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Post by Jay on Jan 20, 2022 8:09:19 GMT -8
Jer isn't the only one seeing movies: I'm back on my school schedule and thus back on my streaming BS, working through the ever-past backlog of horror more often than not.
The Lost Boys (1987) I feel like there are two competing movies here, the live-fast-die-young rebellious teenaged vampire movie and the one starring Hollywood's main Coreys in which they fight the vampire menace. The two are connected via the presence of wacky taxidermist grandpa, but only loosely as providing a common base of operations and some comic relief gags. I also spent about twenty minutes googling who the hell saxophone-playing Leo Johnson from the opening concert was. Summary: THIS IS THE GOONIES FOR GOTH / PUNK TEENAGERS
Pet Sematary (1989) An incredibly faithful adaptation on the book, I would have enjoyed it on that merit alone, but the director made a few choices that really added to the overall effect, namely the continued presence of Pax-cow, prefect casting of Jud and Gage, the eerie paintings in Rachel's family home (accompanied by a ghost in drag), and surreal elements like Louis' final entry to the house. One thing that I felt dragged just a little was that Louis' actor was good at vocalizing his moods (dramatic "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOs" aside) but less good at expressing them beyond the dead-eye the character demanded. Summary: I AM BLAMING KEPHEN STING FOR MY INABILITY TO SPELL "CEMETERY" AS AN ADULT
Crimson Peak (2015) Ten minutes in, I was wondering if I should be reading Northanger Abbey or some similarly Gothic novel instead to ground myself. Nevertheless, I found it overall a good watch even without genre context, heavily stylized as it was. The ghosts themselves seemed more at home in Asian horror for their design, but I came away impressed with Jessica Chastain's range within the film as I'd taken her as one of the acting field's interchangeable redheads. On the other hand, I've seen Mia Wasikowska in three things and two of them used her in fairly similar ways. Summary: GUILLERMO DEL TORO, DIRECTOR'S TRADEMARKS: STRONG WOMEN, BATHTUBS, STRAIGHT RAZORS, AND FACIAL INJURIES
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Post by Jay on Feb 12, 2022 11:34:57 GMT -8
I uh.... really hope that I'm not the only one who ends up posting in this here thread. Others perhaps deserve their separate posts but I am not nearly as prolific in my viewing. The Green Knight (2020) I was watching this one in advance of teaching Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and ergo wanted to know what had been done with one of the rare somewhat successful Hollywood adaptations of Arthurian legend. Unfortunately for pedants and purists, the resulting story only barely focuses on the central narrative of the story, which was the juxtaposition of scenes of hunting and Gawain being tempted by the lady while he crashes nervously at a castle, awaiting his Beheading Game date with the Green Knight. That whole thing takes up like twenty minutes. But I'm neither a pedant nor a purist and it would be a silly thing to do with medieval literature anyway, which is basically fanfic. Also I don't know how you make a decent movie out of a guy having blue balls for three days. The rest of the movie functions as a love letter to the period and all its messiness, including some gestures to warfare aftermath, prostitution, gruesome saint's passions, talking foxes, and frost giants for some danged reason, and does so without the whitewashed casting that's typically plagued the genre. It also comes out on the other side with the same core thesis of Gawain being unworthy at this time, for both reasons explicit and implied. I'd regard the movie as a net plus insofar as it got more interest than the field typically generates left to its own devices. Still, I might be careful what company I said that in as some field experts are notoriously fussy. Summary: TELL ME YOU'RE AN A24 MOVIE WITHOUT TELLING ME YOU'RE AN A24 MOVIE
Robocop (1987) Okay so despite growing up in the era when it was emerging as a franchise property, I had never actually seen it because I mistook the more domestic jingoism aims of subsequent incarnations with the original and that's my bad. There are a lot of satirical elements in this, but the trouble with period satire is that it becomes harder to read as we evolve in that direction as a culture. About all that remains is the over-the-top commercials for things like luxury heart implants and the strangely tone deaf news broadcasts. The violence? It's now common and extreme enough that the guy getting blasted by ED 209 or the brutal execution of Officer Murphy don't seem as graphic as I think they were meant to be at the time. The dystopia? When the evil corporation talks about investing in hospitals and prisons and typical non-profit enterprises, that's already something that we deal with now. I think we've normalized Reagan-era politics enough to where a lot of what was supposed to be daring or hyperbolic about the film ends up being lost in the cultural translation. But hey, Miguel Ferrer and Ray Wise were in the cast, so I can now pretend that Twin Peaks was David Lynch's idea of a Robocop reunion. Summary: PETER WELLER IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TAKE THE DNA OF ED HARRIS, JAMES WOODS, AND LANCE HENRIKSEN AND DISTILL A SINGLE HUMAN MALE FROM IT. HOLLYWOOD ALWAYS CULTIVATES BACKUPS
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Post by Jeremy on Feb 12, 2022 17:25:11 GMT -8
I plan to post on this thread when it comes to contemporary films, though I haven't seen a lot of them thus far - at least, none that are worth writing extensively about (apart from Eternals, which I covered on the MCU thread). But what the heck, here are some new releases I've seen in the past few weeks:
The Tragedy of MacBeth - Beautifully shot film with a great cast at the center (particularly Denzel, who delivers even the most absurd Shakespearean dialect with quaking conviction). Unfortunately, there's not very much to get attached to beyond the technical accomplishments; in being a faithful adaptation of the material, it just ends up feeling somewhat distant and airless. The source material feels ripe for Coen treatment, but the result is less effective that Joel's original works.
Swan Song - Mahershala Ali is an excellent actor, and I'm glad he's finally got a starring role to his credit. This is a intriguing sci-fi film (akin to a feature-length episode of Black Mirror) about a dying man transferring his life and memories to a carbon clone, and the ethical complications that come with it. Awkwafina is also quite good in an unexpectedly dramatic turn, though her character underscores that the film is... pretty depressing. Probably not something I'd watch more than once.
Sing 2 - This film has an A+ CinemaScore, which is kind of stunning until you realize just how carefully engineered it is to elicit a positive response from as broad an audience as possible. Pretty much the same as the first film, if louder and more over the top, with elaborate musical numbers once again functioning as character development. That said, this is the only film I can think of which features Wes Anderson, Edgar Wright, and Spike Jonze among the cast, so props for that.
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Post by guttersnipe on Feb 13, 2022 16:21:49 GMT -8
Well, I did it. No, I did not give it my undivided attention. Yes, I did feel like an idiot for pausing it every time I needed the toilet or to make a cup of tea.
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Post by ThirdMan on Feb 13, 2022 18:05:43 GMT -8
I believe they've just unearthed 45 minutes of thought-to-be-lost footage in Argentina. So now you can look forward to watching The Fully-Restored, Final Cut.
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Post by guttersnipe on Feb 14, 2022 13:43:31 GMT -8
There was actually one instance where my mind wandered to the point of not looking up for about fifteen minutes. I didn't roll back to catch up though, as I'm quite literally not missing anything.
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Post by Jeremy on Feb 25, 2022 14:14:07 GMT -8
The latest:
Death on the Nile - Uncomplicated but engaging throwback mystery, and the sort of quasi-anthology sequel we don't get much anymore (it's ostensibly a follow-up to Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express, but with an entirely new supporting cast). The story's been adapted to the screen a few times in the past, and those familiar with prior versions may grow weary of this latest iteration, but the actors have great fun, particularly once the film starts living up to its title.
Moonfall - Roland Emmerich's penchant for big, dumb, destructive spectacle used to be catnip at the box office, but in 2022, his shtick has grown stale. Halle Berry and a Patrick Wilson-lookalike (who, as I discovered after watching the film, is in fact Patrick Wilson) can lend only marginal credence to the story, which gets dumber as it goes along and devolves into a nonsensical climax that somehow manages to rip off Big Hero 6. The ending features a forced setup for the sequel that will never happen.
KIMI - Minor yet effective thriller from Steven Soderbergh that expertly captures a lot of the fears and foibles in post-Covid America. The pandemic itself is largely incidental to the story, but it effectively adds weight to the plight of the agoraphobic lead character (expertly played by Zoe Kravitz) and the revelation that sends her into a spiral of seeming insanity. Runs out of steam by the climax, but an engaging watch at a touch under 90 minutes.
Flee - A well-intentioned but dissonant documentary, and a rare example of an animated film where the narrative and visual style are diametrically opposed. The raw, choppy animation provides a few striking images, but it mostly serves to distance us from the narrator's story as his character escapes from one damaging country and life scenario to another. This sort of content can be well-dramatized in an animated film (see Persepolis or The Breadwinner), but it feels disappointingly dry with this treatment.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) - Excessively dumb and gory film which clearly takes some inspiration from the recent Halloween films. The story involves a group of entitled liberal yuppies arriving in crusty conservative Texas and providing just enough base political commentary before they start getting sliced and diced. On the plus side, it's really short (75 minutes sans credits) and there's an inappropriately-timed joke about cellphones and cancel culture that made me laugh.
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Post by Jay on Feb 28, 2022 8:45:24 GMT -8
This is not one that I was looking forward to viewing out of terror, as the franchise for me at least parallels what others feel for Star Wars or Lord of the Rings... Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) Oh boy... So I'll bury the lede here and say that I would give this something like a 6 or 7/10. It's not terrible, but it's distinctly not great. For the points in its favor, the soundtrack has a good feel to it (I mean the orchestral bits, the licensed songs I was indifferent to although I think the original soundtrack is weird in that most of those were commissioned), Phoebe has solid if imitative characterization and individual lines / jokes, Egon's approaches to parenting are pitch perfect, and aspects of the climax like Ray's speech and the casting of the villains were spot on. Rudd also seemed to have immense fun playing his particular part. Perhaps my favorite aspect of it, which takes appreciation of the deep lore, is how it ultimately gave a spot of redemption to Winston's character arc, which was cut once the part went to Ernie Hudson in the original. There were also parts that I very much disliked about it. One was that Carrie Coon's characterization was basically limited to "I HAVE DADDY ISSUES" which was announced nearly every time she opened her mouth. Never mind that her mother is totally unknown and that the father of her children barely gets mentioned, we needed to know how much she resents her father for abandoning her at every opportunity. It's the kind of thing that ends up reading more like the writer's preoccupation than a rounded character. Secondly, Trevor, the Finn Wolfhard part.... Wolf Bigfist.... Fist Hardpunch... really doesn't have much going for him either and most of his role in the plot is ancillary at best. He fixes the car. He also has a girl he likes. Mostly he recoils at Phoebe's science jokes and that's it. It seems like he AND his would-be GF were there to fill out the roster of four. And as to the other member of that four, Podcast, it was pretty clear that he was intended as the "Ray" of the group, and felt like an attempt to recycle Data from The Goonies. Where the movie fails, it's mostly in its attempts to recycle 80s themes, and I think that afflicts Trevor, afflicts Podcast, and afflicts the main plot which at its worst is (SPOILER FROM HERE OUT) a recapitulation of the first movie. The thing about the first movie is that there was build-up to Gozer and a lot of other related ghost things going on in the background as the leadup to it. You know the movie is going to be Gozer before we get out of the initial cold open. I think that could be an overcorrection from the Paul Feig movie in an attempt to more strongly link it to the original franchise (Reitman's comments on Feig's version are interesting as well, he characterized it as Feig getting all the gunfire on him as the SWAT team lead), but I'm not sure it did it any favors either other than potentially setting the stage for something else down the line, much like all them Spider-Men reboots. It's not abysmal, but I'd sooner watch the second film, and that's me as an unapologetic Peter MacNicol fan. Summary: R.I.P. Harold Ramis (1944-2014)
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Post by ThirdMan on Feb 28, 2022 12:31:03 GMT -8
I thought it was a cute little film. The sentimentality with Ramis's ghostly sendoff got to me well enough. Did the movie NEED to exist? Absolutely not. But I don't mind that it does.
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Post by Jeremy on Feb 28, 2022 20:46:06 GMT -8
My feelings for Ghostbusters: Afterlife have dulled a bit since seeing it in theaters, but I think it's fine. I've got no real nostalgia for the original films or cartoons, nor particular love for the 2016 reboot, but this was a fun film and clearly a love letter from Jason Reitman to his dad (RIP Ivan).
Finn Wolfhard's character was generally pointless, and the film never justified his role outside the cross-promotion with the Stranger Things crowd. Mckenna Grace is quite good, and hopefully this film springboards her into more work. I audibly cringed when Bokeem Woodbine said The Line, but otherwise was happy to see him pop up, however briefly.
SPOILERS BELOW
I do think the movie gilded the lily at the end with the extended ghostly cameo. Yes, it makes sense that the filmmakers would want to pay tribute to Ramis, but his character (presumably rendered through a blend of archival footage and modern CG wizardry) stuck around too long and quickly became uncomfortable to watch. I am not a fan of dead actors being "resurrected" for movie roles years after the fact, even with the intent to honor them; it just feels creepy and vaguely immoral. (That final post-credits scene was a pretty weak nostalgia play as well.)
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Post by Jay on Mar 1, 2022 9:58:14 GMT -8
Another SPOILERIFIC response to Jeremy's spoilers... SPOILERS BELOW I do think the movie gilded the lily at the end with the extended ghostly cameo. Yes, it makes sense that the filmmakers would want to pay tribute to Ramis, but his character (presumably rendered through a blend of archival footage and modern CG wizardry) stuck around too long and quickly became uncomfortable to watch. I am not a fan of dead actors being "resurrected" for movie roles years after the fact, even with the intent to honor them; it just feels creepy and vaguely immoral. (That final post-credits scene was a pretty weak nostalgia play as well.) Those scenes were honestly the most uncomfortable to me. I was talking with a friend about it afterwards and she raised the point that when Star Wars does a CGI young Mark Hamill here and there, at least he can consent to it, but with Ramis, there's no equivalent and you're not sure how to feel about it. I know he co-wrote the original screenplay with Aykroyd, but I've always felt the franchise was more Aykroyd's baby than anyone else's, and so the closure left us awkwardly uncertain if it was about Ramis and he would have approved or about the surviving members' (in particular, Murray's) feelings of regret after the fact. In any case, the character of Egon was never shy about speaking and to have him on scream for so long without a peep... I think I preferred the more poltergeist type appearances from earlier in the film.
I forget if we already had this conversation but The Real Ghostbusters had a lot of episodes that were written by J. Michael Straczynski, the same dude who created Babylon 5. With your animation background, you'd probably pick up more crossovers, but I know there were a lot of guys in there who went on to far bigger things as the 90s unfolded. I'd also defend Extreme Ghostbusters as being unfortunately titled (this was the era when Surge was still on the shelves, after all), but worthy in its own right. But then I'm an anthropology and folklore nerd, so a lot of that appealed to me.
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Post by ThirdMan on Mar 1, 2022 15:34:40 GMT -8
I have it on good authority that the producers of the film conducted a seance before filming commenced, and got the late Harold Ramis's blessing for his ghostly apparition to appear in the film. BTW, that was actually the ghost of Harold Ramis. The only holdup was that Ramis had misplaced his SAG card when he became non-corporeal, but they found a loophole to get around that. I hope that puts your guys' mind at ease.
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Post by Jay on Mar 1, 2022 17:34:45 GMT -8
I have it on good authority that the producers of the film conducted a seance before filming commenced, and got the late Harold Ramis's blessing for his ghostly apparition to appear in the film. BTW, that was actually the ghost of Harold Ramis. The only holdup was that Ramis had misplaced his SAG card when he became non-corporeal, but they found a loophole to get around that. I hope that puts your guys' mind at ease. I'm sure Dan Aykroyd knows people. I will accept this.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 1, 2022 21:37:51 GMT -8
I forget if we already had this conversation but The Real Ghostbusters had a lot of episodes that were written by J. Michael Straczynski, the same dude who created Babylon 5. With your animation background, you'd probably pick up more crossovers, but I know there were a lot of guys in there who went on to far bigger things as the 90s unfolded. I'd also defend Extreme Ghostbusters as being unfortunately titled (this was the era when Surge was still on the shelves, after all), but worthy in its own right. But then I'm an anthropology and folklore nerd, so a lot of that appealed to me.
Yeah, some impressive names apparently wrote for Ghostbusters back in the day - David Gerrold ( Star Trek), Linda Woolverton ( Beauty and the Beast), JM DeMatteis and Keith Giffen (comic book aficionados), Duane Capizzi ( The Batman), Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle ( Kim Possible). TV animation in the '80s was a pretty free-flowing industry, so it makes sense that writers would cross over between different projects. Not sure if you have memories of it, but Filmation's Ghostbusters also added to the jumble (and persuaded Columbia to add "The Real" to their own show's title). This show was actually a spin-off of a '70s sitcom called The Ghost Busters, and it premiered days before the "official" Ghostbusters animated series. The legal disputes lasted for decades; I remember how The Real Ghostbusters was tied up in copyright claims for years that prevented it from being released on DVD, while Filmation's Ghostbusters got a snazzy home media release (and probably fooled many nostalgic parents who thought they were buying a boxset of the adventures of Venkman and Spengler).
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Post by otherscott on Mar 2, 2022 8:11:18 GMT -8
I watched the whole Matrix series over the weekend, most of them for the first time. It's kind of a weird blind spot because the Wachowskis have made possibly my favourite movie of all time (Cloud Atlas).
I think there's a sense that The Matrix is a masterpiece and the sequels are terrible, but I think if you remove the novelty of the idea behind The Matrix, Reloaded is probably my favourite of the movies. The plot feels a little crisper, the action scenes are more notable overall, and I have to admit the love story at the center of The Matrix doesn't really work. There was no chemistry at all between Keanu and Carrie-Anne in these early movies which makes the whole thing feel particularly contrived. The chemistry is a little better in the new movie, Resurrections, which it has to be because the fact it is a love story is really all there is to that movie. An unnecessarily self-referential love story where the characters aren't even on the screen together that often.
Ultimately I think it's Revolutions that blew any goodwill towards the series I had. It's just one series of fight scenes after another, with none of the philosophical mumbo-jumbo that the series is built on. The fight scenes aren't that interesting and the characters aren't really worth caring about, I mean even at the best of times I don't think people felt particularly emotionally connected to Neo or Trinity.
Anyways, it was a fun adventure through the movies that made the Wachowskis famous. Cloud Atlas remains a masterpiece in my opinion, Speed Racer, Sense8 and the first couple Matrix movies definitely fall into the category of flawed but fun. I wish they had more leeway to do more adventurous stuff then try to cash in on half-baked Matrix sequels, but when you make Jupiter Ascending you tend to suffer the consequences for it.
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