Watch Watched Watching: The Rambunctious Cinema of Terrence Malick

[Underfoot]

6 hours ago, IFR said:

Netflix continues its status as the god-emperor of mediocrity. Out of the billions of dollars it spends each year, what has it managed to produce that is actually good? Dark? The Queen's Gambit? Mindhunter was decent, too.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power

 

[RhaenysBee]

9 hours ago, IFR said:

Netflix continues its status as the god-emperor of mediocrity. Out of the billions of dollars it spends each year, what has it managed to produce that is actually good? Dark? The Queen's Gambit? Mindhunter was decent, too.

Anyway, that was a little rant I had to get out of my system. I really liked the idea of a series of horror movies over different time periods, and so it stings that the movies have been given the Netflix treatment.

To be fair the last season of Dark was quite a mess. And they screw up every good they get their hands on. I’ve been seriously considering canceling my Netflix but my mum uses it to binge the Crown and Korean romcom series, so I haven’t yet had the heart.

I actually continued to hate watch The Bold Type. Hate watching is unhealthy, people, don’t do it. It’s a waste of time and blood pressure. It just seriously saddens me that something of this quality would get production for 5 full seasons. 

[Mark Antony]

Netflix is definitely one of thre weaker streaming services now. Ozark and Last Kingdom are the ones I will come back for

[TheLastWolf]

Is there any proper R rated animated film? 

Not like the sleazy Armageddon spoof parody DISASTER movie 

[Heartofice]

Netflix feels the most like the streaming service run completely by an algorithm. Essentially throw a lot of shit at a wall, see what sticks, make more of that, make less of what isn’t working.

That’s why I feel there are a lot of shows and movies they make which really are just the ingredients for success ( success being viewer numbers) rather than coming it at it from the position of wanting to make something great.

So it’s like ‘rom com + popular star + familiar situation = pump out lots of those movies’

Not really different to the studio system but I feel like it’s being taken to a whole new level , with far less attempt to really take a chance on something different or unique.

[Week]

1 hour ago, The_Lone_Wolf said:

Is there any proper R rated animated film? 

Not like the sleazy Armageddon spoof parody DISASTER movie 

Akira?

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

To be fair the last season of Dark was quite a mess. And they screw up every good they get their hands on. I’ve been seriously considering canceling my Netflix but my mum uses it to binge the Crown and Korean romcom series, so I haven’t yet had the heart.

I actually continued to hate watch The Bold Type. Hate watching is unhealthy, people, don’t do it. It’s a waste of time and blood pressure. It just seriously saddens me that something of this quality would get production for 5 full seasons. 

I cancelled Netlfix in February, but just resumed. This month will have a couple of things that look interesting - the special episode for the Korean Kingdom series, and Masters of the Universe. In the meantime, I'm catching up on some of the shows I had only a mild interest in, like Shadow & Bone, Lucifer, and Love, Death + Robots. I have very little interest in any of the recent movies they produced. Hopefully the final season of Lost in Space comes out soon. Then cancel again until Stranger Things, The Last Kingdom, Cobra Kai, and/or The Wicher are released.

[RhaenysBee]

55 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I cancelled Netlfix in February, but just resumed. This month will have a couple of things that look interesting - the special episode for the Korean Kingdom series, and Masters of the Universe. In the meantime, I'm catching up on some of the shows I had only a mild interest in, like Shadow & Bone, Lucifer, and Love, Death + Robots. I have very little interest in any of the recent movies they produced. Hopefully the final season of Lost in Space comes out soon. Then cancel again until Stranger Things, The Last Kingdom, Cobra Kai, and/or The Wicher are released.

I’m looking forward to those two as well though I have a feeling Stranger Things is going to be a train wreck. I also plan to watch the final season of La Casa De Papel for the sake of closure, though Netflix did a prime job of destroying that piece of gem. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Netflix feels the most like the streaming service run completely by an algorithm. Essentially throw a lot of shit at a wall, see what sticks, make more of that, make less of what isn’t working.

"The movie business" in other words. Totally agree. 

That's how you build a back catalogue.

Netflix has a good track record of making moves that are met with skepticism but ultimately turn out to be correct. For example, when they split mail and streaming into two separate subscriptions. When I first heard that Netflix was reshaping itself as a movie/television studio I was quite skeptical. But they were savvy enough to realize that other corporates were looking at the money Netflix was making and would eventually get in on the streaming game themselves. Once that happened they'd eventually be sucked dry because the studios they rely on to fill their catalogue would increasingly keep exclusive content on their own platforms.

Half of what they're producing now will be complete dog shit and they know it. It will come and go and make no impact at all. Half of what's left will be kind of "meh". What remains will be somewhat worthwhile and may even contain a few gems. This is no different from what other studios have done except Netflix is compressing a few decades worth of work into a few years. Why not? They have buckets of cash and what they don't have they can borrow for next to nothing.

That's not to say they're making all the right decisions. They let MGM-UA go to Amazon and paying half a billion for the rights to a knives-out trilogy is kind of staggering. 

 

 

[Veltigar]

I went to the theatre to watch the long overdue Black Widow film. Going in, I didn't know what to expect. The first review on the Guardian gave it a 4/5, but a lot of the YouTube fanboy reviewers were shitting all over it. As per the usual, the Guardian turned out to be the closest to the truth as I was pleasantly surprised by this film.

Sure, there is a lot of meta criticism that can be leveled at it. Just like everyone else I agree that this film should have been made 5 years ago and that it is kind of weird that none of the characters in this film were mentioned in Endgame or any of the other films. Still, I cannot ignore the fact that it is one of the better MCU films out there. Up there with the likes of Ragnarok and Cap 2. 

A great deal of this film's success can be attributed to its humor and casting decisions. With the exception of Ragnarok, this is for me the funniest Marvel film by quite a large margin. Everyone is great in it, with Florence Pugh and David Harbor as the clear stand outs of the ensemble. Even the villain in this film is less forgettable than the average MCU antagonist, although that is mostly the result of Ray Winstone's presence rather than anything unique about the character.

The film also feels a lot more mature story and content wise than its peers.. For once I also completely accepted the Dominic Toretto moments in which the film made it all about family. In their limited screen time, the cast really sould the idea of this Russian family of spies to me which i thought was rather clever. The action was also rather decent. It lacks a stand-out scene like the elevator fight in Cap 2, but a lot of what they showed was pretty well done. In particular some scenes with snow and certain falls.

There are also some criticisms to be leveled at the film of course. First off, its story is just bonkers. As is the custom of these types of films, it is clear that no-one really took the time to step away seriously enough to make a true difference.  The way the villains used their powers made absolutely no fucking sense. You really feel like no one really thought the implications of the story through because they were a little bit too enamored with the political statement they wanted to make. There were some very cringy lines and dodgy effects, particularly near the end. All in all though, I'm quite happy  

 

EDIT: For spelling and the fact that I wrote this review while falling asleep 

 

[aceluby]

On 7/6/2021 at 3:57 PM, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Speaking of "aggressively mediocre", Passengers felt like a really good movie that had the guts ripped out of it. As much as I like Jennifer Lawrence in just about anything, I think the film was miscast. The starring duo should have been older. Like Ed Harris and Jamie Lee Curtis or something. 

There’s a video out there about how the story should have been told from the middle and ended with how he got there. When presented that way, it’s actually a really good movie…. 

[IFR]

15 hours ago, Underfoot said:

She-ra and the Princesses of Power

 

Thanks for the recommendation!

11 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

To be fair the last season of Dark was quite a mess

I wouldn't agree that's fair. I absolutely loved season 3, and thought it was a wonderful denouement. It amplified the depth, themes, and complexity of the show in a thoroughly enjoyable manner. The penultimate episode is one of my favorite episodes of any show, and the finale was a satisfying conclusion to the kind of story that usually falls apart at the end. It's actually remarkable that the show made sense at all, considering its sprawling ambition.

@Deadlines? What Deadlines?

I think your assessment of Netflix is perfectly sound. This is the profitable way of making television. All hype and no substance draws a large audience.

The truly worrying thing is that other streaming channels seem to be trying to emulate this approach. Even HBO has been diluting its selection of carefully crafted programs with mindless Netflix-esque shows.

[RumHam]

21 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Finally saw Tenet.

I am not embarrassed at all to admit I will need to completely view this at least one more time before I'm sure what I just watched.

That movie fucking baffled me and I've been meaning to get back to it. I may have to put down the bottle and maybe even take up a pen. 

20 hours ago, IFR said:

I think it's a testament to Nolan's amazing talents that his weakest film (which I feel Tenet is) still is entertaining and has a breadth of ambition that most other films do not match. 

Branagh was a great villain and I think that helped keep me emotionally engaged when I had otherwise almost given up. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

There’s a video out there about how the story should have been told from the middle and ended with how he got there. When presented that way, it’s actually a really good movie…. 

I was thinking exactly the same thing.

Spoiler

Start with the meteor storm, jump to her waking up; the two of them have their time on the ship; then the shocking reveal and jump back and tell his story from the previous year. 

I still think the casting would have worked better if they were somewhat older. He's too old to travel to the colony but he gets a special visa because he has essential skills. They're both at an age where they don't have many close relationships because of old age or lives drifting apart. She's working on her final book, which she writes about her time on the ship.

Spoiler

It's revealed that ten years in he's dying from something terminal (similar to Lawrence Fishburn's character but over time) and she goes back into hibernation. She publishes their story and lives the rest of her life on the colony, never returning to earth. Titanic in space. He's Jack to her Rose.

 I'm over thinking this.

 

[polishgenius]

One of the things about Tenet that bothered me is that it seemed like two separate perfectly good films crammed together into one. The psychological heist thriller with Branagh and his wife and the SF action movie about reversed time did not need to be in the same movie at all. 

The other main thing was that the action staging and editing were borderline incompetent. The reversed chase scene was at least ambitious, though incoherent, but the finale just fell flat in every way for me.  

 

 

 

[RhaenysBee]

4 hours ago, IFR said:

I wouldn't agree that's fair. I absolutely loved season 3, and thought it was a wonderful denouement. It amplified the depth, themes, and complexity of the show in a thoroughly enjoyable manner. The penultimate episode is one of my favorite episodes of any show, and the finale was a satisfying conclusion to the kind of story that usually falls apart at the end. It's actually remarkable that the show made sense at all, considering its sprawling ambition.

 it’s entirely possible it’s only my mind’s having failed to expand to the extent the show required. For me it felt overly complicated; the insane amount of time and space lines became very difficult to follow and fragmented the story too much. To be honest, I didn’t think it made sense all the time, but there’s certainly a limit to how much information my brain is willing to struggle with. Sometimes a bit less is more.  And even though I’m a sucker for love stories, the ultimate solution just felt like a bit of an easy way out of the cobweb. Each to their own. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

5 hours ago, IFR said:

I think your assessment of Netflix is perfectly sound. This is the profitable way of making television. All hype and no substance draws a large audience.

The truly worrying thing is that other streaming channels seem to be trying to emulate this approach. Even HBO has been diluting its selection of carefully crafted programs with mindless Netflix-esque shows.

Well, you don't win a streaming war by holding fire. And I think the other studios would be doing the same thing regardless of what Netflix does. And there are a few gems that pop out from time to time.

The one thing Netflix doesn't have is Nostalgia. They have very few existing franchises they can squeeze the life out of so they have to start from scratch.

Whether it's profitable or not remains to be seen I think. 

[TheLastWolf]

16 hours ago, Week said:

Akira?

Wow thanks 

[aceluby]

9 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Hide contents

Start with the meteor storm, jump to her waking up; the two of them have their time on the ship; then the shocking reveal and jump back and tell his story from the previous year. 

I still think the casting would have worked better if they were somewhat older. He's too old to travel to the colony but he gets a special visa because he has essential skills. They're both at an age where they don't have many close relationships because of old age or lives drifting apart. She's working on her final book, which she writes about her time on the ship.

  Hide contents

It's revealed that ten years in he's dying from something terminal (similar to Lawrence Fishburn's character but over time) and she goes back into hibernation. She publishes their story and lives the rest of her life on the colony, never returning to earth. Titanic in space. He's Jack to her Rose.

 I'm over thinking this.

 

Spoiler

When you start from her waking up, he's super fucking creepy.  You don't have the scenes where you get to know him, see him being playful, see how lonely he is, and there's no lovable guy character development.  You have this dude, who is stalking this girl trying to make her love him, you don't know why either of them woke up, you don't know what's the truth or what he's lying about, etc... There's just so much built-in mystery and the big reveal of her being purposefully woken up by him hits so much harder, is really creepy/scary, and makes them working together to fix shit at the end have a ton more tension (can she really trust anything he does?).  After they get together at the end, show what is now the beginning of how it all started, finish with him waking her up, then cut to the ending scene where the rest of the ship wakes up.

It's seriously like one edit and it makes a straight forward, fairly boring film ,with an unnecessary third act into a decent thriller in space.  They really fucked up there, because it's something so simple.

 

[Cas Stark]

HBO has been creating high quality 'new' content for the last 20 years, there is no reason to let Netflix off the hook for overpaying for C+ grade content.