daft twat wrote:
Before I see Final Reckoning, I have to wonder, is anyone actually marveling at the achievement of it all? 30 years. 8 movies with the same actor as the protagonist. Harry Potter is the only comparison for that, and that series had source material and was all done in a decade. I’m excited to see this tomorrow, and I already hope he’s got one more in him.
Final Reckoning spoiler (do not read if you have not seen it yet):
26 minutes of previews and AMC going on about how great AMC is before the movie began. I almost had to pee before the actual film.
There was an awful lot of talking in the first half, but it didn’t bother me. The plane sequence at the end was worth the price of admission.
What hurt this movie for me was the generic locales: somewhere in the Bering Sea. Somewhere in South Africa. There was a bit of London but not enough. I like to see citizens and landmarks. I get strangely excited when I see foreign places I’ve been.
Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, Fallout was an immaculate run. These last two movies didn’t stick the landing exactly, but they were satisfactory.
Yeah, and all the popcorn talk. He's really hyping up popcorn. Talking about how he usually eats two whole tubs when he watches movies. Buying popcorn for the entire crowd at a TFR screening. The whole TFR press tour is more like a popcorn press tour!
I don't think he actually loves popcorn THAT much. Especially movie theater popcorn, with all that fake butter. He's too much of a health nut. But we know he loves movies, and that he loves the cinema experience. And that he wants to save it. He knows movie theaters actually make most of their money through concessions. And that the profit margins on popcorn are huge.
So my theory is that he's hyping popcorn up so much because he wants to help theaters. And that video of him awkwardly throwing popcorn into his mouth like a space alien only helps my theory
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
(plus the fact that being seen as "Mr. Movies" helps his once tattered brand, etc etc -- everyone's got self-serving reasons for doing things in Hollywood. But I believe his commitment to the cause)
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
Jorge wrote:(plus the fact that being seen as "Mr. Movies" helps his once tattered brand, etc etc -- everyone's got self-serving reasons for doing things in Hollywood. But I believe his commitment to the cause)
Wow. Maybe we should question the sincerity of his I-love-movies schtick. I'm starting to worry that it's all a cynical ploy to make money
Well that was certainly a lot of minutes of sounds and images. Forget showing up 40 minutes late. Show up two hours late.
I was looking forward to it, but this movie did not appeal to me at all.
My guess is that the budget was cut after the previous one, but rather than cut this one down, they filled in the holes with lots of pointless dialogue and exposition. I've heard of "telling when you should be showing", but I feel like there were whole subplots created and resolved with a few lines of dialogue.
D.
Last edited by BurtReynolds on Tue May 27, 2025 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- The 'memberberries were lost on me. This is not a franchise made to remember (and there is nothing wrong with that). All I know is that the second one was directed by John Woo, and John Woo sucks, and the third one had Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Philip Seymour Hoffman rules. I liked the previous flick, but couldn't tell you a single thing about it. We did not need any of these callbacks or extra characters.
- So the basic formula is this: they have to pull off some nearly impossible mission, but they have a brilliant plan that only they can pull off. But then all these complications pop up and they have to dig deep to overcome even more impossible odds. But most of the submarine sequence doesn't work well because many of the complications aren't very interesting and don't really effect the climactic bit at all. I probably missed something (because I couldn't be bothered to pay attention through another exposition dump), but the end of the sequence pretty much plays out exactly how they planned, right? Would have worked better if they didn't spoil it in the planning scene and made the characters improvise more. It was pretty anti-climactic.
The underwater stuff was also painfully sluggish. just the nature of underwater scenes I guess.
- Not enough of smoking hot Haley Atwell. Apparently she was pregnant in this? So they relegated her to a glorified henchman? This is why the wage gap exists. Tom Cruise would never let a mere human child get in the way of the craft . I assume he was enraged, and rightly demoted her.
BurtReynolds wrote:All I know is that the second one was directed by John Woo, and John Woo sucks.
It's a pretty bad movie. Not sure why Jorge gives it a pass. I get that he's the Mission Impossible guy, but come on.
I don't think it stands up to scrutiny in terms of writing, thematic depth, or even verisimilitude, but basically, I think it's outrageous, funny, and a good time. Watch it with a group of friends and if you're not all cheering along when the doves appear behind Ethan in the dungeon near the end, I don't know what to tell you; that's what I did last year and what changed my mind about it. No movie that provides that level of goofy fun can be bad.
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
Ello Sailor wrote:"Having fun with friends is fun", and other movie reviews.
Is that what verisimilitude is?
Apparently verosimilitud is a much more common word in Spanish than verisimilitude, its English equivalent, is in English.
Here's what I mean when I use it:
In literature or film, verisimilitude is about how plausible the story, characters, dialogue, or setting feels. Even fantasy or science fiction stories can have verisimilitude if they follow internal logic and create emotionally or psychologically believable scenarios.
Basically how believable things are within the context of the piece, which isn't the same as realism
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
Ensign9 wrote:
But...they just couldn't go an entire scene without telling all us dummies in the audience that it was a torpedo tube he was gonna hop into.
I laughed.
The sub stuff wasn't bad, but the first half of the movie was such a turn off that it had to do something amazing to get me back on board, and it didn't really do it for me.
