Watch, Watched, Watching: The Workprint Prototype Version

[Raja]

 You guys, Sicario was *really* good. I need to catch Prisoners next. Masterful direction and gorgeous cinematography. Some of those shots in the sunset 

Villeneuve's next flick is the sci fi flick Arrival ( after which he's doing blade runner), which looks excellent too. I need to watch the other films this guy has put out. 

[Nictarion]

Prisoners was solid. Really need to see Sicario soon. I like both Blunt and del Toro. Seems like a pretty divisive film.

[Martell Spy]

Looks like the Get Down is being released Friday on Netflix. I forgot this was coming. The timing is good, because I have very little to watch. It sounds great.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

5 hours ago, Raja said:

 You guys, Sicario was *really* good. I need to catch Prisoners next. Masterful direction and gorgeous cinematography. Some of those shots in the sunset 

Villeneuve's next flick is the sci fi flick Arrival ( after which he's doing blade runner), which looks excellent too. I need to watch the other films this guy has put out. 

Thought Sicario was a promising movie that sort of fell flat at the end, being almost a bit dumb instead of setting itself up as an intelligent comment on the cartels. 

Prisoners was also a movie of two halves, starting very promisingly, and kind of falling apart by the end. I think Villeneuve is one of those guys whose movies I look out for though, hes very good.

 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Watched 'The Lobster' with Colin Farell. It was absolutely not what I was expecting, and was delightfully unusual and funny, with some fantastic character acting. The way it creates its own world with its own rules without really ever explaining it, I really enjoyed that. 

Again it didn't quite end as satisfactorily as I would have hoped, but the first half is one of my favourite halves of a movie!

[Mark Antony]

6 hours ago, Raja said:

 You guys, Sicario was *really* good. I need to catch Prisoners next. Masterful direction and gorgeous cinematography. Some of those shots in the sunset 

Villeneuve's next flick is the sci fi flick Arrival ( after which he's doing blade runner), which looks excellent too. I need to watch the other films this guy has put out. 

I honestly preferred the cinematography over The Revenant.

the tunnel scene with the night vision was just so amazing and yeah the sunset shots were beautiful. Also the shot of the aftermath of the dinner table scene left me speechless. 

. One of my favorite movies from last year for sure. So many tense moments. Prisoners isn't as good imo but still an extremely well done movie. 

[RedEyedGhost]

8 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Watched 'The Lobster' with Colin Farell. It was absolutely not what I was expecting, and was delightfully unusual and funny, with some fantastic character acting. The way it creates its own world with its own rules without really ever explaining it, I really enjoyed that. 

Again it didn't quite end as satisfactorily as I would have hoped, but the first half is one of my favourite halves of a movie!

Great. Netflix is delivering that to me tonight.

[Boris the Blade]

14 hours ago, Raja said:

 You guys, Sicario was *really* good. I need to catch Prisoners next. Masterful direction and gorgeous cinematography. Some of those shots in the sunset 

Villeneuve's next flick is the sci fi flick Arrival ( after which he's doing blade runner), which looks excellent too. I need to watch the other films this guy has put out. 

 

13 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Prisoners was solid. Really need to see Sicario soon. I like both Blunt and del Toro. Seems like a pretty divisive film.

 

8 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Thought Sicario was a promising movie that sort of fell flat at the end, being almost a bit dumb instead of setting itself up as an intelligent comment on the cartels. 

Prisoners was also a movie of two halves, starting very promisingly, and kind of falling apart by the end. I think Villeneuve is one of those guys whose movies I look out for though, hes very good.

 

Speaking of Sicario, I'm looking forward to that movie Hell or High Water. It's getting really good reviews and looks very interesting. Plus I really like Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster (god he was amazing in 310 to Yuma).

 The cinematography in both Prisoners and Sicario was amazing, which is not a shocker since it was Roger Deakins haha. Prioners and Sicario both were good, I think Prisoners second halve was better than Sicario's which did go a bit off the rails at the end. I also had some issues with some of the character development or lack thereof in Sicario. Prisoners had it's issues as well, but it definitely delivered a bit more than Sicario did. I did love the way both looked though, especially Sicario, very No Country for Old Men look wise, which again is not a shocker given Roger Deakins. Speaking of great cinematography, Blue Ruin has some amazing shots and is also a pretty damn good movie. 

Another great looking movie which I actually just watched for the first time in a while is LA Confidential. It still holds up really well. I can't believe it's been around almost 20 years. I really do not get how Titanic won the Oscar that year over LA Confidential, Boogie Nights and Good Will Hunting. 

 

[Talleyrand]

10 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

 

  Hide contents

the tunnel scene with the night vision was just so amazing and yeah the sunset shots were beautiful. Also the shot of the aftermath of the dinner table scene left me speechless. 

 

Spoiler

I'll echo this but there was one thing that annoyed me about the dinner scene - when the Cartel boss pulls the cliched "It wasn't personal" it pulls me out of the moment every film or show it's in.

Cause it always gets one of the two stock responses "Neither's this *BLAM*" or as was the case in Sicario "It was for me *BLAM*"

I mean I never really get the point of it, is the bad guy hoping the man with the gun pointed at him will suddenly decide to give up on avenging the brutal murders of his wife and child and just go home.

 

[Veltigar]

Just finished The Raid 2. Long story short, I was kind of bored. The action was awesome, although I do think the actiion in the first film was better. Something about the claustropbic, nightmarish setting of the appartment building in that first outing made it all work a lot better in my opinion. The central conceit of that first film (i.e. surprise raid of a building full of criminals) also helped me suspend my disbelief about the huge amounts of hand-to-hand combat. Some of the attacks in this second film just clearly didn't make any sense and that's a shame.

The story was pretty shit. You could easily see what plot they were going for, but it was just very poorly executed. The relationship between characters was pretty horendously set-up, which made everything the story tried to do fail. A lot of story beats just didn't feel earned.

The Raid 2 was also way to long. It's like 50 minutes longer than the first one and Gareth Evans really does not have the chops to fill the huge spaces between the awesome action scenes with anything interesting. That messed with the pacing and made the film ever so slow. And that's really weird, since even the minor fight scenes manage to look like this. A movie with that kind of action has no business being boring.

The music was also rather bland. The lead actor is a great martial artist, but I'm less convinced by his acting shops. The directing was good though and the choreography outstanding. I'd still recommend it, but with the caveat that the first Raid film is miles ahead of this one. 

 

[polishgenius]

43 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

Just finished The Raid 2. Long story short, I was kind of bored. The action was awesome, although I do think the actiion in the first film was better. Something about the claustropbic, nightmarish setting of the appartment building in that first outing made it all work a lot better in my opinion. The central conceit of that first film (i.e. surprise raid of a building full of criminals) also helped me suspend my disbelief about the huge amounts of hand-to-hand combat. Some of the attacks in this second film just clearly didn't make any sense and that's a shame.

The story was pretty shit. You could easily see what plot they were going for, but it was just very poorly executed. The relationship between characters was pretty horendously set-up, which made everything the story tried to do fail. A lot of story beats just didn't feel earned.

The Raid 2 was also way to long. It's like 50 minutes longer than the first one and Gareth Evans really does not have the chops to fill the huge spaces between the awesome action scenes with anything interesting. That messed with the pacing and made the film ever so slow. And that's really weird, since even the minor fight scenes manage to look like this. A movie with that kind of action has no business being boring.

The music was also rather bland. The lead actor is a great martial artist, but I'm less convinced by his acting shops. The directing was good though and the choreography outstanding. I'd still recommend it, but with the caveat that the first Raid film is miles ahead of this one. 

 

 

The action is awesome (better than the first, for me, although not as constantly intense obviously) and I found the visual storytelling immediately around the action - things like the buildup to the prison fight and the little details around hammer girl and baseball guy to be much more polished than the first one but yeah, the overall story is bloated as fuck.

Part of the problem is that the side stories we see glimpses and hints of are more interesting than the main story. I'd much rather have seen a film about the hairy assassin dude or the aforementioned violence siblings than most of the crime stuff we got.


I want DC to get Gareth Evans to do a Cassandra Cain Batgirl film. Minimal talking, just her beating the fuck out of people for, say, ninety minutes.

[RedEyedGhost]

Did not love The Lobster.  It did have some good bits though.

Quote

Please, just a little bit longer.
Have a good day.
That's awful, just awful.

 

[Nictarion]

Couple episodes into Wolf Hall. Really liking it so far. Impressive cast.

[Mark Antony]

3 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Couple episodes into Wolf Hall. Really liking it so far. Impressive cast.

I loved it! The sets, costumes, music. All fantastic. Rylance and Lewis were just amazing as well. 

[Veltigar]

16 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Part of the problem is that the side stories we see glimpses and hints of are more interesting than the main story. I'd much rather have seen a film about the hairy assassin dude or the aforementioned violence siblings than most of the crime stuff we got.
 

I agree completely. Mad dog (or whatever his name was in the sequel) had an interesting plot going on and in that one scene in the diner I saw a lot more emotion than in anything the lead actor did. I would much rather have seen a film centered around his character. Especially since he was wasted in here. His role in the story made zero sense. They made such a big deal about his relationship to the leading crime boss and his son, but nothing was properly set up, so it ended up feeling rather hollow.

16 hours ago, polishgenius said:

The action is awesome (better than the first, for me, although not as constantly intense obviously) and I found the visual storytelling immediately around the action - things like the buildup to the prison fight and the little details around hammer girl and baseball guy to be much more polished than the first one but yeah, the overall story is bloated as fuck.
 

The first one was more frantic, so I guess there wasn't much time for the visual storytelling in that one. You're right though, The Raid 2 did such things in a rather neat way. Particularly with our introduction to baseball guy imo  

16 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I want DC to get Gareth Evans to do a Cassandra Cain Batgirl film. Minimal talking, just her beating the fuck out of people for, say, ninety minutes.

Yeah, he should certainly get more work. He's a pretty promising director. Pair him up with a good screenwriter and a bigger budget and he would certainly be able to make something really interesting  

[Talleyrand]

37 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

They made such a big deal about his relationship to the leading crime boss and his son, but nothing was properly set up, so it ended up feeling rather hollow.

Yeah it might be giving the script a bit to much credit but it could be a subversion of the usual trick two sides into fighting thing given that there was no real fighting between the main Indonesian gang and the Japanese and they solved their issue diplomatically quite quickly.

At least that's what I'm hoping cause otherwise I'd have to go with my initial reaction when I saw it which was that it was pretty goddamn funny that they set up this close relationship between the boss the son and the hitman only for the boss' reaction to the hitman's death to be "eh, shit happens"

[GallowKnight]

18 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Just finished The Raid 2. Long story short, I was kind of bored. The action was awesome, although I do think the actiion in the first film was better. Something about the claustropbic, nightmarish setting of the appartment building in that first outing made it all work a lot better in my opinion. The central conceit of that first film (i.e. surprise raid of a building full of criminals) also helped me suspend my disbelief about the huge amounts of hand-to-hand combat. Some of the attacks in this second film just clearly didn't make any sense and that's a shame.

The story was pretty shit. You could easily see what plot they were going for, but it was just very poorly executed. The relationship between characters was pretty horendously set-up, which made everything the story tried to do fail. A lot of story beats just didn't feel earned.

The Raid 2 was also way to long. It's like 50 minutes longer than the first one and Gareth Evans really does not have the chops to fill the huge spaces between the awesome action scenes with anything interesting. That messed with the pacing and made the film ever so slow. And that's really weird, since even the minor fight scenes manage to look like this. A movie with that kind of action has no business being boring.

The music was also rather bland. The lead actor is a great martial artist, but I'm less convinced by his acting shops. The directing was good though and the choreography outstanding. I'd still recommend it, but with the caveat that the first Raid film is miles ahead of this one. 

 

That pretty much sums up how I feel about The Raid 2.

[Veltigar]

32 minutes ago, Talleyrand said:

Spoiler

 

Yeah it might be giving the script a bit to much credit but it could be a subversion of the usual trick two sides into fighting thing given that there was no real fighting between the main Indonesian gang and the Japanese and they solved their issue diplomatically quite quickly.

At least that's what I'm hoping cause otherwise I'd have to go with my initial reaction when I saw it which was that it was pretty goddamn funny that they set up this close relationship between the boss the son and the hitman only for the boss' reaction to the hitman's death to be "eh, shit happens"

 

 

The problem however, is that the relationship between the trio is not properly set up at all. We don't get any scenes between

Spoiler

Mad dog and the father

and the only scene Mad dog has with the son

Spoiler

is immediately followed by his death.

I would love to give them credit for their "subversion", but the foundation of it all, the relationship at the heart of it is just not properly written out. 

12 minutes ago, GallowKnight said:

That pretty much sums up how I feel about The Raid 2.

[Zorral]

On 8/12/2016 at 1:34 PM, Harakiri said:

 

 

Speaking of Sicario, I'm looking forward to that movie Hell or High Water. It's getting really good reviews and looks very interesting. Plus I really like Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster (god he was amazing in 310 to Yuma).

 The cinematography in both Prisoners and Sicario was amazing, which is not a shocker since it was Roger Deakins haha. Prioners and Sicario both were good, I think Prisoners second halve was better than Sicario's which did go a bit off the rails at the end. I also had some issues with some of the character development or lack thereof in Sicario. Prisoners had it's issues as well, but it definitely delivered a bit more than Sicario did. I did love the way both looked though, especially Sicario, very No Country for Old Men look wise, which again is not a shocker given Roger Deakins. Speaking of great cinematography, Blue Ruin has some amazing shots and is also a pretty damn good movie. 

Another great looking movie which I actually just watched for the first time in a while is LA Confidential. It still holds up really well. I can't believe it's been around almost 20 years. I really do not get how Titanic won the Oscar that year over LA Confidential, Boogie Nights and Good Will Hunting. 

 

Because Titanic made more money than the others put together?

I dunno, but yah, Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential are really fine works and hold up just fine.

I watched the first, 90 minute episode of The Get Down, the only episode Luhrmann directed himself.  I quite enjoyed it -- wasn't sure what to expect as I'd been fine with Moulin Rouge but found his Gatsby unwatchable for so many reasons.  But don't know what to expect from the next 5 of The Get Down as he's only supervising, not directing or writing, so far as I understand it.

However, in keeping with how Luhrmann does things, this is no historical about hiphop, which it has been billed as being -- it's a superhero Romeo and Juliet romance with a hiphop track and lots of borrowings from The Warriors and some other flix from the past that supposedly depict NYC in the mid-1970's (none of which were actually made in the era they were depicting either).  But The Get Down's first episode at least has all the elements that were out there then, uptown in the Boogy Down, but still underground (as far as white and non-hispanic types were concerned).

Whether the series overcame all the many, serious problems there were in the making of it, I do not know yet.  Others who have watched all 6 episodes say that after the first one The Get Down becomes a quite generic television romcom, which does not bode well.

This is too bad as that first episode, directed by Luhrmann, was quite amazingly photographed, an adventure in looking, filled with vibrant action and color.

[princess_snow]

I just finished The Tunnel which starred Stephen Dillane. I really enjoyed it. Also just finished Znation which took me awhile to get into but didn't mind it. Trying to get through Jack Taylor which has Iain Glenn in lead role.