This movie, right off the bat, makes some smart creative decisions: it doesn’t try to imitate the original too much, and it’s not a musical.
They even steer away from the usual Disney formula by taking away the funny sidekick.
And while the film is technically quite impressive (cinematography and score are top notch), I found it to be ultimately unengaging.
Also, there seems to be a correlation between big, feminist action movies and poor lead performances.
I mean, just do the math: Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and now Mulan.
Yes, I also find it important that more of these movies get made (not corporate, tame Disney films, but female driven action movies in general), but they deserve to be a lot better than this.
Problem is, if nobody sees it, chances are execs will take the wrong lesson from it, and think people don’t want to see female/Asian representation, or feminist themes.
So, we’re kinda fucked regardless, but I still don’t find that an excuse to give a heavy push to this mediocre movie, as I see some journalists doing.
5/10
It was so bad. I dont know why it had such good reviews. There was no sherlock element in the whole movie. Waste of time really.
TLDR ? This movie is Disingenuous. At best, it's a Ghoulish dark satire of the republican party during the Bush/Cheney era. Except, they forgot to insert comedy or satire. As a result, it's grim and insulting, the parody is often at the expense of the audience being too stupid or uncaring, or religious. Large chunks of american history are deleted, omitted or filtered so that the movie can focus on the death toll of the war, or the "Wazzup" meme, etc.
large chunks of Dick Cheney's history don't make it into the movie, or are stylised / exagerrated / spoofed.
It is a well made disaster of a movie. Care went into making this.
But, it's as bad as Holmes & Watson, Star Trek Discovery, The Last Jedi or Ghostbusters 2016. It's deeply unlikeable at times, and it is actively trying to rewrite history as it goes. I'm not a republican or a conservative, i don't follow politics, this is a highly deranged film that is deceptive at times, and I doubt that any of the events took place, as a result of the ham-fisted effort at painting Cheney as some mastermind villain, working in the shadows. It's only missing that villain laugh track during the more hammy moments.
The most sanguine part of the movie is that they treat the WTC bombing and 9/11 properly, but they draw an enormous bow throughout.
part of the movie hinges on the use of executive power being wielded by Dick Cheney through the Bush Presidency, to the degree that they'll infer it becoming part of the reasons why Cheney brought the war from Afghanistan to Iraq, and that he also used the position to secure oil reserves in Iraq before the war started, as well as ignore questions / receive kickbacks from Haliburton contracts, and infer that he brought a lawyer into the emergency/control room during the "crash" period of 9/11 post-pentagon collision, as airline flights and air corridors were shut down, airports were being closed, and private/civilian aircraft were being tracked and landed in airports, etc. So that he could wield this Executive Power without asking the senate or the Congress or the President for approval.
It walks the line of defamation, and yet, apparently it's from the guy who made Anchorman 2 and Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, The Other Guys. Brad Pitt and Will Ferrel financed this movie, i think. Their companies are in the titles.
All of the Actors do a great job. I even like Annapurna for their video game productions (Donut County, Gorogoa, Edith Finch, Florence), and i've seen a handful of Annapurna movies, like Phantom Thread, Her, American Hustle, and Sausage Party...
I went in with no preparation, and assumed it would be a dark comedy with political overtones, because, politics and Steve Carell, and I can see Aquaman later on. It can't be that bad, it's Christmas week.
This movie has the unfortunate effect of making you hate theatrical movie releases and critics, and perhaps all movies.
Yet, it's so well made, it has style, artistic credibility, and it's directed, shot and lit perfectly, the sound is on point, the acting is sometimes forgettable, But it's similar in style to other "moral" drama films, like "The Big Short", leading into the Global Financial Crisis where they pander heavily on people's motives and actions of "we're getting away with it", sic. The pandering is incredible.
It is a better political movie than most, but it's utterly manipulative and disingenuous at it's heart, and nothing can make that funny or amusing.
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is unhinged and deranged, while Vice, is just powdercoated hatred and bile, trying to hide under progressive and democratic ideals. it's more like an upmarket youtube political conspiracy movie talking about Hilary Clinton's "SECRET Brain surgery", George Soros, the Koch brothers or the Jewish conspiracy movies you get recommended after watching "The Young Turks" or "David Pakman".
They even sink low enough to include a "Ghostbusters 2016" poke at the audience in the end credits by lampooning the partisan nature of the film, in an attempt to skirt criticism and outrage
A sideplot about an hour in, has a series of scenes in a focus group with the same strangers. The marketer/political consultant asks the group to raise their hands to choose between climate change or global warming. Another time, it's a choice between Estate Tax or Death Tax, inferring that marketing & political think-tanks, along with Fox News, used politically correct language in the 90's and 2000's to make conservative ideas palatable.
At the end of the movie, Cheney is in a cross-chair interview, after just having had a heart replacement. As the interview starts, the scene pauses, and Cheney/Bale instead, turns away and lectures the audience directly (invoking Frank Underwood's, stylised yet sociopathic 'lectures' in House of Cards) , saying he did what was best for America, despite the cost and the lives lost in the war(s) sic. It's just on the borderline of "helping make america great again" and a typical Frank Underwood self-justification, we fade to black, get a terrible americana/Fly Fishing title credits to the music of West Side Story's Puerto Rican version of "Coming to America" and we return to the Focus Group, mid-credits. The final scene has the consultant ask what people thought about the movie. A member of the group, complains that the movie insults conservatives, while the neighboring person insists it's factual, with the first man then calling it liberal propaganda, and then calling the other a libtard, sic. and hits him, both getting into a fist fight, while the camera turns away, to another woman, who turns to her neighbour in the room, and says she's going to enjoy the next Fast and the Furious movie (sic).
The implied comment is that they did the research, and had to improvise the story in-between, because nobody would speak about Dick Cheney's history or family to set the record straight. When/If you see a biography of Barack Obama in a few years, attending child brothels with kevin spacey in indonesia, receiving oral sex from a pansexual transvestite, while he's snorting a line of cocaine off a preteen boy , while another person is handing Barack a membership form for the Democratic Party ... Vice, is going to be the movie that they quote and use dialogue from.
This is the kind of movie that Alex Jones and infowars would make of Hilary Clinton & Barack Obama, by selectively omitting pages from a biography, and denigrating the characters and roles they undertook. The excuse would be, they couldn't confirm the story, so they took liberties and stuck with the facts, being transcripts, police records, licenses, marriage dates, etc.
I'm Australian, I genuinely don't care about the politics, but the smearing of the republican party is like a sledgehammer at times.
There are several Saturday Night Live level 'jokes' or skits/scenes that don't even make you cringe, they're just deeply unsettling attempts at humor or levity. Care went into the timing to paint several scenes as 'dark', or darkly funny at the expense of others. I expect people would laugh at them, it didn't connect with me, or the other 5 people in the theater.
It's not quite Fahrenheit 11/9 levels of insanity, on the contrary. It walks the line of parody, conspiracy and defamation neatly in a lighthearted attempt to skip 20 years of context, in a 2 minute conversation.
There's an early moment, perhaps 40 minutes in, where Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld is ruminating to a younger Dick Cheney in a random hallway of the oval office, about the imminent bombing of cambodia while Nixon is talking with Kissinger in a spare room of the Oval Office to avoid recordings. Mid-lecture, you hear Carell while we see a village about to be bombed mid-lecture, a typical cambodian/indonesian forest village, women and children sitting around, before explosions occur, and the scene changes back to Carell & Bale, unphased.
This kind of manipulative sledgehammer is used, repeatedly to invoke... satire? outrage ? compassion ?
This occurs about 5 or 6 more times, with even less subtlety.
Alfred Molina's "restaurant" scene, Molina's character offers Cheney and 3 seated guests at a restaurant table, Extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay as menu options , is ham-fisted, but it's executed darkly and humorously, similar to say, Aaron Echkhart's Thank You For Smoking scenes, lampooning Tobacco, Firearms and Alcohol lobbyists.
It's the kind of movie where you could let things slide if you were a lifelong US democrat, because it tries to tell harsher truths of the political and military consequences, overtly, by flashing to bombings, drone strikes, torture, rendition, deception and greed, during the more infamous moments of nixon's career and Bush's presidency.
And it profoundly relies on Fly fishing to represent Dick Cheney, as other movies do (2007's Shooter) to the point where they use gaudy Americana as Fly Fishing decorations (rockets, drones, Oil Rigs, missiles, the white house, Surveillance cameras) in the end-credits.
There's element's of Zero Dark Thirty in the invocation/flashes of torture, waterboarding, confinement, exposure, even the Abu Ghraib incident/leak with a prisoner being dragged by a Dog Collar by Lynndie England (the "work safe" versions) appears here. and rendition scenes along with the "Shadow government" themes of Dick Cheney's role as Vice President during George W Bush's tenure. It is highly implied several times that Cheney set himself up as the Executive, the CEO in charge of the war by undermining George Bush and, being responsible for the birth of ISIS, hiding reports from the president, etc.
They walk the line when it comes to defaming the Cheney family, there's also an implication of Lynne Cheney's father, Wayne Vincent murdering his wife in an argument by drowning, and of Lynne Vincent, being raped by her father Wayne in an over-edited and dubbed scene that was heavily muffled to avoid the censor noticing. Wayne, is seen pointing to his daughter during a muted, abbreviate shouting scene implying alcoholism and frequent domestic violence.
It extrapolates the most defamatory versions of people, and highlights that absurdity.
It takes what should be parody or simulacra, a 'bad saturday night live' sketch comic scene, and extrapolates moments as their cheapest moments. It's also high budget, they take Sam Rockwell's version of President Bush, Governor Bush, and rotoscope him into the more infamous moments of Bush's Presidency, i.e. the mid-war "Mission Accomplished" presentation on the Carrier Deck.
Lets be honest, we all went to see the movie for the action, for the gore which was spectacular by the way! We all knew what it was about... except the piece of shit who brought his kid to the movie and his wife started yelling at him and due to her sitting next to me she was also yelling in my ear and not even my shushes would calm her down... I mean bitch can't you take it outside?!
Okay, okay... the movie, obviously isn't a masterpiece, the acting? the dialogue? You'll find better dialogue on 4chan... The story? A mix between Taken and Home Alone... But even with its flaws I still enjoyed it... why? I don't know, '90s nostalgia, I guess...
If you're a fan of action flicks, this movie is for you. But keep in mind this is not a family friendly movie...
I think I would have been perfectly satisfied with a Henry Cavill Sherlock Holmes film
The few seconds of return to childhood at the end was not worth the hour plus of bratty, violent, hypersexualized preteens you had to sit through to get there. Realistic depiction of some girls? Sure. I remember girls like that. But meaningful writing or filming to leave you feeling educated or wanting to act in some positive way to make a difference? Nope. You just can’t figure out why anyone let their kids do this film or how anyone could film it and not question why half the (very creepy) shots were necessary. I kept hoping it would redeem itself and the online outrage people had without seeing it was dramatic, but I’m going to have to say it was pretty spot on, unfortunately.
Absolute shite. Please don't waste your time. Very predictable with a horrible ending. They don't show you who the killer is and what his intentions were for doing what he did. They explained absolutely nothing. I wasted an hour and a half on this dreadful movie. Don't make the same mistake I made.
A TV special, not a movie, where a rich person defends two other rich people from abusing the staff of other rich people.
If you’re picking sides in this Megan/Harry vs. The Royals you’re a twit. Defend people who need defending, don’t pick sides in a battle of the privileged.
I soooo love it how the trailer completely ignores that the all-female Ghostbusters movie ever existed. Like it never happened, like it was only a bad dream. :heart:
EDIT:
Just watched it. I can't say the movie was spectacular, but it was darn spectacular to me.
I believe the movie paid all due respects to the Ghostbusters and that it was carefully made not to disappoint. It worked!
And yes, I'm high on nostalgia while typing it.
P.S. Anyone else got emotional when Ecto-1 first sounded the sirens?
This is how DC's Movies should have been made. It's action sequences are insanely awesome. Amber Heard is drop dead gorgeous like a goddess in this movie. Jason Momoa is born to play Aquaman. Perfect castings. Don't miss this amazing movie guys.
I'm half tempted to give this full marks just for daring to play Radiohead's Everything in Its Right Place during your typical military in dropship scene. Anyway my boy Gareth knocked out another cracking piece of scifi. You really don't mind when a director takes a few years off and comes back with something like this. There's certainly a fair amount of Rogue One, Blade Runner and Terminator in the mix, the latter of which he takes the Judgement Day plot and turns it on its head defying expectations where I assumed it was going just due to the tropes of the genre.
There's also a lot of stuff on screen for 80mill in comparison to other recent effects heavy films. Gets you wondering if budgets elsewhere escalate to $200 mill mark due to talent demands or that something like this has less behind the scenes VFX artists but take longer to bake? I dunno. Either way, check it out. The trailer gives too much away (as always my opinion) however there's plenty more that isn't shown.
NB. Watch out for the Scarif Easter egg
EDIT: There has never been a movie like this that I didn't like but I really wanted to read and talk more about with other people. I guess Darren Aronofsky at least got people talking about his movie, even if people didn't like it.
What a weird movie. I really thought the sound design was great. Really creepy and creates great tension.
So Jenifer Lawerence is Mother Earth and Javier Bardem is God? Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve and the heart crystal is the apple of eden? I don't know much about the bible but that is what I got. I guess the message Daron Aronofsky is trying to say is we treat the Earth like shit. It is going to kill us all but its bound to repeat again? I don't know, it is a weird movie.
EDIT2: So after seeing this after a long time of not thinking about it I realized that Darren Aronofsky really hates humans. The bat shit crazy third act can not make up for the boring first two acts. And knowing that this is just the bible made it even worse. I don't hate this movie but I'm definitely not a fan.
What? No Milla Jovovich? Wouldn't be the same.
Well, I'll never listen to That's Life by Frank Sinatra in the same way again, that's for sure.
Before I start, there are two groups of people who need to be addressed:
- Regarding the people who are saying that it's too violent, and a movie based on comics shouldn't be like that: please, go back to watching Dora: The Explorer.
- Regarding the people who are calling it a Taxi Driver or King of Comedy rip-off: Is Mr. Robot a Fight Club rip-off? You have to see the difference between ripping something off and taking inspiration + adding your own ideas to it. Also, Taxi Driver is a vigilante story, something which this isn't.
So, most of the praise you heard about this movie I can absolutely get behind. The cinematography and score are without a doubt Oscar worthy. Joaquin Phoenix is front and center, and he absolutely shines. It is a full on character study, and the movie shows everything from the Joker's point of view. It keeps the movie focussed, but it has to be said that there are no other interesting characters to get invested into, something that other character studies don't forget. The pacing is also very well done. It doesn't feel like a slow movie, and the final 20 minutes are something special. To me, however, the first 90 minutes are a lot more interesting. I love the fact that we get to see an in-depth exploration of the causes of social exclusion and what leads to Arthur's downward spiral. Phillips very wisely points to a variety of causes at very different levels of society (elites, government, punks), while not forgetting that some blame also falls into the hands of Arthur himself (e.g. his megalomania). This is a very strong and nuanced message.
And then there's the film's other message. When it comes to a film like this (a protagonist with a downwards spiral), the movie often starts with making you feel sympathetic towards the character. The Wolf of Wallstreet does that. Breaking Bad does that. And Joker also does that. But then there's a point where the character crosses the line, a moment which you can almost pinpoint in this movie, namely the scene where he kills his mom . From that point on, a movie should clearly condemn what he's doing in order to not give out an immoral or wrong message. In The Wolf of Wallstreet, Di Caprio starts to lose everything. In Breaking Bad, Walter White starts to lose everything. Phillips, however, goes out of his way of condemning what his character does. Instead, he plays swelling and upbeat music during the film's darkest moments. Moreover, Joker gets a happy ending , and no other characters have a sincere conversation about the atrocities of what he's doing. In other words, the movie gives off the impression of still being on his side, thereby presenting violence as the answer to this man's problems, and I can totally agree with some of the critics who have a moral problem with that. I understand that they wanted to stay with Arthur's perspective through the end, but this comes at the cost of one of the biggest mistakes a film like this can make. At the same time, one major flaw doesn't make a film bad. I mean, Gone With The Wind is immoral in the sense that it is racist, but is it a bad film? Absolutely not.
7.5/10
It’s not a movie.
It’s just another bland, soulless mass product that’s primarily aimed at the Chinese market.
Now that WB is the only real studio releasing big movies, it really shows what a joke of a studio they’ve become during the last 5 years.
Not that they didn’t release crap before that, but at least there was something like a good Mad Max, Harry Potter, Matrix or Lord of the Rings film somewhere to be found in their slate.
It would seem Villeneuve and Nolan are the only real talents that are left at the studio.
For nearly every other film they make, they seem to think that appealing to the lowest common denominator will give them the biggest return on their investment.
I.e. the action scenes are more important than the story or the characters, and the scale needs to be huge, even if it looks tacky and fake.
3/10
A good movie ruined by lame pop culture references and political agendas.
Am I the only one that thinks this movie f'ing sucks balls. Didn't like this at all
Hated it.
As simple as that.
Terrible way to take the series to. I mean it's not as bad as the prequels, because the acting is quite all right, but it hits so many bullshit moments where I was facepalming every other scene it's unbelievable.
....I didn't like it.
There was no plot.
There was no literary protagonist. There IS a main character, though.
When I say plot, I mean an objective that the protagonist is after from the beginning; Some kind of imbalance that they sense needs to be rectified or corrected. When there is no objective, there is no obstacles in their way, either. This movie is 3.5 hours of, just, things that happen and it never clues the audience in on the endgame...so there's also hardly any climax, either. Its just, this happens, then that, then that, then that...with characters you can't really call "likeable" or "rootable" I wouldn't have cared if DeNiro died at any given moment in the film because I couldn't connect with him.
