Topic: The Movie Thread

@Th3solution i just tend to think of them in the same vein as the many different bacteria we have in our bodies, they are just something that's there

@Th3solution let's not pretend that the mid to late nineties were a more accepting time of things like blackface or obvious stereotyping - things haven't changed that much in 20 years other than the levels of collective outrage. The stereotypes in TPM stood out as clearly to me as a 17 year old as they do now.

I'm not particularly offended by TPM, without the benefit of being held back, Lucas tells stories with a cudgel - with all of the subtlety and finesse of a charging Rhino.

As I say, opposed to being offended - I largely find it distasteful, lazy and just indicative of a lazy storyteller.

EDIT: Anyway - go do the quiz!

@Th3solution @KALofKRYPTON @RogerRoger i watched The Living Daylights yesterday and i noticed in this one Bond was a lot more respectful of the female characters than earlier Bonds were, well apart from smacking Moneypenny on the backside although she was flirting with him as much as he was with her

but in regards to Kara he was a lot less predatory than previous Bonds were with their female leads, he even took her on a date

@FullbringIchigo That's because Dalton is the man! 😁

@KALofKRYPTON True

@KALofKRYPTON Lol, fair enough. I can’t say that I can be a good judge of societal norms through the ages, but just follow the trends I notice in cinema and the media. I haven’t been around to see or notice progress first hand.
And yes, I need to get my quiz answers in. I glanced through the questions briefly but just getting around to it. 😅

Just got back from the new Halloween. I'm... disappointed. Don't get me wrong: it's not a terrible film, which pretty much instantly makes it a top five Halloween film by default, but that's not really saying much. Despite it positioning itself as a sequel to the original Halloween, this is essentially a remake of H20. Same story: Laurie Strode is a PTSD-ridden mess after the events of the original film, and this has made life hard for her child and others in her life. The interpretation is different (Laurie is merely traumatized in H20, versus being a paranoid gun nut in the new film; in both, she's taken refuge in alcoholism).

Like H20, this film deflates any sense of tension or gravity it might have built up with inappropriate instances of humor. This film messes up in certain ways that H20 was better about, however. For one thing, we see WAY too much of Michael Myers in this movie. Several of his murder scenes are filmed in full daylight, and, in the first half of the movie, without his mask. That's not to say Michael Myers can't be presented in a frightening fashion whatever the time of day (the original has some amazingly spooky sequences that take place during daylight hours), but there's no sense of mystery here. He's just an evil crazy guy who is running around randomly killing people. Even when night drops, this is still a problem: there's no build-up to the kills at all. We just see him casually stroll into peoples' homes, brutally murder them, and then casually walk out. He was frightening in the original precisely because of how little we actually saw of him. He seemed to be everywhere at once, a phantom perpetually haunting the shadows of night and outer edges of waking life.

For another, there are way too many characters and subplots going on in this film. Halloween and H20 both benefited from having a tight focus on a limited number of characters. The film abandons or discards most of this by the end to focus on the core family unit, but it really hurts the film overall.

The film's insistence on throwing character gags into the fray, even as it's building up to its climax, is constantly annoying. H20 had exactly one comical character, and he didn't intrude on that film's atmosphere nearly as much as others did here. Sadly, some of these humorous moments are among the film's best. Jibrail Nantambu, in particular, plays a child who is being watched by a babysitting, and his dry wit and the way he delivers his lines are hilarious and steals the scene he's in. But it also brings way too much levity to the fray.

There are some really, really bad scenes that go a long way to undermine the film. The opening scene, for example, where a journalist who is researching Michael Myers and his crimes in the past confronts him in the psychiatric prison and holds out the mask he wore on the night of the killings (apparently this still being held as important evidence of... something by the Attorney General forty years after the fact). This causes other inmates to coo and holler like animals as the journalist tries increasingly hard to provoke Michael with it, to the point where he's yelling like a deranged lunatic. It's a remarkably stupid scene, which left a sour taste in my mouth. THE OPENING SCENE.

There's a scene in the second half of the movie, long after we're supposed to be feeling scared about Michael, where some random cops are sitting in a car having a pseudo-Pulp Fiction-ish conversation about some sort of foreign sandwich. Again... stupid, stupid, stupid!

There's a psychiatrist character who is useless, and when the writers revealed his actual character motivation, I felt intense annoyance. Terrible character writing that doesn't add at all to the movie.

It's probably worth mentioning that this film does some things right over H20. The eyes in the mask look blank and hollow, like in the original (in H20, you can constantly see Michael's eyes through the mask, which drove me nuts; he's pure evil. You shouldn't be able to see the eyes!). The mask, in general, is a lot creepier than the one in H20. And, unlike in H20, he's treated as a pure monster: there's no attempt to humanize him at all.

All-in-all, it was a disappointing film, although definitely not aggressively bad like most of the sequels. It's definitely not the return to form I was hoping for, though.

Speaking of " Especially with the fact that the PS4 has Netflix"

@Kyroki You got some taste in the movies, mate.

Speaking of "Especially with the fact that the PS4 has Netflix"
There's a good VPN for Playstation console, and this, PureVPN for Ps4

Don’t know much about much, or VPN’s, but I thought this should be added: https://thebestvpn.com/reviews/purevpn/
On topic, I missed Hereditary at the cinema but bought it the other day on blu-ray. Once I’ve watched it, and if it makes a great impression on me, I’ll probably post my thoughts on it.

Wonder Woman 1984 has been pushed back seven months to 2020.

Wow, there's also a Terminator 6 movie which I didn't know about till today. Just like the Predator, I really wished they would stop milking this franchise. The first two Terminator movies were great (especially Terminator 2) and then it went all downhill after that.

@WanderingBullet The same with Alien films. The first two are awesome, and although I didn't hate the last two as some people, I'm getting a bit fed up of how average they are.

@JohnnyShoulder The last Alien movie was horrible.

Alien 3 was a decent movie. Not up to the standards of the first two, though.

In fairness, that's probably what happens when you make multiple Terminator 6 movies.

Oops. Corrected it. haha

I'm planning to see A Simple Favor on Saturday. It stars Anna Kendrick, who I've enjoyed in the Pitch Perfect movies, and is directed by Paul Feig, who also directed the fantastic Spy. Trailer seemed like it's got a promising mystery, and it's been getting great reviews. Hope it's as good as I'm expecting it to be! Anyone who has seen the movie here and would like to share their experience?

@Tjuz Honestly - I'd rather put piins in my eyes than watch another Paul Feig film.

@KALofKRYPTON Really? I've only seen Spy and I thought that was a very enjoyable movie. I'm guessing you had a very different experience with the film, or possibly some of his other movies. Care to elaborate?

@Tjuz firstly, I really can't stand Melissa McCarthy, so that doesn't help.

For Spy specifically, there was only one joke that brought out a real laugh - something between her and Statham about hitting him I think. The rest of it was just, there.

Then we get to Ghistbusters, which is an awful film on many levels. In fairness, I wanted to hate it just for the fact of the shameless cash in it represents - and it did quite literally nothing to make me think otherwise. It was base, boring, intellectually deficient, the story was awful, not a single moment manages to be witty, scary, clever or satirical.

I did delve into as much of the behind the scenes stuff as I could and found out exactly why. Fieg is essentially a con artist.
The script as written apparently wasn't that great to start with, but rather than actually help craft a performance or story - Fieg just rolls hours of film getting actors to ad-lib until he thinks something is funny.

He's also a bit of a coward, several times he's quite open about having no idea how to make a Ghostbusters sequel, so it became what it is.

I'm all for a 'check your brain at the door' comedy romp, but only if it's actually funny.

@KALofKRYPTON Fair enough. I do enjoy Melissa McCarthy in the places I've seen her, although that's not all that many. I haven't seen Ghostbusters, so I can't debate with you on that one.

I did end up watching A Simple Favor, and it was actually a really good movie. It went far beyond the comedy aspects you'd expect and delivered an often thrilling mystery too. Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively both steal the show, but it really is Kendrick's movie. The soundtrack and costume design throughout the movie is worthy of some recognition too, particularly Lively's wardrobe. Feig and his cast managed to elevate an already great script to one of the best movies I've seen this year, which to be fair, only puts it at 2/9 (behind A Star is Born). It does have some faults with the movie dragging at certain points or twists being revealed in too fast a fashion to really catch on, but both of these end up being fairly inconsequential when looking at the movie as a whole. It was a great mix of the comedy and thriller genres, and I'm looking forward to what Feig/Kendrick/Lively cook up next. Definitely worth a watch if you're at all interested.