Movies You've Seen Recently |OT| April 2017

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Finally got around to Arrival. What a fantastic film. Great acting and cinematography. The slow-burn nature of the film really helped add to the tension / ambience.
 
kevin1025 said:
I liked a lot of Sucker Punch. Not all of it because that would be silly, but a lot of it.

I'll try to deflect for you!
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Sucker Punch ruled! The imagery and how each "level" was used was great which it's almost the perfect video game on the big screen as far as I'm concerned. A bit wandering at times but I loved each part. No it's not flawless by any means but such a fun movie and one that I enjoyed the cgi in.
 
mask of the phantasm isn't even the best animated batman movie. what kush yah smoking.


Justice league animation>Batman animation.
 
Under the Skin (2013) - ★★★☆☆
I had no expectations going into this one. I didn't know what to expect either, other than Scarlet Johansson starring, and she's one of my favorite actresses. I like the way she acted, and how she was this other thing, secuding men into this very dark but beautiful scenery and it’s full on nude no details to hide. And then she coldly walks back to get dressed. I like the way it was filmed, and there was some very stunning cinematography mixed with some very raw footage of Edinburgh, Scotland. The atmosphere was cool, the locals playing these Scottish people did very well and I loved the ending. But it was a slow burn, and at times monotonous.

Ghost in the Shell (2016) - ★★★☆☆
Just came out of the cinema today having seen this. Wow at that cinematography that was the strongest part of the entire film, but the plot was thankfully also simplified, and the ending changed for the better. This film was way better than the 95’ anime. It was interesting, how this Kuze was hacking into other cyborgs, creating his own network, while Section 9 tried to keep up with all of this, and how Harald Corp played into this as well as the government. The whole plot around Major was great, although I wish they had time to also develop some of the other squad members of Section 9. I liked the action in it, I loved being in this world, and would happily go back there. Unfortunately, we probably won’t get a sequel. Nice film.
 
The BFG (2016): I re-read the book in preparation for this. The book itself is special as it's one of the things I did in my short time at Carver Elementary School. This movie is visually beautiful, with Giant Country being a lush green place instead of a scorching desert. The wisp-y colored dreams make Dream Country into a beautiful place as well, along with other things like the BFG sneaking around London at night, and the morning scene in the garden. There are differences between the movie and book. The BFG's home has a lot more stuff in it, and there's a much bigger threat of Sophie being caught outside the snozzcumber bit. He's also more willing to stand up for himself rather than just blowing a Trogglehumper into the Flushlumpeater's ear, and I think the movie is better for it.

I do think this is a pretty good adaptation of the book. Haven't seen the 1989 version since reading the book the first time 20 years ago.
 
Beauty and the Beast was decent. Music was great and the sets were pretty good. However, I wasn't a fan of the added subplot; it felt entirely unnecessary and messed with the already jarring editing. Made the film feel bloated.

The camera work was very boring. Lots of static shots that at times it felt like some BTS footage with special effects. The sequences like Be Our Guest were different because they were entirely CGI and just felt so much more cinematic.

Emma Watson can't sing well... or act very well either. Luke Evans killed it as Gaston and I liked Dan Stevens as the Beast, despite the mostly iffy CGI work.
 
lordxar said:
Sucker Punch ruled! The imagery and how each "level" was used was great which it's almost the perfect video game on the big screen as far as I'm concerned. A bit wandering at times but I loved each part. No it's not flawless by any means but such a fun movie and one that I enjoyed the cgi in.
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Yeah, it was the levels that surprised me, along with the visuals. That and Legend of the Guardians a few months apart made me happy about Zack Snyder. How far we've come since then, haha.
 
Blazing Saddles is hilarious. An absurd send up of the western genre, the film's irreverance disguises a craft that has been missing from the lazier examples of the parody movie that have cropped up in recent years.

The fact that it's shot like a western is the film's greatest strength, as it tricks you into thinking a character or plot point will play out one way only for the film to swerve you with a joke right in the middle. The characters are (intentionally) archetypal, but that only serves to make it funnier when they do or say something you would never expect them to.
 
kevin1025 said:
Yeah, it was the levels that surprised me, along with the visuals. That and Legend of the Guardians a few months apart made me happy about Zack Snyder. How far we've come since then, haha.
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I admit to being visually stimulated be it huge cartoon rabbit knockers or awesome looking levels.
 
So over the next week and a half, my wife is out of town with younger son on a school spring break trip. Older son will be back from college over Easter weekend, so he and I may choose to hit a couple of the movies listed below based on his preference. I also have to help out with my parents which limits my ability to run through a movie every single night.

That being said, assuming I'll knock out maybe 6 or 7 of these, what would you consider the priority of doing so? These are all available to me either via Amazon Prime, Netflix or HBO Go.

These would all be first watches (although I suspect I saw Blazing Saddles eons ago).

Batman vs. Superman (should I waste 2+ hours of my life to see just how bad it is?)
Big Lebowski
Blazing Saddles
Speed Racer (a GAF favorite and I adored the cartoon when I was younger)
Everybody Wants Some
Creed
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Grosse Pointe Blank
Nacho Libre
Goon
Bronson
Black Snake Moan
Once Upon a Time in the West


These are all movies my wife is unlikely to want to watch. I'm thinking top 5 are 1, Big Lebowski; 2, Creed; 3, Everybody Wants Some; 4, Blazing Saddles; 5, Speed Racer
 
Puck Beaverton said:
I don't watch cartoons because I'm an adult.

Bateman TAS is better than Justice League, although I dig it.
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19555_the-lonely-island-snl-andy-samberg-threw-it-on-the-ground.gif
 
AngmarsKing701 said:
Batman vs. Superman (should I waste 2+ hours of my life to see just how bad it is?)
Big Lebowski
Blazing Saddles
Speed Racer (a GAF favorite and I adored the cartoon when I was younger)
Everybody Wants Some
Creed
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Grosse Pointe Blank
Nacho Libre
Goon
Bronson
Black Snake Moan
Once Upon a Time in the West
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What's I've watched:

Big Lebowski was ok. It didn't hit me like it has others.

Blazing Saddles is awesome!

Tucker and Dale is seriously dumb fun.

Goon was actually pretty damn good surprisingly.

Once Upon a Time in the West is an incredibly slow slog but amazing, watch that one for sure.
 
Being very telegraphic AngmarsKing701 :

Batman vs. Superman Terrible
Big Lebowski Great
Blazing Saddles One of the weakest works of Mel Brooks
Speed Racer (a GAF favorite and I adored the cartoon when I was younger) Fun
Everybody Wants Some Haven't seen it
Creed Shit
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil I laughed way more than i should
Grosse Pointe Blank Shit Not even Benny the Jet saves it.
Nacho Libre Haven't seen it
Goon Haven't seen it
Bronson You might develop a Tom Hardy mancrush. Very stylish, a bit hollow.
Black Snake Moan Meh
Once Upon a Time in the West The best
 
AngmarsKing701 said:
So over the next week and a half, my wife is out of town with younger son on a school spring break trip. Older son will be back from college over Easter weekend, so he and I may choose to hit a couple of the movies listed below based on his preference. I also have to help out with my parents which limits my ability to run through a movie every single night.

That being said, assuming I'll knock out maybe 6 or 7 of these, what would you consider the priority of doing so? These are all available to me either via Amazon Prime, Netflix or HBO Go.

These would all be first watches (although I suspect I saw Blazing Saddles eons ago).

Batman vs. Superman (should I waste 2+ hours of my life to see just how bad it is?)
Big Lebowski
Blazing Saddles
Speed Racer (a GAF favorite and I adored the cartoon when I was younger)
Everybody Wants Some
Creed
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Grosse Pointe Blank
Nacho Libre
Goon
Bronson
Black Snake Moan
Once Upon a Time in the West


These are all movies my wife is unlikely to want to watch. I'm thinking top 5 are 1, Big Lebowski; 2, Creed; 3, Everybody Wants Some; 4, Blazing Saddles; 5, Speed Racer
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Only Thing worth watching is speed racer
 
Once Upon a time in the West
Everybody Wants Some
Big Lebowski
Blazing Saddles
Speed Racer
Batman bin Suparman
Creed

Watch those ones
 
Speed racer is actually not a movie but a flat nauseating neon disco ball, some facets of which are at times glistening with flashes of John Goodman and Susan Sarandon's faces wondering what they are doing, at times with subpar actors in very ugly costumes realizing there is no plot.

Other than that, Once upon a time in the west and The Big Lebowski are masterpieces, Blazing Saddles and Creed are pretty good. And Everybody wants some is probably worth watching.
 
The Lobster is a movie I would've adored during my awkward highschool years. Now? It seems too heavyhanded and overlong. Aside from some humorous bits, it's too wrapped up in its 'point' for me to call it clever or insightful.
 
Sibersk Esto said:
The Lobster is a movie I would've adored during my awkward highschool years. Now? It seems too heavyhanded and overlong. Aside from some humorous bits, it's too wrapped up in its 'point' for me to call it clever or insightful.
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I would have expected the complaint to be that it was too wrapped up in its absurdist fantasy to have a coherent "point."

But that's exactly what makes it so brilliant. First and foremost, it is hilarious for its deadpan insistence and follow through on the world it creates. If you consider that world to be in service to any kind of "point", you automatically miss most of the appeal of the movie. I'd say this level of dedication to such a bizarre world is a rarer feat than an insightful point anyway. And in a way, the dedication is itself insightful, if you consider it as a broad comment on our own dedication to our absurd world, rather than making more specific comparisons (which exist as well, but become incoherent when viewed that way).
 
I love how lanthimos just fully commits to these bizarre ass scenarios he involves his characters in. There is no compromise or attempt to normalize stuff for the viewers
 
Anyway, back to business.

Kong: Skull Island (2017) - it's a bit rough in pacing, but it was a fun ride all in all while doing fun thing with the war stuff (eyes) and the editing. It is really John C. Reilly's movie though, as he is the main character. I wonder if the latest changes to the script were mostly just evening things out and adding the monarch subplot that appears to be there
for sequel reasons. Within the first few minutes: "like the branch that searches for signs of alien life?" "Those guys are nuts!". Having read the origin of a certain Kaiju on gaf, I couldn't help but get excited a little.
I look forward to the other movies. Also, I really appreciated
that the very first thing to hit a chopper was in fact a tree. Dat setup for Kong vs Godzilla.

Power Rangers (2017) - well, it's not as bad as it could have been, but it's really not too far from what I expected the layout of the script to be. It's also a movie that has no idea what it wants to be: Gritty Chronicle, kids show, or coming of age. It starts out chronicle, then randomly decides to be 'coming of age' stuff, and then decides to go kids show, all without any apparent reason or focus on being just one instead of everything.
The self-censoring on 'shit' and 'fuck' from Billy (who is however, the only decent character) really stands out as being wtf when fucking revenge porn is in this. Similarly the whole protector angle with Red going: "let go kill Rita", like WTF? KILL??? Along with same Rita eating a fucking donut in the forced down your throat Krispy Creme advertisement as a central plot thing (this is real btw)? No, fuck you.
While trying to be something new, all this movie manages to be is an edgy try-hard teenager that winds up embarrassing himself. Except for Billy, he's good people.

Justice League The Flashpoint Paradox (2013) - so I think this is an adaptation of the Flashpoint event comic and it's actually pretty fun to see everything go to shit. Sadly, Martha Joker was not actually explored or shown, but Thomas Wayne as liquored-up gun toting bats was amusingly different from the usual fare. Compared to the other DC animations this is actually worthwhile if you're not a comic reader (like me), but you still want to get the gist of what comic nerds keep talking about.

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) - okay, so unless I'm imagining things, this must have influenced Akira Toriyama while writing the 'Cell saga' of Dragonball. The reason is that this movie has the shot of empty clothes laying on the floor and an alien absorbing biomass, which really is not that common, and it's perfectly reproduced in the same manner in Dragonball. There is no shame in being influenced btw, but I do wonder when these movies and TV serials reached Japan, and whether I've been blind to a whole universe of influenced productions from the Quatermass series. Granted, I have been blind to that anyway since I didn't see this classic series until now.
Alas, if you're looking for the TV serial, it was not recorded beyond the first two episodes and as such is lost in its original form. A 2005 'redo' from the original script was made however, starring David Tennant.
Also, one shot really stands out as having influenced 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that is when one of the crew of the rocket ship walks up to a wall, similar to the depictions in that movie. That was really fun to see in such an early movie, and solidifies its place as a classic early sci-fi movie.

Quatermass 2 (movie, 1957) - ironically I have this memory from about fifteen years ago or more of seeing a bunch of towering black creatures with actors looking out a window, and somehow this got tied in my mind with The Thing From Another World (1951). Turns out that image is from Quatermass 2, and my brain just messed those up for some reason. But I've been looking for it and it was surprising to find it here. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I feel like I've been calling myself a fan of sci-fi in name only, while having never seen the actual classics (granted, most people wouldn't care about that). Since I only started looking for this series due to a Gremlins 2 rewatch, I have to pay my due to Joe Dante for putting a reference to Quatermass on an office door in that movie. And speaking of Gremlins and Dante, when going through some 'Trailers from hell' video's, it turns out Dante is really big on 1950's monster movies, which goes a long way in explaining why the melting effects on the Gremlins is similar to that seen in these 50's movies. I believe I mentioned this melting effect with Fiend Without A Face or another movie last month.
Anyway, with the writing being clear and the pacing brisk, you really won't be bored watching the Quatermass series, even in modern times.

Quatermass and the pit (movie, 1967) - I also watched the Hammer movie version of The Pit after previously having seen the TV serial original. Unfortunately, being a movie can be a bad thing compared to television, when producers don't take science(s) very seriously. Whereas the early dig stages are slower, methodical, and scientifically accurate in characters and depiction in the TV serial, this movie version cheapens this early setup stage immensely to the point of being utterly ridiculous when a full, intact skeleton, just happens to be in a wall of fresh mud. The writing occasionally takes a hit too, though not as much. It does however, make the most of its halved run-time versus the TV version by making the plot easier to follow and greatly expanding on the effects for the finale. But it sacrifices the sense of dread that the original has to do so, as well as the vital symmetry between the first introduction of Quatermass and the original ending speech. As a result, the movie version is worthwhile for being in color and larger in scope, but doesn't stand up to the intensity of the original 1958 TV serial (which is about 3.5 hours, and awesome).

The Abominable Snowman (1957) - staying with Nigel Kneale as screenwriter for one last huzzah on this round (I still have to watch the fourth and final Quatermass movie), The Abominable Snowman uses the now familiar setup of a science-man going on a adventure of knowledge to battle the unknown, featuring Peter Cushing as the would-be conqueror of curiosity. The movie may not go to the same heights as the previously discussed films, but it's pleasant and provides the opportunity to see Peter Cushing play a different character than the one his career is unfortunately being condensed to by a company of white slavers. So that's a good enough reason to watch it. Right, George?


edit: damn, I should have waited three posts so I could be on top of the next page. #BuryMeWithMyGifs
 
Sibersk Esto said:
The Lobster is a movie I would've adored during my awkward highschool years. Now? It seems too heavyhanded and overlong. Aside from some humorous bits, it's too wrapped up in its 'point' for me to call it clever or insightful.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the world of Lanthimos.
 
Just rewatched the animated Beauty and the Beast film and it moves along so briskly compared to the live action remake. I was fine with the longer takes on existing scenes but I really do wish they hadn't padded out the runtime with that
mother
subplot.

I think I can safely say this is still my favourite Disney animated film.
 
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