Cinema and Movie Thread: flickering images

[Amentep]

Had to really resist the urge to put this in the anime thread...

 

[Keyrock]

24 minutes ago, Amentep said:

Had to really resist the urge to put this in the anime thread...

 

I'm confused. The costumes and effects look like something out of a 2007 vidya game, which makes me think they're going for a comedic/goofy tone, but they seem to be mostly playing it straight in the trailer, so I don't know what tone they're going for. My hope is that they play it straight and it's terrible enough to be hilarious. Also, I'm calling it that Sean Bean dies 45 minutes into the movie.

[Amentep]

 

[Keyrock]

Nothing says "classy" like Jim Wynorski.

Best case scenario is something on the level of Chopping Mall, which gave us this gem:

[Bartimaeus]

Smile (2022). Man, I really hate "curse" horror films, even ones with half-decent coats of paint. For 2022 films...dang it, this goes below The Northman. Are you happy, @PK htiw klaw eriF?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Just now, Bartimaeus said:

Are you happy, @PK htiw klaw eriF?

No.

[Bartimaeus]

Peter Pan (1953). I think I actually enjoyed Return to Neverland even with its massive issues more than the original here, probably because at least the core ideas felt stronger (not to mention grouchy Jane seems a way better protagonist than the vague and wishy-washy Wendy). It doesn't help having read the book not that long ago and keenly feeling all the omissions...and the additions. Hook feels bizarrely sympathetic at points, Peter Pan's (lack of) character is inconsistent, the themes are largely watered down or simply not really there, and...boy, those Native American scenes seemed, um, a bit questionable. Thinking back to what I saw of that trailer for the new live-action one, it seems doubtful Disney will try to give a more interesting or faithful interpretation, but I suppose you never know.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Lucky Bastard (2013)

I do not reccomend this to anyone.

I See You (2019)

Surprisingly very good, but it's something that you have to stick with. In many ways it reminds me of Barbarian (2022) so if you liked that this may be worth a go.

[Gfted1]

Knock at the Cabin

This is the first Shyamalan film Ive seen since The 6th Sense that I liked. Bautista is really growing on me as an actor too.

[Keyrock]

6 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Bautista is really growing on me as an actor too.

Big Dave is a surprisingly capable actor. I'd go so far as to call him the best pro wrestler turned actor that I can think of. Obviously, The Rock is a bigger star in Hollywood, but The Rock always just plays The Rock, no matter what movie he's in. It works because of how charismatic he is. Dave Bautista actually has some acting range. He's not Daniel Day-Lewis or anything, but he can do more than just one character.

Side-note: At the very end of Big Dave's WWE run when he already knew he was leaving rasslin' and going to Hollywood full time and was just fulfilling the end of his contract, he completely stopped giving a **** and it was the best chunk of his rasslin' career, from an entertainment standpoint. Giving zero ****s Big Dave was GLORIOUS.

[Hurlshort]

7 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Big Dave is a surprisingly capable actor. I'd go so far as to call him the best pro wrestler turned actor that I can think of. Obviously, The Rock is a bigger star in Hollywood, but The Rock always just plays The Rock, no matter what movie he's in. It works because of how charismatic he is. Dave Bautista actually has some acting range. He's not Daniel Day-Lewis or anything, but he can do more than just one character.

[Zoraptor]

Pfft. This is real wrestling acting royalty:

stupid marks putting spoilers in the title

[Keyrock]

13 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

I love They Live and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper was good in it, largely because it was the perfect role for him, but he was not a good actor.

Ahem,

Edited March 26, 2023 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

3 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Pfft. This is real wrestling acting royalty:

stupid marks putting spoilers in the title

I mean, I'm not going to say anything bad about "Sexual Chocolate" Mark Henry.

[Amentep]

22 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I mean, I'm not going to say anything bad about "Sexual Chocolate" Mark Henry.

Wasn't he in the storyline involving 80-year-old Mae Young being pregnant and the plastic hand(?) birth?

[Amentep]

 

[Bartimaeus]

and people say wes anderson is more style than substance, really shows them

(although real talk, this trailer did a better job of interesting me in a film than the last hundred I've seen, it's somewhat tamed by not actually liking the wes anderson films I've already seen - maybe because his style in short bursts can be fine while not so much over two hours)

Edited March 29, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Gorth]

On 3/25/2023 at 8:42 AM, Amentep said:

 

So bad it's probably good?

 

Edit: I *am* a fan of the old Peter Jackson movies

Edit2: For some reason, it goes by a different name on IMDB (Killbots), maybe to avoid confusion with Murderbot Diaries (a book series based on a similar concept)? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26457986/

Edit3: Seems like the original title was murderbots, then the working title became killbots, now the most likely release candidate is murderbots. Confused yet?

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Nope (2022): Jordan Peele does Evangelion 

It's very good, great even. It has everything from a cgi monkey (and an explanation why you don't use real monekys) to Keke Palmer to an Angel to Steven Yeun playing a former child star playing a cowboy. I don't think it's the best film of 2022 nor the best Jordan Peele film, but it is much better than another esteemed horror director's third film released in 2022 starring the lead from his debut. Highly recommend.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Gorth said:

Edit2: For some reason, it goes by a different name on IMDB (Killbots), maybe to avoid confusion with Murderbot Diaries (a book series based on a similar concept)? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26457986/

Edit3: Seems like the original title was murderbots, then the working title became killbots, now the most likely release candidate is murderbots. Confused yet?

Yeah, I initially thought it was The Murderbot Diaries and was confused when it turned out not to be. How many different things can be called Murderbot? ...At least two, apparently.

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Nope (2022): Jordan Peele does Evangelion 

It's very good, great even. It has everything from a cgi monkey (and an explanation why you don't use real monekys) to Keke Palmer to an Angel to Steven Yeun playing a former child star playing a cowboy. I don't think it's the best film of 2022 nor the best Jordan Peele film, but it is much better than another esteemed horror director's third film released in 2022 starring the lead from his debut. Highly recommend.

I watched Nope twice, and I liked it the least out of Peele's films...but I still mostly enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed the first half, the second half really tried my patience. The film really went off the rails and in a bad way for me after the "it's above the house" scene and never recovered. I also don't even remotely understand your comparison to Evangelion with it, .

Edited March 30, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

12 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I watched Nope twice, and I liked it the least out of Peele's films...but I still mostly enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed the first half, the second half really tried my patience. The film really went off the rails and in a bad way for me after the "it's above the house" scene and never recovered. I also don't even remotely understand your comparison to Evangelion with it, .

Mostly enjoyed is high praise from you.

The alien is an Angel, aesthetically at least. I didn't mean that Nope is actually like Evangelion, it's s relatively straightforward commentary wrapped in a creature feature.

[Zoraptor]

Speaking of Jordan Peele movies I watched Get Out recently during a binge of horror films on Netflix and enjoyed it a fair bit; certainly one of the better 'with social commentary' type horror movies I've seen. Not as good as its reputation maybe, but not far off at all. I also appreciated that it didn't treat you like you were stupid and pretty much told you the set up from the start, if you paid attention. cf Midsommar, which is otherwise fine and really rather nicely shot, acted etc, but where it's blindingly obvious where it's going but you aren't 'supposed' to know it for nearly 90 minutes of film.

Binge included The Mist, where I still hate the ending but like everything else apart from the forced stupidity of the pharmacy raid, and the two Quiet Place movies where I should have hated the gimmick but in the end it just worked in practice. I may have to trade in my curmudgeon card as I even liked the Netflix movie whose name escapes me- hmm, Malevolent per my viewed list, guess I like Florence Pugh in horror movies or something; and where even the name suggested mediocrity and forgetableness- and I watched specifically on the basis that it would be an awful but potentially fun train wreck.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Mostly enjoyed is high praise from you.

Eh, a 6/10 isn't particularly rare. Although...you know, if I look over the movies I've watched within the past month, only 8/24 made it to a 6/10 or better, so I suppose it is some level of distinguishment for me.

And two of those 8 were documentaries, so I'm not sure they should really count. According to my movie rating-tracking site, my mean average rating is in fact 60.34%, so it's right there.

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Midsommar, which is otherwise fine and really rather nicely shot, acted etc, but where it's blindingly obvious where it's going but you aren't 'supposed' to know it for nearly 90 minutes of film.

I'm not sure if that's what bothered me about Midsommar or not. Everything about it seemed...well-made and nice, but for some reason it left absolutely zero impact and I remembered and felt almost absolutely nothing about it a few weeks after watching it, which I find to be a very tragic quality for a film.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, my feelings about Midsommar are, hmm. Some sort of combination of its plot feeling soulless and paint by numbers while being very obviously aimed at being quasi arthouse. Kind of like going to an expensive fusion restaurant and being served an expensive and obviously well crafted dish with a lot of thought put into it that doesn't really work as, well, actual food- you've had an experience, a lot of obvious effort has been put in and it isn't bad per se, but it didn't fulfill its actual intended function. I could certainly see how anyone wanting said metaphorical food would find very little to remember about it.

[Bartimaeus]

More nostalgia:

A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004): Huh, I remember this being a lot better when I watched it 20 years ago. Seeing it as an adult now...well, the setup and pacing feel so awful from almost beginning to end of the film. Guess that's what happens when you haphazardly smash three different books together all at breakneck speed. Weirdly, I initially thought Jim Carrey's trademark silliness was a total mismatch for Count Olaf, but then I realized that he's probably the best part of this film even if that's true, so I guess whatever. I heard the TV show does a better job of things, but it's so very long and it is very difficult to make me stick with multi-season shows.

Matilda (1996): Haven't seen this since I was very young (around 6 or 7), didn't ever really want to re-visit it because I didn't think it'd hold up. Major error on my part, it's really great in a lot of different ways. The first hour of being purely a little slice of life film about a little girl in some less than perfect circumstances is fantastic. So much thought, charm, style, and love went into making this (...and also a lot of pretty inexplicable dutch angles). Straight into my favorite films of all time, #thankyounostalgia, I'm going to go read the book too.

18 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Yeah, my feelings about Midsommar are, hmm. Some sort of combination of its plot feeling soulless and paint by numbers while being very obviously aimed at being quasi arthouse. Kind of like going to an expensive fusion restaurant and being served an expensive and obviously well crafted dish with a lot of thought put into it that doesn't really work as, well, actual food- you've had an experience, a lot of obvious effort has been put in and it isn't bad per se, but it didn't fulfill its actual intended function. I could certainly see how anyone wanting said metaphorical food would find very little to remember about it.

My utter contempt for "artiste" food knows no bounds, so I will take that explanation and run with it gladly, .

Edited March 30, 2023 by Bartimaeus