Topic: Movie thread.

@Peek-a-boo My family and I like to have a theater outing almost every Sunday. We bring our own snacks (shh!) and go during the middle of the day when ticket prices are reduced, so it doesn't end up being too expensive.

What movies are you looking forward to? I'm looking forward to seeing Wish Upon (although my expectations are pretty low), Dunkirk (not really a fan of war films, but Nolan is a good director, and early impressions have been pretty rapturous), A Ghost Story (probably on DVD, because I haven't seen it listed at any of the cinemas near us, which is a shame), Atomic Blond, American Assassin, My Little Pony: The Movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (although after the mediocre The Force Awakens, my expectations are pretty low for this one as well), Murder on the Orient Express, and Blade Runner 2049.

None of the theaters near me were showing Kimi no Na wa when it first released domestically, which I'm VERY disappointed about, but whatever. Guess I'll be seeing Shinkai's "masterpiece" on bluray.

RE: The Girl With All the Gifts... are you sure? Because wikipedia lists the release date of TLOU as June 14, 2013 and the release date of TGWAtG (book version) as June 2014. I couldn't believe how similar the stories were. Good to hear the book version has a better climax although, even then, it's still not very good. I'm amazed how much critical acclaim it has received.

Nah, everybody does it!

I always take a bottle of water with me due to the air conditioning making my mouth dry, but I did get stopped one time at a cinema in London. I said that there was no way I was paying £3 ($6) for a bottle of water!

I believe that the majority of the films I wanted to see this year has already been shown at the cinema. I had a look at some of the upcoming films between now and Christmas, and I am likely to see the following:

Thor: Ragnarok (this is my most anticipated comic book film of the year!)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The Red Turtle
The LEGO Ninjago Movie
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
The Handmaiden
Goodbye Christopher Robin
A Ghost Story
Flatliners (by the guy who wrote, produced and directed ‘Source Code’)
Dunkirk (seeing this on Friday)
Detroit
The Dark Tower (I have read the books, and am curious to see what the film is like)
Coco (Pixar’s first original film since Wall-E and Brave)
Blade Runner 2049

My number one most wanted film this year, however, is Wonder.

The novel is just absolutely superb, and the pupils I read this story to in our classroom were as gripped to the story as I was, and it takes a very rare - and special - book to do something like this.

As for The Girl With All the Gifts, you could be right! I’ll have a look at my book when I arrive home later.

@Peek-a-boo I see theaters overcharge for something basic like bottles of water throughout the world! Yeah, those prices are a rip. We bring cups of ice and bottles of water from home.

RE: Baby Driver, do you think it's a movie that needs to be seen in theaters to get the full effect, or could it also be appreciated on DVD? Some movies only really work for me in the cinema, like Pacific Rim. Not a great film, but good lord was it glorious on a huge screen!

Patriots Day (DVD) - Drama focusing on the events surrounding the Boston Marathon Terrorist Bombing. Ended up being a very good watch. It was quite emotional in places, with some super tense moments, and the interviews with the actual survivors (and other involved persons) at the end of the film was a neat touch.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Netflix) - This was quite good. A bit more gritty than your typical Star Wars film (though not to the point where it feels out of place), which gave it a unique feel, and it had some of the most spectacular war setpieces I've ever seen in a film. The cameos of characters from the original films were a pretty cool touch as well.

@Ralizah I’ve travelled around a fair bit, and a small bottle of water is ridiculously overpriced in places like London, Melbourne and the bling-bling city of Dubai. I refuse to pay for bottled water when I visit my local cinema; my tap water is perfectly fine!

As for Baby Driver, visually, you can happily watch it on DVD/Blu-ray.

Audio wise? The soundtrack and all those subtle audio cues are not going to be the same at home. Personally speaking, given that three different folks in the past few pages have nothing but overwhelmingly positive things to say about the film, you should try and see it at the cinema if you get the opportunity to do so.

p.s. My hardback copy of The Girl With All the Gifts has January 2014 as the publication date so, I guess I was in the wrong. Felt like I had read the book many moons ago though...

@Ralizah
You forgot one of the best movies of the year! Power Rangers! It's easily the best I've seen this year. A great reboot, awesome story, special effects, and of course it's the Rangers!

@GameOtaku I didn't see Power Rangers, so I could hardly include it in my list.

Anyway, you're a massive fanboy, so it would have to be a complete trainwreck for you not to love it.

@Peek-a-boo Thanks for the recommendation. I'll see if I can watch it before it leaves the theaters.

Talking about Baby Driver (no spoilers), but I absolutely loved that scene early on that was all shot in one take. It was like 2 or 3 minutes long, that was awesome! It lasted the entire song from what I can remember.

@Peek-a-boo oh sure, I liked the film too. Meant more that obviously their interference meant he walked away which was a shame.

That was the first time I'd watched it again since the cinema so it wasn't too bad but generally I'm like yourself and will wait to rewatch something. Do still want to check out Fury Road in that style.

Bearing in mind that I can take or leave the films that Christopher Nolan has done so far, and that I am not part of this reclusive bubble that a lot of folks seem to be in when it comes to talking about his films however, I can quite happily say that Dunkirk may well be the best film I have seen this year.

For a film that doesn’t show any violence, it still manages to capture the horror of war frightfully well. All of the action is very close-up to the soldiers, each of which shows a genuine sense of fear amongst them when everything starts to go wrong.

The music is subtle but powerful. The audio sounds extremely crisp and authentic. The action is relentless, and the film zips by at a breathless pace. It felt like it was an experience as opposed to the mere act of watching something unfold on the big screen.

Any negatives? There is a lack of emotional attachment to the soldiers, seeing as you’re not getting to know them outside of a very select few. One or two scenes felt ‘empty’ in the middle of all the chaos, thus unnecessarily slowing the pace down.

On a whole, I would give an easy 9/10

It’s definitely a film you want to see at the cinema though! It just won’t be the same at home.

@Peek-a-boo Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I'm looking forward to experiencing this in the cinema. Not a huge war movie fan, but Nolan rarely disappoints.

The new Thor: Ragnarok trailer that was shown during the Marvel panel at the San Diego Comic-Con is now available for all to see, and it looks AMAZING! I love the fantastic song that was used in Hotline Miami too.

Not a fan of the new Justice League trailer though.

Trying too hard to be like Marvel in terms of tone and dialogue, and Cyborg looks terrible to me and has virtually no charisma whatsoever. I still like Ben Affleck as Batman, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman continues to be great, especially considering WW is the best film out of the DC stables.

I believe there’s a trailer doing the rounds for The Avengers: Infinity War however, the quality of said footage is awful. Just patiently wait until it has been officially uploaded onto YouTube later today.

@Peek-a-boo Dunkirk was a solid 8/10 for me. I was wondering if we got any plot twists, since this is his first historical film, and I was right, we didn't. However it did try to do a Memento with all the scenes taking place in a different order. I'll need to watch it again to fully understand the chronology, but it wasn't anything too complicated.

Saw a trailer for the Dark Tower, I'm intrigued. Guess those trailers are good for something, aren't they?

I also remembered that I've seen Life and The Fate of the Furious this year, but the fact that I completely forgot about them says enough.

Expelled From Paradise (Netflix) - Anime sci-fi/mecha film set in a future where most of humanity lives in a utopian virtual world, but after a hacker from the outside seemingly threatens their existence, an agent is sent out into the real world to find the culprit.

I'm not going to go into detail like I did in the Anime thread, but if you already like sci-fi or mecha anime, definitely check this out.

Also, I saw the trailer for Ready Player One, and it looks totally awesome (extra so because of the DeLorean from Back to the Future).

@Octane I could only laugh at those who thought Dunkirk was going to have some kind of twist that Nolan likes to plant into his films, given that Dunkirk is based on a true story!

Yeah, the film had three time frames:

1. The Mole (one week)
2. The Sea (one day)
3. The Air (one hour)

My number one favourite thing about the film is not seeing/showing the Germans. I think it was a deliberate design choice to emphasize the terror of an unseen enemy. Even when you finally see them at the very end, they are out of focus and in the background.

Also, the entire scene when Tom Hardy was frantically pushing and pulling the lever to open the wheel bays whilst attempting to land his gliding plane on the beach, along with the upswell in music and a fading sun illuminating the screen, was just absolutely terrific.

Another noticeable thing to mention is that apart from George (the chap on the boat), nobody had any names, which Nolan did on purpose. In wars, we don’t remember names.

The reason why I rate it so highly is because my Grandad, who passed away twenty one years ago, was rescued from Dunkirk. He never told us much about it, but we do know that he returned to war after surviving Dunkirk, and ended up not far from Goslar. He was still in Germany when the war came to an end.

He would have been 112 years old if he was still with us today! I miss him.

I watched two movies in a roll in a week.

War of the Planet of the Apes was good, but for me i feel like it dragged on for longer than it should and i don't think it is really as good as the other 3.

Spiderman Homecoming is a good time, but not as good as Spiderman 2, but very few comic book movies are.

@DiscoDriver44 That scene in the car was the best scene I have seen in the cinema all year! (I think I have been vague enough!)

Been Reading some reviews of the Emoji Movie. Reading them is just making me feel a bit angry at how disgusting the movie is when it comes to pure pandering and product placements.

Did you actually think for even a second that it would be anything else but that?

Saw two films recently.

Wish Upon: I wasn't expecting too much, what with this being one of those lazy horror movies where characters make wishes and things go horribly wrong, but it somehow ended up being even worse than I could have imagined. None of the deaths are fun or scary, the main character is so loathsome that I felt no sorrow in watching her life unravel, the acting borders on amateurish, and nothing interesting is done with the concept. A terrible experience from beginning to end.

Dunkirk: Now... this. THIS! I don't even know what to say about it. This is definitely one of the most involving and anxiety-producing films I've ever seen. Many people describe cinema as a way for the viewer to transport themselves to another time and place, but never has this been so true as it is here, a movie that immerses us completely in the viewpoints of the people it follows, where the action rises and swells like the tide, where the sound design makes us feel like bullets are ripping at the ground around us, where the music pulses in a terrifying, almost tribal fashion along with the events unfolding on-screen. Practically a re-invention of the war movie genre!

A few design choices work really well. There's very little actual dialogue here: events often unfold wordlessly, which creates a kind of organic narrative you rarely see in films these days. You never actually see the "enemy" (German soldiers)... instead, they're a looming, constantly menacing force that manifests itself in the terrifying shriek of German planes, the hail of gunfire piercing through metal at helpless soldiers, etc. Movie monsters often work best when they're left off-screen, and I think the same is true here. Finally, the film is so immediately immersed in the historical events that we don't get backstories or much development for any of the people involved. While this might lead to us not having a protagonist to identify with or root for, it adds to the authenticity of the experience, and, as a result, kind of broadly humanizes everyone involved, because, in reality, nobody is really special or privileged, and all of the people involved are experiencing this horror together in a sense. The film reflects this on a structural level, and I thought that was really cool.

Historical and war films usually bore me to tears, but this is still the best film I've seen this year.

BTW @Peek-a-boo , you're right. If ever there was a movie that needed to be seen in a theater, this is it.