Wot films are you watching?

[LexW]

what you see is what you get

This seems like a profound misunderstanding of the entire genre of murder-mysteries, something Johnson is very familiar with, so I remain extremely skeptical.

Also

Summary

They did go unreliable narrator - everyone remembers different things, sometimes significantly different. Surprised you didn’t pick this up on three viewings!

[edit] turns out it was directed by Duncan Jones after Moon (much better) and before Warcraft (which I assume was much worse).

Surprisingly the Warcraft movie doesn’t actually suck. It got terrible reviews, and only did okay box office (except in China, where it was huge, but so are a lot of things). So when I watched it on Netflix I wasn’t expecting much. It’s actually a kinda-fun movie, and sticks very close to the established plot/lore for the Warcraft games (just compresses stuff a bit). I’d say in a weird way it’s a lot more watchable than Sourcecode or quite a number of other movies. He pretty much nails Warcraft, with it’s weird mix of humour and seriousness, and attempts at pathos and meaning which don’t quite succeed. So I think there’s hope for Rogue Trooper. He probably “gets it”, and isn’t going to massively deviate from the source material.

[theclockworkrat]

I remember enjoying Source Code quite a bit the first time I saw it, then watching it again a few years later and finding the whole film insufferable. Honestly can’t remember what led me to either opinion though. I think the romantic sub-plot was one of the downsides.

[BillButNotBen]

I liked the relationship between Jake and the 2 female leads. I somewhat preferred the relationship with the ‘radio’ operator as that was a bit more interesting.
The ending was pretty cheesy.

I think it ends up being too similar to things we’ve seen before (groundhog day, various tv show episodes, etc…) without really doing much to make it stand out as unique.
Edge of Tomorrow has a lot more fun with the same idea.
Sourcecode keeps mentioning that he can go nuts and it doesn’t matter, but he never really does anything like just shoot everyone in the head and then go through their bags.

[The_Velour_Fog]

sorry i posted from bed and was going to expand more

Summary

yes they did show events from different perspectives, but when they were explicitly being re-told for the detective’s benefit.
The actual events from Marta’s perspective were shown in pure flashback and not framed in that way so we have to assume they actually took place.
Even the vomiting was played straight - why else would Marta vomit into the cup in the car when no-one else was watching?

[LexW]

Re: your question:

Summary

For two reasons - first off, he’s right there and could have seen her at any moment (indeed he must have been able to smell the vomit and I think may even have made a comment to that effect), if he ducked his head even slightly, and second off, her maintaining the illusion that she pukes when she lies is vital to her plan, and I can’t remember what she lied out there, but it was a pretty obvious or easily detected lie - I remember thinking “why even lie about that?”. And the why is to reinforce the illusion.

Summary

As for Marta’s recollections being “pure flashback”, actually they’re a mix. In the bits where her being the mastermind would matter, she’s telling Blanc, and they’re framed the same way as with other characters.

I mean, really there are two possiiblities here. Rian Johnson is a man who loves murder mysteries and the whole “whodunnit” genre. So either:

Summary

A) He constructed a relatively straightforward film, and put in a load of stuff that makes the film itself look a bit messy and contradictory, and told a simple and not very plausible story. At the very least this scenario means there’s a whole bunch of never-explained stuff. It also makes Benoit Blanc not look like a complete idiot, even though the film makes it clear he is a complete idiot (his getting Gravity’s Rainbow reversed, for example).

Summary

or

Summary

B) He built a brilliant and multi-leveled murder mystery, full of brilliant red herrings, even the ending, and potentially every single thing is explained and adds up, and Benoit Blanc is exactly the idiot the film has been telling us he is.

I mean, take your pick, but I think he’s a better director than the first option.

[The_Velour_Fog]

the reviews and possibly the director himself mentioned that it wasnt a classic whodunit, more of a whydunit

i dont think the movie suffers at all from that interpretation

[BillButNotBen]

So… Solo… is so so.

Nah, it’s probably better than so-so, but it’s not great.
It’s a fun action movie, and I enjoyed it. It’s probably a bit too long, but its pacing is pretty good.

In fact, I’d say it’s pretty great except for the dumb endingS, which are both highly predictable and highly unbelievable.

To my great surprise, I had no problem with the non-Ford Solo guy. He worked quite well. I also liked Emilia Clarke, who was much better in this than Terminator:GarbAge and more fun and human than in GoT.
I also liked that the relationship between her and Solo didn’t fall into predictable tropes and cliches.

I liked Woody Harrelson as well, and the team/teams mostly had good chemistry. (Star Wars movies do do good chemistry… except the prequels).

There were basically 2 problems with the movie.

1 - Too many fan references and callbacks/forwards (Mild plot spoilers, big Line spoilers)

One of the annoying things about the prequels was the way they made the universe feel small by including too many links to the originals. Solo is 10 times worse. Rogue One managed to mostly avoid this.
Sure, it’s cute and I guess it’s a reward to the fans when they reference other characters or events, or reuse famous lines. But Solo seemed to be doing it every 5 seconds, and going 'wink wink! Did you notice that! Did you see how clever that was!?'
Eg: The line about ‘there’s a BIG crime boss on Tatooine…’ was repeated about 5 times just to hammer it home.
A few of these would have been ok, but they were just too obvious.

There was also the other sort of reference, where they kept throwing in references to characters/factions from the EU. Some of those I got, some of those I didn’t. But again there were too many and they were too clunkily obvious even when I didn’t get them.
“Hey, aren’t you Beckett? You’re the guy who killed Aurra Sing! (You know, that one lady who was referenced one second in one movie but in a bunch of EU stuff and only big fans are going to get this line and everyone else will be thinking why am I talking about this guff?)”
"Wow! You can do Teras Kasi, that dumb martial art from a crap star wars video game!! I’d better point it out because people will go nuts for that clever reference!"
Lando thinks mining outposts are the worst? Ha ha!

Plus the big surprise reveal of a bad guy at the end was a big surprise and kinda cool (Hey it’s that guy!) but makes no sense unless you’ve been keeping up with other parts of the EU (which I haven’t).

2 - Plot twists were mostly hugely predictable and out of character (BIG spoilers

Pop quiz hot shot:
You have watched more than one movie in your life.
You are watching Harry Potter part 1 and Hermione pointedly says to Harry “Don’t trust anyone!”.
In part 7, Hermione betrays Harry and says “I told you not to trust anyone”.
Are you (a) Shocked and surprised because you’d never have expected her to do that!
(b) Entirely unsurprised but thinking 'this is totally out of character for her and dumb"?

If (a) you might like the end of Solo.

[really spoilers!]
The ending has, I think, 3 surprise reveals/betrayals in 5 minutes. 1 with the Marauders kinda works. 1 with Becket is really dumb. The other one kinda makes sense, but feels out of character. It also feels a bit dumb that the big bad would believe her.

Both of these were exacerbated by the fact that we already know how the main mission has to end because we’ve been told in the originals. They’re going to Kessell in the Falcon and will have to leave quickly. I wonder if they can make that run in time??
So we have events we already know, lots of references and lines you may know, and surprises that are predictable.

I guess a lot of the issues may be down to the re-shoots and edits, but I don’t know if they were added or toned down. There are a number of points where it feels like points/lines are repeated when not needed. There’s also some very quick ‘tone changes’ where people go from grieving to joking within about 2 seconds.

Despite all these nitpicks, it is fun. It feels like it could have been really good if it’d dumped the fan service, had less production/editing issues and had a bit of a better ending.

[Chaz]

I missed Solo at the cinema and wasn’t expecting much from it when I finally got it on UHD, as pretty much everybody kept panning it, but like you I actually quite enjoyed it too. A friend of mine who’s really into Star Wars wasn’t keen on it, as he thought it wasn’t a very Star Warsy film. I kind of quite liked it because of that really. It was set in the Star Wars universe but almost completely devoid of Stormtroopers and there were no damn Jedi. If your idea of a good Star Wars movie features and army of Stormtroopers and lightsabers at dawn, then yeah you’re going to be dissapointed. Personally I found the lack of all that stuff quite refreshing. It’d be nice to see more stories set in the Star Wars universe that don’t focus on the Empire or the rebellion. In fact I’d rather like to see a sequel to Solo and some more intergalactic heist hijinks, but something tells me that’s not going to happen.

Haven’t seen Rogue One yet either. Still waiting for that one to come out on UHD.

[BillButNotBen]

It might be a case of seeing it first, but I really liked Rogue One, mainly for the same reasons you gave with Solo. It was refreshing to see a movie in the SW universe, but with the freedom to do something a bit different.

I’d actually say Solo was a lot closer to Rogue One than I was expecting. Solo has more comedy. Rogue One has more stormtroopers. Solo is a ‘putting the gang together for a heist’ movie. Rogue One is a ‘putting the team together for a mission’ war movie. (Though it’s not as much of a ‘dirty dozen’ war movie as I expected).

Both look great. I think Rogue One is better.
I’d also like more stand-alone star wars movies, but I think they maybe abandoned that idea. Shame, as they worked better than the ‘main’ ones.

PS/ If you liked Solo, you should also probably try The Mandalorian if you get the chance. It’s basically a standalone ‘star wars as a western’ movie but split into short episodes.

[BillButNotBen]

I watched an old movie you might have heard of. I think it was called “A New Hope”. [/peter parker]

You know what, Star Wars (to give it its proper name) is a straight up great movie. I think it’s become easy to forget that as the ‘franchise’ has expanded and as all these other elements have been bolted on and fleshed out.

I finally managed to watch a ‘custom special edition’ that has blueray quality, but with a proper color grading and with most of the crap Special Edition ‘humor’ and rubbish cgi additions removed, but the decent improvements kept. Plus Han shoots first and there’s no dumb Jaba scene.

Given how old it is now, and how much tech and film-making has advanced, you’d think it’d be a bit boring and naff, but scenes like the death star escape and the attack on the death star are still really good.

Was mainly watching it to see if it was suitable for the kids. Still undecided. In HD, there’s more blood on the chopped off arm than I remember, and you see the skeletons on the farmstead much clearer than I remember. Plus Vader breaking someone’s neck with sound effects. I also realized it’s up there with The Last Jedi in terms of the rebellion troops having a very bad day. Their ground troopers die by the dozen in the first scenes, and basically they sacrifice all their pilots in the final battle, with apparently only Luke and Wedge surviving.

I enjoyed Solo this week, but even with its tech advantages, there’s nothing in there half as exciting as the death star attack.

I’m trying to remember what age I first watched it. It must have been on TV in the UK from about 1982, when I was 6. But I’m sure I already had all the toys and knew all the characters by the time I was 5.
I wonder if it was a case of picking up the movie by osmosis from all the toys and trailers and adverts and talking with other kids. Or if I’d actually seen it.

[BillButNotBen]

Watched Ratatouille for the first time.
As far as Pixar movies go, it’s not that great. I guess that’s why it seems to have joined A Bug’s Life in being a forgotten pixar movie.

It’s a pretty standard Pixar movie, except for choosing to have its central ‘cute’ neurotic fast talking character be a somewhat toy-unfriendly Rat.
It has a few exciting chase sequences, which Pixar can do in their sleep these days, but it’s not particularly funny or surprising, and my kids got kinda bored about 2/3rd of the way through.
Having your kid’s movie be about legal contracts, dna tests and food critics reviews isn’t that great an idea. Having the big dramatic climax to your kids movie be a voiceover newspaper critic’s review of a restaurant is a really bad idea.

The rat character was fine, but the kid character was so bland and wet that you couldn’t really care or root for him. I guess he had to be, given his role, but it didn’t lead to much investment in the character.
The ‘romance’ with the only female chef in the kitchen felt really out of the blue and crammed in, and very out of date.

It’s not terrible, and it’s probably better for adults than kids, but if you’re looking for a movie to watch with your kids then I’d put it pretty low down the list.

[LexW]

Have to agree completely. As a Pixar movie it automatically got free pass positive reviews, getting an astonishing 96% on RT, but it’s an absolute snooze, and I say that despite actually enjoying the specific setting. I mean, I’ve got issues with The Incredibles and its weird Randian subtext (which the director denies, but has also featured in other films of his), but at least its a fun movie, even with the subtext, and has good group dynamics and characters and so on.

When I watched Ratatouille and realized how it had been incredibly positively reviewed, I realized I could no longer trust reviews of any Pixar movie, because I dunno what they do to film critics, but whatever it is, they aren’t calling a weak movie a weak movie. It’s at best, a 3/5 movie. I feel like, if it had “Dreamworks” written on it, not “Pixar”, people might have noticed that.

I don’t think its even really much better for adults. The main human character is just awful as you say, and that romance felt out of date and even a bit creepy even at the time.

[BillButNotBen]

Oh good. That means I’m not crazy, because I remembered that it got really good reviews.

[Skalpadda]

I decided to watch two movies I heard lots praise for last year.

First Parasite, which I knew nothing about beyond “a poor family moves into a rich family’s house” (not entirely accurate as it turns out) and that I’ve liked some of the director’s other movies (except Okja which I turned off a little way in because I couldn’t stand how saccharine it was). Going in without knowing much about it was probably a good thing, because it’s a movie with a lot of surprises. I liked it a lot, not sure if it deserved that Best Picture Oscar, but it’s definitely one of the better films I’ve seen from last year.

Then The Lighthouse, which I also really liked. Again I knew very little about it going in. I was worried at first that the black and white and old film aspect ratio (I dunno what you call it, it’s narrower than 3:4) would feel like a pretentious crutch, but no, it works well and it’s beautifully used. I don’t want to talk about the story to this one either, but it’s worth seeing if you like surreal weird things and Willem Dafoe is absolutely wonderful in it. Robert Pattinson was also good, I had no real notion of him beyond that he’s played various teenage heartthrobs but that’s definitely not his part here.

[Sarfrin]

I forgot we watched Train to Busan the other day. I expected it to be scary but had no idea it was going to be so sad as well. Really good.

[LexW]

Then The Lighthouse, which I also really liked. Again I knew very little about it going in. I was worried at first that the black and white and old film aspect ratio (I dunno what you call it, it’s narrower than 3:4) would feel like a pretentious crutch, but no, it works well and it’s beautifully used. I don’t want to talk about the story to this one either, but it’s worth seeing if you like surreal weird things and Willem Dafoe is absolutely wonderful in it. Robert Pattinson was also good, I had no real notion of him beyond that he’s played various teenage heartthrobs but that’s definitely not his part here.

I am reminded that I need to watch this and will do so! Seems like both Pattinson and Stewart, despite being much-mocked for the Twilight movies (which are pretty bad and only sometimes the good kind of bad), turned out to be pretty good dramatic actors. Taylor Lautner needs to be in more comedies (the werewolf in Twlight), he’s great in when he gets to do that (he was bizarrely in a small-budget British sitcom for several years - after Andy Samberg was in it! It feels like they both lost a bet or something).

Anyway, yes excited to see it. Weird movies/books involving lighthouses often tend to be good, for whatever reason.

[Det.Bullock]

So… Solo… is so so.

Nah, it’s probably better than so-so, but it’s not great.
It’s a fun action movie, and I enjoyed it. It’s probably a bit too long, but its pacing is pretty good.

In fact, I’d say it’s pretty great except for the dumb endingS, which are both highly predictable and highly unbelievable.

To my great surprise, I had no problem with the non-Ford Solo guy. He worked quite well. I also liked Emilia Clarke, who was much better in this than Terminator:GarbAge and more fun and human than in GoT.
I also liked that the relationship between her and Solo didn’t fall into predictable tropes and cliches.

I liked Woody Harrelson as well, and the team/teams mostly had good chemistry. (Star Wars movies do do good chemistry… except the prequels).

There were basically 2 problems with the movie.

1 - Too many fan references and callbacks/forwards (Mild plot spoilers, big Line spoilers)

One of the annoying things about the prequels was the way they made the universe feel small by including too many links to the originals. Solo is 10 times worse. Rogue One managed to mostly avoid this.
Sure, it’s cute and I guess it’s a reward to the fans when they reference other characters or events, or reuse famous lines. But Solo seemed to be doing it every 5 seconds, and going 'wink wink! Did you notice that! Did you see how clever that was!?'
Eg: The line about ‘there’s a BIG crime boss on Tatooine…’ was repeated about 5 times just to hammer it home.
A few of these would have been ok, but they were just too obvious.

There was also the other sort of reference, where they kept throwing in references to characters/factions from the EU. Some of those I got, some of those I didn’t. But again there were too many and they were too clunkily obvious even when I didn’t get them.
“Hey, aren’t you Beckett? You’re the guy who killed Aurra Sing! (You know, that one lady who was referenced one second in one movie but in a bunch of EU stuff and only big fans are going to get this line and everyone else will be thinking why am I talking about this guff?)”
"Wow! You can do Teras Kasi, that dumb martial art from a crap star wars video game!! I’d better point it out because people will go nuts for that clever reference!"
Lando thinks mining outposts are the worst? Ha ha!

Plus the big surprise reveal of a bad guy at the end was a big surprise and kinda cool (Hey it’s that guy!) but makes no sense unless you’ve been keeping up with other parts of the EU (which I haven’t).

2 - Plot twists were mostly hugely predictable and out of character (BIG spoilers

Pop quiz hot shot:
You have watched more than one movie in your life.
You are watching Harry Potter part 1 and Hermione pointedly says to Harry “Don’t trust anyone!”.
In part 7, Hermione betrays Harry and says “I told you not to trust anyone”.
Are you (a) Shocked and surprised because you’d never have expected her to do that!
(b) Entirely unsurprised but thinking 'this is totally out of character for her and dumb"?

If (a) you might like the end of Solo.

[really spoilers!]
The ending has, I think, 3 surprise reveals/betrayals in 5 minutes. 1 with the Marauders kinda works. 1 with Becket is really dumb. The other one kinda makes sense, but feels out of character. It also feels a bit dumb that the big bad would believe her.

Summary

Oh, he knows or at least he knows she’s not telling the truth. He just doesn’t care after all by his logic if she managed to kill her boss she’ll better suit his needs.
That’s why he summoned his lightsaber in front of her, it was his way to say “Don’t hope to pull that same stunt on me, kiddo”.

[TheDreamlord]

First Parasite

If you liked Parasite, I recommend you explore Korean cinema more. It has some amazing movies, especially out of 2-3 directors that have done really great movies. I can make recommendations if you are interested. For me, Korean cinema when I discovered it a decade and a bit ago was a revelation. They do have a tendency to ultra violence, though. But I love the sense of catharsis and drama a lot of them have.

Then The Lighthouse

On the other hand, I can’t stand that guy (he did A Witch too, if I remember right). I find his movies painfully pretentious, even if excellently acted and directed. I just can’t stand his plots. Beautifully shot though, I give him that. And excellent acting from Defoe as always.

[Skalpadda]

If you liked Parasite, I recommend you explore Korean cinema more. It has some amazing movies, especially out of 2-3 directors that have done really great movies. I can make recommendations if you are interested. For me, Korean cinema when I discovered it a decade and a bit ago was a revelation. They do have a tendency to ultra violence, though. But I love the sense of catharsis and drama a lot of them have.

Recommend away. I’ve seen a couple of Korean movies I liked, but more is welcome. The ultra violence thing seems to be pretty common in east asian movies in general, along with them loving their “everyone dies and/or is miserable” endings.

On the other hand, I can’t stand that guy (he did A Witch too, if I remember right). I find his movies painfully pretentious, even if excellently acted and directed. I just can’t stand his plots. Beautifully shot though, I give him that. And excellent acting from Defoe as always.

I haven’t seen The Witch, but in The Lighthouse there isn’t that much of a plot beyond the confines of the characters and the rest is mainly atmosphere. It worked for me, the gradual character drama kept me interested because the performances were good enough to carry it, but I can see why some might want more out of it. I’m also a sucker for movies that just look and sound interesting, which this definitely does.

[BillButNotBen]

I went through a big Korean Movie phase about 15 years ago, and their differences from mainstream western movies made them quite refreshing. It didn’t last that long though. I guess I got used to their tropes and they no longer felt so refreshing.

Haven’t watched many recent ones though, don’t know if that’s changed. They had a refreshing, then annoying, tendency to jump genres about 5 times per movie. Serious drama -> zany comedy -> serious drama --> action --> etc.

I think the only one I’ve watched reasonably recently was Snowpiercer (not 100 korean, but there in spirit) which I enjoyed but seemed to share the usual pros and cons.
Want to watch Parasite though.