Topic: The Movie Thread

@LN78 Die Another Day is so under appreciated. Diamonds is rubbish yeah, after Quantum I'd say Moonraker, that's atrocious. After watching so many of the pre-Craig era Bond's I've actually become more critical of the Craig era and NTTD is the final nail in the coffin how it's completed.

I'm very much a traditionalist when it comes to my Bond though and I hate the modern interpretation of him.

@LN78 Thunderball has one of the most boring sections of any movie I’ve seen. There’s a solid 20 minutes of faffing about underwater. Apparently it was groundbreaking but it doesn’t make for good viewing!

@LN78 Yes, but Goldfinger requires more 'product of its time' framing than most of the other Connery Bond films. Of the first four films, Goldfinger is the only one I find actively embarrassing to watch with some people.

@LN78 I’d probably say quite a few! A Clockwork Orange didn’t do much for me, along with well, anything Nolan’s ever had his grubby hands on post-Memento. I didn’t like To Catch A Thief either which I’ve seen critics rave about but then I’m not a huge Hitchcock fan. I think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a pretty divisive movie as it is but I probably stand on the ‘nah’ side too. Of course, I’m discounting horror movies as that’s more just a personal preference and there’s loads of classics in that genre that I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch!

As for A Clockwork Orange, it's an example of a film I find entertaining, but also sort of... meaningless? I don't think it has anything intelligent to say about the subjects it ostensibly tackles. It's a shock film dressed up in a fancy suit.

So, I saw Violent Night yesterday, and it's absolutely bonkers. Wonderful experience. Somehow it manages to simultaneously be an incredibly brutal and gory action vehicle AND a very traditional sort of saccharine Christmas film. It's the deft mixture of these two elements that helps it stand out. David Harbour's turn as a grumpy, disillusioned Santa Clause is also quite memorable.

@LN78 I always forget about the Prestige to be honest, I saw it years ago and I think I did enjoy it at the time. One of those movies that you’ll never appreciate the same way once you know the twist though.

@Ralizah That was my takeaway from A Clockwork Orange as well. I’m still slightly unsure about what the message actually is but that could be on me.

@nessisonett I don't know if you're familiar with Roger Ebert's infamously scathing review of the film, but he sums it up pretty well in the first paragraph:

"Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" is an ideological mess, a paranoid right-wing fantasy masquerading as an Orwellian warning. It pretends to oppose the police state and forced mind control, but all it really does is celebrate the nastiness of its hero, Alex."

About as concise a summation of the film as I can imagine.

@Ralizah I hadn’t seen that review but it does seem pretty apt!

Roger Ebert's reviews are my favourite ever. He really could boil a movie down to a couple of sentences like few others.

I watch Everything Everywhere All At Once last night because everyone was wamping on about how amazing it was and it was alright. I also watched Inception which I'd seen years ago but not recently, and I really liked it. This is my movie report.

In a bit of a surprise turn we rewatched Avatar: the Way of Water again at the theatre over the weekend. My brother wanted to see it again (it's his favorite film series) & he said he'd pay if I went with him so I figured why not. Still managed to absolutely engross me the second time around. The underwater scenes are nothing short of magical in 3D.

Also got to see the first Mario movie trailer in 3D (the one with the penguins) this time around as well, which was a nice perk.

Hmmm…. Classic well regarded movies that I actively dislike… 🤔

I have to agree that my first viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey was underwhelming and boring. But a rewatch as an adult helped me appreciate it. It’s still a slow burn, but the soundtrack does a lot of heavy lifting to make the experience enjoyable.

I’m not as well-exposed to the classics and a lot of the top films I’ve never seen, especially the older ones. But here’s some of the well-regarded “greatest films” which I don’t particularly think are all that great:

Forrest Gump - Never understood this one. I just couldn’t get along with this and it was just a strange premise. It was worth watching, but hardly what I’d consider being one of the greatest movies of all time

Titanic - ditto to above, minus the strange premise

Rocky - I’m surprised I didn’t like this because I was a fan of Rocky 2-4. But the original movie was markedly slower and more boring. I understand it’s a character study rather than a feel-good Karate Kid style fight movie. But it was hard to get through for me.

Gone with the Wind - tried to watch this a while back, on account of its lofty position in cinema history, but just too dull.

Dances with Wolves - another boring self-indulgent outing for Costner. (Edit: see also Field of Dreams and Robin Hood. Oh and Waterworld 😂)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl - I like this alright, but it’s just too chaotic and disjointed to be considered one of the greats. It’s okay. And now knowing Depp’s background a little more, his portrayal of a dim-witted pirate who’s half drunk all time doesn’t seem like such a stretch of a performance.

Men. One of the strangest films I've seen in a long long while. And I'm not sure what to make of it all. Especially the last part, when it goes completely bonkers. Some of the special effects looked a bit fake at times, but i think that is just the sign of the low budget it was made for. Brilliant performances by the small cast, especially from Rory Kinnear.

Some interesting choices for overrated classics on here. Here's some that really didn't do anything for me.

The Godfather Part II
Pulp Fiction
Breathless
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Mean Streets
The Third Man
Nosferatu
Eraserhead
Blow-Up
Blazing Saddles

@LN78 Yep I loved Alex Garlands previous films too. Ex Machina is probably one of my favourite films ever. Also the same year that Nightcrawler came out which is another one of my top films. Men is worth a watch, if only to hear back what you think of it.

As for classics I've never got on with, there are probably a skip full of them. The ones that come to mind are the two Bladrunner films. I did like the first one when I first saw it, but each time I've seen it has been a different version and I've liked it less each time. Bladrunner 2049 bored me to sleep, which hardly ever happens.

Top Gun I was never a fan of and always found it watchable at best.

Most of Pixar's earlier films have never appealed to me, so none of the Toy Story films (only seen the first two mind), Finding Nemo annoyed the hell out of me. The first one I actually liked was probably The Incredibles.

I tend to avoid films which I know aren't film for me though. I've still not seen stuff Titanic and Romeo + Juliet. And have no intention to either.

@LN78 Really liked Annihilation. So much that I bought it on 4K Blu Ray even though it is on Netflix. It does makes more sense the more I've seen it. Oh I didn't know that about Dredd. So much better than that awful Stallone version!

@RogerRoger for what it's worth, I don't think the rocky films are a tough sell. I think only one of them (rocky V) is actually considered bad by fans and I don't even think it is that bad tbh ( + it's fairly short iirc so not a big deal sandwiched in the middle of 7 other films)

The first one is definitely the best though imo. It tells a real story with real characters that are much more flawed in many ways than the later films which are a bit more like, this character is flawed in one way and here is how they overcome that flaw.

2, 3 and 4 are all excellent, if not a little cheesey. Balboa (6) is great too as a kind of sending off. Creed is very much a rehash (but a very good one) of the first Rocky film and not only homages moments and scenes but also plays with flawed characters that aren't actually that nice even though you still root for them. Creed 2 is good as well and is like a direct sequel to Rocky IV.

@LN78 Fair enough. Should’ve just said “classic movies that don’t click with people”. That’s how I feel about most of the movies I posted tbh.

@RogerRoger I feel like The Goonies is one of those movies people remember fondly because it's mixed in with other memories of the era they also liked.

As for Close Encounters, go ahead, but know I watched it in my mid-20s and still found it to be dreadfully boring. And the ending is so brazenly selfish that even the director has said he would have opted to change it had he made the film when he was older.

@LN78 Yeah, I didn’t necessarily mean that Robin Hood and Waterworld were considered classics (in fact Waterworld still is probably considered one of the worst projects in the history of film) but I consider all these Costner films similarly painful. He’s so one-note in his “acting”… which I dare say barely even qualifies as acting. He does a great job of acting like a random guy named Kevin Costner. I never understood why he took Hollywood by storm for that chunk of time. And yes, I include Field of Dreams in that same category of Costner films, where I feel that watching them is like having your fingernails slowly pulled out one by one.

Perhaps it’s fair to say that Kevin Costner is my Tom Cruise. I probably harbor prejudice against all his movies just because of him.

@RogerRoger I agree that Titanic had some nice visuals and the eye-candy part of it alone makes it worth the watch. I just am not a Leo DiCaprio fan either. He’s another one that I’ve never understood the adoration. After the spectacle of the ship and the iceberg, the story of Titanic becomes this long drawn out teenage romance novel fodder.

As for Rocky, the first film is a slower movie than the sequels. Stallone’s eponymous Rocky Balboa starts as an Everyman Hero, but his rise to glory feels neither emancipating nor tragic; It lies in the lukewarm middle of just a ‘meh’ character who doesn’t have an interesting conclusion. He’s just sort of… there. Only in Rocky 2 and onward does he really get into his own and fill the space where a viewer might have interest in seeing how his life plays out.

Edit: all due respect to @ralphdibny who already tossed some praise toward Rocky. I don’t intend to be contrary for argument’s sake. It’s clearly me that in the minority so take what I say with a grain of salt 😄