minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
That whole thing reads exactly like a severe dv victim. Downplaying serious hospital-worthy injuries, her claiming that it was "her fault" for doing something small and unrelated, etc. It was actually tough to read, wow.
Everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
+28
Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited March 31
The saddest thing of all about those Jonathan Majors texts is that they looked at that and thought it makes him look good.
How bad is the real situation that THAT is the best they can make him look right now?
I don’t mean the SADDEST thing. That sounds dismissive of the victim.
'Its my fault that you beat the shit out of me and sent me to the hospital because I tried to grab your phone and let me just list the violent acts you performed real quick' I hope won't have the desired result.
Christ, what a rollercoaster of learning who Majors is, liking him in a few movies, to the mask going off.
I am in the business of saving lives.
+3
Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Pathetic! That’s the word I wanted instead of sad. I finally thought of it.
Rocky Balboa is my 'sick kid is napping' movie today and I forgot how good it is! It's small and intimate and it looks like it's shot on actual film?
And only 98 fucking minutes long?
Should have won an Oscar.
I am in the business of saving lives.
+6
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Got the house to myself for 2 hours tonight. Fancied a film. Saw the Renfield trailer yesterday and Nick Hoult reminded me of a tight 120 minutes of perfection. Time to WITNESS.
+24
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
D&D was a blast, and the drafthouse-style theater I saw it at played an episode of the old D&D cartoon and some AD&D toy commercials before the film.
I also had no idea that the kid from IT was grown up now, so I spent the whole movie trying to figure out which celebrities her parents were to explain why she looked so familiar.
Rocky Balboa is my 'sick kid is napping' movie today and I forgot how good it is! It's small and intimate and it looks like it's shot on actual film?
And only 98 fucking minutes long?
Should have won an Oscar.
It's the movie that sold me on the franchise.
It makes me retroactively wonder if Creed 1 was ever necessary because Balboa is such a way to end the franchise. The old guy has to figure out he's if he's got anything left in the tank. All the unresolved anger about Adrian's death. Paulie's regrets. Just everything clicks.
And it's so remarkably quiet movie. The small moments in Philadelphia neighborhoods. The small moments with Marie.
It's for this feeling of rewriting the shit pile that was Rocky V.
It's on Prime and I reccomend it.
Also apparently 'Rocky IV Rocky Versus Drago's which is a new edit by Stallone is also on prime?! I'll have to save that for tomorrow.
the villain of rocky v, totally not don king's, central argument against rocky is that he should not be proud of where he came from
and, in the most philadelphia way possible, this statement is refuted by a brawl in the streets
+12
Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I hate Rocky V so much. Granted I haven’t watched it since it was new so maybe my opinion will be different now that I enjoy movies a lot differently than I used to…
Fuck am I going to watch Rocky V again? A movie I swore I would never watch again…
the villain of rocky v, totally not don king's, central argument against rocky is that he should not be proud of where he came from
and, in the most philadelphia way possible, this statement is refuted by a brawl in the streets
I don't mind beating up lawfully distinctive Don King or a thirty five minute street fight to end a movie, but Rocky Balboa is a great send off to the character.
Creed is dramatically better than Rocky Balboa, what are ya talking about??
I don't think it's dramatically better. It's still good, sure, but Balboa is a quiet examination of aging and regrets and failure while Creed is a big look at family and identity. They're two different themes.
I saw Creed 2 for the first time maybe a month ago and I didn't love it either.
What really turned me around on not waiting till VOD to see John Wick 4 and getting tickets for this coming weekend was a friend telling me they checked the time when the final action sequence started and then checked it again when the sequence ended and
a full 37 minutes consisted of it
My big complaint since hearing about the runtime was that I figured the Lore would fill up most of those three hours, and hearing that instead Friday night was just the wave of relief I needed
Just got out of John Wick 4
The Lore and talking takes up a lot of the first like half hour or so, which had me back to being worried
But then it's just off to the races for almost the entire time in a way that was honestly astonishing to me. Not even just including the four scenes where I was near-hysterical from how hard and long I was laughing (and yes a certain part of that final action sequence was one of them*). The last time I felt this positively emotionally exhausted after an action film was my first viewing of Mad Max Fury Road. This ain't that good, but man it's something. A self-reflecting conclusion to a quadrilogy questioning how it'll all be remembered and hopeful at least the end will skew it towards "positively"; if nothing else but for the action, I think that'll be the case
More homages to The Warriors in modern cinema, please
*
I think I was actually going to die laughing if he had been kicked back down the many-steps again
Yeah I dunno, I get a certain amount of cynicism but response to this that I've seen has been pretty universally damning.
Like, even people who claim they weren't fully convinced deciding that this makes him look worse.
If you read the replies to that tweet, there's some real MRA or worse vibes in a couple who are on the defense for Majors. Mostly then getting their bullshit called out, but there is a not-insignificant population of direct abusers or those implicitly or explicitly supportive of asserting the 'natural order'. (I haven't finished it, but for insight into patterns of DV, trauma, and toxic masculinity/misogyny written as a tool for those (potentially) experiencing abuse, from the perspective of someone attempting to help male abusers reform, I'd recommend checking out "Why Does He Do That?", easily found free online. With the caveat that it's narrow & dated in address, and its author is apparently antivax, and that sucks, but just take him with a grain of salt & stick to the prompt. Not me, but: https://ask.metafilter.com/360557/ok-what-do-you-know-about-Lundy-Bancroft. ...I don't have to entirely agree with someone on a specific subject --much less holistically-- to derive benefit from their perspective, and I recommend the book in that mentality. In that same vein, "The Narcissist In Your Life" also gives a layman take on other psychological processes that cause harm.)
But yeah, woof, TMZ and releasing those texts, makes you wonder whose team the lawyers are on. (As numerous others have mentioned, they're relying on a surface reading to lampshade or blow over people's heads. ...Also, probably not her name that got redacted there, class class class.)
pooka on
+7
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited March 31
Welp, just paid less for a bundle of five movies containing The Dungeonmaster, Dolls, Cellar Dweller, Arena, and Robot Jox than I paid for Robot Jox by itself last year
Maybe I can hock my copy of Robot Jox real fast for a decent price still
Welp, just paid less for a bundle of five movies containing The Dungeonmaster, Dolls, Cellar Dweller, Arena, and Robot Jox than I paid for Robot Jox by itself last year
Maybe I can hock my copy of Robot Jox real fast for a decent price still
I thankfully hadn't bought Robot Jox after looking for a copy last year, but I did buy The Dungeonmaster on blu and Arena in a dvd collection. Still bought the new set though. Oh well.
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I assume the lawyer is trying to show "see she apologized and said it wasn't his fault!"
Hoping, of course, that people are unfamiliar with the idea that abused people often apologize to and attempt to mollify their abuser to avoid further harm
I mean
Jesus Christ those two sentences
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
+20
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I saw the new Dungeons & Dragons movie last night.
It was fun!! An enjoyable fantasy-romp!!
I wouldn't describe it as laugh-out-loud the entire time, rather I was smiling for 120+ minutes.
I would also say everyone's general critiques regarding the film that I've read here are right on the money.
At Alamo Drafthouse they had a pre-movie thing with the main actors telling us how good we are for doing capitalism and giving the theater our money. Everyone seemed fine but Hugh Grant looked like someone was holding a gun to his head.
I saw Dungeons and Dragons last night and really enjoyed it. I saw it in an Xtreme theater which is bigger screen and sound system and I was wondering if anyone else had trouble hearing some of the lines?
I'm wondering if it was the audio mix or maybe I'm just getting old but from time to time someone would say a line that sounded muffled
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
PRIME MOVIE GARBAGE HAUL
MEGA SHARK vs KOLOSSUS
The movie starts out in the middle of a tense action scene where sexy ladies clad in black leather with their cleavages wide open are steering some kind of dolphin-shaped submarine fighter vehicles. They're chasing the Mega Shark, but manage to do nothing and then they die. Meanwhile in Chernobyl some American mercenaries are trying to buy a Super Powerful Power Source from some Russian mercenaries. Things go pearshaped and the Kolossus awakens in your standard cheap sci-fi movie kind of way and begins to wander around, threatening to blow stuff up.
From here we get a bunch of boring boardroom scenes between government people, most of who want to kill the Mega Shark, but the Environmentalist Main Character thinks that's a bad idea, and then the CIA tries to stop the Kolossus but fail. A smarmy-looking billionaire with bad guy moustache brings the good guys together to stop the Mega Shark and the Kolossus, but in a surprise twist it turns out he's evil and mind controls the Mega-Shark and the Kolossus so he can use them to take over the world. He dies, and with his mind control gone the Mega Shark and the Kolossus fight for about 30 seconds and then the Kolossus blows up himself and the Mega Shark. But surprise, there's another Mega Shark.
Having not seen any of the other Mega Shark movies I'm not entirely sure if they're connected, but the way everyone talks about the Mega Shark it feels like I should already know the basics of what's going, which honestly isn't that much. The movie's bad in a very boring way and doesn't provide any entertainment value whatsoever. Half a star out of ten stars.
FLIGHT 666
The movie starts off with a credit scene visualized by serial killings. Then people get on a plane and spooky things start happening on that plane. That's it, that's the movie. It's alright. The ghosts look neat. In the end they find out why the plane is haunted (serial killer and his luggage are on board) and then they do an emergency landing. Three trophies out five.
CONTAINMENT
Tenants of a large apartment building discover that they're locked in. The doors are shut, windows won't open, everything is closed. Across the way in the neighbouring buildings, people are banging on their windows, presumably likewise trapped. And down on the street level a crew of hazmat suited individuals scurry about, making their way through each building. The people discover that a nonspecific deadly airborne disease is on the loose and the hazmat crew isn't there to help them. Their mission is to contain the threat.
Out of all the movies where a group people are trapped in a bad situation, Containment is one of them. Personalities clash and tempers boil, and violence erupts as the residents of the building are desperately trying to survive. The hazmat crew have an experimental antidote, but they've only brought enough for themselves.
Containment is decent enough. Well acted and decently scripted, though I'm not entirely sure what having three directors brings to the mix. It's not a movie you need to go out of your way to watch, but if you have a Prime subscription and like these types of movies, it's alright. Two boosters and a lollipop out of four.
I too saw the DnD film last night, not as enamored with it as some reviews but my feeling is they're grading on a curve against all the other attempts at dnd movies. I did enjoy the way a lot of the goofs and encounters were set up to read perfectly as bad/ good rolls and game rounds.
But that's neither here or there, my takeaway is there is one and one thing only that I care about now and that is
I too saw the DnD film last night, not as enamored with it as some reviews but my feeling is they're grading on a curve against all the other attempts at dnd movies. I did enjoy the way a lot of the goofs and encounters were set up to read perfectly as bad/ good rolls and game rounds.
But that's neither here or there, my takeaway is there is one and one thing only that I care about now and that is
It's nothing groundbreaking but there's something to be said for it being a goofy action movie that breezes by with some solid jokes and fun performances while also not trying to sell you nine upcoming movies and a TV show
Saw John Wick: Chapter 4. As posted about previously, I had some serious issues (about the plot only) going in after Chapter 3. I'll say that 4 repairs some of those issues, to some extent. It didn't feel TOO long, while probably it still would have been better with a few cuts here and there. My highest praise goes to two of the sequences in the last act of the movie, those easily join the "best scenes in the series" grouping. I liked 4 a lot more than 3, not sure if it's better than 2. It's definitely not better than 1. More thoughts/gripes below.
-So now having seen 4... 3 plays even more like an anime original filler arc. In 2, John is used and abused by the High Table, basically sentenced to death for the crimes and plots of others. He becomes fed up with this and tenders his resignation by breaking the rules of the Continental in an unmistakable way. Then in 3, he tries to unring that bell for an entire feature film. He gives up the last physical reminder of his wife (with the dog gone in 1 and the house gone in 2) to a High Table member, begs and pleads and embarrasses himself, and gets his few remaining allies whittled down, pointlessly. And yet, he also doesn't directly take action against the High Table, despite having several ways to do that within arms reach and there being literally no downside. 4 starts off with a statement of intent. He dispenses with the "follow the stars" bullshit from 3, directly tracks down the wedding ring guy and shoots him in his platitude spewing face. 3 was stupid, and even the plot of the series fully recognizes it as a waste of time.
-John is just like... textually a gigantic idiot. He goes to Japan (to stay? to visit? it's totally unclear why). The daughter of the Continental owner there is like, "You are going to get us all killed by being here, you asshole." John is like "???" Sure enough, agents of the Marquess show up there immediately, and start killing everyone. The Dad dies fighting them off. She and John meet again and she's like "This is directly, predictably, and completely, your fault." John replies, "Oops... woopsie!" Like, it could have been something if literally any character made the case that existing under the Table, outcomes like this are inevitable, they have to DO something about it to keep going, that would be an argument at least. But no one even tries! In his discussions after Japan, it seems his plan is "to kill the whole High Table" in a general sense, but he has no PLAN. Not even a vague "kill them in this order" idea. He's just saying the words without any actions taken to make it happen. It makes him frustrating to root for when the only time he gets going is when other people explain in great detail what he SHOULD do, and then he does that. Because in the first movie, everything he did was self motivated, he knew what he was doing and how to get it done. We haven't seen that character since 2.
-Winston is a conniving snake, like damn. He uses John throughout 3 to try to keep what he has, then betrays him and tries to kill him to seal that deal. In 4, that didn't work, so then he contrives another way for John to keep Winston on top. Sure enough, Winston gets everything back to the way he wants it, at the cost of John's life only. The movie tries to play him as John's surrogate dad, but he's just a user. Also, the Marquess keeping him alive made no sense. Why would the Adjudicator be MORE ruthless than the guy whose entire job description is "burn it all to the ground"?
-Speaking of 3 being a huge waste, a whole subplot in 4 is just getting John back in with the crime family he killed off through stupidity and poor planning in 3.
-The tracker Nobody character was deeply strange to me. See, his whole deal is, get this... he wants MONEY! Yeah, he's like really invested in earning money off of this assassin work. Movie... that's literally all of them. What are you doing, here? Now, the high pressure negotiating could be kind of a fun back and forth between him and the Marquess, but the results make it meaningless. Whenever he forces a price increase for his services, the phone network ladies then raise the bounty amount for EVERYONE. So all the people who DIDN'T negotiate or get their hands mutilated also get access to the higher potential amount. Shouldn't that amount solely be for him, IF he succeeds? Like, it makes sense that he's actively foiling his competitors (and helping John) since he only gets paid if HE does the deed. But the Marquess shouldn't be willing to work with him because he keeps getting John extra chances, he would possibly be dead if this guy sat things out! The whole song and dance actively makes less sense the longer the movie goes on. I suppose the true explanation is, "Anybody want to watch a spinoff starring this guy and his pupper?" And my answer is... if you make it compelling, I guess so? Do whatever, guys.
-Like the Halle Berry action scene from 3, I felt like the Continental Japan (CJ from now on) branch scene was way too long and too indulgent. The super duper armor guys were an interesting wrinkle in concept, but in practice, it's a problem. First, the CJ guys are using ninja weapons. Because they're effective? No... they're really not. Guns are clearly better! They don't even pull a Ninja Assassin and create the fantasy that in some ways, these crazy ninja weapons are preferable. They're worse in the obvious ways that they're obviously worse, in the scene! They pick up throwing stars to use, but the enemies are all super armored up, not even bullets can get through. So you think arrows or throwing stars will? It's so dumb, it might even be mildly racist. Ignoring that, this being the first action scene implies that the forces of the Marquess will all be at least to this level for the rest of the movie. Using the videogame analogy that the rest of the movie is clearly so comfortable with, these are super elite minions with the highest armor class. But... the rest of the movie doesn't have super armored minions. They go back to being killable by being shot anywhere, especially in the third act. From a "balance" standpoint, it's all wrong. Next issue, in the finale of 3, we had super armor and the solution was to grab a special armor piercing weapon, which was a lot of fun. In this one, John just keeps shooting them 13 or 14 times and it's fine? Which makes the scene feel increasingly overlong and not very satisfying from a choreography standpoint (everyone just gets shot over and over and over and defeated without a super clear "that guy was beaten now" in every case). I'll say the introduction to Donnie Yen's character in this sequence was worthwhile, though.
-Okay, time for some compliments. The "Dragon's Breath" top down action sequence is one of my favorite parts of the entire series. Holy CRAP. Somebody in that team played a lot of Hotline Miami. Can't wait for the movie to stream somewhere so I can watch that scene 10 more times.
-The Arc de Triomphe sequence was both exciting AND rather hilarious. A creative scenario where every side has to fight for their lives and rush their butts off.
-And then the stairs brought the slapstick lurking in the background of many previous sequences all the way to the front. The pacing of that joke is immaculate.
-Since John basically has a Wolverine healing factor throughout the movies, I rather like the Marquess' description of John as a Revenant haunting the High Table. If they wanted to kill him off, ending his vendetta and then he immediately relents to his injuries makes as much sense as anything was going to.
so partly for April Fool's and partly as a warm up for the new Mario movie, my friends and I are doing a Bad Video Game Movie night where the playlist is secret except for the knowledge that at midnight we're putting on the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie
So far it's been:
Resident Evil
Double Dragon
Doom
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
the Doom movie from like 2005 is far worse than I even remembered, but then Tomb Raider was surprisingly way better than I'd remembered to compensate
so partly for April Fool's and partly as a warm up for the new Mario movie, my friends and I are doing a Bad Video Game Movie night where the playlist is secret except for the knowledge that at midnight we're putting on the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie
So far it's been:
Resident Evil
Double Dragon
Doom
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
the Doom movie from like 2005 is far worse than I even remembered, but then Tomb Raider was surprisingly way better than I'd remembered to compensate
Substitute Surf Ninjas for Doom!
I am in the business of saving lives.
+2
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Weird to start a bad movie marathon with a good movie if you ask me
That bit towards the end of Tomb Raider, when she runs in slow motion, is absurd. Those ten seconds or whatever are the perfect distillation of what the perfect video game movie is in the mind of a producer targeting a hypothetical 13-year-old video game playing boy, and what the perfect video game movie is to an actual 13-year-old video game playing boy.
Posts
Like, even people who claim they weren't fully convinced deciding that this makes him look worse.
"it was my fault for trying to grab your phone"
"I only just got out of the hospital"
So he is a piece of shit.
I’m going to admit…after watching it again today I’m changing my tune. Armageddon is more fun maybe but Deep Impact is definitely a better movie.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1JI9WWSRW1YJI
How bad is the real situation that THAT is the best they can make him look right now?
I don’t mean the SADDEST thing. That sounds dismissive of the victim.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1JI9WWSRW1YJI
Christ, what a rollercoaster of learning who Majors is, liking him in a few movies, to the mask going off.
I’m getting too old to think anymore
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1JI9WWSRW1YJI
And only 98 fucking minutes long?
Should have won an Oscar.
I also had no idea that the kid from IT was grown up now, so I spent the whole movie trying to figure out which celebrities her parents were to explain why she looked so familiar.
It's the movie that sold me on the franchise.
It makes me retroactively wonder if Creed 1 was ever necessary because Balboa is such a way to end the franchise. The old guy has to figure out he's if he's got anything left in the tank. All the unresolved anger about Adrian's death. Paulie's regrets. Just everything clicks.
And it's so remarkably quiet movie. The small moments in Philadelphia neighborhoods. The small moments with Marie.
It's for this feeling of rewriting the shit pile that was Rocky V.
It's on Prime and I reccomend it.
Also apparently 'Rocky IV Rocky Versus Drago's which is a new edit by Stallone is also on prime?! I'll have to save that for tomorrow.
and, in the most philadelphia way possible, this statement is refuted by a brawl in the streets
Fuck am I going to watch Rocky V again? A movie I swore I would never watch again…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1JI9WWSRW1YJI
I don't mind beating up lawfully distinctive Don King or a thirty five minute street fight to end a movie, but Rocky Balboa is a great send off to the character.
I don't think it's dramatically better. It's still good, sure, but Balboa is a quiet examination of aging and regrets and failure while Creed is a big look at family and identity. They're two different themes.
I saw Creed 2 for the first time maybe a month ago and I didn't love it either.
Just got out of John Wick 4
The Lore and talking takes up a lot of the first like half hour or so, which had me back to being worried
But then it's just off to the races for almost the entire time in a way that was honestly astonishing to me. Not even just including the four scenes where I was near-hysterical from how hard and long I was laughing (and yes a certain part of that final action sequence was one of them*). The last time I felt this positively emotionally exhausted after an action film was my first viewing of Mad Max Fury Road. This ain't that good, but man it's something. A self-reflecting conclusion to a quadrilogy questioning how it'll all be remembered and hopeful at least the end will skew it towards "positively"; if nothing else but for the action, I think that'll be the case
More homages to The Warriors in modern cinema, please
*
Steam
But yeah, woof, TMZ and releasing those texts, makes you wonder whose team the lawyers are on. (As numerous others have mentioned, they're relying on a surface reading to lampshade or blow over people's heads. ...Also, probably not her name that got redacted there, class class class.)
Maybe I can hock my copy of Robot Jox real fast for a decent price still
I thankfully hadn't bought Robot Jox after looking for a copy last year, but I did buy The Dungeonmaster on blu and Arena in a dvd collection. Still bought the new set though. Oh well.
I mean
Jesus Christ those two sentences
It was fun!! An enjoyable fantasy-romp!!
I wouldn't describe it as laugh-out-loud the entire time, rather I was smiling for 120+ minutes.
I would also say everyone's general critiques regarding the film that I've read here are right on the money.
I'm wondering if it was the audio mix or maybe I'm just getting old but from time to time someone would say a line that sounded muffled
MEGA SHARK vs KOLOSSUS
The movie starts out in the middle of a tense action scene where sexy ladies clad in black leather with their cleavages wide open are steering some kind of dolphin-shaped submarine fighter vehicles. They're chasing the Mega Shark, but manage to do nothing and then they die. Meanwhile in Chernobyl some American mercenaries are trying to buy a Super Powerful Power Source from some Russian mercenaries. Things go pearshaped and the Kolossus awakens in your standard cheap sci-fi movie kind of way and begins to wander around, threatening to blow stuff up.
From here we get a bunch of boring boardroom scenes between government people, most of who want to kill the Mega Shark, but the Environmentalist Main Character thinks that's a bad idea, and then the CIA tries to stop the Kolossus but fail. A smarmy-looking billionaire with bad guy moustache brings the good guys together to stop the Mega Shark and the Kolossus, but in a surprise twist it turns out he's evil and mind controls the Mega-Shark and the Kolossus so he can use them to take over the world. He dies, and with his mind control gone the Mega Shark and the Kolossus fight for about 30 seconds and then the Kolossus blows up himself and the Mega Shark. But surprise, there's another Mega Shark.
Having not seen any of the other Mega Shark movies I'm not entirely sure if they're connected, but the way everyone talks about the Mega Shark it feels like I should already know the basics of what's going, which honestly isn't that much. The movie's bad in a very boring way and doesn't provide any entertainment value whatsoever. Half a star out of ten stars.
FLIGHT 666
The movie starts off with a credit scene visualized by serial killings. Then people get on a plane and spooky things start happening on that plane. That's it, that's the movie. It's alright. The ghosts look neat. In the end they find out why the plane is haunted (serial killer and his luggage are on board) and then they do an emergency landing. Three trophies out five.
CONTAINMENT
Tenants of a large apartment building discover that they're locked in. The doors are shut, windows won't open, everything is closed. Across the way in the neighbouring buildings, people are banging on their windows, presumably likewise trapped. And down on the street level a crew of hazmat suited individuals scurry about, making their way through each building. The people discover that a nonspecific deadly airborne disease is on the loose and the hazmat crew isn't there to help them. Their mission is to contain the threat.
Out of all the movies where a group people are trapped in a bad situation, Containment is one of them. Personalities clash and tempers boil, and violence erupts as the residents of the building are desperately trying to survive. The hazmat crew have an experimental antidote, but they've only brought enough for themselves.
Containment is decent enough. Well acted and decently scripted, though I'm not entirely sure what having three directors brings to the mix. It's not a movie you need to go out of your way to watch, but if you have a Prime subscription and like these types of movies, it's alright. Two boosters and a lollipop out of four.
But that's neither here or there, my takeaway is there is one and one thing only that I care about now and that is
I would die for him
@tynic I don't know why the tea got me
-John is just like... textually a gigantic idiot. He goes to Japan (to stay? to visit? it's totally unclear why). The daughter of the Continental owner there is like, "You are going to get us all killed by being here, you asshole." John is like "???" Sure enough, agents of the Marquess show up there immediately, and start killing everyone. The Dad dies fighting them off. She and John meet again and she's like "This is directly, predictably, and completely, your fault." John replies, "Oops... woopsie!" Like, it could have been something if literally any character made the case that existing under the Table, outcomes like this are inevitable, they have to DO something about it to keep going, that would be an argument at least. But no one even tries! In his discussions after Japan, it seems his plan is "to kill the whole High Table" in a general sense, but he has no PLAN. Not even a vague "kill them in this order" idea. He's just saying the words without any actions taken to make it happen. It makes him frustrating to root for when the only time he gets going is when other people explain in great detail what he SHOULD do, and then he does that. Because in the first movie, everything he did was self motivated, he knew what he was doing and how to get it done. We haven't seen that character since 2.
-Winston is a conniving snake, like damn. He uses John throughout 3 to try to keep what he has, then betrays him and tries to kill him to seal that deal. In 4, that didn't work, so then he contrives another way for John to keep Winston on top. Sure enough, Winston gets everything back to the way he wants it, at the cost of John's life only. The movie tries to play him as John's surrogate dad, but he's just a user. Also, the Marquess keeping him alive made no sense. Why would the Adjudicator be MORE ruthless than the guy whose entire job description is "burn it all to the ground"?
-Speaking of 3 being a huge waste, a whole subplot in 4 is just getting John back in with the crime family he killed off through stupidity and poor planning in 3.
-The tracker Nobody character was deeply strange to me. See, his whole deal is, get this... he wants MONEY! Yeah, he's like really invested in earning money off of this assassin work. Movie... that's literally all of them. What are you doing, here? Now, the high pressure negotiating could be kind of a fun back and forth between him and the Marquess, but the results make it meaningless. Whenever he forces a price increase for his services, the phone network ladies then raise the bounty amount for EVERYONE. So all the people who DIDN'T negotiate or get their hands mutilated also get access to the higher potential amount. Shouldn't that amount solely be for him, IF he succeeds? Like, it makes sense that he's actively foiling his competitors (and helping John) since he only gets paid if HE does the deed. But the Marquess shouldn't be willing to work with him because he keeps getting John extra chances, he would possibly be dead if this guy sat things out! The whole song and dance actively makes less sense the longer the movie goes on. I suppose the true explanation is, "Anybody want to watch a spinoff starring this guy and his pupper?" And my answer is... if you make it compelling, I guess so? Do whatever, guys.
-Like the Halle Berry action scene from 3, I felt like the Continental Japan (CJ from now on) branch scene was way too long and too indulgent. The super duper armor guys were an interesting wrinkle in concept, but in practice, it's a problem. First, the CJ guys are using ninja weapons. Because they're effective? No... they're really not. Guns are clearly better! They don't even pull a Ninja Assassin and create the fantasy that in some ways, these crazy ninja weapons are preferable. They're worse in the obvious ways that they're obviously worse, in the scene! They pick up throwing stars to use, but the enemies are all super armored up, not even bullets can get through. So you think arrows or throwing stars will? It's so dumb, it might even be mildly racist. Ignoring that, this being the first action scene implies that the forces of the Marquess will all be at least to this level for the rest of the movie. Using the videogame analogy that the rest of the movie is clearly so comfortable with, these are super elite minions with the highest armor class. But... the rest of the movie doesn't have super armored minions. They go back to being killable by being shot anywhere, especially in the third act. From a "balance" standpoint, it's all wrong. Next issue, in the finale of 3, we had super armor and the solution was to grab a special armor piercing weapon, which was a lot of fun. In this one, John just keeps shooting them 13 or 14 times and it's fine? Which makes the scene feel increasingly overlong and not very satisfying from a choreography standpoint (everyone just gets shot over and over and over and defeated without a super clear "that guy was beaten now" in every case). I'll say the introduction to Donnie Yen's character in this sequence was worthwhile, though.
-Okay, time for some compliments. The "Dragon's Breath" top down action sequence is one of my favorite parts of the entire series. Holy CRAP. Somebody in that team played a lot of Hotline Miami. Can't wait for the movie to stream somewhere so I can watch that scene 10 more times.
-The Arc de Triomphe sequence was both exciting AND rather hilarious. A creative scenario where every side has to fight for their lives and rush their butts off.
-And then the stairs brought the slapstick lurking in the background of many previous sequences all the way to the front. The pacing of that joke is immaculate.
-Since John basically has a Wolverine healing factor throughout the movies, I rather like the Marquess' description of John as a Revenant haunting the High Table. If they wanted to kill him off, ending his vendetta and then he immediately relents to his injuries makes as much sense as anything was going to.
So far it's been:
Resident Evil
Double Dragon
Doom
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
the Doom movie from like 2005 is far worse than I even remembered, but then Tomb Raider was surprisingly way better than I'd remembered to compensate
Substitute Surf Ninjas for Doom!
guess I know what I'm watching tonight
(looks up the poster) holy shit Scott Wolf and the guy I only know from John Wick, what a combo