I’ve got to agree: The Acolyte was good in that they wanted to do Hong Kong action in Star Wars, and they did, and the fights were indeed spectacular.
Carrie Anne Moss was mesmerising to watch, and Manny J is ridiculously hot, I’m really pleased he got to show his acting range in a big show.
But everything else… phew. The writing, the pacing, the storyline… I started shrugging and thinking “Hey, some Star Wars media is for 8 year-olds and that’s fine” except they then had a really brutal adult episode mid-season. It’s just a mess.
Easily the worst Star Wars show by a mile (I loved the deliberately slow, meditative pace of Boba Fett to match the desert etc, but with Acolyte I found myself hitting the “fast forward 10 seconds” button frequently).
For less than the price of going to see Deadpool v Wolverine, I had an entire IMAX screen to myself today to watch Borderlands. The plot is workmanlike, the dialogue terrible, but it was huge fun and I enjoyed the visuals. It’s not quite as good as the Uncharted movie, because that had a great heist sequence in the middle, where as this is mostly things going boom.
I did see the trailer for the new Crow, and it looks good but not massively different from the original to me.
Now, back to Netflix and watching The Decameron. The stories bear little resemblance to Bocaccio, but it does look beautiful and feature many exaggerated performances.
I watched Possessor the other day. I was not prepared for it. I’m not sure whether I liked it, but it’s a while since a film actually shocked me, so it’s been stuck in my head, as it were.
(The other film I know Christopher Abbott from is Piercing, which is similarly hard to recommend to people, if for entirely different reasons. Andrea Riseborough I last saw in the astonishing Mandy. Some intense films between them, it would seem.)
Episodes of the very silly and funny NEKO SAMURAI are up on YouTube.
A samurai is hired to kill a (maybe monster?) cat but keeps it instead because it is very cute, and then has to fight everyone. I saw the trailer years ago, love the main character’s permanently angry/dangerous expression in a fun comedy about a cat.
Saw Deadpool & Wolverine and … it kinda left me cold—my partner enjoyed it more than I did.
The 4th wall ripped to shreds… the number of more or less obscure references and in-jokes obliterating any chance of fully follow along (and I did, I have seen most of the movies and shows in question), the lack of plot and the slo-mo money shots… it‘s like smothering my food in sriracha and wondering why it is so salty.
The jokes were funny. The money shots were good. But it all felt a little bit old.
Trailers for both The Crow and Borderlands were scary in very different ways. Why does everything have to be remade? And who let Uwe Boll touch the script for Borderlands?
—
On the other hand we met our friend whom I had recommended Kleo because they grew up on the other side of the Iron Fence (about my age, I was 10 in 1987) and I thought they might have some appreciation for the whole thing that was different from ours. Apparently they binged the first season in no time and enjoyed it a lot despite the weirdness and—her words—lack of authenticity in the set details. Not the plot though where everyone is sacrificed for the „greater good“ of the state. That was realistic she said. And then she laughed hard about Aunt Margot…
How much can we make from a sequel?
“The first movie sold 1M tickets and got an 87% RT score. So, we can guess that 870,000 will see the sequel. Let’s cut the sequel’s budget by 13% of the original…”
versus
How much can we make from this original script and concept?
I went to see Deadpool & Wolverine the Tuesday after being released here in NZ (about two weeks ago) and I must admit that I enjoyed it, but… and this is a big but… I went with very low expectations, ready to let the movie entertain me in a lower, more basic way.
I did enjoy the humour a lot, and the dynamic between Wolverine and Deadpool was acceptable (I hate you, but I need you against I need you, and idolize you but I try to downplay it to avoid looking uncool) , enjoyed the extended cameos from a few characters that were either long forgotten, unfairly treated or simply not allowed to happen at all, so it didn’t feel like scraping the bottom of the barrel. They sort of felt like a nice homage, in a way.
Other than that, it is better than the few latest MCU movies, but that wasn’t very difficult. There is a lot of fan service, the plot is simple, it is an entertaining movie and not much more. Which is a lot since movies like Logan or Endgame happened, none of the ones I have caught up with since have been anything out of this world.
Whether that’s the usual “it’s got a black woman in it, it is Ruining My Childhood” brigade or simply because nobody seemed to be terribly enthusiastic about it, who knows. I suspect Disney simply divide the money it makes by the cost of production and compare that with other projects they have waiting.
The Borderlands movie was everything the reviews had promised: terrible.
But we had to go.
There are so many cool actresses who can do action. Why Cate Blanchett? The rest of the casting was fine. But Lilith? Not so much. The most wooden performance I have ever seen and I am not a connaisseur, I just like to be entertained.
Sadly, casting decisions can’t be fixed with a Director’s Cut.
It’s rare that a trailer makes me say “Oh nooo” out loud, but Borderlands managed it.
Most of the reviews say Blanchett having fun being an action hero and shooting things is the only bit the reviewer liked. The casting is just terrible.
Don’t get me wrong, I like her.
She was just really not the right casting for this role.
And I agree Thor Ragnarok was a great movie (one of my MCU faves) and she was a great villain.
