A few reviews

[TM2YC]

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
I adored Wes Anderson's 'The Royal Tenenbaums' but I thought his follow-up 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' was overblown and more interested in kookiness and outlandish visuals than strong characters. The budget was more than double that of TRT and I think it's Anderson's only box-office flop. So his next, 'The Darjeeling Limited' is a noticeably stripped back, smaller scale, lower budget affair but thanks to gorgeous panoramic location shots of India it looks expensive and is a welcome return to decent, character-driven story telling. There is just the right amount of Anderson's trademark visual delights, every object and printed word still looks designed and arranged with precision, there is just fewer of those objects and they are there to serve the story e.g. the matching animal print cases that the characters carry, as literal/symbolic "baggage". Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman are so believable as three brothers, trying to reconnect and change but weighed down by falling into old patterns of negative behaviour and fraternal "button pushing". One of Anderson's best films.

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Hotel Chevalier (2007)
A 13-minute short produced alongside the movie 'The Darjeeling Limited', taking place sometime prior to where that story began. Jason Schwartzman plays his 'Jack' character meeting up with his ex Natalie Portman in a hotel room. It didn't do a lot for me beyond appreciating some of the crisp dialogue and well composed visuals. I'm glad it has introduced me to Peter Sarstedt's wonderful 1969 song 'Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?' which features prominently.

 

[TM2YC]

Death on the Nile (2022)
'Death on the Nile' is unfortunately a mess but with enough kitsch glamour to still make it a diverting watch. It begins with an extended black & white WWI trench prologue for no obviously useful reason, other than perhaps Director Kenneth Branagh had just watched '1917' and fancied "having a go". The sequence features some truly terrible CGI but also some of the best looking de-aging FX I've yet seen. The whole film is like that, simultaneously looking like a cheap green-screen affair and like watching money burn on screen. Coincidentally it had about the same budget as the epic '1917', despite this Poirot caper being set mostly on a boat set. Nobody with eyes will be surprised to read that this was not in fact shot on location in Egypt. I've no idea why this was shot on 70mm, it looks more like it was done on an iPhone.

That trench sequence is followed by a dance scene so over the top that it would look campy in a Baz Luhrmann movie. Thankfully once the all-star cast are (not so) safely ensconced on the S.S. Karnak, things settle down into a familiar murder mystery. Like so often happens with these convoluted plots, even though I'd seen versions of this before, I'd totally forgotten who was responsible for the murder. Sadly Branagh botches the introduction of the only clue you need to solve the whole case, by having a tasteless over-elaborate camera move swoop down on it, underlining it's importance, when a cunning Director would have sought to do the opposite. So I instantly solved the murder, before the murder actually happened on screen. Then I had to spend about 90-minutes watching Poirot fail to solve it because he hadn't had a clumsy director showing him the solution. Branagh himself is again excellent as Poirot but the rest of the cast are dreadful, badly acting, or over acting. It can't have helped that Branagh hamstrung the actors by insisting they all do accents, poorly. With Americans playing Brits and Brits playing Americans, or Brits attempting laughable French accents. Please stick to lower budget gems like 'Belfast' Mr. Branagh where you excel, put away your CGI paintbox and leave the camera where it is, stop making it fly around.

 

[mnkykungfu]

would look campy in a Baz Luhrmann movie

Oh, snap! That's an amazing description.

Then I had to spend about 90-minutes watching Poirot fail to solve it because he hadn't had a clumsy director showing him the solution

I heard Hitchcock basically explaining how Suspense films and Mystery films were counterpart genres, the flip side of the coin. This has stuck in my head ever since as such a clear, clever dividing line: a true Mystery is one in which the audience does not know some information that the screen character(s) do know, while a Suspense film is one where the audience knows something which the characters don't. I believe Hitchcock was saying he'd never made a true Mystery, because he liked too much to pull at the audience by making them watch the characters fumble towards danger they didn't even realize, so to speak.
Of course, when the story you're adapting is actually a Mystery, but you really do it as a Suspense film, it's considerably harder to maintain the audience's engagement, I think. Campy dancing or not.

 

[TM2YC]

Sharpe's Company (1994)
The deranged, evil, Obadiah Hakeswill, as played by Pete Postlethwaite was probably the best nemesis Sean Bean's Richard Sharpe faced in the whole run of these 90s TV movies. Hakeswill being the cruel thorn in the sides of Sharpe and Harper occupies half the story of 'Sharpe's Company', the siege of a fortress town the other. It's all very dramatic but the plotting feels a little repetitive and random, but it is a slow attritional siege after all. I think Hugh Fraser is a better Lord Wellington than David Troughton (from the first two movies), you can feel more of a fun, fatherly comradery with Sharpe. Michael Byrne is a worthy replacement for Brian Cox as a new intelligencer character. Byrne has the charm of Cox but with an extra evil twinkle in his eyes. So we like him but still suspect he's done unspeakable things for King and country.

Sharpe's Enemy (1994)
There are 12 Sharpe TV movies after this one, and while I remember that a couple are worse, I can't recall if any are better than 'Sharpe's Enemy'. It's got everything, Sharpe on a covert mission in enemy territory, a daring rescue, capturing a fortress, defending it by using genius tactics to overcome a 10-to-1 disadvantage in numbers, and a whole series of duplicitous or cowardly foes and honourable allies. This is a separate adventure but is also "part 2" to the Hakeswill plot line from 'Sharpe's Company', so they ideally need to be watched back-to-back. I've compared Sharpe to the Bond movies before and this is the one with the 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' ending. Sean Bean and Spanish actress Assumpta Serna have to be one of the all-time sexiest screen couples. Guest star Liz Hurley can heave all the bosom she wants in this movie but it's nothing compared to Serna's fiery Comandante Teresa Moreno threatening a pompous English noble with a duel "if he were a man" for insulting her husband Sharpe.

when the story you're adapting is actually a Mystery, but you really do it as a Suspense film, it's considerably harder to maintain the audience's engagement, I think. Campy dancing or not.

Totally agree but Branagh was playing it as a mystery. By not showing who was responsible for the murder and letting Poirot reveal it at the end to the characters and the audience at the same time. He definitely didn't mean for the viewer to be able to solve the puzzle, before he tells us there is a puzzle.

 

[TM2YC]

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
I don’t know if it was intentional but anytime the stop-motion animals in Wes Anderson’s reimagining of Roald Dahl’s story were still and looking at the camera, I thought they looked exactly like real dead stuffed animals with glass eyes. So it's a bit creepy and not unlike Jan Švankmajer’s (intentionally unsettling) 1988 film 'Alice'. I also didn't care for the constant use of the phrase “cuss” as a stand-in for “f*ck”. Can a children's film not be done without a swear word, even an imaginary one? I couldn’t help but wonder if the film might've been even better if it was a little more Dahl and a little less Anderson. Those nitpicks aside, this a charming, beautifully animated world. Anderson’s usual visual flare is set free of live-action production limitations and I can’t get enough of his immaculately set fonts.

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Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
The first section of the film almost put me off, as it's focusing on these two kid runaways who are not really kids, they are two typically eccentric Wes Anderson adult characters, who he has just chosen to cast with 12-year old actors. Young actors who it's easy to imagine have absolutely no idea what any of the dialogue means and don't understand any of the references to obscure pop culture and literature they are supposed to profess an admiration for. However, the rest of the film is about the lovely people of the island community, setting aside their own problems and joining forces to find the wayward couple, to accept them for who they are and become better people themselves. By the end, 'Moonrise Kingdom' had utterly charmed me in a 'It's a Wonderful Life' type of way. Personally I thought the funniest bits in the film were the visual jokes around the misuse of typography, like the layout of the island police uniform baseball caps appearing to read "Isl Po and lice" and the Khaki Scout troop number "55" badges making the kids look like members of the "SS". I bet there are other typography jokes I missed, just waiting to be appreciated on a rewatch!

 

[asterixsmeagol]

"Cuss" was actually my favourite part of Mr Fox, but to each their own.

 

[TM2YC]

Le Redoutable aka Godard Mon Amour (2017)
Michel Hazanavicius portrays a period of existential angst for Director Jean-Luc Godard, following a lukewarm reception for his more overtly political Maoist film 'La Chinoise', against the backdrop of the "May 68" unrest in France. Godard is uncertain about whether to double-down on the uncommercial political films, while people are constantly telling him how great his earlier (commercially successful) films are. Much of the focus is also on his wife at the time, the actress Anne Wiazemsky, who loves life and initially still loves Godard but becomes increasingly disillusioned with his negativity, emotional abuse and rejection of the world as it is. I think the viewer will bring some of their own feelings for Godard to this biopic, if you already view him as a bold, uncompromising artist, you might see it that way. For me, it confirmed my views from seeing a number of his films, that he's pompous, contrarian, vain, childish, pretentious and maddening. I really enjoyed 'Le Redoutable' though.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^I swear, I get more film trailers to add to my list of "maybe I will need to watch this film, I have to check out the vibe and decide" queue from you than from any other source.

 

[TM2YC]

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
This has been free for me to watch anytime on Disney+ for quite some time but my enthusiasm for watching "the least worst Terminator sequel since 1991" hasn't exactly been brimming over. The terrific Duncan and Richard from Val Verde Broadcasting did a commentary, so I decided to suffer along with them. 'Dark Fate' looks as bland and derivative as I'd expected but the performances are strong (Mackenzie Davis in particular), despite the middling script. The constant use of floppy unconvincing CG body doubles is horrible and the action is infected with a superhero-movie aesthetic. The hard hitting physical fight scenes and exhilarating in-camera stunts of T1 & T2 seem so long ago, a lost ancient era of awesome movie making. Due to this being one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time, hopefully this will be the last attempt that Hollywood makes for a while to reanimate the desiccated corpse of this franchise.

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The Rock (1996)
There is a cavernous plot hole at the centre of this admittedly pretty fun movie. Michael Bay got so obsessed with portraying the far-right terrorists as patriotic, benevolent, martyr heroes that he forgot (or didn't care) that by doing so, he'd made it 100% clear to the viewer and to the characters within the piece, that the terrorists had no intention of ever inflicting any terror, yet everybody carries on as if there is still a massive threat from them. Ed Harris should've simply been a villain who wants money and is absolutely prepared to kill innocent people to get the millions of dollars he demands, just like the usual 'Die Hard' formula it's (badly) copying. Bay's usual low-level homophobic, misogynist and racist caricatures abound. I considered playing a drinking game where I'd do a shot every time Bay shows an American flag, or has somebody say "that's classified" in a manly voice but I would've died of alcohol poisoning. At 136-minutes it's far too long and chaotic, it takes an hour and 20 minutes (I checked my watch) for the main plot to begin (the rescue mission). It would really benefit from being a tight 90-minutes that focuses on the great action and snappy dialogue. Despite all these problems, the interplay between Nicolas Cage's wise-cracking, nervous energy and Sean Connery's stern authority is what makes 'The Rock' very re-watchable. I always enjoy imagining that Connery is playing an older Bond. Something that was surely intended by the film-makers with a large grin and a wink. A lot of the character backstory lines up. Hans Zimmer is in full-on 90s bombastic mode for the score. Big drums, loud brass, yeah!

 

[mnkykungfu]

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
the action is infected with a superhero-movie aesthetic

For those of us who like the action in a lot of superhero movies, this was a pretty awesome film. It wasn't just "least bad", it was "finally a worthy sequel". I agree with you that Mackenzie Davis was awesome at least, but Hamilton and Schwarzenegger also do amazing riffs on their classic characters, neither content to play them exactly unchanged, but not losing what made us love them in the first place. This film got SO much hate online, I think in part because a big portion of the intended target audience doesn't want a movie focusing on 3 women, doesn't want a film with nearly half in Spanish, doesn't want to see the poor treatment of immigrants play a role in the plot. It's a film that has far more to say about modern America and where it's leading to in the future, and some people just wanted a turn-your-brain-off action film that lives up to some unobtainable standard of "exactly the same as the past films and yet not just copying them".

Not saying that was you, @TM2YC , just saying there is an audience for this film, though it's probably a younger, less-invested audience than the one that saw T-2 in the theater.

 

[TM2YC]

This film got SO much hate online, I think in part because a big portion of the intended target audience doesn't want a movie focusing on 3 women, doesn't want a film with nearly half in Spanish

If a person hates films focusing on strong women and featuring Spanish characters then they already, A: Hate Terminator films and B: Hate James Cameron films, so er, why do they care? Idiots.

Personally I think DFs terrible boxoffice is more down to following the atrocious Genisys, which did decent boxoffice. People got suckered into paying to see that disaster, so weren't feeling disposed to risk being tricked again by the same producer, same production company, some of the same writers and same studio just 4-years later. Especially after James Cameron had played a key part in telling everybody how great Genisys supposedly was. I'd be very confidant betting that if DF had been the first Terminator film since Salvation (and Genisys had never existed) people would've flocked to see it and been at least moderately pleased.

For those of us who like the action in a lot of superhero movies

I like that action IN superhero movies, not in a Terminator movie.

 

[mnkykungfu]

I think DFs terrible boxoffice is more down to following the atrocious Genisys

Yeah, I'm with you that that played a significant role in people not wanting to watch it. But not in the massive criticism of the film.

I'd be very confidant betting that if DF had been the first Terminator film since Salvation (and Genisys had never existed) people would've flocked to see it and been at least moderately pleased.

You're more optimistic than me. The damage wasn't done over one film, it was done with three disappointing sequels in a row. But that's only part of the problem...

This sort of narrative has been adopted that the first two films are perfect and untouchable and so every new one has to compete with the idea of those films... meaning it gets roundly trashed. Dark Fate is the first Terminator film to be genuinely a good movie in its own right, and it shouldn't have to compete with the legend of the earlier films in order to get appreciated for that. It's like the Star Wars OT fans hating on the Prequels. Those are different movies in many respects, and that they aren't as good shouldn't equal them gating hated on to the exponential level they have been by fans who overlook the flaws in the old movies. There's a new generation of fans who have continued to love the prequels, finally leading to what's shaping up to be a really nice continuation of them in Kenobi. I hope maybe Dark Fate gets its due in a similar vein.

That said, I respect that Dark Fate didn't work all that well for you, and you're of course entitled to your opinion. I've chimed in with my Ebert to your Siskel, so at least people can hear another take on it and maybe they'll decide it's worth a popcorn night.

 

[TM2YC]

The French Dispatch (2021)
The question I always have going into a Wes Anderson movie is "Is this going to be too Wes Anderson?". The answer in the case of 'The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun' (to give it it's full title) is definitely a yes but since it's essentially four short films, within the framing device of them being articles taken from the last issue of the titular magazine, any worries about style overwhelming the narrative and characters, are largely moot. It's a total feast for the eyes, with every button, fleck of paint and typographical space looking like it was precisely orchestrated. Benicio del Toro's segment about a tortured, imprisoned artist was the best, accentuated by Tilda Swinton's turn as an effusive and eccentrically mannered socialite art-historian. Frances McDormand and Timothée Chalamet's 'Nouvelle Vague'-esque segment was the least engaging. About 97% of the movie is in 4:3, which really suits Anderson's tasteful compositions. The depth of the created world even extends to Jarvis Cocker recording a whole real album of French Pop, under the fictional alter-ego "Tip-Top", the name and sleeve of which appear in the film. Plus Anderson made a video for the single, which is partly an animated summary of the plot, partly a trailer and a bonus credits sequence.

 

[TM2YC]

Lady Vengeance aka Kind-hearted Geum-ja (2005)
Park Chan-wook's perpetual use of flashbacks to multiple time periods, from the perspectives of multiple characters, dream sequences, narration and non-sequitur editing, verged on chaotic and stopped the film from gathering enough momentum. A more linear structure would have worked better but then the premise might have looked too similar to 'Oldboy', which was maybe what the film-makers were worried about. The child kidnapping plot element recalls 'Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance' too. It really works when it's focusing on the mother and daughter relationship and the horribly fascinating gory twist/shock ending was not where I was expecting this to go. Great performances all round but star Lee Young-ae is the most impressive, and I didn't think much of her in 'Joint Security Area'. The baroque-style score is terrific and despite the dark subject matter, it's got a lot of humour.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^as you mentioned, I found that too goofy and disconnected to get into.

 

[TM2YC]

The RKO Story: Tales from Hollywood (1987)
I've been watching a re-run of this fantastic 6-hour 1987 BBC documentary about the rise and fall of the famous studio. It's a great looking, almost HD transfer on BBC4. It's amazing how many key production people and stars of "Hollywood's Golden Age" that they were still able to get interviews with in 1987 (many sadly no longer around to be spoken to). It's a chronological history of the studio but it's also broken down into six distinct parts: Early days / Fred and Ginger / The women of RKO / Orson Welles / McCarthyism / Howard Hughes' ownership. One thing that has dated about the film is in respect to sexual politics, the talk of the "casting couch" mentality of those days and of Hughes horrendous controlling behaviour of his many contract actresses, isn't presented with the same seriousness that we'd see today. It's a surprise that RKO lasted as long as it did, it seemed to usually be in financial trouble, for various reasons, from beginning to end, with only a few reliable franchises bringing in the bucks.

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Orlando (1992)
Writer/Director Sally Potter's loose adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel is now 30-years old but looks like it was made tomorrow. It's a playful and witty exploration of gender fluidity, a satirical look at the historical patriarchy and a celebration of growing self-assurance. Tilda Swinton plays the title character, a young man who is magically given eternal youth by an elderly Elizabeth I but decades later Orlando wakes from a slumber as a woman. Something that causes legal problems, two bureaucrats tell her "One, you are legally dead and therefore cannot hold any property whatsoever. Two: You are now a female... which amounts to much the same thing". Potter cleverly sets Orlando's story against a visual backdrop of British historical androgyny, starting with Quentin Crisp playing Elizabeth I (a woman who described herself as having the heart and stomach of a male King, in a female body), the gender of the King/Queen being something that changes throughout the film and it points out that several of Britain's most significant monarch's in the post Tudor age have been female, 80s synth-pop star Jimmy Somerville plays a castrato and of course for much of the movie the men are dressed in luxurious Restoration wigs, long flowing Romantic-era hair, Queen Anne silk stockings, Regency lace shirts and Elizabethan makeup.

The dance-music score is refreshingly different for a period drama:

 

[Masirimso17]

Orlando (1992)
Writer/Director Sally Potter's loose adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel is now 30-years old but looks like it was made tomorrow. It's a playful and witty exploration of gender fluidity, a satirical look at the historical patriarchy and a celebration of growing self-assurance. Tilda Swinton plays the title character, a young man who is magically given eternal youth by an elderly Elizabeth I but decades later Orlando wakes from a slumber as a woman. Something that causes legal problems, two bureaucrats tell her "One, you are legally dead and therefore cannot hold any property whatsoever. Two: You are now a female... which amounts to much the same thing". Potter cleverly sets Orlando's story against a visual backdrop of British historical androgyny, starting with Quentin Crisp playing Elizabeth I (a woman who described herself as having the heart and stomach of a male King, in a female body), the gender of the King/Queen being something that changes throughout the film and it points out that several of Britain's most significant monarch's in the post Tudor age have been female, 80s synth-pop star Jimmy Somerville plays a castrato and of course for much of the movie the men are dressed in luxurious Restoration wigs, long flowing Romantic-era hair, Queen Anne silk stockings, Regency lace shirts and Elizabethan makeup.

The dance-music score is refreshingly different for a period drama:

I watched this movie for class about a month or two ago and loved it, it’s so good!

——————

A ★★★ review of The New Mutants (2020)

…I LIKED IT?!?!?! Yes, I’m as shocked as you dear reader. From everything I’ve heard, from the terrible marketing, bad luck with production and constant delays, and so, so many negative reviews when it finally came out, there was a reason why I avoided seeing this. So when I proposed a trailer...

boxd.it

I viewed this for my Diversity & Inclusion class final project of making an X-Men trailer (I was able to pick what I wanted to do, so .)

Going off of my review above, I think this film is ripe for a good fanedit. There’s so much good stuff under the technical clusterfuck of this film that I want to bring back to the forefront. I’m not too knowledgeable about “horror/thriller” filmmaking or editing, so I would probably have to get help with that, a collab would be super fun. My main contribution though would be to restructure the film and give it a more natural flow compared to the disjointed original where characters don’t react properly at the correct time.

I just bought the UHD/Blu-Ray both for my final and for an eventual fanedit. I’m gonna have to re-examine this film, analyze its structure, and get in the nitty-gritty of it because it’s such a fascinating film to me (for better or for worse, lol).

 

[mnkykungfu]

^I liked The New Mutants far better than you, in fact, it seems far better than anyone! I was disappointed because I was hoping (like many people) that it would actually lean into the Horror aspect more than that one scary trailer it had (nevermind the other much-less-scary trailers), however like many films, they put all those parts in the trailer itself.

Unlike many viewers, I didn't hold it not being a Horror movie against it. If you look at all the detailed reviews bashing the film, they all mention how it's not really a Horror movie, not really scary. Well $#*t if I rated every movie based on what it wasn't, I'd never get to appreciate what it was. And I completely loved all the positive aspects you mentioned in your review @Masirimso17 . The film does so many things so much better than most comic movies. AND it's an adaptation that's actually far better than the original story, and made me care about characters I never cared about in those original comics!

Frankly, the film is far better than it has any right to be, and is better than all but 2 or 3 of a litany of mixed-bag X-Men films. It's such bad luck that it came out when the studio was changing hands. Can you imagine if Marvel got its hands on this during production and launched it out of the gate as their own *new mutants* film?? ALL those actors went on to do great stuff, and they'd be on for another 2 films at least!

 

[Gaith]

For those of us who like the action in a lot of superhero movies, [Dark Fate] was a pretty awesome film.

Whoa there, amigo, T2 is one of my favorite movies, and I love the goofy action of the recent Fast & Furious movies, and I will be the first to say that those steak and peppermint ice cream flavors do not mix well. Goofy action suits F&F because that is now an urban fantasy saga about demigods. But, in maintaining the grim survival thriller framework of the first two films, Dark Fate has no business featuring a car chase that turns into a plane chase that turns into a zero-G fight that turns into a parachute drop into a dam that turns into a superhero battle. Whoever suggested building the third act around all that should have been shown the door at once.

doesn't want a film with nearly half in Spanish, doesn't want to see the poor treatment of immigrants play a role in the plot. It's a film that has far more to say about modern America and where it's leading to in the future

Disagree there also. Yes, the whole border crossing/immigration detention center briefly gives the movie a raw, topical feel (it's definitely flick's best aspect, frankly), but I don't think that rises to the level of "having a lot to say." Particularly when the movie immediately does a bewildering 180 with a heroic US Army general who believes in Sarah and her mission (and has a chummy history with her?) for no stated reason whatsoever. If you're going to make US officials the enemy movie, and (despite being a Navy veteran myself) I'm fine with that, at least have the nerve to commit to it, or at the very least not undercut it.

This sort of narrative has been adopted that the first two films are perfect and untouchable and so every new one has to compete with the idea of those films... meaning it gets roundly trashed. Dark Fate is the first Terminator film to be genuinely a good movie in its own right

1) That narrative certainly worked against T3 the hardest. T3 also gave itself the handicap of having a lot of jokes, which Jonathan Mostow has explained were there to make the ending a real surprise. I personally enjoy said jokes, and when I saw a T3 fanedit that removed them, I saw what he meant, because the movie is otherwise so grim and foreboding that the ending doesn't play as a swerve at all.

2) Disagree that Dark Fate is a good movie. It's a thoroughly average one.

3) Disagree that Dark Fate is better than T3. T3 is shorter, giving it a higher strengths/runtime ratio, has better performances (Stahl and Danes are both excellent, and Arnie is equally good in both), and its action, while admittedly heading in a cartoonish direction, isn't nearly as OTT as Dark Fate. Add to that T3 not pulling the spectacularly lazy move of "here's a new enemy that's not Skynet, but yeah, it's still Skynet in all but name," and showing the original timeline's Skynet origin (meaning the Cyberdyne one we saw in T2 was an outgrowth of the chip left in a Cyberdyne factory in '84), and T3 is the clear winner, IMO.

There's a new generation of fans who have continued to love the prequels [...] I hope maybe Dark Fate gets its due in a similar vein.

I don't begrudge anyone an enjoyment of the Star Wars prequels, but, for all their strengths in bits and pieces, they're objectively bad movies. I don't begrudge anyone an enjoyment of Dark Fate, but I think it's a very clearly mediocre flick, so I can't join you in actively hoping people will remember it for being better than it is.

just saying there is an audience for this film, though it's probably a younger, less-invested audience than the one that saw T-2 in the theater.

Nah. I think DF plays best for those who are long-time Terminator fans, and viscerally dislike the goofy humor of T3; it's just that there's a greater number of fans in that age cohort who (quite understandably) don't like any of the sequels at all. (I get that I'm in the minority as a genuine T3 fan, and I'm okay with it.) I don't think most younger audiences care about Terminator much at all. (They already had their Terminator with The Matrix, after all, and look where that series went.)

 

[mnkykungfu]

^Well, @Gaith what can I say? I fundamentally disagree with literally every single thing that you wrote there. lol I don't think there's much room for our opinions to meet in the middle on this one, so I won't do the internet argument thing where I try to respond to your individual points. I'll just say that I generally think there is FAR more Spanish and more of a Spanish emphasis on the film than you characterize there (literally almost the whole beginning), and I also would have a completely different description of how the action plays out in both DF and T2 (and T3 for that matter). I love the performances in DF unilaterally, whereas there's so much cringe in T3. For me, that's an objectively bad film and gives any F&F film a run for its money with the goofy action, much less humor. But hey, man, you can end your trilogy with T3, and I'll end mine with DF.