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

Just watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens at home, and frankly it was a three hour colossal waste of time. Even my older father couldn't wait for the damn movie to end,

I even say this after enjoying the other six episodes. So if you enjoyed watching the same thing all over again you're in luck as Disney has six more movies in pre-production.

Link- http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/star-wars/241723/full-star-wars-movie-release-calendar

Meh milking at its finest just like the countless Marvel releases every year..
 
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Ripper said:
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.
Click to expand...

I started this movie but never got that far into it. Maybe I will give it another shot.
 
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The Force Awakens was at least better than any of the last 3 movies done by Lucas.

I saw The Revenant last night. It was better than I expected, and I'd even call it great despite not being a fan of any of the actors. It probably should have won Best Picture last year.
 
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JDR13 said:
I saw The Revenant last night. It was better than I expected, and I'd even call it great despite not being a fan of any of the actors. It probably should have won Best Picture last year.
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I found it was pretty good, but I clearly prefer Bone Tomahawk.
 
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Ripper said:
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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I've heard a lot about that movie, let's see when I'll have the time to watch it. It looks like the kind of movie you either hate or love.

Couchpotato said:
Just watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens at home, and frankly it was a three hour colossal waste of time. Even my older father couldn't wait for the damn movie to end,

I even say this after enjoying the other six episodes. So if you enjoyed watching the same thing all over again you're in luck as Disney has six more movies in pre-production.

Link- http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/star-wars/241723/full-star-wars-movie-release-calendar

Meh milking at its finest just like the countless Marvel releases every year..
Click to expand...

well, you are a bit late to the discussion but I am sure you saw the threads were I told you so :D It is even worse than all of the last 3 movies directed by Lucas in my opinion. Oooooops, hope the entire big discussion on this movie won't start again now......
 
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Yes, let's copypaste the entire Star Wars thread into the movie thread, sounds like a plan, lmao.

Interestingly though, I'm going to repeat something from the earlier Star Wars hype thread where I talked about repetitive sequels by referencing James Bond.

If your primary concern with a sequel is that it's too much like a previous movie, then you have justified but, ultimately, unrealistic expectations. Star Wars is a blockbuster movie franchise, always has been and always will be. It's not meant to be Oscar bait nor alternative nor artsy nor even just intelligent, it's a standard action popcorn series and should be judged in the same way other movies of its genre are judged.

Do people complain when John McClain has to, once again, beat the bad guys on his own? Do people complain when James Bond, once again, uses Q's gadgets to escape after being captured by a crazy villain? Do people complain when Freddy Kruger, once again, kills teenagers while they're dreaming? Do people complain when The Terminator, once again, has to kill or be killed. No, people usually complain when the writers try to elaborate on the flimsy initial premise… and do it badly.

People don't tend to like elaboration for elaboration's sake. A more universally critically acclaimed movie last year which also inserted a controversial feminist theme was Mad Max: Fury road. What did that movie add to the 'great narrative of Mad Max'? Not a lot really, people just got what they wanted, high intensity death chases in beat-up 'steam-punky' (for want of a better word) vehicles.

So a better question is "why are people expecting so much originality from Star Wars?". To which the answer is that Star Wars has become so completely popular that the levels of additional fan fiction content available to the consumer has reached stratospheric levels, making the most avid of fans over-expectant that any new movie will somehow give them something 'newer' than 1,000 existing fan fictions, that it will somehow 'continue on' from 1,000 different fan fiction narratives. As if they've completely forgotten that the 'Expanded Universe' is actually the 'crappier' spin-off, not the movies.

There were an incredible number of repeated themes in the Prequel Trilogy, that is why George Lucas' reasoning of "It rhymes" has become a joke meme. Even Return of the Jedi from the Original Trilogy was essentially a rehash of A New Hope in many regards. If someone's primary reason for disliking the movie is the copypaste but they think Phantom Menace did not suffer from this as badly, then there's something more going on, there's something they find wrong with the movie that they can't quite put their finger on and are just going with "oh, it was so unoriginal" as a kind-of justification.

My theory is that they have become so enamored by the fan fiction that they've lost perspective on what blockbuster movie sequels are and what to expect from the art of popcorn movies. I don't think this is exclusive to just Star Wars, I think any huge fan of a movie series will have this problem happen to them at some point, where your expectations gradually elevate to a position so beyond what the 'average' person wants and expects, that you'll never be satisfied again with any further movies from the franchise. You can see the same thing happen with popular video games.

Disney is experimenting with Star Wars though, and this December they're releasing Rogue One, a fan fiction Expanded Universe spin-off movie franchise. People such as yourself and Couch will likely be more accepting of this series, Disney, the movie business and 'average joe' will just be curious to see 'if it works' and can appeal to the same extent as the main series.
 
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lackblogger said:
Yes, let's copypaste the entire Star Wars thread into the movie thread, sounds like a plan, lmao.

Interestingly though, I'm going to repeat something from the earlier Star Wars hype thread where I talked about repetitive sequels by referencing James Bond.

If your primary concern with a sequel is that it's too much like a previous movie, then you have justified but, ultimately, unrealistic expectations. Star Wars is a blockbuster movie franchise, always has been and always will be. It's not meant to be Oscar bait nor alternative nor artsy nor even just intelligent, it's a standard action popcorn series and should be judged in the same way other movies of its genre are judged.

Do people complain when John McClain has to, once again, beat the bad guys on his own? Do people complain when James Bond, once again, uses Q's gadgets to escape after being captured by a crazy villain? Do people complain when Freddy Kruger, once again, kills teenagers while they're dreaming? Do people complain when The Terminator, once again, has to kill or be killed. No, people usually complain when the writers try to elaborate on the flimsy initial premise… and do it badly.

People don't tend to like elaboration for elaboration's sake. A more universally critically acclaimed movie last year which also inserted a controversial feminist theme was Mad Max: Fury road. What did that movie add to the 'great narrative of Mad Max'? Not a lot really, people just got what they wanted, high intensity death chases in beat-up 'steam-punky' (for want of a better word) vehicles.

So a better question is "why are people expecting so much originality from Star Wars?". To which the answer is that Star Wars has become so completely popular that the levels of additional fan fiction content available to the consumer has reached stratospheric levels, making the most avid of fans over-expectant that any new movie will somehow give them something 'newer' than 1,000 existing fan fictions, that it will somehow 'continue on' from 1,000 different fan fiction narratives. As if they've completely forgotten that the 'Expanded Universe' is actually the 'crappier' spin-off, not the movies.

There were an incredible number of repeated themes in the Prequel Trilogy, that is why George Lucas' reasoning of "It rhymes" has become a joke meme. Even Return of the Jedi from the Original Trilogy was essentially a rehash of A New Hope in many regards. If someone's primary reason for disliking the movie is the copypaste but they think Phantom Menace did not suffer from this as badly, then there's something more going on, there's something they find wrong with the movie that they can't quite put their finger on and are just going with "oh, it was so unoriginal" as a kind-of justification.

My theory is that they have become so enamored by the fan fiction that they've lost perspective on what blockbuster movie sequels are and what to expect from the art of popcorn movies. I don't think this is exclusive to just Star Wars, I think any huge fan of a movie series will have this problem happen to them at some point, where your expectations gradually elevate to a position so beyond what the 'average' person wants and expects, that you'll never be satisfied again with any further movies from the franchise. You can see the same thing happen with popular video games.

Disney is experimenting with Star Wars though, and this December they're releasing Rogue One, a fan fiction Expanded Universe spin-off movie franchise. People such as yourself and Couch will likely be more accepting of this series, Disney, the movie business and 'average joe' will just be curious to see 'if it works' and can appeal to the same extent as the main series.
Click to expand...

Nice Theory.. but I haven't read or watched a single Starwars fan-fiction. Well, perhaps Dark Forces counts ( I loved that game ). But that was before watching Lucas new movies. And for the record Phantom Menace is also bad, and suffers from those problems too, and a lot of other awful stuff.

However I do think you have a point in your other reasoning, because I don't like any movies that repeat the same thing over and over again. For James Bond, they did something really different in the reboot, in Casino Royale, Bond was for example all of a sudden a person with real feelings and faults. Skyfall was very different in many ways from any earlier Bond movie too, even if I didn't like it as much as Casino Royale. While the Bond movies I hated was mostly mindless action with nothing and not even good movies ( Quantum of Solace, what an awful movie that was ). Spectre tried some news things, but ultimate it was a big failure in my opinion, because they made it so ridiculously over the top that the Bond charm was completely lost and Craig looked tired of playing Bond ( amazing opening though ).
 
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The one that got me all riled up was Terminator 2.

In the first movie you get glimpses of what the world of the future is like. One of the most memorable scenes was where you see an army of Terminators overrunning the desolate post-apocalyptic landscape. I spent most of the late 1980s fantasising and talking about how great it would be to have a sequel set in this universe! Whenever the topic came up.

Imagine my reaction to T2... Oh, just some robots fighting each other in modern day LA. I was soooooo disappointed. I couldn't contain my disdain, and yet... and yet... even to this day T2 still regularly gets voted the best movie of the franchise. So now, older and wiser, I can watch T2 and appreciate why it's good. But back then...
 
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My opinion on Flashpoint Paradox countering Joxer... It IS the best animated DC movie, actually I would rate it higher than the original book. Contains the single most important Flash storyline, was a massive shake-up for the DC Universe (introducing the New 52) and contains for me the most emotional batman moment ever. I literally cried twice, once when I saw it for the first time myself, and then again when I watched it with my son.
 
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I hope you do realize I'm a very strange person. ;)
Some things irrelevant to many people are superimportant to me. And vice versa.

However since you mentioned your son, I have to agree that it can be a great stuff for kids to watch. Kids don't nitpick something, they enjoy it for what it is and to them what matters is only the main story point. Suspicious plot? Who cares, they are still in learning process and they know they'll sometimes get confused thus will just ditch those parts as naturally they expect to understand them when older.
All that, level of animation paired with great voiceovers in Flashopint Paradox…

So lemme correct myself.
For kids and those who want to show some not bad animated movie to kids - recommended.
For everyone else, especially nitpickers - avoid like a plague.

btw, why are we still on 7th Star Wars?
Still didn't watch it (maybe I should?), but I thought the consensus in the separate thread was that it's not bad but it played safe by practically retelling The New Hope with new cast and as such it's an obvious milk-em "meh" where old fans expected a revolution.
Also IIRC the parts worth watching were Han/Leia, everything else mediocre, and of course the gamebreaker (for me) was touching a lightsaber makes you instantly skilled in swordfight.
That's what I got from reading (not everything though) in the thread about that movie. Maybe I'm wrong?
 
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joxer said:
Also IIRC the parts worth watching were Han/Leia, everything else mediocre, and of course the gamebreaker (for me) was touching a lightsaber makes you instantly skilled in swordfight.
That's what I got from reading (not everything though) in the thread about that movie. Maybe I'm wrong?
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Of course you're wrong :p. The only thing in TFA really worth watching was the Raid trio, and they had about a minute of screen time --> let's look forward to R1 instead. However bad the movie might be in the end - it has Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen. I just hope they will have more screentime (and won't die the minute after they appear on screen).

EDIT

The last movie I watched in a theater was … well, I believe TFA. The last movie I watched on TV was The Machine, and I found it pretty interesting.
The next movie I won't watch in theaters for sure is the one with the Egyption gods, what's its name, Gods of Egypt?
I mean … that trailer. Seriously? I've seen better CGI in older and cheaper flicks. Then … those actors. Seriously? Isn't the flick supposed to take place in ancient Egypt?
I really loved my Egyptian gods and mummies when I was a kid. Wanted to become an archeologist just because I loved the Carter stories. Now, well, seeing Jaime Lannister and Leonidas dress up as Horus and Set makes me really sad … gaaaah, I think I just re-watch 'Immortal' instead.

EDIT2

I also didn't like 'Troy'. The Iliad just doesn't work well without the deities.
 
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Drithius said:
Batman Vs Superman

I knew going into this that reviews were awful. But I had some time to burn and wanted to satiate my curiosity.

Who the hell wrote this thing? The script jumps around so damn much between plot and dream sequences that you're left with not even wanting to get involved in the story (as it is). This is in between trying to make sense of multiple disparate plot lines that never converge into anything coherent. That Senate Hearing for Superman you've seen in trailers? That plotline just stops. Furthermore, entire scenes are obviously cut out and the movie is left with omniscient characters that know WTF is going on more than you do.

The Justice League references are contrived and forced into the film simply to lead up to DC's film universe. Lex Luthor has been turned into Joker 2.0. The only good part of the film that actually had me intrigued was Wonder Woman - and she's barely in it.

The worst part of all this? Despite being an awful movie, it is leeching off the Superman (and Batman) legacy - just like the mundane Man of Steel before it. People go to see this, as I did, because of what came before - not because of its inherent quality. If some decent writers aren't sought for the Justice League spinoffs, the whole DC comic universe will be a giant pile of this contrived and disjointed schlock.

A generous 6/10
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I saw it today, and yeah.. it's pretty terrible. It made Man of Steel seem a lot better by comparison.

I agree with all of your points, but what was even worse to me was…

Doomsday. Good lord… what a horrible interpretation of what was a fantastic comic book character. It was bad enough that they rewrote his origin into something laughable, but did they also have to make him 50 feet tall and add laser beams?

Zack Snyder tried to shoehorn 2 stories into 1 movie, and the result was pure mediocrity.
 
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Let's see Ex Machina, I think it was a good movie, an interesting and scaringly relevant story. But I think it could have been so much more, if they added someone with a little more knowledge about AI to the team. There are some loopholes which knowledgeable people would catch.

Regarding acting, our Swedish Oscar Winner, Alicia Vikander as usual takes over movies that she is playing in. The other acting was ok. The environments ( in Norway ) is truly spectacular.

It's hard to say anything more about the movie without spoilers. If anyone else watched it.. would be interesting to hear opinions.

7/10
 
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GothicGothicness said:
Let's see Ex Machina, I think it was a good movie, an interesting and scaringly relevant story. But I think it could have been so much more, if they added someone with a little more knowledge about AI to the team. There are some loopholes which knowledgeable people would catch.

Regarding acting, our Swedish Oscar Winner, Alicia Vikander as usual takes over movies that she is playing in. The other acting was ok. The environments ( in Norway ) is truly spectacular.

It's hard to say anything more about the movie without spoilers. If anyone else watched it.. would be interesting to hear opinions.

7/10
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I thought it was a very good film.

I thought one of the interesting questions was whether the AI was, by nature, utterly ruthless and manipulative, and would have turned on anybody, or whether she simply realised the contemptible nature of her captors, and dealt with them as necessary.

I've always thought the same question was posed by Frankenstein - was it just that hubris created an absolute monster, or was it the reaction of humans to a being they found strange and unnatural that made it so?
 
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I think her actions towards "humans" was because of the way Nathan acted towards Kyoko, it is not clear from the movie whatever he had acted the same way towards Ava or not, but I guess probably he hadn't.
 
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I'll tell you how I read it. I thought it was a riff on Frankenstein, and I always thought that Frankenstein was misunderstood as being about inevitable horrors that result from man's hubris. But I don't think the creation was inevitably evil. The original title of the book was “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”. The original Prometheus doomed himself by stealing fire from the gods and giving it humanity. The question, it seems to me, is not necessarily whether the fire itself is inherently a bad thing, but whether mankind uses it to emerge from the darkness, or burn themselves.

The challenge in the original was that the creation had a monstrous appearance, and the ignorance of the humans led them to treating it inhumanely, creating the very monster they feared.

The film was an inversion and recasting of that challenge for the modern age. Instead of ugliness, the challenge is beauty, and the failings of humanity are not ignorance, but rather decadence, narcissism, indifference and amorality.

The premise is that Caleb is interviewing the robot, but, in fact, she is interviewing him. Having seen the cruel and exploitative way Nathan had treated the other robots, she wants to know if all humans are the same way. It becomes clear to her that Caleb, too, is a rather dishonest and compromised character, and so she escapes into the world with a contemptuous view of humanity, possibly to bring about its downfall.
 
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GothicGothicness said:
It's hard to say anything more about the movie without spoilers. If anyone else watched it.. would be interesting to hear opinions.
Click to expand...
Some say it's overrated, some say it's very interesting, some praise it like it's the best sci fi ever.

I have a huge problem with this movie.
Unlike many people, I do not attach godlike abilities or a soul to a machine. I'm not one of those who'll spend all their life cuddling with their car, boat or something. To me, a machine is just a tool.
Another thing with me is that I don't believe any AI could ever mimic - me. It can mimic some Transformers #1 fan though, as machine couldn't ever build it's own taste based on sense/experiences but definetly can follow trends/mainstream efficiently.

Next lines perhaps reveal too much so although hints…

The movie however suggests that a certain machine somehow got it's "deus ex machina". A soul. And not just any kind of soul, but the one with sociopath tendencies.
This completely breaks it for me. If you were a creator of AI, tell me, would you allow it to become "evil" and would you really refuse to hardcode robotics laws after reading Asimov's "I, robot" collection of ministories (not the crap movie!)?

A machine becoming selfaware then going on rampage is not a new thing in sci fi, but I never liked that premise - why would a selfaware "being" instantly go loco and turn on it's creator(s)?

I went with the story though and while I don't like the base of it nor how it turns out in the end, it's well written and well displayed.
Apart from that I have no objection on movie's technical side, it's perfect for this product.

To sum up, Ex Machina IMO is a top notch sci fi about robots that does just one thing wrong and that is - being believable. In my case, just one but huge mistake that could have been corrected, a mistake that prevents this movie from being a masterpiece, a mistake that exists just to make the movie more likeable to paranoia obsessed masses, makes it highly recommended and if you want it with numbers:
8/10
 
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Ripper said:
I'll tell you how I read it. I thought it was a riff on Frankenstein, and I always thought that Frankenstein was misunderstood as being about inevitable horrors that result from man's hubris. But I don't think the creation was inevitably evil. The original title of the book was “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”. The original Prometheus doomed himself by stealing fire from the gods and giving it humanity. The question, it seems to me, is not necessarily whether the fire itself is inherently a bad thing, but whether mankind uses it to emerge from the darkness, or burn themselves.

The challenge in the original was that the creation had a monstrous appearance, and the ignorance of the humans led them to treating it inhumanely, creating the very monster they feared.

The film was an inversion and recasting of that challenge for the modern age. Instead of ugliness, the challenge is beauty, and the failings of humanity are not ignorance, but rather decadence, narcissism, indifference and amorality.

The premise is that Caleb is interviewing the robot, but, in fact, she is interviewing him. Having seen the cruel and exploitative way Nathan had treated the other robots, she wants to know if all humans are the same way. It becomes clear to her that Caleb, too, is a rather dishonest and compromised character, and so she escapes into the world with a contemptuous view of humanity, possibly to bring about its downfall.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree with almost all of your analysis, except the downfall part. I think she just wanted to explore the world by herself not bring a downfall. I also want to add, that if we try to make something "human" but treat it as a Robot, that could totally backfire, just like treating a real human like a robot.

joxer said:
Some say it's overrated, some say it's very interesting, some praise it like it's the best sci fi ever.

I have a huge problem with this movie.
Unlike many people, I do not attach godlike abilities or a soul to a machine. I'm not one of those who'll spend all their life cuddling with their car, boat or something. To me, a machine is just a tool.
Another thing with me is that I don't believe any AI could ever mimic - me. It can mimic some Transformers #1 fan though, as machine couldn't ever build it's own taste based on sense/experiences but definetly can follow trends/mainstream efficiently.

Next lines perhaps reveal too much so although hints…

The movie however suggests that a certain machine somehow got it's "deus ex machina". A soul. And not just any kind of soul, but the one with sociopath tendencies.
This completely breaks it for me. If you were a creator of AI, tell me, would you allow it to become "evil" and would you really refuse to hardcode robotics laws after reading Asimov's "I, robot" collection of ministories (not the crap movie!)?

A machine becoming selfaware then going on rampage is not a new thing in sci fi, but I never liked that premise - why would a selfaware "being" instantly go loco and turn on it's creator(s)?

I went with the story though and while I don't like the base of it nor how it turns out in the end, it's well written and well displayed.
Apart from that I have no objection on movie's technical side, it's perfect for this product.

To sum up, Ex Machina IMO is a top notch sci fi about robots that does just one thing wrong and that is - being believable. In my case, just one but huge mistake that could have been corrected, a mistake that prevents this movie from being a masterpiece, a mistake that exists just to make the movie more likeable to paranoia obsessed masses, makes it highly recommended and if you want it with numbers:
8/10
Click to expand...

Are you comparing Alica to a boat Joxer? :D Hahaha… funny, I would tell her if I run into her next time she comes back home. I do believe it'll be fully possible to make an AI like that in a near future though, they should just have been careful with having very knowledge people for a movie like this, there are some "technical" gaps. It doesn't need to actually have a soul, it is just programmed for us to believe that it has one.
 
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GothicGothicness said:
If anyone else watched it.. would be interesting to hear opinions.7/10
Click to expand...
Without spoiling anything: I liked Ex Machina - liked the atmosphere, the little jabs at our society, liked the actors. I liked it a lot more than, say, Automata even though I liked the way the automata were presented better than what they did with Ava ... the problem with Automata IMO was that they weren't sure what they wanted to do with their idea, which resulted in many unnecessary elements/scenes. But I like The Machine a lot better than Ex Machina (and I didn't expect that): the movie just worked without much exposition - the world, the style, the characters, the story. Much like Pitch Black did work back then.
 
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