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

joxer said:

No? Here's one you should give a shot:

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No for me, unfortunately. Oh, I forgot I also like Sweeney Todd. I remember liking the dark nature of it.

Why not? The dentist score and scenography was an actual horror?

I have no idea why musicals aren't a thing any more, I still remember some that had no right to be fun, but ended up great, for example Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with totally idiotic premise and ridiculous initial setup yet it's charm was undeniable.

Philistine said:

I'm joking.. it actually stars the Ruffalo-like Nino Castelnuovo and Edwige Fenech. It's a from a time when classic giallo's weren't cutting it (that's a pun there) with audiences anymore, so more sex was added to spice things up.

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I don't think it was just a matter of films using sex to spice things up in that era, I think it was just the trend of the day that everyone was copying. In the late 70s to early 80s soft-porn became mainstream and huge numbers of movies turned to sex in order to maintain their audience.

It's quite hard to find movies from that era that don't have good furry beavers in them somewhere at some point. It's difficult for us to imagine in our current day and age, but sex was very much abundant in this era. It all got halted, initially, because of the AIDS epidemic and so the trend moved away from copious sex to things like action and gore and romcoms.

It was a reaction to the post-war austerity combined with the Baby Boomer post-war generation of kids all being aged 20-30 and living under the threat of nuclear annihilation. A very youthful environment full of randyness and devil-may-care what does it all matter anyhow mindsets.

Our current situation, of excessive persecution of the age-of-consent law-breakers and the whole anti-flirtationist metoo movement, is a knee jerk in the opposite direction, in line with the increasing global conservatism that accompanies the Baby Boomers all becoming deranged and paranoid old pensioners while the old media desperately searches for something to maintain its relevance.

You'll find no surprise that most of the 'really bad people' we hear about on a regular basis, from Jimmy Saville to Harvey Weinstein to Catholic priests are all people who's outlook on sexual activity was formed in the 70s. It's not that they did much different to anyone else, its just that they failed to adapt to the end of that fad and so got used as the stick to beat everyone else into complying with 'the new normal'.

As was mentioned earlier in the thread, a film like The Blue Lagoon would likely get bullied into massive controversy if it was made today, but back in the early 80s no-one batted an eyelid other than to complain that it was a fairly crap movie beyond the soft-core porn approach. It was a hugely mainstream film though and everyone went to see it and thought nothing of it.

There are tons of other examples.

Found this older video but it's the truth.

Anthony Mackie Explains Why Hollywood Movies Suck Now

I've binged all 8 Harry Potter movies. Initially I'd see the first 5, but stopped. I liked them. They're a lot of fun, even though sometimes they're hard to take very seriously. But the world is great and highly imaginative. Now if I can finally finish the final 3 books, as I quite liked those also.

danutz_plusplus said:

I liked them. They're a lot of fun, even though sometimes they're hard to take very seriously.

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I've thought and thought and I still can't get my head around what you mean by "taking them seriously", lol. They're not exactly meant to be 'serious' literary pieces?

lackblogger said:

I've thought and thought and I still can't get my head around what you mean by "taking them seriously", lol. They're not exactly meant to be 'serious' literary pieces?

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I mean the author built the sort of world and rules to that world that you can make up anything anytime you want to explain anything. There's really no limit to what you can explain via it's magic system. So you can either see loads of plotholes, or just accept that there's no plotholes since anything can be explained via magic.

So, I mean you have to just accept this in order to enjoy it. It doesn't exactly have strict rules to the way magic works.

And I think normally this would be an issue for me, but I just love the imaginative world Rowling wrote. I also liked how each movie just got darker and darker in tone and atmosphere. Liked that a lot.

Also, one thing that was bugging me, and might sound weird, was that I cannot unsee Ralph Fiennes every time Voldemort was on screen. His face was too similar to Fiennes's face. I think they should've either kept him looking normally, like all other wizards or just went even more overboard with how disfigured it looked. Or maybe even not show him as much, to have him be even more menacing.

danutz_plusplus said:

I've binged all 8 Harry Potter movies. Initially I'd see the first 5, but stopped. I liked them. They're a lot of fun, even though sometimes they're hard to take very seriously. But the world is great and highly imaginative. Now if I can finally finish the final 3 books, as I quite liked those also.

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We have watched the movies SO MANY times through the years, that re-reading the books for the first time since original release has been very interesting - some things are actually better in the films, but many things (unsurprisingly) work better in the books ... and whenever they decide to completely add new stuff in a movie it never works because it is wholly abandoned within seconds and feels disjointed.

We watched last year's remake of Rebecca and found it well acted and shot and overall pretty decent - none of us had seen the original (even my film student son, for shame!) so had no expectations ... but now want to see the masterful Hitchcock take!

Ok, so I know I'm late to this movie, but I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I'm gonna have to think on this one a bit. At worse it's a fine film, I was riveted and enjoyed every moment, and at best it might be my favourite Tarantino film of all time, simply because of how he reversed the fortunes of the victims. Well, except for the insurgents, those filthy hippies got exactly what they deserved in the movie. In any case, I enjoyed it completely and will be adding it to movies that I rewatch.

Carnifex said:

Ok, so I know I'm late to this movie, but I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I'm gonna have to think on this one a bit. At worse it's a fine film, I was riveted and enjoyed every moment, and at best it might be my favourite Tarantino film of all time, simply because of how he reversed the fortunes of the victims. Well, except for the insurgents, those filthy hippies got exactly what they deserved in the movie. In any case, I enjoyed it completely and will be adding it to movies that I rewatch.

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I liked it, but for me it ranks somewhere in the middle as far as Tarantino's work goes. It had some great scenes but a lot of dull filler in between them. DiCaprio was just ok. Pitt stole the show imo.

I don't know, man. I was digging all the actual old cast from Lancer, well, at least the people playing them in the film. It was absolutely riveting, I don't think I've ever seen a movie that's attempted to pull off something similar, let alone achieve it on the scale Tarantino did. It took some serious balls, my guess would be that he maybe had the finale in mind first and then maybe worked backwards? Just the audacity of it all, the total brilliance required is daunting. I can only salute such tremendous efforts, in these days of woke garbage and catering to the masses, this film humbled me.

You guys motivated me to get the 4k version of Once upon a time in Hollywood. I wasn't blown away by the movie, but it really vibed with me. It was laid back and atmospheric, up until the last 30mins which are one hell of a rollercoaster ride.

For some reason this is the only 4k movie from Tarantino. Weird. I wonder why.

I don't claim to know the man personally, although I did meet him once some years ago. It was right after Inglorious Bastards had been released, I tried not to squeal and just pumped his hand, saying I admired his work. Were I to meet him now, I'd give him the Parisian two smacks and a hug if he permitted me, as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has struck a chord in me that I've just not felt from him before as a director.

Carnifex said:

I don't claim to know the man personally, although I did meet him once some years ago. It was right after Inglorious Bastards had been released, I tried not to squeal and just pumped his hand, saying I admired his work. Were I to meet him now, I'd give him the Parisian two smacks and a hug if he permitted me, as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has struck a chord in me that I've just not felt from him before as a director.

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I also love all of his movies. They're all great, even Death Proof. I wonder why they won't do 4k variants of the older ones. Hateful Eight in particular would look amazing.

danutz_plusplus said:

They're all great, even Death Proof.

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Damn, you really are a hardcore fan.

Even Kurt Russell couldn't save that movie for me.

JDR13 said:

Damn, you really are a hardcore fan.

Even Kurt Russell couldn't save that movie for me.

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I'm always surprised about people's opinion of that one. Most people I hear don't like it. I watched it once, and remember it being very tense. And I loved Kurt Russell as the insane stuntdriver. Also, the car chases were nice.

Now, the movie that Death Proof was in double feature with was bad. The Rodriguez one. That was a very obvious B movie.

danutz_plusplus said:

Now, the movie that Death Proof was in double feature with was bad. The Rodriguez one. That was a very obvious B movie.

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Planet Terror, right? I saw them together at the theatre. I don't remember much about it other than Bruce Willis was in it. Those two movies together were the longest 4 hours of my life.

JDR13 said:

Planet Terror, right? I saw them together at the theatre. I don't remember much about it other than Bruce Willis was in it. Those two movies together were the longest 4 hours of my life.

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Yeah, that's the one. I couldn't get through that one. Got bored fast. I saw Death Proof at home, as a standalone.

One good thing about that double feature was that it spawned Machete. That was a hilarious movie.

Death Proof to me was ok. The ladies in that made it memorable, Russell was just so-so. The music was also pretty damn good, any film that uses Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mich and Tich will always get a huge thumbs up from me!

danutz_plusplus said:

One good thing about that double feature was that it spawned Machete. That was a hilarious movie.

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Yeah, Machete was good. The sequel was terrible though.

Interestingly enough, Rodriguez directed an episode of The Mandalorian this past season.