The Official Movie Thread
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CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Kinda gay that Mysterio looks to be a hero rather than a villain in this new Spider-Man movie. They finally give some attention to a cool underused villain in the Spidey-verse and they make him a protagonist, all for the gimmick of "doing something unexpected."
Blurry_Dreams
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it's pretty fucking obvious that huge chunks of the script of the 3rd transformers movie were actually already set-in-stone before meagan fox was fired from the movie
if you look closely the 4th movie actually contradicts the 3rd one
did either of the these things prevent a 5th one??
at the end of the first Jurrassic park movie, they could have just gotten some helicopters with weapons and killed all the meat-eating dinosaurs
but they didn't
because it would have prevented all those sequels
batman could have decapitated superman when batman had the kryptonite
superman could have killed batman at the very beginning of the Dawn of Justice movie
the fast furious movies all really look like the exact same movie
James T Kirk is really just "James Bond in Space"
the Borg Queen played by the Same Actress dies twice
killed once by Jean-Luc Picard and killed again by Kathryn Janeway
if you binge-watch all the X-men movies in one day
you'll see that every single x-men movie contradicts the others
first class actually looks like a reboot
and then days of future past actually creates even more continuity problems by trying to shove all the contradictory movies into one single timeline
how old is emma frost??
how old is moira mctaggert??
how old is cyclops??
which teleporter is nightcrawler's dad??
depends which movie you're watching
big bangs and fiery explosions shouldn't have to also win best screenplay
when you watch 50-foot-tall shiny CGI robots destroying Chicago, when you're watching meat-eating dinosaurs eat humans, when you're watching James T Kirk or James Bond miraculously survive to be in the next episode/movie, do you really fucking need "to have a story" ??
Blurry_Dreams
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Krigloch the Furious
Pants full of poo
Blurry_Dreams
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i loved the way the appearances of and references to duct tape in the 2018 movie Skyscraper just totally looked like some kinda duct tape commercial staring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Blurry_Dreams
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Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
I just got back from this. (Sweden premiere today, even though midsummer was in June. No idea.) There's a lot to unpack but my initial feeling is that it rehashes a lot of narrative beats and themes from Hereditary but with less audacity and purpose this time around. I love Aster's direction and his use of sound but I don't think this film will hold up in hindsight as well as Hereditary did.
Seeing it in a Swedish theater full of Swedish people was an interesting experience and basically turned the movie into a horror-comedy. It was pretty ridiculous, but I nontheless got a kick out of seeing Swedish culture and environs feature so prominently in an American horror movie.
Lastly,
Oblivious Maximus
I am the worm
no country for old wainds
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CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Evidently not. Honestly I liked Homecoming and I think Tom Holland is the best Peter Parker so far (even though the Raimi films are superior as films). Mysterio is a childhood favourite villain so I'm kinda bummed at this choice haha.
NW:
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Oblivious Maximus
I am the worm
Was Zendaya worth getting mad over like so many people were? I actually saw Raimi's first two in the theater. Man, was that really 15 years ago?
A great Miike pick. Shinjuku Triad Society is my favorite of the Black Society Trilogy but Rainy Dog is a great example of how good Miike is at drama.
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
If she's the annoying SJW stereotype then yeah, don't remember her name, I'd say she was poorly written and irritating enough to be mad about. For me she was more just groanworthy and cringe, her character was like if you took Daria's dry delivery and then filled her with gender and race studies cliches. Very odd character, stood out like a pimple on a beautiful face. There was literally no reason for her to exist, she was the casting equivalent of randomly running a bunch of disruptive political adverts throughout an apolitical movie.
She didn't stop me from liking the movie though, at all. I kinda expect a bit of cringe from normie films these days.
I remember taking my little brother to see the first one, first time going out without parents to see a movie. We got there super early, grabbed our seats and waited like 30 minutes for the previews to even start. It was a cool day, that first movie definitely has a lot of nostalgia for me.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
I've been bothered by this movie all day and gave a shot at writing a longer review of it. Not something I usually do but I wanted to figure out why it bothered me so much.
Minor spoilers.
In an interview, Ari Aster described his film Midsommar as “a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film.” I have a reflexive reaction of disgust to statements like these that suggest that the subtext of a horror film is the crucial component and the text mere window dressing, and it's especially disingenuous when something like 2 hours is spent establishing the strange customs of this invented pagan cult and substantially less time than that on the relationship struggles of the main couple. I'd furthermore be surprised if anyone could make a case for how the breakup theme forms a consistent narrative throughline throughout the film; although one or two of the main character's decisions are motivated by it, for the most part the main characters exhibit no agency at all as they are being dragged one way and another by the members of the pagan cult.
The primary narrative throughline I identified in Midsommar was the invisible hand of the director moving pieces into place for the denouement. For the grand finale, Aster has a gorgeous, macabre tableau prepared and he will sacrifice any amount of organic storytelling to get to this conclusion. Midsommar moves towards its ending as inexorably as Hereditary did, but that film explicitly involved demonic entities to which any narrative meddling from on high could be attributed. I would also argue that Hereditary's narrative fatalism was also strongly integrated into the film on a thematic level, and made up an essential part of that film's horror. In Midsommar, it comes off less like a strength and more like an unnecessary holdover.
The inorganic storytelling of Midsommar is expressed not only in the passivity of the main characters, but also in the gradual reduction of the cultists themselves into caricatures. Initially, their portrayal is humanized; they present rational motivations for being part of the cult; they appreciate the community it provides, and they find solace in the ancient traditions. When a ritual suicide is carried out early in the film, they are given the chance to explain this extreme practice, and their rationalization gives them depth. But as the plot escalates and the rituals become less suicidal and more homicidal, they are given no opportunities to account for their actions. What is the justification for blood-eagling your victims before placing them on the sacrificial bonfire? Will the sacrifice offend Ymir if the lungs are still inside the body? It is also mentioned that between the ages of 16 and 32, cultists go on a “pilgrimage”, leaving the supervision of the cult for long stretches of time. In other words, this is a cult that routinely offers its members the opportunity to deradicalize, then expects them to participate in murderous rituals upon return. To be clear, I extend horror directors the license to invent however sensational and implausible cults they want. But when cult mentality is the main driver of your plot, maybe it behooves you to put some thought into the mechanics of cult mentality. This is an area where comparisons to The Wicker Man are especially unfavorable; in contrast to the stodgy Christian policeman protagonist, the pagan cultists of The Wicker Man came off as uninhibited and liberated, passionate and life-loving. The Wicker Man gave cult life a seductive appeal; it explained why anyone would want to be part of this community even if it involved the occasional participation in ritual sacrifice, without needing psychedelics or psychosis to explain their actions.
These criticisms aside, there is much to appreciate about Midsommar. As a Swede I got a kick out of being on the receiving end of Hollywood xenophobia for once, as I feel we're mostly just overlooked. (When Swedish actors are cast as villains in American productions, they are usually given more threatening nationalities, like German or Russian.) I continue to be impressed by Aster's direction and use of sound. But while I loved Hereditary on a sensory level when first I saw it in the theater, and afterward on a cerebral level; I loved Midsommar on a sensory level, but came out of the theater thinking that all the pieces did not fit together.
The primary narrative throughline I identified in Midsommar was the invisible hand of the director moving pieces into place for the denouement. For the grand finale, Aster has a gorgeous, macabre tableau prepared and he will sacrifice any amount of organic storytelling to get to this conclusion. Midsommar moves towards its ending as inexorably as Hereditary did, but that film explicitly involved demonic entities to which any narrative meddling from on high could be attributed. I would also argue that Hereditary's narrative fatalism was also strongly integrated into the film on a thematic level, and made up an essential part of that film's horror. In Midsommar, it comes off less like a strength and more like an unnecessary holdover.
The inorganic storytelling of Midsommar is expressed not only in the passivity of the main characters, but also in the gradual reduction of the cultists themselves into caricatures. Initially, their portrayal is humanized; they present rational motivations for being part of the cult; they appreciate the community it provides, and they find solace in the ancient traditions. When a ritual suicide is carried out early in the film, they are given the chance to explain this extreme practice, and their rationalization gives them depth. But as the plot escalates and the rituals become less suicidal and more homicidal, they are given no opportunities to account for their actions. What is the justification for blood-eagling your victims before placing them on the sacrificial bonfire? Will the sacrifice offend Ymir if the lungs are still inside the body? It is also mentioned that between the ages of 16 and 32, cultists go on a “pilgrimage”, leaving the supervision of the cult for long stretches of time. In other words, this is a cult that routinely offers its members the opportunity to deradicalize, then expects them to participate in murderous rituals upon return. To be clear, I extend horror directors the license to invent however sensational and implausible cults they want. But when cult mentality is the main driver of your plot, maybe it behooves you to put some thought into the mechanics of cult mentality. This is an area where comparisons to The Wicker Man are especially unfavorable; in contrast to the stodgy Christian policeman protagonist, the pagan cultists of The Wicker Man came off as uninhibited and liberated, passionate and life-loving. The Wicker Man gave cult life a seductive appeal; it explained why anyone would want to be part of this community even if it involved the occasional participation in ritual sacrifice, without needing psychedelics or psychosis to explain their actions.
These criticisms aside, there is much to appreciate about Midsommar. As a Swede I got a kick out of being on the receiving end of Hollywood xenophobia for once, as I feel we're mostly just overlooked. (When Swedish actors are cast as villains in American productions, they are usually given more threatening nationalities, like German or Russian.) I continue to be impressed by Aster's direction and use of sound. But while I loved Hereditary on a sensory level when first I saw it in the theater, and afterward on a cerebral level; I loved Midsommar on a sensory level, but came out of the theater thinking that all the pieces did not fit together.
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Slayed Necros
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CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Blurry_Dreams
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there were harcore-fans-of-the-comic that instantly hated the first raimi film
people who loved the first movie included a shit-ton of people-who-have-never-read-a-comic-book
the 3rd one was clearly "a sam raimi movie" making it awesome for hard-core-sam-raimi-fans
but at the same time making it un-watchable to hard-core-spiderman-fans
(sam raimi directing a deadpool movie might be awesome)
when the 3rd spiderman movie came out
the people who hated the 3rd one got into a flame-war over which was better
the 1st one with defoe's goblin or the 2nd one with molina's doc ock
spiderman 4
would have been "profesional theif" black cat stealing adrian toomes' vulture wings
with carnage
with a 3rd guy flying on a goblin glider
would have been too much shit crammed into one movie anyway
but spiderman 4 really got canceled and turned into a re-boot because of spiderman 3 sucking at box office
so, no, apparently raimi wasn't good enough
but then because of re-booting
we got harry becoming goblin while norman's dying
adrian toomes played by michael keaton
black cat and carnage will appear in movies that don't include spiderman
uuuggghhh
no country for old wainds
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love opening this thread and seeing no posts and the 'show ignored content' button
