It's a classic of its type and era. Of course, that's not necessarily good in the grand scheme of wider cinematic art.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
- Thread starter Th3Ch33s3Cak3
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I watched an hour or so of Marvels 2023 today.
Very strange movie to watch on a lot of levels. This films problems share a lot more in common with Suicide Squad (2016) and Joss Wedons Justice League than films like Ant-man 3 and Thor: Love & Thunder. I think your enjoyment of the film will largely dependent on how much you can handle messy film making in exchange for being "entertained". Marvel films like Thor: Love & Thunder and Ant-man 3 have a clear cohesive "vision". They're movies you can just watch. They start at point A and get to point B. You may not have liked them, but they are reasonably paced and don't require any kind of investment from the audience entering the theater. The former two are explicitly remembered as unfinished messes.
While Suicide Squad (2016) is an extreme example there's a general feeling of disjointedness at the core of the film. Like at no point is any part of the film working other than when the action scenes are happening.
There's an intro scene for Kamala. It's neither an "as scene previously", nor a reintroduction. Its just like a weird random comic intro harkening back, unfortunately, to the parts of her show I enjoyed and much like the show it just ends abruptly and we get no more comicbook animations for the rest of the film. Unlike Across the Spider-verse it doesn't set the cinematic tone for the film its just like "hey yall remember kamala likes comics?"
I don't quite recall the order, but theres then an intro for the villain finding a weapon..and it's like "New Phase, who dis?". It neither sets up the villain as the threat nor gives us any info about her.
aand then we get Captain Marvel having a dream sequence that is... I kid you not, I'm not exaggerating, a flashback of the entire first Captain Marvel film as a quick 5 minute reel. Whats so strange is that..thats it. It doesn't show anything new or setup anything. It just...reminds you the first film exists???
The rest of the film, that I watched, is a lot of jumping around getting the group together and then villain doing..stuff? it's really hard to describe without you seeing it, but the villain is an absolute nothing burger. She just lacks any personality, good or bad. It's like if Jeremy Irons took his role in Dungeuns & Dragons seriously. She's cold unflavored tofu.
Captain Marvel herself, seems to have been...rewritten? So you know how everybody complained that Captain Marvel in both her own film and in Endgame was very acerbic? Like she only smiled when she was gonna punch somebody and generally seemed sardonic towards other characters? Well Disney heard. In this she's almost like a completely different person. She's talkative, a bit silly and willowy. I'm not good at describing it lets say she was kinda emulating Sigourney Weaver in her previous outings? Well now she's like Buffy. I mean it sounds like Joss Wedon wrote her parts. In a vacuum I wouldn't pick up on it so much, but it's a bit of whiplash. I was sort of expecting Captain marvel to be the Abbot to Kamala Costello and instead I'm getting flashbacks to Mean Girls.
Ok, but is it a bad film? .................
Man I'm not sure this "is" a film. I've never watched a film so reliant on me both having scene several other films and TV shows, and actually having liked all of those. I got an hour in and I was just...not engaged on any level.
I will go back and finish it, but I'm just not..excited to do it.
Very strange movie to watch on a lot of levels. This films problems share a lot more in common with Suicide Squad (2016) and Joss Wedons Justice League than films like Ant-man 3 and Thor: Love & Thunder. I think your enjoyment of the film will largely dependent on how much you can handle messy film making in exchange for being "entertained". Marvel films like Thor: Love & Thunder and Ant-man 3 have a clear cohesive "vision". They're movies you can just watch. They start at point A and get to point B. You may not have liked them, but they are reasonably paced and don't require any kind of investment from the audience entering the theater. The former two are explicitly remembered as unfinished messes.
While Suicide Squad (2016) is an extreme example there's a general feeling of disjointedness at the core of the film. Like at no point is any part of the film working other than when the action scenes are happening.
There's an intro scene for Kamala. It's neither an "as scene previously", nor a reintroduction. Its just like a weird random comic intro harkening back, unfortunately, to the parts of her show I enjoyed and much like the show it just ends abruptly and we get no more comicbook animations for the rest of the film. Unlike Across the Spider-verse it doesn't set the cinematic tone for the film its just like "hey yall remember kamala likes comics?"
I don't quite recall the order, but theres then an intro for the villain finding a weapon..and it's like "New Phase, who dis?". It neither sets up the villain as the threat nor gives us any info about her.
aand then we get Captain Marvel having a dream sequence that is... I kid you not, I'm not exaggerating, a flashback of the entire first Captain Marvel film as a quick 5 minute reel. Whats so strange is that..thats it. It doesn't show anything new or setup anything. It just...reminds you the first film exists???
The rest of the film, that I watched, is a lot of jumping around getting the group together and then villain doing..stuff? it's really hard to describe without you seeing it, but the villain is an absolute nothing burger. She just lacks any personality, good or bad. It's like if Jeremy Irons took his role in Dungeuns & Dragons seriously. She's cold unflavored tofu.
Captain Marvel herself, seems to have been...rewritten? So you know how everybody complained that Captain Marvel in both her own film and in Endgame was very acerbic? Like she only smiled when she was gonna punch somebody and generally seemed sardonic towards other characters? Well Disney heard. In this she's almost like a completely different person. She's talkative, a bit silly and willowy. I'm not good at describing it lets say she was kinda emulating Sigourney Weaver in her previous outings? Well now she's like Buffy. I mean it sounds like Joss Wedon wrote her parts. In a vacuum I wouldn't pick up on it so much, but it's a bit of whiplash. I was sort of expecting Captain marvel to be the Abbot to Kamala Costello and instead I'm getting flashbacks to Mean Girls.
Ok, but is it a bad film? .................
Man I'm not sure this "is" a film. I've never watched a film so reliant on me both having scene several other films and TV shows, and actually having liked all of those. I got an hour in and I was just...not engaged on any level.
I will go back and finish it, but I'm just not..excited to do it.
Princess Mononoke in theaters, 9/10
Among Ghibli's very best, though it doesn't quite reach the levels of perfection Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro do. It has IMO the best film score of all time, it's absolutely stunning to look at even by Ghibli standards, the story is thoughtful, engaging and multilayered, and I've recently started to realize just what a well executed character prince Ashitaka is. Fantasy is laden with stoic, quiet heroes with a righteous moral core, but it's how we clearly see him struggle with his morals makes him stand out. He also is genuinely out of his depth in trying to steer the conflict he gets caught up in, and the film doesn't present his side of the argument as unequivocally righteous and good, it's merely one perspective among many. The film is Lord of the Rings tier in how the theater experience elevates the film. I wish I could someday see this in IMAX. The first hour of this film is some of the best fantasy cinema ever created.
I still maintain that this film has some noticeable pacing issues in the final act. The final 40 minutes feel like one long action sequence with little pause for breath, and the intensity it keeps up gets a bit exhausting for my tastes. I also think that the transition to the final conflict is a bit janky. This film could really use a "suit up" montage where we see all sides of the conflict preparing and heading for the inevitable confrontation: Okkoto, Eboshi, and San and the wolves. Instead it's presented piecemeal and in a non-linear fashion solely from Ashitaka's point of view, and it can be a bit jarring.
The one aspect where I fully think some "George Lucas-ing" would be in order is this movie's violence. It's already pretty gnarly for a PG-13 film, which only makes it that much more noticeable when it can't fully show the grisly consequences of the violence. Some good ol' 90s OVA style blood spatter in a few scenes would make all the difference in the world in increasing the impact of those scenes.
Among Ghibli's very best, though it doesn't quite reach the levels of perfection Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro do. It has IMO the best film score of all time, it's absolutely stunning to look at even by Ghibli standards, the story is thoughtful, engaging and multilayered, and I've recently started to realize just what a well executed character prince Ashitaka is. Fantasy is laden with stoic, quiet heroes with a righteous moral core, but it's how we clearly see him struggle with his morals makes him stand out. He also is genuinely out of his depth in trying to steer the conflict he gets caught up in, and the film doesn't present his side of the argument as unequivocally righteous and good, it's merely one perspective among many. The film is Lord of the Rings tier in how the theater experience elevates the film. I wish I could someday see this in IMAX. The first hour of this film is some of the best fantasy cinema ever created.
I still maintain that this film has some noticeable pacing issues in the final act. The final 40 minutes feel like one long action sequence with little pause for breath, and the intensity it keeps up gets a bit exhausting for my tastes. I also think that the transition to the final conflict is a bit janky. This film could really use a "suit up" montage where we see all sides of the conflict preparing and heading for the inevitable confrontation: Okkoto, Eboshi, and San and the wolves. Instead it's presented piecemeal and in a non-linear fashion solely from Ashitaka's point of view, and it can be a bit jarring.
The one aspect where I fully think some "George Lucas-ing" would be in order is this movie's violence. It's already pretty gnarly for a PG-13 film, which only makes it that much more noticeable when it can't fully show the grisly consequences of the violence. Some good ol' 90s OVA style blood spatter in a few scenes would make all the difference in the world in increasing the impact of those scenes.
I disagree. Mononoke is pure perfection just as much as the other two.
Not really. They got away with a lot back in 1999 with a PG-13 rating; it will always be amazing. I didn't need any extra splatters. The surprising blood and gore that did appear is real and more than creepy enough, because they don't go overboard with it. Seeing someone get shot, stabbed, and limb sliced off or shot off, makes the audience feel it.
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The only thing I can think of in that scene where Ashitaka shoots a man's both arms off and there's a brief shot of them dangling from a tree is some juicy christmas hams. It just looks goofy to me.
To you. Seeing that all the way back in 1999 at the age of 10 was shocking. It still has some effect on me. I wasn't too used to gore in cartoons yet. I saw a little bit of blood here and there, but nothing like that at the time. Aside from HBO's Spawn, till that one was definitely not meant for kids or early teens.
That scene is primarily to show that Ashiktaka has demon powers. It's supposed to be this sudden shocking revelation so it goes by very quicky - before he even notices something's wrong with him he shot off a dude's arms, and similarly before the dude even realizes he's been hit his arms are lopped off. It comes across rather unnatural because that's what Ashitaka has become. You see it again later in the third act when he takes on a couple more samurai warriors, where his attacks are so quick and strong there's barely any time to observe the violence being inflicted.
Don't know how those scenes would differ if they had more gore - if it would've added to it or subtracted - but there's other moments where the movie does linger on the violence, like when Ashitaka gets shot and walks out of the Iron Works with San, and in Otoko's final moments. So I feel the lack of blood in those scenes was done intentionally. When you see Ashitaka shoot a man's head off with such ease and without the conventional blood spray it's somewhat disturbing.
Fun fact, in Forrest Gump the Watergate guard who answers the phone was the same one on duty who discovered the break-in during the actual event.
I think he was in this movie as well playing himself, but since it was made like four years after the event that’s not a shock.
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A ★★★★ review of Magic (1978)
"I'll tell." "What will you tell?" "Everything." The plot of the film follows a magician/ventriloquist named Corky (Anthony Hopkins) as he works with his agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) to get a deal to make it big. However, when one of the conditions of the contract involves a medical...
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@hanselthecaretaker2
The Beekeeper - "6/10, NOT ENOUGH BEES!"/sarcasm
I saw the movie; really good. It is basically a John Wick sequel/spiritual successor in a sense, but definitely does its own thing. The Beekeeper is a better John Wick sequel than 2-4. I am more so referring to 4 though. The action is pretty good. I have no idea what some film critics were talking about the action being hard to make out. There is some quick cutting, but it's nowhere near the amount you would see from Bourne clones in the late 2000s and early to mid 2010s. I can still tell what's going on fine.
I am glad to see more of these old-school style action films coming out again since the late 2010s and early 2020s. Can't wait to get this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
The Beekeeper - "6/10, NOT ENOUGH BEES!"/sarcasm
I saw the movie; really good. It is basically a John Wick sequel/spiritual successor in a sense, but definitely does its own thing. The Beekeeper is a better John Wick sequel than 2-4. I am more so referring to 4 though. The action is pretty good. I have no idea what some film critics were talking about the action being hard to make out. There is some quick cutting, but it's nowhere near the amount you would see from Bourne clones in the late 2000s and early to mid 2010s. I can still tell what's going on fine.
I am glad to see more of these old-school style action films coming out again since the late 2010s and early 2020s. Can't wait to get this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
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Quick cutting was I think designed in large part to create a sense of fast pace and excitement, although I feel its days are mostly past. I think it also perhaps helped to hide limitations in the physicality / skills of the actors because they don't really need to be choreographed so much.
Some yes; most others no or failed at conveying that. Quick or rapid cut editing was and is mainly used by director's who either couldn't direct action (Nolan was guilty of this with Batman Begins and learned from his mistakes), actor(s) who can't do action or fight sequences/choreography, something done by a secondary film crew when the director is not in nor on location, to get away with a PG-13 rating, or all the above. It's shitty short cut too many bad directors or bad action directors, and I blame Paul Greengrass for letting these assholes in. I know that was never his intention, and the blame lies mainly on the top fat cats in Hollywood trying to get something as cheap as possible. Greengrass didn't help even though is style of film making is "better" than the charlatans and imitators copying him, and I honestly never liked his style of film making. There's a reason why I consider Bourne Identity the best of the franchise.
David Ayer is one of the few who uses quick cuts, but does it right and in fewer numbers.
That's been true since the mid 2010s and I am all the more happy for it.
I just had my rant earlier and didn't read that part until finishing it. Yeah that was part of the reason, but there were other factor as well. If your actor or who ever lacks the physicality nor the skills, then don't do it, or find a better work around. I rather they keep the camera static in that case, then incomprehensible editing where the audience can't tell between shit and who's getting hit.
Hope to get to the theater for this one. On a similar note, will be watching The Equalizer 3 tonight on Netflix.
Spirited Away in theaters, 11/10
My #1 favorite film of all time, bar none, no contest. It is the greatest animated film of all time, and one of the greatest films of all time, period. Nothing like this will ever be seen again, it will never be topped. Watching it is like a religious experience to me. It is a 2-hour fireworks display of creativity, imagination, artistry, and breathless, incandescent beauty in every respect. I am in awe every time no matter how many times I watch it. Alongside Redline and the Spider-verse films it's one of the most beautiful-looking films ever. The cinematography, the colors and the just insane amount of background detail are simply dazzling. The only issue I have with it is that the end reveal about Haku could be set up a little bit better, but beyond that there's nothing. I recognize may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for me it is the G.O.A.T.
My #1 favorite film of all time, bar none, no contest. It is the greatest animated film of all time, and one of the greatest films of all time, period. Nothing like this will ever be seen again, it will never be topped. Watching it is like a religious experience to me. It is a 2-hour fireworks display of creativity, imagination, artistry, and breathless, incandescent beauty in every respect. I am in awe every time no matter how many times I watch it. Alongside Redline and the Spider-verse films it's one of the most beautiful-looking films ever. The cinematography, the colors and the just insane amount of background detail are simply dazzling. The only issue I have with it is that the end reveal about Haku could be set up a little bit better, but beyond that there's nothing. I recognize may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for me it is the G.O.A.T.
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And alongside Akira it was the anime to kick open the doors to anime exposure in the West. Coupled with the rise of DVD it brought so many otherwise obscure titles into the open.
The Equalizer 3
Vigilante goodness without the silliness of the Jon Wick sequels. The violence is gritty and creative and the fairly grounded style of storytelling gives it a more human feel with vulnerability. I also liked the first scene with Mcall and Emma . It was fun watching him sort of playfully toy with her in a good natured way as they’re sizing each other up. It was a good call on kind of inverting the trope about the hero getting beat up at the end and barely surviving. Nice to see him just stealthily clean house in top form. They got his low point out of the way early and it helped in setting the stage for the rest of the movie.
Vigilante goodness without the silliness of the Jon Wick sequels. The violence is gritty and creative and the fairly grounded style of storytelling gives it a more human feel with vulnerability. I also liked the first scene with Mcall and Emma . It was fun watching him sort of playfully toy with her in a good natured way as they’re sizing each other up. It was a good call on kind of inverting the trope about the hero getting beat up at the end and barely surviving. Nice to see him just stealthily clean house in top form. They got his low point out of the way early and it helped in setting the stage for the rest of the movie.
I watched Sisu twice on Starz.
I compare this movie to Equalizer 3.
The boy told me he is tired of seeing unstoppable one man armies that dispatch a bunch of people in colorful ways so I was worried he wouldn't enjoy this. Well, it is very different and he did. We get interesting characters and situations. More like an NC17 rated Raiders of the Lost Arc than Equalizer 3. There is a journey to be had here with goals, objectives and a hero's journey including a nadir from which he must rise.
I watched it a 2nd time with my buddy and he like it so much he's buying it on bluray. I will see it again some day.
Don't watch the trailer if you don't want to see a few things that do happen in the movie.
Deleting trailer: shows more than I'd want anyone seeing before seeing the movie.
A-
I compare this movie to Equalizer 3.
Equalizer 3 establishes that Denzel is a bad ass who can kill entire armies. We then spend another 2/3s of the movie establishing some bad guys that need killing. Then without so much as getting a scratch, Denzel kills them all. The End. Not really something I could call a story.
The boy told me he is tired of seeing unstoppable one man armies that dispatch a bunch of people in colorful ways so I was worried he wouldn't enjoy this. Well, it is very different and he did. We get interesting characters and situations. More like an NC17 rated Raiders of the Lost Arc than Equalizer 3. There is a journey to be had here with goals, objectives and a hero's journey including a nadir from which he must rise.
I watched it a 2nd time with my buddy and he like it so much he's buying it on bluray. I will see it again some day.
Don't watch the trailer if you don't want to see a few things that do happen in the movie.
Deleting trailer: shows more than I'd want anyone seeing before seeing the movie.
A-
Ghost in the Shell and Ninja Scroll be like: are we a joke to you?