Watch, Watched, Watching: Three Monkeys Edition

[Veltigar]

I think the John Wick franchise is getting an unfair deal here. It is by far the best western action franchise out there currently and the first one at least should be listed as one of the top 5 best western action movies of the decade. I'd even feel bullish about including it in a global top 5 of the last decade. 

I have always felt that the John Wick 2 was a marked step down however, downgrading the concept established by the first John Wick from  very good film to just okay film. I did however still turn out to see John WIck 3 in theatre and in my opinion the third installment was a return to form.

I hardly remember anything from John Wick 2, but I have seen John Wick 3 two times in the cinema and can still vividly remember the action set pieces from it. Pound for pound it is superior to the first film in its set pieces and action. Where it falters - and that really is  becoming the Achilles heel of this franchise - is the insane world building. @briantw wasn't kidding that pretty much everyone seems to be an assassin. 

I believe the creators made a fundamental mistake in disconnecting John Wick completely from it's relatively grounded roots to lean into this crazy world they only hinted at in the first film. It's a typical sequel disease, but I wish they had avoided it here. That being said, @Ran I'd still warmly recommend you check out John Wick 3. The emotional connection of the first film is probably never returning, but the action in the third film alone elevates it far above the current level seen in most action films.

[Heartofice]

For me the John Wicks movies don’t have anything really going for them outside of the action sequences. Most of the emotional beats are pretty trite and tacked on, the acting is often absolutely dreadful, especially the villains, the story is simplistic and nothing special. So really it’s about how good the action is. That’s why I like 2 and dislike 3. 
The third entry I think is actually boring after the first half hour. The fights are really not very exciting and all feel like something we’ve seen before. I was quite disappointed as I thought the second movie upped the scale and the stakes and made it more ridiculous, which was a good thing.

Anyway, as has been said, I think the love for these movies is partly driven by just a lack of good alternatives.

I think we went through a trend of Hollywood thinking it can cast cheap but recognisable actors as action stars and cover up their lack of martial prowess with fast cuts and shaky cam, completely taking the wrong lesson from Jason Bourne. So we ended up with 1000 Liam Neeson movies, including Taken 3 which I think had a scene of about 30 cuts to hide the fact he can barely get over a fence.

Then I guess there was the other parallel trend of your Statham movies which had some great fight scenes but were generally dreadful, like your Transporter movies. ( Don’t count Crank here as it’s a batshit masterpiece)

So John Wick sort of filled a void of having a leading star who does put in the work when it comes to martial arts and also wasn’t totally awful outside of that. No wonder it did well.

[Ran]

Watched John Wick 3. It seemed to mix up the fights more, with very different scenarios, so that was refreshing, though I agree that it was not especially exciting for the first quarter of the film or so (then again, I disliked the opening, over-long action sequence of the 2nd film). 

The integration of the Malinoises into the fight scenes in Casablanca was my favorite part of the film (went and looked up the behind the scenes about them, and quite amazing that they basically picked out puppies and trained them specifically for the film.) The High Table guys with super body armor was a bit boring at first, but  then the armor-piercing shotguns came out. Mark Dacascos as this goofy-but-deadly ninja who's an admirer of Wick was pretty good, though personally the fight against the two Indonesian knife men was more entertaining (except for the obvious bits where 'Oh, I'm thrown, I've been winded, giving Wick 10 seconds of one-on-one with the other guy' that were rather blatant).

Story-wise, I think this one was probably a bit better than the 2nd film, just because the arc of the film does turn on Wick actually seeming to be in some danger thanks to being cast out of the underworld, and his race to find help feels like genuine stakes. So, too, the twist of his being sent back to go after Winston.

The whole story universe is just gonzo, and now they don't even bother with hiding killings out in the open or pretending people just happen to look away -- they're actively dropping bodies in the middle of busy terminals and people practically walk over them.

 

 

[polishgenius]

John Wick 3 suffered from some of the same issue as The Raid 2 did: it upped the action and improved the theatrical buildup to the action but also added a bunch of bloat.

However (unlike the Raid 2 or either of the first 2 John Wicks) there were also a couple fight scenes that I thought went on too long in and of themselves and that was a problem.

[Luzifer's right hand]

3 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

John Wick 3 suffered from some of the same issue as The Raid 2 did: it upped the action and improved the theatrical buildup to the action but also added a bunch of bloat.

However (unlike the Raid 2 or either of the first 2 John Wicks) there were also a couple fight scenes that I thought went on too long in and of themselves and that was a problem.

Yeah I actually got bored during some of the fight scenes in the middle of the movie while watching it in cinema.

[BigFatCoward]

Can someone take one for the team and watch the new Coming to America? I want to know if it's as bad as it looked in the trailer. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

V for Vendetta is great on every watch. I'm absolutely ordering the graphic novel once I clear some books out of my to read list.

I only watched like half of the first season of The Handmaid's Tale, but the book is so much better.

[Ran]

Yeah, forgot to say that Wick 3 was a bit bloated. Like you guys, I think they could have trimmed time from some of the fight scenes and not missed much. The first and last half hours could probably have lost ten minutes each without any real loss.

 

[JGP]

Watched E3 of S2 of For All Mankind last night, and still feeling like someone donkey punched me right in the aorta. Yet the final scene had me laughing. 

I love this show so much. 

[Nictarion]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Can someone take one for the team and watch the new Coming to America? I want to know if it's as bad as it looked in the trailer. 

Unfortunately, yes. The old guys at the barbershop were probably the best part, but that’s all of about two scenes. 

[Grand Moff Mithrandir]

Watched season 3 of Westworld(yes, I know I’m late) and I must say I disliked it immensely mostly due to the cyberpunky route they chose to take.

[Zorral]

The Netflix docu-drama really was maybe the best of this format I've seen -- but then most of them are so bad, perhaps the barrier isn't high. Still, it was watchable in terms of the photography of the geography, some even rather beautiful.  The educational aspect were valuable -- so that's where 'ninjas' come from, OK!

The one thing that bothered me was the repetition that these soldiers were the best the world had ever known.  That's a call that can hardly be made by anyone after these millennia, one thinks. And are they speaking of individual warriors or armies in aggregate? After all this is the 16th century -- there were all those others who came before the Spartans, Romans. There were the Arabs, the Mongols, the Turks, the Mamluks, the Jannissaries, and some very tough guys like William the Marshal.  We can go on and on.  Not to mention the incredible warriors and armies of the Rajaite states in India soon to contain the Mughals.  And many many more.  Nor was Japan the only country to have centuries in which the ruling class lived only to do war, for pete's sake -- good grief, just look at the Islamic and Christian states of the medieval Iberian peninsula. 

This has nothing to do with the series, but I always wonder with army death tolls in these sorts of wars, including these of the 16th century warlord Japan, how are they able to repopulate their armies so quickly?  Particularly in the 14th century of the Black Death?

[williamjm]

I watched Netflix's The Dig, which I thought was good. I thought it managed to tell a compelling story about the archaeological excavation and although it's a bit coincidental the looming shadow of World War 2 did add something to it as well. I thought Fiennes and Mulligan were both very good and did manage to convey what the characters were feeling despite mostly not really voicing those feelings. I've seen some complaints about the romance involving Lily James' character feeling a bit redundant, I don't think the film would have lost much with it being omitted but I didn't mind it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Overall, Ace Venture  holds up. It's so dumb, but it's fun as hell if you can look past some mid 90's style jokes. 

[Ghostlydragon]

I watched the 2nd X Files film after finishing season 9 this week. And now I can move on to the comeback seasons but I think I'll finish up some other shows first. I've had Sister Sister paused half way through Season 3 since December so I better return to that and I also have Buffy recorded through Sky tv since June so I really should start that soon. Or haunting of hill house. 

[Isis]

We finished S1 of Snowpiercer last night. The last 3-4 episodes of the season certainly picked up the pace. I liked the homage to the 'fight in the dark' scene from the film, where a fight is shown in flickering light, giving a kind of positive/negative impression. I think we will roll right into S2 today. I also finally cottoned on that the narration at the start of each episode where they (actually it's Melanie that says it) say 'it's one thousand and one cars long', is like a hat tip tp BSG where they used to say how many souls there were left at the start of each episode.

On a less positive note, we tried to keep watching S2 of A Discovery of Witches and oh my goodness the episode with the wedding is pure Twilight. Hilariously bad. I'm not sure if we will continue watching after that. It was twee and boring.

 

[Veltigar]

Caught up with the final two episodes of WandaVision. I feel like I should have saved myself the trouble and just read the synopsis on Wikipedia. I keep hoping that these things will manage to surprise me and for a brief stint from let's say episode 3-6 it seemed like it was actually going to deliver, but in the end it ended up being just another conveyor belt Marvel property. 

The only thing that sparked any joy from me was this excellent exchange in the final episode:

Spoiler

Vision: Wanda, I know we can't stay like this. But before I go, I feel I must know. What am I?

Wanda Maximoff: You, Vision, are the piece of the Mind Stone that lives in me. You are a body of wires and blood and bone that I created. You are my sadness and my hope. And mostly you're my love.

Vision: I have been a voice with no body. A body but not human, and now a memory made real. Who knows what I might be next?

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Vision: We have said goodbye to each other before, so it stands to reason...

Wanda Maximoff: ...we will say hello again

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I don't know why, but those final three bolded lines were excellent. Seemed like the writers there had a level of inspiration not seen elsewhere.

Next up was Rob Roy. I had seen this films once many years before and already greatly appreciated it back then. Revisiting it after more than ten years however, I'm struck by just how great this film is. It truly is a tragedy that this films is so often overshadowed by the far shallower Braveheart. The only place where you usually see praise for Rob Roy pop up is when people discuss the sword fights in it.

Rob Roy's best known sequence is probably the final duel, which is rightly hailed as the best sword-fight ever committed to film. I believe far more people have seen this fight than have seen the actual movie, which I can totally understand. I myself have rewatched that fight often over the years, but I just now came back to the film as a whole which is just as good as that incredible final duel.

Like many other great films, it is superbly made. The music is great and the acting from literally everyone is a master class. What truly makes Rob Roy excel and turns it into probably the best film of its kind can however be reduced to three aspects. 

The first are the sword fights and action sequences in the film. Never have these been committed to screen with more realism, adding greatly to the tension. Closer to the atmosphere of a real sword fight to the death you will never come, unless you are willing to start a particularly gruesome fight club and you just so happen to have a lot of HEMA enthusiasts in your circle. 

Secondly is the devotion historical realism of this film in general (when compared to what we usually get that is) and the willingness to trust the intelligence of its viewers. People share houses with their livestock, they are destitute to a degree we can't imagine, they pee and shit in chamber pots in front of people and make crude jokes. In short, their world feels vastly different than ours. Even the dialogue seems to be largely void of modern words (although I guess the Highlanders in reality would probably still speak Scot Gaelic at this time).

Better still, the film doesn't waste any time explaining all of this. The people in it discuss for us arcane differences in social rank and the peerage system, the Jacobite Rebellion and Queen Anne's failure to provide the country with an heir. All of the above is not strictly speaking necessary to follow the film, but the film rewards historic knowledge with added layers of complexity. I simply adore it and wish more films would take this tack.

Finally, the third reason why this is definitely one of the greatest period pieces ever made is the complex roster of villains in this film.  If I define 'villain' loosely, I count six named villainous characters. Some of these parts are small and have little screen time, but together with the bigger villainous parts they offer a smorgassbord of the various different kind of villains you can have and how they interact to shape the story. This provides the film with such complex characterizations and allows the hero to really look very noble by comparison, being the lone rock of decency in a corrupted world.

Tim Roth's turn as Archibald Cunningham has been rightly lionized. He's absolutely diabolical as Rob Roy's primary antagonist. A cold-blooded psychopath and sexual predator, who hides his true skill and depravity behind a fobish exterior that manages to lure unsuspecting people into a trap. That dichotomy alone would be enough to create a compelling villain, but it goes beyond that. Cunningham is clearly a man who does neither love or value himself and is therefore unable to feel love for anyone or anything else. Life for him is but a fleeting succession of hedonistic flashes of pleasure mixed with stretches of boredom.  His bastardy has eaten him away from the inside, until he became just an empty shell of a man. 

And the complexity doesn't even end there. I love his interactions with the other characters, each showing part of his character:

Spoiler

When he rapes Mary, even Killearn, the other big villain turns away from him. Brian Cox is incredible as the slimy factor, superbly witty and in many films he would be great as the ultimate villain of the piece. Here though, he sees himself that his ruthlessness pales beside that of Archibald. You can clearly see how Killearn feels repulsed by his behavior, even though the actions Archie takes are a superlative instance of Machiavellian reasoning, basically weaponizing the values of the Scottish clan system against the MacGregor's, trying to force him to attack him directly.

Despite all of that however, Cunningham knows his place in the rank system of the time. That sends a powerful message to all of us. Here is a man who you can truly see as a perfect villain as he's both personally deadly and able of strategic reasoning and yet the Marquis is untouchable. Cunningham knows this, the Marquis knows this and they both act out their part in this tragic arrangement. With the Marquis showing that he knows that Cunningham is responsible for all of this, but not caring to intervene as he doesn't want to lose face nor lose the MacGregor lands. It's brilliant really.

Another detail  about the film I tremendously enjoyed was the contrast between Cunningham's behavior in the first duel against the Scottish champion and his behavior in the duel with Rob Roy. In that previous violent encounter, he had kept his wig on, but by taking it off against Macgregor he signals that Rob Roy is different from his previous opponents. Still not a match for his skill with a blade, but capable enough to perhaps pose a threat. Even the arrogance that ultimately kills him was on display in that first fight. After he beats the first Scottish champion, he turns his back on his defeated foe who cheats and gets up to strike a blow to his back. Its only through the intervention of the Duke of Argyll that he lives. It's just absolutely brilliant writing!

The one thing I'm a bit confused about is:

Spoiler

Whether Archie is the bastard son of the Marquis or not. I remember thinking this, but I'm not sure anymore. it's at least implied, but I feel like I missed some clues.

 

[Nictarion]

@Veltigar

It’s Brian Cox that played Killearn in Rob Roy.

[Veltigar]

4 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

@Veltigar

It’s Brian Cox that played Killearn in Rob Roy.

Ah, I keep confusing the two XD thanks for the heads-up!

[l2 0 5 5]

Got through the first five eps of Deadwood S3

Fuck Hearst! Who the fuck does this guy think he is strutting into the camp like this? Takes Al's finger off!! The  balls on this guy. Big Captain guy, meet Dan Dorrity. You wanna get in the mud with that greased up hog? Was legitimately cheerin Dan on as the fight was taking place like this was real life. 

Loved Bullock's energy these past two episodes. The man has been on a mission to exercise his sheriff duties to an extent we haven't seen yet.