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Absolutely, I remember seeing this one in cinema upon release, the movie is still as exciting as when i saw it first. So many great moments in that movie.
The AVP films are better than this pile of...
I had hopes for that film. You should have seen my face when I had just seen it.
At this point, I'm willing to rate even P2 higher than TP. My favourite of the sequels remains, to this day, Predators. In my opinion, Predators deserves much more praise than it got in 2010.
+1
I agree Predators has grown on me over the years it's a good film, I am just shocked of all people Shane Black would make such an insulting Predator movie, the tone the editing easily some of the worse I have seen in recent years and that's just scratching the surface of how bad The Predator is. I have bought all the other films, no chance I'll buy this one.
But when The Predator was announced, made by Shane black, I immediately made a fist and yelled "yeah!". A competent filmmaker AND star of the original... How could he cock it up (if I can borrow a phrase from SF)?
Well, we know how, don't we. Like you, @Fire_and_Ice_Returns, I was shocked. If the one "good" thing I take away from the film is Casey Busey's presence, then you know things are bad. The action, comedy, editing, acting... are all on the level of, say, the 5th Wrong Turn sequel or something like that. I think the Predator universe deserves better, though.
I'm overall shocked and amazed. Dark Horse Comics has absolutely no trouble whatsoever brewing out great after great storylines in the Alien / Predator / Prometheus universe. Successful crossovers with Batman, Superman, ... have already happened. It seems like any competent filmmaker can effortlessly produce highly entertaining films in this universe, either in the separate or the mixed worlds of Alien and Predator. And yet, one must travel back in time quite far to reach the last brilliant Alien flick and the last good Predator film. A great AvP has yet to be made. And where Scott is taking Prometheus has, since Covenant, become a mystery. They started in film, but I'm afraid other media like comic books and video games have taken over.
I recall Black amping up the film as a monumental "event film" some years back, acting like he'd shake up what a blockbuster would be. I couldn't believe how generic and dull it looked in the footage I saw, I doubt I ever waste time watching it.
Unlike many historical documentaries, “Apollo 11” tells the story of the mission without any voice over narration – letting the images (and voices) from those days in 1969 speak for themselves - and I for one was absolutely transported back in time.
What was surprising to me is how emotional I got in viewing the film (and from reading the accounts of others that have seen it I’m not alone). Maybe it was the documentary sending me back to a time and place when I was all of eight years old and watching the mission with my late mother (on the old B&W TV), or the tremendous pride and admiration that I have always felt for the 400,000 people that worked to make the Apollo Program possible. Maybe it was both.
There was one particular scene near the end (when the crew is heading back to Earth) and we hear John Stewarts’ song “Mother Country”, that especially got to me. To quote from the song:
“And about these 'good old days' the old lady replied
"Why they were just a lot of people doing the best they could"
"Just a lot of people doing the best they could"
And then the lady said that they did it, "pretty up and walking good"
What ever happened to those faces in the old photographs
I mean, the little boys…….
Boys? . . . . . Hell they were men”
Highly recommended, if you’re a “space nerd” or just interested in that period in American history.
It was good seeing Gary Busey's son, Black was attempting to pay homage to 80's and 90's action films it just fell flat. The script was pretty poorly constructed and the film seemed to be built around the jokes. The Predator did alot of none sensical things that are not consistent with what we know about the Predator, the humans should have had no chance at all.
The film is much much worse than the trailer, AVP is a Masterpiece in comparison.
Ben Affleck has done great things this past decade. Quite frankly, when first seeing him in Kevin Smith's Mallrats, I thought he was abysmal. Michael Bay subsequently established him as just the pretty boy to bring in teenage girls. But Ben has slowly been building himself an ups-and-downs career with, in my opinion, more ups than downs.
And then LIVE BY NIGHT was released in 2016, a great looking film with a stellar cast, attempting a strange fusion between Public Enemies and A Time To Kill. There's nothing wrong with the movie, really, except that it feels trite in almost all narrative regards. Like 2013's Gangster Squad, it struggles with bringing its enchanting settings to life, almost as if shying away from exploring its true potential. It isn't a bad film, let me be clear about that, but it's nothing we haven't seen before, and not in that good way of paying homage to something either.
Running for a good two hours, Live By Night almost overstays its welcome as it constantly fails to be fresh, tense and just generally "alive". Technically, every second of the movie deserves our attention, but narratively, it lacks the boldness to go places worth remembering. And that's my major fear, that I might end up forgetting pretty much everything about this movie, no matter how good it looks.
I loved, LOVED the book. Ben streamlined it as best he could, but I think he bit off a bit more than he could chew here. Not a bad film by any means, but he didn't cover any new ground compared to his other efforts.
Now that I've seen the film, would reading the book offer me something new?
The book offers the same core story but better developed, naturally. It's Lehane, so it's very well written and the characters are very colourful, especially the minorities and the KKK members. There are many segments of the book that wouldn't be feasible to adapt to the screen for budgetary reasons - mostly to do with Coughlin's relationship with the Cuban revolutionaries. Just too large to fit into a two hour film.
It didn't help that Affleck insisted on playing the part himself, despite being almost two decades older than the character in the book. He seemed to fall in love with the romanticised "outlaw" persona when the Coughlin of the book quickly abandons that ideal and is far more morally questionable than the screen version.
If you ever get a chance to pick it up, I'd recommend it. Though I fear you may end up disliking the film more, perhaps unfairly. Ben gave it a good go, but he was fighting a losing battle narratively with this one. There's also a second book surrounding the character set a decade or so after Live By Night, which was also quite good.
I agree about Affleck. He probably did the best he could, but perhaps his ambitions ran impossibly far with this one.
Ever see Desperado or Once Upon A Time In Mexico?
No - the next step I suppose!
They're recast sequels starring Antonio Banderas. I loved Desperado.
The movie is pretty good fun and does deliver enough twists to be worthy of an Alistair MacLean story.
Sicario: day of the soldado ; while the first one was really impressive Mr. Brolin and Mr. Del Toro do deliver a decent movie this time. It is supposed to be the middle one of a trilogy (what is not these days a bloody trilogy) and that shows and feels like it. Nice but just not as brilliantly as the first one. I will however admit looking forward to the next installment.
I think the director switch really, really hurt this one. It felt so painfully generic and middle of the road to me, as well.
I found it mostly too efficiently directed to be generic. It didn't attempt to lazily remake the first and that was a good call, I think. Sollima's certainly got chops when it comes to letting things breathe and heightening tension and I thought he did a good job of it overall considering how daunting it must have been to take the project on. Tonally and atmospherically the film was very consistent with the first.
I don't rate Villeneuve as highly as most others do (though I do like him a lot), so perhaps the change wasn't a big deal for me.
The script, however, was too haphazard in its final third to allow me to put the film up with the first one.
Funny you mention that, because that's my biggest issue with the film and it has absolutely nothing to do with Sheridan's script: you have the director to thank for that, hence my issues with Sollima here. It had the same artistic style to the first one, which I loved - brooding soundtrack, lots of lengthier, tense moments inside cars and big landscape shots of the desert - but the third act is where any semblance of enjoyment, for me, completely evaporated. I'm not sure what Sheridan's finale would've contained, but since I'm a big fan of his and the first film was so killer, I can only surmise it was leagues better than the tweaks Sollima made.