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Watched, Watched, Watching: Saltier Things Part One


Corvinus85

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I watched Michael's Bay The Rock yesterday for what I believe to be the first time ever. I saw bits of it over the years when it was constantly being shown on the tele over here, but I don't think I ever had a proper sit down for the entire thing. At least not one I can remember.

I determined quite some time ago that I was going to wait for the right moment with this film. I have an incredibly large back catalogue of films that I still need to see, but most of those are older, more artistic type of films. Sometimes I just want to see a film but lack the bandwidth at the end of the day to watch anything too serious.

Trouble is that lighter fair of high quality is exceedingly difficult to find (especially now that the mid-budget film has been all but killed off), regardless of whether it's a comedy or an action movie or something romantic. As everyone keeps on saying that The Rock is the best film Michael Bay has ever made I thought it was a good option for some relatively recent lighter fair.

Now that I watched it in full, I think it is fair to say that it is indeed a strong contender to be Bay's best film. That being said, it is not exactly high praise given the rest of his filmography. The most amusing thing about the film is the theory that Sean Connery is playing an older version of James Bond, all the rest is pretty standard middle-of-the-road stuff. The action is okay, the plot stupid and the villains undercooked. I also didn't care all that much for Nicolas Cage's character, who was just a tad too farcical for my liking. He works best when the weirdness shines through occasionally (Like in the put the bunny down scene in Con Air), but there were too many mannerisms and quirks to the character.

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3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I've always loved TDKR because I feel like it gets the balance right of serious realism and comic book silliness. I really enjoyed the tone of it, and Tom Hardy is such an enjoyable Bane. The Dark Knight is clearly the better movie, but I also find it a less enjoyable one, mainly because I feel like the second half is a bit of a let down. Batman Begins feels like a trial run for the trilogy where Nolan is finding his feet, with some good bits but also its overall plot and last third again are kinda weak.

Either way, I'm still annoyed at Tenet on an almost daily basis. This movie pops into my head all the time, and it only serves to irritate me at the lack of consideration Nolan had for his audience when making it. 

I do hope he goes back to making good movies.

I liked Tenet.  I liked that it took two viewings to really understand what happened.  I liked that the mystery remained after the story was “finished”.  I liked that it was open ended.  
 

:)

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4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Well, since I'm whining justifiably, I guess we're good. :P

:P.  The canard that Inception doesn't make sense was thoroughly hashed out on the internet over a decade ago.  Obviously the premise is on its face nonsensical, like tons of fiction, but the internal logic of the film is perfectly fine.  

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

:P.  The canard that Inception doesn't make sense was thoroughly hashed out on the internet over a decade ago.  Obviously the premise is on its face nonsensical, like tons of fiction, but the internal logic of the film is perfectly fine.  

I get that some didn’t understand “Inception” or found it confusing… but yes… the internal logic works.

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To be fair, I didn't say I found it confusing. I said it set rules and then broke them. 

 

 

You can disagree with whether that matters since it was still understandable- my main problem with the film was I thought the pacing in the third act got a bit wonky, not this stuff, there's a reason why I named Tenet when I was reaching for an actually nonsensical film in my first post- but if it's been hashed out that any of the stuff I mentioned was justified beyond 'meh, we need it this way for the action to work' I haven't seen it. 

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On 6/22/2022 at 1:58 AM, Heartofice said:

Either way, I'm still annoyed at Tenet on an almost daily basis. This movie pops into my head all the time, and it only serves to irritate me at the lack of consideration Nolan had for his audience when making it. 

Fuck the audience.

On 6/22/2022 at 12:41 AM, polishgenius said:

Tenet is the only really bad one he's made, though. 

I loved Tenet. I remember trying to watch this thing like any old sci-fi-action movie. Around the time they discovered the first turnstile I remember thinking, "I surrender. You win, Christopher Nolan."  I then curled up into a tight little ball and and placed myself into the hands of auteur film director Christopher Nolan. Of course it's going to be weird. 

And people complaining about not being able to hear the dialogue? How dare you, Sir or Madam. When Apollo 11 went to the moon, did people complain about the paint job? Rocket not pointy enough? Christopher Nolan is using all his film making powers to bend your mind into crazy balloon dog shapes and you have the nerve to whine about dialogue? How dare you. 

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42 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

To be fair, I didn't say I found it confusing. I said it set rules and then broke them. 

 

 

You can disagree with whether that matters since it was still understandable- my main problem with the film was I thought the pacing in the third act got a bit wonky, not this stuff, there's a reason why I named Tenet when I was reaching for an actually nonsensical film in my first post- but if it's been hashed out that any of the stuff I mentioned was justified beyond 'meh, we need it this way for the action to work' I haven't seen it. 

What rules did “Inception” break?

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53 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

And people complaining about not being able to hear the dialogue? How dare you, Sir or Madam. When Apollo 11 went to the moon, did people complain about the paint job? Rocket not pointy enough? Christopher Nolan is using all his film making powers to bend your mind into crazy ballon dog shapes and you have the nerve to whine about dialogue? How dare you. 

The genius of Nolan is that his movies are so smart, only smart people are allowed to watch them, and he filters his audience into those who have normal hearing, and those with supernatural hearing, who can make out what someone is saying 500m away on a busy road, especially when that person is having  plot vital, complex conversations around space and time. 

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13 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

S2E6 Halloween is pure genius. Just absolutely wow. Layers, layers, layers everywhere. Had they hired a new writer for this season? Yay Buffy. 

The show only gets better. That's not to say every episode is great, there are duds every season, but it really did take time to find its footing. Season 3 may be the best of them, or perhaps season 5 -- opinions vary. Season 6 is doubtless the most controversial season, but has its adherents.

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Season 3 is totally the best. It still has the High school setting which works a lot better than the others. It has the absolute rock star villains.

S4 has some good bits, S5 does too - but both are inconsistent and their main season arc is really spotty (especially S4). S6 is...not great. 

Season 2 does have a number of writers that end up doing a lot of great things. Bruce Seth Green wrote the halloween ep, and S2 was notably when Marti Noxon joined the staff (fans would apparently regret this later, but at the time she was great). 

 

The show didn't get some of its most well-known writers until later - Doug Petrie, Stephen S DeKnight, Jane Espenson, and very late Drew Goddard. Something I didn't know until now - two of the writers I associate with the Buffyverse heavily (Jeff Bell and Tim Minear) never worked on Buffy directly. 

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I'll join the anti-Tenet crowd. I laughed when I read that Nolan consulted Kip Thorne on the Tenet script, because Tenet is so far out there that doing such a thing seems like a random indulgence.

I do really like Interstellar. I take "love...transcends dimensions of time and space" as the opinion of desperate characters, not a narrative fiat. As for falling into a black hole, etc., I say that if renown hard sci-fi movie 2001 can have giant superdimensional space babies, then Interstellar is allowed its own pseudoscience. I really recommend The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne. It adds a lot to the movie, and Thorne is a very entertaining writer.

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12 hours ago, DMC said:

:P.  The canard that Inception doesn't make sense was thoroughly hashed out on the internet over a decade ago.  Obviously the premise is on its face nonsensical, like tons of fiction, but the internal logic of the film is perfectly fine.  

You don't have to try to impress me, Morty.

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7 hours ago, KalVsWade said:

S6 is...not great. 

It has significant flaws, like a ridiculously over-literal interpretation of a potentially decent metaphor as one main arc, but there's a lot of great as well. Once More With Feeling is arguably the best episode of anything, ever, and certainly justifies the existence of the season. Season 7 isn't great, but still worth watching.

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I'm a fan of S6 and as I said there are people who consider it the best season, too. (And if you are Team Spike, you definitely need to watch S6.)

But the range of opinions is why it's controversial! But I think if you're hooked on S2, then you absolutely will power through the rest of the series, @RhaenysBee. And then, you have five seasons of Angel to enjoy.

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17 hours ago, polishgenius said:

but if it's been hashed out that any of the stuff I mentioned was justified beyond 'meh, we need it this way for the action to work' I haven't seen it. 

On 6/21/2022 at 9:04 PM, polishgenius said:

At the risk of incurring the wrath of DMC, and running a bit from memory and summaries:

Spoiler

Throughout the film, we're told that kicks are involuntary- the feeling of falling when falling asleep to jerk you awake. It's also established that you set the kick up on the level below you, iirc- ie the level you need to wake into. But in the climax, there's at least one occasion (the explosion in the fortress) where they're kicking from the level they're in, and also they 'miss a kick', somewhat defeating the whole object of the concept. 

Also the principle that time runs really fast in Limbo and you age is set up, but at the end, while Saito does age, Fischer and Cobb don't - and while Cobb could be explained by him being aware of it now, Fischer doesn't know what it is or realise at that stage that he's dreaming. 

Alright, fine, let's hash out your complaints then...

Spoiler

First, we are not told the kicks are "involuntary" -- at all.  Dunno where that's coming from.  Indeed, in the inciting incident/"tryout," Cobb is fully aware of and anticipating the kick in the dream within a dream (i.e. second level) based on the music being played, then acts accordingly (while dealing with Mal's intervention/sabotage).  That is what is "established" in terms of "rules" that is entirely abided by in the main mission.

Second, I have no idea why you think the kick can only be set up by the level "below" you.  I'd more describe it as "above" you, as in you set up the kick for level 2 on level 1 and level 3 on level 2 and so forth.  And..well, that's basically exactly how the third act (and even the second act) plays out. 

Yusuf has to buy them as much time as possible on level 1 (in which he is the dreamer), but ultimately has to resort to the van crash too early as the kick(s).  Then, on level 2, JGL (in which he is the dreamer) does the same - and has to deal with the lack of gravity from level 1 with the car falling after they miss the first kick.  On level 3, same story with Hardy (in which he is the dreamer) - although you could certainly wonder why there weren't any gravity problems there beyond the avalanche/first kick they missed. 

To get back to your complaint though, both JGL and Hardy improvise at their levels when they miss that first kick, I don't know why you're singling out Hardy's explosion in the fortress.  It makes perfect sense why both would do what they did -- and why they're responsible for doing so at those levels.  

Anyway, point is the film is incredibly meticulous about explaining all this - and the exponentially progressive timeframes - of the first three levels.  If anything, the complaint should be Nolan spends way too much time establishing then demonstrating these rules because he's showing off.  I remember when I first saw it in theaters and that was my eye-roll moment on the third or fourth cutback to the van falling off the bridge - it's like dude, we get it, you're putting all three of these levels together based on the timeframes you established and you think it's really really cool.

Third, and most importantly, when it comes to the "limbo" level, the only rule established in the film is there are no rules.  It's Abrams' mystery box, Kubrick's monolith, even Tarantino's briefcase.  There's the whole exposition scene where it's established that Yusef's drug compound allows them to last 10 hours (and, of course, the hitch that if they die they go to limbo instead of just waking up), which is a week on the first level, six months on the second level, and ten years on the third level.

Again, that's an exponential progression, but the only thing we know about "limbo's" progression is what we get from Cobb when he said him and Mal spent 50 years down there.  We have no idea how long that actually was and obviously it wasn't with Yusef's special compound that Cobb immediately gets addicted to.  Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter. 

The reason Fischer - and Ariadne for that matter - don't age is because they followed the synchronized second kick back up to level 1.  Like, Ariadne literally kicks Fischer off the building and kills him when she recognizes the lightning as the second kick because Hardy started to use the defibrillator on Fischer on level 3 when he started to hear the music.

The reason Saito ages is because he died in an upper level and subsequently "lost himself."  Fischer didn't lose himself because Mal kidnapped him.  That's Ariadne's entire gambit, she realizes they can quickly find Fischer because she understands if they go down there they can find Fischer before the second kick since "Mal" will want to use him to draw in Cobb.  And then Ariadne obviously didn't lose herself as she killed herself to synchronize with the kick.  

Why didn't Cobb lose himself?  Because that was the goddamn primary arc of the movie.  He'd been there before, he went back there to get Saito, and Ariadne reminds him not to lose himself right before she goes back up on the second kick.  I know all this takes a long time to "hash out" - which is why I didn't bother for a bit - but it's all right there. 

I mean, after the second kick when Cobb washes up on the beach and is taken by Saito's men, should he look older?  Probably, yeah, that'd be more accurate I suppose - although he still should look younger than Saito.  But who gives a shit?  If anything, it pales in comparison to both Cobb and Mal looking their regular age when we flashback to them killing themselves in limbo after living there for fifty years.  But I don't care about that either, and really if you're that anal about the logic I think you've already made up your mind about the film.

Finally, to be clear, I'm totally fine with generally making fun of Inception.  It's an eminently easy target in terms of being silly, convoluted, overly expositional.  No reason not to have a sense of humor about it.  Plus, of course, it was a huge pop culture thing, so of course comedies were gonna make fun of it.  That's all cool.  But, that doesn't mean it didn't make sense.  Really the reason it was such an easy target is because it spent too much time spelling out why it made sense - as I just did.

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6 minutes ago, DMC said:
Spoiler

First, we are not told the kicks are "involuntary" -- at all.  Dunno where that's coming from. 

 

It's quite literally the whole premise of what a kick is. Unless you're suggesting that waking up from that feeling of falling is voluntary. 
 

 

Spoiler

Even in your example at the 'tryout', Cobb knows it's coming but that doesn't mean it's voluntary and he could have skipped it- fuck, being dropped in the bath drowns the entire world. 


 

 

30 minutes ago, DMC said:
Spoiler

"I'd more describe it as "above" you, as in you set up the kick for level 2 on level 1 and level 3 on level 2 and so forth.  And..well, that's basically exactly how the third act (and even the second act) plays out."

 

"both JGL and Hardy improvise at their levels when they miss that first kick, I don't know why you're singling out Hardy's explosion in the fortress"

 

 

 

Spoiler

Regardless of which way round you want to use the terminology, that is exactly my problem, which is why I'm singling out the explosion in the fortress. The van crash is used to jolt the hotel. The hotel explosion is used to jolt the fortress. The fortress is used to jolt... what? Ariadne uses it as the signal to kill herself in Limbo and wake up, but they were planning it before they thought they were going to Limbo.

 

That doesn't make it hard to follow, it's just... not what the film was telling you before, and since it is so rigidly set up, it's weird that that happens. And for me, in this kind of film which as you say is so meticulous.



Your case for what went on in Limbo seems to be entirely supposition. 'Mal kidnapped Fischer' by shooting him dead. He has absolutely no idea what's going on, so how does that keep him from aging? Cobb (and Ariadne) don't age because they know what's happening, yeah, I said that. But it just doesn't apply to Fischer.

 

 

1 hour ago, DMC said:

if you're that anal about the logic I think you've already made up your mind about the film.


I was so excited for Inception that I gathered a massive group of people to go see it for my birthday and when I only quite liked it the first time I saw it again a couple days later to see if a rewatch would up it in my estimations. So it definitely wasn't that.  

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