Topic: The Movie Thread

I saw The Little Mermaid on Disney+ earlier. I have fond memories of that film as I went with a load of younger relatives to see it in the cinema when it was released, while the adults did boring grown up stuff. It was... ok. I seemed to lose a bit of interest just after Ariel kissed the Prince and then snapped back when she got her voice back. It seemed to hold up better than Thor, with no buffering and certainly looked better than I was expecting.

I don't think I'll be keeping the service as there is not enough content that I think I would watch on a regular basis. I saw a couple of episodes of The Mandalorian which was ok and had nice original trilogy feel to it, but nothing to keep me signed up. I will probably revisit it later in the year and see if there is more stuff that interests me.

@JohnnyShoulder The Mandalorian gets better in the second half. But if your not much of a SW fan then it may never click for you.
It was awesome to get to watch Onward for “free” - a big budget movie that literally was released into theaters a month ago. Standard Pixar fare, but I liked the magic slant to it and the whole tale of two brothers on a quest thing. Frozen II is also really quite new and recently out of theaters. I also need to watch The Good Dinosaur, a movie I never had interest in but several people on here stated the hold it up as Disney/Pixar’s best work, so I need to check it out. Also, I need to see Coco again. I think that movie is under appreciated.

I’m also taking the opportunity to use Disney+ to watch all the live action renditions that I never saw because they got clobbered by the critics and the audience. The only one I’ve seen in the past was Cinderella, which I thought was great — actually better than the original animated version. But after that they have all been poorly received. So I streamed The Lion King the other day, and... it’s actually not too bad. I think I read somewhere on here someone said it was well done but a purely unnecessary movie because the original animated show is still leagues better. I think I would mostly agree with that. The live action realism is quite impressive and I thought it was visually stunning. Timone and Pumbaa were the highlights and really well voice acted. And James Earl Jones is, well.. the golden voice of course, so you gotta love Mufasa.

Next I think I’ll try Aladdin. I’m bracing myself for a huge let down, but we’ll see. Then it’ll be Beauty and the Beast, and Lady and the Tramp, and Dumbo. For some reason The Jungle Book is trapped up in some contract on another service for a while, like Solo: A Star Wars Story, so I’ll have to wait for that.

I’m also hoping to use D+ to finally watch The Clone Wars and Rebels, as well as to rewatch the prequel trilogy recently. I have Marvel Inhumans, Marvel Runaways, and some old X-Men and Spider-Man animated series to dabble in as well. Some of the classics from the vault I really want to see again, like The Sword in the Stone — probably the most underrated Disney show ever.

I also watched a little bit of one of the Hostile Planet nature documentaries for a while in the background while I did some work in the background. It was high quality and visually beautiful.

Honestly, now that I put it all together, I’ve used Disney+ way more than Netflix since I’ve had it. And this before the new Marvel shows have even come out.

But obviously it’s not for everyone. There is a surprisingly large amount of content, however.

@Th3solution As a huge fan of the Runaways comics, I was really annoyed at how the head honchos at Marvel decided to axe every single show that was on air. It finally hit its stride in the 3rd season (which isn’t on D+ yet) and it was cut for no apparent reason.

@Th3solution I've already seen all the live action remakes I want to so far, and if I wanted to see any of them I can get them on 4K UHD blu ray from the rental service I use. At least that way I'm not in the hands of the internet gods throttling my bandwidth. I've been watching Star Wars films all my life (the first film was released the same year I was born) so consider my self a fan of the films, but I'm going subscribe to a service just to watch one show or just for when I fancy watching a classic Disney movie (which is quite rare).

The main thing wrong with the The Lion King is that all the animals had no little or no character and emotion to them due to them being realistic and not be able to emote things with their face. It came across as really weird and soulless, especially when it came to the musical numbers. As a flim it was ok, but like with the other remakes all that it really improved on over the original were the visuals, and it's not something I would watch again.

@RogerRoger Coco is emotionally intense. It had a strong effect on me!

@JohnnyShoulder I agree on most of your impressions of The Lion King. Sounds like I enjoyed it a smidge more than you but I think you nailed it with the “soulless” descriptor. This primarily came across with Nala and the romance with her feeling flat. Scar also lacked punch, despite this version of him being portrayed much more ruthless, yet without the extensive facial animations of the original version he lacked personality. Mufasa and Simba’s relationship was adequately communicated because Mufasa was a rather stoic father-figure even in the original.

As far as your comments on the value of the service, I would agree that it’s wise to save $6 a month if you don’t have some regular consumption of the product. The good thing about jumping in and out and/or waiting for a time when more content that you want shows up in D+ is that unlike Netflix and Amazon Prime, all the content on D+ is assumed to be permanently on there, since Disney owns all those properties. So a year from now you should still be able to watch Holes or BFG or Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Pirates of the Caribbean whatever other random show you might want to. Not so with other services outside their original content. Which reminds me, I really need to cue up Bumblebee before it disappears from Amazon Prime...

But yeah, I waste a lot of money on these streaming services that I hardly use. I guess I could say the same for PS+ with all those games in my backlog I never play from it. The one value though from these services that I do like it the barrier to try something new is quite low (just time - still a precious commodity, mind) whether it be a game or a movie or a TV series. Without PS+ I don’t think I’d have ever got around to Bloodborne or Titanfall 2 among others that I quite adore now.

@RogerRoger Most Disney pictures suffer from the same recycled format, and so Onward feels familiar, even though it tries to add a new setting. Unfortunately, Disney and Pixar have pumped out great cinema content (imo) and are victims of their own success. But why every single Disney or Pixar movie has to have the story revolve around a dead parent or parents is beyond me. I can count on one hand the number of major Disney productions in which the protagonist has not had a parent or both parents or a close family member die as one of the story beats (really, can you think of many?) So Onward unfortunately feels too familiar in that regard, and so it cheapens the whole “going on a quest together” which would have been fun otherwise. But since Life is Strange 2 resonated with you on the two brothers tale, then this might strike some good emotional notes. It’s definitely worth 90 minutes of your time. Would it have been worth $10 plus the overpriced popcorn and soda at the theater? Probably not. And maybe Disney realized this and figured the pandemic was a sign that they needed to cut their losses and just use it as a vehicle to get eyes on their streaming service.
Coco is much more unique and like @mookysam says, feels more genuinely emotional and powerful. I was surprised how much I liked it.

@RogerRoger Jungle Book is probably my favourite out of the live action remakes that I've seen (and I've not seen them all). The original was never a favourite of mine though, but I did prefer Mowgli as I thought it had the better story and characters. The effects were much better in Jungle Book with the financial muscle of the big D behind it.

@Th3solution It is something that i plan to revisit later in the year, but I'm in no rush to sign up as I have plenty to watch on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I think there were a few shows which I heard about when D+ was first annouced which had me mildly interested. Not sure whether anything has been delayed because of COVID-19.

Plus The Mandalorian is only up to episode 5 so far in the UK and I've just finished the fourth one but only got a couple of days left on my trial.

Good point about the content being a permanent fixture, I never thought of that.

A Quite Place - enjoyed it, didn’t seem very long for some reason and didn’t think it would go the way it did. Liked the monsters actually, was worried they would be a bit too cheap looking. Looking forward to where they go with the second one.

Freehold (Two Pigeons) - watched this one afterwards, very weird film about a wide boy estate agent and some weird “thing” living his is flat, messing with him. Watch it!

@LN78 yeah that would of made more sense than my idea to set up a permitter of speakers with a 2 mile radius, get them playing nonestop drum and bass and live in the middle.

@LN78 I heard they banned popcorn etc during showings of the original?

I watched Eraserhead again. It’s still one of my favourite movies, bonkers, somewhat terrifying and strangely heartwarming all in one. It’s such a shame about Jack Nance, he was a superb actor and I would have loved to see him return for the Twin Peaks revival.

@Th3solution @RogerRoger I don’t think I’ve actually enjoyed a Pixar movie since Inside Out. I wasn’t a fan of Coco, Finding Dory or Incredibles 2. I find it strange that a company who released hugely original, nuanced stories just seemed to fall a bit flat after Toy Story 3. Wall-E and Ratatouille are two of my favourite movies, never mind Pixar movies and I’d rather they didn’t try making a sequel to either of them and just leave them alone.

@nessisonett I refuse to watch Coco as it seems they just ripped off The Book of Life from a few years ago.

Just watched VFW, that was pretty gnarly. It had William Sadler in it too, which was pretty neat.

Watched Suspiria last night on Amazon Prime. Man it's f'd up. It's a re-imagining of a 70's film which I've never heard of. But do not confuse this with a lazy cash grab remake. At 2 hours 30 mins it's a long film, and it is a slow burn in places especially in the middle section. It is set in 1977 in Berlin and uses real life events as a bit of background for the story, unfortunately I did feel it added much apart from being used to explain why a girl went missing. There are some really horrific scenes mixed together with a haunting soundtrack from Thom Yorke from Radiohead.

The cast are excellent, especially Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton who actually played 3 roles in the film. I genuinely did not know this before I watched the film and so glad I was not aware of this.

It a fascinating, if not an easy watch, and found I was glued to the screen for the most part. If you enjoyed Midsommar, you will probably enjoy this, but it is less well crafted.

@JohnnyShoulder Suspiria is a brilliant movie. I probably prefer the original Argento movie but they’re both great. Dakota Johnson’s underrated as an actress because of the 50 Shades movies.

@kyleforrester87 Happy to see you enjoyed A Quiet Place! I don't love it as much as most, but Emily Blunt was totally snubbed for an Oscar nomination for that film. Really well made and I'm a bit depressed about the fact that the sequel got delayed!

@JohnnyShoulder I just watched Suspiria a few weeks ago and completely agree with what you've said. It's an incredible piece of film that I certainly won't forget any time soon. I'd personally say it was miles better than Midsommar, but to each their own!

@LN78 @nessisonett @Tjuz I've just watched a few bits (no pun intended) YouTube and Tilda Swinton wore a prothestic penis the whole time she was playing the male doctor, just just for when he was nude at the end. I love hearing about when actors go above and beyond what is required for their role

@LN78 Yeah seen those. Don't remember too much about MC but WNTAK stays long in the memory. She is one of those actors that even in bad films she manages to rise above it and put in stellar performances. You seen Snowpiercer? She is brilliant in that, hilarious at times. It was directed by the same bloke that did Parasite, Bong Joon-ho. Only recently realised that he also directed the excellent The Host. One of his other films, Okja is on Netflix. Which stars Tilda Swinton!

@LN78 Is it anything like his performance in Velvet Buzzsaw? I really like JG but he can sometimes be a bit OTT in the old acting department, especially with his eyes. Nightcrawler is a near perfect performance you can get imo.

Be interesting to hear your thoughts on Snowpiercer. I though it was a little but over hyped and all over the place, but still a good watch. Think it would be worth a repeated watch.