Random Movie Thoughts Thread

[Population: 1]

Imo Excalibur has yet to be surpassed as the definitive Arthurian legends cinematic experience.

 

[Totenkindly]

I don't know why they didn't just super-lean into Chris Pratt channeling Jack Black's Dewey Finn (from School of Rock) in "Onward," it was already pretty obvious but they should have really leaned into it musically and wherever else they could, then, instead of doing half-measures.

That was a movie where it was clear they knew the ending and the setup but didn't have nearly as many ideas for the middle.

 

[Totenkindly]

Had been looking at the individual 4K disc reviews for all the films in the Star Wars movie trilogies. It's not really a wonder if you go out of order and just look in terms of time / sequence of release. The first trilogy definitely has an improved viewing experience for the original trilogy from the 70's-80's, but as far as 4K goes, the transfers have some problems... possibly just because of the source, although I think some of the reviews still say more could have been done.

It's also not a shock to see that the last few films have amazing 4K transfers. The bluray copies I own for Revenge of the Sith and The Force Awakens are amazing quality, so much that it's hard to believe they are the bluray transfer. I do own the 4k for "The Last Jedi" (might have been the first SW film that came out on home 4K?) and it is absolutely gorgeous. It looks like the final film has not quite as good but still pretty stellar ratings on the 4K transfer (although I guess I will never know because I don't plan to buy it).

But things are kind of sketchy in the period from The Phantom Menace to Attack of the Clones. I was thinking maybe TPM would have been a noticeable step up and potentially decent 4K release, but it looks like they did not invest that much time in it, which was surprising. Attack of the Clones actually was an improvement in 4K but still not up to snuff. Revenge of the Sith was the first one they really nailed, in the release time sequence.

I am feeling in part that it was Disney trying to market their 9-movie 4k package in March. That's why they wouldn't bump the final film back six months even though they should and could have, to improve the quality instead of rushing it out the door and editing it in the freaking field. So they could have created a better 4k package but again were tied to their money inflow schedule. Oh well.

 

[Totenkindly]

^^ I guess no one told them that current administration took any LGBT demographic questions off the 2020 census. No longer funny.

(Well, kinda wasn't funny anyway. Those straight-to-home Disney sequels are about as enjoyable as these two clips. But that was the point.)

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well, I guess the positive is that I can watch all 30 seasons of the Simpsons, a show I saw about 5-6 seasons of, then stopped watching years ago.

I'd have to probably watch 2 episodes a day to make it through the series in a year, which isn't going to happen, but I've started walking back through at least the Halloween episodes. I'm dyin', I forgot how hard I used to laugh at some of this. Plus, some of their voice cameos -- they got Neil Gaiman to do the cat's voice for their "Coraline" spoof.

I might watch some of the old moviesI remember from my childhood, that will probably suck now as an adult but I was so fond of it when young. (For example, the Kurt Russell "Dexter Riley" sci lab comedies, or the Witch Mountain stuff, etc.) Don't know if I can brave the Herbie lovebug films or Apple Dumpling Gang, though.

I was shocked to see Old Yeller only runs about 75 minutes. Really?? I thought that dog took a lot longer to die...

 

[Totenkindly]

I watched the 1961 and 1999 (?) versions of The Parent Trap now. I knew the latter one pretty well, but haven't seen the first since I was very young and so had forgotten everything.

I'm kind of impressed that the 1999 version is actually a film remake that hits a lot of the same beats as the 1961 version but does better with weeding out the dead space / extraneous characters and also scrubs out some of the worse characterizations in the original. In other words, it's an actual remake that hits similar beats (including certain scenes and lines) while being its own thing and improving the story while also updating it to a more modern setting.

The 1961 version is still enjoyable on its own (and Haley Mills is decent) but times have changed -- there's stuff in that film that kind of negs on characters from the perspective of gender stereotypes without seemingly being aware. The 1999 version does away with a lot of that, faults are ascribed to particular characters rather than genders and both parents actually scan as fallible but likable, neither of which is trying to manipulate the other, they're both just being played by their kids a bit. They are both decent people who just couldn't make their original marriage work, and have much more chemistry than in the original film. There's a better sense of pacing and timing throughout as well.

And it's before Lindsey Lohan became a hot mess. Sometimes it's easy to forget how talented she had been.


I'm also doing the "Freaky Friday" comparison, although I'm not really liking the original as much either even though I remember more of it. The biggest point is that the mom and daughter aren't necessarily acting like the other that we see in the first few minutes, both seem to be more stereotypes of "uptight mom" and "slobbish kid" once they trade places. They should have taken a few more minutes to really establish a unique baseline, and then actually have the other mimic the baseline. And there's this unsettling moment early on, when Annabelle is in her mom's body but she's married to her father... awkward. It's cool seeing Jodie Foster, though, when young -- she's still so much who she is now, just a younger less weathered person.

 

[Totenkindly]

The copy of Office Space I ordered a month ago finally arrived. (Thanks, COVID.)

I hadn't watched it for years, but it still feels relevant today, working in Systems. Man. I also just love it when they go all gangsta on that stolen printer -- I think we all can identify.

(And Jennifer Aniston looks so young, she was probably in her late 20's or something. But I guess this was her Friends years too... I never really watched that show or got into it.)

I think it's funny that Mike Judge plays the Chotchkie's manager who berates Aniston's character for not wearing enough flair.

THis is amusing, cuz I hate that guy in the film:
The guy from “Office Space” has lost his lawsuit against “illegal flair” — Quartz

Also:
TGI Fridays Got Rid Of Flair Because Of Office Space - CINEMABLEND

I thought it was nice Michael McShane (whose first name is misspelled in the front credits, wow) got a bit part in this film. I was big into him with the British incarnation of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" He didn't really make the jump to the American version, although Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie did. I think Ryan Stiles has gotten the most mileage out of that show, although McShane (bit roles, like in A Bug's Life), Greg Proops (Two headed radio announcer for the pod race in Phantom Menace, etc.), Tony Slattery (outraged boss from The Crying Game), and of course Wayne Brady have been in some other things. (Brady did become a regular on the American version later in its run.)

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Rogue One's last third is so amazing. The sense of movement in the space and air is palpable even on the small screen; there are moments that never fail to induce vertigo each time I watch it. The stuff on the ground is equally exciting; I particular enjoy the labyrinthine journey into an enemy stronghold that is strongly reminiscent of ANH (in a good way, without being derivative).

I had high hopes for Rise of Skywalker doing something differently (even though I had pretty big doubts about the story itself) but it was kind of a tease. When I want something to be like Star Wars, I don't mean that I want to include things from Star Wars. I mean that I want it to evoke the same feelings. Wonder, adventure, excitement, hope, etc; you can't evoke that just by bringing Luke's X-wing back one final time.

Anyway, I'll get to ROS eventually, and I'll see what my opinion is on it the second time around.

 

[Totenkindly]

I've got access to ROS on Disney plus but I cant really stomach it again. I just rewatched the ruined star destoyer scene and that's about all I can handle.

 

[Stigmata]

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood actually gets better everytime I watch it, especially now that I have a better understanding of the backstory.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I've got access to ROS on Disney plus but I cant really stomach it again. I just rewatched the ruined star destoyer scene and that's about all I can handle.

The more I learn about "Duel of Fates" the more I was Treverrow had been kept involved in some capacity. It seems to have answered most of my story /character gripes with ROS. I don't know if the final battle would have been on the level of Rogue One, but I like that Rose is included, Coruscant is a big part of the story, Kylo doesn't get redeemed, the Emperor is only a hologram, and Rey actually uses the new lightsaber she built, which is a saberstaff (it boggles my mind that they didn't do that).

Also, yes to Luke following up on his promise to "see ya round kid". Fun fact.... Luke's last line there is actually the last line of Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro. Johnson had to have seen that. Which is why I stick to my controversial opinion that Johnson understood what this was all abou (even if it kind of flies in the face of the previous movie)t; he actually looked at some of the same sources that inspired Lucas. (And while we're at it, Star Wars is far less a direct copy of The Hidden Fortress than A Fistful of Dollars is of Yojimbo.) Mifune's character arc in that movie, by the way, involves him learning that "the best swords are kept in their sheaths" and it really mirrors the concept of the Jedi at its best. I just really like the Jedi best as reluctant badasses, which TLJ actually pulled off really well IMO.

Also, how lame is it that ROS shows Luke's death as having little impact? Sorry, I'm just very sore about how ROS went out of its way to undo so much of the stuff I liked about what I thought was the best movie in the trilogy. I suppose people felt TLJ did the same to its predecessor; if they did, I can understand why they wouldn't care for the movie.

 

[Population: 1]

The most interesting characters in Apocalypse Now were supporting roles or actors that barely had a line. The Roach, the haunted looking soldier with the M-79 at the Do Lung Bridge, only had a couple of lines, but to me he had one of the most memorable performances in the movie.

Warning: Not for delicate ears.

 

[Totenkindly]

The more I learn about "Duel of Fates" the more I was Treverrow had been kept involved in some capacity. It seems to have answered most of my story /character gripes with ROS. I don't know if the final battle would have been on the level of Rogue One, but I like that Rose is included, Coruscant is a big part of the story, Kylo doesn't get redeemed, the Emperor is only a hologram, and Rey actually uses the new lightsaber she built, which is a saberstaff (it boggles my mind that they didn't do that).

Also, yes to Luke following up on his promise to "see ya round kid". Fun fact.... Luke's last line there is actually the last line of Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro. Johnson had to have seen that. Which is why I stick to my controversial opinion that Johnson understood what this was all abou (even if it kind of flies in the face of the previous movie)t; he actually looked at some of the same sources that inspired Lucas. (And while we're at it, Star Wars is far less a direct copy of The Hidden Fortress than A Fistful of Dollars is of Yojimbo.) Mifune's character arc in that movie, by the way, involves him learning that "the best swords are kept in their sheaths" and it really mirrors the concept of the Jedi at its best. I just really like the Jedi best as reluctant badasses, which TLJ actually pulled off really well IMO.

Also, how lame is it that ROS shows Luke's death as having little impact? Sorry, I'm just very sore about how ROS went out of its way to undo so much of the stuff I liked about what I thought was the best movie in the trilogy. I suppose people felt TLJ did the same to its predecessor; if they did, I can understand why they wouldn't care for the movie.

Thanks for the background / connection to Kurosawa.

I don't think Johnson undid things -- he just answered threads started by TFA in frustrating ways at time for some. There was actually wholesale undoing by ROS. Anyway, I won't say more here since ROS has its own thread, and I think this thread feels more like a catch-all for films that do not have their own threads.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Thanks for the background / connection to Kurosawa.

Yeah, they were on TCM last month, and I got to check a few of them out.

I don't think Johnson undid things -- he just answered threads started by TFA in frustrating ways at time for some. There was actually wholesale undoing by ROS. Anyway, I won't say more here since ROS has its own thread, and I think this thread feels more like a catch-all for films that do not have their own threads.

Good point; Rogue One (which probably also has its own thread) just started me thinking about Star Wars in general, and things kind of proceeded from there.

 

[Totenkindly]

Got my 4K copy of The Mask of Zorro today and watched the first 40 minutes over lunch. It is like watching a completely new film, the colors (reds, blues, yellows) pop, I am noticing secondary characters in the background I had missed before, the sound implementation is good and I might have heard a line or two I had missed on a lower-quality DVD copy.

I am really loving this film. Weirdly, I started rewatching Her last night (I haven't watched it since it came out) and Matt Lesher is in that film as well.... in fact Her is full of actors who I probably just didn't know at the time (like Olivia Wilde, Rooney Mara, Chris Pratt, etc.) So then today I start watching TMoZ and Matt Lesher plays Harrison Love -- I looked up a bit and he's based on Harry Love, who actually takes down Joaquin the bandit IRL and sticks his head in a jar (Alejandro's brother in the film, Alejandro is the fiction). So there are elements of history baked into the plot.

 

[Totenkindly]

Briefly was watching some ROS videos where the critics were discussing Abrams over-reliance on nostalgia in many of his more recent films (typically when he is doing franchise films and/or near-remakes), and then was briefly thinking about Spectre, the last Bond pic that came out. I think it was one of the failings of that movie where the dramatic crux relied (essentially) on nostalgic resonance and not much else, similar to the highly predicted character reveal of Abrams' "Star Trek Into Darkness" film.

Basically we were supposed to recoil, gasping, at the huge reveal of the enemy in this film, without a lot of the emotional underpinning that would have earned such a response. (Compare with the prior film, Skyfall, considered one of the best Bond films, which is self-contained + builds off Bond's relationship with M which has been established in multiple films.)

If you've been living under a rock, Bond's nemesis is canon-baddie Blofield, which people were ALSO predicting as much as we all figured out Cumberbatch was Khan in STID. For viewers unacquainted with the Bond universe, the reveal means nothing; meanwhile, in this one film we are introduced to the character in this film alone, about how Bond had a stepfamily, but there's little emotion residue connected to that backstory. It only appears in this film as additional backstory that has little resonance with earlier films. This might have been a bigger deal if it had been set up in prior films -- you know, like Bond had this stepbrother with whom he had a conflicted relationship and maybe he was still harboring emotions about it. Nope. It just shows up and suddenly he's to blame for everything that has been going wrong with the world. We're supposed to be shocked when Oberholzer (or whatever his name is) ends up pulling off the scooby doo mask and ends up being Blofield... and further nostalgic dependence when he is scarred in an explosion created by Bond to effect his escape, since the original Blofield had a horrible facial scar.

Spectre is shot beautifully but lacks a lot of emotional impetus since it relies so much on the reveal. There's little actual generated emotion. Even the romantic chemistry feels lacking, despite the two talented actors in the roles.

I guess a counterpoint to this would be the revelation in Captain America: The Winter Soldier of

Bucky Barnes being the Winter Soldier in the Marvel franchise. Comic fans would have known this as well, but the film actually earns any emotional response to the reveal for viewers of the MArvel films because the THe First Avenger spends a lot of time establishing their friendship, how close they were, and showing Bucky's "death" and how deeply it affected Steve, especially when displaced from his own time. Losing Bucky and (mostly) Peggy Carter were two of his largest emotional wounds.

The Winter Soldier drags out this reveal to about the same stage of the film as Spectre, but it's so much more a gut punch because the franchise established it dramatically rather than just relying on external sources / nostalgia.

It's becoming disheartening to see film substance based on nostalgia as their main mark of quality. It was like Ready Player One, which was visually nice at times, but relied mainly on tossing in lots of pop culture references from the 80's to generate affection -- while sometimes completely missing the mark of the substance of the image, catching only the superficial elements. (One of the most egregious cases being The Iron Giant, which in the beloved film has as its linchpin that the Giant is more than a weapon or gun -- it's the whole underlying point of the freaking film, that the Giant can define himself as more -- and then in RPO he's used superficially for warm fuzzies as -- you guessed it -- a weapon of mass destruction in the video game realm. RPO uses the surface image to generate nostalgia while misunderstanding the substance of the image.)

Pop culture references are kind of cool and can work in some ways (Stranger Things still relies too much on it but manages a bit of depth otherwise at times; and parody shows like Family Guy and THe Simpsons can totally exist on them, depending on the intelligence behind how the references might be combined in the shows -- and ironically there is still actual affection in the relationships among Simpsons characters, established over many years of the show), but in general we've been moving into a surface, not substance era; and we need to get back to deeper storytelling that supports itself internally rather than just throwing out superficial references to better films.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Chronological order works surprisingly well for the MCU films

 

[Unkindloving]

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood actually gets better everytime I watch it, especially now that I have a better understanding of the backstory.

Do you find yourself more or less aware of Tarantino's affinity to feet on rewatches?

 

[Stigmata]

Do you find yourself more or less aware of Tarantino's affinity to feet on rewatches?

I actually hadn't ever really paid that much attention to it but upon reading this post I just had mental flashes to all the different scenes throughout his films where he showcases feet. Cannot unseen now.

 

[Totenkindly]

"This little piggy..." bwa ha ha. come on, little piggy! wiggle!

 

[Totenkindly]

Finally watched Birds of Prey last night on bluray (got a rental from redbox for 88 cents after discount). Looks nice, high energy, and I laughed a ton during it... but kind of forgettable. I wish it had felt meaningful, but it's kind of a throwaway, good for about 90 minutes of laughs and not much rewatch value. I blame that on the script, not on the directing or actors really. What's it mean to be truly emancipated? The film could have gotten some emotional power if it had really dug into what that meant... and heck you can do it, look at Kick Ass. That's a similar genre'ed film that has heart.