Watch, Watched, Watching: Start another thread already

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, Padraig said:

Thanks!  I was originally planning to but was all Leone'd out.  Maybe I was too quick to judge.

 

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Once upon a time in the West is utterly beautiful but also a bit of a slog midway through, again a bit of a tough watch unless you are in the mood.

Once Upon a Time in America is an even tougher watch. It's not quite as good as The Godfather or Goodfellas, but it's much rougher.

[Cas Stark]

The Wild Bunch is so sad, I never watch it all the way through.

[Nictarion]

22 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

Once Upon a Time in America is an even tougher watch. It's not quite as good as The Godfather or Goodfellas, but it's much rougher.

People watching it for the first time also need to make sure they go with the extended director’s cut. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Once Upon a Time in America is an even tougher watch. It's not quite as good as The Godfather or Goodfellas, but it's much rougher.

There are some brilliant scenes in the film, as acting and historical period shooting and location. But the misogyny-sexism-rape stuff is so over the top and the women's responses to it so implausible that I've never been able to re-watch it.

Once Upon a Time in the West is one of my all time favorites in the same category as Gangs of New York.

Edited July 9, 2023 by Zorral

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

49 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

People watching it for the first time also need to make sure they go with the extended director’s cut. 

Yep. It has to be one of the weirdest editing decision I can think of. The long, non-linear cut was well received in Europe. The much shorter linear one released in the US was not. I've never even bothered to watch it.

12 minutes ago, Zorral said:

There are some brilliant scenes in the film, as acting and historical period shooting and location. But the misogyny-sexism-rape stuff is so over the top and the women's responses to it so implausible that I've never been able to re-watch it.

It's a fair criticism. Telling someone who hasn't seen it that the first rape scene isn't the bad one is a bit awkward. You also have to let people know just how violent the film is. 

 

[Veltigar]

I finished the second season of The Bear. It was fantastic, but I do think I have a preference for season one's smaller scale and 

Spoiler

its more upbeat ending. With season one it was intense and painful, but they arrived in a place with the potential for progress.

With season 2 it was the opposite, mostly upbeat and progress, but the season finale was a gut punch between the awkwardness with Sidney and Marcus, Carm breaking up with Claire, Marcus' mother dying, etc.

My favourite episode was the 7th one. It was crazy to get a look behind the scenes of a restaurant that was playing on the top level. Loved the evolution of cousin Richie's character as well. His arc made the second season imo.

 

16 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

Once Upon a Time in America is an even tougher watch. It's not quite as good as The Godfather or Goodfellas, but it's much rougher.

What always throws me in OUaTiA

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The baby switch scene. Like, I don't know why it gets too me that much, since there is a lot of killing and other horrific stuff that is arguably worse, but the sheer banality of the evil on display is sickening. And the most fucked up thing about it is that I feel bad about the fact that that scene in particular makes me feel bad while I can look at the murders in the movie without bating an eye. Brilliant stuff really.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Veltigar said:

What always throws me in OUaTiA

  Reveal hidden contents

The baby switch scene. Like, I don't know why it gets too me that much, since there is a lot of killing and other horrific stuff that is arguably worse, but the sheer banality of the evil on display is sickening. And the most fucked up thing about it is that I feel bad about the fact that that scene in particular makes me feel bad while I can look at the murders in the movie without bating an eye. Brilliant stuff really.

 

I think that scene is hilarious. At least nobody dies in it. 

[Theda Baratheon]

Rewatched the Dungeons and Dragons film and it still holds up outside of the cinema! A lot of fun. 

[Zorral]

Mikari (2022) season 1 AP. Subtitles.  Montalbano except the protagonist is an ex Italian assistant minister, a journalist and writer (there’s a joke in the third episode in which dad is reading a book by Camilleri instead of his son’s new book).  Beautiful women, beautiful locations, beautiful food, mysteries to be solved.

The seaside town of Mikari and his father’s beautiful seaside villa is where Saviario Lammana comes back to in Sicily after something something in the government up in Rome. Fortunately for him his wealthy father in Palermo never uses this seaside villa. Immediately he meets a young (quite younger than him capeche) beautiful, smart student working in a local 5 star hotel restaurant to earn money between terms.

You get the picture. Attractive, light-hearted, quirky local characters, a tried and true entertaining package, perfect for hot and humid and smoky nights here these days. There are more seasons than this one, but this first one is what Prime’s got.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Zorral

[Relic]

On 7/9/2023 at 7:06 PM, Zorral said:

 women's responses to it so implausible that I've never been able to re-watch it.

.

I'm not remembering exact details but it's important to keep in mind that...

 

Spoiler

...all of scenes with older Deniro are opium hallucinations. So he's never actually forgiven for the rape, and Woods isn't actually still alive.

 

[Veltigar]

I went to the theatre to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yesterday. I enjoyed it more than I expected, but I have to say that the positive feelings surrounding it are short-lived. It truly is a Frankenstein's monster of a film, cobbled together from parts of the better, earlier iterations (excluding Cristal Skull of course, which still remains the worst film by a mile) and not much else.

In fact, I could positively hear the Memberberries from South Park scream "I member this" almost constantly throughout the film. Remember Short Round, here is another child side kick. Remember Indy taking a relative on his adventure, here is his god daughter. Remember Egyptian Gimli, here he is again. Remember Nazi's, we know you Americans love Nazi's, so here is a plethora of them. Remember a comically oversized henchman, here is another one and so on and so forth. 

Now, you could say that this is kind of the deal with this franchise. The Last Crusade was build on the same foundations as Raiders, but it did at least try to add some new elements into the mix. I did not feel like this film put anything like the same type of effort into trying something new.

In the future, I think I will look upon this latest film as if it came to us from an alternate timeline that wasn't quite as good as our own. I won't say that I'll never rewatch it, as there was some good in it, but it certainly will not be something I would take the trouble to introduce to a younger generation. For them, I would keep it at the original trilogy and perhaps if they have reached a certain age I'd tell them to watch it but be wary of disappointment.

To end, I will draw attention to one aspect of the film that I found particularly bad and one aspect that I found rather good. To begin with the negative, I though this movie, even by the low, low standards of Indiana Jones was really not concerned at all with any degree of historical realism. I scratched my head quite a few times and was often taken aback how they made basic mistakes that they could have easily corrected using Wikipedia and that really stretched the boundaries of plausibility to far. To name but a few in the spoiler section below:

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1. A three wheel touk-touk gaining on an actual car in a chase, which is ridiculous for anyone who has ever driven both a car and a touk-touk. The way Indy used his old-man-driving powers to bend the three wheeler to his will was also unimaginable for anyone whose ever drove with it.
2. Linking Archimedes to the Antikythera or even the fact that they turned this quite fascinating device into a magical McGuffin was kind of weak. There is so much crap you can lift from Greek Mythology, why muddle the waters for a generation of stupid kids who will see this and will not appreciate the true genius behind the mechanism. I would have preferred the Lance of Longinus to have featured in the film.
3. The Nazi colonel attacking Indiana with the fake Lance in the beginning, instead of pulling out his pistol and winning the fight instantly.
4. Indiana Jones being incredulous about the possibility of magic, even though by this point he's seen three magical objects and an Alien skull with powers that go beyond the realm of explanation.
5. The ship sinking with 100 CENTURIONS onboard. This was the biggest load of bosh I have heard in a film in a long time and particularly annoyed me. Centurion is a rank, so would you fill a ship with a 100 sergeants to protect an object? It's terribly lazy. Either say that it contained a full century of warriors to protect the object (so 80 men, since the Romans were weird about this) or that it contained 100 legionnaires.
6. Roman catapults being able to shoot a German bomber out of the sky. This is an edge case, as I suppose you could handwave it, but embedded in all the other drosh in the film it is quite hard to stomach.
7. Indiana Jones not being allowed to stay because he would alter the timeline. As if the presence of a crashed German bomber and an entire crew of dead Nazi's would not do the same already.
8. The tomb of Archimedes not being discovered in the Ear of Dionysus, despite that place having been crawling with tourists since time immemorial (in fact, the name of the Ear is from the early 17th century and was given by Carravagio)
9. The idea that storms open up time portals at convenient intervals. As someone who has flown quite a bit in life already, if that were true, we would have disappearances of plains all the time. If the dial itself had opened a portal, it would make far more sense that they draw people to the Battle of Syracuse

 

On the positive side of the ledger, I really liked the villains in this film. Mads Mikkelsen is always great and while he can't single-handedly safe a train wreck (see the latest Fantastic Beast film), he can definitely do a lot with very little to work with. I thought it was a great idea to have a villain

Spoiler

modelled on Werner Von Braun. That was a great way to explain his power and resources. His motives also made some sense. I feel like it would have been even stronger if they had made the motives a bit more personal (e.g. he has brothers or children who were killed in the war) and if tempering with the time line had led to calamitous results, making Indiana Jones fight someone who is trying to stop Hitler, but this was decent enough.

I also felt like Boyd Holbrook more than held his own against Mads in an even more thankless role. I feel like he was a very interesting secondary villain, due to the little glimpses we saw of him learning German and the like, which according to an interview from the Guardian was because

Spoiler

 

"Initially Holbrook’s character was written as German, but he pressed Mangold for him to instead be an American who we see trying to learn German. “That’s because he is such a piece of shit that no one will have him, except for Mads,” he says. “This guy really just wants to belong to anybody. And it doesn’t get more human than that.”"

 

Boyd Holbrook: ‘You know what I’m striving for? The perfect performance’ | Indiana Jones | The Guardian

I feel like they could have done even more with this as well, but you know, it was decent enough I guess.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Veltigar

[Isis]

I've completed season one of The Leftovers now and moved onto season two. 

Spoiler

I had actually quite warmed to it by the time it finished, the final two episodes in particular were entertaining and thought-provoking. I'm glad they put that little flashback in the finale to the GR removing all the family photos (a few eps earlier) because that gave me a genuine OMG moment. 

I hope that S2 is going to pick itself up and get going soon. I'm only one episode in but, COME ON!

[BigFatCoward]

1 hour ago, Isis said:

I've completed season one of The Leftovers now and moved onto season two. 

  Hide contents

I had actually quite warmed to it by the time it finished, the final two episodes in particular were entertaining and thought-provoking. I'm glad they put that little flashback in the finale to the GR removing all the family photos (a few eps earlier) because that gave me a genuine OMG moment. 

I hope that S2 is going to pick itself up and get going soon. I'm only one episode in but, COME ON!

Yeah, i wrapped it a few episodes in.  

[Theda Baratheon]

Started Black Bird. 

DAMN Taron got hench…good for him! 
It is atmospheric, nice score and good acting so far. 
 

really impressed with Apple TV + 

[Liffguard]

I finally saw This is Spinal Tap! for the first time, definitely holds up.

[BigFatCoward]

Finally started Mrs maisel s5. I love that show, I love the actors, but the farce part of it can fuck off. 

[Raja]

18 hours ago, Isis said:

I've completed season one of The Leftovers now and moved onto season two. 

  Reveal hidden contents

I had actually quite warmed to it by the time it finished, the final two episodes in particular were entertaining and thought-provoking. I'm glad they put that little flashback in the finale to the GR removing all the family photos (a few eps earlier) because that gave me a genuine OMG moment. 

I hope that S2 is going to pick itself up and get going soon. I'm only one episode in but, COME ON!

I mean, you're *one* episode in

Actually thought S2 premiere was excellent - wonder if part of it is that we went a year without getting back into the world

Edited July 12, 2023 by Raja

[Theda Baratheon]

9 hours ago, Liffguard said:

I finally saw This is Spinal Tap! for the first time, definitely holds up.

Oh my god  one of my absolute FAVOURITES. Sometimes I’m just going about my business like normal and then the Stonehenge song pops into my head and I burst out laughing. Actually, that could apply to so many of the scenes. SO good  

[Liffguard]

1 hour ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Oh my god  one of my absolute FAVOURITES. Sometimes I’m just going about my business like normal and then the Stonehenge song pops into my head and I burst out laughing. Actually, that could apply to so many of the scenes. SO good  

For me it was the tiny bread scene

[Isis]

5 hours ago, Raja said:

I mean, you're *one* episode in

Actually thought S2 premiere was excellent - wonder if part of it is that we went a year without getting back into the world

I found it a bit slow, which is a weird complaint for this show I guess but I mean compared to the relatively fast-paced end of S1. I will try another couple of episodes.