Last Movie You Watched

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Postby movieartman » Fri Nov 27, 2020 11:26 pm

Battleship (2012)

Pros!
- I liked the limited technology level of the Aliens that gave things a reasonable playing field with a single major exception I will mention below.
- The distance combat scenes between ships is solid and shot well enough.
- I appreciate that they seem to actually put thought into the improvised tactics of the naval warfare we get.
- The alien's armor is kinda standard fare Halo/Mass Effect looking stuff but it's solid enough.
- One of Taylor Kitsch's better roles with him starting out as a bumbling frat boy type, still not great.
- Tadanobu Asano is good for what he is given.
- Brooklyn Decker is decent here. Given a little more to do than most of the women in the Bayformers films which have a very similar feel and style to this movie.
- Some nice military porn.

Neutral Observations!
- Rihanna is just kinda there, never good nor notably bad (no she did not deserve a raspberry award here)
- The Alien's behavior seems intriguing but inconsistent. I can't tell if it was a genuine attempt to present some of them as not being evil for evil's sake or if it was a writing problem. Examples being them multiple times refraining from harming unarmed individual humans (and their yoyo of death operates like this as well, sparing a unarmed kid) and not attacking the main Destoyer when it retreats. But this kinda conflicts with the apparent genocidal conquest we see as being their long term intent when the lead has a vision of their plans when one of the aliens touches him along with them sending one of their yoyo's of death to destroy a non military freeway system.
- Score is fine, never really noticed it in a good way nor was it intrusive/over barring or inappropriate for the film.
- It is hard navy propaganda.

Cons!
- That exception to the top Pro being: The Aliens having the ability to not be seen on sonar but somehow not having sonar themselves was a big plot hole.
- The cast reactivating the USS Missouri broke suspension of disbelief hard.
- The cripple slow mo fighting the 7ft armored alien hand to hand did so also.
- Liam Neeson is given nothing at all to do and he seems bored as fuck.
- I like the aliens porcupine beard & 4 fingered hands but aside from that they are way too human looking, especially the mouth.
- Race related joke involving the art of war that is cringyly applied and the Japanese actor involved seems to be cringing at it.
- Final scene with Neeson was very flatly done & drawn out and Neeson seemed to detest it.

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Postby silvermoonlight » Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:24 pm

Last Christmas 2019

I knew what I was in for with this one but I gave it a go anyway...
SPOILER: Show
The truly sad part this could have been great it could have been magnificent but it lets itself down as it won't unpack its darker issues. Also the stalking element is not cute even if the guy is nice and it does not deal with its LGBT plot line at all.

It mostly glosses over and goes for a nice happy ending despite that outing someone to their family can have dire consequences and could get them kicked out of the family or cut off money wise even more so since the lead's family is Russian but the film seems deeply unaware of this or the real homophobia still going on in Russia and even if they let the country decades ago it could still be an issue.

The movie also hints at issues of depression sadness but again does want to do the leg work on the leads issues and the family falling apart after she got well the most unrealistic thing by far is when she finds out her love interest in dead when she's see's him again for the last time, she does not utterly freak out like real person was since he basally haunted her and he doesn't get any consequences for his actions even if they were well-intentioned and to make her see thing better as he still played stalker and was dishonest about whom he really was as ts clear he knew he was dead all along and only alive to her in soul form due to the heart transplant.

Side note Emma Thompson has no idea what a real homeless shelter is like, I've worked with the homeless at one point in my life and it's nothing like this film like the movie Scrooged nails it way better and that's from 1988, Thompson's version is sanitized clean and no one has drug or alcohol issues or full on jaded views of the world due to betrayal or bad treatment by others just for being homeless.
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Postby C.T.1290 » Tue Dec 01, 2020 10:53 pm

I’ve started to celebrate this holiday season by watching some good old Christmas films.

Home Alone is the first I decided to start with, with plenty more to watch this month for the next 24 days.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Dec 01, 2020 11:05 pm

I've started watching the Digimon Adventure Tri films, and oh my g a w d they're cheaply produced and boring! They feel like made-for-TV films!

The original TV series had episodes directed and animated by Mamoru Hosoda. How did it get this bad?

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Postby robersora » Wed Dec 02, 2020 5:03 am

^
Yeah it's bad, and it gets worse. Get out as long as you still can. Overall not as horrible as Sailor Moon Crystal, but almost.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Wed Dec 02, 2020 7:51 am

When I first heard the backlash against these films, I was like "Nah, everyone is probably just misremembering what the TV series was actually like when they were kids," but the TV series was actually pretty good, so I don't know why I thought that in the first place. Then I saw the first two Tri films and was like "OH! Oh. oh......"

These movies are just offensively boring. I spent the entire climax waiting for the credits to roll. It was bad.

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Postby robersora » Wed Dec 02, 2020 12:56 pm

^
Yeah, the original show was good, despite being a slideshow. Tri on the other hand is just uninspired, the best thing about it were the fire film posters designed by Atsuya Uki (Cencoroll).
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Postby Gus Hanson » Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:09 pm

Um, IDK if this will change any minds but I just got done watching Tri 4: Loss and really the only nitpick I could gather was feeling like the Digivolve montages dragged on for too long. That and the obvious Gennai perving on Sora and Meiko.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:03 pm

I haven't gotten that far yet. (I just finished the second film.)

Like, I get the original series had mostly "par for the course" animation, but it's story at least had focus. It felt like the second Tri film specifically had all of these little story branches that lead nowhere and accomplished nothing.

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Postby Gus Hanson » Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:21 pm

First Love (2019)

Directed by Takashi Miike and featuring Nao Omori who played Ichi the Killer, the plot features a boxer and a drug addicted call girl who get caught up in the middle of a botched yakuza/dirty cop drug deal that gets the yakuza and triads involved in a gang war. The action is addictive and the two leads face adverse circumstances in that the boxer supposedly has an inoperable brain tumor and the call girl has drug induced hallucinations of her abusive father. Another trippy sequence is the ending escape from the cops in which they commandeer a car and the scene of the car jumping through a blockade is done in an animated almost manga-like style.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Tue Dec 08, 2020 11:58 pm

^ I've been meaning to see First Love. I have it on Blu-ray. I should do a video on that when I actually see it. (Assuming I ever do videos again. My work life as an optician is starting to eat away at my soul.)

Anyway, I saw American Beauty for the first time tonight. I only own the film on a two-VHS tape collection, with a ton of special feature on that second tape. Everyone on that second tape went on about how great that script was. Watching the film itself, I actually think the script is the weakest element of that film. The direction is good, cinematography is solid, the performances are pretty great, and Thomas Newman is constantly hitting home runs with his iconic and identifiable musical score stylings, but that script is just so 90's-style "ironic," where it's actually passive-aggressive sarcastic instead of ironic, but in a way that supposedly "mAkes yOu thInK," or whatever. The end result was me not knowing whether or not I liked the film due to it's "time-capsule" quality as a movie. Lots of neat script ideas, and even some great characters, but the movie feels like it has nothing important to say despite clearly trying to say something meaningful.

Needless outburst, but here goes...  SPOILER: Show
Also, Kevin Spacey playing a character who gets kissed on the lips without consent by an older man is flippin' hilarious in retrospect. Kevin, my dude, you're a great actor, but get fucked. In the ass. With a cactus. Until you learn to like it. And get so addicted to it that you leave the rest of us alone. So we can both be happy. Please?

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Postby The Killer of Heroes » Thu Dec 10, 2020 2:15 pm

Ignoring whatever one feels about Spacey as an actor for a moment, I always thought his character just came off more like an asshole than a free spirit or whatever.

Like the scene where his wife doesn't want the couch stained with beer and he like's "Omg get over it" just makes him seem like the whiny child, not his wife.

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Dec 10, 2020 3:38 pm

^ Yeah, especially since we saw him gush over his newly acquired retro sports car in that exact same scene. To go from bragging about his material possessions and then ridicule hers by calling it “just stuff” is very hypocritical and just makes him look like a complete jerk. Like I said, the script does the film no favors, so it was weird to see everyone so proud of it on Tape 2.

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Postby The Killer of Heroes » Thu Dec 10, 2020 3:50 pm

Lol I had forgotten about the sports car thing on top of that.

I haven't seen the movie in 7-8ish years so maybe Spacey's character is intended to read as a hypocrite after all and I'm not remembering the film correctly, but that's not how I really remember it coming off or the film even being discussed in articles and such I read about back in the day.

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Postby silvermoonlight » Thu Dec 10, 2020 4:11 pm

My biggest issue with American Beauty is I think people read it wrong in the same way they read fight club wrong in that the lead is not some hero, he is the villain of the narrative in both cases they are home wreckers destroying everything they love and everything around them they're cautionary tales on how your destruction has serious consequences to everyone around you.

How you are less of a person when you become internally selfish and only care about your own desires to me Spacey's character and his wife needed marriage counselling or just to sit and really talk it out but its clear he's not going to do that as he sees every choice he makes as fine as he's making them and fuck anyone else for whining or having an opinion or being hurt because by his misgivings they don't count in his world. Also Ironically both movies end with a gun being fired for different reasons but mostly because the villain pushed to far and caused too much pain and has lost there way.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Dec 10, 2020 8:48 pm

Spacey's character as the villain is certainly a better reading of that film, I just don't know if it was the intended one. Like, the film clearly paints his character as the asshole, but also repeatedly tries to justify his "assholery." He blackmails a company for a more than decent severance pay, but the film tries to justify that by the contesting actions by the company firing their employees while the higher ups spend company money covering up sexual scandals. He becomes insufferable to his wife, but the film justifies that by letting him catch his wife cheating on him. He has a gross crush on his daughter's blonde peer at high school, but the film "justifies" that (as if one could) by showing his loveless marriage and the teen blonde obviously letting him on.

Ultimately, the film has absolutely nothing to say with the character's death, either. Like, all that, and Spacey's disembodied voices tells us that he doesn't regret a singe bit of his life. Like, what was the ultimate point here? I feel like the film was so obviously trying to say something, but it gets so caught up in parroting 90's disenfranchisement that it looses it's own train of thought. Sorry, I keep going back to this bad script, but it's really, really bad. So yeah, Spacey as the bad guy of the film makes more sense than the more traditional reading, but I don't think that's what the movie was even going for to begin with.

Man, I really need to wash this film down with some Daria. There's a TV series that doesn't just "do" 90's disenfranchisement; it lives it.

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Postby Zusuchan » Fri Dec 11, 2020 7:25 am

silvermoonlight: The thing is that from what I remember of American Beauty is that the main character isn't supposed to be a villain and is presented as being in the right, whereas Fight Club is way more upfront about the wrongness of the whole "Fight Club" idea and of course all that goes on from there (despite ironically enough being more subtle than Mendes's film). I also believe that The Narrator is a better person than Lester Burnham-they both start from the same vantage point of leading unhappy lives full of mind-numbing conformism in a society they dislike for all the right reasons and start acting against it, but in Lester's case he becomes a dick who doesn't care a fig about morals and generally acts as a whiny child whose problem is revealed as disliking his life because it doesn't conform to his expectations instead of some kind of deeper emptiness, whereas The Narrator is a mentally fucked-up sad human being who truly does have a deep problem with things he sees in society, such as rampant over-capitalism, conformism, consumerism etc, but is too weak to fight against it consciously, so does so subconsciously, and his mental problems reveal themselves as he becomes slowly obsessed with making a better world, but this leads itself to fascism and terrorism, which he then tries to fight against when he realizes the true ultimate endgoal of Tyler. So at the end of the day, I'd argue that while Lester is a "villain", he's never presented as one, whereas The Narrator could be argued to be one, but at the end of the day escapes that judgment as far as I'm concerned due to actually being a good human being deep-down.

This difference is present in the films as well. American Beauty tries to have a deep message, but fails because of the actions of its main character and even if it did want to point out how rightful actions against conformism and trying to actively lead a better life can transform into pettiness and malice quite easily, then the fact that almost no one has managed to read that message out of it, including the people who actually made the film, means it conveyed that message rather poorly. Fight Club actually has a deep message (with several clever subthemes) and the sometimes morally reprehensible actions of its main character(s) are a part of it and illuminate the messages clearly, thereby leading to a far better, nuanced film.

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Postby Dr. Nick » Sat Dec 12, 2020 1:42 am

The Pyramid (2014): In case you thought As Above, So Below was way too much of a classy affair, this is the film for you. It's one of those bad films that would probably benefit from being cheaper and more Asylum-y. But to give credit where credit is due, there's one remarkably good scene involving a classic pyramid trap that leads you to believe the film is about to turn into a classic-style mummy flick. Unfortunately, no such luck.

And Now You're Dead, A.K.A. Enter the Eagles (1998): Corey Yuen brings his overcaffeinated Hong Kong action to Prague in a heist film starring Shannon "Bruce's daughter" Lee. The man can direct kinetic action like it's nobody's business, even though he does overreach with two choppily staged aircraft sequences that are clearly way beyond the films budget. And while the various shootouts and fisticuffs get the blood pumping, to my surprise I found the heist parts to be the most thrilling of all. Some of the ideas are ridiculous (fooling laser sensors with bees!), but things flow logically within the hyperreality the film has established for itself. Too bad there's only one big heist scene, after which the more standard action plot takes over, but still definitely recommended if you're in the mood for some explody nineties cheese.

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Postby robersora » Sat Dec 12, 2020 2:35 pm

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:Spacey's character as the villain is certainly a better reading of that film, I just don't know if it was the intended one. Like, the film clearly paints his character as the asshole, but also repeatedly tries to justify his "assholery." He blackmails a company for a more than decent severance pay, but the film tries to justify that by the contesting actions by the company firing their employees while the higher ups spend company money covering up sexual scandals. He becomes insufferable to his wife, but the film justifies that by letting him catch his wife cheating on him. He has a gross crush on his daughter's blonde peer at high school, but the film "justifies" that (as if one could) by showing his loveless marriage and the teen blonde obviously letting him on.


I don't think it's about justifying it, it's about showing how everyone is caught up being merely a cog of the machine called society, and the biggest failing of Spacey is giving into the frustration chain instead of attempting to break it.
I think back then it was revolutionary to see something so subversive about the American save haven that was televised suburbia. That wow factor is long gone now, so all its weaknesses reveal themselves more easily.

It's scary how Fight Club's fiction was overtaken by reality once more.

Another question, As I've seen it popping up again and again. Where is this weird guttural reflex and performative disavowal of relationships between teenagers and older men coming from? Like I get it, it's kind of weird, but the lengths Americans online go to show that they think this is wrong, is kind of strange.
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Postby Princess Asuka » Fri Dec 18, 2020 11:34 am

So I watched the first two Home Alone movies. The first one was good though it would've been a little better without the tarantula in my opinion. The second one was good but it was a little too predictable especially cause I pretty much figured out that he was gonna give the pigeon lady the other ornament.
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