Movies, Movies, Movies.....

Saw "Godzilla: KoM" today.

(at Alamo Drafthouse Lakeline, in Austin. . and dressed appropriately, of course)

very good, tho the story needed a further tweak, as some character motivations just don't work.

the film also felt a wee bit too long

both of these minor issues could have been solved by cutting out the kid and her mom subplots . .but oh well, didn't distract too much, and visually the film is stunning.

the final battle in Boston is spectacular to look at.

(and there *is* a post credit stinger. . not much of one, but there is one, if you want to stay thru the credits).

Has Godzilla been popular elsewhere? Was thinking of checking it out but it already left the theater near me after only a couple of days and even the big shopping mall in the city has just 1 showing at 10 PM. Sometimes films leave quick to make way for the Korean movies but only Parasite is airing and I can't remember the last time a big action movie left the theater this fast.

Has Godzilla been popular elsewhere? Was thinking of checking it out but it already left the theater near me after only a couple of days and even the big shopping mall in the city has just 1 showing at 10 PM. Sometimes films leave quick to make way for the Korean movies but only Parasite is airing and I can't remember the last time a big action movie left the theater this fast.

the critics don't seem to care for it, but the Audience reviews have been good.

per Rotten Tomatoes:

275 critics rated it only 40% fresh

but

15,167 Audience members rated it: 85%

So I saw Dark Phoenix yesterday and I was not impressed. To me it was just a crappier X-Men the Last Stand. The X-Men and the other mutants that appear are really the only mutants in the entire movie. Now I don’t think it’s the worst X-Men film though(that title belongs to X-Men Apocalypse). Other than that I think this brings a pretty shameful ending to the Fox era but thanks to Disney/Marvel there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Toy Story 4 Review

Recently TPR was given the chance to see a preview screening of Toy Story 4. I always thought that Toy Story 3 had wrapped up the entire series pretty perfectly so in a way it was sort of odd to see a 4th film released but it's Toy Story, easily the most successful Pixar franchise so I was eager to check it out. I'm really happy to say Pixar definitely hit another homerun here! This movies picks up not too long after the last Toy Story with Bonnie's family taking a road trip before she starts kindergarten. In her orientation she glues some pipe cleaner to a spork and creates a new toy called "Forky." Forky quicky becomes Bonnie's new favorite toy and on the road trip Forky gets lost and it becomes Woody's job to bring him back.

First off, I really do think this is one of the best looking animated movies I've ever seen! The detail on the characters is amazing and the scenes and locations they visit look beautiful! A large portion of the movie takes place in an antique store and we were told in the press junket we attended that there is in an Easter Egg from every single Pixar movie in there! The characters in the Toy Story series have always been memorable and in this one the new characters really steal the show. Especially loved Forky and Duke Caboom! (voiced by Keenu Reeves) As we saw in the trailer Key and Peele voice two carnival plush toys and they are absolutely hilarious. It definitely seems like this movie has the most comedy out of the entire series. It has it's heartfelt moments as well, but to me they weren't as "emotional" as some of others in the series have been, particularly Toy Story 3.

In the end, I absolutely loved Toy Story 4!! it's one of my favorite movies of the year so far. Great story, heartfelt moments and fantastic animation! It's pure fun from start to finish, really an excellent addition to the series! The way this one finishes up it kinda feels like the last one. But given the success I'm sure we'll see another one in another 9 or so years.

Toy Story 4 is out June 21st! Definitely go see it!

Was shopping today at a toy store with my son and they had a pile of Marvel Endgame jigsaws on display. Seems weird they can use every actor's likeness but their biggest star. At least it's one who wears a robot suit. A google search shows it happened to most of them.

Saw Spider-man: Far From Home last night and thought it was SO much fun! Tom Holland absolutely knocks this character out of the park, and he’s only getting better as the movies progress.

Also saw Ma recently and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys campy horror. It was hilarious and thrilling in all the right places. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to watch Octavia Spencer the same way again.

WOW! If The Lion King doesn't become the #1 highest grossing animated film of all time, I'll be shocked! Now *THIS* is how Disney should be doing all those re-makes. A perfect retelling of the original animated movie using current technology animation! While I haven't minded those "live action" films, I have to say that I haven't walked away from any of them feeling the need to see them again. But The Lion King? This is *PERFECTION!*

And yes, I said "animated." I personally do not consider this film to be "live action" as there isn't anything "real" about it. Even director Jon Favreau himself is quoted saying: "There’s no real animals and there’s no real cameras and there’s not even any performance that’s being captured that’s underlying data that’s real. Everything is coming through the hands of artists."

The film is most certainly "photo realistic" but it is not, in my opinion, "live action." And this is not a bad thing, either! In fact, I prefer it! I had always thought that instead of these live action re-makes, I would have rather Disney just take the original animated film, like Aladdin for example, and do a shot-for-shot remake using today's technology in animation. Imagine what the "Whole New World" sequence would look like if it was animated using the technology from Moana, for example. And that's kind of what Lion King exactly did!

I appreciated that the new film, while not exactly a shot-for-shot remake, was close enough to the original movie that you knew every beat point, every song, every moment. So no spoilers here, if you saw the original animated movie, you know everything in this new film. And that's fine. The Lion King is a timeless classic on its own. There was was no need to add any new music or additional scenes to it. They didn't NEED to "improve" any of the storytelling in Lion King, but it was sure nice to see it be "updated."

It is almost like what they are doing with retro video games coming out on updated consoles. A game like Final Fantasy VII doesn't NEED anything new added to it, but you'd love to play it on an updated console with current technology and art styles.

Initially I had even though "why not just take the original voice acting and audio and re-make the animation based on that?" but the new cast works perfectly well, and of course having James Earl Jones as Mufasa was a very good choice. If you're going to keep one original actor from the first film, that's the keeper! (I probably would have liked to have seen Jeremy Irons return as well, but I was fine with the new voice acting for Scar.)

I also was wondering if the "photo realistic" look of the movie would be a distraction, but it really wasn't at all. The fact that they didn't use "real animals" and lay voice overs on top of them worked so well. In the first five minutes of the film with that opening sequence that EVERYONE knows, you're drawn in and everything "just works."

I'm really hoping this re-make blows all the rest of them out of the water at the box office and makes Disney realize "huh...maybe we don't need to be 're-making' these films as live action or telling a different version of the story, but instead just updating our already beloved classics to today's technology."

It is almost like Jon Favreau and his team took Mufasa's advice... "Remember who you are... remember."

The Lion King opens in theaters on July 19th and we strongly recommend you go see it!

are the songs in it?

I loved the "updated" versions of the songs from "Jungle Book" (and the way they were worked into that film), but haven't seen any musical number clips from Lion King, so wondering if the classic songs make an appearance.

Hearing John Oliver do "Morning Report" is something I would really enjoy.

are the songs in it?

Yes. It is basically a shot-for-shot remake of the original.

Great to hear! This has looked like it had the potential to be among the best "remakes" Disney has put out... I'm even more excited to see the film after reading this review! Thanks for sharing!

This really is wonderful to hear!! I agree that the other live-action remakes have left a LOT to be desired. I'm definitely going to catch this on the big screen!!

As always, love your reviews. While I do love many of those 90’s remakes - I totally agree with what you are saying as well! I don’t like the new songs in the live action stuff. (Only exception would be that one song they had Jasmine do). I can’t wait to see this!

We can't wait! Thanks for the review.

I also was wondering if the "photo realistic" look of the movie would be a distraction, but it really wasn't at all. The fact that they didn't use "real animals" and lay voice overs on top of them worked so well. In the first five minutes of the film with that opening sequence that EVERYONE knows, you're drawn in and everything "just works."

 

I'm really hoping this re-make blows all the rest of them out of the water at the box office and makes Disney realize "huh...maybe we don't need to be 're-making' these films as live action or telling a different version of the story, but instead just updating our already beloved classics to today's technology."

 

It is almost like Jon Favreau and his team took Mufasa's advice... "Remember who you are... remember."

Bravo for this new "ANIMALATED" film! May it be the first of many!

Alice

I heard one of my favorites from the broadway 'He Lives in You' is on the soundtrack, did they add it to the film? I get the feeling it might have been put in as a credits song considering its album placement though.

I heard one of my favorites from the broadway 'He Lives in You' is on the soundtrack, did they add it to the film? I get the feeling it might have been put in as a credits song considering its album placement though.

It was not in the main film, no. There are no new songs in the movie. There are some in the credits. Not sure which those were though.

So, we saw the Lion King last night...

I'll never understand the critics as long as I live. I feel like they have to be the most pretentious people on the planet. I can usually tell when the critics are going to like a movie because I walk out of the theater thinking it was super weird and not really liking it. As soon as we walked out of Dunkirk a few years ago I said to Brit, "That was weird and it sucked, it's going to win a ton of awards" and... yup.

If there's a movie that kills it at the box office, they absolutely have to bitch about it to show how refined their tastes are. For added fun, if a move is a flat-out steaming pile of garbage they have to inflate it more than they should to show us that there's some creative genious that we're apparently missing. This has the EXACT same score on Rotten Tomatoes as the new Aladdin movie which was brutally bad. That movie gave me douche chills on multiple occasions and it was so bad that it actually made me concerned for this one.

Anyway, I’d say something about spoilers but it’s the Lion King and you’ve all seen it.

Spoiler: Mufasa dies

Anyway, that movie was amazing. I’d have to work REALLY hard to come up with a single critique.

The original is obviously timeless and an impossible standard, but this movie is great. The jokes are all updated (and funny) and they play off of the fact that they know everyone in the theater has seen the movie before and they use that to make you laugh.

If you go scene by scene and compare everything to the original then you can find things to pick apart if you insist on doing that for some reason (see: “Be Prepared”) and the songs are all probably a little better in the original (but they’re still great in this one) but on it’s own this is a masterpiece and everyone needs to go watch it.

They did an amazing job with it. Go see it.

^ Yeah I’ll never understand critics either. It’s like with Marry Popinns Returns. The critics hated it while everyone else loved it. In fact I just watched a critic do a review of the Lion King and sure enough he hated the movie. He even called it THE worst Disney live action remake. That’s right he said this was worst remake of them all. Unfortunately this one of critics I have respect for and follow more than the rest cause he happens to be the Nostalgia Critic. Yeah Doug Walker for some reason doesn’t seem to like any of the Disney live action remakes. From Alice in Wonderland to the Lion King.

I like him, I respect his opinion. I just watched a little of it and I feel like we weren’t watching the same movie.

This whole “lions can’t emote” and uncanny valley bullshit is a ridiculous complaint that I’ve seen a lot today and it feels really nitpicky. I feel like most of the people complaining about “uncanny valley” just heard the term for the first time like three days ago and had to Google it and suddenly they’re movie purists and animation experts. There’s a ton of emotion in this movie which is impressive considering we’ve all seen the original and we all know what’s coming.

I mean, people are going to have different opinions and I often disagree with the concensus on movies. People are allowed to think what they want. That said, many criticisms just seem like they’re coming from people who went in wanting to hate it because they either love the original and feel like they need to somehow defend it, they hate the fact that Disney is going through and re-making everything so god forbid they actually enjoy one of them or they know everyone is going to love it so they just absolutely have to be different.

The original is better. Of course it’s better. That said, I was blown away by this movie. The artwork was ridiculous and it really brought it to life in an amazing new way.

In their defense, I’ll say this... amazing graphics usually win me over. For example, I loved Avatar. When Disney was building Pandora and everyone was like “I’ve never seen Avatar, nobody cares about Avatar, why are they doing this?” I was reading those comments and thinking “Avatar was my sh*t! What are these people talking about?” so maybe that’s part of the reason why I liked it so much. I don’t know though... this was a really good movie.

Yeah I respect opinion also but to a point at least. Where he lost me was when he called it was the worst Disney live action remake.

For those who are CATS musical freeks, here's the first official trailer for the movie, coming up in December...

See my small opinion of this trailer here. https://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21366&p=1914171#p1914171

Congrats to Avengers Endgame for being the movie to finally top Avatar at the box office.

Anyone else seen The Farewell? One of my favorite films in quite awhile. Awkwafina really shows off her acting abilities beyond her normal comedic talents. The film itself takes you on an emotional roller coaster while navigating the divides between east/west cultures, as well as what unites us. Cannot recommend it enough.