Having sunk one franchise with Die Another Day, director Lee Tamorahi sinks the xXx one, only difference is nobody cares about that.
Actually, watching this on Sony Movie Channel, I quite enjoyed, it's crap of course but watchable in a way. Ice Cube is the new xXx. The other one got 'taken out' off camera we're told. It is nonsense and odd nonsense as it tries to be 'street' and cool but it's toy town stuff, the stunts, it's for 10-year olds. The director's reputation for ludicrous, cartoon-like CGI rears its head in the key stunt scene at the climax, which combines the train exodus in GE with the train-chasing car in OP. It's sort of odd having a black leading man as it appears there is some Hollywood rule that prohibits them having sex on screen; at any point he is about to do the deed, as you would in any other action staple like Bond, events prevent it or he backs away, going for a shake and a cheeseburger instead. It reminds me of the way the working classes were treated in 1950s films as opposed to 1960s movies where Connery or Burton could just prowl around, instead they were allowed to sit at the top table, but only briefly as a treat, and then back as you were. It's sort of condescending while purporting not to be.
Samuel L Jackson is cool in it, and he rarely appears to be phoning it in whatever rubbish he's doing, but the whole idea Ice Cube recruits his vaguely criminal street gang to save the White House, well it's too dumb.
re Joshua's critique of Dunkirk:
part of storytelling is generalization, giving events a shape with a beginning middle and end, and highlighting the bits that are supportive of that story, and minimizing or eliminating bits that confuse the story.
Perhaps accurately representing the experiences of 10,000 men on the beach with the realistic noise and chaos would not have made a comprehensible story for us in the audience. Maybe a documentary could have accurately summarised some of it, but not a narrative film.
Gymkata explains several very experimental techniques Nolan used that actually do subvert the conventional expectations of storytelling, providing a multiplicity of viewpoints, and giving a sense of continuous noise and chaos rather than clichéd movie dialog, so that's admirable in its intent.
For me I found those experimental techniques made the film confusing and somewhat painful to watch, hard to tell what's going on, especially when all the various actors seems to have the same dark hair and dirty faces ... but I've always thought Nolan directed incomprehensible action sequences ever since that first Batman movie, so I'm a bit biased on that point.
But looking at Joshua's critique and Gymkata's response, I gotta give Nolan points for effort. He made some radical storytelling decisions to film an experience that may be ultimately unfilmable.
If people in the audience are interested in the actual history, they can go do some reading. As the movie was quite popular, I'm sure many watched the film knowing nothing about the event, then went to the library and started researching deeper, their interest in history piqued.
There are some interesting opinions on the Dunkirk film and I respect all to have these opinions whatever they are. This film was a disappointment to me because I was expecting it to be more realistic to the actual history. I watched the old Dunkirk film at Christmas time and I thought this to be the much better film just because it gave more of the story and the scale.
As I said, I can thank the new Dunkirk film for one thing. I have not seen him in any other film but I believe that Tom Hardy would make a good replacement as James Bond when Daniel Craig retires.
At Christmas time I watched the Dunkirk film on DVD. I have been looking forward to this film since it was in the cinema. I must say that it is I think the worst film I have ever seen! I will also go to say that I think it disrespected the memory of those who were there. I will also admit not to seeing it all the way through because I had to turn it off because it was so awful!
Totally agree, it is a terrible movie, where were the one third of a million to be evacuated, the defenders who held the line to death or capture, the 850 "little ships" not a dozen or so, the thousands of vehicles ...................the episode of Foyle shown the other day about Dunkirk had more "heart" in a few minutes ,and better acting than this whole sorry movie.
Terrible movie. Lots of Bond connections both behind the camera (Vic Armstrong, Derek Cracknell ao) and in front of it: David Niven (CR67), Telly Savalas (OHMSS), Philip Locke & Paul Stassino (TB), and most obviously Roger Moore attempting an awful Teutonic accent.
I liked it better than you folks seem to. It did a clever job of subverting our expectations from the first film. Especially after the first film did such an annoying job of recapitulating every last plotpoint from the original. The usual overlong dogfights, hangar bays, and blueprints that reveal one weakness wasted my time. But all the actual plotrelated stuff between Rey and Luke, and between Rey and Kylo Ren, was interesting.
And to compare with the prequels, I think Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are better actors than Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen were.
Speaking of proper actors:
I kept thinking I know that tall woman with the purple hair, who is she? who is she? of course credits tell me that's Laura Dern. She's about two feet taller than Carrie Fisher. Havent seen her in a film for years. Completely missed Benicio del Toro even though he looked and acted more or less exactly the same as he did in that Villeneuve movie I just watched.
I think Kylo Ren was just messing with Rey when he told her she's nobody. We still don't know who she is, but The Force is inexplicably strong with that one. We all know Darth Vader's own mom was a slave, and Ren reveres the legacy of his grandfather, so he's not one to talk about humble roots. I think there's still a Secret Origin coming in Part Nine.
Also, have we ever seen Princess Leia pull Jedi tricks before? She must have some of those mitocondria-type Force molecules in her DNA to have passed it onto Kylo Ren. Anyway, pulling herself back into the ship after floating in space looked like a Jedi trick to me
Not nearly as good as Rogue One, but all that film had to achieve was to get the plans to Princess Leia in time for the original film to begin. As long as it set up that one plot point, it was free to tell a creative story without worrying about how much three generations have invested in these characters. Looking at that petition page linked to upthread, I gather much of the issue is the corporate declaration that hundreds of tie-in novels and comic books have now been declared nonCanon, which must threaten some folks' very sense of reality.
Yes, to all.
Not a bad movie at all for today's expensive fan fiction follow ups. As good as Blade Runner 2049 IMO.
Still liked SPECTRE better. -{
This movie is based on a on a novel by Ballard that was considered unfilmable, and without having read it you kind of sense why. This doesn't mean it's a bad movie, just that the directorand screenwriter had to inventive. The director is Ben Wheatly (A field in England, Free Fire, Kill List) is one of the most interesting directors working in the UK today (in my opinion) and may one day direct a good Bond movie. High-Rise takes place in a new high-rise building. The buiding clearly is an image of the class system in the UK. To put it simply the situation develops into an urban "Lord of the Flies" scenario with adults. The movie is interesting and demands more from the viewer than most movies whith Tom Hiddleston. It's well made I soon noticed that the high-rises look like a brutalist version of the new Edvard Munch Museum that's currently being buildt in Oslo:
Dunkirk would have been improved by a scene like this, which demonstrated that though some English were keen to cross the Channel to do their patriotic duty, not all really got the point of it:
"Sorry fellows, I'm keeping the Russian - but there's room for 2 in the boot if you squeeze..."
The Hitman's Bodyguard :
A fantastic fun action movie -{ plenty of laughs
With some great action sequences.
literslly just watched! Absolutely brilliant and thinking would love Bond 25 in Amsterdam and a great chase round the canals!! Big Sam Jackson was just great as per and can't believe Selma Hyake(how ever you spell it) is 51! Fave film of the year so far.
I watched the original Netflix film Bright, with Will Smith as a cop teamed with an Orc hunting down an elf with a magic wand in the mean streets of LA. Yep: it's like Tolkien tried to write a cop movie and then gave up and started writing The Fifth Element. It's bizarre enough to be watchable, but not bizarre enough to be good.
High-rise
This movie is based on a on a novel by Ballard that was considered unfilmable...
...High-Rise takes place in a new high-rise building. The building clearly is an image of the class system in the UK. To put it simply the situation develops into an urban "Lord of the Flies" scenario with adults....
yeh I saw that too, not because of Hiddleston but because I'm a J G Ballard fan.
I gotta say Hiddleston is better at these morally ambiguous deal-with-the-devil type roles than he is at being a good guy, I don't think he would have made a very good Bond.
24 have you also seen Cronenberg's Crash? that was an even more "unfilmable" Ballard story. Lets see if anybody ever attempts Atrocity Exhibition (I couldn't even read that one, although all the cool kids claimed they had). There's another book called Concrete Island that formed a quasi-trilogy with Crash and HighRise, that might make a good film, if audiences can buy into the premise. More Lord of the Flies type stuff. Even his early straight sci-fi novels usually were setups for civilization to breakdown and educated professionals going savage, by the 1970s he abandoned the scifi trappings and set these stories in a genuine contemporary landscape.
Ballard's book was written in 1975. The world has only gotten more like that since then, with all the 80 story condo towers taking over every major city. The effects of such a housing type becoming dominant have really changed the city of Toronto for example, for the worse. Villeneuve's film Enemy featured some great shots of the dehumanising condo-scape that has come to redefine Toronto.
when you show that image of the highrise development, I am reminded of Gerald Scarfe's fanged stadium, from the artwork of The Wall. It looks like a giant organism that is going to consume the audience, a sort of architectural venus flytrap. I think the architecture in HighRise was consuming the mere humans that lived within it, as well.
I have long thought that Wall artwork was inspired by the real life Olympic Stadium in Montreal, as that is the precise venue where Roger Waters got the idea for The Wall in the first place.
I'm an avid reader, but I haven't read any Ballard. Interesting what you said about the building consuming the people in it. I certainly think the brutalist architecture fits the story.
I agree Hiddleston plays morally ambigious well, probably better than true blue heroes. But I think this the Bond personal well. Bond is sometimes a morally ambigious hero. I saw Bond in TH in some scenes in the movie, but I generelly find him not masculine enough for the role.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,762Chief of Staff
I’ve read quite a lot of Ballard’s work...including Atrocity Exhibition, which is the most bizarre and difficult book I’ve ever read...I’ve also watched High Rise, enjoyable but a little disjointed, much like the book )
I’ve read quite a lot of Ballard’s work...including Atrocity Exhibition, which is the most bizarre and difficult book I’ve ever read
I started and gave up a number of times, something I otherwise would not do with an author I like ... the copy I have is the illustrated trade paperback that came out in the 1980s, published as part of the RE/Search series
as I recall, each paragraph gets a new title and the protagonist gets a new but similar name and a new but similar profession and supporting cast, but otherwise the subject matter is much like the obsessions of Crash
24 if you've never read Ballard, I recommend either HighRise or Concrete Island (which is actually more Robinson Crusoe than Lord of the Flies) ... Crash is a bit more disturbing and a tougher slog.
His early sci-fi I like a lot, they're all global environmental catastrophes of different sorts that set up the civilizational breakdown, various titles like The Drowned World or The Burning World etc, quite credible science. The Burning World begins with an atmospheric disruption caused by all the plastic waste floating in the oceans congealing into a skin and stopping evaporation, thus no more rain ... that's actually really happening in the Pacific although theres still a few square km of open ocean left in our reality!
Well tonight (now) I’m in bed watching Dr No ,whilst eating some delicous Medhjool dates washed down with a huge Bellini ,I got the peach juice from our local Sainsbury’s
I’m in bed at the moment watching The Enforcer munching on a box of cheese footballs
The Enforcer is my least watch Dirty Harry flick, I should rewatch it.
Saw parts of Magnum Force recently, a personal favourite behind the original.
Sudden Impact follows in my ranking with the dead pool getting the short end of the stick.
(Sorry my I pad is going nuts at the moment) anyway they played a piece from the film ,complete with narration by Charlie Sheen and helicopter noises, how we all laughed ,even dad would have found it funny
So much a Bond film, I wondered why on earth I hadn't taken my elderly mum to see it when it was in cinemas*. Then I realised why: it is really, really long. Also, the previous movie with stunts around the Dubai skycraper was a bit unmemorable other than that, I think, so that might have put me off. Not sure, did the Kremlin blow up in the beginning of that one?
But yeah, the opening where Cruise is said to have done his own stunt hanging off an aeroplane taking off is great stuff, it puts you in mind of the stunt in OP, then the end to that action scene puts you in mind of another Bond film (see for yourself).
Then, an assassination at the opera. It's Hitchcock rip off really, as De Palma likes to do, but very well done and maybe a bit QoS too.
The action is slick, dynamic and unpretentious - something the actual Bonds have struggled with of late. A bit generic maybe. Cruise is a star in this stuff and watchable of course, he is hamstrung unlike the Bonds by not having a new song and singer, title, etc each time the way the Bonds do. The Bonds you feel do actually try to be a bit more ambitious and classier, even if they often fail imo, but dammit this film did take me back to the straightforward ambitions of the stunt-laden Moore era. -{
Of course, MI 6 (so to speak) is being filmed now isn't it. It's odd, the first one came out a year or so after GE and I generally preferred it, and all those years later, with talk of Craig handing in his gun, Cruise is still out there flogging this franchise, and with some panache going by this one.
* A bit of a family tradition between us to see the new Bond film in the cinemas.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,762Chief of Staff
Mr Holmes...Sir Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes trying to recall the actual events of his last case whilst he battles senility...very enjoyable and McKellen is superb as usual -{
I watched Platoon the other night , only because at my dads funeral ,we requested a piece of music by Baber ,Adagio for strings ,(in b flat minor)
My condolences. Was it recent?
Anyway, Platoon is on the watch list for this weekend now, thanks for reminding me of it. I saw Savages recently and it still feels like something's missing throughout the film. Script wise it worked but the execution was far sloppier than what I'd come to anticipate. Alt ending (3 of them lying) FTW.
My dad doesn't really want to (which is why I never saw it on the cinema) but I want to see The Hitman's Bodyguard. The reviews were horrible when it first came out and I went to see Blonde instead. What did everyone think of it?
Comments
Having sunk one franchise with Die Another Day, director Lee Tamorahi sinks the xXx one, only difference is nobody cares about that.
Actually, watching this on Sony Movie Channel, I quite enjoyed, it's crap of course but watchable in a way. Ice Cube is the new xXx. The other one got 'taken out' off camera we're told. It is nonsense and odd nonsense as it tries to be 'street' and cool but it's toy town stuff, the stunts, it's for 10-year olds. The director's reputation for ludicrous, cartoon-like CGI rears its head in the key stunt scene at the climax, which combines the train exodus in GE with the train-chasing car in OP. It's sort of odd having a black leading man as it appears there is some Hollywood rule that prohibits them having sex on screen; at any point he is about to do the deed, as you would in any other action staple like Bond, events prevent it or he backs away, going for a shake and a cheeseburger instead. It reminds me of the way the working classes were treated in 1950s films as opposed to 1960s movies where Connery or Burton could just prowl around, instead they were allowed to sit at the top table, but only briefly as a treat, and then back as you were. It's sort of condescending while purporting not to be.
Samuel L Jackson is cool in it, and he rarely appears to be phoning it in whatever rubbish he's doing, but the whole idea Ice Cube recruits his vaguely criminal street gang to save the White House, well it's too dumb.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
part of storytelling is generalization, giving events a shape with a beginning middle and end, and highlighting the bits that are supportive of that story, and minimizing or eliminating bits that confuse the story.
Perhaps accurately representing the experiences of 10,000 men on the beach with the realistic noise and chaos would not have made a comprehensible story for us in the audience. Maybe a documentary could have accurately summarised some of it, but not a narrative film.
Gymkata explains several very experimental techniques Nolan used that actually do subvert the conventional expectations of storytelling, providing a multiplicity of viewpoints, and giving a sense of continuous noise and chaos rather than clichéd movie dialog, so that's admirable in its intent.
For me I found those experimental techniques made the film confusing and somewhat painful to watch, hard to tell what's going on, especially when all the various actors seems to have the same dark hair and dirty faces ... but I've always thought Nolan directed incomprehensible action sequences ever since that first Batman movie, so I'm a bit biased on that point.
But looking at Joshua's critique and Gymkata's response, I gotta give Nolan points for effort. He made some radical storytelling decisions to film an experience that may be ultimately unfilmable.
If people in the audience are interested in the actual history, they can go do some reading. As the movie was quite popular, I'm sure many watched the film knowing nothing about the event, then went to the library and started researching deeper, their interest in history piqued.
Expecting it to be so much better, but I now find Nolan
A very passive director
As I said, I can thank the new Dunkirk film for one thing. I have not seen him in any other film but I believe that Tom Hardy would make a good replacement as James Bond when Daniel Craig retires.
Totally agree, it is a terrible movie, where were the one third of a million to be evacuated, the defenders who held the line to death or capture, the 850 "little ships" not a dozen or so, the thousands of vehicles ...................the episode of Foyle shown the other day about Dunkirk had more "heart" in a few minutes ,and better acting than this whole sorry movie.
Terrible movie. Lots of Bond connections both behind the camera (Vic Armstrong, Derek Cracknell ao) and in front of it: David Niven (CR67), Telly Savalas (OHMSS), Philip Locke & Paul Stassino (TB), and most obviously Roger Moore attempting an awful Teutonic accent.
A fantastic fun action movie -{ plenty of laughs
With some great action sequences.
Not a bad movie at all for today's expensive fan fiction follow ups. As good as Blade Runner 2049 IMO.
Still liked SPECTRE better. -{
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
This movie is based on a on a novel by Ballard that was considered unfilmable, and without having read it you kind of sense why. This doesn't mean it's a bad movie, just that the directorand screenwriter had to inventive. The director is Ben Wheatly (A field in England, Free Fire, Kill List) is one of the most interesting directors working in the UK today (in my opinion) and may one day direct a good Bond movie. High-Rise takes place in a new high-rise building. The buiding clearly is an image of the class system in the UK. To put it simply the situation develops into an urban "Lord of the Flies" scenario with adults. The movie is interesting and demands more from the viewer than most movies whith Tom Hiddleston. It's well made I soon noticed that the high-rises look like a brutalist version of the new Edvard Munch Museum that's currently being buildt in Oslo:
Munch museum:
High-rise:
"Sorry fellows, I'm keeping the Russian - but there's room for 2 in the boot if you squeeze..."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I gotta say Hiddleston is better at these morally ambiguous deal-with-the-devil type roles than he is at being a good guy, I don't think he would have made a very good Bond.
24 have you also seen Cronenberg's Crash? that was an even more "unfilmable" Ballard story. Lets see if anybody ever attempts Atrocity Exhibition (I couldn't even read that one, although all the cool kids claimed they had). There's another book called Concrete Island that formed a quasi-trilogy with Crash and HighRise, that might make a good film, if audiences can buy into the premise. More Lord of the Flies type stuff. Even his early straight sci-fi novels usually were setups for civilization to breakdown and educated professionals going savage, by the 1970s he abandoned the scifi trappings and set these stories in a genuine contemporary landscape.
Ballard's book was written in 1975. The world has only gotten more like that since then, with all the 80 story condo towers taking over every major city. The effects of such a housing type becoming dominant have really changed the city of Toronto for example, for the worse. Villeneuve's film Enemy featured some great shots of the dehumanising condo-scape that has come to redefine Toronto.
when you show that image of the highrise development, I am reminded of Gerald Scarfe's fanged stadium, from the artwork of The Wall. It looks like a giant organism that is going to consume the audience, a sort of architectural venus flytrap. I think the architecture in HighRise was consuming the mere humans that lived within it, as well.
I have long thought that Wall artwork was inspired by the real life Olympic Stadium in Montreal, as that is the precise venue where Roger Waters got the idea for The Wall in the first place.
I agree Hiddleston plays morally ambigious well, probably better than true blue heroes. But I think this the Bond personal well. Bond is sometimes a morally ambigious hero. I saw Bond in TH in some scenes in the movie, but I generelly find him not masculine enough for the role.
as I recall, each paragraph gets a new title and the protagonist gets a new but similar name and a new but similar profession and supporting cast, but otherwise the subject matter is much like the obsessions of Crash
24 if you've never read Ballard, I recommend either HighRise or Concrete Island (which is actually more Robinson Crusoe than Lord of the Flies) ... Crash is a bit more disturbing and a tougher slog.
His early sci-fi I like a lot, they're all global environmental catastrophes of different sorts that set up the civilizational breakdown, various titles like The Drowned World or The Burning World etc, quite credible science.
The Burning World begins with an atmospheric disruption caused by all the plastic waste floating in the oceans congealing into a skin and stopping evaporation, thus no more rain ... that's actually really happening in the Pacific although theres still a few square km of open ocean left in our reality!
(EDIT: got a title wrong, had to correct that!)
I too watched the enforcer
Saw parts of Magnum Force recently, a personal favourite behind the original.
Sudden Impact follows in my ranking with the dead pool getting the short end of the stick.
So much a Bond film, I wondered why on earth I hadn't taken my elderly mum to see it when it was in cinemas*. Then I realised why: it is really, really long. Also, the previous movie with stunts around the Dubai skycraper was a bit unmemorable other than that, I think, so that might have put me off. Not sure, did the Kremlin blow up in the beginning of that one?
But yeah, the opening where Cruise is said to have done his own stunt hanging off an aeroplane taking off is great stuff, it puts you in mind of the stunt in OP, then the end to that action scene puts you in mind of another Bond film (see for yourself).
Then, an assassination at the opera. It's Hitchcock rip off really, as De Palma likes to do, but very well done and maybe a bit QoS too.
The action is slick, dynamic and unpretentious - something the actual Bonds have struggled with of late. A bit generic maybe. Cruise is a star in this stuff and watchable of course, he is hamstrung unlike the Bonds by not having a new song and singer, title, etc each time the way the Bonds do. The Bonds you feel do actually try to be a bit more ambitious and classier, even if they often fail imo, but dammit this film did take me back to the straightforward ambitions of the stunt-laden Moore era. -{
Of course, MI 6 (so to speak) is being filmed now isn't it. It's odd, the first one came out a year or so after GE and I generally preferred it, and all those years later, with talk of Craig handing in his gun, Cruise is still out there flogging this franchise, and with some panache going by this one.
* A bit of a family tradition between us to see the new Bond film in the cinemas.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Anyway, Platoon is on the watch list for this weekend now, thanks for reminding me of it. I saw Savages recently and it still feels like something's missing throughout the film. Script wise it worked but the execution was far sloppier than what I'd come to anticipate. Alt ending (3 of them lying) FTW.
My dad doesn't really want to (which is why I never saw it on the cinema) but I want to see The Hitman's Bodyguard. The reviews were horrible when it first came out and I went to see Blonde instead. What did everyone think of it?