Charlie's Angels Blu-ray Review & Comments

Casimir Harlow

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Thanks for the review, always well done. As to the film and ever watching it? God no.
 
I liked it. Entertaining enough for a Saturday night.
 
Thanks for the review, always well done. As to the film and ever watching it? God no.
It's funny that as bad as the marketing was for Birds of Prey I still (very belatedly) ended up watching it. I just can't see myself ever watching this. If it came on I don't think I would even leave it on in the background.
 
My God was this terrible. "Get woke, go broke" was never truer, the same for Birds of Prey. It's the only way Hollywood and others might, just might, learn, but even then, especially in those countries which have a subsidy structure where funding is now dependent on fulfilling politically correct and other criteria.
 
Thanks for the review Cas.
I'm with Coulson - I actually haven't seen BoP yet, but will. However, this? Nope.
P.S. I have given strict instructions to my wife that if I ever say to her "Hey, Sweetheart, shall we watch the latest Charlies Angels Movie Tonight?" She immediately calls an Ambulance, as dementia has obviously set in!
 
Cas have you seen many other Blu rays release in 1080p but with HDR encoding instead of just SDR? This is the first I’ve heard of such a release!
 
Cas have you seen many other Blu rays release in 1080p but with HDR encoding instead of just SDR? This is the first I’ve heard of such a release!

Hah, that's because it's a typo, was supposed to be 1080p/AVC. Changed it now, cheers.
 
Talking of HDR it's available on iTunes in Dolby Vision/Dolby Atmos.
 
I watched this last night as my wife was wanting to see some "girl power" films (hell they even mention that in this one). By that she's talking groups of women who get on together to overcome some obstacle, she doesn't want man-hating as such but dig's at sexism are her cup of tea. So recently we saw Charlies Angels (2000), Full Throttle, Ocean's 8, and now this.

To be fair Cas's review did mean I knew what was coming!

cas said:
Perhaps 20 years later nobody expected to find it hard to replace Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, but this latest endeavour proves the opposite.

That is so true. I wouldn't say any of those three names as a big draw but together in the first film they starred in they had an amazing chemistry and sense of joy which was just infectious. I didn't get that at all off the 2019 film.

cas said:
Kristen Stewart's off-the-cuff jokes are funny and fast, and it's almost enough to make you wonder whether the film might have been a whole lot better if they'd found a better duo to team her up with
Personally I thought she utterly stole the movie at the start and her co-stars were never in the running to catch up even at their best (whatever that was). I wouldn't say either of the other two were bad actresses and they had their moments but frankly the nerdy on-training one I would have dearly like jettisoned very early.

That said you have to like some of what she managed. Her largely passive subjection at least audibly to sexism is very important to see someone suffering on screen but whether it clicks in certain people's (mens'!) minds I don't know.

For me though Kirsten Stewart got a bit tiresum and I was enjoying seeing Ella Balinska more by the end... ok, perhaps that was more to do with seeing.


What wrecked the film for me though, and I didn't enjoy it beyond Ralph being the but of a joke, was a partly Patrick Stewart being a let down to me (looked like he slept walked through it), partly that the twists didn't make sense on every occasion, but really that the tone was so driven towards "woman can do anything men can do" that it went beyond the positive and uplifting and more towards "Bond and other action star men can be callous dicks and so can women". Having seen Charlies Angels (2000) the other day going from that to not giving a care about killing mooks, getting over death really very quickly, killing mooks in contrived grusom ways and then trying to deliver an utterly Bond post mortem line.... well just spoiled the mood.

It's completely not that I don't want women to be brutal in films (I love enough old/new action films with female stars giving out punishment) but perhaps I don't like them making a really bad stab at being heartless male killers in what is largely a comedy!

It was also a bit tiring reading Banks saying if the film bombed (she said it in advance and of course it did bomb) it would be because men didn't go to see women in action films. She was quite specific in what counted as "women in action films" so Superhero films (Wonder Women, Captain Marvel) didn't count and clearly there must have been reasons why Aliens (with Ripley not being a stone cold killer), Nikita (might be a bad example as it was French), Resident Evil and all the rest didn't count either.
 
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I watched this last night as my wife was wanting to see some "girl power" films (hell they even mention that in this one). By that she's talking groups of women who get on together to overcome some obstacle, she doesn't want man-hating as such but dig's at sexism are her cup of tea. So recently we saw Charlies Angels (2000), Full Throttle, Ocean's 8, and now this.

To be fair Cas's review did mean I knew what was coming!



That is so true. I wouldn't say any of those three names as a big draw but together in the first film they starred in they had an amazing chemistry and sense of joy which was just infectious. I didn't get that at all off the 2019 film.


Personally I thought she utterly stole the movie at the start and her co-stars were never in the running to catch up even at their best (whatever that was). I wouldn't say either of the other two were bad actresses and they had their moments but frankly the nerdy on-training one I would have dearly like jettisoned very early.

That said you have to like some of what she managed. Her largely passive subjection at least audibly to sexism is very important to see someone suffering on screen but whether it clicks in certain people's (mens'!) minds I don't know.

For me though Kirsten Stewart got a bit tiresum and I was enjoying seeing Ella Balinska more by the end... ok, perhaps that was more to do with seeing.


What wrecked the film for me though, and I didn't enjoy it beyond Ralph being the but of a joke, was a partly Patrick Stewart being a let down to me (looked like he slept walked through it), partly that the twists didn't make sense on every occasion, but really that the tone was so driven towards "woman can do anything men can do" that it went beyond the positive and uplifting and more towards "Bond and other action star men can be callous dicks and so can women". Having seen Charlies Angels (2000) the other day going from that to not giving a care about killing mooks, getting over death really very quickly, killing mooks in contrived grusom ways and then trying to deliver an utterly Bond post mortem line.... well just spoiled the mood.

It's completely not that I don't want women to be brutal in films (I love enough old/new action films with female stars giving out punishment) but perhaps I don't like them making a really bad stab at being heartless male killers in what is largely a comedy!

It was also a bit tiring reading Banks saying if the film bombed (she said it in advance and of course it did bomb) it would be because men didn't go to see women in action films. She was quite specific in what counted as "women in action films" so Superhero films (Wonder Women, Captain Marvel) didn't count and clearly there must have been reasons why Aliens (with Ripley not being a stone cold killer), Nikita (might be a bad example as it was French), Resident Evil and all the rest didn't count either.
What many in Hollywood don't seem to realise is that it is mostly men who go to see these films. So if you deliberately alienate 60%+ of your audience (men) then your film will flop, end of story.

The kind of people calling for these films are a very loud minority contributing to an echo chamber, reinforcing what they read on Twitter. So Hollywood think that this is what women want to see. What's worse is that those same people don't go to see these films, they just want the check box ticked.

In the end, women did not go to see this film, or GB2016, or Charlies Angels or Dark Fate (irony much?). But I'm guessing that these films were all in the pipeline around at around the same time.
 
I enjoyed this on Blu-ray Saturday night. It was exactly as good as I expected it to be, a little bit more mature/serious than the previous versions, but still a knowing wink. Hot women kicking ass with quips. I didn’t think it laid overmuch into the politics of our time, Kristen Stewart was amazing, and looked fantastic throughout. The premise was always high-concept, low-plausibility, nothing new to see here, but if you like action movies that sit somewhere betwen high-budget franchise and straight-to-video this fits the bill well.
 
... I didn’t think it laid overmuch into the politics of our time, ....
You didn't see the very obvious pointers towards girl power while just about every male character was an idiot or evil? Fair enough but the director herself said outright that this was exactly about the politics of our time. Not trying to start a fight (seriously) but that was the whole point of the film otherwise it wouldn't have been made. Almost identical circumstances to Birds of Prey with almost identical results.
 
You didn't see the very obvious pointers towards girl power while just about every male character was an idiot or evil? Fair enough but the director herself said outright that this was exactly about the politics of our time. Not trying to start a fight (seriously) but that was the whole point of the film otherwise it wouldn't have been made. Almost identical circumstances to Birds of Prey with almost identical results.
Haven’t seen Birds of Prey yet, but my yardstick here is the Charlie’s Angels franchise, which was always about empowering women to be strong, sexy, independent and kick-ass, and prove they were good as, if not better than male counterparts It’s not as if they’ve rebooted it and made all the men women, for gods sake. Then I’d probably have issues. Not having seen Birds of Prey, at least that as well is about female characters originally conceived as female characters.
 
Haven’t seen Birds of Prey yet, but my yardstick here is the Charlie’s Angels franchise, which was always about empowering women to be strong, sexy, independent and kick-ass, and prove they were good as, if not better than male counterparts It’s not as if they’ve rebooted it and made all the men women, for gods sake. Then I’d probably have issues. Not having seen Birds of Prey, at least that as well is about female characters originally conceived as female characters.
When it comes to fictional TV shows and films, some of my [best friends are black]* most memorable and usually favourite characters are the strong, intelligent women. Rosalind Pearson from the Gentlemen, Poison Ivy from the Harley Quinn cartoon, Satai Delenn from Babylon 5. Of course you have Ripley and Sarah Conner. These are well written characters, many with full story arcs in stories where they don't have to crap all over men to show their superiority.

Even the most powerful male characters have struggles to overcome, flaws to reconcile. Superman is an alien which brings its own issues with a weakness for Kryptonite. Batman is borderline psycho, James Bond (in the old days) almost always got himself in trouble. Luke Skywalker was immature and impatient, it cost him his arm. Modern fem*n*st films have caricatures in place of women. Insulting and belittling their male counterparts. Perfect with no flaws. If you are going to make fem*n*st fantasy then at least hire talented writers and directors. That's what the Harley Quinn cartoon did and up until the last few episodes, it worked a treat!


* Sorry couldn't resist ;)
 
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Luke Skywalker was immature and impatient, it cost him his arm
Nah, it was "Only" a hand! ;)
This losing a limb thing did seem to be a Skywalker tradition, though, as Annakin Skywalker lost his right arm fighting Count Dooku, and then his left arm AND both legs in the fight with Obi-wan in "Revenge of the Sith".
 
You could always go and hide behind your moma's skirts till those nasty feminists have gone away again.
 

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