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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.
I've been looking at Fan Made Edits lately after watching M4's The Hobbit Book Edit.
I know that most people don't like The Hobbit trilogy, but I actually like it since it's a much lighter movie and perfect to leave it running as a bit of background noise. And then I stumbled on the Book Edit of the trilogy and... it's just so good.
The whole premise of the fan edit is to try and stick to the part of the trilogy which also the book is mostly about: Bilbo. This cuts the trilogy to one 4-hour movie which is a joy to follow. I won't spoil what parts have been edited out or rearranged, I'll just say that it's a very enjoyable watch with most of the unneeded silliness removed, the plot being tightened up considerably and the fan edit being done really professionally with custom VFX. I also love how the core message of the movie about home, friendship and connection has a chance to shine through much more brightly.
The next fan edit I want to watch is The Matrix Revolutions Decoded which is a one-movie reimagining of the rest of the story of Matrix after the first movie without having to go through 2 movies (which are arguably too long / bloated), a video game and some comics.
finally someone else into fanedits! There are so many great ones but it feels like its only a handful of us enjoying them... or even knowing they exist. That Matrix edit seems beneficial to the franchise.
BLUE THUNDER (1983) tonight!
In the early 80s when video rental shops could no longer rent out copies, my parents were essentially given a video storeworth of movies. I was young and mostly watched Popeye, The Making of Thriller, and a few others. Later on I really got into Blue Thunder. I didn't really know what was going on, but I liked helicopters.
Daniel Stern is so young in this.
edit: I had no idea what Blue Thunder was about as a kid, but what I witnessed tonight is absolutely not what I had expected. Good movie with some great shots.
Watched Alien: Romulus as I had heard decent things about this as it should be a sort of return to form for the franchise. Maybe I am just incapable of appreciating mainstream blockbusters now, but I was mostly disappointed. With some notable good parts.
First of, the intro tries to mimic 2001 in style and sound. Bold, but it doesn't work when you can't live up to even a small percentage of that reference. Secondly, the whole premise with escaping the mining planet wasn't very convincing. I am not buying this group of random people just have access to a spaceship they unhindered can take off with and the whole setup becomes completely irrelevant after 15 minutes. Of course the plot needs some reason for them to enter that station not knowing what is there, but it could have been handled better I think.
There is a varied cast of characters, but I practically don't care about any of them and we barely get any character development or background either. So I am not emotionally invested at all once they get killed off one by one.
The only one with an interesting story is the synthetic Andy. He actually has an interesting character progression throughout the film, that opens the always interesting dilemmas of artificial life and how it should be weighed against biological life. Rain is fine, but being so much a copy of Ripley makes her uninteresting. It tries to sits somewhere in between Alien and Aliens but lacks the anxiety of the first one, and the spectacle isn't nearly as exciting as the second one. The nostalgia references was terribly handled too.
Bugonia
I outright hated Kinds of Kindness last year.. This is so much better. The screenwriter wrote The Menu, a film I really liked in 2022. A lot of more high brow film people hate that film, they think it's too overt in it's themes of class. This is perhaps the reason that this film has received a more muted critical reception. But I loved this combo. It's so beautifully shot, Poor Things was beautiful too. But the colors here are all saturated, it feels so bright and colorful to contrast with the content of the film. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons are incredibly in their roles, Stone especially a very physical performance.
(4.5/5)
Guillermo Del Toro's Frankestein
I've fallen out of love with Del Toro in recent years. This was good. It's uneven, and frankly it feels it's length. But there's some really good visuals here (some bad CGI) and the performances are all great. Everyone here is giving big, theatrical, melodramatic performances. Jacob Elordi is the stand out, his physicality (6'5) is used to great effect here. He delivers lines in a Shakespearean way. I've been on his train since I saw Priscilla and Saltburn back to back (even though I didn't care for the films themselves I really liked him in them). He's come a long way from the days of The Kissing Booth. Goth is also really good in this, very gentle, fits the plain beauty that Del Toro loves in women.
(3.5/5)