Blade Runner 2049 - 10/10 I don't see any reason to not give it a ten out of ten; no flaws are coming to mind. So visually stunning.
I don't normally post in this thread so here is every movie I have watched in the past month: 500 days of Summer- 10/10 (In my top 25 movies of all time) Coffee Shop- 7/10 Coco- 8/10 Mama Mia 1- 8/10 Mama Mia 2- 7/10
Hey. WALL•E [on TV] - I loved it as a child, and two days ago I was glad to see it's still great. I felt like watching it after finally getting the PS2 game again (the sole reason I had a PS2 in the first place). The setting, the sound design, the finely carried plot, it's awesome. I just love getting inmersed in it and the reflections the bigger picture incites. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom [at the cinema] - I had planned watching this movie for a while, and the in-universe website they put up for it really kept me invested. We finally watched it yesterday, the whole family. I'm still surprised at how maturely my five y/o brother went through it (and the other Jurassic films, by extension). He wasn't carried away enough to be scared, but wasn't uninterested in the thing either. He kept asking what dinosaur was on screen at the moment (a bit annoying, but not as bad as with Transformers), and he understood most plot progressions and didn't take the deaths to heart. My mom is still going on about how adorable Blue was. I liked it, I guess, and I certainly want to see wherever the story's heading towards now. I just hope they stop there. Even though there are many new concepts being handled here, it's true the sheer wonder of the dinosaurs alone isn't going to keep this franchise afloat forever. But for now, I think they did a good job choosing between tradition and subversion (and from the looks of it, it's been better digested than the other dark middle chapter in a sequel trilogy). Let's see where it goes from here.
I've been on a Ghibli kick for awhile, since the movies aren't expensive as fuck anymore to buy. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - 8.5/10
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - 6/10 Not a bad movie and I enjoyed it quite a bit. But it has big points off for under using Jeff Goldblum. I also felt a few things were just shoehorned in for the sake of poorly moving the plot along.
Tag - 7/10 Actually pretty damn funny, but man is there some dark humor in there at the end. The ending didn't detract the overall experience for me though.
Saw Venom and A Star is Born on Saturday. Venom is not nearly as bad as critics are saying it is. It's a very fun, enjoyable comic-book film. Granted, the film wouldn't work at all had the peformance of Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock and Venom not worked as well as it did. If they really focus on the weirdness of the almost buddy-cop relationship Eddie Brock and Venom have in the sequel, the movie will be gold. Having never seen the previous 3 versions of A Star is Born, I went in not really knowing what to expect outside of the trailers I had seen. If this film doesn't at least get an Oscar nomination for the music alone, it will be an absolute crime. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga give absolutely killer peformances, and the film left me in tears. The very next day I saw it I went out and got the soundtrack. The movie is truly incredible. Highly recommended.
Synecdoche, New York - ?/10 I dont wanna talk about it. That movie fucked me up. Black Panther 7.5/10 - Really cool movie, a good break in style compared to other Marvel movies
On Saturday, I saw First Man and Bad Times ad the El Royale First Man Though it's been getting great reviews, I've been noticing that First Man has been getting more of a mixed response from audiences and is underpeforming at the box-office, which is so weird to be because I LOVED first man SO much. Movies like First Man are pure movie magic. The way Damien Chazelle shot a lot of the flight scenes in a shaky cam manner and a lot of the time from the first person perspective made the film so incredibly visceral. The guy made a film about jazz drumming seem like the most intense thing ever, of course he could make you feel like you're actually in the cockpit of these ships. As I said, most of the flight scenes are shot from a first person perspective, so it made it all the more glorious when wide shots from afar are used when Apollo II launches. I'm so glad I saw the film in IMAX, because when they land on the moon, it transitions from the 16mm film most of the movie is shot in, to glorious IMAX. The theater I was in audibly gasped when it transitioned, it was that good The movie deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible. There's a scene with Neil Armstrong alone on the moon, and is one of the most touching and moving things I've seen in a long time. It made me cry my eyes out. I was reading up on it, and it may or may not have actually happened. Neil's biographer and sister think he did it; I guess we'll never know. But it's an amazing scene. If I were to guess, the movie might be getting a mixed response because it's a lot more somber and reflective than I think people want. The film calls into question whether the cost to get to the moon was really worth it, an intriguing topic, but not something people might not want to think about too much. Usually these kinds of films affirm the positive without question. Some have been saying it's too slow, but I thought it was perfectly paced. All a matter of taste I suppose. Oh, and Justin Hurwitz's score is absolutely AMAZING. 9.5/10 Bad Times at the El Royale Bad Times at the El Royale was a film I was highly anticipating, which was misplaced I suppose. It's not a bad film, but it thinks its a lot more clever than it actually is. If there was a film that would be most comparable to this one in both tone and structure, it would be The Hateful Eight, a film which I loved. Where that flm took its time and had major payoff, this movie was a slow burn that never paid off. I love movies that take their time to build, but when you don't deliver on that build up, the whole experience seems pretty pointless. They take so much time setting up backstories to these characters and showing events from multiple perspectives, but it really doesn't amount to anything. It even seems weird in retrospect that the premise of the hotel being half in California, half in Nevada is never really factored into anything. It could ave just been a normal hotel. If there's one thing the film really has going for it, it is the performances from the actors. Jeff Bridges gave an amazing peformance and is probably the one you most empathize with. Though only in the final act, Chris Hemsworth plays a cult leaders, and is absolutely brilliant. One of the standouts though was Cynthia Erivo, who hasn't been in any major film before, this. She was fantastic, and is probably going to become a big star. The movie's basically second-rate Tarantino, but is worth watching if you're really into thrillers like this. 6/10