Recently watched movies 2025

[nwhoopfan]

Spectral. Netflix 2016. Decent cast of non-star actors. There's a war in Moldova (filmed in Budepest). The troops are capturing something in these special glasses they were. Then it kills one of them. They send for the designer of the glasses. The locals call them "ghosts of war". Now these special forces teams and this brilliant engineer and the kinda cute (Emily Mortimer) CIA agent have to find out what is actually going on and how to stop it. I'd call this sci-fi mostly, and it's surprisingly original and pretty good.

Yeah I stumbled onto that several years ago, I've watched it multiple times.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Hmm...I just didn't get it with "Sinners." If Coogler just made a period piece about music and the South, it might've been something. Mixing it w/ a generic vampire flick didn't do anything for me (I saw several reviews on imdb say it was basically "From Dusk Til Dawn," only not as good, hard to argue with that). Had a good cast and some good performances. Michael B. Jordan was always an athletic well built guy, but dang he was stacked in this one.


Wow, they snuck Lola Kirke into this and I didn't even recognize her. I thought she'd pretty much quit Hollywood to focus on music.

edit--one of the songs during the movie I thought sounded like The Carolina Chocolate Drops, sure enough Rhiannon Giddens was listed in the credits; so was Lars Ulrich from Metallica; Lola Kirke sang several songs too

 

[Palatine]

Man of Steel (2013)

With the recent Superman hype decided to rewatch this Zack Snyder effort. I holds up very well and is a much better movie than I originally thought. First of all, Henry Cavill is Superman. This is perfect casting. He plays it straight with a smile. The rest of the cast is top shelf. The story by Chris Nolan is entertaining and true to the comic. There are a few holes in the plot but they tend to come from the film making.

Snyder tends to the indulgent. The entire Perry While hero section should have cut. And the final showdown between Superman and Zod should have been treated as an anti-climax not the full out epic Zack delivers. It actually detracts from a very satisfying end. I also have to take issue with the sound. The movie is big enough without turning the volume up to eleven to make it dramatic. It would be a better experience if the sound was less extreme on both ends.

That said three stars. Giant spectacular movie making. A lot of fun. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it.

 

[temery]

I saw Jurassic World Rebirth over the weekend in 3D. I think it was PG-13 because the violence was cartoonish in that it would never happen. I.e. 95% involved a dinosaur. Make no mistake though, there is a fair amount of gore and death.

I can't really rank it in terms of the Jurassic Universe, because I don't think I've seen any other since the original Jurassic Park. The CGI was good, but the story and some of the details were a little far fetched, even considering it revolves around dinosaurs.

Now because I watched it in 3D, I wonder if I'll react to it when it comes out on a streaming service. The last Action/Fantasy movie that I saw in 3D was Avatar. I remember liking it in the theatre, but being underwhelmed on a 47" HD TV.

I just streamed it on Amazon. 30 bucks was a bit much for a movie that was at best ok. Most of the action was very predictable.