Midweek Movie Free Talk

I just watched The Mitchells vs. The Machines on the plane and it made my eyes water so much. It’s a weird, quirky, funny animation movie, and for some reason the family stuff consistently made me tear up. A bit embarrassing on the plane but it was fun.

Recently rewatched The Grand Budapest Hotel, and it was enjoyable. But after seeing royal tenebaums, I feel a distinct lack of connection with the characters in Grand Budapest. The craft on display is beautiful, and the narrative is a very fun story. I think perhaps each scene felt too drawn out or self contained to create a cohesive through line. Each scene alone was very enjoyable, but I think I was missing a sense of overarching drive and motivation.

I also rewatched O brother where are thou, and it was much funner than I remember. While I'm not a huge fan of the effect of the color grading for the first ten or twenty minutes of the movie, it gives way to some beautiful shots later on. The dialogue is much much much snappier than I remember, and the details throughout are incredibly meticulous. I always underestimate George Clooney, but credit where it's due, his character keeps the movie focused while never feeling like "George Clooney playing a straight man".

I saw Oppenheimer in IMAX 70MM.

I was kinda disappointed because I didn't know what to expect and built the wrong movie in my head. It was definitely great, and is basically an look into his life around his whole career, but it just felt so off from a Nolan movie. I'd say definitely see it in theaters, but I didn't get anything extra out of it for the format.

I recently rewatched all three Austin Powers movies and they are both a truly enjoyable romp and, oof, really dated.

Granted, watching them now I caught so many more references and even things I didn't realize were references. The movie is more jam packed with references than a reddit thread about jackdaws but at the same time, if you watch it as a parody movie, it does a delightful job lampooning other action movies and just generally trying to be fun over all else... Sometimes to it's detriment.

I forgot how much crazy was packed into that AP3 intro segment too, Devito bring the obvious exception.

Finally watched Oppenheimer last Friday and I am sorta conflicted on it. It was a decent movie in my opinion. The soundtrack got kind of lost in the story for me. The story itself was pretty engaging though it was also hard to follow at times, especially when combined with some of the visual effects they added.

Also watched Bullet Train again on a flight recently and it is still one of most favorite movies from the last few years. It doesn't take itself too seriously and the story isn't bad. I love the soundtrack for it and always have the Japanese rendition of Staying Alive in my main playlists.

I just got out of TMNT: Mutant Mayhem.

I remember playing with the Ninja Turtle toys as a kid, I think I might have watched some of the cartoon show and maybe like one of the original live-action films. When I was a little older I watched the 2007 animated film. I wouldn't say I was ever that big of a fan of it.

This was really good, and even though I haven't seen much else from this franchise, I can tell this is easily the best thing to come out of it. It's from the directors of Mitchell's vs the Machines which came out in 2021 to rave reactions. I thought it was okay. This was a massive improvement over Mitchell's. Visually it looks so much better, it feels more cinematic, the action set pieces flow better, the comedy hits a lot more. And a film twitter user isn't the main character, that's already much better.

It's fast paced, non-stop, and so much fun. The characters feel alive, they feel like actual teenagers. It's easily my favorite animated movie of the year (no I don't really care that much for Spider-Verse if you're wondering).

Ok, so I saw the latest Mission Impossible in theaters this week. I love all the other movies, even MI:2 for it's own reasons, I think the series has just proven itself to be really fun.

I really disliked this one and I'm gonna discuss it using many SPOILERS from this point forward, I'd love to hear other opinions. I went into the movie knowing that it was like one of the (if not the) first movie to begin production again during Covid. I really tried to appreciate that and I don't want to give the impression I thought it was a "Bad" movie. It just didn't live up to my expectations for the MI franchise for many reasons:

1. So many one shots (A single actor in frame). SO MANY ONE SHOTS! I assume this was a Covid thing, but I was shocked how often it felt apparent that these actors were on set, shooting a scene, by themselves. I was really struggling to feel them play off each other. It felt really delivered, like they know the pacing of the scene, but they're just delivering their lines alone.

2. Who wtf were the agents hunting Ethan and why tf should I care about them at all? Am I missing something or did they really just imply that the older white agent has some kind of history with Hunt, THEN THEY NEVER EXPLAIN A THING? Like, even in the shootout in the street, he is looking at Ethan all intense and Hunt clearly knows this dude, but like that's it. They didn't explain a thing?

3. Ok, I guess Ethan has a backstory we don't know? But in this movie they basically told us "Ethan has a backstory and it's suuuuuuper sad" and that's it. Then they made some primary component of his backstory, which we got glimpses of in the flashbacks, Gabriel A PRIMARY VILLIAN?? How are you gonna make this man a primary villian and not give us any understanding of who he is or why he is? Ethan was basically just like "No, you don't get it, Gabriel is like super evil," ok man, whatever you say.

4. "tHe EnTiTy" are you serious bro? How many times did they say this line on set and no on realized it sounded insanely stupid? Like, if you took a shot for every time they said it, you'd die.

5. The world has always been ridiculous, it's Mission Impossible. I get that. But this story felt like it was almost a parody of an MI movie.

6. They did a lot less location shooting, many sets felt like they were clearly a set and not a location. They also substituted a lot of physical effects for CGI and that felt lame.

7. Why is everything at an angle?

All this to say, I was really bummed because I do love these movies and the characters and I'm sad to see the quality take such a hit. It felt like a B movie. Also, I'm just saying all this semi humorously. I know it's just a movie, I'm just curious if anyone else felt the same?

I'm not a fan of most horror films but was recently convinced to see Talk to Me. I went in with pretty low expectations and actually found it to be quite effective. If you like Hereditary, which I do very much, then I think you'll enjoy it. It's definitely not as well written or acted, but it explores a similar concept in an interesting way with minimal filler/cliches.

Since it's summer break, I've been indulging in film. Right now I'm working through my Summer 2023 List. Yesterday, for example, I watched La Strada alone but later Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with my kids. Any of these films on this list your favorites or ones you despise?

The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Oh, boy, did I have fun. I went in with no expectations, and a knowledge of the book expanded by multiple reads but faded by the length of time since I last did a full read through. I forgot just enough to have a couple of Dracula's powers be genuine surprises, and enough to not be overly upset at changes.

SPOILERS below, including differences between book and film, just so you don't think "oh well, I read the book, I know everything."

So to begin with, I love the epistolary nature of Dracula. I thought it built up the tension beautifully, subtly enough that I didn't even notice how invested I was until the final chase and showdown, when I realized I was gripping the book hard and I was doing that thing where my eyes were trying really really hard to read faster than I can actually read. And the captain's log chapter is one of my favorites. I love that it starts with "yeah, there is literally nobody on this ship except the dead captain lashed to the wheel with the log book clutched to him." It throws this mystery into your face by completely spoiling the ending, and then goes back and makes you watch the characters suffer through the horror while knowing full well they are all fuuuuucked.

It was the idea of choosing just one chapter of a story and building another story off of it that caught my attention. The trailer convinced me to give it a chance despite the low ratings. I thought they did a pretty good job of still making it as much of a slow burn as is possible within the time limit of a movie.

I thought that while they did have a lot of characters and certainly not enough time to develop them in, they did a good job of making them likable enough to root for anyway. I really liked that there was a sort of repeating pattern in that you went into the movie knowing how it ended because you read the book, in which you went into the chapter knowing how it ended because the book just outright told you. The actors deserve a lot of credit for how much I ended up getting invested in them before they went to their completely expected terrible, terrible ends.

I wasn't particularly thrilled with the addition of a woman and a child who both seemed pretty blatant attempts at evoking more emotional investment than a bunch of men dying was. In fact they were the ones I became least invested in because it was really, really obvious that, if anybody was going to make it out at the end (which I suspected they would, the same way Disney decided to do Hunchback and then totally copped out on the ending), it definitely wasn't going to be either of them. Not the fault of either actor, but really a waste of their talent - because while their characters weren't anything to write home about, they both did a perfectly good job with what they were given.

The male characters were much more interesting to watch because they were all very stereotypical masculine traits made flesh. Rough, aggressive, loyal, blunt, and with very simple dreams of having enough money for wine, women and food. I hope people will forgive me for comparing Demeter to Alien, but... it really did remind me of the way things played out in Alien. You begin with a blue collar crew with high camaraderie and short tempers who are well treated, well fed, and know they're going to be well paid... and then you slowly wittle away at them until the remaining crew begin to understand that, hey, forget the dreams for future years they harbored only a few days ago - at this point in time if you have plans for five minutes from now, you might want to make peace with the idea of never finishing them.

I liked watching these capable, confident men crumble under the weight of nameless, shapeless dread, fear of something they could not solve with teamwork, nor caution, nor simple violence. Again keeping in mind the number of characters vs the time limit, I really did appreciate how well they portrayed their characters' escalating fear and desperation.

The ending was - unsurprisingly - disappointing. I really do wish they'd kept true to the book in that aspect, because the way they did choose to wrap everything up really unraveled all the terror and danger they'd built up around their Dracula. And man, I LOVED their Dracula. Having enjoyed watching several playthroughs of Until Dawn, I don't know if the makers of UD took their monster designs from anywhere else, but I feel like this Dracula had to be inspired by UD or whatever inspired its artists. And having already sat through the horror of UD I was preconditioned to see that face and recoil in terror. The full body shots were a bit disappointing but the facial expressions were always great. It was a real romp, right up until they started wanting to have their cake of some of the characters making it out alive but also eat their cake of Dracula being super powerful and scary but also, defeatable by two people who hitherto had been helpless even with a bunch of other characters there too.

The very ending was the most disappointing because when Dracula showed up and made the pounding noises they'd been using for tension throughout, I thought that actually, they might very well have created an interesting 'ending'. Throughout the movie there are moments where Dracula's voice can be heard in the wind by various characters (bitten or not), and Anna points out that she is connected to him and can sense him. So when Dracula deliberately pulls Clemens' attention to him I thought "what if Clemens begins by hunting Dracula, but because his mind is now not as sturdy against infiltration by Dracula, he is driven mad, and his driving need to understand science is warped into what Renfield becomes?

Didn't happen... but since it does actually end there, that's how I choose to interpret the ending.

Overall, I'm satisfied with what I saw. I might even see it again, because while the last 15 minutes or so is just unnecessary filler, my ability to suspend disbelief allowed me to have a real fun time with the rest.