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41 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I'm still surprised at myself for being genuinely excited when each new movie came out. I shouldn't have liked them, but I did. 

The last 2 movies were a real trudge though. They did a good job of making me lose all interest. That whole 'split up movies into 2' should go down as a dark trend in cinema.

Mockingjay 2 got better on the second watch. Still, I think it could lose about 10 minutes and be better for it. More Jenna Malone would be nice too.

The Cornucopia scene in the first movie was definitely one of those, "how the hell did this get into a PG-13 film?" moments for me. That whole sequence with Rue and her wake and the salute was incredibly powerful. 

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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I'm still surprised at myself for being genuinely excited when each new movie came out. I shouldn't have liked them, but I did. 

The last 2 movies were a real trudge though. They did a good job of making me lose all interest. That whole 'split up movies into 2' should go down as a dark trend in cinema.

Its been some years now but the books also got progressively worse if I remember correctly.

I don't know if I ever saw all of the films, I definitely remember the first and I must have seen some of the second because I recall some of the actors. I don't remember watching the third film.

Not a fan of two-part endings either. I imagine it could work in some circumstances but usually its done with not nearly enough source material to work with

 

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4 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Its been some years now but the books also got progressively worse if I remember correctly.

 

The second book suffered from being too close to the first in some ways but it opened things up in interesting ways in others.

The third book was by far the most ambitious and original but it needed to be twice as long. I don't know if the films handled it right because I've not seen them- not, by the sounds of it- but that was one case where I thought spreading it out over a longer time was potentially justified. There was a really good story there about seeing Katniss fall apart under the strain of her position and the dissonance between what she thought it should be and what others thought it was,  from inside her PoV (obviously such a thing would not be for everyone, trauma trigger warnings all over the shop when recommending the book), as well as some tidy subversion of hero tropes, but it mashed through it at double-quick time. 

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13 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Its been some years now but the books also got progressively worse if I remember correctly.

I don't know if I ever saw all of the films, I definitely remember the first and I must have seen some of the second because I recall some of the actors. I don't remember watching the third film.

Not a fan of two-part endings either. I imagine it could work in some circumstances but usually its done with not nearly enough source material to work with

 

I couldn't disagree more. They got progressively better for me. Mockingjay was my favorite.

The only issue I had was that I'd prefer the last chapter to be much longer and more detailed.. It felt a bit rushed, though I otherwise liked it.

I thought the decision to split them was, for once, justtfied, as a proper adaptation would have been otherwise a 4-5 hours  long film. I would have had the first one end at a different, somewhat later point. But I liked Mockingjay part 1.

I was disappointed by Mockingjay part 2 as it not only missed the chance to expand on the ending, it rushed it even more, simplified it, and I  don't think someone would have gotten an idea about the things Collins described in the last chapter, just from the movie. They should have shown on screen the things that Collins has Katniss describe/retell in the last chapter.

Spoiler

I hoped we would get to see what she describes, in more detail: how Katniss and Peeta slowly start to recover and heal together. Haymitch returning and making some kind of life for himself iwth his geese, but he's still an alcoholic and not magically perfectly happy. People start to return and rebuild. We see a montage of other characters - Annie and her son, Katniss' mother in her new hospital, Gale training people in District 2. Something more about the curent government and how things are going (don't spend too much on this).

Some readers made misguided complaints about Katniss agreeing to have children, with some (very weird) arguments that this shows she was broken and just went along with what Peeta wanted - which makes zero sense (the stupidity just hurts my brain while typing it), especially since she says she eventually agreed, and it was made clear throughout the books that the only reason she didn't want children is because she was too afraid of losing them to the Games and tha she wouldn't be able to do anything about it to save them. The fact she agreed to it means that she felt safe enough in the new society to give it a chance.

The movie ending made it look too unambigiously happy. The book still doesn't let you forget Katniss and Peeta have physical and, more improtantly, emotional scars that didn't just go away. We should've seen them making a book about all the people they have lost, as a part of their recovery, something I loved in the book.

.It ends with the Epilogue of her watching the children play in the meadow, as the book does, but they should have had her voice over saying what she says in the books:  where she hints that she still often thinks about how easy it would be to lose that happiness and all her loved ones because of darker "games". The book ending still warns you that their society - any society - could easily and quickly slip into oppression and/or war all over again, and the movie didn't really convey that.

 

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Just finished watching  Things Heard and Seen . I'd been potentially expecting a jump scare creep old haunted house film but it was actually much better than that. 

I do seem to keep reading and watching stuff lately with awful philandering and/or psychotic male academics though, and it's reached a point of feeling physically nauseated when I see the inevitable happen. I wonder what the ratio of awful:non awful male arts academics in fiction is?

Anyway, I enjoyed the film despite its fully believable antagonist. 

but what was the scene at the beginning? I thought the film would end with that? I guess it's just a prophecy/foreshadowing

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2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Mockingjay 2 got better on the second watch. Still, I think it could lose about 10 minutes and be better for it. More Jenna Malone would be nice too.

The Cornucopia scene in the first movie was definitely one of those, "how the hell did this get into a PG-13 film?" moments for me. That whole sequence with Rue and her wake and the salute was incredibly powerful. 

I think the last two films are basically unwatchable. The first movie holds up, but it's downhill after that which sadly has made me not want to read the books.

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2 hours ago, Isis said:

Just finished watching  Things Heard and Seen . I'd been potentially expecting a jump scare creep old haunted house film but it was actually much better than that. 

I do seem to keep reading and watching stuff lately with awful philandering and/or psychotic male academics though, and it's reached a point of feeling physically nauseated when I see the inevitable happen. I wonder what the ratio of awful:non awful male arts academics in fiction is?

Anyway, I enjoyed the film despite its fully believable antagonist. 

 

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but what was the scene at the beginning? I thought the film would end with that? I guess it's just a prophecy/foreshadowing

 

My gf expected the same but enjoyed it just like you. 

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Finished season 3 of Justified. Limehouse and Quarels weren't as compelling as the Bennets in the villain role, but I did like it overall. Not as good as season 2 for the reasons discussed above, but the episode with Dewey Crowe I referred to earlier is probably my favorite episode so far so it does have that going for it.

I do wish they had focused more on Arlo. Not sure what the future will bring there, but his struggle with

Spoiler

dementia was a very interesting plot development. I do feel like the show didn't completely stick the landing however. Arlo thinking he shot Raylan to protect Boyd... I'm not sure whether I buy that Boyd had done enough for Arlo to earn that kind of loyalty. They should have had more familial scenes together to make that work.

I think the only downside on this show for me is the relationship bullshit. I like Natalia Zea a lot, but Wynona and Raylan just bore me. I'd love for her to either to be out of the picture or for her and Raylan to make up their minds and be happy together. This in-between shit doesn't fly.

For the rest I was finally able to watch The Father. No question about it that Sir Anthony deserved that award. Overall it's a very good film and scary to boot. I wonder why no one ever made a horror movie with a monster inspired by dementia. It worked for STD's with It Follows and dementia is a whole lot scarier than that. It's really good to see another high-profile adaptation of a play win some awards for once. That's been a while.

I think all in all I'd rank the nominees I have seen this year as follows:

1. Promising Young Woman
2. Minari
3. The Father (though 2 and 3 are really close)
4. Nomadland
5. Judas and the Black Messiah
6. The Sound of Metal (terrible film, so it's a landslide for the last place)

I also had the opportunity to cross a film of my watch list that has been on there for years, namely Carl Theodor Dreyer's iconic 1928 film La passion de Jeanne d'Arc with Maria Falconetti as Jeanne. This film deserves its legendary reputation and Falconetti truly is devastating in this role. I'm pretty sure those eyes of her will follow me in my nightmares for years to come.

I was interested in checking this out after revisiting Luc Besson's awful The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc a couple of months back. It took me some time to hunt down the Criterion copy of it, but it's an unbelievably intimate film. Dreyer build one of the most expensive sets ever, but you hardly ever see it. You only see the faces of Jeanne, her judges and her tormentors. She's lit in soft light while he used harsher lighting for everyone else. You see the creases in their faces, the warts and pockmarks... with Jeanne though, you just see her eyes and the soul behind it. It's truly remarkable, though definitely not an easy film to watch.

I was also enthralled by the score on the Criterion edition. Apparently it wasn't in the original version and is only a very recent addition, but the composer made it specifically for the film I guess. Still, the match between Voices of Light V. Pater Nostrum and this film was superb. This is why you bring in a score really, it added so much emotion. 

22 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

I remember loving it back in the day. Even though it had one of the silliest looking cases of old age makeup. (The "It's been 30 years... so let's make this character look 300 years old" school of makeup.)

Oh yeah, this is almost as bad as Prometheus on that front :D

 

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52 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

But Prometheus wins not only for being so bad, but also for being completely unnecessary. 

For what it's worth there was originally a reason. They shot scenes with Pearce without the makeup that were cut. I think they were used in Covenant. 

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As far as I'm concerned, Alien had its trilogy. "The Passion of Ellen Ripley" told with two brilliant films and one flawed.  

Prometheus was the first experience I've had where I was hyped for a film for a solid year, saw the thing on opening weekend, and left feeling very disappointed. It wasn't terrible exactly, but it certainly failed to meet my expectations. I re-watched it a few times and left it behind years ago. 'Never even bothered with Covenant. 

As much as I appreciate the critical community not piling on ol' Riddley, it was obvious that some of them were really trying to give the film a positive review. 73% on the Tomatometer with an average score of 6.9. Far too generous IMO.

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think the last two films are basically unwatchable. The first movie holds up, but it's downhill after that which sadly has made me not want to read the books.

That's a bit strong but I get that opinions were more divided on the latter films. Mockingjay P.1 might have been the only one I saw in the theater (I can't remember) and I liked it a lot. I saw part 2 for the first time about a year ago and gave it a "meh" out of 10. I liked it more the second time. 

In contrast, A lot of the MCU films, ones that I generally enjoy on my initial viewing, consistently decline with repeat viewings. And, in terms of the world building and quality of the story telling, the Star Wars sequel trilogy would kill (if movies could kill) to be as good as any of the Hunger Games films.

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2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

As far as I'm concerned, Alien had its trilogy. "The Passion of Ellen Ripley" told with two brilliant films and one flawed.  

Prometheus was the first experience I've had where I was hyped for a film for a solid year, saw the thing on opening weekend, and left feeling very disappointed. It wasn't terrible exactly, but it certainly failed to meet my expectations. I re-watched it a few times and left it behind years ago. 'Never even bothered with Covenant. 

As much as I appreciate the critical community not piling on ol' Riddley, it was obvious that some of them were really trying to give the film a positive review. 73% on the Tomatometer with an average score of 6.9. Far too generous IMO.

Prometheus gets a bad rap because it wasn't what people expected or wanted. I'd encourage everyone to watch this video then give the film a second chance if you didn't like it:

 

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Yeah, I don't hate Prometheus. It's a really shitty Alien prequel but a pretty ok sci-fi/horror movie. Better than most but not great. I was still excited to see where Shaw and David went at the end but then Covenant happened. That movie is actually horrible. 

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3 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I don't like Prometheus because of stupid plot moments and poor editing, not because the story wasn't what I expected.

The characters were all throwing the Idiot Ball around so the plot could even happen. 

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20 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

The characters were all throwing the Idiot Ball around so the plot could even happen. 

That's one way to put it. If we're being critical I don't get why two guys who I'd assume have the equivalent of PhDs were behaving like freshmen in a lab setting when it came to studying completely foreign samples. And how that theme repeated itself throughout the movie.

Still, I like the movie while acknowledging it wasn't made as well as it could of been. The sequel was trash though. I barely remember it.

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