Westworld - Season 2
7.4
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Westworld isn't your typical amusement park. Intended for rich vacationers, the futuristic park --...
One on One
Book
101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the...
Black Panther (2018)
8.3
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After the events of Captain America: Civil War, King T'Challa returns home to the reclusive,...
sci-fi action black panther superhero
Arsenal: The Greatest Goals
Nick Callow and C. Arsenal football club pl
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Arsenal Football Club has enjoyed a storied history at the top table of English football since its...
Game Of Thrones - Season 6
9.1
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Summers span decades. Winters can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne continues. ...
Game Of Thrones - Season 3
8.9
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Summers span decades. Winters can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne continues. ...
Sustainability Planning and Collaboration in Rural Canada: Taking the Next Steps
Lars K. Hallstrom, Mary Beckie, Glen T. Hvenegaard and Karsten Mundel
Book
Rural communities, often the first indicators of economic downturns, play an important role in...
LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018) in Movies
Sep 30, 2020
A few things I liked...
- The fracking company were moustache twirling type villains, and were fairly amusing in the tiny amount of screentime dedicated to them.
- The CGI for the monsters is pretty decent, and the practical effects for close ups are also good.
- The whole final act when the monsters eventually turned up was effectively entertaining
But....
It takes a painfully long time to get to that bit. The hour plus of runtime preceding the monsters attacking is mostly boring setup, messy pacing and dialogue and a waste of a good cast.
The younger cast are fine, but it's hard not to feel that Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Margot Robbie and Michael Sheen are just severely under utilised, in a sometimes humorous comedy that is trying ball achingly hard to be an Edgar Wright movie.
Slaughterhouse Rulez isn't awful by any means, more accurately frustrating because it feels like a much better movie is buried somewhere beneath the final product.
Ryan Hill (152 KP) rated Ant-Man (2015) in Movies
May 10, 2019
There are only a handful of ways to treat an origin story an Ant-Man breaks no molds there. It hits every single beat you'd expect it to, builds up the story like you'd expect it to and concludes it like you'd expect it to. So it is left to the moments in between and the schwung with which it delivers them to make the film. And it works like a charm.
Every time I felt myself getting a bit annoyed with yet another piece of expository dialogue or predictable plot development, it sideswiped me with a fantastic action sequence, hilarious fight scene or the utterly brilliant Michael Peña. There is so much clever entertainment chucked into the film that it was very easy for me to just say 'Fuck it' and enjoy the ride.
What I loved about it was the toned down treatment of the bizarreness of the super powers. It would have been very easy to go completely overboard with this, but Reed actually manages to bring a level headedness to the fantastical which I appreciated and which actually strengthened what they were basically trying to instill in Rudd's character, some semblance of identifiable humanity. As much as I love Wright, I'm perhaps one of the few people who don't think he would have been able to restrain himself and gone the route of Scott Pilgrim which is not something that would have worked I feel.
Rudd is excellent and plays it straight, casting off a vibe of 'What the hell am I doing?' very successfully. He is likable and his transformation into this unlikely hero worked mainly because of the way he played it. The rest of the cast is great (CGI-Michael Douglas will haunt me forever) and Michael Peña truly is stellar. Give him his own film. Please.
The main attraction in this type of film is usually the action. And while the action in this is fantastic, there is surprisingly little of it, making the final confrontation actually something to look forward to And boy does it deliver. It uses the potential of the, let's be honest, silliness of the powers to its fullest, making it what it should be. A thrilling ride.
Ant-Man surprised me. Wright's involvement is palpable, which is good. But its main attraction lies in the simple fact that it is effortlessly entertaining. Fun, funny and exciting. Exactly what it should be.
Steph Freeman (26 KP) rated Black Panther (2018) in Movies
Feb 21, 2018 (Updated Feb 21, 2018)
Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, and Danai Gurira were an amazing protagonist team, with Martin Freeman and Michael B. Jordan rounding out the character archetypes beautifully. The costumes, make up, and cinematography were gorgeous, but the real star of the movie for me was Letitia Wright. Her comedic timing and her elegance made Shuri the best supporting role I have watched in a long time.
I don't know a lot about the culture in Africa, a terrible oversight of my American education, but I do have friends from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Togo who were very excited to see their culture represented in such a blockbuster film. It was refreshing to see something so beautiful that will hopefully inspire young Americans to learn about a culture outside of our borders.