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Films you've seen/film discussion

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Butts

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It was great. A lot of reviews have already pointed this out, but it had that comfortable, familiar feeling of 'coming home' a la Stand By Me. As decent a Stephen King adaptation as you're ever likely to see in a cinema.

Certainly better than The Dark Tower but hardly in The Exorcist / Omen quality bracket. About as scary as Jackanory. :p
 
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TheNewNo2

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I rewatched Kingsman: The Secret Service last night, on the basis that I'll probably see Golden Circle this weekend.

This was the third time I've watched it, and while its politics are a bit weird, it's a great fun movie. And I can't believe I'd forgotten it contained the immortal line, "If you save the world, we can do it in the asshole".

3.5/5


And I did see Kingsman: The Golden Circle. It was... It was amusing. It was exciting. It was almost complete nonsense just to pin together some mediocre fight scenes. 2.5/5 - Decent.

I also watched ARQ on Netflix. Someone wakes up inside a time loop, only to find that time loop is itself inside a time loop. Needlessly obtuse, albeit an interesting new spin on Groundhog Day. 2.0/5 - Meh
 
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fowler9

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Alien Covenant. Alright, entertaining enough and tied up most of the loose ends. I was a bit disappointed as I was with Prometheus. Tried watching it a second time and got bored. I hope that is it for the Alien franchise.
 

backontrack

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Looking for film recommendations as I tend to steer clear of the usual box office smashing kiddy cartoons or marvel explodathons.
I'm looking for something that's either incredibly gritty or realistic, preferably British although I can live with anything American. Something preferably politically or current affairs based or something that makes a good sociological statement.

Are you OK with French subtitled films? If so, then La Haine is perfect. It ticks all of those boxes, pretty much.
 

EM2

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Just got home from seeing Blade Runner 2049.
First experience of IMAX 3D, which works brilliantly. It looks amazing, and sounds great too.

There are obviously some similarities; there are scenes that immediately make you think of a similar scene from the first film, there's characters that remind you of other characters. And it's raining (when it's not snowing).

Do you need to have seen the original? I'd say no. It definitely helps, I think but I think there's more than enough in it that it stands on its own.

Does it answer everyone's fundamental question from the original, i.e. is Deckard a replicant?
SPOILER (highlight below to read):
I don't think it does! It's still not made blatantly obvious and there's more than enough ambiguity.
 

TheNewNo2

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Blade Runner - I got this on Amazon Video as I thought Blade Runner 2049 trailers looked interesting, and I probably should find out what the story was about. Frankly I thought it was pretty abysmal. I found I couldn't stay interested in the story, none of the characters were compelling, and the whole thing seemed to be a load of pretty disjointed scenes with little followup from one to the next. 1.0/5.0 - Dire

American Assassin
- I saw this in the cinema, and from the off it was not good. Man on a beach, he proposes to his girlfriend, she is immediately killed. It could be seen coming a mile off and served as a frankly needless backstory for a main character who had very little in him other than being annoyed that someone killed his girlfriend. The foreshadowing in this was all pretty obvious - I know that Chekov's Gun is a thing, but would it kill producers to put something on the background news snippets which simply wasn't related? All this being said, Michael Keaton is as ever excellent, and he's the one who saves this from being a complete mess. As for the consequences of exploding a nuclear weapon... those seemed rather downplayed. 2.5/5.0 - Decent

Self/Less
- Seen on Netflix. An interesting body swap drama which didn't try to take itself too seriously. Fun action, likeable characters. Not brilliant, but a good bit of fun. 3.5/5.0 - Good
 

fowler9

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Blade Runner - I got this on Amazon Video as I thought Blade Runner 2049 trailers looked interesting, and I probably should find out what the story was about. Frankly I thought it was pretty abysmal. I found I couldn't stay interested in the story, none of the characters were compelling, and the whole thing seemed to be a load of pretty disjointed scenes with little followup from one to the next. 1.0/5.0 - Dire

American Assassin
- I saw this in the cinema, and from the off it was not good. Man on a beach, he proposes to his girlfriend, she is immediately killed. It could be seen coming a mile off and served as a frankly needless backstory for a main character who had very little in him other than being annoyed that someone killed his girlfriend. The foreshadowing in this was all pretty obvious - I know that Chekov's Gun is a thing, but would it kill producers to put something on the background news snippets which simply wasn't related? All this being said, Michael Keaton is as ever excellent, and he's the one who saves this from being a complete mess. As for the consequences of exploding a nuclear weapon... those seemed rather downplayed. 2.5/5.0 - Decent

Self/Less
- Seen on Netflix. An interesting body swap drama which didn't try to take itself too seriously. Fun action, likeable characters. Not brilliant, but a good bit of fun. 3.5/5.0 - Good

Since you hate Blade Runner and I love it what films do you like so I have a basis for comparison?
 

TheNewNo2

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Since you hate Blade Runner and I love it what films do you like so I have a basis for comparison?

Things this year which I've rated at least 4/5 are Split, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Bad Moms, Fast & Furious 5, The Belko Experiment, Miss Sloane, Wonder Woman, Doctor Strange, Nerve and Wind River.
 

fowler9

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Things this year which I've rated at least 4/5 are Split, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Bad Moms, Fast & Furious 5, The Belko Experiment, Miss Sloane, Wonder Woman, Doctor Strange, Nerve and Wind River.
Cheers mate, thats a good mix, am going watching Blade Runner this afternoon. Of the films on your list I have seen I would rate them similarly. Ah well, I will enter the cinema with hope in my heart but fearing the worst.
 

PeterY

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The Kingsmen was watchable and it had it's funny moments.

Blade Runner seemed to drag on, I must I was tired when I saw it and I was glad when the end finally happened.
 

fowler9

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Blade Runner 2049 I found really enjoyable but very hard work. It looked and sounded amazing. The original was and always will be one of my favourite films. This, like Premetheus and Alien Covenant will just be remembered as a decent film. Don't know why they bothered making it.
 

TheNewNo2

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The Bad Batch - A film on Netflix which looked like it might be interesting and starring Jessica Alba. It turned out to instead by Suki Waterhouse, with Jason Momoa in his usual role as "grunt who sort of speaks English" and Keanu Reeves being a child molester I think? The story seemed to be the idea that not all cannibals are evil, which is just weird. 1.5/5.0 - Bad
 

ComUtoR

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Blade Runner - I got this on Amazon Video as I thought Blade Runner 2049 trailers looked interesting, and I probably should find out what the story was about. Frankly I thought it was pretty abysmal. I found I couldn't stay interested in the story, none of the characters were compelling, and the whole thing seemed to be a load of pretty disjointed scenes with little followup from one to the next. 1.0/5.0 - Dire


Which version did you watch ? On simple level. Voiceover or not ?

Personally I think the voiceover is the best version by far and pulls you in deeper. Some of the subtleties of the film are made clearer.
 

TheNewNo2

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Which version did you watch ? On simple level. Voiceover or not ?

Personally I think the voiceover is the best version by far and pulls you in deeper. Some of the subtleties of the film are made clearer.

I watched the Final Cut. No voiceover.
 

ComUtoR

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That could be it then. IF you liked the film itself but was confused or just didn't follow the sub plot then I fully recommend the voice over version. I much prefer that version but it is always heavily criticised by critics and even Harrison Ford is reported to have hated doing it.

Philip K Dick (plot wise) is hard to watch at the best of times. I've seen all 7 versions but always come back to the 'Original'
 

TheNewNo2

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Geostorm - So, I like apocalyptic dramas, I like Gerard Butler, I like gratuitous demolition of American landmarks. I should have loved this.

It was awful. 1.5/5.0

I will now explain at great length why.

So, the basic premise is that in 2019, a number of extreme weather events (floods, hurricanes, etc) caused the world to realise "****, we need to do something about this", so they build a massive network of satellites to control the weather. That this happens in 2019, when the US will still have a president who believes global warming is a Chinese conspiracy, quite literally made me laugh out loud in the cinema.

It didn't get much better.

Gerard Butler designs and builds this network off-screen, and at the start of the film he's giving evidence to a Senate committee who basically decide to make his brother fire him. Three years later, an Afghan village gets flash-frozen, and they realise something is wrong with the system. Someone in space gets blown out an airlock. The bald guy (turns out to be Secretary of State) says they should call Gerard Butler. This is the first sign that he's evil - because this is a reversal, it should be the brother saying call Butler, the SoS saying "we fired him for good reason". So Gerard Butler leaves behind his daughter with his estranged wife and goes to space. He promises the daughter he'll come back, she knows he won't, and that seems reasonable.

Oh, did I mention Butler's an alcoholic now?

Then Hong King explodes with a Smart Car being chased by explosions. Buildings quite literally fall like dominoes.

So, they send the alcoholic to space as the only cargo on a shuttle, and he meets the captain of the ISS and a team of people including a British jerk who is also clearly evil, because we saw him be a jerk to the guy who was blown out the airlock. They try to retrieve the Hong Kong satellite to get its hard drives but it tries to kill them and the hard drives get fried. Butler realises the airlock which exploded has hard drives too, and part of it is still stuck nearby, so they send the two highest value people on the station out to get it, and then Butler's suit tries to kill him but he miraculously just avoids floating off towards the moon but loses the bit of airlock. He and the rest of the station somehow also avoid being punctured by the millions of bits of debris he just created.

I shall interject at this point to say that somehow the entire ISS has earth-normal gravity, despite only small parts of it spinning to generate centrifugal gravtiy. This for some reason includes the docking bay, which is an incredibly stupid place to have gravity all the time.

Gerard Butler saved the hard drive! He hid it as soon as he grabbed the airlock, but he only tells one person because someone tried to kill him. The airlock was fine, so he goes back to the security cameras, and finds guy-blown-out-the-airlock took a download of the Afghanistan satellite and hid it, because there are no cameras in the locker room. There's a virus and they need to whole reboot the system to fix it, but they are locked out.

Meanwhile, Butler's brother is shagging someone from the Secret Service, and he also knows this techie who he uses to deciper an extremely simple code Butler sent him which says "trust no one". The guy from Hong Kong who was driving the Smart Car and works for the ISS somehow is attacked in this massive office building where he's the only person there. He goes to Butler's brother and is promptly run over after being pushed into the road. The Techie finds references to "Project Zeus", but she can't open the files without being on the White House network.

Secret Service agent comes home and finds Techie wandering around in her underwear and Brother makes things worse. He tries to convince her to let them use her access to the White House. In doing so, he uses the phrase "this is bigger than you and me"; which Techie corrects as "you and I". And this shows how this movie likes to think it's being clever but fails, because "you and me" is actually the correct case here. Anyway, Secret Service agrees and decrypts the files. It's about using the satellites as weapons! Now they realise they need to shut down the network, so they decide to steal the keycodes from the president. Brother lies his way on to Air Force One.

Bald guy reappears, and calls Brother on the lie. He says Brother can trust him. Brother explains, Bald Guy says the president himself is the keycode - it's biometric - then slips up and admits he is the villain. Brother escapes and decides to kidnap the president. He and Secret Service succeed.

Meanwhile in space, things are getting worse, satellites are going rogue, and one fries to flash-freeze Rio. It freezes lots of people in bikinis, drops a plane from the sky, but somehow this one person in a bikini is able to outrun it when no one else can, and they successfully launch another satellite to crash into the first one and knock it offline. But then the station's self-destruct activates. Why does it have a self-destruct someone asks, apparently it's in case it was ever falling to earth. Why they can't abort the self-destruct is never explained. It's also never explained why the self-destruct blows up a small bit of station every minute or so getting slowly closer to the control centre, rather than just blowing up the entire thing at once. Anyway, everyone evacuates, except Butler, who stays behind to input the shutdown command.

Brother and Secret Service are in a taxi with the President, being chased by goons through a massive lightning storm. Lightning which strikes everywhere except this massive metal crane, which then just falls over on its own. Very little effort is made to explain to the President what's going on or why they've kidnapped him. Bald Guy is waiting on the edge of town with an RPG, and when he sees the President's car he shoots it, because geolocation says it's them. Except then Secret Service shows up behind him and cold-cocks him. Miraculously at that point all the state police show up, and the earth is about 20mins from destruction, but POTUS lets aldie explain that what he planned was to kill everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and also all America's geopolitical rivals. Also quite a lot of America actually, leaving the Midwest and Texas and that's about it. Why he leaves that bit, heavily Republican when he's allegedly a Democrat, is unexplained.

Daughter is with her mother and points to say "Daddy's in space". She appears to have got about 10 years less able to talk since she left Butler.

POTUS is taken to Cape Canaveral. The director of the Kennedy Space Centre explains how imperative it is that POTUS put in his authorisation, but then spends a minute commiserating with Brother about how Butler's still in space. POTUS has his eye scanned by his personal data slate then leaves. Why he didn't do this half an hour ago is unexplained. Brother realises Butler is still in space and going to die. It for some reason takes a full minute for POTUS's eye test to make it to space, but Butler must now run to plug it into the right terminal on the other side of the station. Why he needed to use the holoroom and couldn't take the call from the server room is unexplained. He's running but then the bit between him and the server room blows up. But then he's in a space suit! How he managed to get in a space suit inside 30 seconds, given you literally cannot put on a spacesuit by yourself, is (say it with me) unexplained. He makes for the server room, but his keycode won't open the airlock. Oh no! But then the station manager turns up again, and shows him he was trying to open a broom cupboard and not the airlock. They make it to the server room, somehow avoiding all the billions of pieces of deadly shrapnel, and they manage to press the reset button with one second to spare.

In Dubai, a guy on a camel is killed in a tsunami, and in Moscow the Kremlin starts to melt.

Butler's still in space, and the station's still exploding, but still everything is working and he transfers control back to NASA. Then he sees a satellite which has miraculously hung around. This satellite has an entry hatch and space for two people inside, and he and Station Manager get in. "We have to get as far away as possible before the station explodes" he says, and one second later the station explodes. But he's still alive! And he uses the satellite's thrusters to signal SOS, which a shuttle, which is miraculously undamaged from all the trillions of pieces of deadly shrapnel, connects with and saves him. They land and the earth is saved. Daddy takes daughter and brother fishing, they all hate it.



In some ways this is a decent movie. There's a good story in there, and I have to say it was kind of fun. But it was just buried under so much cliché, obvious foreshadowing, cosmic coincidence and denial of reality that it was just in the end plain bad. It's like if there's a song you really like by your favourite band. But then One Direction do a cover of it, which is awful, and they also change history so the original song never existed. This is that song.
 

DaleCooper

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Slaughterhouse Five (1972) - A film based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name. Billy Pilgrim has, in his own words, become "unstuck in time" and constantly jumps between his home in America in the 70s, Dresden in WW2 and the distant planet Tralfamadore. An unusual, low-key film but the constant changes of scene maintain the viewer's interest. I was particularly impressed with the lead actor's (Michael Sacks) ability to portray the main character at widely spaced times of his life - the make-up department also did a good job. 7.0/10
 

DarloRich

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Thor: Ragnarok

Preposterously silly fun hammed up to the max with a sound track influenced by synthesizers and Jean-Michel Jarre. A good two hours worth of escapism and perhaps one of the best Marvel films simply because both the silly banter and the action are full on an well done.

( oh and it has got "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin fired in at various points - how did it take Marvel so long to use this song?)
 

fowler9

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Thor: Ragnarok

Preposterously silly fun hammed up to the max with a sound track influenced by synthesizers and Jean-Michel Jarre. A good two hours worth of escapism and perhaps one of the best Marvel films simply because both the silly banter and the action are full on an well done.

( oh and it has got "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin fired in at various points - how did it take Marvel so long to use this song?)
A mate of mine said he hated the sound track because it just hammed up the film to much in a way that didn't work, too much 80's electro stuff in his opinion. I'm happy to give it a go.
 

DarloRich

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A mate of mine said he hated the sound track because it just hammed up the film to much in a way that didn't work, too much 80's electro stuff in his opinion. I'm happy to give it a go.
i thought it matched the film quite well. It is a film which seems to capture comic book silliness quite well.
 

DarloRich

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Thor:The Dark World - Thor saves the world. Again. Not the best of the stable but decent enough. Good action sequences and good humour. Slow in places but enjoyable.

TT: Closer to the edge - Documentary focusing on the 2010 Isle of Man TT race and riders Guy Martin, John McGuinness, Conor Cummins, and Ian Hutchinson. It never once glosses over what could happen to the riders and the risks they take with the terrible accidents that occurred to Conor Cummins & Guy Martin shown in detail. (How Cummins survived his accident to ride again is beyond belief while Martin walked away from his bike turning into a fireball after a crash) The riders are very open and human. The film is funny and moving. It is superb. One of the best sports films I have ever seen.

The Dictator - Political satire staring Sacha Baron Cohen. It is obscenely provocative, crude, vulgar and childish at times yet funny & satirical in places. It tips to far in direction of the first ideas sadly.

Event Horizon - British-American science fiction horror film directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Set in 2047, the film follows a crew of astronauts sent on a rescue mission after a missing spaceship, the Event Horizon, spontaneously appears in orbit around Neptune. They learn that the Event Horizon was responsible for testing an experimental engine that opened a rift in the space time continuum, allowing a hostile entity on board the ship. Not sure about this one now. In the past I thought it was really good but watching it again there are loads of unanswered questions. It is still a good film but could have been a great one with a bit more thought.

Team America: World Police - satire of big-budget action films and their associated clichés and stereotypes, with particular humorous emphasis on the global implications of the politics of the United States. It is gloriously offensive, funny, and rips into both left and right and their approach to terrorism and geo politics. All in puppet form.

Sin City - Ensemble case in a modern film noir made up of independent but interconnected and very violent stories. It is uncompromisingly graphic, violent, and a very adult comic book translation. I think it is a really good film but it wont be for everyone as it lacks humanity and focuses on often over the top violence.

Dusk till Dawn: Silly vampire/crime mash up. It is uneven but fun. I quite like it. If onyl for some of the ways in which the vampires get off'd

Cloverfield: American monster/horror filmed so as to look like footage found on survivours cameras Alien Godzilla ( plus helpers) attack New York. Military fight back. Everyone dies, expect creature. Everyone in the world seems to like it, except me. Maybe i should watch it again as i seem ot be missing something. I thought it was dull, slow, boring and just not very good.

Poseidon: Wolfgang Peterson directed remake of the 1972 classic Poseidon Adventure starring Kurt Russell. It isnt very good. Awful almost.
 

fowler9

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Thor:The Dark World - Thor saves the world. Again. Not the best of the stable but decent enough. Good action sequences and good humour. Slow in places but enjoyable.

TT: Closer to the edge - Documentary focusing on the 2010 Isle of Man TT race and riders Guy Martin, John McGuinness, Conor Cummins, and Ian Hutchinson. It never once glosses over what could happen to the riders and the risks they take with the terrible accidents that occurred to Conor Cummins & Guy Martin shown in detail. (How Cummins survived his accident to ride again is beyond belief while Martin walked away from his bike turning into a fireball after a crash) The riders are very open and human. The film is funny and moving. It is superb. One of the best sports films I have ever seen.

The Dictator - Political satire staring Sacha Baron Cohen. It is obscenely provocative, crude, vulgar and childish at times yet funny & satirical in places. It tips to far in direction of the first ideas sadly.

Event Horizon - British-American science fiction horror film directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Set in 2047, the film follows a crew of astronauts sent on a rescue mission after a missing spaceship, the Event Horizon, spontaneously appears in orbit around Neptune. They learn that the Event Horizon was responsible for testing an experimental engine that opened a rift in the space time continuum, allowing a hostile entity on board the ship. Not sure about this one now. In the past I thought it was really good but watching it again there are loads of unanswered questions. It is still a good film but could have been a great one with a bit more thought.

Team America: World Police - satire of big-budget action films and their associated clichés and stereotypes, with particular humorous emphasis on the global implications of the politics of the United States. It is gloriously offensive, funny, and rips into both left and right and their approach to terrorism and geo politics. All in puppet form.

Sin City - Ensemble case in a modern film noir made up of independent but interconnected and very violent stories. It is uncompromisingly graphic, violent, and a very adult comic book translation. I think it is a really good film but it wont be for everyone as it lacks humanity and focuses on often over the top violence.

Dusk till Dawn: Silly vampire/crime mash up. It is uneven but fun. I quite like it. If onyl for some of the ways in which the vampires get off'd

Cloverfield: American monster/horror filmed so as to look like footage found on survivours cameras Alien Godzilla ( plus helpers) attack New York. Military fight back. Everyone dies, expect creature. Everyone in the world seems to like it, except me. Maybe i should watch it again as i seem ot be missing something. I thought it was dull, slow, boring and just not very good.

Poseidon: Wolfgang Peterson directed remake of the 1972 classic Poseidon Adventure starring Kurt Russell. It isnt very good. Awful almost.
Loved Event Horizon. It was like a mix of Hellraiser and 2001. Ha ha. Maybe not. Jason Isaac's is in it and he spent his younger years growing up by me. Didn't think much of Cloverfield but 10 Cloverfield Lane was really good.
 

fowler9

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Manchester By The Sea - Loved it but really can't put my finger on why. Lots of really good characters played really well. Not a massive amount happens but what does is done really well, it is sad but not a tear jerker. One of my favourite films this year. It just kind of fishes you in and you want to know what is going to happen to everyone.
 

TheNewNo2

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Thor: Ragnarok (twice). Excellent fun, that truly leans in to the utter ridiculousness that is Thor. Why it's set on a planet where it's eternally the 80s I don't know, but it works. The villain is a bit rubbish - you feel there was a good character there, but she's left with nothing to do really except chew the scenery at unimportant characters. It's also pretty bad that she is literally the only named female character in the film (technically there's two more, but one's name is never heard, and the other, Valkyrie, is quite literally a Valkyrie, hence it's a job rather than a name, and no one ever thinks to ask her her name). Bechdel failure, but funny. 4.0/5

Justice League. Continuing the DC Extended Universe tradition of being generally rubbish. It brings back Ben Affleck's Batman, who no one liked, Henry Cavill's Superman, who no one wanted, and also Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, except she's wearing less this time because the film was directed by a man. Another villain whose motivation merely seemed to be "he's evil". Bechdel pass though. 2.0/5
 
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