2023 Films League Table

[Grand Moff Muffin]

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
3. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
4. Oppenheimer
5. Babylon
6. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
7. Sisu
8. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
9. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
10. M3gan
11. Haunted Mansion
12. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
13. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
14. Scream VI
15. Meg 2: The Trench
16. Hypnotic
17. The Flash
18. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
19. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (TV movie)
20. Plane
21. Renfield
22. The Enforcer
23. 65

Martin

[Benn]

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Liked it so much I bought the soundtrack in the bar afterwards.

[The Doctor]

It was very good.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
3. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
4. Oppenheimer
5. Babylon
6. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
7. Sisu
8. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
9. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
10. M3gan
11. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (refreshing animation style - probably my favourite TMNT film)
12. Haunted Mansion
13. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
14. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
15. Scream VI
16. Meg 2: The Trench
17. Hypnotic
18. The Flash
19. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
20. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (TV movie)
21. Plane
22. Renfield
23. The Enforcer
24. 65

Martin

[The Doctor]

We...we...AGREE.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Just re-watched 'The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan' on Blu-ray. My view that's it's the best Musketeers film adaptation to date remains unchanged from when I saw it in the cinema.

So refreshing that they didn't even attempt to put an English language dub on the disc.

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
3. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
4. Oppenheimer
5. Babylon
6. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
7. Sisu
8. Blue Beetle (DC learns to make their characters likeable at last)
9. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
10. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
11. M3gan
12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
13. Haunted Mansion
14. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
15. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
16. Scream VI
17. Meg 2: The Trench
18. Hypnotic
19. The Flash
20. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
21. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (TV movie)
22. Plane
23. Renfield
24. The Enforcer
25. 65

On the surface, Blue Beetle is DC's Venom meets Iron Man, but the family dynamic makes it come alive, and I loved the retro elements, which evoked Stargirl more than the DCEU. Recommended.

Martin

[Stomski]

See, I knew I'd hate that supporting cast in BB, thanks for confirming Martin!

[Bogatan]

Oh boy have not been keeping up to date.

1. Avatar The Way of Water

2. Puss in Boots : Whatever this ones called.

3. Antman 3:

4. 65

5. The Whale

6. RRR

7. John Wick Chapter 4

8. Shazam 2

9. Creed 3

11. Dungeons and dragons

12. Super Mario Bros

13. Guardians Vol 3

14. Fast X

15. Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse

16. Transformers Rise of the Beast (Imax) - Liked it a lot.

17. The Flash - So much good stuff in this and so close to being a surprisingly good film, but the botched final third ruins it all.

18. Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny - Ive never really felt the deep connection to Indie that most people my ages seem to have for at least some point in their lives. Still I like the character and the films and this was a decent send off.

19. Mission Impossible Dead reckoning Part 1 - It was an M:I film. A good one. Well half a good M:I film. Hopefully we see part two some day.

20. Elementals - Been a while since I got excited by a new Pixar release, which is a bit depressing. I mean they are still generally good to great, but I cant be bothered. So it took over 2 weeks to get around to seeing Elementals, but Im really glad I did. Nothing ground breaking, but lots of fun.

21. Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse - So good I saw it again

22. The Meg 2 - The first wasnt exactly grounded in realism, but the sequel has realy gone full scifi. Not bad, but unexpected.

23. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (Disney 100) - So long since Ive seen the early classics. Really amazing how little story there is even for a film thats only 80 minutes long. Somehow the sequence of the Dwarves arriving home and meeting Snow White is about 20 minutes long. Still it remains a thing of beauty.

24. Barbie - Oh boy! That was good. Gotta get back for a second viewing before it eventually leaves the big screen.

25. TMNT : Whatever this ones called - Really enjoyed it. Nice to see Spiderverses success leading to more experimentaion in feature animation.

26. Bambi (Disney 100) - Again I will have seen this before but I was still surprised by how different it is from what I think of as a Disney Classic. It almost plays out like a wildlife documentary with an occasion voice over added. ITs not a musical either, 2 songs, but non performed by any of the characters on screen.

27. Cinderella (Disney 100) - Again I know I'll have seen it before but had no memory of it. Really pleasantly surprised. More like what I expect from a Disney Classic than Snow White or Bambi.

28. Peter Pan (Disney 100) - Wow the native American stuff has not aged well. It was the part of the movie I had completely forgotten about.

29. Blue Beetle - fine.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
3. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
4. Oppenheimer
5. The Equalizer 3
6. Babylon
7. A Haunting in Venice (Branagh is still not Poirot, but this is my favourite one yet, I love Venice)
8. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
9. Sisu
10. Blue Beetle
11. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
12. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
13. M3gan
14. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
15. Haunted Mansion
16. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
17. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
18. Scream VI
19. Meg 2: The Trench
20. Hypnotic
21. The Flash
22. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
23. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (TV movie)
24. Plane
25. Renfield
26. The Enforcer
27. 65

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I get very few meetings scheduled for Friday afternoons, and lately I've been easily doing my week's quota of hours by Friday lunchtime, so... SuperScreen ticket for 'Expend4bles' booked for this Friday pm.



Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
3. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
4. Oppenheimer
5. The Equalizer 3
6. Babylon
7. A Haunting in Venice
8. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
9. Sisu
10. Blue Beetle
11. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
12. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
13. M3gan
14. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
15. Haunted Mansion
16. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
17. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
18. Scream VI
19. Expend4bles (silly)
20. Meg 2: The Trench
21. Hypnotic
22. The Flash
23. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
24. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (TV movie)
25. Plane
26. Renfield
27. The Enforcer
28. 65

Martin

[The Doctor]

It was awful. Expendables 1 and 2 were great fun. 3 missed the point but had its moments. 4 was just crap.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I liked the daft bit with the motorbikes.

Martin

[legios]

1. Shin Kamen Rider.
2. Tenet
3. No One Will Save You: An interesting, almost dialogueless alien (home) invasion horro film of sorts. An interesting premise - an agoraphobic woman whose town treat her as a pariah for some past event realises that they is an alien being breaking into her house...Things develop from there... Makes some interesting use of its fundamental conceit to make things rather atmospheric, and is surprisingly unnerving in places. More a psychological horror than anything, but even without going splatterpunk some of the violence that ensues actually has quite an impact. Interesting ending too, it took me a while to parse the implications of it, but it was rather unsettling once it had sunk in. Well worth a look if you have an interest in horror.
4. Glass Onion
5. Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucruz Doans Island: It's a feature-length remake of that one episode from the original Mobile Suit Gundam, remade with feature quality animation and mechanical and character designs based on the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin manga series. It's...fine... There is nothing here thematically that isn't in the original episode, just told slightly differently and with some very nice visuals. I think there is a good solid fifty-minutes in here, and another thirty minutes featuring characters and situations that aren't really given any context or proper introduction in the film. It is a very competent production, but a bit of an odd duck. I'm not sure how coherent it is if you don't already know the original series. And if you do, chances are it isn't particularly necessary... Nice to look at though.
(There is also a total of about ten minutes of material dotted here and there which is trying to convince you that you really need to buy the Premium Bandai kits of the cool field-custom and redeco mobile suits which...job out to the classic RX-81 and a classic Zaku... Which made me laugh far more than intended (i.e at all!) :-) )
6. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
7. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania.

Karl

[The Doctor]

Sept 24, 2023 16:02:30 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

I liked the daft bit with the motorbikes.

Martin

That was one of the few moments of joy for me.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
3. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
4. Oppenheimer
5. The Equalizer 3
6. Babylon
7. A Haunting in Venice
8. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
9. Sisu
10. Blue Beetle
11. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
12. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
13. M3gan
14. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
15. Haunted Mansion
16. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
17. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
18. Scream VI
19. The Creator (well made but lacking any originality)
20. Expend4bles
21. Meg 2: The Trench
22. Hypnotic
23. The Flash
24. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
25. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (TV movie)
26. Plane
27. Renfield
28. The Enforcer
29. 65

'The Creator' might have deserved praise had it been made 25 years ago, but in the century of Christopher Nolan science-fiction films like 'Inception' and 'Tenet', cinema-goers should be given more of an intellectual challenge. The makers are clearly hoping audiences will be swept up in it emotionally and so be blind to the gaping plot holes. Sounds harsh, but it feels like it was plotted by a committee of SF fans who all want to rip off different existing films.

Martin

[Jim]

I finally made it to the cinema this year!

1. Fallen Leaves

A lovely film, which could sound grim on paper but which is actually really heartwarming and funny, as well as political, in a very deadpan and understated way. Highly recommended.

[legios]

1. Shin Kamen Rider.
2. Tenet
3. No One Will Save You.
4. Glass Onion
5. Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucruz Doans Island
6. Spiderman: No Way Home: That was definitely a Spider-Man film that exists, and is reasonably watchable. The central gimmick, of getting actors from previous Spider-Man films back to play the villain or the Spider-Mans that they played doesn't interest me one way or another really. But on the bright side, it did mean we got a pretty good cast assembled in one place to do some bit part stuff and a bit of voice-acting. It was mostly competent, although the final action set piece was by far the least interesting such sequence in the film on a visual level. And it was nice that for once a Marvel movie doesn't end with "And then the hero killed the villain and everyone cheered". Final analysis:- yeah, it was fine.
7. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
8. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania.

Karl

[Grand Moff Muffin]

My favourite film of 2023 was released on Blu-ray today.

Had to get the steelbook.

Martin

[Pinwig]

I need a handy-dandy boxed set of those still so I can work out which ones I've not seen.

[Benn]

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
2. 23 Seconds To Eternity

Not sure how I feel about this one, a collection of artsy films and music videos from The KLF, but with very little in the way of giving them context.

[Bogatan]

1. Avatar The Way of Water
2. Puss in Boots : Whatever this ones called.
3. Antman 3:
4. 65
5. The Whale
6. RRR
7. John Wick Chapter 4
8. Shazam 2
9. Creed 3
11. Dungeons and dragons
12. Super Mario Bros
13. Guardians Vol 3
14. Fast X
15. Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse
16. Transformers Rise of the Beast (Imax)
17. The Flash
18. Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny
19. Mission Impossible Dead reckoning Part 1
20. Elementals
21. Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse
22. The Meg 2.
23. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (Disney 100)
24. Barbie
25. TMNT : Whatever this ones called
26. Bambi (Disney 100)
27. Cinderella (Disney 100)
28. Peter Pan (Disney 100)
29. Blue Beetle - fine.

And again not keeping up with this.

30. One Hundred and One Dalmations (Disney 100)- Damn I had forgotten how good this is. Just love the atomshpere and art.

31. Equalizer 3 - Strange series of films but I continue to enjoy them. the cinema had seat service in that screening. Very odd.

32. Expendables 4 - Honestly cant remember if I have seen 2 or 3. This was..... odd. Statham is always good and I was happy to see Megan Fox. The bike scene was great. Other parts were very half hearted. This time the screen had balacony seating which was way higher than the screen. Made for an interesting view.

33. Dream Senario - Well that was odd again. Really uncomfortable and unpleasant to watch at times. But always facinating till near the end when it changed tone very suddenly which just left me with questions.

34. The Marvels (Imax) - Not top tier, but loads of fun thanks to the cast. Plots mostly an excuse to have the three leads together which is honestly enough, but also does a bit of housekeeping tying up threads form Captain Marvel and GOTG vol 1. Only an hour and 40. Nice. Theres a credit scene just before the credits and one after the animated section of the credits. The first one made me very happy and the second is one of the big ones which will likely be spoiled sooner than later.

Only real negative for me was the ongoing rushed low quality look to the VFX. really frustrating. Mostly they are fine but then things they've been doing perfectly for 15 years now look rubbish.

Theres an audio clip at the end, like the one at the end of Endgame. Really not worth hanging around for.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Nov 13, 2023 14:47:05 GMT Bogatan said:

The Marvels (Imax) - Not top tier, but loads of fun thanks to the cast. Plots mostly an excuse to have the three leads together which is honestly enough, but also does a bit of housekeeping tying up threads form Captain Marvel and GOTG vol 1. Only an hour and 40. Nice. Theres a credit scene just before the credits and one after the animated section of the credits. The first one made me very happy and the second is one of the big ones which will likely be spoiled sooner than later.

Only real negative for me was the ongoing rushed low quality look to the VFX. really frustrating. Mostly they are fine but then things they've been doing perfectly for 15 years now look rubbish.

Theres an audio clip at the end, like the one at the end of Endgame. Really not worth hanging around for.

Agree with all of this, except I realise now that I really don't care about unpolished VFX any more in films like this. No CG is going to match the quality practical effects of Tom Cruise movies, so if they want to cut the costs somewhere in silly sci-fi movies like Quantumania and The Marvels, it won't spoil my enjoyment of them if they cut the quality in the CG department. Good CG doesn't make a movie good, and bad CG doesn't (usually) make a movie bad. Not when the film's just supposed to be a bit of fun, anyway.

SPOILER: Click to show

Loved the training montage. And I would buy a T-shirt that says "Stop running. Let the Flerkens eat you."

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
3. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
4. Oppenheimer
5. The Marvels (silly fun with a cast that clicks)
6. The Equalizer 3
7. Babylon
8. A Haunting in Venice
9. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
10. Sisu
11. Blue Beetle
12. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
13. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
14. M3gan
15. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
16. Haunted Mansion
17. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
18. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
19. Scream VI
20. The Creator
21. Expend4bles
22. Meg 2: The Trench
23. Hypnotic
24. The Flash
25. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
26. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (TV movie)
27. Plane
28. Renfield
29. The Enforcer
30. 65

Martin

[Bogatan]

Nov 13, 2023 17:49:06 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Nov 13, 2023 14:47:05 GMT Bogatan said:

The Marvels (Imax) - Not top tier, but loads of fun thanks to the cast. Plots mostly an excuse to have the three leads together which is honestly enough, but also does a bit of housekeeping tying up threads form Captain Marvel and GOTG vol 1. Only an hour and 40. Nice. Theres a credit scene just before the credits and one after the animated section of the credits. The first one made me very happy and the second is one of the big ones which will likely be spoiled sooner than later.

Only real negative for me was the ongoing rushed low quality look to the VFX. really frustrating. Mostly they are fine but then things they've been doing perfectly for 15 years now look rubbish.

Theres an audio clip at the end, like the one at the end of Endgame. Really not worth hanging around for.

Agree with all of this, except I realise now that I really don't care about unpolished VFX any more in films like this. No CG is going to match the quality practical effects of Tom Cruise movies, so if they want to cut the costs somewhere in silly sci-fi movies like Quantumania and The Marvels, it won't spoil my enjoyment of them if they cut the quality in the CG department. Good CG doesn't make a movie good, and bad CG doesn't (usually) make a movie bad. Not when the film's just supposed to be a bit of fun, anyway.

SPOILER: Click to show

Loved the training montage. And I would buy a T-shirt that says "Stop running. Let the Flerkens eat you."

Martin

It doesnt affect my view of the film (or tv series) as such. But I notice it and that takes me out of the moment.

The inconsistancy is detracting. I can happily watch TOS with its 60s VFX and I can happily watch SNW with its modern VFX. But if for one scene in the middle of an episode SNW used the 60s Gorn costume in place of the SNWs version with no explanation, it would distract.

Too many current Marvel projects include occasional effects straight out of the early (98-05) CG era. its not the end of the world, but I think I'd probably find much less distracting If the entire film looked that way rather than the ups and downs we're getting.

[Bogatan]

And now I really want to see the SNW episodes using the TOS Gorn.

[The Doctor]

I didn't even know an MCU film was out. Wow. I guess I really have lost interest of late.

-Ralph

[The Doctor]

Nov 13, 2023 23:38:46 GMT Bogatan said:

And now I really want to see the SNW episodes using the TOS Gorn.

It's the only proper Gorn.

-Ralph

[Bogatan]

Nov 14, 2023 10:09:06 GMT The Doctor said:

I didn't even know an MCU film was out. Wow. I guess I really have lost interest of late.

-Ralph

Another knock on affect of the strike is the lack of promotion.

Shame as it is a lot of fun.