Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Finally got around to watching Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. A lot has been said about this film, and I don't really have anything to add, but the praise it's received was well-deserved.
-
We are currently performing site maintenance, parts of civfanatics are currently offline, but will come back online in the coming days. For more updates please see here.
Which movies have you watched? XVI - This title not included in your subscription
- Thread starter Traitorfish
- Start date
- Status
Watched The Gentleman starring Matthew McConaughey. Pretty good, much better than I expected. It also wasn't the Ocean's 11 copycat that I was anticipating. Somewhat reminiscent of a Tarantino film, without all the gratuitous blood squirting everywhere.
I'd heard that McConaughey was done with RomComs and was trying to be taken seriously as an actor in his old age... this was certainly a step in that direction.
I'd heard that McConaughey was done with RomComs and was trying to be taken seriously as an actor in his old age... this was certainly a step in that direction.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
- I think I've seen about half of Pixar's movies, and so far they've all been good. If you haven't seen any of them, and want a specific recommendation, I'd suggest Inside Out, a contender for my favorite movie of 2015. (The Incredibles remains one of my all-time favorite superhero movies, possibly #1, but I'm figuring you might be burned out on superheroes for a bit.)
- National Treasure was fun, and if you love it, there's a sequel that's more of the same.
- Splash would be the follow-up to Big.
- I rewatched Who Framed Roger Rabbit? when I got Disney+, and I thought it held up really well.
- They have a few sports movies that I liked. Underdog overcoming great odds, most of them based on true stories, if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. I'd suggest The Rookie with Dennis Quaid, but Bend it Like Beckham (Parminder Nagra), Remember the Titans (Denzel Washington) and Miracle (Kurt Russell) are all good, or at least good enough. I've never seen Invincible, but only because Mark Wahlberg rubs me the wrong way.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
A Boy And His Dog
My first thought while watching it was "wow this must have inspired the Fallout video game creators" and per Wikipedia, that checks out.
It was a bad movie built on an interesting premise about a boy in the post-apocalypse with a telepathic dog. It went off the rails right from the beginning when you realize the boy goes around the wasteland looking for food and women to rape. Thats not an exaggeration, the entire plot revolves around various attempted rapes.
It's bizarre and awful.
But it directly inspired Fallout so there's that. The movie had glowing mutants, underground vault societies and looked like Fallout, right down to the random bed frames and mattresses strewn about. The resemblance was so strong that it really was my first impression of the whole movie, before I realized it was a bizarre 70's rape fantasy flick.
My first thought while watching it was "wow this must have inspired the Fallout video game creators" and per Wikipedia, that checks out.
It was a bad movie built on an interesting premise about a boy in the post-apocalypse with a telepathic dog. It went off the rails right from the beginning when you realize the boy goes around the wasteland looking for food and women to rape. Thats not an exaggeration, the entire plot revolves around various attempted rapes.
It's bizarre and awful.
But it directly inspired Fallout so there's that. The movie had glowing mutants, underground vault societies and looked like Fallout, right down to the random bed frames and mattresses strewn about. The resemblance was so strong that it really was my first impression of the whole movie, before I realized it was a bizarre 70's rape fantasy flick.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
I started watching Happiest Season, but I wasn't in the right mindset. It's got two strikes against it, for me, from the outset: (1) It's a Christmas movie, and evidently not an ironic one. I'm just not a Christmas guy. (2) At least initially, there's a lot of awkward, embarrassment humor. Humor based on humiliating the characters makes me uncomfortable, even if I find it funny. Still, I may try to finish the movie anyway, it seems like there's some stuff to like. I mentioned the great cast earlier, and I'd forgotten that Mary Steenburgen was in it, and in the first 20 minutes or so, she was the one who made me laugh the most. She and I go way back, to Time After Time. Also, I didn't realize until this weekend that the movie is directed by Clea Duvall, which intrigues me.
Then I watched Lovers Rock, the second installment of Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" anthology. Unfortunately, I was so wound up I couldn't enjoy it. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. To some degree, I think the first one, Mangrove, had primed me to expect something awful to happen, but also I think I'm just so on edge in general, I'm expecting bad things to happen, in general. And there are a few moments in the movie where I thought [stuff] was about to go down, and it never really did. I remember someone wrote a review of The Queen's Gambit and called it the best fantasy film of the year, in part because many of the terrible things that could have happened to Beth never did. Lovers Rock turned out to be a very joyous, optimistic movie, and I kind of failed enjoy it on its terms because I was expecting to get punched in the mouth. I was on edge the whole time. So I think I want to watch it again, after I've taken a minute to chill out. It's a shame I don't smoke anymore. That'd get you in the right headspace (and the odor would help set the scene).
Another reason to watch it again: The British-Caribbean accents were not easy for me. I'm sure I missed some dialogue. I think I read that Steve McQueen grew up with these folks, and the cast are all Brits, so I'm assuming the dialogue and accents are legit.
McQueen's naturalistic, immersive direction was amazing. At myriad points I was thinking, "How the f did he film this without the camera getting jostled and knocked around?"
Also, the movie has an outstanding soundtrack, which basically doesn't stop the entire time, since the movie's about a party.
Lovers Rock spoilers:
Then I watched Lovers Rock, the second installment of Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" anthology. Unfortunately, I was so wound up I couldn't enjoy it. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. To some degree, I think the first one, Mangrove, had primed me to expect something awful to happen, but also I think I'm just so on edge in general, I'm expecting bad things to happen, in general. And there are a few moments in the movie where I thought [stuff] was about to go down, and it never really did. I remember someone wrote a review of The Queen's Gambit and called it the best fantasy film of the year, in part because many of the terrible things that could have happened to Beth never did. Lovers Rock turned out to be a very joyous, optimistic movie, and I kind of failed enjoy it on its terms because I was expecting to get punched in the mouth. I was on edge the whole time. So I think I want to watch it again, after I've taken a minute to chill out. It's a shame I don't smoke anymore. That'd get you in the right headspace (and the odor would help set the scene).
Another reason to watch it again: The British-Caribbean accents were not easy for me. I'm sure I missed some dialogue. I think I read that Steve McQueen grew up with these folks, and the cast are all Brits, so I'm assuming the dialogue and accents are legit.
McQueen's naturalistic, immersive direction was amazing. At myriad points I was thinking, "How the f did he film this without the camera getting jostled and knocked around?"
Also, the movie has an outstanding soundtrack, which basically doesn't stop the entire time, since the movie's about a party.
Lovers Rock spoilers:
Spoiler :
I never watched it because I just thought it looked bad. I didn't realize it had that plot-thread. Yikes.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
I was thinking about this some more on the way to work this morning. I think this movie and The Vast of Night would be a good double-feature for filmmakers with no budget seeking inspiration. Unless there are some tricks being used that I didn't see, I think part of the magic for these films, for me, was in their simplicity. There's maybe an elegance in the filmmaking of such a simple movie, and maybe also an earnestness or sincerity. It takes me back to early works of some independent directors. Clerks, She's Gotta Have It, and Reservoir Dogs are the ones probably a lot of people have heard of, but if anyone wants to jam on independent films for a bit, I could definitely hang with that. But where The Vast of Night is Andrew Patterson's one and only IMDb credit, I'm fascinated that a director as accomplished as Steve McQueen returned to his roots - not just to his city and his people, but to a style of filmmaking that would be in the rearview mirror of most people in his position, making a niche movie with a cast of unknowns on a budget of £100 (I can't find the budget with a quick Google search, even for the Small Axe anthology, which some sites treat as a series rather than as 5 separate films). This movie almost evokes "guerrilla" filmmaking, although I'm sure it wasn't actually. (By "guerrilla" I mean that someone could have made this movie, as is; in one night; with no permits or anything; at an actual, quasi-legal house party; with a crowd of genuine party-goers surrounding a cast of maybe four actors, maybe doing improv - this movie is that spare.) I would love it if other, accomplished filmmakers did something similar and tried to make a small movie, just with their friends and some pocket change, in a week or two. Joss Whedon did that some years ago, making Much Ado About Nothing with his buddies, in his house, over a long weekend.
Now that I'm thinking about this, I definitely want to watch Lovers Rock again. I'd been thinking about watching The Vast of Night again, anyway, so I can put together a Top 10 of 2020 list, and I'm thinking now those might be a fun double-feature. They're both short, too, which is convenient. This might be the first time in 20 years that I could put together a 'Top 10 of the Year' list at the end of the year. I think I've watched more movies this year, from/of this year, than I have since the 1990s.
Also, yonder thread made me think of something else that I forgot to mention: Lovers Rock has basically no plot. If you asked me what it was about, I'd say, "It's about a house party", wanting to avoid spoilers. "That's not a story" you might point out, "that's a setting." "That's true" I'd concede, "it's not really about the house party, it's about the people who are at the house party." "Cool, but that's a setting with some characters." Then I would shrug and say, "It's also got a great soundtrack?"
If movies with thin plots grate on your nerves, I heartily recommend the previous installment in McQueen's series, Mangrove, which I heartily recommend anyway.[EDIT: Put down the parentheses before somebody gets hurt, man. Just put 'em down and back away...]
thetrooper
Misanthrope
- Joined
- May 24, 2004
- Messages
- 9,060
Terminator 3 yesterday.
Pretty mediocre but that car chase sequence is absolutely hilarious.
Pretty mediocre but that car chase sequence is absolutely hilarious.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2006
- Messages
- 22,482
Watched a couple movies over the weekend.
My Name is Dolemite: Eddie Murphy dramedy about the creation of the blacksploitation film Dolemite. Movie took a while to get going, but I like that it spent time setting up Eddie Murphy's character and introducing us to the characters so they felt like friends rather than randos. There were also some genuinely laugh out loud lines in the second half of the film.
Enola Holmes: Sherlock Holmes style mystery featuring Holmes' younger sister. I had seen it got good reviews, but it was a lot more young-adult oriented than the reviews indicated. It was fine. Dialogue was a bit ropey, but there were at least some nice gaslight London backlot shots.
Castles in the Sky: BBC drama about the underdog team that developed radar featuring Eddie Izzard. Film moved along a bit faster than I would have liked, but still enjoyable.
Not sure what it's actual title is, but a PBS American Experience documentary on the building of Penn Station in New York, including the problems faced digging tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. Standard PBS documentary affair. Talking heads, narrator, Ken Burns pans over black and white pictures, the usual.
My Name is Dolemite: Eddie Murphy dramedy about the creation of the blacksploitation film Dolemite. Movie took a while to get going, but I like that it spent time setting up Eddie Murphy's character and introducing us to the characters so they felt like friends rather than randos. There were also some genuinely laugh out loud lines in the second half of the film.
Enola Holmes: Sherlock Holmes style mystery featuring Holmes' younger sister. I had seen it got good reviews, but it was a lot more young-adult oriented than the reviews indicated. It was fine. Dialogue was a bit ropey, but there were at least some nice gaslight London backlot shots.
Castles in the Sky: BBC drama about the underdog team that developed radar featuring Eddie Izzard. Film moved along a bit faster than I would have liked, but still enjoyable.
Not sure what it's actual title is, but a PBS American Experience documentary on the building of Penn Station in New York, including the problems faced digging tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers. Standard PBS documentary affair. Talking heads, narrator, Ken Burns pans over black and white pictures, the usual.
It's a succession of plot holes, mandated to be bland and predictable by the studio becau$e of rea$on$, and the writers actually threw in the end of the world to make at least some part of it being worth telling a new story. It's on scriptwriter Brancato's blog:
[we wrote] a first draft.
Arnold shows up and tries to kill rich, smug John Connor. A female terminator, a nanotech assemblage of micro-bots, strives to protect him. Yet it turns out Arnold was sent by the Resistance-- and the nano-chick is Skynet's most nefarious creation of all. See, after the first two pairs of terminators were sent back from 2029 for the first two movies, JC revealed himself to be evil-- a Skynet deep-cover agent. He destroyed/will destroy the human resistance from within. This is all because the female nano-terminator supposedly defending him actually infects him in the present day, with a nanobot that bores deep into his brain. So after Connor betrays humanity in 2032, his mortified wife Kate sends Arnold back to kill John Connor in 2003. (Sarah Connor is already dead of cancer, by the way.) In the film's action, the Arnold terminator fails, nano-***** kills true love Kate-- but Judgment Day seems to have been prevented yet again (although Connor still has a scrap of Skynet inside his head, the-end-or-is-it?). This script was, admittedly, pretty insane, trippy and multiversive. We were out to conjure some of the dizzy absurdity of the first Terminator. I was happy with the script.
It nearly got us fired. Thanks to Mostow's desperate lobbying on our behalf, we were given a few weeks for one last chance. To hell with integrity. Mike and I worked frantically to cobble together what was wanted, namely a far more predictable script. A typically good Arnold saves a down-and-out JC from a Swiss-Army knife terminatrix, etc. It felt safe, expected, paint-by-numbers. We quickly realized the only possible saving grace, the one thing that could begin to justify the film's existence, would be to end the world in the last scenes-- and so return the franchise to the fatalistic integrity of the original "Terminator." I never imagined this would fly.
The "development process" involved the usual dumbing and watering down, cutting for budget, gutting character moments, turning anything shaded into black and white. We were told to throw back in elements from the script we were first handed, such as "She'll be back" and stupid sunglasses. We refused to write in a Chili's endorsement, though we suggested "I'll be baby-back, baby-back, baby-back ribs." Another writer came in at the last minute and threw in a few more clunky lines and cringe-worthy moments. The shoot had some near-disasters, including a major part recast after a week of filming, and a budget shortfall that required a cash loan from Schwarzenegger. Mostow actually shot plates for a time bubble arriving in the fallout shelter with yet another Arnold to avert Judgment Day at the last second, just in case focus groups demanded it.
When I saw the finished product, I was pretty bummed. The casting choices were dubious, the look too brightly-lit and TV-ish, the campy comedic bits painful to watch. Subtleties that somehow survived development were sacrificed to overly-aggressive editing. Incredibly, the movie did keep our ending. Critics were kinder to "T3" than I'd expected, and while the domestic box office was middling, it did well overseas.
Arnold shows up and tries to kill rich, smug John Connor. A female terminator, a nanotech assemblage of micro-bots, strives to protect him. Yet it turns out Arnold was sent by the Resistance-- and the nano-chick is Skynet's most nefarious creation of all. See, after the first two pairs of terminators were sent back from 2029 for the first two movies, JC revealed himself to be evil-- a Skynet deep-cover agent. He destroyed/will destroy the human resistance from within. This is all because the female nano-terminator supposedly defending him actually infects him in the present day, with a nanobot that bores deep into his brain. So after Connor betrays humanity in 2032, his mortified wife Kate sends Arnold back to kill John Connor in 2003. (Sarah Connor is already dead of cancer, by the way.) In the film's action, the Arnold terminator fails, nano-***** kills true love Kate-- but Judgment Day seems to have been prevented yet again (although Connor still has a scrap of Skynet inside his head, the-end-or-is-it?). This script was, admittedly, pretty insane, trippy and multiversive. We were out to conjure some of the dizzy absurdity of the first Terminator. I was happy with the script.
It nearly got us fired. Thanks to Mostow's desperate lobbying on our behalf, we were given a few weeks for one last chance. To hell with integrity. Mike and I worked frantically to cobble together what was wanted, namely a far more predictable script. A typically good Arnold saves a down-and-out JC from a Swiss-Army knife terminatrix, etc. It felt safe, expected, paint-by-numbers. We quickly realized the only possible saving grace, the one thing that could begin to justify the film's existence, would be to end the world in the last scenes-- and so return the franchise to the fatalistic integrity of the original "Terminator." I never imagined this would fly.
The "development process" involved the usual dumbing and watering down, cutting for budget, gutting character moments, turning anything shaded into black and white. We were told to throw back in elements from the script we were first handed, such as "She'll be back" and stupid sunglasses. We refused to write in a Chili's endorsement, though we suggested "I'll be baby-back, baby-back, baby-back ribs." Another writer came in at the last minute and threw in a few more clunky lines and cringe-worthy moments. The shoot had some near-disasters, including a major part recast after a week of filming, and a budget shortfall that required a cash loan from Schwarzenegger. Mostow actually shot plates for a time bubble arriving in the fallout shelter with yet another Arnold to avert Judgment Day at the last second, just in case focus groups demanded it.
When I saw the finished product, I was pretty bummed. The casting choices were dubious, the look too brightly-lit and TV-ish, the campy comedic bits painful to watch. Subtleties that somehow survived development were sacrificed to overly-aggressive editing. Incredibly, the movie did keep our ending. Critics were kinder to "T3" than I'd expected, and while the domestic box office was middling, it did well overseas.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
Variety, 3 Dec 2020 - "Warner Bros. to Debut Entire 2021 Film Slate, Including ‘Dune’ and ‘Matrix 4,’ Both on HBO Max and In Theaters"
To be honest, I'm not sure how many of these movies I would have run out to see in theaters. Many of them are things I'd look for a year later on a streaming service anyway. Still, big news.
To be honest, I'm not sure how many of these movies I would have run out to see in theaters. Many of them are things I'd look for a year later on a streaming service anyway. Still, big news.
"Downfall" on Amazon Prime. The last days of Hitler and all his hangers on in his bunker. Great movie that carries the sense of doom. In German with subtitles. It is based on a book by the woman who was his secretary from 1942 on. She escaped at the last minute so was a witness to what went on.
Chukchi Husky
Lone Wolf
Over the past week I watched the first six Star Wars episodes.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
I've surprised myself with how disinterested I am in The Matrix 4. Of the Warners movies listed for 2021, I think only Judas and the Black Messiah is one I'm looking forward to. Those Who Wish Me Dead and Godzilla vs Kong look like good discount-matinee material, especially if they're Summer movies and I need some air conditioning in the middle of the day.
BenitoChavez
What business is it of yours?
Variety, 3 Dec 2020 - "Warner Bros. to Debut Entire 2021 Film Slate, Including ‘Dune’ and ‘Matrix 4,’ Both on HBO Max and In Theaters"
To be honest, I'm not sure how many of these movies I would have run out to see in theaters. Many of them are things I'd look for a year later on a streaming service anyway. Still, big news.
I wonder if this will kill off theaters, that is if COVID hasn't already done that. Especially if other studios follow suit. I personally still like going to the movies for big action movies to get that cinematic experience you can't get at home but the convenience to stream from home is a big draw for movies I'm only mildly interested in.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
There's a big concern about that. My guess is that it won't kill them entirely, but that movie theaters will become something like live stage plays, something most people do once in a while, as a special event, and a small number of people do it more often just because they're into it, and some people never do it. You can still find record stores that sell vinyl and walk-in bookstores. This was coming anyway, covid just hit the accelerator. Until 15-16 years ago, I went to movie theaters 30-40 times a year. In the last several years before covid, I probably went 3-4 times a year.
‘Don't jinx it’
-unknown Air Nation monk, when a friend said ‘what if the Fire Nation attacks?’
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked
- Locked
