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TCM/HDNET Movies DVR: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution - 2/5 Breakfast at Tiffany's - 3/5 (4/5 without the goddamned Mr. Yunioshi scenes) The Amazing Transparent Man - 3/5 Filmstruck: Targets - 4.5/5 Multiple Maniacs -  The Blob - 3.5/5
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Jun 19, 2017 04:47
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Bad Batch: 1/5 Utterly awful, everything that wasn't Jason Mamoa was embarrassing, boring, and terrible. The main actress had an incredibly distracting "Texas" accent that constantly dipped to her natural British one because she's a dismal actress who spent most of the time trying to squint into the horizon. Her character's motivations were non-existent then when they had her explain them to the audience they changed to merely very confusing. There's a "tripping" scene with special effects that would be unacceptable on a TV show and it goes on sooooo long. And looming all over this mess of a movie is the Vice branding of old people who think Burning Man is the pinnacle of cool, is anyone still impressed by shots of weed plants or raves? Watch Girl Walks Home Alone At Night instead.
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Jun 19, 2017 05:23
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[quote="Egbert Souse" post="""] Multiple Maniacs - [/quote] This made me curious https://youtu.be/iCurxt0ULzk Now i gotta see it
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Jun 19, 2017 05:35
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got any sevens posted:This made me curious https://youtu.be/iCurxt0ULzk I suspect it's better that way.
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Jun 19, 2017 14:44
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Wonder Woman (2017, Patty Jenkins) - 4/5 [Theatrical] One of the best superhero movies I've seen in a while and definitely the best DC property since The Dark Knight. I liked how it took place during WWI and generally strayed from cliches. Harold and Maude (1971, Hal Ashby) - 4/5 [TCM] I had tried watching this about a year ago and it didn't click. Now, I think it was a fairly brilliant dark comedy. It's pretty much Wes Anderson, beta version. I do think some of the comedy borders on being overt slapstick at times, but perhaps that's intended. Still, a fantastic soundtrack of Cat Stevens songs, outstanding performances by Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon, and enough surprises to make it worthwhile. Fail-Safe (1964, Sidney Lumet) - 4.5/5 [TCM] I think I managed to find the most nihilistic classic movie. Goddamn. The Odd Couple (1968, Gene Saks) - 3.5/5 [TCM] After such a grim film as Fail-Safe, I thought a comedy would do well, also starring Walter Matthau. Often a bit silly, but him and Lemmon have an incredible screen chemistry. It's also amazingly well composed for Panavision, which I didn't expect. Also has a real earwig of a score. Black Sunday (1960, Mario Bava) [English language Italian cut] - 4/5 [Filmstruck] Mario Bava knew how to make pretty movies, even when they were about undead vampires. Creepy, amazing cinematography, and Barbara Steele's incredible face. Eating Raoul (1982, Paul Bartel) - 4/5 [Filmstruck] Haha, this is exactly my sort of comedy. Endlessly tasteless, but droll. I love how the Blands live up to their name (Paul sleeping with a wine bottle pillow  ), while everyone around them is a horny perv. This could almost be a John Waters comedy, except he would have switched bloodless bonks on the head with something far more disgusting. Withnail & I (1986, Bruce Robinson) - 4.5/5 [TCM] Either I think I got the fear or a pig shat in my head. Rokk í Reykjavík (1982, Friğrik Şór Friğriksson) - 4/5 [DVD - Thanks, FreudianSlippers!] This is basically punkrock.avi. Among the sights: a guitarist wearing a SID VICIOUS IS DEAD tabloid cover t-shirt, an audience member knitting, and a group of preteen singing "Antichrist" and talking about huffing gas fumes.  Á köldum klaka [Cold Fever] (1995, Friğrik Şór Friğriksson) - 4/5 [DVD - Also thanks, FS] Weird, meandering, but I couldn't take my eyes off it. After a short prologue in Japan (in 4x3), it expands to Panavision when it gets to Iceland. It's a road trip movie. I haven't seen any Jim Jarmusch films yet, but this seems to be similar to his style. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012, Terence Nance) - 4/5 [DVD - Thanks, axleblaze!] This is both a college and collage film. Scenes change from past to present, narrative to documentary, VHS to HD, live-action to animation. Brilliant and dizzying. Cop Car (2015, Jon Watts) - 3/5 [Blu-Ray, also thanks, AB] I liked the simplicity, though, I felt the ending was a bit grim. I was kind of hoping the angry woman would blow away the bad guys and save the kids. But perhaps the point is that adults can't really be trusted to do the right thing. Kevin Bacon was terrific as the title character, especially with such a majestic mustache. Early Women Filmmakers - Disc 1 (New Blu-Ray set from Flicker Alley) All short films except for The Blot. Les chiens savants (1902, Alice Guy) Une histoire roulante (1906, Alice Guy) L'enfant de la barricade (1907, Alice Guy) Falling Leaves (1912, Alice Guy) - 3.5/5 Making An American Citizen (1912, Alice Guy) - 4/5 The Girl in the Arm-Chair (1912, Alice Guy) - 3/5 Suspense (1913, Lois Weber) - 5/5 Discontent (1916, Lois Weber) - 4/5 The Blot (1921, Lois Weber) - 4/5 Mabel's Strange Predicament (1914, Mabel Normand) - 3/5 The first three are really just quick vignettes. Trained dogs, a bum rolling in a barrel, a firing squad. The next three were made after Guy moved to the US. Falling Leaves is about a woman suffering from consumption and how a doctor takes care of her. Making An American Citizen is slightly racist, but darkly funny. A Russian immigrant abuses his wife time after time, while Americans tell him down. After hitting her, he's arrested and spends time in a labor camp. He comes back appreciating his wife and doing her chores! The Girl in the Arm-Chair is way more melodramatic about a gambler going into debt (with typical anti-Semitic stereotypes). It does have a neat scene where the gambler has a nightmare about the debt and playing cards circle around him. Lois Weber's films are fascinating because she seems to have this Christian socialist ideology. Suspense is an essential early cinema short, that outdoes D.W. Griffith's films of the type in terms of form. Discontent is about a cranky Civil War veteran who's unhappy living with family and wants to live back at the retirement home. There's a really neat moving matte shot with him imagining being back at the home. The Blot is considered one of the great early 20s silent features. It's overtly moralistic, but for a good cause. The father of a family is a hard-working teacher and clergyman, yet his family is poor because he was paid barely a livable wage. Meanwhile, his daughter is courting with a guy from a rich family. Meanwhile, the mother is thought to have stolen food when the guy had ordered it for her family. The neighbors are all overweight and even get into a huff when the poor family's cat raids the garbage. There's even a scene with a rich family eating dinner and every course is outrageously expensive. The boy tries to help as best as he can, with a recurring shot of him reciting a Bible verse about giving. The film also has some really nice naturalistic lighting. I also really like how Weber loves her characters and ends things on a happy note for even the jerk characters. Also worth noting the restoration here looks quite nice and has a great score. Lastly, there's one of Mabel Normand's Keystone comedies, also starring Charles Chaplin. Mabel is trying to hide from a drunk (Chaplin in oddly haggard tramp makeup instead of whited up) and things get complicated from there. There's a really gross shot of her hiding under a bed with hairy stinky feet in front of her face. Ew.
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Jun 26, 2017 02:48
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I just saw "I Daniel Blake", talk about a gut punch.
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Jun 28, 2017 16:45
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Transformer5: It's like Bay has streamlined movie plots to a point of minimalism so he can focus on action more. I like it but I can't put a numerical value on it. Anthony Hopkins was great too, and the Cuba bits. Seems like more movies this year have followed his trend of using cutouts instead of full characters. It's almost ultra-traditional, like marionette plays, but with modern contrivances.
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Jun 28, 2017 21:02
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John Wick 2: 9/10 Thoroughly entertaining. An improvement on the first one in every way. Logan: 10/10 Easily the best superhero film since The Dark Knight, and that is because — like The Dark Knight — it did everything it could to distance itself from superhero films. Nothing in the MCU compares to Logan in quality, either. Alien Covenant: 8/10 I enjoyed the blend of Alien, Aliens, and Prometheus in this. It's beautifully shot just like its predecessor. My main complaint is the rushed ending in the spaceship. Hopefully there's an extended cut on Blu-Ray. Also, Michael Fassbender. Transformers V: 7/10 I'm only rating this on special effects and action, which it delivered on.
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Jun 28, 2017 21:17
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got any sevens posted:Transformer5: Then at the other end of the spectrum you've got truck-nutz.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:16
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O.J. : Made In America - 92/100 Baby Driver - 72/100 The Drop - 84/100 BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jul 1, 2017 |
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Jul 1, 2017 01:22
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films from Early Women Filmmakers (Blu-Ray): The Star Prince (1918, Madeline Brandeis) - 2.5/5 La Cigarette (1919, Germaine Dulac) - 3.5/5 La souriante Madame Beudet (1923, Germaine Dulac) - 4/5 The Star Prince's main appeal is that it has a cast made up almost entirely of children. It's unfortunately a little slow and the surviving print isn't great, but it's a clever concept. La Cigarette is about an unhappy husband who plots to kill himself by slowly smoking poisoned cigarettes. Actually much faster paced and interesting compared to a lot of features I've seen from this time. Madame Beudet is much more surreal, with an unhappy wife and insane husband. Some really incredible lighting for its time and some clever uses of distorting lenses/mirrors. films from Pioneers of African-American Cinema (Blu-Ray): Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled (1918, R.G. Phillips) - 4/5 Two Knights of Vaudeville (1915, unknown) - 3/5 A Reckless Rover (1918, C.N. David) - N/A I just received Kino Lorber's collection of early African-American films. These three were made by Ebony Films - white-owned, but usually cast with all black actors. They're not in the best shape - I decided not to give A Reckless Rover a rating since a large percentage of it is eaten up by nitrate decomposition, thus making it hard to watch. Out of these, I thought the mummy comedy was hilarious. Fast-paced and great gags. I'm realizing how rarely you actually got to see African-Americans in silent films since they either didn't feature them at all or opted for blackface. Hairspray (1988, John Waters) - 4.5/5 Waters dials down the gross-out factor, but doesn't skimp on the subversive angle. I can see why this is a cult classic since it's such a fun, charming movie. Also, I was really surprised by how good Divine's performance is. Ikiru (1952, Akira Kurosawa) - 4.5/5 Wow, what a gut punch of a movie. I've yet to see a Kurosawa film that didn't impress me on some level, but I think the film actually gets into its best part in the second half. I like how he skips along time in a way that makes it sort of like a mystery. Of course, Takeshi Shimura's performance is incredible - the scene where he sings in the bar is absolutely haunting. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968, William Greaves) - 3.5/5 I'm not really sure what to make of this, but I liked it. I probably should watch again. La Notte (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni) - 4.5/5 Something about Antonioni films makes me unable to turn away. They're almost hypnotic by design. I'm pretty sure I still have my crush for Jeanne Moreau.
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Jul 3, 2017 14:01
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Ratings out of 100. Silence (2016) - 83 Paterson (2016) - 89 The Love Witch (2016) - 93 The VVitch (2016) - 70 La La Land (2016) - 82 Manchester by the Sea (2016) - 87 The American Side (2016) - 68 Following (1998) - 76 20th Century Women (2016) - 79
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Jul 3, 2017 15:23
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I finally got around to seeing some animated movies from the past decade or so. Cars: B+ Finding Nemo: B Both good movies, but I think I actually liked Cars a little more than I liked Finding Nemo. There was a bit of cuteness overload for me, and Dory was occasionally somewhat irritating. I don't blame Ellen DeGeneres for that; the character was just a bit too perky and eager at times. Others: The Haunted Mansion (Disney, 2003): C The Loved One (1965): B I caught this on TCM a few days ago. What a delightfully odd film! I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. Funny in some parts, poignant in others. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jul 3, 2017 |
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Jul 3, 2017 17:09
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Ratings out of 100. I wanna hear about Paterson.
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Jul 3, 2017 17:23
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Ratings out of 100. This, please and thank you.
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Jul 3, 2017 18:04
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Ratings out of 100.
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Jul 3, 2017 18:08
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Ratings out of 100. If you would
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Jul 3, 2017 18:09
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haha gently caress that's basically all of them except The American Side (and Following). Silence (2016) - 83 This movie is way longer than it needs to be. It's a nice little period piece and all the performances are great, but we don't need 2 hours and like 40 minutes or whatever of essentially a single idea, which is "what is it to have faith?" Happily though the movie does a great job with the question, even though it takes too long to do it. The key issues are the social nature of faith, the material nature of faith, and the action vs. belief nature of faith. Even though it spends the most time on it, I think the movie has the least to say about the social nature of faith. All the stuff about Christian community and apostatizing perfunctorily for the sake of bowing to the government kind of gets buried by the end. As the movie repeatedly notes, the people who are being tortured/killed to get the priests to apostatize have already apostatized many times themselves - this is true both for the earlier scene where Adam Driver drowns in about 10 seconds somehow and in the climax. So ultimately the Japanese people end up being more or less window dressing for the priests's story. The inquisitor never gets to really win an argument, even though you could imagine him making a case about how the Christian conversion process is just colonialism by another name. There's a brief foray towards that in the conversation where the main priest whose name I've forgotten says that Japan should pick the side of Christianity, not the side of Portugal that he has been accused of pushing, but as far as the movie is concerned that's where it ends, and we never really get to see why that might be a crummy answer for various reasons. So, I was sort of disappointed that the movie didn't go into the Japanese part of the equation, either by focusing on these Japanese Christians and their crises of faith or on the political context. The one exception of course is Kichijiro, but even the most interesting thing is his relation to the priest and whether or not the priest has it in him to keep forgiving, and even whether this is really forgiveness. (Another exception is Liam Neeson's claim that the Japanese aren't even Christian, because they have a perverted understanding of the topic, but again that's used almost entirely as a thing for the priest to deal with rather than a topic in its own right.) The movie does do a good job with the other stuff, though. That little cross the priest keeps for his entire life, the one that's hidden at his waist when he puts on the Buddhist robes and which is in that same location when he dies, felt a tiny bit like a reveal/twist at the end, but that's fine, since it really makes you think about what matters to him. The idea seems to be that he may have found a way to convince himself that one's actions are entirely divorced from one's faith, the classic sola fide view which any good Catholic should reject, but maybe he lived the rest of his life conflicted, and either way we don't even know if he was right. The choice to have Jesus straight up talk to him a bit was kind of a weird one. I still don't know what ot make of that. Paterson (2016) - 89 Jarmusch's sense of restraint is never going to get old for me, I think. I love how tightly regimented the film is, with the "Monday," "Tuesday," etc., the glimpses at the watch, fixing the mail box, etc. I found it pretty comforting, and I think Paterson does too, which is interesting because it's so easy to read that sort of thing as representing stultification. I think that's what people are expecting when the guy's a bus driver, but his clear refusal to want to be more than he is (because he doesn't show his poems to anyone), his easy (well, relatively easy) banter with his friends, his smoking hot girlfriend, and the complete lack of exasperation all make it clear that whatever's going on here is not some sort of slow burn "getting fed up with my life" thing at all. Nothing builds up to anything for him - everything either gets immediately deflated, like when it turns out the gun he wrestled from his friend was fake, and later he's still friends with the guy, which we learn in a conversation about basically nothing, except one point I'll touch on later or is just met with something akin to resignation (like the Brussels sprouts cheese pie [which honestly seemed pretty good] or the dog eating his poems. But ultimately for me the movie is about the upside of a lack of possibility. The great triumph in the film is Paterson meeting the Japanese poet and starting to write poetry again, and there's no indication that the future is going to be any different from the past. And remember what he or his friend said in his conversation with his friend when they met on the street after that thing with the gun: "well, it's like they always say: 'sun still rises in every morning and sets every evening.' Always another day." Then the other responds "so far." This is the sentiment expressed by the philosopher David Hume, who famously argued that we have no reason to think that things in the future will be the way things in the past were. There's no reason to assume the sun will rise tomorrow just because it's risen yesterday and so on. But, the sun still rises, and it would loving suck if it didn't. So, for Paterson, the routine is a blessing. The sun rises, he wakes up between 6:10 and 6:30, he walks to work, etc. Even the non-routine soon becomes routine - one set of twins turns into a million sets of twins, everyone has the exact same reaction to the bus breaking down (it could have blown up into a million pieces), etc. But he's cool with that. All he wants is this homeostasis. He's even cool with his house being black and white. Because the alternative is chaos! The Love Witch (2016) - 93 Hahah holy poo poo this movie owns. I don't think enough can be said about the style, from the film to the colors to the costumes to the way all the actors are riding the edge of corniness, so forget all that. I don't mind being beaten about the head with feminism but it's also nice to get more nuanced approaches to the topic, and this movie's a slam dunk. The only didacticism comes from the mouth of the main character, and it's never really clear whether she's been brainwashed, whether she's her own woman, whether she's just loving loony, or what. She's clearly empowered, and empowered in some interesting, hyper-feminine ways, but what exactly is that doing for her and for everyone else? Is the idea that she's completely wrong to buy into this distinction between the genders, this hyper-essentializaiton, and that the chaos she causes is a result of her backwards ideas about the duality of mankind? But this duality is exactly what's preached by the witches that she clearly feels conflicted about, and they clearly feel conflicted about her. Did she strike off on her own? If she did, what's she doing differently? Are the witches even the bad guys? How much of anything is down to the prejudices of "the townsfolk," aka the patriarchy, as ably represented by that guy in the bar whose face looks SO loving FAMILIAR to me but as far as I can tell I've never seen him in anything else? Does she even have magical powers, and what does it mean if she does or doesn't? Plus the movie's hilarious. The VVitch (2016) - 70 This is a really gorgeous movie but unfortunately it was 1) too scary for me and 2) didn't need to be scary so I took a lot of points off. That's all wholly subjective - for the people who aren't scaredy cats like me, the fact that it's scary is totally fine and the fact that it didn't need to be scary is entirely irrelevant. But I just really wish this had been a movie I could've watched without having to pause a couple of times and, eventually, put a livestream of kittens on my second monitor in order to make it through. It's got your garden variety faith and paranoia and gender relations and shitbag children and so on, but I'm always down for that, and the supernatural stuff at the end is a nice touch. Great performances all around, and the dialogue taken from actual documents from the time is a great touch, and again I can't gloss over just how nice the movie looked, but I just would've had a much better time if the soundtrack had been absent or some nice piano music or whatever instead of "Now That's What I Call Horror: 50 Greatest Hits from People Torturing a Violin" because I don't really like that sort of thing. La La Land (2016) - 82 I liked everything in this movie except the music. The songs did nothing for me. So an 82 is actually pretty high for a musical with music I don't give a poo poo about. I actually wasn't really feeling this movie until like halfway in or whatever. Once they got together things heated up a bit, and once they had the fight over dinner, which is the best scene in the movie and one of the top romantic fights of all time (the best, of course, being the one in Before Midnight) things really started popping. It's just nice to see a movie where the relationship doesn't work out, but it's maybe not because they're incompatible, and it's maybe for the best, at least for one of them, and maybe also not for the best, and also it's painful, and also there's no reconciliation at the end. That's just a nice little story to tell. Two bonus points for the great costumes and Ryan Gosling goofin' off during a concert. Manchester by the Sea (2016) - 87 Casey Affleck + whoever played the kid gave great performances. I mean, what more is there to say? This is the second Lonergan film I've seen and he seems to be a big fan of traumatic stuff happening and then people dealing with it. If you go in for that, there's really not a hair out of place with this thing. I guess it's possible to have found some of the times the music cuts in to be overdoing it a bit, but I thought everything was extremely measured, which is what I usually want from this sort of story, because otherwise it just drops off into sappy schmaltzy Oscar baitey bullshit. Even when they were freaking out, neither Affleck nor the kid felt like they were playing to the rafters. 20th Century Women (2016) - 79 Like La La Land I really wasn't feeling this for the first half. I've never seen a Mike Mills movie but it seems like maybe he's got a bit of a schtick, and that schtick (the still photograph slideshows interspersed into the movie) wasn't really doing it for me. I also soured a bit on the film when it became clear that everyone was like, super straight, because I was getting some queer vibes from people and that all got nipped in the bud. When the kid started getting woke and his mom started freaking out and all the relationships started developing, I was totally on board. A ~16 year old getting beat up because he tells another kid that a woman was likely faking her orgasms because women don't orgasm without direct clitoral stimulation, and also getting his car spray painted because of that and also because he likes the Talking Heads and not Black Flag, and then the older people listening to Black Flag and the Talking Heads to try to figure out what the hell that's about is just a nice funny sequence of events, and Greta Gerwig's delivery of the line I taught him how to verbally seduce women is pretty funny.
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Jul 3, 2017 19:28
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Between Paterson and Manchester by the Sea, it was a good year for the Moonrise Kingdom kids.
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Jul 3, 2017 19:39
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Baby Driver 3/5. Lot of style, not much substance. Would have been better if it were 20 minutes shorter and had a tighter edit/screenplay.
Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jul 5, 2017 |
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Jul 3, 2017 23:27
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1776 (Mr. Feeny as John Adams?!): A Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: D
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Jul 5, 2017 20:12
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:1776 (Mr. Feeny as John Adams?!): A Always love to hear people's takes on 1776.
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Jul 6, 2017 00:05
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I Before E posted:Always love to hear people's takes on 1776. Sure! I watched 1776 on TCM last night, and I have to admit that it inspired me in a way that the 'rah rah' patriotism of A Capitol Fourth did not. For all these men knew, they were signing their names to their death warrants. The Continental Army was a small force of undertrained and underdisciplined men facing what was, at the time, one of the most powerful empires on Earth. And yet despite those long odds, and the very real possibility of being hanged for treason, they had the courage to see "independency" through to the end. I'm not a historian, so I'm not sure about the historicity of all the things that were depicted in the movie, but I was impressed with the eye for detail. This movie had the balls to tackle several issues head on (for instance, the issue of slavery) without prettying it up for posterity. It's so easy to view the founding fathers as larger than life, but this movie didn't really do that. It depicted them as brave men, to be sure, but men with blind spots and character flaws. One song mentions how much John Adams was "obnoxious and disliked" several times. Franklin is depicted as a fairly horny old man, which was both amusing and correct. Even Jefferson, one of the greats of the Continental Congress, was shown as being reluctant about writing the Declaration - even refusing outright to do it, because he wanted to take his wife to bed. Seeing the founders have the courage, even in the face of what seemed like certain death, to openly defy King George gave me courage to defy King Donald I and never stop fighting for what's right. And, of course, it was cool seeing Mr. Feeny as Adams.
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Jul 6, 2017 02:30
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Sure! See, I love it too but I take a very different read, where it's a dark comedy about how for all Adams' bluster the US is born out of compromising on the greatest atrocity in our nation's history which every single person in that room is complicit in, if not for the sale of slaves ("they don't see them as figures on a ledger, no, they see them as figures on a block!") then for all the rum they buy, and the cowardice of a man who just doesn't want to change history. "The eagle is a scavenger, a thief, and a coward." I like your read too, though.
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Jul 6, 2017 03:48
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Alien: Covenant B+ Wonder Woman C+ The BFG B- The Wailing A Okja B Big Hero 6 B- Return to the 36th Chamber A- Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 B+ Baby Driver B+ axelblaze fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Jul 8, 2017 |
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Jul 6, 2017 03:58
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I'd be interested in Okja.
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Jul 6, 2017 04:28
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I Before E posted:See, I love it too but I take a very different read, where it's a dark comedy about how for all Adams' bluster the US is born out of compromising on the greatest atrocity in our nation's history which every single person in that room is complicit in, if not for the sale of slaves ("they don't see them as figures on a ledger, no, they see them as figures on a block!") then for all the rum they buy, and the cowardice of a man who just doesn't want to change history. Very true. Kicking the can down the road to deal with American independence before the issue of slavery was a devil's bargain. It got them what they so desperately needed, but it only delayed the inevitable north/south split by about ninety years. To its credit, though, the movie doesn't shrink away from using pretty harsh language - with a South Carolinian as the mouthpiece - to decry what Adams, Franklin, and others freely admitted was the hypocrisy of loathing slavery while benefiting from it.
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Jul 6, 2017 06:31
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Train to Busan (2016) dir. Sang-ho Yeon 8/10 Wolf Children (2012) dir. Mamoru Hosoda 8/10 Green Room (2015) dir. Jeremy Saulnier 8.5/10 The Fate of the Furious (2015) dir. F. Gary Gray 6.5/10 Get Out (2015) dir. Jordan Peele 8/10 Elle (2015) dir. Paul Verhoeven 7.5/10 Alien Covenant (2017) dir. Ridley Scott 7/10 Showgirls (1995) dir. Paul Verhoeven 7.5/10 Predator 2 (1990) dir. Stephen Hopkins 5.5/10 Split (2015) dir. M. Night Shyamalan 5/10 Predators (2010) dir. Nimrod Antal 6/10 The Intern (2015) dir. Nancy Meyers 7/10 Hope (2013) dir. Lee Joon-ik 8.5/10 War Machine (2017) dir. David Michod 8/10 Okja (2017) dir. Bong Joon Ho 8.5/10 Baby Driver (2017) dir. Edgar Wright 9/10
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Jul 9, 2017 09:00
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Howzabout Split and Okja.
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Jul 9, 2017 15:14
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I'm really not understanding the praise for Baby Driver. It was like a knock off Drive at best.
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Jul 9, 2017 16:18
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I mean, fantastic editing and sound mixing, but everything else about it was middling at best. I'm no big fan of Drive, but I felt like Baby Driver had almost no identity of its own and, despite apparently being a passion project, felt designed by committee to appeal to the broadest possible audience BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 18:18
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I really can't comprehend how your can come away from Baby Driver and feel like it was a cynical exercise designed to sell music. I mean what gave that impression beyond it being a movie that was thouroghly focused on music?
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Jul 9, 2017 18:40
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glam rock hamhock posted:I really can't comprehend how your can come away from Baby Driver and feel like it was a cynical exercise designed to sell music. I mean what gave that impression beyond it being a movie that was thouroghly focused on music? Well, in addition to the movie itself prominently featuring a colorful cast of iPods as side characters? How about the promotional material, you know, a hard push from Sony Music or something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YirEgK7yJCg Let's release it a week before the movie. BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 19:12
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I mean, they were old school iPods, which I don't think your can even buy anyone and I think were chosen more so Baby had to spin a wheel to navigate his music, connecting it closer to the car. The other thing just seems to be a pretty standard promotional music video.
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Jul 9, 2017 19:27
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Here, I don't feel like arguing about something that seems so incredibly obvious to me, so I changed my original post to reflect your concerns.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:06
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:I mean, fantastic editing and sound mixing, but everything else about it was middling at best. Wouldn't the way 2 do that be the Suicide Squad route of licensing new music from current popstars, or, alternatively, including any music from current pop stars? Like, not packed with Drake tracks, not hearin a turn timed 2 a Migos ad-lib.
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Jul 9, 2017 21:57
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Maybe it's because I know Edgar Wright but it was pretty much just his taste in music. Like the whole movie is so pure Edgar Wright that it seems bizarre to see people think it was by committee. It just feels backwards to assume that in a movie mostly about it's music to think that the music was forced into the movie.
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Jul 10, 2017 00:24
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glam rock hamhock posted:Maybe it's because I know Edgar Wright but it was pretty much just his taste in music. Like the whole movie is so pure Edgar Wright that it seems bizarre to see people think it was by committee. It just feels backwards to assume that in a movie mostly about it's music to think that the music was forced into the movie. You don't get it. The music doesn't have to be 'forced into the movie' in order to be pushed as a cross-platform consumer experience. I mean, the film itself mirrors a soundtrack's eclecticism by integrating an entire swath of contrasting genre conventions into its story. But that's not a strength, in my own humble, it's just schizoid. Chase/heist/mafia/younglovecomedy/musical/revengehorror/chamberdrama/roadmovie. Am I forgetting anything in this narrative mashup? A Guardians of the Galaxy style mom-tape? Check. Sorry, none of it stuck. Worth a watch, I suppose.
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Jul 10, 2017 01:08
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All of Wrights films have meticulous editing and directing and he's got a very distinct style.
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Jul 10, 2017 02:43
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Yeah, I get it, I've seen them. I didn't knock Baby Driver for editing, visual or otherwise. Is film criticism off limits or something? 
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Jul 10, 2017 03:20
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