love

Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684038 times)

1SO

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36128
  • Marathon Man
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3220 on: February 22, 2019, 11:43:41 PM »
With Marvel, there's the feeling of a Master Plan in place. This is like...
"They liked the sequel."
"Then we better give them a movie about the nun."
"We didn't think that far ahead."
"Well you better start. You open next October."

Sam the Cinema Snob

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 26795
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3221 on: February 23, 2019, 08:41:45 AM »
Yea, the Nun looked pretty uninspired. I did do some reading on the actual painting Loraine Warren did of the nun and it was not related at all to the case in The Conjuring 2. I think it's something James Wan just saw and thought would be a cool addition to the movie...which it was.

1SO

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36128
  • Marathon Man
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3222 on: February 23, 2019, 05:16:08 PM »

The Great Wall (2016)
★ ★ ½
I wonder if it's better or worse than Dragon Blade (2015), with Adrien Brody and Jackie Chan.
I get why on the surface you might think to compare Dragon Blade with The Great Wall, but it's like comparing a Roland Emmerich disaster film to a Harry Potter film. One is all about the perceived interest and box office the casting might bring to an incomprehensible story while the other has ideas and flair that keep it interesting. The script is as deep as Space Jam, but Zhang Yimou's visual compositions and bold strokes of color are breathtaking.




Every shot on this set is a dazzler.

If the effects technology were more advanced than a video game - the creatures don't even look Starship Troopers good - this would've been a case of exciting style over childish substance.

Thief

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 145
    • Letterboxd Profile
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3223 on: February 23, 2019, 05:53:27 PM »
One of the silliest, dumbest films I've seen recently.

smirnoff

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 26251
    • smirnoff's Top 100
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3224 on: February 23, 2019, 05:53:51 PM »
From the trailer I see WWZ, Helms Deep, The Host... I always think of Zhang Yimou as kind of a poetic, elegant director of action.... but this just looks so noisy! Like he's gone down the 10,000 didgeridoo rabbit hole.  I'm not saying I wouldn't try watching it at some point though. ;)

Bondo

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 23082
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3225 on: February 23, 2019, 06:19:29 PM »
Fighting With My Family

I'm not particularly a wrestling fan, but watching The Wrestler, and watching a few events with people who are into wrestling, certainly have moved me from an elitist "it's fake" scoff. Even if it is scripted, the daring and athleticism involved, not to mention the performance skills at the best levels, can be absolutely remarkable. That doesn't mean I'm ready to make it weekly viewing, but I'm at least open to it. And the appearance of GLOW retrospectives have futher pushed it into my mind. I would say moreso than boxing or UFC, and that's probably true about watching the real thing on TV, but Creed and Warrior (among others) have made good use of them on the big screen too.

Though you get moments of the physical appreciation of wrestling here (and I'm curious how much the actors trained for versus stunt workers), the thing that makes this a very good movie doesn't have a lot to do with wrestling, but rather the richness as a family drama and coming of age story. The Knights are a family rooted in wrestling, and the film gives us moments for each of the characters to do their own origin story from the parents initially taking it up to the kids in turn taking it from family business to personal passion. You also get those moments where wrestling is contrasted to what life for kids in Norwich might look like without. This is a very blue-collar area, and wrestling in this film serves the function that boxing gyms have served in more than a few American films. And perhaps more than anything, this is the story of siblings Saraya (Florence Pugh) and Zak (Jack Lowden) coming of age to discover who they are, with or without wrestling. Credit to writer-director Stephen Merchant (technically making his solo debut) and the cast generally (which includes Nick Frost, Lena Headley, Vince Vaughn and Dwayne Johnson) for the comedic beats, but Pugh and Lowden in particular deliver when the film demands dramatic power. It may follow some predictable beats (especially given it is based on a true story so one knows where it ends) but it does it so well that you don't hold that against the film. Of the mainstream fare in the first two months of the year, Fighting With My Family is the Diva Champion.

ETA: One nice thing with pro wrestling compared to boxing or UFC, is that because it is fixed/scripted, it is inherently more cooperative rather than adversarial, a point that is particularly played up to satisfying conclusion here, and in GLOW, especially as it plays against norms that might pit women against each other.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2019, 07:53:28 PM by Bondo »

1SO

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36128
  • Marathon Man
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3226 on: February 23, 2019, 07:37:33 PM »
One of the silliest, dumbest films I've seen recently.
On that criteria, The Great Wall is smarter and more satisfying than...
The Meg
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Rampage
Venom
Aquaman (debatable)

Thief, I would like to read your ranking of these 6, assuming you've seen them.

1SO

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36128
  • Marathon Man
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3227 on: February 24, 2019, 01:12:03 AM »
London Has Fallen (2016)
★ ★
I have a theory for anyone that cares. See, I was enjoying this film for about an hour. Once again, the screenplay sets up a terrorist attack where the amount of manpower is total fantasy (at this point in our world) but it's effective and exciting to watch. A series of ambushes using a variety of weaponry and tactics to keep it fresh and relentless. Meanwhile, Gerard Butler is tossing off badass one-liners like a pro.

Then, the film changes. The action becomes more generic, repeating the same assault weapon charges into battle. Butler's dialogue goes from F.U. cool to dumb macho posturing. That got me to look up the credited screenwriters. The two people who wrote Olympus has fallen are credited with story and Screenplay. Then there are two more writers. One wrote Den of Thieves and the other wrote Peppermint, two action films not known for their action or their dialogue. I think the original pair mapped it all out and got the first two acts down pretty solid before getting tossed aside for the other two writers who brought things to a conclusion.

ProperCharlie

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 287
  • Am I right sir? Ithangyou.
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3228 on: February 24, 2019, 03:34:57 AM »
Some truly transgressive, fun and ground-breaking films this week including discovering Ossi Oswalda's comedic timing, Lois Weber's skilled composition and pacing, and that the Eameses who designed the lounge chair from last week are the same Eameses who directed such educational short films as 'Powers of Ten' in the 1960s.

John Wick (2014)
Keanu Reeves opts to dress in black again. A film that venerates honour among thieves and condemns those who break the rules of safe harbour. Very much in the gun-kata and close-quarters combat school of martial choreography. Proficiency is king whether it be fighting, driving or decision-making, and there is little more enjoyable that seeing a craftsman at work. More style than substance otherwise in a straight-forward revenge plot that enjoys its fantastical underworld social system a little too much..

L’inferno (1911) - note this is the 68 minutes long Inferno, not the 15 minute version from the same year.
Virgil and Dante descend the ring roads of Hell. A five-reel marathon of horror and a who’s who of sin. Images, while slightly risible to a modern viewer, that are surreal and macabre enough for you to remember them for days afterwards. It’s classical torture porn from the early days of cinema. It’s difficult to know who the Italian makers of this film thought the audience might be. An acknowledgement that a large group of people only went to church to relish the descriptions of hell?

Suspense (1913)
Lois Weber is home alone and menaced by an ill-intentioned ne’er-do-well. This is remarkable. A full-on action-suspense film from 1913 that threatens to turn into a slasher. Unnaturally stable car-mounted camera shots. Close-ups of action reflected in a wing mirror, over the driver’s shoulder, in a moving car. Triangular split-screen showing simultaneous action. The whole is very well-paced, the sense of threat genuine, the purpose clear and with only a single inter-title. Lois Weber, cinemas first great action director.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
A shocking insight into the US High School Gulag system. An element of this plot hinges on some 90s kids with extensive musical and theatrical taste, failing to recognise David Bowie’s “Heroes” for an entire year. OK, this is before Google, Spotify and Wikipedia, but come on! It deals with homophobia, sexual abuse and mental health issues well, however the framing story is almost too affected and painfully self-aware, while at the same time being deeply conventional and afraid to leave those boundaries.

Loops (1940)
Norman McLaren doodles directly onto film accompanied by hand-sculpted squelches and pfffts. One of McLaren’s strengths is his ability to translate sound directly into neatly choreographed lines and shapes that represent that sound visually and precisely. He’s done this with music before but now he’s doing it to muffled explosions of sound directly carved onto the film by hand. There’s nothing electronic here apart from the bulb in the projector. This is a strip of film used as an instrument..




Ich möchte kein Mann sein (1918) aka I Don’t Want to Be a Man
Ossi Oswalda indulges in some gender-play much to the consternation of her new guardian. Made as the German lines on the Western front of World War I collapsed and the political establishment in Germany did likewise, you’d never know anything catastrophic was happening elsewhere in Europe. Ernst Lubitsch directs a frothy comedy of social deviance as a young woman cross-dresses her way through an evening of high society and eventual romance. Ossi Oswalda glows with conspiratorial levels of delight in the chaos of her own making.

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
Michael Curtiz goes all expressionistic and screwball-y at the same time. Wise-cracking woman in a man’s world, reporter Glenda Farrell uses her instincts to delve into the shadowy, angular basements of New York. Deco at ground-level, twisted gothic nightmare below. Magnificent sets and Fay Wray screams up a storm under an overly complex waxy imperilment device. The ending is unforgivably rushed given the marvellous mask-cracking build-up. The two-strip Technicolor doesn’t add much.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) - Rewatch
The Archers and Roger Livesey show us all the humanity behind the eyes of red-faced, ageing career soldier with outmoded ideas. What Kore-eda does for childhood and families, The Archers do for those in military and religious service. They know how to show us the person behind the assumptions we place upon them. To humanise not only the lead character but a German military serviceman as well during some of the darkest hours of WWII is remarkable. A film for these times when there are many with whom we disagree.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Rami Malek gets his overbite on. An overly earnest medley of Queen’s greatest hits sound-tracking the life of an extraordinary man. Films rarely capture the moments of inspiration or creation well and this film is far from an exception to that. It’s plodding, cliched and in some cases badly acted. However, it’s impossible not to like Freddie and the songs he sang. He was a performer without compare, well done the Rami Malek for capturing that. In the words of another man with false teeth, “Oooh, you are awful. But I like you.”
« Last Edit: February 24, 2019, 03:47:12 AM by ProperCharlie »

Beavermoose

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 5006
  • Samsonite! I was way off!
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3229 on: February 24, 2019, 05:27:42 AM »
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Maybe I'm getting old but the visuals were too much and some gave me a headache. My expectations also were clearly much too high considering how much praise this has been getting. It was lots of fun and uses some clever comic book tropes but none of this is revolutionary. The Lord/Miller style taken to the extreme works in something like the Lego movie which feeds off the chaos but in a movie where we need to develop some investment in the characters it just didn't give me time to breath and care. I love Spider-Man and it was nice to have an alternate take on the character but I was expecting something more.
Can someone tell me what's so amazing about this movie?