Recently Watched Movies 2022 | Page 23 | The Boneyard

Recently Watched Movies 2022

nwhoopfan said:
Marvel just keeps sinking to new lows. "Thor: Love and Thunder" was awful. Just so dumb. Buffoonish. Not funny even though they tried way to hard to be. Gorr could've been a good villain in a different movie but was wasted here. Everything was a waste. Taika Waititi is dead to me after this mess. But Guns N Roses must've made a boatload of money off this stinker, I think at least 4 of their songs were featured. And we got Dio's "Rainbows in the Dark" playing during the end credits, so at least it had that going for it. Disney really is out to murder the golden goose with the MCU.
Expand ...
I liked it, but it was a bit of a mess. It seems to me there is a trend with some movies of late to spend too much time rapidly setting up the entire movie. Much like that last of the new Star Wars movies where they had to re-tell a lot of the story to reset from the Last Jedi debacle. This Thor movie suffered badly from that. Once it settled into the story, it was at least decent. But that first 30-40 minutes was hectic and shoddy. A lot of George Lucas-esque quick half-assed takes cobbled together. I really enjoy movies that can pull you in with a slow burn style. This is the exact opposite, and for me, a huge turn off.
 
nwhoopfan said:
Finally watched "Top Gun Maverick." I certainly enjoyed it, but I must totally be missing something. I can't believe how hyped up this movie was, the experience did not match the fanfare for me. Mav trying to reconcile with Goose's son was compelling. The romance felt totally shoehorned in and out of place. Mav and Iceman sharing a moment together felt like it was totally for the nostalgia and was given so little screen time, it didn't really fit either. We got some character development with the new crop of hotshot pilots, but not that much, then it was a rush to get to the mission. And why does no one seem to be picking apart how ludicrous some of the plot was? We practically had a "let go and use the Force, Luke" kind of moment in this, only there's no Force to use. In addition to borrowing from Star Wars, then we got a VERY condensed version of "Behind Enemy Lines" squeezed in. There were probably even a few dashes of "Stealth" thrown in here. It was entertaining, but the many reviews making it out to be one of the best movies ever make me wonder if others saw a different film than I did. For me, Kosinski's previous film w/ Cruise "Oblivion" was much better. Nostalgia is a powerful drug y'all.


Okay, had to look up the director on IMDB. He did "Only the Brave." That was a massively superior film to this. Interestingly Miles Teller and Jennifer Connelly were both in that.
Expand ...
Tend to agree, but the last half hour of the movie made it for me. The first three quarters was very nostalgic and formulaic and if it had just ended there, I would have been similarly disappointed. Instead, they went off script and it ended on a very high note IMO.
 
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Went last night with my daughter, home from college. There is an element of tribute to Chadwick Boseman here, and I think that’s fine. The story is mostly pretty decent, although the overselling of technology and “vibranium“ is a bit much. It’s a metal people. The new MIT genius is ok I guess. If any of you remember the old Sub-Mariner (Namor) from the comics, well he makes his arrival in this. They changed his backstory and made him a sort of bad guy. Wakanda is in trouble because it won’t do what he wants and battle ensues. They need a new Black Panther to take on Namor, who will it be. Cinematography is pretty good, CGI and otherwise. I do appreciate the colors in Africa and in this one, in Haiti. Costumes are excellent.
 
HuskyHawk said:
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Went last night with my daughter, home from college. There is an element of tribute to Chadwick Boseman here, and I think that’s fine. The story is mostly pretty decent, although the overselling of technology and “vibranium“ is a bit much. It’s a metal people. The new MIT genius is ok I guess. If any of you remember the old Sub-Mariner (Namor) from the comics, well he makes his arrival in this. They changed his backstory and made him a sort of bad guy. Wakanda is in trouble because it won’t do what he wants and battle ensues. They need a new Black Panther to take on Namor, who will it be. Cinematography is pretty good, CGI and otherwise. I do appreciate the colors in Africa and in this one, in Haiti. Costumes are excellent.
Expand ...

Namor was always sort of the bad guy in the original Fantastic Four comics. He has a thing for Suzie and she liked him too. That set up a romantic triangle between The Submariner, the Invisible Girl and Mr. Fantastic. Great stuff. Namor didn't like the land people because they were screwing up the ocean. Have NOT seen WF, but the original Namor back story always had him as sort of a bad guy, he was definitely a heavy.
 
Palatine said:
Namor was always sort of the bad guy in the original Fantastic Four comics. He has a thing for Suzie and she liked him too. That set up a romantic triangle between The Submariner, the Invisible Girl and Mr. Fantastic. Great stuff. Namor didn't like the land people because they were screwing up the ocean. Have NOT seen WF, but the original Namor back story always had him as sort of a bad guy, he was definitely a heavy.
Expand ...
That fits with this. They changed his back story a bit but he’s kinda of a heavy, but not evil. This movie is pretty decent really.
 
"Slumberland" on Netflix. A bit goofy, and loud and chaotic at times, but I enjoyed it. Jason Momoa was totally hamming it up. Chris O'Dowd and Kyle Chandler are always solid. The young actress they got for the lead--Marlow Barkley--I was unfamiliar with. To me she bears an uncanny resemblance to Saoirse Ronan when she was around that age (see her in "City of Ember" for comparison).
 
.-.
Murder Mystery (2019). Netflix.

Another enjoyable Netflix/Sandler collaboration.

A fun, light comedy/murder mystery movie that is led by the very funny banter between married couple Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.

This whodunit's best strength is its wide range of memorable characters, plus its shot nicely with most of the scenes taking place in Monaco.

It's funny, it's light and overall a fun and enjoyable 90 minutes, which was needed after yet another holiday with unnecessary family drama.
 
Went to the theater for the first time in forever with my folks today, saw "Devotion." It was good. Really more of a character study than a war movie. I continue to really like Glen Powell. Johnathan Majors was good in the other starring role.
 
Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Disney+. This is 44 minutes long, so not quite a movie. Has almost everyone from Guardians, plus one special guest apearance (not from MCU). Mantis and Drax hear some of the story about Peter’s first Christmas in space as a kid, and decide to return to earth to get him a special present. This short opens and closes with the Pogues, Fairytale of New York. Anytime something starts with “It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank”, you probably have something good, and it is. This is really funny and clever and they absolutely nailed it.
 
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: End Game (2019)

I'm not a Marvel guy, I find all that stuff boring, but my 9 and 11 year old nephew are obsessed and are dying for me to wath the movies.

So as a way to bond this holiday weekend, we had them over, ordered pizza (Colony for my wife and I and Dominos for the unsophisticated palates of preteens) and watched both movies.

Overall, I was mostly bored, as expected, and fell asleep halfway through Endgame, but I did appreciate the production value: the colors were beautiful and the landscapes were incredible, like a LOT of time and care was put into this movie.

Downey as Iron Man was my favorite character and was amazing at the vast cast of both movies. On the plus side, Elizabeth Olsen is a celebrity crush of mine while Scarlett Johansson was one of the past, both of which are supported by my wife who shares their Nordic heritage, so there's that.

If I had kids, I can see the interest in these movies, especially if your kids are jazzed about Marvel, but respectfully, these aren't for me, but I totally get their widespread appeal.
 
Moonfall (2022)

Pretty much ten gallons of suck in a one gallon container. The plot is, and unsurprisingly, that the moon is falling because a bunch of homicidal nanobots are sucking up energy from the dwarf white star that powers its gyroscope. What? If only our intrepid heros can restart their gyro the moon would immediately go back into orbit. Huh? Interestingly, that’s not even the biggest stretch to the laws of physics in the movie. As the moon passes over the earth, it’s gravity cancels out the much larger earths gravity and starts sucking things off the much larger planet. How does that work exactly? Spoiler (kind of ) alert: eventually the moon does nick the earth shearing off a mountain top just as the Gyro gets restarted and the moon goes back in the orbit.
I’m not a scientist or anything, but wouldn’t gravity be an issue there? Never mind the fact that a bunch of moondust manages to shear off the top of a granite mountain with hardly scratch to the moon. If you are a science-fiction fan you’ve probably seen a senior to with Scotty from Star Trek complaining to Captain Kirk that he “cannot change the laws of physics“. The writers of this movie did not in any way feel so constrained.

There are other little stupid plot points, like a family using oxygen tanks because, somehow, the moon has depleted earths oxygen. The dad nobably gives up his mask for his daughter and then tells her to keep walking straight and not look back as he slowly suffocate on the ground. Hello? Ever hear of buddy breathing? Just walk together and take a head off the oxygen as you need it. Frankly, I think Darwin would have approved of the father’s death.

For as lame as the plot is you would think that the acting would shine in comparison to it. Nope. It is absolutely wooden and the actors seem utterly disinterested with a ‘give me my check so I can get the eph away from this shit show’ attitude. Halle Berry is mildly attractive so there’s that. Michael Pena plays the IQ challenged dad. I didn’t recognize anyone else.

Unless you are a masochist, this is a movie to avoid.
 
Slumberland. Netflix. The trailers for this are awful. They make it seem like a completely different (worse) movie. This is incredibly sweet and heart warming. It's also fairly cleverly done. The lead is an 11 year old girl (who does look like a young Saorise Ronan) who lives in a lighthouse with her dad. The catch is that she begins to go on adventures in her dreams (Slumberland) and meets a roguish "outlaw" Flip, who was a character in stories her dad told her about his wilder, youthful days. Really enjoyed this as one of the nicest family movies in a long time.
 
.-.
Nope (2022) - We enjoyed this one a lot. Totally captivatng. An unmoving cloud houses an alien ship that occasionaly comes out and vacuums the Earth of humans, then regurtitates metal objects and blood. A great cerebral battle ensues.

The Swimmers (2022) - Cute movie about two Syrian sisters and a cousin who leave Damascus amid war and become refugees looking to get to Germany. The sisters are world-class swimmers and the youngest has dreams of being an Olympian and representing Syria. The movie slowly has the viewer experience the long journey and succssfully shows how tough things were.

She eventually gets to the Olympics, but as a representative of the newly-created Refugee Olympic Team. She did it in 2016 and 2020.
 
Matrix Resurections (2022)

Blah blah blah bullet time blah blah blah flash backs blah blah middle-age people screaming in slow motion blah blah blah zombie agents blah blah Neo has the Force blah blah Trinity is Superman.

It was vaguely okay. The problem with using flashbacks is it reminds us when the special effects in the storyline were new to us. Now we’ve seen it all before.
 
CL82 said:
Matrix Resurections (2022)

Blah blah blah bullet time blah blah blah flash backs blah blah middle-age people screaming in slow motion blah blah blah zombie agents blah blah Neo has the Force blah blah Trinity is Superman.

It was vaguely okay. The problem with using flashbacks is it reminds us when the special effects in the storyline were new to us. Now we’ve seen it all before.
Expand ...
They wanted to squeeze the last dollars out of the franchise and they did. Nothing new or very interesting. One last payday.
 
I just watched Top Gun Maverick. Undisputably, this is a good movie hitting every point it needs to. It was really enjoyable.

My only question is would it make far more sense to send cruise missiles in to take out the target we know they’re faster than -18s and they’re specifically designed to come in ground hugging.. You wouldn’t need to send just two and make everything perfect you could just keep on flying them until you blew the thing up. But if you weren’t going to do that why not use stealth bombers? But if you couldn’t do that, wouldn’t you just run a series of sortees taking out the SAMS first and then going in and bomb the site? it just seemed like they took it the mission that had the least opportunity to succeed and went with that.
 
Spirited. Apple+. Stars Ryan Reynolds’s and Will Ferrell. This is a Christmas movie that takes a unique spin on the Dickens ”A Christmas Carol” story. It’s pretty funny and has a solid plot and storyline. It’s also a musical, and yes, both stars sing some tunes. The ghosts of past. present and future do their thing with a new target every year. This year they take aim on Reynolds’s character and that backfires in some ways. It’s clever, fun and has a good message. Recommended.
 
"Troll" Norwegian film on Netflix. I enjoyed it. Pretty decent for B grade. Gets you right into the action and never really lets up.
 
.-.
"Don't Worry Darling.' Sooooo slow. 3/4 of the way thru, still waiting for it to get anywhere. Florence Pugh can't rescue it. Why is Harry Styles being cast in movies? He's not an actor. He's a singer and a pretty boy, that's about the extent of it. He's just so clearly not up to par with almost every other member of the cast. Florence is acting circles around him. And so is Chris Pine.
 
CL82 said:
Matrix Resurections (2022)

Blah blah blah bullet time blah blah blah flash backs blah blah middle-age people screaming in slow motion blah blah blah zombie agents blah blah Neo has the Force blah blah Trinity is Superman.

It was vaguely okay. The problem with using flashbacks is it reminds us when the special effects in the storyline were new to us. Now we’ve seen it all before.
Expand ...

When I'm scrolling on my phone while a movie is on, you know the movie sucks. Like this one.
 
nwhoopfan said:
"Don't Worry Darling.' Sooooo slow. 3/4 of the way thru, still waiting for it to get anywhere. Florence Pugh can't rescue it. Why is Harry Styles being cast in movies? He's not an actor. He's a singer and a pretty boy, that's about the extent of it. He's just so clearly not up to par with almost every other member of the cast. Florence is acting circles around him. And so is Chris Pine.
Expand ...

I was underwhelmed. I didn't mind the pace at all, it was just the reveal was unoriginal. And the plot holes were too large to get past.
 
Dove said:
Nope (2022) - We enjoyed this one a lot. Totally captivatng. An unmoving cloud houses an alien ship that occasionaly comes out and vacuums the Earth of humans, then regurtitates metal objects and blood. A great cerebral battle ensues.

The Swimmers (2022) - Cute movie about two Syrian sisters and a cousin who leave Damascus amid war and become refugees looking to get to Germany. The sisters are world-class swimmers and the youngest has dreams of being an Olympian and representing Syria. The movie slowly has the viewer experience the long journey and succssfully shows how tough things were.

She eventually gets to the Olympics, but as a representative of the newly-created Refugee Olympic Team. She did it in 2016 and 2020.
Expand ...

I was hoping Nope would be better than it was. I've been underwhelmed by Nope and Us after being incredibly impressed, like everyone else, with Get Out.
 
"See How They Run" was entertaining, but could've been better. Saoirse Ronan's character was a lot of fun. Some of the cast weren't given much to do.
 
"Wifelike." Hmm, what to say? A bit of elements of Stepford Wives, and various other movies or tv shows dealing with very lifelike androids and what role and rights they have in society (I got just a bit of a reminder of "Humans"). Starts out a bit exploitative/titillating, maybe the director felt that was necessary to set the tone for what happens later. It was okay, but not exactly good. Some of the dialogue and acting felt flat. Elena Kampouris was great as the main android. Her manner of speaking, the way she moved, her posture, all very convincing that she wasn't quite human.
 
.-.
"Dio: Dreamers Never Die." Documentary that came out this year about Ronnie James. Well put together. I had no idea he had such a long and varied musical career. Joined his first band in 1958!

Is Rudy Sarzo in every music documentary? It seems like it. Well, he's been in almost every band, so I guess that's why.
 
"Ticket to Paradise" was billed as a comedy, but wasn't that funny. Like I expected the bickering between exes George Clooney and Julia Roberts got old real fast. When the movie and their characters moved past that and got more heartfelt, it was much better. Also as expected Kaitlyn Dever and Billie Lourd were the best part of the movie, and didn't get enough screen time.
 
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

This is the story of the intelligence hunt that led to the capture of Osama bin Laden. It is shown through the eyes of a fictional analyst Maya Harris, played by Jessica Chastain. It is an interesting look at the intelligence operation to locate bin Laden, including enhanced interrogation techniques, black detainment sites, etc.. The acting is solid in the movie is engaging. Highly recommended.
 
.-.
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
168,365
Messages
4,567,918
Members
10,471
Latest member
EO2004


Top Bottom