Cinema - Comments by Magic Marmalade

Cinema - Comments by Magic Marmalade

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Member	Item		Review/Comment
Magic Marmalade 21st Mar 2017		Cinema Lucy (2014)	...and Resident Evils 1-89, Ultraviolet etc. ...Where she plays sexy bad-ass semi-robotic frosty killer ninja type, as does Johanssssson in Marvel's Avengers series, this, Ghost in Michelle and soon to be etc. etc.. Yawn. Basically, anything they can get these two in some impossibly skinny PVC number, and sling 'em around the screen for an hour and a half for the benefit of teenage boys of all ages... which is OK by me... don't get me wrong, but how many of this kind of film do we really need?
Magic Marmalade 19th Mar 2017		Cinema Lucy (2014)	I saw it on the televisi-tron last night... seemed another one of those films of wasted potential. Has the unmistakable whiff of a Luc Besson film (usually a good thing), but alas, it seems Hollywood has gotten their claws in him, and bludgeoned him with crap CGI at key moments which totally torpedo all the good stuff in it. Another awful aspect of this is some of the cruddy acting, especially the physical stuff, with Scarlett throwing herself comically about the room... I did laugh. Scarlett Johansson was great in Under The Skin (proper Sci-fi), but what with the release of Ghost in The Shell (probably why this was shown on the telly), it seems she's heading down the path of being already typecast as Milla Jovovich's long term successor for all this kind of rent-a-robot ass kicker-y (Scarlett isn't the warmest, or most personally engaging actor on the planet, so perhaps that's why). I think he's a better director when they don't give him the cash to do effects... it diutes his unique film-making sensibility... and he is one of those directors who's films you watch mostly because it was him that made it, and to see the things that he particularly does... (like Gilliam, Burton, etc.) ... so drowning it out with super slick production doesn't add to the mix. The best sci-fi too, is usually made with a meagre budget, a fact that Hollywood doesn't grasp, as all you end up with is, at best, a big idea that falls apart or collapses under the weight of special effects, or "producers" (I always think of cows when I hear that term for some reason :) want "more action"... or to throw some martial arts in there for some reason, or more explosions. I'll add this to the list of nearly good sci-fi: Looper, I Robot. (Script writers have to be at least as smart as the original Idea too... seldom is the case.).
Magic Marmalade 18th Mar 2017		Cinema 127 Hours (2011) (2011)	[YouTube Video]
Magic Marmalade 17th Mar 2017		Cinema Blade Runner (1982) (1982)	T-shirt?.... I'd have the movie poster tattooed on me face if I could get away with it! Best film ever made. (There's loads web-sites about which detail the extraordinary amount of layers there are to this film... they put so much in there that nobody realises is there... and reading Paradise Lost is helpful too.)
Magic Marmalade 16th Mar 2017		Cinema Blade Runner (1982) (1982)	The book
Magic Marmalade 26th Feb 2017		Cinema Slipstream (1989)	R.I.P. Bill Paxton :(
Magic Marmalade 21st Feb 2017		Cinema The Strange Door (Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Door) (1951) (1951)	This film seems completely unhinged.
Magic Marmalade 21st Feb 2017		Cinema Nine ½ Weeks (9 1/2 Weeks) (1986) (1986)	That's OK zab... try again in a few minutes....it happens to everyone sooner or later :)
Magic Marmalade 18th Feb 2017		Cinema Macbeth (2015)	I've never really "got" this play... by which I mean I never got why it was regarded as highly as others, as it seemed a little ...dull. Having seen this film though, I think I get more from it.... rather than a theatrical "actorly" production as you might usually see, they've gone for a more earthy, visceral, brutal one... more "real", and it works. Great.
Magic Marmalade 18th Feb 2017		Cinema Henry V (1989) (1989)	Probably the best movie / filmed adaptation of any Shakespeare work... Kenneth Branagh is brilliant in it.
Magic Marmalade 27th Jan 2017		Cinema The Avengers (Avengers Assemble) (2012) (2012)	think the cast entry needs a little cleaning up... pretty sure Captain America doesn't play Chris Evans in this :)
Magic Marmalade 27th Jan 2017		Cinema The Avengers (Avengers Assemble) (2012) (2012)	Absolutely agree zab.... Although I've been going off superheroes lately (way too much of a good thing now I think), this is how to do the multi-character movie well, unlike the second: Age Of Ultron (a mess), this just keeps the story around the central focus of the story, and doesn't try to do too much with too many characters at once. Keep it tight, and sacrifice the urge to look at everybody in too close detail, and the story moves well.
Magic Marmalade 23rd Jan 2017		Cinema La La Land (2016)	I would like to be able to mark this a helpful review zab, but alas... ...I hate, detest, and loathe musicals (musical drama) in equal measure. And for the same reason that I would squirm at the idea of tomato ketchup on ice cream... both are very nice in their own context, but neither drama, or music should ever be together in this way. It JUST AIN'T NATRAL! Either give m me theatre/drama, or some other story on the one hand, and then, quite separately, music on the other, or give me neither. The idea that people just burst in to song in the middle of a story they are telling is entirely alien to me. (And please God don' anyone be inspired by that to make Alien: The musical!). ((And no, I i'nt too keen on operas either - in their entirety... I can take the songs by themselves, but not when it gets in the way of the story.)) Phew... got that out of my system at last.... normal service shall now resume :)
Magic Marmalade 16th Jan 2017		Cinema 2012 (2009) (2009)	At least with bay and Emmerich you know it's going to be bad before you watch it, but Snyder teases...promises a well crafted subtle and restrained film, then just thinks: "Ah nuts, let's just spend half-hour blowing EVERYTHING to bits for no apparent reason" (Man Of Steel - AKA: The Fist two thirds were Ok before Zach could no longer restrain himself) -Must be infuriating for prospective screenwriters struggling to get a script accepted which has some quality at least, then goes to the cinema and sees millions of dollars spent getting this monkey-doo on the screen.
Magic Marmalade 15th Jan 2017		Cinema 2012 (2009) (2009)	I wish people would stop giving Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, and Zach Snyder money... they'll only keep making crap like this.
Magic Marmalade 29th Nov 2016		Cinema Nikita (La Femme Nikita) (1990) (1990)	Great film.... but then they made a cash in T.V series, which I haven't watched in principle. ... I haven't seen it in a little while myself, but this does, I believe, feature Jean Reno in an early incarnation of his "cleaner" character, which quite obviously was the basis for the later: Leon (minus the endearing and redeeming character traits of that later character :)
Magic Marmalade 17th Nov 2016		Cinema Walkabout (1971) (1971)	[YouTube Video]
Magic Marmalade 17th Nov 2016		Cinema Walkabout (1971) (1971)	This is one of those I've never actually seen all the way through... ...I just tend to catch bits at the end of something else, when I switch over, or see the odd scene here and there. I'll make a point of watching it next time it's on.
Magic Marmalade 26th Oct 2016		Cinema The Happening (1967)	Not to be confused with later M. Night Shayam... grim fest. (Which is good-ish, but depressing)
Magic Marmalade 24th Oct 2016		Cinema Jack Reacher (2012) (2012)	I was pleasantly surprised too by this. Tom Cruise is a mega Marmite man (too soon to mention Marmite? :), and I myself find the younger Tom Cruise hard to watch - too animated, smug, and grin-some for my liking... ...but he's aging well, and is actually very good now... I think he needed a few years on him knock some of the mega-Watts off him, so you can relate to the characters he plays better. Matthew Mc-Cough-any is another one who's improving with age, and getting significantly less irksome. Both actually very good actors when you get posing and nonsense out of the way.
Magic Marmalade 11th Oct 2016		Cinema Erinnerungen An Die Zukunft (Chariots Of The Gods) (1970) (1970)	Didn't realise there was a film of his book! ...an industry maybe, but not a film :) I may have to seek this one out, but then, all I'll need is my tin-foil hat and I can tune in to it's moon-rays as it exists ambiently in the universal energo-spehere.
Magic Marmalade 11th Oct 2016		Cinema A Clockwork Orange (1971) (1971)	I was whelmed... well whelmed. Not underly whelmed nor overly so, but whelmed just as well.
Magic Marmalade 10th Oct 2016		Cinema A Clockwork Orange (1971) (1971)	The different vinyl soundtrack releases for this film: First Second Third (Not entirely sure about the order)
Magic Marmalade 27th Sep 2016		Cinema Secretary (2002) (2002)	Sorry zab, you'll have to explain AYPI to me... I'm not up on my acronymisations. Are You... um.... Peanuts Inside ? ....Ajax Yoghurt Pleases Incessantly? ...............Afghan Yurts Pretend Insanity?
Magic Marmalade 26th Sep 2016		Cinema Secretary (2002) (2002)	I actually really enjoyed this film... ... Even though I was uncertain about it before hand, thinking it was just going to be a low budget, career's-on-the-shit-heap soft porn cringe-fest, and not one of Spader's finest moments (And if you count Crash - The Cronenberg one based on Ballard's book - that would be saying something)... But instead, I found that after a few moments rolling my eyes and tutting, I really got into the film, as it's one of those that draws you in through it's quirky, off-the-wall sensibility. It is quite simply about two, um, "odd" people, finding each other... it just happens that their odd-ness is sexual in nature. ...But you gradually find that the sex is incidental to quite a fun story about these two weird people and their battle of wills. Nothing that will shock too deeply in reality, and it won't make you wish for a lobotomy or other form of memory erasing brain scrape immediately after, like having watched a Lars von Trier film, but I actually found it quite a sweet film... quite romantic and indeed subversively comedic too. Ah... isn't that lovely. ((OK, I'll admit that Maggie Gyllenhaaaaaaaal was a big part of the attraction too... she looks like she's made of pipe-cleaners:))
Magic Marmalade 24th Sep 2016		Cinema Split Second (1992)	Haven't seen this since it pretty much first came out on video, but remember it being quite good.. I'll have to look out for it again.
Magic Marmalade 20th Sep 2016		Cinema The Matrix (1999) (1999)	Manage Trois? (That's not an invite!)
Magic Marmalade 19th Sep 2016		Cinema The Lair Of The White Worm (1988) (1988)	So bad it's good... then right back round to awful again. It is one of those films you just sit agog at (That's right... it made me use the word "agog"... that's how bad this is) Try as you might, you will never fathom how they managed to make such a terrible film.
Magic Marmalade 19th Sep 2016		Cinema The Matrix (1999) (1999)	Someone should write a book one day called: "Killed By Sequels" - Great movies that subsequent instalments have greatly diminished the value of. (File under Rocky, Rambo, etc. etc etc.)
Magic Marmalade 30th Aug 2016		Cinema Up (2009) (2009)	I think Pixar have lost the plot a bit recently... (Nothing to do with the acquisition by Disney of course !:) ... This was one of their last to really think big, which wasn't a sequel or "franchise" instalment. They had a great run of highly original, brilliantly scripted movies with big ideas. They need to get back to this kind of quality again.

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