Movie Thread/Now Watching

[markm]

Jon, I got you, Babe.

[JonoBlade]

Picking up a thread from a few weeks back, somewhat unexpectedly my daughter wanted to see Avatar after we watched a making-of documentary. So we saw 1 on Friday night and then went to see 2 at IMAX on Saturday. Now it's her favourite film. 

I mean, it's a spectacle on a scale you don't see that much these days. I'd read that it drags a bit, which is inevitable in a 3 hour film, but reckoned it did a decent job of keeping the pace up.

Purely from a technical perspective it is astounding. There's plot holes you can drive a space cruiser through but, visually, you gotta hand it to Cameron.

Not for grumpy goats, though. It is the cinematic equivalent of the most noodly space prog concept album with minimum 12 minute songs imaginable.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

19 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Picking up a thread from a few weeks back, somewhat unexpectedly my daughter wanted to see Avatar after we watched a making-of documentary. So we saw 1 on Friday night and then went to see 2 at IMAX on Saturday. Now it's her favourite film. 

I mean, it's a spectacle on a scale you don't see that much these days. I'd read that it drags a bit, which is inevitable in a 3 hour film, but reckoned it did a decent job of keeping the pace up.

Purely from a technical perspective it is astounding. There's plot holes you can drive a space cruiser through but, visually, you gotta hand it to Cameron.

Not for grumpy goats, though. It is the cinematic equivalent of the most noodly space prog concept album with minimum 12 minute songs imaginable.

 

Disclaimer not neccessary Jon-boy! As the king of the contrarian counterculture malcontents (according to Marky Mark) I don't pay any attention at all to what might be playing at the movies and particularly not to any of these big budget Hollywood blockbuster debacles which seem to be basically interchangeable with one another. Especially nowadays when they've gone full OTT fantasy superhero nonsense, I have less than zero interest in any of it. I would honestly be willing to pay for the privilege of not having to sit through them.

I'm also the proud father of a 9 yo who couldn't possibly be expected to sit still or stay quiet for even a relatively short movie, so I've never once taken him out to the movies and he's never once asked me to. He generally can't even be persuaded to watch movies with me on the tellie (yes, I feel stupid as saying "tellie") he only barely has enough attention span for 10 minute Youtube videos. I did manage to get him to sit and watch that Christmas Chronicles (Kurt Russell playing Santa) movie with me on Netflix one December (2021?) and he said he liked it, but that was the last time.

But I'm not grumpy my crunchy vegan friend, it's really not my fault that your modern mainstream Gen-X/Millennial pop culture sucks so hard and I have no use for it.

[Parker]

Recently watched the movie Stalker on blu ray by Criterion Collection, and loved it. This was my second time viewing the film, and my wife's first, and we were both blown away. It was made in the soviet union, so the idea is not to make a great sci-fi movie with flashy visuals and special effects, but rather to make a great sci-fi movie with a lot of philosophical content and engrossing atmosphere. A top notch movie that was actually recommended by Varg Vikernes. Unfortunately, many involved with making the movie died of cancer because it was filmed in a toxic waste dump.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

One of my favorite sub-categories of film is the cold patient spy film. I can't get enough of it. That craving hit me pretty hard yesterday, so I rewatched The Third Man. Movie guys love to gush about the camera work in this one, but honestly the film would be tremendous even if it had the dullest shots in the world. Not that I'm unappreciative of the excellent use of shots here, but that's not where the movie gets its power.

 

It struck me the other day that one of the lesser used tropes in movies that I don't think I've ever seen pulled off successfully is the "mind palace": a visual metaphor which represents a character's conscious mind in which physical actions represent some sort of metal activity usually unnarrated or not directly told to the viewer. It's weird because you wouldn't think of that as being all that difficult to pull off. Dreamcatcher tried it and, like just about everything in the movie, it doesn't work. That super modern Sherlock show on the BBC from a few years back had it, and it worked even less. The worst example is probably The Cell. God what a mess that piece of shit was. I usually chocked the frequent failures of the trope to the difficulty of representing mental action in a visual medium being very difficult to pull off with any consistent rule set within the length of a full film, but then the most successful  example I can think, Inside Out 100% commits to the idea as its central function. Can anybody think of any examples of this being used perfectly?

[Dead1]

I watched Barbie movie with the family.

 

It was really, really good for the most part.   Great performances,  very self aware, lots of laughs. Plot's a bit naff (Hollywood has long forgotten the art of the plot) but tolerable.

 

HOWEVER and here's a spoiler alert:

It really does portray all men as stupid, moronic or evil.   Not referring to the Kens featured in the movie (one kind of expects Ken to be a buffoon).  When Barbie goes to the real world, all the human men are stupid, moronic and/or evil.  Even the human girl's dad who gets two speaking lines is portrayed as an insensitive buffoon.  And as always the evil ones are white.

I get it's mainly directed at women but if you did a movie where every single woman was some sort of moronic housewife stereotype these days you'd be crucified (I remember the Dunkirk movie being sledged for not having any diversity despite it being about 340,000 white dudes stuck on a beach in 1940).

And it's proof culture wars exist.  Having a wife and a 10 year old daughter, I am exposed to a lot of teen viewing (all these teen witch shows and coming of age stuff) as well as romantic shows my wife's interested in (eg Bridgerton) which I might watch for 5-10 mins in between household jobs.

Some universal themes:

 

- Only good white males are usually gay (if skinny) or comedic fat guys (sadly lots of cliched goofy fat black guys too).

- Heterosexual male love interests are now invariably non-white (usually black or Indian, you still don't see any Asian males either).

- Villains are almost universally white males (sexuality non-disclosed unlike for good white males who are overtly gay).

 

 

Black Adam

Yeah this was typical DC garbage.  Even the CG was shit.

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

I feel like we cultural war is increasingly creeping into mainstream entertainment as a way of quoting controversy, any publicity is good publicity. Isn’t that the same? Anyway, about the only movie coming out at the moment I’m even remotely interested in that is Oppenheimer

[AlSymerz]

I couldn't watch Oppenwhateverthefuck. Apparently the only way to see it is as Nolan intended, at IMAX. But because it's shot in 70x15 film the entire film is 18 kilometres long. I could sit and watch a movie that long.

[Dead1]

Oppenheimer is definitely a movie I want to see.  I really liked Nolan's Dunkirk - one of the best war movies of all time IMO.  

1 hour ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

I feel like we cultural war is increasingly creeping into mainstream entertainment as a way of quoting controversy, any publicity is good publicity. Isn’t that the same? Anyway, about the only movie coming out at the moment I’m even remotely interested in that is Oppenheimer

 

Probably but then the culture was always a mainstream media phenomenon.  I mean most of us don't give two fucks about anything much unless the media tells us to care.  

 

(But then that's always been the human way - we're mainly sheeple with a handful of leaders guiding us on our merry way.  Eg your average peasant in the medieval period didn't give a shit about Jerusalem or even knew what or where it was, but when someone with influence tells him he has to fight for the Holy Land in a Crusade, and it's pick up a spear and off to the middle east).

 

[Serpentboi1992]

watched this earlier tonight. it's actually a pretty well made slasher film

[RelentlessOblivion]

I rewatched Dunkirk recently, I still think it is a good movie, but I didn’t enjoy it as much on the recent viewing. Still as far as I’m concerned Christopher Nolan only has two films that aren’t worth watching, and even one of those I would still say is better than average.

[RelentlessOblivion]

At last it’s October, time for the annual horror binge. Sadly starting with Nefarious, a by the numbers possession flick which never manages to surprise. Would’ve been at least interesting had they commited to having the villain win

[AlSymerz]

I'm going to watch Barbie.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I literally can’t think of a joke that is funnier than that sentence…

[RelentlessOblivion]

The Conjuring and Jaws the last couple days. I still enjoy both but there is a reason Jaws is an auto Emma classic. Wow. The conjuring is just a decent film which spawned a terrible cinematic universe. Todays movie is Annihilation which I’ve heard good things about 40 years, but never actually watched.

[agamerwholovesmetal]

just bought some dvd boxsets for the thing and child's play series so my october is set.

37 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

The Conjuring and Jaws the last couple days. I still enjoy both but there is a reason Jaws is an auto Emma classic. Wow. The conjuring is just a decent film which spawned a terrible cinematic universe. Todays movie is Annihilation which I’ve heard good things about 40 years, but never actually watched.

Jaws was the first horror movie I ever saw. I was in 4th or 5th grade and my mom played it on our old VHS player, and I got to see it on the big screen at a theater that showed old movies with her and my older brother. It's simply a perfect movie and fun for the whole family to see before going to the beach.

[RelentlessOblivion]

22 minutes ago, agamerwholovesmetal said:

just bought some dvd boxsets for the thing and child's play series so my october is set.

Jaws was the first horror movie I ever saw. I was in 4th or 5th grade and my mom played it on our old VHS player, and I got to see it on the big screen at a theater that showed old movies with her and my older brother. It's simply a perfect movie and fun for the whole family to see before going to the beach.

My first was Poltergeist I think. Eight year old me found it more entertaining than scary, 2 1/2 decades later the same still rings true. Jaws is perfect from the pacing, two soundtrack, but the less said about the sequels, the better.

 

Re Annihilation it’s a slow burn, interesting but not scary in the conventional sense.