What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

danutz_plusplus said:

If you want to see a bigger analysis of Willis’s latest years in film and the disaster that he turned into.

https://youtu.be/fP47VQTxufM

The way he’s churning them out you’d think he’s Nicolas Cage trying to make money as fast as possible to avoid going to jail for tax evasion.

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It's quite weird. I mean, when I say this one is bad, I don't mean in the way many mainstream movies are bad - this one is just not like a proper movie at all.

I wonder what happened. Up until quite recently he was still making solid films like Moonrise Kingdom and Looper, and he must have made good money from the Die Hard sequels (also awful, but within the realm of normal Hollywood movies). Then suddenly it's almost exclusively straight-to-VOD garbage for several years.

Ripper said:

I wonder what happened. Up until quite recently he was still making solid films like Moonrise Kingdom and Looper, and he must have made good money from the Die Hard sequels (also awful, but within the realm of normal Hollywood movies). Then suddenly it's almost exclusively straight-to-VOD garbage for several years.

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The best answer is probably easy money for a small amount of work. Yes he did a few big movies but each one seem to bomb, or get poor citric reviews nowadays.

I'm a fan of Nicolas Cage & Steven Seagal also and they're mostly making VOD movies as well. Guess age and diminished popularity have something to do with as well.

Add to the fact 1990's style action flicks aren't big hits in theaters anymore as well.

It made me think of the contrast with a movie called Alien Raiders. That's another no-budget sci-fi movie, but it's actually pretty watchable. Sometimes they have no money, but they have the right idea, and it's a good effort.

Papillon (1973)

Is without doubt a good film. It oozes quality from beginning to end. Which is no surprise when you look into who made it, the director fresh from Planet of the Apes and Patton, bringing with him his cinematographer from Patton, and the art director from Diamonds Are Forever, Battle of Britain and Jason and the Argonauts. To top it all of are two of the biggest acting names of the time, Steve McQueen (Papillon) and Dustin Hoffman.

I mean, you could watch this film in the same way one looks at the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, just gazing in wonder at the beauty of it all, being gradually hypnotised by the consistently perfect delivery of the two main characters, without for one minute even caring what the plot was or what was going on, and be perfectly happy with the film in every respect. 10/10 at this point.

However, prison dramas are not my favourite genre at the best of times, and this is undoubtedly a prison drama. Whilst it at least expands well beyond the confines of looking at prison walls for the duration, it still has all the usual stuff you get in every prison movie ever. It's another escape from prison film and that's about it regarding the actual plot.

Of course there are other aspects to the film, like friendship bonding, the human desire for freedom, questioning the penal system and all that good stuff, but, essentially, it's just another escape from prison movie. And it's biggest drawback is it's supreme quality in production values, because where the film really falls down is in it being almost 2.5 hours long.



And that the 2.5 hours is not really justified. All these film-making geniuses combined and shot such great footage that, come time to edit it into an actual film, they were too attached to each and every perfect shot and scene, rendered helpless to actually say at any point SNIP SNIP SNIP, we don't actually need that bit in the movie.

As such, practically every scene has an exotic and overly-long establishing shot, dialogues are overly filled with very long dramatic pauses, we linger on scenes long after the scene has ended to make sure we have fully digested the perfection of production, pointless scenes are kept in in their entirety just because, on their own, they are great scenes, even though they add nothing to the overall experience.

There's a good, well paced 1:45 movie in here, trapped and caged by a tortuous 2:25 straight jacket. For all the pleasures it takes in showing you a detailed guillotining, it completely forgot to take the guillotine to the reel in post-production.

Upon finishing watching, one knows one has just watched something incredibly well made and well acted, something that is truly a beauty to behold. But one is also left thinking… is that all it was?

As such, it's quite difficult to rate. IMDB has it at a very respectable 8/10, but, I dunno, sure, maybe, kinda. I'd probably plump for 7.5ish, not a life-time must watch standard, but certainly worth it for the actors if you like the actors, and who doesn't like Steve McQueen?

I agree with most of what you said, aside from the length. But that's usually because I never have an issue with length in film or tv. I just look at it as more content to enjoy.

I find it very hard to say what should and should not be cut from a movie. How would I know what the intention was when the editor and director decided whether a scene should be this long. What even makes a scene too long? Is it because it failed to entertain every moment of it? Maybe I'm one of the few it failed to entertain. Does it have to entertain every moment? Maybe it wants to give time and breath to absorb the scene. I don't know, which is why I can never make that statement.

But what I'm sure of is that I want to have the director's vision, whatever it is. The same reason I can never entertain fan-cuts of various movies. Or modding in games. I want the vision the developers had.

That's just my take on it. I might be wrong. And people might disagree. I hear a lot people reviewing saying something should be cut down, but I can never agree or disagree. That would just be a different cut of the movie. There likely isn't one true version. So I'll just default to what the director/editor chose. Makes my life easier.

Oh, for sure, I'm like that, I prefer whatever is the official cut, usually, maybe director's cut in certain cases, and, yes, this problem can vary greatly from film to film.

In the case of this film, its the problem that the subject matter itself isn't that sprawling, as I said, it's a fairly basic premise. So the excessive run time is, as you say, just watching something because it's there, which is fine if you want to do that, and the kind of person who can do that, but it's certainly something to mention when recommending something or not.

For example, one scene off the top of my head:

They get assigned to a heavy labour task by the prison boss, as a punchline to a joke kind of thing. So the next shot is of them hauling half a tree around with all the other prisoners. Cool, we get the joke, we understand the hardship now, everything the film needed to communicate has been communicated...

... And then a prison guard randomly shoots a crocodile & then instructs our two heroes to go and fetch it for him. We then see our two guys dance around the croc for two or three minutes, finally grapple the croc & then we have a scene of them retuning to the prison camp with the croc & watch as someone splits open the croc's belly...

... none of which added anything to the film. Its not referenced before or after and has no build-up and no pay-off. The scene ended when we saw our heroes lugging the tree around. The whole croc scene is entirely irrelevant and added another 5 mins to the movie for no reason, either thematic or contextually or atmospherically. If anything it distracted from the flow of all those things.

And there lots of things like this. Stuff that's, as you say, just there.

Ripper said:

It made me think of the contrast with a movie called Alien Raiders. That's another no-budget sci-fi movie, but it's actually pretty watchable. Sometimes they have no money, but they have the right idea, and it's a good effort.

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Regarding current day Bruce Willis, a lot of the crappy action movies I've been watching recently fall into that category, only they're from the 80s-90s and have the relevant stars from that era.

As a direct similarly, the most recent one I watched was On Dangerous Ground (1996), a TV movie starring Rob Lowe, who infamously did loads of this kind of dreck that bewilders every Rob Lowe fan even to this day.

It's not quite as bad as the 4.4/10 IMDB has it at, but then again it kinda is. As you say, the thing that unites all these kind of movies is the idea you get while watching, the idea, or sense, that the thing in front of you just isn't really a film, it's more like people pretending to make a film.

lackblogger said:

Oh, for sure, I'm like that, I prefer whatever is the official cut, usually, maybe director's cut in certain cases, and, yes, this problem can vary greatly from film to film.

In the case of this film, its the problem that the subject matter itself isn't that sprawling, as I said, it's a fairly basic premise. So the excessive run time is, as you say, just watching something because it's there, which is fine if you want to do that, and the kind of person who can do that, but it's certainly something to mention when recommending something or not.

For example, one scene off the top of my head:

They get assigned to a heavy labour task by the prison boss, as a punchline to a joke kind of thing. So the next shot is of them hauling half a tree around with all the other prisoners. Cool, we get the joke, we understand the hardship now, everything the film needed to communicate has been communicated…

… And then a prison guard randomly shoots a crocodile & then instructs our two heroes to go and fetch it for him. We then see our two guys dance around the croc for two or three minutes, finally grapple the croc & then we have a scene of them retuning to the prison camp with the croc & watch as someone splits open the croc's belly…

… none of which added anything to the film. Its not referenced before or after and has no build-up and no pay-off. The scene ended when we saw our heroes lugging the tree around. The whole croc scene is entirely irrelevant and added another 5 mins to the movie for no reason, either thematic or contextually or atmospherically. If anything it distracted from the flow of all those things.

And there lots of things like this. Stuff that's, as you say, just there.

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Yeah I get that, but as I said, I feel this type of reasoning leads to movies becoming very mechanical. Each scene must have a logical reasoning, must not repeat/continue the point of another scene, must forward the plot etc. What about having a scene there just because you want that scene there. Maybe for mood setting. Maybe just because the director likes how it came out, or maybe just to be weird.

For example, in a regular David Lynch movie it would be very hard to say a scene should be cut or not. Why not offer that same benefit to other directors?

Shagnak said:

I've seen 62 of those movies.
Thanks for the list, it reminded me that I've yet to see several movies that I intended to watch (e.g. Arrival).
There's a couple I've never even heard of: Upstream Color; The Holy Mountain?

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I've see 77, own 51. I've not heard of Upstream Color either, but I own all of Jodorowsky's movies, including Holy Mountain.

danutz_plusplus said:

For example, in a regular David Lynch movie it would be very hard to say a scene should be cut or not. Why not offer that same benefit to other directors?

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I don't offer that benefit to Lynch either. I'm a big Lynch fan, but I still think Inland Empire is a horrific movie that I wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy :lol: its 6.9 rating on imdb is, IMO, waaaay too high and is only that because of deranged fanboys who'll watch literally anything by him.

lackblogger said:

I don't offer that benefit to Lynch either. I'm a big Lynch fan, but I still think Inland Empire is a horrific movie that I wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy :lol: its 6.9 rating on imdb is, IMO, waaaay too high and is only that because of deranged fanboys who'll watch literally anything by him.

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With that I must agree. I started it, but haven't managed to finish it. It was way too weird and not very compelling. Or maybe I was too tired. I don't remember anything other than that Laura Dern is in it.

Touching any Lynch film is a big no-no. I refer you to what happened to Dune because control was wrested from Lynch, and turned what could have been an awesome film into a mediocre one, at best. I still weep for what that movie could have been, it was so well cast and then.....nope. I gotta just let it go.

When it comes to very special VHS movies, I think Order of the Black Eagle must be up there.

Ever wonder what a campy 20 minute 70's cartoon storyline would look like if it were extended to 2 1/2 hours for a full length movie? Wonder Woman 1984 is your answer. Cringeworthy!

Drithius said:

Ever wonder what a campy 20 minute 70's cartoon storyline would look like if it were extended to 2 1/2 hours for a full length movie? Wonder Woman 1984 is your answer. Cringeworthy!

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Surely the kind of person who'd choose to watch Wonder Woman 1984 would be the kind of person who'd quite like the idea of watching a full length 70s cartoon storyline?

Just guessin' here...

What was it you were hoping for?

I gave up on hoping for a decent comic book film some years ago, now I'm simply praying they never put the ones I enjoy in a movie format. Yes, the first Avenger film, Iron Man, and Captain America, along with Winter Soldier are at least acceptable, but what they do to the actual stories that they originate from….no. Don't get me started.

Having said that, I do think the Netflix show Daredevil did a fine job with that material. Is it perfect? F no. Is it good, worth watching, and at least attempts to stay honest to the source materials? Yes. The first Luke Cage episodes are decent as well. If they ever do anything with Daredevil again, I certainly hope they at least offer the role to Charlie Cox.

Oh, and I thought the first Wonder Woman flick was decent too. I suspect I'll see the second at some point, but I'm in no rush to be disappointed.

Carnifex said:

I gave up on hoping for a decent comic book film some years ago…

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Say what?

Filmed almost without any combat reshoots: Gundala.

If you want a nonsuperhero comic based, then: Blade of the Immortal.

Those two are decent.
More than decent, in fact something great: Inuyashiki.

Or simply state you don't expect a decent comic adaptation from Hollywood.

You may wish to re-read my second paragraph again. Anime was slightly amusing in my youth, nothing I'm really keen on these days.

One of my brothers came over last night and we tried to watch the latest Wonder Woman flick, dear lord that thing is straight up horrid. They should praise Gaia that the threatres are actually closed for the most part, the hue and cry to remove the garbage would have been loud!

When it comes to superhero movies, I find the Marvel films to be vastly superior to DC. The only DC superhero movies I liked were the Dark Knight Trilogy and Man of Steel. Everything else has been decidedly medicore imo.

JDR13 said:

When it comes to superhero movies, I find the Marvel films to be vastly superior to DC. The only DC superhero movies I liked were the Dark Knight Trilogy and Man of Steel. Everything else has been decidedly medicore imo.

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How about Joker? I loved that one. It was the whole package for me. Great acting. Great soundtrack. Great script. Man, I loved the soundtrack. So dreary and depressive.