The New Film Thread: Page 8 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

The New Film Thread

Qwiss

Charleze Theron is very good at the action stuff.

Mirth

HomeSteak wrote:
The Dissident is sensational.

I thought this was great - tied the whole story together really well.

QuincyAbeyie

Godzilla vs. Kong was a decent enough two hours to pass the time. Still think Skull Island is the only one of these four films that passes as both a proper film and a spectacle. Godzilla 1 only attempted (and failed) the former while Godzilla 2 and this one only attempted the latter. At least this one succeeded where Godzilla 2 was lacklustre in pretty much everything.

Claudius

Skill Island is the only enjoyable Saturday matinee style spectacle. The rest is subpar. So much big budget trash out there.

banduan

Qwiss! wrote:
Charleze Theron is very good at the action stuff.

pretty good at acting overall I'd say

Claudius

She’s half decent. Best of her generation. But that’s about it

Klaus

Hmm.

Klaus

I've seen some very good, albeit topically heavy, films recently. It began with me catching a small viewing of Quo Vadis, Aida? (Not to be confused with Quo Vadis, which is also great) It's taking place during the Bosniak genocide in Srebrenica. No doubt a war movie where Americans aren't the bad guys is like catnip for the Oscars, and it will probably end up winning this year, but it would be well-deserved in contrast to shit like 1917.

I was really moved by many of the film-making choices Jasmila Zbnaic made. In American hands this could have turned into one of only two types of stories that Hollywood knows how to tell about war: either the gruesome exploatative kind where real-life photo of death and mayhem isn't enough and everything turns into a theatre of blood, or a hero narrative against forces of evil. She turned this into a moving, engaging film instead, just as capable of being interesting as it is horrifying.

I went back and watched some of her earlier work about the Yugoslav war after seeing this, and I ended up liking Grbavica and Men Don't Cry in particular. Both of them had a similar vibe too as Quo Vadis, Aida. I had never heard of Zbnaic before this, but she's a fantastic director. Well worth keeping an eye out for.

QuincyAbeyie

1917 only won technical awards, namely cinematography, sound mixing and visual effects. None of the things you're talking about here really comes into play in those categories. Really glad 1917 released before Covid so I could see it on the big screen, immense experience for me.

Quo Vadis, Aida is definitely on my watchlist as I've only heard great things but don’t see it being shown in a cinema close to me.

Klaus

It might only have won three but it got ten nominations in total, including Best Picture and Best Director. I thought it was very predictable, just like it was predictable that the academy would jump at Dunkirk the year before.

Qwiss

banduan wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Charleze Theron is very good at the action stuff.

pretty good at acting overall I'd say

Absolutely, just saying she made the jump to action very well too.

Claudius wrote:
She’s half decent. Best of her generation. But that’s about it

I doubt there are more than 2 or 3 convincing names you could honestly say were better. Weaver is really the only one who I can think of.

QuincyAbeyie

KingslandBarge wrote:
The me the likes of Natalie Portman, Gal Gadot don't hold a light to the likes of Linda Hamilton or Sigourny Weaver as action leads.

Action leads have changed, for better or for worse. The biggest action hero in the world of the 2010s is probably Robert downey Jr. and he's 56 years old without any of the physicality you'd expect from action leads before like Stallone, Schwarzenegger etc. More often than not they go for hiring a good actor/actress while physicality was a bigger factor before. Sure some of the old ones have actually turned out to be good in general, but if you look at movies like The Expendables you clearly see that it wasn't their phenomenal acting talent that made them famous. Scarlett Johansson is a good actress, Brie Larson won an Oscar for best actress in a main role before taking the Captain Marvel role. Because the superhero genre is the biggest action genre right now they can look for acting ability alone (case in point, Downey Jr.). Gadot is a weid one, and I'm not sure why Natalie Portman is even mentioned. Has she played an action lead since Leon the Professional? In Thor she's a scientist/damsel in distress I think.

Like Qwiss said Sigourney Weaver is a rare one who would be great both for the action movies of yesteryear and the ones today if she was younger, but has Linda Hamilton really done much after Terminator? Think it might've been more that she was a really good fit for those movies. I don't see her as a better actress than Charlize Theron.

goon

Besides the Superhero stuff, what are some of the better action films from the last decade?

I’ve been avoiding the genre like the league since the 2000s, lots of explosions, loud bangs and CGI to make up for the fact that there’s nothing else.

Claudius

American Sniper, Salt, Mad Max, Green Zone, Snowpiercer, Inception, Edge of Tomorrow. I also just loved Atomic Blonde for the action, costumes and music.

QuincyAbeyie

I usually log everything I watch. In the action genre when filtering by 2010-2020 and excluding superhero stuff, here are the ones I've given 4/5 or higher (I only rate for myself, doesn't mean I would necessarily say that an action movie I rated 4/5 is a better movie than a drama movie I rated 3,5/5):

English: The John Wick movies, Mission Impossible 4, Rogue One, Kingsman (the first one), Mad Max, Warrior, Avengement (very much a guilty pleasure), Hotel Mumbai, Revenge, The Equalizer, Baby driver, Nice Guys, the Jump Street movies, Looper, Dredd, The Grey, Brawl in Cell Block 99.

Non-english: The Raid, The Night Comes at Us, Train to Busan, The Man from Nowhere, 13 Assassins.

Not really a lot in an entire decade.

Edit: Yeah, Inception and Snowpiercer were also there. Rush too, but I don't really consider it an action movie.

goon

Cheers both, will check them out, I did enjoy the two or three listed that that I have seen, particularly Mad Max, so that’s a good sign.

Clrnc

Quincy Abeyie wrote:
I usually log everything I watch. In the action genre when filtering by 2010-2020 and excluding superhero stuff, here are the ones I've given 4/5 or higher (I only rate for myself, doesn't mean I would necessarily say that an action movie I rated 4/5 is a better movie than a drama movie I rated 3,5/5):

English: The John Wick movies, Mission Impossible 4, Rogue One, Kingsman (the first one), Mad Max, Warrior, Avengement (very much a guilty pleasure), Hotel Mumbai, Revenge, The Equalizer, Baby driver, Nice Guys, the Jump Street movies, Looper, Dredd, The Grey, Brawl in Cell Block 99.

Non-english: The Raid, The Night Comes at Us, Train to Busan, The Man from Nowhere, 13 Assassins.

Not really a lot in an entire decade.

Edit: Yeah, Inception and Snowpiercer were also there. Rush too, but I don't really consider it an action movie.

That's a really good list, agree with most of them out there.

banduan

John Wick was definitely not my cup of tea. Mad Max and Edge of Tomorrow are definitely up there in terms of action classics.

QuincyAbeyie

Surprisingly wasn't a big fan of Edge of Tomorrow. I'll have to rewatch it some time because in theory it's exactly my kind of movie.

goon

Only watched it once in the cinemas but I remember enjoying it it, quite funny and the action wasn't OTT.

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