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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.
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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.