Topic: The Movie Thread

@zupertramp Yeah, nobody really knows which colours were truly used but I quite like the end product and they put years and years of work into the process. Even though they didn’t use all 100 hours of the footage sent to them by the Imperial War Museum, they restored all of it for free for their archives. It’s interesting because it’s a movie about the soldiers and their experiences, rather than the bigger picture, which many fictional movies are about.

I watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood tonight. It really is a fantastic movie, never too ghoulish with the recreations and quietly compelling. Considering I’m relatively young and from the UK, I don’t have too much knowledge of Mr Rogers but I have seen some of his stuff on YouTube and he’s literally the nicest man ever. I’m probably the cynic looking to find some sort of weakness like Matthew Rhys’ character but it’s hard to find any. I loved the way the movie was filmed, the use of colour is beautiful and it might be one of the best looking movies I’ve seen. I don’t know what kit they used but it captures the look of the period perfectly, especially his show. I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to even the most staunch of cynics out there.

@nessisonett Somehow I never watched much Mr. Rogers growing up but he's a staple of my wife's childhood so we'll probably get around to watching that eventually.

Oof, hope he makes a full recovery.

@JohnnyShoulder I saw that. Sad. I mean, who doesn't love Jeff Bridges?

Watched Borat Subsequent Moviefilm the other night and laughed so hard I had an asthma attack.

I just watched Borat Subsequent Moviefilm with my family, and it was... eh.

Compared to Who Is America, which ended some careers and made a laughingstock of some reasonably well-known American politicians with truly amazing setups (I'll never forget how he duped Joe Walsh with that Kinderguardians proposal), it was... tepid. Lukewarm. Maybe the issue is that I went in with the expectation that it'd deliver razor-sharp satire. I would have appreciated a bigger focus on the alt right in this film instead of embarrassing stunts that didn't illuminate anything. The best part of the film was when he roomed with those two QAnon cultists and talked to them.

Also, I'll just say it: he needed the Rudy Giuliani bit to be really devastating, and while it was a bit sketchy, nothing bad enough happened to make it the climax of the film.

@zupertramp I just looked up La Llorona, and it sounds fantastic. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

I was excited for The Curse of La Llorona when it came out, as I've grown tired of cut-and-paste American supernatural horror and was enthused that the filmmakers were looking to explore hispanic supernatural folklore, but the film was mediocre and ended up feeling like cultural appropriation to me. They REALLY should have taken the opportunity to allow the latinx characters to be the stars of the film, instead of killing them so the ghost would have an excuse to harass some random white family. People are always bitching about a lack of "diversity" in films, but Hollywood's money never seems to be where its mouth is in that regard.

Watched The Invisible Man over the weekend. Man, its hella good. It gets a bit coincidental in the last act and some may scoff at the movie logic. But overall, I found it a thrilling and tense watch. The way its shot with the wide and lingering shots makes it feel extra creepy. Brilliant performance by Elizabeth Moss. So much better then the 'Dark Universe' films they tried in the past.

I'll just say it. Cuties wasn't bad at all. In fact the trailer and marketing was incredibly poor on Netflix's part and vastly undermined the deeper messages the film had to convey about how hypersexualization and exploitation of young girls can deeply affect them at a personal, emotional and psychological level, as well as those around them such as their families. It even directly criticizes the Western culture surrounding the eschewed viewpoint on sensitive topics that people have effectively weaponised through the usage of social media, which is exactly why the film ended up in the controversy it did

The ending was also surprisingly heartfelt. It's not the best movie of the year by any means, and I still think it tended to go too far in how the girls were portrayed in a few places, but it's still well shot and really well acted with a difficult to watch, but satisfying plot. 7/10.

I seemed to have stopped getting notifications entirely for this thread.

@TheFrenchiestFry Thanks for the input on Cuties. I've been curious how it handles things as it was getting some heat from even non partisan groups regarding its depictions of young girls (using young actors) so it's nice to hear from a regular person who has actually seen it.

@Ralizah I very much agree with you regarding the new Borat film. I thought it would hit harder than it did and aside from that it wasn't as funny as the first. And yeah the Guliani bit played out way too ambiguously. I can see how maybe Sasha Baron Cohen feels confident what was about to go down, because he was there and I'm sure you get a feel for these things in the moment, but it isn't enough to come across on film. Not for me anyway.

(Also I know I've gone on record against cringe humor and mockumentaries but I give a pass to unscripted stuff like this.)

Okay now for a few updates. Saw The Rental. It was... well honestly I didn't know what to expect and yet it was better than I expected. I'm still kinda deciding but I think yeah, I'd recommend it.

Also watched Horse Girl and even though it wasn't like horrible or anything, I certainly didn't love it. It was basically just meh.

Then there's The Lighthouse. Maybe I'm too dumb or uncultured or whatever but I did not like this movie. I Midsommar-level hated this movie in fact. Acting was on point, there's no denying that but man, what a pointless journey.

And then my favorite movie of the bunch Kajillionaire. I loved the stupid, quirky, and subtle humor and also really, really appreciated the depiction of a certain family dynamic that I obviously can't go into without spoiling plot elements. Also gave me a renewed appreciation for Evan Rachel Wood.

@zupertramp The only people left complaining to Netflix or begging them to take the film off their service are those who haven't watched and are purely going off the trailer. It's a difficult film to watch for sure, but not the absolute dumpster fire advertised by Netflix and their wack marketing team

@TheFrenchiestFry Yeah, I agree that it was a difficult film to watch. But Lolita was also a difficult film to watch and openly has a pedophile as the (sorta) protagonist. Hell, speaking as somebody who really likes Rosemary’s Baby, plenty movies in Hollywood were made by pedophiles. It feels like a certain group who totally coincidentally are the same group who attack Netflix for having black people in The Witcher scored an open goal that Netflix created through their terrible marketing. It’s a shame that it’s the director who suffered as a result.

@zupertramp Shame you didn't enjoy The Lighthouse (or Misdsommar). They are hard ones to reccomend. I appreciate that they didn't rely on quiet-quiet-BANG-BANG moments or on bucket loads of gore/blood. I did get so far with The Lighthouse and was thinking what the fudge is going on, but then it clicked and it kinda won me over from then on.

@JohnnyShoulder I feel like those are films you have to really be in a specific state of mind to truly enjoy. Lighthouse is a film that seeks to really mess with your mind with all the imagery and how engaging the story about these two guys slowly losing their mind as they're isolated from the rest of civilization really is, but at the same time it's still not above a fart joke

@TheFrenchiestFry It was the fart jokes that really won over lmao. That did take me surprise and I had to rewind it to make sure I wasn't hearing things.

@TheFrenchiestFry @JohnnyShoulder One other thing I forgot to mention is I wasn't at all a fan of that aspect ratio. Black and white, fine. A little graininess, cool. But this crap where I have to see giant black bars on the sides of my expensive widescreen tv is just dumb. The movie would be no different in widescreen format so please, stop making me feel like I can't see anything and just show the whole frame. Anyway, rant over.

@zupertramp "b--but muh ARTISTRYYYY"

nah in all seriousness I can understand when people are peeved out by choices like that, although I do personally like how it's presented at that ratio because it emulates a feeling of clausterphobia that is already prevalent throughout the film through its choice of setting as well as its themes

I’m a fan of different aspect ratios. Especially when they’re played around with like in The Grand Budapest Hotel. The Painted Bird suited it at 2:39 as well.

@TheFrenchiestFry yeah i figured he was either going for a literal boxed-in feel or just wanted the look of a really old film but I just found it too frustrating. I usually try to give some leeway for artistic risk but in cases like this, I really would prefer filmmakers make use of the dimensions of modern screens.

That said, the rest of my family said they got used to it and forgot about it after a while.

@nessisonett My personal favorite implementation of different filming styles was in Steve Jobs where each time period pertaining to a specific Apple product unveiling was shot with three different film formats. I believe it was 16mm for 1984, 38mm for 1988 and completely digital for 1998

@TheFrenchiestFry Yeah that’s similar to The Grand Budapest Hotel where the 1932 sections are in 1.37:1, the Academy ratio, the 1968 sections are in 2.40:1, the widescreen format used in the 60s and 70s and the 1980s sections are in 1.85:1, the most common modern aspect ratio.