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Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
Saw Spider-Verse yesterday. I didn’t go googoogaga for the first one like everyone did. But I did enjoy it quite a bit. And it’s obvious that it‘s the most influential animated film to the industry since Shrek (The Bad Guys, Mitchell’s vs the Machines, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem). What’s great about its influence is that it keeps animated budgets low, allowing these movies to be big hits even if they don’t hit blockbuster numbers (like The Bad Guys). And Disney is the only studio not getting with the program.
I thought this sequel was okay. The visuals are better but it’s a messier script. Having recently re-watched the first one, it’s a really tight script. Not a second is wasted in that movie. But this one just felt long. Too long. And it’s only part 1! Idk, I’m not crazy about these movies. But it was a spectacle.
Just saw it last night, and I think the script writers had a hard time with the amount of info they needed to dump on the audience to convey all the things going on. Overall definitely enjoyed it though, and it's great fun to see how many of the background spideys you can recognize or place
Disney is just too Disney to do anything that isn't Disney.
Kinda goes into the most interesting part of the movie for me, and the reason I made a discussion thread for it. The meta contextualization of the "Canonical Force" being the existential threat of the movie works on so many levels. It's a discussion against fandom, corporate mandates, the status quo bias of superheroes, gatekeeping grief and pain, and the stagnation of your star character's character because you just can not let that Golden Goose die. Spider-Man is just too Spider-Man to do anything that isn't Spider-Man with him, and that's the driving plot.
The Menu (2022)
★★★★ (Watched 09 May 2023)
Just when the customers were being served their breadless bread plate, the smell of my wife's baked bread coming out of the oven wafted into the room and filled me with such sudden joy that I marveled at the simultaneous synchronicity and tragedy of the fact that I would not only get to enjoy fresh, hot, home-baked oat-and-honey bread but that I would live to digest it.
Link.
I just wanted to chime in and say that's a hilarious (and clever) review of the movie. It's bizarre, surreal, and dark... and I'm sure there was some deeper meaning I was supposed to get from it (which I'm too thick to understand). But I still really enjoyed it, so wholeheartedly recommend it too.
p.s. If you like The Menu, you might also like The Platform. Its meaning is far less subtle, but it's still really good.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Anyone else really into Korean films? Most of my favorite movies (The Wailing, Old Boy, Train to Busan, etc.) are Korean.
I've seen Taxi Driver and Little Tprest, good movies! Escape from Mogadishu is good too if you haven't seen it!
Edit: Oh New World is one of my favorites as well!
I wouldn't say I am "really" into them, meaning I don't necessarily go out of my way to watch every film from Korea, but whenever I hear that one is good I will seek it out. And I've enjoyed pretty much every one that I have seen so far... Including the ones you mentioned, but I would also add The Good The Bad The Weird, the rest of Park Chan Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy, and most of Bong Joon Ho's films (as well as the show, Squid Game). As far as "foreign" cinema goes, IMO Korean is up there in terms of its quality, at least from all that I've seen of it so far.
I just picked up Dungeons & Dragons on UHD BD; it was a blind buy, but I'd heard such good things about it that I just went for it and I'm looking forward to it.
Frustratingly, by main BD player is in for a warranty repair and is taking forever to come back, so I'm watching this on the PS5, I guess.
That's unfortunate about your technical difficulties! I think the movie did an amazing job of adapting the source material while also remembering the rule of cool. As a DM there were a bunch of parts that made me think of how things go for the person running the game as well as those playing it.
Following up, this movie was great. I'd never played D&D, I didn't realize how many D&D concepts I was already familiar with, like mimics (the toothy treasure chest). I also had no idea that Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, Icewind Dale were part of the D&D lore.
So now that we’re halfway through the year, what is everyone’s favorite movies so far?
Mine are:
This was last year’s list at this point in time. By the end of the year only Top Gun and Ambulance made my top 10.
From this list I only see the top 3 staying at the end of the year (all 5/5’s on Letterboxd for me).
Knock at the Cabin was absolutely stellar. I think M Night is way more fun when he’s reigned in a little bit by source material. Feels like studios have learned a lesson from how Avatar: The Last Airbender went. I’m excited to see what he does next.
Air surprised me. I didn't think I'd enjoy it at all. A film about shoes? But I did.
In my opinion it’s a film about Nike’s success as a business. It’s a really well made film and I enjoyed it but I felt a bit like I was cheering on some massive corporate advert. I felt a bit like that after the Tetris movie too, which I also thought was good and well made.
Went to The Little Mermaid with my younger sister. I'm not good with musicals, every time someone starts to sing my brain shuts off wether I want it or not. A lot of times I was confused because I didn't recall much of the exposition that took place during songs, so the characters motivations felt fuzzy and incomplete. It's still a charming movie and a very traditional fairy tale. I'm not exactly the target audience, but I reckon it must be one of the best traditional fairy tales Disney made in recent years. Which, to me, as an adult, isn't saying much. But again, this movie is not really for me and that's okay. I was just there for my sis.
Recently watched Charlie Day's Fool's Paradise and man that was a rough movie to watch. I love Charlie Day in basically everything he's acted in but this was almost torture. As I was watching the movie I was just waiting for it to get better but then it just ended. It's also supposed to be a comedy but I didn't really pick up on any comedy. Overall, I'd say the premise was interesting but the execution is a bit poor.
Wasn’t that stuck in dev hell for a while? I remember reading about multiple reshoots.
Yeah it was. Charlie Day actually rewrote parts of the script with guidance from Guillermo del Toro and so the large parts of the movie had to be reshot.
I watched The Pope's Exorcist last night. I went in with high expectations 'cause reviews were good and it looked really well done and nice and spooky. I watched it with a couple other people and we were all very underwhelmed. The acting was good (the little boy did a great job) but the general creepiness and scary/suspenseful moments were lacking. I was disappointed.