The Hitman's Bodyguard was great, second best movie of the year behind John Wick 2. Will post more later but movie critics are fucking idiots, muthafucka
I had to study that preview image for a long time to figure out if Jackson's hand was on backwards.
GNU Terry Pratchett
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Spoilered until images are unborked.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Owning an idea doesn't make up for poor direction or story or bad acting, it simply lends credence that the story given is earnest and not rummaged through in studio mongering to a PG-13 resolution. And while I'd never say Roth is a great director he does pick an idea and stick with it all the way to a torture porn resolution. It simply means you've got my ear, let me hear what you have to say; it's often the opposite of bigger studio releases that rely more on actors and brands as opposed to the story itself. Sometimes you get a nice mix of the two like most of Nolan's movies, but usually you need one or the other to carry it through and the original idea has more weight with me at this point.
So The Hitman's Bodyguard takes a simple story and just lets top notch choreography and banter carry it to greatness. Deadpool was a AAA class bodyguard and ran a successful business protecting bigwigs, but one of his contracts gets killed in a way that is no reflection on his own abilities. Two years later he's made a laughingstock despite being really really good, like Batman good. After a failed escort by Interpol, he's called up by his ex-girlfriend Agent Elektra to escort Nick Fury from Manchester to the Hague to testify against Commissioner Gordon, who was a former president of Belarus now on trial for war crimes (the actual country of Belarus, not some made up Blahstovia or Blahdistan). Cue the action with the blood and the excessive use of motherfucker!
This movie has
1 - street fight shootout
1 - building escape shootout
2 - car chases that are way better than the car scenes in Fast & Furious 8; one is a top notch Amsterdam chase that redeems the city for being complicit in that terrible, terrible movie Ocean's 12, the other one feels like a Top Gear road test of a Ford C-Max which also comes with a screengrab that will so meme'd by everyone in a few months in response to people being buzzkills
1 - "one-take" action scene that works well because it allows Reynolds to show he can do extended action stuff
2 - flashbacks with action and slow-mo that are used to excellent music choices that also have great comedic timing
Despite being about the action and humor that lands perfectly between the two, it's about the relationships and love as a motivator. Contrasting make-a-plan Reynolds with seat-of-your-pants Jackson in their professional lives as well as romantic (and even past and motivations), you have a movie that, like Deadpool, allows the characters to easily roll away from joking into natural exposition drops and scene transitions as we get from England to the Netherlands. This is better than any talk of family in F&F, or hope and belief in your Star Wars or Marvel movies that is there just to provide a lull until the next act or what have you. Selma Hayek's role is also a nice scene break in places just to transition time without feeling out of place or there just to be filler, you get the connection between her and Jackson. And the setup for the final act works just as a laugh that everything needs to be planned out in a masterful reveal by the film itself. Killing bad guys can be fun! This movie excels in not making exposition a drag, even as it goes through a bog standard story that to its credit, never tries a last minute reveal, the good guys are known from the beginning, as are the baddies.
Critics don't know nothing, Lionsgate probably didn't bribe them with enough swag or Reynolds and Jackson interviews. Let it be a reminder that Wet Hot American Summer has a 32% RT rating while American Hustle has a 93%. This is a case of the trailer absolutely delivering what you want in the movie proper. And Iiiiiiiii will always love you, The Hitman's Bodyguard. Already pre-ordered for digital release like what dabbing on the haters forever.
I probably couldn't muster up that kind of passion and word count for my fathers eulogy, whatever team wrote The Hitmans Bodyguard is blushing right now and they don't know why
It looks like a decent rental down the road, sure.
I think you're 100% wrong when you're calling it "not Hollywood", though. It couldn't be less specifically tailored (right down to the somewhat pandering casting), or any less progressive. That's not bad or anything, mind! But it's totally "Hollywood". Different from American Hustle, sure, and it might be very competently made and fun. I mean, I wouldn't wager on that, but you never know.
The Hitman's Bodyguard brought to you by Avi Lerner's (London has Fallen, Expendables 3) production company (Expendables series, ...has Fallen series), from the director of Expendables 3 and the producer of, among other things, Terminator Genisys, Life, and Jack Reacher:
Never Reach Around, or whatever it's called, along with new Star Trek and the latest Mission Impossible flicks.
This post was sponsored by Tom Cruise.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
That's fair enough.
(while Lerner is Hollywood he himself considered what he does more in line with Cannon Films, which also carried a stigma that wouldn't let people see the gems like Runaway Train or Lifeforce yes it's a good movie it makes space vampires work)
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I don't get the Dunkirk love. It wasn't bad, but eh, it was just sorta. There. Certainly not even close to the best movie of the year for me, and probably near the bottom of Nolan's portfolio.
Like the best part was the realisation the movie was running multiple timelines which maybe wasn't even meant as a twist but it felt like one! Maybe I'm just slow on the uptake.
I wasn't really a fan of Hacksaw Ridge last year either, but that felt a lot more affective than Dunkirk.
It's Michael Mann, so it looks gorgeous but the dialogue is atrocious (I think I've read here this is to make the Chinese translation easier?) and the premise seems reasonable but it just descends into the absurd. Hemsworth is supposed to be a convicted hacker whose help the FBI / Chinese need and yet they just let him go do law enforcement type stuff with no shits given. Need to catch the Mexican gangbanger suspect? Sure, just send Hemsworth in first, alone. By the end he's Jason fucking Bourne knocking up makeshift bulletproof vests and shanking people left right and centre.
Good to hear about The Hitman's Bodyguard, of course my default position is critics are meaningless at best usually and full of shit quite possibly. Probably still wait for DVD, but now I'll have something to fill in the Christmas TV drought.
Saw Zootopia with the family tonight. It was the baby's first movie. She actually sat and watched it although it may have scared her by the middle, we weren't sure.
Was a fun movie though. Pretty funny in several parts, lots of great visual and background gags using the world they'd built really well.
I really liked the character work they do and the way they turn around your expectations of the main character really deftly. It's not where you expect them to take the whole "learning and growing" arc but it makes perfect sense when they do. The plot is solid too although the whole "Eureka!" moment that breaks the case open is a wee bit too contrived imo. Really nice ideas and themes the movie pushes too. It's got a good message and it conveys it well and in ways that are unexpected given how the movie begins.
So yeah, great little animated movie outta Disney. Well done, keep making them like that.
I was raised by an abusive, narcissistic person. I think I turned out fairly well and we have a mostly healthy relationship now.
That's my preface for saying Glass Castle makes me furious, and I think it should be called out for pushing that "blood is thicker than water" horse shit. For the same reason 13 Reasons was criticized, this movie should be criticized 10x more.
I don't know what happened with that family irl and how it differs from the movie, but 9/10 times the type of parents portrayed in the movie don't change. They remain rotten assholes who are afraid of their kid having more success than them.
I wish the movie had ended 20 minutes earlier when she cut them off.
As we were exiting the theater, I heard people saying, "he was a good dad part of the time!" No, he was never a good dad. He was also not a good human being. Fuck 'em.
It's incredibly disappointing that this was the same director as Short Term 12.
EDIT: From reading the reviews, apparently they choose to do some Hollywood glamorizing on the source material.
I watched Collateral Beauty and Wind River this weekend, in that order. Kind of a Goofus and Gallant situation of how movies portray people dealing with the death of their children. Collateral Beauty is clumsy and shallow and graspingly reaches for those tearjerker moments, while Wind River hits you hard emotionally while being realistic and not feeling like it's pandering.
Collateral Beauty, as a phrase, is stupid and means nothing. It means that sometimes when you lose something important, you notice that the world is still an interesting, pretty place... so uh great. The theme of the film is that if you do bad shit for selfish reasons, sometimes it just works out anyway because magic. The only parts that COULD have worked were Will Smith confronting philosophical ideas, but they thought up about three sentences worth of dialogue for each concept and then called it a day. Sandman #8 eats this movie's lunch, and there was a whole series AFTER that to further expand on the ideas presented. Watch 7 Pounds instead. It's also not a great movie, but it has some scenes that actually stay with you and some kind of ideas you can have a thought about.
Wind River is one of those detective movies where a young woman is raped and then killed as the inciting incident. That's probably a cue for a lot of people to nope right out, which is of course fair to do. However, one of the differences here is that the movie is very actively angry about this. It's angry about what that does to community and family. It's also not one of those movies where it was done because "the city has a black heart" or some shit like that. It actively interrogates why it happened and extends understanding, but NOT empathy or forgiveness, to the perpetrators. The film takes place around an Indian Reservation and adds more of interest to the themes from Hell or High Water, which was from the same writer as this movie. Recommended so long as the subject matter doesn't do you more harm than good.
(while Lerner is Hollywood he himself considered what he does more in line with Cannon Films, which also carried a stigma that wouldn't let people see the gems like Runaway Train or Lifeforce yes it's a good movie it makes space vampires work)
I have the Arrow Lifeforce Blu-ray, which is decent - an okay restoration and two editions of the movie (US/Germany theatrical and the director's cut). A good buy if anyone wants to see if space vampires really do work (it's fun).
This post was sponsored by Tom Cruise.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I, too, saw The Hitman's Bodyguard with a friend (aside--this Saturday at the movies with my gal pal Fiona is turning into a regular and fun thing) and I had a good time with it, despite its several problems that threaten to capsize the film early on.
The Cons:
- The cinematography and lighting are horribly distracting; everything is oversaturated and blown out, like staring at the sun through a foggy window. Weird halos are everywhere and the long depth-of-field with such light density constantly makes even practical sets look like greenscreen backgrounds.
- It takes too long to get the actual film started, which is one of the reason the film runs much longer than it should. The premise is fairly simple: down-on-his-luck professional bodyguard has to protect a hitman who is scheduled to testify against a warlord with a penchant for killing informants. If this sounds like the plot of Lethal Weapon 2, you're wrong, because it's the plot of Midnight Run Bullit The GauntletBulletproof with Adam Sandler. Considering how well-worn this premise is, it shouldn't take us nearly 30 minutes to introduce us to all the characters, but here everyone gets a 5-minute origin story montage before the story even kicks off. Honestly the film would have been even more effective at establishing Reynold's character if his origin was cut from the beginning.
- It honestly seems too scripted. Reynolds, known for improvisation, seems to be forced into spouting lots of humorless exhibition and repeating gags that are obviously written and inorganic. Salma Hayek's character suffers from this, too, as nothing about her character doesn't feel affected. For a film marketed as an action-comedy, it's really more of an soft action film starring two funny actors; there's just not that much comedy. And that's okay! Just, you know, maybe don't hire Ryan Reynolds and Sam Jackson if you're not going to bring the laughs and let them do their thing.
- Gary Oldman's villain has zero depth. It can be summed up by, "He's an evil Russian Belarusian politician."
The Pros:
- The action is pretty serviceable. It's not John Wick-tier, but it's also not tryhard douchebro stuff you might see in a Jason Statham or Vin Diesel movie. It's merely good, though with a surprisingly high body count blithely accumulated for a modern action film, which is not really my thing.
- Reynolds, Jackson, Hayek, and Yung are all actual characters with their own personalities and motivations and they change and grow and enhance each other. No one is really a cardboard cutout, other than Oldman, who is in the movie for about three minutes and puts on both facial prosthetics and a thick accent, making me think he worked on this film for maybe six days, total.
- The weird flashback scenes paired with their music choices made me laugh a lot, which was the intent, so hooray there. :biggrin:
- I really liked how Jackson's character was written; instead of being this crazy badass or psycho, he's a funny and soulful guy with some real life experience and isn't a bit evil, and there's a really nice juxtaposition between how society considers Jackson the villain and Reynolds the hero because of what they do instead of what they do it for.
Let's make a whole movie where famous people make jokes like this for two hours. Then let's make two Netflix series about it. It won't get old ever.
Unlike the cast! Because that joke... Ok that case age jokes are actually solid.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
The Netflix series'sss have diminishing returns but the movie was original and funny with how it slowly descends into more absurdity that catches you off guard
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Wet hot American Summer is one of those cult movies that people who like it think everyone else is wrong but they are the ones who are wrong.
So much comedic talent and so few laughs.
Meanwhile American hustle is hilarious and Jennifer Lawrence (who I don't like much in anything) is a laugh out loud riot in it.
Nah, WHAS is just niche as fuck. It's doing a very specific thing, and if that thing is your thing, you'll love it, but if not, it gives no fucks.
It was borderline my thing, and i enjoyed it enough to watch through it and also watch the series, but i can definitely understand why most people don't like it.
The scene with Rudd being forced to clean up his mess in the kitchen is a thing of beauty, just because he absolutely owns the character.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Your movie opinions are atrocious but you are a precious angel baby, never change, xoxo.
You are like if lightning struck a pile of Jason Statham movies and Gallagher videos.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
Your movie opinions are atrocious but you are a precious angel baby, never change, xoxo.
You are like if lightning struck a pile of Jason Statham movies and Gallagher videos.
I think you mean, 'lightning struck a pile of Chev Chelios unreleased footage and Gallagher's Brother betamax cassettes'.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
On a sadder, less callback note, Jerry Lewis died today, 91 RIP.
He became grumpy old man but King of Comedy and Bellboy were great, and I will always have a soft spot for Pardners from his Marting & Lewis era. And of course the telethons. Godspeed.
Entering this thread without knowing its history and call backs feels like watching grown ups 2 without ever seeing grown ups 1.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I'm Chris Rock in this situation.
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
At this point I'm honestly shocked that anyone remembers our teen drama film war from decades ago.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
On a sadder, less callback note, Jerry Lewis died today, 91 RIP.
He became grumpy old man but King of Comedy and Bellboy were great, and I will always have a soft spot for Pardners from his Martin & Lewis era. And of course the telethons. Godspeed.
a bit of an undersell there
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
On a sadder, less callback note, Jerry Lewis died today, 91 RIP.
He became grumpy old man but King of Comedy and Bellboy were great, and I will always have a soft spot for Pardners from his Martin & Lewis era. And of course the telethons. Godspeed.
a bit of an undersell there
There is now a hole in my phone from smashing the agree button so hard.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Posts
Movies that totally own what they want to be get much more respek than trying to appeal to everyone Hollywood jerkoff material.
Which is why Hitmans Bodyguard succeeds so much, it is 16 Blocks meets Top Gear.
/looks at RT
40%
/looks at poster
TexiKen
Hmmm
I don't believe you.
That's nonsense, though. That idea, taken broadly, makes Eli Roth a masterful director, and Knock Knock a masterpiece of modern cinema.
I had to study that preview image for a long time to figure out if Jackson's hand was on backwards.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
So The Hitman's Bodyguard takes a simple story and just lets top notch choreography and banter carry it to greatness. Deadpool was a AAA class bodyguard and ran a successful business protecting bigwigs, but one of his contracts gets killed in a way that is no reflection on his own abilities. Two years later he's made a laughingstock despite being really really good, like Batman good. After a failed escort by Interpol, he's called up by his ex-girlfriend Agent Elektra to escort Nick Fury from Manchester to the Hague to testify against Commissioner Gordon, who was a former president of Belarus now on trial for war crimes (the actual country of Belarus, not some made up Blahstovia or Blahdistan). Cue the action with the blood and the excessive use of motherfucker!
This movie has
1 - street fight shootout
1 - building escape shootout
2 - car chases that are way better than the car scenes in Fast & Furious 8; one is a top notch Amsterdam chase that redeems the city for being complicit in that terrible, terrible movie Ocean's 12, the other one feels like a Top Gear road test of a Ford C-Max which also comes with a screengrab that will so meme'd by everyone in a few months in response to people being buzzkills
1 - "one-take" action scene that works well because it allows Reynolds to show he can do extended action stuff
2 - flashbacks with action and slow-mo that are used to excellent music choices that also have great comedic timing
Despite being about the action and humor that lands perfectly between the two, it's about the relationships and love as a motivator. Contrasting make-a-plan Reynolds with seat-of-your-pants Jackson in their professional lives as well as romantic (and even past and motivations), you have a movie that, like Deadpool, allows the characters to easily roll away from joking into natural exposition drops and scene transitions as we get from England to the Netherlands. This is better than any talk of family in F&F, or hope and belief in your Star Wars or Marvel movies that is there just to provide a lull until the next act or what have you. Selma Hayek's role is also a nice scene break in places just to transition time without feeling out of place or there just to be filler, you get the connection between her and Jackson. And the setup for the final act works just as a laugh that everything needs to be planned out in a masterful reveal by the film itself. Killing bad guys can be fun! This movie excels in not making exposition a drag, even as it goes through a bog standard story that to its credit, never tries a last minute reveal, the good guys are known from the beginning, as are the baddies.
Critics don't know nothing, Lionsgate probably didn't bribe them with enough swag or Reynolds and Jackson interviews. Let it be a reminder that Wet Hot American Summer has a 32% RT rating while American Hustle has a 93%. This is a case of the trailer absolutely delivering what you want in the movie proper. And Iiiiiiiii will always love you, The Hitman's Bodyguard. Already pre-ordered for digital release like what dabbing on the haters forever.
I think you're 100% wrong when you're calling it "not Hollywood", though. It couldn't be less specifically tailored (right down to the somewhat pandering casting), or any less progressive. That's not bad or anything, mind! But it's totally "Hollywood". Different from American Hustle, sure, and it might be very competently made and fun. I mean, I wouldn't wager on that, but you never know.
Never Reach Around, or whatever it's called, along with new Star Trek and the latest Mission Impossible flicks.
(while Lerner is Hollywood he himself considered what he does more in line with Cannon Films, which also carried a stigma that wouldn't let people see the gems like Runaway Train or Lifeforce yes it's a good movie it makes space vampires work)
I wasn't really a fan of Hacksaw Ridge last year either, but that felt a lot more affective than Dunkirk.
It's Michael Mann, so it looks gorgeous but the dialogue is atrocious (I think I've read here this is to make the Chinese translation easier?) and the premise seems reasonable but it just descends into the absurd. Hemsworth is supposed to be a convicted hacker whose help the FBI / Chinese need and yet they just let him go do law enforcement type stuff with no shits given. Need to catch the Mexican gangbanger suspect? Sure, just send Hemsworth in first, alone. By the end he's Jason fucking Bourne knocking up makeshift bulletproof vests and shanking people left right and centre.
Was a fun movie though. Pretty funny in several parts, lots of great visual and background gags using the world they'd built really well.
I really liked the character work they do and the way they turn around your expectations of the main character really deftly. It's not where you expect them to take the whole "learning and growing" arc but it makes perfect sense when they do. The plot is solid too although the whole "Eureka!" moment that breaks the case open is a wee bit too contrived imo. Really nice ideas and themes the movie pushes too. It's got a good message and it conveys it well and in ways that are unexpected given how the movie begins.
So yeah, great little animated movie outta Disney. Well done, keep making them like that.
That's my preface for saying Glass Castle makes me furious, and I think it should be called out for pushing that "blood is thicker than water" horse shit. For the same reason 13 Reasons was criticized, this movie should be criticized 10x more.
I don't know what happened with that family irl and how it differs from the movie, but 9/10 times the type of parents portrayed in the movie don't change. They remain rotten assholes who are afraid of their kid having more success than them.
As we were exiting the theater, I heard people saying, "he was a good dad part of the time!" No, he was never a good dad. He was also not a good human being. Fuck 'em.
It's incredibly disappointing that this was the same director as Short Term 12.
EDIT: From reading the reviews, apparently they choose to do some Hollywood glamorizing on the source material.
Collateral Beauty, as a phrase, is stupid and means nothing. It means that sometimes when you lose something important, you notice that the world is still an interesting, pretty place... so uh great. The theme of the film is that if you do bad shit for selfish reasons, sometimes it just works out anyway because magic. The only parts that COULD have worked were Will Smith confronting philosophical ideas, but they thought up about three sentences worth of dialogue for each concept and then called it a day. Sandman #8 eats this movie's lunch, and there was a whole series AFTER that to further expand on the ideas presented. Watch 7 Pounds instead. It's also not a great movie, but it has some scenes that actually stay with you and some kind of ideas you can have a thought about.
Wind River is one of those detective movies where a young woman is raped and then killed as the inciting incident. That's probably a cue for a lot of people to nope right out, which is of course fair to do. However, one of the differences here is that the movie is very actively angry about this. It's angry about what that does to community and family. It's also not one of those movies where it was done because "the city has a black heart" or some shit like that. It actively interrogates why it happened and extends understanding, but NOT empathy or forgiveness, to the perpetrators. The film takes place around an Indian Reservation and adds more of interest to the themes from Hell or High Water, which was from the same writer as this movie. Recommended so long as the subject matter doesn't do you more harm than good.
I have the Arrow Lifeforce Blu-ray, which is decent - an okay restoration and two editions of the movie (US/Germany theatrical and the director's cut). A good buy if anyone wants to see if space vampires really do work (it's fun).
The Cons:
- The cinematography and lighting are horribly distracting; everything is oversaturated and blown out, like staring at the sun through a foggy window. Weird halos are everywhere and the long depth-of-field with such light density constantly makes even practical sets look like greenscreen backgrounds.
- It takes too long to get the actual film started, which is one of the reason the film runs much longer than it should. The premise is fairly simple: down-on-his-luck professional bodyguard has to protect a hitman who is scheduled to testify against a warlord with a penchant for killing informants. If this sounds like the plot of Lethal Weapon 2, you're wrong, because it's the plot of Midnight Run Bullit The Gauntlet Bulletproof with Adam Sandler. Considering how well-worn this premise is, it shouldn't take us nearly 30 minutes to introduce us to all the characters, but here everyone gets a 5-minute origin story montage before the story even kicks off. Honestly the film would have been even more effective at establishing Reynold's character if his origin was cut from the beginning.
- It honestly seems too scripted. Reynolds, known for improvisation, seems to be forced into spouting lots of humorless exhibition and repeating gags that are obviously written and inorganic. Salma Hayek's character suffers from this, too, as nothing about her character doesn't feel affected. For a film marketed as an action-comedy, it's really more of an soft action film starring two funny actors; there's just not that much comedy. And that's okay! Just, you know, maybe don't hire Ryan Reynolds and Sam Jackson if you're not going to bring the laughs and let them do their thing.
- Gary Oldman's villain has zero depth. It can be summed up by, "He's an evil Russian Belarusian politician."
The Pros:
- The action is pretty serviceable. It's not John Wick-tier, but it's also not tryhard douchebro stuff you might see in a Jason Statham or Vin Diesel movie. It's merely good, though with a surprisingly high body count blithely accumulated for a modern action film, which is not really my thing.
- Reynolds, Jackson, Hayek, and Yung are all actual characters with their own personalities and motivations and they change and grow and enhance each other. No one is really a cardboard cutout, other than Oldman, who is in the movie for about three minutes and puts on both facial prosthetics and a thick accent, making me think he worked on this film for maybe six days, total.
- The weird flashback scenes paired with their music choices made me laugh a lot, which was the intent, so hooray there. :biggrin:
- I really liked how Jackson's character was written; instead of being this crazy badass or psycho, he's a funny and soulful guy with some real life experience and isn't a bit evil, and there's a really nice juxtaposition between how society considers Jackson the villain and Reynolds the hero because of what they do instead of what they do it for.
So much comedic talent and so few laughs.
Meanwhile American hustle is hilarious and Jennifer Lawrence (who I don't like much in anything) is a laugh out loud riot in it.
Unlike the cast! Because that joke... Ok that case age jokes are actually solid.
Go to prison.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Nah, WHAS is just niche as fuck. It's doing a very specific thing, and if that thing is your thing, you'll love it, but if not, it gives no fucks.
It was borderline my thing, and i enjoyed it enough to watch through it and also watch the series, but i can definitely understand why most people don't like it.
The scene with Rudd being forced to clean up his mess in the kitchen is a thing of beauty, just because he absolutely owns the character.
Your movie opinions are atrocious but you are a precious angel baby, never change, xoxo.
You are like if lightning struck a pile of Jason Statham movies and Gallagher videos.
I think you mean, 'lightning struck a pile of Chev Chelios unreleased footage and Gallagher's Brother betamax cassettes'.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Nah that's a simile.
And so this dance continues.
okay?
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
He became grumpy old man but King of Comedy and Bellboy were great, and I will always have a soft spot for Pardners from his Marting & Lewis era. And of course the telethons. Godspeed.
Entering this thread without knowing its history and call backs feels like watching grown ups 2 without ever seeing grown ups 1.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
a bit of an undersell there
There is now a hole in my phone from smashing the agree button so hard.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!