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Post by ThirdMan on May 10, 2023 10:02:45 GMT -8
I'd say its narrative layout/plot, as a film, is unimaginative, but it's lifting iconography from the games that I happen to think is visually imaginative, at the very least. And in this case, Illumination isn't being rewarded for being lazy, they're being rewarded for being the first ones to put this IP, in animated form, on the big screen. They can coast with other properties, but if it isn't Mario or the Despicable Me/Minions franchise, they won't be making this kind of cash.
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Post by Jeremy on May 10, 2023 18:12:32 GMT -8
By coasting, I mean they sell the entire film around an inherently bankable IP, and everything else about the final product is secondary.
In any event, I do hope this film's success convinces other studios to wake up and realize that yes, animated films can still perform well on the big screen. Major PG releases have been quite sparse in recent months, with studios probably convinced that kids would prefer to watch everything on streaming. But Mario should be evidence that families with young kids can still enjoy a time at the theater.
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Post by ThirdMan on May 10, 2023 19:18:05 GMT -8
Oh, kids and families being massively underserved by animated theatrical releases in the past number of months was a huge factor in this hitting so big commercially.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 13, 2023 15:54:30 GMT -8
Caught up on some more new-ish releases, let's talk about 'em.
Avatar: The Way of Water - On the one hand, this would very likely have been much more impressive and immersive if I had seen it on the big screen (something I may have considered doing if my local theater had offered any dimension below 3D in their screenings). On the other hand... three hours of this on a 90-foot screen would have probably left me little more than a slack-brained skeleton. The film is pure spectacle, through and through, and while I respect Cameron for delivering when it comes to state-of-the-art VFX - no matter how awkward the designs of the Na'vi might be - none of it really works below the surface level, certainly not at this runtime. The characters remain stock, the story predictable, and nothing really feels worth investing in. And boy, having Sigourney Weaver play a teenager is distracting, to say the least. Given Cameron's glacial process, it's likely he'll spend the rest of his life making nothing but Avatar films, and I'd be lying if I said that didn't eat at me just a bit.
Renfield - Entertaining, if choppy and underdeveloped, story about Dracula's hapless lackey and his journey to self-worth and self-discovery. The story is light on its feet and has some laughs, though it's clearly been trimmed in spots to cut down on some of the subplot baggage (trying to service side-arcs for both Awkwafina and Ben Schwartz's characters turns out to be more trouble than it's worth). The comically gory violence is worth a few laughs as well, even if a lot of the excess blood seems designed to paper over some weak action scenes in post-production. And Nicholas Cage is a hoot as Drac, chewing victims and scenery with equal abandon. Not a great film by any stretch, but an easygoing 90 minutes.
Three Thousand Years of Longing - Dull and self-indulgent pablum, occasionally livened by the performances of Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. Ironic that a film about the power of stories should feel so weak in its own story department, but the whole exercise feels bland and empty. Didn't care about the characters, didn't care about their relationship or their hang-ups, only sometimes cared about Swinton's accent. Let me know what I'm missing, as it seems like a lot of critics loved this one (I'm hardly surprised it bombed at the box office).
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Post by ThirdMan on Jun 22, 2023 23:10:19 GMT -8
Some movies I've watched recently...
Shazam: Fury of the Gods - Really not much weaker than the original, despite reviews suggesting otherwise. I mean, they probably devote more screen-time to the most overtly nerdy character -- who, if I recall, was kind of annoying in the original, and is here -- but this is just silly and formulaic, but generally inoffensive. Didn't hate it.
Also didn't hate the critically-reviled Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. I gather folks were put off by this lighthearted diversion of a franchise being encumbered by the convoluted weight of the next Avengers supervillain, but Paul Rudd remains charming, and the supporting cast is Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer, with a cameo from Bill Murray. It's darker and more serious at times than you'd expect for this series, but the performances are solid across-the-board (the villain is well-acted), and there's more visual imagination on display in the art direction than is typical in the MCU, even if 95% of it was created in a computer (not sure how else they'd render most of this stuff, though). Yeah, I wouldn't expect this to get great reviews, given that the structure is pro-forma superhero flick (particularly in the third act), but just how negative the overall reviews were remains a little puzzling to me. It's OK.
Much better than OK is the latest Wes Anderson flick, Asteroid City, which isn't as densely ambitious (or aggressively-wordy) as his previous film, The French Dispatch, but is more warm and wistful. Even though Anderson's films don't have enormous budgets, their art direction and cinematography remain second-to-none, and the sly deadpan (visual and verbal) humour is consistently on-point. Great cast as always, with Steve Carrell subbing in for Bill Murray, who unfortunately got Covid just as this was heading into production. Possibly a Top 5 Anderson -- the others, for me, being The Grand Budapest Hotel, Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom, and Fantastic Mr. Fox -- but I need to watch it again to see where it ultimately lands. Regardless, very funny and creative.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 23, 2023 15:24:13 GMT -8
To truly understand and appreciate why so many critics hated Quantumania, I expect you'd need to see it on the big screen*. At home, I expect the visuals wouldn't be so bad, but sitting through two solid hours of dreary CGI sludge projected on a 60-foot screen was a total assault on the senses. As with Thor: Love and Thunder, there are interesting visual ideas, but they're so poorly rendered as to play as parody of prior MCU films. (The Marvel shows can get away with some of the CGI shortcomings since they're designed for smaller screens, but the movies need better visual effects if they're going to play to mass audiences.)
The cast is the best part, but they aren't given much to work with - considering that Kang is meant to be the next Thanos, you'd think they'd do a better job of having him get defeated by a bunch of ants in his first appearance. (Technically his first appearance was in Loki, but I think most of us have already forgotten Loki.)
Shazam! Fury of the Gods was fine, apart from the mediocre final 15 minutes.
The truth is that I've lately been learning to measure my expectations when it comes to superhero films... except I just watched Across the Spider-Verse this week, and it's a fantastic film that puts pretty much every DC and Marvel movie of the past three years to shame. I want to write about it more extensively, and will do my best to finally have a new piece up on the site next week, but for now I'll just say that it's one of the most visually inventive films I've seen in forever, and the fact that a film this ambitious received a major studio budget and is raking in hundreds of millions is kind of phenomenal.
*I do not actually recommend watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on the big screen.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jun 23, 2023 21:08:33 GMT -8
To truly understand and appreciate why so many critics hated Quantumania, I expect you'd need to see it on the big screen*. At home, I expect the visuals wouldn't be so bad, but sitting through two solid hours of dreary CGI sludge projected on a 60-foot screen was a total assault on the senses. Well, I didn't have much of a problem with the visual effects on my 42-inch screen (aside from not thinking the multiple-Rudd sequence was blended all that well, but that's very difficult to pull off, even today), but to me, with regards to murkiness, and based on past experience, what you're describing is more of an issue with general theatrical presentation than anything else. Most theaters project their images way too dimly, and they almost always look better when they make it to home video. CGI rendering can certainly show its flaws on a much bigger screen, but overly-dim projection has been a much, much bigger issue for decades. And that's compounded by so many big CGI blockbusters -- even $300 million productions like Avengers: Endgame -- going relatively dark in their third acts, because CGI almost always shows its seams more under natural daylight (lighting/shading has to be more precise). Anyways, I saw Across the Spider-verse when it opened, but unfortunately, as is often the case these days, I think I fell asleep for at least 15 minutes of it. I have to go to night showings now (as I did last night with Asteroid City), because I just can't stay awake during afternoon (when I'd usually be sleeping, because I work a graveyard shift) screenings. Which is all to say I plan to see it again, possibly as soon as tomorrow (I might see The Flash as well, if only for Keaton, but.... eh.). I thought it was at least on-par with the first one, based on the ~85% of the movie I saw, though, save for the "To be continued..." aspect. On a side note, it's cool that Jason Schwartzman is in two of the best films released thus far in 2023 (he's the villain in Spider-verse, and the lead in Asteroid City).
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 25, 2023 6:02:33 GMT -8
It's not that the visuals in Quantumania were poorly lit (that may have been a peripheral issue, though not quite at the level it was in parts of Wakanda Forever), it's that they all look very obviously fake and CG-rendered. The film is trying to transport viewers into an otherworldly realm, but it's clear from first frame to last that this the world is entirely artificial, and that Paul Rudd and co. are just chatting and walking in front of a greenscreen. Compound that with other recent Marvel issues - poor world-building that serves as flimsy setup for future films, weak script that feels like a first draft* - and it's another sign that the MCU is past its due.
And I had a similar experience with Spider-Verse, in that I went to a late-night showing (stretched past midnight) when I was quite tired. But it was just difficult to fall asleep due to the nonstop barrage of stuff happening onscreen, so it ended up being a very fun experience (until I woke up the next morning with a headache).
*Still amazed that the "stop being a dick" scene made it past the editing stage.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 25, 2023 13:49:50 GMT -8
In semi-connected news, I caught a screening of Asteroid City today. And, well...
Look, I think Wes Anderson is one of the top talents behind the camera today. His works are very funny and visually engaging, and the five-film stretch from Fantastic Mr. Fox to The French Dispatch is one of the best such runs I can think of from any director. So I went into his latest film with some pretty high expectations.
But... it really didn't work? Unlike his previous films, Asteroid City feels very messy and muddled, lacking a clear central narrative or compelling protagonist to latch onto. This problem is further compounded by the overly convoluted structure - unlike Grand Budapest Hotel and French Dispatch, where the internal story was woven seamlessly in with the external framework, this film undercuts itself with a haphazard framing device which paints the story as a play and the characters as actors, giving the whole thing an air of inauthenticity that detracts from the core narrative. It's also not nearly as funny as his previous works, nor as visually inventive (except for that one scene midway through the film that has everyone talking).
I dunno, the cast is packed and largely watchable, but I was kind of bored by the whole affair. One of the year's biggest disappointments.
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Quiara
Grade School
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Post by Quiara on Jun 25, 2023 16:02:11 GMT -8
Three Thousand Years of Longing - Dull and self-indulgent pablum, occasionally livened by the performances of Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. Ironic that a film about the power of stories should feel so weak in its own story department, but the whole exercise feels bland and empty. Didn't care about the characters, didn't care about their relationship or their hang-ups, only sometimes cared about Swinton's accent. Let me know what I'm missing, as it seems like a lot of critics loved this one (I'm hardly surprised it bombed at the box office). Well, there's two major assets here you're overlooking:
1) Idris Elba's left pec 2) Idris Elba's right pec
I'm joking here - although Elba being the Sexiest Man Alive is not not to this film's advantage - but I think that the movie being weirdly sexual is to its advantage, particularly because there's a childlike guilelessness to it. That sounds terrible when I put it that way (what is this, Cuties?), but stuff like the beautiful woman with Brillo pad leg hair, or the fat brother being locked away in his morbidly obese harem, or even the interspecies romance that undergirds the film - all of which sounds icky when described but in the context of the film itself is gross in a way that imbues them with... idk, not realism. But it's not a movie that feels like a movie, in the Hollywood-as-pejorative sense - it feels like a myth brought to life, which is very much the point.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jun 25, 2023 16:19:13 GMT -8
And P.S., re: the new Miles Morales flick. It rocks, but unfortunately I've been scratching my head (in a bad way) at the inclusion of video game characters in this movie? Like, OK, you've got the Atari version of Green Goblin. How does that work? Does that universe exist as a sort of Flatland deal? I'd be willing to give that a pass as a fun easter egg but Miles' roommate is also playing a different Spider-Man video game, and the Spider-Man from that video game series shows up and talks to Miles later? And Video Man is also there??
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 25, 2023 18:23:44 GMT -8
Don't forget the Spider-Plushie that pops up in one of the crowd shots! I'd to see a film detailing his tragic backstory.
I'm sure there are a thousand other Easter eggs (the Sun-Spider cameo, followed immediately by the 1960s animated Spider-Man bit, was particularly awesome), but I'd probably need to wait for the film to be available on DVD/streaming to catch them all.
As for 3KYoL, I could tell what the film was going for, and I appreciate that it takes an offbeat path to get there. It just feels very overly pleased with itself, in a way that I haven't seen from many other movies recently. And I know I tend to be a prude about this stuff, but some of the sex/nudity really did feel gratuitous, to the point that it undermined whatever point Miller was trying to make.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jun 25, 2023 19:07:01 GMT -8
Watched Across The Spider-verse again last night (after The Flash, which I'll probably say something about at a later date). A co-worker said his friends were annoying with the "inaccurate" depiction of The Scarlett Spider (played by Andy Samberg in the movie), to which I had responded, "One minor character out of literally hundreds is that much of a deal-breaker?". I looked out for him more this time, and he literally has barely a minute of screen-time. Heh.
As for the framing device for Asteroid City, Anderson's films revel in their level of visual artifice -- and the friction between visual order and random (character) behavioural chaos -- going back to at least The Life Aquatic, so I wasn't bothered by them going a bit more meta, and breaking the fourth wall, with this one. I actually felt that The French Dispatch -- though superbly designed on a production level -- was more convoluted structurally (and longwinded verbally), and lacked any sort of emotional anchor on a character level. Asteroid City's protagonist, Augie, and the stage actor playing him, is a bit depressed and subdued, but his play character's protectiveness of his kids, and his actor's trying to figure out what the play "means" existentially, provided a pretty good hook for me. I found Life Aquatic, Darjeeling, French Dispatch, and even much of Isle of Dogs, to be considerably drier. Asteroid City was a very easy watch for me, and I especially appreciated that it was a nice, tight 105 minutes, when so many other films these days -- including Spider-verse, which has a "To be continued..." on it (!)) -- are in the two-and-a-half-hour range. Anyways, it seems like a fair number of folks are often turned off by the metatextual interplay between live theater and film (see: Jeremy's reaction to, say, Birdman), so I'm not surprised that the reactions to Anderson's latest have been a bit mixed (though leaning considerably positive with most major critics). I had a lot of fun with it, though.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 26, 2023 5:42:57 GMT -8
Scarlet Spider isn't really out of character, to my mind (he's always been something of a tool). On the other hand, I was surprised that Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099) was portrayed in such an antagonistic light, but it worked within the bounds of the story.
My reaction to Asteroid City was in fact quite similar to that of Life Aquatic or Darjeeling Limited (both of which I found to be rather dry films which were more interesting aesthetically than emotionally). Asteroid City takes the metatextualism one step too far, and maybe it will be more coherent on second viewing, but it just kind of dragged for me. I'm a bit surprised that French Dispatch seems to be one of Anderson's least-loved films - I thought it was inventive and hilarious, and structuring the story as an anthology meant that no individual story really overstayed its welcome.
Also, not sure I get your point re. Birdman - I loved that movie (probably my favorite Best Picture winner of the 2010s), and the theater/film dynamic worked really well. Perhaps a bit pretentious, but very engaging.
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Post by otherscott on Jun 26, 2023 6:39:10 GMT -8
I've always been a little bit cooler on Into the Spiderverse than the consensus, but I will say I thought the highs of Across the Spiderverse were terrific. I think the fact it was only half a movie bothered me more than it should have considering I'm more of a television guy, but the problem was I find the driving principal of the movie (the canon events) to be complete nonsense, and it is very possible that the second half will convince me otherwise. I also felt like I was watching the movie on 2x speed at points (including how quickly people were talking, I could have used some closed captions).
Some of the sequences were astoundingly good though (particularly the opening sequence with Gwen) and I just found everything about the movie more engaging in general that the first one. So I guess in total I'm probably still cooler on it than the majority, but for different reasons. With Into the Spiderverse it was more "I don't see what's so special about this" and Across the Spiderverse it is more "I see what's special about this, but there's stuff that bothers me."
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