Section 8 Clan Forums

Just saw Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.

Fantastic film. I think it will be very hard to find a better film this year, and it’s only January. As much as Spider-Man has been done in the last twenty years, it’s amazing that something original was able to be done with it. The story is very well written. The visual effects and animation are top notch. The characters and their development & backgrounds are thoroughly fleshed out and explored while leaving room for potential sequels. The plot twist surpasses anything M Night Shayamalan could dream of. The music score is also very well done. In short this movie has no short comings.

And yes, Stan Lee makes a cameo. It is very brief and he has no lines, but that is definitely him (his animated form at least) in one scene. You’ll have to look for it. If you’re looking for a good film to see, you need to see this. In theaters. And be sure to wait through the credits.

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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<a href="https://www.gametracker.com/player/Entrepid/8.6.76.94:28961/" target="_blank"><img src="http://cache.gametracker.com/player/Entrepid/8.6.76.94:28961/b_560x95.png" alt=""/></a>

Just saw The Upside. The movie is about a quadriplegic who hires a man to be his life-auxiliary, basically someone who does everything for him. It is a brilliant film and Bryan Cranston delivers a masterful performance as always. There are some incredibly hilarious scenes and the use of opera music is pure genius. Definitely a film to see. It’s based on a real story so the overall plot is a bit dry as expected from such films, but it’s so well done that this is hardly noticed until one sits down to try to describe it. The scene involving changing out the foley catheter, holy crap, the entire audience was in tears from laughing at it.

Nurse: Don’t worry, it’s not hard.
Dell: Yeah, well “it” better not be!

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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I usually wait til the credits roll to write reviews, but Aquaman has the worst script I’ve ever seen put to film. It’s like a thirteen year old wrote it and they filmed the first draft.

About an hour and a half later....

Well the credits are rolling now...where to begin with this? I’ve already pointed at the quaility of the script. The plot’s desperation for significance is overwhelming. Another film that has no originality to it.

We have a muscle bound, long-haired, blonde super hero man; whom the ladies are supposed fawn over, using a weapon only he can wield to fight his half-brother to save a highly advanced kingdom whose main city can only be accessed by a magical bridge.

That’s right, I just saw Underwater Thor.

But the borrowing from other films doesn’t end there. The writers apparently loved Harry Potter so much that they sprinkled in a dash of the “pure blood vs half-breed” concept. And let’s not forget a hint of Captain Planet’s legendary and sickening environmentalist brainwashing.

Then to top it all off they conclude the film by having The Little Mermaid meet Star Wars.

It’s an annoying collage of talking points and an outright confusing conglomeration of piss poor dialogue, obvious green screen effects and horribly dated CGI that makes Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within look like they used live actors.

Not worth seeing, even when it inevitably hits Netflix and you’ve technically already paid for it.

Whoever wrote the commercials claiming it was the number one movie in America apparently got their data from the same polling source that said Hillary was going to win in 2016.

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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Just saw The Prodigy. A rather decent thriller up until it’s rather predictable ending. The lead child actor, Jackson Robert Scott can act pretty damn well actually. The plot is basically centered around the premise that if your child is born at the exact same time that a naked, handjob obsessed, Hungarian-American psychopath gets killed by a SWAT Team, you’re in for a lot of trouble. All in all it’s an enjoyable film that’s destined for a sequel (possibly a trilogy) but lacks rewatchability. See it in theaters, but it’s not one to buy unless you specifically like these types of films.

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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Saw Alita Battle Angel recently, it's a fantastic flick. Go see it in theaters. Below is the review I posted on Facebook while the credits were rolling:

Just saw Alita Battle Angel. Amazing movie with spectacular effects. I wouldn’t be surprised if people actually tried to create the Roller Ball sport in real life, with modifications of course. To me it was a strange cross between RoboCop and Final Fantasy VII. The story is quite well written except the ending practically screams “rush job”, as if someone in the editing room suddenly realized they were at the two hour mark and had to find some way to close it out quickly. The story clearly isn’t finished and a sequel is definitely planned. I hope they follow through and make it.

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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Went and saw the Captain Marvel movie. It's about average as these movies go. The effects look good and the music is alright, although it’s a bit distracting in the opening scenes when Vers is sparring with what’s his name. The music for that sequence is way over stated and over the top, trying to convey an emotional attachment and feelings that simply don’t exist yet. There is no suspense but, man, they were really going for that apparently. That scene would have been better without music actually. As for the rest of the film itself the story is simply ok. The audience, or at least I, got about as invested in the story as Brie Larson was invested in her role. And that’s not very much. At least she was able to get her lines out without having the script on her person, but I’m almost convinced someone was holding cue cards off camera. There is a significant difference between delivering lines and simply saying them. Almost like a pizza delivery. There are some drivers who do their best to get it to you hot and there are others who somehow barely manage to drop it off before the crust has gone stale. Mrs. Larson’s performance was closer to the latter end of that scale. Not all the way over there, but slightly better than Stephen Hawking’s voice box.

Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is a key player in this film and his performance is right on target to keeping the character consistent with his prior appearances. But his reaction at seeing his first space alien comes across as if he’d just seen a car with square wheels. Something that’s different but not completely unusual and foreign. He basically takes it in stride as if he was running and stepped in dog crap but kept going. He did not falter in the slightest. I’m hoping that he gets his own origin film to show something in his history that would develop such a response. Maybe a good ole fashioned 1970-1980 Cold War spy film type thing.

Overall it’s a good origin story for Captain Marvel and Fury’s eye-patch. And there are two post-credit scenes. Well, one is mid-credit and one is post-credit.

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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Shazam.

Starts out dull, the first three characters are about as deep as the ink on the paper used to write the script. Slow to get going, but it picks up about half-way through. The timing of the release is somewhat questionable. The opening and climactic scenes are all set around Christmas and that conflict of walking into a theater in early spring to be assaulted with Christmas music makes the transition from reality to fantasy impossible. The suspension of disbelief is slow to develop and there’s a lot of details that detract from the movie that would otherwise be glossed over.

For example, when Billy is crossing off names on the list in his search for his mother, he scribbled out the line, crossing back and forth over it multiple times. But every other name on the list was only crossed out with a single line. This makes it obvious that the notebook is a prop and someone else had prepared the writing on it, completely destroying the intended fantasy that the character had written and crossed out the names himself. It’s one of those things where you may not notice it, but your brain does and it becomes one of those subconscious blocks, kinda like when someone is telling a good lie but you just don’t believe it but can’t figure out exactly why.

And Frankie is way over the top. He has more words in every single one of his lines than our main character has in the entire movie. The guy never shuts up.

The Asian kid, whose name I don’t recall so I’ll just call him Short Round, is set up as a computer nerd and super genius stereotype but then that never goes anywhere. The other kids in the foster family only seem to exist as a plot point for the end and their characters are not developed at all, actually becoming less relatable than the one-dimensional cut outs found in the opening scene.

But in the end I did find it enjoyable. It picks up speed in the second half and is actually worth seeing just for the scene where a crazed mall Santa hijacks a live newscast to rave about “f*ucking monsters from hell” that nearly killed him. I just died laughing at the sheer lunacy of the image and what is arguably the most believable performance of the film. That alone made me glad I paid to see the movie.

As for whether or not you should see it....well, it’s not a waste of money and is more enjoyable than not. There is a mid-credit scene setting up a sequel. I think that would be a good movie, there is a good plot set up and plenty of room for character development that wasn’t done here. If they do make one I’d probably go see it.

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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dt's- Delirium tremens: A central nervous system symptom of call of duty withdrawal that is seen in chronic call of duty players. Symptoms include uncontrollable trembling, hallucinations, severe anxiety, sweating, and sudden feelings of terror.

Underwater Thor!

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Vagisil. Use only as directed.