Topic: Movie thread.

I've been doing something since the start of the year that I think anyone who regularly watches movies should do: a word document with every movie I've seen this year. I already have most Spider-Man movies, Zootropolis and most recently Shazam on mine and I think it's just a great idea to be able to look back on it at the end of the year and see which one was you favourite (spoilers: it's probably either going to be No Way Home or Shazam, watched the latter there for the second time recently, even better than the first).

Rookie of the Year - More of a kid centric Baseball film that sees 12 year old Henry able to pitch at the professional level after recovering from a broken arm, and his talents may just be the answer to the Cubs ailing season.

It's ultimately just fluff & a bit uneven (for example his mom's boyfriend seems like a nice enough guy at the start, then they seemingly forget about him for a large chunk of the movie so the mom can form a romance with one of the Cubs players, only to randomly drop him back in again later as a mustache twirling villain conspiring to end the mom's budding romance & trading the kid off to another team for a big payout for himself without much of a buildup between the two), but hey, I like going back and watching these old 90's movies I missed as a kid, and it makes a nice change of pace from all the meticulously produced modern blockbusters.

Just watched Shaun of the Dead for around about the 4th time now.
Watch it.
Then watch it again.
Then watch it again.
Enough said.

Disney's Jungle Cruise. I thought the first half was very fun. Second half isn't as strong as the first, but it's still a good watch.

SpaceBalls
Love the first take of "Prepare the ship!" at 0:36. And if anyone didn't know, this is where Tesla cars got "Ludicrous Speed" from.

https://dai.ly/x126upn

@WoomyNNYes I watched Jungle Cruise when it came out in cinemas last August and thought it was pretty good. It felt very unlike a Disney movie (especially with a goddamn jumpscare, are you kidding me?),which is great, except for the ending which was the most Disney thing I've ever seen. It wasn't even a bad ending, it was just kind of painfully Disney, you know?

To me a Disney movie isn’t really a Disney-ish unless there’s dead parents, either by killing them on screen like The Lion King and Bambi to traumatise them or having them be always dead to make their back story tragic.

Disney isn’t bubblegum pop, it’s emo pop punk ;p

@jump I'm kind of relating it to a lot of more modern Disney movies you know? Where everything ends up cheery for the main band of heroes and as for the villains.... well, if you know you know .

@Fizza So any movie with a happy ending is a Disney movie? ;p

In any case it was not directly aimed you. I was just making a point there's dead parent's everywhere in Disney. Frozen, Finding Nemo, The Lion King etc and even the Disney tween shows like iCarly have no parents. It's propaganda from Disney to let the kids know parent's don't matter as Disney themselves are you real parents, even the films with living parents like Mary Poppins subverts the parent dynamic by telling you it’s actually the parents that are wronguns and they are the ones that need fixin’.

@Fizza Are you familiar with Letterboxd? It has a diary feature where you can track every movie you've seen. Definitely recommended.

@Gryffin I am, but I would personally prefer to keep it in my own personal document. It's good though, no qualms about it!

@jump I understand that, it's just that with a lot of Disney movies nowadays, it's not really about physical loss like it was back in the older movies, it's a lot more about mental problems like self-doubt, anxiety, prejudice, depression, that kind of stuff and by the end a few of those movies, almost all of those problems go away and it sometimes feels as though they never existed to begin with, making the previous hour and a half (give or take) feel pointless.
This is only a problem with a handful of Disney films though and the modern ones that take these problems and present them in a captivating and engaging way usually end up being some of my favourite movies of all time.
For example, I recently rewatched Zootropolis, a movie that I feel falls into the previously mentioned camp, and it is one of the best movies I have ever seen in the way it presents its message, themes and world.
This is all subjective of course and I understand your viewpoint of me kind of generalising all Disney films into 'Everyone is happy. The End' but that's just the way I feel about things personally .

@Fizza One of the reasons I love Up and Inside Out so much, heavy emotional dealings.

I went to the cinema to see Nightmare Ally. Good flick but it comes in two halves of one of a noir thriller which was okay and plays out as expected (which isn’t a complaint as it was telegraphed beforehand) and the other half of watching the backstory/rise which was the best part of seeing some cool circus visuals and learning of their grifting ways. Still as a Guillermo del Toro film I was expecting some kind of monster to pop up the last second.

Also I spotted the ending within the first 30 mins. It makes me wonder if folk are too condition to movies now as people have seen how structure works from watching hundreds of films so you can see it coming? So it's either have a plot twist coming you can see miles away or put in a stupid plot twist which you reject for not tracking it's logically like M. Night's entire career.

the Good Dinosaur - I don't think it'll go down as anything particularly memorable, but it decent enough time with a few chuckles & cute moments, and the almost photorealistic environmental shots were absolutely gorgeous.

Blank Check - It's not realistic in the slightest, but I think if you were a kid in or around the 90's I think there's some fun to be had in the way it absolutely indulges in all the materialistic fantasies a kid of the era would have. While I wouldn't go as far to say I found it offensive, I will say the "romantic" subplot simply doesn't make much sense (I can't imagine the intended audience would care about it in the slightest), and his obsession with it would have made more sense if he was his older brothers' age (lamenting that he's only a couple sweet years away from adulthood & all that). I think it's also somewhat compounded by the fact that while he's supposed to be 12(?) he could easily pass as under 10.

Took a break from Elden Ring to watch Last Night in Soho and I was pretty disappointed. While it has promise and some bright spots, I was frustrated after the halfway point. I don't know if Edgar Wright's style is a good match for a serious horror/thriller. I swear the timing in some scenes felt comedic. And there were a lot of clichés that bothered me (oh no mean girls, how many people are going to almost get hit/get hit by cars? For real she's in a library using a microfiche?).

Watched Aquaman again.

@WoomyNNYes It's bonkers Aquaman is DC's biggest film. Don't get me wrong it's loads of fun and some of their choices like Julie Andrews playing a monster are great but it just reminds me of how much a mess Warner Brothers are in and how underappreciated films like Birds Of Prey and The Suicide Squad are.

@Losermagnet Yeah, I felt it could have pulled the threads together a bit better for the pay off, I figured out the end pretty quickly from it having all the ghosts roaming about even though it's meant to be about prozzie's life being ruined. Still I enjoyed it myself, I like ttrippy 60s London trappings myself (I'm pretty sure I'm been to a few the pubs in the film) and actually having a sweet wholesome character that isn't aimed at 5 years olds was a nice change.

The microfiche is real though, I've been to The British Library and they still have it there as not everything is on the internet. If anything is pre-90s it's incredibly hard to find things as I've tried before looking for 70s music stuff.

Aquaman is the best DCEU movie, but the dark knight is the best dc movie. Arguably one of the greatest movies of all time.

@jump I was reading up on it in IMDB and, unsurprisingly, Wright put in a great effort for authenticity and detail. Ellie was a good character and things like the dance numbers were really well done. I think when it tried to lean into horror in the second half is where it really came apart for me. Not bad, but perhaps the Edgar Wright film I enjoyed the least.

I'm just coming off the back of stumbling into watching Long Shot, and I as it started I was thinking, 'I'm never gonna watch all this, this'll just be some run-of-the-mill 5/10 US-style rambling film and I should be going to bed' but I legit really enjoyed it and honestly think it's the best modern rom-com I've seen in a long time. That's partially explained by the complete absence of decent rom-coms in recent years, but still... it was good fun from start to finish. Not consistently great throughout, but has enough moments spaced across the film to carry you through.