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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 28, 2020 9:03:38 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. Was Nomadland good? “Perfect Oscar bait” is a review that can go either way. The non-fiction book it was based on was pretty interesting, I thought, but not necessarily something that lent itself to an adaptation. |
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Dec 28, 2020 11:15:00 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.
Bummer this isn't good. I was intrigued by it and am a sucker for sci-fi stuff*, despite it rarely being good. Clooney's beard looks glorious, though. *In high school I wrote a short story with a similar-ish premise. A dude is alone on a space station and when all communication from Earth stops. Then all the lights on the planet start to go out. I think he I had him slowly die while listening to Pink Floyd and whispering his daughter's name. I'm pretty sure all my short stories in high school weaved in music I liked and ended with the the protagonist dying. I guess because it was the 90s and I'd seen Pulp Fiction. |
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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 15:10:16 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. Was Nomadland good? “Perfect Oscar bait” is a review that can go either way. The non-fiction book it was based on was pretty interesting, I thought, but not necessarily something that lent itself to an adaptation. I thought it was great, but also very Oscar-y. Like a lot of movies based on literature it's very pretty and leisurely. There's a lot of looking at Frances McDormand looking at landscapes and contemplating how you feel, and not a lot of 'forward plot momentum' or 'plot'. |
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Dec 28, 2020 15:32:38 GMT -5
Tear 'em a new one, Floyd.
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Dec 28, 2020 16:38:13 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:
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.
Another plot hole was, wouldn't Clooney have died of hypothermia within a half-hour after just barely avoiding getting drowned and losing his snowmobile, tent and all supplies while stranded in the middle of nowhere in the Artic? That said despite figuring out the twist with an hour to go, I much preferred the Artic scenes to the space ones as the cinematography was nice. The spaceship stuff falls into a sci-fi subgenre that I call "In space no one can hear you yawn". |
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Dec 28, 2020 16:49:22 GMT -5
Wonder Woman 1984 would have been an ideal summer drive-in popcorn flick. I might not have even had an issue with its need to cut out a good 30-40 minutes in that case.
To my mind the biggest time waste in it was the scene where she flys for what seems like an eternity just to get the gold armor. The armor is in her coat closet in an apartment in the Watergate building, and she's in Downtown D.C. before going to retrieve it. Is that really a big enough distance to require going all the way up into the stratosphere? Couldn't she have just run really fast for a few blocks?
Also, why would Steve Trevor be blown away by the D.C. subway trains and escalators? While neither existed in DC in 1917, both did exist in NYC and London by then. We know he's been to the latter place.
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Post by Prole Hole on Dec 28, 2020 17:56:34 GMT -5
The Blues Brothers (1980)
What's amazing about The Blues Brothers is what a good movie it is stripped away from fans that won't shut the fuck up about how it's the greatest movie ever. To be clear, it isn't, but it's an excellent shaggy-dog movie for a lazy, post-Christmas afternoon when you've got nothing better to do than have a glass of wine, listen to some excellent tunes, lose yourself in a meandering plot and just relax. I'm not a fan of either Belushi or Ackroyd yet both are deployed perfectly here (it really helps that Ackroyd can't just descend into schtick and is being reined in), a coked-up Carrie Fisher at least adds a little dimension to the otherwise-linear plot, and you've got James Brown, Aretha Franklyn, Cab Calloway (CAB FUCKIN' CALLOWAY!) and Ray Charles all throwing in with this nonsense. I probably hadn't seen it in twenty years and that distance (and lack of said obsessed fans) has really helped the film and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A scant revelation, I realise, but turns out The Blues Brothers is really good.
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Post by Floyd Diabolical Barber on Dec 28, 2020 23:39:54 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:
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.
Another plot hole was, wouldn't Clooney have died of hypothermia within a half-hour after just barely avoiding getting drowned and losing his snowmobile, tent and all supplies while stranded in the middle of nowhere in the Artic? That said despite figuring out the twist with an hour to go, I much preferred the Artic scenes to the space ones as the cinematography was nice. The spaceship stuff falls into a sci-fi subgenre that I call "In space no one can hear you yawn". It took two soul crushing hours for the movie to make the point that the hero's defining character feature was "deadbeat dad" |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Dec 29, 2020 16:07:55 GMT -5
Wonder Woman 1984I'd echo what a lot of people said; the movie doesn't entirely work, and really lacks propulsiveness, especially in the first act. It shouldn't be 80 minutes into the movie that we finally get a second scene of Diana as Wonder Woman. The entire plot seemed to have been engineered as an excuse to bring Steve Trevor back, and - while I liked him in the role, and he was good in this - I think this gimmicky approach ultimately hurt the movie. What it reminded me of the most was probably Iron Man 2 - it feels like a minor incidental story in a lot of ways. Like IM2, it was fun. and kind of breezy, but also insubstantial. I'm really hoping they bring Circe in as the villain for the third film. She'd feel like an actual threat, and they could use that Kalidia song in promos for it.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 29, 2020 16:50:57 GMT -5
Was Nomadland good? “Perfect Oscar bait” is a review that can go either way. The non-fiction book it was based on was pretty interesting, I thought, but not necessarily something that lent itself to an adaptation. I thought it was great, but also very Oscar-y. Like a lot of movies based on literature it's very pretty and leisurely. There's a lot of looking at Frances McDormand looking at landscapes and contemplating how you feel, and not a lot of 'forward plot momentum' or 'plot'. I mean the book is based on a series of interviews and visits with different nomad types, there’s no real story to it. Makes sense that the movie would be kind of plotless and that’s kind of why i wondered how a movie adaptation would even work. I quite liked the book, but almost would have preferred a companion documentary. That being said, I think I can picture which subjects they composited for McDormand’s character. |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Dec 30, 2020 2:04:38 GMT -5
We finally sat down and marathoned the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions over the weekend and maybe I'm just a completionist nerd who prefers world building to stuff like "pacing" and "plot," but I think I prefer these to the originals. Fellowship, in particular, benefits from more of Aragorn's and Frodo's backstory getting filled in, and Two Towers has a flashback scene accomplishing the same for Faramir and Boromir and Denethor. The only movie where I felt all the added stuff really did hurt the pacing was Return of the King. Saruman's gnarly death scene and "Gandalf versus the Witch King" were pretty cool, though.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Dec 30, 2020 15:30:29 GMT -5
Soul
Not bad. Certainly an improvement on Onward. That said, this seems like the first Pixar movie not aimed at kids at all; I have trouble imagining a kid not getting bored during this.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Dec 30, 2020 15:42:41 GMT -5
Modern popular culture? What's that?
The Graduate (1967)
Hilarious, although I can't tell whether it's deliberately hilarious or hilarious in the sense that The Room is hilarious. Every five minutes there's a shot that I bet looked really cutting edge in the 60s but now is just the funniest shit, the infamous leg scene just being the tip of the iceberg here. The leg scene also serves as you first hint that this movie is gonna be audaciously sexist and full of visually interesting single-entendre. It is impossible to think of this movie without thinking of Simon & Garfunkel, and I think it would be even if 90% of the film wasn't set to one of two S&G songs, because what other duo could get you so into the mindset of an ennuied Jewish neb who's just begging to be stuffed into a locker like Mister Hoffman here?
Probably the most interesting aspect of this movie in hindsight is that it's mostly a boomer artifact, and yet its portrayal of the '60s in California is distinctly unswinging, e.g., when Dustin Hoffman stalks his girlfriend all the way to Berkeley, the college is portrayed as a total straightsville and she's into a bland blond clean-cut pre-med guy rather than some bearded Ginsburgoid radical freakazoid. This is probably to the movie's benefit because that sort of '60s iconography is boring as shit and it's infinitely funnier seeing Dustin Hoffman e.g, do the world's most inept parkour before using a crucifix to jam a door shut than it would be to see him smoke pot. Kind of a funny movie, this one - definitely in the highest echelon of mom-fucking movies.
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Obviously very funny, although just like the band itself it loses steam as it goes along - most of the great gags are in the first half of the film. I think Jeanine's arrival is the beginning of the end, because she feels like she's dragging the movie away from a funny pastiche of '70s/'80s rock and into a more Beatlesque John vs Paul Yoko/Linda-bashing mold. But there's a lot of phenomenal material here - I think the best moment is the gag where the cocoon won't open, but now that I have listened to the Sabbath album Born Again for the catatonic Diaz vs. Starostin series and now know that the "Stonehenge" gag is based on a real thing I could not stop laughing at that scene. It's kind of fun to poke apart, "oh, this is a Cream pastiche, this is AC/DC, this is Skynyrd, this is the Commodores," etc. It also helps that the music here was clearly made from a place of love for that audio brain rot, sort of in a Blue Oyster Cult way. Very fun, particularly if you like trashy rock music (I do).
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Post by Floyd Diabolical Barber on Dec 31, 2020 0:31:31 GMT -5
Modern popular culture? What's that? The Graduate (1967) Hilarious, although I can't tell whether it's deliberately hilarious or hilarious in the sense that The Room is hilarious. Every five minutes there's a shot that I bet looked really cutting edge in the 60s but now is just the funniest shit, the infamous leg scene just being the tip of the iceberg here. The leg scene also serves as you first hint that this movie is gonna be audaciously sexist and full of visually interesting single-entendre. It is impossible to think of this movie without thinking of Simon & Garfunkel, and I think it would be even if 90% of the film wasn't set to one of two S&G songs, because what other duo could get you so into the mindset of an ennuied Jewish neb who's just begging to be stuffed into a locker like Mister Hoffman here? Probably the most interesting aspect of this movie in hindsight is that it's mostly a boomer artifact, and yet its portrayal of the '60s in California is distinctly unswinging, e.g., when Dustin Hoffman stalks his girlfriend all the way to Berkeley, the college is portrayed as a total straightsville and she's into a bland blond clean-cut pre-med guy rather than some bearded Ginsburgoid radical freakazoid. This is probably to the movie's benefit because that sort of '60s iconography is boring as shit and it's infinitely funnier seeing Dustin Hoffman e.g, do the world's most inept parkour before using a crucifix to jam a door shut than it would be to see him smoke pot. Kind of a funny movie, this one - definitely in the highest echelon of mom-fucking movies. This is Spinal Tap (1984) Obviously very funny, although just like the band itself it loses steam as it goes along - most of the great gags are in the first half of the film. I think Jeanine's arrival is the beginning of the end, because she feels like she's dragging the movie away from a funny pastiche of '70s/'80s rock and into a more Beatlesque John vs Paul Yoko/Linda-bashing mold. But there's a lot of phenomenal material here - I think the best moment is the gag where the cocoon won't open, but now that I have listened to the Sabbath album Born Again for the catatonic Diaz vs. Starostin series and now know that the "Stonehenge" gag is based on a real thing I could not stop laughing at that scene. It's kind of fun to poke apart, "oh, this is a Cream pastiche, this is AC/DC, this is Skynyrd, this is the Commodores," etc. It also helps that the music here was clearly made from a place of love for that audio brain rot, sort of in a Blue Oyster Cult way. Very fun, particularly if you like trashy rock music (I do). "Plastics!" |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Dec 31, 2020 1:45:18 GMT -5
Modern popular culture? What's that? This is Spinal Tap (1984) Obviously very funny, although just like the band itself it loses steam as it goes along - most of the great gags are in the first half of the film. I think Jeanine's arrival is the beginning of the end, because she feels like she's dragging the movie away from a funny pastiche of '70s/'80s rock and into a more Beatlesque John vs Paul Yoko/Linda-bashing mold. But there's a lot of phenomenal material here - I think the best moment is the gag where the cocoon won't open, but now that I have listened to the Sabbath album Born Again for the catatonic Diaz vs. Starostin series and now know that the "Stonehenge" gag is based on a real thing I could not stop laughing at that scene. It's kind of fun to poke apart, "oh, this is a Cream pastiche, this is AC/DC, this is Skynyrd, this is the Commodores," etc. It also helps that the music here was clearly made from a place of love for that audio brain rot, sort of in a Blue Oyster Cult way. Very fun, particularly if you like trashy rock music (I do). is similar if you're a folkie or grew up the child of a folkie, as I did. The pastiches are both accurate and highly specific--60/70s folk singers loved singing about mining disasters for some unknowable reason--in addition to being genuinely good songs. Except for the New Christy Minstrels Main Street Singers shit, which is deliberately awful and, again, punishingly accurate. |
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Post by Prole Hole on Dec 31, 2020 10:17:08 GMT -5
We finally sat down and marathoned the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions over the weekend and maybe I'm just a completionist nerd who prefers world building to stuff like "pacing" and "plot," but I think I prefer these to the originals. Fellowship, in particular, benefits from more of Aragorn's and Frodo's backstory getting filled in, and Two Towers has a flashback scene accomplishing the same for Faramir and Boromir and Denethor. The only movie where I felt all the added stuff really did hurt the pacing was Return of the King. Saruman's gnarly death scene and "Gandalf versus the Witch King" were pretty cool, though. 100% the extended cuts are better than the theatrical releases. They really let you feel the texture and detail of the places and it doesn't sacrifice character work or plotting to do it. The thing with LOTR is they've always been absurdly long movies so adding in another (say) forty-five minutes to a movie that's already over three hours long has a lot less impact that adding forty-five minutes to a movie that's an hour and a half long. All three LOTR's can easily absorb the extra time, and because everything (really, everything) comes together getting to spend more time in these places and with these characters feels like a win rather than a here-comes-the-self-indulgence. Watching the non-extended versions now makes me think "why has this movie been hacked to bits" rather than watching the longer version and thinking "who stuck in all this unnecessary extra stuff" (oh hai, stupid, destroy-the-tension colonist scenes in extended Aliens). The extended cuts are, to my mind, the definitive versions. |
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Post by pantsgoblin on Jan 1, 2021 19:58:15 GMT -5
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Enjoyably spooky Swedish silent film set on New Year's Eve. The Criterion DVD includes a neat, droney score from KTL and Stephen O'Malley.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jan 2, 2021 0:41:32 GMT -5
Parasite
It's really good, but you knew that.
Something I quite liked about the movie (and this is the point where I warn you of SPOILERS) is that ultimately, the Parks aren't really bad people, per se? Like, even when they think they're totally alone they never really do anything despicable beyond saying "oh, that Mr. Kim is nice but he's a little smelly." I think a much weaker movie might have made them really nasty to drive the point home, but instead they spend the entire movie being an rich-but-nice (or "nice-cuz-rich," as the film puts it) family, and we come to hate them not because they do anything but because as the stakes rise, their naivete starts grating more and more.
The "plothole" I notice in this film, though: the guy who recommends the Kim kid for the job in the first place... what were they gonna do when he came back? Like, what were they gonna do when he came back for his old job and saw that the entire Kim clan was working there under false pretenses? I was almost certain the movie was going to bring this up at some point, and they mention the character, but he never shows despite being a very obvious Chekhov's gun.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 2, 2021 11:57:23 GMT -5
The Midnight Sky (2020)Or more accurately, half of it because that's where I gave up. I really, really wanted to like this but it was, in the end, simply dull. The space bits were basically identical to That Hilary Swank Show and the bits on Earth are well shot but plodding and I just couldn't get invested in the fate of some adorable kiddywink beyond the completely abstract. Maybe you find out what the disaster on Earth is, maybe not, but in the end that wasn't enough of a hook to maintain interest. George Clooney is doing his solid-but-unremarkable work behind the camera and not a vast amount more in front of it. Really, if I don't give a shit after a solid hour, I'm out. EDIT
Oh the kid is in his mind? Yeah I thought so after her "did you love her?" line in the melting base thingy. That was the moment I gave up then lasted another ten minutes to confirm, yup, still don't care and headed over to S3 Cobra Kai.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jan 2, 2021 21:12:22 GMT -5
When Marnie was There
A lovely little low-key coming of age lesbian romance drama until it turned out that that wasn't what it was at all. I can't tell if it was something they did on purpose or one of those cases like Pom Poko where the cultural divide just hit harder than it usually does. We enjoyed it, in any case.
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oppy all along
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Post by oppy all along on Jan 4, 2021 7:04:21 GMT -5
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015): Watching this movie in preparation for WandaVision, and it's... fine. It's miles ahead of anything else the superhero movie genre was doing at this time, even though it's the movie that showed the limits of the Whedonverse. The MCU would move on to bigger and better things, as did the DCEU and Spiderverse.
Pertinent to WandaVision, we've established right off the bat that Wanda is weird, unbalanced, beset by tragedy, and unbelievably powerful. And we establish that Vision is... played by Paul Bettany. Hopefully WandaVision goes further into showing his character beyond "robot who thinks us little people are worth giving a chance".
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Post by The Stuffingtacular She-Hulk on Jan 4, 2021 10:11:40 GMT -5
I watched The Farewell (2019) last night and somehow managed to make it through the whole time without bursting into uncontrollable sobs, which is surprising for me. I cry at movies and TV all the time. It can best be described as poignant without being mawkish, and it has excellent performances all around. My only complaint is that some of the subtitles were hard to read because they were too light in a few scenes, but in spite of not speaking a word of Mandarin, I got the gist of those scenes anyway. So it's a pretty minor complaint. I really like Awkwafina in spite of her silly stage name, and she just seems to improve with each role she takes on. She was so good in this.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Jan 4, 2021 12:56:39 GMT -5
WW84
Owlette's Review: Did you think it was good? I thought it was good. There were lots of other parts going on other than the fighty fighty bits.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 5, 2021 11:35:30 GMT -5
Alien (1980)
It remains (alongside Casablanca) my favourite movie of all time. I have the blu-ray Quadrology (thankfully with the superior theatrical cut of Aliens as well as the interesting-but-less-good Director's Cut) and am rewatching the four originals because we're gonna be talking about them on my podcast in a special episode. It remains... just unbeatable. Even beyond a cast that is simply staggeringly good - Ian Holm is just genius as Ash and it goes without saying that Sigourney Weaver is perfect but even the less appreciated actors like Tom Skerritt are perfect for their respective roles. The creature remains one of the best designs in all of cinema and it is that rare film where knowing what's going to happen actually increases rather than decreases the tension. Just. Perfect.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jan 5, 2021 12:40:22 GMT -5
Kajillionaire
Immediately after watching I bumped this up to #2 in my best of 2020 list. Funny, strange, beautiful, heartbreaking.
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Jan 5, 2021 16:22:10 GMT -5
ParasiteIt's really good, but you knew that. Something I quite liked about the movie (and this is the point where I warn you of SPOILERS) is that ultimately, the Parks aren't really bad people, per se? Like, even when they think they're totally alone they never really do anything despicable beyond saying "oh, that Mr. Kim is nice but he's a little smelly." I think a much weaker movie might have made them really nasty to drive the point home, but instead they spend the entire movie being an rich-but-nice (or "nice-cuz-rich," as the film puts it) family, and we come to hate them not because they do anything but because as the stakes rise, their naivete starts grating more and more. The "plothole" I notice in this film, though: the guy who recommends the Kim kid for the job in the first place... what were they gonna do when he came back? Like, what were they gonna do when he came back for his old job and saw that the entire Kim clan was working there under false pretenses? I was almost certain the movie was going to bring this up at some point, and they mention the character, but he never shows despite being a very obvious Chekhov's gun. I got the impression that the friend who recommended the son for the tutoring job had zero intention of ever seeing the Parks again because he was trying to get away from the daughter's attentions. In fact I wondered if the film was even implying he was pulling a cruel trick on his poorer friend and/or trying to deflect from something improper he might have done. |
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oppy all along
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Post by oppy all along on Jan 6, 2021 4:41:19 GMT -5
Captain America: Civil War (2016): Woo, Phase Three! At this point Marvel just started knocking it out of the park with every release. We reinforce that Wanda is dangerous and Vision is played by Paul Bettany. And there's the ongoing thread of superheroes maybe not being the best thing to have around. But most importantly, we learn that Captain America is just the most dickishly stubborn person in the world.
Seriously man, the funeral quote started with "Compromise if you can-". Peggy did not say "Never ever compromise and if someone asks you to compromise you hit him repeatedly in the face with the frisbee his dead dad made for you". That's something you chose to add to that.
I do love that after everything the Avengers were undone by one angry dude with some knowhow and a lot of prep time. The threat you really need to be afraid of is the Iago.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 6, 2021 13:30:01 GMT -5
Aliens (1986)
The rare sequel that's not actually a let-down. Actually that's less true these days but back in the dark, dark days of the 80's it was practically unheard of. And yet Aliens pulls it off by switching out the tension-drenched horror of the first for a military thriller (and also tension-drenched horror). All that military action helps disguise the fact that it takes us a long time before we get to our first encounter with anything even faintly xenomorphic but that delay again heightens rather than undercuts the tension. We see everything from Ripley's perspective - her awake from hypersleep, the accusations around the Nostromo being destroyed et al before finally being persuaded back into action. That helps keep the unknown just that - unknown - and is why the theatrical cut is better than the Director's Cut * Throughout it all, Weaver - better here, somehow, than last time - lands every emotional beat perfectly so the story is carried along nicely, and all that military stomping about the place helps to keep the pace up until the acid starts flying. If this isn't as good as Alien - and it's not, because nothing is - it's so absurdly close that it beggars belief. An outstandingly great movie, proper thematic development, a brilliant action piece and a peerless lead. Amazing.
* Wisdom is probably halfway in-between, to be fair. The material about Ripley's daughter should be in there, as should the sentry guns, but all the material based on the colony prior to the arrival of the Sulaco actively makes the film worse because it removes the singular perspective of the movie and undercuts the unknown element. It's difficult to build suspense from the unknown if you've spent fifteen fruitless minutes dicking about with some colonists who have no purpose beyond being facehugger bait.
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Post by haysoos on Jan 6, 2021 17:54:03 GMT -5
Aliens (1986)The rare sequel that's not actually a let-down. Actually that's less true these days but back in the dark, dark days of the 80's it was practically unheard of. And yet Aliens pulls it off by switching out the tension-drenched horror of the first for a military thriller (and also tension-drenched horror). All that military action helps disguise the fact that it takes us a long time before we get to our first encounter with anything even faintly xenomorphic but that delay again heightens rather than undercuts the tension. We see everything from Ripley's perspective - her awake from hypersleep, the accusations around the Nostromo being destroyed et al before finally being persuaded back into action. That helps keep the unknown just that - unknown - and is why the theatrical cut is better than the Director's Cut * Throughout it all, Weaver - better here, somehow, than last time - lands every emotional beat perfectly so the story is carried along nicely, and all that military stomping about the place helps to keep the pace up until the acid starts flying. If this isn't as good as Alien - and it's not, because nothing is - it's so absurdly close that it beggars belief. An outstandingly great movie, proper thematic development, a brilliant action piece and a peerless lead. Amazing. * Wisdom is probably halfway in-between, to be fair. The material about Ripley's daughter should be in there, as should the sentry guns, but all the material based on the colony prior to the arrival of the Sulaco actively makes the film worse because it removes the singular perspective of the movie and undercuts the unknown element. It's difficult to build suspense from the unknown if you've spent fifteen fruitless minutes dicking about with some colonists who have no purpose beyond being facehugger bait. I actually watched Alien again the other day for the first time in many years, and was also struck by just how amazingly near-perfect that movie was. About the only things I would change in Alien is perhaps make some of the Nostromo crew more likeable. And by some of the crew I mean Lambert. She should be about 50% less shrill, or possibly killed a little sooner. That's one of the things that Aliens does well, where even the characters who are generally assholes or annoying, like Hudson or even Gorman become likeable and you're actually sad to see them die. The only one you want to see die is that weasel rat-fuck Burke. I might also give Ripley a different wardrobe when preparing for the sleep chamber in the end. Sure, it's an inversion of the standard horror movie trope of watching the monster sneaking up on the girl in her underwear, but seeing Ripley in her ginch with her nekkid butt crack hanging out just seems undignified and silly. And I agree 100% on the Director's cut of Aliens, and that the material with Newt and Mr. Weasley/Peterson going to check out the Alien ship should have been left out. I shared that somewhere on here around Halloween time. Might have even been this thread. Totally undercuts the tension of the marines arriving and their investigation. |
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 8, 2021 4:26:20 GMT -5
Alien3 (1992)
I really want to like this movie, and I like the general shape of it, but there's just no escaping how it struggles next to the previous two entries. We have, again, an excellent cast who really help give shape to a prison colony in the middle of nowhere, and Charles Dance and Charles S Dutton are both outstanding (and of course a nod to the ever-excellent Pete Postlethwaite). Weaver, too, modified her performance just enough to make this feel credible, but she's given a harder task this time. Thematically, the idea that she becomes "mother" eventually to the creatures works but the script doesn't really have a firm grasp of how to deal with that while still keeping the action coming... which means it does a lousy job of keeping the action coming. It takes forever for anything of note to happen (the Director's Cut, while giving a welcome expansion to Paul McGann's excellent turn, is even worse for this) and meanwhile Ripley just hangs around with a bunch of criminals not doing very much while people laboriously explain things to her. At least when we had all those military briefings in Aliens they were short and to the point, and the dialogue was snappy so it held the interest. Here it's just exposition. Then when the Alien eventually turns up... it does what it did last time out. Yay? All the exciting stuff happens near the end of the movie and it's pretty heavy work to get there. And the occasional feints towards religious symbolism feel clumsy in a way the motherhood themes of the previous two movies never did. There are some things to admire here - the "Aliens-eye view" spinning camera is still great, it's a bold step to have such nakedly unpleasant protagonists and then ask the audience to invest in them, and it still feels shocking that they actually kill Ripley. Parts of it look good as well - David Fincher directs a lot of the scenes where everything is lit by sparking torches extremely well, though he struggles badly with anything "outside" or finding ways to make protracted explanations interesting. The Alien looks... Ok. Scenes of it scampering about like a glove puppet aren't tremendously effective, but as ever lit in shadow and glowing orange light it looks fantastic, and though it's the same ta-da! trick both previous movies have pulled, it still looks amazing when it explodes out of the leadworks. So... points for trying, but the fundamental flaw of all future Aliens movies is established here for the first time, which is this - if you want to make your Aliens movie interesting, you need characters it's possible to give a shit about being threatened in a situation that means something. For all that the actors here are terrific we are given less than zero reasons to give a shit about the actual characters, and "aliens running about" simply isn't a strong enough hook for your movie once you've seen what that already looks like, as Alien: Resurrection, Aliens v Predator, Aliens v Predator 2 - Acidic Boogaloo, Covenant and Prometheus will go on to prove.
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