Watch, Watched, Watching: Endgame

[Mexal]

3 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

It really is a well put together movie. Shame about every other film the Wochowskis made. I don't hate the Matrix sequels but it was all steep downhill from there.

I get why people don't like it but I really liked Speed Racer.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

24 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I get why people don't like it but I really liked Speed Racer.

I would have liked it on shrooms. 

[Mexal]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I would have liked it on shrooms. 

I was pretty stoned when I watched it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I was pretty stoned when I watched it.

Yeah I watched it on a rainy Saturday afternoon (iirc) and realized like ten minutes this movie was going to require a bowl and a couple of shots of whiskey. 

[briantw]

22 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yeah I watched it on a rainy Saturday afternoon (iirc) and realized like ten minutes this movie was going to require a bowl and a couple of shots of whiskey. 

That's how I watch pretty much everything.  

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, briantw said:

That's how I watch pretty much everything.  

I love just getting fucked up and throwing on a random episode of Survivor from a random season. I do this frequently when dawn is approaching and I can't wait any longer for bitch ass stuff like Melatonin or Ambien to work.

[Jace, Extat]

5 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Melatonin is some weak-ass shit to be sure, but that Ambien is potent.  Shame about the sleepwalking and the not remembering and whatnot.  

When you're Jace, everything else is just a toy.

 

ETA: Yeah! That's much better! Ten points to whoever gets that reference.

[briantw]

5 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I love just getting fucked up and throwing on a random episode of Survivor from a random season. I do this frequently when dawn is approaching and I can't wait any longer for bitch ass stuff like Melatonin or Ambien to work.

Into the Spider-Verse has quickly become one of my favorite movies to watch high.  Perfect combination of comedy and trippy art style. 

[dbunting]

Watched Us this week. Pretty good for a horror type movie. Makes you think a little and has humor.

Spoiler

Figured the mom out pretty quick, then doubted myself because it took so long to be revealed. Nice how they gave you hints throughout, like her not talking and such, the growl when killing the woman etc. 

Also started watching Hannah on Amazon. Pretty good, entertaining enough. Only have two episodes left already so that kinda sucks. It has some plot holes but they are forgivable. 

[Martini Sigil]

Happy! S2 started Wednesday, which not-so-coincidentally, makes me happy... this show, and the Santa Clarita Diet --IMO-- are the two funniest shows on TV, and they're both out now... so I am replete with the ha ha's 

[Teng Ai Hui]

Recently I had a nostalgic urge to watch Beverly Hills Cop.  I was surprised at how well it held up.  It has a good mixture of comedy and action and a great soundtrack -- "The Heat Is On," "Neutron Dance" by The Pointers Sisters, two Patti LaBelle songs, and of course the unforgettable movie theme, called "Axel F."

 

ETA: I just remembered that "Axel F" is also brilliantly used in an animated film called Monsters vs. Aliens.

[Corvinus85]

I just watched Highwaymen on Netflix, the story of the hunt for Bonnie & Clyde, told from the perspective of the two Texas Rangers that killed them. Costner and Harrelson gave solid performances, and the film had pretty good tension most of the time. It also did a fair job at showing the poverty that had struck rural America in those days. I didn't know much about Bonnie & Clyde, but it seems the movie did a good job.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I concur on Highwaymen, Harrelson, Costner and Bates all delivered like the seasoned actors they are. The pace was pretty good for the manhunt aspect of the story, nothing forced. I liked this version also liked the old Beatty, Dunaway version made in the 1960's.

[DireWolfSpirit]

7 hours ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

Recently I had a nostalgic urge to watch Beverly Hills Cop.  I was surprised at how well it held up.  It has a good mixture of comedy and action and a great soundtrack -- "The Heat Is On," "Neutron Dance" by The Pointers Sisters, two Patti LaBelle songs, and of course the unforgettable movie theme, called "Axel F."

 

ETA: I just remembered that "Axel F" is also brilliantly used in an animated film called Monsters vs. Aliens.

I cant hear Axel F without also thinking of Rockit. 

 

[Isis]

Watched the first two eps of the second season of OA last night. Best thing I've watched on TV in ages.

Also watched the first ep of Project Blue Book on SyFy. Interesting...

 

[Heartofice]

Rewatched John Wick 2 last night. 

I remembered that the structuring of the movie really isn't fantastic. It seems to purposely try and make up for its draggy storytelling by going overboard on long action set pieces. I'm certainly not complaining about the amount of time killing and shooting, more that the moments that don't involve that, seem to take forever and don't manage to be that efficient in how they get from A to B. 

But the fights are so great, and Keanu is a sort of god to me these days that I can let the movie off.

[Kalbear]

We also rewatched John Wick 1 & 2 recently because my older kids hadn't seen it. They're both awesome, though the first one is incredibly slow to start and doesn't go as you might think. 

John Wick chapter 2 is, however, the most gorgeous movie I've seen in UHD HDR. It is absolutely captivating. All the night scenes with the neon and the shine off the streets, and then the fight in Italy with the bright lights and darkness, and finally with the museum - it is just eye candy. If you have a high-end TV or a friend with one, go watch it. 

[WarGalley]

16 hours ago, Triskele said:

Watched episode 1 of Patriot, this Amazon show.  Very funny at times and totally unique in tone.  A few friends have really praised this one, so I have some high hopes.  

Best new comedy of its year imo. Very underrated.

[Zorral]

The Highwaymen (2019) Netflix Original. Retelling the 1930’s Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow folk ballad (faux) hero tale from the pov of the two retired Texas Rangers who massacred them without mercy. 

I love that we don’t really see the killers, Bonnie and Clyde, and we never see their faces, until the very end, when they are killed in a hail of bullets. This underlines how much pov creates sympathy for even the most evil of figures. This choice right there creates an antithesis to Warren Beatty and Fay Dunaway's Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

This one with wonderful Kevin Costner and Woody Harelson is a present day counter-cultural narrative, of sorts, taking mild pains to condemn the giddy media coverage of these un-Robin Hoods, who rob banks and kill poor and innocent people, and the even more frenzied support of the public, naming them heroes. It’s speaking to the incredible swiftness with which online communities build up and take down figures – even to the Columbine killers in their flapping dusters under which they conceal weapons, as does The Terminator’s (1984) Kyle Reese, when trying to save Sarah Connor from Schwartzenager.

But it wants to have its condemnation of mass media glamorization of violence and have its violence too, quite like John Ford, after re-examining his decades of films of glamorizing the single righteous man with a gun, tries to do, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Like The Highwaymen, so does this fail, in the end., when Jimmy Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard, who condemns violence in favor of the law and court, to save his own masculinity, goes out with a gun to face Lee Marvin’s Valance, the most violent man of all, while John Wayne’s Tom Doniphon is the real secret assassin behind the wall – and the paper’s editor prefers to prints the lie of Stoddard glory rather than the truth of Donophin's anonymous kill – and Stoddard gets the girl and become a Unites States Senator on the back of the glory of his fake kill.

There’s a sly scene in which Kevin Costner’s Frank Hamer is acquiring the armory with which he’s going to face the Barrow Gang.  He requests one lethal weapon after another from the gun seller.  The seller says, “Which one do you want?” He says, “All.”  Right out of the 1984 The Terminator*, where Arnold Shwartzenager plays the same scene, with the same terse words, originally -- though the scene doesn't conclude the same way with Hamer's acquisition.

A great deal is made in The Highwaymen by Hamer and Maney Gault, with barely straight faces, concerning the technological advances in lawkeeping since the days they rode the Mexican borders on horseback with their peace keepers – wire taps on the party phone lines! While surely most of those watching this Netflix Original film have no idea what a party line even is. So here we have a chronological meditation meta rondelay between three films: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), also set in the 1930’s, The Terminator (1984) set in the 1980’s but permeated by 2049, only 20 years in the future of the time in which we are watching (2019) The Highwaymen, still set in the 1930’s. 

The scenes of endless highway unrfurling over the Texas llano under the endless sky within far distant horizons banked with blue, lavender and white cloud strata, and at the west the nearly set sun glows palely, soothe our troubled soul and sore heart.

The location scenes in Louisiana's dark woodlands are disturbing, evocative of inevitable impending bloody justice, as we drive those narrow dirt roads between the piney woods not yet lumbered out.  It's the drive to Angola Prison, always dark, always confined, whether day or night, sunshine or cloud. A long way of unbroken oppression, with only cruel confinement at the end of the road.

I enjoyed watching this film then for several reasons.  It gave me a lot to look at that I liked, starting with the primary actors, and ending with the landscape.  That is America.  We cannot separate who we are from where we are, or, as can also be said, economic, political, cultural and technological, there's a lot of US history to unpack here, provided with a not so concealed wink.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many thanks to Richard Slotkin's magnificent trilogy of histories that insightfully examine the history of the USA through its culture of violence, giving a primary role to our entertainments that celebrate the righteous solitary man with a gun as the solution to every problem: Regeneration Through Violence (1973); The Fatal Environment 1985; Gunfighter Nation (1992).

[briantw]

I've been doing a Game of Thrones re-watch in preparation for the final season.  I was kind of dreading it, to be honest, because I remembered these earlier seasons dragging at times.  It's been pleasantly surprising that this hasn't been an issue at all.  I think this show was made to be binged.  The slower episodes don't stand out as much when you don't have to wait a fucking week for the next bit.