Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[BrawlMan]

Re watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Still an awesome movie and a much better film than Godzilla (2014). Why did the critics hate this film so much again? It's got the right balance of characters, is genuinely funny, and keeps it high on the monster fighting scale. Hell, I like the human characters here than in the 2014 film, because they don't feel isolated and are actively involved without overtaking the film. Now I am hyped for Kong vs. Godzilla.

​

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Coming to America

Not the best Eddie Murphy movie, nor the best John Landis movie, but a movie that randomly earned a spot close to my heart just by constantly being on TV when I was a kid. I know it by heart. It has that warm familiarity to it. And it's a pretty good comedy too. The Zamunda scenes, the barbershop scenes, the Soul Glo jingle, all that still make me laugh. Rewatching it I was surprised how much of the movie is also earnestly romantic, more concerned with developing the will-they-won't-they or generally being cute rather than funny. I also think this was Murphy sort of trying to escape the obnoxious motormouth typecast by adopting a more earnest character. Akeem is immensely likable, but then there's also the problem that his quiet, polite nature makes him a foil to everyone else, which feels like a waste of Murphy. Curiously the movie also sidesteps a lot of fish out of water humor - very little along the lines of situation humor, misunderstandings, etc.

 

[gorfias]

"Nostalgia" 2018 on Hulu. Most of this was a very good straight forward slice of life drama. It was, at its best, stories of how physical objects connect us to our memories. Little too much of the time, those objects are photographs. I think that is cheating when compared to, say, glimpsing a swing set and thinking of your kids playing on it. Warning, while I think it keeps with the theme, the final act is really, really dark. Before that act, the film dealt with pretty universal issues: growing old, or dealing with aging parents. What it is like to deal with end of life issues. And no one gets out of here alive. We all face these issues sooner or later. The final act deals with something I hope virtually never happens to anybody so, kinda manipulative. 3/4.

Spoiler

Out of nowhere, a young girl, a central character's daughter, dies off screen. It is her swing set we see. Unlike the near universality of aging or dealing with the aging, I think it very, very unusual to lost a child like this. At least I hope it is.

Re watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Still an awesome movie and a much better film than Godzilla (2014). Why did the critics hate this film so much again. It's got the right balance of characters, is genuinely funny, and keeps it high on the monster fighting scale. Hell, I like the human characters here than in the 2014 film, because they don't feel isolated and are actively involved without overtaking the film. Now I am hyped for Kong vs. Godzilla.

Oooo... it's on HBO. I hope to have my buds over to see Godzilla vs. King Kong (and it's been said before: both their moms best not be named Martha). Maybe make a double feature of it. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Coming to America

Not the best Eddie Murphy movie, nor the best John Landis movie, but a movie that randomly earned a spot close to my heart just by constantly being on TV when I was a kid. I know it by heart. It has that warm familiarity to it. And it's a pretty good comedy too. The Zamunda scenes, the barbershop scenes, the Soul Glo jingle, all that still make me laugh. Rewatching it I was surprised how much of the movie is also earnestly romantic, more concerned with developing the will-they-won't-they or generally being cute rather than funny. I also think this was Murphy sort of trying to escape the obnoxious motormouth typecast by adopting a more earnest character. Akeem is immensely likable, but then there's also the problem that his quiet, polite nature makes him a foil to everyone else, which feels like a waste of Murphy. Curiously the movie also sidesteps a lot of fish out of water humor - very little along the lines of situation humor, misunderstandings, etc.

There are a handful of movies I can watch and enjoy multiple times over; Coming To America is one of them. Every time I watch it, I laugh like I've not seen it a hundred times. I can't wait to watch the sequel tonight; I've avoided spoilers like the plague, but the general consensus I've stubble into has been that it doesn't disappoint. I'm pretty sure it won't be as memorable as the first film and will survive largely on the well-earned nostalgia, but any reason to revisit the barber shop or Randy Watson, then or now, is a good one.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

There are a handful of movies I can watch and enjoy multiple times over; Coming To America is one of them. Every time I watch it, I laugh like I've not seen it a hundred times. I can't wait to watch the sequel tonight; I've avoided spoilers like the plague, but the general consensus I've stubble into has been that it doesn't disappoint. I'm pretty sure it won't be as memorable as the first film and will survive largely on the well-earned nostalgia, but any reason to revisit the barber shop or Randy Watson, then or now, is a good one.

Me too, know the movie by heart but rewatched it anyway to hype up and prepare for the sequel. I don't have any great expectations for the sequel, I just think it'll be fun to see all these characters again. It's neat they're bringing almost everybody back, though it helps Murphy and Hall play most of them. And I've avoided spoilers too, so I don't know how the he'll they explain Akeem having a son in Queens. He doesn't get laid in the original with anybody, not even the lady he ends up marrying.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Me too, know the movie by heart but rewatched it anyway to hype up and prepare for the sequel. I don't have any great expectations for the sequel, I just think it'll be fun to see all these characters again. It's neat they're bringing almost everybody back, though it helps Murphy and Hall play most of them. And I've avoided spoilers too, so I don't know how the he'll they explain Akeem having a son in Queens. He doesn't get laid in the original with anybody, not even the lady he ends up marrying.

Yep, I watched the original a few days ago, too. Even though she'd seen the film several times, my girlfriend finally admitted that she didn't get the bit with Randolph and Mortimer where Akeem gives them the cash in the sack. I was so disgusted with her, it almost ended our relationship. Fortunately, we were able to find "Trading Places," (she loved it,) and the loop of her ignorance was closed.

As to the kid thing, I'm speculating it's not going to be Akeem's kid in the end; it's probably Semi's! Akeem was too wholesome a character to be marred by any casual salaciousness, but we know Semi had no problem flaunting riches which can make for some easy lays. But that's pure speculation.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yep, I watched the original a few days ago, too. Even though she'd seen the film several times, my girlfriend finally admitted that she didn't get the bit with Randolph and Mortimer where Akeem gives them the cash in the sack. I was so disgusted with her, it almost ended our relationship. Fortunately, we were able to find "Trading Places," (she loved it,) and the loop of her ignorance was closed.

As to the kid thing, I'm speculating it's not going to be Akeem's kid in the end; it's probably Semi's! Akeem was too wholesome a character to be marred by any casual salaciousness, but we know Semi had no problem flaunting riches which can make for some easy lays. But that's pure speculation.

I imagine there will be a twist, I just don't get how they'd rope in Akeem in the first place. He wasn't sowing them royal oats.

The inside joke with the hobo cameos, to be fair, I didn't get myself until not that long ago. Even as a kid it was clear to me it was so specific it had to be some kind of inside joke, I just didn't know what it was referring to.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I imagine there will be a twist, I just don't get how they'd rope in Akeem in the first place. He wasn't sowing them royal oats.

That's a valid point; Akeem would know if he'd screwed anyone to be concerned about, so yeah, maybe my theory doesn't hold as much weight as I thought.

The inside joke with the hobo cameos, to be fair, I didn't get myself until not that long ago. Even as a kid it was clear to me it was so specific it had to be some kind of inside joke, I just didn't know what it was referring to.

Trading Places is another of my "handful I can re-watch," so I figured everyone had seen it; I was borderline offended that she hadn't. But yeah, I'd seen Coming To America a dozen times before I watched Trading Places, so I was in a similar boat if not for quite as long, hence I didn't kick her out.

 

[thebobmaster]

Last movie I watched was on Hulu. It was technically an episode of the series Into the Dark, but it was put up as its own movie and had a feature-length runtime, so I feel it still counts.

Anyways, it was called Pilgrim, and it was...not good. Even as a fan of horror, I could not get much into it even when things started getting wilder towards the end. Despite the short runtime, I found myself bored throughout a fair chunk of the movie, and a big reason for it was the fact that I just didn't care about any of the characters other than one that I was certain was going to survive because this wasn't the kind of movie that would kill off the adorable 12 year old kid. It spent a long time building up to the horror, but the problem with doing that is that you need to actually care about what is happening...and I didn't.

Granted, the last 20-30 minutes of the movie were decent, and the ending went absolutely nuts in a fun way, but when you have an hour of bleh before that, it's hard to appreciate it. If I hadn't been watching it for the sake of completion, I probably would have turned it off partway through without any regrets.

 

[dreng3]

I just finished a, slightly intoxicated, re-watch of The Man From Earth. It is a damn good film that debates some interesting topics thorough a fairly underutilized premise. The entire vibe of the movie is great though some of the actors oversell it a bit or react in ways in consider disproportionate, but that is subjective.

I am still amazed at how a movie so lacking in action can keep me glued to the screen and leave me contemplating my own understanding of reality following the viewing.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Rock and Roll High School.

A high school musical from 1979 featuring The Ramones. I've been listening to a music podcast that had a 4 part series on The Ramones and this movie was mentioned. Turns out the whole thing is on youtube.

It's about what I expected it to be, maybe a little worse. It sure was very "of it's time." Kind of an interesting time capsule kind of movie. The acting is bad, the writing is bad, the music is great (if you like The Ramones), and the romance sub-plot is incredibly cringey by today's standards (and probably even 1979 standards), but the movie is also kind of adorable in a way. It's also mercifully short.

The Ramones were not good actors.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Raya and the Last Dragon.

First off, this film is peak Disney commercializing diversity. Southeast Asian cultures, my fucking ass. Not only is majority of the cast East Asian (Awkwafina is a notably out of place addition), but its quite obvious that the Southeast Asian inspiration was only aesthetic. And even then I feel this was only surface level.

But honestly the biggest crime was that it was just boring. Visually, the film can't hold a candle to pretty much any other recent Disney or Pixar movie. In terms of soundtrack, sure you had a few token Asian-y sounding songs, but everything else was generic Hollywood music. In terms of story, well I won't even bother. The action was done quite well, which was nice. Southeast Asian martial arts is less artsy and more punch-a-mothafucka, and I think that came through. But it was sparse. What wasn't sparse was the godawful comedy. The titular last dragon is pretty much Mushu from Mulan but even more annoying and disturbingly visually similar to My Little Pony.

And the nice little cherry on top of this crap sundae was that we Southeast Asian peeps can't even watch the fucking thing, since Disney+ hasn't seen fit to bless us with their streaming service. But then maybe that's even more pandering to us. We all just pirated the film, which is just classic SE Asian.

So all in all, what a disappointment. I know representing our culture would be really difficult considering we really aren't quite that similar, but damn, I expected them to try way harder than this.

TLDR Disney proves once again that their idea of diversity is just not having white people in their cast and they totally phoned it in for this movie.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Raya and the Last Dragon.

First off, this film is peak Disney commercializing diversity. Southeast Asian cultures, my fucking ass. Not only is majority of the cast East Asian (Awkwafina is a notably out of place addition), but its quite obvious that the Southeast Asian inspiration was only aesthetic. And even then I feel this was only surface level.

But honestly the biggest crime was that it was just boring. Visually, the film can't hold a candle to pretty much any other recent Disney or Pixar movie. In terms of soundtrack, sure you had a few token Asian-y sounding songs, but everything else was generic Hollywood music. In terms of story, well I won't even bother. The action was done quite well, which was nice. Southeast Asian martial arts is less artsy and more punch-a-mothafucka, and I think that came through. But it was sparse. What wasn't sparse was the godawful comedy. The titular last dragon is pretty much Mushu from Mulan but even more annoying and disturbingly visually similar to My Little Pony.

And the nice little cherry on top of this crap sundae was that we Southeast Asian peeps can't even watch the fucking thing, since Disney+ hasn't seen fit to bless us with their streaming service. But then maybe that's even more pandering to us. We all just pirated the film, which is just classic SE Asian.

So all in all, what a disappointment. I know representing our culture would be really difficult considering we really aren't quite that similar, but damn, I expected them to try way harder than this.

TLDR Disney proves once again that their idea of diversity is just not having white people in their cast and they totally phoned it in for this movie.

Philippines is considered South East Asian, not Pacific Island?

Anyways, I wasn't feeling this movie when I saw the trailers, probably because I feel this is a consequence of getting older. Disney hasn't done anything cool an ages imo.

If you want a children's animated films that are of quality, watch the stuff of Cartoon Saloon.

Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Breadwinners, and Wolkwalkers.

Especially Wolfwalkers

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Philippines is considered South East Asian, not Pacific Island?

Do they seriously still teach that in schools? Because really, I don't get how this became a misconception. Hell there are other SEA countries closer to Guam/Hawaii/Palau.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Do they seriously still teach that in schools? Because really, I don't get how this became a misconception. Hell there are other SEA countries closer to Guam/Hawaii/Palau.

I thought SEA was Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, among others, anything on the mainland continent

 

[Hawki]

I thought SEA was Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, among others, anything on the mainland continent

Southeast Asia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Philipines would be considered part of SEA by that. Though I really don't get why West Papua is considered part of SEA, but PNG isn't, despite them being at the same latitude.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Raya and the Last Dragon

Disney doing broadly Asian inspired fantasy adventure. By which I mean, Disney doing Avatar, more or less. The movie's set in a world named Kumandra, consisting of five kingdoms at an uneasy peace. I'd probably embarass myself trying assign their real world analogues to them, but protagonist Raya is the daughter of the ruler of what seems to be more or less India. Kumandra became, in ancient times, victim of an awfully vague calamity that turns people into stone, which was halted by the sacrifice of a race of ancient dragons which locked their powers into a magical McGuffin. That McGuffin was broken into pieces by emissaries of the sinister kingdom of more or less China. You can probably guess that one piece ended up in each of the five kingdoms. The story is about Raya racing the princess of Not China for those pieces to banish the vague calamity once again. She's helped by Water Dragon Sisu who looks like something from the seedier side of DeviantArt and talks like a sassy black woman, despite being voiced by an Asian American voice actress. It's for someone else to decide whether that's offensive or not.

See, Raya's not not good, but I've seen just about everything it does done better, most of it in Avatar. I liked the world and the general visuals of it, but where a series like Avatar went on for long enough to explore it and flesh it out, Raya crams an adventure that take its heroine across the entire world into a runtime of just above 90 minutes. You know, if you paced it right, you could have gotten a decent trilogy out of this. But that's just it, isn't it? Raya doesn't quite want to commit to being a proper long form fantasy adventure, it also wants to be a breezy action comedy so you end up with something more than a bit bipolar. The stakes are high and threaten the entire world, but also, there's a sassy sidekick and a wisecracking kid. The movie hints towards lore and history but the human characters look like plastic dolls and the nonhuman range from furrybait to happy meal toys. Early last year Pixar released Onward, not a great movie, exactly, but it recontextualized narrative tropes from high fantasy fiction by integrating them into a goofy buddy comedy road trip movie. It was a gimmick decent enough to carry a short movie. Raya does the exact opposite, peppering what should be a relatively straight forward fantasy movie with comedic sequences that rarely ever hit for me. A lot of humor and dialogue in general is very Hey Fellow Kids-y.

Overall the movie is fine, mind you, but bear with me here. A short time ago I saw Pixar's Soul, probably the studio's most mature and sophisticated production yet. Raya's not like that. There's a potential there that the actual movie seems to be going out of its way to not live up to. I mean, I like the protagonist, voiced by Kelly Marie Tranh, known as idealistic mechanic Rose from the only good movie in the new Star Wars trilogy. The world is reasonably cool. The dragon is kinda sexy (but seriously, what's with that voice? Is it some reference to Murphy in Mulan?). The rivalry between Raya and the chinese princess mostly made up for the lack of a more flamboyant bad guy. It had no singing, it had no living barbie dolls prancing around some kind of fairy tail kingdom... you know, this would have been a really good opportunity for Disney's animation to step out its comfort zone and broaden its range a bit. I could now go on a rant about how good Atlantis and Treasure Planet were and what a shame it is they never made anything like it again, but never mind that. Raya is a somewhat above mediocre fantasy action movie. Rotten Tomatoes really seems to dig it so maybe it's better than I'm making it out to be but for me the movie never really rose above being, you know... mildly enjoyable.

 

[BrawlMan]

This short film by Rossatron. Pretty brutal. He's learned a lot from other action directors.

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[BrawlMan]

And the nice little cherry on top of this crap sundae was that we Southeast Asian peeps can't even watch the fucking thing, since Disney+ hasn't seen fit to bless us with their streaming service. But then maybe that's even more pandering to us. We all just pirated the film, which is just classic SE Asian.

So all in all, what a disappointment. I know representing our culture would be really difficult considering we really aren't quite that similar, but damn, I expected them to try way harder than this.

TLDR Disney proves once again that their idea of diversity is just not having white people in their cast and they totally phoned it in for this movie.

I do thank you for your honest opinion. Funny enough I just talked about rare and hard it is for South East Asia to get any proper represntaion when in the gaming industry. Japan does it fine, but they don't always go for SE Asian asthetics and should be more than Japan doing properly. Here's the post I typed, if you're interested. I was talking to CriticalGaming with the quote you see.

You always have to look from their perspective on the why. While you can't please some people, there are many people and cultures that don't get represented enough, wrongly or improperly, or the super rare occasion. Indivisible for example has representation of ancient Southeast Asia that is rarely depicted. The game has a dark-skinned Asian female as the protagonist too, and the game did not get picked up by many publishers because of it. So the "not enough" crowd ain't exactly in the wrong.

Hogwarts Legacy Will Allow For Transgender Characters

This gets thrown around all the time and I think it is fairly debunked at this point. Since the dawn of gaming you've had more than enough chances to play as "not-white men" so it is a bullshit statement. People use "straight white man" as a general label at this point and it's been false for a...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

 

[Samtemdo8]

snip

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