Movie/film thread: resurrected

The Accountant (2016)

As a standalone movie, a confusing mishmash with some excellent Jason Bourne-style action sequences. The movie is much easier to understand as a two-hour franchise pilot. In that case the improbable coincidences are much more allowable, and possibly even fun.

 

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

Brings the book to life. Also, she kills and eats a pigeon. Bravo! Author! Wonderful flick! Take the kids to see! Kill them all.

 

Rogue One - Not bad, but not great.  I wonder if George Lucas put this out to help fund better special effects for SW Episode VIII.


Spoiler Alert!

Peter Cushing didn't let his death in 1994 stop him from getting more lines in this film than he had in Episode IV.

"Death isn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days. It doesn't screw your career up the way it used to." - Lister, Red Dwarf

Arrival (2016)

Hepatapod-As-a-Second Language. Any ESL careerists should have a look. Aliens arrive. They don't speak like us. A linguist with a security clearance is called in. Based on the Ted Chiang short story Story of Your Life. Very science. More like what might really happen if no one shot first. And China saves the day. Has mystical scifi elements.

 

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

Actu-lols. Genuinely funny coming of age story with what seemed to me a compellingly sophisticated portrait of how being a teenager is both simple and complex. A bit glossy at times, but substantial nonetheless. Could be good in classes.

Plus, Phantogram in the soundtrack so, you know, can't help myself.

 

"LION"; A five years old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survived many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia (Nicole Kidman): 25 yrs later, he sets out to find his family. As you can imagine, it was an interesting story.

Masterminds (2016)

Entertaining, quirky, light comedy. Supposedly based on a true story.

Robbery (Lou Lap) (2016)

Apathetic slacker Lau Kin-ping starts work at an all-night convenience store in Hong Kong. Surreal. Bloody. Violent. Sharp references to other movies. Has some particularly wild twists. Not for everyone but great fun nonetheless.

 

So Young (c. 2013)


Very accurate glimpse of college life in China. The campus, the classrooms, the classes, the dorms and the dorm drama.


And the afterlife of their college experience. Rings very true to my almost 19 years of experience teaching in various Chinese universities.


Not much to do with teaching English in China, but lots to do with the straum and derge (sp?) of Chinese college student life.


Find the version with English subtitles if you can.

Passengers (2016)

Jennifer Lawrence is a far better actress than Chris Pratt is an actor. In fact, Chris Pratt is so far outclassed here, this movie really can't read as anything other than a barefaced win for the patriarchy. This movie could be less blandly poisonous, but not with StarLord in the lead.

One thumb up for the probably deliberate ship's thrusting prow during a sex scene moment. Otherwise: 

"HIDDEN FIGURES"." This is the incredible untold story of three African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glen into orbit. This was the stunning achievement that restored the nation's confidence, turned around the Space Race and galvanised the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big." Calach, I'm pretty sure that you will like this one as will EL and several other movie buffs.  To be quite honest, I was surprised that it had the impact on me which it had. I hope that some of you folk will see it and give me your opinions.

Sounds interesting.  I'll add it to my list.

The Hunger Games Quadrilogy (2012-15)

First movie is best movie. The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay I & II. Viewed as love stories, they're quite weird. But they're not love stories. They're traumatic stress stories. For me, that total lack of Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson chemistry really does mirror the weird baselessness of the Katniss/Peeta relationship in the books. Maybe the author intended something different. But she definitely was into stripping the romance out of war, and putting the whole of the humanising/dehumanising conflict into the person of Katniss Everdeen, and it seems like that's where the movies end up too, I think.

Meanwhile, "fire is catching" - that's a great line.


 

I've been watching the Resident Evils. As always, first movie is best movie. As a horror action film it rightly is called survival horror. Last night however was watching Retribution and was distracted the whole way through....

Resident Evil: Retribution Main Theme - "Flying Through The Air" - Tomandandy

Jason Bourne: The Bourne Ultimatum - "Extreme Ways" - Moby

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

The Resident Evil movies are strange beasts. They always more or less feature Alice, the Milla Jovovich character from the first movie, but they keep trying to shoehorn game characters in as well and it never works. Characters like Claire and friends turn up largely unannounced and try somehow to be a part of the story, but the story is and always will be Alice and the movies go lopsided. They wander out of horror territory into fantasy gun porn and not altogether bad kungfu sequencing. Personally, I think the first movie contained more substantial drama than the rest of the movies combined, and those other movies would capitalise better on their outstandingly cool imagery if they would commit more fully to flash over substance. There's a whole lot of basically physical drama they could do with their cameras that just would work better if they were creating atmosphere rather than action, and in particular a horror atmosphere, duh.

The Final Chapter is as chock full of non sequitur alliances and hurdled gaps in plot as all the other movies and has tremendous potential in some of its action imagery and landscapes, and it actually does round out the six movie long story pretty well, but I do miss the leavening effect of actual horror I think. First movie remains best movie.

Final Chapter? Worth it, anyway: