Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684737 times)

Will

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5100 on: September 28, 2020, 11:02:57 PM »
AN AMERICAN TAIL - I don’t believe there’s another children’s film that is equal parts hopeful and cynical as this. 7.

I plan to rewatch this soon. This description makes me more interested to do so. Hopefully Cynical Children’s Films is an interesting Top Five list. Would Fox and the Hound make the cut? Iron Giant? Seems like it could actually be a pretty long list, since the world is essentially shitty but children have the privilege of being ultimately oblivious to that fact.

pixote

I don't think there's another children's movie that directly deals with diaspora or immigrant disillusionment while also propping up the American Dream. Bizarre film.

I love that list so far! I'd add IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN and FANTASTIC MR. FOX off the top of my head.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5101 on: September 29, 2020, 08:22:03 AM »
Guns Akimbo (2019)

Well that was one batsh*t movie, think Crank, Daniel Radcliffe continues to find the weirdest movies to be in, so good of him. Miles (Radcliffe) a dorky mild computer coder spends his evenings having a go at internet trolls. One night he decides to do so in a live action death match game. Those running the game take offence, find him, then bolt 2 guns with 50 round each to his hands. He is given 24 hours to kill Nix (Samara Weaving) or die. Nix is the games current champion, and is basically DC's Harlequin. Then let the fun times begin. Starts off slow and continues to build, to a messy ending.

Rating: 85 / 100

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5102 on: September 29, 2020, 09:13:15 AM »
Secret Society of Second Born Royals - This is an alternate reality movie in which first-world absolute monarchies exist in great numbers and are scattered all over the western world. This movie takes place at a school in which the only children to attend are the children of royalty. To imagine such a place you first have to imagine the most stereotypical ivy-league setting, with all it's wealth and privilege and snootiness, but take away any underlying intellectual requirements for being there. Instead replace that with pure entitlement. This is the place which the movie chooses to source it's protagonists.

How readily the movie assumes the audience will be to get on board with these characters is but the first insult. It proceeds clumsily and cluelessly along, like a Disney cruise ship over a coral reef. It crescendos with a scene in which the newly coronated monarch marvels at their own benevolence by declaring that its 21st century peasantry may have itself a parliament.



3/10

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5103 on: September 29, 2020, 09:50:07 AM »
Guns Akimbo (2019)
Weaving further invites Margot Robbie comparisons by doing her own take on Harley Quinn crossed with Terminator (3?).
You say Crank, I went with Shoot 'Em Up.


Secret Society of Second Born Royals is proof I don't eat everything Disney puts in front of this household.
[gif]scene from Salo[/gif]

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5104 on: September 30, 2020, 01:05:46 AM »
Paddington 2

In short, magical. It almost seems negative-review-proof with how well-intentioned and imaginative it is, which makes me want to write something negative. I'm a bastard like that. But there are just so many visual touches here you can't help but feel like you're in audiovisual heaven, whether it's the pencil drawn animation piece from the antique store, the simple Paddington vs. the soap bucket/rope scene leading to an eventual window-washing montage, or the daring train scene that is obviously not real the way Buster Keaton might have liked, but still suspenseful and full of visual wit and humor. The only way I could see you downing this is to say that it makes light of the horrors of prison and being unfairly incarcerated (or incarcerated at all) and uses some bits of seeming tokenism to make the picture feel more diverse. I'm talking light bits, like the diversity walkthrough of Paddington's neighborhood from the outset to possibly make the film seem a tad less white. It's just not the critical approach I'd take. It's too empathetic and all-loving. Beyond that, it's a marvel to behold, and a little tighter in the plotting than the first. The time spent with Paddington in prison vs. the time spent with the Browns trying to get him out is very well-balanced, just long enough to make me wonder what the other side was up to. Super good, and definitely one of the better feel-good films I've seen. I suspect both Paddingtons will serve as a warm blanket in years to come.
A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5105 on: September 30, 2020, 05:44:23 AM »
In short, magical. It almost seems negative-review-proof with how well-intentioned and imaginative it is, which makes me want to write something negative. I'm a bastard like that.

Goes without saying that I was that bastard for real, not just as a rhetorical device.  :D

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5106 on: September 30, 2020, 07:53:19 AM »
The Old Guard (2020)

I don't buy these characters. For being hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of years old, nothing about how they act or how they speak sets them apart from any other generic, hardened, special forces, ex-military type character from any other movie. They are in a perpetual state of ill-temperedness, they grumble one cynical sentence at a time, but with stony expressions they all still get glassy-eyed when at a distance they observe a group of children playing... so that we know they still have an inner goodness and warmth which they keep locked away.

BLAHHHHHHHHH! With their special powers, and all of their experience and perspective, they're attitude is little different than a group of "cool kids" at the back of a class. Where is the wisdom? Where is the more clever approach? All they seem to be is a group with an above average ability to kill people, which again doesn't really set them apart from your typical green beret or black ops specialist. They supplement their gun-fu with a Ninja Turtle-like medley of hand-handheld weaponry... whoopdiedoo. You know, it's movies like these that make me go back to Ronin with greater appreciation. In a scene where Sean Bean asks De Niro what his favourite weapon is, and De Niro gives him a look like "huh, grow up"... he just says "it's a toolbox, you put the tools in, I do the job". The idea of having a "favourite" weapon is subject for some immature hot head to obsess over, not a professional. Meanwhile our hero's in The Old Guard are still at the level of attaching their identity to their weaponry.

4/10
« Last Edit: September 30, 2020, 11:25:46 AM by smirnoff »

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5107 on: September 30, 2020, 10:47:46 PM »
Co-sign.

This was the film that sent me down the rabbit hole of why Netflix movies look like TV shows. How it isn't just the lighting, but the way things are framed and locations are selected to be more TV friendly and less cinematic. I also saw a video defending the film because the director is talented and usually more visual. (It was like watching someone defend Birds of Prey. I see it in the shots they select, but not once in the film I experienced.)

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5108 on: September 30, 2020, 10:51:40 PM »
Paddington 2
Your review gives me much to think about. I'm one who much prefers the first film because of the interaction between Paddington and The Browns. Not a fan of keeping them apart. You're right about the visual imagination, but a) the first film wasn't lacking this, it just wasn't as abundant. b) a LOT of the technique here is fruit from the tree of Wes Anderson.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5109 on: October 01, 2020, 01:01:08 AM »
In short, magical. It almost seems negative-review-proof with how well-intentioned and imaginative it is, which makes me want to write something negative. I'm a bastard like that.

Goes without saying that I was that bastard for real, not just as a rhetorical device.  :D

LoL got any links to reviews or thoughts?


Paddington 2
Your review gives me much to think about. I'm one who much prefers the first film because of the interaction between Paddington and The Browns. Not a fan of keeping them apart. You're right about the visual imagination, but a) the first film wasn't lacking this, it just wasn't as abundant. b) a LOT of the technique here is fruit from the tree of Wes Anderson.

I honestly don't see the separation as far as the quality of the two films that many people seem to see, often favoring 2 over 1, even as I do think I favor 2 over 1. I definitely thought of Anderson in both of the films, just the whimsy, especially in the dollhouse vision of the Brown's house and the quirks and shades of melancholy of the members of the family. I also thought about it a lot in the prison scenes, but can't figure if that's just coincidence, or if the layout of the prison and the revelation of the tender-hearted inmates just comes so close to what I was experiencing with The Grand Budapest Hotel that it just recalled and recalled and recalled that film for me, but never in a bad way. I probably need to watch both again and reflect. (Not that I haven't seen GBH enough, like 5+ times). Paddington 2 came three years after that one, so I don't know how much of P2 was already conceived by the time Grand Budapest came out. The first definitely doesn't lack the imagination, but I think the second seems to incorporate more sylistic flourishes and be more tightly edited than the first, even if we're just talking by a few degrees. They're both 4.5/5 films for me. Maybe even higher. I can see one or both becoming all-time favorites, tbh. Time will have to tell a little more with these than maybe some other insta-favorites.
A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

 

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