Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

Is this the first poll?


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BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
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I have a buddy that is very angry when anything deviates from the comics. I try to tell him, the 1st time Spiderman defeats the Sandman, he does so with a vacuum cleaner. You don't want a beat for beat adaptation of the comics.
Hence why they are called adaptions. They need to adapt. It's why a 1-to-1 adaptions of manga don't always work, nor are they fool proof. Especially if there are story, character, and structure issues. And that's if the story is already bad or mediocre to start. I get some of your complaints, but rarely anything felt wrong with Shang-Chi. The only complaint I do have with the CG, is the muted color palette towards the end. I know they're fighting evil demons and everything, but it's no excuse to get rid of all of the colorful scenery. Other than that, it's an A+ movie for me.
 
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Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
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I worry I'll have the same reaction. I'll wait for streaming.
I've seen both the Lynch and Sci-Fi TV mini series (buddy gave me on DVD, 4x3 ratio!). And while I loved the Pink Floyd trailer, I'm thinking, OK, this story, a 3rd time, and it is only 1/2 the 1st book.
I've only vaguely been following the production but apparently the decision to break the first book into 2 films was either a studio or directorial decision due to costs and runtime, so apparently if Dune makes enough money they'll make Part 2 ASAP. And if it doesn't make enough money, it won't. One of the Youtubers I follow(Quinns Ideas) is really big into DUNE so he's been covering it a lot lately, but he's also really big into DUNE so he's VERY invested in it succeeding and it's making me wonder if it's affecting his opinions on the whole thing(notably he's embracing the positive reviews but dismissing all the negative ones).

So we'll know soon enough if we're going to see a second part. I do want to see it but I'll either have to stream it or hopefully, see it in the theater depending on how bad Delta is when it comes out(Right now we're finally over the hump and cases are on a decline again).
 
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XsjadoBlayde

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Us (Bought honestly with honest cash and there's nothing you can say to prove otherwise!)
A respectably crafted and unique film which made me look up and learn certain cultural moments in US history afterwards, that provoked mixed feelings in of itself. The only issue for me is I didn't feel honestly scared at any particular moment, but it also didn't seem like the film was trying to be scary either, more like it was more interested in using the horror aesthetics and genre expectations to exercise the points it wanted to make. So in that sense it succeeded, just at the expense of the romantic plans I had made between my bowels and my fresh definitely-not-stolen underpants.

In The Tall Grass (Netflix)
Not...great. but almost interesting enough to see it through to the end without quitting in total despair. Some space egg shenanigans, some time loop/jump shenanigans, paranoia and lots and lots of tall grass - gotta hand it to the title for not fucking around there at least. The actors, they do try in that earnest-but-not-engaging sense, apart from the child actor...they were actually the one character I found intriguing, with their sweaty bug-eyed, spaced-out performance: Hopefully they'll blossom in to the next generation's Steve Buscemi if we don't completely burn humanity into nothingness in the meantime.

Been seeing a lot of impressively reviewed horrors hitting cinema lately, but am too poor and alone to go watching anything on the big screen unfortunately. So if anyone's got any horror recommendations available on streaming, I'd be very happy to indulge ppl's favourites - stuff like the most unsettling, dread-inducing, soul-destroying horror preferably. Sci-fi horror is a bonus, but alas a terribly rare combination when factoring in quality too. Currently have got Lake Mungo and Virginia on the list up next!
 

BrawlMan

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Finally saw Fear Street Part III: 1666. Nice way to cap off a trilogy. I am sure, that there will be more FS stories that involve other monsters and tales. Considering that open ended credit sequence involved someone taking the Satan book off-screen. There will be plenty more to show at some point.
 

Bartholen

At age 6 I was born without a face
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Zack Snyder's Watchmen, the 3-hour director's cut. 8/10.

Still probably his best film alongside Dawn of the Dead '04. Although it's screamingly obvious that Snyder just does not understand the point of the source material, and all his trademark traits are pretty rampant here, it's still a very entertaining and well made movie. The director's cut editions are used well, and make it a better film than the theatrical version: some extra dialogue, some scenes are longer, and some entirely new scenes are added which give better insight into the story. The acting is great (bar Malin Åkerman), the action is crunchy and well done, it looks great and the VFX hold up really well. This time I took more notice of the slightly over the top sound design (Ozymandias' foot makes a whip cracking noise for example), but it's just restrained enough that it doesn't become distractingly silly. There are some elements where you have to take the bad with the good, like the costume design and the ending, but I'd still heartily recommend it to anyone. It might actually be a bit of fresh air nowadays compared to on release, because we've been so inundated with formulaic Marvel movies that a grimier, more realistic and grounded superhero story with far more concrete stakes stands out.

But like I said, Snyder doesn't get the source material at all. I think it's better to view this as a grittier, alternate reality superhero story rather than an adaptation of a fundamental deconstruction of superheroes. That way your head will hurt way less.
 

Xprimentyl

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Schumacher: Interesting / Great

Documentary on the life and times of Michael Schumacher, one of Formula 1's most prolific drivers. I'm relatively new to F1 (been watching for a few years now,) but since being in the thick of it, I keep hearing comparisons of current "greats" to Schumacher, so this documentary was right on time. He was indeed pretty incredible, bringing greatness to one the sport's most icon teams at Ferrari.

What makes me sad is that his son, Mick, featured in dozens of pictures as a child throughout the film adoring his father, now drives in F1... for the objectively worst team: Haas. He routinely races for second-to-last place with his Hass teammate Nikita Mazepin who can barely keep the car on the track; they're a joke. I don't think I could bear the weight of driving in my father's shadow, the weight of the Schumacher name, and not have the proper tools to do the legacy proud. My hope is that Mick learns and improves at Haas (good luck there,) and is given a proper shot with a competitive team in the years to come.
 
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Gordon_4

The Big Engine
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Survivor (2015) - 2/10

Look its watchable, but its watchable the same way a car accident is. What's frustrating is that there is enough talent in the movie: Mila Jovavich, Pierce Brosnan, Dylan McDermott, Angela Basset, Frances Delatour that had the script not been radioactively shite you'd have a perfectly good mid budget thriller on your hands. But there are several huge issues that prevent it from being so. To whit:

Mila is the right actress, but they've saddled her with the wrong character. She is a senior security analyst of the US Embassy in London regarding visas. Buuuut she's thrust into deadly cat and mouse with no background as to how she's doing this other than dumb luck. At one point a British Counter Terrorism police officer postulates based on her rapid rise and fluency in multiple languages that she's former/active CIA. She should have been.

Dylan McDermott is her boss and he's okay; guy's been a solid presence in mid budget movies and television for a long time. What I'm less enthused about is how he swans around London armed with a pistol, kicking down doors and seems to go places he shouldn't by virtue of saying 'American Embassy' and when the British Police take the not unreasonable idea that Mila is party to the bombing she survived and has made no effort to speak to anyone - though in her defence she had to escape an assassin - he says she has diplomatic immunity and the British Police can't touch her. Uh, she's suspected of an act of terrorism on British soil, Dylan. You bet your arse they can touch her. Also that isn't how diplomatic immunity works.

Though to the movie's credit, both factions of the good guys manage to swing their jurisdictions at each other in ways that are correct one minute and blatantly incorrect the next.

Pierce Brosnan is making a late career of playing amoral pieces of shit and I'm gonna be honest, it kind of works. All that charm and charisma he had as James Bond now being used for evil makes him pretty magnetic as a bad guy and I hope he gets to flex his dad bod self in better movies. Because they kind of waste him here: they talk him up as if he's a latter day Carlos the Jackal but because Mila is the protagonist and must evade him until movie's end and then defeat him, they end showing him as kind of dumb because its somehow beyond his skill to put a bullet in a high level but otherwise unremarkable bureaucratic functionary.

Also, Mila is somehow able to FLY from Heathrow to New York AFTER the Metropolitan Police have issued a warrant for her arrest and her face is all over every news channel and website in the fucking world. And this is arguably the movie's biggest scripting failure. By 2015 most people would be aware of the massive amounts of security, vetting and cross departmental cooperation involved in getting on an international flight so the fact that she does get there shatters the movie's already fragile grip on reality.


If it puzzles anyone that I've bothered to write this much about a movie I thought was crap, well, its because watching it and seeing the better movie it could have been was weirdly frustrating.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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While Dune is certainly a visually impressive work, a lot of it felt a bit sterile to me. Almost all of its locations feel very sparse and empty, even those that are supposed to express wealth and power. Most of Dune is set in mostly empty rooms with murky lighting.
I had the same issue with Blade Runner 2049. Like someone had turned the textures down by 40%. And while I understand the world it's depicting is supposed to look unappealing, I don't think that's supposed to extend to the actual filmmaking. I know Roger Deakins can movies look exceptional - he worked on No Country for Old Man for god's sake - but whatever new digital technique he's applying feels like it's draining the life out of the visuals.
 
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Terminal Blue

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Likewise I quite enjoyed the remake, but maybe not as much as you did.
I mean, it's one of those films where, even though I know it's good and feel comfortable recommending it, I also know that my experience of it is going to be unusually positive because the subject matter or tone appeals to me in a special way. In this case, both.

I'm just not sure why everyone (well, to be fair, mostly horror bros) hated it so much, other than the fact it has a very gay sensibility and it wants you to feel stuff. One podcast I listen to made a good point, that a lot of the people complaining about Suspiria being meandering or plotless or style over substance also tend to be the people who loved Mandy.

This is a great movie. About inevitable destruction and how two sisters deal with it. (Also part of the reason Majora's Mask is one of my favorite Nintendo games ever. I wish they explored darker material in their kid-friendly games still.) Kirsten Dunst plays the depressive one who embraces it. Charlotte Gainsbourg's character is the more hopeful one who can't. Both played very well. First we get to know their characters in an hour long wedding reception and some eerie nightmare visuals. I've long wondered what an event like this would be like. It made me think of some things I hadn't considered.
I have to admit, I have incredibly mixed feelings about that film. I think it's the most honest depiction of depression I've ever seen, but to me it also raises the question of whether that's actually a good thing.

There are times when I feel like the movie is going for some kind of negative capability, like maybe it's sometimes trying to suggest that absolute misery can be this intense and beautiful experience. There's that scene where Claire catches Justine bathing in the blue planetshine from Melancholia, and I feel like there's something going on there. But so much of the film is also deliberately ugly and cruel. Again, it's very honest, but I'm just not sure what it was trying to convey.

Still enjoyable though.
 
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Bob_McMillan

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My friends were talking about how great Kung Fu Panda 3 was, and I insisted that it was the Return of the Jedi of the trilogy. The pandas are just the ewoks, they went a little too far the the humor (especially after a particularly dark 2nd movie), and they end with an incredibly cheesy montage.

So we ended up watching it last night, and my feelings were validated. My friends then realized they had attributed elements they liked from the first two movies to this one, and agreed that it was the worst of the bunch. I guess it was totally worth completely fucking my sleep sched over to prove my point.

But yeah, my rating: meh. A disappointing end to a trilogy that I enjoyed as a kid and and still do today. The bare minimum I ask from movies like this is to have good action scenes, and while the movie has some pretty good visuals and animation, they dedicated most of the time to shitty "pandas are fat and stupid" jokes. The previous 2 movies made me laugh out loud and impressed me with their kung fu action. This one felt like it was aimed far too much at children.

A sidenote, the Kung Fu Panda cast is so weirdly star studded. Jackie Chan, Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Dustin Hoffman, Bryan Cranston, Gary Oldman, J K Simmons, Jack Black, and others. Makes me wonder if Jack Black handled all the networking himself.
 
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Hawki

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Mortal Kombat: Scorpion's Revenge (7/10)

So, I'm calling this movie good, and ergo, better than the 1995 MK movie. However, that's with the caveat of me already being familiar with MK, and as such, how much you enjoy this movie will likely depend on that. As in, MK 1995 can probably stand on its own, whereas Scorp's Revenge is something made "for the fans," so to speak.

Anyway, this is a loose adaptation of MK1. It's called Scorpion's Revenge, but very little time is actually spent on Scorp's actual revenge, nor is Scorpion really the main protagonist. This isn't too bad, but it's noticable. Anyway, general thoughts:

-Action is great, blood and gore is great. That's something I rarely say, but it's so over the top and so, well, bloody, that I couldn't help but have a smirk. Benefit of animation I guess.

-The characters are good, but that's mostly contingent on you being familiar with them, and not all of them get equal screentime. Liu Kang gets a grand total of two fights, and loses the second one against Goro. Sonya's pretty decent, Johnny's fab, poor Jax is just a punching bag, Shang Tsung is appropriately scheming and sadistic, Raiden is somehow both badass and useless, and Scorpion...well, this ties in with what I said earlier. Scorpion is basically a death machine here, to the extent that even in Hell (sorry, the Netherealm), he ends up killing the very demons sent to torture/capture him (so, buddies with the Doom Slayer then), but...well, he starts off as a death machine, dies as a death machine, and his titular "revenge" on Sub-Zero is a single scene, with Sub-Zero barely featuring himself, before he goes on to kill Goro, and then Quan Chi. So on one hand, this isn't in-depth character writing, on the other...well, rare as it is for me, this is one of the few cases where constant violence, blood, and gore is stuff I can enjoy because of how over the top it is.

-Arguably a minor point, but while the rules of how the tournament works are vague, it's somehow still better explained better than either the 1995 film or the reboot, where it seems how things progress is how the plot (or Shang Tsung) demands it. Here, at least I get a vague setup - equal numbers of Earthrealm and Outworld (or aligned) warriors teleported to various points on the island, and left to do a battle royale of sorts. Of course, that Shang Tsung gets to choose who faces whom (because that isn't potentially biaised at all, Elder Gods...idiots...) is questionable, but hey, it's something.

So, yeah. The movie's dumb, but it moves so quickly and so briskly, that if you can enjoy the constant action and bloodshed, that doesn't matter. For me, in this case, it didn't. Having watched this and the 2021 MK film in the same year, there's no competition.
 
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BrawlMan

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Mortal Kombat: Scorpion's Revenge (7/10)

So, I'm calling this movie good, and ergo, better than the 1995 MK movie. However, that's with the caveat of me already being familiar with MK, and as such, how much you enjoy this movie will likely depend on that. As in, MK 1995 can probably stand on its own, whereas Scorp's Revenge is something made "for the fans," so to speak.

Anyway, this is a loose adaptation of MK1. It's called Scorpion's Revenge, but very little time is actually spent on Scorp's actual revenge, nor is Scorpion really the main protagonist. This isn't too bad, but it's noticable. Anyway, general thoughts:

-Action is great, blood and gore is great. That's something I rarely say, but it's so over the top and so, well, bloody, that I couldn't help but have a smirk. Benefit of animation I guess.

-The characters are good, but that's mostly contingent on you being familiar with them, and not all of them get equal screentime. Liu Kang gets a grand total of two fights, and loses the second one against Goro. Sonya's pretty decent, Johnny's fab, poor Jax is just a punching bag, Shang Tsung is appropriately scheming and sadistic, Raiden is somehow both badass and useless, and Scorpion...well, this ties in with what I said earlier. Scorpion is basically a death machine here, to the extent that even in Hell (sorry, the Netherealm), he ends up killing the very demons sent to torture/capture him (so, buddies with the Doom Slayer then), but...well, he starts off as a death machine, dies as a death machine, and his titular "revenge" on Sub-Zero is a single scene, with Sub-Zero barely featuring himself, before he goes on to kill Goro, and then Quan Chi. So on one hand, this isn't in-depth character writing, on the other...well, rare as it is for me, this is one of the few cases where constant violence, blood, and gore is stuff I can enjoy because of how over the top it is.

-Arguably a minor point, but while the rules of how the tournament works are vague, it's somehow still better explained better than either the 1995 film or the reboot, where it seems how things progress is how the plot (or Shang Tsung) demands it. Here, at least I get a vague setup - equal numbers of Earthrealm and Outworld (or aligned) warriors teleported to various points on the island, and left to do a battle royale of sorts. Of course, that Shang Tsung gets to choose who faces whom (because that isn't potentially biaised at all, Elder Gods...idiots...) is questionable, but hey, it's something.

So, yeah. The movie's dumb, but it moves so quickly and so briskly, that if you can enjoy the constant action and bloodshed, that doesn't matter. For me, in this case, it didn't. Having watched this and the 2021 MK film in the same year, there's no competition.
Make sure to watch Battle of the Realms when you get the chance. The follow-up which is actually better. Scorpion's Revenge, it's sequel, and the original 95 Mortal Kombat movie are all good. I do like Battle of the Realms more than the original 1995 film, but it still has a special place in my heart. BoR has its own flaws, but nothing that ruins the entire experience.
 

Xprimentyl

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Cry Macho: Bad / Great

Tale of an ex-ranch hand who's tasked by his old boss to go to Mexico and retrieve his 13-year-old son for him. The Clint Eastwood branding comes with high expectations, and almost none of them were met in this film.

It's a poor PG-13 rated, 1 hour and 40 minute film that easily could have been a great R rated, 2 hour and 40 minute film. No real violence, no real action, no grit. Not saying a 90-year-old Eastwood should be Dirty Harry all the time, but in a film about his toughness tasking him to kidnap a child and abscond with him from Mexico, I'd say it's fair for people to expect it. Hell, they even implied it: he sounds like he always does, low and raspy, no fear. At one point he even squares up the kid, putting up his dukes and looking every bit the old man he is. Oh, and apparently, he's still got "it" in his ability to break wild horses; certainly a stunt double was used for that scene.

It also feels really rushed, like, they jump from plot point to plot point with no reasonable, intuitive evolution of story. Worst is how the characters don't properly develop or delve into the deeper implications of what they're dealing with, oh my God, was that awful. The kid he rescues can't act his way out of paper bag, and both he and Eastwood jump between disparate emotional states like hummingbirds on crack! One moment "I hate you!" 10 seconds later, after no real substantive information has been exchanged, "Ok, I'll go with you." Or how the boy begins to melt Eastwood's signature, icy exterior within the ostensible first couple of days of their journey.

I'd LOVE to see the cutting room floor for this film; I'm almost certain, there's an entirely different, much better film down there. That, or Eastwood's finally lost it.
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
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Murder on the Orient Express (2017) - 9/10

First time I saw this movie I was on a plane and it entertained me, this time though.....God knows why but I was in tears during Poirot's summation and everyone's motive and true identity and connections are laid bare. I think hearing the music helped, the plane wasn't great for acoustics and the track that plays during that final scene, Justice its called, is deeply melancholy.


I'm really looking forward to A Death on the Nile.
 
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09philj

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The Green Knight. A gourmet toast sandwich of a film. Well presented, bland, inoffensive. Unlikely to leave a lasting impression.
 
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Terminal Blue

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The Green Knight. A gourmet toast sandwich of a film. Well presented, bland, inoffensive. Unlikely to leave a lasting impression.
So I watched it, I felt like I liked it. Then I went away and thought about it, and.. that changed..

It's very pretty. It has nice music. It's shot very well. Dev Patel is nice and extremely pretty. There's some imaginative scenes.

Spoilers here on out

See, in the poem Gawain is the one who kisses his host. It's a story about being honest, and Gawain sticks to the deal he made and gives his host a kiss for each time the host's wife has kissed him. This honesty is what saves him in the end. The film decides to flip this by having the host have the big gay for Gawain and turn predatory all of a sudden and.. really? Did we need a gay panic scene in 2021? Like, if you wanted to flip the scene around to justify a darker tone, just have Gawain lie. This isn't a story about honesty any more, so him lying doesn't really change anything.

And that might seem a weird thing to bring up (and pretty trivial if you're straight) but it's also symptomatic of a bigger problem.

Initially, I felt like this film was about facing the inevitability of mortality. But actually, now I think about it it isn't, it's about the need to be brave and the inherent value of dying for honour. Every character whom Gawain meets either tells or shows him that his journey is futile, that he's going to his death for no reason and that honour is pointless, and they are all clearly right. He even realises it himself when he's about to get his head cut off. But then, he has a magic clairvoyant vision which reveals that actually he was right all along. His life without honour would be meaningless and empty. So the film ends with him realising that actually dying is pretty cool and taking off the cum belt, accepting his own death as the price for avoiding shame.

..and that is an incredibly toxic message. Sure, we don't actually see Gawain die, you can always assume the knight spares him like he does in the poem (although given that the knight in the poem turns out to be the character who is a predatory gay in this film I'd hate to think how that ending goes) but even so, yikes.

None of this is to shit on anyone who enjoyed the film. There's a lot of things to like.

Incidentally, if you like grim films about characters facing mortality while trying to be something they might not actually be, I recommend Saint Maud. It's available on Prime Video. For some reason this film made me think of it.
 
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Bob_McMillan

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Spectre, aka the 4th Craig James Bond movie.

My TV was already set to night mode and as such the picture was warmer, but Jesus Christ, these people really wanna make foreign countries come off as dusty and faded huh? Mexico and Tangiers look fucking ridiculous.

Anyway, boring movie. Blofeld is such a fucking dumb villain. He has absolutely NO motivation to be a villain on the scale that he is, instead of just a personal one to Bond. And even that just boils down to daddy issues. The "it was me along!" twist does not work at all and just feels super out of place. The action scenes all seem way too vehicle focused, which I find really uninteresting. Bond's love for Madeleine feels forced when he fucked some random chick whose husband he'd just murdered in the same movie.

Probably should have just watched any of the previous three movies. Definitely won't be paying to see No Time to Die, if it ever comes out.
 

Hawki

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My Little Pony: A New Generation (7/10)

This is a good film. What irks me is that up until the last 10 minutes, I'd call it a great film. And okay, sure, this is coming from someone who already likes MLP, but if anything, if you're familiar with MLP before seeing this, you'll arguably have a slightly worse time, because if you're a lore-hound, you'll be busy asking questions that are never answered.

So, anyway, this takes place in the same continuity as Generation 4, but way, WAY in the future (despite there being no technological progress). At this point, the three tribes have separated, and all fear each other. How and why this happened is never explained, nor is it explained why the windigoes haven't returned as a result (see what I mean about the lore issues?) Nor is it explained where every other non-pony species went, nor are any of them mentioned. This doesn't bother me too much, but if you're looking at this from a pure canon-based standpoint, there's a hundred questions that are never answered. It's arguably to the film's detriment that it's in the same continuity as G4, because it could have kept the premise, and arguably been just as strong, if not stronger for it.

Still, anyway, judging this as a film in of itself, it's good. Good characters, good dialogue (actually burst out laughing quite a few times), and good, if simple themes. It's kind of like Zootopia (if not as good) in terms of theme and how it presents them, but never in a preachy manner - prejudice is bad, prejudice begets paranoia, paranoia begets more prejudice, so on, and so forth. Not quite the same thing, but point is, it's a case of how you can have a "kid's film" that touches on such themes without talking down to them.

Going to touch on some issues with the above though, namely that not all character development is equal. Of the Mane 5, Pipp easily gets the least character development, and sure, she's the last one to be introduced, but even so, there's still a noticable gap. Furthermore, the songs. The songs in of themselves are good, I can't complain, but in a musical, ideally songs should develop plot and/or character. To be frank, not all of the songs do that, or if they do, go on a bit too long.

So, one last thing, the final ten minutes. We're at this weird point where the film presents us a supposed McGuffin, attempts to subvert the McGuffin, but is still using the McGuffin in a sense. Basically, magic (and friendship) can be returned with three crystals (crystals that were never in G4, so this is another example of the links between the two weakening this film), but that doesn't work, but hey, maybe the true friendship wasn't in the crystals, but rather, the friends we made along the way? Right? Well, yeah...except the crystals activate anyway, and do restore magic, and friendship is therefore restored (centuries/millennia of prejudice can apparently be overcome overnight, didn't ya know?), and all's right in the world. Oh, and Sunny's an alicorn now, because apparently alicorns have become to G4 what super saiyans became to DBZ - a dime a dozen.

Actually, in fairness, I can sort of understand the alicorn 'thing,' but I still dislike it in this case.

One last thing, the references to G4 that do work IMO are the ones where you'll blink and you miss. Such as when they go through the ruined station and find the Wonderbolts poster (in the context of shattered glass and old advertisments), and the single tree that they find in the field? My guess is that it's the Tree of Harmony. Which indicates that so much time has passed that the Everfree Forest has become grassland, and that the Tree of Harmony is now standing alone as just a normal tree works as a visual metaphor.

So, yeah. Good. Could have been better. But still good.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Frequencies

A pretty decent film, if rather esoteric in nature
I feel I have to put the trailer in to explain the film somewhat to begin with


The film explores the ideas of what if Luck were just a thing you could measure and it's impact on the idea of pre-destination and if luck is measurable and a frequency of the world could it be changed by other frequencies with ideas about being able to change your world by changing your self. It actually takes a surprisingly dark turn into ideas of autonomic suggestion and how bad that is / would be if it were more effective. It then also explores the idea of propaganda and control all of it culminating in the question of "Well if there is destiny and our actions are not truly our own does it matter so long as we're happy?". All this played out as a love story between a high frequency girl and a low frequency boy. High being very lucky, low being very unlucky and when they meet it causes a things to happen to try and keep them apart. Also following his attempts to change his frequency.

The story oddly is told in 3 parts. One from his perspective, one from her perspective and one from the perspective of his best friend who is trying to help him.

It's worth saying it kind of comes off probably unintentional but seemingly a somewhat worryingly presenting Frequency as position on the Autism spectrum with Marie the girl being high frequency but suffering from alexithymia such that she claims to not feel any emotions really and operate life a machine. While being able to apply both her Luck from her frequency and intelligence to achieve things while Zack despite being a genius, he suffers because of his low frequency causing him to have bad luck but also struggle to connect with people who are higher frequency. It could be seen as a somewhat subversion of what is seen as the world at present where austistic individuals are seen as the ones with problems being offered to be sent to special school while in the film Zack being low frequency gets offered to be sent to a different school to better suite him because of the perceived impact his frequency will have on his life.
 
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Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
Legacy
Feb 9, 2012
18,465
3,005
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The Many Saints of Newark

There's way too much to unpack after one viewing. For the most part it feels either like the pilot for a show or a whole show condensed in 2 hours. And the movie doesn't seem to be sure who it's about. With a little editing one way you could make it about young Tony, with a little the other way it's about the McBrayer character. The closest to a lead is Dickie Moltisanti, who connects all three together, and is given the most screen time, but goes through the least change of the three.

There're some decent send-ups - guys playing Paulie, Silvio and Pussy are all pretty good - but are rarely given anything to do. Johnny Boy's barely in the movie. Livia and Junior are great. Some cameos you wouldn't even be able to spot without reading the name off the cast list. They go unnamed mostly and a lot of the time I was guessing who was that supposed to be.

There's a shit ton of references, to the point of overindulgence, but I was ok with them. I'm a sucker for the show and don't feel the least bit protective of it. Just wish the story were more focused. The show had the benefit of lettting scenes breathe and enjoy quiet moments where the mood would sink in and a thought or an idea would develop. The movie doesn't have time for that. It jumps jumps jumps forward assuming you're sold from the very first minute. Maybe fans will be, if they're open minded about messing around with the mythology of the show, but I see this as very alienating to a random viewer.