The Cinema and Movie Thread

[Keyrock]

Not sure if this belongs here or in the TV & Streaming thread because it's on Netflix but it's also a movie, so... 

I watched Red Notice. It was a perfectly cromulent mindless adventure movie. The Rock was his usual charismatic self, Ryan Reynolds was his usual charismatic self, and Gal Gadot... Well, she was in the movie. The plot was paper thin and frayed at the edges, but it was an acceptable excuse for hijinks and adventure stuff to happen. I turned my brain off for 2 hours and was mildly entertained. I'll completely forget about it in a week.

[Bartimaeus]

19 hours ago, bugarup said:

Watched new "Blade Runner", by the same dude who did new "Dune". It was a visual treat that Stanley Kubrick himself wouldn't be too critical of, but thematically it was not like original film at all. Also kind of stupid. 

I had watched the first one for the first time not too long before the second one came out, and though I didn't love the first one, I did like it and certainly thought it was unique and enjoyable enough. I watched the second and...I guess I must not have gotten it, because I spent the majority of the time either frustrated, bored, or simply laughing at it, none of which were exactly positive feelings. It was decidedly not for me.

Edited November 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus
double "positive"

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I think Dennis Villeneuve's sci-fi movies just aren't that interesting and end up being boring for me. I dunno.

[ShadySands]

I liked Dune but fell asleep during Blade Runner, twice.

[Maedhros]

1 hour ago, KP Cross Split Attack said:

I think Dennis Villeneuve's sci-fi movies just aren't that interesting and end up being boring for me. I dunno.

I think he's regressed a bit. I loved Arrival, liked Blade Runner and found Dune to be quite dull.

For me his films are very lacking in "joy", for lack of a better word. Everything is very cold and humourless. It's something he has in common with Christopher Nolan.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Maedhros

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

I liked Dune but fell asleep during Blade Runner, twice.

That's what you get for watching from the couch. MOTOR BOAT IN A BATHTUB.

7 minutes ago, Maedhros said:

I think he's regressed a bit. I loved Arrival, liked Blade Runner and found Dune to be quite dull.

For me his films are very lacking in "joy", for lack of a better word. Everything is very cold and humourless. It's something he has in common with Christopher Nolan.

I was going to compare him to Nolan, in that both make big budget blockbusters that aim for being more profound/thought provoking than your average action flick but fail (for me at least) at doing so. Maybe it's the curse of the big budget only producing kid movies and boring action stuff.

Arrival and one of his early films are really good though.

[Gromnir]

7 hours ago, Maedhros said:

I think he's regressed a bit. I loved Arrival, liked Blade Runner and found Dune to be quite dull.

For me his films are very lacking in "joy", for lack of a better word. Everything is very cold and humourless. It's something he has in common with Christopher Nolan.

the biggest mistake villeneuve made in his dune is the failure to recognize the pug factor. 

a couple minutes o' scenes with pugs coulda' changed the whole tone o' the film. maybe not.

HA! Good Fun!

[majestic]

I liked Blade Runner 2049 better than Arrival.

Technically I enjoyed Arrival more until it became so stupid it turned from a really good film into something not even Alex Kurtzman and Jar Jar Abrams could dream up while collaborating to create the stupidest movie premises of all time (and oh boy did they try, huh?).

By the by...

[Achilles]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I liked Blade Runner 2049 better than Arrival.

Technically I enjoyed Arrival more until it became so stupid it turned from a really good film into something not even Alex Kurtzman and Jar Jar Abrams could dream up while collaborating to create the stupidest movie premises of all time (and oh boy did they try, huh?).

By the by...

I think the problem with Arrival is that it mostly glossed over the most interesting parts of the short story it was based on. To be fair, I don’t know how a director would have filmed the most interesting parts of the short story.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

The Beta Test (2021)

This was much different than I expected and very good.

[Maedhros]

Train to Busan.

Korean Zombie film. Somehow the very predictable character arc of the tropey "busy father/working father" worked for me, and helped lift the film up from being a bang average zombie flick to....slightly above average zombie flick. 6/10

[majestic]

On 11/27/2021 at 2:01 AM, Achilles said:

I think the problem with Arrival is that it mostly glossed over the most interesting parts of the short story it was based on. To be fair, I don’t know how a director would have filmed the most interesting parts of the short story.

I didn't read the short story, so I don't know what you're talking about, but I found the film to be pretty interesting until it decided to do what happens at the end, which really crashed me hard out of immersion. That was incredibly jarring and not in the good way. I'm not against strange endings, to be honest, not that long ago I watched a film where the protagonist literally turned into a car that the other main character just drove away with and enjoyed it, but it was the sort of setting where this is not the strangest thing that happens. They do end up being chased hard by a medieval fairy tale castle for a while, after all. *shrug*

Edited November 28, 2021 by majestic

[ShadySands]

I saw the new Bond movie and didn't much care for it

[Achilles]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

I didn't read the short story, so I don't know what you're talking about, but I found the film to be pretty interesting until it decided to do what happens at the end, which really crashed me hard out of immersion. That was incredibly jarring and not in the good way. I'm not against strange endings, to be honest, not that long ago I watched a film where the protagonist literally turned into a car that the other main character just drove away with and enjoyed it, but it was the sort of setting where this is not the strangest thing that happens. They do end up being chased hard by a medieval fairy tale castle for a while, after all. *shrug*

The events more or less happen the same.

What's missing from the movie (and maybe why you felt thrown) is...

Spoiler

a deeper dive about how biology influences perception and therefore language. The aliens in the movie look like octopuses, however in the story their appendages spread out from their body in all directions. Since they would receive stimuli from all directions at once, concepts like "beginning", "middle", and "end" don't exist for them.

It's pretty universally accepted among the science-minded that math is a universal language that will be "spoken" by all advanced civilizations in the universe. The short story kinda takes this and says, "yeah, maybe. But don't let that fool you into thinking that alien intelligence won't be truly 'alien' in other ways".

...which felt like a pretty slick move on the author's part when I read it. YRMV.

The one way that I felt the adaptation did work is that the story actually had a bit of twist in it, naturally, so Denis didn't have to sprain anything inventing one for a story that didn't necessarily need it, like he usually does.

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, Achilles said:

The one way that I felt the adaptation did work is that the story actually had a bit of twist in it, naturally, so Denis didn't have to sprain anything inventing one for a story that didn't necessarily need it, like he usually does.

It's the twist I had an issue with. I loved everything up to it.

Spoiler

To be honest the idea that time travelling is enabled by learning an alien language and thereby changing how you experience the concept of and concepts relating to time was a bit too far out there, compared to the relative groundedness of the rest of the film. Aliens arriving on Earth nonwithstanding, I liked the scope and how the film appeared to be about linguistics until it suddenly became jarringly different.

Just didn't work for me. Many things don't, but this one was actually one of the larger disappointments.

8 minutes ago, Achilles said:

Spoiler

It's pretty universally accepted among the science-minded that math is a universal language that will be "spoken" by all advanced civilizations in the universe. The short story kinda takes this and says, "yeah, maybe. But don't let that fool you into thinking that alien intelligence won't be truly 'alien' in other ways".

 

Stargate had a pretty fun version of this at some point, with the elements of the periodic table serving as a universally understood basis. Basic element makeup is the same everywhere, after all - at least as far as we know, and it would be pretty weird if it weren't.

[Achilles]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

It's the twist I had an issue with. I loved everything up to it.

Right. But if you read the source material, you knew what was happening and why. And when the twist came you'd think, "did he make this movie because he liked the short story, or did he do it because it had a twist? Hmm"

Spoiler

It wasn't time travel. It was the ability to perceive events as they do because she learned how to think like they think because that's what happens when you learn a foreign language. Humans perceive event sequentially, therefore we think sequentially, and our language reflects that (sentences have beginning, middles, and ends, etc). Their species doesn't, with the attendant consequences.

It didn't stop being about linguistics. It was linguistics the whole time. Well, linguistics and biology.

 

Quote

Basic element makeup is the same everywhere, after all - at least as far as we know, and it would be pretty weird if it weren't.

Unless it isn't. Carbon-based life is what we know, but that doesn't mean that's all there is.

Added by edit: I went looking for a link to the short story for anyone who was interested in a quick, fun read. Looks like this thing is worth money now, so you have to buy it to read it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48749235-story-of-your-life

Edited November 29, 2021 by Achilles
Cleaning up format

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 minutes ago, Achilles said:

Unless it isn't. Carbon-based life is what we know, but that doesn't mean that's all there is.

Even assuming the same information, I think it's a bit presumptuous to take anything we consider to be reality (ie math or periodic elements) and assume that they would be universal. Even if things exist in common, such as oxygen or distance, the perception of them on a social or biological level could differ enough with alien species to result in completely different interpretations that render their universality moot. It could be something like the aliens in Arrival, it could be like the Tamarians from Star Trek, or it could be something even more alien. I haven't read the short story, but I thought Arrival was good when I saw it way back in 4 BC19. I feel like the big dumb here, but I also just realized that all of Villeneuve's recent films have been adaptations.

[Achilles]

1 hour ago, KP Cross Split Attack said:

Even assuming the same information, I think it's a bit presumptuous to take anything we consider to be reality (ie math or periodic elements) and assume that they would be universal. Even if things exist in common, such as oxygen or distance, the perception of them on a social or biological level could differ enough with alien species to result in completely different interpretations that render their universality moot. It could be something like the aliens in Arrival, it could be like the Tamarians from Star Trek, or it could be something even more alien. I haven't read the short story, but I thought Arrival was good when I saw it way back in 4 BC19. I feel like the big dumb here, but I also just realized that all of Villeneuve's recent films have been adaptations.

It's an oldie, but you might want to check out the movie, Contact, if you haven't seen it already. Another movie based on a book, this one written by absolute legend, Carl Sagan.

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, Achilles said:

Unless it isn't. Carbon-based life is what we know, but that doesn't mean that's all there is.

I thought I remembered scientists actually finding (or creating?) a non-carbon-based microbe, but it turns out the time I had heard about this occurring was, firstly, overstated to begin with (the actual claim by those whom "discovered" it wasn't that it was not carbon-based but rather that it could substitute phosphorous with arsenic, of all things, as a valid substitute to sustain itself/growth), and secondly, it was later tested by others and consequently debunked. Thanks for nothing, GFAJ-1.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

18 hours ago, Achilles said:

Unless it isn't. Carbon-based life is what we know, but that doesn't mean that's all there is.

 

17 hours ago, KP Cross Split Attack said:

Even assuming the same information, I think it's a bit presumptuous to take anything we consider to be reality (ie math or periodic elements) and assume that they would be universal.

Ah, well, that wasn't about carbon. Regardless of one's perception, hydrogen is made up of one electron and one proton no matter where we are in the universe (and regardless of which isotope of hydrogen we're talking about). This is about as basic and immutable as we can get. If it had but one proton more, it would be helium. All you need to do is agree on a common concept of representation. Now, that might be really difficult, but scientists already expended a lot of effort on defining all measuremeants we have based on natural constants and ratios thereof, and for good reason.

Everything else is fun speculative fiction.

14 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I thought I remembered scientists actually finding (or creating?) a non-carbon-based microbe, but it turns out the time I had heard about this occurring was, firstly, overstated to begin with (the actual claim by those whom "discovered" it wasn't that it was not carbon-based but rather that it could substitute phosphorous with arsenic, of all things, as a valid substitute to sustain itself/growth), and secondly, it was later tested by others and consequently debunked. Thanks for nothing, GFAJ-1.

There are several proposed solutions for non-carbon based life, and they all have the same problems. None of the proposed elements that could change (i.e. different solvents, or different base elements) work well enough. It's not impossible, but a good deal less likely than carbon based life - and that's just by any basic definition of life, i.e. microbes, not complex life forms. In terms of purely hard science fiction the most likely thing to be found are non-green plants, that's not exactly what we imagine, is it?

18 hours ago, Achilles said:

Spoiler

It wasn't time travel. It was the ability to perceive events as they do because she learned how to think like they think because that's what happens when you learn a foreign language. Humans perceive event sequentially, therefore we think sequentially, and our language reflects that (sentences have beginning, middles, and ends, etc). Their species doesn't, with the attendant consequences.

It didn't stop being about linguistics. It was linguistics the whole time. Well, linguistics and biology.

 

If you apply the duck test to above statement, it comes out as time travel. The how, when, what and why is relatively besides the point, but makes this particular twist all the worse. Sure, there's the idea of block time, the concept which I think is what the film/short story is based on, and the idea that time isn't real but is an emergent property, making it "not real" in a physical definition sort of way, which means absolutely jack sh*t in terms of reality.

Block time is a neat mathematical concept, but that's about it. Like tachyons. Tachyons are mathematical solutions that show up that would work - but have no basis in reality any more than if you use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle, then look at the math and go "hey, in theory there could be triangles with sides that have negative length!" because x² is always a positive value (unless it's i, but have you seen a triangle with a complex number as hypotenuse somewhere in reality? ).

Wow, that went on a tangent. Alls I'm saying is that I can understand why people enjoyed Arrived for what it is. For me, the ending ruined the entire experience. If there was any way to have perceived that in some other manner, I would have never watched it.

Major spoiler:

Spoiler

I also hate solipsism. Seems like a given, but hey...

Second major spoiler:

Spoiler

Stupid tree falling over when no one is around to hear it DOES make a sound. Period.

 

 

[Zoraptor]

29 minutes ago, majestic said:

Ah, well, that wasn't about carbon. Regardless of one's perception, hydrogen is made up of one electron and one proton no matter where we are in the universe (and regardless of which isotope of hydrogen we're talking about).

All you need to do is agree on a common concept of representation.

Yep.

You could easily have positively charged electrons instead of negative- presumably it's true arbitrary so a 50% chance of either, though you'd never actually know since they'd translate into our language/ scientific perception- so long as you then have negatively charged protons, that's an arbitrary difference based on language much like north and south magnetic poles. But an electron will always have the opposite charge from a proton whatever the charge is called, and the poles of a magnet will always be opposite whether you call them north and south or Neville and Steve. You cannot have hydrogen with a proton and a positron, and you can't muck around with universal constants (typically because if you do, everything stops working spectacularly; hence the deep philosophical observation that the universe works because if it didn't we would not be here to know about it).

Different cultures or species may call them different things, perceive them differently (an obvious example being synethesia and the ability to 'see' music some have) and express them differently but they're interpretations of the same physical phenomena.

[Keyrock]

I finally got around to watching Denis Villaneuve's Dune. This is one of those movies that I recognize is a good movie but that I didn't particularly enjoy. I mean, I didn't dislike it, I walked away from it not feeling much of anything.

I rewatched the David Lynch Dune a couple of years ago and as flawed as that movie is, I enjoyed it more than this one, despite the fact that Denis Villeneuve's version is both a better adaptation of the book (half of it, anyway) and a better movie.  You can't really compare a movie from 2021 to one from 1984 visually, but the 2021 movie looks spectacular. The 2021 movie also conveys the story much better. But it just left me flat, I dunno. The 1984 movie is so weird (par for the course for David Lynch) and I really love that about it. I love how grotesque Baron Harkonnen is. I love the ludicrous giant slug navigators. I even like the hilarious looking shields. The new movie just doesn't have anything delightfully weird like that.

[Malcador]

 

 

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

I love how grotesque Baron Harkonnen is. I love the ludicrous giant slug navigators. I even like the hilarious looking shields.

Wait, what.

How can you list weird and wonderful things from Dune 1984 without mentioning Sting's batarang codpiece? It's the single most memeorable thing from the entire movie, and the second most memorable codpiece in entertainment after the Black Russian.

[Hurlshort]

I don't understand why Sting isn't in the new Dune. He looks the same.

Actually , Kyle Maclachlan hasn't aged either. There might be something to this spice stuff.