I saw this movie last week, so I thought I'll share some thoughts on it.

First off, spoilers! Be warned.

I start of by saying, I'm not really a romcom fan in general, and wasn't specifically into watching this movie because it was an all Asian cast. I grew up watching Chinese dramas (HK, mainland and from Taiwan), and so many of them are romantic comedies. So, though I love the idea of Hollywood taking on more diverse stories, movies like "Crazy Rich Asians" already exist.

Having said all that, I honestly loved the movie! And I believe one of the major reasons why is the depiction of different Asians, specifically Asian-Americans (or as we're referred to in Chinese, foreign-Chinese or overseas-Chinese).

...unrelated to the movie itself, but a little background if anyone's interested...
I'm a Canadian-born Chinese and grew up when people thought all Chinese people lived in Chinatown. I literally had teachers confirm with my parents that the address I gave was correct and that it was in fact not in Chinatown. I was automatically placed in ESL classes, though English is my first language. So, little bit of an outsider in the country I was born in. When I visit family and friends in Hong Kong though, I'm the white girl. Literally everything I do is a novelty. I can write my own name in Chinese, I recognize famous Chinese songs (like Beatles level famous), or I can order my own breakfast (a bun with coffee).

So back to the movie. In Crazy Rich Asians, in Rachel, I feel they captured this really well. If this movie was less Asian centric, I feel "Asia" would have been overly exotic, instead of gross wealth being exotic. If this movie were made in HK or China, I feel, Rachel would have been portrayed as far more foreign and her "Banana" qualities exaggerated.

I also really appreciated that a lot of jokes, and moments, especially the MaJong scene weren't explained. The jokes were so funny, especially the lucky red colour. I haven't laughed out loud in a theater for a while.

This post is already getting sort of long, so I might do another one on the strong women in the movie, which I believe they were really well done too. Rachel was amazing!

Who else has seen this? What are your thoughts?

Edit: I added a spoiler tag, but guess I really didn't. Still leaving it in, in case comments contain them.

Old stories are always being updated for lots of reasons, ranging from trying to appeal to new audiences to correcting toxic depictions to fitting better to the current social or political climate and more. There's nothing new there. However, one thing I find a bit odd lately, as in the last five years or so, is that a lot of this modernization is actually done pretty poorly in main stream media. We see more forced diversity, queerbaiting, and generally bad storytelling. Not totally sure how I'll do this yet, but I'm thinking of posting stories that stand out to me for better or for worst, starting with a classic.

There will be spoilers for both movies.

Cinderella (2015)

This is one I honestly didn't think worked at all. To be fair, I believe Disney's goal was just to sell a beautiful movie, and not a good story. This whole movie was gorgeous. It was also really boring, which I honestly believe is the greatest sin in storytelling.

Cinderella herself is "smarter" in this movie than the old classic cartoon. She's well read and has some agency, which honestly makes her more a damsel than the original cartoon for me. In the cartoon, she was an abused child that had no where to go. Her being trapped made sense. In the new one, she's sort of a fighter...who doesn't fight. I didn't get it.

Another issue is that Cinderella was really the only character they modified, which is why the story is still shallow.

Ever After (1998)

This is honestly one of the best modernization of the fairy tale I've ever seen. What worked for me, is that they fleshed out all their characters. Danielle, Henry, the stepmother, stepsisters, everyone! This makes for a much richer story, where characters themselves can be modernized, but still fit the time of the period piece. It's not about dropping a fourth wave feminist into an aged story, but about adding the dimensions that would have still existed then. Danielle is strong, well read, and obedient. Her servitude is not without reason. She's seeking a "mother", and her relationship with her stepmother is more than simply being a slave. The audience is shown the moments of kindness Danielle seeks from her stepmother.

My quick two-cents. I also find it interesting that Ever After came out over 15 years before Cinderella.

So what are you thoughts? Any good fairy tale adaptations you can mention?

It's Monday again, and that means it's time for Movie Monday, a thread where anyone and everyone is welcome to post a movie review about films that they've seen recently, or just liked or disliked in the past.

If you're wanting to post a review, I'd suggest reading trough Movie Monday: week 1 to read through the rules and what to write, but for the most part I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible.

The two rules that I do have are: So far, the only rules are:

All top level comments should be reviews. (if you have any questions or suggestions on how to do things differently, either send me a private message or post in the discussion thread I linked up above)

No spoilers in top level comments. Ideally any spoilers should be in children comments (with sufficient warning) if you wish to write a review with spoilers, make another comment below your top level comment and write the spoilers there. Anyone who doesn't want to know any spoilers should un-expand the comments at the top before they start reading comments. Hopefully this should allow discussion of both the film and the review without forcing people to see spoilers.

But other than that, happy Movie watching and have a great Monday :)

So since I'm a terrible person and all that I totally forgot to make this post last week so I've decided to wait a week and actually post on a Monday. For those of you that don't know what Movie Monday is, here is the post I made about it.

Basically I'd like to make a weekly post where myself and other users post comments on what movies they've watched recently and whether or not they recommend it etc. There's no specific format set out for the reviews, so feel free to write one any way you like, whether it's just a few sentences or a whole essay, we'll figure out what works best as we go along.

So far, the only rules are:

1. All top level comments should be reviews. (if you have any questions or suggestions on how to do things differently, either send me a private message or post in the discussion thread I linked up above)

2. No spoilers in top level comments. Ideally any spoilers should be in children comments (with sufficient warning) if you wish to write a review with spoilers, make another comment below your top level comment and write the spoilers there. Anyone who doesn't want to know any spoilers should un-expand the comments at the top before they start reading comments. Hopefully this should allow discussion of both the film and the review without forcing people to see spoilers.

I know the second rule is a tiny bit confusing, but like I said this is a learning process and we'll see what happens. Anyway have fun and happy film watching!

Anyone seen this? I heard about this movie on NPR and decided to check it out. Wow! It's a great, well told story that pulls a lot of discreet threads together. As an aside from the main story of a black cop infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan it also references racist media of yesteryear like Gone With the Wind and Birth of a Nation. There are several moments that wink at Donald Trump's talking points and policies. There was a lot of reaction from the predominantly black crowd I was in, the connection was certainly noticed.

And the end! Wow. Almost had me in tears, really brought me back to a year ago when I saw the Vice News on Charlottesville. I was in a theater in Richmond, VA about an hour from Charlottesville. You could have heard a pin drop right when the movie ended. I've never seen so many people get gut punched like that all at once. The timing of this movie was absolutely well thought out.

while its not the best star wars movie, it isn't the abomination that people make it out to be. its legitimately fun to watch and comfy with all its bad CGI.

Favorite star wars movies in order: IV, V, Solo, VII, I, VIII, VI, Rogue One, III, II

So this is something I've been thinking about doing for the last couple weeks, but I've been super busy working on a project and haven't had too much time, and I didn't want to start something if I couldn't commit to it. Now that my project is almost finished I've got more time to both watch movies and talk about them with random internet strangers, which is why I'm here now asking about a weekly movie review thread.

I watch maybe two or three films a week, but often struggle to find anything worth watching. And so for all of you out there with the same problem, I'd like to start a discussion thread where users post a movie review on one film they've watched recently and children comments are free to discuss the review, the movie, or just ask questions in general about the movie.

Here are some questions I have about how this would function, and I'd like your opinion on them.

Is this something that users here actually want?
Like I said earlier, I feel like this could be a helpful tool for people wanting to watch a few things but not knowing what to watch, but there are plenty of reviews and things like that out there, and this might not be something that users here want.

What should be included in the review?
To me what immediately comes to mind is a very imdb style review (with no spoilers) that comments on directing, acting, set, camera angles, etc. Maybe giving it a rating out of 10? How long should it be? I don't read a whole out of reviews though so I'm not 100% sure the best way to go about this.

How often should we have a discussion thread?
I'm thinking a weekly thread would be nice, probably on Monday for two reasons. First, it allows anybody who's busy over the week day but has some time off on the weekend for films and writing reviews to write one, and secondly, it means we can call it Movie Monday, which sounds better then Movie Tuesday :p

Any other questions or things that need to be discussed for this to work well?

Today NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe which will dive closer to the sun than any other man made object in history.

In celebration of this event I watched Sunshine, a really well cast sci fi thriller. It was pretty darn good. I would highly recommend a watch if you are into this sort of thing, I had entirely missed it somehow. Casting is great, visuals are great, story is good, pacing is excellent. Don't be put off by the age of the movie, I don't think vfx would be any better today.

50 years into the future, the Sun begins to die, and Earth is dying as a result. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun - but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind's last hope.

It may not be on US Netflix but it is on Amazon.

Trailer

I already canceled moviepass. Their new rules of only 3 movies a month plus getting "up to" 5 dollars off on more movies was a kick to the kidneys. The blacking out of mission impossible was absolutely it for me.

Anyone keeping it or have you already canceled? My sub lasts until the 15th. Hopefully I'll be able to see christopher robin and a few others before then.

EDIT: Alright, this ended up veering off in the direction that I was hoping it wouldn't. My apologies if I pushed things in the wrong direction from the outset.

I want to make very clear from the outset of this post that I am not calling anyone out for posting this type of content, and I do not want to criticize any individuals for making such posts. This is intended to be a high level discussion of what general types of content are worthwhile here, to see if we can define some of the community specific goals about relevant content. And I know this comes at the risk of being yet another meta post about tildes content (feel free to move this post elsewhere if others think it is better suited, I mainly chose to post here to work on being more community specific about our goals).

This question comes up because a quick glance at the current ~movies page shows a whole bunch of movie trailer posts. The majority of them have zero discussion. Of the ones that do have discussion, most of that is pretty low effort. So part of the question to address is: do movie trailer posts ever generate good discussion in the first place? Looking at reddit, the answer is almost always no, and the posting of movie trailers is often a race among karma farmers with little actual interest in what they are posting. Part of the problem I see there is that it primarily leads towards a discussion of the movie itself rather than the trailer. Since the movie hasn't come out yet when the trailer is posted, that discussion is entirely speculative, and leads to some sticky situations like with the Ghostbusters remake, where more outrage was generated over the female leads casting than any discussion of the film's own merits.

There are, very occasionally, trailers that are in and of themselves interesting pieces of artistic expression; so part of me says that a universal ban on trailers being posted would be overkill. But in those cases it may be beneficial to enforce that the discussion should focus on the presentation of the trailer itself. Though countering my own argument, trailers are fundamentally designed to draw attention towards the movie, so perhaps isolated discussion does not make sense. But that would again point to a desire to simply omit all trailers being posted. Possibly unless it is for a movie that has already been released, in which the trailer could serve as merely a marker to open discussion on the movie itself.

So what does everyone else think? I'm totally okay if everyone says they like seeing the movie trailers on here, but I thought it would be a good time to discuss it.

I just went to see the Apparition (recent French film about a journalist investigating visions of the madonna).

I couldn't make head or tail of it. Has anyone got a coherent theory of what was going on, or is it just a shoal of red herrings that doesn't make any sense?