Dave

[Dave]

It’s more the tone that makes it feel separate to the first three movies, for me. It’s more playful, silly, and actively takes itself much less seriously. All of which I find quite good fun, just different. 

[Dave]

The sequels are also pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised when I first watched them, based on their reputation.

I think that they are better than their reputation suggests, but their biggest weakness is that the action, story and more philosophical aspects aren’t integrated as well as they are in the first movie. In the first film there’s very much a sense of each action sequence being integral to the story and ideas of the movie, whereas in Reloaded and Revolutions it feels like the story stops every so often for a big action scene. They’re a good expansion on the ideas of the original though.

The most recent sequel, Resurrections, is fun but you have to see it more as meta commentary about the franchise itself rather than a true continuation. I enjoyed it but I don’t really consider it part of the same story we saw in the original trilogy.

[Dave]

[Dave]

I’m going to let my only opinion in this thread be this…
The Matrix is probably the greatest film ever made.
Ok bye now

[Dave]

Well yes, one is actually entertaining.

I really don’t want to know which one you don’t like, as I’d be upset either way.

[Dave]

Similar thinking to Clem.

23/10/2026 

Confidence & Paranoia, Parallel Universe, Stoke Me A Clipper.

[Dave]

[Dave]

Triple posting, but I also tend to rate things in their own context rather than globally, for example, how good is this as an episode of Doctor Who, how good is this as a Star Wars movie. This gets rid of silly thoughts like “am I really about to rate Claws of Axos higher than The Godfather?

I think this is really important. I mean, The Naked Gun isn’t The Matrix but they both achieve what they set out to accomplish magnificently.

[Dave]

The way people use ratings online is so warped. It’s like:

10/10 = nothing ever gets this 

9/10 = almost nothing gets this, the very best

8/10 = very good 

7/10 = good
6/10 = meh

5/10 or below = shit
I don’t understand what the point of rating things out of 10 is if half the scale is treated as an amorphous blob of bad.

It’s like that scene from Animaniacs.

[Dave]

Yeah the old video game mags used to love a percentage score. Probably a bit too specific for me when you’re arguing the difference between an 86% and an 87%, but then to be honest I end up feeling the same about star ratings and marks out of ten too – ultimately they’re all blunt instruments of numerical ranking that are nowhere near as informative as actually reading someone’s thoughts on what they’re rating, whether they liked it and why.

[Dave]

You mean do the same as – ugh! – IMDb?

Well IMDb has decimal points, so might as well be a percentage. 

[Dave]

22/10/2026 

Give & Take, Cured.

[Dave]

I am generous with giving out 3, 3.5, and 4 star scores, with very few of 2.5 stars or less.

If they allow .5 star ratings then why not just make it a mark out of 10?

[Dave]

In Bodyswap, Rimmer-Lister’s chest full of donuts also contains a single cream bun.

It’s like a Where’s Wally.

[Dave]

[Dave]

Isn’t a square rectangle just a square?

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Dave]

Ok, maybe not impossible. 

[Dave]

21/10/2026 

Pretty impossible. 

[Dave]

[Dave]

The hotel room fight was the high point, there was actually some wit to that. Mostly though you could accurately simulate the movie by having Street Fighter cosplayers stand around shouting their characters’ catchphrases.

[Dave]

I have a friend who gives absolutely everything 5 stars. 
Well, that’s a lie, he watched the most recent Dredd movie recently and gave that 2 stars (… o.o) but I’d say 75-85% of all movies he reviews (1 or 2 per week) get 5 stars.
Anyway, Street Fighter is a 5 star movie according to him.

I can see it being fun in a beers-and-pizza trashy Friday night kind of way, but even then it’s so choppy and messy that it barely even feels like a story, just a series of moments that mostly exist to call back to the games (and occasionally, the first movie).

[Dave]

It really isn’t is it. I was relieved when it was over but that ending is Officer Rimmer levels of ‘wtf that’s the end??’ 

I was genuinely baffled when it suddenly ended as I assumed the final act was just getting going. Bizarre.

I enjoyed the anime segments though. I would have rather watched that film.

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Dave]

Watching an old movie where they do the credits at the start (the Star Trek movies) is so dull, thank God for George Lucas. Although the latest movie I am aware that did this was Men In Black, all the way in 1997. I’m sure many, many other movies have done it since, but most seem not to.

The Debut does this, which is how I found out that Craig Bierko is in it. I don’t think I would have recognised him otherwise. 

[Dave]

[Dave]

Yeah, Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men is a fun run.

[Dave]

Clare Grogan reunites with Chris and Craig

“As you can see, they were really, really, really, really, really thrilled to meet me.”

[Dave]

20/10/2026 

DNA, Camille, Dimension Jump. 

[Dave]

Saw an advance screening of The Debut tonight. I loved A Real Pain and this is just as good but in a totally different way. Sometimes sillier than I expected (including some great sight gags), but there’s some decent pathos there too and it has something interesting to say about the relationship between art and reality and how they feed into each other. Plus Giamatti and Moore are both great as you’d expect.

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Dave]

19/10/2026 

Can of Worms.

[Dave]

[Dave]

18/10/2026 

Confidence and Paranoia. 

[Dave]

Buffy was a unifying sensation, I think pretty much everyone my age I knew who was into anything alternative watched it because it had the horror/fantasy/teen/comedy/action crossover appeal, plus it was actually high quality.

Yeah, and for me being a longtime comics fan you could clearly see the DNA of Spider-Man and X-Men in it.

[Dave]

Yeah Charmed is another good one. That slightly new age witch-y type stuff was very big among girl friends in the 90s.

[Dave]

Just dodging the obligatory “girls liked that stuff too”, I know. But none of the ones I knew.

I only noticed female friends of mine really getting into the MCU once Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth took their lead roles, for some unfathomable reason.

There was definitely female-oriented geek stuff out there though, perhaps more in the supernatural realm like Buffy or The Craft or whatever.

[Dave]

Ah that makes sense. I couldn’t for the life of me remember that Kryten costume.

[Dave]

I’m convinced “cult show” just means “popular, but science fiction, so only anoraks like it”

Yeah and now that geek culture is mainstream you don’t really hear it applied to modern shows.

[Dave]

Well, Street Fighter isn’t very good.

[Dave]

17/10/2026 

I still don’t have a clue what I’m looking at.

[Dave]

Lovely to see it again in its original form.

[Dave]

[Dave]

Celebrity Traitors.

[Dave]

Halloween III is the only one I’ve seen

I watched this far too young and found it incredibly disturbing. 

[Dave]

I watched all of the X-Men movies up to Apocalypse last year and really enjoyed them, not high cinema by any means but I liked the retro (yes, early 2000s is retro) feel of it all and how there was none of that post-ironic, ashamed-of-itself bullshit you get in modern superhero flicks.

This stuff is a real problem and has killed a lot of my interest in the superhero genre. You watch early superhero classics like the Donner Superman, Burton Batman, Singer X-Men or Raimi Spider-Man all the way up to Nolan’s Dark Knight movies really, and they might be a bit dated in places but they all play things pretty straight and sincere and certainly don’t feel ashamed of the source material.

Even the early MCU films were played fairly straight – yes, Iron Man was funny and dry in places, but it still felt sincere.

I think it was Whedon’s popularisation of that kind of winking, ironic and self-aware humour that led to superhero movies becoming like that. That approach worked great in Buffy and the first Avengers movie, but it quickly became a bit overdone and familiar and was already feeling old by the time Gunn made it the basis of his take on Guardians of the Galaxy.

And now almost everything feels like that. Yes, you might get the occasional Wonder Woman or The Batman that play things more straight, and sometimes going for a silly fun take can work (like Tom Hardy’s Venom), but mostly superhero films these days feel like they’re going to great lengths to make the audience aware that they’re really not taking any of this seriously, so why should anyone watching it?

[Dave]

Teenage Sex and Death in Camp Miasma

This is another one I wanted to catch. Hopefully soon.

[Author]

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