2018 Movies

My Top 5 so far this year (based on UK release)

1. Hereditary
2. A Quiet Place
3. The Shape of Water
4. Cargo
5. Three Billboards

Sicario 2: Soldado (2018)
Lurching from one admittedly tense and well-Directed scene to another with no real narrative direction. The characters are inconsistent and thinly drawn. Even to somebody who only knows a few words of Spanish, the subtitles noticeably didn't match the dialogue, on several occasions (Might just be a UK cinema release issue?). It takes itself very seriously but has silly and obvious plot holes. e.g.


A moderately entertaining and brutal crime film that passes the time. Suffers the familiar sequel problem, the same talented cast doing their level best with a half-baked script.

Edit: I just realised this was Directed by Stefano Sollima, who is the son of Sergio Sollima. I watched one of his father's films (a Spagetti Western) a few days ago. What are the chances .

Early Man (2018)



A new Aardman claymation movie is always cause for celebration, and Early Man is certainly beautiful to look at. Story-wise, the prehistory/soccer pastiche doesn't amount to much, and the narrative and heroes are disappointingly tame, but Nick Park's signature gags had me chuckling throughout. It's no instant classic like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! or Shaun the Sheep movie, but it's absolutely worth a watch for any Aardman fan. Grade: B

Business-wise, Early Man seems to have been a flop, costing twice as much as Shaun the the Sheep movie to produce (though I've no idea why - sure, there was more CG evident, but still), but only grossing about half its receipts worldwide. In the UK, its $15m take was even beaten by Coco's $26m! Come on, that ain't right.

^ I feel bad that I skipped it. There didn't seem to be much promotion of it for some reason. The post-mortem on Wikipedia made me chuckle:

"Early Man... was Nick Park's lowest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes at only 81%"

"Only"  Most Directors would kill for those RT scores.

SKYSCRAPER
Saw it last night and was a bit underwhelmed
 I enjoyed Rampage and San Andreas so I don't have huge expectations for DJ's tent poles but this one fell short. Obviously the biggest selling point with these films is the setpieces and none of 'em really had any wow factor for me. I just felt constantly reminded how much better Die Hard and even the majority of the Die Hard clones are than it.  Essentially it's a bland  family friendly  90 minute mashup of  Die Hard and Towering Inferno which doesn't sound too bad but it struggles to pull off even that..

A generous 6/10

So far:

1. Death of Stalin
2. Thoroughbreds
3. Incredibles 2
4. Annihilation
5. I Kill Giants
6. A Quiet Place
7. Solo
8. MI: Fallout
9. Black Panther
10. Red Sparrow
11. Tomb Raider

Mission Impossible: Fallout
Initial thoughts: The last really good action movie I can remember seeing would probably be Rogue Nation and if I had to think back to a truly great one it would definitely be Die Hard or Terminator 2, MI:F lived up to the hype and then some!  While it didn't offer anything truly new plot wise to the spy action genre it really did take those familiar tropes to their creative pinnacle. An absolute blast from start to finish while most action movies have about 3-4 set pieces this felt like it had one about every ten minutes and still managed to balance out a great twisty plot with all the mayhem though.  Can't recommend this one high enough, I left the cinema with a massive smile on my face.  The next Bond movie will really have to raise the stakes to compare favourably to this, Mr Cruise and Co have truly outdone themselves with MI:F it is brilliant and easily the best blockbuster of the year for me!

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)



Sixth verse, same as the fifth, more or less. Fallout is, in some ways, a lot like Spectre is to Skyfall - it's a rare consecutive returning director making a direct sequel that's even longer, even vaguer about the baddies' motivations, and largely swaps the glamour and glitz of its predecessor for a barren, stripped-down look.* Yes, the technical direction, stunts, and editing are all first-rate, and I certainly got my $5 AMC Tuesday ticket's worth on a big-ass screen, but I'm so very tired of all these bland, generic, overwhelming white "arms dealer" antagonists.

To be clear, I have zero problem with evil white villains: make them neo-Nazis, Thanos-style Malthusians, classical paganists, fanatical anti-Islamists, aspiring global rulers, US Presidents, whatever; but the specific angle of apolitical white arms dealers has been done to death way too many times over. In M:I-III, the villain was an apolitical American arms dealer. In Ghost Protocol, the villain was a European white dude who wanted to set off a bunch of nukes to "cleanse the planet," or some sh*t. In Rogue Nation (which did not, in fact, feature a rogue nation, because that might have been political), the villain was a white British (I think) baddie who... dealt arms, or something. What's more, all four Craig 007 films to date have centered around white arms dealers of various kinds; not one has had any discernible ideology; and the same goes for the last few Fast & Furious villains, though at least Furious 7 dared to give us an arms dealer of color in as well as Statham's arms dealer.

And now, in Fallout, the villains are largely white baddies who want to set off a trio of nukes because "suffering causes peace." They don't even bother speechifying about why that might be true; they just repeat it a few times with no elaboration whatsoever, and I am so very bored. And, to be clear: we aren't getting all these apolitical, motivation-free white arms dealer baddies because the filmmakers have any kind of point to make; we're getting them because that's the easiest way to offend nobody, including the international and Chinese markets. So, we get yanked around with double-crosses, hidden identities, and all that crap for nearly 2.5 hours, and in the end, it all means exactly as much as it did when it began, which is Nothing at All. What's the point of saving the (fictional) world if no one in it ever has an opinion about anything?

As a piece of big-screen action craftsmanship, it's pretty good. Grade: B. But please, please, do something even slightly more interesting with the story next time around. (And that goes for you, too, 007 and Toretto.)


* (Just to clarify, not that anyone cares: I much prefer Spectre to Skyfall, but prefer Rogue Nation to Fallout.)

I agree. I also really miss the heist element in these Mission Impossible movies. 

So far this year, I think the only film that pleasantly surprised me was A Quiet Place. It wasn't exactly what I expected and it was also better than I expected it to be. Not to say it's the best movie of the year or anything like that. I just like being surprised sometimes.

Moe_Syzlak said:

I agree. I also really miss the heist element in these Mission Impossible movies. 

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and I’m so sick of the mask gag in these movies. It’s always been an eye roll for me. And I called it the second Cruise started thegood cop bad cop routine. The outing of the bad guy mask trick was telegraphed as well. As was who the bad guy was in general. It was an okay action movie, but it was devoid of surprises or anything to make you think.  

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Fair enough, it's cheesy and the least believeable element of these films but its the MI calling card, Bond has his shaken Martini. All's fair in love and espionage

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
Not gonna lie, I fell asleep a couple of times, not just in the endless overly convoluted exposition sequences but during one of the action scenes... Cruise crashing on the bike woke me up. So much time is spent setting up the plot upfront that credits were still playing 20-minutes in (I know because I kept glancing at my watch). Once the villain is finally established and the ticking clock began, the movie came to life for an exciting last act. What was with all the glow-filters added to every light source, so distracting. Night scenes looked dull and flat making them hard to watch. 2.5 hours is waaaay too long for a story that has no real direction, or shape, just forward momentum. 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I guess I must be wrong though. Shame because I was really excited to see a movie that everybody else had enjoyed so much.

^Horses for courses I guess..I just find the last 3 Mi movies really refreshing given the CGI slugfest that seems to be most tentpoles nowadays. One thing (of many) I thought it did really well was put a lot of the exposition seemingly in with the setpieces, it barely felt like it drew breath for a second where often the first act of a lot of movies nowadays can almost feel like a chore to watch. The art of grabbing the viewer from the start is something that movies don't seem to do too often nowadays(for me at least).   A lot of the overlong blockbusters we get nowadays  could be a lot shorter and snappier if they simply trusted the audience to catch up rather than spoon feeding everything or just plain slowing things down to make it more grandiose (DKR!). Having said that though MI6's runtime seemed to fly by for me. I can't remember being so impressed by a summer blockbuster in years.

Two great M:I vids:

Sinbad said:

I just find the last 3 Mi movies really refreshing given the CGI slugfest that seems to be most tentpoles nowadays.

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I see your point, but I'm afraid I can't call any race to stop a nuclear detonation, complete with red ticking timer, in any way "refreshing." 

Speaking of Skyfall, no wonder I was so lukewarm on Fallout: as Cracked notes, it's a virtual plagia - erm, was clearly inspired by that highly overrated Bond picture. 

Equalizer 2 (2018)
I liked the first film a lot, so I still wanted to go watch the sequel, despite the poor reviews it's been getting. After seeing it, I'm totally unable to comprehend how this film is certified rotten on RT, with top-critics calling it "plodding", "bloated", "ponderous" and accusing it of "frustrating ineptitude". Where as I'd rank this is among the best films of 2018. From the edge of the seat tension of the opening train scene, to the visually unique "western showdown" finale, which is set in a seaside town racked by a hurricane, my eyes were glued to the screen. I don't recall experiencing anything like this hurricane sequence before, allowing for a totally immersive and paranoia inducing soundmix, as you can never be sure if you are hearing a thunder crack, or a gunshot, the creak of timber, or a footstep. It patently should get the Oscars for best sound editing and mixing but I'm sure it won't even be nominated ('cause I'm cynical like that ).

Sure there are lots of minor and major characters, long dialogue scenes and explorations of weighty themes in the middle (mixed with the action sequences) but that's a good thing isn't it? I was quite surprised to learn that the film was digital because I'd assumed the gorgeous Cinematography was 35mm. Like the first movie, it bears no relation to the TV show, it is it's own thing and Denzel Washington is fantastically understated. A rare sequel that is even better than the first.


Robbie Collin seemed to like it (I also loved little moments like the book shop one he mentions):


EDIT: Before EQ2 there was this introduction to Idris Elba's Directorial debut 'Yardie'. It looks fantastic but I'm seeing lukewarm reviews. I'll give it a go if it plays at my multiplex:

This trailer looks like 'Die Hard at a football match':


It's probably terrible but I hope not because I'd love to see Dave Bautista become the 2018 equivalent of Arnie. It's also got Ray Stevenson and Pierce Brosnan.

tI'm quite excited to see that Bautista Die Hard Knock off as Scott Mann's The Tournament and Heist were both pretty serviceable action flicks. I went to see Equalizer 2 today and while the opening and finale were well handled I found everything in between pretty plodding and overly sentimental

BlacKkKlansman (2018)



Critics are gushing over Spike Lee's latest as "ferocious" and "hilarious." I'm afraid, however,  that I'd go with "mildly amusing," "safe," and  "bloated." Sure, it's kinda funny that a 1970s small-town cop who happened to be black infiltrated his local Klan and charmed David Duke over the phone. But the accompanying terrorism story rings false, and is indeed mostly made up.

 

As for the humor... I laughed more during the Klan scene in Django Unchained, as well with Get Out. Worst of all, despite the two-hour running time, we never get more than a superficial understanding of our protagonist. Add in a fictional love interest who's really only there to soapbox and bolster the fictional terrorism plot, and the result is an ~85-minute story stretched into a 129-minute run time.

Good acting, though.

B-. In retrospect, I wish the screening had been one of Chi-Raq instead, as that sounds like the much more distinctive film.