Topic: The Movie Thread

@WanderingBullet Oh... That's certainly a bold decision. It looks like a Ken Block via Mad Max cobble-together.

Can't say I'm enamored with the design work of this film so far.

@Tjuz I think Mulan will bomb, coronavirus or not.

@Tjuz Totally forgotten that Mulan's releasing this month. The Jungle Book was the last live-action Disney movie that I've gone to the cinemas to watch but I'm actually quite interested in Mulan since it's not a musical and also a shot for shot adaptation.

@KALofKRYPTON Affleck's Batman has set the bar for me fighting wise. He's also a pretty good Bruce Wayne and I'm not even a fan of him as an actor. As for the new movie, I'll be very disappointed if it's similar to the choreography and fight scenes we saw in the Dark Knight Trilogy.

@WanderingBullet i hope it's not too much like The Dark Knight Trilogy, this might be a unpopular opinion but i wasn't a fan

@WanderingBullet Batfleck is the bomb! Best on-screen Batman in so many ways - especially the brute force fighting.

Bale's arms up pirouette thing was always a bit meh.

@FullbringIchigo Hahaha, I went through my disdain for the Nolan trilogy last week, you’re not alone!

So I went to see the new adaptation of The Invisible Man and... it was pretty good! It's practically a one-woman show as we watch Elizabeth Moss gradually descend into madness and paranoia over the course of the film. Unlike a lot of Hollywood media, it does a good job of embedding its themes within the context of the narrative. A bit like Verhoeven's 2000 film Hollow Man, this explicitly descends into the realm of horror as the titular character abuses his ability to harass women; unlike that film, though, this is rooted in a female perspective of abuse, so the focus isn't voyeuristic so much as it is paranoid. The main character is abused throughout the film by an invisible force that seems to focused on isolating her by making everyone else around her think she's nuts.

It's difficult to say the film is enjoyable, but it is a really solid horror film, even if you ignore the themes completely. The film does an amazing job of building an insane level of tension by focusing on negative space and effectively controlling the sound design to build a sense of almost relentless paranoia. The unpredictability of never knowing when Moss' invisible assailant will strike again is terrifying. In a big way, this feels much more like a spiritual successor to a sadly underrated 1982 horror film titled The Entity, which also features this dynamic of a woman being abused and terrified by an invisible force that she is helpless to defend against.

If I had to offer criticism of the film, I'd say it's unfortunately too reliant on genre tropes at times, and, while very effective, I didn't appreciate the abundance of jump scares. The climax and denouement are also kind of disappointing insofar as they don't fit well with the rest of the film. Still, a really effective piece of horror cinema overall.

@Ralizah If I weren't already enthused by your review (I was), your mention of The Entity should elevate anyone's interest!

Shame about the conclusion of the film then, but I'll stick it on the list.

@KALofKRYPTON i'll be honest i still prefer Keaton over all the others, Affleck was good though although i feel he needed batter material, Val Kilmer wasn't that bad really but the movie sucked and Bale never felt right to me, the whole thing felt forced and as for Clooney well he can go do one as far as i'm concerned,he was terrible in the role, terrible Bruce Wayne and a Terrible Batman

i'm not counting Adam West in this because his Batman was supposed to be silly and campy and he played it well

@LN78 Go watch it.

I saw it when I was a kid. Scared the crap out of me then and is still a genuinely creepy thing to watch in my adulthood.

@LN78 I feel like I should put a disclaimer on Streets of Fire, but i won't - I thoroughly enjoyed it!

@KALofKRYPTON The last half hour or so of the film isn't really bad or anything, it's just... I dunno... more conventional? It felt like the film lost a bit of its spine at the last second. But it doesn't take away from the rest of the experience.

I watched The Entity when I was a teenager, and someone pitched it to me as "a horror movie about a ghost rapist lolol." I didn't exactly get the titillating, exploitation movie thrills out of it that I was expecting, but it did burrow itself into the back of my brain and has been there ever since, especially when I'm alone in my shower . Now I have to wonder if that person ever even watched the film!

@LN78 I've never seen Repulsion (or even heard of it), but I guess I'll need to add it to my ever-growing list of horror films to watch!

Doctor Sleep is fantastic. Just don't go in expecting a horror movie, even if it does have at least one genuinely frightening and repulsive sequence in it.

@FullbringIchigo I enjoyed the first two movies even though I wasn't a fan of Bale's portrayal of Batman. Quite liked him as Bruce Wayne, though but the Batsuits, the fighting and his boogeyman voice just didn't work for me. At least the stories were good and Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger were great in their respective roles. I even thought Anne Hathaway was a pretty good Catwoman. Not to mention, both the Tumbler and Batpod were pretty cool too.

If Matt Reeves's going for the whole "grounded in realism" approach then I really do hope they take some notes from Netflix's Daredevil. At least, the fight scenes in that series were awesome and memorable.

@WanderingBullet being honest i liked Batman Begins but i just feel as a whole the trilogy wasn't that good, especially the 3rd film i mean Bane steals all Batmans money in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses and gets away with it?

the ENTIRE police department goes underground to catch him, what kind of idiot would make that decision there is no way in hell they would do something like that, now sending the military in maybe i can get that but the whole of the GCPD? nope

then there is the bit at the end, first there was no way Batman had time to escape that bomb blast radius it was a nuke not a stick of dynamite and second Bruce Wayne was a famous man all round the world and not one person in that restaurant recognised him?

of course then there is the fact that you couldn't understand a damn thing Bane said

as for the actors yeah some of them were good and Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson are always great in whatever roles they do although if i'm honest i didn't think Ledger's was as legendary as people make out, it was good don't get me wrong but i think the main reason it's so "beloved" is because of the actors untimely death and the media that surrounded it

as for Bale i'm sorry but i just didn't buy his Bruce or his Bat, he did get the spoilt rich git down though but then again if the gossip to be believed that's what he is like IRL anyway so that wouldn't be hard for him

i did like the Tumbler though, i even still blast around Gotham in it on Arkham Knight from time to time

@FullbringIchigo I agree that the third movie was bad and I wasn't a fan of Bane either. Hardy does like to talk in different and sometimes weird accents.haha

I do have to say that the voice actor impersonating Hardy's voice is pretty spot on and funny.

I watched JoJo Rabbit. It’s a movie that wasn’t on my radar and only through its publicity from the Oscars that my interest was piqued. I’ve always liked history and WWII era is one of the most fascinating to me. I also liked Waititi’s Thor Ragnarok, especially for its sharp and witty humor, so I just had to see what all the fuss was about with JoJo Rabbit.
I guess I’d say that I liked it. I’m not necessarily a fan of dark humor, and the treatment of Nazi Germany in such a comedic light is certainly off-putting initially, but amazingly I didn’t find it offensive. I could see how some would recoil at the light treatment of the themes, but taken as a whole, the film is not necessarily irreverent. In the early parts of the movie, after you get over the initial unconventional portrayal of Hitler and the Nazi’s, you get into a groove with the humor and just overall weirdness and feel like you know where it’s going, only to have it throw in some unexpected curve balls.
If you like Wes Anderson’s style (Personally, I’ve only seen The Grand Budapest Hotel. People tell me I really need to watch The Royal Tenembaums ) then you would like this because apparently JoJo Rabbit could be compared to his films.
I would have a hard time recommending it universally, but I would say it is worth a watch if you want a film with heavy themes mixed with non-stop humor. I figure that’s not a combination that most people are actually looking for.

@Th3solution Yeah, given that Waititi’s Jewish, I reckon he feels that the best way to beat fascists is to just poke fun at them. I really liked Jojo Rabbit and felt that it’s probably a good way of dealing with those dark themes. I think there would have been less ‘backlash’ about the film being too light if more people actually knew he was Jewish.

@Th3solution Mostly agree with your opinion. It's a weird little movie that I can't really say anything about for certain. I do think it's a bit overrated, particularly the screenplay. The third act was quite a mess and too sharp of a turn from the rest of the movie in my eyes. It has a cute ending though, and is pretty much enjoyable throughout. Didn't wow me, but certainly isn't a bad time. If we're talking Waititi, my opinion that Wellington Paranormal is the best thing to come out of his work remains!

I really like this breakdown of what has been shown of The Batman, especially the little bat mobile history and what he says about the bat symbol in the bat suit. Do you think I said the word bat enough times in that sentence? 😂

@JohnnyShoulder I've watched a few of his videos before. Not sure how accurate he is but he always seems to be very confident about his assumptions or theories.
The guy also loves to title his videos "First Look Teaser" which for me can be quite misleading at times since I always think that his talking about official video teasers.lol

@WanderingBullet Yeah that came up on my feed and I got a bit excited as I thought it was an official teaser trailer lol. Yeah it is only one one fans theory on it all, and he is not reporting it as a factual piece.