movies

Thor: The Dark World

, , , 4 Comments

Okay I ACTUALLY LOVED THAT MORE THAN THE AVENGERS AND I REALLY LIKED THE AVENGERS AND I LOVED IT MORE THAN IRON MAN 3 AND I REALLY LIKED THAT TOO

Okay so right at the beginning Jane is on a date with someone and you can only see his eyebrows, and me and my boyfriend were like “is that…?” AND IT WAS IT WAS CHRIS O’DOWD I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HE WAS GONNA BE IN IT and apparently I can recognise him just from his eyebrows

Also on the subject of unexpected cameos: Captain America turns up and Chris Evans is obviously having so much fun that I’m JUST DONE OKAY

The actual story
Okay the plot is reasonably thin and easily resolved but (as in most comic book movies) the CHARACTERS are the standout and everyone in this film is SUCH A GOOD CHARACTER. It’s kinda Loki’s movie really though? Lemme tell you what happened there-

-Frigga makes sure Loki’s life is spared after the events of Avengers

-She visits him in his cell although actually that might have been Loki just creating an illusion of her?? It’s very sad either way

-(I wish she’d had more screentime in Thor 1)

-She does some very badass fighting and then dies, which kinda sucks, but it is a pretty good death/funeral scene

-Loki is told of her death by a prison guard and then just stands up and makes the lights flicker with RAGGGE

-Anyway, Thor and Loki go to the titular Dark World to do plot things, and there’s a BIG DRAMATIC PLOT TWIST where Loki stabs Thor and is all, “Ha you really trusted me nope nope nope I don’t care about Frigga or you or anyone MWAHAHA’ but this all turned out to be a clever illusion, which is good, because frankly Loki is a lot more interesting if he does still have a flicker of goodness/love for other people. And luckily the script agreed

-…and then he gets stabbed SAVING THOR. Which is exactly what I thought would happen, hooray for being right! Sort of. And he manages to apologise before he dies! Awwwwww. Except-

-he’s not dead! There’s a very short scene of someone flickering illusion-style before telling Odin that Loki’s body has been found, and then at the end Thor has a conversation with Odin that ends with Odin saying something along the lines of ‘yeah nice one Thor I’m proud of you’ and Thor says thank you and walks away and then Odin WAS LOKI ALL ALONG! and he says ‘no, thank you‘ in a sort of half sincere and half mocking way and then roll credits.

I DO HONESTLY WISH THEY’D KEPT HIM DEAD THOUGH? Especially since a) poor Frigga stays dead b) it’s never actually explained how Loki’s not dead and c) it just sort of makes a better story for him to be Actually Dead? But I suppose Loki is so popular that they’re afraid to kill him off, perhaps? Well, there are much worse ways they could have done it, anyway.

The ladies
GOOD GOOD EVERYONE IS GOOD JANE IS GOOD DARCY IS GOOD THEY SAVE THE WORLD WITH SCIENCE

No seriously! They do! And they have this really sweet sisterly relationship going on too. (Fun fact: the first time I saw the original Thor I actually thought Darcy was supposed to be Jane’s sister.)

Sif doesn’t get much to do, but they did thank god not go the love triangle route between her, Jane and Thor, hooray

Everything else
Stellan Skarsgard steals literally every scene he’s in, and his little mini storyline (him dealing with Loki having been in his head) was one of my favourite threads in the whole film. And Stan Lee shows up in a scene with him! I’d forgotten to look out for him but there he was.

Christopher Eccleston was perfectly fine, I was surprised at how Christopher Ecclestony he still looked under all that make-up.

There is an erotically-shot scene of Thor shirtless FOR NO REASON that I v. much appreciated, hooray for the female gaze

Is it not out in America yet??? Have we actually had two films this year before America???? What’s going on but SEE IT AS SOON AS YOU CAN

(no subject)

, 0 Comments

I saw Man Of Steel today! Four spoilery thoughts beneath the cut:

1) I really really wish that we’d get a superhero film where the hero’s mother was his guiding figure instead of existing just to give birth and then die. See also: the Batman films and the new Spider-Mans. (But not the old Spider-Mans! Hooray!) Not that I didn’t enjoy the stuff with Russell Crowe but what about Lara, Superman’s mother? Can’t she be a ghosty-echoey thing too?

2) I really dig this version of Perry White (having paid him no attention at all before…) I really liked that he stayed behind to help that girl when he could have run to relative safety. And I wondered if he was gonna die then but he lived! Yay!

3) I spotted the trucks marked “Lexcorp”. And in Smallville, a shop marked “Sullivan”, which has gotta be a reference to Chloe.

4) Good grief this film had the highest body-count of any superhero film I’ve ever seen? Not counting the named characters (Jonathan Kent, Jor-El, Lara, Zod, Zod’s henchwoman whose name I forgot…) there was everyone on Krypton plus a ton of soldiers plus thousands and thousands of people in New York Metropolis. Eeeep.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

, 2 Comments

This is going to be a rambling cross-platform review! Be prepared! And note that I am entirely ignorant of most of Star Trek and all my knowledge of the in-jokes comes from that Star Trek episode of Futurama…

Thoughts on Benedict Cumberbatch’s casting can be found here (it was a pretty big topic on Tumblr last week).

Thoughts on Carol Marcus, whom I REALLY LIKED, can be found here. So far all most people are mentioning about her is her underwear scene, and I am MAD ABOUT THAT

And onto everything else-!

-NOEL CLARKE HI NOEL CLARKE. (They missed a big opportunity not casting Freema Agyeman as his wife, I reckon. Not that the actress who was wasn’t perfectly fine but a) it would have been a great Doctor Who in-joke and b) it is a well-known fact that Freema is a massive Trek fan…)

-Uhura’s Crowning Moment Of Awesome was even more awesome to me because the other night I was watching that episode of The Big Bang Theory where they’re all like “oh haha girls don’t speak Klingon” and LOOK HERE’S ONE OF THE ICONIC FIGURES OF SCI-FI TO PROVE YOU WRONG

-Actually, everyone got a Crowning Moment Of Awesome (Sulu’s big threatening speech! Scotty’s last-minute save!), which was very much appreciated by me

-JJ Abram’s love affair with lensflare continues

-The theme of ‘how far would you go to save your family’ was done pretty well I thought- first with Thomas Harewood (Noel’s character) killing himself and many other people in order to save his daughter, then Kirk seeking revenge for his father figure, then with Khan trying to save the crew he thought of as family, then Kirk doing the same thing and actually properly dying in the process.

-Which I both liked and didn’t like, because Kirk’s death was a really good scene, and its immediate turnaround sort of…lessens the whole concept of death in the Trekverse? Because if you’ve got some guy running around who can bring people back from the dead–

-Zachary Quinto makes a really good Spock, all his scenes were wonderful. (With the possible exception of the ‘KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!’, which I found hilarious, but that’s probably because of the aforementioned Futurama episode.)

Yes it was good

Iron Man 3

, , , 0 Comments

I’m not complaining but I’m REALLY SURPRISED we got this before America did? Because the plot is very twisty and with the internet the way it is I’ll be amazed if anyone lasts til the American release date without accidentally being spoiled and basically this just adds to my theory that movie companies have absolutely no idea about social media at all.

Anyway. I liked this better than both 1 and 2! And they were both excellent so yes, this is a Really Good Movie in my opinion. There’s a couple of minor twists along the way and then you hit the big one, and I spent all that scene giggling in my head, partly because it’s sort of played for laughs and partly because I wasn’t expecting it and it sort of changed everything the film was selling itself as.

…Wait, I warned for big huge colossal spoilers. Basically! The guy we thought was the Mandarin isn’t, he’s an actor hired by Guy Pierce’s character to be a face of terror for people to rally against. Also he’s hilarious and I really, really wish we’d seen more of him. Guy Pierce is the real baddie (also he breathes fire and stuff) AND PEPPER TAKES HIM OUT WHILE TONY JUST WATCHES, which is kinda awesome.

This is a good movie for Pepper actually, she passes the Bechdel test with Rebecca Hall’s character (who was really interesting and somewhat wasted I think) and she gets to wear the Iron Man armour and do lots of stuff. And she’s alive and well at the end, so A+ on that, folks.

What else? The Avengers get mentioned and there is a cameo from one of them after the credits but I won’t say who. (You can probably guess, actually.) There’s a lot of EPIC ACTION, and a cute little kid, and lots of cool stuff involving the Iron Patriot/Rhodey, and things blowing up and PEOPLE blowing up (which is horrible and I wasn’t too fond of those bits, but eh) and Tony being perfectly Tony and generally, yes, very good movie.

(no subject)

, 12 Comments

Damn but Hot Fuzz is a CLEVER MOVIE

Like at the beginning when Nick and the old lady are exchanging crossword clues and she says 'Fascism! Wonderful' and fascism is precisely what the NWA were practising…

Or that Nick is set apart from the NWA by only a hair's breadth: note the repeated line about 'the village's rustic aethestic'. The NWA are basically Nick taken up to 11, what with their obsession with order and (twisted) justice. 'The common good of the community' is the goal of them both. And all the people Nick arrests at the beginning are the ones who show up dead later (he's an Angel of death).

AND THEN IT'S LIKE Danny shows up to humanise Nick and turn him far far away from that direction (not that Nick would ever have started killing people, but who knows what anyone might do For The Greater Good?) and then they have this awesome relationship and make a perfect team and SO HELP ME IT'S SUCH A BRILLIANT FILM ON EVERY CONCIEVABLE LEVEL

Les Miserables

, 2 Comments

When I was in high school, our drama group put on a production of Les Miserables. I'd never seen it before, and I didn't know what to expect, but it blew my mind. It was done on a tiny budget (Javert's jump into the river was represented by a string of lights suddenly flickering on and off) but the acting and singing was professional-grade level, I'm not even kidding. To this day- almost a decade later – it's the best thing I've ever seen on stage.

And the movie was good too!

So good. I loved very minute of it.

-Goddamn but Anne Hathaway deserves that Oscar nod. Was 'I Dreamed A Dream' done in one take? It looked like it. And her physical change was quite unnerving and DAMN SHE WAS GOOD. So was Hugh Jackman. He was bloody perfect. Nice going, Wolverine and Catwoman.

-I remember Samantha Barks from I'd Do Anything! Or vaguely, anyway. She was great. I was always slightly annoyed that all the promotional material didn't feature her more, I know she's not a big star like the others but still…

-Teeny little Daniel Huttlestone's Gavroche, oh he was brilliant. I knew he was going to die and it still depressed me. And then he was just lying there with his eyes open when Javert came across him, woe.

-I cried at Fantine's death. I bet you did too.

-The only song I missed was 'Dog Eat Dog'. I like the Thenardiers. (Well, not as people, but you know.) I actually sort of wished they were in it a little more. I always wondered if they ever grieved for, or heck, even missed Eponine.

-Russell Crowe was probably the weakest link singing-wise but I don't think he was as bad as people have been saying. Then again, I am tone-deaf. So I probably have no business commenting at all.

-CINEMATOGRAPHY SO PRETTY

In conclusion: it was everything I hoped for and it brought me right back to that little, packed school theatre at night six-odd years ago. I suspect I can never call myself part of the Les Mis fandom exactly- I can't even remember some of the tertiary character's names. But it always has a special place in my heart.

Hobbit thoughts

, , 2 Comments

  • I liked it a lot but DAMN it could have been a bit shorter. The poor woman next to me had to get up about three times. I think there was quite a lot that could have been cut really- like the dwarves singing about plates, I’d get rid of that. And I’d have ended it after the escape from Goblin Town and saved the fight with Azog for the next film.
  • That being said, that last fight was a spectacular scene.
  • Riddles In The Dark was done really well. Especially Bilbo sparing Gollum. That’s one of the moments the whole saga pivots around and here it was. Probably my favourite single moment in the film, actually.
  • No wait that’s a lie. It was the Misty Mountains song.
  • SYLVESTER MCCOY as Radagast he was bloody perfect.
  • Deux ex machingles! (I know, there are in-story reasons why the Eagles show up just in time to save everyone and then bugger off again, but…)
  • UNEXPECTED HOT DWARVES
  • If I ever start a band, I want to call it ‘Azog and the Defilers”.

The various Middle-Earth films, to me, are like that old friend who you only see once so often, and then whenever they show up you have a really great time and maybe mildly take the piss out of each other and then they’re gone again for another couple of years. Next Hobbit film isn’t till 2014, right?

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0 Comments

A photoset dedicated to the underrated, unsuperpowered, and often unnamed characters of Marvel movies who either supported others in their times of need, or fought alone for what they thought was right:

The German man (The Avengers): Stood up alone against an Actual God
The train passengers (Spider-Man 2): Saved Spider-Man and then defended him, completely unarmed, against a very armed supervillain
Christine Everhart (Iron Man): Demanded accountability from Tony Stark, and it was also thanks to her he got to Gulmira as fast as he did
Ursula Ditkovich (Spider-Man 2&3): Offered Peter food and friendship at times when he really needed it
Mr Ditkovich (Spider-Man 2&3): Not only tolerated, but liked and cared about his difficult tenant
Alicia Masters (Fantastic Four): Made Ben Grimm realise he was still human and showed him love and kindness
Stanley (The Incredible Hulk): Gave Bruce a room, a job and a friendly ear
The old security guard (The Avengers): Helped Bruce out and gave him some (sadly deleted) advice
The crane operators (The Amazing Spider-Man): Did what they could to repay the person who helped them
The people on the Queensboro Bridge (Spider-Man): Risked their lives to try and stop the Green Goblin
Martina (The Incredible Hulk): Didn’t give Bruce away to Blonsky’s men
Travis and Heather Hudson (Wolverine): Offered kindness to a stranger and died for it

(no subject)

, , 6 Comments

Just a(nother) thought on M’s role in Skyfall..

She sort of got the storyline almost always assigned to a male character, didn’t she? The return of the abandoned son, the tension with the favoured son, the stoic death in battle, the token from beyond the grave…

Bloody hell, Skyfall was almost (almost!) a mother-son story. Which is rare to say the least. Silva even calls her ‘mother’. And when we see Bond’s parent’s graves, his mother was Monique, another M…I sort of thought that the final ‘battle’ of the film was basically Bond protecting his surrogate parents, making up for not being able (whatever the story is there) to save his real parents. Kincade as a surrogate father -the man who taught him to shoot- and M as a surrogate mother -the woman who basically made him what he is.

I have no knowledge of the Bond franchise whatsoever, so all that could be wrong for all I know. But damn, I can see why people keep comparing it to Batman…

«< 4 5 6 7 8 >»