OncomingStorm93

I saw something last night at a sold out IMAX showing of “KxG: Dumb Money” that I hadn’t seen in forever: Two kids, like 10 year old boys, who clearly snuck into the theater and were seathopping until they were just sitting on the ground staring over seats. Between that and Wingard’s passion for colorful guts and oozes, cinema is back baby.

I think part of the issue with KOTM was the overly-apocalyptic tone of the trailers, weirdly juxtaposed against classical/“beautiful” music and way too damn much orange/blue cinematography. Almost like a studio exec said people like those contrasting colors on posters so let’s literally drench every scene in the movie in orange or greenish-blue hues. Anyway, I’m pleasantly surprised at how non-abysmal the reviews for this are and how strong the opening weekend looks to be. Long live the moviegoers.

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Finally got to this tonight. “Kung Pow! Enter The Fist” had better ADR than the antagonist of this abomination.

Not even an earthquake can inspire a reaction out of Dakota Johnson. Not en ounce of emotion here. It’s just emptiness all the way down https://x.com/etnow/status/1756123491798290554?s=46&t=fS7FMGKGufDc6pfSRp7OCg

I can’t believe The Rock just showed up and displaced [other movie] from a highly anticipated title bout with Wicked.

You gotta factor that Apple views all these films more as marketing campaigns for their streaming service. After all, so much of the discussion is about Apple TV+. No press is bad press, free marketing, yadayadayada. How relevant is the BO discussion in that larger context? Certainly not the same for a film that a studio spent $200m of their own production budget on. Apple’s playing a different game. And I dare say it’s working for them.

As someone who thinks it is indeed anywhere near that bad, here's some spoiler-free reasoning: The dialogue is terrible. Starting with the "Argylle" book-within-the-movie, then the actual espionage. It's absolutely unimaginative at best, intellectually insulting at worst. The screenwriter on this has 4 screenwriting credits measured on RT (including Argylle). They're all between 8%-37%. I would be able to overlook the nonsensical plot twists if at least there was good banter, but this "crowdpleasing spy action comedy" lacks any of that (I'll give props where due, Catherine O'Hara has some great lines, but that's more because of her delivery) What's the point of an all-star cast if they lack chemistry? An unfortunate side effect of this film's central mystery, globetrotting nature, and frequent plot twists is that the actors can't really latch onto their characters, or how their character relates to any other individual in this film. With a constantly shifting story, there's no consistent characterizations, and thus the all-star talent can't really dive into their parts fully. Squandered talent. The action? I'm a Matthew Vaughn fan, but he's been neutered here by bad CGI and the PG-13 rating. When the action on display should clearly result in blood splatter throughout, but none to be seen, it takes me out. And there are some genuinely creative action scenes here, they just lack the impact they would have if Vaughn could be fully Vaughn. And the CGI is bad at times. Not "The Flash" bad, but still jarring. Finally, the editing. It's not terrible, but there's a central conceit to the editing that I thought was very poorly implemented. Can't say more but you will know what I'm talking about if you see the film.

I can’t get over how unfathomably stupid that film was, from start to finish. Truly lost some brain cells last night. And the half-sold Century City crowd was laughing at the film at the end. Group of 30-somethings behind me called it the worst film they’ve ever seen as the credits started rolling, and in the moment I couldn’t disagree. ”The real Agent Argylle” is gonna be a juicy meme this year. As in the phrase itself.

This was the stupidest shlock I’ve seen in theaters post-Covid. What on earth was Vaughn smoking while putting this together. The only good thing I can say about this film is that Sam Rockwell dance moments are in abundance.

maybe the real agent argylle was the friends we made along the way

I didn’t have an issue with Morales as the big heavy. I’ve seen him in Narcos and Ozark. In those shows he played an character, here he was just an ominous, mostly emotionless exposition device. Perhaps they’re saving the character work for part 2? I doubt it given how much rewriting there was. Hoult’s character “background” would have had to be different, he couldn’t realistically be someone Hunt knew professionally 30 years ago. I wonder what that character was going to be… Also, Morales’ “Ethan!” yell at the end was Into Darkness “Khan!” level of laughable

I’m not concerned about the marketing for the second one, as long as they take the proper lessons from the marketing on this one. That being the lack of a storytelling hook. It just relied on stunts, cinematography, and prior investment in the series, without adding any new clear hook. I just rewatched the trailers. The hook boils down to “big mysterious threat looms”. Big whoop. Compare that to Ghost Protocol’s “Hunt and co get blamed for Moscow bombing”, Rogue Nation’s “Meet the evil counter-IMF” and Fallout’s “Bad guy from last time wants revenge with nukes” and also “Hunt gets babysitter” It boggles me why the Dead Reckoning marketing didn’t at least establish the race for the keys, or perhaps highlight Grace as the fresh face. The Entity didn’t need to be kept a secret, since it’s introduced very early in the film. But at the same time, the truth is Esrai Morales didn’t have the presence of Cavill or Harris, The Entity doesn’t sound as interesting as The Syndicate, Atwell wasn’t given much action to show off, and the keys were weakly written plot devices. Next film’s marketing needs to be clear on the story, not play the JJ Abrams mystery box game.

I did catch American Fiction last night, greatly enjoyed it. Wasn’t what I was expecting based on the trailer. The racial satire is kinda secondary to a The Decendents style character study built around unpacking family trauma, in that tragicomedy mold. Not sure it’s an “awards worthy” performance from Wright. He’s fantastic but the role mostly calls for exasperation and resignation from him. Sterling K Brown was the MVP as he often is.

How is that not a flop when you consider what The Marhvrvw dhsssj lynebwha