Watch, Watched, Watching: Hindsight in 2020

[Zorral]

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm on to the last episode of Watchmen. Holy crap is this an incredible show, and the twists can land like gut punches. 

Regina King wore the best gown last night among the O attendees.  She was one of the few who did wear her choice, instead of the choice doing the wearing of the person.  It was simple and elegant.  Everything was the architecture of the patterns and fabric, in connection with the shade she chose to show off her skin.   

[Nictarion]

2 hours ago, Isis said:

Definitely better than The Lighthouse in your opinion?

Yes. 

[RedEyedGhost]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

ETA:  Anyone ever have issues with Amazon Prime having the sound slightly off time / not synced?  I'm going a free trial and having this issue, and turning on and off is not doing anything.  Never had this issue with Netflix.  thanks

 No troubles for me.  Have you tried it on any other devices?

[Nictarion]

Watched the first episode of The Sinner S3. Intriguing setup for the season, with a pretty interesting case. This show seems like it will be a similar situation to True Detective though, where it will never quite be able to match the quality of the first season. 

[Heartofice]

4 hours ago, Triskele said:

Saw The Report with Adam Driver.  If you're a political junkie you probably know much of the story but will still enjoy getting your junkie fix.  

ETA:  Anyone ever have issues with Amazon Prime having the sound slightly off time / not synced?  I'm going a free trial and having this issue, and turning on and off is not doing anything.  Never had this issue with Netflix.  thanks

It’s been like that for a while for me, funny you should mention it. It’s less than half a second out so not that noticeable but don’t think there is any way to change it. 

[Veltigar]

Quote

On another front, had an odd day and decided to watch normal TV for a change. I caught a broadcast of Gladiator... There was a time when I saw this film at least once a year, but now it had been a while. It appeared different than I remembered.

I found it striking how old-fashioned the film felt (in the positive sense of the word). There is more of the 1950's epic Hollywood film inspiration in there than I remembered. Whatever mixture they used though, it is bizarre how effective this film is. I think someone could make a very interesting study on how Gladiator influenced a whole generation of (mostly) young boys to think about leadership and idealism. Looking back on this scene for instance, I can't help but wish for a figure like Maximus to rise up and make a difference. I'm usually highly skeptical of authority figures, but damn it, you just want him to rule purely based on his virtus.

I'm shamelessly reposting this, since I want to start a lovefest about Gladiator for the 10.000th time  I have been listening to the Maximus chant on repeat for the last two days 

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Parasite is that very rare film where the hype is so intense that it cannot possibly live up to it, and then it does.

So bizarre to think that this is the same guy who made Snow Piercer, which was pretty much the opposite of the latter part of that description

[Isis]

9 hours ago, Mexal said:

Different. So hard to judge those kinds of things. The technical feat of telling the story the way they did, and some of the shots (e.g., the town at night) was so spectacular that I give it so much credit. I don't know if I'd say better because I think a lot of this is opinion with very different visual storytelling needs, but I'd say it's a deserved winner.

I need to see 1917 really.

Last week we watched the BBC's War of the Worlds mini-series. Wow. So bland and dreary. I wasn't fussed about what happened to anybody in this. The leads had no chemistry at all. The aliens were mildly interesting when they started eating people buit other than that it was just dull. Thank goodness it was only three episodes.

At the other end of the spectrum we watched White House Farm (featuring a few familiar GOT faces like Mark Addy, Gemma Whelan, Alfie Allen, Mark Stanley), which weirdly (having lived in Essex from 1983 to 2010), I had managed to not have heard of the actual case it dramatises. We started watching it at about 6pm on Friday night and accidentally watched all five available episodes because it was just too gripping to stop. Final episide airs tomorrow. Very strong performances in this. The cinematography is pretty good too. Would recommend.

Also watched Shadow of the Moon which was not what I was expecting but I kind of liked it. Bit difficult to categorise it, beyond calling it a scifi drama...but that feels like underselling it a little.

 

[Heartofice]

21 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

So bizarre to think that this is the same guy who made Snow Piercer, which was pretty much the opposite of the latter part of that description

I watched Snow Piercer when it was more of an unknown gem, and at that point I thought it was pretty decent. It works far better if you don't buy into the hype about it because it's the sort of sci fi story I have heard a number of times before. It's pretty uneven though, I think if the whole movie had matched Tilda Swinton's tone then it would be much better.

[BigFatCoward]

It seems like my watch of S3 of Mrs Maisel has been going on forever. Still amazing, but much more uneven than the first 2 seasons. 

 

[Astromech]

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I'm shamelessly reposting this, since I want to start a lovefest about Gladiator for the 10.000th time  I have been listening to the Maximus chant on repeat for the last two days 

So bizarre to think that this is the same guy who made Snow Piercer, which was pretty much the opposite of the latter part of that description

Here's a 2000 article on the film touching on the homage to classic Hollywood epics.  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/23/1  I still think there should have been a white stallion named Miracle in the film, but that's just me.

I enjoyed the docu-drama Rise of Empires: Ottomans. 

I watched the first two episodes of Locke and Key. It's decent so far. However, I'd rather spend more time with Bode exploring the mansion than with his siblings at the boarding school.

[maarsen]

10 hours ago, Triskele said:

Saw The Report with Adam Driver.  If you're a political junkie you probably know much of the story but will still enjoy getting your junkie fix.  

ETA:  Anyone ever have issues with Amazon Prime having the sound slightly off time / not synced?  I'm going a free trial and having this issue, and turning on and off is not doing anything.  Never had this issue with Netflix.  thanks

I had/have that issue also. I think there was a lawsuit against Amazon for them doing this if you did not stream through an Amazon device. 

[Veltigar]

8 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I watched Snow Piercer when it was more of an unknown gem, and at that point I thought it was pretty decent. It works far better if you don't buy into the hype about it because it's the sort of sci fi story I have heard a number of times before. It's pretty uneven though, I think if the whole movie had matched Tilda Swinton's tone then it would be much better.

Meh, I saw it pretty early that year and still thought it was only just about okay. It didn't incite me to check any of his other work. Same thing for Memories of a Murder which I saw without knowing it was his. Parasite is far and away the best film of his I have seen and it makes me want to check out some of his other work like The Host.

 

4 hours ago, Astromech said:

Here's a 2000 article on the film touching on the homage to classic Hollywood epics.  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/23/1  I still think there should have been a white stallion named Miracle in the film, but that's just me.

Finally someone who understands my needs  It's a cool article. 

One surprising factoid that I learned while doing another deep dive was

Spoiler

the fact that Proximo was originally going to fight Maximus in his penultimate match as a final fuck you from Commodus before the final confrontation. I don't know how they would have made that work to be honest.

 

[Zorral]

6 hours ago, Astromech said:

Here's a 2000 article on the film touching on the homage to classic Hollywood epics.  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/23/1  I still think there should have been a white stallion named Miracle in the film, but that's just me.

In terms of cultural and political history it's really interesting to read  review of film like this written during what none of us at the time knew was the run-up of 9/11, when the world changed for the worse, the very much worse: "Sun 23 Apr 2000 17.35 BST First published on Sun 23 Apr 2000 17.35 BST"

From the review:

Quote

After all, it is 36 years since Anthony Mann's The Fall Of The Roman Empire, the last of the great toga epics, which also told the story of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, played then by Alec Guinness and Christopher Plummer.

I really enjoyed The Fall of the Roman Empire, which I've watched 3 or 4 times in the last 10 years or so -- obviously didn't see it when it came out! -- which means I have only seen it on personal device screen, unlike Gladiator which I think I even saw twice on a big theater screen.

~~~~~~

Is the bolded a reference to the Disney movie Lippizan rescue by the US army?

P.S. -- Thank you so much for that Guardian link, btw.  It's gone into my references files for the history of historical fiction / films.

 

[Astromech]

2 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Finally someone who understands my needs  It's a cool article. 

One surprising factoid that I learned while doing another deep dive was

  Reveal hidden contents

the fact that Proximo was originally going to fight Maximus in his penultimate match as a final fuck you from Commodus before the final confrontation. I don't know how they would have made that work to be honest.

 

I would love to have at least one Hollywood epic annually to get excited for. 

I actually think it worked better with him fighting that retired champion, Tigris, and facing Commodus at the end. 

Every time I watch the film, I can't help but think of films like Ben Hur and Quo Vadis when seeing the design of the Colosseum. As well as the triumph when Commodus returns to Rome from Germania.

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

 

~~~~~~

Is the bolded a reference to the Disney movie Lippizan rescue by the US army?

P.S. -- Thank you so much for that Guardian link, btw.  It's gone into my references files for the history of historical fiction / films.

 

Haha, no. The bolded is a reference to Mel Brooks's The History of the World Part I.

You're welcome. I find it interesting reading those contemporaneous reviews with our hindsight.

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, Astromech said:

I would love to have at least one Hollywood epic annually to get excited for

So would I!

Or at least a series like HBO's Rome or Netflix's Polo (but without the Blue Princess, please).

What I really appreciated even at the time of Gladiator's original release was how much land Celtiberia had that was seemingly made in mind of raising some of the very best horses.  Though I also simultaneously had a fair amount of trouble believing the coincidence that he arrived just after his family was massacred, starting from a point nearly 2000 miles away.  I don't actually have trouble believing he could have ridden that far within what seems about 3 weeks, because historically Roman soldiers could do a huge amount of unbelievably rapid movement on little food when called to -- but in this case accomplishing such a travel feat would demand the wherewithall to constantly replace the horse.  We see no evidence that Maximus is carrying a secret cache of cash into the battle.  Also he presumably isn't going the direct routes, and just finding horses between Germania and Spain as often has he would need to change mounts would be iffy.  I always bump into this.

~~~~~~

Also this is the first time I saw dogs being used by a Roman army.  Did they do that? I haven't run across references to this use but then I'm no scholar of Roman military history beyond quite broad strokes, unlike my much more comprehensive understanding of how slavery operated within the Roman Empire. 

However, I recalled the Gladiator  dogs when watching the really unfairly slagged and dumped Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, because there are some truly terrifying dogs used by some of the villains in this series. The Shieldlands are the buffer zone between the ever shrinking terrain of the "Mudborn" and "The Old Lands', what looks like the remains of what had been a Roman Empire -- with various objects, styles, patterns and visitors received from there. Which is how it worked for sure as we see from excavations in Nordic and Germanic lands.  BTW, for those who are fond of these not necessarily strictly requirely historical reality -- besides Beowulf is a fiction anyway -- I was more than reasonably entertained.  It's at least as good, and probably better, than The Witcher! 

[polishgenius]

12 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I'm shamelessly reposting this, since I want to start a lovefest about Gladiator for the 10.000th time

 

Yeah it's almost as good a revenge flick as Man on Fire.

 

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Same thing for Memories of a Murder which I saw without knowing it was his. Parasite is far and away the best film of his I have seen and it makes me want to check out some of his other work like The Host.

 

I like Snowpiercer a lot, though it's nowhere near as good as Parasite. I didn't even get into Memories of Murder.

The Host is excellent but is also scattered and weird. I haven't seen it for ages, should give it a rewatch, as well as watching Mother which has been sitting next to my desk for two years.

 

 

The film that Parasite most reminds me of is American Beauty.

[williamjm]

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Meh, I saw it pretty early that year and still thought it was only just about okay. It didn't incite me to check any of his other work. Same thing for Memories of a Murder which I saw without knowing it was his. Parasite is far and away the best film of his I have seen and it makes me want to check out some of his other work like The Host.

I thought The Host was a fun monster movie which managed to feel quite different to American films in that genre. I haven't seen Parasite yet but I suspect The Host doesn't have the same depth to it.

[Ran]

I thought Snowpiercer was visually interesting, but too overtly allegorical and not very cohesive as a story. Parasite is much more sharply and cohesively directed, but I felt like the last act was over-obvious and let down the careful work that came before. I appreciated the flooded Seoul scene and its aftermath much more than the conflict in the house when the former housekeeper returned, and certainly more than the explosion of violence that occupies the last fifteen minutes or so. I'm more okay with the Best Director win (because it is really well done) than I am with Best Picture.

That said, I watched Memories of Murder and that was ... not entirely what I expected from people comparing it to Zodiac and saying it's Bong's best film, but that said I quite enjoyed it and the last few minutes of that one were quite the turn. Loosely inspired by South Korea's first serial killings (a case which is even now going through the courts, as a man convicted for one of the murders is seeking a retrial after the police determined that the actual serial killer -- who was, indeed, caught in the end, though by the happenstance of being caught for a murder long after the initial spree -- was responsible), what I enjoyed was the initial satire of these bumpkin police officers entirely unequipped to handle this case going around trying to beat confessions out of people, and bumbling their way from one clue to another that a straightlaced cop from Seoul was able to get. Kang-ho Song is great as Inspector Park, and his flying double kick at what he believes is a would-be rapist (but is, in fact, the big city cop) was hilarious.

And yet while there's this discordant humor there, it never loses sight of the fact that there's this terrible toll of women being rmurdered, and as the story progresses the humor starts to give way as the country detectives slowly start to see that their methods aren't right, while the detective from Seoul finds himself increasingly troubled as they find a good lead that they can't close on. It ends quite darkly.

The rhythms of the film and the sense of oddball humor reminds me of Takeshi Kitano's films like Sonatine (the interpersonal stuff, not the crime stuff) or Kikujiro (which also has some similarities to Parasite or Koreeda's Shoplifters in subject matter), while the violent Inspector Cho who loves nothing better than roughing up suspects and getting confessions out of them reminds me quite a bit of Sam Rockwell's character in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I suspect that's a coincidence, but found it so obvious the way they were portrayed as figures to be made fun of, unlike (say) Russell Crowe's brutal Bud White in L.A. Confidential.

[Conflicting Thought]

Snowpiercees is his worst movie imho, he went full holywood and i didnt care for it, didnt like chris evans performanse and it was just too in your face.

i've watched memories of a murder, witch i loved, and afyer watcibgnit i realised just how much of an influence it was for fincher. 

I watched the host, and i really really liked it, i have a soft spot for good monster movies. And it was so fucking tragic. 

And i watched parasite wich is, in my opinion, his best movie by far,  it is actually one of my favorite movies of all time, it spoke to me in a fundametal level. 

 

[Heartofice]

I always get excited when I see The Host is on tv. Imagine my disappointment when I find out that it’s that goddawful movie with Saiorse Ronan! Every time!