Topic: The Movie Thread

I finally watched The Batman last night. It was quite good as it goes.

@ralphdibny I finally bit and rented it a couple of nights ago. I quite enjoyed it, I liked it tried things a bit differently than previous versions. I'd be curious to see where it goes if it gets a sequel.

I’ve finally got around to starting the trek through the Daniel Craig Bond films. I’ve completed Casino Royal and Quantum of Solace so far through Netflix. I have plans to gradually make my way through with Skyfall being next. I’m really annoyed that apparently Spectre is the only one not on any of my streaming services. I have both Skyfall and No Time to Die on Amazon Prime. Not sure how I’m going to watch Spectre, but I guess I’ll figure that out later. (I may have to rent it, which goes against my principles when I’m already paying a mint every month for all these blasted streaming services)

For now I’d say I’m relatively pleased with the first two movies. I’m surprised that I liked Quantum just as much as Casino. I had seen CR before and remember liking it, and I think that I saw parts of QoS in passing, but wasn’t really paying attention. Watching them back to back helped keep me engaged, because I didn’t realize how much each of these movies relate to each other. They really are direct sequels to one another, which I never realized before. I thought each Bond film was an independent stand-alone and could be watched a la carte, but watching Quantum without understanding what happened in Casino would really make things even more confusing than they already are. There’s too many double and triple agents and knowing friend from foe is hard enough, much less just having a solid foundation of Bond’s duties and mission. It’s all quite complex. So I feel like I’m prone to get the most out of these movies if I watch them in close proximity to one another.

The film direction and editing (especially with Quantum) doesn’t do it any favors either. There’s a lot of jumping around from a 10 minute action sequence all of a sudden to a plot point where you can’t be clear how we got from point A to point B.

Speaking of the action sequences and film direction — my biggest complaint of QoS was the hectic and hyperactive action scenes. It was kinda ridiculous how they edit these chase scenes and fight sequences with a couple thousand one-second dynamic blurred clips one right after the other. It’s like a visual representation of a migraine headache. You can hardly see what’s going on, just a quick flash of a speeding car or boat or a flying elbow to a villain’s face. The clips are just too fastly paced during those segments and they come too often. These movies shine the most when Craig has time to show off his steely blue eyes and actually give us some meaningful plot direction. Hopefully Skyfall’s action is paced better and edited in a less frenetic fashion. Casino wasn’t as manic as Quantum, which I appreciated, but it still suffered from a few weird plot jumping issues where I kept thinking “Now, how did we get here?”

Skyfall seems to be the most beloved, so I plan to get to it soon.

Persuasion is possibly the worst movie I’ve seen all year. I don’t know who thought ‘Jane Austen if she was a girlboss’ was a good idea. Utter, utter tripe. I’m all for modernised adaptations of classics (Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is great for example) but this movie felt like an AI was asked to generate a wine mum English teacher’s attempts to engage a bored class. Lines such as “I’m an empath” are beyond cringey. Persuasion is a beautiful story that relies on an understanding of social roles in Georgian England and the way that spinsters’ lives were fundamentally over before they were 30. This Netflix movie completely and utterly misses the point. Anne Elliott is not ‘single and thriving’ as she nauseatingly says in the movie, nor would she sit about drinking wine and crying hysterically. The whole point is that for basically everyone else, she’s ‘past her prime’ due to not marrying young after rejecting Wentworth. So the whole point is her getting a second chance at happiness with Wentworth at an older age. It’s a love story, not a weird ‘wink at camera’ slapstick comedy where she pees on trees and falls over.

I watched Stephen Kings IT the other day for the first time , not the original one , but the remake or whatever ; i don’t know anything about penny wise but my first impression of the movie is that it’s overrated as hell . the acting is so bad whenever the clown is on screen but i guess it’s hard to pretend to be shocked or afraid when you’re just staring at or running from a green screen i guess ….

@BearsEatBeets yeah me too, even though at the beginning and end of the film I told myself I'd be fine if I never see another Batman film. I am morbidly curious about what a sequel might hold 😅, especially as a quasi-adaptation of Zero Year.

In some ways, I don't want to give it too much credit but I think that's just me being stubborn. I do enjoy a slow burn film, one that's deliberate in every movement and bit of dialogue. Very Fincher-esque. The aesthetics were somewhere between Burton's films and Batman Begins too, with a little bit of Snyder's Watchmen thrown in for good measure.

I went in with low expectations but I think as a sum of all it's influences, The Batman is actually a decent film.

@ThereThere Except Fleabag is good. And witty.

@RogerRoger I’m looking forward to seeing how the whole thing ends up with Craig’s Bond. And I don’t mind lots of action in my movies, and in fact welcome it. The actual car, motorcycle, plane, and boat chase scenes are good in many ways (until they ran out of modes of vehicular transport 😂) as are the fight scenes, but they ruined some of the good stunt and effects work by making the shots too choppy.

The other observation I’ll make is that I wasn’t really sure what to think of M when I watched Casino Royale years ago. But this time, I think I’m beginning to understand her character. Before, I didn’t really like the awkward relationship with Bond, but now I think it’s quite brilliantly constructed (and performed).

@ThereThere Hopefully you find something that clicks with you soon! Usually I go for something I would not normally watch when I'm in a similar rut.

@RogerRoger Oh, the overlap of M may have been what confused me about her at first, thanks for clarifying that. Coming back to Bond films after several years of hiatus from them effectively washed the preconceived relationship with the Brosnan Bond from my mind so maybe that’s why the character clicked better this time around.

I was also confused because the ending of Casino seems to suggest that M is killed but obviously she survives and the plot weaves are clearer to me after paying attention to Quantum.

And with a name like Skyfall, if there’s not a jump from a skyscraper with Bond fighting the villain through an extended mid-air free fall sequence I’m going to be sorely disappointed. Or maybe jetpacks in the air? They haven’t tried that yet. Pogo-sticks? A battle in an antigravity chamber maybe?

@ThereThere I get like that sometimes, I'm on a run of films (Matrix Revolutions, Eternals, Scream, Murder on the Nile) which have not been great. I'm hoping something on Apple TV+ might do the job. Got my eye on Coda, which is not something I would typically watch.

@ThereThere I looked at my list of movies and it goes back further than that too. Yeah hopefully something on the service sparks any kind of interest for me.

With all the heat lately I didn't want to run my PS5 or PS4 so I watched quite a few films. They have ranged from the bad including Dr Strange Multiverse, Snake Eyes, Lucy (I didn't even bother finishing which is rare), Birds of Prey (also unfinished) and Pandorum. I wasn't expecting much from most of those but was kind of disappointed in Dr Strange, it felt like a vomit of VFX which failed to make me care for what was going on.

The Equalizer 2, The Book of Eli and Turning Red were enjoyable enough if nothing special. There was also The Sea Beast which I didn't expect much from thinking it was going to tread similar ground to How to train a Dragon (which it kind of does) but was a pleasant if predictable watch.

The best of the bunch were I am Mother (Netflix) a cool, little tense sci-fi film, Underwater another sci-fi film which I had never heard of but glad I stumbled onto on Disney+ and Le Mans '66. I'm almost always curious to look into how factual films based on real events actually are and was pleased t learn about Ken Miles. I was very impressed by the film.

I also re-watched Seabiscuit for the first time in ages, I forgot how much I love that film.

Really enjoyed Skyfall. I’m watching the Craig movies in order and this is the best one yet. Thankfully the director took a more tactical approach to the pacing and editing issues I complained about in Quantum of Solace.

Skyfall definitely has the best balance of these films so far in regards to plot, action, drama, and acting. I’m not sure what to think of the Silva character. Bardem did well in portraying an unhinged villain, but something felt strange about his performance. I guess that’s the point of it though. Perhaps I just couldn’t get No Country For Old Men out of my head. And I think he steals some of the scenes away from Craig’s more subtle acting style, which again, might be the whole point of the character.

Overall quite a good film though and works well as a follow up to the first two in the series, but also stands on its own a little better than Quantum. Looking forward to Spectre, which I get the feeling is generally considered the low point of the Craig era. I’m going in with an open mind though.

@RogerRoger Forgot to tag you regarding the above Skyfall impressions. 😄 Thought you might be interested.

@Th3solution Skyfall is defo my favourite of the Daniel Craig films, with either Quantam of Solace or No Time to Die my least fave. I've not seen Quantum of Solace in an age, so am not sure how it compares to No Time to Die.

@RogerRoger Yes, definitely the aforementioned Dench’s excellent portrayal of M is on full display in Skyfall. It was a really good storyline, even if some of the narrative beats fell just a tiny bit shy of the high watermark.

Still on the lookout for Spectre. I’m usually not an advocate of renting movies because I figure if you ever want to watch the movie again then you’ve already paid the price to own it. I saw the BD preowned for $8. But what are the chances I’ll watch it again? 😅 Probably small. So I might just fork over the $4 to Amazon or Apple to rent it.

It’s strange how streaming services have conditioned me to be averse to paying to watch a movie. I used to rent movies nearly every weekend. Now it pains me because I have access to tens of thousands of movies on demand through my 4 or 5 streaming services. I wonder if I’ll get to that point with my video games eventually. So far I’ve not become dependent on services, but things are changing fast.

@RogerRoger For sure. I’ve always wondered about how the economics of these streaming services work. In this example, they got me with the strategy of offering the new entry on streaming but not its precursor. So they’ll make a few dollars on Spectre, which they wouldn’t have otherwise. I’m sure there’s a whole burgeoning subspecialty of Business economics with formulae and predictive models about how, where, and when to put entertainment media on a service.

I appreciate the situations when a whole franchise is all contained on one platform. I really like how all of WB is aligned with HBOMax so that any of the DC or Harry Potter films are complete and available in their entirety if you have that one service. Same with Marvel and Disney+ (minus Spidey, of course). Unfortunately Bond is strewn all over several services. Which is like most other franchises like Fast & Furious, Jurassic Park, or whatever. If you want to see them all you have to hop around or just buy them.

Just got back home from watching Jordan Peele's new film, Nope, and it was... pretty good. Definitely at least a partial return to form after the interesting but supremely messy Us, along with his horrendous reboot of The Twilight Zone. Although I feel like it might some engender some level of backlash of its own, since it's absolutely not the sort of film I think people have come to associate with the director. There's absolutely a little bit of social commentary regarding black representation in American mass media, but the themes of race and class aren't central to the narrative like they were in his previous two films.

I actually really liked the sort of film he ended up crafting, though. Much more of a classic Spielberg-type film than Spielberg himself has created in decades. Think, in particular, of genre classics like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Unfortunately, it's also probably at least half an hour longer than it needed to be. Sort of a meandering script in the first half, subplots that don't really go anywhere, and it's a shame, because I could see people zoning out before the action kicks up in the pretty fantastic second half of the film.

Lots of little references to a variety of other films as well, including a pretty on-the-nose visual reference to Akira.

Strongly recommended to fans of sci-fi cinema if you can tolerate some slow stretches.

@RogerRoger @Th3solution Amazon own the rights to the Bond movies as they acquired MGM. There is probably an existing deal for another streaming service, as I was surprised that some of the films were not permanent additions on Prime.

EDIT: At least that will sort out any funding issues that the films had going forward.