wankerness
Well-Known Member
Ah. I thought you said he hadn't made anything decent since Planet Terror. Maybe I am reading it wrong!
Movies you've been watching...
- Thread starter 8Fingers
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Ah. I thought you said he hadn't made anything decent since Planet Terror. Maybe I am reading it wrong!
KnightBrolaire
SSO's unofficial pickup tester
I did say that, but that was more my half assed way of saying he hasn't had really good critical response since Planet Terror. I've enjoyed most of his output honestly.
wankerness
Well-Known Member
No one ever mentions Desperado anymore, seems like everyone praises El Mariachi and lambasts Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I just wanted to say, remember Desperado? That was awesome.
I think seeing Salma Hayek in that movie and From Dusk till Dawn probably spontaneously made millions of preteens hit puberty. Robert Rodriguez is a great action filmmaker, but he has this strange and very obvious gift for also making women look REALLY, REALLY HOT no matter who they are or the context. Something about lighting, I think. Planet Terror may be the best example just because of how out of place it seems. Doctor running around all disheveled with a broken wrist? Let's bust out the oil and light her like 70s porny fashion shoot!
I still need to see the Machete movies.
I think seeing Salma Hayek in that movie and From Dusk till Dawn probably spontaneously made millions of preteens hit puberty. Robert Rodriguez is a great action filmmaker, but he has this strange and very obvious gift for also making women look REALLY, REALLY HOT no matter who they are or the context. Something about lighting, I think. Planet Terror may be the best example just because of how out of place it seems. Doctor running around all disheveled with a broken wrist? Let's bust out the oil and light her like 70s porny fashion shoot!
I still need to see the Machete movies.
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KnightBrolaire
SSO's unofficial pickup tester
Desperado and Dusk Til Dawn are hands down some of his best movies. Mariachi was only good because of what he managed to do with such a shoestring budget. Once Upon A Time in Mexico isn't bad, but it's definitely not as good as Desperado or Mariachi.
Machete 1 is a lot of fun. If you like Planet Terror then you'll like Machete, it has that same kind of schlocky grindhouse kind of vibe. Also the inclusion of Lindsay Lohan as a nun is fucking hilarious
PunkBillCarson
Well-Known Member
When I saw Salma Hayek do the dancing scene in From Dusk Till Dawn, I had a boner for days on end. No shame.
KnightBrolaire
SSO's unofficial pickup tester
Spiderman Into the Spiderverse won best animated picture. 
Bloody_Inferno
Silence is Violence
I haven't seen Into The Spiderverse yet, but I feel that it was a shoe in win. Well deserved regardless. I do think Mirai and Isle of Dogs are strong contenders, but Incredibles 2 and Wreck It Ralph 2, not so much.
wankerness
Well-Known Member
It was absolutely not a shoe-in win, the Academy tends to vote Pixar/Disney no matter what. Or remember when BOLT won frickin best Animated movie? It would have been a shoe-in if this was the WGA or somewhere that there are actual people who understand filmmaking and writing quality giving the awards, yeah.
That was one of the only bright spots of the evening. I also loved Olivia Colman winning over Glenn Close and the subsequent speech, even though I hated the movie she was in. She's great.
Bohemian Rhapsody winning editing was the funniest. That movie's editing is at the level of the scene where Liam Neeson climbs the fence in Taken. See sample video here:
https://twitter.com/pramitheus/status/1089188260071514112
Or sound editing! JFC. Roma has one of the most immersive sound fields I've EVER heard, and from everything I've heard, First Man's may be even better and should have won Design at the very least. BR won both of them for putting Queen songs in a Queen movie. Maybe they were just giving it awards because the songs stopped us from having to hear the dialogue.
It was all worth it for the interviews with Spike Lee about Green Book afterwards. The most light-hearted comment he made was something like "man, whenever someone's driving someone I don't have a chance. They just changed the seating arrangement this time!" I wish they'd showed his reaction when it won - apparently he threw his hands up over his head and tried to walk out of the theater but was escorted back to his seat.
I saw a panel interview with him and that moron that directed it a month or so ago and it was so funny watching his death glares at him.
MFB
Banned
I'm floored that Chatwin didn't take home anything for First Man's soundtrack, it was the highlight of the movie.
Spaced Out Ace
Well-Known Member
Kick Ass.
wankerness
Well-Known Member
Yep, same here, 8 or 9/10. The last 30 minutes is possibly the most outrageous thing I've ever seen from a visual standpoint. I almost thought I should be wearing sunglasses. The collision of animation styles is the best part of it. Especially Anime spidergirl.
Bloody_Inferno
Silence is Violence
Captain Marvel
I saw this last night, much earlier than planned, but waited until I can figure out what to post. It's alright. Solid like every other MCU movie, I just wish there was more of it. It's a lot slower paced and more grounded than the others, and I actually liked that a lot (I wanted Doctor Strange to be more along this kind of pace), but just off mark in the character development. Brie Larson did her best as Carol Danvers but I felt directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck were holding back on what they could really do exploring the character. I guess I was thinking something similar with Taika Waititi or James Gunn style success in coming out of nowhere and really taking the property and creatively expanding it as far as possible, get the duo who did Half Nelson and make a superhero movie hoping in the same level as Winter Soldier meets Thor Ragnarok. Again, I praise the slower pace, in favour of a more human level story. And Samuel L Jackson and Ben Middleston were both good fun. I just wanted even more of it. I guess I'd rank it on the Phase 1 to Hulk/Dark World/Iron Man 2 level, quasi trailer to something much bigger.
I saw this last night, much earlier than planned, but waited until I can figure out what to post. It's alright. Solid like every other MCU movie, I just wish there was more of it. It's a lot slower paced and more grounded than the others, and I actually liked that a lot (I wanted Doctor Strange to be more along this kind of pace), but just off mark in the character development. Brie Larson did her best as Carol Danvers but I felt directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck were holding back on what they could really do exploring the character. I guess I was thinking something similar with Taika Waititi or James Gunn style success in coming out of nowhere and really taking the property and creatively expanding it as far as possible, get the duo who did Half Nelson and make a superhero movie hoping in the same level as Winter Soldier meets Thor Ragnarok. Again, I praise the slower pace, in favour of a more human level story. And Samuel L Jackson and Ben Middleston were both good fun. I just wanted even more of it. I guess I'd rank it on the Phase 1 to Hulk/Dark World/Iron Man 2 level, quasi trailer to something much bigger.
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Spaced Out Ace
Well-Known Member
I might go see the other Captain Marvel movie. I'm sure me, as a white male, am allowed to express my opinion about that. 
wankerness
Well-Known Member
I'm not too optimistic about this, the reviews seem mostly of the "eh, it's pretty good" variety with a lot complaining about it moving too slowly or having weird/boring exposition dumps. Good to see you LIKED that about it, I guess. I'll see it before home video if it comes to my local 5 dollar theater or someone else wants me to go
It's too bad, too; Brie Larson in Room and Short Term 12 has what are very easily two of my favorite performances of the last ten years. She's just looked...BORING in all the trailers. It's going to be sad if functional non-actress Gal Gadot ends up having the better superhero performance!
Maybe I'll end up loving it, I'm just a lot less optimistic about this than I feel I should be.
Bloody_Inferno
Silence is Violence
Brie Larson is the better actress than Gal Gadot no question, and that Oscar Larson has helps too. In the case of having a supernatural fish out of water, the better written screenplay worked in Gadot's favour. A bad screenplay will drag it's actors down with it no matter how well they act (see Christoph Waltz). I thought, Larson was fine, at some points more interesting and human than the stoic Wonder Woman, but it could've been more (seems the recurring theme here) and it shows that she's trying to break out more. Looking up the screenwriter, along with the Boden/Fleck duo, they got the lady who did that 2018 Tomb Raider movie, so that explains a lot.
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I saw Captain Marvel last night, and I'd generally agree with the things said by other people who saw it. It was fine. Not bad, not great. Fine.
I'd say it's biggest problem is that it was tonally inconsistent. It was as if they gave Larson quippy dialogue, but then told her to play the character a lot flatter in disposition than a bunch of the other MCU characters, but only some of the time. Sometimes she seems like an actual person, but other times it was like they told her to act without moving the muscles in her face. Brie Larson is a great actor, so I'm sure this comes down to problems with the directing and screenplay.
Time for the obvious elephant in the room:
Aside from that, it was an enjoyable if mildly forgettable entry into the Marvel canon. The story was good, action was good, the actors were generally good (I particularly enjoyed Ben Mendelsohn) and most of the humour landed.
I'd say it's biggest problem is that it was tonally inconsistent. It was as if they gave Larson quippy dialogue, but then told her to play the character a lot flatter in disposition than a bunch of the other MCU characters, but only some of the time. Sometimes she seems like an actual person, but other times it was like they told her to act without moving the muscles in her face. Brie Larson is a great actor, so I'm sure this comes down to problems with the directing and screenplay.
Time for the obvious elephant in the room:
I'd say the biggest problem with this movie is differences between how it was filmed and how it was put together in post production. The way it was filmed, it feels like it's meant to have a sort of Batman Begins-style journey of self-discovery. The problem is they then put it together in the editing room to really emphasize the girl-power undercurrent into, well, a current. Now, let me be absolutely, unwaveringly clear: I have no problem with politics of what they were doing, in fact I think they're a good thing. They just did a really shitty job with it. Look at Mad Max: Fury Road, that movie's narrative incredibly feminist, but it also pulled it off far, far more effectively, and in doing so actually enhanced what was already one of the greatest action movies of all time. Here, it was definitely fumbled.
The part of this movie where that narrative works best is when they actually address it directly, when Carol and her other pilot friend are talking about the mission, and how it was a big deal because it was a chance to do something great as pilots at in time when women still weren't being allowed to fly combat roles. It really feels real there, and you it's really clear that it's a source of pain. Unfortunately a lot of the more symbolic uses of the narrative don't work nearly as well, if at all. Going back to how it was acted one way and framed another, the part at the end of the movie where she kicks Jude Law's ass and tells him that his opinion is meaningless to her (I can't remember the exact phrase, but it's basically that) seems like it was acted that way because the character loathes how he lied to her about being Kree and about the source of her power, and so any trust that previously existed between them has been eroded by his duplicity about him lying to her that the Skrull are her enemy and that she meant nothing to him as a person, only as a weapon. However, the way that it's framed and edited together tries to add this subtext of "I'm a strong woman and you're a man who was trying to control me, but I rose above because I'm a strong woman." Their backstory doesn't bear that out, though. Even if he was lying to her because he considered her to be a strategic resource rather than as a person, there's no indication gender has anything to do with it. The filmmakers seemed to be connecting the two differing narratives about using a person but not valuing them, but it comes off as a really clumsy false-equivalency because it's so forced. The directors would have been better served it they'd edited it completely straight and then trusted their audience to make the connection. Instead what they did might as well have been jumping up and down on the screen and yelling, "GET IT?! IT'S A METAPHOR!!"
TL;DR the film's feminist narrative doesn't work because of bad film-making choices that were clearly driven by its marketing, not because there's anything inherently wrong with what it's trying to say. Ultimately what I worry most about is that it will give scummy edgelords something to latch onto in an effort to justify their toxic bullshit when they ultimately bleet "LOLOL TOLD YOU FEMINIST DOESN'T WORK, GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN."
I will admit though, I did find it amusing how one of the scenes in the movie has a guy telling her to smile more, and literally that exact same thing happened (courtesy of aforementioned scummy edgelords) when the first trailer debuted.
The part of this movie where that narrative works best is when they actually address it directly, when Carol and her other pilot friend are talking about the mission, and how it was a big deal because it was a chance to do something great as pilots at in time when women still weren't being allowed to fly combat roles. It really feels real there, and you it's really clear that it's a source of pain. Unfortunately a lot of the more symbolic uses of the narrative don't work nearly as well, if at all. Going back to how it was acted one way and framed another, the part at the end of the movie where she kicks Jude Law's ass and tells him that his opinion is meaningless to her (I can't remember the exact phrase, but it's basically that) seems like it was acted that way because the character loathes how he lied to her about being Kree and about the source of her power, and so any trust that previously existed between them has been eroded by his duplicity about him lying to her that the Skrull are her enemy and that she meant nothing to him as a person, only as a weapon. However, the way that it's framed and edited together tries to add this subtext of "I'm a strong woman and you're a man who was trying to control me, but I rose above because I'm a strong woman." Their backstory doesn't bear that out, though. Even if he was lying to her because he considered her to be a strategic resource rather than as a person, there's no indication gender has anything to do with it. The filmmakers seemed to be connecting the two differing narratives about using a person but not valuing them, but it comes off as a really clumsy false-equivalency because it's so forced. The directors would have been better served it they'd edited it completely straight and then trusted their audience to make the connection. Instead what they did might as well have been jumping up and down on the screen and yelling, "GET IT?! IT'S A METAPHOR!!"
TL;DR the film's feminist narrative doesn't work because of bad film-making choices that were clearly driven by its marketing, not because there's anything inherently wrong with what it's trying to say. Ultimately what I worry most about is that it will give scummy edgelords something to latch onto in an effort to justify their toxic bullshit when they ultimately bleet "LOLOL TOLD YOU FEMINIST DOESN'T WORK, GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN."
I will admit though, I did find it amusing how one of the scenes in the movie has a guy telling her to smile more, and literally that exact same thing happened (courtesy of aforementioned scummy edgelords) when the first trailer debuted.
Aside from that, it was an enjoyable if mildly forgettable entry into the Marvel canon. The story was good, action was good, the actors were generally good (I particularly enjoyed Ben Mendelsohn) and most of the humour landed.
wankerness
Well-Known Member
The aforementioned screenwriter from Tomb Raider 2018 is probably going to get a lot of blame, but I am guessing it's more the directors. I hate this unknown quantity BS. Hire someone that's done something that actually relates to the material, guys!! I mean sure, sometimes you luck out and get the Russo Bros, but just as often you get a Colin Trevorrow.
Spaced Out Ace
Well-Known Member
You white males need to realize this film is not for you and to stop telling Brie it doesn't work for you. 
Noisy Humbucker
Only obsesses over guitars when not playing them.
Iron Eagle on Amazon!
