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Menty Watches Movies.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

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I am catching up with some of the Marvel films that have slipped through the cracks. I've seen most of them, but this, the latest Doctor Strange and No Way Home, I haven't gotten around to yet. I'm not sure why. I really enjoyed the first Tom Holland outing, so it's weird that it took me this long. But if I keep trying to explain why it takes me so long to watch stuff or the sporadic nature in which I do it, then it will become a theme, so let's not.

Considering this is the final phase three film after Endgame, the choice to make it a rather breezy affair seems wise. It sets up No Way Home (which I just finished as I write this), which is far more heavy-hitting and consequential, so making this a more lighthearted adventure makes sense.

I liked it! I thought all the teenage angst stuff and the bumbling teachers were all done well, where they could have easily fallen flat with it. Most of the jokes hit, everyone looks like they're having a good time making the film, and it's just generally a fun ride. I got a few decent laughs out of all the banter before the main plot and big action scenes took center stage. Ned and Betty's whirlwind romance on the school trip and subsequent "no hard feelings", mutual break-up at the end was excellent and a good counterpoint to MJ and Peter.

Gyllenhaal is great as Mysterio, but even though films like these get a free pass on being absurd, I never really clicked fully with his motivations and the manner in which he uses the drones to make mock superhero battles to fool everyone into thinking he's a great hero. There are a lot of plot problems with the setup and execution of the whole thing, and yes, it's a comic book film, but it does stretch even comic book film logic to its limits in places.

Gyllenhaal acting all sincere and good towards Peter before switching to his real persona was probably the best bit of acting in the film. Shout out to Tom Holland, though. He's pretty much faultless as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. He plays the role so well that it's easy to miss that he's actually a very good actor. Does that make sense? He seems so natural at it that you can take it for granted.

All the whizz-bang, pew-pew CGI battles are a spectacle, as you would expect, and the ending sets everything up nicely for whats to come. It's fun!

Peter Parker: You can't have seen me because I'm not Spider-Man. And also, on the news, it was the Night-Monkey.
MJ: The Night-Monkey?
Peter Parker: Yeah.

7/10
 
The part where Mysterio was fooling Peter with illusions (I think there's two fake Nick Furys or something) I remember standing out as looking really good and it feels like they've struggled to hit that level of SFX post covid/working the SFX artists to death.
 
CaptainWacky said:
The part where Mysterio was fooling Peter with illusions (I think there's two fake Nick Furys or something) I remember standing out as looking really good and it feels like they've struggled to hit that level of SFX post covid/working the SFX artists to death.
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The film looked spectacular, yeah. When you see those big showpieces in these films, you do tend to give a fleeting thought to the insane work load they put their VFX artists through. There have been more than a few mutterings over the past few years about how badly those in the industry are treated, and the quality of some of the work in Marvel (and other big blockbuster films) has been all over the place. It's an already cutthroat industry where competing companies are desperately trying to underbid each other to get the gig and then when they do get it they have half the runtime needing VFX shots, which must be cripplingly hard to get done on their tight schedules. I remember in Homecoming there being some pretty shaky CGI work, but this one looked top notch.
 
I think Sony probably give them a bit more money to spend than stingey Disney (maybe, I don't know.)

You can feel the strain in the post covid effects work (if you ever watch Ant-Man 3...lol.)
 

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)​

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My ongoing mission to watch films that I had some intention to watch at one point but, for whatever reason, slipped through the cracks. Next up is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

I have a passing interest in historical naval combat (read: I liked the Horatio Hornblower series), and I like Russell Crowe, so this makes sense.
I also remember the viral tweet from Crowe when someone dissed the film during the pandemic and had intended to watch it because of it, and well, here I am and I have.

The story's setup is simple. so simple that the film begins with this great opener that has since gone on to become a meme.

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HMS Surprise is hunting the French frigate Acheron off the coast of Brazil, despite being the smaller and less well-armed of the two vessels. It quickly becomes apparent that perhaps they are the hunted and not the hunter, and that the captain of the French vessel is a skilled and able commander to match the indomitable commander of the Surprise.

Russell Crowe plays the captain of the Surprise, Jack Aubrey, or "Lucky Jack," as the crew calls him. His foil in the film is the ship's genius doctor, Stephen Maturin, played impeccably by Paul Bettany. After a near-miss with the Acheron where they get a pasting from the larger ship and barely manage to escape, Aubery decides to pursue the Acheron and attempt to take her on despite having fulfilled his mission statement by pursuing her past Cape Horn and the obvious reckless danger involved.

This film is amazing. Seriously, I had an inkling that it was good because I know a lot of people rave about it and lament the fact that it got unlucky at the box office, but I was still blown away by this one. It's so good. Everything is spot on. I'm no naval expert, but you can just tell that the attention to detail and authenticity are right in the pocket. Crowe is awesome as Jack Aubery, with a rousing and intriguing performance that makes you believe that you would follow him on a suicide mission if he asked you. He completely manages to miss the trap of making him too one-dimensional, and that's probably because Russell Crowe is a phenomenal actor, so we needn't have worried.

Bettany, as I previously mentioned, is excellent as the doctor, and the rest of the supporting cast of the crew are all played brilliantly by their respective actors, of which some are actual kids that still hold their own, so kudos there (reading up on some trivia, it seems they took the off-screen bonding of the cast pretty seriously, and it shows).

If you thought this was just going to be filled to the brim with ship battles and action scenes, you were wrong. There is an entire sub-story about making scientific breakthroughs on the Galapogas Islands, and the film uses its scenes in the downtime between battles to really make you care about the crew and develop the personalities and relationship between Aubery and Maturin. It's really well done.

Cinematogrophy is beautiful, with great sweeping, majestic shots of the ship and a fantastic sense of the gritty, harsh realities of life at sea in that era, and once the cannons start firing, it's a visceral and violent experience.

It turns out that the whole thing is based on the Aubery-Maturin series of books written by Patrick O'Brien between 1969 and 2004. This feels like some pretty basic trivia I should have been aware of but didn't know about. This film is so good that it makes me want to read them. There are TWENTY though. Again, it's a real shame there were no sequels. The material is obviously abundant to draw from and the film ends in a way that would have made sequels easy.

And that was the original intention. This was meant to be the first film in a continuing franchise, but because of poor box office numbers, it didn't happen.

Despite the poor showing at the box office, it's critically acclaimed and was nominated for ten Oscars, winning two.

So yes, I loved it and can recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. You should see it. There.



Dr. Stephen Maturin: Jack, I fear you have burdened me with a debt I can never fully repay.
Capt. Jack Aubrey: Tosh! Name a shrub after me. Something prickly and hard to eradicate.
Dr. Stephen Maturin: A shrub? Nonsense! I shall name a great tortoise after you: Testudo Aubreii!

I promised myself that I would not go overboard (heyyyyy) with my scores, but I'm going for it.
9/10
 
That's something I wanted to watch at the time and never got round to and I find it hard to go back to movies after a certain number of years have passed. One comment I've seen about it over the years is that it's a better Stark Trek movie than most Star Trek movies?
 
It touches on quite a few cornerstone themes from Star Trek, and Aubery and Maturin are very Kirk/Spock or Kirk/McCoy (depending on the scene), and the conflict itself goes full on Wrath of Khan whilst also keeping the more whimsical, wide-eyed exploration of the best of Trek and the close-knit nature of the crew, so yes, it's easy to see why people say that. Gene was heavily influenced by Horatio Hornblower, which in turn is an obvious major influence for the Master and Commander series, so it all comes full circle. If you like quality Star Trek, then I don't see how you can't enjoy this film.

Seems to be a popular idea.
 
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