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What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Older Films)


Mr. Breathmask

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The pipe organ was an inspired choice. Its great to hear this terrific instrument outside of the cliche horror moments or wedding scene.

 

But the actual writing is such that there comes a point in the film's hefty runtime where I just go: "I get it, Hans!"

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Zimmer is hardly the first to use the organ in a non-religious context in film, or even in a sci-fi context. But yes, Interstellar's score mostly works quite well.

 

I believe the boys were referring to Dunkirk, where the incessant pulsating was exhausting...

 

 

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Regarding Interstellar, I only remember the shameless melodrama with his daughter.

 

35 minutes ago, The Original said:

Dunkirk is just fine in the film. It's not commute-to-work easy listening.

 

I agree. I like that is was different. 

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1 hour ago, KK said:

I believe the boys were referring to Dunkirk, where the incessant pulsating was exhausting...

 

Wasn't that the point though? The reason why the score works (in my opinion) really well is that it's mostly just sound design. And the film's entire sound design is based on never giving you rest to put you in a similar state of mind as the protagonists.

Just now, Stefancos said:

I listen to stuff while cycling almost every day, and have done so for decades. Its perfectly safe!

 

I've come to find it so inconvenient that I rarely bother these days. I only wear light headphones when biking, which means that most orchestral recordings are so dynamic you can only hear the loud bits anyway (a dynamic range compression feature in the player software would be very welcome here). Plus streaming is still unrealiable on my bike route, and whatever music I put on the actual phone ends up not being what I want to listen to in the end. And I lost my Bluetooth dongle a while ago and can't be bothered with keeping the headphone cable connected to the phone.

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3 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

Wasn't that the point though? The reason why the score works (in my opinion) really well is that it's mostly just sound design. And the film's entire sound design is based on never giving you rest to put you in a similar state of mind as the protagonists.

 

People here don't seem to care how a score works in the film. It's all about whether it gives them eargasms on its own.

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11 minutes ago, The Original said:

People here don't seem to care how a score works in the film

 

Oh, I do.

 

The film is the ultimate presentation of any score: NOT the album. The score is by definition written to serve the film.

 

The album's just another form of souvenir from the film: its main purpose is to allow one to reminisce about the film through the music.

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23 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Oh, I do.

 

The film is the ultimate presentation of any score: NOT the album. The score is by definition written to serve the film.

 

The album's just another form of souvenir from the film: its main purpose is to allow one to reminisce about the film through the music.

 

Baiting @Thor?

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Stay from Interstellar is probably my favourite cue from the score. The context of the scene it underscores makes the music very powerful for me. Somehow Zimmer encapsulated so many scary primal feelings in such an expansive yet intensely uncomplicated musical idea. Aching loss, fear, hope, bravery, yearning, it's all there for me. An absolute amazing piece.

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Thor prefers the final edited film version of the Alien score (with Freud inserts galore) to the Goldsmith album as released on LP.

 

In fact, when I pressed him on that one time, he couldn't seem to comprehend that there was a difference between the LP presentation and the original chronological score Goldsmith composed. What a frustrating exchange that was.

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Next on the list, coincidentally, another one  with the Marseillaise prominent in the score - though it serves a better narrative purpose here than "there's a French person onscreen, let's play the French music"

 

Somewhere in Europe (1947)

A group of war orphans stick together for survival and pillage the world of the adults which spat them out without help or care. At the height of their tribal aggressivity, they come across an old conductor living in a ruined castle who treats them like humans again, and they gradually form a bond, a tighter camaraderie, find a home there and become productive. A fun, if at times overdone score (the latter not uncommon for the era), engagingly shot with both interesting angles and dynamic, inventive daylight handheld shots. Moments like the starving kids flooding a full pantry, breaking everything, shoving each other all around to get to something; or the backstory of a young girl taken advantage of by soldiers, starting the juvenile hall escapee group leader character down the path of goodness after hearing it are really affecting still.

A happy accident of the soviet era of filmmaking is they gladly approved and produced scripts which glorify the system indirectly (aka pointing out how bad fascism and nazism was - and they're not wrong there) therefore dating them less and making them less uncomfortable to watch nowadays. Here, too, though the villain is a raging fascist beating kids for information and the end is about a better new world and system coming with focus supposedly on the people and their wellbeing, there's only a single "socialist" namedrop and it's never made more explicit than that, it doesn't take any value away from it.

 

I love this film, an absolute classic.

 

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Batman begins.

 

I’ve only watched this trilogy once: some six or seven years ago when I hadn't seen too many superhero movies. I still remember that I found all three of them fantastic, unforgettable and amazing. And now... I just don't understand what I found so great about them. This time, I only started liking it after more than an hour and the only things I truly enjoyed were the Batmobile chase with the semi-conscious Rachel and Michael Caine. I'm just so sick of the entire superhero formula right now and feel like maiming the first person who says the word 'justice' in front of me. The villain wasn't interesting either: 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to destroy a city.' Really? Even Morgan Freeman was just fine and Katie Holmes was good, but not as great as I thought she was. That's it. I'm feeling too emotionally detached to write more.

It's very easy to tell which cues were written by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Unsurprisingly, I prefer Howard's input, although one piece, Father to the Rescue, was really jarring. Obviously, it plays very well on album, but its ending was too dramatic for the opera scene it introduced. The same can be said about the very end of the movie: the music doesn't tell us how we're supposed to be feeling at all: happy that Batman survives and will carry on. It's as brooding as it was when Batman first suited up. Yet again, it sounds like Zimmer (and Howard) wrote the music they wanted to write and had a ball, and the fact that it happened to be used in a Batman movie was a mere coincidence. I'm just so, so TIRED of cellos playing ostinatos in D minor! Zimmer can say it's meant to depict a hero who can't move on, the problem is that Batman did move on after 45 minutes and the music and Zimmer did not, Zimmer started stagnating long before Batman. Now, if you'll excuse ME, I have to find something written for flutes, celesta and violins in F major.

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It’s the best of the trilogy. 

 

The samurai movie-esque elements in the first act are my favorite parts of the movie. 

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@bollemanneke I'm just about to start with that trilogy now. 

 

I'm on a Batman roll, after:

Batman Forever (1995)

Batman and Robin (1997)

I get that people don't like these- I thought they were just okay. The curious thing about Batman, Batman Returns and Batman Forever is that the pivotal part of the story is the narrative arch for the prominent villain (Batman=Joker, Batman Returns=Penguin, chiefly, and then Catwoman, Batman Forever=The Riddler). The other villains (Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Two Face) aren't nearly as compelling and don't take as much precedence. That is why my opinion on these movie depends a lot on how I feel about the antagonist. In this case, The Riddler and Two Face are just alright, and Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Bane are a considerable 'meh'. A few small points on both jumbled together, as I don't like to put much effort into reviewing franchise installments:

 

-Mr. Freeze's ice gun nearly gave me a seizure. Where's the thought process on those excessive light blasts?

-Tommy Lee Jones goes all-out whacko. He probably took the role for the heck of it.

-Jim Carrey's Riddler is alright, but the riddles could've been a lot bigger (more important) and better.

-Batgirl's entrance is very abrupt. Robin isn't all that great a sidekick either. 

-Goldenthal's score is totally in the shadow of Elfman, but it has it's moments.

-Alfred is the sole continuous source of recompense, honestly.

-Bane is totally wasted.

-The Batman actor cycle went too far with George Clooney. I mean, I have no problems with Keaton, Kilmer, or Clooney, but c'mon!

 

All in all, they were just okay. Nowhere near Batman, but they fit in nicely with Batman Returns as a trio of sometimes good, sometimes bad, and most times 'meh' flicks.

 

 

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1 hour ago, John said:

It’s the best of the trilogy. 

 

Don't know about that, but I do love it dearly.

 

When Marvel movies are absolutely smothered in light-heartedness that doesn't allow for any profundity, Nolan takes a full three minutes to let the grief of Bruce's parents dying fester. The result is that when Sir Michael recalls Bruce's father: "its not just your name, Sir. Its your father's name, and its all that's left of him." it really packs a punch.

 

The movie has real heart, even if the action sequences aren't quite "there" yet.

 

54 minutes ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

Batman and Robin (1997)

I get that people don't like these- I thought they were just okay.

 

Look Jerry, I'm all for liking movies. But there's got to be a line!

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Yes, the dramatic beats are handled very well. 

 

A lot of people seem to dislike the film’s slow pace, but I enjoy the slow-burn feel to it. 

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2 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Look Jerry, I'm all for liking movies. But there's got to be a line!

Oh, Batman and Robin was definetly weak. Weaker than Batman Forever. And nothing compared to Burton's original. Calling Batman and Robin just okay is like a mere two out of five stars, with Forever pulling in just above.

 

Returns leaves such a bad taste in my mouth, though. Such a pity.

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4 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Batman begins.

 

I’ve only watched this trilogy once: some six or seven years ago when I hadn't seen too many superhero movies. I still remember that I found all three of them fantastic, unforgettable and amazing. And now... I just don't understand what I found so great about them. This time, I only started liking it after more than an hour and the only things I truly enjoyed were the Batmobile chase with the semi-conscious Rachel and Michael Caine. I'm just so sick of the entire superhero formula right now and feel like maiming the first person who says the word 'justice' in front of me. The villain wasn't interesting either: 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to destroy a city.' Really? Even Morgan Freeman was just fine and Katie Holmes was good, but not as great as I thought she was. That's it. I'm feeling too emotionally detached to write more.

It's very easy to tell which cues were written by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Unsurprisingly, I prefer Howard's input, although one piece, Father to the Rescue, was really jarring. Obviously, it plays very well on album, but its ending was too dramatic for the opera scene it introduced. The same can be said about the very end of the movie: the music doesn't tell us how we're supposed to be feeling at all: happy that Batman survives and will carry on. It's as brooding as it was when Batman first suited up. Yet again, it sounds like Zimmer (and Howard) wrote the music they wanted to write and had a ball, and the fact that it happened to be used in a Batman movie was a mere coincidence. I'm just so, so TIRED of cellos playing ostinatos in D minor! Zimmer can say it's meant to depict a hero who can't move on, the problem is that Batman did move on after 45 minutes and the music and Zimmer did not, Zimmer started stagnating long before Batman. Now, if you'll excuse ME, I have to find something written for flutes, celesta and violins in F major.

You’re sick of the superhero formula, so you watch the movie that started it?

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I watched Vice on a plane the other day. It’s a weird film, but Christian Bale is incredible in it. I watched an interview with Dick Cheney after it, and I didn’t realise quite how much Bale completely transformed into him. As a film it does kinda shout at you and I imagine it could be described as “liberal propaganda”.

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13 minutes ago, John said:

So now we’re just pretending the OG Iron Man was never good to begin with? :eh:

I never really liked it, even as it's target audience (13 year olds).  Seemed kind of drab and bland, like a TV show.  

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50 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

RDJ is the only reason its noteworthy.

 

I remember him making a suit. Then, he makes another suit. And RDJ talks as if he knows he has an audience that is watching him. I guess that's why people love the character. He is there for them.

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The King's Choice (2016)

Drama about the Nazi occupation of Norway, and Norwegian King Haakon's actions during this time.  This sort of thing appeals to me, what with political and family dynamics coming into play.  Some solid performances here.  Erik Poppe's direction keeps things interesting, and the film's subplots are well integrated.  The cinematography is pretty good, but sometimes the use of shaky camera and zoom clashed with the otherwise conventional lighting and blocking of certain scenes.  I found the music rather pedestrian.  In scenes involving artillery or bombing, it is almost comical how it "bwaaams" in competition with the very loud sound effects.

3/4    

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On 6/9/2019 at 7:32 AM, Stefancos said:

I listen to stuff while cycling almost every day, and have done so for decades. Its perfectly safe!

 

Bikers wearing headphones are suicidal. I help them with a healthy blast from my car horn. 

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On 6/9/2019 at 4:47 AM, Chen G. said:

Interstellar

 

Its good, but boy oh boy Nolan's dialogues are as endless as the space vistas he puts on screen!

 

***1/2 out of *****

You gave it way too many stars. Its immense in it forgetable-ness.

Spielberg and Williams dodged a bullet. 

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