More films!

Blade Runner 2049 : great stuff! Almost on par with the original Blade Runner for me. The visuals are amazing, the world bleak and distopian, and the acting is strong (and minimalist). The movie takes its time and has surprisingly many silent scenes that lack even music - like the original - and yet doesn't bore for a second.

The Dark Tower : Never was a huge King fan, but I was looking forward to the movie adaptation anyway. Turns out it wasn't bad, but nothing thrilling either. Both Elba and McConaughey but in a good performance, but it all feels a bit simplified and Hollywood blockbuster-y, given the pitch dark source material. Just didn't really do it for me.

I never watched the Dark Tower... it looked pretty bad so I didn't bother. I did watch the rest of those, though, and I think we agree on their quality.

Ready Player One - saw this in the theater recently. I read the book years ago and really liked it. The movie diverged quite a bit from the source material, but I still liked it. The quality of the CG and whatnot is really good. Some parts are absolutely amazing. Other parts are awfully Hollywood or eye-rolling, but that's kinda to be expected. Overall, I'd give it a 7.5/10.

I can't recall if I've watched any other movies recently. I think I've mostly been watching TV shows... working my way through the latest season of Vikings currently.

Ready Player One sounds good, I should go have a look in the cinema. Haven't been in ages with all this work stuff.

Speaking of TV series, I started watching The Handmaid's tale recently. Only halfway season 1 but it's really good TV so far. Even hard to watch sometimes, the depictions of life in a dystopian fucked up religious totalitarian state. If you're not easily shocked then it's something you gotta try tho.

Yea, I watched that when it first aired. Really good stuff. Season 2 just started, but I'll hold off until I can binge watch it some.

Finished Vikings season 5... it's ok. The first two or three seasons were really good... after that they've been ok... not great, not horrible.

Also started watching the latest seasons of Dark Mirror and Electric Dreams. I like weird shows like that, what can I say.

Which one of those two would you recommend? Vikings never really appealed to me but who knows, might give it a spin.

Speaking of weird shows, did you see Twin Peaks season 3? Enjoyed every minute of it hahaha. Felt like I was trapped in some madman's bad trip. Just sipping on a nice beer through every episode, loving it. Hell I even loved the endless shots of two people driving in a car in the dark.

Oh yeah, speaking of great TV: Westworld is back!

I've never watched any Twin Peaks. I've heard it's bizarre, but never took the time.

As far as which is better (Black Mirror or Electric Dreams), they're damned similar. Both are good. As far as I'm aware, in both cases there's no continuity.. just weird episodes. So yea, no preference.

Watched Avengers: Infinity War in the theaters today. Also watched Black Panther last night. Good thing I did... parts of infinity war would probably have been pretty confusing otherwise. At any rate, actually a pretty decent movie. Curious how the next one picks up things. Lots of rooms for spoilers and, unfortunately, I had been spoiled by asshole news websites with spoilers in headlines.

so, to conclude, infinity war is pretty good, maybe 7 or 8 out of 10. It's very useful to have a good understanding of the previous Marvel movies, but not strictly required. However, if you're not familiar with... like... every movie, you may not know who many of the characters are or what some of the references being made are. It does not conclude the narrative... so assuming you're somehow immune from spoilers and you want a complete story, maybe wait until the next movie so you can watch both.

Oh yea, I watched Jumanji. It was fine... nothing super special.. but yea. She's hot.

I was impressed that Infinity War was able to take that many characters and jam them into a movie without it becoming an incoherent mess. Bravo.

Watched a few movies lately. Thought I'd provide some feedback.

- Pacific rim Uprising - Omg terrible. Sequel to the original Pacific Rim, which wasn't great. This one ups the ante to completely horrific.
- A quiet place - Horror movie. I wasn't particularly horrified, and it was kinda dumb.
- Journey's End - Movie about some British guys set in WWI trench warfare. Take depressing WWI trench movie, add depressing British guys, add a dose of depression... yea, not so great.
- A Wrinkle in Time - I never read the book, so at least it didn't ruin that for me. It's got Oprah Winfrey in it. Seemed kind of like a combination of the Neverending story and something terrible. So, not so great.
- I Kill Giants - About a girl that kills giants, but really she's just a bit psychotic. Or more than a bit. I wouldn't call the movie terrible, but it's not so great.
- Isle of Dogs - Amusing.
- The Grey - People working at an oil refinery in Alaska have their plane crash in the wilderness, after which a pack of wolves slowly kills them all. Shouldn't probably be watched if you're going flying any time soon, or going somewhere with snow. Not especially uplifting.

I think that about covers my recent movies.

Watched Collide. Quite ok. Over all it's the car chases that are worth the watch.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2126235/

I followed the IMDB link and this was the movie description



Cologne high-speed Autobahn? It's like whoever wrote it had no idea what Cologne or an Autobahn are.

Watched Rampage today. Lol...it was pretty bad, though mildly entertaining.

lol @ high-speed Autobahn.

Rampage looks like exactly the sort of The Rock movie you'd watch for a fun hour and a half, without expecting anything more than a good time. There's not a lot of movies starring The Rock that I don't at least enjoy a little.

Saw Black Panther on the plane this week. Was a decent to good movie, but not the amazing masterpiece it was supposed to be imo. I had some serious issues with the whole idea of Wakanda being a sort of hidden super technological society, none of it made any sense. Also the hodgepodge mix of African cultures and outfits...it's like if you would create a fictional European country and fill it with people wearing clothes and style from very distinct cultures like the French, Spanish, Swedish and Russian ones.

Still, enjoyed it well enough. Killmonger was the best character, even if his motivations were a bit meh they made sense.

Yea, Killmonger (despite the stupid name) was a pretty good character, actually. The rest... not so much. The end fight scene was a bunch of CG bullshit. I prime example of the worst of the worst when it comes to overuse of CG. Meh.

Anyway, saw Ant Man and the Wasp today. It was ok. Nothing super amazing, but pretty amusing anyway. Unfortunately, where the first movie set up a quantum universe pretty interestingly (and marginally realistically), this one kind of undid all that. A shame. I would've loved something a bit less scientifically stupid. But whatever, it's a Marvel movie, what can you expect? Otherwise it was decent.

Have you guys seen Unbreakable and Split? They're both pretty decent movies... unbreakable being the better of the two in my opinion. At any rate... hmmm.



Other movies I've watched include Fury, where Brad Pit is a Sherman tank commander in WWII Germany. Oof... good movie, actually, but not especially uplifting.

Oh, the new ant man movie is out already? I didn't even know. So many superhero movies these days...

Sad to hear they went full hollywood on the more interesting parts of the franchise though...like you I enjoyed the attempts to keep things marginally scientific in the original.

Yeah the other Black Panther characters were just...bland. For all their efforts to create a diverse movie they sure went for the blandest bland when it came to character development. At least Killmonger had some palpable rage in him, which gave him already more range than the rest of the cast.

Been watching The Handmaid's Tale season 2, latest season of The 100 and some random movies here and there. I actually saw Paddington 2 on a date, great stuff honestly.

I've been rewatching a lot of classic movies too to see if they hold up and the answer is: generally, yes. As long as they're not sci fi or use a lot of 'modern gadgets', then they look dated really quickly. So that includes most movies set in the near future (in their time) or stuff like James Bond. Not that that makes them bad movies per se, but they just require a lot more suspense of disbelief haha.