Topic: The Movie Thread

@seinfeldfanatic Have you tried getting the DVD instead? That's how I saw it. Considering getting the Blu-ray later on, but currently costs twice the amount of the DVD. What streaming service is The Substance on in the US? Maybe, that's an option?

Have no idea what other horror film is recently released on DVD / Blu-ray? Saw, Renfield last year and that's a blast. If you haven't seen that then I recommend watching that. Personally, I like to watch Alien Romulus, but Disney does not release physical media in Australia anymore, so if I want to watch any Alien, Marvel, Indiana Jones, Disney, Pixar films I must subscribe to their streaming service, which I don't want to.

I finished watching Goodfellas ,for the first time, this morning and loved it. I especially enjoyed the fact that it was apparently based on a true story. Truly a tour-de-force of American gangsterism. I heard that The Irishman and Casino are good movies as well. Can anyone else recommend similar that I might enjoy?

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN OK so welcome to the wonderful back-catalogue of Scorsese movies! (he directed and also co-wrote Goodfellas)

Goodfellas is one of my favorite movies of all time - and I'd highly advocate you check out another Scorsese movie.... "The Departed". NO SPOILERS - it basically focusses on a police plant (played by Leo DiCaprio) who infiltrates the local mob/mafia. But at the same time, the mob have their own plant in the police system (played by Matt Damon). So each camp, police and mob, both have a plant in the opposite group - with each trying to flush each other out.

Utterly brilliant, with a career highlight from Mark Wahlberg of all people!

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Casino is good. Sharon Stone's performance in particular imo. It is long though, and not quite as good as Goodfellas but required viewing for any cinefile.

The Irishman I didn't care for that much. But definitely recommend The Departed as well.

Finally checked out "The Marvels" - can't remember another MCU movie I watched where I just felt this lost? Yet, when the credits rolled, it was just kind of a content placeholder filler movie that moves absolutely nothing forwards?

It is funny, cause for as long as I’ve been alive, comics have used this practice where “events” run through a titled booked, but then also feed through half a dozen other titles as well, meaning the story is this expensive jigsaw you have to assemble together, to get the complete and coherent experience.

On paper, it makes sense why the MCU would adopt this same approach, cause it wants to be this authentic comic book experience in every way, just on the big screen. The problem, is a comic takes like what, 10 - 15 minutes to read? If you wanted to refresh your knowledge of everything you needed to properly follow what is going on in this film, you’d need like two or three real world days, and that is assuming you don’t sleep at all or take any breaks.

So like, if the majority of people weren't happy to spin six different plates to follow a comic storyline, who out there is blocking off like a week of their life to watch all the ***** they'd need to be able to actually follow a movie which felt irrelevant the moment the credits rolled?

Especially as for my money, Ms. Marvel, Secret Invasion and WandaVision are all easy skips, but are basically essential viewing for this anyway. MCU demanding like 25 hours of your life to watch three bad TV series so you can follow a movie that doesn't matter the moment it is over. What are we even doing here, man?

I ain't got the answer for you, but this knows as well as I do this ain't it.

Remember when people considered ‘Age of Ultron’ the low point of the MCU?

Please someone punch a hole in the sky and throw me through it, I want to go back!

The Untouchables, The Departed, Donnie Brasco; all are quite good.

But, really, you can just rewatch The Godfather Part II every year for the rest of your life and have an even better time.

@CJD87 @zupertramp Thanks for the recommendations guys! I'll be sure to report back once I've watched The Departed and Casino.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN The Departed is brilliant, but I would also recommend giving Infernal Affairs a look. It's the Chinese movie "The Departed" is a remake of and it's quite good.

@Pizzamorg Don't know if it answers your question, but there are still people left who enjoy Marvel's output these days (even though I may be the the only one left, judging by all the online hate and snark), so these movies actually hold value for me. And I didn't need to spend any time catching up to understand what was going on, either. I had a great time with "The Marvels", but I knew what I was in for going in and didn't expect anything more

I mean I guess if you watch zero of the feeder shows / movies you can't ever know how lost you actually are, so I guess that is one way to solve the problem. I exist in a sort of awkward in between space where I do watch most of the MCU output eventually, but never close enough together it seems, so I always remember just enough to be aware of how much I must have forgotten.

I'm trying to remember the last MCU stuff I really enjoyed. I remember really enjoying Werewolf by Night and No Way Home.

@Pizzamorg I'm going to see "Brave New World" tonight, but seems to me that it is one you might want to give a miss, as it apparently draws on several of the previous releases (unknown to me at the moment exactly how much it draws on them). One reviewer called it "homework", which is a common sentiment out there (and one I don't really understand... I guess if you go in expecting it to be a standalone experience, sure, but when was the last time any of these movies were? To me it feels like someone saying "bleh, I hated watching episode X of TV show Y as I felt I had to do my "homework" and watch the previous episodes to enjoy it")

Anyway, I have seen all the other releases, not because of "homework" but because of genuine interest, so I'm all set Looking forward to tonight!

Surely you can see the difference though @FuriousMachine? Once upon a time, you just had to watch a series of movies in sequence, that came out at a cadence a normal person could follow in between other life events. Now it feels like we have a dozen movies and TV shows per year, and every one of them will be referenced in the next big MCU movie release, making it significantly more difficult to hold onto all the various strands.

For the record though, I actually quite enjoyed Falcon and the Winter Soldier. In general, I think the MCU TV shows that have been more street level focused, including Hawkeye in that as well, have actually been some of the MCUs best works recently. I am currently watching through Echo and enjoying it much in the same way. That fight between Echo and Daredevil in episode one, the creative choreography, crunchy kineticism and smooth camera sweeps was more engaging to me than the dozen or so MCU movies that ended up as two weightless CG figures bumping into each other in front of an obvious green screen firing lasers.

@Pizzamorg There is, of course, a difference, but my point is that it feels like everyone keeps expecting something that haven't been the case for a long, long time. That people don't care for the particular way Marvel is doing things is fair, but it feels like a lot of people feel they are owed something different and keeps griping about it. A reviewer that has to watch all these things for their job I can understand, but why so many people keep watching and coming away with the same gripes every time (and yet keeps coming back) is what is baffling to me. (To be clear, I mean this in general, and not necessarily in your case )
Also, if Marvel was the only game in town, I would also see the frustration, but they most definitely are not
(speaking of game, I will say this: currently playing Marvel Midnight Suns and that is the best use of the brand/property in many a year, for my money, including the MCU).

Sorry, but I feel the opposite @FuriousMachine. I think the current MCU approach sucks, exhausting and overwhelming the average viewer with subpar content for the sake of content. I hope people do keep complaining about it, and loudly, to inspire the MCU to change the approach. If the MCU don't change the approach, then that must mean the majority are fine with how it is now, and then that is fine then.

Also I liked Midnight Suns a lot. I think I wrote a review of it on this forum once upon a time. Done quite a few runs of that game since, which I don't normally do, but it is one of the few games that are well worth replaying to me.

@FuriousMachine @Pizzamorg I definitely had this complaint as the shows started being churned out in earnest. Especially when I started to realize the shows were going to have a different tone based on, what seemed like, different target audiences. But then I kinda had a realization... this is exactly what comics do already. Often interconnected stories across many different series, many with different target audiences. And the typical comic reader doesn't try to read them all. I do think the MCU could do a better job, especially now, with recaps but even if you don't get every reference there's nothing that deep in any of these movies that you can't kinda infer what's going on and why - much like you have to do while reading your preferred comic.

So, when I started to look at it this way, I stopped watching the stuff that didn't interest me because, yeah, that is like homework.

@zupertramp @Pizzamorg @FuriousMachine Just to interject, I do think the large quantity of TV and movie releases have blunted my interest in the MCU. And to be fair, I feel the same about Star Wars and even the DCU, to a lesser degree. And it’s probably a combination of the all the competing properties, to be honest. There’s a large overlap in the ‘nerdverse’ of people who like Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Tolkien, and other Sci-Fi or Fantasy properties, including video games. In my opinion, the dilution of content by so many franchises and outlets has caused increasing apathy toward nearly all of them. It would have been unthinkable 10 years ago for me not to have watched a Marvel movie or a Star Wars show within the first few weeks of release. Now I am about 3 Marvel movies and 4 TV series behind and 6 Star Wars TV series behind. Same for DC - I’m making my way through The Penguin now and enjoying it, but I completely skipped the last 5-6 movies and all the other shows. The Penguin seems rather standalone so I went for it, although as it turns out, it’s fairly closely tied to The Batman, and I’m grateful I had watched that.

Anyway, I digress, but the ‘homework’ type of sentiment does resonate with me. I don’t think Marvel is as bad about it as Star Wars, and so I’ve been able to keep a better connected to the franchise because of that. But SW reliance of tying things to voluminous animated shows like Clone Wars and Rebels has crippled my ability to participate in some of the recent content. I wonder if that’s part of the reason we haven’t received a major SW movie in a long time (aside from the severe failure of Rise of Skywalker) because they have painted themselves into a corner with all the interconnected TV stuff. I guess there’s a Mandalorian movie in the works, and this will be a test of whether the IP can get back into blockbuster movie status. But first I need to to my homework since I never watched Mando season 3, because I understand I should first watch The Book of Boba, which is better understood if I watch The Clone Wars… eh, maybe I’ll just skip it. 😅

As a parting thought, I do wonder how the MCU would have fared in an alternate timeline (irony semi-intended 😉) where there was no pandemic. Also SW and DCU. The cultural peak of these movies was occurring around 2019. Once everything shut down in early 2020, it felt like everything went off the rails as things turned toward TV and streaming instead of major theater releases.

I finished watching Burn After Reading this morning, it was typical Coen Brothers fare imo, being familiar with a couple of their other movies such as The Big Lebowski and whatnot, but, perhaps not their best. Still an enjoyable movie, though.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Totally agree with your assessment of Burn After Reading. Their adaptation of True Grit has probably become my favourite work of theirs.

Jumping back to your request for recommendations after seeing Goodfellas. You’ve got some solid suggestions there but may I offer a couple of slightly more left field recs? City of God is worth a look, as is Michael Mann’s Collateral (which also has some jazz references you might really appreciate in it). Neither are really anything like Goodfellas but I think you’d totally understand the recommendation after seeing them.

Pirated the new Captain America (sorry Anthony Mackie not your fault I won’t spend money on it) and to be fair it’s f**king dreadful. I’m not sure anybody asked for a sequel to The Incredible Hulk, never mind one without the titular Hulk. Giancarlo Esposito is criminally wasted too. The fight scenes are messy and badly edited, CGI is shoddy, pacing is all over the shop. Anthony Mackie takes a back seat in his own movie at times, probably the most crucial scene of the movie near the end has him just standing in the background while other characters interact. In retrospect it’s utterly hilarious them trying to market it as a ‘political thriller’ like Winter Soldier. Harrison Ford is pretty fun though.

@Jimmer-jammer Quite liked Barton Fink, myself, actually and Fargo imo is their best, or at least a personal favourite of mine.

Anyway I must confess I have seen City of God before and thought it was a thoroughly enjoyable watch, have added Michael Mann's Collateral to my to-watch list. Thanks for the recommendation! I'll try to report back and let you know what I think!