Cinema and Movie Thread: coming at you at 24fps

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Gleefully trying to get Sirius Black and Remus Lupin executed in book The Prisoner of Azkaban over their childhood quarrels is where he officially stepped over the "cruel, petty, depraved human garbage of a bully, but technically not evil" line for me.

For Lupin, Snape had a very easy way to get him killed (or killing him) had he wanted to since he was making the potion that stopped him from transforming. But the one time it failed it was Lupin's fault, for not drinking it.

The issue with Sirius was a bit more than a mere childhood quarrel. Apart from anything else Sirius actively tried to get Snape killed as students and tried to use his supposed friend Lupin to do it in a deniable way. That's how Snape knew Lupin was a werewolf. Under those circumstances- plus him being convicted of effectively killing Lily Potter, though I don't think we knew the significance of that at the time- it's unlikely anything short of God Himself proclaiming Sirius innocent would be enough.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

For Lupin, Snape had a very easy way to get him killed (or killing him) had he wanted to since he was making the potion that stopped him from transforming. But the one time it failed it was Lupin's fault, for not drinking it.

I guess, but I can't imagine Dumbledore would take too kindly to Snape exposing and/or killing one of his teachers without justification. That was a whole arrangement which was necessary for Lupin to be able to work there in the first place. Seeing Lupin "in league" with Black to be able to do away with both of them seemed to be exactly what he wanted...but my goodness, I did rather overlook the whole Lily Potter aspect. Whoops. Funnily, that connection is instead actualized for the readers by Black right after Snape is knocked out...that would admittedly seem to be too much of a coincidence to be an accident, as much of a lame trick on the part of the author in order for readers to give some confidence in the morally dubious Black while denying the same to Snape - not that it's something Snape would've ever mentioned to anyone but Dumbledore, and only because he would've already known. I also went back and actually read some of the specific barbs Snape directed towards Harry about his father, and there's a pretty clear hinting of a "your father was a fool whose poor judgement got your mother killed" pattern going on, which would fit perfectly with the whole secret keeping and having trusted Black to keep them safe (the fact that it actually instead turned out to be Pettigrew whom James instead trusted the secret to and IIRC on Black's suggestion kind of proves what Snape said about the two of them). Alright, you've convinced me that at least Snape's character must have been planned from the beginning.

Edited June 29 by Bartimaeus
"said directed" -> "directed"

[Sarex]

@Bartimaeus From what I remember, and this was a long while ago, JKR had a board outlining the whole story fairly early on.

Here is an example of it:

This tells me that she is very much an architect instead of a gardener (outliner instead of a discovery writer). Now she could very well be somewhere in the middle (although the internet says she is very much on the architect side of things), where she outlines plot points, but does discovery writing of how the characters get there, but this still wouldn't affect the main character archetypes in the story, as those are usually closely tied to the plot.

[Bartimaeus]

Well, that probably explains why it often felt like "right, we just did the one or two things we were supposed to this month, so let's write a barebones couple sentence summary and get into the next one"...

[Sarex]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Well, that probably explains why it often felt like "right, we just did the one or two things we were supposed to this month, so let's write a barebones couple sentence summary and get into the next one"...

The upside to that is that the story feels tight and engaging, but yeah the downside is that it can be too lean...

[Zoraptor]

For a bit of balance, there were a few places where I thought Rowling fell down when it came to planning and related matters, all towards the end of the series.

The revelation of horcruxes seemed to be rather... not exactly abrupt, but it kind of needed more fleshing out earlier so that you don't just get a big expositionary sequence from Slughorn. It was clearly planned, but the execution was not great. Similarly and worse while the Deathly Hallows were introduced individually early on their significance mostly seemed to be a way to drive the plot of the book (movie). If someone told me that Rowling had picked them semi randomly because she was having difficulty getting people where she wanted them to be organically I'd have certainly believed that, with the possible exception of the wand (and even then the 'rule' its significance relied on was ?new? to DH? very iirc).

[Gfted1]

 

[Sarex]

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). It is good, but then again it isn't. Too artsy fartsy and preachy for it's own good.

[CopingMarlinsFan]

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

Too artsy fartsy and preachy for it's own good.

The more things change the more things stay the same it seems, this is so many movies now.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Salome's Last Dance (1988) - Oscar Wilde watches a brothel put on one of his plays.

Incredible. It's just a brilliant move to make a film that rather than a straight adaptation of a play is just the play being put on in front of an audience. Certainly an interesting way to stretch a budget and reinforce the unreality inherent to the form of the stage play. I found myself getting engrossed in the play only for cuts to Oscar Wilde to be drinking or pursuing a twink to interrupt the play action.

Whore (1991) - The anti-Pretty Woman

It's visceral and raw, a small-time and personal tragedy that could be any number of people. Personally I find myself preferring the stories of people who aren't major figures but are closer to the people that you'd know, like I'm not interested in a hesit film with an elite crew but would absolute watch a bunch of broke people attempt to rob a chain restaurant. Whore absolutely falls into this category and it is wonderful for it.

A bit of serendipity, both films are based on plays. 

[Hurlshort]

The Beekeeper - John Wick with Bees. Jason Statham is always fun. He probably had about 10 lines of dialogue in this, and that was plenty. It was exactly what I was expecting.  

Kind of had a Hitman feel to it in certain parts. The bad guys are cyberscammer, and my daughter recently got scammed out of $400, so that was cathartic. 

[Amentep]

6 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

The Beekeeper - John Wick with Bees. Jason Statham is always fun. He probably had about 10 lines of dialogue in this, and that was plenty. It was exactly what I was expecting.  

Kind of had a Hitman feel to it in certain parts. The bad guys are cyberscammer, and my daughter recently got scammed out of $400, so that was cathartic. 

Yikes!  Sorry to hear your daughter was scammed - any recourse or lost for good?

 

[Lexx]

Watched Furiosa a 2nd time. Still good. This movie is 2 1/2 hours long, but somehow time just flows away. This time I noticed the bad CGI a little more. Sad, but still not the worst I've seen. Real shame that movies aren't getting updated like games... would be nice to have the worst scenes improved some..

Edited July 4 by Lexx

[Hurlshort]

On 7/3/2024 at 1:52 PM, Amentep said:

Yikes!  Sorry to hear your daughter was scammed - any recourse or lost for good?

No recourse. Wells Fargo investigated and said it was her fault. Which it was, of course, but she had a teen checking account, and I was surprised they didn't have better protections in place. Basically they sent her a bad check, which she deposited, and then threatened her if she didn't Venmo the same amount ($400) back. The check didn't clear and she was out the amount she venmo'ed. She came to us after that fact, but she learned that lesson the hard way.

[Bartimaeus]

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005).

I sat down and watched this from beginning to end. The whole thing. These movies are just terribly constructed from about every possible aspect - most egregiously writing - but their one saving grace is they are very easy to make fun of and laugh at, not to mention the memes. This whole saga is basically Baby's First Romeo and Juliet Space Opera Parody, except the baby here is George Lucas. Don't ever let this guy back into the writing room...or the director's seat.

Being easy to make fun of at least makes them more enjoyable to watch than the sequel series, which just hurts my brain and makes me want to initiate a system shutdown. It's something.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005).

I sat down and watched this from beginning to end. The whole thing. These movies are just terribly constructed from about every possible aspect - most egregiously writing - but their one saving grace is they are very easy to make fun of and laugh at, not to mention the memes. This whole saga is basically Baby's First Romeo and Juliet Space Opera Parody, except the baby here is George Lucas. Don't ever let this guy back into the writing room...or the director's seat.

Being easy to make fun of at least makes them more enjoyable to watch than the sequel series, which just hurts my brain and makes me want to initiate a system shutdown. It's something.

I'll see you and raise you five

Madame Web (2024)

I know that on forums like these we often engage in hyperbole and exaggeration, but I can sincerely say that this is easily one of the worst films I have ever seen, if not the worst. On every single level this movie just ****ing sucks, from the bad cgi to wooden acting to a plot so damn stupid even by the stupid standards of superhero movies....it's just ****ing awful. 

Luckily I fell asleep for a quarter of it.

[Bartimaeus]

If you fall asleep during a movie, have you truly watched it? I think you have to go back and start over, .

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Just now, Bartimaeus said:

If you fall asleep during a movie, have you truly watched it? I think you have to go back and start over, .

I would prefer not to.

The intro sequence is awful, and after that it segues into one of the ****tiest ambulance scenes that has been inflicted on me. Beyond that half the time it feels like the cast is doing line reads to memorize the part instead of acting, it's like the shockingly bad Florence Pugh line in Dune 2 but in almost every goddamn scene of this movie. Then in the middle of the action, where the future Spider-Women are being hunted by evil bizness Spider-Man, the titular character drops the girls off with Uncle Ben (yes that one) and ****s off to Peru for a week to discover her past and does some vision quest stuff....because evil bizness Spider-Man who has a hacker lady using 2003 NSA tech and facial recognition on every camera in NYC can't figure out the lady preventing him from killing some teenagers (and whose mom he killed btw) has a friend who has a sister? Come the **** on Sony.

I figure I fell asleep during the most action heavy sequences, and I've played enough 10 year old videogames to have an idea how it looked.

Anyways I woke up for the end, where the main character is now blind and paraplegic but is also the legal guardian/mother figure to three teenagers who will grow up to put on gaudy Spider-themed costumes and fight random scrubs. This is what happens when I put on a terrible movie to knock me out when I'm trying to sleep, so I guess I can credit it for helping with that.

[melkathi]

Watched that Shogun season 1. Found it rather meh because they couldn't get me to care even remotely about any of the male characters, most of all the protagonist.

[Hurlshort]

9 hours ago, melkathi said:

Watched that Shogun season 1. Found it rather meh because they couldn't get me to care even remotely about any of the male characters, most of all the protagonist.

Huh, so you're saying it was true to the novel.  

[Amentep]

 

[Gorgon]

Looks really cheesy. 

I love it. 

Note to self, if you are ever attacked by a rhino, just throw sand in it's face.

[Gfted1]

Thats why I always walk around with pocket sand.

[ShadySands]

On 7/7/2024 at 10:58 AM, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I would prefer not to.

The intro sequence is awful, and after that it segues into one of the ****tiest ambulance scenes that has been inflicted on me. Beyond that half the time it feels like the cast is doing line reads to memorize the part instead of acting, it's like the shockingly bad Florence Pugh line in Dune 2 but in almost every goddamn scene of this movie. Then in the middle of the action, where the future Spider-Women are being hunted by evil bizness Spider-Man, the titular character drops the girls off with Uncle Ben (yes that one) and ****s off to Peru for a week to discover her past and does some vision quest stuff....because evil bizness Spider-Man who has a hacker lady using 2003 NSA tech and facial recognition on every camera in NYC can't figure out the lady preventing him from killing some teenagers (and whose mom he killed btw) has a friend who has a sister? Come the **** on Sony.

I figure I fell asleep during the most action heavy sequences, and I've played enough 10 year old videogames to have an idea how it looked.

Anyways I woke up for the end, where the main character is now blind and paraplegic but is also the legal guardian/mother figure to three teenagers who will grow up to put on gaudy Spider-themed costumes and fight random scrubs. This is what happens when I put on a terrible movie to knock me out when I'm trying to sleep, so I guess I can credit it for helping with that.

You missed the best part.

After she finally unlocks her powers and can be in multiple places at once, she just stands there and in about as much time as it would take to walk over to each of the spider women she magically appears one by one in front of them, does the barest minimum to help, then gets knocked down and that's over.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

You missed the best part.

After she finally unlocks her powers and can be in multiple places at once, she just stands there and in about as much time as it would take to walk over to each of the spider women she magically appears one by one in front of them, does the barest minimum to help, then gets knocked down and that's over.

I guess my brain forcing me to sleep was a defense mechanism.