Wot films are you watching?

Skalpadda 2020-06-12 17:20:22 UTC #9718

I finally watched Star Trek: Into Darkness. It’s not as bad as I expected, there are some nice moments and a couple of the action scenes were kinda fun. But it’s still pretty bad and managed to undermine most of the things it actually did well with dumb writing.

For example

I thought Kirk’s “death scene” was pretty well done. I mean yeah, it’s obviously just Spock’s death in Wrath of Khan with Kirk and Spock reversed, but it was a good couple of scenes leading up to it and I was onboard with the drama. Until Spock does the “KHAAAN!” scream, which just came across as a really dumb pop culture reference and puncured the whole thing.

And while Kirk would obviously not die permanently they apparently didn’t trust the audience to remember the scenes that set up the movie but felt the need to beat us over the head with Khan’s magic blood and set it up again with the daft tribble resurrection thing, making the entire ending completely predictable.

All the plot felt like it was just there to connect the action scenes together, there’s no character development that didn’t already happen in the previous movie, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to say about… anything, as far as I can tell.

I also saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and… it’s a Tarantino movie. I don’t feel like there’s all that much to say about it. Like a lot of Tarantino movies it doesn’t really feel like a story anyone felt the need to tell, more like Quentin writing down his idle daydreams. It’s beautifully done and entertaining from moment to moment, but in the end it amounts to “some stuff happens and then there’s an incredibly violent finale, then it ends”.

BillButNotBen 2020-06-13 01:13:21 UTC #9719

This was my general opinion too. I guess I kinda liked a lot of the cheesy Wrath of Khan references. I may have swtiched off my brain though.

I feel like this about most of his recent movies, although I haven’t seen OUaTiH.(?!)

A lot of the movie critic reviews of his recent movies seem to keep rating them higher and higher, but for me I think his early work was much better. While even his early work can tend to fall into the “stuff happens, people talk, violent finale” mold, they felt more energetic and focused.
Frankly, I’d still rate Reservoir dogs and pulp fiction as the best of the bunch. Almost everything from Kill Bill Vol2 onwards has felt kinda meandering and unfocused, with the probable exception of Django.

LexW 2020-06-13 11:30:27 UTC #9720

Django is good but even it sort of fucks around too much and doesn’t have as much edge as one would expect, because it’s sort of too much of a celebratory kind of revenge movie. On the one hand, I liked that, and I liked some of the ruthlessness (which brought back some of the edge), but on the other hand, it’s not perhaps as good as it could have been.

BillButNotBen 2020-06-13 11:41:02 UTC #9721

Agreed. I’m also not sure I’m a big fan of his style of revenge movie.

Death Proof, Inglorious Basterds and Django were 3 revenge movies in a row, and in the first two I ended up feeling sorry for the bad guys.
This may well have been intentional (especially with IB), but it wasn’t particularly enjoyable.

Actually, I guess Kill Bill was also a revenge movie, but for some reason I have no problem with that, or at least the first part.
It doesn’t help that his last few movies have felt pretty long.

LexW 2020-06-13 11:51:42 UTC #9722

KB has the difference in that there’s always a risk, and price, to the revenge. The Bride could have lost at any moment, almost. Whereas Django, whilst the revenge is very justified, like insanely justified, it feels more like once he finally gets going, he’s just playing with them, and there’s not a lot of risk to him, which somehow cheapens it (especially as he had been at so much risk earlier).

BillButNotBen 2020-06-20 01:57:31 UTC #9723

RIP Ian Holm, aka Bilbo.
I just saw him last week in The Hobbit, even though he’s only in it for a few seconds.

somini 2020-06-20 11:28:37 UTC #9724

You mean the priest from The Fifth Element?

BillButNotBen 2020-06-20 13:09:14 UTC #9725

No, I mean Ash from Alien.
(Or possibly Pod from The Borrowers).

MiniMatt 2020-06-21 21:42:11 UTC #9726

Currently watching The Big Lebowski on account of it being on telly & being one of the best movies of all time (and this after me preaching about the dangers of nostalgia in the other thread)

Rath 2020-06-29 17:37:42 UTC #9727

Well guys and gals, we’ve apparently got one year before Johnny Mnemonic becomes ridiculuous.

Or, you know, six months.

somini 2020-06-30 17:49:28 UTC #9729

I want my 320GB of hot RAM…

LexW 2020-07-01 11:22:41 UTC #9730

Dude, you know better than to challenge 2020! This year has been doing absolutely every single thing it can to make the world into a full-on cyberpunk dystopia (2019 really half-arsed it by comparison). Don’t taunt it! We don’t want 2021 to try and outdo 2020, either.

Movie-wise, I think they only thing I’ve watched recently has been the original Aladdin, in 4K on Disney+, which was amazing, as it always is. A few jokes slightly off-colour now, of course, and others just feeling out of date - I mean good god I’m 42 and a couple of the references were clearly “before my time”, but I suppose that’s just how these things are.

somini 2020-07-05 23:49:57 UTC #9732

Missed this about two weeks ago, . So much good stuff…

alms 2020-07-06 01:15:09 UTC #9733

Watched one of the most celebrated(?) films of 2019, Ford V Ferrari.

For a film that is supposedly about Ford and Ferrari, there is surprisingly little of either. I guess the script must’ve been titled The Carroll Shelby & Ken Miles Show until somebody lifted their hand and pointed out the average moviegoer doesn’t have a clue who Carroll Shelby is, let alone Ken Miles.

Mind, while anybody with a passing interest in cars has heard the name Shelby at least once, it’s not like I am a walking encyclopedia, or knew already everything that there was to know about the GT40. Quite the opposite.

But anybody can get a rough idea just by spending much less time reading about the subject, than it takes to watch the film.

My main issue with this picture is similar to that I have with The Imitation Game: both films are entertaining, if watched in a vacuum, but also are way south of the border, when it comes to factual accuracy.

Now, Hollywood certainly doesn’t have an unshakable reputation for adhering to facts, and surely one cannot expect a script writer not to take liberties – it’s a film telling a long story in a limited time, so it can never be 100% accurate.

Literally every story I’ve read about the Drake suggests he was given a better portrayal in the picture than he actually deserved, even though the casting choice is perplexing, to say the least. However, the Ford side of things seemed wildly out of whack.

It’s rarely a serious film, something that perhaps can be explained by a desire to depict that era of racing as daredevil, and also to provide a counter-balance to some really tragic facts, but the end result didn’t make entirely sense. It hits a weirdly farcical note.

Christian Bale has been given a colorful role here, and he’s fun to watch for most of his screen time, although he came across as a bit labored and not fully convincing to me; probably the script is at least partly to blame for this, too.

BillButNotBen 2020-07-06 10:04:44 UTC #9734

most celebrated(?). Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have ignored it then.

Have you seen Rush (2013). I have no idea about the historical accuracy, but that’s a good Vs movie about cars… though much more about their drivers.

LexW 2020-07-06 11:59:09 UTC #9735

You weren’t the only one buddy, I just saw the title and time period and auto-ignored that film. Hilariously if they’d mentioned Shelby instead of Ford I’d have been more interested, not less. I guess I’ll catch it on Netflix or Prime. It does have Damon and Bale, both of whom are enjoyable to watch.

Zephro 2020-07-06 12:30:03 UTC #9736

I think the problem is also that Carroll Shelby only became involved in the car after it’d been racing for a season, and that actually the British Ford division was the one that designed the car (though I’m kinda assuming that was written out of the film so that it all happens in the USA). Shelby was only brought in to fix up the racing team from the mk2 onwards I think, or something like that. So naming it after him would be odd? Though I imagine the film does basically make it about him and ignores all the work done in the UK. As yknow Hollywood.

I didn’t see it but the movie was released as Le’Mans '66 here, so one suspects they thought Le’Mans was more resonant with a British audience.

alms 2020-07-06 13:30:19 UTC #9737

The cult classic here is Steve McQuinn’s Le Mans. It was a very troubled production that ultimately turned sort of alright, although not great by great movies’ standards, it’s a racing fans’ favorite. The twisted road it went through during its making, lends an unevenness to it that immediately stands out; but the film makes up for it by being surprisingly touching and well-acted, though this might not be immediately obvious; for the contemporary viewer there’s a buyer beware concerning the 60s / 70s art film feel, coming from the highly polished quality of today’s entertainment.

There’s also a companion doc on the making of the film, which came out only a few years ago, and is useful to put it in context - in fact, might be worth watching before it.

I haven’t watched Rush yet, seeing how it’s a Ron Howard movie, I always felt kind of skeptical. From what I collected it depicts the Lauda - Hunt rivalry as much more fierce than it actually ever was.

Going back to Ford V Ferrari and its title, the film features Shelby and Miles as the absolute protagonists, dominating screen time; they are presented as the film’s heroes, and almost single-handedly responsible for all that was good about the GT40.

Both Ford and Ferrari, the firms, are kind of villains: the entire Ford structure is shown as some sort of elephantic bureaucracy, inhabited by scores of pen-pushing fools, and guided by spiteful idiots who can hardly see past their nose. Henry Ford and Lee Iacocca in particular look like perfectly idiotic tourists. Caricatures more than human beings.

Hopefully this further elucidates my quip, if needed.

After the intro establishes Shelby’s and Miles’s backstories, Shelby is shown as basically in charge of the GT40 from the get-go, though at times struggling to acquire or maintain full control. While it is mentioned in passing that the prototype will be arriving from the UK, there is no attempt to explain how the car started its life as the Lola Mk6. Throughout the film, the various iterations the car goes through are never well explained, though there are some highlights concerning the technical developments.

The ones I mentioned are actually somewhat minor changes – to say more would be entering major spoilers territory.

Det.Bullock 2020-07-07 00:28:53 UTC #9738

Watched Willow
This is a movie that I wasn’t aware of when I was a kid and probably would have enjoyed it more then, it doesn’t make the mistake Ladyhawke does of using an electronic soundtrack but Ron Howard not being a particularly inventive director ultimately makes the movie much less interesting than it could have been and I wouldn’t be suprised if this movie was mostly made to let the ILM flex their muscles because it’s full of blue screen and effects that push it a bit too much.
Imagine Hook without Spielberg behind the camera and you can get a fair idea of what you are going to see.
Besides, Val Kilmer always looks odd to me and I can’t tell what it is.

BillButNotBen 2020-07-07 04:45:03 UTC #9739

Yeah, I did watch Willow as a kid and enjoyed it quite a bit, although it was never one of the all time classics. Even at the time, the special effects were a bit too ambitious relative to what they could achieve. Also, Willow as a protagonist was slightly limited by what Warwick Davis could do.

I remember parts of it being surprisingly dark for a kids movie, such as the skeletons in cages.

But mainly I remember having a teen crush on Sorcha, partly because she was pretty badass, and probably partly because of the massive sexual tension there was between her and Val.
Also, his character was interestingly non-heroic. Almost a prototype Jack Sparrow.
The Sorcha and Mad Mortigan stuff was much more interesting than the Willow stuff imho.