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


Mr. Breathmask

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IF.... is serious and great, and IAWL is not outdated, schmaltzy and inferior. It's a dark, depressing, desperate journey into one man's broken dreams, and thwarted ambitions. It's a cruel irony that it took the imminent death of the main character, for him (with the help of an angel) to realise exactly what his presence (and by extension, his absence) means to people. It's fucking genius, is what it is. You tell all those smart arse uni know-it-alls to stick that where the sun don't shine!

 

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Superman.

 

It was such a relief to finally watch a Superman movie in which the characters don't behave like suicidal zombies. These people were so much better, but I do think that Miss Teschmacher (who calls their girlfriend that, anyway?) was a tad too superficial at the end and found it rather hard to take Lex and co seriously because they made them a little bit too comical. Also, why does Lois not hear that Superman and Kent have the same voice? Do normal people really not pay attention to voices? And finally, the very ending of the film just killed the excellent level of tension that the final battle had caused. But I loved the romance between Clark and Lois and I will embrace this movie with all its faults (very few), because the reboot is just unwatchable crap and compared to this it's... well, they still need to invent a word to describe that.

Now, the score. Obviously, its themes are greater than great. I especially love how Williams manipulates them for different emotions. The romantic flight is simply glorious and I'm finally convinced that this upbeat Superman theme can work during sad moments as well. I did find the villain music too humorous and Kent's journey to earth could have used more heroic music. What often really annoys me as well is how Williams can kill an intense and quiet moment by inserting random notes that just don't need to be there and don't even belong there, during the moment when Superman is kneeling by Lois' side during the finale, for instance. Either be romantic or sad, but don't fill up silences with dissonant, haphazard notes. Finally, some of the sound effects in this movie were too overbearing and Williams should have recorded this score a few years later: it deserves a better sound.

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Why doesn't Lois recognize Clark's voice? I like the naive comic book logic that states a person with glasses is a completely different, unidentifiable person. I think it's based on how Christopher Reeve carries himself differently when playing each role. 

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5 hours ago, Richard said:

IF.... is serious and great, and IAWL is not outdated, schmaltzy and inferior. It's a dark, depressing, desperate journey into one man's broken dreams, and thwarted ambitions. It's a cruel irony that it took the imminent death of the main character, for him (with the help of an angel) to realise exactly what his presence (and by extension, his absence) means to people. It's fucking genius, is what it is. You tell all those smart arse uni know-it-alls to stick that where the sun don't shine!

 

 

It was eight years ago, they're probably still unemployed. I think it was my first real encounter with the rookie film studies mentality that praising one work of art means to dismiss another because it isn't arty enough or has mass appeal, rather than assessing their individual merits.

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Beauty and the Beast '17

 

A group of high quality houseware items conspire to engineer a romance between a bookish local girl and their monstrous goatman owner, all to achieve their goal to become human again. Weird movie. The chick in it is rather pretty.

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Just now, Stefancos said:

Oh dear....

I don’t understand the hate for this one, because he didn’t lose it until The Happening, in my opinion.

 

It’s got a stellar score, beautiful cinematography from Deakins, a well-rounded cast with a standout performance from William Hurt, and some lovely naturalistic camerawork. 

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The Village I saw back before the internet was spoiling big twists and it really got me, so that was very cool. But overall I did not like the film, I remember being annoyed by the fake monster lol. The marketing was built around it I recall, so when I eventually saw what it was I felt ripped off! 

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It followed the worrisome trend of every new Shymalayan movie being even more morose than the one that came before it but whenever the score became lyrical it sprang to life.

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The premise of The Village is so silly it was impossible for me to go along with it. I think Shyamalan expects the audience to suspend their disbelief a little bit too easily. 

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Dune (Judas Booth) version

 

The 3 hour cut, completely disowned by David Lynch. Despite this it really isn't that different than the shorter version that was released in the cinema. (I guess a true "David Lynch" version will never be released).

 

The extra scenes add loads more exposition and a few character scenes, but do slow a film which had little momentum down even more.

 

Lynch is good with dialogue and plotting and this film has loads of it. There's also little suspense because the characters spell out the plot of the film long before it sets into motion. The narration in the beginning and the scene between the Emperor and the Navigator basically tells you the plot of the secret union between the Emperor and House Harkonnen and their plan to destroy the Atreides, in great detail, and then we spend the next 90 minutes seeing it played out. 

There's almost nothing in this film that happens that isn't predestined by dialogue much earlier. That means there's almost no surprise in the movie, which makes it slow.

 

Visually astonishing though. A delicate mix between bad special effects and incredibly beautiful ones. It's a pity Lynch would never work with such a large canvas again. 

The action scenes in this are pretty poorly done though. 

 

The score is very interesting.

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Child 44

 

Slowly paced and a bit bloated for its own good, but respectable recreation of 1950s USSR, and interesting portrayal of a cruel and violent political culture in paranoid denial of its own ugliness. Tom Hardy has a great ASMR voice with a Russian accent.

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I just did a rough count of how many films I've seen in my lifetime at the cinema. I comes around the 150 mark, but I need to remember a few more.

 

I couldn't say how many films in total through TV and video I've seen.

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8 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

I don’t understand the hate for this one, because he didn’t lose it until The Happening, in my opinion.

 

It’s got a stellar score, beautiful cinematography from Deakins, a well-rounded cast with a standout performance from William Hurt, and some lovely naturalistic camerawork. 

 

Agreed. Except for The Happening, because I haven't seen that (or any of his subsequent films).

7 hours ago, Quintus said:

The marketing was built around it I recall, so when I eventually saw what it was I felt ripped off! 

 

I like seeing films without knowing anything about them, so luckily I often see them without ever watching a trailer. Considering how hard trailers usually try to sell a film even to audiences that aren't in fact the real target audience of the film, I find it a bit "unfair" to judge a film for being different from what a misguided trailer might have made it out to be.

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1 hour ago, Denise Bryson said:

I wonder who on JWfan has seen the most movies? Maybe Alex or Pub?

 

I have seen a lot but only 10% in a way that i am qualified to write about them. 

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26 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

Agreed. Except for The Happening, because I haven't seen that (or any of his subsequent films).

 

I like seeing films without knowing anything about them, so luckily I often see them without ever watching a trailer. Considering how hard trailers usually try to sell a film even to audiences that aren't in fact the real target audience of the film, I find it a bit "unfair" to judge a film for being different from what a misguided trailer might have made it out to be.

It’s the best way to approach films! I watched The Village with my girlfriend and afterwards as we were talking I discovered that she had no idea who Shyamalan was and has somehow lived the past 18 years without ever being spoiled about the ending to The Sixth Sense. It’s next on our watch list. 

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1 hour ago, Stefancos said:

How is that possible? I've never seen The Sixth Sense, but I know how it ends.

 

It ends how every film ends

 

DOLBY              datasat                SDDS    

                  in selected theaters

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Just watched The Tree of Life (2011) by Terrence Malick.

It challenges anything you expect from filmmaking and I think it's probably a masterpiece. I can definitely understand why it has been divisive, but it is truly beautiful and bold.

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Aliens (Theatrical)

Not really near the original but still pretty good. Starts off surprisingly seamlessly, then it's a big cliche dump until they land, then it's just an 80s scifi action movie, but a good one. The alien queen is a damn impressive puppet! One big drawback was the score for me, Horner was very uninspired here. It's one thing to put those horns in most of his scores, it's kind of his signature, but to base half an unrelated score on the Khan horns, anvil strikes, and even outright quote one of his main Star Trek fanfares is just plain lazy. 

 

Supposedly, the director's cut is the much better version. Which area does it mostly expand upon? (Action, characters, plot, tension/horror, bit of everything?) Also, how watchable are the two sequels? I read somewhere 3 is not too good, but the original cut makes it almost great, and 4 is terrible, and watchable in the directors cut. Based on the original two, I'm right on the edge of buying the 9dvd boxset, it seems like an awesome package.

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Uninspired score?  It fits the film perfectly!  And man does the LSO knock it out of the park.  Try the album, as Cameron changed around much of Horner's intentions.

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Of course he did.

I guess I didn't clarify at all, I literally finished my first viewing 20 minutes ago, so this is a very fresh, raw first impression. It might grow on me with time and repeated viewings, but right now, I can't see myself genuinely enjoying those Star Trek quotes and annoying anvils.

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2 hours ago, idril said:

Just watched The Tree of Life (2011) by Terrence Malick.

It challenges anything you expect from filmmaking and I think it's probably a masterpiece. I can definitely understand why it has been divisive, but it is truly beautiful and bold.

Marinate on it for a bit and revisit it sometime in the near future. Opens up tremendously as you’re more able to connect the visual parallels. 

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