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Watch Watched Watching: Indie Art Cinema Wave #__?


TheLastWolf

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The Green Knight was enjoyable, but not as much as anticipated - it is an adaptation. Some beautifully captured scenes though, glad I watched it but unlikely to revisit.

So revisited a couple classics(?) from the 90s. Strange Days (1995). I hadn't watched Strange Days in over dozen years and I thought its setting and technology might age poorly, but that wasn't the case. A testament to how well made this movie is - tightly directly by Katheryn Bigelow from a James Cameron screenplay with a fantastic cast. Maybe its age but I enjoyed this viewing more than before. Fantastic sci-fi cyberpunk noir movie.
 
Finished the night watching The Game (1997). Also wasn't sure this would hold up on rewatch, but like a favourite jigsaw puzzle, the piecing together of all the parts is what draws you back. Michael Douglas is excellent, channeling performances from Wall Street to Falling Down to pull this off. Directed by David Fincher (in-between making Se7en and Fight Club), a very different mood and feel to Strange Days. 

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18 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Hmm, I wouldn't say his films are generic horror movies per se. Get Out is a rather remarkable film and even 2019's Us, which is a terrible waste of time all together at least looked more stylish than the standard horror films rolling out of the Hollywood conveyor belt. Damning with faint praise perhaps, but at least he has that going for him.

I liked Get Out, too. I have actively disliked everything that Peele has made since. Us was ridiculous, Lovecraft Country (even though he was only executive producer) was unwatchable in how cheesy it was (and its message on race wasn't exactly told with the intelligence of In the Heat of the Night), and Twilight Zone was a catastrophic husk of the Steiger version.

I learned my lesson. I refuse to watch anything with his name on it that isn't a comedy sketch.

@Deadlines? What Deadlines?

I was curious and examined the top earning movies ever, in terms of domestic earnings and adjusted for inflation. I went as far as the top 200. Very nearly half of those movies are from 2000 and later. And this is just in terms of domestic earnings. Which is remarkable when you consider that until the 80's and the rise of VHS, movie attendees only could access movies by watching them in theaters. Also, consider the abundance of entertainment available in the last two decades compared to then. In 2019 there were over 500 scripted TV shoes. In 2009 that number was 210. I don't have the data for <2000, but it was undoubtedly much fewer shows. And despite this wealth of competing entertainment avenues available, the fact that the last two decades still demonstrated such box office success makes me think that studios have a pretty good idea of how to make money.

I see this in some of my friends, too. They will go to every Marvel movie and Star Wars movie, they will watch all the franchises, and then complain about how all of it is so unoriginal. None of them have seen the Green Knight, by the way. That thread isn't exactly blazing active on this board either. And that's because the original material generally has a much more limited appeal. The Green Knight does not follow the tried and true familiar beats. Marvel and Star Wars do and so they get the audience.

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I think people do want to watch good movies, but it’s now far less relevant as to whether a movie gets bums on seats than ever. Hype and online buzz is far more valuable in creating an audience, because a movie just doesn’t have the time to generate positive word of mouth.

You can get far more people to watch a mediocre spider man movie than a great film with no existing IP. 
 

Plus it’s all about risk. Making a movie is a risk, it costs a lot of money and the incentive is to reduce as much risk as possible. Being good , or trusting in a unique vision rather than a tried and tested formula just doesn’t make sense if you want your money back, and making your money back is far harder than ever now DVD sales are not a thing. 
 

Essentially I think what we are seeing is the falling away of the high budgeted ‘good’ movies.. like Godfather or something. 
 

Good movies still get made, but the budget range for them is much smaller now, and they take up that lower budget bracket.

Or the real quality lies in TV where there is more incentive to create something unique and high quality 

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15 hours ago, ithanos said:

Finished the night watching The Game (1997). 

For whatever reason sometimes I think The Edge (1996) is titled The Game. Both movies are really enjoyable with some similarities despite totally different settings. 

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15 hours ago, ithanos said:

The Green Knight was enjoyable, but not as much as anticipated - it is an adaptation. Some beautifully captured scenes though, glad I watched it but unlikely to revisit.

My expectations were way too high for this one and I feel like it couldn’t live up to the hype. I liked it but didn’t love it. It dragged at times but was definitely stunning to look at. I did like the ending’s sequence of showing what might’ve been. I’m gonna give it a few months and watch it again.

I also was gonna read the short story before viewing but decided against it as I didn’t want it to take away from the movie.  Weird as it’s usually the other way around. 

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Finally saw The Suicide Squad tonight. and it's by far the craziest superhero (supervillain?) movie I'e ever seen. In a good way. It is definitely different than the usual superhero movie, which was very refreshing. Darkly hilarious, bloody, violent, fun, unpredictable (this is a really rare case of a superhero movie where I felt that was the case ). it seemed almost to parody the standard superhero movie and at the same time address the issues I tusually have with these movies, and beneath all the silliness, it turned out to be surprisingly smart and bold wiith the political side of its story.

Spoiler

I was pleasantly surprised that Peacemaker and Amanda Waller - and of course, the US government - were straight up villains of the movie.

On another note, reaing the cast list afterwards made me think "wait what, this person was in the movie?!" several times.

Also, a couple of days ago I finished True Detective season 1 - one of those renowned TV 'classics that I haven't seen so far, which I intend to correct this year (I intend to watch Breaking Bad and finally binge all of The Wire this year too). The murder mystery wasn't really that great or interesting, except for adding the Southern Gothic atmosphere, but it felt like the show was really more about the characterizations and human drama with the main two characters (and Marty's family). The best parts of the show were the performances and the music. The theme song was one of the things that drew me to the show (I saw The Handsome Family at a music festival a couple of years ago), and it's certainly one of the best TV theme songs ever, if not the best, but the rest of the music used in the show was also great.

I think I'll skip season 2, as everyone seems to say it was awful, but I will watch season 3 - which I know had mixed reviews, but I like Maharshali Ali.

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16 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

I think I'll skip season 2, as everyone seems to say it was awful, but I will watch season 3 - which I know had mixed reviews, but I like Maharshali Ali.

Season two isn't awful. It's a step down from season one for sure, and every now and then someone will spout some truly terrible dialogue. The performances are good. I'd say watch the first episode and decide if you think it's worth your time.

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11 hours ago, IFR said:

I was curious and examined the top earning movies ever, in terms of domestic earnings and adjusted for inflation. I went as far as the top 200. Very nearly half of those movies are from 2000 and later. And this is just in terms of domestic earnings. Which is remarkable when you consider that until the 80's and the rise of VHS, movie attendees only could access movies by watching them in theaters. Also, consider the abundance of entertainment available in the last two decades compared to then. In 2019 there were over 500 scripted TV shoes. In 2009 that number was 210. I don't have the data for <2000, but it was undoubtedly much fewer shows. And despite this wealth of competing entertainment avenues available, the fact that the last two decades still demonstrated such box office success makes me think that studios have a pretty good idea of how to make money.

Global population has also doubled since the 1970's. The population of potential ticket buyers has more than doubled because of former Warsaw pact countries and China opening up and others getting on a better footing economically.

Also, some of those recent films in the top 200 actually lost money. The 70's blockbusters all made multiples of their production budgets.

Spielberg couldn't even get the damn shark to work and these slick, blow dried, Star Wars and MCU so-and-so's can't even knock him out of the top 10. Pathetic. 

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6 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Spielberg couldn't even get the damn shark to work and these slick, blow dried, Star Wars and MCU so-and-so's can't even knock him out of the top 10. Pathetic. 

I think you also have to factor in the sheer amount of media content available for us to consume today compared to in the seventies.  What the fuck else were you going to do back then but go to the movies?  Even twenty years ago, I had to go to a store to rent movies.  Now, I have access to almost all of the entertainment in the history of the world, so making it out to see the latest Star Wars or Marvel film usually isn't a huge priority.  I can just wait until they hit streaming and watch one of two or three dozen other shows or movies on my watch list in the meantime.  

Today, there are TV shows that are every bit as good as what you can see at a theater, and often times the shows are far better.  In the seventies, TV was trash. 

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22 minutes ago, briantw said:

I think you also have to factor in the sheer amount of media content available for us to consume today compared to in the seventies.  What the fuck else were you going to do back then but go to the movies? 

Sex. Disco. More Sex. Fondue. Post-fondue sex. Bowling. Bowling orgies. Arguing about who was a better guitar player; Hendrix vs Clapton. Make-up sex after guitar player arguments. And weed. Though not too much weed because then you'd have no stamina for sex. Then saluting the flag and thanking God you weren't born a Communist and off to bed for some quiet masturbation and a 7 hour power nap. Seriously, HIV kinda messed up everything.

I was making fun a little bit. As I said in a previous  post, comparing films from different eras in terms of box office grosses is speculative at best. The media landscape was changing, international markets were evolving, population was increasing, etc.

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19 hours ago, RumHam said:

Season two isn't awful. It's a step down from season one for sure, and every now and then someone will spout some truly terrible dialogue. The performances are good. I'd say watch the first episode and decide if you think it's worth your time.

I'll give it a chance. At best, I decide it's not really that bad, at worst, at least I get to see why people say it's awful.

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So I've been watching the several seasons of Homeland.

It's a spy series featuring all the CIA, NSA, cloak and dagger type drama post 9/11 that one could imagine.

Damian Lewis (Billions) helped carry the first few seasons before his character """""""""""""""won't spoil.

The main characters were Carrie Mathison and Saul Berenson who had so much plot armor they were in every season. She as superspy and he as mentor and head of the agency and eventually NSA Director.

F.Murray Abraham also is prominent as a double dealing CIA chief and colleague of Saul.

Mathison is played by Claire Danes and Berenson by Mandy Patinken(sp).

Anyways it's the Carrie character that the show revolves around most heavily.

Carrie is pretty much a superspy, while being an awful human being at everything else. She abandons those closest to her, including her daughter. She uses every person she's in contact with throughout the seasons. A very manipulative character.

She is this superspy but in the end it's just impossible to like character, she has terrible bouts with bipolar disorder. Which when she's in manic mode actually fuel that superspy persona, which, can only be described as driven and mercurial, it's also the behavior that causes her to lose (unwillingly) custody of her daughter to her sister.

I think we're supposed to be parts pity for her but she's also a female playing a hero trope(Bonds-ish), so I kept checking myself whether the parts of the character I disliked, would I hold a male superspy to the same standard?

I'm not sure, but fair or not, I concluded her character is an awful persona.

And in fairness I also found myself abjectively horrified at other characters (both male and female) as well. F.M.Abrahams( Dar Adel was pretty much evil).

All in all you come away not impressed with the lives these characters lead, even while in service of great sacrifices to what they believe in, which in their eyes is patriotism to the country( my emphasis on "in their eyes" ).

Eta: Here's an article on Carries complex character-

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/07/homeland-claire-danes-emmys-1234571241/

 

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4 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

All in all you come away not impressed with the lives these characters lead, even while in service of great sacrifices to what they believe in, which in their eyes is patriotism to the country( my emphasis on "in their eyes" ).

Eta: Here's an article on Carries complex character-

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/07/homeland-claire-danes-emmys-1234571241/

 

I think we stopped after season 3. The character, Carrie, just became unbelievable to an annoying degree. (Like, worse than Jack Bauer levels.) After all the bad decisions she makes she would have been tied to a desk-job or had her vetting removed or something. There's just no way, she'd keep being allowed to be 'responsible' for any ops as her judgment was just SO QUESTIONABLE.

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I watched The Vault on Amazon Prime. I like heist movies but this one is an unexceptional example of the genre. The heist does have some interesting elements to it, but also some fairly huge plot holes.

It does seem that the vault's ingenious security mechanism also makes it impossible to actually use it as a vault since any time something was deposited or anyone went in to retrieve something it should trigger the flood.

8 hours ago, Isis said:

I think we stopped after season 3. The character, Carrie, just became unbelievable to an annoying degree. (Like, worse than Jack Bauer levels.) After all the bad decisions she makes she would have been tied to a desk-job or had her vetting removed or something. There's just no way, she'd keep being allowed to be 'responsible' for any ops as her judgment was just SO QUESTIONABLE.

I think I watched 4 seasons of it and also thought the same, it is increasingly unbelievable that Carrie still has a job.

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Watched Saint Maud

Really liked it. No idea what to expect going in really, it got good reviews but part of me suspected it was just an indie shock horror movie. It’s much more of a psychological examination of truama, and death and self worth. 
 

Everyone in it puts in a good performance but Morfydd Clark as Maud is just mesmerising, able to switch between dour to amiable, to joyous to intense with a look. 
 

It also manages to visually create a consistent atmosphere of oppression and darkness, it’s choice of location is really well observed and you just feel a little unclean throughout. 
 

Very good

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On 9/6/2021 at 6:45 PM, Annara Snow said:

Also, a couple of days ago I finished True Detective season 1 - one of those renowned TV 'classics that I haven't seen so far, which I intend to correct this year (I intend to watch Breaking Bad and finally binge all of The Wire this year too). The murder mystery wasn't really that great or interesting, except for adding the Southern Gothic atmosphere, but it felt like the show was really more about the characterizations and human drama with the main two characters (and Marty's family). The best parts of the show were the performances and the music. The theme song was one of the things that drew me to the show (I saw The Handsome Family at a music festival a couple of years ago), and it's certainly one of the best TV theme songs ever, if not the best, but the rest of the music used in the show was also great.

I think I'll skip season 2, as everyone seems to say it was awful, but I will watch season 3 - which I know had mixed reviews, but I like Maharshali Ali.

The theorizing on the forum was pretty epic during season 1, and that has helped improve the show in my mind.  The stuff we were coming up with was a lot better than what ended up happening.  There was a surprising amount of evidence for Marty's grumpy father-in-law being in the cult. 

(Yes I know the evidence was quite weak, but it did exist!)

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I've been using my free week of Apple tv so I'm watching Ted Lasso and For All Mankind. The first season of Ted Lasso was nice, I think I'd have probably enjoyed it more if I'd watched it in the middle of lockdown. For All Mankind is really good so far.

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1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

The theorizing on the forum was pretty epic during season 1, and that has helped improve the show in my mind.  The stuff we were coming up with was a lot better than what ended up happening.  There was a surprising amount of evidence for Marty's grumpy father-in-law being in the cult. 

(Yes I know the evidence was quite weak, but it did exist!)

True detective season one is the point in my life where I realised how stupid it is to hypothesise about what’s going to happen in tv and movies. It’s impossible to ever live up to those expectations and nothing has ever managed to do that.

That show turned out to be nothing like the one that people were discussing, and was much more grounded and cookie cutter. Sure it was fun thinking we were all being tricked and missing these hidden signs.. but turns out we weren’t 

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