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Watch Watched Watching: May The Fourth be with you!


TheLastWolf

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Watched Lock, Stock and Two Barrels before Eurovision. The making off this film (especially any trivia associated with Vinnie Jones) is way more interesting than the actual final product. I know this is a cult classic, but I think it's supremely overrated. It looks horrible with that fucking sepia filter laid over it, the cockney is grating, the characters are stupid and the plot in this is just ridiculously overwrought. 

8 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Probably, plus McDormand gets another Oscar for the earth shattering boldness of going makeup-less and wearing dirty jeans. Truly next level stuff zzzzzzzzzzz!

In all seriousness I couldn't get past that depressing trailer either.

It wasn't the film I would have given Best Picture too, but I also believe it is getting a bit of an unfair rap here. I certainly thought it was better than Judas and the Black Messiah for instance, but both are very overrated films in my book. I don't feel like they romanticize the lifestyle that much. It's just a very sympathetic portrayal of the people who lost the gale in  our society because the deck was stacked against them.

4 hours ago, Ghostlydragon said:

Eurovision time. Will UK be near the bottom or top?

Well deserved though. The singing wasn't very good and since he wasn't hunky enough to lock in some teenage votes, this is what you get.

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19 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Yeah I watch everything with subtitles 

If watching something on my phone I have English subtitles on as it helps with the fluctuating volume issues (i.e. If trying to have the volume 'not too loud' I might then miss dialogue without subtitles). 

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23 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Have to say Army of the Dead , the Snyder latest on Netflix, is a fun movie. I guess this where he tends to do his best work 

Parts of it were a bit clunky but I enjoyed it a lot. It gets better on second viewing. Also, There were a lot of things I didn't notice initially.

Spoiler

Aliens i(like, really early), blue eyed robot zombies, evidence of an actual time travel sub plot.

Tig Notaro's addition was seamless. When you consider how that film was made (hand held cameras, mostly natural lighting), it's pretty remarkable. She's great in the film.

I've also seen criticisms of the "dream lens" cinematography. Each to their own. I thought it was gorgeous. 

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I re-watched Dredd recently. Damn I like that movie. Was it just released at the wrong time? Why couldn't more people buy tickets to see that movie?

 

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19 minutes ago, kungtotte said:

Dredd is one of the few comic book movies that actually feels like a comic book. I really liked it, though I never went to see it at the cinema and only caught it on DVD.

Love Dredd. How awesome is Lena Headey in that. Miss her on my tv

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3 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I re-watched Dredd recently. Damn I like that movie. Was it just released at the wrong time? Why couldn't more people buy tickets to see that movie?

It was a great film, it's a shame that we never got any sequels to it. I know there have been some plans discussed about a TV series with Karl Urban, but I'm not sure if that's going anywhere.

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11 hours ago, Veltigar said:

It looks horrible with that fucking sepia filter laid over it, the cockney is grating, the characters are stupid and the plot in this is just ridiculously overwrought.

I always assumed that the amateur-ish look, the characters' stupidity, and the overall ridiculousness of the story were absolutely done on purpose.

Though given some later Ritchie movies, I guess one could be in doubt... :idea:

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12 hours ago, Veltigar said:

It wasn't the film I would have given Best Picture too, but I also believe it is getting a bit of an unfair rap here. I certainly thought it was better than Judas and the Black Messiah for instance, but both are very overrated films in my book. I don't feel like they romanticize the lifestyle that much. It's just a very sympathetic portrayal of the people who lost the gale in  our society because the deck was stacked against them.

This year had a lot of really good but not great films at the top. And the BP nominations were depressing watches (haven't seen them all yet but there is pattern).

4 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Parts of it were a bit clunky but I enjoyed it a lot. It gets better on second viewing. Also, There were a lot of things I didn't notice initially.

A second watch? Already? I enjoyed it for the stupid fun that it was, but I don't think I need to see Army of the Dead again.

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To follow up from the previous post, does Hiroyuki Sanada age? How is this dude in his 60's, still doing the work Mortal Kombat had to require and looking that good?  Very impressive. The Twilight Samurai seems to be what he's most linked to. Has anyone here watched it?

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50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

To follow up from the previous post, does Hiroyuki Sanada age? How is this dude in his 60's, still doing the work Mortal Kombat had to require and looking that good?  Very impressive. The Twilight Samurai seems to be what he's most linked to. Has anyone here watched it?

I've seen it, but it was over a decade ago. I remember it being really good though

I watched Army of the Dead. It was fine, the brain dead action was good fun. And I was very impressed with how well they managed to integrate Tig Notaro into the movie. It wasn't exactly seamless, but I don't know how much of it I would have noticed if I wasn't actively looking for the seams. The plot was really, really dumb and kinda falls apart if you think about it even a little.
 

Spoiler

 

Why was the heist cover even necessary? Hiroyuki Sanada's character didn't seem like he was hurting for money, so wouldn't it just have been easier to just hire Bautista and the gang to just get Alpha head?  They got the head easy enough, so if they had just gotten that at the first confrontation and then gotten the fuck out it would just have been a done deal. The entire cover and betrayal bit just feels like an incredibly convoluted and stupid plan Being upfront about everything would just have been so much easier.

Also the daughter character was the worst and so was her entire predictable boring-ass plotline. The movie would have been a hundred times better if she just had gotten eaten by zombies.

Plus there felt like there was a lot of foreshadowing that never went anywhere, like the big-ass saw never being used for any mayhem during the end or the line about the regular zombies that had been caught outside coming alive in the rain

The best scene was the Vasquez-alike fighting her way through the kitchen, even through her death seemed pretty dumb. They could have easily saved her with how easily they killed the zombies otherwise.

 

I also watched They Live, which of course is a masterpiece.

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I went for another black and white classic and watched Jean Cocteau's 1946's La belle et la bête. I am a huge admirer of the animated Disney film that was made years later so it was a joy to see just how much the creative team behind that film were inspired by Cocteau's work. 

Every time I saw something that reminded me of the animated film, I just had to smile. It's uncanny how much Jean Marais looks like Gaston from the animated film to give but one example. Aside from that though, I do admit that I'm a little disappointed. It was a perfectly fine film, but I was expecting more.

I really liked the special effects and the sets on display, but with that, my praise pretty much ends. Where the animated film is perfectly streamlined and feels rather unique within this genre this film seems unable to decide whether it wants to be Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. There is also a big villain sized hole in the center of this film, not to mention that the relationship between the characters is weird and I'm not just talking about the very unsubtle sexual undertones on display. I can't decide how to feel about Avenant for instance. Is he a hero? A villain? Does the movie itself actually now? It seems like it sort of just did something

Spoiler

I don't understand why the Beast turned into Avenant for instance. Nor why Avenant is all of a sudden seen as bad? I read the following on IMDB:

  • Some viewers have suggested that director Jean Cocteau cast Jean Marais in both roles because they were off-screen lovers at the time. However, others believe Cocteau had something more profound in mind. One theory is based on the fact that avenant can be translated from French to English as "pleasant to look at; handsome." As such, Avenant is a sort of Prince Charming, the antithesis of the Beast. When the Beast begins to die of heartbreak, it is Avenant who becomes a beast, and the Beast turns into the handsome prince. The moral: True love can turn a beast into a handsome prince; selfish love can turn a handsome prince into a beast.

This is such a weird explanation. Why does he become a selfish beast? Because he tries to rescue Belle from what he believes is a monster who captured her against her will. In this version Belle also admits that she loves him before meeting the Beast so its not as in the animated film where Belle shows no interest in Gaston, Gaston is clearly selfish and starts to pull all sort of bad stuff in order to murder the beast.

The sisters are also a mystery. Why would the father allow two of his daughters to treat him like shit while he has the one daughter who is devoted to him serve as a glorified house maid? Also, the reason the Prince gives for his curse is just stupid (His parents didn't believe in fairies, so therefore the fairies took revenge on him).

The more I think about it, the less sense that story makes. The disney remake just got a whole lot better in my opinion because it is an improvement all across the board.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

To follow up from the previous post, does Hiroyuki Sanada age? How is this dude in his 60's, still doing the work Mortal Kombat had to require and looking that good?  Very impressive. The Twilight Samurai seems to be what he's most linked to. Has anyone here watched it?

Yes, also a few years back. It deserves a lot of praise though if memory serves I didn't think it was a stone cold classic. Just a very good film, with a lot of restraint. 

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On 5/17/2021 at 7:37 AM, dog-days said:

Geraldine James is fantastic. I first saw her on VHS as Sarah Layton in The Jewel in the Crown

She is. But the two hours of DA were atrocious. Worse even than the show. Two hours of boredom, idiotic plot, bad dialogue, and Fellowes' godawful ideology drowning everything. Not even Maggie Smith could save this thing for me; she was just obnoxious without the wit. Ugh. And James had only a handful of scenes.

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Has anyone on here watched The Unicorn? It's a recent CBS sitcom with Walton Goggins in the lead... I'm intrigued by that casting choice, but also apprehensive because it's a CBS sitcom ;)

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The 2017 documentary of Joan Didion's life and times has gone up on Netflix.  It is a fascinating watch on a variety of levels, not only because it centers, w/o ever vaunting/saying it, one of the few public intellectuals and commentators of the last 1/2 of the 20th century's USA, who is a woman -- and didn't come out of academia. The establishment of the non-academia affiliated New York Review of Books, did so much for her profile. It was a different time for writer-thinker-journalists, with so many outlets, including Look Magazine, for exhibiting their ideas.  None of that exists now.

Didion's  trajectory and perspective on so much is not part of Gloria Steinem's, or Betty Friedan's.  IOW, like Susan Sontag, she didn't begin, or arrive at, the propellant of self-identifying member of any overtly political feminist group or organization.

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22 hours ago, GallowKnight said:

I've seen it, but it was over a decade ago. I remember it being really good though

I watched Army of the Dead. It was fine, the brain dead action was good fun. And I was very impressed with how well they managed to integrate Tig Notaro into the movie. It wasn't exactly seamless, but I don't know how much of it I would have noticed if I wasn't actively looking for the seams. The plot was really, really dumb and kinda falls apart if you think about it even a little.
 

  Hide contents

 

The best scene was the Vasquez-alike fighting her way through the kitchen, even through her death seemed pretty dumb. They could have easily saved her with how easily they killed the zombies otherwise.

 

 

I laughed when the guy was like "leave her she's done for" when she only had like three zombies next to her and wasn't bitten yet. Then it takes him sooo many bites before he puts her out of her misery.  

On 5/23/2021 at 5:03 AM, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

 

  Hide contents

Aliens i(like, really early), blue eyed robot zombies, evidence of an actual time travel sub plot.

 

 

So I'm assuming the original zombie was infected with some alien virus. Maybe the robot zombies were made by the aliens to watch the fun? If you figure out the purpose of the time travel thing do let me know. The only thing I can think is they're planning a sequel where some alien tech fucks up the timeline? But I'm not even sure how that would work.  

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Watched 500 Days of Summer for the first time.  I enjoyed it a lot, but also felt that the movie really could have been more.  For example, the movie seemed to be going out of its way to demonstrate that Tom was in love with the idea of Summer, but didn't really care what she had to say or about her as a person.  A romantic comedy in which the guy is so flawed (and in a fairly realistic way) that the romance is doomed is fairly unique. 

But, it also seemed afraid of committing to this premise.  The very first lines of the movie identify that the movie is a work of fiction, and any similarities are purely coincidental "especially you, Jenny Beckman.  Bitch."  That really is the embodiment of the kind of unhealthy view of women that the movie is attempting to deconstruct.  But I don't see how including that opening line furthers that goal (quite the opposite - this is meant to be funny).  And throughout the movie, since we see Tom's suffering from the breakup but nothing from what Summer is feeling (really ever) it makes people empathize with Tom to an unwarranted degree.

And reading online, it seems like many people agree, and see Tom as the hero and Summer as the villain in the movie, just because she broke up with him.  When in fact, it's very clear that Summer was honest from the start about not wanting a serious relationship, and that she broke up with Tom because he was getting too attached and wasn't listening to her.  Which is...very normal, even admirable, relationship behavior. 

So while I found the movie enjoyable and unique, I also felt it was a bit of a muddled message and somewhat missed the mark. 

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I do like 500 Days of Summer but I agree that it misdelivered its message, since even people who I know would agree with it if they've read that into it got 'Summer is the villain' out of it.


Ending it with the chance meeting with Autumn didn't help either. I thought it was a downer 'he really hasn't learned' ending but plenty read it as 'idealising girls is fine he just idealised the wrong one'

 

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