LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Lethal Interjection
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

Post by Lethal Interjection »

Life of Pi - It was pretty alright. It diluted much of the 'unreliable narrator' idea pretty much from the outset. The revelation of Richard Parker was too quick, the 'french castaway' was eliminated, and much of the ambiguity of Pi's story (the meerkat bones, for example) weren't present. It was still a good movie. It just dumbed down a novel which was already more dumbed down than I'd have preferred.

Orphan Fight: Batman V Superman - I made a FB post about it, but I'll sum that up. Marvel has done a great job at including a glorious number of easter-eggs for comics fans, but primarily hiding them in the periphery. BvS put them in plain sight and spotlighted them. Which made what could've been a pretty good movie into a game of eye-spy for blind kids.

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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Snowpiercer:
I regret trusting tumblr is probably a common turn of phrase, but it doesn't make it less true.
Snowpiercer has a good cast, also a diverse cast, but that's about it. Overall the plot was over-convoluted and ridiculous. The logistics of the train made no sense, where was the beef coming from? Where was the material everyone was using to make clothes? Just no sense. Sudden cannibalism backstory reveal was so badly dialogued and presented that I laughed at it. Also it didn't even come back as a plot point, it was just 'look at how angsty my life was because I once ate babies'. The cgi was low budget, which I can ignore when the rest of the story holds it together, but as the rest of the story was horrible the least I could have gotten was pretty cgi. The dialogue was hammy and heavy fisted. The editing was horrible and fight scenes in particular suffered for it, making them look like a bad episode of original Star Trek, with missed hits that actors fall over from etc. The timing of the whole movie was... off.

I will confess I had a migraine, a really bad one, so maybe that affected my perceptions a little. BUT overall this movie was bad. I know it subverted some tropes with who lived and who died, but I want trope subversion in good movies. In the end I wished everyone had died, because it was that bad a movie... but considering the first thing the two survivors saw was a polar bear... they probably died a few seconds after it faded to black.

Edit: It wasn't even a 'so bad it's good' movie. Which I can usually enjoy.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

Post by Liriodendron_fagotti »

The Wicker Man (1973). I always think that Edward Woodward is Jason Isaacs. They both have that cold, British Imperial air to them. I was inspired to watch it by the new Radiohead album's first track. I wish I didn't know what was coming, but it was still a pretty artful movie - especially with the music. Its scare factor hasn't aged very well though.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Captain America: Civil War. Goddammit I can't stand Captain America. He is such a douchebag. I did not empathize with the titular asshole once in the movie. The rest of the movie was fine. Another Avengers flick. I'd missed 3 or 4 in between, so I missed a few character intros, but it didn't really matter. When all of them get in a big fight, I kinda lost track of who was on who's side, which again didn't really matter. Spiderman was the best part in the movie. Tony Stark is like a superhero Steven Colbert.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Liriodendron_fagotti wrote:Captain America: Civil War. Goddammit I can't stand Captain America. He is such a douchebag. I did not empathize with the titular asshole once in the movie. The rest of the movie was fine. Another Avengers flick. I'd missed 3 or 4 in between, so I missed a few character intros, but it didn't really matter. When all of them get in a big fight, I kinda lost track of who was on who's side, which again didn't really matter. Spiderman was the best part in the movie. Tony Stark is like a superhero Steven Colbert.
I liked the movie for the most part. I don't have as strong a dislike for Captain America but I've also never found myself attached to the character, which is something I've had for basically every other character.* But I really do feel like they too heavily emphasized Team Cap's motivation as being "But Bucky is my/his friend" and somewhat glanced over the potential encroachment of superhero civil liberties. Scarlet Witch felt that already to some degree, but Falcon and Hawkeye seemed to just be following the lead, and Ant Man was just happy to be wanted. And the civil liberties thing only really became clear after the introduction of the super-supermax prison (to both the viewer and the characters).
And maybe that is because of my perspective? But I can see both sides of the X-men schism... I mean the case for and against mutant registration is much clearer to me. Maybe because it is more clear that it affects a greater percentage of the population. Hell, even Batman V Superman made a better case for "keep these superheroes in check".
That said, I loved Black Panther and Spiderman. For completely opposite reasons. Black Panther was badass and I want to see more. Spiderman was funny and mildly annoying in his teenage-ness but I kind of liked him. He actually made me think they could actually pull off a Spidey film where the character is actually still a kid and even make that better than the two series that came before (not tough to do). Though, it must be said, the scene where Stark visits him at his home and they go to talk alone in his room and Stark fucking locks the door was super creepy. I really don't understand how that ever made it through editing. I mean it's weird and kind of gross even without considering the potential trigger it might pose.




*Oh, except for Falcon. But even though I don't like the character, I think his fight scenes are among the best of the Avengers movies. So even that ranks him higher than Cap.

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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Oh... well I guess I should...

Captain America: Civil War
I adored this movie. It's tacky in places, it's got plot holes (what Marvel movie doesn't?), it doesn't understand jet lag or travel time. And I loved every bit of it. Characterisation was A+. Music score was noticeably over dramatic in one or two places, but I didn't mind. I had no trouble following who was on whose side, there are only 12 characters fighting the 'war' and only Spider Man hadn't been introduced previously. Tony Stark was a bit of chump in places, but that's in character. Steve Rogers was obstinate all the way through, but that's completely in character. Bucky was just a resigned-to-his-fate abuse victim the whole way through... except when triggered to be an assassin.

For all it's random 'run at each other at the airport' moments (that's in the ad it's not a spoiler) the writing was surprisingly understated in places. The banter was solid all the way through. The characters were al given reasonable motivations that you could understand. I just really liked it.

If I were to pick a 'side' it would be Captain America's because I full believe in protecting abuse victims and protecting your family / friends against the odds and not locking up people 'for their own protection'.


Edit (in reply to Lethal):
They did gloss over the liberties thing, but I know that was a choice on the part of the writers and directors because they wanted to make it a more personal fight. Which I appreciated a lot because I can connect with it more. Spider Man, Hawkeye and Ant Man all felt tacked in at the last minute to bulk it out. Hawkeye seemed to have less point than the other two. Ant Man was actually important for the fight, and Spider Man for the banter.

Starks entire interaction with Spider Man irked me. The door locking was creepy, and then recruiting a 15-16 year old boy without explaining both sides so he could make an informed choice was vile. It is the one thing Tony did that I could not reconcile with at all. 'We must protect people... except this teenager, who cares about him, am I right? Lets line him up to fight some war veterans and shit.' Just. No Tony. No.

Black Panther was perfect.

>_> Long post is Long.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

Post by Liriodendron_fagotti »

I forgot to say this, but I enjoyed watching the movie as an indictment of the US' failure to prosecute high-level governmental officials for war crimes after the Iraq War. The movie ultimately shows our failure, with Captain 'America' succeeding in showing that the US should act as the world police regardless of the destruction and destabilization it causes.

Yes, we all sympathize with the downtrodden, oppressed groups (Bucky), even though there are terrorist elements within them, because we know they're just responding to a legitimate assault of some kind. But the way to solve that conflict is not through invading the shit out of the oppressor, but through dialogue and communication.

The Black Panther, and to an extent the antagonist, are the only ones who end up realizing this by the end. They have been on the receiving end of that collateral damage and understand its effects in ways the NATO countries (Avengers) never can.


There's, uh, there's my more better review.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

Post by Kimra »

*blinks slowly*

Ooookay. I think you went too deep? I think you stretched the bounds of the story to fit your analogy. But okay. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. This is far too an intense a conversation about a movie like this, and so I'm just... I'm glad you got something out of it. Whatever that was.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

Post by smiley_cow »

Jaws -- I was worried when I saw it was 2 hours, but it was actually pretty well paced, and overall pretty fun movie. My favourite parts were the giant fish hook to catch the giant shark, all the wrong shark facts (Like the rogue shark theory and all the stuff about them being mindless killing machines), and basically any scene with Hooper.

Also wow that shark looked super fake. Especially all those scenes at the end. I think they overexposed it.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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smiley_cow wrote:Jaws -- I was worried when I saw it was 2 hours, but it was actually pretty well paced, and overall pretty fun movie. My favourite parts were the giant fish hook to catch the giant shark, all the wrong shark facts (Like the rogue shark theory and all the stuff about them being mindless killing machines), and basically any scene with Hooper.

Also wow that shark looked super fake. Especially all those scenes at the end. I think they overexposed it.
Yeah, I had the same reaction when I saw it for the first time 4 or 5 years ago. At the time I thought, "Probably going to be some campy shit, but it is pretty culturally important". But, yeah, it is pretty great if you can come to accept the fake-shark stuff.
Ultimately I was drawn in by some pretty good acting, particularly from Dreyfus and Shaw.
So I was happy to rewatch last week on Netflix (I assume this is where you watched it as well, smiley). And Netflix also picked up Jaws 2 and 3, which means I can watch those as well. Somewhat less culturally important, but still referenced often enough because they are campy shit.


*Maybe second. I think I'd seen some or all of it at some point in my teens but it didn't leave much of a mark.

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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Lethal Interjection wrote: Ultimately I was drawn in by some pretty good acting, particularly from Dreyfus and Shaw.
So I was happy to rewatch last week on Netflix (I assume this is where you watched it as well, smiley). And Netflix also picked up Jaws 2 and 3, which means I can watch those as well. Somewhat less culturally important, but still referenced often enough because they are campy shit.
Yeah, I was really impressed with both the acting and the writing. I can definitely see why it's such a popular movie.

And yeah, I grabbed it off Netflix. Still debating if I want to watch the sequels though. I need to look up if Hooper's in them.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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He's not.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Good to know. That settles that then.
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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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Nice Guys. It was pretty great. Same writer/director as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and very much the conceptual sequel.
In hindsight it was maybe too similar because as I compare them in my head it's not difficult to write a plot synopsis that could easily fit both movies, and that's without the black comedy similarity.
Kinda spoilers for both movies:
Private investigator enters into a buddy-cop situation with another guy when it turns out they are looking into separate (seemingly) but related events. They stumble their way through the case(s) and a fair amount of collateral damage. A conspiracy unfolds. An eager and astute, but seemingly out-of-her-depth, 3rd party continually noses their way into the duo's business and provides exposition and drive. Things don't quite turn out the way anyone wanted, but the pair end up exposing the underlying injustice anyways.
Which I'd say is equal parts over-thinking it and legitimate complaint.
I should say that I'd forgotten that part of the reason the trailer intrigued me was because it was by the same guy as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black). And I didn't really start to clue in on the similarities was over half-way through the film. So it's obviously not that similar.

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Re: LR's MOVIE OF THE NOW

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I went on my annual masturdate* on Sunday to see X-Men Apocalypse.

Here's a rough synopsis.
Act 1: Choosing sides for an epic game of mutant kickball. I think it even literally alternated sides in the choosing. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but it was pretty poor storytelling. Even with each pick sort of setting up the character motivation... It was mostly a bunch of filler between "ooooh!" moments.
Act 2: A rather mediocre set up the conflict for the final battle. Again, it was a lot of filler between a few salient points.
Act 3: A pretty good battle scene, I think. But what made it great --and from my perspective saved the movie-- was the theme of redemption. Redemption played a role in a fair number of characters throughout the climax and in rather different ways. I loved it. Plus it was in a movie titled Apocalypse which was kind of fitting.

Ultimately it was an OK movie. I think it sits somewhere in the middle of all the X-men/Wolverine movies.


*Doing an activity usually done with couple or group of people, but enjoyed by oneself. It's also not quite 'annual'. I've seen maybe 6 movies by myself in the last 10 years, plus a couple of other events that aren't movies. Mostly they are things which I don't have someone with the same interests to bring along. But I've grown to appreciate the concept of the 'masturdate' to the point that I might make it a more regular event.

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