Cinema and Movie Thread: coming at you at 24fps

[Bartimaeus]

Godzilla Minus One (2023).

Every time I watch a Japanese movie, I'm constantly asking "what?" and "why?" about every little thing. I think my brain just doesn't like Japanese cinema - there's something about the style, pacing, and editing I just can't into. My best experience with a Japanese film thus far has been Tetsuo the Iron Man, where I was still doing all of those things, but at least it felt like the right thing to do so because of how completely incomprehensible it was.

Mad Max: Furiosa (2024).

I haven't seen any other Mad Max films, but I thought it was pretty great, though I honestly would've been pretty okay without Anya Taylor-Joy being in it and just sticking with whoever had been playing as the young version of her for the entire first half of the film. She wasn't exactly a character that...uh, really needed a lot of character, anyways.

[Sarex]

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Mad Max: Furiosa (2024).

I haven't seen any other Mad Max films, but I thought it was pretty great, though I honestly would've been pretty okay without Anya Taylor-Joy being in it and just sticking with whoever had been playing as the young version of her for the entire first half of the film. She wasn't exactly a character that...uh, really needed a lot of character, anyways.

How did you stomach the CGI? Was it noticeable to you?

Charlize Theron was the superior Furiosa hands down, but overall the move was better than Fury Road in everything but the practical effects. They leaned too much on the CGI for my taste.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

How did you stomach the CGI? Was it noticeable to you?

Charlize Theron was the superior Furiosa hands down, but overall the move was better than Fury Road in everything but the practical effects. They leaned too much on the CGI for my taste.

There were definitely a number of bugbears, but I was surprisingly quite into the film, so I didn't really mind that much at all. That's usually how it goes for me with "bad CGI" - I take notice and am unhappy with it way more when a film isn't working for me on other levels, just like how I was watching Godzilla Minus One and mentally complaining about basically everything I was seeing for no particular reason. My understanding is that Fury Road is purportedly one of the most insane films of all time in terms of committing to practical effects (to the point of the actors largely having a bad time filming it), so I'm sure Furiosa pales in comparison to it visually, but overall, I thought it was a pretty good looking film for the most part. But I've kind of realized over the past few years that if a movie or show can successfully pull me, of all people, in by means of its other strengths, I'll pretty much always forgive whatever visual issues there may be: it's just not really that important to me. Which probably sounds completely at odds with me given all my years of incessantly whining and complaining about art styles in animation and video games, but I earnestly believe it's true at this point. Visuals do play a big part in relaying what something is or at least might/should be, though, so I'll certainly continue to use them as a point of evaluation.

I haven't seen Charlize Theron's Furiosa, but I'll probably watch Fury Road here at some point after liking this film, and I'll be curious to see how she compares. I've never really liked Charlize Theron in anything I've ever seen, but I've also not seen that much that she's in to begin with, so who knows. Anya Taylor-Joy...I loved her in The Witch and Thoroughbreds, but I haven't been enamoured with her in basically anything else she's done (and I actively disliked her in The Northman, though to be fair, I actively disliked that entire movie period). I guess she was fine here, but I liked the kid playing the young version of her more, so as far as I'm concerned, she's the best Furiosa that I know so far, . Then again, I haven't yet seen what that character ultimately turns into...

[Gfted1]

Yeah, I didnt think I would like Mad Max: Furiosa but it was pretty awesome. I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that old tattooed guy is Gandalf.

[Amentep]

On 8/24/2024 at 12:13 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Every time I watch a Japanese movie, I'm constantly asking "what?" and "why?" about every little thing.

I felt this way about a lot of Italian genre films until I just started saying "dream logic" and stopped thinking about it.  Fulci is really, really bad in this way, but I actually like his films as I just roll with 'em.

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Yeah, I didnt think I would like Mad Max: Furiosa but it was pretty awesome. I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that old tattooed guy is Gandalf.

George Shevtsov in that role reminded me more of John Hurt than Ian McKellen, but close enough, I suppose.

59 minutes ago, Amentep said:

I felt this way about a lot of Italian genre films until I just started saying "dream logic" and stopped thinking about it.  Fulci is really, really bad in this way, but I actually like his films as I just roll with 'em.

I reflexively skip any movie that I hear anybody describing as being "like a dream". Never my, uh, cup of tea, .

[majestic]

On 8/15/2024 at 3:32 AM, Hurlshort said:

That sounds like a job for @majestic!

You rang?

So, I actually sat down and watched Rebel Moon Chapter One: Chalice of Blood. That name is a mouthful, and it is the Director's Cut version of A Child of Fire, which I have not seen. Bear that in mind. I have heard a lot of things about Zack Snyder's most recent film, and none of them good, so I went into watching this with a few expectations in place, the biggest of which would be that it looks like a Zack Snyder film - and that it does. Oh boy does it look like a Zack Snyder film, and lo, Snyder's trademark color grading and desaturation is in place, in full force. That man could film a set created in various shades of pink and make it look somber and brooding (actually, that is a bad example, as the original Addam's Family show was shot in black and white on a set in various shades of pink, and the result looked appropriate for an Addam's Family show).

The other expectation was that I am going to be miserable and hate the film, after all, many of the criticisms I heard from and read of arise from issues that I have harped on over and over and over again, and then some.

Imagine my surprise when that did not happen. I get all critcisms, like the space Amish people plowing and tilling and seeding their fields by oxen and their bare hands while still having houses with automated doors and other modern amenities, or how most of the characters in the film are flat non-starters (only Kora, Noble, Jimmy and Gunnar are developed characters, and of those only Gunnar has an actual character arc, to the point where one could think Gunnar's the main character instead of Kora), that all the scenes with Jimmy are weirdly disjointed and do not fit into the film, that is spends an inordinate amount of time introducing a character who does nothing (although that is apparently just in the Director's Cut).

It just did not really matter. For a film with a runtime of three hours and twentyfive minutes it was surprisingly engaging. The sheer length meant I could not sit down and watch it in one go because I am a little pressed to find so much free time at the moment, but if I had I would not have turned the film off.

That is not to say that I do not have issues with the film. More than once I thought that this movie feels like a video game adaptation. In fact, it would probably work better as a video game. Arguably it did work better as a video game, because it is by far and large Mass Effect 2, just with an obvious betrayal shortly before the suicide mission (which did not materialize, but somehow suspect it still will, in the second chapter, what with the ending of the first one).

There's also too much of Snyder's trademark slow motion violence.

Lastly, there's also way too much copying from existing sources to create a film that is basically a sci-fi The Seven Samurai, and while something like Mass Effect's setting is charming in being a love letter to every sci-fi setting ever created, Snyder's version is a little too much of a mix and a little too unfocused to be really interesting. On the one hand you have your peaceful farming village in what could be a version of Warhammer 40k's Imperium of Man and all the implications that this brings, and on the other hand you have a warrior prince from a conquered world becoming Toruk Makto by riding Buckbeak. For those that have not seen the film, I kid you not. Tarak the Warrior Prince, one of the film's flattest characters, talks to Buckbeak the hippogriff, then kneels in front of it, and mounts it for a ride. This being grimdark it then proceeds to gut Draco instead of just hurting him, but somehow that is both expected as one can see it coming from a mile away, and hilariously gratifying.

Then there's the sequence with Nemesis and the sentient spider creature that I am pretty sure I have seen before somewhere, I just cannot remember where at the moment. There's all the references to Star Wars (including a cantina full of scum). Noble has a tentacle hentai scene and ends up being hooked up to The Matrix.

There's not a single original thought in this, I think, and yet... yet I did not hate it, and I actually found myself just enjoying the ride. These things happen every now and then. I mean, by all accounts, Rebel Moon Chapter One: Chalice of Blood is not a good film. Still, for whatever that is worth, I enjoyed watching it. Normally I would blame this on my mind being broken by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jar Jar Abrams, but I, uh, also liked Sucker Punch, and my liking Sucker Punch predates the new Star Wars trilogy and all of nuTrek except Star Trek 2009.

Yeah, I am about as surprised as you all are.

[Hurlshort]

That is a surprise! I did watch the whole, non director's cut of Rebel Moon and thought it was fine. It had some good parts. I only got a few minutes into the 2nd film, so I can't really say anything about it. 

On a related note, I did not like Furiosa nearly as much as Fury Road. I thought there was too much exposition. But I also watched Fury Road in theaters and Furiosa at home, and I think that made a difference.

[Bartimaeus]

Speaking of which...

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).

I hated the first half hour (basically up until Max got free), but it got a lot better after that. I think both movies have their strengths, I guess I'd maybe rate them just about equally, and I'd certainly understand why one might prefer one over the other - they attempt to accomplish very different things, and the story, characters, action, and even visuals are all told in very different ways, even if all of the elements have similarities on the surface. I actually preferred the action and visuals of Furiosa over Fury Road, but that's more a function of Fury Road's being utterly obnoxious rather than being less impressive: I almost turned Fury Road off in that first half hour because of how incensed I was getting at its jerky fast pans/zooms, slow-mos, and random hallucinations/visions...let me get a feel for a film, its characters, story, and stakes before you start throwing all that at me. The film eventually took a few slow moments to re-establish and save itself from that awful start, so all's well that ends well, I suppose. Fury Road is the more novel of the two to be sure, but novelty in of itself has never been a guarantee of a better experience.

Edited August 28 by Bartimaeus

[rjshae]

We went to watch Twisters. It was entertaining for the most part, but loud. So darn loud. We couldn't even hear each other's comments. Looks like cinemas are targeting nearly deaf people now.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

I enjoyed it. I think that I would have preferred it if it was more like other Mad Max films taking place during a single conflict instead of an origin story, but preferences aside the film was solid enough. The cgi means that visually it can be lacking but for me at least it wasn't as grating as superhero trash.

I hope if they do another Mad Max there's a big twist reveal that the rest of the world is still normal but only Australia has descended into chaos.

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Not gonna lie, serious contender for movie of the year. Ethan Cohen still has the Fargo juice and really pumped it to make this.

[Bartimaeus]

Swiss Army Man (2016).

Somehow, the Daniels (of Everything Everywhere All at Once) manage to tie together the funny, thoughtful, and face-palmingly absurd for me once again, against all the built-in biases I had against this going into it. With Harry freaking Potter himself starring as the film's inanimate-ish corpse. I don't even know, dude.

[Lexx]

Finally watched The Thing from 2011 yesterday. The landscape shots were nice, but the rest of the movie is very... meh. The original movie is so much better.

Edited September 2 by Lexx

[majestic]

3 hours ago, Lexx said:

Finally watched The Thing from 2011 yesterday. The landscae shots were nice, but the rest of the movie is very... meh. The original movie is so much better.

You mean the 1951 film? Yeah well, dunno...  

edit: 'tis a joke, just to make it completely clear.

Edited September 2 by majestic

[majestic]

Rebel Moon Chapter One: Curse of Forgiveness

So this clocks in at a lot less runtime than the director's cut of the first chapter. I started watching the film Saturday night, and to my surprise, I found myself watching it all in one sitting. It was close to midnight when I began watching, so it was half past two already.

The film is basically two halves, somewhat neatly split at half the runtime, although with a 15 minutes credit sequence the first part has a bit more than half of the actual film. The first half is actually fantastic. The second half is also somewhat good for such an extended action sequence, but it does drag on after a while, and the film sadly uses up much of the tension in the first like 30 minutes of the action sequence (that runs for over an hour total).

Bad action pacing aside, I really liked it, except this time I am less surprised at it than I was when enjoying the first part. Afer all, some minor flashbacks aside, the film spends almost 90 minutes on bringing in the seaon's harvest and preparing the defenses for the action sequence. This isn't much of a spoiler because nothing much happens, but that nothing much is exactly what was necessary to create some actual stakes in the fight. It is much easier to care for a group of flat characters risking their lives if they get to interact with the villagers and help bring in the harvest and train them for the length of a regular movie.

Spoiler

I also managed to guess the two deaths of the heroes, it was pretty clear that Nemesis would not survive based on her backstory and actions in the first film combined with the fact that she was assigned to defend the children with whom she spent time with during the harvest, and Gunnar was basically dead the moment his romance with Kora lead to some hot, steamy action. I wouldn't even be surprised if Kora ends up being pregnant in any sequels, should they be made.

There's the occasional weak point because of the setting's disjointed and mishmashed nature, but who gives a damn. This is a film that's not afraid to spend over 50 minutes on showing characters cutting corn and thrashing it while interacting with the townsfolk, eating and sining and dancing the nights away with them while toiling hard during the day. That alone made it worth for me. Not very surprised that I have read critics write that parts of the movie are deathly boring. No, they're not, we just seem to have lost the ability to appreciate a slow buildup to raise the stakes in a future confrontation.

Before action sequences turned into nightmarish CGI spectacles of insane length, that was actually normal. Except perhaps for 80ies trash cinema, but that's something else entirely and lovable in its own right.

Also, uh, and that is something I forgot to mention in my post about the first chapter, there's something meta-hilarious about having both actors that played Daario Naharis in Game of Thrones in the same film.

Kora is still a mixed bag of a main character, and I am unsure how good of an idea it was to show her character growth with two overly long sex scenes. Zack Snyder could have spent the time on better showing her growth and perhaps add a little more to her miniature arc. As it stands it is only visible in her ability to have a romance and in comparing the differences between the sex scenes. It sort of works if you pay attention, but I suspect not many people will while they can stare at Sofia Boutella's and Michiel Huisman's naked bodies.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

A componently made horror flick that has no poetry in it's soul. Perhaps as a viewer I am tainted with the knowledge Landis is a piece of **** (sorry to insult excrement by comparing it to Landis) but I found the film to be hollow. It's pretty but I find it lacking, I think it just lacks substance to make it anything more than 20 minutes of Werewolf with over an hour of an unlikeable **** floating through Jolly Olde England.

Mulholland Drive (2001) - KP rewatch

I don't know how many times I've seen this film, but I think this time made me think of my father a lot. If Naomi Watts had only made this film she would deserve to be remembered as an actress of a generation, the shift between bright-eyed up and coming starlet to a battered and tired woman bitter about having been abandoned by everything brings echoes of Ergo Proxy's examination of raison d'etre. Glued together by Lynch's trademarked surrealism, this dream reminds us of the hell of waking up. Not as iconic for me as Lost Highway, but still one of the best films ever made.

[Amentep]

 

 

[Amentep]

 

 

[Amentep]

 

 

[majestic]

Well, uhm, this might be one for the "so bad it's good" category.

[BruceVC]

I finally got round to watching Prey and Dune 2 ( the second part of the latest remake )

Prey: I really enjoyed it and I consider it a worthy part of the overall Predator franchise. I always ignore criticism around any book, movie or game until I have experienced it myself and Prey had lots of negative opinions about it being woke and the most exasperating part of this criticism was this was  before the movie had been released

But I found Naru to be a very believable character and how she adopted a combat strategy, yes there were some  unrealistic scenes but within the boundaries of artistic license. She used the environment, her agility and the Predators own tools to defeat it. Basically brain over brawn

I loved the whole French trappers battle scene and how the Predator used his shield and speed to defeat the larger force

Very entertaining movie and recommended, I see Hulu should be making the next one set in modern times with Arnold coming back

 

Dune 2 : Absolutely brilliant and better than the original, not much to say apart from that and I see they making a third part 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 16 by BruceVC

[Lexx]

lol that Predator trailer is so terrible. Thank god it's fake.

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

lol that Predator trailer is so terrible. Thank god it's fake.

Apparently Badlands is going to be set in the future, Im very excited 

 

 

[BruceVC]

On 9/2/2024 at 7:59 AM, Lexx said:

Finally watched The Thing from 2011 yesterday. The landscape shots were nice, but the rest of the movie is very... meh. The original movie is so much better.

But its a  precursor to the  original 1982 Thing, its about the Norwegian team so its  a different narrative?

Edited September 16 by BruceVC

[Lexx]

Sure, but it's still full of terrible CGI and bad action shots.