Let’s Talk Movies! #31: Pandas, Zombies, Male Models, Superheroes, Greeks and…Caesar!

[Buzz]

37% approval so far from the official critics on rotten tomatoes for B vs S. But if you look at the fans' reviews page on RT then you'll see more 4 stars rating.

I'll wait until the end of next month to see it. I have no desire to sit 2.5 hrs in a dark room to see any movie, but I am very interested to see how WW is introduced and to see her fight like one of the guys.

I already have my ticket but must confess to being much more eager to see Captain America: Civil War.

 

[Cachoo]

Just watched "Last Days In Viet Nam" again and I do believe it is one of my favorite documentary films of all time. Someday I need to compile a list but in that particular film there were so many people who were so brave and altruistic during a scary time when the expedient thing to do was to "get out." And they stayed to try and help others. Very moving film....

 

[Johnny_Fever]

I don't know if this will be any good, but I'm all over the trailer:

The Nice Guys

 

[BigB08822]

The Nice Guys: I saw that trailer last night while watching Youtube videos and I actually watched it the whole way through instead of clicking to skip to the ad. I can't wait to see it, looks hilarious.

 

[jenny12]

I already have my ticket but must confess to being much more eager to see Captain America: Civil War.

Because of all the bad reviews of Batman v. Superman, I feel the same way. I loved Captain America: Winter Soldier, so I'm hoping Civil War is good as well.

 

[Johnny_Fever]

The Nice Guys: I saw that trailer last night while watching Youtube videos and I actually watched it the whole way through instead of clicking to skip to the ad. I can't wait to see it, looks hilarious.

I love how even the graphics are '77. No detail left untouched. Those classic rock songs stand the test of time.

 

[PeterG]

New movies coming out this week are below. Not a great week, although Jane Wants A Boyfriend was a pleasant surprise. But Get A Job looks horrible. Hope it's just a trailer...it not - what a waste of a great cast! If you're into sports, both Fastball and Seven look like really well made movies.


March 25th - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – Action adventure with Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Laurence Fishburne, Jena Malone, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon, Jason Momoa and Jeffrey Dean Morgan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX_iASz1Si8

March 25th - My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 – Romantic comedy with Nia Vardalos, John Corbett and Ian Gomez
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGHoDScUow8

March 25th - I Saw the Light – Biographical drama with Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bKjhqvbHs8

March 25th - Get a Job (Limited) – Comedy with Alison Brie, Anna Kendrick, Miles Teller, Bryan Cranston, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Marcia Gay Harden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPObhu8OiT4

March 25th - Jane Wants a Boyfriend (Limited) – Romantic comedy drama with a new cast and featuring Eliza Dushku [Dollhouse] and Polly Draper [thirtysomething]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MHZrDe4Gig

March 25th - Fastball (Limited) – Sports documentary. From imdb.com: “With Kevin Costner narrating, lead a cast of baseball legends and scientists who explore the magic within the 396 milliseconds it takes a fastball to reach home plate, and decipher who threw the fastest pitch ever.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l7T40_kx4I

March 25th - Born to Be Blue (Limited) – Musical drama about Chet Baker with Ethan Hawke and Callum Keith Rennie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC1DQ9qIECo

March 25th - Mia madre (Limited) – Italian drama featuring John Turturro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIWLTh7fdeI

March 25th - Seve: The Movie (Limited) - Sports documentary. From imdb.com: “Despite being blocked at almost every turn in pursuit of the sport he loved, Seve Ballesteros fought against adversity to become the most spectacular and charismatic golfer to ever play the game.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0jA2fh3wp4

March 25th – Identicals aka Brand New-U (Limited) – Sci-Fi, new cast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcn35qnwl4U

March 25th - Baskin (Limited) – Fantasy horror movie from Turkey. Imdb.com: “A squad of unsuspecting cops goes through a trapdoor to Hell when they stumble upon a Black Mass in an abandoned building.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFKqAE2eBUg

March 22nd - Easter Mysteries (Limited) – Musical. From imdb.com: “the first depiction of Christ's death and resurrection told through the lens of Peter his disciple. This portrayal sheds a new light onto this historical story in human terms - ordinary people with hopes, dreams and fears, uncertain of what lies ahead.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URYoHnO9-aA

 

[mrr50]

March 25th - Fastball (Limited) – Sports documentary. From imdb.com: “With Kevin Costner narrating, lead a cast of baseball legends and scientists who explore the magic within the 396 milliseconds it takes a fastball to reach home plate, and decipher who threw the fastest pitch ever.”

Probably Bob Feller but I would throw Sandy Koufax into the mix. I need to see this

 

[Xela M]

I watched "Changing Lanes" with Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson. What a good film! It says on imdb that it's a thriller, but it's actually a drama and it's just such a good screenplay and the male actors are superb.

It's about two people whose lives unexpectedly cross when they have a very minor car accident. The accident itself is very minor, but leads to a string of events in both the men's lives that escalates into a feud.

I have been in the situation Affleck's character found himself in here, so I could totally relate to the court room scene.

It's just a very good film without any complicated ambitions or artsy direction. A very enjoyable way to spend an evening.

 

[orbitz]

First look at Wonder Woman in her upcoming solo film: http://www.ew.com/article/2016/03/24/wonder-woman-first-look-gal-gadot-robin-wright-connie-nielsen

Hmm, I don't know. I still don't think Gal has enough muscular definitions to be believable as an Amazonian and a superheroe, but her appearance in BvS did create mostly positive buzz. So maybe there's hope.

 

[Artemis@BC]

Oh, the dilemma! My love of all things Ewan, vs. my extreme dislike of religious movies.

Last Days in the Desert

Mind you, it looks like it could be more of a philosophical and humanist take on things rather than a religious one. So maybe ...

 

[Buzz]

Batman v Superman
Just got back from seeing this movie and it was sorta MEH! The action does not pick up until the last hour or so of the movie, unfortunately the rest of it is very boring. There was a lot of dream sequences that are hard to tell from reality and didn't make a lot of sense. The audience did not clap or anything at the end of the movie. Or maybe I missed it because I was too busy running for the ladies room.
5.5 out of 10 stars from me.


SPOILERS
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Spoiler

1) They changed a big part of Batman's story by seemingly having Bruce Wayne's father die when Superman was fighting Zod. Bruce clearly yells "Dad!" into his phone but later he is standing in a giant abandoned palace saying "I am now older than my father ever was.". EH?!

2) Superman three times with very little notice flew in the save Louis but could not tell his mother was in trouble or where she was being held. But somehow Batman could?!

3) Batman was all ready to kill Superman but because their mothers have the same first name he changes his mind and decides Superman is not so bad after all?!

4) What is with Aquaman being in this movie for all of five seconds?!

5) Wonder Woman is awesome whenever she is on screen unfortunely she is not in the movie much. Speaking of Wonder Woman if she did not come out of hiding during WW2 when the Nazis were slaughtering millions of innocent civilians, why would she come out of hiding for the sake of a 100 year old grainy photograph?! That sounds really selfish for someone who is supposed to be so caring and benevolent.

6) Those dream sequences were too many and to hard to tell apart from what was really happening.

7) How convenient is it that Superman's facial scar disappears without much explanation. It would have hard to explain away Clark Kent having the same scar as Superman.

 

[PeterG]

The Dishwasher

The Dishwasher is a short film (10 minutes) made by a brother and sister who are from my small city here in Maple Ridge. I watched it because I read about it in the local newspaper and figured I should support work made by some local folk! So I was pleasantly surprised to have liked it so much. I hope you will watch it, for my fellow Canadians you might be aware of the sister of the two siblings, Alexz Johnson, who was the lead in the TV series Instant Star. She doesn't appear in the short film, she did the music while her brother Matt David wrote and directed.

 

[Johnny_Fever]

I thought Mad Max last year was heralded for doing effects the old-school way (non-CGI) but in a new, state of the art way.

Yes, I remember that now. I watched this Jungle Book clip the other day and I have to admit, CGI is becoming very convincing.

 

[watchthis!!]

Wonder Woman Assembles Her Squad of Badass Warrior Women
http://filmschoolrejects.com/news/wonder-woman-assembles-her-squad.php

Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen (The Following, The Good Wife) and Lisa Loven Kongsli (Force Majeure) will co-star along with Chris Pine, Danny Huston and David Thewlis.

Yes. Snoke, in particular, stood out like a big sore thumb for me in a film that tried very hard to adopt the old style of filming, ie small scale models, location shootings.

Hmm. Maybe I get lost in the story and don't notice these kinds of things....

 

[Jay42]

I just got home from seeing Batman vs. Superman and I actually really like it. I wasn't expecting too but I found it really enjoyable. It does start off slow and there is easily 2 movies worth of stuff in it but I still really enjoyed it. I would have liked more Jason Momoa but considering they had everything but the kitchen sink in the movie I don't know how that could possibly have worked. I also like how they handled the aftermath of all the destruction from Man of Steel.

I enjoyed Ben Affleck as Batman a lot more than I thought I would. I don't know what exactly I had expected but his performance was really good. I thought Jesse Eisenberg was good as Lex but my brother, who is more familiar with the DC Universe than I am said the he thinks that Eisenberg would have been perfect as the Mad Hatter, a villain who is the the Arkham City and Arkham Knight video games as well as the comics. Since I haven't gotten that far in Arkham Knight I'm taking my brothers word for it. I do think they went a little to far into the "Lex is insane" thing. I always thought Lex was more restrained crazy than in your face bonkers, Eisenberg handled it well though. My favourite has to be Gal Godot though. She didn't have a lot to do but she definitely made the most of it. It's definitely made more more excited for the Wonder Woman movie.

My only real complaint actually has to do with the 3D conversion. I don't know if this was just a problem for us but there seemed to be some significant issues with the layers. The scene of the last Senate Hearing had a shot where all the senators were duplicated on the screen and there were several shots where I could see the lights in the background twice. I know it's nitpicky but it was annoying. I do kind of wonder if it's because they shot the movie through seemingly several neutral density filters. 3D doesn't tend to handle dark that well and this movie is very dark. Everything looked like it was either shot with ND filters or polarizers.

In reference to 2 points in @Buzz spoilered section:

Spoiler

For point 3: I found that both painfully obvious and really unnecessary. Batman probably would have stopped fighting Superman if Superman just said that Lex was going to kill his mother. Her name really didn't matter.

For point 7: I think it all comes down to the effect the sun has on Superman. Since it wasn't a scar so much as a fresh wound it makes it easier for the sun to help heal it as well as the damage from the nuke.

All in all I would definitely see the movie again and I am absolutely buying the soundtrack.

 

[smurfy]

I just watched on cable 'About Time' - with Domnhall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy.
I loved it, such a nice story. Gleeson carried the movie, McAdams was good, but more of the girlfriend/wife role - he was the star. The scenes with Gleeson and Nighy were the best part of the movie.
I never saw any of the Harry Potter movies, but recently have seen Gleeson in 'The Revenant', 'Brooklyn' and 'Star Wars'. I am becoming a big fan, good actor - in such different parts.

 

[Artemis@BC]

^ One of my favourite sleeper movies of recent years. And yes, the Gleeson-Nighy relationship was the highlight.

2 more Gleeson movies to check out if you're a fan: Ex Machina and Frank. Ex Machina I absolutely loved, it's how AI movies should be done. Frank was ... really really weird, but in a very entertaining way. And both movies add to Gleeson's repertoire to show his incredible range.

Another one, though very depressing, is Calvary, where he plays alongside his father.

 

[Erin]

I saw About Time for the first time about a year ago and agree. Apparently Rachel McAdams must specialize in that kind of role, she was also the wife in The Time Traveler's Wife!

 

[PeterG]

Recently I watched Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), which is based on a Ray Bradbury novel. To me, it had the look of a TV-movie, so I was surprised to find that it was released to theatres. Wikipedia says that budget was 19 million and it made 8 million, so maybe that's why I don't remember it from when it came out. I thought it was good enough, but not brilliant. I think maybe a Bradbury story needs an especially competent director, not to mention a good screenplay adaptation. I thought both those tasks here were just adequate. I can't fault the cast, which includes Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd and Pam Grier. They all do as much as they can with their roles. It sounds weird, but the thing that stood out the most to me about this movie was how handsome Jonathan Pryce looked! I would never put him in the "babe" category, but this look really works for me!

Have you not seen Django Unchained?

And I'd say his character in Wolf of Wall Street was an asshole

Those are both great examples of DiCaprio playing nasty people. Not sure which character I disliked more! Wasn't his character in Blood Diamond questionable as well?

Spoiler

At least in the beginning of the movie?

For those interested in what the film would have sounded like: Audrey's rehearsal track for I Could Have Danced All Night synced to the film.

Oh. Yikes. I thought the little bit of singing Hepburn did in My Fair Lady was representative of what she could have done. Maybe it was the only vocal that was decent enough to make it into the movie... Although I'm wondering if maybe this was a rehearsal take, or she was singing the studio recording of the song and sang live but focussed on being the character rather than give a good vocal. And whoever filmed this edited out the studio recording and left only the live singing. But it's pretty bad, tried to listen to this when you first posted it and then tried just now at the halfway point and had to turn it off both times...

 

[BigB08822]

Been catching up on a lot of movies via Redbox. Can't remember all the ones I posted about so will go back over them.

Room - Amazing film, highly recommended. I know I wrote about this film the other day.

Bridge of Spies - Started off slow but was a good film. I would recommend this as well.

Spectre - Classic James Bond. Tons of action and a little bit of a story line thrown in there. Good entertainment, recommended if you like this kind of film.

Spotlight - Another one that started off slow but I did like it. Some of the wigs were not good, I am not sure how such a major motion picture can have two main actors in such noticeable wigs. That bothered me. This movie also name drops constantly. They keep referring to certain people and we had either not met them or briefly met them. I found it very hard to keep up with. It was worth it, though.

Tonight we are watching Inside Out.

Edit: I just realized that after watching Inside Out we will have seen the films that won Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Picture, Best Song and Best Animated Picture. I wasn't trying to only rent Oscar winning movies, I promise, lol.

 

[Artemis@BC]

My favourite riff so far on Batman vs Superman. (with the caption)
http://www.savagechickens.com/2016/03/batman-vs-superman-3.html

 

[Artemis@BC]

I may have mentioned before that every time -- every single time -- I watch a double bill, there's some unintended connection between the two films. Usually a secondary actor, but sometimes a significant event or location.

Last night was no exception. The movies: Man Up and Spectre. The connection: Rory Kinnear.

Spectre was exactly what it says on the label. Not the best Bond flick ever, but entertaining and fun.

Man Up was the surprise. It's like a Hollywood-style romcom made by Brits -- all the traditional tropes of a romcom but with a twist of British humour. Simon Pegg plays against type, which was a treat to see. And Lake Bell (with a very convincing suburban London accent) proves that she can be a leading lady and carry the film. It's still a romcom so still very silly in parts, but I liked it a lot. Oh, and Rory Kinnear's character was delightfully wacky, quite the change of pace for him.

 

[Seerek]

Finally got to see 45 Years. Charlotte Rampling gives quite a performance in a rather minimalist (on the surface) film (especially when compared to performances from everybody else that was nominated this year for Best Actress).

What I took away most from the movie was the overall underlying message that couples do in fact continue to evolve and learn from each other several decades on. Even the title being a non-round anniversary number infers that Rampling and Tom Courtenay's lives are not about mere milestones, but about the present (even if remnants of the past should pop up as reminders every now and then).

 

[Buzz]

Anyone knows when advanced tickets will be on sale for Captain America: Civil War?

 

[Aussie Willy]

I never saw any of the Harry Potter movies, but recently have seen Gleeson in 'The Revenant', 'Brooklyn' and 'Star Wars'. I am becoming a big fan, good actor - in such different parts.

I agree with both posts about Gleeson. He is very good and really making a name for himself.

 

[PeterG]

Weekend Domestic Chart for March 25th, 2016

Batman Vs. Superman debuted at #1, playing at 4,242 theatres where it averaged $39,134 per screen. The weekend total for North America is 166 million, with 254 international box office. So 400 million for the debut weekend on a 250 million budget. Apparently everyone was right when they said "perfect casting!!" when the Ben Affleck news broke.

Zootopia dropped to #2, it is closing in on the 250 million mark domestically and has made over 450 million internationally. So almost 700 million on a 150 million budget. Also good news for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which debuted at #3 with almost 18 million domestically, 8 million internationally, so it's already at 26 million worldwide on an 18 million budget. I hope this gives Nia Vardalos a career boost, I find her quite enjoyable to watch.

 

[Cachoo]

I have to be honest: I haven't seen the film but I think Affleck looks hot in it and I still like the idea of an older, hardened Batman who is not necessarily sympatheic.

I finally saw "Brooklyn." What a delightful film. What I'd like to know is if the Irish and Irish Americans found this depiction true.

 

[CantALoop]

Holy sh*t, I thought Zootopia was going to be innocuous, light-hearted fare...but at the risk of giving away things, I'm amazed at the writing and creative team - my jaw dropped when I realized how deep they were going.

Spoiler

Seriously, allegories to racial profiling and possibly religious profiling/radicalization without being preachy or heavy-handed? In a DISNEY movie?? Mind. Blown.

This might be one of my favorite animated films of all time: great characters, superb voice acting, amazingly detailed graphics and lush worlds, and best of all, a plot that manages to be funny and incredibly thoughtful at the same time.

 

[PeterG]

Holy sh*t, I thought Zootopia was going to be innocuous, light-hearted fare...but at the risk of giving away things, I'm amazed at the writing and creative team - my jaw dropped when I realized how deep they were going.

Why, we warned you back in February!

Hey, it's about time there was some discussion about race in the movie world!

Zootopia is an Immersive and Timely Toon Noir About Systemic Racism
http://filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/zootopia-review.php