found to be inferior to the first (still worth the price of admission of course)
I saw this last Wednesday and thought it was brilliant, besting its 2021 predecessor by some measure. Almost three hours went by in a relative flash. It even provided a much-needed sprinkling of levity here and there. Not much, mind, but films of this nature can get bogged down in their own straight-faced pomposity (this is true of both Part 1 and of David Lynch’s 1984 vintage tbh), and this one doesn’t.
If I’m really, really nitpicking, I’d say that there’s a scene which briefly had me thinking of Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Jones, 1979) although, given the similarly ludicrous circumstances at hand, the comparison was either intentional or inevitable, and it was fleeting in any event. Also, Christopher Walken’s turn as the Emperor of the Known Universe was basically just Christopher Walken doing his Christopher Walken shtick, which would’ve dragged me out of the movie had I not already always secretly suspected/hoped that Christopher Walken might actually be the Emperor of Everything anyway. So it was all good.
Austin Butler - last seen as the titular hip-swivelling King in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022) - was absolutely fantastic here in what was the “Sting” role in the 1984 picture. And star Timothée Chalamet really pulled it out of the bag in transforming from waif-like boy to magnetic leader of millions. Wasn’t entirely convinced he’d be able to carry it off - too young, too slight - but he made it work.
But we need a part 3 (and given the way in which this one concluded I’d be stupefied if we didn’t get one). We need to see the end of Paul Atreides’ journey. We witnessed the empirical rise - and simultaneous moralistic fall - of Michael Corleone, of Anakin Skywalker, of Walter White; and we need this tale to join theirs in tragic pop-culture infamy.
All merely IMHO, of course.
I agree with you Caress, I’ve seen it in cinemas twice now and both times it felt like that runtime was only 10 minutes, it blitzed through that runtime.
I absolutely adore Dune 2, it just feels like a perfect sci-fi blockbuster to me, and might be the closest I get to experiencing what people felt when they saw Empire Strikes Back when it first came out.
I personally didn’t love the first one, I thought it was just ok but I think my opinion might rise if I do a rewatch after seeing the second one.
Last night: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Wingard, 2024)
I mean, whatever you think this movie is probably going to be - that’s exactly what it is. The monstery fightery bits are spectacular, the human elements and general plot are a load of auld bollocks. Kong, now living beneath the Earth’s crust in “Hollow Earth” is lonely and, in his search for other giant simians with whom to co-habit, inadvertently releases a horde of apes led by an evil version of himself, riding astride a “bad guy” version of Godzilla. Kong’s going to need to come up to the surface world and convince Godzilla, who beat the f#ck out of him in the last movie, to come assist him before all hell literally breaks loose. Oh yeah, and some shit about a kid from Skull Island, and some villagers living in Hollow Earth, and some symbols the villagers are using to call for help, or some bloody thing.
Was it any good? Yeah, I liked it. I’m a Godzilla fanboy and a sucker for skyscraper-sized monsters kicking ten bells out of each other, wider plot points be damned. Probably the weakest movie in the Monsterverse franchise since Godzilla (Edwards, 2014) and, depending on what you want or expect from these films, maybe the weakest of all; as with the original Toho franchise, begun in 1954, the Monsterverse is becoming increasingly kiddie-friendly. But if you can look past that, there’s some cracking monster-smashy action going on here.
Saw Challengers last night, thought it was bloody brilliant. I can see how some people may not enjoy it but I personally adored it. So much I’m going to see it again Saturday with some friends.
Even if it doesn’t seem like something that would be up your alley, it’s honestly worth seeing for the soundtrack alone!
Asa, I’m really looking forward to getting this on Bluray when it is released, and then putting it by until I watch it at Christmas as a ‘premiere’…
There are quite a few good films being released this year; both at the cinema, and on disc…
‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’
‘Godzilla Minus One’
Kraven the Hunter’
‘Dune 2’
‘Nosferatu’ (Robert Eggers)
Furiosa. It’s no Fury Road, and it’s especially not as high-adrenaline, and it’s quieter, but it’s still one hell of an action movie.
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
With live music accompaniment at the Prince Charles Cinema in London.
Very enjoyable.
Wow…what a great experience that must have been…I’m glad you had the opportunity to do that.
Last week: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Miller, 2024)
A prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, dispensing with the titular one-time law enforcer and placing Imperator Furiosa front and center, played in the earlier movie by Charlize Theron but played here (in the main) by the almost ubiquitous Anya Taylor-Joy and, to be fair to her, she’s every bit as good as her predecessor.
So, we know from Mad Max: Fury Road that Furiosa was taken as a child from a green and verdant land, that she became a trusted Road Warrior for tyrannical Citadel Chief Immortan Joe, riding his enormous War Rigs out onto the “Fury Road” to either Gas Town or The Bullet Farm where she would trade the Citadel’s food and water for ammunition and “guzzoline”; we know that she’s a badass battle-hardened motherfucker; and we know that, somewhere along the way, she lost an arm.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga fills in all of these “hows”, “whys” and “wherefore thou arts” for us, pitting Furiosa - a child for the first hour of the picture - as something of a negotiation makeweight 'twixt Immortan Joe and the psychotic bike horde leader Dementus, played with pantomime glee by Chris Hemsworth, who still manages to look like Thor despite being a heavily bearded murderous Aussie lunatic.
Furiosa is slightly slower paced than its predecessor, which is fair enough given that Fury Road was basically a massive there-and-back car chase whereas this one takes place across many years, thus needing to give a little more time and space to the main characters and their circumstances. That said, this is still a Mad Max movie even if we’re missing the main man so we don’t sit contemplating our existences for too long, and the action is plentiful, grimy and utterly insane, as we’ve come to expect from this franchise.
Overall then, I probably liked the more kinetic Fury Road a tiny bit more than this one, but Furiosa remains a high octane blast in its own right nonetheless, and a very worthy prequel. Chris Hemsworth steals the show but Ms. Taylor-Joy proves every bit the action star that Ms. Theron was previously. If you like Fury Road then this is a must-see. If you never saw Fury Road then BOTH movies are must-sees, immediately. Now, I am awaited in Valhalla! Witness me!
Last night: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Wall, 2024)
Very late to this one but I’m thankful to have caught it at the tail end of its cinematic run because it’s a very good-looking picture.
Less a proper sequel and more the first in a proposed new trilogy of movies set in the same universe and continuity as the previous three films, Kingdom kicks off “many generations” (ie about 300 years, give or take) after the events of 2017’s War For the Planet of the Apes. The world as we humans inhabited it has been almost completely swallowed back up by mother nature at this point. Huge forests have grown in, up and around the skeletal remnants of our former cities and skyscrapers. In this American jungle exists a tribe of apes who are at one with each other, their surroundings and, for some reason, eagles, whom they appear to both revere and train as scouts and foragers.
Eh? Never mind, this peaceful commune is rounded up in short order by another, far larger tribe with superior firepower (they’re armed with rudimentary cattle prods) and set to work as slaves for Proximus Caesar, a snarling, mood-swinging bonobo and all-round Idi Amin-type who has set himself up as the King of all he surveys as well as the keeper of the original Caesar’s teachings although, in a nod to our own centuries-old penchant for coercion and control through religion, he teaches a bastardized version of Caesar’s word in order to suit his own agenda which, for a while now, has involved trying to get into a sealed, bombproof underground military facility left over by the humans back in the day.
In capturing our tribe of eagle enthusiasts however, Proximus left behind Noa, the juvenile chimpanzee son of the tribal chief. Believed dead, Noa is now determined to follow Proximus, get back his tribe and avenge his father. Along the way he’ll run into a sage orang-utan who understands what Caesar was really about (apes not hurting each other, a belief that humans can be decent), and a human female who is a lot smarter than any he’s ever encountered before. Did she just call his name? She can talk?? You maniacs!
At nearly 2½ hours, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is definitely flabby around the midriff. It could’ve lost half an hour, maybe forty minutes, and been a limber beast of a picture. That said, it’s an engaging enough tale (even if it performs some narrative gymnastics here and there; just roll with it) featuring some genuinely likable simian protagonists, and it looks gorgeous as mentioned earlier. Early similarities to Apocalypto (Gibson, 2007) are too abundant to miss (Mad Mel’s Mayan chase 'em up was apparently a big influence on the writing team), but this gives way to an almost The Outlaw Josey Wales (Eastwood, 1976) vibe, before Kingdom finally embraces its roots, paying late deference to both the 1968 original picture and its first sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (Post, 1970).
If you’re not already bananas for the Apes franchise then Kingdom is unlikely to convert you but those who love a spot of monkeying around will need to make a Right Turn Clyde for the nearest cineplex before it swings off into the sunset forever.
Last night: A Quiet Place: Day One (Sarnoski, 2024)
For the uninitiated: A Quiet Place (Krasinski, 2018) and its 2020 sequel are set on a post-apocalyptic Earth; said apocalypse being the invasion of hordes upon hordes of vicious alien creatures, blind but supersensitive to even the slightest noise, leaving the remaining humans having to exist much like bedbugs: Bloody QUIETLY! SSSHHHH! This third movie in the franchise is a prequel and, as the name implies, is set on the first day of that invasion. Like the other movies, Day One focuses on a small story within that larger nightmare scenario, in this case that of terminally ill Sam (an emaciated Lupita Nyong’o), on a day trip into New York with her fellow hospice residents when the attack begins. With little that the alien invaders can take from her - she’s already dying, fast - Sam determines to go get one last slice of pizza from the store in Harlem where her dad used to take her oh-so-many years ago. She takes her cat Frodo with her and, along the way, picks up terrified English businessman Eric (Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn). Will she get her pizza?
Hm. Now, I should say up front that I’ve only seen John Krasinski’s monstery shush-'em-up A Quiet Place once before, and I’ve never seen his 2020 follow-up A Quiet Place Part II ever. I thought the first movie was okay but I also felt the inherent silence within the movie, absolutely pivotal to the plot of course, made it kind-of drag. I’m clearly in the minority here because it’s a much beloved movie and indeed franchise at this point, but still. Didn’t snap my radish.
So why did I go to this third movie in the series? Well I’m a monster movie fan in general and I figure, three movies in, we’ll see a lot more monster for our cinema pound(s!). Also, since Day One is a prequel set on the day of the initial invasion of our blind, noise-sensitive alien nemeses, I further figured it would take the better part of the entire movie for everyone on-screen to twig that they need to stop making a typically human racket which, by definition, would present so much more monster carnage. Surely?
No.
Our human survivors cotton on to the need for absolute silence within maybe three minutes of the initial assault on New York which, itself, happens less than ten minutes into the movie. So, as it turns out, Day One is pretty much as silent as the other films. It doesn’t drag too badly but at the same time there’s not all that much story being told here. Our motley trio head off for pizza, then head towards the Hudson where boats are picking up survivors (our hideous crawling antagonists don’t like water). The end! I mean I get it but these are hardly the highest, most gripping stakes I’ve ever seen in a movie. And, whilst mrs.caress hit the cinema ceiling a couple of times, I really didn’t think there were enough jump scares which are, after all, the bread and butter of a movie of this nature.
In all then, I think this one is strictly for existing fans of the A Quiet Place franchise. Or for fans of cats, because the cat (played by two identical kitties) absolutely steals the movie, despite a good few reaches of credibility in just how loyal a cat would be, even a trained “comfort” cat like this one. Miaow!
Being a grumpy old man and confirmed anti-noise person … I’m with the Aliens, ‘Shut the fuck up, humans!’
Has anybody seen the Costner movie Horizon? I am planning to take a look myself next week.
