As I told you did I split the last WWW, as it was just too much to write about, so here you have the second part of the tenth instalment as special edition, just for the movies.
What is this about?
Every fourth Wednesday evening I will publish a post in which I collected the thoughts I had throughout the week(s) while watching the latest or any episode of a series or maybe even a movie.
Depending on how my time allows it, the comment will also be for those that I watched that day.
You’re warned: There will be Spoilers.
Let’s start
Different movies
These are the different movies I’ve seen before part one that I’m now covering in this part.
When I grew up Jim Carrey was in every other movie I saw and one of my favourite actors at the time, so it’s not surprising that I watched pretty much every re-run of The Mask that I could get my hands on. Until recently it’s been years since I last saw it and after a certain episode of Supernatural (namely Tall Tales) reminded me of Milo, the dog of main character Stanley Ipkiss I just felt the need to watch it again. I have to say I was slightly afraid it’d lag the spark I saw back when I grew up, but it’s just such a ridiculous movie that that fear was uncalled for. Sure it has some very questionable scenes, but they fit into the narration about this totally chaotic character of the mask. I didn’t bother with the sequel though, as I remember it being horrible.
Speaking of old movies, I’m not entirely sure what made me re-watch Space Jam after all these years, but I do believe it might have been the fact that I saw it on Netflix and felt like it. 😉 While it is – and was – blunt in a few places the overall charme was not lost and it was just as quirky and fun as I remembered. So I kind of feel like that we had a different cut in Germany as I missed a few scenes (I think The Mask had the same problem). Are they really going to make a sequel? o.O
This time around there were a couple of movies I actually went to see in the cinema. The first of them was Deadpool. A lot of people already made great reviews about it, so I’m not going into too much detail here. Even if I enjoyed Marvel’s heroes – especially the X-Men and Spider-Man – in their cartoon versions back in the day, I never really knew about Deadpool. But with a Tumblr comes knowledge and I soon grew curious about the actual Merc with a Mouth that I had only seen in his failed iteration in the Wolverine movie we’re not talking about. So I read up on him, got hooked and subsequently excited for the movie and I was not disappointed. Deadpool comes with a refreshing twist to everything you know from watching superhero movies.
The movie doesn’t take itself serious (Credits, 4th-Wall-breaking, …) and is pretty realistic – except for the part where Deadpool goes on a killing spree because he wants to look pretty again for his girl. Yeah, that and the kiss-and-fade-out ending was what bugged me most about it, but I can overlook that for the sake of the overall humour and fact that it’s filled with tons of references. The latter probably made it hard for people not familiar with the Marvel franchise to watch it – and therefore less enjoyable, which is a pity as this one is just a lot of fun.
Let’s stay with Marvel and skip a few movies times wise: X-Men: Apocalypse. As I’ve seen the cartoon version of the Apocalypse story line I was kind of expecting something different. It was strange already that the cast fighting him would be so young – and I think by now I’m pretty much lost as to when something in the new time line takes place anyway – even if they brought back one of my favourite X-Men: Nightcrawler. Well, his introduction was strange, fighting with Angel in a cage fight? I’ve never heard of that version before… and why was Mystique there? Did she want to stop the mutant-cage-fights? Did she just want to protect her son? Is Kurt even her son in this universe? o.O
The most confusing part, however, was Magneto in Poland(?) with a six year old (?) daughter and wife and then there is Peter/Quicksilver not looking a day older than the last time they met, suddenly knowing he is his father, but unable to tell him, while every one else knows from Mystique? I’m getting confused again just writing this down … as I said, I’m totally lost at the time line, so if anyone can point me to a proper graph about it, be my guest! Additionally to that the titular antagonist was kind of a wimp. How did Black Kat put it? „All he could do was enhance peoples abilities and move sand around“
What was that about? They introduced him as character that accumulated the mutants powers whose bodies he took over (power #3?), but they never showed any of the others – not even the regeneration ability of the last one he became. That was seriously a let down.
It was interesting to see a different iteration of the known cast, but the overall story dragged on and was quite full of strange moments.
One more Mavel movie to go: Captain America: Civil War – or actually Nearly all of the Avengers and three new guys. Fight and story wise was it impressive, I still couldn’t say if I’d be #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan both have valid points in the whole political issue their facing, so I decided to be #TeamAvengers, where everyone just sits down, seriously discusses their points and starts working together again. But yeah, that’s probably just me wanting to find a compromise between both sides. The movie itself was a good mixture of action and character development, even if some stuff felt a bit rushed. Especially weird was the whole thing with Captain America and Shannon Carter shortly after Peggy Carters funeral ( 🙁 ) that never even really been hinted at before (except maybe a few-seconds-long scene in Winter Soldier). An unnecessary addition to an otherwise great movie.
One of the new additions, even if we’ve seen him before was Paul Rudd’s Ant Man. Usually movies he’s in are feel-good romcoms and somehow I just felt like watching some of them. So I followed Netflix’s recommendations and watched Our Idiot Brother and I love you, Man. Both very different movies, that still work well thanks to Rudd’s charm. In the first one he plays a hippy that stumbles from one faux pas into the next. The character seems simple minded, but it buries a certain anger and determination behind it. There is an incredible outburst from the otherwise happy character that just gets to you. In the beginning I always say I’m using spoilers, but here I don’t want to say what brings up this reaction, for people who still want to experience it. 🙂
I love you, Man has not just a weird title (I prefer the German one „Trauzeuge gesucht!“/Best Man Wanted!) but also a very strange story line. For most part of the movie I kind of waited for the moment where Rudd’s friendless character without a best man for his wedding, calls off the wedding to get together with his new best friend. This wasn’t improved as the ending pretty much showed them declaring their love for each other (as the title would suggest) directly in front of the actual couple taking their vows. It’s just weird … letting those two guys end up as an actual couple might have improved the whole thing.
Speaking of strange movies. While I was in London with Janzy we used the possibility to watch a few movies „for free“ (I’ll explain, whenever I get to writing that travel logue) and ended up watching Hail Caesar! and Youth. Both movies offered a plethora (sorry, couldn’t resist this word is just as much fun as flabbergasted) of great and well known actors (George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Jeff Lewis from The Guild! 😀 for Ceasar and Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda and Rachel Weisz for Youth), but were story-wise totally confusing. Youth jumped through hallucinations, while Caesar added a very weird communistic „plot“. I mean one of the characters was picked up by a Russian submarine from the beach. o.O
Just very strange movies that we’re glad, we didn’t had to pay for directly…
When we got back from the trip we decided to watch Notting Hill while relaxing from the flight as we had spent more than an hour trying to find the book store used in the filming of this flick…it was Janzy’s idea/wish… Anyway, I had actually never seen the movie before, so I was surprised to find well rounded comedy in a movie that’s praised for being oh-so-romantic. Sure it had the obligatory silly, predictable and partly unrealistic love story, but the antics and humour of the characters made up for it.
As I mentioned in part one did I enjoy Matt Ryan as an actor, so I took a look at two movies he had stared in: Miss Pettigrew lives for a Day and Flypaper. I was certainly confused that he was listed for the former when he made an appearance of maybe 3 seconds. Again these movies couldn’t be more different and I can certainly recommend the first one. It’s funny, it’s witty, it’s all over the place and still lovely. And it’s certainly impressive how much you can do in the time of a day and a bit if you’ve gotten yourself mixed in with the right/wrong people … it’s hectic, but in a good way, just go and watch it! 😀
Flypaper on the other hand was … strange … I’m not entirely sure I understood it. It was complex and confusing and suddenly everyone was dead, well almost everyone. The concept and the character-interactions were interesting though.
After I finished reading The Restaurant at the end of the Universe I decided to watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again, just to see how different the whole thing was from the original. Not knowing the books it was enjoyable, but now that I know what actually was supposed to happen I was a bit disappointed at all the good stuff they left out and all the strange stuff they instead focused on. It was still fun to watch, but it could have been better – though the fly swatter field was something I would have enjoyed in the books as well…
I don’t think I have anything more to say for Mara und der Feuerbringer than what I did with the review. I just felt like watching it again, it’s such a great movie…
A not so great movie on the other hand was Warcraft. I admit I never played the games (too easily bored to commit to something so expensive) or cared much about it’s lore. But when I saw the trailer on the big screen, before X-Men, I believe, I got curious. It looked incredible. When our local cinema included the movie in their discount week (only 8€ instead of ~12€ for the ticket) I asked around if someone wanted to see it as well and in the end we were a group of five; the other four getting the discount and I got the ticket for free. For the record: From the five of us only one had ever played it.
Let me quote my comment from Geekritique’s review again:
Even without knowledge it at least is a movie that’s nice to watch without having to think too much – at least you shouldn’t think, because if you do, you get awfully frustrated. The graphics are amazing, but the plot was horrible and even if we kind of expected that from the get go [from reviews that Black Kat had read ahead of the screening] there still was a slight hope that it would not be this awful.
That pretty much says it all. It could have been something really amazing, but no, they made something filled with tropes, blunt and weird at times. I admit the portrayal of the main Orc characters was interesting, but I didn’t get why they put the focus on them whereas the whole game is on the humans story (at least that’s what I know, please correct me if I’m wrong here). They kind of poured pretty much all of what little characterization they had into the Orcs. This made me want to see more of Durotan story line and as usual then he just died…
But that wasn’t the strangest thing: What’s up with Orcs breaking off their dead parents tusks? o.O
Why would anyone gift anyone the dusk of their dead relative as a token of affection? o.O
What the hell? o.O
Needless to say this was the subject of a few jokes afterwards, the ones about false teeth were the best…
I was also quite confused about Anduin Lothar. For the first part of the movie everyone calls him Lothar – which is an interesting choice of name by the way, as that is an Old High German name and a variation of the Germanic Clothar and basically means „loud Warrior“ – and then suddenly the King refers to him as Anduin. At first I thought this was just a word for friend – you know, like LotRs „Mellon“ – or brother-in-law, but as it turns out that is his first name … the only character to have a first name or a last name at least.
Long story short:
There are way more interesting Fantasy/Gaming flicks than this. Zombie Orpheus’/Dead Gentlemen’s The Gamers, Journey Quest or their other projects or The Guild or Mara and the Firebringer as a Fantasy movie.
Even Knights of Badassdom has more substance than this at times…
You can find another great review – if your German is good enough – here at What’s best in Life?: Warcraft: The Beginning.
What were you watching?
What episodes (or movies) did you enjoy/dislike throughout the week/month?
Anything you’d recommend checking out?
Let me know in the comments below!
Final Words
I hope you enjoyed this little look into the different stuff I watched throughout the last months.
The next instalment will probably feature both series and movies again and will be published at the 6th July.
PoiSonPaiNter
The Mask is a great movie. 😀 It has also been several years since I’ve seen it.. Might be time for a re-watch here as well!
Deadpool had the best freaking opening credits. „Produced by asshats.“ lol. I very much enjoyed that movie, though it doesn’t quite make it to my favorites list, I don’t think. Same with CA: Civil War; I felt that to be a bit lacking, though I did like it. Mostly I think I’m just getting a bit of „superhero movie fatigue,“ as it simply felt repetitive.
I know absolutely nothing about X-Men, except from the only two movies that I’ve seen: Apocalypse, and Days of Future Past. Maybe there’s more of him in the other films (I do know he has a few scenes in X-Men: The Land Stand), but the X-men cinematic universe needs more Angel. Nightcrawler was great, and a close second favorite – but I would just love to see more of Angel.
As for Warcraft, it’s a shame it didn’t live up to expectations story-wise.. I have yet to see the film myself, but I already know I’ll enjoy it just because it’ll be neat to see all these familiar things on screen. It’s a tough one because the games are filled with pop culture references and tropes, but it’s done in a way that is more.. charming, then it is annoying or boring. But that just doesn’t translate well to films. The franchise as a whole is not a masterpiece when it comes to story, but it’s a very, very fleshed-out universe, and they are, generally, good stories (even if most are on the more cliche side, or cliche „with a twist“).
The game they adapted the movie’s story from is by far the weakest in the franchise, being the first and originally developed in 1994 (er, ’94 or ’95). Still, that doesn’t mean it can’t make a great film, if done right. ..Well, to avoid making this comment novel-length, let’s just say I wish it had lived up to its potential. ;D
P.S. In the games, you can play as either side: Alliance (humans, etc.) or Horde (orcs, etc.), and each has a slightly different storyline or ending. That’s why they put the focus on both. And most of the characters have first-last names; they just might not be mentioned. (ex. the human king is Llane Wrynn, one of the main orcs is Orgrim Doomhammer..)
/end wall of text. (You just made too many great mentions to keep it short lol.)
What an amazingly long comment 😀
Oh, yes the opening credits were so awesome…but I agree it’s more of „good times“ than „favourites“ movie.
Now I have to check what I wrote about Civil War…
Well, it didn’t have the feeling we got from the first Avengers (Age of Ultron lacked that too), but it was still great, as the reactions fit the characters quite well (better than that Black Widow/Hulk thing in AoU).
And I forgot to mention Daniel Brühl/General Zemo! How could I forget to mention him?! o.O
A German native actor with a proper German accent, even if Sokovia looked to be closer to Poland or Czech Republic and German therefore being an unusual choice of language – at least as native language.
So yeah, it was great with the characters, but lacked in other places.
The Last Stand is – like the Wolverine movie – one of those that fans like to forget, even if I liked it because of some of the characters. Angel had an appearance there, but was a totally different character, he was whiny and weak basically. I don’t know the Apocalypse story line well enough to know what he’s like in the comics, that makes him become Arch Angel (that’s what he calls himself with the Metal wings), but yeah, guess I’ll have to take a look at it.
Nightcrawler had and appearance in Part Two of the earlier movies, but the version I like most is from the X-Men:Evolution cartoons. He was so much fun there. 😀
It still felt like they put more focus on the Orcs than the humans. In the back of my mind I had the inkling that you could play as both, so thanks for clarifying it – and the other things too. (The surname doesn’t improve the king’s name…)
lol, likely one of the longest comments I’ve written anywhere. XD
Ugh, yes, that Hulk/Black Widow thing in AoU was completely unnecessary to me. I do agree that the character development/reactions were great in Civil War (Spiderman was incredibly annoying, though lol. Even if it fit his teenage personality more.) I was just happy to see more of Tony Stark/Iron Man. 😀 I love Downey Jr.’s portrayal of him so so much. Ah! Forgot about Zemo. It’s always nice when details like that are given proper attention and care – accents are too often overlooked.
Ahh. Yeah, I’m tempted to give the comics with Angel a try. I’ve never been able to get into comics that much, but things change. Good to try again. I’ve not seen the cartoons either (also want to try those sometime), but I loved Nightcrawler in Apocalypse, that’s for sure. Definitely would like to see more of him as well 😀
They probably did, since so many people are used to orcs being the bad guys like in LoTR. They needed a bit more to be seen as „human.“ Haha, yeah, honestly even in the game/novel universe, the king is a pretty bland character.. x)