Which movies have you watched? 13 - In a world where...

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I finished reading Ready Player One so I decided I'd watch the movie.

Did Spielberg even read the book before directing this? What a horrifying mess. Terrible.

Isn't the real question "Did Spielberg even direct this?"
 
Watched a few since my last entry:

Io -- Well-shot, well-acted, but weak premise, and narratively went nowhere.
Puss In Boots -- Long since saw all 4 Shrek movies, this was just for my inner completionist. The set-pieces were pretty good, but some of the settings were quite, I dunno, sterile compared to the Shrek movies, like they didn't really have enough (visual) ideas to make a full-length movie. Also rather lacking in comedy — but that's not necessarily a failure of the script, rather maybe my frustrated expectation.
Hot Pursuit -- Netflix recommended this one because we'd seen The Heat -- and it looks like the film-makers were going for the same kind of vibe here, but didn't quite have the guts for it. I have a lot of time for Reese Witherspoon, but this is not a great movie.
 
Hot Pursuit -- Netflix recommended this one because we'd seen The Heat -- and it looks like the film-makers were going for the same kind of vibe here, but didn't quite have the guts for it. I have a lot of time for Reese Witherspoon, but this is not a great movie.
Is that the one with Sofia Vergara? I haven't seen it, but the trailers made me think of Midnight Run with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin.
 
Is that the one with Sofia Vergara? I haven't seen it, but the trailers made me think of Midnight Run with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin.
Yep, that's the one. But Midnight Run was better.
 
The Crimes of Grindelwald. Made it about 40 minutes before giving up. Trash.
 
Watched BlacKKKlansman last night.
Interesting film, but I felt tonally it was all over the place, and one point feeling like a dark screwball comedy and then going full Serious Movie, and then back to dark screwball comedy. That could just be an element of Spike Lee films (only other movie of his I've seen was Chi-raq), but it did keep taking me out of the movie. Still, good movie, worth watching.
Spoiler For example :
The movie ends with a scene of the cops doing a wire sting on one of their racist fellows to get him arrested/kicked out and ends on a sort of jokey/laughing note; but then it cuts to a scene of KKK members doing a cross burning outside the main character's apartment, and shots from Charlottesville where the Neo-Nazis did their nighttime tiki-torch marching and killed someone.
 
The Crimes of Grindelwald. Made it about 40 minutes before giving up. Trash.
I got to watch the last 40 minutes when I dropped by some friends' place a few days ago. It was completely meh, but a good point -compared to the seven Harry Potter films- is that I didn't have any books to compare it against so there was less disappointment.
 
Io -- Well-shot, well-acted, but weak premise, and narratively went nowhere.
I watched IO this weekend, and I agree with you. I think the premise was alright, but yeah, it went nowhere. I'm not sure it was aiming for the usual 3-act structure, but it didn't seem to have any resolution to what it claimed to be its characters' goal and challenge. It set up a quest and then just sort of wandered away from it, and then ended. It didn't so much conclude as... stop.
 
Yeah IO sucked. Getting tired of netflix releasing all these vaguely sci fi movies that seem like just B movies straight to dvd kind of releases. They need to get better writers. Had some of the same issues as how it ends. IO was so slow.
 
I just saw Room. I had trouble watching it. The story is very realistic and it just broke my heart seeing what the two main characters went through. I did finish it though and I'm glad I did because it is definitely a film worth watching. Just be prepared to feel all the emotions.
 
Solo (the Star Wars movie).

Decidedly meh, and I just couldn't care about the characters. Nice to finally see the Imperial Army, at least.
 
Apollo 13 (1995), for probably the 6th or 7th time. :thumbsup:

Ron Howard's masterpiece, imho, but I wouldn't fight with supporters of some of his other movies. afaik, the story and the science are reasonably accurate, and like 2015's The Martian, it makes the math nerds the heroes. Unlike that one, this is based on a true story. I don't think any of the historical footage was altered, but I guess I wouldn't know. The stones it takes to go to space is kind of stunning, when you stop to think about it, and doubly-so with 1960s technology. There's a scene where Jim Lovell/Tom Hanks is making calculations to burn some fuel or something, and they didn't even have pocket calculators, they just had six guys at Mission Control with pencils and slide-rules checking his math. For a movie that doesn't have a lot of action, it does have a tremendous amount of tension, which doesn't really dissipate very much with repeat viewings. I wasn't alive for the Apollo 1 disaster, but I do remember the Challenger. This [stuff] is no joke. I believe the movie's two most-famous lines are real. Gene Kranz's famous white vest is actually in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum today, which is sort of bizarre and cool at the same time.

Memorable lines:
  • "Houston, we have a problem" is of course the movie's signature quote.
  • "You, sir, are a steely-eyed missile-man" may be the 2nd-most famous line.
  • "We now live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It wasn't a miracle. We just decided to do it."
  • "We gotta make this fit in a slot made for this, using nothing but that." Okay, that line means nothing if you haven't seen the movie, but I love the whole 'McGuyver' thing of smart people trying to do something preposterous.
  • "I don't care what anything was designed to do; I want to know what it can do." There, that line makes more sense out of context. Same thing, engineers trying to make a dumptruck fly, with duct tape and Saran Wrap.
  • "Don't you worry, dear. If they could put wings on a washing machine, my Jimmy could land it." And with all the talk of the engineers and mathematicians, let's not forget about the pilots, who basically strapped themselves to a 10-story bullet and fired it into the sky. It sounds like something from an episode of Jackass, except 3 guys had already burned alive trying it.
  • "Get ready for a little jolt, fellas." To put it mildly.
The film's rather glaring Achilles Heel is especially stark today, that it's very male and very white, but I don't know if that's not historically accurate. Maybe there really were no black people or women in Mission Control back then. 2016's Hidden Figures might be a good companion piece, if you wanted to do a double-feature (I don't think any of my streaming services has that one, unfortunately).
 
The film's rather glaring Achilles Heel is especially stark today, that it's very male and very white, but I don't know if that's not historically accurate. Maybe there really were no black people or women in Mission Control back then.
There's been a few posts somewhere in OT recently that it was shameful that the US government decided to just march into space and up to the moon rather than lift the blacks out of poverty at the time, and only gave them the (theoretical) right to vote after Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and others started making a ruckus.
 
Went to a showing of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) with a live band performing its own soundtrack for the movie. The band definitely took a very different style than the original soundtrack to Metropolis and the other rescores I've heard (for example no overture at the beginning) but it had this great syth/electric guitar sound*. The cut of Metropolis also was the first time I've seen it with the restored Argentinian footage, which fills in a lot more of the background with Josephat, the Thin Man, and Worker 11811. Unfortunately, the footage of the monk preaching in the cathedral and the fight between Joh Fredersen and Rotwang is still missing and at this point is probably well and truly lost.

*I would describe it as sort of a cross between early Depeche Mode (ie Ice Machine) and Gary Numan's later work (like the album Savage).
 
I don't know what to call it, but a few days back I saw one movie named Beauty and the Beast. I like the story and the picture quality was awesome.:)
 
I don't know what to call it, but a few days back I saw one movie named Beauty and the Beast. I like the story and the picture quality was awesome.:)
I suppose you mean the old classic by Disney?
 
I'm not sure Jeanette means anything at all.
 
Apollo 13 (1995), for probably the 6th or 7th time. :thumbsup:

Ron Howard's masterpiece, imho, but I wouldn't fight with supporters of some of his other movies. afaik, the story and the science are reasonably accurate, and like 2015's The Martian, it makes the math nerds the heroes. Unlike that one, this is based on a true story. I don't think any of the historical footage was altered, but I guess I wouldn't know. The stones it takes to go to space is kind of stunning, when you stop to think about it, and doubly-so with 1960s technology. There's a scene where Jim Lovell/Tom Hanks is making calculations to burn some fuel or something, and they didn't even have pocket calculators, they just had six guys at Mission Control with pencils and slide-rules checking his math. For a movie that doesn't have a lot of action, it does have a tremendous amount of tension, which doesn't really dissipate very much with repeat viewings. I wasn't alive for the Apollo 1 disaster, but I do remember the Challenger. This [stuff] is no joke. I believe the movie's two most-famous lines are real. Gene Kranz's famous white vest is actually in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum today, which is sort of bizarre and cool at the same time.

Memorable lines:
  • "Houston, we have a problem" is of course the movie's signature quote.
  • "You, sir, are a steely-eyed missile-man" may be the 2nd-most famous line.
  • "We now live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It wasn't a miracle. We just decided to do it."
  • "We gotta make this fit in a slot made for this, using nothing but that." Okay, that line means nothing if you haven't seen the movie, but I love the whole 'McGuyver' thing of smart people trying to do something preposterous.
  • "I don't care what anything was designed to do; I want to know what it can do." There, that line makes more sense out of context. Same thing, engineers trying to make a dumptruck fly, with duct tape and Saran Wrap.
  • "Don't you worry, dear. If they could put wings on a washing machine, my Jimmy could land it." And with all the talk of the engineers and mathematicians, let's not forget about the pilots, who basically strapped themselves to a 10-story bullet and fired it into the sky. It sounds like something from an episode of Jackass, except 3 guys had already burned alive trying it.
  • "Get ready for a little jolt, fellas." To put it mildly.
The film's rather glaring Achilles Heel is especially stark today, that it's very male and very white, but I don't know if that's not historically accurate. Maybe there really were no black people or women in Mission Control back then. 2016's Hidden Figures might be a good companion piece, if you wanted to do a double-feature (I don't think any of my streaming services has that one, unfortunately).
There really were no women or people of color in mission control back then.
 
I saw Captain Marvel last night.

It's fine, but if it weren't part of MCU it's a very forgettable, generic sci fi / fantasy / super hero action movie. Really the only reason to watch it is to bridge some gaps before End Game. And some of the backstory about the kree gives a little more insight into the Guardian movies, but only a tad.

The acting is pretty bad, which is weird because it has a good cast. But Samuel Jackson seemed like he was mailing it in, and the snarky role Brie Larson plays kind of buries her talent. She's like a song with one long sarcastic, smirky note. It seem like they were trying too hard to emulate ragnarok with it's funny quips and couldn't quite get there. There is some cool nostalgic stuff though since it's set in the mid 90s, some good music, cd-roms, blockbuster. Funny stuff aimed right at the target demo.

I will say the production value was super high though. It might be because I saw it in a super emax theater but I don't remember action sequences being that strikingly clear in a while.

In closing, you could easily skip it and wait for video unless you're completely set on watching everything before End Game.
 
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