Watch, Watched, Watching: Anybody but Superman

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, RhaenysBee said:

It was much ado for very little.

All we need to understand is, since behind every great family and their great fortune is a great crime, for a great family to continue with its great fortune is to commit more great crimes. Which entertains those over whom they maintain their exploitation and dominance via their great fortunes which provides their great power.  

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

I added The Gentleman to my sickday(s) watchlist. 

I tried to figure out if and how it was related to the movie by the same title by the same direction. It’s not. ‘Kay. I suppose he just really likes this title?

It was rather fun for the first 5-6 episodes. Then I kinda got tired of it because it was buildup on buildup on buildup and I found myself asking, To what? For me the magnitude of the climax was disproportionate to the amount and complexity of all that buildup. The way I see it, we didn’t quite arrive anywhere surprising, impactful, meanigful, fun, punchy. It was much ado for very little. I like the dynamic, the cinematography, the editing, the style of storytelling, the visual experience, I even liked the acting quite a bit. I certainly enjoyed the whole thing more than The Gentleman movie. If they ever made a season 2 I would probably tune in out of curiosity. 

Yeah, this is my take too, especially the ending. Things were wrapped up way too neatly, there were a number of side plots that were entertaining and added nothing to the story, and a number of times things just kind of...stopped. 

I was honestly expecting something clever with the carrier pigeons, but even that wasn't special. 

It's pretty and fun, and often funny. Early on in the season there are some real good Ritchie crime sequences and cutting wit. But the ending was definitely a letdown. 

[RhaenysBee]

15 minutes ago, Zorral said:

All we need to understand is, since behind every great family and their great fortune is a great crime, for a great family to continue with its great fortune is to commit more great crimes. Which entertains those over whom they maintain their exploitation and dominance via their great fortunes which provides their great power.  

I can see what you mean by the first part, I don’t agree with it as an axiom. I’m not sure I understand the second part. 

18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It's pretty and fun, and often funny. Early on in the season there are some real good Ritchie crime sequences and cutting wit. But the ending was definitely a letdown. 

Yep, and that high quality beginning just set my expectations at a much higher standard than the one the ending achieved. 

[dbunting]

Watched Poor Things finally. Not sure what to think about this. I liked the visuals and the, I think steam punk / Island of Dr. Moreau is my feel to the world. Some good performances. Just a strange movie that takes you through a lifetime of experiences, learning, growing mentally, in a matter of months or a year I guess for Bella. 

Spoiler

Was there supposed to be meaning to her hair growth other than it matching her mental growth? To me they wanted us to know it was getting long and it seemed to match how much she matured through the movie, or am I putting too much into it?

Strangely enough for a movie with a lot of sex and nudity, it never felt like it? IDK, I am glad I saw it but can't think of any reason I would watch it again.

[RhaenysBee]

1 hour ago, dbunting said:

Watched Poor Things finally. Not sure what to think about this. I liked the visuals and the, I think steam punk / Island of Dr. Moreau is my feel to the world. Some good performances. Just a strange movie that takes you through a lifetime of experiences, learning, growing mentally, in a matter of months or a year I guess for Bella. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Was there supposed to be meaning to her hair growth other than it matching her mental growth? To me they wanted us to know it was getting long and it seemed to match how much she matured through the movie, or am I putting too much into it?

Strangely enough for a movie with a lot of sex and nudity, it never felt like it? IDK, I am glad I saw it but can't think of any reason I would watch it again.

I just finished the book, and flipping through the photos from the movie, I find myself pretty reluctant to tune into the movie. I know I shouldn’t judge by the photos only but I absolutely loved the novel and my gut feeling is that the movie wouldn’t improve the experience. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Its not as good as The Favourite or Lobster IMO 

Edited April 25 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Veltigar]

10 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Its not as good as The Favourite or Lobster IMO 

Indeed, it's better!

2 hours ago, dbunting said:

Watched Poor Things finally. Not sure what to think about this. I liked the visuals and the, I think steam punk / Island of Dr. Moreau is my feel to the world. Some good performances. Just a strange movie that takes you through a lifetime of experiences, learning, growing mentally, in a matter of months or a year I guess for Bella. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Was there supposed to be meaning to her hair growth other than it matching her mental growth? To me they wanted us to know it was getting long and it seemed to match how much she matured through the movie, or am I putting too much into it?

Strangely enough for a movie with a lot of sex and nudity, it never felt like it? IDK, I am glad I saw it but can't think of any reason I would watch it again.

I'm not someone who does a lot rewatches, but I think the whimsical world depicted would be a main draw, as well as Emma Stone's glorious performance.

As to your spoiler

Spoiler

That might indeed be the case. I saw an interview with the costume designer that Bella's wardrobe deliberately evolves throughout the film to reflect her increasing maturity (less flowy, more angular IIRC). It might be that the hair design follows a similar path.

 

[HexMachina]

I did not particularly like The Lobster. Thought the Favourite was excellent and I'd put Poor Things slightly above that. Some pairings just work so well, and Emma Stone/Yorgos Lanthimos is obviously one of them

[Nictarion]

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is probably still my favorite Lanthimos. 

[Isis]

On 4/25/2024 at 8:42 AM, dbunting said:

Watched Poor Things finally. Not sure what to think about this. I liked the visuals and the, I think steam punk / Island of Dr. Moreau is my feel to the world. Some good performances. Just a strange movie that takes you through a lifetime of experiences, learning, growing mentally, in a matter of months or a year I guess for Bella. 

  Hide contents

Was there supposed to be meaning to her hair growth other than it matching her mental growth? To me they wanted us to know it was getting long and it seemed to match how much she matured through the movie, or am I putting too much into it?

Strangely enough for a movie with a lot of sex and nudity, it never felt like it? IDK, I am glad I saw it but can't think of any reason I would watch it again.

I listened to quite a good podcast about the film which interviewed lots of the production people and when trying to describe the look of the film, they were like IT'S NOT STEAMPUNK OK?  I mean, what else would you call it?

I think I would definitely watch it again as it is so visually interesting and they are so many details I probably missed the first time.

[Zorral]

On 4/24/2024 at 4:16 PM, RhaenysBee said:

I’m not sure I understand the second part. 

The Duke's great family is broke, so they commit more crimes to keep the coffers filled and continue the style of ife to which centuries of criming has made possible. 

[Iskaral Pust]

Tokyo Vice S1 and S2 was pretty good.  I just binged them over the past few weeks.  I initially had low interest a year ago after watching the pilot — slow pace, lots of subtitles, awkward audience-inserts in the form of two unrelated American characters living and working in Tokyo with fluent Japanese — but was recommended to return to it by a friend after they finished S2 recently.

It’s a Yakuza thriller: feuding gangsters in Tokyo abetted by corruption are opposed by crusading journalists and a few incorruptible police, all set in a culture that is stodgily centered around hierarchy, tradition and performing politeness/respect.  Overall a good quality watch with well-drawn characters.  I would guess the story is complete after two seasons.

Rebel Moon 2 was ridiculously bad.  It’s a tired retread of Seven Samurai in a Star Wars-ish setting, which sounds bad enough (did The Mandalorian’s spaghetti western in a Star Wars setting inspire this?), but the writing, direction and execution are so weak.  It’s disappointing to think this is what we get for two big-budget space operas.

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

 S2 was pretty good

I finally just finished watching this.  I liked and admired both seasons very much, but for some reason had a difficult time getting myself to watch it.  This is one of those shows that doesn't benefit from having a week between release of episodes.  It began right before going away for about a month, so when I returned there were lots of things to watch, and also, jetlagged, it was hard to get back into.  Then at one point I caught up to where season 2 was.  After a week, I was entirely meh at getting back to it again.  Now that all rest of the episodes are up, I watched one of the remaining eps each night, and everything seemed to be snappier -- and a lot more involving.  I dunno.  

[Heartofice]

I thought Priscilla by Sofia Coppolla was a bit of a disappointment. 

Was quite excited to watch it, as a sort of counterpoint to the pretty dire Elvis movie by Baz Luhrmann, getting the other side of the story.

The movie starts out well, in an interesting fashion. I didn't realise just how young Priscilla was when she met Elvis. She was 14 and he was 24! That kind of underpins the entire movie, which is really about the difference in age and power between them.  She is shown as something that Elvis owns and uses to make himself feel better. She is simply a tool to him, but like everything in his life, he wants to be able to control it, and pretty much has the power to do so.

The problem with the movie I thought, was that after it made this point, it didn't really do much with it. The movie just sort of peters out. It doesn't help that you don't really ever get a sense of Priscilla's personality, which is maybe a conscious decision by Coppolla, but didn't help the movie. She just comes off as a silent partner.

Otherwise I liked the performances generally, Cailee Spaeny seems to age up 10 years in a scene with just a facial expression. Jacob Elordi does an ok Elvis, he adds his own flavour to it I guess, without really ever actually looking like him (would make a great Superman though), but I always find it a tough role to play.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

On 4/26/2024 at 8:27 PM, Iskaral Pust said:

Tokyo Vice S1 and S2 was pretty good.  I just binged them over the past few weeks.  I initially had low interest a year ago after watching the pilot — slow pace, lots of subtitles, awkward audience-inserts in the form of two unrelated American characters living and working in Tokyo with fluent Japanese — but was recommended to return to it by a friend after they finished S2 recently.

It’s a Yakuza thriller: feuding gangsters in Tokyo abetted by corruption are opposed by crusading journalists and a few incorruptible police, all set in a culture that is stodgily centered around hierarchy, tradition and performing politeness/respect.  Overall a good quality watch with well-drawn characters.  I would guess the story is complete after two seasons.

 

Got turned off by Season 1 for those exact reasons. Tried to watch it, but just fell asleep. Maybe, I'll give it another try, when I have a bit more energy.

[Veltigar]

I was finally able to watch Akira Kurosawa's Ran, to the surprise of absolutely no one, I will confirm that it's a master piece. Crazy to think how difficult it was to make this film, given how brilliant the result turned out to be. I have a lot of respect for what Kurosawa, battling depression, blindness, grief and financial insolvency was able to achieve here.

The battle scenes are glorious. It's ridiculous how much better the battle sequences are when compared to those churned out by most film makers today who have so many more examples and such enhanced technology to work with. Even more delightful was his use of colour. I have a ridiculous fondness for the bold use of colours in movies and since I have only seen a selection of Kurosawa's black-and-white films before this, I was very pleasantly surprised.

I thought the story in general was engaging, as the film certainly did not feel its length. The Shakespearean inspiration is clear, though it's not a straight adaptation of King Lear as I first thought. His Lord Hidetora is a far more malignant presence than Lear ever was and Lady Kaede feels like she's been transplanted from Macbeth. The mixture does work however and it becomes its own creature in the process, which really demines the traditional "the book was better" debate that you always have with more conventional adaptations.

I also felt that the film was rather historically authentic to the period Kurasawa was invoking. There are for example large numbers of arquebusiers who play an important role in the story and at one point there is a scene in which two important Samurai generals seem to be wearing a more European style breastplate, which is accurate, as those were status symbols in the Japan of that era. The fact that not everyone was climbing over themselves to commit seppuku or behaved like some crazy archetype of Bushido also felt more realistic than in something like FX's series Shōgun (engaging though the latter is). 

If I had to sum up the three minor gripes I have with this film, it would be that:

Spoiler

Firstly, I didn't like the noh inspired make-up of Lord Hidetora. He looks a bit fake, which I guess is probably the point, but it made it a tad harder to connect with that character. Secondly, I really didn't like the jester character. Humour is very subjective, but I thought he was a pretty annoying and superfluous character in this case. Thirdly, I think I would have liked the film even more if more time was spent with Lady Kaede (and to a lesser extent Lady Suë). The former's seduction of the middle brother was over in a flash and I didn't get why she was able to have such a pull over him. Perhaps that plot line could have benefitted from some more screen time, although they worked very efficiently with what they had.

 

[Ran]

Watched Jonathan Glazer's second film, Birth, for the first time. What a fascinating film! Anchored by the performance of Nicole Kidman as Anna, a woman from New York City money who after ten years of mourning the death of her first husband finally prepares to marry again... only to have a ten-year-old boy (played by an eerie, wide-eyed Cameron Bright) appear who needs to talk to her. The unraveling of her life ensues. 

There's a magnificent 3 minute close-up of Kidman, sitting in the audience during Wagner's The Valkyrie, and on her face you can see conflicting emotions and thoughts all mirrored in her eyes and expression, until resolve comes. 

The film has a number of controversies to its name, which I wont' reveal due to spoilers, but Lauren Bacall (who plays Kidman's mother) apparently got testy at an interview in a press conference asking what it was like to perform with "another screen legend" like Kidman, snapping that Kidman was just a beginner and it'd be years yet before she could be called a legend. Danny Huston and the late Anne Heche also feature.

The only issue I have with the casting is that Peter Stormare, a Swedish actor well-known for playing various "foreign" characters with heavy accents, was cast to play Clifford, brother of Anna's late husband, who sounds like a completely normal WASPy type while Stormare... uh, does not not. I was very confused by this, because even if if he wasn't his brother and instead was his best friend, like, what non-Anglo European has a name like Clifford? It makes no sense.

Edited Sunday at 06:21 PM by Ran

[BigFatCoward]

The fall guy is getting an insane push for something I have literally zero interest in. 

[l2 0 5 5]

Finally finished Fallout. Pretty much everything you could ask for in a show in general, let alone a game adaptation. The music, costume, wasteland landscape, gore, etc was spot on. Loved all the vault boy wall art, pip boys, stimpaks, rad away, Super Duper Mart (the ghouls!!!) and then of course the skull at the end.... Hope to see some of that in S2. Enjoyed all three lead characters. Goggins is classic, never seen Maximus or Lucy in anything else but thought they were great. 

[Veltigar]

I finished watching FX's Shogun yesterday. As stated in the dedicated thread for it, the show started with a bang and ended with a whimper for me. Contrasting it to the magnificence of Kurosawa's Ran which I watched the night before probably did not do it any favours, but I also thought it was plain underwhelming. In many cases, I felt the connective tissue (or groundwork or whatever you like to call it) wasn't there for the story beats they included to land properly. 

I then watched The Nightingale, an Australian film about an Irish convict in 1820s Tasmania who teams up with an aboriginal tracker to get revenge on some British soldiers. It was unrelentingly bleak, brutal and violent, which is pretty much the best thing about it artistically speaking.

We still get far too few tales about colonial exploits and those we do have are often to gentrified to be palatable. This film, from the director of the horror sensation The Babadook, does not play that game. People are murdered for no reason all the time and the violence is a constant. Sad to say that it's probably quite accurate to the times depicted.

The rest of the film cannot keep up with that decision however. There was a lot of buzz about how good the two leads were, but I thought the acting was pretty mid. I also didn't feel like most of the decisions made by the characters in this film made sense. I could understand that for the villains, who were really one-dimensional (fitting in this story though), but it struck me as inauthentic for all the other characters in the film. If you can't buy the character's actions and the performances that inhabit them, it's quite difficult to really get into the film. 

13 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

The fall guy is getting an insane push for something I have literally zero interest in. 

It reminds me a bit of Free Guy, a film I really hated, but they made a genius move casting Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. That pairing actually makes it likely that I'll check this film out at some point, even though I have my doubts about the story as you do.