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Posted: |
Feb 17, 2020 - 10:29 AM
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By: |
Mark
(Member)
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Toy Story 4 - 7.5/10
Good review. Saves me doin one. Saw this on sky yesterday. You covered it.
Sorry guys. My wife and I watched Toy Story 4 on Sky on Saturday and thought it was naff. I gave it a 4/10. My wife gave it 5. I gave her 1 to make up for the disappointment of a bad movie. She gave me a 2/10.
Anyway, enough of the personal stuff. I found it too saccharine and sentimental and hardly funny at all. For a end of the series movie it seemed a shame that most of the regular characters are pushed out of the storyline with the focus on the irritating Forky and Gabby Gabby, with her own sentimental backstory, and other irritating characters like Ducky and Bunny. It looks great, I loved the skunkmobile and Bo-peep and her sheep, and I also liked Duke Caboom. But half way through the film, after seeing Forky run to the rubbish (sorry, trash) bin for the twentieth time (it wasnt funny the first time Forky) I found myself getting very tired with the film. It felt like it was just retreading the same storyline, but with less laughs.
Just saw Judy (2019). 7/10 It has taken me a year to get over the shock of seeing Zellwegger's drastically altered new face in Bridget Jones 4, but I am back on watching terms with her and loved her performance as Judy Garland. The film paints a moving and extremely maudlin portrait of her London tour in 68. My key criticism of the film was the use of artistic bs in creating a gay couple who befriend Judy (she goes around to their flat for an omelette and they later (and I am not making this up) sing Over the Rainbow to a packed auditorium when her voice fails her. Why do they invent these sequences ? its like the sequence in Darkest Hour where Churchill gets on the underground and chats to the great unwashed - you know, as you are watching this sequence, just as you know when Judy is having her omelette with the camp duo, that this never happened. It makes you question the integrity of the film.
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Edit - in fairness, a lot of what mark says about toy story 4 is accurate. Perhaps the 4 IS for marks out of 10? Lol.
Forky was irritating, and gobby gabby needed a smack. And all the best characters - dinosaur, potoato head etc were marginalised. Buzz was funny tho (listening to his inner voice) and so maybe i fall somewhere between your ratings. It maybe wasnt as good as 7.5 (if u had seen 1 2 and 3) and probably wasnt as bad as 4 out of ten. Maybe 6.8 is fair!!
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ODETTE
1950
Along similar lines to Carve Her Name with Pride, the film covers the wartime exploits of a courageous Frenchwoman, Odette Sansom, who returned to her homeland to spy for SOE and run a network of agents. As was common, they were betrayed, and caught by the gestapo. She was tortured but refused to say anything but "I have nothing to say". She is sent to Ravenbruck concentration camp to suffer more brutality including 3 months in total darkness and eventually gets free once the Americans and Russians are closing in on the camps. Anna Neagle stars with good support from Trevor Howard and Peter Ustinov. Odette was awarded the George Cross for her bravery and later an MBE. She died in 1995, aged 82, in Walton on the Naze.
7.6 out of 10.
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Posted: |
Feb 19, 2020 - 12:19 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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BIRDS OF PREY (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) - 7/10
I saw SUICIDE SQUAD back in 2016, in which Margot Robbie first brought the DC Comics character of "Harley Quinn" to the big screen. In my hazy memory of that film, it's Robbie's character that sticks out, and was the one probably most deserving of its own film. So here it is, co-produced by Robbie herself.
In the film, after splitting with the Joker (who is never seen), Harley Quinn is one of a number of people trying to recover a diamond stolen by a young pickpocket (Ella Jay Basco). Also after the stone: an evil crime lord (Ewan McGregor), the crime lord's nightclub singer turned driver (Jurnee Smollett-Bell, and yes, she's the sister of infamous hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett), a woman who's family was murdered by the crime lord (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and a police detective trying to bring down the crime lord (Rosie Perez). Eventually, the women all join forces against the crime lord.
With all this estrogen on-screen, the film just had to be written and directed by women (Christina Hodson and Cathy Yan, respectively). Yan is making her American commercial feature film debut. Her only other feature, something called DEAD PIGS, only played the festival circuit in the U.S in 2018.
The current film is a slam-bang action picture, with Robbie delivering an over-the-top performance, as the material requires. The film is also peppered with Harley Quinn's narration throughout, which, along with on-screen titles, fills in the background of many of the characters in a quicker fashion than pure imagery and dialogue could have. That holds the film to a reasonable 109 minutes, before it becomes tiresome. Despite the fact that the film is rated [R], bloodshed and bad language are kept to a minimum, with most of the action consisting of bone-crushing hand-to-hand combat. Quinn's single-handed storming of a police station to seize the young pickpocket is a highlight.
After under-performing at the box office during its first weekend, the $81 million film is now shown on theater marquees and in listings as HARLEY QUINN: BIRDS OF PREY to make sure that film-goers connect the picture to the Quinn character.
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Posted: |
Feb 19, 2020 - 4:15 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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The Summer With Monika - 8/10
Not much happens in the early (1953) Bergman film, but what does happen happens in an eight-out-of-tennish way. 17-year old Monika forces the older but less experienced Harry out on a date, they fall in love and out of it again in the course of a Summer, and end up physically back where they started - but one of them has developed beyond any expectation and one of them “Return[s] to Go, do not collect £200”. How they get there contains the beauty of the film.
I watched this on YouTube on the train to London this morning. I hope to find another for the return journey. Sorry to come over all Jim Phelps, but his Bergman intrigues me.
First and foremost, never apologize for trying to be like me, as you obviously aspire to greatness. 
As I mentioned in my own review of Summer with Monika, the film has moments of British "Kitchen Sink" drama about it, such was its bleakness. I've also mentioned, over in my Bergman thread, how it perplexes me that Harriet Andersson, apart from being a genuinely superb actress, did not become a major star, or at least a major world sex symbol, after this.
You know how you feel about Shostakovich and Leeds United? That's how I'm beginning to feel about Bergman's films.
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