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


Mr. Breathmask

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The X-Files: I Want to Believe

 

I really wanted to believe this wouldn't have been the final say on this franchise, but it looked that way for a long time. I enjoy this film as a piece of canon but I can see why it ended up pleasing pretty much nobody. Normies would have been lost and uninterested, and fans were just baffled by the choice in premise. Still I think its biggest asset is it's one of the most beautifully shot films I've seen in the modern era, which contributes to its classic X-Files atmosphere. Really kids, this is how you shoot "dark" - you need highlights composed meticulously to conjure a sense of spatial presence, and not that monochromatic blob of blackness you see in a lot of recent productions whose cinematographers and their dopey fanboys get defensive over. Oh and Gillian looks stunning in this.

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15 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

I’m watching Amistad

 

#DiscoStu #OnBrand

I saw this one a couple of months ago.  I liked it quite a bit.  A couple of the historical inaccuracies are a little off-putting, and Spielberg gives in to some perhaps excessive sentimentality a couple of times, but overall it is quite impressive.  The cast is cohesive and driving.  The cinematography quite well done.  And many sequences really lay things bare, with Spielberg bringing a unique vitality to the forefront.  

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On 5/11/2019 at 12:02 PM, Nick Parker said:

Didn't it get criticized for being a white Asian dress up power fantasy back in the day? There was a movie that came out a few years ago that was another entry into that subgenre, I want to say it didn't do very well. 


The Great Wall with Matt Damon and the live-action Ghost In The Shell with ScarJo both got flak for being Asian stories with Western leads. Box-office considerations still trump cultural sensitivity (there's 3 words that don't appear together often, lol), it seems.  

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The Eiger Sanction

 

So Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy being all manly and shit, and everyone else being all sissy and stuff, and Clint go climb a big rock man. Needed Spock to rescue him.

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Excalibur (1981) aka Soft-Focus: The Motion Picutre

 

So this is what fantasy was like before the 2000s came about? Yuck. For an R-rated motion picture, its attempts at being gritty are counteracted by squeaky-clean suits of armour, lewd sex (with Boorman directing his own daughter in one instance), the incessant soft focus and green lighting.

 

The way the actors are directed, too, is probably where Michael Bay learned his craft. When you have stage actors like Sir Patrick Stewart, you could be forgiven for directing them to infuse their performance with a bit of theatricality. But this is something else entirely: all of these performers SCREAM every other line, especially in the early scenes. Its defeaning! Which is problem enough, had not most of what they screamed been exposition or their own character motivations.

 

I suppose the locations are pretty, and it gets points for guts. Writing off a movie never gives me joy, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't suffer through this.

 

** out of *****

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Two months ago, I saw a provocative movie on cable TV. It was called The Net with that girl from the bus. I did a little reading and I realized it wasn't too far-fetched.

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Train To Busan - this very enjoyable South Korean 'zombies on a train' flick has gore, tension, a little humour and even a bit of genuine poignancy. And appropriately enough given its title, it moves at a fair old lick too. 

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I even saw it in the theatre, which is something JoeinAR can't say (no way he was going to pay for a non-American movie).

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Well, they both have Liam Neeson :)

2 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

I even saw it in the theatre, which is something JoeinAR can't say (no way he was going to pay for a non-American movie).

Just before it was released in the uk, one of the red tops ran a two-page spread, focussing on Helen Mirren's...er..."assets". It was called

(groan) SEXCALIBUR.

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2 hours ago, SteveMc said:

I prefer Krull.

 

Saw that one too in the theatre. Remember it to be a Star Wars wannabe and didn't like it.  For the record, I didn't like Excalibur either, but years later, I watched a version with black bars (on Dutch TV). It looked incredible. I loved it! Then decades later the Blu-ray came out, watch it, there were no black bars, and thought it was something of a kitsch fest.

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1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

...which gives black bars on a 4:3 screen. Don't you live in the 90s?

 

Yeah, I think i watched it on my Pioneer TV, which was a 4:3. 

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10 hours ago, Ghostbusters II said:

The idea of a robot made in the form of a child is odd. The child will never eat (Beware spinach!), sleep, grow old or even "love" unless given a command. This is inherently creepy and so opposite of what a child is, one wonders what the people in this strange futuristic society were thinking. Several people do question what the point of a mecha child would be.

 

 

A child that will always stay a child (and thus forever dependent) is exactly what some mothers would like to have, I think. It would be an answer to the often heard 'complaint' that they grow up too fast. Well, maybe David was indeed already a bit too old and not adorable enough to fulfil that 'desire'.

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10 hours ago, Ghostbusters II said:

Monica and her husband in their soulless posh home don't really come off as Spielbergian at all. In fact, the actress playing Monica is perhaps the worst in any Spielberg production.

 

It's one of the numerous misconceptions of this sucker to have a mother as personality-free as that soulless interior-decorator-cum-Ikea home (i buy that she's depressed but at least give her a manic phase, too!). Would this have worked in a Kubrick version? I doubt it, though it would have probably made more sense from a narrative POV. For Spielberg, it's a death knell. You would have needed someone on the level of a younger Sally Field to make that part of the story come alive.

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2 hours ago, publicist said:

to make that part of the story come alive.

 

But it was the best part of the movie since this act does deal with interesting questions about the relationship between man and artificial intelligence. The 'journey' and the 'supermechas' part is where the movie becomes less interesting, IMO.

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It certainly doesn't make it bad. The first act was interesting because of what was going on. I never felt it needed a Sally Field so one could relate to it.

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Was that ordinary song even used in the movie? Or was it meant to be a hit song to satisfy the Whitney Houston crowd?

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8 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

It certainly doesn't make it bad. The first act was interesting because of what was going on. I never felt it needed a Sally Field so one could relate to it.

 

It's not about 'relating'. It's the usual boring millenium motif of american cinema (also see: Wes Anderson) of prosperous but whiny americans suffering through endless bouts of soul-searching and depression . Not very inviting and basically lazy screenwriting.

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2 hours ago, publicist said:

 

It's not about 'relating'.

 

But it is, that's why you feel so disconnected to it. Because it's ...

 

Quote

... boring millenium motif of american cinema (also see: Wes Anderson) of prosperous but whiny americans suffering through endless bouts of soul-searching and depression . Not very inviting and basically lazy screenwriting.

 

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I don't really understand all the comments I've read on YouTube videos with women claiming to ball their eyes out at the end of A.I. That implies chick flickage status, but I don't feel any emotion during that scene. Something screwy here.

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Just now, Ghostbusters II said:

That implies chick flickage status, but I don't feel any emotion during that scene. 

 

Imagine it was E.T. spending one more day with Elliot. 

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Funny, the premise to the upcoming Pixar movie Onward is very similar to A.I.:

 

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The film is set in a suburban fantasy world where humans do not exist, populated with fantasy creatures. Two elf brothers embark on a quest to discover if there is still magic in the world in order to spend a day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him.

 

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Yea it's clear looking at the list they pretty much give sequels to the original ones that make the most money

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Toy Story 4 is painfully unnecessary.

As was Cars 3 (and I love the original Cars).

This new thing with the elves and the magic seems rehashed.  Nowhere near the guts of Pixar's best concepts.  They need to think outside the box again.  

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