Mark is a voice actor that has done some on screen work. I don't care much about star wars and his joker and trickster is peak. Note though him in the long walk was epic.
My son is big cinephile, and he complains about how contemporary movies are all filled with people who look like nepo-baby actors. He says they all have iPhone face: no matter what time period they're supposed to be in, they all look like they've seen an iPhone.
He longs for the old days when older unattractive actors were in demand as character actors.
I always find the first moments of movies with famous actors disconcerting. Why is Jack from Titanic here? Oh, he is not Jack from Titanic, just has his body-suit…
The Bear had an episode with a family reunion where everyone was a famous actor, so you have some familiarity with them, but they were so characterized, it wasn't off-putting.
I do agree though those actors that are always the same persona (e.g. The Rock), do throw me away from what I'm watching.
The Disney-churn Marvell/Star Wars slop has ruined the film industry. No one is willing to risk a thing on original IP when remakes/reboots/continuations are taking in the bank.
We will never see another Stranger Than Fiction, or Dead Poets Society or, Eternal Sunshine while the low hanging fruit is such a hot commodity. And it will never not be a hot commodity.
I agree with your point about established ip being safe and attractive to executives.
I disagree with your point about "never see another eternal sunshine" type movie. Everything everywhere all at once. The substance. Sinners. There are gems.
This was a problem before Marvel or the Star Wars reboots. Execs will always go for what seems safer and an established IP with a fanbase is safer than something brand new. A tale as old as time.
Also cinema is so old that nothing new happens. The same problem occurred in the 30s, 50s, etc... each time needing a "new wave" to break the execs out of their trance.
And they're right. People are more willing to pay for things they're familiar with. People keep blaming movie studios for doing what People clearly want.
They choose based on what will make money. People keep complaining that they have the nerve to produce what people will most likely pay to see. If the majority of the audience really didn't want franchises, they'd stop paying to see them
I think you're reversing causality. Movies that were bound to be bad cast The Rock. We need to experiment by casting The Rock in a Paul Thomas Anderson.
I actually saw a family arguing about this today. The mother was like "we can sit anywhere, don't you wanna sit down here in the front" and the daughter was like "no, I don't want to crane my neck". I was mildly annoyed because there was assigned seating and therefore the mother was encouraging rule breaking, but I minded my own business and didn't say anything
I also agree, some of these movies get so fucking epic that I just don't care. I miss the human drama that takes place in a lower scale.
Not that infinity war wasn't fun, mind. But now it's not even enough to just fight for the world, but we have to fight for the multiverse!
I'm sure Doomsday will be good because the Russo brothers have made all of the best marvel movies, but it feels a bit "y'all haven't liked shit since we killed everyone off, so here they are again."
But post-infinity war I've basically only enjoyed the TV shows. Thunderbirds was pretty good. FF was... fine? Compared to previous FF movies, it was great. But it didn't land for a lot of people.
But Hawkeye was good. I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel. Echo was a decent spinoff. Looking forward to new installments of the Defenders characters now that the marvel Netflix people are largely back. Shit, I'll even be interested to see if they can make the Finn Jones Iron Fist work this time. But Colleen Wing was the best part of that show and I hear she isn't coming back. And the Falcon and the Winter Soldier was so much better than the Captain America movie.
Anyway the TV shows all have a limited scale and it gave them so much more heart.
You're right about the latest superman. I really liked the movie and him, although mostly the dc stuff was taking itself waaay to seriously for me in the past.
(personal preference)
Even if they do decide to go dark and gritty and kill off a few main characters, they went so deep down the multiverse rabbit hole that it doesn't seem possible for anything they write to have consequences ever again
I think it's more about drawing other audiences. Kids and gamers will absolutely watch Mario. If you cast Pratt, you could probably pull marvel fans as well. Using the og Mario voice actor may miss out on those sales
Okay, just as a caveat I know we should let this go and it doesn't really matter and it's obviously all subjective. However I'm just deathly curious, do you consider Chris Pratt a great actor? Cuz I've never heard anyone say that and I'd be fascinated to find otherwise.
I can still find modern special effects interesting enough if I find them aesthetically interesting – as though a lot of thought clearly went into them. I understand there were minimal hurdles to translating that vision to film, but it's the vision itself I appreciate.
I also definitely get the same feeling you do watching older films and especially stage plays, where the constraints of the medium make it even more impressive.
Part of the awe of watching movies (The so-called movie magic) is that at the same time as you're in awe of the film, there's a part of you in awe of how much collaborative work it took to create that stunt/effect/miniature, etc...
There's no magic anymore when one can just do the same thing in Blender at home if they had enough time to learn.
Watching a movie at home on my 120" projector with 5.1 and comfy chairs with my wife and the furkids is a far better experience than I've probably ever had at a cinema - partly because I can control the sound level, it's just too loud at the cinema.
National Movie theaters are now trying to show UFC and sports games. I support it. Because there's a lot of abandoned movie theaters and I would rather them fill seats with anything, than become the dying empty malls.
Also, I don't go to national movie theaters. My local neighborhood theater charges $5 for movies and $3 for pizza and popcorn.
"This was the last thing I watched together with my 8 year old son/daughter before he/she died from cancer" starts crying (it doesn't have to be true, just dramatic enough to shut them the hell up and to make them mind their own bussiness)
Hard disagree it's very much you white fuckers (said with love because I'm white) need to embrace the social experience of a movie.
Horror is peak in theaters.
Drag me to hell was the best experience I ever had. Everyone was talking and yelling in the theater. It was rowdy. I was drunk with my friends. It was an 11/10 experience.
Second was Smile post pandemic the theater was packed it was loud and boisterous.
Serious white people get the stick out your ass and enjoy life
I cannot stand The Godfather. Any mafia shit, really. I hate the whole family hierarchy thing, I hate the guise of freedom when it’s just an organization reminiscent of cops or the military, and I hate the blind loyalty to a system that only serves one person or family, it’s all just so petty and capitalistic, the mafia is fucking stupid.
You say that like I’m obligated to appreciate the film just because it claims to be critical of the mafia and if I don’t like it then I just didn’t get it. That’s not the case, I get it. I don’t like those films either, and yes, it’s because they’re army movies. Regardless of being critical of the subject material, you cannot make a movie entirely about the mafia (let alone, three of them), or the army, or anything, without romanticizing the subject matter. Do you have any idea how many people saw The Godfather and fell in love with the idea of the mafia, or Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now and fell in love with the idea of being in the military, or SLC Punk and fell in love with the idea of being a poser? All those people fucking loved those movies. Some people missing the point doesn’t mean that everyone who gets the point is obliged to think a movie is good. The Godfather fucking sucks, because it’s about stupid people doing stupid things and sucking their own dicks about it.
One beautiful thing about art - and, for me, especially movies - is that they reveal truths within ourselves.
The first time I saw Fight Club, the "true" meaning went WAY over my head. I was young, I just saw a cool action flick with a twist ending. To me, the message was Fuck the System. I grew up, though. I can now clearly see the deeper themes, like warning about toxic masculinity and groupthink.
Similarly, Starship Troopers was a favorite of mine. I never understood the parallels to fascism when I was younger - I just rooted for Johnny and the gang.
The Godfather and Apocalypse Now fall squarely into that same set of movies. These are all movies that I enjoyed when I was young, but the themes were just beyond me. And that's OK. My point is that you are definitely NOT obligated to appreciate these films. But maybe you can understand why these films are studied and rewatched and discussed. At least part of the reason is because someone who saw a film 5 or 10 or 30 years ago is only just now starting to understand it.
Sounds like you don’t understand different tastes and perspectives. I never said that that is inherently a bad thing, I just hate movies focused on military and authoritarian conformity and hierarchy as their main appeal, which is what the mafia is. As I said, I think the mafia is fucking stupid, I’m not asking for movies to be sunshine, I’m saying I don’t give a fuck about stupid mafia bullshit and glorified tales of such. Same goes for hoorah military shit. I’m not even saying it shouldn’t have been made, I just don’t like it, that was the point of this whole post. You can like the movie regardless of how stupid I think it is, art is subjective.
And creating a movie is a glorification of its materials, no matter the intent behind the creator. Just look at Fight Club, SLC Punk, Wall Street, The Punisher, Lolita, Full Metal Jacket, The Joker, etc… That’s not negotiable.
You’re intentionally misinterpreting what I’m saying, and it shows. You know what I’m getting at, I’m not playing in to this purposely obtuse bullshitery. I don’t like The Godfather and have valid criticisms of the films, get the fuck over it.
Also, you didn’t understand those movies and shows at all if you think those were the themes and subjects they were focusing on and exploring. Learn how to examine and interpret a story, you’re only seeing the metaphors, maybe watch some stuff on media literacy and film studies.
This is laughable coming from a guy who wrote “creating a movie is a glorification of its materials, no matter the intent behind the creator. That’s not negotiable.” Learn to take your head out of your ass before talking shit.
Yeah thats what you were supposed to take away from that movie, the creator of it isn't trying to glorify that life but show you how pathetic it is. But idiots watch it and take the wrong message
“So you see, the lesson is that Gatsby’s pursuit of wealth only kept him further from-“
“Dude, that guy’s parties were AWESOME! He had like a freaking circus there and all! What minority group do I have to brutalize to be like him??”
Lookie here boys, we gots ourselves a tough guy. Hey, Rico, why don't you show our friend what happens to tough guys round here. Maybe a little swim with the fishies will show him we ain't so bad after all.
That's why the sopranos is pretty good. They are just pathetic overweight old guys who have no connection to italy, but try really hard to pretend they have.
Even better is that a certain kind of group still think they are bad ass, because they kinda fail to see the point.
More theaters need a rotation of classics. There's a whole subset of movies I'd love to see in theaters again and having to wait for some small theater half an hour away to show one of those for one weekend a year is a bummer.
Sorry, chief. Best we can do is a lousy remake instead. That's because the licensing rights for oldies are too hard to figure out so we can't be bothered, and all creativity in Hollywood died in 1999.
Yeah. I've had people fight me tooth and nail repeatedly that the Matrix was a "2000s movie." I think this is another one of those Berenstain Bears things.
(Most likely people watched it on DVD in the year 2000, since for a while there The Matrix was the movie that sold DVD players.)
Its funny because when I was young bargain theaters would play old stuff they could get cheap regularly. I think its tougher now that people can see something whenever they like.
Fandoms ruin movie franchises worse than any bad directing or writing ever could.
I avoid fandoms of franchises I enjoy because they end up sucking the life out of everything. When things don’t go exactly as fans expected or want, people turn to the internet to rage at things we once loved. Many of these “dogshit” movies are entertaining and fine as they are. But we’ve become so obsessed with our own expectations of what story a movie is supposed to be or say, that we have stopped allowing others to tell their own stories and show their own visions. It’s just all about ragging on whatever all the time.
This includes: Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, DC, everything in the Tolkien universe, etc. All perfectly fine franchises that just aren’t for everyone and I think that’s ok.
Exception: The last 2 Ghostbusters movies, those movies forgot what the GB are supposed to be about; adult, raunchy, horror comedy.
I am the same way, even if it’s a show I don’t like, I’ll avoid fandoms because they make it worse.
The only one that I have not noticed get bad is for The Expanse, but I don’t delve too much into it, so maybe I just don’t see it. I’m just obsessed with the books and tv show.
Hideaki Anno reportedly dealt hilariously with this: when fans started complaining that the 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' was getting weird, he doubled down on the confusion. Well NGE is now a modern classic worldwide.
I never got into Rick & Morty, but I also didn’t hear about it until it was popular and the fan base had already turned me off of it. “Fans” really can ruin great things.
The Wilhelm scream is not, and never was, a funny inside joke. When you're watching an intense action scene and suddenly you hear this high pitched and often way to loudly mixed scream it instantly ruins the immersion.
Any movie that adds it is instantly ruined for me. I can somewhat excuse older movies since it wasn't that wildly used yet but any contemporary director/audio engineer adding it really needs to get the idea out of their head that it's funny/clever/subtle. Cause it's not.
I'm mixed on this. If it's a serious movie, then I agree wholeheartedly. It's not funny and it breaks my immersion.
But if it's a more relaxed or even funny movie? Bring it on, the more subtle the better, I love hearing it, always gives me a chuckle when I'm in a chuckling mood.
That's because the officer falling is Ben Burt, the sound designer for Star Wars and many other movies, who made the scream his signature. (Although he didn't originate it.)
That doesn't clock as the traditional Wilhelm scream to me.
I'm not trying to say you're wrong, I don't know much about this. I'm just saying if I were watching this with zero context, I wouldn't recognize it as being the Wilhelm scream. Whereas normally I hear it in every movie it's in, pretty clearly.
Now that you mention it, the scream in that clip is similar but a bit different. Good catch.
The main point I was trying to make was that the person getting knocked off and falling is the person who made it popular. Personally, I hate the Wilhelm scream. It's way over used and really doesn't add anything to the scene it's in.
I'll hottake that hottake: cinema popcorn is amazing (around here at least), and I think a lot of that comes from key ingredients they use. One is "Flavacol" seasoning, and the other is butter-flavored coconut oil. Makes a world of difference, assuming you like a buttery taste.
lol It’s cool, I know not many people like it. I also love other weird things like candy corn and valentines sweetheart candy. I do draw a line at black licorice though.
Cinema popcorn is 60% of why I want to go to the movies. My local cinema changed popcorn maker and now it’s not as fresh… I am not as excited to go to the movies anymore :/
I think it's more that we turned cinematic universes into a forced content machine to have x number of side character movies per year, with one major tentpole event every few years, with tv shows, video games, and comics all filing in gaps along the way. It's exhausting. I'm fine with a connected universe that is allowed to live and breathe in it's own.
That will happen when you have writers who aren't as smart as the characters they're trying to write for and studios scared of putting out anything that audiences may not understand.
So apart from tumblr fanbase, why doesn't /tv/ like this show?
Because it has smart characters written stupidly.
Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men is a smartly written smart character. When Chigurh kills a hotel room full of three people he books to room next door so he can examine it, finding which walls he can shoot through, where the light switch is, what sort of cover is there etc. This is a smart thing to do because Chigurh is a smart person who is written by another smart person who understands how smart people think.
Were Sherlock Holmes to kill a hotel room full of three people. He'd enter using a secret door in the hotel that he read about in a book ten years ago. He'd throw peanuts at one guy causing him to go into anaphylactic shock, as he had deduced from a dartboard with a picture of George Washington carver on it pinned to the wall that the man had a severe peanut allergy. The second man would then kill himself just according to plan as Sherlock had earlier deduced that him and the first man were homosexual lovers who couldn't live without eachother due to a faint scent of penis on each man's breath and a slight dilation of their pupils whenever they looked at each other. As for the third man, why Sherlock doesn't kill him at all. The third man removes his sunglasses and wig to reveal he actually WAS Sherlock the entire time. But Sherlock just entered through the Secret door and killed two people, how can there be two of him? The first Sherlock removes his mask to reveal he's actually Moriarty attempting to frame Sherlock for two murders. Sherlock however anticipated this, the two dead men stand up, they're undercover police officers, it was all a ruse. "But Sherlock!" Moriarty cries "That police officer blew his own head off, look at it, there's skull fragments on the wall, how is he fine now? How did you fake that?". Sherlock just winks at the screen, the end.
This is retarded because Sherlock is a smart person written by a stupid person to whom smart people are indistinguishable from wizards.
Sure and perhaps I'm wrong but just because you aren't one doesn't mean you don't know any. Heck they often get consultants for medical shows for some bits of realism. How hard would it be to talk to some actual scientists and engineers (would probably be pretty cheap) when you're already spending millions.
Hollywood uses experts on set all the time. And then ignores the expert's advice (and common sense) because the director wanted a certain "thing" that would never actually happen.
Low hanging fruit, but one example would be the movie "Lucy", based entirely on the debunked myth that humans use only 10% of their brain.
Another example: The beloved Game of Thrones episode "Battle of the Bastards" features several battle scenes that are physically impossible (like using a HUGE pile of bodies as a fortification). The director said he absolutely knew that his depiction was impossible. How many of his expert advisers do you suppose just walked away shaking their heads in puzzlement?
Hear me out here... I want more remakes. But remakes for the right reasons.
White Men Cant Jump was a good movie for 1992, but it was hardly oscar bait. The 2023 remake wasnt bad, it was a fun revisit. I enjoy it because it gives me the feeling they actually had fun making it. Do it with Major League or The Replacements, dont reinvent the wheel just make a VERY similar movie with serious actors who want to have some fun, break their mould, tell some dick jokes. Dont cast whoever is currently hot or someone I've seen in 28 contrived comedies. I want Timothee Chalomet and Benedict Cumberpatch as players with unusual names have an in character argument about who has the stupider name.
NGL I do love a good sports movie but those are the easiest low hanging fruit examples I can think of because you dont even need to pretend like the original didnt happen,"Our baseball team sucks AGAIN" isnt a complicated plot. You can reference the original, update the humor, have cameos and its all just fun.
They need to stop trying to remake and reboot beloved franchises that nobody is asking to have remade. Remake fun, make it fun and let people eat popcorn.
Denis either didn't get Dune (doubt it, or at least I'd like to believe so, seeing how fascinated he's been with Dune, historically, but he's a visual artist and not a philosopher/writer so it's always possible) or was forced by money people for money reasons to drastically change some important characters in ways that make no internal sense (but are more appealing to the Western audience). Both movies are basically just well shot, very pretty spectacles and, if you've read Dune, you know the essence of it is in the silent reflection, logical inferences and ideological battles, so even at their core the movies failed to understand Herbert. Idk, it's just a mess, a very pretty one but "random religious disunity in a group that actually believes and is currently being subjugated by the great powers" and "spicy, annoying, immature New-Yorker who's supposed to be the ideal, loving and wise woman (and much of the reason why the plot advances at all) for a man assaulted by visions and the pressure of power" definitely soured the whole watching experience.
I look at it more that Denis made a lot of choices to remove a lot of the more esoteric elements to fit that it was a movie and a sequel made years later. A lot was removed from the book, but it still feels well paced for two movies.
And if you're going to make significant cuts, you might as well cut out the really weird shit.
He kept all the magic thingies and even added an element that was not present in the books with the random female voice/voices "speaking prophecies" to Paul. But more importantly, he ruined a main character, transforming her into basically a contemporary American. It might be well paced, it might be pretty, but it's not Dune and it doesn't make as much sense as it should have had they not messed with it for the sake of larger audiences.
Books and movies have very different options and rules for storytelling. Changes must be made and those decisions will never make everybody happy. I realized at one point that a movie or show, even if it's retelling a story from a book, will never match my expectations. It's always just another entry in that stories universe. That allowed me to enjoy adaptations more.
Must? Idk about that. Will, sure, for financial reasons usually, but there were too many big, nonsensical changes in Denis story... This is like making Sam from LOTR a sneaky, dishonest fella but keeping the rest of the story as it is. 🤷
A book can just tell you what a character is thinking, your focus as a reader is always exactly where the writer wants it to be, because there is nothing to focus on but the words. None of that translates to movies. The broad rule for screenplays is that one page translates to one minute of runtime. You can't directly translate a 400 page book into a screenplay. You must adapt it and make changes. Some are easy, because descriptions of how something looks like become an image. Others are difficult.
Probably not a hot take but audio mixes are often dreadful. If I have to turn on subtitles to understand what someone is saying because they've been buried in the mix, someone fucked up and that person shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a mixing console again.
It's complex for the sake of complexity and the complication needlessly makes the story more difficult to parse. The revelation about there being an additional layer before reality is such an overused trope that it wasn't an interesting twist and added nothing to the plot.
I didn't find the movie to be that complicated or difficult to understand. it had a lot of cool visuals that made it seem like your brain was supposed to be surprised or something. but there was nothing complicated about it
Crash was absolutely trash, this movie was at least watchable. It's admittedly a really unfair comparison.
The reason I make it is because I feel the movie is getting a lot of praise because of what it's "about" - and I use that word lightly because it's not really...about anything. It's just the pretense for the movie.
The movie opens with a revolutionary group raiding an ICE detention center to free people.
I agree...what was the resistance fighting for? Why did we spend 45 minutes watching them fuck shit up with no explained goal?
All of the performances were great but Lockjaw was a stupid fuckin character. Hated the twist with him and hated the plot around it which....was apparently the ONLY plot because nothing else really happens.
Which feels weird to say because there was so much going on in the movie. But there's only so much going on because everything in the movie exists for a single purpose and then it goes away. Every character has a single motivation.
I'm particularly mad because I walked in expecting to love it after several people whose movie opinions I almost always agree with told me they loved it. But I don't love it, I'm neutral on it at best.
Casablanca sucks. Also, most “refined” cinema is a fart-sniffing competition of one-upsmanship in how much a person can endure meandering nonsense disguised as commentary.
I mean, it's a hot take, I'll give you that. I can't agree with it, though. Every line of dialogue in that film moves plot. It's really well edited and far ahead of its time. Modern cinema owes a lot to the lessons taught by Casablanca.
I think there's a fine line between collaboration and committee (members of a band can collaborate to make good music). But capitalism definitely works against art.
Ok for something resembling a more serious answer, I've always found it weird when things outside of a film itself affected people's opinions on the film itself. Like I don't care that an actor or director was caught saying something dumb or the people don't speak out in support of something. If the film is good or bad, then that stuff shouldn't affect it imo. I know films don't exist in a bubble, but whenever I talk to people and they bring this up for why they do or don't like something or think it's over or underrated then I just get really confused.
Because art has meaning only through our emotional attachment. Literally anything can upset that balance.
I'd be willing to bet that you also have a tipping point.
Maybe you you don't care if a director is charged with allegations of sexual impropriety. But what if it's molesting a child? What if that child lived in your town? What if that child were your 15 year old niece? What if she was your 10 year old daughter? What if she were murdered?
At some point (hopefully long before your daughter is murdered!), most of us would probably form a personal opinion about this crazy-ass director who's running around and committing heinous crimes, and it would skew our perception of their work. It's just that the line in the sand is a bit different for all of us.
I just can't see myself having that line considering film is a collaborative effort and I can't bring myself to say this work is bad or whatever cause of what a singular person involved in it did. Woody Allen is a shit head, but Hannah and Her Sisters is an insanely well made film that had me feeling so many different things with an ending speech that hit me hard. I wish nothing but the absolute worst most disgusting things to happen to J.K. Rowling, but Prisoner of Azkaban still blows me away with everything they managed to pull off in it.
There was once I time where I would have argued against your take on Star Wars. But now, I don't disagree with you. The newer Disney Star Wars films have killed the franchise.
Second draft of this comment, because I realize this has happened a lot during my lifetime.
Star Wars, like Star Trek, The Legend of Zelda - a lot of the media I grew up with - started out as stories, and then transitioned to settings, and have now become paint colors.
There used to be an answer for "Who is the main character of Star Wars?" When I was a kid, that answer was Luke Skywalker. When I was a teenager, the answer changed to Darth Vader, and now it's a meaningless question, like who's the main character of brutalism or who's the protagonist of JNCO jeans?
I don't consider Disney's Star Wars to be a part of the actual universe.
It's kind of bittersweet. Yeah, we don't get new Star Wars but at the same time we can appreciate what we have knowing that there's nothing new coming.
Same. I don't consider the sequels canon. There are too many plot holes that contradict the original trilogy. Sometimes the sequels even contradict themselves.
With very few exceptions, the "Theatre" is dead to me. Last film I saw in one was Blade Runner 2049- a proper movie. There was nearly nobody else in my theater, but when I left there were tons of people leaving some stupid piece of shit movie down the hall.
Good question, it's a lot easier to be negative. I enjoy Tarantino movies, A more high brow movie I liked is The Act of Killing, I liked the HBO series The Deuce, ehm... this is hard.
His characters just exist to move the plot forward, I never get the feeling that they have any agency or personality beyond existing so they can be in a Nolan movie.
Exactly. And the style, while it's pretty and cool looking, works together with the paper-thin characters to give this introspective muffled and artificial feel to all of his works.
Yeah, but his films are all hermetic and self-contained, there's nothing for me in them except the gimmick. I have no desire to rewatch ‘Tenet’ or ‘Inception’, because understanding the story better gives me absolutely bupkis. The stories aren't in any way connected to the wider world and have zero impression on my life afterwards. Like, the mystery in ‘The Name of the Rose’ is a gimmick, but it remains interesting because it has layers and lots of connections to history and stuff.
If Nolan directed some kinda sci-fi ‘Robinson Crusoe’, I might've been left with an urge to build a hut and defensive walls and gather resources, like it happened with the book and some of Cory Doctorow's novels. But his films don't even give me that. It's kind of an achievement in itself, really.
P.S. Actually, there are plenty of self-contained gimmicky films that I still want to revisit sometimes. E.g. 'Man with a Movie Camera' entirely consists of editing tricks, but it works. Lynch's films are self-contained and often don't even have a story. Idk what it is with Nolan's films, but they're dry as fuck.
yeah no, I can't really disagree with that. I also don't feel like re-watching any of his movies - in fact i was interrupted in the middle of Oppenheimer, and don't even feel like finishing it
My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery.
My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.
My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.
My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard really.
At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles.
There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum. It's breathtaking — I highly suggest you try it.
I tried watching LOTR ever since it's out on DVD. I never finished one. It's so boring, i don't know what it is. Last time someone tried to show me the enhanced super long edition and it was absolutely painful and we both fell asleep.
Watch in a theater if there's an event near you or with a bunch of friends. The theatrical cuts are much better paced. It was even criticized for being much faster than the books. If you get to the Mines of Moria (1/2 of the way through the first) and you're not hooked then it's not for you. LoTR is movie magic. Not just "wow that was a great movie" but something that transcends the medium, and makes you ask, "HOW did they DO that?" Hope you give it another shot. Cheers
I think 8 is the biggest steaming pile of garbage ever, but 7 was simple fun and 9 would have been decent if it wasn’t forced to rebuild the china shop that 8 had just rampaged through. The Last Jedi took every bit of work building a narrative that 7 had done, piled it up, shat on it, then lit it on fire, all in the name of trying to be a cool rogue auteur. 9 had no choice but to do inane contortions like “somehow, Palpatine returned” because there were no fucking villains left alive.
Rian Johnson should never be allowed within a hundred miles of a beloved franchise he didn’t create. He can keep making Knives Out, but I will die on the hill that The Last Jedi is a selfish, senseless, poorly written piece of hackery.
Partial blame goes to Disney for not having the sequel trilogy plot predetermined in a story bible before ever putting the first ink to script.
Episode 3 is better when you watch it as a meta movie. Or with the commentary on.
George Lucas really started to learn that his shit does smell with episode 1 & 2, and asked for help with Episode 3. So watching how he got help, and the behind the scenes, just makes each scene more enjoyable.
Whether it was intentional or not, there's a really interesting metaphor for the 24/7 news cycle, the need to blame something, and the state of the world. There's so much in there to think about but most of the audience just thought "plants make people kill themselves? That's too silly". In my mind it isn't the plants; no one knows, but the need to get the first headline, or feel in control is so great that people get frantic, panicky, and dangerous.
They really screwed up "The Wizard of Oz" by their knee-jerk reaction to using new colour technologies right in the middle of production. It was jarring, not amazing, as I'd already been accustomed to colours all of my life. /s
There are good action films, namely ones where action isn't the whole thing. E.g. 'Terminator 2', the original 'Total Recall', 'True Lies', or 'One Battle After Another'.
So... 60fps exists... why don't we just use that for movies lmfao? (is this even a "hot take"?)
I like Revenge of the Sith more than every other Star Wars movie, including the original trilogy... (I like the volcano planet lightsaber duel)
Also as an introvert... I never went to a theater... 🏴☠️ (Did I miss out on anything?... I like the ability to pause so... 🤷♂️) It's not like Christopher Nolan is gonna get a heart attack over this lol
The Hobbit trilogy was filmed and released in 48 fps (in theatres only, now lost media), and pretty much everyone hated it.
I saw it and can confirm it looked really fucking weird. I thought I’d get used to it after a while but the effect kept pulling me out of the movie throughout the entire runtime.
cause it looks like shit. films, aka movies, have had a certain look and feel to them since the beginning. when you have the resolution and frame rate too high it looks like youre looking at actors on a soundstage. its too clear. it disables the suspension of disbelief.
60fps exists... why don't we just use that for movies
Originally because it felt like tv shows, which were shot in 60 fps and were pretty shitty from the artistic standpoint.
as an introvert... I never went to a theater
As also an introvert, I can report that you're not forbidden from going to movies alone nor are you required to interact with anyone other than getting to your seat. The theatre is not much of a wow factor for me personally, but others likely get more out of it.
Advertising matters for movies. Every time someone says "movies suck now", there's always some guy that says "movies are great if you know where to look". Sure, but where is that? I can find listicles with a few of them, but this is usually only the ones that break into mainstream, a year later. Even generic reddit and Lemmy/Piefed subs aren't much better. It's not feasible to ask someone to join a forum or Discord about indie movies just to not be fed slop.
The Aliens in Aliens are loosely based on Naked Mole Rat cultures and behaviours complete with hive mind that talks via chirps and trills, giant queen with extended baby area, specialized roles (this is more from the expanded universe), not liking other clans of Aliens, resistant to pain/acid etc. There are just so many parallels.
I say Aliens as the Alien in Alien was slightly different depending on if you consider the deleted scenes canon or not.
That seems like a perfectly valid reaction to most of the movies beyond the first 2-3. I know there are some exceptions, including some of the animated series, but most of it is just repetitive, useless dreck IMO.
modern movies suck today because Hollywood stopped telling stories and started selling fantasies.
take for example two movies that are somewhat similar, Falling Down (1993) and Law Abiding Citizen (2009).
In FD the audience spends 75% of the movie following a guy around who is clearly not well. he's the antihero that we all sometimes wish we could be, but we also acknowledge it's moralistically unjust to just go around blowing shit up and shooting at people. towards the end of the movie you understand the real cause of why he was acting the way he was which made his character even more relatable. it made you question our society and the cruel realities that everyday people survive. it makes you think that maybe that "pocket protecting pencil pusher" has more in common with you than you'd like to admit.
In LAC the audience is immediately jarred by a violent sexual event that charges you with a desire for revenge. The rest of the movie is about a guy taking that revenge and getting some sadistic pleasure from it. you aren't supposed to relate to the main character, or any character in the entire movie. everyone is shitty except for his dead wife and kid. The premise of the entire movie is to make the audience feel good that "justice" is being administered and sugar coats it in a high fructose action syrup. by the end of the movie you're filled with rage of the injustices within our own world and feel as if you have been wronged like the main character. you spend the rest of the night imagining your own revenge if you were the main character.
FD tells the story of how far a broken man will go if he has everything taken from him.
LAC sells the fantasy that revenge is action packed and you will always win if your cause is righteous and just.
that said, don't get me wrong. I liked both movies, but I'm not going to lie to myself and say that LAC isn't just revenge porn.
modern movies are flat and simple because audiences lack the mental capacity they used to have. this is because we no longer watch them for entertainment, we watch to escape our own realities.
edit: oh yeah and sound engineers can suck fucking dick if they can't understand how to level out the foreground, background, and vocals for a regular not action movie. I'm tired of reading subtitles.
Cinema has it's own symbolic language. As does music, dance, painting, etc. They are all different languages with different capabilities. Translation from book to movie is always incomplete, just as The Divine Comedy does not move into English without significant compromise. Adaptation is the best to hope for. And even that is often too difficult to accomplish well.
Translation from book to movie is always incomplete
I wouldn't say ‘always’, since plenty of books don't have anything besides what would be shown on the screen.
But also, conversely, cinema allows for things that can't be put in a book. Lynch's films can't be turned into books with a semblance of the same effect — even though literature has its own surreal tradition, and Ballard, Kobo Abe or Murakami don't quite work in film. And the notion of novelizing ‘Man With a Movie Camera’ doesn't even make sense.
CGI shouldn't win cinematography or even special effects awards.
Both of those things used to be collaborative skills. Multiple people working together to make a great composition on the screen. (director, cinematographer, set designer, costumer, prop-maker, foley artist, actor, etc...)
A great shot in CGI requires a computer and rendering time. It's not the same.
If you can do everything with a computer, than none of your special effects are special by definition.
Oh...You've got spiderman framed above buildings high in the sky in Into the Spider Verse? Great...cool shot...but took nothing to actually create it.
If you tell me that to get that shot you had professional stunt people doing wire work, a complex camera rig, two helicopters and high-speed camera? THAT is the special in special effect.
You clearly dont know enough about how pipeline to make good 3d effects goes.
You cant just toss enough money and time to make good CGI scene. The director needs to understand how the effects work and how design the scene with that in mind. There is huge amount of work to make sure the real parts in the scene work with the CGI parts. It needs just as much planning, story boarding and collaborations between the different groubs than any other special effect shot needs. The lighting needs to match, the eye lines of the actors need to match. Any time when there is contact between real things and 3d modeled things it needs to be planned shot by shot to make it work. Even full CGI scenes need to be planned how they stransit in to ot from the real footage.
If you think special effects are just high speed pursuits or stunt men doing wire work, you really are selling the whole VFX industry short.
Oh I'm not saying there isn't skill involved. There's obviously artistic skill involved.
But there's already awards for that kind of thing. It's a completely different skill set completely removed from the collaborative nature of film-making and film special effects.
One person sitting behind a computer, no matter how skilled, isn't the same as a team working in tandem to create something awe inspiring.
What is considered film expertise today is a joke. This applies to all mediums, but especially in cinema you see it all the time that a person who has watched popular, top-rated Hollywood movies is considered very knowledgeable. Yeah, it doesn't matter, especially in a private group, but it's a cringing pain in the ass to listen to these people talk about movies.
So did not have one but after reading through a day of responses I realize my hot take is I am so out of watching things in general that I cannot recognize tons of stuff.
If it's people I don't know or care about... And it's not directly in front of my line of sight... Then I guess.
But I'm really sensitive to light in my periphery. I drive with the dash lights as low as they will go without being off, and can't stand new cars with the LCD equivalent of the sun in place of the radio.
But in my own home? My own family? Especially if it's a movie I really care about and they haven't seen? Drives me bonkers, because they are missing the best parts, or will be confused later because they are missing details. Frustrating.
I don't have a problem with remakes. And neither do the majority of moviegoers, or they'd stop paying to see them. Stop saying there are no original movies or that original movies aren't advertised enough. When you get the theater to buy your ticket to the latest remake, there is a list of other movies playing and you probably have your phone on hand to look up what they're about to decide if you want to see them.
Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of movies do indeed suck. And given how anyone can make a movie these days with their phones, that's more likely to be accurate than ever before.
It's not for me either. Having only seen episode 4 and the one where bb8 was introduced, I could even tell they were basically the same fucking movie. Fell asleep in the theater.
I mean before a certain point in time it was only a subculture really concerned with sci fi and fantasy. It was not really mainstream at all even if some movies did well sometimes. Its amazing how mainstream its become.
::: spoiler Major spoilers for the movie. You have been warned.
The story should have been about an existing character and not a new character that gets killed off in the end.
Reze's story wasn't bad, but I cannot connect with her the same as with any of the already established characters. Plus there was a huge lack of Makima throughout the movie. She shows up at the start for around 20 minutes, then disappears until the last 2-3 minutes of the movie just to kill Reze off.
It feels like nothing was really gained because of this, other than a gun devil piece and a mini arc with the angel dude.
I would have much preferred an arc about someone we don't know well, like Makima or some of the other devils we met during the show's finale (We got a mini arc for the angel dude, but what about the Shark fiend or the spider lady?)
Overall, the movie wasn't bad. It just wasn't what I was looking for in a Chainsaw Man movie.
:::
It is pretty faithful to the manga, which is what I was looking for. I can't imagine they could haveade it better by just ad libbing some bullshit Chainsaw Man fanfic.
Star Wars holds a place in my heart mainly for nostalgia reasons. Seeing those original films for the first time was formative back in the day when I was a wee cunt. But yeah, they're pretty indefensible from a film criticism standpoint.
My takes:
Goodfellas is fine. It's a'ight. It's about 900% more beloved than it deserves. Casino was better, even though it was the same damn movie.
On Goodfellas: Ray Liotta is fucking awful in it. He gives me second-hand embarrassment watching him. He's been great in other roles, but he just seemed so out of his depth trying to hold his own in amongst the De Niros and Pescis of the world. I also think the actor playing Big Paulie was fucking awful, but he doesn't have much screen time so it's easy to forget how shit he was.
Also - and lastly, I swear - on Goodfellas: the editing is less "fractured and frenetic like the rapidly-imploding mind of the main character" and more like "fractured and frenetic like the coked up Parkinson's-suffering editor during a violent bowel movement". Unnecessarily janky and rough around every single edge, to put it mildly.
Nic Cage should not be allowed to be in films, full stop. Not even a documentary about Nic Cage in which he agrees with me, personally, through the camera that he's terrible.
The Godfather III was good. Yeah, not as good as I and II, and the downright offensively-bad acting from Andy Garcia (you thought I was about to complain about Sofia Coppola, didn't ya? Andy was an order of magnitude worse) definitely knocks a few stars off my IMDb rating, but the film was fine.
I've posted about this in Unpopular Opinion before, but I think remakes and reboots are great, as long as the film-makers are trying to do their best and make an honest go of it. I especially love when a film is transported from one culture into another. For example, Unforgiven - the Clint Eastwood modern classic - was remade in Japan, except instead of the gunslinging Wild West it was the samurai-sword-swingin' Meiji period. How cool is that shit? I love it. Now I have two awesome movies where before there was only one.
I take umbrage at item 4, but I don't have the time for the correct kind of reply.
If you could go to chatgpt and put in this prompt for me and then read the result, that'd be great.
"Please make a long, meandering reply to the assertion that Nic Cage should not be in movies, stating that Nic Cage is perfect for those movies that need that Nic Cage energy."
I don't want big name celebrities doing voice over for animated movies. Give me actual VAs
Is Mark Hamill an exception? Or is he a voice actor that happens to have done some face acting as well?
Mark is a voice actor that has done some on screen work. I don't care much about star wars and his joker and trickster is peak. Note though him in the long walk was epic.
You'll probably get a kick out of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL-VHe_4GmE
he was a face actor until that
car accidentwampa fucked it up.Yeah, but the wampa never acted again, so I think justice was done. Their career is over.
based on his voice work as Skips from Regular Show, most definitely he's actually got the chops for it.
I genuinely do not want to see famous actors in any media, at all. I don't want to recognize anyone in a movie.
My son is big cinephile, and he complains about how contemporary movies are all filled with people who look like nepo-baby actors. He says they all have iPhone face: no matter what time period they're supposed to be in, they all look like they've seen an iPhone.
He longs for the old days when older unattractive actors were in demand as character actors.
I always find the first moments of movies with famous actors disconcerting. Why is Jack from Titanic here? Oh, he is not Jack from Titanic, just has his body-suit…
The Bear had an episode with a family reunion where everyone was a famous actor, so you have some familiarity with them, but they were so characterized, it wasn't off-putting.
I do agree though those actors that are always the same persona (e.g. The Rock), do throw me away from what I'm watching.
Which is why I can't stand Will Smith movies. Or Vin Diesel. Or any of the other dozen actors who don't actually go out of their way and act.
‘Black Mirror’ was great because I don't know anyone in it.
The Disney-churn Marvell/Star Wars slop has ruined the film industry. No one is willing to risk a thing on original IP when remakes/reboots/continuations are taking in the bank.
We will never see another Stranger Than Fiction, or Dead Poets Society or, Eternal Sunshine while the low hanging fruit is such a hot commodity. And it will never not be a hot commodity.
Original movies like that are still being made, much much more than ever before.
Just not in Hollywood. And you won't get a trailer for those movies fed to you by Youtube's algorithm, you have to look for them yourself.
My recent favorites were Flow and The Outrun (both from 2024).
Edit: Using this comment to plug one of my favorite original movies of all time:
The Guard (2011)
(The first 2 minutes set the tone of the movie well)
Yeah people will only consume content that had been marketed to them then turn around and complain that no original stuff is being made :'(
It's funny cause I'm old enough to remember the exact same thing being said during times that are now considered a golden age.
So really we should vote with our wallets and agree to not watch cinema pollution like that then
Sadly, I think that slop flicks will remain popular the same way and for the same reasons McDonald's is.
Waaaay ahead of you. It’s too bad way too many people still watch that shit enough to justify it.
I agree with your point about established ip being safe and attractive to executives.
I disagree with your point about "never see another eternal sunshine" type movie. Everything everywhere all at once. The substance. Sinners. There are gems.
This was a problem before Marvel or the Star Wars reboots. Execs will always go for what seems safer and an established IP with a fanbase is safer than something brand new. A tale as old as time.
Also cinema is so old that nothing new happens. The same problem occurred in the 30s, 50s, etc... each time needing a "new wave" to break the execs out of their trance.
And they're right. People are more willing to pay for things they're familiar with. People keep blaming movie studios for doing what People clearly want.
The same thing happened in the 50s with big budget epic movies trying to appeal to everyone, I think Cleopatra was at the tail end of it.
Who controls which movies make money? The audience does.
Who controls which movies are produced?
They choose based on what will make money. People keep complaining that they have the nerve to produce what people will most likely pay to see. If the majority of the audience really didn't want franchises, they'd stop paying to see them
You’re proving my point without an effort. Thank you.
Having The Rock in your movie makes it worse.
Given his script caveats to get him to star, you're right.
I've only liked maybe two Rock movies and he still had hair in both of them.
I think you're reversing causality. Movies that were bound to be bad cast The Rock. We need to experiment by casting The Rock in a Paul Thomas Anderson.
Would that it were so simple.
It's complicated.
I actually like sitting in the first few rows.
Damn. Didn’t think I’d find a psychopath in a comment thread about movies but there you go!
First actual hot take I've seen in this post so far
Thus we can only assume that you are a giraffe or an okapi.
there is another option
I’ll just sit in the back and give you some space
I actually saw a family arguing about this today. The mother was like "we can sit anywhere, don't you wanna sit down here in the front" and the daughter was like "no, I don't want to crane my neck". I was mildly annoyed because there was assigned seating and therefore the mother was encouraging rule breaking, but I minded my own business and didn't say anything
Marvel / DC super hero movies are boring besides some of the jokes. Every main character is basically invincible, fights are pointless.
Except for those who died, I guess?
Scnr 😁
But Actually, that's what I found to be a good thing: letting characters leave, finishing their story. Captain America, scarlet witch.
My hot take is I still watch the series of movies in hope for good stuff but most has passed.
One guy wrote a very true thing: when was the last time superheroes actually saved someone like they originally did.
Superman did, but it's fair criticism for marvel.
I also agree, some of these movies get so fucking epic that I just don't care. I miss the human drama that takes place in a lower scale.
Not that infinity war wasn't fun, mind. But now it's not even enough to just fight for the world, but we have to fight for the multiverse!
I'm sure Doomsday will be good because the Russo brothers have made all of the best marvel movies, but it feels a bit "y'all haven't liked shit since we killed everyone off, so here they are again."
But post-infinity war I've basically only enjoyed the TV shows. Thunderbirds was pretty good. FF was... fine? Compared to previous FF movies, it was great. But it didn't land for a lot of people.
But Hawkeye was good. I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel. Echo was a decent spinoff. Looking forward to new installments of the Defenders characters now that the marvel Netflix people are largely back. Shit, I'll even be interested to see if they can make the Finn Jones Iron Fist work this time. But Colleen Wing was the best part of that show and I hear she isn't coming back. And the Falcon and the Winter Soldier was so much better than the Captain America movie.
Anyway the TV shows all have a limited scale and it gave them so much more heart.
You're right about the latest superman. I really liked the movie and him, although mostly the dc stuff was taking itself waaay to seriously for me in the past. (personal preference)
Justice Gang. I need a Justice Gang movie. Guy and Mr. Terrific were SO well executed.
Even if they do decide to go dark and gritty and kill off a few main characters, they went so deep down the multiverse rabbit hole that it doesn't seem possible for anything they write to have consequences ever again
Regular actors should stick to regular acting and leave voice acting to voice actors.
Is this a hot take?
Chris Pratt as Mario was when a lot of people went "wtf why?"
A lot of people wouldn't even know about it if Chris Pratt wasn't in it
I think you highly underestimate the cultural catchet of Mario.
Too much of a hot take for the hot take post?
I wouldn't call it a hot take, just kind of a silly one, akin to saying the Nike logo isn't that recognizable.
I was talking to someone about that movie, and I brought up Chris Pratt. They didn't know who he voiced in the movie.
A lot of people would not have known about Mario? 🤨
Oh man, the idea that you consider the worst Chris to be a bigger draw than Mario. Wow
I think it's more about drawing other audiences. Kids and gamers will absolutely watch Mario. If you cast Pratt, you could probably pull marvel fans as well. Using the og Mario voice actor may miss out on those sales
Again he's the worst Chris. He's not a draw for anybody. Great actors can be draws. That ain't him.
Okay, just as a caveat I know we should let this go and it doesn't really matter and it's obviously all subjective. However I'm just deathly curious, do you consider Chris Pratt a great actor? Cuz I've never heard anyone say that and I'd be fascinated to find otherwise.
As much as I have issues with 2001 space odyssey, it is a technical marvel for its time.
Same. I still appreciate modern effects tho but those old movies really impress me. Have you seen The Johnstown Flood? That one kinda blew my mind
I can still find modern special effects interesting enough if I find them aesthetically interesting – as though a lot of thought clearly went into them. I understand there were minimal hurdles to translating that vision to film, but it's the vision itself I appreciate.
I also definitely get the same feeling you do watching older films and especially stage plays, where the constraints of the medium make it even more impressive.
Precisely.
Part of the awe of watching movies (The so-called movie magic) is that at the same time as you're in awe of the film, there's a part of you in awe of how much collaborative work it took to create that stunt/effect/miniature, etc...
There's no magic anymore when one can just do the same thing in Blender at home if they had enough time to learn.
Same. I watched Citizen Kane for the first time a year or two ago, and some of the shots blew my mind. Like how the fuck did he do some of that shit?
How do you feel about something like Fury Road, where they make a point of including practical effects?
Texas has changed a bit since I was there last...
‘Man With a Movie Camera’ is great for this.
Watching a movie at home on my 120" projector with 5.1 and comfy chairs with my wife and the furkids is a far better experience than I've probably ever had at a cinema - partly because I can control the sound level, it's just too loud at the cinema.
National Movie theaters are now trying to show UFC and sports games. I support it. Because there's a lot of abandoned movie theaters and I would rather them fill seats with anything, than become the dying empty malls.
Also, I don't go to national movie theaters. My local neighborhood theater charges $5 for movies and $3 for pizza and popcorn.
In a cinema I used to go to, they used to show the Met’s operas during the Sunday matinee. Absolutely lovely!
Thats sick, I'd love to watch ufc at a theatre.
The theatre experience fucking sucks.
You're beholden to their schedule
It's fucking expensive
It's quite often filthy
Some motherfuckers talk or use their phone and ruin your experience
Other motherfuckers bring babies or small children to more adult films and do not take them out if they start crying
Kids make fun of me when I go see cartoons
ULPT: That's when you guilt-trip them:
"This was the last thing I watched together with my 8 year old son/daughter before he/she died from cancer" starts crying (it doesn't have to be true, just dramatic enough to shut them the hell up and to make them mind their own bussiness)
And staff don't do anything about it
Another thing that's bad about theaters is you can't pause the movie. If you desperately need a bathroom break, you miss part of the movie
Kinda makes me wonder how often the people that clean up after each screening have to deal with bottles of piss. 🤔
Hard disagree it's very much you white fuckers (said with love because I'm white) need to embrace the social experience of a movie.
Horror is peak in theaters.
Drag me to hell was the best experience I ever had. Everyone was talking and yelling in the theater. It was rowdy. I was drunk with my friends. It was an 11/10 experience.
Second was Smile post pandemic the theater was packed it was loud and boisterous.
Serious white people get the stick out your ass and enjoy life
Participation with the movie like at a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening is great.
Some dude talking loudly about some bullshit that has nothing to do with the movie is something else altogether and not enjoyable.
Someone shouting "DON'T GO THAT WAY, THE KILLER IS THERE!" in a horror movie would be funny af.
Counterpoint: I ruined The Ring for everyone when that bitch came out the TV and I busted out laughing
Forgot ADs.
I could put up with a lot, but ADs for 30 minutes is too much, and I am too lazy to try and get there after them.
For me it's the apostrophes
Ok fixed.
And, always, some dirty motherfucker has thrown a drink on the screen staining the screen
Real smoking hot take here.
The amount of computer generated special effects used in a movie directly correlates with the likelihood of me not liking it.
Superhero movies for example are completely unwatchable because of this.
It's a bit more complicated than that, just recently stumbled across this guy who looks deeper into it - https://youtu.be/tvwPKBXEOKE.
CGI is a big part but the (lack of) cinematography plays a much bigger part than i would have thought.
I cannot stand The Godfather. Any mafia shit, really. I hate the whole family hierarchy thing, I hate the guise of freedom when it’s just an organization reminiscent of cops or the military, and I hate the blind loyalty to a system that only serves one person or family, it’s all just so petty and capitalistic, the mafia is fucking stupid.
You’re not supposed to like the Mafia in these movies.
This is like saying that you hate 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Full Metal Jacket' because you hate army.
You say that like I’m obligated to appreciate the film just because it claims to be critical of the mafia and if I don’t like it then I just didn’t get it. That’s not the case, I get it. I don’t like those films either, and yes, it’s because they’re army movies. Regardless of being critical of the subject material, you cannot make a movie entirely about the mafia (let alone, three of them), or the army, or anything, without romanticizing the subject matter. Do you have any idea how many people saw The Godfather and fell in love with the idea of the mafia, or Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now and fell in love with the idea of being in the military, or SLC Punk and fell in love with the idea of being a poser? All those people fucking loved those movies. Some people missing the point doesn’t mean that everyone who gets the point is obliged to think a movie is good. The Godfather fucking sucks, because it’s about stupid people doing stupid things and sucking their own dicks about it.
One beautiful thing about art - and, for me, especially movies - is that they reveal truths within ourselves.
The first time I saw Fight Club, the "true" meaning went WAY over my head. I was young, I just saw a cool action flick with a twist ending. To me, the message was Fuck the System. I grew up, though. I can now clearly see the deeper themes, like warning about toxic masculinity and groupthink.
Similarly, Starship Troopers was a favorite of mine. I never understood the parallels to fascism when I was younger - I just rooted for Johnny and the gang.
The Godfather and Apocalypse Now fall squarely into that same set of movies. These are all movies that I enjoyed when I was young, but the themes were just beyond me. And that's OK. My point is that you are definitely NOT obligated to appreciate these films. But maybe you can understand why these films are studied and rewatched and discussed. At least part of the reason is because someone who saw a film 5 or 10 or 30 years ago is only just now starting to understand it.
Sounds like you want films to be only about sunshine and daisies.
Way too bold a claim.
Sounds like you don’t understand different tastes and perspectives. I never said that that is inherently a bad thing, I just hate movies focused on military and authoritarian conformity and hierarchy as their main appeal, which is what the mafia is. As I said, I think the mafia is fucking stupid, I’m not asking for movies to be sunshine, I’m saying I don’t give a fuck about stupid mafia bullshit and glorified tales of such. Same goes for hoorah military shit. I’m not even saying it shouldn’t have been made, I just don’t like it, that was the point of this whole post. You can like the movie regardless of how stupid I think it is, art is subjective.
And creating a movie is a glorification of its materials, no matter the intent behind the creator. Just look at Fight Club, SLC Punk, Wall Street, The Punisher, Lolita, Full Metal Jacket, The Joker, etc… That’s not negotiable.
Ah, so ‘District 9’ glorifies refugee camps, ‘Black Mirror’ glorifies techno-authoritarianism, ‘Life Is Beautiful’ glorifies Nazi concentration camps, ‘Idiocracy’ glorifies abject stupidity, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’ glorifies abusive psychiatric hospitals, ‘Soylent Green’ glorifies overpopulation?
Your take was bizarre before, but with that comment it's plain idiotic.
You’re intentionally misinterpreting what I’m saying, and it shows. You know what I’m getting at, I’m not playing in to this purposely obtuse bullshitery. I don’t like The Godfather and have valid criticisms of the films, get the fuck over it.
Also, you didn’t understand those movies and shows at all if you think those were the themes and subjects they were focusing on and exploring. Learn how to examine and interpret a story, you’re only seeing the metaphors, maybe watch some stuff on media literacy and film studies.
This is laughable coming from a guy who wrote “creating a movie is a glorification of its materials, no matter the intent behind the creator. That’s not negotiable.” Learn to take your head out of your ass before talking shit.
Yeah thats what you were supposed to take away from that movie, the creator of it isn't trying to glorify that life but show you how pathetic it is. But idiots watch it and take the wrong message
As is the typical pattern.
“So you see, the lesson is that Gatsby’s pursuit of wealth only kept him further from-“
“Dude, that guy’s parties were AWESOME! He had like a freaking circus there and all! What minority group do I have to brutalize to be like him??”
I agree that the system sucks and that, IRL, they're bad people and harmful to society. Still a good movie though.
I lost focus on the second movie, but the first one was decent
Lookie here boys, we gots ourselves a tough guy. Hey, Rico, why don't you show our friend what happens to tough guys round here. Maybe a little swim with the fishies will show him we ain't so bad after all.
That's why the sopranos is pretty good. They are just pathetic overweight old guys who have no connection to italy, but try really hard to pretend they have.
Even better is that a certain kind of group still think they are bad ass, because they kinda fail to see the point.
It insists upon itself.
"COZ IT HAS A VALID POINT TO MAKE, IT'S INSISTENT!"
More theaters need a rotation of classics. There's a whole subset of movies I'd love to see in theaters again and having to wait for some small theater half an hour away to show one of those for one weekend a year is a bummer.
We have a local theater here that basically only runs classics, it's pretty great.
This is why I love my local theater, comparatively cheap tickets and the best prints for old classics running all the time.
Sometimes they also bring in the director, or someone else that was involved in the production to talk about the movie. Those are really fun.
Sorry, chief. Best we can do is a lousy remake instead. That's because the licensing rights for oldies are too hard to figure out so we can't be bothered, and all creativity in Hollywood died in 1999.
Nuh-uh. What about the matrix?
Shit. You're right.
Yeah. I've had people fight me tooth and nail repeatedly that the Matrix was a "2000s movie." I think this is another one of those Berenstain Bears things.
(Most likely people watched it on DVD in the year 2000, since for a while there The Matrix was the movie that sold DVD players.)
Its funny because when I was young bargain theaters would play old stuff they could get cheap regularly. I think its tougher now that people can see something whenever they like.
Fandoms ruin movie franchises worse than any bad directing or writing ever could.
I avoid fandoms of franchises I enjoy because they end up sucking the life out of everything. When things don’t go exactly as fans expected or want, people turn to the internet to rage at things we once loved. Many of these “dogshit” movies are entertaining and fine as they are. But we’ve become so obsessed with our own expectations of what story a movie is supposed to be or say, that we have stopped allowing others to tell their own stories and show their own visions. It’s just all about ragging on whatever all the time.
This includes: Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, DC, everything in the Tolkien universe, etc. All perfectly fine franchises that just aren’t for everyone and I think that’s ok.
Exception: The last 2 Ghostbusters movies, those movies forgot what the GB are supposed to be about; adult, raunchy, horror comedy.
The more I like a movie or franchise, the less likely I am to read what others are saying about it because I don't want to hear the negativity
I am the same way, even if it’s a show I don’t like, I’ll avoid fandoms because they make it worse.
The only one that I have not noticed get bad is for The Expanse, but I don’t delve too much into it, so maybe I just don’t see it. I’m just obsessed with the books and tv show.
Hideaki Anno reportedly dealt hilariously with this: when fans started complaining that the 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' was getting weird, he doubled down on the confusion. Well NGE is now a modern classic worldwide.
That’s the right way to fucking do it! Embrace the weird!
But adult, raunchy, horror comedy does not sell tickets to kids /s
Not a movie but Rick and Morty fans are like this for me. I like it but the fans are awful
I never got into Rick & Morty, but I also didn’t hear about it until it was popular and the fan base had already turned me off of it. “Fans” really can ruin great things.
Watching a movie in cinemas make the experience better, compared to watching the same mlvie at home.
The Wilhelm scream is not, and never was, a funny inside joke. When you're watching an intense action scene and suddenly you hear this high pitched and often way to loudly mixed scream it instantly ruins the immersion.
Any movie that adds it is instantly ruined for me. I can somewhat excuse older movies since it wasn't that wildly used yet but any contemporary director/audio engineer adding it really needs to get the idea out of their head that it's funny/clever/subtle. Cause it's not.
I'm mixed on this. If it's a serious movie, then I agree wholeheartedly. It's not funny and it breaks my immersion.
But if it's a more relaxed or even funny movie? Bring it on, the more subtle the better, I love hearing it, always gives me a chuckle when I'm in a chuckling mood.
Like most inside jokes, it was better before the internet.
Now it's the The Narwhal Bacons At Midnight of the industry.
Completely agree... There is exactly one scene where the Wilhelm scream is appropriate and that's it.
That's because the officer falling is Ben Burt, the sound designer for Star Wars and many other movies, who made the scream his signature. (Although he didn't originate it.)
That doesn't clock as the traditional Wilhelm scream to me.
I'm not trying to say you're wrong, I don't know much about this. I'm just saying if I were watching this with zero context, I wouldn't recognize it as being the Wilhelm scream. Whereas normally I hear it in every movie it's in, pretty clearly.
Now that you mention it, the scream in that clip is similar but a bit different. Good catch.
The main point I was trying to make was that the person getting knocked off and falling is the person who made it popular. Personally, I hate the Wilhelm scream. It's way over used and really doesn't add anything to the scene it's in.
Cinema popcorn is inferior because they can get away with low quality. There's plenty of good popcorn around, but it's rarely found at the movies.
I'll hottake that hottake: cinema popcorn is amazing (around here at least), and I think a lot of that comes from key ingredients they use. One is "Flavacol" seasoning, and the other is butter-flavored coconut oil. Makes a world of difference, assuming you like a buttery taste.
I’ll hot take your hot take of that hot take: Cinema popcorn is best the day after a movie when it’s stale
That's when it tastes like plastic IME. Big yikes from me, but different strokes for different folks.
Btw, I happen to love crispy popcorn, and figured out that you can rescue stale popcorn & other snacks by tossing them in the air-fryer a little bit.
lol It’s cool, I know not many people like it. I also love other weird things like candy corn and valentines sweetheart candy. I do draw a line at black licorice though.
Good tip on how to refresh stale popcorn though!
So some tricks from ex cinema employee. Use canola oil and yellow Popcorn kernels and a Aluminum bowl That you can buy from a restaurant supply store.
salt kernels before you cover then with oil.
Fill the oil to just enough to cover the kernels.
Then cover the bowl with Aluminum foil. And roll the bowl over the stove on medium heat. Till it starts popping
then use More canola oil for butter Lightly Spritzed in a spray bottle.
That will give you perfect theater popcorn at home.
Optional secret ingredient Tajin instead of salt
except the chocolate popcorn at Seattle's
CineramaSIFF Cinema. That stuff is to die for.Cinema popcorn is 60% of why I want to go to the movies. My local cinema changed popcorn maker and now it’s not as fresh… I am not as excited to go to the movies anymore :/
Cinematic universes shouldn't live forever. At some point, there is just too much of it, both for people making it and for people watching it.
I think it's more that we turned cinematic universes into a forced content machine to have x number of side character movies per year, with one major tentpole event every few years, with tv shows, video games, and comics all filing in gaps along the way. It's exhausting. I'm fine with a connected universe that is allowed to live and breathe in it's own.
Warm Bodies is an homage to the Shakespeare Cinematic Universe. Just, with zombies.
How old is the Shakespeare Cinematic Universe? Does it count if it started out live-action?
The film/tv industry really really sucks at showing smart people.
Oppenheimer sucked. Barbie was only good in comparison to how much shittier stuff there is nowadays.
I haven't seen a movie in years where exposition scenes haven't felt like they were directed by a condescending 5th grader.
That will happen when you have writers who aren't as smart as the characters they're trying to write for and studios scared of putting out anything that audiences may not understand.
Throwback to this great rant:
TOPPETS OF TOP KEK
Sure and perhaps I'm wrong but just because you aren't one doesn't mean you don't know any. Heck they often get consultants for medical shows for some bits of realism. How hard would it be to talk to some actual scientists and engineers (would probably be pretty cheap) when you're already spending millions.
Hollywood uses experts on set all the time. And then ignores the expert's advice (and common sense) because the director wanted a certain "thing" that would never actually happen.
Low hanging fruit, but one example would be the movie "Lucy", based entirely on the debunked myth that humans use only 10% of their brain.
Another example: The beloved Game of Thrones episode "Battle of the Bastards" features several battle scenes that are physically impossible (like using a HUGE pile of bodies as a fortification). The director said he absolutely knew that his depiction was impossible. How many of his expert advisers do you suppose just walked away shaking their heads in puzzlement?
Hot take: movie goers are so used to suspension of disbelief that movies are too afraid to take risks that challenge the audience.
Like Netflix pushing every movie to say the plot.
But also, how many braindead takes from "influencers" or morons who don't understand the film.
I'm fucking sick of remakes.
Not every film needs to have a sex scene.
Films can be so bad that they're good. Black Sheep for instance is terrible but also good.
CGI has ruined the old school prop departments
Hear me out here... I want more remakes. But remakes for the right reasons.
White Men Cant Jump was a good movie for 1992, but it was hardly oscar bait. The 2023 remake wasnt bad, it was a fun revisit. I enjoy it because it gives me the feeling they actually had fun making it. Do it with Major League or The Replacements, dont reinvent the wheel just make a VERY similar movie with serious actors who want to have some fun, break their mould, tell some dick jokes. Dont cast whoever is currently hot or someone I've seen in 28 contrived comedies. I want Timothee Chalomet and Benedict Cumberpatch as players with unusual names have an in character argument about who has the stupider name.
Do you just watch films about sports?
NGL I do love a good sports movie but those are the easiest low hanging fruit examples I can think of because you dont even need to pretend like the original didnt happen,"Our baseball team sucks AGAIN" isnt a complicated plot. You can reference the original, update the humor, have cameos and its all just fun.
They need to stop trying to remake and reboot beloved franchises that nobody is asking to have remade. Remake fun, make it fun and let people eat popcorn.
Denis either didn't get Dune (doubt it, or at least I'd like to believe so, seeing how fascinated he's been with Dune, historically, but he's a visual artist and not a philosopher/writer so it's always possible) or was forced by money people for money reasons to drastically change some important characters in ways that make no internal sense (but are more appealing to the Western audience). Both movies are basically just well shot, very pretty spectacles and, if you've read Dune, you know the essence of it is in the silent reflection, logical inferences and ideological battles, so even at their core the movies failed to understand Herbert. Idk, it's just a mess, a very pretty one but "random religious disunity in a group that actually believes and is currently being subjugated by the great powers" and "spicy, annoying, immature New-Yorker who's supposed to be the ideal, loving and wise woman (and much of the reason why the plot advances at all) for a man assaulted by visions and the pressure of power" definitely soured the whole watching experience.
I look at it more that Denis made a lot of choices to remove a lot of the more esoteric elements to fit that it was a movie and a sequel made years later. A lot was removed from the book, but it still feels well paced for two movies.
And if you're going to make significant cuts, you might as well cut out the really weird shit.
He kept all the magic thingies and even added an element that was not present in the books with the random female voice/voices "speaking prophecies" to Paul. But more importantly, he ruined a main character, transforming her into basically a contemporary American. It might be well paced, it might be pretty, but it's not Dune and it doesn't make as much sense as it should have had they not messed with it for the sake of larger audiences.
Books and movies have very different options and rules for storytelling. Changes must be made and those decisions will never make everybody happy. I realized at one point that a movie or show, even if it's retelling a story from a book, will never match my expectations. It's always just another entry in that stories universe. That allowed me to enjoy adaptations more.
True just like the Lord of the rings.
Must? Idk about that. Will, sure, for financial reasons usually, but there were too many big, nonsensical changes in Denis story... This is like making Sam from LOTR a sneaky, dishonest fella but keeping the rest of the story as it is. 🤷
A book can just tell you what a character is thinking, your focus as a reader is always exactly where the writer wants it to be, because there is nothing to focus on but the words. None of that translates to movies. The broad rule for screenplays is that one page translates to one minute of runtime. You can't directly translate a 400 page book into a screenplay. You must adapt it and make changes. Some are easy, because descriptions of how something looks like become an image. Others are difficult.
Probably not a hot take but audio mixes are often dreadful. If I have to turn on subtitles to understand what someone is saying because they've been buried in the mix, someone fucked up and that person shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a mixing console again.
100% this. I say this all the time.
Inception isn't that great.
It's complex for the sake of complexity and the complication needlessly makes the story more difficult to parse. The revelation about there being an additional layer before reality is such an overused trope that it wasn't an interesting twist and added nothing to the plot.
I didn't find the movie to be that complicated or difficult to understand. it had a lot of cool visuals that made it seem like your brain was supposed to be surprised or something. but there was nothing complicated about it
I personally love it because it is genuinely open ended
Even the worst practical effects look better long term than most CGI.
Have you seen any of the old "living dead" movies?
That's not so much a hot take anymore.
This is how it’s done Fast and Furious style, fam.
I didn't think One Battle After Another was very good. Felt like my generation's Crash, though not nearly as bad
Actual hottake unlike the OP
But...Crash was a pic everyone needed to have seen. Is OBaA the same?
Crash was a hard watch.
Crash was absolutely trash, this movie was at least watchable. It's admittedly a really unfair comparison.
The reason I make it is because I feel the movie is getting a lot of praise because of what it's "about" - and I use that word lightly because it's not really...about anything. It's just the pretense for the movie.
The movie opens with a revolutionary group raiding an ICE detention center to free people.
The resistance was just entirely too goofy. It felt like 3 scenes from Dumb and Dumber were shoehorned into an action/thriller.
Good bones, though. It was a solid idea. Sean Penn and Teyana Taylor are absolutely unforgettable as Lockjaw and Perfidia.
I agree...what was the resistance fighting for? Why did we spend 45 minutes watching them fuck shit up with no explained goal?
All of the performances were great but Lockjaw was a stupid fuckin character. Hated the twist with him and hated the plot around it which....was apparently the ONLY plot because nothing else really happens.
Which feels weird to say because there was so much going on in the movie. But there's only so much going on because everything in the movie exists for a single purpose and then it goes away. Every character has a single motivation.
I'm particularly mad because I walked in expecting to love it after several people whose movie opinions I almost always agree with told me they loved it. But I don't love it, I'm neutral on it at best.
Movies in general aren't interesting to me. I much prefer video games.
my wife said something akin to this in a discussion we had. I was saying how I mostly use video as background and rarely pay attention to it now.
Mmorpg is like a weekly TV show but you get to control it. It's very addictive.
Casablanca sucks. Also, most “refined” cinema is a fart-sniffing competition of one-upsmanship in how much a person can endure meandering nonsense disguised as commentary.
One-upmanship time! My take - Much of the movies in the Criterion collection suck.
I love Casablanca, beyond love really. When Ilsa first appears, it's hard for me to breathe.
I mean, it's a hot take, I'll give you that. I can't agree with it, though. Every line of dialogue in that film moves plot. It's really well edited and far ahead of its time. Modern cinema owes a lot to the lessons taught by Casablanca.
I didn’t like it either.
anyone making noise, shining lights, or blocking the screen should immediately be thrown out.
Pacific Rim is the perfect popcorn movie
Perfect for edibles and the bass turned up
Guilty pleasure movie of mine
Money enables art only to a certain point. Past that the stakes (money) is so high that all the decisions in making the movie is done by committee.
Committees are incapable of making art.
A t-shirt slogan I would wear.
I think there's a fine line between collaboration and committee (members of a band can collaborate to make good music). But capitalism definitely works against art.
Too many movies are formulaic and boring. Even if fun, they can be boring substantially.
I would live at the cinema if it was possible.
Ok for something resembling a more serious answer, I've always found it weird when things outside of a film itself affected people's opinions on the film itself. Like I don't care that an actor or director was caught saying something dumb or the people don't speak out in support of something. If the film is good or bad, then that stuff shouldn't affect it imo. I know films don't exist in a bubble, but whenever I talk to people and they bring this up for why they do or don't like something or think it's over or underrated then I just get really confused.
Because art has meaning only through our emotional attachment. Literally anything can upset that balance.
I'd be willing to bet that you also have a tipping point.
Maybe you you don't care if a director is charged with allegations of sexual impropriety. But what if it's molesting a child? What if that child lived in your town? What if that child were your 15 year old niece? What if she was your 10 year old daughter? What if she were murdered?
At some point (hopefully long before your daughter is murdered!), most of us would probably form a personal opinion about this crazy-ass director who's running around and committing heinous crimes, and it would skew our perception of their work. It's just that the line in the sand is a bit different for all of us.
I just can't see myself having that line considering film is a collaborative effort and I can't bring myself to say this work is bad or whatever cause of what a singular person involved in it did. Woody Allen is a shit head, but Hannah and Her Sisters is an insanely well made film that had me feeling so many different things with an ending speech that hit me hard. I wish nothing but the absolute worst most disgusting things to happen to J.K. Rowling, but Prisoner of Azkaban still blows me away with everything they managed to pull off in it.
There was once I time where I would have argued against your take on Star Wars. But now, I don't disagree with you. The newer Disney Star Wars films have killed the franchise.
It's definitely what nailed the coffin closed. Disney releasing a new Star Wars show every few months was what killed it for me.
Second draft of this comment, because I realize this has happened a lot during my lifetime.
Star Wars, like Star Trek, The Legend of Zelda - a lot of the media I grew up with - started out as stories, and then transitioned to settings, and have now become paint colors.
There used to be an answer for "Who is the main character of Star Wars?" When I was a kid, that answer was Luke Skywalker. When I was a teenager, the answer changed to Darth Vader, and now it's a meaningless question, like who's the main character of brutalism or who's the protagonist of JNCO jeans?
I don't consider Disney's Star Wars to be a part of the actual universe.
It's kind of bittersweet. Yeah, we don't get new Star Wars but at the same time we can appreciate what we have knowing that there's nothing new coming.
Same. I don't consider the sequels canon. There are too many plot holes that contradict the original trilogy. Sometimes the sequels even contradict themselves.
I still watch every Star Wars thing that comes out but I'm less emotionally invested than I used to be
Same. I watched that Skeleton Crew show on Disney+. I enjoyed it, but I noticed a few plot holes. It also ended kind of abruptly.
With very few exceptions, the "Theatre" is dead to me. Last film I saw in one was Blade Runner 2049- a proper movie. There was nearly nobody else in my theater, but when I left there were tons of people leaving some stupid piece of shit movie down the hall.
I remember Blade Runner being pretty full when I saw it
Glad to hear it.
Nolan movies are mid
They are mid, but that's better than most of what hollywood shits out.
Please include a good movie or producer. Otherwise the gatekeeper can't judge you in their mind.
Good question, it's a lot easier to be negative. I enjoy Tarantino movies, A more high brow movie I liked is The Act of Killing, I liked the HBO series The Deuce, ehm... this is hard.
His characters just exist to move the plot forward, I never get the feeling that they have any agency or personality beyond existing so they can be in a Nolan movie.
Exactly. And the style, while it's pretty and cool looking, works together with the paper-thin characters to give this introspective muffled and artificial feel to all of his works.
He's a good director, but he keeps making gimmicky films. Someone should hire him with an actually good story.
I kind of find the gimmicks to be the most enjoyable parts of his movies. They're also very pretty.
Yeah, but his films are all hermetic and self-contained, there's nothing for me in them except the gimmick. I have no desire to rewatch ‘Tenet’ or ‘Inception’, because understanding the story better gives me absolutely bupkis. The stories aren't in any way connected to the wider world and have zero impression on my life afterwards. Like, the mystery in ‘The Name of the Rose’ is a gimmick, but it remains interesting because it has layers and lots of connections to history and stuff.
If Nolan directed some kinda sci-fi ‘Robinson Crusoe’, I might've been left with an urge to build a hut and defensive walls and gather resources, like it happened with the book and some of Cory Doctorow's novels. But his films don't even give me that. It's kind of an achievement in itself, really.
P.S. Actually, there are plenty of self-contained gimmicky films that I still want to revisit sometimes. E.g. 'Man with a Movie Camera' entirely consists of editing tricks, but it works. Lynch's films are self-contained and often don't even have a story. Idk what it is with Nolan's films, but they're dry as fuck.
yeah no, I can't really disagree with that. I also don't feel like re-watching any of his movies - in fact i was interrupted in the middle of Oppenheimer, and don't even feel like finishing it
Holywood is over.
Now begins the age of Hollywoo!
Wow now there's a hot take I haven't heard regularly for my entire life lol
we live in the same bubble :D
Define Hollywood
define it yourself.
I'm not the one who said it's dead. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to better understand you.
Very well, where do I begin?
My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery.
My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.
My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.
My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard really.
At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles.
There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum. It's breathtaking — I highly suggest you try it.
And where does Hollywood come into things?
Breathtaking scrotums, mon frère.
Its TikTok now. No Real hollywood is a lot of TikTok slop.
Or LOTR. Or sports based films.
I tried watching LOTR ever since it's out on DVD. I never finished one. It's so boring, i don't know what it is. Last time someone tried to show me the enhanced super long edition and it was absolutely painful and we both fell asleep.
Watch in a theater if there's an event near you or with a bunch of friends. The theatrical cuts are much better paced. It was even criticized for being much faster than the books. If you get to the Mines of Moria (1/2 of the way through the first) and you're not hooked then it's not for you. LoTR is movie magic. Not just "wow that was a great movie" but something that transcends the medium, and makes you ask, "HOW did they DO that?" Hope you give it another shot. Cheers
I think SW 7, 8 and 9 are OK and liked them better than 1 and 2, which I disliked so much that I never bothered to see 3.
I think 8 is the biggest steaming pile of garbage ever, but 7 was simple fun and 9 would have been decent if it wasn’t forced to rebuild the china shop that 8 had just rampaged through. The Last Jedi took every bit of work building a narrative that 7 had done, piled it up, shat on it, then lit it on fire, all in the name of trying to be a cool rogue auteur. 9 had no choice but to do inane contortions like “somehow, Palpatine returned” because there were no fucking villains left alive.
Rian Johnson should never be allowed within a hundred miles of a beloved franchise he didn’t create. He can keep making Knives Out, but I will die on the hill that The Last Jedi is a selfish, senseless, poorly written piece of hackery.
Partial blame goes to Disney for not having the sequel trilogy plot predetermined in a story bible before ever putting the first ink to script.
Episode 3 is better when you watch it as a meta movie. Or with the commentary on.
George Lucas really started to learn that his shit does smell with episode 1 & 2, and asked for help with Episode 3. So watching how he got help, and the behind the scenes, just makes each scene more enjoyable.
3 is better than 1 and 2.
That is a hot take.
I liked The Happening.
Whether it was intentional or not, there's a really interesting metaphor for the 24/7 news cycle, the need to blame something, and the state of the world. There's so much in there to think about but most of the audience just thought "plants make people kill themselves? That's too silly". In my mind it isn't the plants; no one knows, but the need to get the first headline, or feel in control is so great that people get frantic, panicky, and dangerous.
That movie would have been better without that dick Marky mark in it
Say hi to your mother
What’d I miss? What did Mr. Marky do, sir?
They really screwed up "The Wizard of Oz" by their knee-jerk reaction to using new colour technologies right in the middle of production. It was jarring, not amazing, as I'd already been accustomed to colours all of my life. /s
Well wessa don't care about the you
the last jedi was amazing. thats my hot take
I agree
Action movies & horror movies make me yawn. I get so bored. Shitty porn has better plot lines.
There are good action films, namely ones where action isn't the whole thing. E.g. 'Terminator 2', the original 'Total Recall', 'True Lies', or 'One Battle After Another'.
Movie theaters are money sinks for idiots.
So... 60fps exists... why don't we just use that for movies lmfao? (is this even a "hot take"?)
I like Revenge of the Sith more than every other Star Wars movie, including the original trilogy... (I like the volcano planet lightsaber duel)
Also as an introvert... I never went to a theater... 🏴☠️ (Did I miss out on anything?... I like the ability to pause so... 🤷♂️) It's not like Christopher Nolan is gonna get a heart attack over this lol
The Hobbit trilogy was filmed and released in 48 fps (in theatres only, now lost media), and pretty much everyone hated it.
I saw it and can confirm it looked really fucking weird. I thought I’d get used to it after a while but the effect kept pulling me out of the movie throughout the entire runtime.
cause it looks like shit. films, aka movies, have had a certain look and feel to them since the beginning. when you have the resolution and frame rate too high it looks like youre looking at actors on a soundstage. its too clear. it disables the suspension of disbelief.
some people aren't used to it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera_effect
I get it... I'm not used to my IRL "Origin Story" feeling like straight out of a movie plot either lmfao
Originally because it felt like tv shows, which were shot in 60 fps and were pretty shitty from the artistic standpoint.
As also an introvert, I can report that you're not forbidden from going to movies alone nor are you required to interact with anyone other than getting to your seat. The theatre is not much of a wow factor for me personally, but others likely get more out of it.
Advertising matters for movies. Every time someone says "movies suck now", there's always some guy that says "movies are great if you know where to look". Sure, but where is that? I can find listicles with a few of them, but this is usually only the ones that break into mainstream, a year later. Even generic reddit and Lemmy/Piefed subs aren't much better. It's not feasible to ask someone to join a forum or Discord about indie movies just to not be fed slop.
Try MovieInsider, it has a good list of all upcoming movies
Thanks I'll look
The Aliens in Aliens are loosely based on Naked Mole Rat cultures and behaviours complete with hive mind that talks via chirps and trills, giant queen with extended baby area, specialized roles (this is more from the expanded universe), not liking other clans of Aliens, resistant to pain/acid etc. There are just so many parallels.
I say Aliens as the Alien in Alien was slightly different depending on if you consider the deleted scenes canon or not.
If you want millennials to go to the theater you need to figure out what we can do with our kids for 2 damn hours.
That seems like a perfectly valid reaction to most of the movies beyond the first 2-3. I know there are some exceptions, including some of the animated series, but most of it is just repetitive, useless dreck IMO.
The entire concept of cinemas is obsolete and I can't wait for the last one to go out of business.
I'm just happy with myself for sitting through a whole movie. I have no idea if it was good or bad. It's always good I sat through a movie.
Movies are going to go away because either no one has the attention span for them or they want a full season of prestige television.
modern movies suck today because Hollywood stopped telling stories and started selling fantasies.
take for example two movies that are somewhat similar, Falling Down (1993) and Law Abiding Citizen (2009).
In FD the audience spends 75% of the movie following a guy around who is clearly not well. he's the antihero that we all sometimes wish we could be, but we also acknowledge it's moralistically unjust to just go around blowing shit up and shooting at people. towards the end of the movie you understand the real cause of why he was acting the way he was which made his character even more relatable. it made you question our society and the cruel realities that everyday people survive. it makes you think that maybe that "pocket protecting pencil pusher" has more in common with you than you'd like to admit.
In LAC the audience is immediately jarred by a violent sexual event that charges you with a desire for revenge. The rest of the movie is about a guy taking that revenge and getting some sadistic pleasure from it. you aren't supposed to relate to the main character, or any character in the entire movie. everyone is shitty except for his dead wife and kid. The premise of the entire movie is to make the audience feel good that "justice" is being administered and sugar coats it in a high fructose action syrup. by the end of the movie you're filled with rage of the injustices within our own world and feel as if you have been wronged like the main character. you spend the rest of the night imagining your own revenge if you were the main character.
FD tells the story of how far a broken man will go if he has everything taken from him.
LAC sells the fantasy that revenge is action packed and you will always win if your cause is righteous and just.
that said, don't get me wrong. I liked both movies, but I'm not going to lie to myself and say that LAC isn't just revenge porn.
modern movies are flat and simple because audiences lack the mental capacity they used to have. this is because we no longer watch them for entertainment, we watch to escape our own realities.
edit: oh yeah and sound engineers can suck fucking dick if they can't understand how to level out the foreground, background, and vocals for a regular not action movie. I'm tired of reading subtitles.
I really liked how the 48fps version of the Hobbit looked (even though the movies themselves were mediocre).
Cinema has it's own symbolic language. As does music, dance, painting, etc. They are all different languages with different capabilities. Translation from book to movie is always incomplete, just as The Divine Comedy does not move into English without significant compromise. Adaptation is the best to hope for. And even that is often too difficult to accomplish well.
I wouldn't say ‘always’, since plenty of books don't have anything besides what would be shown on the screen.
But also, conversely, cinema allows for things that can't be put in a book. Lynch's films can't be turned into books with a semblance of the same effect — even though literature has its own surreal tradition, and Ballard, Kobo Abe or Murakami don't quite work in film. And the notion of novelizing ‘Man With a Movie Camera’ doesn't even make sense.
I don't think anyone has "cared" about SW since the prequels (besides children, ofc, I was one of them!), tbh.
CGI shouldn't win cinematography or even special effects awards.
Both of those things used to be collaborative skills. Multiple people working together to make a great composition on the screen. (director, cinematographer, set designer, costumer, prop-maker, foley artist, actor, etc...)
A great shot in CGI requires a computer and rendering time. It's not the same.
If you can do everything with a computer, than none of your special effects are special by definition.
Oh...You've got spiderman framed above buildings high in the sky in Into the Spider Verse? Great...cool shot...but took nothing to actually create it.
If you tell me that to get that shot you had professional stunt people doing wire work, a complex camera rig, two helicopters and high-speed camera? THAT is the special in special effect.
Made it in a computer? It's meaningless.
You clearly dont know enough about how pipeline to make good 3d effects goes.
You cant just toss enough money and time to make good CGI scene. The director needs to understand how the effects work and how design the scene with that in mind. There is huge amount of work to make sure the real parts in the scene work with the CGI parts. It needs just as much planning, story boarding and collaborations between the different groubs than any other special effect shot needs. The lighting needs to match, the eye lines of the actors need to match. Any time when there is contact between real things and 3d modeled things it needs to be planned shot by shot to make it work. Even full CGI scenes need to be planned how they stransit in to ot from the real footage.
If you think special effects are just high speed pursuits or stunt men doing wire work, you really are selling the whole VFX industry short.
Artists
They need (3D) artists, gramps.
Oh I'm not saying there isn't skill involved. There's obviously artistic skill involved.
But there's already awards for that kind of thing. It's a completely different skill set completely removed from the collaborative nature of film-making and film special effects.
One person sitting behind a computer, no matter how skilled, isn't the same as a team working in tandem to create something awe inspiring.
What is considered film expertise today is a joke. This applies to all mediums, but especially in cinema you see it all the time that a person who has watched popular, top-rated Hollywood movies is considered very knowledgeable. Yeah, it doesn't matter, especially in a private group, but it's a cringing pain in the ass to listen to these people talk about movies.
So did not have one but after reading through a day of responses I realize my hot take is I am so out of watching things in general that I cannot recognize tons of stuff.
I don't really care if people are on their phones if it's on low brightness
Alternatively, if it IS full brightness everyone in the cinema behind that person is now legally and morally obligated to dump popcorn on their head.
The financial equivalent of showering them with gold at this point.
Mmm, buttery and salty gold
If it's people I don't know or care about... And it's not directly in front of my line of sight... Then I guess.
But I'm really sensitive to light in my periphery. I drive with the dash lights as low as they will go without being off, and can't stand new cars with the LCD equivalent of the sun in place of the radio.
But in my own home? My own family? Especially if it's a movie I really care about and they haven't seen? Drives me bonkers, because they are missing the best parts, or will be confused later because they are missing details. Frustrating.
I don't have a problem with remakes. And neither do the majority of moviegoers, or they'd stop paying to see them. Stop saying there are no original movies or that original movies aren't advertised enough. When you get the theater to buy your ticket to the latest remake, there is a list of other movies playing and you probably have your phone on hand to look up what they're about to decide if you want to see them.
Most movies suck but people don't realize it because they're stupid cows.
That's probably true except people know how to avoid those ones. I don't think 90% of movies suck, it's more like 50-60%
Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of movies do indeed suck. And given how anyone can make a movie these days with their phones, that's more likely to be accurate than ever before.
Tell sturgeon to stick to sturgery, I'll stick to celebrating my hobbies 😜
It's not for me either. Having only seen episode 4 and the one where bb8 was introduced, I could even tell they were basically the same fucking movie. Fell asleep in the theater.
Rogue one was really awesome though.
I mean before a certain point in time it was only a subculture really concerned with sci fi and fantasy. It was not really mainstream at all even if some movies did well sometimes. Its amazing how mainstream its become.
Chainsaw Man Movie: Reze Arc:
::: spoiler Major spoilers for the movie. You have been warned. The story should have been about an existing character and not a new character that gets killed off in the end.
Reze's story wasn't bad, but I cannot connect with her the same as with any of the already established characters. Plus there was a huge lack of Makima throughout the movie. She shows up at the start for around 20 minutes, then disappears until the last 2-3 minutes of the movie just to kill Reze off.
It feels like nothing was really gained because of this, other than a gun devil piece and a mini arc with the angel dude.
I would have much preferred an arc about someone we don't know well, like Makima or some of the other devils we met during the show's finale (We got a mini arc for the angel dude, but what about the Shark fiend or the spider lady?)
Overall, the movie wasn't bad. It just wasn't what I was looking for in a Chainsaw Man movie. :::
It is pretty faithful to the manga, which is what I was looking for. I can't imagine they could haveade it better by just ad libbing some bullshit Chainsaw Man fanfic.
Those seats have to be available for consumer purchase
They are so comfy, love them
Star Wars holds a place in my heart mainly for nostalgia reasons. Seeing those original films for the first time was formative back in the day when I was a wee cunt. But yeah, they're pretty indefensible from a film criticism standpoint.
My takes:
I disagree with 4. Nic Cage is a great actor, he just isn't going to give a subdued method actor style of performance.
Stopped reading here
I take umbrage at item 4, but I don't have the time for the correct kind of reply.
If you could go to chatgpt and put in this prompt for me and then read the result, that'd be great.
"Please make a long, meandering reply to the assertion that Nic Cage should not be in movies, stating that Nic Cage is perfect for those movies that need that Nic Cage energy."