Watch Watched Watching: Indie Art Cinema Wave #__?

[RhaenysBee]

I watched the new episode of See. I still like this thing, though at this point it’s dangerously edging toward that line where scenes are no longer in service of the story, but the other way around. And certain things happen just so they can have a cool sequence. But the main storylines are still strong enough to be paid attention to and the new characters seem rather interesting and the lead actors are still doing a brilliant job and their characters are still on quite coherent, intact and substantial arches. The “children” make the hair on my back stand. Both are absolutely insufferable, as characters and actors likewise. 

a couple minor issue in particular 

Spoiler

Haniwa confronts the officer guarding her - “does he know that you can SEE?” - the officer gasps “how did you know?” - Haniwa “I was trying to hide it all my life. I kNoW.” 
OKAY. As the audience, am I allowed to know too? Or is that too much to ask from the script writer? 

In general they keep going back and forth this with the whole “hiding of sight”. Kofun is a completely useless individual in the most shocking way for an 18 year old male who grew up in a nomadic society. He’s a squeamish princess, at least that’s what the director wants you to believe, to the point that he’s more incapable than the queen who spent her entire life being served by other people. It is astounding. Jason Momoa does address this sometimes and he tends to attribute the children’s lack of survival skills to their sight (not their insufferable character or his lack of properly training them for life). But if I circle back to what Haniwa said, if you were brought up to hide your sight - and you were taught practical things the way the rest of the community did them anyway, because they brought you up- HOW are you so absolutely useless at doing things their way?  

And then there are this funny directorial decisions. My favorite was the fact that they had Jason Momoa crawl through a tunnel of hot/burning coal (let’s assume this is something doable, albeit difficult and painful), and then subsequently had him scream and wail on the FIRST lash after his capture. I mean does the man have high pain tolerance or does he not? And isn’t there a psychological factor? That he’s not going to give Edo the satisfaction to hear him scream at least while he’s still there to hear it? I don’t know, it was just off, you could tell he was acting it out a bit weirdly too. 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Two episodes in, I really can't tell if White Lotus is good or not. 

 

Having now binged the show, I'm going to say it was not good overall. It really sucks you in at first, and despite all the good things you can say about it, the final execution is awful.

What would be worse in a straight relationship, your husband's mom showing up on your honeymoon or your wife's dad?

[TheLastWolf]

Wheels. Donavan Warren acted and directed and produced. Loaded Dice Films. Patrick Hume. Neat camerawork by Ioana Vasile. Mostly nice music by whatshisname, same for the editing. Independent art film. 2014. Depressing. Script coulda been a lot better. It looks like something I'd have wrote now. Warren reportedly lost 50 pounds in transformation, underwent medical testing to fund the project and all. No roger ebert review tho. RT, Meta and IMDB are all decent scores 

[Teng Ai Hui]

The family went to the theater to watch Free Guy last night.  We all enjoyed it a lot, especially all of the fun little cameo appearances.  

[Annara Snow]

On 8/23/2021 at 7:20 PM, WarGalley said:

Judas and the Black Messiah. Thoroughly enjoyed this one and thought it was better than Nomadland from a Best Picture standpoint (caveat being that I have not seen any of the other nominees). This is the first time I saw Daniel Kaluuya in a major role, the others being his bit roles in Black Panther and Sicario, and he stole the show. Even more surprising to me was my lack of knowledge of Fred Hampton or the events covered in this story given the FBI's role as a hit squad and execution an American citizen. I will definitely be checking out Eyes on the Prize, a documentary referenced in the movie, to understand the true events better given this was a fictional dramatization and likely to embellish or ignore facts for storytelling purposes.

I also watched BlacKKKlansman right afterward. It was an interesting contrast to the first movie given this had the police going undercover into the Klan but I ultimately didn't like it as much. I think it was mostly due to John David Washington's wooden acting. His mannerisms and tone were played almost identically to his character in Tenet and left something to be desired. Adam Driver and pretty much the rest of the cast were much more colorful characters than the protagonist here.

I am still wondering how I had not heard of Fred Hampton and his murder before the movie came out, either. It seems like a lot of people have never heard of him. The FBI really managed to bury that story, hasn't it?

My "should have gotten the Best Picture Oscar" pick is Promising Young Woman.

[Annara Snow]

On 8/19/2021 at 6:28 PM, Annara Snow said:

Started watching Halt and Catch Fire on TV because it happened to be on it and I had heard good things about it earlier, and I was hooked pretty much instantly. It's such a good show, and so addictive, I'm glad I'm now on my vacation so I can binge it and watch a few episodes a day. I love all the main characters (no matter how messy and flawed they are... or rather because of it). The acting is great, the writing and music are so good, too.

How did this show not get much more popular? (It should also have had heaps of Emmy wins and nomin ations if there was any justice, but I already knew Emmys have little to do with actual quality, so that's beside the point.) Someone on Twitter says t was poor promotion, because AMC was too focused on the trainwreck that is TWD. The network loves those zombies. 

Finished the show a few days ago, and it's definitely in my top 10 favorite shows of all time now.

I don't really get the "the show improved in quality after season 1" comments, because I found it great from start to finish, and I loved season 1. It's hard to rank the seasons - I guess I'd give season 3 a slight edge over the others.

I'm still not fully sure how I feel about the finale - in a way, it's like it deliberately chose not to give real closure to the characters and plotlines, but instead left things sufficiently open-ended and had a bunch of hints  that the characters may end up doing some of the same things they had done before and run in circles all over again.

Spoiler

Well, obviously apart from Gordon. His death was a long time coming, and I still cried during that episode and the one after where everyone was mourning and trying to deal with it.

 

[williamjm]

Partly inspired by the Spiderman : No Way Home trailer I watched Spiderman 2 for the first time in many years. I think Sam Raimi did manage to make the action scenes more visually interesting than the majority of other superhero films. I think Raimi's background in low-budged B-movies means he looked for more creative ways of shooting a scene than just throwing lots of CGI on the screen (although there are some moments when there is some dated-looking CGI), perhaps most obviously in the Evil Dead-referencing hospital scene. However, I think the characters are sometimes a bit weak, in his non-Spiderman moments Peter is mostly annoying and self-centred and MJ is giving almost nothing to do in the film other than wait around for Peter to make a decision about what to say to her. Alfred Molina is good as the villain, again there's not much characterisation but he makes it work.

[Rippounet]

Finished season 1 of Shadow and Bone last night.

It was... unequal. The first few episodes were slow and boringly predictable, with main characters (Alina & Mal) who were so vanilla it hurt.
I kept watching because I found the world-building decent - also, some secondary characters had promise (like Inej and Jesper).
Then the pace suddenly picked up in episode 5 (IIRC), with a series of revelations and plot twists that finally delivered a decent payoff for watching the previous ones. The end of the season still disappointed me a bit, but I understand why they'd want to keep exciting bits for season 2 - since it's happening.
I like where season 2 is going a bit more. Now that much of the introduction/exposition is done, I expect things will be a bit more interesting.

[dbunting]

23 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Having now binged the show, I'm going to say it was not good overall. It really sucks you in at first, and despite all the good things you can say about it, the final execution is awful.

 

I agree, my wife loved the show and so did others and I just didn't get it.

[SpaceChampion]

Went on a nostalgia binge by watching V the original miniseries and now into V: The Final Battle.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, dbunting said:

I agree, my wife loved the show and so did others and I just didn't get it.

To me it’s like the Mare of Easttown. The show sucks you in, 75% of it is good to great, but ultimately the ending falls flat for me. 

Spoiler

Daddario’s character arc was especially baffling. Unless I missed something it didn't make any sense at all.

 

[dbunting]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

To me it’s like the Mare of Easttown. The show sucks you in, 75% of it is good to great, but ultimately the ending falls flat for me. 

  Hide contents

Daddario’s character arc was especially baffling. Unless I missed something it didn't make any sense at all.

 

I agree on her character, again unless I missed the same thing you missed.

Mare of Easttown, same thing. It was good, not really good and I did not like the ending one bit. If they had not done the last thing they did I would've like it more. People said there were signs but I missed em all.

[Kalbear]

Daddario's arc is the most cynical and horrible. 

Spoiler

She is not happy with this douchebro for a hubby, and is realizing that unless she stays beautiful he's going to go elsewhere (and probably will anyway). She realizes that she has absolutely no value other than a trophy to him. And what makes her think twice is Belinda just not having any of her stupid shit and leaving. She realizes that as bad as she might feel, her options as a fairly meh journalist are limited, and being rich and having an easy life is better than most everything else. In addition to that, she sees how the guy who pissed her hubby off gets fucking stabbed in the chest, and she doesn't want to risk that, either. 

So she just...gives in. She gives up. She goes along with being a trophy wife, resigned entirely to her fate. Because the alternative for her is so, so much worse.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, Kaligator said:

Daddario's arc is the most cynical and horrible. 

  Reveal hidden contents

She is not happy with this douchebro for a hubby, and is realizing that unless she stays beautiful he's going to go elsewhere (and probably will anyway). She realizes that she has absolutely no value other than a trophy to him. And what makes her think twice is Belinda just not having any of her stupid shit and leaving. She realizes that as bad as she might feel, her options as a fairly meh journalist are limited, and being rich and having an easy life is better than most everything else. In addition to that, she sees how the guy who pissed her hubby off gets fucking stabbed in the chest, and she doesn't want to risk that, either. 

So she just...gives in. She gives up. She goes along with being a trophy wife, resigned entirely to her fate. Because the alternative for her is so, so much worse.

 

Yep, didn't miss anything then. In the end

Spoiler

Who are we suppose to really care about and be happy for? Quinn has a nice arc overall, but he's a secondary character for most of the series. You feel bad for Belinda, but I didn't actually care about her. Armond is the most interesting character, but he's still a bad person and dies. Olivia is the weirdest of the batch, and her arc is just as odd as Daddario's.

Idk, like I said, it was mostly entertaining, but the end is largely shit. 

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yep, didn't miss anything then. In the end

  Reveal hidden contents

Who are we suppose to really care about and be happy for? Quinn has a nice arc overall, but he's a secondary character for most of the series. You feel bad for Belinda, but I didn't actually care about her. Armond is the most interesting character, but he's still a bad person and dies. Olivia is the weirdest of the batch, and her arc is just as odd as Daddario's.

Idk, like I said, it was mostly entertaining, but the end is largely shit. 

 

What sort of conclusion would have been more satisfying for you, in particular?  Honestly curious.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

What sort of conclusion would have been more satisfying for you, in particular?  Honestly curious.

I'm really not sure to be honest. The ending just felt rather flat to me. I think they had too many subplots they tried to resolve and it seemed rather rushed I guess.

[dbunting]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

What sort of conclusion would have been more satisfying for you, in particular?  Honestly curious.

For starters

Spoiler

Not having Daddirios character who all series long we are shown is intelligent and mostly confident all of a sudden in the last second flip flop and decide to be a trophy wife. Huge let down for the one character I liked the most.  The silly way the teen son snuck back out of the line, as if his parents are from Home Alone and are gonna forget their minor son didn't get on the plane. Oh, and Stiflers mom handing the wellness center lady a bag full of cash and yet wellness lady seems like that is nothing, she just tosses it in a drawer. Had to be at least 30k in the bag, well in my mind there was.

 

[Nictarion]

Speaking of The White Lotus, how many of you realized that the guy hooking up with Jennifer Coolidge was Uncle Rico? My wife pointed it out after we watched the whole thing, and it kind of blew my mind. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, dbunting said:

For starters

  Hide contents

Not having Daddirios character who all series long we are shown is intelligent and mostly confident all of a sudden in the last second flip flop and decide to be a trophy wife. Huge let down for the one character I liked the most.  The silly way the teen son snuck back out of the line, as if his parents are from Home Alone and are gonna forget their minor son didn't get on the plane. Oh, and Stiflers mom handing the wellness center lady a bag full of cash and yet wellness lady seems like that is nothing, she just tosses it in a drawer. Had to be at least 30k in the bag, well in my mind there was.

 

Yes, that is what you didn't like. But what would you have liked? what would have made it work for you? How would you have closed it out so it would be right?

I can understand you didn't get what you wanted but I can't figure out how got the idea that

Spoiler

listsicle lady was intelligent, confident or even with any talent for anything in particular at all?  She was obviously made to be nothing but what she was in the episodes -- that's how I took her from the git go.  We all see different things.

 

[dbunting]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

Yes, that is what you didn't like. But what would you have liked? what would have made it work for you? How would you have closed it out so it would be right?

I can understand you didn't get what you wanted but I can't figure out how got the idea that

  Hide contents

listsicle lady was intelligent, confident or even with any talent for anything in particular at all?  She was obviously made to be nothing but what she was in the episodes -- that's how I took her from the git go.  We all see different things.

 

I can't tell you the million things I would have liked or fan fiction an ending, I can only tell you that for me, these things didn't work or make sense, to me.