Serious Movie Discussion XXXVII

[ufcfan4]

I actually prefer DOFP to GOTG, but both are really good.

What didn't you like about the ensembling of DOFP?

This summer is damn underrated in my opinion. Loved DOFP, loved Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and loved Guardians of the Galaxy.

I'll probably have to see it again, but Guardians seemed like a top 3 Marvel film for me. The cast was perfect. The characters were awesome- very likable and gelled very well together.

The action was damn solid, and the use of popular music was ideal. It's one of the few Marvel comic book films where I really can't really even cite a relatively significant flaw. I felt Ronan was an awesome villain as well.

 

[taurus]

I loved Sabotage, but adding to our opposed reactions, if I had to pick between the first part and the second part, I much preferred the second part. What was the problem you had with the second part of the film?

i can't quite put my finger on it.

spoilers ahead

the totally unnecessary love scene, the "i'm sleeping with Sugar" came out of nowhere and was not related to the plot in any way, 5 (if i'm not mistaken) team members meet and no one trusts no one and they still go their own separate ways without knowing who has the money, Lizzy killing everyone bcs "where's my money" (basically, she could have killed the guy that actually stole the money first and continued to kill others without knowing), as well as the too Hollywoodish final scene.

All those thing may seem minor, but i kind of had the feeling the movie just fell through, after the initial bang that was quite intruging (torture scene, the raid, no money, elaborate murders, Arnie backstory etc).

Too each his own, i guess.

decapitation car chase scene was cool though.

 

[Ricky13]

Regarding True Detective, Bullitt:

For shame, man. For shame.

Can't say I'm surprised though.

 

[Ricky13]

theskza - my thoughts on Days of Future Past below in the spoiler tag. It's really long but just skip to last few paragraphs if you want to know why I thought it didn't work.

Spoiler

So I didn't enjoy X-Men: Days of Future Past. I think First Class was better written and better composed visually (which is so important for these films where the action is so frantic considering the multitude of super powers executed in one scene: sounds silly but the framing was very soap-ish? Does that make sense? ). The majority of the film is its bloated second act. From the point that Jackman sets off into the past until the climax, nothing really changes. No characters make any decisions they can't effectively go back on, so the narrative never feels propulsive. There's no real protagonist. I'd argue Charles Xavier was the protagonist in the first film. Wolverine is not the protagonist in this, really, apart from the emphasis on him in the resolution scene, which was lazy writing and fan-service to an upsetting degree. With no protagonist, audience empathy keeps shifting from one character to the next. You need that one character to constantly come back to, the person through whom the conceit is emphasised/refuted. There's a bit of that with his interaction with Professor X, but then Professor X is doing it to everyone else by the last scene.

Who should I care about?

Speaking of last scenes, and to borrow an excellent phrase from Flem, the "save the day" shit was so interminable that I was exhausted, and not in a good way. From the middle of the film it seems like there's no time. And then in the end it feels like they have enough real time for a million lectures between characters. Badly paced.

I feel bad now, for ripping it. But I'm also annoyed.

I liked it and thought it was on par with First Class- maybe a notch below that one and X2 as the best 3 x-men movies by a good margin.

You make great points about the lack of protagonist but I think I'd disagree slightly...I think the interesting factor was that you'd ASSUME Wolverine would be the protagonist- he's the time traveler, he's the character who by far has been the star of the x-men films, the only guy carrying his own films of the lot, too. But he's really not. And that's underscored for me by the fact that

Spoiler

He gets virtually no relevant action. He gets to square off with Beast a bit, he takes an ineffectual slash at a sentinel, he kills three mortals and that's about it. Wolverine always got some of the most relevant and awesome action scenes in the films. In this one, he was important, he had a lot of screen time, but when the denouement came - where was he? At the bottom of a lake.

If anything, that's what irked me. The dude is a badass and he was pretty much an after thought when it mattered. But I think it underscored the fact that the First Class guys were the ones front and center here. They were in the climactic scene, front and center. And if you had to pick out one protagonist, I'd say it's again Xavier. It's his story to an extent- coming to terms with his paralysis and his insanely powerful and troubling mutant abilities. The scene between young and old pretty much highlighted it.

.

I liked the action with the future sentinels a lot- vicious stuff. Fassbender and McAvoy owned in my opinion- great work from them once again.

I think a solid argument can be made that once again, Professor X is the protagonist, but I guess the problem is that the argument has to be made? Going through a film often means having a point of view, and I didn't really know whose point of view I was looking at it from. Also, the film has too many ideas, as opposed to the simpler idea in First Class of banding together for a common good and the antagonistic forces within and without that challenge this.

I think it was entertaining in bits. The Sentinel scenes were quite intense. Movie just didn't hit the spot for me though. I really hate the way Singer shoots as well. So many of his person to person interactions are filmed like an episode of House MD.

I think I liked it more than Ricky did at least

You most certainly did mate.

I also thought it lulled a bit during the mid part of the film, but I didn't have a problem with there not being a clear protagonist, I don't think that is something a film needs.

It's not so much a protagonist thing as a controlling idea thing. The whole movie is about one thing: saving the world. So after the inciting incident that's all they're doing. I like what you said here:

...namely a whole bunch of worthless internal conflict for the characters, even though we know of course that they get their shit together in time to save the day.

You're right, it's not a protagonist thing necessarily. It's just that having one would have provided an axis around which character values/motivations can revolve/evolve. (The other way to do this could have been giving a face to the enemy. I think a massive flaw was the facelessness of the Sentinels. Your antagonist needs to have a core against which you rally as a viewer. James Cameron understood this in the Terminator films. Singer doesn't.)

In First Class, Professor X is the clear protagonist. He's trying to point out to the rest of the mutants what they share with humanity, and this brings them to full use of their powers. Eric, on the other hand, is trying to show mutants that they are better than humans because of what differentiates them from humanity. The whole movie is about that. It's what makes certain scenes so powerful. The driving force of the wonderful scene in which Eric turns that massive dish is just this conflict. This very same conflict is why we feel like shit when Raven goes Eric's way.

There is no such conflict in Days of Future Past apart from sheer survival. It's a save-the-day movie from a third of the way on, and even the inciting incident is a save-the-day spectacle, but it works because of the mystery surrounding it.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Guardians of the Galaxy was kind of awesome. These comic book movies are starting to get pretty good now.

More so than all the others, the comic relief in this one worked really well. It reminded me of Hellboy, but that might just be the fact that I never heard of these characters until the movie came out.

 

[Sigh GunRanger]

flemmy have you seen True Detective?

 

[Shot]

Like UFC said above, this summer has been pretty stacked with good movies. Very surprised.

Edge of Tomorrow was awesome, as was DoFP, DotPotA, and Guardians. Haven't been this surprised about happy about a summer in years.

As far as bullit trashing, TD... Not surprised. I'll take the guys views on movies all day, but shows? Idk about that. The only thing similar between Hannibal and TD is the fact that there are murders and cops involved. Very different shows going for very different themes

 

[Adamant]

GOTG was good.

DOFP was fantastic.

Godzilla was fantastic.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was ok.

 

[Ricky13]

Watched The Dollars Trilogy over the weekend with some friends to lead up to Django Unchained, and man I feel stupid about how much I was disappointed with the latter the first time I saw it. I think along with Jackie Brown and Inglourious Basterds, it's in my top three Tarantino films.

It feels like films like Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction/Kill Bill established his style over story, told us who he was, and in his more recent films he's perfected the actual storytelling. Django Unchained is his best constructed story since Jackie Brown, the Schultz-Candie showdown and the subsequent handing over of the reins to Django being downright poetic. How did he think of that as a way to pass the torch? Fucking brilliant - to switch the film from a vehicle for Schultz to one for Django that way. I remember finding the last segment overlong and unnecessary. On repeat watches it breezes by.

This summer is damn underrated in my opinion.

Absolutely. Edge of Tomorrow is my favourite summer film in years, and I think Marvel made their best film since Iron Man.

The only thing similar between Hannibal and TD is the fact that there are murders and cops involved. Very different shows going for very different themes

This is the reason I didn't respond in detail to Bullitt's True Detective observations. I wouldn't know where to start. He's watched something completely different. What he was looking for (the creepy murder stuff that he found interesting in Episodes 6 and 7) is what Pizzolatto goes out of his way to say (through the writing) is the wrong thing to expect, and is foreshadowed throughout, even in the first episode when Cohle says, "You better start asking the right fucking questions." The murders are simply one aspect of a conversation Pizzolatto is having with the audience about men and women, and how we (incorrectly) think that the thought processes that lead to such murders are so distant from the things happening in our homes (Marty's reaction to his daughter sleeping with multiple males in a car). Also, all the stuff about how McConaughey is a walking Heidegger ignores its purpose - organic character arc, and even in terms of veracity, is far more rooted in research than the pop psychology sessions in Hannibal (I've only seen Season 1 though). Screw that even because, you know, fuck veracity; everything Cohle says (especially the "time is a flat circle" speech) ties in perfectly with how the story plays out.

I actually like that he swings for the fences with his criticisms, but a debate this time around seems pointless.

 

[KOQ24]

watched felon,a small movie with stephen dorff and val kilmer.
really solid overall,surprisingly good performance by dorff.

negative points for the cameraman apparently having parkinsons

also watched we bought a zoo.
i expected more from cameron crowe.
utterly generic story,overly long
the few interesting parts werent even shown on screen

 

[Shot]

Watched The Dollars Trilogy over the weekend with some friends to lead up to Django Unchained, and man I feel stupid about how much I was disappointed with the latter the first time I saw it. I think along with Jackie Brown and Inglourious Basterds, it's in my top three Tarantino films.

It feels like films like Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction/Kill Bill established his style over story, told us who he was, and in his more recent films he's perfected the actual storytelling. Django Unchained is his best constructed story since Jackie Brown, the Schultz-Candie showdown and the subsequent handing over of the reins to Django being downright poetic. How did he think of that as a way to pass the torch? Fucking brilliant - to switch the film from a vehicle for Schultz to one for Django that way. I remember finding the last segment overlong and unnecessary. On repeat watches it breezes by.

I felt similar. I loved it when I first saw it, but enjoyed it even more after multiple viewings. If I have one complaint about the movie though, is that Jaime Foxx is pretty bland in the role compared to the performances of the other main actors. He just kinda stands around and looks grumpy.

Still, a lot of stuff to like about the movie. I love how all of Tarantino's movies tend to have that one scene that just sticks in your head forever and Django had that with the Leo-Waltz-Foxx dinner scene. Just awesome stuff from Leo.

Absolutely. Edge of Tomorrow is my favourite summer film in years, and I think Marvel made their best film since Iron Man.

I hope Edge of Tomorrow gets a bit more love once it's released on Netflix or OnDemand. I had to beg a couple of friends to see it after I checked it out and they all loved it. People shit on Tom Cruise, but for an actor as prolific as he is, he rarely puts out a stinker.

This is the reason I didn't respond in detail to Bullitt's True Detective observations. I wouldn't know where to start. He's watched something completely different. What he was looking for (the creepy murder stuff that he found interesting in Episodes 6 and 7) is what Pizzolatto goes out of his way to say (through the writing) is the wrong thing to expect, and is foreshadowed throughout, even in the first episode when Cohle says, "You better start asking the right fucking questions." The murders are simply one aspect of a conversation Pizzolatto is having with the audience about men and women, and how we (incorrectly) think that the thought processes that lead to such murders are so distant from the things happening in our homes (Marty's reaction to his daughter sleeping with multiple males in a car). Also, all the stuff about how McConaughey is a walking Heidegger ignores its purpose - organic character arc, and even in terms of veracity, is far more rooted in research than the pop psychology sessions in Hannibal (I've only seen Season 1 though). Screw that even because, you know, fuck veracity; everything Cohle says (especially the "time is a flat circle" speech) ties in perfectly with how the story plays out.

I actually like that he swings for the fences with his criticisms, but a debate this time around seems pointless.

The shows, Hannibal and TD, are thematically very different. Both are ambitious in their own way, but like you pointed out, TD focuses on far different things. It's like comparing The Wire to The Shield, both shows are about cops but both are trying to send completely different messages.

I enjoy arguing with Bullitt. Hell, in a "The Wire" thread, we might have argued for like 5 pages. It is what it is, different strokes for different folks.

True Blood still sucks dick, doe.

 

[Ricky13]

Been watching House of Cards. Seen a season and a half.

This shit is turrrrible (considering the praise its gotten; as something to watch while doing laundry, it's fine). One of the greatest examples of choosing aesthetic/tone over narrative intent, like, ever. Awful. Only Fincher could be at the helm of something so tone-deaf.

I'm still going to finish the second season. Works well as a background to household chores. That's not a knock. Spacey's scenery chewing is excellent as a time-killing tool.

 

[Shot]

Been watching House of Cards. Seen a season and a half.

This shit is turrrrible (considering the praise its gotten; as something to watch while doing laundry, it's fine). One of the greatest examples of choosing aesthetic/tone over narrative intent, like, ever. Awful. Only Fincher could be at the helm of something so tone-deaf.

I'm still going to finish the second season. Works well as a background to household chores. That's not a knock. Spacey's scenery chewing is excellent as a time-killing tool.

The show has its moments, but overall it's just wasted potential to me. Spacey knocks it out of the park but the writing is pretty ridiculous.

 

[Fizzee Water]

So, I watched the new Godzilla. I can't believe how BAD it was. It was terrible.

There is absolutely no story whatsoever. Nothing any of the humans do make any difference at all to the film. The main protagonist was the most forgettable, milk toast, boring character I have ever seen in my life. The whole movie seemed so disjointed and disconnected.

50+ minutes before Godzilla appears and then all we get is a roar and some 1 second clips of a news break? What!?! And then all of a sudden he is swimming to San Francisco....!?!? What....the....fuck....happened?

Was anyone actually entertained by the monsters fighting? I mean seriously, the bad monsters were basically giant versions of the bugs from Starship Troopers. They were half Godzilla's size and were frail as hell. He could've stepped on them and killed them! What did they even do to him to make him fall oh so melodramatically like he was dead!?! I wanted to see something baddass, where are the baddies with razor blade tails and giant wing-spikes?

The plot of the movie was: Get bomb here. Oh shit, now we have to get bomb out of already utterly destroyed city whilst we catch glimpses of Godzilla's feet as he unsuccessfully attempts to swat a flying bug thingy out of the sky. RIVETING!!!

I just can't even. Why did they kill Cranston off so early? Why not make the human-plot of the film a redemption story of some sort? Kill off his wack ass son and have Cranston have to redeem himself by saving his family.

I can't even begin to fathom how anybody could think that was a good movie.

(I must admit when Godzilla spit fire down that thing's throat, it was awesome.)

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Bullitt are you insane telling me that Disconnect is better than Looper?

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

I liked world war z. Especially the last act.

 

[ufcfan4]

I liked world war z. Especially the last act.

Cool movie. Better than a lot of people expected I think.

 

[theskza]

I liked world war z. Especially the last act.

Yes!

The ending was such a breath of fresh air from the SAVE-THE-WORLD-GENERIC-BLOCKBLUSTER-ENDING world.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Yes!

The ending was such a breath of fresh air from the SAVE-THE-WORLD-GENERIC-BLOCKBLUSTER-ENDING world.

I just liked the tension while they were going through the b wing.

Tension is the one thing that always works for me in horror.

I'm on a zombie kick. Just played The Last of Us, just watched WWZ, waiting for The Walking Dead game to come out with the last episode before I give my life to that...

I think I might try the tv show

 

[theskza]

Yeah, it was great.

I actually finished The Last of Us yesterday. What an outstanding game on so many levels. 10/10.