Topic: The Movie Thread

I watched Clueless tonight. I really miss teen movies that were actually witty. The ones made on Netflix these days are just rubbish. There was a weird phase in the 90s to early 00s where they reimagined classic texts as high school dramas but there were some bloody good movies in there.

@nessisonett "I know you can be underwhelmed and you can be overwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"...!

I have a soft spot for that genre also. We recently watched "10 Things I Hate About You".... equally classic IMO.

BTW - great recommend on Justified, now well into Season 2 which is perhaps one of my favorite seasons of TV ever (up there with Season 4 of the Wire, and Season 2 of Leftovers). The introduction of the Bennett Clan has been fantastic, and the plot threads are pretty gripping!

@CJD87 I’d say season 2 of Justified was up there with my favourite seasons of TV as well! You’ve still got some great seasons to come as well, it’s one of the few shows that I’d say finishes in a perfect place.

watched Mr Mom on Tubi last night. Still a classic funny movie. Sure its a little dumb but its better than Gung Ho

Oh dear Thor 4… what went wrong? I do quite enjoy Ragnarok but this felt like Taika Waititi has sniffed one too many of his own farts. Just a very odd movie with total shifts in tone, humour that doesn’t land and they somehow managed to bungle Natalie Portman for a 3rd movie. Waititi is clearly still talented, Our Flag Means Death proves this, but I wonder if it’s all gone a bit to his head with the whole ‘secretly marrying Rita Ora’ and phoning in very expensive movies while slagging off the VFX in interviews. Not good at all.

@nessisonett Well don't say I didn't warn you.

@LN78 Haha, I was hoping we would differ on this one!

@nessisonett And sometimes it is better to found out for yourself whether you like something or not.

@nessisonett I''m inclined to be generous to Taika and Sam Raimi and speculate that these recent Marvel projects of theirs have fallen victim to some COVID related calamities because between them these two proven, extremely talented blokes have spewed out two of the worst movies in recent memory. All things being equal that just seems unlikely.

@JohnnyShoulder Liking a thing and recognising that a thing is complete crap are entirely different propositions.

@LN78 I quite liked Multiverse of Madness on second viewing but I can recognise that it’s definitely a flawed movie. Marvel have just hit a rough patch at least according to my tastes recently but I have been really enjoying She-Hulk so maybe they’ll grab me again in the future.

@LN78 People have different tastes though, and what you may think is crap others may like.

@JohnnyShoulder Ah,so you fall into the "if I like a thing it means it's good" camp? You don't think there are such things as objectively bad music or movies or TV shows? What an interesting perspective.

@LN78 No not really and I did not say thay, but I know what I like and couldn't care less what stuffy critics think of films, plus I like to be as open minded as possible before watching a film.

@JohnnyShoulder As I said, how much I like or enjoy a movie or a TV show (for example) often has very little correlation with the quality of that movie or TV show. You may have seen that I recently trawled through a stack of movies from Cannon Studios - most of them were abject manure but they were never less than entertaining and many of them were actually very likable. My point carries over to those recent MCU movies- they're objectively terrible (barely functional plots, tonal inconsistency, wonky performances etc.) but that doesn't mean that they're unenjoyable at a superficial level.

Yeah I think everyone has a few turds which they find highly enjoyable! 😂

@JohnnyShoulder That's all I'm saying - that objective standards do exist when it comes to art.

@LN78 I would hold the view that objectivity does exist when it comes to art, but that those standards of objectivity are subjective. Yes, that sounds like nonsense but I reckon it’s similar to how different critics have different criteria. Like if I played a game then I would put graphics and gameplay fairly balanced in my criteria but others would maybe pay much more attention to gameplay. Some aspects are executed either well or not, it’s just up to us to decide how much that affects our view of the art.

@nessisonett That's how (I hope) most people evaluate these things. It's not as if there's a checklist for what constitutes a "good" videogame (as an example) but in the broadest technical strokes you can start an evaluation with things like functionality (does it work?) or fitness for purpose (is it even a "game" per se?) and work from there into the minutiae - like to what degree the finished game achieves the developers' goals - although I would probably argue that things like graphics and gameplay ("fun") are more in the realm of the subjective.

@LN78 Yeah like take that new portrait of Obama for the White House.

It’s undoubtedly an incredibly well executed painting but that level of hyper realism lacks artistic flair for me. There’s something off about it being so perfect that it looks like a photograph. I’d take one of Monet’s paintings he did while half blind over that, despite the painting undoubtedly looking nothing like the subject. Like this is supposed to be a bridge.