Movies You've Seen (or would like to see) Recently

[Hurlshort]

Since we've got a best game of the year thread going in C&C, I wonder what you guys would pick as your best movie of 2017?

 

My choice is Logan. I don't even really consider it a comic book movie. It's just such a perfect ending to the character, and yet it is also perfect as a self contained piece. I think it will stand the test of time.

[Blarghagh]

Baby Driver

 

Anyway, I just came back from The Last Jedi, but I think I need to see it again just to figure out how I feel about it.

[Lexx]

Yeah, Baby Driver was real good. Logan was good too, but I thought the ending was crap, with the usual superhero fightings and stuff. Don't remember any other great movies from 2017 right now, actually.

[injurai]

Loved the end of Logan. Definitely one of the best movies this year.

 

Also Baby Driver, shame that Spacey is in it.

[Malcador]

Baby Driver

 

Anyway, I just came back from The Last Jedi, but I think I need to see it again just to figure out how I feel about it.

From the spoilers I've read, it seems I'll enjoy it a little bit better than TFA. Good thing too, the idea of being as bored as I was during TFA for 2.5 hours was worrying

[Blarghagh]

Not really spoiling anything, but tags just in case:

 

 

There's honestly one subplot that felt pointless and probably bogged down the runtime. Everything else was expertly paced, seamless and filled with surprising directions. I'm just not sure I liked those directions.

 

I will say this, those expecting a loose remake of ESB? Yeah, that's what they want you to think.

 

[algroth]

I loved both Logan and Baby Driver, but at this point I'm inclined to go with Dunkirk. That film just floored me.

 

I guess my top 5 right now would look something like:

 

1. Dunkirk

2. Zama

3. After the Storm

4. Blade Runner 2049

5. Baby Driver

[algroth]

Yeah, Baby Driver was real good. Logan was good too, but I thought the ending was crap, with the usual superhero fightings and stuff. Don't remember any other great movies from 2017 right now, actually.

 

 

I do think Logan loses some steam when X-24 is introduced. I feel like they had a pretty great villain with Donald Pierce so it was a bit of a disappointment to me when he got sidelined in favour of Wolverine clone. That said, there's still enough things of interest through the third act for the film to keep afloat, and the very ending scene was superb.

 

[Tale]

Your Name. followed by Bladerunner 2049.

 

But I haven't seen Baby Driver.

[Blarghagh]

Considering my love affair with Guillermo del Toro's work, I think Shape of Water might end up being mine, but it's not out here yet.

[Malcador]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/14/media/disney-fox-deal/index.html

 

Disney purchasing Fox for $52 B

[injurai]

Just 21st Century Fox that is, there movie division.

 

This also means the require full rights to Star Wars, 21st still had distribution rights on the movies they produced. This also means they now have X-Man back.

 

God damn though, $52 B is a lot. They bought Star Wars for $4 B.

[algroth]

Quite worrying.

[injurai]

Wait...

 

this also means they will have James Cameron's Avatar. Which is slated to have 4 movies over the next decade...

 

Christ, Disney is unstoppable.

[ShadySands]

Finally saw the second Kingsman movie. It wasn't nearly as good as the first but I still enjoyed it.

[Amentep]

Since we've got a best game of the year thread going in C&C, I wonder what you guys would pick as your best movie of 2017?

 

My choice is Logan. I don't even really consider it a comic book movie. It's just such a perfect ending to the character, and yet it is also perfect as a self contained piece. I think it will stand the test of time.

 

At this point I'd probably have to give it to IT, but there are quite a few films that I didn't get to see (either because timing didn't work out or they didn't show up locally) that I think could top it, potentially.

[algroth]

Just came back from The Last Jedi. I'm... Conflicted about it. I liked it, and it's definitely worth a watch in cinemas for the sheer spectacle alone (the photography and art direction are some of the best in all of the saga, first films included), but I feel it's the one that left me the least convinced from the Disney outings so far. Without going into spoilers, I do feel that there were a few too many winks, the comedy was often played too broadly (almost MCU-like at times), and there was a pandering both to fanbase demands and to the current 'social climate', with tokenism being a particularly serious and distracting problem. Many have complained about The Force Awakens feeling a lot like fanfic but this goes as far as feeling like fanfic for that very film, and I don't quite know how to feel about that even as I recognize that some of the sequences in here are some of the most evocative moments we've had in the whole saga so far, largely thanks to Rian Johnson's sensibility for the finer details in given scenes. Dunno, I'm certain I liked it but I feel my reservations are pretty great at the moment too.

[Hurlshort]

I took the whole family to see The Last Jedi. It was a fun film. It had some flaws, for sure. I think part of it is that Rogue One was such a different tone, and going back to the more fantasy-centric tone threw me a bit. I think I'll have a better handle on how I feel about it once the 3rd is out and we have a full story arc.

[majestic]

Dunno, I'm certain I liked it but I feel my reservations are pretty great at the moment too.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean, although my reservations are greated than the feeling that I liked it. I enjoyed watching the spectacle (and I was at a 4DX showing so a spectacle it was) and some of the scenes but others, well, there are some scenes and things in this film I hated more than everything Lucas did in the prequels and that takes some doing.

 

I'll go into details once more forumites have seen it and we can have a discussion without killing the flow of our posts with excessive spoiler tags. One thing though:

 

 

I hated the whole casino planet detour. With a passion. From the reason it was in there to the obvious aesop down to the looks of it.

 

[algroth]

 

Dunno, I'm certain I liked it but I feel my reservations are pretty great at the moment too.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean, although my reservations are greated than the feeling that I liked it. I enjoyed watching the spectacle (and I was at a 4DX showing so a spectacle it was) and some of the scenes but others, well, there are some scenes and things in this film I hated more than everything Lucas did in the prequels and that takes some doing.

 

I'll go into details once more forumites have seen it and we can have a discussion without killing the flow of our posts with excessive spoiler tags. One thing though:

 

 

I hated the whole casino planet detour. With a passion. From the reason it was in there to the obvious aesop down to the looks of it.

 

 

 

 

I don't mind the idea behind that sequence but I do mind some of the implementation. I really disliked the whole getaway sequence and felt the way the subject of war profiteering was a little too on the nose - but also I felt that, whilst the porgs at the island may have been a decent comic relief, between them, the alien horses and crystal foxes there were far too many 'animals' with anthropomorphic interactions with other characters, in a way that to my mind recalls the gophers in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And then there's Benicio del Toro's character who seems to serve no real purpose through any of it, really.

 

But to me the most problematic sequence is probably the opening battle sequence - I think that already set a huge precedent for what would be a growing pet peeve through the whole film, which is related to the sheer amount of tokenism present in the film. The sequence is itself very heavily centered around the heroism of a woman of Asian descent whom we've never seen before, know nothing about (do we even get to know her name?), but we're still meant to care for and not feel utterly confused about the sheer amount ot time and pomp given to her heroics. This paired with an unordinary amount of time and attention given to the non-white males in the fleet compared to the couple of passing shots of white males shown, which in today's context in which minorital representation is such a huge trending topic that I can't help feel that this all came across as rather pandering and forceful - forceful *not* because the characters were non-white males, but because, contrary to the likes of Finn or Poe or Rey, there is nothing to these characters to justify the attention or grandeur given to them and their role or actions. Normally you'd merely keep them in the background while focusing your attention on the actual characters of relevance to the story, i.e. Poe in this case (and this is a film which at 152 minutes definitely could have done with some trimming) - and maybe insert whatever is relevant to Rose's backstory and development in a less intrusive or confusingly protagonical fashion. This is one of many problems for me anyhow, but yeah, the list seems to only be growing the more I mull about the film.

 

[algroth]

So, thinking a little deeper about the issues with The Last Jedi, I'll go ahead and copy my phrasing of some of my issues as expressed on another forum, with spoilers:

 

 

The film felt a lot like a middle ground between fanfic and corporate course-correction, with the occasional moments of greatness thanks to Rian Johnson's rather poetic sensibility. But by and large, while I enjoyed it, I'm feeling like the more I think about it the more problematic I find it. It is that weird kind of film that seems to at once ostentate how it's trying to do things differently and yet where every 'surprise' or twist seems to have been thought so as to meet the audience's criticisms to The Force Awakens. Rey's parents better not be Skywalkers? Sure, it was a red herring all along! Snoke not that interesting a villain? Well, why don't we kill him off? Kylo Ren too similar to Vader? Well, let's break that mask, shall we? Then we also get a whole bunch of detours to other places that don't seem to serve much purpose in developing the characters or themes, while Luke's desertion of the Force does feel oddly phony, considering how all the talk of "balance" never leads to creating any sort of balance but redefining a new generation of good Jedi and bad Sith; likewise, for a moment I thought that the whole trip to the casino would have ended up with Finn and Rose running into the revelation that both sides have more than a bit of dirt on them, and maybe choosing to desert the rebels as a newfound sense of doubt about their position in the conflict came about them - but no, this is merely used as justification for Benicio betraying them in the end. These narrative threads could have all allowed each character to reach a new step in their respective developments, and given the new trilogy more purpose, but instead they seem squandered in what essentially all bogs down to a bit of noise in which heroes do heroic deeds. It's the kind of film that really makes me wonder if Disney ever had an idea for the trilogy beyond wanting to make a Star Wars trilogy, because this whole act surely felt improvised.

 

[Agiel]

The Last Jedi idle thoughts:

 

 

1. Didn't have much of an issue with the tokenism, as when we're dealing with an interstellar civilisation comprising of at least dozens of sentient species making humans so uniform in ethnicity would honestly be more uncanny valley for me. That said you guys were on the money on the war-profiteering aesop being a bit too on the nose.

 

2. For the Luke portions in the beginning to the middle part I definitely saw shades of Chris Avellone's take on the Star Wars universe in KOTORII, and hoped to see it lead to Rey emerging as a "Grey Jedi" under Luke's tutelage as a result of it. Alas, probably due to Disney's insistence they didn't go in that direction (and from what I've read even George Lucas wasn't hot on the idea of a Force-user falling between "Light" and "Dark" sides).

 

3. Come the time of Finn's (attempted) Kamikaze run on the laser-battering ram I almost groaned that there was going to be a second (or third, if you count the bombing run at the beginning) Randy Quaid in Independence Day moment in the movie, but at least the movie's tendency towards twists saved me from that indignity.

 

4. Definitely got the sense that Phasma ended the movie just as much a punk as she did in the last film.

 

Edited December 15, 2017 by Agiel

[algroth]

 

Oh, speaking of which, I did quite like the Brazil nod in it.

 

[algroth]

The Last Jedi idle thoughts:

 

 

-Didn't have much of an issue with the tokenism as previous posters had, as when we're dealing with an interstellar civilisation comprising of at least dozens of sentient species making humans so uniform in ethnicity would honestly be more uncanny valley for me. That said you guys were on the money on the war-profiteering aesop being a bit too on the nose.

 

-For the Luke portions in the beginning to the middle part I definitely saw shades of Chris Avellone's take on the Star Wars universe in KOTORII, and hoped to see it lead to Rey emerging as a "Grey Jedi" under Luke's tutelage as a result of it. Alas, probably due to Disney's insistence they didn't go in that direction (and from what I've read even George Lucas wasn't hot on the idea of a Force-user falling between "Light" and "Dark" sides).

 

-Come the time of Finn's (attempted) Kamikaze run on the laser-battering ram I almost groaned that there was going to be a second (or third, if you count the bombing run at the beginning) Randy Quaid in Independence Day moment in the movie, but at least the movie's tendency towards twists saved me from that indignity.

 

-Definitely got the sense that Phasma ended the movie just as much a punk as she did in the last film.

 

 

 

 

I think it's worth noting that the new trilogy so far is doing a pretty piss-poor job at presenting its villains as anything *other* than punks. I recall a saying from screenwriting class that went something like "a good antagonist always seems three steps ahead of the protagonist", but the exact opposite seems true here, where every confrontation seems to invariably go in the favour of the rebels and heroes. Can we really say that Hux or Kylo Ren really command any presence by now, after they've been foiled so many times by so many people? Snoke may have possessed a modicum of threat but, well, that's done and over with. Phasma was always a damp squib, right from the get-go. To this effect, a friend of mine mentioned that an interesting twist could have been to *invert* the positions of Ben and Rey instead, where Rey, clearly possessing a dark side to her, got tempted by Snoke, whilst Ben's conflicts eventually took him to embracing the light again.

 

Edited December 15, 2017 by algroth

[Malcador]

I'm still disappointed Finn didn't die in TFA

 

 

Also, they killed off Ackbar? Bastards!

 

Edited December 15, 2017 by Malcador