Random Movie Thoughts Thread

[Totenkindly]

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

haha, I always get Radcliffe and Wood confused.

 

[Totenkindly]

haha, I always get Radcliffe and Wood confused.

Lol yeah -- it is what led to this wonderful semi-well-known movie meme:

 

[Totenkindly]

I ended 2023 with watching del Toro's "Pacific Rim" which reminds me of Face/Off in the sense they are both emotion-driven (rather than necessarily logic-driven) films and are really enjoyable on that level. I have no desire to watch the sequel, but this first film just is quite the spectacle and feels so big (esp the kaiju vs jaegar fights). The characters are also larger than life, and I really enjoy the rivalry/camaraderie between the two scientists who are both played to extreme lengths by Burn Gorman and Charlie Day. But there's nothing like watching Gypsy Danger charging in to battle two kaiju at once and clobbering one with an oil tanker. The relationship between Pentecost and Mori Mako is also very touching.

I began 2024 with a very different film -- Aronofsky's "Black Swan." While there are criticisms of the sexuality of the film, my two thoughts: Leroy is rather disinterested in Nina long-term (you can tell by how neutrally he approaches her outside of teaching moments) but seems to be using sexuality as a way to trigger her to be less repressed, and also the sexuality of the film is less literal than shown, it is more symbolic of how Nina has been infantilized by her mother despite now being 28 years old, and to embrace sexuality is to embrace a grown woman's ability to be both fierce and autonomous rather than a little girl always seeking to please the authority figures in her life and being coddled constantly.

Nina has the "white swan" down perfectly -- innocent, fragile, doing everything perfectly to expectation, following all the rules laid down on her by adults. She struggles with being the black swan, who needs to be fierce, full of passion, rough around the edges and even embodying more chaos... and breaking rules to suit herself as needed rather than always looking for approval like a child. Early in the film, she imagines all the pictures of her mother actually watching her (their eyes move), and this is the scrutiny she feels and fears that she will do something "wrong" and earn disapproval by her parental figures. We see as Nina starts to emerge from her infantile state that her first acts of rebellion are against her mother, first with small things (and often then relenting immediately) but quickly becoming longer and more fierce acts of rebellion and potentially even striking out and hurting her mother in order to generate her own personal space and autonomy. Good girl Nina is terrified by all of this and vacillates back and forth, but slowly becomes more and more her own person as the film progresses even though to become this person, this grown adult woman, means feeling unsettled and sometimes even terrified by who she is becoming. A lot of her psychotic delusions revolve around imagining seeing a dark and twisted version of herself attacking or stalking her, and this is actually a pretty fair representation of what she is experiencing. It's a really great example of the shadow side that isn't necessarily evil or bad but often can feel very unsettling and contrary to the person we think we've been, yet the power of adulthood comes through embracing it rather than running from it.

What tells me that Aronofsky is a good director of actors is the fact he took two actresses who have pretty uneven performance records -- Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis -- and coaxed out these two great performances (as the white and black swans, Odette and Odile as per the ballet). Kunis in general can be pretty terrible with serious roles (and we see what happens when she gets no guidance like in "Jupiter Ascending" -- sorry Wachowskis, but man the actors in that film did not get clear guidance on tone), but here she is compelling; and Portman struggles when the director is not laying down clear expectation for what is needed (the most glaring example being Star Wars, because Lucas doesn't direct his actors in terms of emotional arc and just relies on their natural talent to push a scene through), but she is just remarkable here. She has the raw talent to deliver a performance like this but needed Aronofsky to push her in the right directions and make it coherent.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I began 2024 with a very different film -- Aronofsky's "Black Swan." While there are criticisms of the sexuality of the film, my two thoughts: Leroy is rather disinterested in Nina long-term (you can tell by how neutrally he approaches her outside of teaching moments) but seems to be using sexuality as a way to trigger her to be less repressed, and also the sexuality of the film is less literal than shown, it is more symbolic of how Nina has been infantilized by her mother despite now being 28 years old, and to embrace sexuality is to embrace a grown woman's ability to be both fierce and autonomous rather than a little girl always seeking to please the authority figures in her life and being coddled constantly.

Nina has the "white swan" down perfectly -- innocent, fragile, doing everything perfectly to expectation, following all the rules laid down on her by adults. She struggles with being the black swan, who needs to be fierce, full of passion, rough around the edges and even embodying more chaos... and breaking rules to suit herself as needed rather than always looking for approval like a child. Early in the film, she imagines all the pictures of her mother actually watching her (their eyes move), and this is the scrutiny she feels and fears that she will do something "wrong" and earn disapproval by her parental figures. We see as Nina starts to emerge from her infantile state that her first acts of rebellion are against her mother, first with small things (and often then relenting immediately) but quickly becoming longer and more fierce acts of rebellion and potentially even striking out and hurting her mother in order to generate her own personal space and autonomy. Good girl Nina is terrified by all of this and vacillates back and forth, but slowly becomes more and more her own person as the film progresses even though to become this person, this grown adult woman, means feeling unsettled and sometimes even terrified by who she is becoming. A lot of her psychotic delusions revolve around imagining seeing a dark and twisted version of herself attacking or stalking her, and this is actually a pretty fair representation of what she is experiencing. It's a really great example of the shadow side that isn't necessarily evil or bad but often can feel very unsettling and contrary to the person we think we've been, yet the power of adulthood comes through embracing it rather than running from it.

What tells me that Aronofsky is a good director of actors is the fact he took two actresses who have pretty uneven performance records -- Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis -- and coaxed out these two great performances (as the white and black swans, Odette and Odile as per the ballet). Kunis in general can be pretty terrible with serious roles (and we see what happens when she gets no guidance like in "Jupiter Ascending" -- sorry Wachowskis, but man the actors in that film did not get clear guidance on tone), but here she is compelling; and Portman struggles when the director is not laying down clear expectation for what is needed (the most glaring example being Star Wars, because Lucas doesn't direct his actors in terms of emotional arc and just relies on their natural talent to push a scene through), but she is just remarkable here. She has the raw talent to deliver a performance like this but needed Aronofsky to push her in the right directions and make it coherent.

People compare Black Swan to Fight Club. Do you think this is accurate? They share protagonists who are similar in the sense that they do what they are told, and the final outcome for the main character isn't that different. What is different is that there is not really anything equivalent to Project Mayhem; this is ultimately about one person and her struggles. I think you have it correctly when you say that the Black Swan isn't evil or bad; there's no desire to commit terrorism, for instance.

 

[Totenkindly]

People compare Black Swan to Fight Club. Do you think this is accurate? They share protagonists who are similar in the sense that they do what they are told, and the final outcome for the main character isn't that different. What is different is that there is not really anything equivalent to Project Mayhem; this is ultimately about one person and her struggles. I think you have it correctly when you say that the Black Swan isn't evil; there's no desire to commit terrorism, for instance.

I had never really made a connection between the two films. I guess you can stretch it to compare the Narrator + Tyler Durden to Nina Sayer and Lily, although Lily has an existence of her own -- it's Nina's perceptions that muddy and merge things in her consciousness. IOW, you can piece together what things Lily actually does do in the film (more or less) and which are Nina's subjugating her image psychologically to effect her own psychological transformation.

There's also a sense in which The Narrator and Nina are both trying to break free of a system they feel has been sapping the life from them, but the nature of the systems and the scope of the systems is very different. Fight Club is more about "men being repressed by the system" and supposedly reclaiming their autonomy, although by the end of the film we see how their reaction to feeling dead in life actually has simply made zealots/terrorists out of them and they're not necessarily better off. (The author and Fincher have noted that men who glamorize the film are missing the actual point of the film!) Meanwhile, Nina's journey is actually necessary, it's just that she is so extremely repressed that her act of breaking free is seemingly highly detrimental to her -- but her journey is actually a necessary one psychologically. The film doesn't really pull any punches though on how the shadow self can be unsettlingly to face, especially if it cannot be balanced (like the whole subplot with Beth). Basically what Nina needs to do is preserve both her light and dark impulses in one coherent personality.

 

[SensEye]

Rebel Moon P1 is kind of a hot mess and feels way underwritten in spots (or non-sensibly written) + missing character arc and back story material.

Agreed.

I watched this over the holidays, kind of by accident as I had heard nothing about it and was just randomly scanning for something to watch. It took me two tries. I watched half an hour or so in the first try, but both the plot and the dialog were too cheesy for me to continue. I could tell by the special effects and production values it was not some low budget hack job, but it sure felt like one.

Anyways, the next night I was still looking for something to watch and was too lazy to go looking for something new, so I went back to Rebel Moon. It remained cheesy and poorly scripted, but I toughed it out. I had no idea it was a part one, so when it ended, I thought - seriously, that's it? Then it pulled the old rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated plot twist and announced a part two is coming in April(?)

Probably not worth watching overall. It might have made a decent 10 episode mini series (or even a multi-season show if they could find some decent writers) as one can infer all the main characters and the evil empire have a significant backstory, but not knowing what it is makes all the characters seem shallow.

 

[Totenkindly]

That's a bummer you didn't know going in that it was a two-parter. Yes, the second half drops in April.

The thing is, they are also releasing extended versions of both parts in the spring/summer 2024. Apparently an entire HOUR of Part 1 was excised to make it PG-13 and more aimed at a younger audience, and Snyder has said that the entire Part 1 is rearranged/reedited and there's a lot of character arc and back story that was cut.

I mean, it's typical for Snyder's Extended Cuts of his films to be much better than the edited/theatrical versions -- all of his films improve with the additional material (and the infamous Whedon Justice League vs ZS Justice League is just the most blatant, Batman V Superman EC also is much more coherent) -- so I don't know why Netflix did this except I guess to hit the teenager demographic or something. But yeah, I wonder why I bothered. If there is ANY version of this film that is ANY good, it would easily be the EC.

I am still not convinced it will be good but it definitely sounds like cutting a whole hour of material from a three-hour film (to get it to two hours) probably gutted this one to insensibility.


--

So I stupidly joined a FaceBook group for the Synderverse just so I could make a comment about the film, and I've now had to read the stupidest posts available about how RM 1 is a 10/10 film and critics are morons and gush gush gush and anyone who disagrees is a hater and wishing hate at James Gunn and blah blah blah. I made an occasional measured comment from time to time, and once I got 14 likes and then 1 angry face from the same guy who was angry-facing anyone who said anything even remotely negative about the film. (I couldn't have been more kind in my criticism.)

All these poor man-children living in their parents' basements. I am left wondering whether they actually watch films to have anything to compare to. Like, the variety of their movie palette must be negligible. They should educate themselves a bit more on what good films look like. I happen to enjoy most of the extended cuts of Snyder's films, but man, they badly need to watch other types of film to get some perspective.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I had never really made a connection between the two films. I guess you can stretch it to compare the Narrator + Tyler Durden to Nina Sayer and Lily, although Lily has an existence of her own -- it's Nina's perceptions that muddy and merge things in her consciousness. IOW, you can piece together what things Lily actually does do in the film (more or less) and which are Nina's subjugating her image psychologically to effect her own psychological transformation.

There's also a sense in which The Narrator and Nina are both trying to break free of a system they feel has been sapping the life from them, but the nature of the systems and the scope of the systems is very different. Fight Club is more about "men being repressed by the system" and supposedly reclaiming their autonomy, although by the end of the film we see how their reaction to feeling dead in life actually has simply made zealots/terrorists out of them and they're not necessarily better off.

The irony is that they're cogs in a machine and aren't any more "free" than they were before. They ultimately don't have any more individuality than they did before. The speeches in the beginning seems like they could ring true at times but ultimately they lead to another system of control and repression.

Without getting too political, I think it's a perfect metaphor for what's being going on across many corners of the internet. Since this isn't the politics forum, I'll leave it at that.

(The author and Fincher have noted that men who glamorize the film are missing the actual point of the film!) Meanwhile, Nina's journey is actually necessary, it's just that she is so extremely repressed that her act of breaking free is seemingly highly detrimental to her -- but her journey is actually a necessary one psychologically. The film doesn't really pull any punches though on how the shadow self can be unsettlingly to face, especially if it cannot be balanced (like the whole subplot with Beth). Basically what Nina needs to do is preserve both her light and dark impulses in one coherent personality.

But she kills herself in the process, doesn't she? It doesn't seem like she makes it.

She does need to break free of the influence of her mother, though.

 

[Totenkindly]

The irony is that they're cogs in a machine and aren't any more "free" than they were before. They ultimately don't have any more individuality than they did before. The speeches in the beginning seems like they could ring true at times but ultimately they lead to another system of control and repression.

yup

But she kills herself in the process, doesn't she? It doesn't seem like she makes it.
She does need to break free of the influence of her mother, though.

It would seem that way at the film's end, although it fades out before that.

The film itself is modeled after a later iteration of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

Basically, the prince must choose a wife the following night, but he would rather marry for love. While out on a swan hunt to compensate (lol -- "I'm so depressed, let's go kill some shit"), he realizes the birds are enchanted women. The swan queen, Odette, can have her curse broken if a man who has never loved commits to loving her and only her -- but the evil sorcerer who enchanted the women enchants his daughter Odile to look like Odette the following night at the ball where the prince must select a wife, so that the prince pledges himself to Odile instead of Odette. The sorcerer then reveals his ruse and that the prince has just damned Odette to her curse forever. Not willing to spend the rest of her life as a swan, Odette suicides into the lake -- and the prince goes with her, to spend eternity with her in death even if they cannot be together in life. (This is the platform plummet we see in Black Swan.)

The ending has changed based on the specific production. Sometimes Odette and/or the prince lives, sometimes the sorcerer wins completely.

 

[Totenkindly]

And so it begins....

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, at least Georgina Campbell is still making films -- I'd watch anything she's in. I just hope it ends up being some better stuff eventually. (Barbarian was pretty good, at least. She just seems to be in the "horror" phase of her career right now.)

T.I.M. (film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

yup

It would seem that way at the film's end, although it fades out before that.

The film itself is modeled after a later iteration of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

Basically, the prince must choose a wife the following night, but he would rather marry for love. While out on a swan hunt to compensate (lol -- "I'm so depressed, let's go kill some shit"), he realizes the birds are enchanted women. The swan queen, Odette, can have her curse broken if a man who has never loved commits to loving her and only her -- but the evil sorcerer who enchanted the women enchants his daughter Odile to look like Odette the following night at the ball where the prince must select a wife, so that the prince pledges himself to Odile instead of Odette. The sorcerer then reveals his ruse and that the prince has just damned Odette to her curse forever. Not willing to spend the rest of her life as a swan, Odette suicides into the lake -- and the prince goes with her, to spend eternity with her in death even if they cannot be together in life. (This is the platform plummet we see in Black Swan.)

The ending has changed based on the specific production. Sometimes Odette and/or the prince lives, sometimes the sorcerer wins completely.

Huh, I never really saw any room for ambiguity with that ending, but I do remember not actually seeing it.

So in the movie is the sorcerer that big guy with horns that Nina casually says "hello" to? The punch-clock nature of that was amusing.

 

[SensEye]

And so it begins....

This kind of thing makes me chuckle. Apparently there is a movie out there called: Winnie the Pooh - Blood and Honey. Same kind of thing really. But it seems both these movies are really psycho's wearing a character mask type stories.

I think it would be better to do a full animated movie staring Mickey in true psychopath form. The Simpsons have already socialized the concept with Itchy & Scratchy.

 

[Totenkindly]

Huh, I never really saw any room for ambiguity with that ending, but I do remember not actually seeing it.

So in the movie is the sorcerer that big guy with horns that Nina casually says "hello" to? The punch-clock nature of that was amusing.

I think so? The other slimmer guy is the prince (and ironically, a professional ballet dancer and choreographer who has now been married to Portman for 11 years or something, I assume they met and fell in love on this film). Typically the sorcerer looks like a dark owl or something in terms of costuming, from what I had read....

This kind of thing makes me chuckle. Apparently there is a movie out there called: Winnie the Pooh - Blood and Honey. Same kind of thing really. But it seems both these movies are really psycho's wearing a character mask type stories.

Yeah, that is the gist. As soon as these properties hit public domain, they put out cheap horror films based on them because (1) low production costs and (2) juxtaposition with the "wholesome nature" of the property makes them stand out + also generates a lot of buzz even if it is negative.

I think it would be better to do a full animated movie staring Mickey in true psychopath form. The Simpsons have already socialized the concept with Itchy & Scratchy.

Oh sure, that would be even better -- but then you no longer have a cheap production cost or fast rollout time. Animated films take significant time and cost to make. This way, even if you barely make any money, you are still turning a profit.

 

[The Cat]

Marty sure does know how to spotlight a villain.​

 

[Totenkindly]

So about a year ago I pledged money / signed up for this Aliens documentary called Aliens Expanded, then promptly forgot about it and didn't really pay attention to the e-mails regarding it. I just noted it was taking a super-long time to come out.

In early December, I got an e-mail saying the first 100 people who responded could view the Assembly Cut (4 hours long!) and provide feedback. I was like WTH and immediately responded -- and got a slot.

I had hoped to watch it with my eldest but we never got to it. It needed to be done tomorrow morning my time, so I spent 3 hours yesterday watching, an hour today watching, and then an hour to fill out the lengthy survey.

It was just really really cool. It did not manage to get interviews from Weaver, Cameron, or Reiser (I wasn't really expecting them to be in it), and obviously Horner, Matthews, and Paxton have passed on now, but they had pretty much every other cast member, along with Matt Winston, other sound and visual effects guys, a psychologist to discuss PTSD and feminism and psychological concepts in the film, and some film commentators who provided some really insightful thoughts that were pretty balanced.

A few of the cast weren't really that useful (like the women playing Ferro and Dietrich, maybe Spunkmeyer although he did talk a lot), Mark Ralston (Drake) was unexpectedly articulate along with William Hope (Gorman), etc. It was really enjoyable even just being an assembly cut that still needed some trimming as well as visual and musical effects and clips still to be added. They even had some clips from Alan Dean Foster, and of course hearing from Henriksen is always nice.

I am really glad I invested in this and also got selected to provide input to the documentary. It just reminded me of how much I love this film, how much the characters mean to me, and how I might view it as Cameron's best film still. (Sorry, Titanic lovers.) I am so stoked for the 4K transfer to drop in March.

One comment I will make is that I love how Cameron pretty much had even the villains in this film feel sympathetic in some way. You feel bad for Coffey in "The Abyss" as his ship begins to implode, you feel bad for the T-1000 that deserves to be destroyed and yet it's horrific to watch its death throes in the molten iron as it desperately cycles back through its shapes and then turns inside out, you feel a bit bad for Quarritch a bit because he's such a competent and fearless villain (and then Avatar Way of Water gives him even more depth). I think the only villain I did not feel bad for was Hockley from Titanic, although you can empathize with them when he gives that sardonic laugh when he realizes he gave Rose his jacket with the Heart of the Ocean in it when he was trying to play her.

Despite being sleaze, Burke is still a person and there was a deleted scene of Ripley giving him a grenade to kill himself because he was impregnated and she's not going to force him to die an agonizing death even after what he planned for her. (That's my Ripley!) Hudson is such a coward for awhile and a whingy little bitch, but how he goes down at the end is nothing short of total heroism -- when the chips are down, he was there. Gorman surprisingly gets a redemptive arc, despite being portrayed as a totally ineffective theoretical leader constantly being shown up by others with less training; you can see him rethinking his actions and wanting to contribute rather than order people around, and he even goes back for Vasquez in an ill-fated rescue attempt and again like Hudson has this beautiful ending. Bishop is constantly "is he or isn't he an Ash?" and pulls through at the end. AAAAAND... the Alien Queen. She's smart, she's sharp, she's a mother as well raising her hive, and her motives are totally understandable -- and when Ripley kills her entire hive, then a mother's love will turn to ruthlessness. But I just love how cunning and intelligent she is, even if she needs to die.

 

[ceecee]

Marty sure does know how to spotlight a villain.​

He does. I also love that he regularly creates characters that are morally gray - not as easy to root for one over the other.

 

[The Cat]

He does. I also love that he regularly creates characters that are morally gray - not as easy to root for one over the other.

The Departed is just a treasure trove of this.

if you were ever a boy with Daddy issues Marty has written your struggle in nearly every movie.​

 

[ceecee]

The Departed is just a treasure trove of this.

if you were ever a boy with Daddy issues Marty has written your struggle in nearly every movie.​

Frank Costello (and Jack Nicholson's version of him) is my favorite Scorsese villain for the hilarity (she fell funny). I don't think another actor could have pulled of this kind of funny, particularly when dying.