What films have you watched recently?

ICBM

I'm pleased to find I'm not the only one who liked A.I. .

Philly_Q

ICBM said:

I'm pleased to find I'm not the only one who liked A.I. .

It's very good, but all that Spielberg gooey sentimentality wouldn't have been there if Kubrick had made it.  I'm not sure if that's beneficial or detrimental... probably a bit of both.

It's made me think of Tomorrowland, a film with a few similar themes which similarly got bad reviews.  I really liked that.

stickyfiddle

Philly_Q said:

ICBM said:

I'm pleased to find I'm not the only one who liked A.I. .

It's very good, but all that Spielberg gooey sentimentality wouldn't have been there if Kubrick had made it.  I'm not sure if that's beneficial or detrimental... probably a bit of both.

It's made me think of Tomorrowland, a film with a few similar themes which similarly got bad reviews.  I really liked that.

Actually...

"In 2002, Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon that "People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us". "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision." "Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'"[50]

Upon rewatching the film many years after its release, BBC film critic Mark Kermode apologized to Spielberg in an interview in January 2013 for "getting it wrong" on the film when he first viewed it in 2001. He now believes the film to be Spielberg's "enduring masterpiece".[51] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence

Col_Decker

Blair Witch (on netflix)

a sort of reboot / sequel. Meh

Philly_Q

stickyfiddle said:

Philly_Q said:

ICBM said:

I'm pleased to find I'm not the only one who liked A.I. .

It's very good, but all that Spielberg gooey sentimentality wouldn't have been there if Kubrick had made it.  I'm not sure if that's beneficial or detrimental... probably a bit of both.

It's made me think of Tomorrowland, a film with a few similar themes which similarly got bad reviews.  I really liked that.

Actually...

"In 2002, Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon that "People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us". "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision." "Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'"[50]

Upon rewatching the film many years after its release, BBC film critic Mark Kermode apologized to Spielberg in an interview in January 2013 for "getting it wrong" on the film when he first viewed it in 2001. He now believes the film to be Spielberg's "enduring masterpiece".[51] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence

@stickyfiddle ; Fair point, and I've read that before... and I'm not "pretending to think" I know Kubrick or know Spielberg... but just because something's in the script doesn't dictate the way it comes across on screen.  It would have turned out differently.  Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

ICBM

Philly_Q said:

It's made me think of Tomorrowland, a film with a few similar themes which similarly got bad reviews.  I really liked that.

I really liked it too. The only thing I didn't like was that Hugh Laurie wasn't really a strong or dark enough character for that role.

stickyfiddle said:

"In 2002, Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon that "People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us". "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision." "Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'"[50]

Upon rewatching the film many years after its release, BBC film critic Mark Kermode apologized to Spielberg in an interview in January 2013 for "getting it wrong" on the film when he first viewed it in 2001. He now believes the film to be Spielberg's "enduring masterpiece".[51] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence

That's very interesting! I hadn't read that. It does make you look at it in a slightly different - good - way.

boogieman

Tank 432. Sort of horror film about a group of soldiers running from something and getting trapped inside an abandoned tank. Tries to be dark, disturbing and claustrophobic. Ends up being alternately "huh?" and "yawn". Don't bother. 

JezWynd

stickyfiddle said:

Philly_Q said:

ICBM said:

I'm pleased to find I'm not the only one who liked A.I. .

It's very good, but all that Spielberg gooey sentimentality wouldn't have been there if Kubrick had made it.  I'm not sure if that's beneficial or detrimental... probably a bit of both.

It's made me think of Tomorrowland, a film with a few similar themes which similarly got bad reviews.  I really liked that.

Actually...

"In 2002, Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon that "People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us". "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision." "Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'"[50]

Upon rewatching the film many years after its release, BBC film critic Mark Kermode apologized to Spielberg in an interview in January 2013 for "getting it wrong" on the film when he first viewed it in 2001. He now believes the film to be Spielberg's "enduring masterpiece".[51] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence

The flesh fair was imo the weakest part of the film and typically Speilberg (wearing his Stephen King writing hat); Kubrick's take was more intimate, taking on the dynamics of having a machine as family member and (v Kuberick) leaping 2000 years into the future to reveal a new alien world. The climax, where the boy trades everything for a single day of motherly love and memories was very moving.

Kermode gets most things wrong. 

thomasross20

ICBM said:

I'm pleased to find I'm not the only one who liked A.I. .

I also liked it!

Grumpyrocker

Paddington 2 - jolly good fun. Great performances. Lovely writing - with so many minor characters getting pleasing  story arcs that were deftly written. Beautiful photography and lots of laughs.

Valerian - Watched this on UHD last night. Typical Besson, some weak writing, but gorgeous imagination. Could have nixed the romantic subplot, but otherwise good fun. And it looked amazing on  UHD in HDR. This is one of those disks people will use to demo TVs . 

NelsonP

Last men in Aleppo - on BBC4 last night. The most thought provoking and harrowing film I've seen in a long time.

paulnb57

Went to see Paddington 2 yesterday afternoon, what a great film! Nuff said!

boogieman

Sharknado 5. Dear god. It’s deliberately ludicrous but it just doesn’t have the so-bad-it’s-good charm of the earlier ones. It does apparently have a load of “stars” in it doing cameos, I guess just for shits and giggles, but I didn’t recognise most of them. US viewers might I suppose. 

EricTheWeary

Wonder Woman. 

It’s bollocks. Nice looking well made bollocks but it’s still bollocks. 

BigBearKris

EricTheWeary said:

Wonder Woman. 

It’s bollocks. Nice looking well made bollocks but it’s still bollocks. 

Absolutely. 

And to think that there were some good reviews on here...

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

Wonder Woman. 

It’s bollocks. Nice looking well made bollocks but it’s still bollocks. 

Oh well, I liked it.  The plot's not great but she is.

tampaxboo

this is amazing. it really adds the spectacle to the science. the best of these sorts of cgi reconstruction things i have seen yet.

sinbaadi

Philly_Q said:

EricTheWeary said:

Wonder Woman. 

It’s bollocks. Nice looking well made bollocks but it’s still bollocks. 

Oh well, I liked it.  The plot's not great but she is.

I thought it was alright but I struggle to see the strong female role that was so hyped.

Basically they're saying that to be a strong female character you can be very ditsy, have no Street smarts at all and literally need to be super natural.  Super hero movies are not where attainable role models lie imo.

Bygone_Tones

Baby driver.

Not much to the plot but enjoyable for the music and car chases. I'd give it 7.5/10

ICBM

Withnail & I. Never seen it before but it’s meant to be a cult classic.

Obviously I’m missing something... it wasn’t terrible but I didn’t really get it. Vaguely funny in places but no great point to it - got to the end and still don’t really know whether it was good or not.

6/10