11
votes
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.
Updated calendar view
Does anyone want to talk about:
A Beautiful Mind (2001): ★★☆
Shrek (2001): ★★★ (rewatch)
It was back in theaters for its 25th anniversary. It's a movie I watched a million times as a kid, so I had to catch it on the big screen when I got the chance. This time I noticed how much profanity they managed to sneak into a family movie.
Top Gun (1986): ★★☆ (rewatch)
Top Gun Maverick (2022): ★★★ (rewatch)
Watching the original and the sequel on back-to-back days, it really highlights how they totally did just make the same movie with the same story beats twice, but did it better the second time.
Captain America - Civil War (2016): ★☆☆
This is the first dud I've encountered on my road to getting current on Marvel. It kinda represents what I want to avoid when the next major movie comes out late this year.
There are too many characters whose motivations intersect too many different ways, and I got confused about who was on whose side at times. There were characters who I hadn't seen at all even in the previous movies that I did watch, and although you can piece things together from context, the movie just assumes that you can immediately match each person's full name with their superhero name and their in-group nickname and their face and their costume at a distance. It didn't help that I took a month-long gap between my last Marvel movie and this one, so my memory was rusty anyway.
I also noticed the fight sequences in two bad ways. First, there are melee sequences that cut so fast that it's hard to follow along. They even change camera angles significantly back and forth between strobe-light-paced cuts. I mean, most action sequences in most movies have quick cuts, but I've never had trouble with them like I did in this movie. Second, there's a big fight about two-thirds of the way through movie that just dragged on forever. It's a long sequence that feels like it's going to be the climactic fight for the entire movie, but there are still 40 minutes left after it ends. So I lost my suspension of disbelief for a bit just waiting for things to get moving again. It's not good when your big spectacular set piece is boring by the end.
Next up is Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I liked the first one, so hopefully the second one is similar.
CACW is often mentioned as among the top 5 or 10 Marvel movies but your perspective on it makes total sense about the many characters.
You have been watching the MCU movies chronologically, starting from 2008?
Some of them, but not all of them. I asked for recommendations at the start of the year and put together a 1-2 movies per month plan to catch up in time. It had been going pretty well up until this point, and I hadn't felt like I was missing something important until now.
I see, hmm well hard to say without having rewatched any of it myself recently. Can't recall having had the same feeling about anyone but then again I have watched most of those earlier MCU films 5-10 times or more haha
I love Captain America Civil War it’s probably one of the Marvel movies I’ve seen the most. I do think it’s made easier if you had been keeping up with the beginning. I would rarely rewatch the films before a new release so whatever months/years long gaps there were in between movies was how long it would take me. Can’t say that was much of an issue. In 2015 Age of Ultron and Ant-Man released in the Summer and we didn’t have a Marvel film until a Civil War a year later.
I really love the type of filmmaking Civil War had during its peak of the franchise. And I loved Spider-Mans introduction.
Yeah, my issue mostly isn't with the filmmaking (besides the strobe-light-speed cuts in some fights), and mostly that there were too many characters to keep track of.
Was that really Spider Man's introduction (in the Marvel universe)? The way they did it, it felt like Ant Man where you were expected to recognize him from a previous movie.
Yes. The film actually did a last minute inclusion of the character since Sony negotiated a deal with Disney to have Spider-Man in the MCU. Prior to the deal Black Panther (who this film also serves as his introduction) was going to have a bigger role.
That being said it’s Spider-Man the assumption is that everyone is familiar with his backstory. Spider-Man Homecoming (which came out a year later) serves as kind of a “day in the life of Spider-Man story” as opposed to anything big or his origin story.
Ah, so both Spider Man and Black Panther were new additions for this movie. That makes me feel better about not knowing all the characters. It's also interesting to be watching it years later knowing that Black Panther gets his own (two?) movies that came later.
As far as I recall (and I might have holes in my memory), they went heavy on the marketing for his introduction so while it's his first real appearance in the MCU, most fans weren't surprised.
Ah, so I'm just the odd one out for being a decade late. That's an interesting point, the difference in experience of going in blind vs. following weeks or months of trailers and hype.
The Mandalorian and Grogu
I’m still deciding if this is worse than Attack of the Clones to take the mantle of the worst Star Wars movie ever made.
It’s poorly written, structured like three episodes of a TV show stitched together. It looks ugly, cheap, dull. None of the performances are good. There is only one sequence I really liked, and it was when Grogu became the main focus.
From what I remember of the two seasons of The Mandalorian, it looked significantly better than this does. The only reason I’m oscillating between this and Clones, is because that film had to deal with the technological limitations of the time.
I Love Boosters
I find critics to be hypocrites when they hype up Boots Riley, but will trash Adam McKay. Acclaiming Sorry To Bother You and this while panning Vice and Don’t Look Up.
Riley also does the “on the nose political commentary” with a lot of technical flash. But the difference is that Riley has a lot of stupid shit in his films. It’s supposed to be some intellectual exercise of mixing dumb low brow stuff with heavy handed political commentary to make it high brow. Like splitting the difference between McKay’s Will Ferrell comedies and his Oscar nominated work. It doesn’t work for me though.
Also I find Riley annoying on Twitter, even if he wasn’t I still wouldn’t like his films, but the constant moral posturing while taking money from an ELLISON of all people. Come on.
Post-Cannes 2027 predictions:
Picture:
Director:
Original Screenplay:
Adapted Screenplay:
Lead Actor:
Lead Actress:
Supporting Actor:
Supporting Actress:
Film Editing: