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Marvel's The Defenders  - Season 1
Marvel's The Defenders - Season 1
2017 | Action
Starts well, fades away into pure meh
The coming together of some lesser names in the Marvel universe (though I feel sorry for Daredevil being pigeonholed here, well done Affleck!) was exciting. The Defenders for me was the goal, with so much to watch first, two series of Daredevil, one each of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and then Iron Fist. Sadly, that dreadful series of Iron Fist really pummelled me into near-submission. So I didn't start Defenders with the excitement I had hoped to.
The series starts well, setting up interactions between each of these characters and sewing the seeds of the plot that was to come. But that plot really turned out to be quite dreadful and clichéd (cabal of powerful rich pantomime baddies looking to take over the world/harness mystical powers in a ... wait for it ... hidden underground lair).
Luke Cage and Daredevil were not enough to rescue this plot or the series itself from Iron Fist's toxicity. The action scenes are now so boring, it really is just a room full of people punching each other. Go back to that iconic corridor action scene in Daredevil where he single-handedly takes out numerous people at pace, and then compare to this, which is him just hitting and being hit repeatedly over the space of a few minutes. While large scale combat scenes like that must be really hard to choreograph, I wish they had showed less of it and focused more on character development and plot.
By the end I was slightly energised for Daredevil series 3, but have opted instead for The Punisher.
  
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Michael Barker recommended The Killers (1964) in Movies (curated)

 
The Killers (1964)
The Killers (1964)
1964 | Crime, Drama, Mystery
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Ernest Hemingway’s superb eight-page short story is the jumping-off point and inspiration for these two essential and very different movies (Stacy Keach reads the story magnificently in one of the DVD extras). I don’t understand why more people don’t know the 1946 Siodmak film. For my money, this is not only the best noir movie of all time but is just about my favorite Hollywood drama from the 1940s. The complex narrative structure begins as a jumbled Rubik’s Cube, and, slowly but surely, each piece falls into its precise place by movie’s end (the stuff Quentin Tarantino’s dreams are made of). The moody atmosphere provided by Siodmak and his technicians is a marvel. The cinematic execution of a heist has never been better. Here marks the birth of two glorious stars: Burt Lancaster (a beautiful caged animal, all teeth) and Ava Gardner (wow). Paul Schrader’s seminal essay on film noir, as a DVD extra, is invaluable. For those of you who wonder why Siegel’s 1964 violent, stylish, quirkily entertaining B version (the first TV movie ever made) is on this list, I have two words for you: Lee Marvin. There has never been a star like him before or since. Words simply cannot do justice to the magic of this guy—the timbre of his voice, the calm, paranoid, roughneck danger in his physical moves. In a spectacular extra on this DVD, fellow actor Clu Gulager gives a very moving (and, one feels while watching it, very truthful) account of working with Marvin, Siegel, and Ronald Reagan (who hated the movie—yet another reason to see it!)."

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Peter Rabbit (2018)
Peter Rabbit (2018)
2018 | Animation
An adaptation of Beatrix Potter's classic tale of a rebellious rabbit trying to sneak into a farmer's vegetable garden.



This was a pleasant way of starting my Saturday. There's nothing wrong with it, but I don't think I'd feel the urge to see it again.

Kids films always have those adult undertones to keep parents and films nerds entertained. But the ones in Peter Rabbit were frustrating in their fourth wall breaking. It felt like they were all saying, "you got that right?"

There were some laugh out loud moments, but writing this seven hours later I'm having trouble remembering any of them.

Before this one was released there was a lot of uproar about a food allergy scene. Those fluffy tailed little terrors deliberately set off Mr McGregor's food allergy and he ends up having to inject himself with his epi-pen. There were talks of a boycott because of this "food bullying" scene... okay, fine I can see your point... but do you take your family to see a Marvel/DC movie and tell them not to go around punching people and trying to wear pec-enhancing body armour? No you don't, because you bring them up to know right from wrong and how to make valid fashion choices. From a very young age you teach young children to be nice to other people, this isn't the first time they'll see a type of bullying in a film, it won't be the last. Use it as a teaching tool. I find it really difficult to be offended by content that should be counter balanced by common sense.
  
Morbius (2022)
Morbius (2022)
2022 | Action, Sci-Fi
For better or for worse, Morbius is finally out and, well, it ain't anything to write home about, but it's not quite as piss poor as I'd been hearing.
I've always liked the Morbius character, a solid C-list villain of Blade and Spider-Man, but did he ever really need his own movie? Well evidently not. It's essentially a run-of-the-mill comic book adaption that feels like it belongs in the mid 2000s with Elektra and Daredevil. It's kind of like a less fun Venom. Jared Leto isn't too shabby in the title roll when he's onscreen by himself, but there's just no chemistry between anyone otherwise, rendering a lot of the runtime quite boring. The action scenes are the kind of predictable grey CGI orgies that we've come to expect by now, and it's difficult to make out what's even happening on some occasions. The CG itself is hit and miss. Morbius actually looks pretty decent for the most part, but Matt Smith's character looks like a reject from I Am Legend. The movie suffers from a lack of an R rating, with a lot of weird looking bloodless scenes where gore was clearly meant to be present. To top things off, it boasts a mid credits scene that at best, doesn't even try to make sense, and at worst, manages to cheapen the events of Marvel movies that have come before.
Honestly though, I didn't outright hate Morbius. There are certainly worse comic book adaptions out there, but I won't be in any rush to watch again. Sony insisted on pushing ahead with it, and ultimately could have done so much more.