Films Recently Watched

Art imitating life?

Saw Captain Marvel this morning. First hour I was really quite bored. Convoluted story that kept switching between two points in history so often that I couldn't be bothered following it. Brie Larson looked bored and the first hour of effects seemed more like the SyFy channel. It did eventually pick up but far too late in the movie and even then I was thinking 'What the hell is going on here?' For a movie with so much money and talent going in, it was disappointing.

A generous 7/10.

SEVEN ???

it’s a 5 at best. infinity war was a 7 because I had a great time.

The MCUs typically oscillate between 5s & 7s.

Only the thor ones, the others oscillate between dull and dull as fucks.

  On 3/9/2019 at 3:12 AM, bitchroast said:

SEVEN ???

Probably a six if I was harsh.

  On 3/9/2019 at 5:32 AM, dr lopez said:

it’s a 5 at best. infinity war was a 7 because I had a great time.

The main problems I had were:

• Brie Larson was okay but doesn't have the charisma of Gal Gadot, at least not in a female super-hero role.
• The story was unecessarily convoluted.
• The effects were average.
• The big pay-off (the finale) never arrives. I won't spoil it but if you've seen the trailer, you've actually seen 90% of the final battle. Totally underwhelming. Where did all the money go?

  On 3/3/2019 at 4:33 AM, Roo said:

Some early childhood revisits.

 

The Wizard of Oz

4.5/10

 

 

I loved the Wizard of OZ right up until it turns color. I love the dust bowl era. The pastoral sepia tone look. The twista', The trippy tornado sequence in her room. All that was so good. I love that era. Very twilight zone.

  On 3/9/2019 at 8:55 PM, marf said:

 

  On 3/3/2019 at 4:33 AM, Roo said:

Some early childhood revisits.

 

The Wizard of Oz

4.5/10

 

 

 

I loved the Wizard of OZ right up until it turns color. I love the dust bowl era. The pastoral sepia tone look. The twista', The trippy tornado sequence in her room. All that was so good. I love that era. Very twilight zone.

Agreed, the stuff prior to the colourful Oz transition is the best part of the film.

Every American who watches Captain Marvel should watch Border/Gräns immediately after.

Now that’s a fucking movie.

^ not just every American but everyone, period.

  On 3/10/2019 at 8:18 AM, rhmilo said:

^ not just every American but everyone, period.

True.

  On 3/10/2019 at 9:25 AM, Squee said:

 

  On 3/10/2019 at 8:18 AM, rhmilo said:

^ not just every American but everyone, period.

True.

thanks for the recommendation, will check it out.

Border that is, not Captain Marvel.

this blew me away. the way things escalated to a menacing climax was nothing short of genius and the choice of music was just perfect. 

9.5 out of 10

here is a mini series i've been meaning to watch for the longest time but somehow never got around to it. the premise is somewhat unique but it's uneven storytelling or the main character not being as charismatic as everyone seems to make him out to be. probably was much better during it's original airdate of 1988 but now seems very dated

have very conflicted thoughts on this as the last 30 or so minutes are really amazing, but a lot of characters were really annoying including the main character having a very unlikeable disposition. somehow, this is addressed when they do an MRI scan of his brain and find there is a certain lobe that most people have a lot of activity and he has almost nothing happening there. in other words, only a psycho would go climbing el captain with ropes and a crew, but to do it with no ropes or safety equipment is a little unbelievable

i think the next level will be the guy/girl who does it blindfolded while carrying 3 huge jugs of water and no shoes

  On 3/10/2019 at 11:00 AM, fletcher said:

 

  On 3/10/2019 at 9:25 AM, Squee said:

 

  On 3/10/2019 at 8:18 AM, rhmilo said:

^ not just every American but everyone, period.

True.

 

thanks for the recommendation, will check it out.

Border that is, not Captain Marvel.

 

i mentioned this movie a while back but only got to see it yesterday...

  On 11/12/2018 at 8:21 PM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5501104/

this looks interesting, right?

  On 6/16/2018 at 8:27 AM, zaphod said:

 

for some reason i watched solo. i was in a pretty bad mood before it started. then i saw the trailers. one of them is literally a movie about a black kid who finds a big gun. in those interminable five seconds between each trailer there was a little ad for some grinch movie where he walks across the screen and basically tells the audience to fuck off and buy soda, or snarkily says "oh great, more trailers" and makes a jack off motion with his hand. thanks grinch, thanks for letting me know i don't have to be here either. i felt violated. i wanted to leave. then the movie started. somehow one of the most expensive movies ever made (250 million fucking dollars) looks like it was soaked in toilet water and left out in the sun. multiple times i couldn't even tell who or what i was supposed to be looking at. half the movie is out of focus or bathed in shadows. i was so baffled by this that i did some mid-movie iphone research and found out the director of photography made an "artistic decision" akin to gordon willis' work with lowlight in the godfather to reflect the darkness of the world in these trumpian times we all exist in now. you know, in a star wars movie! 

"acting": you have alden ehrenreich doing an impression of five easy pieces era jack nicholson, looking like he's in his late thirties, playing a twenty something harrison ford, standing maybe five foot nine inches tall, acting opposite emilia "franchise killer" clarke, who is a pair of eyebrows attached to a middling 6 of a body. you have a trans sjw robot who is so badly written that it comes off as a parody of trans sjws, who near the end of the film sets all the robots free and then dies while characters literally roll their eyes at it. way to make me more open minded disney, you created a character even the movie hates. you have donald glover once again proving atlanta was an accident, playing lando as some kind of cape collecting intergalactic dandy. oh, but he's pansexual. don't forget star wars was always about the sex. there's so much fucking in star wars. remember the twincest scene between luke and leia after she strangles jabba where han gets in on it and uses salacious crumb's head as a pocket pussy? neither do i. what about ron howard's direction? has anyone ever asked that about a movie? not that anyone cares but darth maul is in this. i thought he was dead but nope, he's back, the fucking legend. 

there isn't much else to say about the film's content. solo feels like forgetting to do an important essay in high school and then frantically completing it in homeroom, fingers crossed, then realizing you turned in a story about cucking your dad. there is no reason for it to exist, there is no reason to ever watch it. it proves that star wars is only as interesting as the canon characters and the actors who inhabited them, and so it proves that star wars is effectively dead. its existence begs the question of why? why keep beating this pinata full of money even after it's given you billions of dollars? with marvel films disney has found a perfect formula for serialized, neverending content that yields infinite returns. they use the aesthetics of whatever social movements are popular at the moment to imbue their films with cultural relevance, to make them events, which of course brings people out to see them, but all of these films are empty. they have tricked people into believing that something like black panther is an artistic statement and not a calculated piece of marketing, released during black history month, with a very loud advertising voice that reminds everyone that watching it is literal social activism. and then three months later release a new movie that makes everyone forget black panther existed. they inject identity politics into the movies and the media frenzies around the movies to generate discussions, to make them impervious to criticism. solo is a failure because of white males. the last jedi isn't bad, it's the alt right. when you allow corporate culture to dictate every creative decision in an industry, the industry dies. the marvel model of a cinematic universe is now being applied to every property that has ever existed. it has effectively turned big budget films into television shows. they have trained audiences to define movies this way, so big budget spectacle that exists outside the realm of a recognizable ip simply doesn't get made. 

looking back, there's one film to blame for all of this. star wars: a new hope.

 

lmao bump for this but also i tried to watch solo last night. doesn't start so bad but damn it plunges into stultification pretty quickly. not much to say that zaph and others haven't said but the music was terrible, and holy fuck that droid was unbearable. they even animated it to walk like like a big fat triggered sjw. big lols imagining a bunch of gamergate incels at ILM studying lindy's gate for inspiration.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8361028/

my fascination with dreamy thrillers with female as lead protagonists started with mulholland drive so this movie obviously caught my attention... it has a lot of lynchian vibes and is definitely influenced by him but halfway trough it starts loosing its pace, i mean, with some few edits, like for example, cutting the IRL scenes or edit them in a more dreamy/paranoid way, i do believe this movie could be a solid 9/10, but it tries to explain itself too much for its own sake... it would definitely be more effective if the viewers were kept in the dark, so to speak... anyway, pretty tasty color grading and a nice performance by the main protagonist keep it pretty interesting until the end... oh and definitely could benefit from a better soundtrack...

  On 10/19/2018 at 4:53 PM, hello spiral said:

 

  On 10/11/2018 at 10:29 PM, hello spiral said:

going to see this tomorrow as part of the BFI Film Fest. Looks good

See this. vgood.

 

thought solo was better than the other new disney star wars movies. also felt the most contrived and most pointless. there’s something about it being a failed project, turned Ron Howard completely by the numbers and played safe disney star wars movie that actually made it feel comfortable in its own skin more do than any of the other new star wars films.

having said that, yes it was still trash and at this point i’m mostly entirely given up on the new films (given up but will prob still see ep9 once it’s convenient to do so at home)

  On 3/12/2019 at 1:44 AM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8361028/

 

 

my fascination with dreamy thrillers with female as lead protagonists started with mulholland drive so this movie obviously caught my attention... it has a lot of lynchian vibes and is definitely influenced by him but halfway trough it starts loosing its pace, i mean, with some few edits, like for example, cutting the IRL scenes or edit them in a more dreamy/paranoid way, i do believe this movie could be a solid 9/10, but it tries to explain itself too much for its own sake... it would definitely be more effective if the viewers were kept in the dark, so to speak... anyway, pretty tasty color grading and a nice performance by the main protagonist keep it pretty interesting until the end... oh and definitely could benefit from a better soundtrack...

Hmm interesting, I thought one of its weaknesses was how it didn’t explain at all how the threat came into being. Even a slither of an idea would have helped, and it didn’t seem to have really been eliminated at the end or anything but I enjoyed it too.

  On 3/12/2019 at 9:01 AM, tec said:

Hmm interesting, I thought one of its weaknesses was how it didn’t explain at all how the threat came into being. Even a slither of an idea would have helped, and it didn’t seem to have really been eliminated at the end or anything but I enjoyed it too.

i read this on imdb and honestly, it makes a great point:

like a black mirror episode, but even so, i felt pretty satisfied without having a clue about what happened in the end, it was pretty fucking haunting and that for me was enough...

Climax was like a Nintendo Switch advert being filmed at a 1990s party in Liverpool in the Jump Ship Rat with Benetton as a corporate sponsor. Absolute merde.