Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

One man's trash is another man's treasure - I've always loved The Great Race, have done since I was a kid.

 

Is it? We could say a lot here, but this one point is so central to the plot that it's worth a deep dive.

A. Using historical analogues. . .I don't know that there are any. While there have been some brutally repressive regimes over the years, most have either been actively suppressing dissent or trying to ham-fistedly force assimilation (eg the education of Daniel and other Israelite nobility in Babylon, Australia's policies re:Aborigines in the early 20th century) or just use children as hostages for cooperation. What seems pretty rare is just murdering people and leaving.

B. This happens every year. No matter what. No matter how loyal you as a district or an individual are, and no matter for how long, someone is going to show up every year and murder one of your children. Forever. How does this provide any incentive for cooperation?

C. Unlike something like blowing up Alderaan, it doesn't really say anything about the military capacity of the central government. Regardless of whether they are invincible or so weak they are about to collapse they could still muster the resources to kill a handful of children.

D. Relative to killing people of other ages or situations, murdering children tends to make people very disproportionately angry. The reasons for this are pretty varied so I don't think we need to make a huge discussion of them.

In light of all the above, how was this a good idea? How was it even workable?

 

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Still hits me in the feels. My favorite scenes besides Steve and Bucky, remain Steve and Erskine. I was paying rapt attention to Richard Armitage again this time (I haven't in awhile); nice to be reminded of what he is. I've warmed up to Red Skull a bit more too, but Zola is my bag. I wonder if Zola will show in Avengers 4 (crosses cathode tubes and wires in hopes). Anyway, I still enjoy this movie immensely.

 

That should have been what a great actor Richard Armitage is...real life distracting me yet again.

 

The idea of the districts sending young people as tributes is a modern-day variant of the myth of the Minotaur (which isn't the only reference to Antiquity in the Hunger Games, though I agree that the films at least aren't very subtle in the way they handle them).

 

Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix

Rewatched this film for the second time and it remains my favorite in this franchise.
The darker tone and more dreamlike sequences appeal to my sensibilities in fantasy films, and it's always more exciting to see the heroes face/overcome greater obstacles/villains, imo.

All the actors do a nice job, and Harry's scenes with Snape are quite interesting.
Almost reminded me of some Rey/Kylo scenes in TLJ, after the fact.
Excellent final "magic" battle too, again, evoked in TLJ, imo. I wonder if Rian was inspired by this film?

Also, great performances by the horrific Umbrage and the awesome Luna. And Gary Oldman is brilliant, as usual.

It's interesting that a lot of HP fanatics rank this one last. I can respect that opinion, but OOTP is my favorite, at least for now. I need to rewatch POA and GOF again before deciding, as those are in my top three HP films, for sure.

 

My only complaint about Umbridge in the movie version of OOTP is that, apart from the blood quill detention scenes, they almost tried to make her out to be a caricature of McGonagall, whereas in the book, she was a genuine menace, with her threat increasing as the book went along.

Granted, they can't include everything in a film adaptation of a book, but the irony is that OOTP is the shortest film adaptation of the books, whereas the book version is the longest in the series.

 

Sure, but crucially that was also just a story. I suspect because no empire could easily sustain such a practice that’s so antagonistic with absolutely no payoff. Even in the Theseus story, didn’t he step in within the first few years of this “tradition” starting?

 

I mean, it's a dystopian fantasy. I feel like you buy into the premise or you don't. I always attempt to just buy into a movie's premise. I mean, name me a fantasy movie with a completely realistic, "this would definitely work in real life" premise. You're essentially arguing that you couldn't get into Charlotte's Web because you can't understand how that spider even learned to spell.

I'm not a big defender of the franchise. The only one I positively reviewed was the last one. I'm just saying that, when it comes to fiction, particularly fiction with science-fiction, fantasy, horror or supernatural elements, you need to just try to buy in on the premise from the jump; I think it's unfair to use real-world logic to pick apart the logic of fiction that doesn't attempt to take place in the real world.

 

^^^ What Rogue said. THG is a work of fiction, and like all works of fiction it borrows from myths, from history, from RL and from the author's imagination. I don't see that this particular point not having an established historical precendent is an argument against the quality of the storytelling (and I have a lot to say about the quality of the storytelling, but Sarge pretty much summed it up).

Well, it's a myth, it's not supposed to be a realistic standard in the first place. Also, there are several versions and the timeframe is pretty elastic.

 

Well, I mean, the rest of my criticisms take the film on its own terms and accept the premise. But I did not want to lose track of the idea that it’s just a completely crazy, impractical proposition.

Dystopian novels tend to do this, but they also tended to made in the “novel of ideas” tradition where the narratives themselves were just painfully clunky because the author was more concerned with making an essay based on the story’s themes.

 

Jumanji (2017)

It's not as good as the original, but it's pretty funny. The Rock and Kevin Hart make a good team. Jack Black is great in this. The change from board game to video game worked well, the play with the rules and traits of video games may be the best feature. The action and adventure is unremarkable, it's more of a typical Johnson/Hart silly comedy than action-adventure. There is never anything close to tension or stakes, or any kind of drama. Overall, the movie is okay. Recommended if you like The Rock and Kevin Hart and you don't mind spending two hours on a movie that just has a few laughs and not much of anything else.

 

Good points, Viking.

Tbh, I have not read any of the HP books, so cannot begin to approach your level of knowledge about this franchise.
Although not my normal mo, as I like chronology, I think I might start with reading OOTP first, as this story intrigues me the most. And I agree, it is curious that the longest book was adapted into the shortest film.

As for Umbridge, she definitely came across as an ever increasing menace to me. Both times I watched the film, but even more the second time. Her threatening and mistreatment of longtime Hogwarts faculty and staff who were beloved by the students was particularly loathsome.

I'm sure the book is even more insidious in presenting her crimes; yet I must say, the film and the actor did an excellent job of portraying her as pure evil in the end. Imo.

 

Annihilation I really enjoyed this, its a sci-fi movie that leaves you with so much to think about afterwards. I'll be honest its probably something I want to watch again to try and grasp it and get my head around it. Its quite a slow burner in the vein of something like Arrival, and it has elements of other classic sci fi that you'll get straight away too. Its got good visuals and interesting themes. How everything evolves and absorbs others is a fascinating aspect of the story and it gives it some unexpected twists too.

The found footage from a previous incursion gives it a creepy vibe too, and in particular the visual in the abandoned swimming pool relating to one of the videos is really good and it slowly adds to the mystery and atmosphere of whats going on and happening to living things. But even then I don't fully understand what was happening to everything and what was trying to survive and evolve, but I want to watch it again because it was so fascinating.

 

Dickson Greeting (1891) – William K.L. Dickson

William K.L. Dickson becomes the original director/writer/actor in American cinema with this tour de force. This film consists of Dickson kind of bowing while holding his hat in his hands. This not resulting in a particularly entertaining film, Dickson decides to repeat the exact same footage twice more, somewhat slowed down. William K.L. Dickson: inventor of the gif. Anyway, I’ll stop being a smartass for a second and mention that the technological advance from the Monkeyshines films of 1890 is really incredible. You can see Dickson with real clarity, all the way down to the expression on his face. This one is really easily mistakable for a silent snippet from the nineteen-teens or even twenties, I’d say. But it’s still just a guy with a hat. 0 stars.

tl;dr – downright shocking technological innovation, but there’s nothing here of interest but that historical element. 0 stars.

 

The Death of Stalin is the funniest movie I've seen in forever. Michael Palin as Molotov! Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev! Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov! The script is outrageous and nearly perfect.

 

I'll have to rent that when it becomes available. It looked like fun. Glad you liked.

 

Serenity (2005) - Plot; While on the run from a relentless Alliance agent, the crew of the Serenity discover a plot that, if it came to light, could rock the very foundations of galactic civilization.

After binging my way through the 14 episodes of the series (which I'd never seen), I returned for a third time to the movie it inspired. I'd enjoyed it before, but now, w/some character and world building to give it context, I really enjoyed it and the emotional beats hit w/more force. As he did w/the series, Whedon creates a world w/various shades of gray. Our villain isn't your standard mustache-twirling evil-doer and the "heroes" aren't altruistic do-gooders. This isn't the humanistic utopia of Star Trek nor the black and white good vs. evil morality play of Star Wars.

The scale is larger here, the action ramped up and the stakes much bigger, but it basically remains true to the spirit of the show. That's about the highest compliment I can pay it. - 8/10

 

I tried watching The Enemy Below (1957) but only got twenty minutes in before bailing. It was just too corny for a sub movie. The Americans were too sunny, and the German u-boat captain was bitter to the point of caricature. Maybe I missed out on some tense submarine action, but I just didn't like where it was going. I also thought it was strange that this destroyer escort didn't seem to be escorting anything or up to anything in particular. What was it doing? It wasn't escorting any merchant vessels. It wasn't part of a carrier fleet, it wasn't part of any fleet that I could tell. Were destroyer escorts in the habit of wandering the Atlantic alone? Minor detail, of course. Maybe I needed to watch more than 20 minutes.


So I went from corn to Capra-corn.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) - First viewing.

From what I've seen so far, I like the Capra myth and I like Capra in general. But I didn't care for this.

Mr. Deeds is...not believable as a human being. I knew this from the start when he's given $20 million and has absolutely no response of any kind, not even shock. He's entirely disinterested. He doesn't have anything to say about it. He doesn't even say that he doesn't know what to say. Yeah, I get it, he's humble, but it's just taken way too far. They're just playing it up way too much. "Oh, he's so humble, he doesn't even blink". The result is he's not human.

I don't really care for Capra's ideal man, he has a bad habit of going around punching people without just cause. It's very stereotypically masculine, but is in fact unjustified assault and violence.

I love Jean Arthur, and there's maybe a good thirty minutes where Gary Cooper's open, innocent pursuit of her really worked on me, but it goes completely off the rails with the trial. The trial is a total trainwreck of nonsense, and there's even a Jesus/Crucifixion reference that just made me groan. Once more Mr. Deeds is not believable as a human being. Cooper gives it his best aw shucks routine, but it was just too tall an order.

I think this was Capra's first shot at his myth. The basic ideas are obviously there, but it's badly formed, needing an awful lot of work. Maybe it's Riskin's script that is at fault, but it's Capra's baby. The Deeds character is awful, the climactic trial is a disaster that kills anything good the film had going, and it appears obvious that they didn't really have any idea how they wanted to end it.

Rehearsal for Capra's superior later films. Not recommended.

 

Saw PR Uprising. Pretty good tbh! Enjoyed the characters the most actually!

 

Blade Runner 2049 - An utterly gorgeous looking snoozefest.

 

This is the best review of this film I’ve seen.

 

Pacific Rim: Uprising

I wasn’t a huge fan of the prequel, but this one looked entertaining so I gave it a go. It was quite good and had some cool action and likeable characters, but that’s it. It was good but not great. It certainly could’ve been, but it felt rushed and they missed a lot of opportunities to create a spectacle.

It started off well. We got introduced to a few good new characters and had a pretty epic little chase sequence. As the film went on we got two battles between a good Jaeger and a bad Jaeger, both of which were well done as they were both a simple one on one fight. Then the film lost it’s momentum. It revelad what the plot was, which was kinda... lame? It wasn’t really anything big. And then the final big battle happened and it was over. What I’m trying to say is the last and most important part of the film was rushed. They needed to extended the run time by an extra 30 minutes and do the final battle better, and we could’ve left the cinema blown away. Sadly, we were left feeling something was missing.

For something on such a large scale, it wasn’t as epic as it could’ve been. I mean, I came to see giant robots fight giant monsters, and that’s what I got, but I can’t help but think how better it would’ve been with a better team behind it. That being said, there were some really great shots in the action scenes and good use of slow-mo. The visual effects were stunning and the sound design was pretty awesome.

John Boyega did great as the lead. I expect to see him in more big roles in the future. Scott Eastwood was really good too. Cailee Spaeny made her major film debut and did a good job as well.

7.5/10.

 

@Jordan1Kenobi - no Cherno Alpha no go for me. Glad you liked John though.