Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

Is this the first poll?


  • Total voters
    45

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
6,044
5,345
118
Australia
DInosaurs would be shit.

Our ancient forebears, with nothing but pointy sticks, wiped out woolly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers, and thoroughly dominated just about every other major creature when they set their minds to it. Who on earth could believe dinos, even with fancy genetic engineering, would stand a chance if we felt like exterminating them? If one guy with a rocket launcher can destroy a tank, one guy with a rocket launcher can kill any dinosaur. One guy with a sniper rifle, hit the right spot, dead / crippled T-Rex. Or a dozen guys with assault rifles and a few spare clips will do the job.

Sure, a few modest sized dinos up to around bear size might be able to survive in far wilderness where they're too much effort to hunt, and small ones that could breed and hide like cats, dogs, rats, fine. All the others are toast at our leisure.

And given that, you can imagine how I feel about dinosaurs on a battlefield. Elephants were rendered obsolete by the Romans. What amounts to something about the mass of an elephant (but with big teeth) isn't much of an improvement, plus the same problems of making sure it doesn't turn round and chow down on your own troops. A velociraptor is just a guy bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Well it would be viable - for a movie at least - if the mad scientists genetically improved the raptors to the point of human intelligence and sapience with communication skills to match.

But at the point you’re not making Jurassic Park, you’re making a shitty version of Dinosaucers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Specter Von Baren

Xprimentyl

Made you look...
Legacy
Aug 13, 2011
6,207
4,481
118
Plano, TX
Country
United States
Gender
Male
Hustle: Good / Great

Adam Sandler portrays Stanley Sugarman, a scout for the NBA who puts his career and reputation on the line for a Spanish baller with a troubled past.

Decent enough film that boast a lot of cameos from actual NBA players. I thought it was based on a true story, but alas, is not.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
19,568
4,371
118
I watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and it was a pretty fun time.

The plot was whatever, the characters were rushed, and the villain motivation was kinda dumb, and yet I had a very nice time with this movie. And I'm just gonna go ahead and attribute that to Sam Raimi. It almost kind of reminded me of watching the 3-parter of a 90's animated superhero show.

Wanda's motivation to just go full murderous villain was extremely dishonest and quite unfair to her as a character, but watching her go full murderous villain was so much fun I almost didn't mind. There was one incredibly goofy moment though when we see America Chavez's tragic backstory involving a wasp, and I kinda broke down laughing.

It's strange, because this movie is far less well put together from a narrative perspective than many of the other MCU movies, yet I was much more engaged throughout this film then I was Shang-Chi. And this is probably because they let Sam Raimi do his Sam Raimi stuff. They let the director be the director instead of having them sit in the back of the car while Kevin Feige follows the roadmap.

So yeah, fun wacky magical superhero stuff.
 

Xprimentyl

Made you look...
Legacy
Aug 13, 2011
6,207
4,481
118
Plano, TX
Country
United States
Gender
Male
I watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and it was a pretty fun time.

The plot was whatever, the characters were rushed, and the villain motivation was kinda dumb, and yet I had a very nice time with this movie. And I'm just gonna go ahead and attribute that to Sam Raimi. It almost kind of reminded me of watching the 3-parter of a 90's animated superhero show.

Wanda's motivation to just go full murderous villain was extremely dishonest and quite unfair to her as a character, but watching her go full murderous villain was so much fun I almost didn't mind. There was one incredibly goofy moment though when we see America Chavez's tragic backstory involving a wasp, and I kinda broke down laughing.

It's strange, because this movie is far less well put together from a narrative perspective than many of the other MCU movies, yet I was much more engaged throughout this film then I was Shang-Chi. And this is probably because they let Sam Raimi do his Sam Raimi stuff. They let the director be the director instead of having them sit in the back of the car while Kevin Feige follows the roadmap.

So yeah, fun wacky magical superhero stuff.
I had no interest in seeing this until I watched the first Doctor Strange film recently, and found it to be one of the more entertaining Marvel movies to date, mostly because it didn't mask its absurdity in austerity. I actually want to see this one now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gorfias

Bob_McMillan

Elite Member
Aug 28, 2014
5,175
1,851
118
Country
Philippines
There was one incredibly goofy moment though when we see America Chavez's tragic backstory involving a wasp, and I kinda broke down laughing.
Man I completely forgot about that... I get that her character was a very last minute addition to the movie, but couldn't they have thought of, I dunno, literally anything else?
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
6,044
5,345
118
Australia
Man I completely forgot about that... I get that her character was a very last minute addition to the movie, but couldn't they have thought of, I dunno, literally anything else?
I dunno, I'm kind of fond of these kinds of turn. Where the origin of something or someone isn't deeply profound. I mean it does beg a couple of questions, but to me the wasp is just an example of the adage "from little things, big things grow". And also the sheer randomness and occasionally absurd nature of the cosmos.
 

Bob_McMillan

Elite Member
Aug 28, 2014
5,175
1,851
118
Country
Philippines
I dunno, I'm kind of fond of these kinds of turn. Where the origin of something or someone isn't deeply profound. I mean it does beg a couple of questions, but to me the wasp is just an example of the adage "from little things, big things grow". And also the sheer randomness and occasionally absurd nature of the cosmos.
I guess I can see that, but then also the whole scene was just so weird. forget the wasp. Chavez never reflects on how absurd the situation is and the whole "boohoo this is my tragic backstory" thing is undercut by horrible looking costumes, set, and special effects.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
Justice League (theatrical version, 2017)

Yes, yes. I am years behind.

This is a thoroughly lumpen pile of ordinariness. I think the film makes a fundamental mistake by attempting to introduce new major characters in hurry. The Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman - lacking prior standalone movies - need to be brought into the plot, requiring a huge chunk of time to let us know "Hi, here's some guy and key thigns to know about him", plus of course the backstory for why there's some baddie as well. Then, all the action gets split trying to give all the superheroes some face time. This diminution of focus is always tricky. Marvel perhaps got away with it better with the Avengers because it had introduced its characters already.

The basic plot idea - alien to destroy Earth because reasons - are just so ho-hum. Beyond that, the action scenes are okay, but I'm also old and jaded, and nothing raises this above the vast panoply of superhero movies we've been fed for the last 15-20 or so years. Supertough bad guy, who has of course brought a legion of cannon fodder with him because it allows our band of heroes to smash lots of stuff rather than just pound on one evil dude. Again, this has all been done in Marvel's Avengers. The DC Universe's later development means it's always behind the curve. Although I don't know how different it could be: whilst there are several ways to skin a cat, there are still only a limited number of ways to skin a cat. There's a lot of CGI, not to great effect. Clark Kent and Lois Lane in a cornfield, with a few dozen cornstalks and an obviously CGIed background (if it wasn't CGIed, what the hell is it with the cinematography?). They really would have been better with a real cornfield. There's the usual seriousness, the usual attempts to make superheroes more complex than people who pound evildoers. There are points of more levity, but they tend to miss the snap and humour of films in the other comic book stable.

The film returns to a fundamental problem with Superman. Superman is too super. He turns up, the resolution is ensured. I do perhaps somewhat like the recognition that Batman - whose given superpower is amusingly put in his own words as "I'm rich" - is in a sense completely outclassed. He's given some acting jobs, but his accomplishment in Justice League is really as a manager and resource provider.

All in all, just so terribly meh.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gorfias

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
Legacy
Jan 30, 2011
1,923
745
118
Crimes of the Future (2022)

David Cronenberg's return to the craft and, moreso, return to the style of movie that made him a household name. "Body Horror" is the term, though his squelching, fleshy noir's, say Videodrome, EXistenZ or Naked Lunch, have always been something seperate from what one would generally associate with the genre of horror. CotF is no different, playing almost like a biopunk riff on Blade Runner, though even moreso than Blade Runner it's a movie that feels much richer in textures and allegories than it does in actual moment to moment narrative.

CotF focuses on performance artist Saul Tenser, played by Viggo Mortensen, and his partner Patrice, played by Lea Seydoux. What does their performance art look like, you ask? Well, Tenser has a never elaborated upon, but implicitly not uncommon, genetic condition that makes him grow additional organs inside his body. In their performances, Patrice surgically removes these organs in front of a live audience. In the world of CotF, you see, pain and disease have been eradicated, so this and other forms of extreme body art can be performed without great risk. This abrupt and radical change in the human body is eyed suspiciously by the powers that be who have established a number of new institutions to survey and control those capable of altering their bodies, most notably a group of people who have found a way to digest plastic and even genetically pass on that ability to their offspring.

So, as you might have surmised, this is kind of a weird movie. It's certainly one of those "late career" type projects, the sort of thing that gets made when directors are so confident in their personal sensibilities that their intent is to shamelessly revel in in them with no attempt to packabe them in a way that's digestible. How much one might enjoy these projects tends to depend on how much of the artists fascinations they personally share. Which is why I can call something like Inland Empire, in all its grainy, murky, labyrinthine eccentricity, one of my personal favourite movies and got a lot of enjoyment Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, even if it did feel more like a full immersion experience into 70's Los Angeles than a narrative movie. If you aren't 100% alligned with them, though, watching those movies can be a rather tedious experience, and Crimes of the Future did occasionally cross over into that tedium for me, albeit between ideas that are actually pretty compelling.

While I like quite a bit of Cronenberg's output, I never really clicked with some of its more openly fetishistic elements. Cronenberg is one of those people who seem to view the relation between pain, lust and the violation of the human body by foreign objects as self explanatory. Me, personally, I don't. No matter how often Cronenberg presents various artificial orifices being fondled, I just don't see what's so damn fascinating about it. So when Kristen Stewart, as a government employee discovering her fascination with Tenser's work, puts forward the thesis that "Surgery is the new sex", I simply don't see where it's coming from. And, mind, I'm saying that as someone with a preference for women who had some extensive plastic surgery done. What's so hot about being cut open if, by the end, you don't even have a bigger pair of tits to show for it?

Cronenberg is at his best when he uses the violation and alteration of the human body as a visual shorthand for the violation and alteration of the human mind. As a short aside, I watched Videodrome in preperation for Crimes of the Future, but it's a movie that's much clearer about what it's actually about. When protagonist Max Renn, played by real life brainwashing victim James Woods, gets gradually transformed into an assassin for two competing secret societies waging a war for the human mind, there is a clear intent of having his physical mutations reflect the mind altering properties of the televised propaganda he's exposed to. CotF seems overall more interested in the visuals then in what they represent.

The film certainly throws a lot of ideas out there. Due to his condition, Tenser has to rely on H.R. Giger-esque biomechanical contraptions for basic bodily functions such as eating or sleeping. People eating nutrition bars made from plastic. Organ registration offices. It sure is some pretty wild stuff that Cronenberg's imagination brings to the screen, but CotF seems to be content in showing it but not very interested in using it. Sure, there's subtext to it. It's easy to read the bureaucratic control of the altered human body as a metaphor for surgical gender reassignment, or abortion, or, for all I know, eugenics. The mutation of the human body to digest plastic as commentary on environmental pollution and its consequences for biological life. Tenser as a standin for Cronenbergs himself, unsure whether he should embrace or purge himself from the things that are at the core of his artistic work. Ideas that are fun to meditate on, for sure, but the movie wants you to do its thinking for it.

It's all very interesting and thought provoking, certainly. It looks quite beautiful, on what's obviously a limited budget, Cronenberg creates a dystopian society that shows humanity at a crossroads between evolving away from itself, or being increasingly incapable of actually inhabiting the world it created. The dialogue tends to dwell in the same space as the visuals, communicating ideas and concepts more than emotions and motivations, but the actors manage to deliver it in a way that lends it some humanity and personality that the content often lacks. But as it keeps making you guess at where it's all going, the ending will hit you with the revelation that it isn't really going much of anywhere. The thunderclap finality that tied together Videodrome or Naked Lunch is absent from Crimes of the Future, it leaves these characters and the strange world they inhabit mostly as it found them, maybe with a revelation or two richer.

Crimes of the Future is a movie that's interesting, but frustrating. It creates a very weird and very immersive world to inhabit, but also doesn't seem interestend in doing more than just inhabiting it. It's a movie contemplating quite a lot of things, but reluctant to share its conclusions on them. This philosophy gives it a sense of inertia. It's a showcase of ideas and aesthethics, a lot of them quite fascinating for sure, but it's very conent with them just being there. The exploration of these ideas is left to the viewer, as any exploration the movie itself does is surface level at best.
 

Specter Von Baren

Annoying Green Gadfly
Legacy
Aug 25, 2013
5,632
2,849
118
I don't know, send help!
Country
USA
Gender
Cuttlefish
DInosaurs would be shit.

Our ancient forebears, with nothing but pointy sticks, wiped out woolly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers, and thoroughly dominated just about every other major creature when they set their minds to it. Who on earth could believe dinos, even with fancy genetic engineering, would stand a chance if we felt like exterminating them? If one guy with a rocket launcher can destroy a tank, one guy with a rocket launcher can kill any dinosaur. One guy with a sniper rifle, hit the right spot, dead / crippled T-Rex. Or a dozen guys with assault rifles and a few spare clips will do the job.

Sure, a few modest sized dinos up to around bear size might be able to survive in far wilderness where they're too much effort to hunt, and small ones that could breed and hide like cats, dogs, rats, fine. All the others are toast at our leisure.

And given that, you can imagine how I feel about dinosaurs on a battlefield. Elephants were rendered obsolete by the Romans. What amounts to something about the mass of an elephant (but with big teeth) isn't much of an improvement, plus the same problems of making sure it doesn't turn round and chow down on your own troops. A velociraptor is just a guy bringing a knife to a gunfight.
In theory you could get a species of dinosaur to work in a military capacity in a way similar to dogs but what long term benefit would you get out of that that justifies it over just continuing to use dogs?
 

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,576
3,532
118
In theory you could get a species of dinosaur to work in a military capacity in a way similar to dogs but what long term benefit would you get out of that that justifies it over just continuing to use dogs?
Hmmm...maybe a semi-amphibious one for swampy areas?

But yeah, there's plenty of tings dinosaurs could do, but we've got much better ways of doing them nowdays. Riding your brontosaurus might have been worthwhile 3,000 years ago, not so much once we've tamed elephants, and especially not once we've got steam engines.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
In theory you could get a species of dinosaur to work in a military capacity in a way similar to dogs but what long term benefit would you get out of that that justifies it over just continuing to use dogs?
Well, yes. Or indeed, genetically enhanced dogs.

Hmmm...maybe a semi-amphibious one for swampy areas?
We basically already have semi-amphibious dinosaurs: they're called crocodiles and alligators.
 

Hawki

Elite Member
Legacy
Mar 4, 2014
9,651
2,173
118
Country
Australia
Gender
Male
Operation Mincemeat (7/10)

This was "good," but only just.

The film tells the story of the real-world operation of the same name of 1943, where the Allies fooled Germany into thinking they'd invade Greece rather than Sicily. Focuses on two of the head honchos, one from the Royal Navy, one from the RAF. I'll get what I didn't like out of the way, the love triangle stuff. Bleh.

What does work though, is pretty much all the 'spy stuff.' The planning, the execution, making adjustments (which is low-key hilarious, as the Spanish are competent when the British don't want them to be, but can't tell them not to be competent without jeprodizing the operation), and numerous Ian Flemming cameos (which are well done, actually). The film actually reminded me a bit of Their Finest (for the personal drama) and The Imitation Game (for the espionage), only both of those films did their things better. Mincemeat is good, but not great, though it could have been if it focused more on the spy stuff.

Still, decent watch.
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
6,044
5,345
118
Australia
In theory you could get a species of dinosaur to work in a military capacity in a way similar to dogs but what long term benefit would you get out of that that justifies it over just continuing to use dogs?
I dunno, you'd probably get some people to join up if only for the potential big dick energy of saying they're with the 35th Raptor Regiment. Fuck knows it would tempt the shit out of me.
 

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,576
3,532
118
I dunno, you'd probably get some people to join up if only for the potential big dick energy of saying they're with the 35th Raptor Regiment. Fuck knows it would tempt the shit out of me.
Oh, you could have cool unit mascots and insignia. You can have the later already, but be better if you had a live example to go with it.
 

Specter Von Baren

Annoying Green Gadfly
Legacy
Aug 25, 2013
5,632
2,849
118
I don't know, send help!
Country
USA
Gender
Cuttlefish
Oh, you could have cool unit mascots and insignia. You can have the later already, but be better if you had a live example to go with it.
Well, shit. Now I want to see someone make a story (Not related to Jurassic Park) about a war with dinosaur divisions.

"Damn dude, it's really cool being in the brontosaurus division but man they crap a lot"

"Oh yeah, the raptor division pays well but I dunno, I kinda miss the two fingers Larry bit off me"
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan and Agema

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,576
3,532
118
Well, shit. Now I want to see someone make a story (Not related to Jurassic Park) about a war with dinosaur divisions.

"Damn dude, it's really cool being in the brontosaurus division but man they crap a lot"

"Oh yeah, the raptor division pays well but I dunno, I kinda miss the two fingers Larry bit off me"
There's a zillion adaptations of Tarzan, but they don't generally put the dinosaurs and stuff in, which annoys me. You totally would have Tarzan riding a stegosaurus from some lost valley, and he goes to the Hollow Earth in a zeppelin and there's more dinosaurs there, and we don't get to see that on the screen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Specter Von Baren

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
Not ones we've been able to meaningfully train, though.
You're not going to do any better training a dinosaur. Reptiles aren't really trainable in the way mammals are, and if you can't rely on a lion to not bite your arm off, you're sure as hell not going to be able to trust a reptile to show restraint.
 

gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
Legacy
May 13, 2009
7,082
1,849
118
Country
USA
Hustle: Good / Great

Adam Sandler portrays Stanley Sugarman, a scout for the NBA who puts his career and reputation on the line for a Spanish baller with a troubled past.

Decent enough film that boast a lot of cameos from actual NBA players. I thought it was based on a true story, but alas, is not.
IMDB has it at 7.4/10 ... not bad at all. A Netflix original.

I liked it. We've seen it many times before but, that's not a bad thing as it is a great story.

Biggest criticism?

The hero's journey involves the discovery and rise, a fall, and then redemption. I thought the movie spent too much time on the fall. The redemption felt very rushed. I think it was like the last 10 min. of a 2 hour movie. It doesn't kill the movie but keeps it from being great IMHO.
.