Three words: I. LOVED. IT.
Listen, I'm a simple bitch, okay? Let's establish that right out of the gate. I can make fun of tropes all day long (especially the romantic ones) but in the end, I will eat that shit right up and walk out of the theater with the biggest grin on my face. Arthur and Mera accidentally hold hands and suddenly I turn into your 80-year-old grandma Gladys clutching her pearls and going "oh my". Jason Momoa and Amber Heard are DCEU's new dynamite duo (as much as I love Gal Gadot and Chris Pine, they've been knocked off the top spot for me). Their chemistry makes my skin tingle. Was the romance cliche? Hell yeah it was! And I adored every second of it!
Of course some stuff besides the romance also happens (but who cares about that? Not Gladys, that's for sure). The main plotline of finding the Trident does feel kinda like a treasure hunt with Arthur and Mera hopping from place to place, but because their chemistry and dynamic is just THAT good, it's all very fun and watchable. The villain is... well, he certainly is, eh? Actually there's two of them, but neither really made me feel anything. Still better than Steppenwolf, I guess? Although that's not saying much. The jokes hit more often than they miss and the movie did get a few good laughs out of me. But the more serious moments hit home for me as well, whether it's Arthur's reunion with his mother or his admission that he knows he doesn't deserve the Trident but it's his only hope of saving the people he loves. The tone feels pretty consistent and the transitions between the dramatic and comedic moments don't seem as jarring as in some other DCEU installments. The fight scenes are awesome. Especially the one in Sicily really made me feel pumped.
My favorite scene was by far Mera really experiencing the life on land for the first time. Her wide-eyed wonder (no pun intended, I guess) not only reminded me of Diana arriving in London, but it also had something wonderfully Little Mermaid-like (and not just because of the hair) about it. It was soft. It was pure. It made me feel warm inside. Mera eating the roses and Arthur immediately doing the same? Nobody's ever gonna ride for me this hard. Those are the kind of scenes that ground these huge superhero movies, that make them feel relatable to me and allow me to take a breath and really connect with the characters. And when 20 minutes later Mera goes full Bad Bitch In Charge on those soldiers and kills them with deadly wine spikes? Oh, I just about lost my mind. I want her to murder me. But aside from that entire sequence, there were plenty of other moments that really got my attention: little Arthur at the aquarium, Arthur and Mera's escape from Atlantis (such a fun chase!), our favorite power couple emerging from the ocean looking like they're on Baywatch (it was great, don't @ me), every time Mera used her powers (the glowing eyes!), the list goes on.
The visuals are absolutely stunning. Gone are the dreary grays of some lesser DCEU movies. Instead we get beautiful colors (Atlantis is beyond gorgeous), some great shots (Arthur and Mera swimming with the flare while surrounded by thousands of Trench people is breathtaking) and of course incredible CGI. It's a very aesthetically pleasing movie. And the music! I loved the music. This is one of the soundtracks I'm definitely gonna need to listen to at some point. And it takes some big balls to put a cover of Toto's Africa in your movie. I appreciate that. Some people are definitely gonna cringe when they hear it, but I had the biggest grin on my face.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable ride. It's quite long, but it didn't drag. I was invested in Arthur's journey. I thought the casting was perfect (and gosh darn do Jason Momoa and Amber Heard look good together! That has to be one of the most visually stunning pairings to have ever graced the big screen). And I just... felt super happy afterwards. I still can't stop smiling. It's a good movie not just by DCEU standards, but in general. I'd love to see it again and I'll definitely try to do so over the holidays. I honestly didn't expect to like it as much as I did. What a great surprise.
Possibly Shinkai's best work so far, and as a massive fan of both 5cm and Garden of Words I do not say that lightly. The animation is breathtaking as always but some scenes go beyond mere visual splendor and are just mesmerizing. The characters are so fun to be around and you'll find yourself rooting for them and hoping it all works out. I was slightly concerned when I saw the "boob fondling" scene in the trailer but even that becomes a genuinely charming gag throughout the movie, believe it or not!
As to be expected of Shinkai, the film also takes you on a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows and keeps you guessing how it will end until pretty much the last minute.
I cannot recommend this enough.
There was nothing enlightening here. I felt that the engineering from social, psychological, computational, and mathematical aspects were interesting and should have been explored more, since they essentially glossed over the misinformation campaigns running rampant on every social media platform the world over. Even if this doc would've focused on regulation, or the lack thereof, that would've been something, but they chose to not call any entities out, remain middle-of-the-road, and out of the fray. I think that this topic would've been much better served as a multi-part series that explored the various ramifications of social media, rather than 90 minutes of glossed over, big-picture fluff that didn't hit at the heart of any of the numerous implications caused by the inherent designs of social media platforms.
I will say, however, there were far better recommendations for how to combat this ever-present problem in the last few moments of the film, while the credits rolled. The director had the interviewees each list methods they utilize to prevent overexposure to the ills of social media to them and their families.
Don’t read the comments or reviews, just fuckin watch it. Not for the Evas, not for the fights or the quality of the animation, watch it for the best delirious poem around, This is not anime or entertainment whatsoever, this is pure art.
Sorry folks but this one didn't go well for Marvel. I don't even know where to start. Acting was average, more like below average. Screenplay was as much ordinary as it could be. No surprise here. CGI was OK but it's somehow expected from Marvel. But I totally didn't like the idea of Wakanda. Hidden city in the center of Africa with tons of technology and advanced weapons and systems and so on. But how the hell did they build all of that? No explanation. It just happened. Yes, they have Vibranium, but they don't sell it. In fact they never did and for whole world they are just a bunch of shepherds and farmers. So where did they take all that money to build empire like this? I don't like movies without explanations and this is one of them. Almost nothing has been told about Vibranium whatsoever. Oh yeah, it's some super thing from the universe capable of anything. That's all the explanation you get. There are too many clichés we have already seen too many times. And we have to see them again. One example: I challenge someone for a fight because I want to kill him. And when I have the chance to kill him, what would I do? Kill him or throw him down from the cliff to the water where he can survive? But enough. If you hesitate if to watch this, I can recommend not to waste your time. Wait for the Avangers where you can also see the Black Panther. You won't miss anything if you miss out this movie.
I do not usually comment, but is too great movie!, animation, story, feelings ...
When you order a pepperoni pizza and they deliver a pepperoni pizza, do you complain they didn't serve you filet mignon? This film is the pepperoni pizza of action films. If you want an action film, this has got it. It's not especially new or revolutionary or poetic, but at least it's got action from beginning to end which is more than many other action films of late.
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.
Tom Hardy, a good actor, always puts on a good show and definitely the right casting choice because It works well. I thought the movie was decent with a good plot easy to follow and some good effects with plenty of action but with a slow start and didn't expect It to be full of humour. My only downer was that It was a little rushed, also I feel It would of been so much better If It was (R) rated.
The music, animation, story. Absolutely beautiful movie <3
Surprisingly overrated. It is worth watching once, but not worth a return visit. It is very predictable, right from the beginning.
It would have been better suited as a made for TV SYFY movie.
Okay so walking into the theater I wasn't exactly expecting much however wow I was blown away complete must see
I had no idea what to expect from this film and I actually really enjoyed it. Highly unique plot, loved all the alien creatures, spectacularly aesthetically pleasing visuals! Overall an enjoyable choice.
Oh hey, it's February the 2nd, let's re-watch this for the umpteenth time. :D
DC has finally did it! Not only is Aquaman much better than any of the Marvel movies, it's an awesome movie on its own. The pace is good, music is good, humor is good, and visual is awesome! Wan did a great job displaying the beauty of the deep ocean.
It makes me feel like an unsophisticated swine but this was so incredibly boring. Took me 2 months to watch the first hour, maybe when I am old I'll be able to appreciate it.
The paradigm of material being cut from a book to fit into the run time of a movie doesn't really apply here because next to nothing from it happens in the film. It bares little resemblance to the book at all and is completely shallow for it. Conservatively I'd put it at 10% of the book translated to the screen in a recognisable form.
It should be "Inspired by" rather than "Based on" however I didn't find it that inspired at all. It's unbelievable to me that Cline himself handled the screenplay, at least in part. People that love the film will be thoroughly disappointed by the book, especially the PG-13 crowd the film brought in.
The Oasis itself was done an utter disservice by portraying it as basically just a game, it was so much more than that.
Disappointing.
Belle... A collection of music videos glued together by a really badly written narrative.
Belle is one of the weakest animated movies i have seen in the past few years, and that makes me really sad, as a fan of the director i went into this expecting an 8 or an 9, but what i got is a 5 at best.
Belle has a interesting idea, with its reworking of the "beauty and the beast" and its child abuse themes... But it fails to build on its characters and to explain basic premises of its own world, making it for a very boring and bland experience.
Most of the things we thought would be relevant were completely ignored and absolutely useless, we asked ourselves watching "did she get some disease and now is unable to sing in the real world and that is why the U is an escape?" No, they never address this, she just fails to sing and vomits once because the movie wanted to i guess? They keep all her "friends" completely irrelevant and underdeveloped until the last quarter of the movie, so i basically don't care about any of them in the end, they never explain the socio economical structure of the U world... How does this work? They say the avatar is made automatically based on people physiognomy, but the avatars are crazy different in form and species, how can that be made from ones physiognomy? How is the invitation system decided? Who is invited and why? Why even have an invitation system instead of selling the app or freely distributing it if that ends up irrelevant to the story? Why show us a very interesting singer character on the start that rivalizes our belle if you are just going to forget her for the whole movie? How to know which avatars are AI controlled and which are actually people? Is it possible do die in U? If not, what is the relevance of all the conflict we see?
Belle raises too many questions and answer very little, it presents us with an beautiful and interesting virtual world but tells us NOTHING about it and how it all works, it presents us with futuristic technology in a world that seems stuck in the 2000s, it gives us many bland and uninteresting characters with only one personality trait each and develops none of them... There are so many problems, so many drawn out scenes... That it all gets boring and tiresome...
And.... That makes me really sad, the music is GREAT, the visuals are BEAUTIFUL, the music scenes are AMAZING... But they are few and far in between and the rest of the movie... Is not interesting, they present us a nice duality of belle and the beast, but their interest in one another is so out of nowhere and forced that it doesnt feel even a little bit real or natural... There is a great scene that develops the characters and emotional connects, but it is only in the last quarter of the movie... When it has already lost all my interest and attention... and the plot of child abuse is ok and very important... But it feels shoved in... The main plot... Feels shoved in... Oh, and how they find the boy... Well, that was just the worst "investigation" bit i have ever seen...
I really wanted to like this movie, but there are just too many unanswered questions, just too little character development, and a plot that is just generic and bland enough to lose my attention... The visuals and music alone are not enough...
At the end, i feel like they made some really great music videos and didnt want to release it as just animated music videos, so they wrote a really bland movie around it and shoved a controversial and important theme(child abuse) to appeal to peoples hearts in an effective but kinda cheap way.
I don't get these ratings. What did people expect when they went to this movie? I mean, come on, it even has "Hardcore" in its name... I've been a fan of Ilya's work for a while now, ever since I saw his Biting Elbows clips on YouTube, and I've funded this movie as soon as it hit Kickstarter, and then I bought tickets to the cinema too, and I don't regret a thing. My expectations - brainless run'n'gun, violence, blood, explosions, gore, loud music, with a good share of comedy - were fully met, and then some. Crank got by without a strong plot, why does Hardcore suddenly need one? Scene transitions made sense, why would you need anything else in a pure action film? 10/10, will watch it again, once I get my digital download.
*Old fashioned murder mystery on a ship.*
A nice easy breezy murder mystery. Full of fun. Don't count on anything serious or deep here just sit back with your popcorn and a soda and enjoy the movie. Nothing offencive here. Just an adult murder mystery romp. We don't get many like these anymore. Ignore the people who like to criticize everything because they think they are actual critics. Chemistry between Aniston and Sadler is awesome. I hope they make more movies together. Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler are the best!
My Score: 7/10.
^^*Trivias*^^
+This movie set a new Netflix record. In the first 3 days 30,869,863 accounts watched the film. 13,374,914 North American accounts & and an additional 17,494,949 accounts watching worldwide.
+The movie seems to be an Agatha Christi-esque style murder mystery thriller. At the end of the movie, we see the characters of Audrey and Nick on a train named "The Orient Express". This is a direct homage to Agatha Christie's famous "Murder on the Orient Express" (1935) novel.
+Adam Sandler's real life wife, Jackie Sandler, makes a cameo appearance as the flight attendant on the plane.
+When Audrey goes to the first-class section of the plane, a passenger is watching a clip of Game Over, Man! (2018), another film directed by Kyle Newacheck.
+In the movie Nick mentions a guy named Eric Lamonsoff. Kevin James played a character named Eric Lamonsoff in Grownups and Grownups 2, also starring Adam Sandler. Most of Sandler's films reference that last name, in a nod to his old friend.
+Andrea Bendewald who plays a customer in the salon Jennifer Aniston is working at in the start of the movie. Andrea is Jennifer's best friend. She was maid of honour at her wedding to Brad Pitt. She also guest starred in Jennifer's sitcom "Friends"
+Adam Sandler's and Jennifer Aniston's second film together. The first was Just Go with It (2011).
+In 2013, a report surfaced from a German financier that Colin Firth, Adam Sandler and Emily Blunt would be joining Charlize Theron in the movie, which turned out to be false. Coincidentally, Sandler did become attached to the project in 2018, though Theron had already left.
+When Nick and Audrey arrive at Malaga Airport (Spain), the airport shown is actually Milan Malpensa Airport (Italy), not Malaga Airport.
+This is the third film featuring Luke Evans and Gemma Arterton together following Clash of the Titans (2010) and Tamara Drewe (2010).
+Charlize Theron was once attached.
+The shield shown by Nick on the plane and in the store is a patrolmen's shield yet he was referred to as a Sergeant.
+Luke Evans and Victor Turpin, who both appeared in "Murder Mystery", are a couple in real life.
+During the interrogation, the character yells 187. That is a California code for murder, not world or US code.
+John Madden was once attached to direct the movie. Anne Fletcher was attached to direct the movie later.
+The Rolls-Royce that Cavendish owns is a Phantom Drophead Coupe, License plate number EQU 617. Recent models (2016) approaches $533,000 new. It gets 14 MPG, has a 412 cubic inch, 453 horsepower V-12 engine, and weighs in at 5,780 pounds. (16.8l/100km, 6.8l V12, 2.6t)
+Game-Over Man (another netflix movie) is playing on the airplane when Jennifer Aniston's character is wandering around the plan.
Spoilers
+Body count: 6
+At the end of the movie when Nick and Audrey are on the train, the camera pans out and we see the name of the train is Orient Express. This is in reference to another famous murder mystery movie, Murder on the Orient Express.
Ignore the reviews, this movie is actually pretty funny, I wouldn't go as far as saying it's better or worse than A Million Ways to Die in the West. The script is supposed to be stupid. We've seen much worse in the cinema's over the years. Enjoy or not, each to their own opinion. Myself, even though I'm not the biggest Adam Sandler fan, it actually works well, massive cast Steve Buscemi and Dan Aykroyd make an appearance as does would you believe Vanilla Ice. Just take it for what it is. Fun.
While I can understand, people enjoying this film or even holding it a personal favourite the accolades it's getting and being passed as movie of the year is laughable. It has a very nice theme and setting which makes for a pretty looking film but the story is so one note with fairly one dimensional boring characters (the antagonists are so unbelievable) with a fairly on the nose basic story. Ignoring that the logistics and execution of the whole thing seems ridiculous and lousy what with how unsecured and awfully maintained the lab is etc. It's a passable movie to me with no rewatchability
IMO the best combination of action & humor ever made!
...including some lies and overreacting. the few facts are abused to make it appear this "opinion" or better "limited point of view" is the only solution.
No Question most people eat to big, unhealthy and to much meat.
But are animal-eating animals unhealthier than plant-eating animals? Are they extinct? No! It has more to do with exercise.
"Casein is addicting" No! All things you do (eat, move, learn, toilette...) trigger the same reward system in the brain for a reason.
An Egg containing all nutrients to create a new life - in their opinion egg yellow kills you. lol
It's 2017 and they still think cholesterol from food is harmful for the body.
What about insects animal protein? Why became the dominant species on this planet an everything eater?
... and so on.
propaganda movie which could have been perfected with a narrator voice of Putin or Erdogan. The same kind of movie could have been made for "only eat meat, plants will kill you"
learning sustainable nutrition not with this "documentary". you might want to go vegan for reasons, but not for this.
just brilliant...
Unequivocally do not recommend anyone watch this, it brings nothing new to the table, and actually manages to tarnish the Cube name.
Totally agree with @movieswatcher, at about the 1h10 mark, the movie just completely goes off the rails and gets annoyingly bad.
Even so, from the get-go it's just a messy story:
The characters are all weirdly invested in each other after barely speaking to each other, let alone getting to know one another. Speaking of, there doesn't even seem to be that much time passing, like were they in there just a few hours? Then there's that utterly unnecessary gate that comes up in between the group, separating them because... who the heck knows? They could have easily used the doors closing as a similar plot device, but no.
Then the subplot of the dude who keeps freezing up because of some boring childhood trauma (that we keept being shown repeatedly). Eventually it even gets projected onto one of the walls of the cube... what, why ? Let him tell the story, then react, and we can guess it's from the only info we know about him (said story).
Finally, what was with the super generic generational age gape hatred which @movieswatcher mentioned as well ?
Additionally, that completely useless female character who never speaks and is way to obvious in her acting, revealing within minutes that she's in fact a robot . Then the rooms reacting to the crazy guy's mood which once again: served no purpose, doesn't make things interesting, and it doesn't advance the plot... it's there, and adds nothing of value.
Kinda like this whole movie: adds nothing of value. Skip, and go re-watch the original.
Spectacular on the outside and a big, empty nothingness on the inside. Couldn't believe how it got 13 nominations at the Oscars.
Awesome! Laughed my ass of, the whole evening!
