Gladiator II

To hell with your 6.6 IMDB!

I was way more invested and entertained in this movie! Set just 16 years after the first film we follow a soldier from Numidia named Hanno who has a proper revenge hard on for roman general Acacius after being defeated and put up as human livestock in the Colosseum, but what I like about this movie so much is as the plot progresses almost every main player in the story changes and holds different amounts of power. Paul Mescal is a fierce lead and to see the shift from soldier to slave to revolutionary is gratifying to watch and he does not hold back on the physicality or the emotion, taking the flaws of Maximus from the first film and swiftly remedying it. Denzel Washington as new gladiator conossieur Macrinus is easily the best character in the movie for my money, and you can tell Denzel is relishing this role and to see his political machinations grow and grow was super engaging for me. Of course our daddy of daddies Pedro Pascal is present and unfortunately he's not in the movie much and has only a smudge of stuff to do, an honorable roman he is and my God what a commanding voice he has in this movie so it was great to see him in something until I'm probably nearing the end of my rope and Mando hits the big screen. Connie is back and her storyline adds some dimension to the film and honestly she acts even better than the first film, and sweet Christmas has that woman even aged a friggin' day?? Incredible. I'm not entirely sure if Rome ever had two emperors cause that is a fascinating detail of history never disclosed to me, but the combined performances of Joseph and Fred while surprisingly more in the background were just that right amount of batshit and hedonistic, they did do proper good work but if you ever want a proper piece on emperors I would point to I Claudius or...Caligula if you're not a prude. Production wise it's definitely surpassed the first Gladiator obviously with advancements due to the 24 year gap in filmmaking, the sets and costuming are great, they knew how to up the ante in the Colosseum (even if probably not entirely accurate to history I loved it anyway), there's more political intrigue, the score is decent, the editing has thankfully calmed the hell down, and I easily can say this is one of those sequels that outdoes the first! May be blasphemy, may be heresy, but call me a fan of the sequel! I kind of feel like an ass honestly for not seeing it in the theater, and my main reasoning for not was well I haven't seen the first and while elements of the plot are brought up here you really genuinely can watch this and not miss much and still enjoy it. So I apologize right now for that blunder, this was a very very good film! 3.5 stars from me, 8.5/10, and next week is time at last.

Gladiator

25 years later, could've been longer admittedly knowing this show.

I'm not entirely sure as to why I finally decided to watch this movie, and subsequently the sequel as well, but hey why not? That's basically the motto of this website! So Gladiator holy moly did this have quite a reputation, highly succesful film, won some big Oscar gold back when they had fucking standards, and clearly had a fanbase enough for a sequel, so what did I think of it? It was okay. I'm not gonna bash it too much, I just thought it was good. The story is very akin to the Moses story with some other recognizable elements thrown in, of a commanding general who gets in good with the royalty of Rome before being outcasted, his family slain, and he's sold into slavery to fight at the Colosseum while trying to get even with the new more antagonistic Emperor. It has some very good things going for it, despite the early ass 2000s effects it has a real grand scope and solid cinematography I mean Ridley Scott is a very visual director so I knew I was going to see some nice stuff. Shit oh my God, the sets and costuming are out of this world honestly, they put a lot of effort into the visuals here! The score honest to God is one of the best film scores I have heard in a hot ass minute and works beautifully with the scenes! The performances in particular of Joaquin Phoenix as this very Ben Solo-esque wannabe tyrant Commudus was one of the most engaging and interesting performances. Sir Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius even though he's just in it for a bit just proves what a powerhouse actor he really is and the fact that he's an introspective ruler with higher aspirations for his country is refreshing to see! Another standout performance that I really never hear anyone talk about is Oliver Reed as Proximo who is the trainer of the gladiators and I cannot for the life of me explain why but he was magnetic to me on screen with glimpses of backstory, a bit of wisdom to part, and holds a unique position of power with ulterior motives of his own, like I was thoroughly enjoying his performance! Also have to shoutout Derek Jacobi who I'm just pretending was The Master in roman times with some nefarious goal in mind, he had that certain aura about him at times and I am thrilled everytime I get to see him act in anything really! Now you might be saying, but Dude what about Russell our main character and Connie as well? Huuuuge props to Connie for being a beacon of knowledge on roman times and history to the point where the crew was asking for advice on the production, that's a badass right there and yeah it was easy to care about her character when she's mostly stuck in the same room as her megalomaniacal brother. As for Russell...eh. I have never hated him as an actor but I didn't have much to work with, it's not your typical kill the despot to achieve vengeance for my family like the man just kindaaaa sortaaa does stuff with no end goal in sight, I mean maybe for the sake of killing Commudus but it feels not entirely earned or necessary. I like his ending, that was nice and gratifying at least. But while we're on the subject of negatives I gotta get my big complaint out now. The editing in this movie is slapdash at points, it started off effective in the first battle scene because war is disjointed, chaotic, and hard to keep up with.....but then it just kept fucking happening. Especially if people have a good length of dialogue, the camera just keeps cutting to random shit with no rhyme or reason and it did nothing but detract me from the story. Yet it's not always like that either, it has moments of clarity and focus as well so it's just confusing. I certainly did not walk in here to raze Gladiator to the ground and indeed it's not terrible in the slightest, but I am holding out hope for the sequel to be better. 2.5 stars, 7.5/10 from me.

Napoleon

Happy giving of the thanks, now let's talk war.

We truly do not get big budget epic historical dramas like we used to, so when I saw the trailer for Napoleon I was onboard all the way. I am no history buff, but I like to show my support for the genre and thankfully it's not a case of where you have to be extremely familiar with the military career of one Napoleon Bonaparte to understand everything presented. The film begins with the french revolution and the execution of Marie Antoinette and concludes with Napoleon's exile to Saint Helena, covering his marriage, his crowning as emperor, his campaigns against Britain and Prussia, and his days in exile. And from what I saw this was a huge undertaking for Ridley Scott, I mean not to say historical dramas are box office bombs by a stretch but it is a risky venture mainly due to the budget. I have no idea what the budget was but it showed a lot in terms of set production, costumes, and volume of extras which is what is to be expected from a film like this! It's directed well, the movie has moments where you are just in awe, the cast is proper good, and keeps a brisk pace where the film doesn't feel like it's pushing 3 hours. It's a farcry from an all out action film, but man I gotta admit to you I haven't felt that sense of amazement and just plain blown away by the scale of the battles scenes here since shit like, Return Of The King easily. Not necessarily in terms of awesomeness but through sheer scaling. It looks real, they really went to a field and got hundreds of people to take opposite sides and charge in. They use CG but only if it's absolutely needed, and it felt appropriately big. The politics were handled very economically to sum it up, they give you the necessary information in a concise and short manner to understand why historical world events occured. And even as a straight up newbie when it comes to french history, I recognized events and names even without knowing the full context. Joaquin is effective, he has that star power where you lock in on him and he does carry the film throughout, it's not so much a character study on Napoleon and rather a short biographical look on his command. Vanessa Kirby as Josephine is such an interesting character who you don't really know that much about but it makes want to learn about her, because she really is this average woman who gets thrown into being the literal empress of France and her subsequent fall from that grace, you kinda want to delve into that historical text but she does very well and has...maybe intentionally and bizarre chemistry with Joaquin. Odd customs and behaviors and mindsets are to be expected when you travel in the fourth dimension. Bit of an ensemble cast of minor players but all did solid work. I quite liked it, it certainly did not disappoint, and I feel it can hold people's interest if they have any to see it. I do give it a recommendation, and 3 stars, 8/10! One more film before the winter of my discontent begins.

2nd Viewing: Blade Runner

Really it's more my 3rd viewing. I watched both the theatrical and final cut today so I could compare notes correctly.

And you know what? I may not fully get it, but this is a really damn good movie now that I saw it again! I highly enjoyed it, and wasn't just witness to the story and didn't feel much. I don't know the deeper meaning of the movie, probably never will, but it was a better experience this time. Cinematography and visuals are stunning and breathtaking, you can see the craftsmanship in everything, and I love the world it builds. Characters are interesting and memorable, especially Roy played to beyond perfection by Rutger Hauer, seriously the man needs an Oscar, he knows exactly what he needs to potray and how to do it. Decker is a great protagonist, and the story flows very nicely as he hunts these replicants down. I think it worked greatly in my favor to watch both versions, and I can safely say the final cut is vastly superior. What shocked me was the narraration was not that excessive in the theatrical cut, it cropped up...maybe 5 times in 2 hours of film, so it never felt overbearing. The final cut has so much better editing, framing, visual richness, and a more coherent story. I really enjoyed this movie, and no doubt will buy it soon. The immersion it sets, I think, is why it is so good. It sets up the technology, the characters, history of said characters, and a wonderful atmosphere. I can stare at those backgrounds for hours, they are so finely detailed and for paintings the depth is incredible. Blade Runner is a heavily visual film, no doubt, but the story it tells is interesting and engaging enough so that it can't just be considered eye candy. I will be seeing it more times in the future, and I fully agree with Harrison Ford and his views on the film, so the final cut is the version you should go for. But for curiosity's sake, if you want to, track down the theatrical cut. It's not often in life you can say the same movie can be viewed literally very differently. So I am very happy to have seen it again, we will touch on Blade Runner 2049 tomorrow, so until then my friends.

Blade Runner

I do not actually think it's fair to review a movie like Blade Runner on the first viewing. Yeah, it took me 22 years to finally see Blade Runner, a movie I've heard so much about and seen referenced countless times and only now have I seen the source material.

So Blade Runner is basically a sci-fi noir film following a detective on the hunt for human replicants for murder, and that's just the plot synopsis from what I saw. This is not a movie you can watch just once in your life, it's a difficult movie to fully describe. It's a quiet movie (I watched The Final Cut, so no voice over.) and you do have to pay attention to even slightly understand the plot. It's a visually rich film without a shadow of a doubt, and in retrospect Ghost In The Shell with Scarlett had much in visual style and art direction to be owed to Blade Runner. In fact almost every science fiction movie after 1982 owes some element to this movie. Now I know this movie is an adaptation of "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick, and I have read up on it briefly, but even then the movie is it's own entity. I don't know, it's just such a bizzare, mysterious, just strange movie and there's no way in hell anybody can form a true opinion on this film in one viewing, this is a movie that you have to watch multiple times so I may have to break a rule and next year I will rewatch Blade Runner and do an In Retrospect of it. There's just no movie with a look and story like this movie, so I feel really bad actually about writing this review, because I have no words to explain how I feel. I couldn't even really say it's a great or even good movie although I found little wrong with it, so it's just all depending on the person and how many times they are willing to watch it again. So that's why I absolutely have to watch this movie again and talk about it again, because it's just that kind of movie. I'm sorry I was all vague and not highly opinionated, but my mind was accepting what I was viewing and I was highly interested in the movie, it held my attention all the way through, but I just couldn't say anything very definitive besides rich visual appeal, so I have to say go watch this movie and please for the love of all things good in this world tell me what you thought of it, doesn't matter if you've seen it once or 50 times I would love to hear your opinions. All I know for sure is, I want that gun.

Alien: Covenant

First Alien movie seen in theaters, how was it?

It was good, it wasn't great nor was it terrible. It picks up 10 years after Prometheus (Which I have not seen, so I was not fully prepared for it.) with a colony ship en route to a new world, get sidetracked by some bizzare transmission, it's not an SOS, it's not a beacon of some form, and they decide let's go. I'm sensing a pattern here. So they get to this planet that has no form of animal life on it, they find the ship from Prometheus and encounter a character from it, and that's when the story kicks off. I dare not delve deeper. So we have Ridley Scott directing again, and he does fine work as always, nothing really spiked on my bullcrap meter...kinda. But that's my own doing by not seeing Prometheus, which I was hoping I did not have to see in order to get this movie. But anyway, everything is fine about the movie, actors are likable 90% of the time, the sets look great cause they are real, action wise nothing much occurs really except for a few shootouts, the music elludes to the original Alien, and I had fun watching it. But all in all, you gotta be a fan of the series to enjoy this movie. You can't just come in there willy-nilly, you have to be informed. I was mostly informed, so maybe if I watch Prometheus I can enjoy it more but if you are not a fan I doubt you are going to see this movie. Although it's good to see some Alien action again. That sounded bad, I apologize for that. So I best shut up now before I keep rambling. Till next week!

Alien (1979)

Yeah, yeah I know! It's not October, but it had to have happened some time. So here we go.

Alien, classic science fiction movie directed by Ridley Scott. Need I say more? Well just for the sake of this review, let's talk about it. It's still really good! Despite being made almost 40 YEARS AGO, let that sink in for a minute, it still holds up damn near perfect. The sets are magnificent, the atmosphere and horror is memorable, the characters all have their time to develop, the design for the alien is perfect, and Ridley Scott just killed it in this movie. I still say this is my favorite movie of his! So, story time, alright so the movie centers around this mining crew, and they recieve a distress signal on an uninhabited planet, they investigate and find a derelict spaceship that has been crashed on the surface for centuries. While investigating one of the crew finds these eggs that in no way resemble a vagina when they open and in the name of science he puts his face in it! This is wrong. So he gets this thing stuck on his face which then implanted an egg down his throat (Gross.) and he gets brought on board. What follows, is quite possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever watched on film, when an alien bursts out of a man's chest which takes about 3 minutes to occur to drag this horror out to near unbearable levels. Now we got an alien loose on the ship. Don't you hate it when that happens? So they got to track it down, which will no doubt end with one character surviving to kill the alien. A tiny bit slasher movie, but hey I dig that stuff! The cast is quite good, Sigourney Weaver gets to be a badass, Ian Holm is....enigmatic to me even to this day, and special thanks to John Hurt for quite literally birthing this series. He deserves special recognition for his sacrifice. The music I have to say is not what you would expect, it's entirely symphonic but still lays on the dread when stuff starts going down. A huge part of this movie is it's design, most of which created by H.R. Giger giving the spaceship a claustrophobic feel coupled together with Amiga computers, obviously showing the time of when the movie was made but it doesn't date the film at all. Major props to that. And then we have the alien spacecraft that has this whole living organism look to it, and it looks jaw droppingly awesome. So highly detailed, and vast in scale. 11/10 from me. But we have at least one more movie to review before Alien Covenant, so join me tomorrow for the action side of the Alien franchise.

Also, highly recommend you watch the trailer for this movie. Whether you've seen the movie or not, watch it. Just maybe not in a dark room, cause I did that and....yeah, I was paranoid for the next 3 hours.

Hannibal

Would you hate me if I said I kinda, sorta like this movie? This a very divisive movie so I get where both parties are coming from.

Hannibal is the last chronological film of Anthony Hopkins' outstanding run as our favorite cannibalistic psychiatrist. How does this movie hold up? Eh, it's not bad. It's a decent movie, it doesn't end very well, but I don't hate this movie. You can tell Anthony Hopkins is having fun, Julianne Moore isn't horrible as Clarice she does fine work, Gary Oldman is always a damn fine actor and he does really well as the villain here. Oh yeah and Barney is the friggin' man! I love Barney in all these movies, he is awesome. Frankie Faison, my God man. Rock on. So what is the story in this possible trainwreck for you of a movie? Hannibal is still on the run, Clarice has been disowned from the F.B.I., and Mason Verger is on a revenge hunt for Hannibal. Clarice figures if she can catch Hannibal first, her career as an agent will be saved. One of the things I enjoyed was seeing exstensive location shooting in Florence, it is a beautiful city and Ridley Scott really got a good feeling of the city. Oh yes, Ridley Scott directed this movie. Strange that. But it works well, he's a competent director in this so no harm done there. The way the story is told is a bit of a mess, it's not completely unfollowable, but you got to pay attention. It's a busy movie, so take note of several of the events in the movie. The ending is...difficult to explain. It's not a horrible piece of garbage, but it isn't all that great either. Some may call it a mixed bag. Actually the more I think about it, the less I like this movie. It's just adequate. Everything is passable, not good or bad, just...eh, okay. I'd take this movie with a severe grain of salt, it is without a doubt the weakest of the Hannibal Lecter movies. Oh, and for those of you wondering why Hannibal Rising isn't on here.....hahahahahaha! That movie is stupid and doesn't exist, and anyone who likes it is stupid. I know it's just my opinion but, I'm right.

Well, one week down. Tune in next week for some more classic horror movies.