Which Films have you seen lately? Certificate 18

[Takhisis]

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987)!

 

[lymond]

Just finished watching my fav team (49ers) advance in the playoffs so now its time to get drunk and watch Eternals with family ... pray for me.

Grew up hating the 9ers (cause I'm a huge Falcon fan, but that rivalry is no more), but pulled for them against Dullas. Almost blew it!

I pray for you AND your family

 

[warpus]

Watched Colour out of Space and that was a somewhat crazy time. Not sure if I'd recommend as I'm not really into horror-like stuff, but .. maybe?

Right now watching The Midnight Sky and it's almost done and I can't believe the moron astronauts didn't realize

Spoiler :

that in order to repopulate the Earth you really do need as much variety in your genitals as possible. Only 1 man 1 woman and 1 unbord child are going to survive? How are you going to rebuild human civilization with that? Two dudes go down in flames for sentimental reasons.. ooo-kay. Makes zero sense. And I mean, I think with that little variance in DNA any sort of future colony is probably screwed anyway, but at last with more dudes adding their spunk to the mix you get a bit more variety and you'd think chance of a human colony to re-establish itself

This part threw me off but the rest of the movie was good

 

[The_J]

I think that was also one of my main criticisms. It all kinda seems pointless to me. They'd have needed to set the whole thing a bit earlier/with more people.

 

[Fippy]

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Colony on Netflix. Pretty good with a different take on the effects of climate change.

Spoiler :

I did want the ending to take one more step and show the future arrival of the folks from Kepler.

 

[lymond]

^^^I started that the other day after coming across an article about it. Just watched a few minutes as I was hitting the sack, but the premise seemed intriguing. I plan to finish. I'm so backlogged right now..ha

Still gotta finish Expanse. Don't want to finish Expanse. Don't want it to end. And Ozark new season later this week..ugh

 

[Takhisis]

The Matrix: Reloaded (2003). It turns out that ‘Councilor West’ is actually played by the real-life Cornell West.

 

[The_J]

The Colony on Netflix. Pretty good with a different take on the effects of climate change.

Spoiler :

I did want the ending to take one more step and show the future arrival of the folks from Kepler.

^^^I started that the other day after coming across an article about it. Just watched a few minutes as I was hitting the sack, but the premise seemed intriguing. I plan to finish. I'm so backlogged right now..ha

Sounds indeed good.
And we don't have it on the French Netflix .

 

[Sommerswerd]

Eternals - First off, I have to say that I don't see what all the fuss was about. It was fine. I mean it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. I also found many of the criticisms I've heard about it way overblown. For example, I'd heard that the movie leaned too hard into LGBTQ issues/scenes. There was one, ONE, gay kiss and that was it, and even then it was just a little peck like an old married couple kissing each other goodbye for the day. Its funny because before even seeing the film, I told one person who was complaining to me about "all the LGBTQ stuff" in the film, that for people who did not grow up seeing much same sex relationships depicted in movies, seeing teensy bit might tilt them and make them feel like "Errmahgawd this movie is ALL about gay stuff!!!" when its really a very minor part of the film... which is exactly how it turned out.

The main complaint I've heard/read was that it didn't reference the MCU, or that it only did it in one throwaway line. Also untrue. Related to that critique, was that the movie didn't really explain why they weren't part of the original MCU movies and why they didn't participate in the Infinity War. Also untrue. We can put aside the fact that we know damn well why they weren't included, ie., because they're new characters in terms of the MCU (not the comics), so they didn't actually exist in the MCU and they are being retroactively inserted. They gave a perfectly fine fig leaf of an explanation for their absence. It wasn't immersion breaking at all, and in fact, for me, it actually helped with immersion because it allowed me to appreciate these characters as separate, doing their own thing, with their own, larger meta-concerns, that were in a sense, on a higher plane than the Infinity War conflict. That's not a new concept in the MCU by any means. The Wizards in Dr. Strange have their own stuff to deal with that most of humanity is either partially or totally unaware of. The TVA is a similar concept, with Kang the Conqueror being another layer within a layer of the same thing. Ego was similarly looking at things from a "higher" plane of existence, its just that he was included in the story-proper, while the Eternals weren't. Another thing I'd compare it to, is the lesser Marvel hero shows like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron-Fist etc., where they exist in the same universe as the major MCU heroes, but they are doing their own thing with little or no interaction with the major MCU characters. It reminds me of Captain Marvel's throwaway line, about why she didn't help with the Infinity War aftermath... the obvious out-of-story answer being that they hadn't written character yet, but her in-story fig-leaf explanation was that she had other **** to do. Fine, whatever.

The one criticism that I definitely agree with, is that there are too many characters. Way too many. I think a related criticism is that Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek were underutilized. I think that second issue is related to the first. There was not enough screen time to showcase and introduce all of the characters properly. Another legitimate criticism that is related to this is that they rely too much on flashbacks to introduce/explain the characters so it makes the movie hard to follow. It reminded me a little bit of Memento where you keep jumping backwards in time. But in Memento, confusing/disorienting the viewer is the point, whereas with Eternals its just annoying, which makes the story even harder to follow, coupled with all the new characters being introduced all at the same time. The other problem is since these are not the major mainstream characters, you don't even have the same emotional investment in getting to know them. Marvel: Inhumans had a similar problem for me.

Ultimately, I think the film was a perfectly fine superhero film. I will admit that my review is biased by a couple things. For one, I had very low expectations based on so many folks panning it ahead of me seeing it, so it was going to be harder for the film to disappoint me. Second, I watched it twice, because I fell asleep watching it the first time so I missed the climax and the Easter eggs. I have to say that seeing it a second time made me appreciate it much more, because it was so much easier to follow the story and understand who all the characters were and how the story fit in to the larger MCU, plus I saw the Easter eggs, which further tied things together. I'd say its worth watching, and if you already saw it, worth watching again to see if you like it better the second time around.

 

[Synobun]

They gave a perfectly fine fig leaf of an explanation for their absence. It wasn't immersion breaking at all, and in fact, for me, it actually helped with immersion because it allowed me to appreciate these characters as separate, doing their own thing, with their own, larger meta-concerns, that were in a sense, on a higher plane than the Infinity War conflict. That's not a new concept in the MCU by any means.

Spoiler :

Except Thanos is one of them. And was acknowledged as such in the end credits scene.

 

[BenitoChavez]

it actually helped with immersion because it allowed me to appreciate these characters as separate, doing their own thing, with their own, larger meta-concerns, that were in a sense, on a higher plane than the Infinity War conflict

Spoiler :

Except Thanos is one of them. And was acknowledged as such in the end credits scene.

Spoiler :

Also the whole purpose of the Eternals was for them to spawn a celestial which required lots of human beings for whatever reason. It wasn't really clear to me why they needed humans. Energy or something. But whatever. The point is wiping out 1/2 of all humans would be a big hindrance to their plan so they probably SHOULD have gotten involved in the Infinity War

 

[Sommerswerd]

Spoiler :

Except Thanos is one of them. And was acknowledged as such in the end credits scene.

Good catch, you might be right about that, I am watching again. He probably should have given that as one of his justifications for why he was doing what he was doing, but he couldn't, because Eternals wasn't actually a thing yet in the MCU when Thanos was villain-monologuing. I'm actually watching it a third time now, and I am noticing even more explanatory stuff that I didn't notice the first two times, one example being that the disease "Mahd Wurry" was explained... essentially as "mad weary (as in super tired of their mission)". I'd figured it out on my own, and made the connection, but I did not realize that they actually explained it in the film explicitly. There are other examples, but the point is that this is not a typical superhero film in the sense that its very plot-dense and requires you to pay close attention and/or watch multiple times to appreciate what is going on.

Spoiler :

Also the whole purpose of the Eternals was for them to spawn a celestial which required lots of human beings for whatever reason. It wasn't really clear to me why they needed humans. Energy or something. But whatever. The point is wiping out 1/2 of all humans would be a big hindrance to their plan so they probably SHOULD have gotten involved in the Infinity War

You don't even need that fact to establish what they should have done... from our, human/Earthling perspective. Obviously, from our perspective, they should have intervened to save Earth from Thanos, in all circumstances. They didn't, because they don't see things completely from our perspective... and that is part of the whole point of the characters. They have this whole meta-perspective, the familiar shorthand of which is "The Lord works in mysterious ways" and/or "God's plan is beyond human understanding" or my personal fav... "The Lord giveth and The Lord taketh away..." and so on.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm pretty fond of the underlying source material for the Eternals. I won't click the spoilers, because I'll be seeing it (someday) and I hope that the Surprise From Low Expectations kicks in. As to why they don't stop Thanos, I will just accept that there's a line in there (comicbook Eternals wouldn't care much because of reasons that don't really apply to the MCU). As to why Thanos doesn't mention them, in the source materials Thanos is an Eternal in the technical sense but is from an offshoot that only connects to Earth Eternals because all stories ended up involving Earth. In the MCU, we don't get any hints that he's from Saturn's Titan (as he is in the comics), but is just from a planet far away called "TItan". Eternals from different systems don't really have anything to do with each other.


I recently rewatched Terminator: Dark Fate, and I really do think that it's a better (and tighter) movie than people thought. I also suspect that it was edited slightly differently for Netflix release, because either there are new details or a lot of details I missed previously.

Much of the criticism had contained anti-woke pushback, but honestly there's nothing in-your-face on the wokeness front. Even the snowflakes who whined back then would probably watch it today and not be triggered, except that they'd been primed. The zeitgeist that bothered them then has moved awfully quickly.

It's tight, well-acted, and loyal to the source material.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Spoiler :

Also the whole purpose of the Eternals was for them to spawn a celestial which required lots of human beings for whatever reason. It wasn't really clear to me why they needed humans. Energy or something. But whatever. The point is wiping out 1/2 of all humans would be a big hindrance to their plan so they probably SHOULD have gotten involved in the Infinity War

This particular concept didn't even scratch the surface of my Impenetrable Suspension Of Disbelief, because The Matrix already firmly established that sort of context. So it was easy for me to just accept it as just another variation on that, and move on.

I'm pretty fond of the underlying source material for the Eternals. I won't click the spoilers, because I'll be seeing it (someday) and I hope that the Surprise From Low Expectations kicks in.

This is, I think what happened for me, and I am confident that it will happen for you, the caveat being that I had zero familiarity with the comic book characters beforehand, so maybe my Impenetrable Suspension Of Disbelief powers may be a little stronger than yours, in this particular instance. In any case, its definitely a film that's worth watching, multiple times. It gets better every time.

Much of the criticism had contained anti-woke pushback, but honestly there's nothing in-your-face on the wokeness front. Even the snowflakes who whined back then would probably watch it today and not be triggered, except that they'd been primed. The zeitgeist that bothered them then has moved awfully quickly.

This. Its "diverse" but it even makes in-universe sense for it to be so, since they are serving as the "Gods" of different cultures and mythologies all over the world. The valet even explicitly refers to them as "the original superheroes" (another thing I didn't notice until my third viewing) which fits perfectly with modern interpretations of our current superheroes as simply modern mythology. I didn't even think of the fact, until my third viewing, that Hephaestus:

Spoiler :

who the character Phastos is clearly intended to invoke/inspire is actually married to Aphrodite/Venus, the Goddess of love in our RL mythology, rather than being gay, and married to a husband, as depicted (in one short scene in the film, that you would miss if you blinked). Even once I remembered that I didn't care, I still enjoyed the character very much.

EDIT: My wife pointed out tonight on our third viewing, that it annoyed her a little that he was the only character that wasn't presented as runway model hot, like the other Eternals I pointed out to her that Sprite was also not presented as beautiful as the others, and I also pointed out that Hephaestus was crippled/disabled in the mythology, but what I did not remember at the time, was that the mythology tends to present Hephaestus as explicitly unattractive, to create an irony with him being married to Aphrodite, who is traditionally depicted as being, of course beautiful and attractive beyond belief.

The point was that he was the blacksmith/engineer of the "gods" and the other details I knew about him were disposable. It was fun to see him depicted in that way. The fact that so many of the characters were not true to their mythological counterparts added to the theme that humans had just encountered them over the centuries/millennia, and played fast and loose with who/what they were.

 

[Kyriakos]

Can the superhero movies ever end?

 

[Sommerswerd]

In this particular case, that's ironically like asking if Greek mythology can ever end.

"can"? As Don't Look Up references, maybe, if the world blows up, or similar... "will"? As long as they're controlled by Disney and Warner Bros... No

My kids watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief yesterday... so Greek mythology is apparently alive and well, still permeating pop culture and literature, and still inspiring the imagination of writers.

 

[Kyriakos]

In this particular case, that's ironically like asking if Greek mythology can ever end.

"can"? As Don't Look Up references, maybe, if the world blows up, or similar... "will"? As long as they're controlled by Disney and Warner Bros... No

My kids watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief yesterday... so Greek mythology is apparently alive and well, still permeating pop culture and literature, and still inspiring the imagination of writers.

It is just overkill, with so many sh movies. Most of them probably aren't quality either

 

[Fippy]

Well why would they stop with SH movies, take here as example..many peoples watch them all
Marvel is one big $$$ machine.

 

[warpus]

I think that was also one of my main criticisms. It all kinda seems pointless to me. They'd have needed to set the whole thing a bit earlier/with more people.

And nobody even said anything! It'd have been another thing if they had an argument about it and one of them said something like: "But it doesn't really matter, I did the math, we're all screwed anyway"