The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by Major sssspielberg! »

Last night I went and saw Censor. Very cool premise, it's about a film censor in Thatcher's Britain who cuts video nasties, and has a very cool visual aesthetic.
Spoiler:
I don't think it did enough with the premise though. It couldn't decide if it wanted to be a slow burn A24 arthouse horror or a modern take on a mid-80s gorefest. I could see the ending 'twist' coming 5 minutes in.
I would recommend it once. It's a first time feature length director and I'd say she's probably got some good shit up her sleeve.
Kaltes-Herzeleid wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 9:44 am I love Final Wars. I praise Final Wars. Simple as.

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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by Al Diplodocus »

Watched Wish Dragon. Its quite similar to Aladdin, but with Chinese culture, and the genie/dragon voiced by John Cho and had a character arc. Visuals were great, if a little too soft and cartoonish, and the humour was great. Not the best animated film I've seen, but its still worth a rewatch.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by JAGzilla »

Hang 'Em High. Probably my favorite of the three Clint Eastwood westerns I've seen, the other two being both Dollars movies. Gotta get to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly soon. Anyway, while I did enjoy Sergio Leone's style, this one clicked for me a little more, though it did kind of lose its energy and plod in parts of the second half.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

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I'm watching the old Fleischer era Popeye cartoons right now on HBO Max. Holy crap these things are hilarious. :lol: Some of the things Popeye and Bluto do make no sense and i love it.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by Jermobooka »

Just came out of watching F9. Wow.

I love these movies way too damn much :lol:
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by Major sssspielberg! »

Watched Q: Into the Storm. Excellent documentary series. Let's all the Q people make fools of themselves and makes a good case without editorializing. It kinda messed me up though a little, the whole story is just so full of ugliness.
Kaltes-Herzeleid wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 9:44 am I love Final Wars. I praise Final Wars. Simple as.

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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by KManX89 »

I saw F9 last night, and let me just say, it IS as bad as you've heard. I enjoyed F5-8 and even Hobbs & Shaw (I own all of them on Blu-Ray/4K), but OMG was this a mess. Plot holes, dumb jokes, bad acting and even the stunts were mindblowingly-fake, even by F&F standards. Guys in the back of my theater were literally laughing when
Spoiler:
the plane with magnets caught Tej's car in midair
and countless other headscratchingly stupid stunts/scenes. My jaw dropped when:
Spoiler:
a truck falls on top of Roman and he somehow survives. You read that right. Taj even says "how are you not dead?" It's like the writers know this shit is batshit insane, LOL. They also kinda admit it during the car in space scene, yes, that also happened.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

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Major sssspielberg! wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 11:55 am Watched Q: Into the Storm. Excellent documentary series. Let's all the Q people make fools of themselves and makes a good case without editorializing. It kinda messed me up though a little, the whole story is just so full of ugliness.
Watched that a couple of months back. It was pretty interesting - mostly I was kind of fascinated by CodeMonkey - and I agree that it didn't push too much of an editorial angle (except, of course, through the editing...).
Last edited by eabaker on Mon Jun 28, 2021 11:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by Major sssspielberg! »

^ of course he had a life-sized Rei Ayanami :lol:
Kaltes-Herzeleid wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 9:44 am I love Final Wars. I praise Final Wars. Simple as.

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Post by Tyrant_Lizard_King »

Gigantis wrote: Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:36 pm I'm watching the old Fleischer era Popeye cartoons right now on HBO Max. Holy crap these things are hilarious. :lol: Some of the things Popeye and Bluto do make no sense and i love it.
The real fun comes from all the stuff they mumble under their breath.
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Post by Voyager »

Whiplash. Terence Fletcher is one of my most hated movie characters now. What an asshole.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

Post by o.supreme »

The Tomorrow War I was pleasantly surprised. This is just a basic, turn your brain off and have fun sci-fi summer film. There are no underlying messages, or any attempt to pander to anyone. If this had been in theaters, I probably would have skipped it. It's kind of a shame however that the spectacle of CG is predicated on date and time. If ID4 were released today, it would be barely a blip on any radar, but because it was released 25 years ago, it was a Summer blockbuster. Tomorrow War is perhaps that, a movie not ahead of it's time, but behind it, but not in a bad way. It represents the basic fun and escapism that movies had been for so long, which is rare now.
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Voyager wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 3:35 am Whiplash. Terence Fletcher is one of my most hated movie characters now. What an asshole.
Great movie, a masterclass of tension.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

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o.supreme wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 8:13 am The Tomorrow War I was pleasantly surprised. This is just a basic, turn your brain off and have fun sci-fi summer film. There are no underlying messages
Then it seems like a potential with a lot of promise was somewhat squandered.
Last edited by eabaker on Sun Jul 04, 2021 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Latest Movie/TV show You Watched Topic 2.0

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The Old Dark House... both of 'em. I grew up with the big name Universal horror movies, but because The Old Dark House ('32) had been effectively lost for decades, and because it turned up on video from a different distributor, I never really had an opportunity to check it out until now. I've been missing out on a classic.

It's hard to do it justice in a capsule review, but Whale's direction is markedly improved from Frankenstein (only a year before), and generally speaking, the performances are superior as well (also after acknowledging the stilted theatrical style of that time). The exception, however, is Karloff: While he's not *wasted* in his part, it nevertheless doesn't afford him the same opportunities Frankenstein or The Mummy did. And while Whale's sense of humor is present in all of his Universal horrors, it's most obvious here. The first horrific elements--i.e. in the same vein as Dracula and Frankenstein--don't show up until around an hour in, although I'll concede that it's hard to rate just how scary this movie might have been to 1932 audiences. In my opinion, at least, the first hour is primarily a macabre social comedy*, and the most overt "horrors" come from Karloff's lumbering manservant's presence.

I have seen the 1963 remake before, but it'd been close to 15 years, and I didn't really remember much of it. (I thought I'd remembered more, but apparently I was recalling another similar film. I didn't give it my full attention tonight, but I know I didn't miss the bird hunting scene I could have sworn was from this movie.) Anyway, like the original, this Hammer/William Castle remake is also a comedy. The difference, however, is that this version has no horrors whatsoever. In fact, I'm sure it has no comedy, either. Although not a terribly produced movie (and featuring a truly great ensemble of Brit character players), I can't recommend it simply because it utterly fails as a comedy. The only laugh I had was at the movie's expense -- from the opening credits:

"Produced and Directed by
William Castle"

(credit fades out, a new credit fades in)

"Directed by
William Castle"

Also, as is typical for Hammer, more complete cast credits come at the film's end. Here, however, they scroll by so fast that you really can't read them. I laughed at that, too, but I'm sure I wasn't supposed to.

*Edit: Don't let this turn you off if you're into these movies for the monsters or because they're ostensibly horror movies. The Old Dark House is truly funny (the original version that is, not the remake), and although I had some of the jokes "spoiled" long ago by Universal Horrors, I still laughed hearing them in their original context for the first time tonight. It's kinda like the humor of something like The Thin Man, crossed with the macabre dealings of an early Hitchcock, set in the environs and realized in the style of a Universal horror. Very unique, very funny, and very good.
Last edited by Terasawa on Sun Jul 04, 2021 8:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Terasawa wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 7:33 pm The Old Dark House... both of 'em. I grew up with the big name Universal horror movies, but because The Old Dark House ('32) had been effectively lost for decades, and because it turned up on video from a different distributor, I never really had an opportunity to check it out until now. I've been missing out on a classic.

It's hard to do it justice in a capsule review, but Whale's direction is markedly improved from Frankenstein (only a year before), and generally speaking, the performances are superior as well (also after acknowledging the stilted theatrical style of that time). The exception, however, is Karloff: While he's not *wasted* in his part, it nevertheless doesn't afford him the same opportunities Frankenstein or The Mummy did. And while Whale's sense of humor is present in all of his Universal horrors, it's most obvious here. The first horrific elements--i.e. in the same vein as Dracula and Frankenstein--don't show up until around an hour in, although I'll concede that it's hard to rate just how scary this movie might have been to 1932 audiences. In my opinion, at least, the first hour is primarily a macabre social comedy, and the most overt "horrors" come from Karloff's lumbering manservant's presence.

I have seen the 1963 remake before, but it'd been close to 15 years, and I didn't really remember much of it. (I thought I'd remembered more, but apparently I was recalling another similar film. I didn't give it my full attention tonight, but I know I didn't miss the bird hunting scene I could have sworn was from this movie.) Anyway, like the original, this Hammer/William Castle remake is also a comedy. The difference, however, is that this version has no horrors whatsoever. In fact, I'm sure it has no comedy, either. Although not a terribly produced movie (and featuring a truly great ensemble of Brit character players), I can't recommend it simply because it utterly fails as a comedy. The only laugh I had was at the movie's expense -- from the opening credits:

"Produced and Directed by
William Castle"

(credit fades out, a new credit fades in)

"Directed by
William Castle"

Also, as is typical for Hammer, more complete cast credits come at the film's end. Here, however, they scroll by so fast that you really can't read them. I laughed at that, too, but I'm sure I wasn't supposed to.
The original Old Dark House is one of my absolute favorites, and I agree that Whale's confidence and skills behind the camera seem to have increased enormously in a short time. It's also one of the rare cases when I think a movie adaptation lives up to or even outdoes the source novel. It's an extremely faithful adaptation - the novel even includes some detailed visual descriptions involving things the mirrors and shadows that are accurately reproduced on screen. At times, it does have to shorten scenes from the novel that put a little more flesh on the characters' bones, and of course this was another case of Whale having to soften the ending after principal photography had wrapped, but the movie's version of Saul is so much richer and more engaging that on those grounds alone it at the very least makes up for any minor failings.
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Post by Tyrant_Lizard_King »

Started One Punch Man. As ridiculous as I expected. Its stupid but its fun.
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Post by Terasawa »

eabaker wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 7:58 pm The original Old Dark House is one of my absolute favorites, and I agree that Whale's confidence and skills behind the camera seem to have increased enormously in a short time.
In front of the camera, I think he got a lot of additional help from a more gifted cast than he'd had in Frankenstein -- there are good performances in Frankenstein (Clive and Karloff in roles they were born to play, just for starters), but it's definitely worth mentioning that The Old Dark House's cast boasts at least two eventual Oscar winners (Laughton and Douglas) and two future nominees (Massey and Stuart). Granted, Gloria Stuart's Oscar nod came nearly 70 years later, but still. It's also a smaller cast, and the screenplay permits each performer, sans Karloff, time and opportunity to show off a little.
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Post by o.supreme »

eabaker wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 11:25 am
o.supreme wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 8:13 am The Tomorrow War I was pleasantly surprised. This is just a basic, turn your brain off and have fun sci-fi summer film. There are no underlying messages
Then it seems like a potential with a lot of promise was somewhat squandered.
Why would anyone want to watch a movie with an alterior motive? They are supposed to be fun, not about pushing an agenda.
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o.supreme wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 9:10 pm
eabaker wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 11:25 am
o.supreme wrote: Sun Jul 04, 2021 8:13 am The Tomorrow War I was pleasantly surprised. This is just a basic, turn your brain off and have fun sci-fi summer film. There are no underlying messages
Then it seems like a potential with a lot of promise was somewhat squandered.
Why would anyone want to watch a movie with an alterior motive? They are supposed to be fun, not about pushing an agenda.
Who decides what the intent of an entire artistic medium should be? And why must an underlying message be perceived as an "ulterior motive" (that implies dishonesty) or "pushing an agenda" (that implies polemicization)? In your opinion, is it wrong for a movie to have any kind of theme, to explore any kind of individual or social concerns? And there's nothing mutually exclusive about having a message and being fun; the two can walk hand in hand quite comfortably, and often do. Jurassic Park doesn't cease to be fun just because it offers a superficial examination of the relationship between technology and nature. King Kong vs. Godzilla doesn't cease to be fun because it comments on crass commercialism. Seven Samurai is tremendously fun, even as it explores class differences and the relationship between the individual and the community.

Besides all that, realistically the movie certainly does have some underlying message or messages, whether the filmmakers intended it to or not, whether they meaningfully explored those messages or not. Whether by design or by accident, all storytelling is in a sense a political act; every story presents a status quo, introduces a change, and takes some perspective on the merits of that change. A responsible storyteller should always be aware of what messages a work is likely to send, because someone is going to pick up on them, whether they're supposed to be there or not.
Last edited by eabaker on Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:08 am, edited 5 times in total.
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