The Official Movie Thread
- Thread starter Manic Ferocity
- Start date
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Bloopy
Active Member
Recently saw The Spanish Prisoner, pretty good. Love the goofy dialogue.
Also just re-watched Ginger Snaps. Probably my favourite horror from the last 30 years (unless you count Hannibal). Maybe I need to look for better recommendations, but it has an excellent amount of comic relief and I'm in love with the main characters.
Also just re-watched Ginger Snaps. Probably my favourite horror from the last 30 years (unless you count Hannibal). Maybe I need to look for better recommendations, but it has an excellent amount of comic relief and I'm in love with the main characters.
unknown
fuck ftagn
I'd agree with this. The Alien franchise is one of my favorites, and Alien 3 was actually my entry to it. While it is definitely the weakest, the director's cut of the film saves it by quite a bit. It also would have been interesting if Jodorowsky had been able to finish it, as he was the intended director. That being said, I think it's an okay film but definitely doesn't deserve the heaps of shit it frequently has thrown at it
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
unknown
fuck ftagn
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
unknown
fuck ftagn
Admittedly, it has been probably over a decade since I last watched it. Not sure I can compel myself to do it again (unless if you can)
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Oh I watched it last only a few months ago. It has its issues but it's really not too bad, it's very French.
no country for old wainds
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,664
- 9,648
- 113
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
yeah, i wouldn't say 3 is that much better than Resurrection tbh. And i'm also probably the only guy here who enjoyed Prometheus.
RadicalThrasher
Active Member
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
I hated Prometheus, surprised you liked it actually for some reason. Fassbender was great though and I have a soft spot in general for Repace.
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
I liked it a lot. Storyline was cool, acting was good, cinematography was top notch. Definitively a "slow burner" that's much closer to the first Alien than any of the other films in the series. I love slow/quiet/dark movies. Not sure if you'll enjoy it though.
unknown
fuck ftagn
Yeah. I have mixed feelings towards Prometheus. I really loved the premise of the movie, and Rapace and Fassbinder are fantastic (that emergency uh c-section scene?). I would agree that it is a beautifully shot film. That said, the writing was pretty bad, and I wasn't really invested in any of the characters beyond those two. Unlike in Alien where I'm pretty much okay with all of the characters. (And even Aliens, with it having a large cast, a number of the characters really stand out)
As a side note, it bugs me when directors do prequels whose technology/graphics/and even general appearance are way more impressive than the films that follow
As a side note, it bugs me when directors do prequels whose technology/graphics/and even general appearance are way more impressive than the films that follow
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Fucking amazing scene. Okay maybe I don't hate the film, I think I was just really disappointed overall.
That doesn't bother me if what is being portrayed in the prequels is a more advanced human civilization that devolves into a dystopian setting in the space between prequel and sequel.
no country for old wainds
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,664
- 9,648
- 113
finally saw THE LAST JEDI. spoilery thoughts below.
- johnson followed abrams' rather pandering A NEW HOPE tribute with a revisionist if not outright anti-star wars movie. no wonder the hardcore fans hate it. it's abundantly clear that this was written before TFA was finished, and that rian johnson is not one of those people who obsessed over STAR WARS lore in the first place. he doesn't even give a fuck about basic plot coherence. i kind of like that. some stuff comes across as totally thoughtless, and there are huge plot inconsistencies in relation to the other movies (detailed in RLM's youtube takedown), but i'm not enough of a fanboy to care about that stuff. as hitchcock once said (and shakespeare would too), fuck the plausibles. a running theme of the film is that sometimes you gotta tear down the past before looking to the future, and in its best moments THE LAST JEDI serves as its own best example. more on that later.
- many scenes of gravity are undercut by goofy comedy here. that isn't necessarily a bad thing or even an un-STAR WARSy thing (the original films did plenty of that), but the timbre of the comedy is too generic. disney/marvel have their grubby paws all over it in those moments. the early yo momma prank call is particularly shitty.
- expectations are genuinely, shockingly subverted on numerous occasions here, and it all feeds into a theme about letting go of the past. to allow such a theme to inform most of your choices for a new STAR WARS movie of all things--the ultimate totem of this era's nostalgia-worship--is nothing short of radical. consider the reveals that rey's parents were nobody special, that sometimes the stuffy authority figure is right and the hot-headed young revolutionary is wrong (these scenes were kind of shitty in execution and i maintain that oscar isaac is miscast, but still), that the shifty thief is actually just a shifty thief who shrugs when you denounce his betrayal. this isn't just new to STAR WARS, it's more or less new to the entire genre that's dominated the mainstream this past decade. what better way to make a dead franchise relevant again? just ask kylo ren: STAR WARS is dead; long live STAR WARS.
- i say this about 2+ hour blockbusters far too often these days, and especially disney/marvel stuff, but somehow it feels incredibly rushed. keep the runtime but lose the extraneous stuff, let everything breathe, and this would feel deeper and more human, less like a glorified plot relayer. johnson's films do tend to lack elegance. laura dern's character, for example, didn't need to exist at all; she's playing a character who's literally a stand-in for leia--maybe take a hint? rey's dive into her own darkness gently fading into that hushed conversation with ren was the haunting, moving exception, and suggested a great movie that never materialised. i actually liked the stuff in snoke's throne room (again, i don't give a shit about your boring theories about who snoke is), including the eventual twist that instead of being a hero ren is a different, more ideologically interesting kind of villain than we thought... but then we rush through the climax and none of the emotional or thematic stuff going on in that scene really seems present anymore, ren just behaves like a typical supervillain again, rey's the generic hero again, yada yada. the more measured the movie gets the cooler it gets, generally speaking, but 90% of the time too much is being juggled and the noise of the plot mechanics spinning their gears overwhelms everything. i get that the climax is really luke's moment (more on that shortly), but i see so, so many movies like this from disney these days, gesturing toward complexity with no intention of actually committing to it. just playing at being deep to impress. i'm sure johnson probably would've committed a lot more heavily if he wasn't under so much pressure to make a Star Wars Movie, but this was probably as far as he was allowed to go.
- the fact that finn and rose's mission ends in failure isn't a problem - again, it's an intentional reflection of the themes of subverting the past, learning from failure etc. that said, finn and rose themselves are still the weak point of the movie. a lot of their scenes had Saga Syndrome (as my dad calls it), where it feels like the writer is writing a sideplot as he goes along just to keep certain characters busy until they become relevant to the main plot again. that the two characters in question happen to be the most racially diverse, and their scenes contain the most contrived ideological pointscoring (that lame ass line when she frees the animal was definitely a low point lol), probably isn't a coincidence. i don't get the impression johnson gave a shit about any of that casino stuff beyond having some fun fucking around with CGI. it feels like it was ordered by the studio.
- people seem to have missed that hamill's astral projection was inspired by leia's own projection that kicked all this off so long ago, even though the film spells it out. it was actually a tribute to the original trilogy, and gives his arc some powerful symmetry. the quiet way he died was genuinely sad and evocative, another refreshing twist in a time when everything has to be FUCKIN EPIC BRO. his performance is convincing right down to his weathered cynicism (which he echoes IRL), and i don't know that 2017 mark hamill could've played the luke the fanboys seem to have wanted. indeed, his luke here almost seems autobiographical, each of them having essentially been twisted by the pressures of being luke skywalker. even luke's much-maligned milking of fat zoidberg mirrors his milking of his own STAR WARS fame for the past god knows how many years. besides, these miserable old men whining about luke having CHANGED since their childhood could really use some self-awareness ffs.
- it's quite a striking movie. johnson has an above average eye for composition, and the rey/ren scenes in particular show he can direct more subtly too.
- the yoda scene is fucking awful. i assume it's supposed to be happening inside luke's mind, which at least alleviates concerns about its plausibility, but fuck it sucks.
- many scenes of gravity are undercut by goofy comedy here. that isn't necessarily a bad thing or even an un-STAR WARSy thing (the original films did plenty of that), but the timbre of the comedy is too generic. disney/marvel have their grubby paws all over it in those moments. the early yo momma prank call is particularly shitty.
- expectations are genuinely, shockingly subverted on numerous occasions here, and it all feeds into a theme about letting go of the past. to allow such a theme to inform most of your choices for a new STAR WARS movie of all things--the ultimate totem of this era's nostalgia-worship--is nothing short of radical. consider the reveals that rey's parents were nobody special, that sometimes the stuffy authority figure is right and the hot-headed young revolutionary is wrong (these scenes were kind of shitty in execution and i maintain that oscar isaac is miscast, but still), that the shifty thief is actually just a shifty thief who shrugs when you denounce his betrayal. this isn't just new to STAR WARS, it's more or less new to the entire genre that's dominated the mainstream this past decade. what better way to make a dead franchise relevant again? just ask kylo ren: STAR WARS is dead; long live STAR WARS.
- i say this about 2+ hour blockbusters far too often these days, and especially disney/marvel stuff, but somehow it feels incredibly rushed. keep the runtime but lose the extraneous stuff, let everything breathe, and this would feel deeper and more human, less like a glorified plot relayer. johnson's films do tend to lack elegance. laura dern's character, for example, didn't need to exist at all; she's playing a character who's literally a stand-in for leia--maybe take a hint? rey's dive into her own darkness gently fading into that hushed conversation with ren was the haunting, moving exception, and suggested a great movie that never materialised. i actually liked the stuff in snoke's throne room (again, i don't give a shit about your boring theories about who snoke is), including the eventual twist that instead of being a hero ren is a different, more ideologically interesting kind of villain than we thought... but then we rush through the climax and none of the emotional or thematic stuff going on in that scene really seems present anymore, ren just behaves like a typical supervillain again, rey's the generic hero again, yada yada. the more measured the movie gets the cooler it gets, generally speaking, but 90% of the time too much is being juggled and the noise of the plot mechanics spinning their gears overwhelms everything. i get that the climax is really luke's moment (more on that shortly), but i see so, so many movies like this from disney these days, gesturing toward complexity with no intention of actually committing to it. just playing at being deep to impress. i'm sure johnson probably would've committed a lot more heavily if he wasn't under so much pressure to make a Star Wars Movie, but this was probably as far as he was allowed to go.
- the fact that finn and rose's mission ends in failure isn't a problem - again, it's an intentional reflection of the themes of subverting the past, learning from failure etc. that said, finn and rose themselves are still the weak point of the movie. a lot of their scenes had Saga Syndrome (as my dad calls it), where it feels like the writer is writing a sideplot as he goes along just to keep certain characters busy until they become relevant to the main plot again. that the two characters in question happen to be the most racially diverse, and their scenes contain the most contrived ideological pointscoring (that lame ass line when she frees the animal was definitely a low point lol), probably isn't a coincidence. i don't get the impression johnson gave a shit about any of that casino stuff beyond having some fun fucking around with CGI. it feels like it was ordered by the studio.
- people seem to have missed that hamill's astral projection was inspired by leia's own projection that kicked all this off so long ago, even though the film spells it out. it was actually a tribute to the original trilogy, and gives his arc some powerful symmetry. the quiet way he died was genuinely sad and evocative, another refreshing twist in a time when everything has to be FUCKIN EPIC BRO. his performance is convincing right down to his weathered cynicism (which he echoes IRL), and i don't know that 2017 mark hamill could've played the luke the fanboys seem to have wanted. indeed, his luke here almost seems autobiographical, each of them having essentially been twisted by the pressures of being luke skywalker. even luke's much-maligned milking of fat zoidberg mirrors his milking of his own STAR WARS fame for the past god knows how many years. besides, these miserable old men whining about luke having CHANGED since their childhood could really use some self-awareness ffs.
- it's quite a striking movie. johnson has an above average eye for composition, and the rey/ren scenes in particular show he can direct more subtly too.
- the yoda scene is fucking awful. i assume it's supposed to be happening inside luke's mind, which at least alleviates concerns about its plausibility, but fuck it sucks.
unknown
fuck ftagn
