Topic: The Movie Thread

@MightyDemon82 would you say it is getting more common for people to go into their media consumption with less of an open mind (and a smaller attention span) than even 10 years ago? It feels that way to me. Every day you see something where people are upset because a thing isn't what they wanted it to be rather than to take it for what it is, and then people share these views and other people repeat them. That, and consumers tend to view things more like critics than ever. What happened to people looking for the good in something and being spun a yarn, rather than looking for the bad, I don't think I will ever know.

Sure, sometimes things will put you out of the moment, or be objectively and noticeably bad, but overall it seems like people genuinely want to dislike something in everything and make it all about that.

Like, we aren't critics, we are an audience looking for escapism.

Glad you enjoyed it, anyway 😄 I feel like it is a good year for Sci-Fi of all different kinds.

@Ravix I definitely feel that seems to be the case. It's either a masterpiece or absolute rubbish, no inbeween. A lot of people go by the word of critics online, rather than judge for themselves.

If I don't enjoy something, i'll shrug my shoulders and move on as it's not for me. I wouldn't want to start a youtube channel to moan about it and attack the creatives online if it wasn't something for me.

what else is in the pipeline sci-fi wise?

@MightyDemon82 I've yet to see Disclosure Day - which will be rectified some time this week - but there has been a lot online speculation that the movie was a stealth sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, so even I was thinking of it as such. Still, I usually manage to let a movie be its own thing and take it for what it is to a certain extent (unless they are over-hyped as masterpieces and turn out to be perfectly ordinary movies, then I typically walk out heavily disappointed... recent examples of movies adored and over-hyped that I didn't like all that much are One Battle After Another and Mary Supreme).

I enjoyed Masters of the Universe BTW, but I didn't love it. I felt it didn't go campy cartoon enough and there were times I thought it took itself a little bit too seriously and that made it tonally uneven for me. A few eyerolls too many. Still, more than good enough fun for it to find its way to my steelbook shelf when that time comes. I really loved the realisation of some of the villains, Beast Man and Trapjaw were particularly good. Not enough Tri-Klops, though. He was always my favourite.

As for upcoming sci-fi, on my radar there's Supergirl of course (already got a ticket), then Nolan's The Odyssey (which is more fantasy, I guess) and the next Spider-Man in July, The End of Oak Street (dino-action with Ewan McGregor; looks fun) and Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars in August.
Then in September we have Cregger's Resident Evil (not sure if that qualifies as sci-fi, though), Clayface (the next DCU movie, which, surprisingly, looks to go the horror route) in October and Dune 3 along with the next Avengers movie and the third Jumanji movie in December.

Those are just the ones on my radar and many of them probably don't strictly qualify as "sci-fi", but they are certainly "genre movies", as the drama snobs would call them

Watched the Chainsaw Man movie over the weekend, not sure if it is best described as peak shounen or peak anti-shounen, with Tatsuya Yoshihara and their creative team in MAPPA creating something kinda unlike anything else in this space.

The first half is slow - perhaps too slow - but so rarely is shounen allowed to be this… quiet. The first half is almost entirely devoid of action, which might sound like a death sentence for a shounen adaptation but Chainsaw Man is a shounen which rarely follows any of the rules.

The first almost hour or so of this is focused entirely on a sort of coming of age, teen romance, sort of story. The kind of romance we so rarely see in the shounen space, one that is this soft, sweet, tangible and authentic feeling. And yes, it does eventually give way to a giant storm summoning baby trying to flatten the city. But it is a rare example of something having its cake and eating it too, as one may have been swallowed up by the endless carnage of the last forty or so minutes, if not for the time invested in the romance story.

Overall, this movie is weird, abstract, almost avant-garde, but seems to so fully understand and capture the intent of the story it is adapting, and I think that story is just something pretty special, carried by authentic feeling characters, which even when held at arms length from the audience by design, are still creations you can feel Fujimoto himself understands intimately.

Gamera, the Giant Monster (1965)
The original mutated turtle (move over, teenage ninjas) makes his debut and gets blasted off to Mars for his efforts. It's not cynical to say that this movie was conceived purely to cash in on the success of fellow kaiju Godzilla, and there's little to set it apart from its contemporaries, but it's still well-made and looks pretty good in parts, especially considering its significantly lower budget. I did like how it planted the seeds for Gamera to become the "Friend of All Children" without being blatant about it, unintentionally making the central kid Toshio a somewhat unreliable champion of the notion.

Finished watching the Until Dawn movie. It was overall pretty good, although you can tell it was low budget in some areas. For example, when they show people getting chopped off, you can clearly tell they're using dolls in those scenes.

I do have to commend the movie for being creative. Typically, I don't like time-loop movies as I find the concept to be lazy. But each time-loop offered something different and interesting, and there were plenty of genuinely terrifying moments. I also like that the movie wasn't a 1:1 adaptation of the game and offered an original story.

So yeah, I definitely enjoyed the movie despite having low expectations from the start.

@MightyDemon82 Saw Disclosure Day last night and I absolutely loved it! Spielberg is still the master. It seems effortlessly crafted and thrills and engages from start to finish.
And the girl who portrays the news anchor at the end of the movie? Powerhouse performance, whoever she was!

@FuriousMachine Glad you enjoyed it. I was hooked from the begining to the end so I agree with you there. Yes the ending was great with that shift in the story telling.

Just watched Mickey 17 and I loved it! My perfect blend of wacky, philosophical, misanthropist and bleak, and sci fi is a top genre for me too. I really liked the creatures and the ridiculous "person"alities of Mr & Mrs Marshall. Its blatant use of comedy in the horrible moments really tickled me.

Watched Citizen Vigilante and it was a powerful movie and I see why it is banned in some EU countries.

@Zuljaras Your comment got me intrigued, but then I realised that this was the new Uwe Boll movie (he originally wanted to call it The Dark Knight, which shows exactly how much of a hack he is) and life's just too short to sit through another Boll mess. I'd rather watch AI slop than watch another minute of celluloid desecrated by Boll His movies aren't even fun in the "so bad they're good" way, so I can't imagine he's all of a sudden turned into a capable director. He should have stuck to boxing movie critics

@FuriousMachine hey. Any idea who would be releasing the UK/Euro version of Hail Mary if it got a steelbook/CE? I think the US/Canada got an amazon exclusive limited CE via Allience (that quickly vanished) . But so far UK only has the amazon studios standard 4k listed.

Any more steels or interesting releases made their way into your collection lately or that you have an eye on? Disclosure Day got one recently that i'm aware of 😄

@Ravix Hey mate! I'm also patiently (and slightly worriedly) awaiting info on a EU non-regular "Project Hail Mary" release - at this point I'm only getting steels, Arrow LEs or other interesting LEs as I've learned the hard way that getting "regular" releases too often leads to double-dipping
Will holler as soon as I hear anything, though.
I just saw a photo of the steel and I thought it was absolutely hideous, so here's hoping it will get different artwork here on this side of the Atlantic. I can see what they were going for and I won't begrudge anyone for liking it, but it didn't do anything for me. Have you seen it?

"Disclosure Day" will absolutely make its way into my collection of steels, as will "Mortal Kombat II", "Crawl", "The Descent", and a US import of the first "Child's Play", all of which are pre-ordered. Also received the new steelbook of the first "Evil Dead" a few days early, and put an order in for "Mars Attacks!" and "Interview with the Vampire" steelbooks. Also have the Arrow release of "Falling Down" on pre-order and will most likely add the US Arrow releases of "Identity" and "Go" at some point.

How about you, anything exciting on your radar?

@FuriousMachine I had mixed feelings. I didn't love the slip/box art but I quite liked the steel itself mainly for the simple stencil element, which admittedly is only a small part of the overall design in the bottom corner. The rest is very 'modern art gallery', but it seemed clean enough to still look good overall, to me. I missed it anyway due to being indecisive. Mostly because it's a US import, but it did have the box to keep it semi-safe so I should have maybe gone for it.

I have Disclosure Day pre-ordered, I think. I'm building my sci-fi segment up with newer releases. And I know what you mean about the double dip, as most of my Sci-fi are on standard, but as most are also big favourites, i'd be easily tempted by anniversary releases. So, now i'm into the hobby again, it's better to just get the best edition at the beginning and that's that.

Saying that... i've ordered the French release of Ghost in the Shell as mine don't have the classic logo text and I really want one with that on 😅 a friend of mine used to have a cool poster in their media room, growing up, and I always loved that design. It is pretty iconic, to be fair. My record for GitS is atrocious as it stands, having pre-ordered both UK anniversary editions not knowing which I liked most, before forgetting to decide and ending up with both as it is. I still haven't decided, but I know the french one is even better, so why not 😅 of course, mentioning it means it will probably now be sat on by an amazon employee before being used as a lunch break frisbee. So🤞it even arrives okay.

Recently picked up some Paul Thomas Anderson with Boogie Nights and One Battle After Another (which apparently has features aplenty thus was delayed from the standard) I beleive the community at large is still waiting for Let There Be Blood which would be an instant order.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has made its way into my Game of Thrones collection from the world of television.

I was waiting on the art for Interview with the Vampire but it is on my radar.

I also bookmarked The Evil Dead steel because it looks pretty cool and i'm an idiot. It is for sure an example of FOMO, but it should be the type of thing I like, as OTT, old and low budget Horror that verges on being funny because of that, or becomes outright parody is something I do like. But i'm just not a big horror buff, so 🤷‍♂️

I was hoping Troy would get something, and it got an Arrow 4K release, I believe. Shame no steelbook, but I'll probably add that to the historical fiction lot. A steel would have paried nicely with Kingdom of Heaven, though (I also picked up the two Gladiator steelbook set from the US recently, mainly for the first) I feel like Alexander Revisited, Rescanned, Restructured and Re-Alexandered was going to be a thing on 4k too, so I will look that up now... yeah it has a shout version, but nothing in Europe apart from apparently a french release with no release date still... hmm. It's not a great film, but I have a soft spot for that stuff, especially the director's cuts. And i'm sure you'd be overjoyed with more Jared Leto 😛

Can't think of anything else at the minute, but i've got a much better collection than when I first started the steelbook versions. And regular edition purchases have mostly dried up for now,

At some point I probably need to start categorising by genre and director, as I haven't been ordering stuff in any way so far, but this seems like the best path as I fill it out more. I also need to add one or two more rows onto the 'steel wall' so I can display a few more that make sense to be displayed together.

Did you get round to Fight Club yet or watching any of the other recent pick ups? I've been slacking lately and have probably bought more than watched 😅 although that will probably be an autumn/winter watch, any way. I might make a list of stuff to watch over the rest of summer to make it easier. OBAA & They Live probably a good start point. (Yes, I'm still all out of watching that one) I've been mostly watching low concentration required stuff lately, the latest Hunger Games and Now You See Me's of the world.

Ah, Falling Down would be a good summer watch, considering the UK/Euro climate is now that every day 😅

@FuriousMachine I did not even know who that is as I was interested in the movie because of the theme and why it was banned. It became viral because of that

@Zuljaras I do, Uwe Boll is one of my favorite bad Directors, I've even had the pleasure of meeting him and he's quite eccentric which I definitely admire. He's known for making awful movies but a lot of those movies were made as clever tax write-offs and he played the German government expertly, I can't fault that either. I was going to watch it either way, seeing it getting banned only reduces the time it will take me to eventually get around to it, perhaps tomorrow. I don't know what's viral or not, I just follow certain charts on certain encrypted networks and that movie seems quite high on the list this weekend and seeing you mention it was the reminder I needed. Most movies I see that are banned now are done so over politics or some other nonsense, seeing it happen over violence is such a rarity. I know the theme but Death Sentence and The Brave One were all about revenge and no real issue was made, then there's the oldies like Taxi Driver and the original Death Wish movies.

I'm a big believer in an eye for an eye though, which makes such movies less of a struggle to digest. I'm definitely curious. I handled those I Spit on Your Graves movies really well too and that man had his eyes eaten by birds, I almost wonder if it's a way to impact Boll's ability to keep releasing movies through Germany. The Germans are still sour with him. They can say it's to not promote vigilantism, it might be more personal. At the same time their ratings board has gone almost extremist as of late, they are destroying gaming by banning the sale of certain titles or banning the advertisement of certain games, they keep them under the counter in certain stores now. They want to wrap the country in cotton.

@Ravix So, yeah, when it comes to actually watching these, that's where my cheeks redden with shame. I still haven't finished the extras on the "Minority Report" steel and I haven't cracked open any of my consequent acquisitions. I also have yet to complete my viewing of the "Back to the Future" trilogy box and that was one of my very first 4K purchases. So, a lot of FOMO going on here as well
Double-dipping is not something I won't entertain, but I feel it's good to minimise it and, theoretically, "regular" releases should be available for a while, so the FOMO editions (let's call'em what they are) get prioritised.
Arrow releases are traditionally incredibly good that I will prioritise them over anything, as long as the movie is something I want to own. So, actually, a lot of my viewing habits lately has been watching upcoming Arrow releases on streaming (where available) to see if I need to buy the release Appropriately, I recently held an audition for Takashi Miike's "Audition" recently, a movie that's continually fallen by the wayside for me, and absolutely loved it. So that's on my shelf now.
I'll be rewatching "Troy", as I didn't love it when it first came out, but a lot has changed since then, so it's absolutely deserving of another shot. Also, "Hush" is up for a rewatch - I liked than when I first saw, but unsure if it was enough to feel the need to own it. Other upcoming Arrow releases that are certs are "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey", "Misery", and probably some others I'm forgetting
I tell you, me and my bank account tremble in fear every time Arrow announces new titles...

Sounds like "Evil Dead" will fit the bill for you, but even moreso "Evil Dead II", I'm guessing. Hope you'll like it, should you go ahead and buy it

@Zuljaras I think he is an absolutely loathsome human being and if he has any redeeming qualities at all, none of them are on display in public. He is the kind of guy who needs to court controversy in order to feel relevant and, as @GirlVersusGame points out, will (and did) exploit loopholes in tax regulations to enrich himself and others. I have absolutely no respect for people like that and when they state that what they are doing is "technically legal", they are clearly aware that what they are doing is wrong and are just looking for justification for their own cr@ppy behaviour.

The subject of vigilantism is an interesting topic, but I don't expect a person like Boll being capable of handling it with any kind of nuance. Society has failed when it defends someone taking the law into their own hands, especially if that defence is justified due to the failure of the legal system. There is an interesting discussion to be had there, but too many movies (and novels) are simply gleefully violent justified by "the bad guys had it coming". An interesting take on the subject is Joel Schumacher's "Falling Down" with Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall. Highly recommended.

@FuriousMachine what the sh**?! Arrow are releasing Misery? I've been faux-annoyed at it being stuck on Shout since I started phsycial movies again last year or whenever 😱 I nearly imported it a few times, but never did. Arrow saving the day, once again. I'd really love a textured steelbook with a typewriter though, not going to lie 😅 or like... a sledgehammer! When is it out? I normally see a little pop-up about arrow releases but must have never seen that one.

I never thought to check on the Minority Report features yet. Anything good there? I was really pleased with the movie on 4k though. But yeah, watching them is definitely the hardest part. Once i've watched it it's been watched and might lose the appeal of the pre-watch anticipation, haha. Exaggerating, but kind of feels like it is part of it.

I don't think i've ever seen the director's cut of Troy, but it is supposedly much better again, like with Kingdom of Heaven, so I'd probably not rewatch the movie in any way, myself, until I went for that release specifically.

I read the last sentence as "you should go ahead and buy it" 💀 damn you. Damn you to hell!

I feel like I watched some of Army of Darkness when it was on tv randomly, I may have been inebriated, but it looked bats*** crazy. Like the crusades of horror or whatever? 😅 the only negative from the trailer of The Evil Dead I watched a while back was is it being quite scream heavy? I do think screaming can become more of an annoyance than a feature at times, but if it is kind of OTT it might be bearable. Maybe i'm misremembering, but probably not 😅

watching original 9 to 5 movie i dvr recorded from the FXM channel on Hulu Live