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

I know you have language issues joxer, but that post was bad on all kinds of levels, even by your standards. I explain quite clearly in my original post what I would have enjoyed watching in the movie and why the movie doesn't work in that way. And, yes, movies about Wall Street are an interesting topic for movies and, yes, having good actors and directors is appealing, and, no, the Wolf of Wall Street is not a mainstream movie. I'm delighted you're still having personal problems with Titanic and that you're still posting about it in discussions 20 years later, but the world's moved on…
The world didn't move on. It's stuck in the same overrated/overhyped rubbish circle.
Two days ago it was Titanic, yesterday was Transformers and today is Straight Outta Compton. Or Jurrasic World. Or dunno, I'm not remembering all titles I don't want to come close.

And no, movies about shares trade are not interesting.
Actors, directors, etc are there to do their job into luring you to watch something that's basically dull.
Yes, Wolf Wall Street is mainstream.
 
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The point I'm not getting Gothic, is why you think all that needs 3 hours combined with no end of graphic sex scenes, Cheech and Chong drug taking and endless bad language and why it needs to be a collection of unrelated sketches instead of a regular narrative.

What you've just described is a standard crime caper movie. Either we, as viewers, support and hope the bad guys get away with it (The Italian Job) or we support and hope the FBI catch the bad guys (The Untouchables). What your post doesn't do is address what the point of the movie was which is the essence of why 3 hours was required (and used ineffectively).

What I and, from what I can gather, everyone else who gave the movie a bad review, is that we were hoping we'd see the guy get a comeuppance - idiot plays fast and loose and crumbles in a fit of implosion. Because the characters are not shown to us in a likeable way, there's nothing in the movie which makes us specifically root for the guy, quite the opposite.

So he gets his comeuppance, but it's, what, a couple of years in jail and he continues to be a rich and successful celebrity as a result of everything we've seen?

So, what it's all about? The uplifting story of a used car salesman scam artist who can continue to be rich despite everyone knowing how much of a turd he is? The uplifting story of how everyone should concentrate on perfecting their sales skills? That there's no problems at Wall Street? That the FBI are a pretty weak and feeble institution? That if you get rich you should just do drugs and buy a yacht while humping everything in site?

As oppose to just telling me what happens, I know what happens, I saw the movie, can you tell me what you got out of the movie? Why a story such as this is interesting to you? Are you happy for the guy at the end? Do you admire the guy? Why did you find the rape of the wife scene relevant to the movie? What is relevant about the many overly extended drug and sex scenes? Didn't you get the idea already before the 8th drug binge scene?
 
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The world didn't move on. It's stuck in the same overrated/overhyped rubbish circle.
Two days ago it was Titanic, yesterday was Transformers and today is Straight Outta Compton. Or Jurrasic World. Or dunno, I'm not remembering all titles I don't want to come close.

And no, movies about shares trade are not interesting.
Actors, directors, etc are there to do their job into luring you to watch something that's basically dull.
Yes, Wolf Wall Street is mainstream.

You think Titanic was the first Hollywood blockbuster? No, it's you who are stuck in a time-zone. Goddam Ghostbusters was schlocky Hollywood mainstream movie, it just happened to be good. Titanic was love story set on the Titanic, it was supposed to appeal to the girls with actions scenes to keep the boyfriend happy. The fact that you don't have a girlfriend who gets to make choices in your life does not mean shit movies exist for the sole purpose of annoying joxer.

I've seen no end of utterly crappy non-mainstream movies, but I don't judge them solely on whether they are mainstream or not, that is utterly, utterly retarded.
 
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About 20 years ago I watched this movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064505/

I'm not sure why I remembered it today, maybe because I catched such cold my nose and throat are suffering immensly.
But the movie was brilliant and one of those rare ones that end with a cliffhanger that's not a cliffhanger at all because whichever "ending" you choose, it's still great.

A mustwatch, 10/10

Please avoid silly remakes. Thanks.
 
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The point I'm not getting Gothic, is why you think all that needs 3 hours combined with no end of graphic sex scenes, Cheech and Chong drug taking and endless bad language and why it needs to be a collection of unrelated sketches instead of a regular narrative.

What you've just described is a standard crime caper movie. Either we, as viewers, support and hope the bad guys get away with it (The Italian Job) or we support and hope the FBI catch the bad guys (The Untouchables). What your post doesn't do is address what the point of the movie was which is the essence of why 3 hours was required (and used ineffectively).

What I and, from what I can gather, everyone else who gave the movie a bad review, is that we were hoping we'd see the guy get a comeuppance - idiot plays fast and loose and crumbles in a fit of implosion. Because the characters are not shown to us in a likeable way, there's nothing in the movie which makes us specifically root for the guy, quite the opposite.

So he gets his comeuppance, but it's, what, a couple of years in jail and he continues to be a rich and successful celebrity as a result of everything we've seen?

So, what it's all about? The uplifting story of a used car salesman scam artist who can continue to be rich despite everyone knowing how much of a turd he is? The uplifting story of how everyone should concentrate on perfecting their sales skills? That there's no problems at Wall Street? That the FBI are a pretty weak and feeble institution? That if you get rich you should just do drugs and buy a yacht while humping everything in site?

As oppose to just telling me what happens, I know what happens, I saw the movie, can you tell me what you got out of the movie? Why a story such as this is interesting to you? Are you happy for the guy at the end? Do you admire the guy? Why did you find the rape of the wife scene relevant to the movie? What is relevant about the many overly extended drug and sex scenes? Didn't you get the idea already before the 8th drug binge scene?

Well, it is based on a real life story, so it wouldn't do to try and add some kind of narrative of something which didn't happen. Joxer might acctually be onto something.. perhaps you wanted a completely fictional film?

The reason for all the swinish partying scenes, rapes and all the other horrible stuff going on in the movie, is that the guy himself admitted that he was a total asshole, and so were/are a lot of other people on Wallstreet, one of the main goals of the movie was to show the public how far those things had gone, and thus they wanted to add a bunch of really horrible sense ( some probably even a bit exaggerated as to what actually happen ). To make this the main point of the movie, but also telling the story of what Jordan did and what happens in the process. Perhaps some people would hesitate to entrust their money to Wallstreet after seeing that movie?
 
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Well, it is based on a real life story, so it wouldn't do to try and add some kind of narrative of something which didn't happen. Joxer might acctually be onto something.. perhaps you wanted a completely fictional film?

The reason for all the swinish partying scenes, rapes and all the other horrible stuff going on in the movie, is that the guy himself admitted that he was a total asshole, and so were/are a lot of other people on Wallstreet, one of the main goals of the movie was to show the public how far those things had gone, and thus they wanted to add a bunch of really horrible sense ( some probably even a bit exaggerated as to what actually happen ). To make this the main point of the movie, but also telling the story of what Jordan did and what happens in the process. Perhaps some people would hesitate to entrust their money to Wallstreet after seeing that movie?

Biographies and narratives are not mutually exclusive you know… People do tend to live their life narratively… Unless you happen to warp through time during your existence, which I wouldn't put past you ;)

So you agree that the movie's intention was to portray him as the unlikable asshole. Ok, so why then glorify all the sex and drugs? Why have the ending as him saying "hey guys, I'm still rich LOL" - that's not communicating a negative is it… Hey kids, don't be like this guy, he had tuns of sex, drugs and money and still has! - SERIOUSLY…

Couldn't they have found a better example of an asshole to do a biography of if they wanted to portray the excess of Wall Street? Someone who actually came a cropper properly? There must be thousands of stories in Wall Street ending in life imprisonment, death/suicide that contain extreme excess… but we get this guy? A salesman who made one criminal move, got caught and is still rich? And we have to watch him rape his wife… for zero narrative end-game?
 
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Biographies and narratives are not mutually exclusive you know… People do tend to live their life narratively… Unless you happen to warp through time during your existence, which I wouldn't put past you ;)

So you agree that the movie's intention was to portray him as the unlikable asshole. Ok, so why then glorify all the sex and drugs? Why have the ending as him saying "hey guys, I'm still rich LOL" - that's not communicating a negative is it… Hey kids, don't be like this guy, he had tuns of sex, drugs and money and still has! - SERIOUSLY…

Couldn't they have found a better example of an asshole to do a biography of if they wanted to portray the excess of Wall Street? Someone who actually came a cropper properly? There must be thousands of stories in Wall Street ending in life imprisonment, death/suicide that contain extreme excess… but we get this guy? A salesman who made one criminal move, got caught and is still rich? And we have to watch him rape his wife… for zero narrative end-game?

Well, there are other such a movies. But few stories and few people are so well known as him, it wouldn't do to choose a random person almost none heard about. Almost no people managed to do what he did either. It is not like some random person on Wallstreet could pull something like that off. I was fascinated by his story before I saw the movie, and they could certainly have chosen another focus for the movie. In fact I know a lot of people who went with their family and stuff like that and suffered through the movie, it is probably not the sort of movie you'd like to take your partners mother or whatever else to right? But I think they put an interesting angle to focus on that part, even if it was not what I was expecting at all. Perhaps they should have been more clear that was the focus when marketing the movie?

While it does perhaps "glorify" to some extent, I think most people who watches the movie won't feel like they wanted a life like that or agree with his actions. Neither would they consider him a good guy. I think another part of the movie is to show that, in-spite of all he got off the hook very easily, because of who he was and he came from Wallstreet, a lot of people in power is involved in one way or another, and I guess it wouldn't go well with them to punish him too severely. A selfish bastard, who puts money above everything else and got off the hook lightly because he was rich and powerful, and still get by very well because he is one hell of salesperson.
 
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And now here's the movies I actually enjoyed and can confidently pass on as my picks for April if you find yourself at a loose end for a couple or three hours:

On the topic of Biographies, a much better example of one is, IMO, First of the Few AKA Spitfire (1942), a movie about the guy who designed the Spitfire aeroplane, the most famous plane of the Second World War. It was made during the war so, unfortunately, it has taken some liberties with the truth, which is the main reason it's only got a 7.1 on IMDB, but other than that it's a very watchable movie that is surprisingly entertaining for a story about an engineer. If you like the history of flight as a general topic I would call it a must-watch, particularly as it covers all the inter-war international flying competitions where bi-planes were gradually replaced with monoplanes.

Another attractive novelty of the movie is that it is directed by and starring Leslie Howard. Howard was one of the biggest names of 1930s Hollywood, the George Clooney of the 30s. He was such as the Scarlet Pimpernel amongst many iconic roles which led to him being one of the big names headlining on the poster for Gone With The Wind, the most popular movie ever made. He could do anything he wanted to in the world of movies. Ironically, he was flying in a plane in 1943 when the Germans shot the plane down. He was suddenly dead at the age of 50, in his prime. Imagine if you picked up the paper tomorrow and read that Clooney had been killed in a plane crash. This movie stands as a testament to the potential that was lost and as a metaphore for the loss of talent that war can bring. I'd give it 8/10.

If you've got kids or just want to watch something really, really light, like, the polar opposite of modern dark/extreme norms, then I've also seen and quite enjoyed two of the tamest movies I've ever seen: Swallows and Amazons (1974) and The Wishing Tree (1999), both of which are so light on adult themes that small children might even complain about the lack of peril or strong language.

Now… neither of these movies are great, as in they are not masterpieces of art, what they are are just glimpses into the sensibilities of the past, movies that would have trouble even being conceived of today. Swallows is about a group of very young kids that go and live and adventure on an island in the middle of a river, completely unsupervised by adults, for days on end. And nothing bad happens to them. They can cope just fine. Just this concept on its own makes it a nostalgia gem. Likely quite hackneyed in its day, it now comes across as so original it's like a breath of fresh air on the first spring day after a long and hostile winter.

The Wishing Tree is like The Green Mile but for kids. A pair of very young kids meet a 'magic man' in the woods, and he's… not… got evil intentions for them. Perhaps the female lawyer fresh in for her adopted mother's funeral can help persuade the deep south American locals that the strange ex-criminal big black man in the woods who's 'playing' with their kids is actually the good guy… a very heart warming movie in the old fashioned corny sense of film-making. Heck, there's even scenes where people eat corns off the cob. I'd give them both 7.5/10, but mostly for reasons that weren't intended at their time of release.

A couple of 3+ hourers now, both TV movies (separated into a micro-mini-series):

The Odyssey (1997) is a pretty darn good adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. If you like ancient Greek myth and legend, tales of monsters, gods and sirens interweaving a potentially tragic love story, then look no further, this movie has it all. From the Trojan Horse to battling the Cyclops and from drunken bad guys to witches that can turn you into a pig or a monkey, poor Odysseus gets banished to a life forever sailing the ocean as punishment for defying the Gods (well, just Poseidon to be precise, the other gods seem to like him). The effects aren't so bad and quite impressive in places, the acting isn't so bad and quite impressive in places, but, most of all, it really feels like a movie about ancient Greece, it just oozes that sense of magic and wonder while always feeling like something altogether Greek.

I say this because I also saw Alexander (2004) Director's Cut, which is supposed to be a big improvement on the awful original. I'm not entirely sure why this movie is hated so much. I could get used to the Irish accents and I could get used to the gay undertones, I even grew to like Colin Farrell in the lead role. The main problem with it is that it just doesn't feel very Greeky. It could be Braveheart, it could be Roman, it could be Game of Thrones, it just comes across as any random movie about a historical general. I got no real sense of the Greek, something The Odyssey has in spades…

From the same production team as Odyssey comes Merlin (1998), the story of King Arthur but entirely from the perspective of his wizard Merlin. It's more like a biography of Merlin than a story about King Arthur though as we see all the big events in Merlin's life, from birth to final resting place, conjecturing that the King Arthur story is a result of Merlin's war with the misguided God/witch Mab (who created Merlin in the first place to restore the power of the Old Gods). Like The Odyssey, its special effects are sometimes really good, as is the acting, but not always, but the most important factor is that the world maintains itself in a fully immersive sense of the times it is set. This movie oozes the Dark Ages of Northern Europe and delivers both magic and reality in equal measure without ever coming across as cheap, either in look or narrative impetus. A must-watch for any fan of fantasy magic. My only complaint was that Sam Neil doesn't look very 'wizardy', not because of bad costuming but just because Sam Neil himself doesn't look very wizardy. If only they'd got Ian McKellan… but maybe this is because I saw LoTR first…

In 2000 there was a movie called Merlin: The Return which, obviously, sounds like a sequel. It's not. It's a gobshiteingly bad movie made by the previously (March's picks) mentioned Paul Matthews. It has nothing to do with the 1997 movie and is unwatchably bad on practically every front.

Both Merlin and Odyssey were 8/10s for me, possibly 8.5s.
 
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From the same production team as Odyssey comes Merlin (1998), the story of King Arthur but entirely from the perspective of his wizard Merlin. It's more like a biography of Merlin than a story about King Arthur though as we see all the big events in Merlin's life, from birth to final resting place, conjecturing that the King Arthur story is a result of Merlin's war with the misguided God/witch Mab (who created Merlin in the first place to restore the power of the Old Gods). Like The Odyssey, its special effects are sometimes really good, as is the acting, but not always, but the most important factor is that the world maintains itself in a fully immersive sense of the times it is set. This movie oozes the Dark Ages of Northern Europe and delivers both magic and reality in equal measure without ever coming across as cheap, either in look or narrative impetus. A must-watch for any fan of fantasy magic. My only complaint was that Sam Neil doesn't look very 'wizardy', not because of bad costuming but just because Sam Neil himself doesn't look very wizardy. If only they'd got Ian McKellan… but maybe this is because I saw LoTR first…


Both Merlin and Odyssey were 8/10s for me, possibly 8.5s.

Wow, finally we have the same opinion about a movie... I feel exactly the same way about Merlin as you do.
 
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While I don't agree with your sentiments, I have to say, that does look better than the US version/s of Godzilla. Trailers can be deceptive though.
 
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The Revenant

Surely there are quite a few calm shots of nature in its full glory. Beautiful sunrises, snowy mountains, crystal clear rivers and so on. These magnificent nature shots allow the viewer to appreciate and enjoy in them.
And to me, it is a good thing. Although not everybody will like that part.

Other than that, there are a lot of bloody scenes,which are pretty realistic,and that can shock some viewers. I also raised an eyebrow at some gory scenes, saying "This is brutal."
And already at the beginning of the movie it starts to get messy.

So, it is a combination of still nature shots VS. killing and blood letting and DiCaprio groaning.
But that doesn't mean DiCaprio was bad in the movie. No. He gave a good performance IMHO.

The movie is a little long, but it is relatively a good movie. It is worth a watch.
My score 7.5/10
 
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As Above, So Below

Pretty good suspense movie. 1/3 Indiana Jones, 1/3 The Descent, 1/3 Event Horizon. Well done, original idea centers around a few people exploring the French Catacombs. Only major thing I disliked was the use of perspective camera angles - seemed shoehorned in at times and unnecessary.

7-7.5/10
 
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Isn't it yet another "foundfootage" whatnot?
I mean, the reason I didn't want to watch it because just one of those was already too much for me.
 
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I finally got around to seeing The Hateful Eight, and I was disappointed. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I kept expecting some sort of really cool twist that never came.

It was entertaining enough to watch once but sub-par as far as Tarantino movies go.
 
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I finally got around to seeing The Hateful Eight, and I was disappointed. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I kept expecting some sort of really cool twist that never came.

It was entertaining enough to watch once but sub-par as far as Tarantino movies go.

Better than most movies but unwatchable as a Tarantino movie I would say.
 
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And I, because suggested by a friend, watched
Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820466/

I don't watch DC and Marvel's cartoons, I'm more of a comic type person, but okay, this is apparently one of the best ones ever made so I gave it a shot.

To keep it short. It builds and builds and builds up, then a plot hole of a moon size strikes the base so the thing just shatters into a disappointment of a year.
If I was asked, I'd put 2/10 because the animation and voiceovers weren't bad, everything else made me sick.

If it was a trash movie I'd praise it on the point of spitting on it's watcher "here's your prize you you moron who enjoys this crap", maybe I'd even call it a masterpiece. Sadly, it's not.
Skip at all costs!
 
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Anomalisa. It's a stop-motion animated film about a middle-aged man having a breakdown. It's slow paced and not exactly jolly, though with a strand of dark humour. It's also one of the best films I've seen in recent years. Made by Charlie Kaufman, who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Adaptation.
 
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