TST Film Review Thread

[John_P]

Saw The Amateur today.

Rami Malek is a cia tech guy (think codes etc) whose wife is killed by mercenaries.

He's eventually able to convince the CIA to give him training to go after the killers.

Enjoyed Malek in this, good work from Laurence Fishbourne and Jon Bernthal in their roles as well.

Enjoyed the fact Malek doesn't just become commando and instead has to use his own smarts and skills.

Pretty decent.

 

[The_bup]

A Minecraft Movie

Wha.. what? My.. my eyes hurt

Against the name, “A Minecraft Movie” is not a movie. It’s a bizarre collection of sounds, visuals and A list actors. The name scares me, “A Minecraft Movie” implies there will be more than one. Please, I beg you, no.

I went with my friends to see it. From the trailers (and the memes but.. later) we could tell this is going to suck; which is why we saw it. I think making a movie about “creativity” and having it marketed as a switch your brain off movie - yes, they said those words in that order! - must be quite insulting for the filmmakers to a degree. We made “trope bingo” for this movie to see what we could guess. For anyone interested, I got three. No rows.

The movie consists basically of some people getting sucked into Minecraft, or as it is framed in the movie, a new dimension. Despite everyone saying how “gross it looks” I found the real world scenes in the movie far more repulsive. Of course, this is in director Jared Hess’s signature Napoleon Dynamite style; although to me this raises more questions on why a low-key comedy director was directing a blockbuster well, Epic. Don’t worry about the characters, they don’t matter. It opens with a 10 minute prologue/exposition, which was just weird. Spoiling the fantasy world immediately removes any wonder from it, so that was pretty underwhelming. There are so many odd moments in the movie where the stakes were so high, life or death, and it’s solved in about 30 seconds. Also, while Jack Black shouts the name of every Minecraft thing he does, there are many strange moments where a character shows their creativity by doing something that is not possible in the game. Minecraft players are plenty creative in game, so It seems weird and arbitrary to do what they did but.. sure.

Buy and large, it didn’t matter to us though. We saw Jack Black say “chicken Jockey” and “WATER BUCKET! RELEASE!”, and the rest of my group seemed pretty pleased, but I was still just.. weirded out by the whole thing. I mean.. man. What did I? I think what didn’t help was the Strangely high amount of suggestive/sex jokes in the movie. Like one or two are fine, goes over the kids heads of course, but Christ the sheer amount! I found it funny, I’m only a teenager after all, but there was a horrible nagging feeling reminding me this movie is for seven year olds and asking why are they here. Even weirder, I queried my friends in it after and they didn’t seem to think it was a problem or didn’t catch them. So, it’s either I am right or I am some perverted sex demon picking up on what’s not there. You can decide.

My main takeaway is that kids deserve better. Of course these poor sellouts have an effect on the new generation, and it is a great sadness. We’re raising kids on.. this? It’s not even funny in a bizarre, creative way like Ren and Stimpy or some other Jack Black movies. It is just pure slop made by a spreadsheet or something…

Sorry for the scatterbrain review. It’s much like the movie in that regard. To re-emphasise, this was just the weirdest thing for me

3/10.

Those three things were the memes, Jennifer Coolidge and maybe the sheer horror of the VFX abominations, which I do love.

Other than that, watch the Lego Movie. Much better

 

[Zeock]

A Minecraft Movie

Wha.. what? My.. my eyes hurt

Against the name, “A Minecraft Movie” is not a movie. It’s a bizarre collection of sounds, visuals and A list actors. The name scares me, “A Minecraft Movie” implies there will be more than one. Please, I beg you, no.

I went with my friends to see it. From the trailers (and the memes but.. later) we could tell this is going to suck; which is why we saw it. I think making a movie about “creativity” and having it marketed as a switch your brain off movie - yes, they said those words in that order! - must be quite insulting for the filmmakers to a degree. We made “trope bingo” for this movie to see what we could guess. For anyone interested, I got three. No rows.

The movie consists basically of some people getting sucked into Minecraft, or as it is framed in the movie, a new dimension. Despite everyone saying how “gross it looks” I found the real world scenes in the movie far more repulsive. Of course, this is in director Jared Hess’s signature Napoleon Dynamite style; although to me this raises more questions on why a low-key comedy director was directing a blockbuster well, Epic. Don’t worry about the characters, they don’t matter. It opens with a 10 minute prologue/exposition, which was just weird. Spoiling the fantasy world immediately removes any wonder from it, so that was pretty underwhelming. There are so many odd moments in the movie where the stakes were so high, life or death, and it’s solved in about 30 seconds. Also, while Jack Black shouts the name of every Minecraft thing he does, there are many strange moments where a character shows their creativity by doing something that is not possible in the game. Minecraft players are plenty creative in game, so It seems weird and arbitrary to do what they did but.. sure.

Buy and large, it didn’t matter to us though. We saw Jack Black say “chicken Jockey” and “WATER BUCKET! RELEASE!”, and the rest of my group seemed pretty pleased, but I was still just.. weirded out by the whole thing. I mean.. man. What did I? I think what didn’t help was the Strangely high amount of suggestive/sex jokes in the movie. Like one or two are fine, goes over the kids heads of course, but Christ the sheer amount! I found it funny, I’m only a teenager after all, but there was a horrible nagging feeling reminding me this movie is for seven year olds and asking why are they here. Even weirder, I queried my friends in it after and they didn’t seem to think it was a problem or didn’t catch them. So, it’s either I am right or I am some perverted sex demon picking up on what’s not there. You can decide.

My main takeaway is that kids deserve better. Of course these poor sellouts have an effect on the new generation, and it is a great sadness. We’re raising kids on.. this? It’s not even funny in a bizarre, creative way like Ren and Stimpy or some other Jack Black movies. It is just pure slop made by a spreadsheet or something…

Sorry for the scatterbrain review. It’s much like the movie in that regard. To re-emphasise, this was just the weirdest thing for me

3/10.

Those three things were the memes, Jennifer Coolidge and maybe the sheer horror of the VFX abominations, which I do love.

Other than that, watch the Lego Movie. Much better

It's just generic slop. Since it was in production for 11 whole years, plenty of the memes (such as a character called 'General Chungus') are painfully out of date.

 

[The_bup]

It's just generic slop. Since it was in production for 11 whole years, plenty of the memes (such as a character called 'General Chungus') are painfully out of date.

I’d take that as just a movie thing in general. Development hell can mean frequent script rewrites and general studio/director hot potato instead of an old script just not being picked up. This movie wasn’t in development hell, but the idea of turning the minecraft into a movie was. I’d wager the script wasn’t written too long ago, it’s just movies take 2-3 years to make and you can’t really accommodate for a 2-3 month lasting meme without it woefully expiring.

 

[John_P]

They said its A Minecraft Movie because there's no one Minecraft adventure.

Most sad was hearing apparently Matt Berry was originally going to play Steve but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with What We Do In The Shadows.

End of the day it'll definitely get sequels which isn't great but the cinemas have really needed something to shift tickets this year so it's good in that respect.

 

[pluk]

Snow White with a 6 year old. Overall is an entertaining enough remake that moves along at a pleasing pace and has decent songs old and new.
One of my daughters comments was 'why doesn't she look like Snow White?', obviously without understanding the context of any implications of race. It is a bizarre bit of casting that I'm sure hasn't helped the films performance, but as a whole it certainly doesn't deserve the slating it is getting from some quarters.

 

[Bert2theSpark]

They said its A Minecraft Movie because there's no one Minecraft adventure.

Most sad was hearing apparently Matt Berry was originally going to play Steve but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with What We Do In The Shadows.

End of the day it'll definitely get sequels which isn't great but the cinemas have really needed something to shift tickets this year so it's good in that respect.

I think the film is more compelling with Jack Black, the script is so bad it’s good and has basically become Gen Z’s Rocky Horror moment. Especially with all of the toilet roll, costumes and popcorn, one guy even brought a live chicken to go and see the chicken jockey.

Plus Matt Berry already has a role within the Fallout show, but it was still nice to see him voice the Villager at the end of the film. Playing different NPCs in different Microsoft franchises.

 

[Matt N]

Now it’s appeared on Netflix, I finally managed to watch Paddington in Peru today.

I loved the first two Paddington films, and I very much liked this one as well! Like its predecessors, it’s just a very nice, wholesome film; Paddington himself is as charming and funny as ever, and there are some cool new guest stars like Olivia Colman as a singing nun and Antonio Banderas as a ship captain.

It’s quite interesting to see the films go to Paddington’s homeland of Peru rather than stay in London, and it does make for an interesting change; it’s still fun, albeit perhaps lacks some of the “fish out of water” humour from Paddington that the first two films had in spades.

But overall, I thought it was a really fun film, and definitely a very nice watch like the first two! I know I’m nearly 22 and they’re children’s films, but I do love the Paddington films; I find them very wholesome, heartwarming films that never fail to make you laugh and feel all warm and fuzzy inside in equal measure!