[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

True, he isn't immortal, but he is invincible, isn't he (except for kryptonite)?

SKYFALL...

What a beautiful-looking film. So lovely to see an action-adventure movie with imagery worth putting on a wall. It has been too long. (Despite a few shots here and there, PROMETHEUS disappointed me on this front.) The Shanghai skyscraper sequence (with nods to imagery from COLLATERAL and TINKER TAILOR) was the highlight. Consistently, it's the filmmaking, not the story, that was keeping me involved.

There are some very nice things in it too... Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, some of Javier's stuff, Ben Whishaw. The use of locations is great, and I enjoyed the return to Roger Moore nonsense with the Komodo dragon. I'd have to say Thomas Newman brought a more distinctive presence to it than another David Arnold score would have. His Scotland music and the elevator ride jumped out as moments when other composers would have achieved a more anonymous sound.
Also liking very much: the clever use of sound in the Macau casino sequence (as with several moments in the film, the filmmaking makes the story better than it should be).
The title sequence is the strongest in a while.

What I didn't like... A little bit like when Bond did Blaxploitation or chop-socky or sci-fi, it ends up being a stuffy and conservative version of the thing it's copying. And this time, it's copying THE DARK KNIGHT, complete with a plot arc and a villain. (There's even a cameo by the dream city from INCEPTION.) But they can't go for the kill. They pull back to being a safer version of the thing, and for all the talk of thinking on your sins, M gets let off the hook.
Also, despite a handful of effective lines/looks, Berenice is not the world's strongest actress. Eva Green is still casting a long shadow over the female roles of this series. (Naomie Harris is good though.)
The final act in Scotland didn't work at all for me. The film is dramatically dead after the second act turning point, and the whole 'defend the mansion, complete with rustic gamekeeper' just felt like a waste of time. (And somehow brought a strange Harry Potter vibe into things.) The imagery of that section is stunning, particularly once there's a burning mansion backdrop, but I was back earlier in the film wishing the plot had taken a different turn.

Bond is alive and well. This is a much more traditional Bond film than we've seen for a while. The nods are all back (with a great live action gunshot opening). But CASINO ROYALE is a better film if like me, you didn't mind Bond taking leave of the land of the outlandish. This one ain't bad, but for a story, I'd go to CR again rather than back to Skyfall.

I liked them both equally. May just see Skyfall again. And I'm not a huge fan of Bond either.

...which may have been the geekiest comment I've made in a while.

I hate Superman.

Superman may not be as easy to identify with as other superheroes....he's more an ideal than a person.

However, that doesn't negate the fact that he's pretty much unbeatable. Only ONE weakness that isn't that easy to come by on Earth. That, and his own psyche.

He's always been one of my favourites.

Especially since the late eightiers when John Byrne once more rebooted the franchise, Supes is far more relatable to psychologically and emotionally than the super boy scout of the fifties through seventies.
In fact that's around the time -the "grim and gritty"eighties- that I switched preferences from Batman to Superman.
It seemed that from Frank Miller onwards everyone was just lining up to deconstruct the Batman, with one story being more bloody, psychotic and ethically questionable than the next.

Anyway, I kinda liked the premise put forward in a story from the mid-eighties where Batman and Superman actually do a radio interiew and Superman explains the difference between the two: Batman is the punisher of evil, Superman is the anithesis to evil.

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So I have "Red Planet" and "Mission to Mars" sitting side by side on my shelf. Tonight I decidet to give "Red Planet" another shot, because people keep saying, that it is the better out of two rather week films.

This is not true! My main discovery tonight was, that RP is completely stupid film from the first minute right on to the very last. Nothing in this film makes any sense whatsoever. Why, for instance, did they have Terence Stamp, when they oviously didn't know what to do with his character. They just keep killing off people, so that the last one might have the girl? (53 More Things to Do in Zero Gravity ...) And I hate that score by Graeme Revell. So - and mankind is gonna vanish anyway? Or did I miss something?

"Mission to Mars" is a film plagued with flaws. But by comparison I think it the far better movie. I have a soft spot for that "2001" like finale, cheesy as it is. And I love Morricone's score.

Cheers!

Just finished watching the extended version of The Return of the King. I think that this is only the second time that I have watched it since I bought the DVDs when they originally came out. I did have to watch it in two halves, which was probably the reason why the ending didn't seem to go on and on this time.

Still enjoyable to watch.

I like the end as well, a story so long and detailed (the 3 movies together) deserve such a slow and detailed ending

but I personally feel the extended versions (all 3) are too much. The originals suffice

You're not alone.

Agree as well! I always found it weird that this is indeed the less popular opinion as I find it completely logical that the ending of 6 hours of film contains the closure of plot points for several characters. It's in perfect balance with the rest of the film. To compare, I thought the ending of the final Harry Potter, after so many films, felt rushed and was over before I realized it.

To comment on Thomas' point: agree as well! These films are clearly constructed as 3 hour films (with Jackson also commenting repeatedly that the theatrical versions are his true director's cut) and while the extended versions are interesting and fun to watch, the extra scenes throw them off balance with especially in Return of the King segments that suffer from the extended scenes .

I haven't seen it, but I'm a bit behind as movies go this year.

I'm off to your hemisphere and timezone soon (but not your country), so forgive if I don't answer any subsequent post.