Watch, Watched, Watching: November Rain

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

52 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Bet he looked really small.

 

... on top of a Mt. Kilimanjaro of CASH, Son. 

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I intentionally watched it on a tiny screen on a plane for free as a fuck you to Tom Cruise.

That'll learn him.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

38 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

... on top of a Mt. Kilimanjaro of CASH, Son. 

That'll learn him.

It will learn him!

And Idc how much he's worth. He's still a complete piece of shit. Fuck Tom Cruise! 

ETA: Also, like I said at the time, watching a dog fighting movie while on a plane makes it more fun, 5x8 or not! 

[dbunting]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

So finally managed to watch Topgun: Maverick

I am highly aware that my contrarian view here is most likely influenced by two factors:

 

For me it was a few things. Nostalgia factor was high, I remember loving Top Gun as a teen so that helps. I saw Maverick in an "Epic" theater so biggest screen and sound system that rumbled your guts. Lastly the fact that I knew going into it that most of the flight sequences were real, that added a lot for me.

Aside from that it was the Star Wars attack on the Death Star with lamer characters.

[dbunting]

Finished Yellow jackets today and was disappointed, because I thought there was eleven episodes not ten, thought I still had one more to watch!  Really enjoyed this series.

Spoiler

Looks like I was half right and the husband is the one who was doing the black mail and not Adam. Poor dead Adam we hardly knew you. Hate when we can't trust what the characters are showing us, these visions and such with the books being gone when they weren't. Still wonder if that was Javy.

The show is set up well for next season since we don't know who lived and who died. They can add people to it that we never saw yet as adults.

The good thing about me coming to this late is I only have to wait until March for S2

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Finished Yellow jackets today and was disappointed, because I thought there was eleven episodes not ten, thought I still had one more to watch!  Really enjoyed this series.

  Reveal hidden contents

Looks like I was half right and the husband is the one who was doing the black mail and not Adam. Poor dead Adam we hardly knew you. Hate when we can't trust what the characters are showing us, these visions and such with the books being gone when they weren't. Still wonder if that was Javy.

The show is set up well for next season since we don't know who lived and who died. They can add people to it that we never saw yet as adults.

The good thing about me coming to this late is I only have to wait until March for S2

Read the casting news. You'll learn about more adults.

[Isis]

I'm sorry, but I'm still upset about Catherine Zeta Jones's face in Wednesday. What happened to it? I've just been looking at photos and maybe it isn't just what they did with the make up in the show. But in that case, why not use make up in a positive way? Any time her face is on screen in the show it makes me uncomfortable. Why have they made her look like a drab old sack?

[Darryk]

On 12/15/2022 at 2:42 AM, Tywin et al. said:

I intentionally watched it on a tiny screen on a plane for free as a fuck you to Tom Cruise. It's okay, but I do not get the over the top praise. The story and characters are pretty basic and the action scenes are by the numbers at this point.

I'm caught between loving Tom Cruise as a movie star and hating his Scientology BS.

[Corvinus85]

On 12/14/2022 at 4:40 PM, Heartofice said:

There are 2 main problems with the movie as far as I'm concerned. Firstly the plot has no weight dramatically and the structure of the movie means you basically watch a training exercise for half a movie, then they repeat it for the second half. When they main event finished I was certain that couldn't have actually been what the movie was building up to, it felt so weird. The whole story is about fighting an 'enemy' that the movie is not allowed to talk about for legal reasons. Really hard to give a shit about some faceless non existent 'enemy'. Are they meant to be in a war? I guessed it was the Russians from the soviet chopper but it was just bizarre to set the whole movie background as some as yet unmentionable bad guy... that you never see.

I think this was written for you.  And yes, the 5th gen fighters they keep repeating ad nauseum are Russian Su-57. But, fyi I don't share your opinion.

On 12/14/2022 at 6:42 PM, Tywin et al. said:

I intentionally watched it on a tiny screen on a plane for free as a fuck you to Tom Cruise. It's okay, but I do not get the over the top praise. The story and characters are pretty basic and the action scenes are by the numbers at this point.

If Cameron had delayed Avatar 2 a tad more, Maverick would have been the front runner in all the technical categories this year. It is well done from a technical perspective.

[Sw33t Summ3r Ch1ld]

I watched Dirty Jobs and there was an episode about recycling soap. I thought, "I'd actually do this." But other than that, I've been watching The Office all night after supper. It's such a clever show and I think, "This show is so quippy line after line." I saw Avatar (first movie) on TV      And my sister doesn't have an account on Hulu anymore, so I cannot watch Inuyasha    I was watching Hallmark Christmas movies for a while but I seriously got sick of it. I've been trying to see what I want to watch on YouTube Free Movies. They had The Last Unicorn around Halloween and I watched about half  

[dbunting]

7 hours ago, Machiavellian Spy said:

I watched Dirty Jobs and there was an episode about recycling soap. I thought, "I'd actually do this." But other than that, I've been watching The Office all night after supper. It's such a clever show and I think, "This show is so quippy line after line." I saw Avatar (first movie) on TV      And my sister doesn't have an account on Hulu anymore, so I cannot watch Inuyasha    I was watching Hallmark Christmas movies for a while but I seriously got sick of it. I've been trying to see what I want to watch on YouTube Free Movies. They had The Last Unicorn around Halloween and I watched about half  

How do you recycle soap? Was it pressing together slivers of bars of soap to make a bigger one?

[DireWolfSpirit]

 

[Nictarion]

The Banshees of Inisherin was fantastic. Funny, sad, brilliantly acted all around, gorgeous scenery. Strong contender for my favorite film of the year (along with Everything Everywhere All at Once).

[TheLastWolf]

Avatar recap was better than the sequel I just walked out of. 3D was good only during certain scenes but overall enjoyable flick.

[Heartofice]

Watched underground horror sensation Barbarian. 
 

I mean, it’s good. It’s fun, well paced, it does things in a slightly unusual fashion making it seem closer to an art house movie than it actually is. It’s still basically a standard horror movie though, but I think it gets extra points for doing a bit more than the basics

I know from reviews there is a theme of MeToo in there and at times it’s subtle and clever , at times really in your face. I don’t think it is really the clever analogy people are making it out to be though, overall it’s still quite a by the numbers scare show 

[Cashless Society]

The Soong Sisters starring Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung and Vivian Wu, about the real life sisters who greatly influenced the direction of China during the 1900's. It was a very interesting look into another part of history I know nothing about, but a feature film runtime could not do justice to the breadth of the time period covered which made the overall film feel undercooked.

The Flowers of War by Zhang Yimou, pretty solid effort from Zhang taking place in WWII, even though he sacrificed the visual flair he's known for in favour of Spielbergian sentimentality á la Empire of the Sun.

Oliver Stone's JFK, honestly if I didn't know any better I would say this film is what inspired Qanon and all other related conspiracy theories. As for the film itself, almost everything about is expertly crafted (direction, editing, cinematography, score) but man is Kevin Costner one of the most boring actors ever put to screen, how the hell did he convince enough people that he could be a Hollywood leading man? Despite all that though, I feel as though the film would be better served as a documentary rather than narrative film.

Bullet Train, well this was a huge disappointment. If anyone asks why mid-budget movies aren't getting made anymore, this should be the go to answer. Literally, the same quality as a Hollywood adaptation of a beloved anime from the 20th Century. 

Ikiru, there's really not much I can say about a Kurosawa masterpiece that hasn't already been said in a more eloquent way than I ever could, but everybody needs to see this film before they die, just once at least.

The Road Home, another film by Zhang although this time it's a romance genre film, presumably taking place during the cultural revolution. It's his first collaboration with Zhang Ziyi, where she plays a farm girl who falls in love with a teacher who has come from the city. As cheesy as it sounds, it's a simple yet well-done film with beautiful imagery and heartwarming score. I give it a definite recommend, especially if you've seen Zhang's films with Li Gong.

Next up, I'll be watching what this year's slate of awards bait has to offer. Hopefully, it's not as dreadful as last year's batch.

On 11/16/2022 at 12:38 AM, Ran said:

One Wonderful Sunday -- This ended up being picked on the draft, to the shock of many listeners no doubt (no Seven Samurai, no Rashomon, no High and Low -- quirky list!) and it was an early Kurosawa film I'd never seen or even really heard of, a fact that was noted by both drafters. And... gosh, I think this is definitely minor Kurosawa, which means it's good, certainly, and worth seeing, but it wasn't what I expected. 

In brief, it's a romantic drama about two young lovers struggling in post-war Japan. Inflation is high, they are impoverished, their dreams of marriage being put off by the war and then the lack of economic security. They can only meet once a week on Sunday. On this particular Sunday, they have only 35 yen between them to enjoy the day with (the equivalent of maybe $20 today), and we follow them through Tokyo as their efforts to enjoy themselves are thwarted again and again, and the question of whether they should give up on their plans and accept reality looms ever larger. Yuzo, the man, is clearly wrestling with depression and what's probably PTSD from having fought in the war, while Masako is the optimist of the pair. There's some nice segments of life in Tokyo at the time -- people flocking to a Schubert concert (only for scalpers to buy up all the cheap general audience tickets and jack up the price), kids playing stickball in the streets, the novelty of a cabaret club (run by a war buddy of Yuzo's, but when he tries to meet him the staff assume he's a vagrant or perhaps a minor hoodlum and fob him off to the kitchen where they give him food, booze, and an envelope with some cash) -- and the leads are likable but not especially remarkable.

The best bit was a very unusual moment for Kurosawa, when at a key moment ...

In any case, as the only romance Kurosawa ever directed, it's worth seeing, but it's definitely not among his best works.

Now why would you carelessly give out such a spoiler?

In fairness, one could argue that OWS is Kurosawa's best film during his pre-Mifune era.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Cashless Society said:

Now why would you carelessly give out such a spoiler?

It's a 75 year old film! And it worked for me despite the drafters on the podcast discussing that moment in detail before I ever saw the film, so I think others will cope.

1 hour ago, Cashless Society said:

In fairness, one could argue that OWS is Kurosawa's best film during his pre-Mifune era.

It's the last of them, at least -- Drunken Angel was his very next film, and its striking how good the film is despite being only made a year after. The Mifune factor, no doubt, but I suspect it also was because Toho Studio finally gave him carte blanche.

[BigFatCoward]

There is a detectorists Christmas special. Awesome. 

[Sw33t Summ3r Ch1ld]

15 hours ago, dbunting said:

How do you recycle soap? Was it pressing together slivers of bars of soap to make a bigger one?

 

These people shredded it and put in some sanitizing solution and then pressed it together.

[RumHam]

12 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Watched underground horror sensation Barbarian. 
 

I mean, it’s good. It’s fun, well paced, it does things in a slightly unusual fashion making it seem closer to an art house movie than it actually is. It’s still basically a standard horror movie though, but I think it gets extra points for doing a bit more than the basics

I know from reviews there is a theme of MeToo in there and at times it’s subtle and clever , at times really in your face. I don’t think it is really the clever analogy people are making it out to be though, overall it’s still quite a by the numbers scare show 

I enjoyed the movie, but it's such a crazy premise.
 

Spoiler

Like there was enough food down there for them to survive for all those years? Or does she do door dash or something.

I guess we have to assume the rapist abductor guy became incapacitated and enough time passed that someone noticed the house was abandoned and then claimed it and sold it? Probably had to fix it up a little and during all that never discovered the people living in the basement.

And then the homeless guy! Like what is keeping him there? Wouldn't you go live anywhere there isn't a giant monster woman roaming the neighborhood at night?

 

[Heartofice]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

I enjoyed the movie, but it's such a crazy premise.
 

  Hide contents

Like there was enough food down there for them to survive for all those years? Or does she do door dash or something.

I guess we have to assume the rapist abductor guy became incapacitated and enough time passed that someone noticed the house was abandoned and then claimed it and sold it? Probably had to fix it up a little and during all that never discovered the people living in the basement.

And then the homeless guy! Like what is keeping him there? Wouldn't you go live anywhere there isn't a giant monster woman roaming the neighborhood at night?

 

Spoiler

I realised by the end of the movie that this isn’t something to analyse from a realistic perspective. Once you see that the monster lady is supposedly what happens through continual incest, when she breaks through walls and can rip guys arms off.. and when someone survived by falling off a tower and landing on her.. I guessed no good could come of examining it too hard