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Post by Nudeviking on Dec 16, 2020 21:38:51 GMT -5
Iron Man 3 - This showed up on some movie channel's 12 Days of Christmas thing last night on account of it being a Christmas movie and I watched it because I was drinking beers and looking for dumb entertainment. It's easily my favorite Iron Man movie and might be my favorite solo Marvel hero movie (Ragnarok doesn't count because Hulk's there pretty much the entire time and Loki is there the whole time plus you got Valkyrie and Korg & Miek). I wasn't a huge fan of this one, but you raise an interesting point about the solo Marvel hero movies in that few of them are truly solo movies where the hero is alone. Aside from a few of the origin stories, most of them are usually team ups. Would Black Panther count? Or is that cancelled out by virtue of really being an ensemble? Funny enough, I remember at the time that this was a real criticism of this movie, "why not call the other Avengers?" but at this point in the MCU, I would love more movies where heroes are really just taking on solo missions that are more or less self-contained stories. Yeah for me the Black Panther movie we got was a lot more like Guardians of the Galaxy than let's say Spider-Man Homecoming in that there was a crew of people dealing with the plot pretty much from the get-go rather than here's "Black Panther being awesome on his own with maybe a brief cameo from a previously introduced MCU character or comic book character that will become a bigger deal in the Black Panther 2 movie we're now never going to get." As for the criticism of this movie I guess the answer is "Because that's how it is in the comics." Iron Man wasn't calling in The Avengers every issue of his solo book. Now that I think of it, this movie is really the only movie in the franchise where the "should have called his buddies" can be even levied since all the subsequent movies either hard coded in a convenient excuse as to why they can't call the Avengers (ie. Ant-Man is under house arrest and not an official Avenger anymore. / Thor and Hulk went through a wormhole and are somewhere else. / S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised and that could include Captain America's Avenger buddies), is introducing new heroes who aren't yet Avengers (Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange) or are in reality team-up movies (Spider-Man Homecoming, Ragnarok, Civil War). |
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Post by DangOlJimmyITellYouWhat on Dec 16, 2020 21:45:52 GMT -5
ganews - My Terminator: Dark Fate take if you (or anyone, really) is interested. www.jgmcquarrie.scot/2019/10/terminator-dark-fate.htmlAva (Netflix) - Not quite what I was expecting and not quite how the movie is being marketed. It's being sold as an action movie with some family drama but it's more a family drama interrupted by a few fight sequences every so often. Not that that's bad thing but it was a bit unexpected. Most of the cast are good or great (exception: Common, who looks the part but is a bit wooden) but it's fairly uneven in tone and struggles to pick a direction and stick with it. The world is sketched in pretty thinly and relies of a lot of tropes/stereotypes to do the heavy lifting, setting-wise, and even though the movie is only an hour and a half long it never feels brisk, which is a strange sort of achievement. It gets better as it goes on and even nudges towards "compelling" in its last act but it really needs a good script editor to run over it a few times. Awesome write-up on Dark Fate. I loved it too! I saw maybe one ep of the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Is it good enough to try and locate to watch now? I fucking love Sarah Connor Chronicles, but if you are one of those people who are annoyed by teenager-John Connor being very much a teenager, I would think it’ll be pretty rough to get through. I definitely agree that season two slogs a bit, but if you’re binging it, you might not notice so much. There are some great approaches to plot points, and fair warning, if you want story arcs wrapped up, you will not get that. |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Dec 17, 2020 0:31:22 GMT -5
C had never seen Home Alone somehow, and I hadn't seen it as an adult, so we gave it a shot. Holds up. I mean, there are plenty plot hole-ish type things that kind of went over my head as a child--Kevin runs into no fewer than five adults who would've immediately called the police and/or CPS if they were paying even the slightest attention, including the elderly neighbor guy who rescues him from the murderous burglars and then...just wanders home, I guess?--but it's the rare kids Christmas movie that isn't treacly sweet and actually seems to understand kids. Don't know why Kevin had to be such a dick to that poor pizza guy, though. I also like how Home Alone is maybe a third tier John Williams score but it still has four or five instantly hummable themes.
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Post by Nudeviking on Dec 17, 2020 0:46:43 GMT -5
Don't know why Kevin had to be such a dick to that poor pizza guy, though. Did you see Kevin's house? His parents were clearly loaded which probably influenced the way he saw the world and interacted with people of a "lower social class" then his family. It's also why he was buddy-buddy with Donald Trump in Home Alone 2 but a dick to Tim Curry's concierge character for no good reason. |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Dec 17, 2020 10:46:42 GMT -5
Don't know why Kevin had to be such a dick to that poor pizza guy, though. Did you see Kevin's house? His parents were clearly loaded which probably influenced the way he saw the world and interacted with people of a "lower social class" then his family. It's also why he was buddy-buddy with Donald Trump in Home Alone 2 but a dick to Tim Curry's concierge character for no good reason. It wouldn't be a John Hughes movie if it didn't involve obliviously rich people living in a Chicago suburb. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 17, 2020 14:40:35 GMT -5
Don't know why Kevin had to be such a dick to that poor pizza guy, though. Did you see Kevin's house? His parents were clearly loaded which probably influenced the way he saw the world and interacted with people of a "lower social class" then his family. It's also why he was buddy-buddy with Donald Trump in Home Alone 2 but a dick to Tim Curry's concierge character for no good reason. Isn't it Rob Schneider's character that he (and Buzz) are just absolute rich kid assholes too? It kind of makes sense he's mean to Curry since he's the one clearly trying to bust him. This year our whole family, even the children, were wondering why the hell Shovel Man and the cops just let him go home unsupervised after they pick up the Wet Bandits. |
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Post by The Stuffingtacular She-Hulk on Dec 17, 2020 16:39:54 GMT -5
One of the things that turned me off about Home Alone as a kid was Kevin being a jerk to the pizza guy. I had no problem with him nearly murdering the Wet Bandits half a dozen times, but that always bothered me, so I never liked the movie all that much.
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Post by ganews on Dec 18, 2020 16:34:04 GMT -5
Next A lot of potential in this movie that is ultimately squandered. Nicholas Cage can see two minutes into the future, or farther when Jessica Biel is involved. So it's yet another take on Groundhog Day and the mall scene of Minority Report, except there are also federal agents and nonspecific terrorists and a nuclear bomb in LA. Cage uses his power like a Clock King and the split video effect is actually cleverly done, as is the twist that half the movie was actually just Cage looking forward and making a mistake...except the movie ends without explaining how he solved it! Like watching Avengers Infinity War without Endgame.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 18, 2020 19:34:14 GMT -5
Jingle Jangle
Netflix cast Forrest Whitaker in a steampunk Christmas musical for children.
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Post by haysoos on Dec 19, 2020 11:06:59 GMT -5
Jingle Jangle Netflix cast Forrest Whitaker in a steampunk Christmas musical for children. This makes it sound better than I suspect it is. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 19, 2020 11:11:48 GMT -5
Jingle Jangle Netflix cast Forrest Whitaker in a steampunk Christmas musical for children. This makes it sound better than I suspect it is. Can I interest you in Keegan Michael Key as a traitorous former apprentice, Phylicia Rashad as storytelling grandma, or Ricky Martin as a wind up matador toy? |
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Post by Prole Hole on Dec 19, 2020 11:59:47 GMT -5
Why thank you! And yes, Sarah Connor Chronicles stands up well. The second season sags a bit in the middle but pulls it back for a rousing finale, and the first season is a taut, well-constructed piece of television. Definitely recommended. You have to forgive the use of When The Man Comes Around though - hey we all remember that dark time when every TV show in the world was mandated to use it. Mind you there's a fucking kick-ass version of Samson & Delilah (by Garbage) which... wait I'm getting off topic. Yes, watch it! It's PERFECT holiday binge-watch fare! I absolutely will not forgive When The Man Comes Around useage in SCC - because there is nothing to forgive as it’s amazing. Oh the song itself is fantastic and Cash's version is amazing - I have the album on vinyl so trust me I am not casting aspersions. But there was a time in the late 2000's where it seemed that some kind of law had been passed that stated it had to be in every TV show. It was super over-exposed at one time. But great song, and very well used in T:SCC. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 19, 2020 17:41:20 GMT -5
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Teach your kids young, All Burgermeisters Are Bastards
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Post by Ben Grimm on Dec 19, 2020 19:51:26 GMT -5
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
On Netflix now. I had gone into this with pretty high expectations and it managed to live up to them. Highly recommended.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Dec 19, 2020 21:53:01 GMT -5
Jingle Jangle Netflix cast Forrest Whitaker in a steampunk Christmas musical for children.
Wait, what?
No, seriously, what?
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 19, 2020 22:15:12 GMT -5
Jingle Jangle Netflix cast Forrest Whitaker in a steampunk Christmas musical for children.
Wait, what?
No, seriously, what?
Forest Whitaker plays “Jeronicus Jangle” and his widow postwoman is super horny for him. |
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 19, 2020 23:13:12 GMT -5
We watched Jingle Jangle a few weeks ago. It is absolutely terrible, Forest Whitaker is miscast and gives an awful performance, and nothing that sounds fun and wacky about it in description delivers at all in the moment. I rarely hate things, and I truly, deeply hated this movie. Oh and it's over two hours long.
The opening number and Keegan-Michael Key's song are pretty good.
We do movie nights every weekend, and my daughter has asked for Jingle Jangle a couple times more. I keep telling her no. When she asked for it again tonight, I told her we could watch it next weekend, but I was counting it as a Christmas present.
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repulsionist
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actively disinterested
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Post by repulsionist on Dec 21, 2020 19:54:27 GMT -5
Pineapple Express (2008)
12 years. Whew! DGG does an excellent job of directing this homage to 70s buddy cop films. The most potent reference film for this work is: Freebie and the Bean. See The Guardian review from 2008 as confirmation of my position. Rogen and Goldberg clearly watched a slew of 70s buddy cop films, probably even a few Poliziotteschi. DGG had probably already made his way through them years earlier then revisited for shot inspiration. I'd wager the watching order for the Pacific Province Pals might have been: The Long Goodbye, Busting, Freebie and the Bean, The Stunt Man, Cops and Robbersons, and Crime Busters. I did find the "by the numbers" transgressive boundaries crossed such as: selling cannabis to the under-aged, dating barely legal, probably other stuff but I'm too dulled by 2020 and mid-life to care to remember - tell-tale Apatow/Rogen/Franco/Goldberg. I mean, I laugh, sometime hardily, but the laughs don't endure.
Looking back, this was the Apatow Golden Age. There was Step Brothers, and a bunch of other garbage between 2007 and 2010 where it was apparent that Apatow had a temporary power to print money.
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Post by Nudeviking on Dec 21, 2020 20:06:46 GMT -5
This makes it sound better than I suspect it is. Can I interest you in Keegan Michael Key as a traitorous former apprentice, Phylicia Rashad as storytelling grandma, or Ricky Martin as a wind up matador toy? I know what I'm watching when I get home from work tonight. |
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Post by Nudeviking on Dec 21, 2020 20:10:01 GMT -5
Santa Claus is Coming to Town Teach your kids young, All Burgermeisters Are Bastards I watched this with my daughter last week and she instantly picked up on how loud and angry the Mickey Rooney Kris Kringle was and thought it was hilarious. She now walks around the house bellowing, "I'M TELLIN' YA WHY!!!!!" and "NOT ME!!!!" and then howling with laughter afterwards. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Dec 24, 2020 1:54:26 GMT -5
I re-watched Spider Man-Into the Spiderverse last night. I still like it. I'm not really into comic book movies, or comics in general, but I really like this. I like the way it uses the comic origins to enhance the story. The writing is really good. The visual look of it is great. I like the voice acting a lot. It's fun!
I also finally got around to watching The Death of Stalin. I really liked this one, too. Steve Buscemi was fantastic, so funny. Simon Russell Beale stole nearly every scene he was in. Jason Isaacs was funny. Thought Rupert Friend and Andrea Riseborough were pitch perfect. Lots of fun visual gags. Had a lot of fun watching how the script mixed in some real events and warped them to make it a strong satire.
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Post by haysoos on Dec 24, 2020 10:24:10 GMT -5
I finally watched Interstellar the other night. It was really good. Somehow I was under the impression that Matthew was alone for most of the movie, so I was kind of surprised when there were people with him in his spaceship. I'm also still unclear on how exactly they rescued him from the black hole. |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Dec 25, 2020 8:28:55 GMT -5
We showed my parents Bad Times at the El Royale last night and they enjoyed it, so that was satisfying. They're getting harder to recommend movies for.
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oppy all along
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Who's been messing up everything? It was oppy all along
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Post by oppy all along on Dec 26, 2020 0:41:59 GMT -5
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020): The pre-release hype train would have you believe Wonder Woman 1984 is the greatest superhero movie since Nolan agreed to do one and it is not that. Oh boy is it not that. This movie is, frankly speaking, a mess. A big, joyous, colourful, dynamic, giant mess. It's like, Patty Jenkins and company were striving for something really ambitious, didn't realise they'd gotten there, and then added a whole bunch of stuff extra that bogged the movie down.
Also I just want one movie where Wonder Woman doesn't look into the middle distance, sigh wistfully, and think about Steve Trevor. IT'S BEEN MANY MANY DECADES DIANA MOVE ON.
Soul (2020): It's nice.
Pixar: If you died today would your life have had meaning?
Me: I don't know.
Pixar: Are you following your spark for living?
Me: I don't know.
Pixar: Do you even have a spark?
Me: I don't know.
Pixar: There's a reason black characters are always transformed in Disney movies, and it is problematic.
Me: Wait a second...
Pixar: Are you the reason someone out there is a lost soul?
Me: I don't know.
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Post by Prole Hole on Dec 26, 2020 7:12:51 GMT -5
Also Wonder Woman 1984. I wanted to like this more than I think I actually liked it. I appreciate the fact that it's trying to rest the story beats more on the emotional connections between characters than on big CGI fights breaking out every fifteen minutes, though with limited success. I massively admire Gal Gadot. They nailed the invisible plane, however vastly unlikely that is. The 80's-ness isn't too overdone - we get a couple of ITS THE EIGHTIES ZOMG moments when we kick off then its toned down to background details, which I appreciate. And, obviously, this is consciously designed as a big rainbow over the summer months so shuffling out on streaming and the pitiful number of open picture houses in the dead of winter isn't exactly ideal timing for it. But something's not quite here. It's far, far longer than it needs to be - quite possibly by an hour, which is insane. The script editing / actual editing desperately needs work. I'm not sure Chris Pine brings anything to the table this time out, much as I like him as an actor, and the movie might be better with his character completely excised (his "ok, see you!" exit certainly suggests so). The lasso-work is, to put it mildly, somewhat overused. There's individual bits which are terrific but very little of it connects with anything else and the whole thing is really a vastly bloated mess. There's a really excellent one-and-a-half hour long, fleet superhero movie in there. This is not that movie, sadly. I look forward to WWIII nonetheless.
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Post by President Hound on Dec 26, 2020 16:43:07 GMT -5
I've been hate watching a lot of comic movies this year. Some are fine, some are even great, but there is just a massive amount of garbage being shot out and it gets an excuse because EXPLOSIONS. I put WW in the fine category. It had some really high highs but it was all over the place.
But I did not expect Wonder Woman 1984 to be in the garbage category. In particular the "racist/misogynistic" sub-category.
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Post by The Stuffingtacular She-Hulk on Dec 26, 2020 17:41:11 GMT -5
Well, I guess that makes me the only person here so far who was not expecting much more than a few hours of entertainment and therefore enjoyed Wonder Woman 1984 for what it was. It was too long by at least 45 minutes, but I had fun with it.
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Post by ganews on Dec 26, 2020 20:50:35 GMT -5
I thought Wonder Woman 1984 was severely bloated but could be edited down into an okay movie. Wifemate was grossed out the entire time by watching her beloved Pedro Pascal as a Trump expy.
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Post by Floyd Diabolical Barber on Dec 28, 2020 0:59:53 GMT -5
The Midnight Sky-2020 I really wanted this to be a good movie, and it just wasn't. The dialog was wooden and stilted, and the movie did nothing to make me care about any of the characters as persons. Nobody in the movie talked like any human being that I ever met. I get that they wanted to highlight the emptiness and loneliness of space and the arctic, but it seemed like the script was being billed by the word. People chatter, even in tense situations.
There were several technical and science-y things that took me right out of the movie, but the worst was that the spaceship looked like a cross between a tech firm office building and a machine shed. The walls were even made of corrugated tin, and the large open areas and tastefully recessed alarm lighting looked like something you might see at a dance club. Real estate on spaceships is precious and expensive. You aren't going to have huge, roomy, empty spaces. No big open staircases, and a control panel of the command center isn't going to look like a DJ booth. They were using office chairs, for crying out loud! There were huge plot holes:
The biggest, stupidest plot hole was this: There are only four living humans left to go back to the inhabitable moon of Jupiter and restart humanity, and they just let two of them fly down to certain death on earth with no real discussion. THERE ARE NO PEOPLE LEFT TO SPARE! Even if their mission specialist job may be dome, wouldn't you think that two NASA scientists/astronauts might have some skills useful for, I don't know, THE SURVIVAL OF THE HUMAN RACE? At least try to talk them out of suicide. The twist ending of the little girl being in his head had an emotional impact, and it made moot several beefs I had about the way Clooney interacted with the little girl, but it also felt kind of cheap and manipulative. This movie made for a long two hours.
It might have had the makings of a really powerful hour long segment of an anthology show, but as a movie it spent way too long doing nothing much.
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oppy all along
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Who's been messing up everything? It was oppy all along
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Post by oppy all along on Dec 28, 2020 2:30:02 GMT -5
Nomadland (2020): Frances McDormand is a grey nomad driving through flyover country as we observe the people left behind by *scare quotes* society. It's nice but then at the end you realise you're sad and you've been sad for a long time. Poetic, gentle, and melancholic, this is the perfect movie to be nominated for Best Picture.
Promising Young Woman (2020): Carey Mulligan is a femme fatale vigilante who has dedicated her life to fighting rape culture. Well, really freaking out dudes who try to rape the drunk chick at a bar. The twists and turns repeatedly punch you in the gut and balls and face. Audacious, daring, and holy shit, this is the perfect movie to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
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