Cinema and Movie Thread: coming at you at 24fps

[Amentep]

THE FALL GUY (2024) - an action comedy romance mystery film. Thought it was a real blast. It reminded me a little of F/X buy with a stunt man than an effects maker.

MOONFALL (2022) - I'm surprised at how much complaint this film got for scientific inaccuracies when most of what is mentioned is explained by the central premise (which is, admittedly science fantasy more than science fact, but once it's established it throws out most issues with science in the rest of the film since youre in an alternate parrallel reality). Would argue that the NASA investigates side of the movie was more enjoyable than the 'disaster film' regular characters try to survive part.

Did I mention I watched Airport (1970) the first if the big 70s disaster films? It's pretty good but I was surprised at how much of the character drama was rooted in marital infidelity.

[Gfted1]

 

[Amentep]

 

 

[Lexx]

On 5/8/2024 at 6:27 PM, Gfted1 said:

 

lol this trailer is pretty much the whole movie. Doesn't feel like I need to watch it anymore now.

[LadyCrimson]

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

lol this trailer is pretty much the whole movie. Doesn't feel like I need to watch it anymore now.

While I'd agree (and that trailers give this feeling too often these days),  one can also go too far into another direction. Like this one. It tells me so little I searched for a brief plot synopsis because I couldn't tell even the tiniest thing about what it would be about - not even what genre/s it might fall into. I guess it got me curious enough to look up the movie tho, so it worked in that sense.

 

Edited May 11 by LadyCrimson

[Raithe]

Realised Hackers was now free on Prime, and idle watched it for the nostalgia hit.

That sweet joy of mid 90's view of techno fashion and concepts of the hacking culture and the before-internet

Plus Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller looking so damn young.

[uuuhhii]

those godzilla movie make less and less sense with each new one

still pretty fun to watch

[melkathi]

God, this Fall Guy movie is dumb.

It doesn't help owning the DVDs from the old show.

[Amentep]

Queen of Outer Space & the 80s Flash Gordon make a great double bill. Been awhile since I'd seen either, and thought they worked well together.

In other news, full trailer for Osgood Perkin's LONGLEGS:

 

 

[Raithe]

Caught Ghosted on Apple TV.

It's, hmm, an odd one. On a lot of levels it works, its a servicable popcorn blend of awkward comedy and action with Chris Evans slightly needy joe normal who has a spectacular one day date with Ana de Armas enigmatic "book curator", decides to travel to London for a surprise romantic moment only to get kidnapped and the reveal she's actually a spy. Throw in a bout of confused identities where all the bad guys think he's actually her infamous spy rep and it spirals along.

A little silly, a little entertaining.  Full of surprise little cameos and faces you know, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, John Cho, Ryan Reynolds, among others.

But oddly let down by a lack of chemistry between Chris and Ana. They work it, but you don't seem to have that magic sparkle.

[Gfted1]

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Dune: Part Two (2024)

I was told to give it a chance so I did. As many of you know, @Bartimaeus and I have hated on Villeneuve a lot, frankly this film confirms it.

Dune: Part Two has a stellar cast and it absolutely disrespects them. Florence Pugh is one of the greatest actresses of her generation and she is absolutely squandered here, relegated to wearing weird aesthetic outfits and delivering one of the most wooden lines I have ever heard. And it is constantly like this, all of that talent is wasted on horse**** lines or set pieces against barren fake scifi sets. Perhaps the closest the film gets to real acting is through Dave Bautista, whose background in wrestling primes him to be able to act without using the dialogue Villeneuve so despises, in the scenes where he is afraid or humiliated. Everything else is just ****ing bland as hell, if it wasn't for the lack of melted faces or unnatural numbers of fingers I could believe this film was completely AI generated.

The cinematography feels like it just shot concept art. None of this **** feels like anyone actually lives here, none of it. Villeneuve's precision and set building captured nothing, even the closest "real world" shots of the desert feel much more like they dumped 9000 tons of sand into a studio lot, it doesn't feel like a desert with actual creatures that live in it.

And to get a bit....woke, as some would say, Villeneuve ripped out the Arabic influences and attempted to sew it back together without filling in the gaping holes. This film actively attempts to de-Arabize the Fremen into generic sci-fi future humanity, grinding off the serial numbers so to speak. Perhaps it's political, given that a film about obivously arab stand-in desert people fighting comically cruel invaders occupying their home would not be a politically popular among the ruling class for entirety the 21st century, but substantially less so in 2024. Whatever the case may be, it is a cowardly move that makes me feel like I'm being insulted.

This movie is a soulless piece of **** and I feel like I need to cleanse by watching a good film. So I'm going to buy tickets for I Saw The TV Glow (2024) and see it tonight or tomorrow, hell I'll probably watch the director's previous feature We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021) to boot, because that movie is ****ing great.

[Bartimaeus]

On one hand, I think it may be that this guy's films aren't for us and we should just stop trying. On the other hand, that's because they're incredibly dull and it's his fault for deliberately making them that way over and over. Overall, I blame him more than I blame us, .

Edited May 25 by Bartimaeus

[Lexx]

Nah, I blame you.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

On one hand, I think it may be that this guy's films aren't for us and we should just stop trying. On the other hand, that's because they're incredibly dull and it's his fault for deliberately making them that way over and over. Overall, I blame him more than I blame us, .

In this case it's definitely my fault for going against my instincts and watching it.

Dissecting the movie more in my head, the thing that really stands out to me is Florence Pugh's horrible last line in the film, which sounds like she was rushing through a line read at 2am instead of being on a set with a dozen incredible actors. When I say this I'm not just angry about how that French-Canadian fool squandered the Midsommar star's talent to have her stand around in weird costumes delivering plot exposition, I mean that with the cast of actors that are all capable of incredible performances he managed to get for the movie he wanted to make since he was a child....he didn't get a memorable performance out of any of them. Not a one. How do you get Christopher Walken out of retirement and sequester him to making grumpy faces while wearing a dress?

Villeneuve with his hatred of dialogue and inability to understand humanity should just make videogame cutscenes or something.

[Bartimaeus]

11 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

In this case it's definitely my fault for going against my instincts and watching it.

Dissecting the movie more in my head, the thing that really stands out to me is Florence Pugh's horrible last line in the film, which sounds like she was rushing through a line read at 2am instead of being on a set with a dozen incredible actors. When I say this I'm not just angry about how that French-Canadian fool squandered the Midsommar star's talent to have her stand around in weird costumes delivering plot exposition, I mean that with the cast of actors that are all capable of incredible performances he managed to get for the movie he wanted to make since he was a child....he didn't get a memorable performance out of any of them. Not a one. How do you get Christopher Walken out of retirement and sequester him to making grumpy faces while wearing a dress?

Villeneuve with his hatred of dialogue and inability to understand humanity should just make videogame cutscenes or something.

I do wish I understood what other people see in his style. Here's a guy who's supposedly making some of the best films of the last decade, but I just can't invest in his stories, develop attachments to his characters, or even be taken to a different world by his visuals and environments. My whole thing is that I want to be emotionally moved one way or another by what I am watching, to actively engage with and become attached to what I'm watching...not get the very life sucked out of me as I watch. He's just one of those guys like James Cameron that no matter how many times I try their films, I really wish I could go back in time and push them off a bridge over an interstate highway so that someone else with a totally different directorial voice could've made their films. That's why I'm not going to watch any more.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021)

A brilliant exposition of isolation and loneliness in the always online world. It's very disturbing and low-key, and doesn't commit the cardinal KP movie sin of explaining itself in a way that feels unnatural/solely for the benefit of the audience. You pick up enough from each character to know who they are while still not really knowing who they are, which is very fitting given that it is a film about online engagement. Highly reccomend, can't wait to see the director's next film tonight.

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I do wish I understood what other people see in his style. Here's a guy who's supposedly making some of the best films of the last decade, but I just can't invest in his stories, develop attachments to his characters, or even be taken to a different world by his visuals and environments. My whole thing is that I want to be emotionally moved one way or another by what I am watching, to actively engage with and become attached to what I'm watching...not get the very life sucked out of me as I watch. He's just one of those guys like James Cameron that no matter how many times I try their films, I really wish I could go back in time and push them off a bridge over an interstate highway so that someone else with a totally different directorial voice could've made their films. That's why I'm not going to watch any more.

There's just a hollowness to his films that all the spectacle in the world can't compensate for. I don't think he can understand the human element(s) of storytelling to make a film that is compelling

[Hurlshort]

17 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I do wish I understood what other people see in his style. Here's a guy who's supposedly making some of the best films of the last decade, but I just can't invest in his stories, develop attachments to his characters, or even be taken to a different world by his visuals and environments. My whole thing is that I want to be emotionally moved one way or another by what I am watching, to actively engage with and become attached to what I'm watching...not get the very life sucked out of me as I watch. He's just one of those guys like James Cameron that no matter how many times I try their films, I really wish I could go back in time and push them off a bridge over an interstate highway so that someone else with a totally different directorial voice could've made their films. That's why I'm not going to watch any more.

Is he that big of a deal though? I mean, he's got a pretty small catalogue. He's not Guillermo Del Toro. I say that because I've gotten the two confused before. He's got like 5 movies in his library, and Sicario is the only one that I think I can give full credit to the director for. Blade Runner and Dune were both established worlds. Sure, he brought the visuals of those to fruition, but it wasn't exactly a creative vision. I'm pretty sure he watched Arrival, but all I remember thinking was Jodi Foster did this movie better already.  

Screw you on James Cameron though. I love his stuff.  

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Is he that big of a deal though? I mean, he's got a pretty small catalogue. He's not Guillermo Del Toro. I say that because I've gotten the two confused before. He's got like 5 movies in his library, and Sicario is the only one that I think I can give full credit to the director for. Blade Runner and Dune were both established worlds. Sure, he brought the visuals of those to fruition, but it wasn't exactly a creative vision. I'm pretty sure he watched Arrival, but all I remember thinking was Jodi Foster did this movie better already.  

Screw you on James Cameron though. I love his stuff.  

No...and yes. He's one of the few auteurs to come out of the last decade that is getting actual budgets for his films. There aren't a ton of those around anymore, and most of the ones still working are ten, twenty years older. So I figure I have at least another decade, maybe two, to look forward of Dennis(sic) films, and it is a bit annoying that he's going to inevitably suck up a lot of the air in the room during that time. But like I said, I'm not going to continue to make the mistake by watching more of them, I don't really even want to talk or think about the guy anymore. Let Dennis and his films forever languish in the vast graveyards of my mind.

James Cameron: At least he's only working on his cruddy video game movies these days (i.e. Avatar) - well, in between personally overseeing and approving of infamously terrible AI-upscaled re-releases of his previous films, that is. And actually, I'm okay with Terminator 1 and True Lies, which is at least something. I have to be honest, while I do really dislike James Cameron's work as a whole, I kind of forgot my actual least favorite director of all time, which is Darren Aronofsky: now there's a guy whose films have consistently and vehemently disgusted me so much that if I heard he was the victim of a grisly murder, genuinely my first thought would probably be "good!"...before I remember that, oh yeah, he just made awful movies, I don't really need to be a bloodthirsty lunatic because of it, .

Edited May 27 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Darren Aronofsky

I've not watched any of his movies, which is kind of impressive.

[Hurlshort]

27 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I've not watched any of his movies, which is kind of impressive.

Same here. I recognize a few, but they don't look interesting to me.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

The film legit made me depressed. A neon draped nightmare of nostalgia that detonates a tactical nuke to the feels. It's perhaps one of the scariest horror films in terms of actually being frightening for the viewer. Could not reccomend more.

Showgirls (1995)

Kyle MacLaughlin's unsettling chin strikes again. It's obsessively horny, glamorous in a gaudy way, and more than a little excessive, just like the myth Vegas has built for itself. Perhaps it's because I'm viewing it almost 30 years later, but the film really feels like it was ahead of it's time in some ways.

[Gfted1]

 

[Lexx]

Ugh, is this another multiverse thing.

[Gfted1]