What have you watched recently?

[FMPONE]

Re-watched Children of Men. Immediately felt it was really good. much better paced than I remembered, but still very epic. it moves along nicely.

However, in the hours after watching it, I’m left with more mixed feelings. Lingering thoughts are that there are some strange decisions with the set pieces, areas that flow into each other in unnatural and bizarre ways, very filmic in that regard, and some extremely bizarre zigzags especially in the beginning. It’s a movie that offers these blunt scenarios which force you to think about them and then kind of fizzles out when you bear down on the details. Overall I think this may be a byproduct of a director who works better with controlling and conveying human emotion and metaphor than with the dry facts of plot. 
 

Spoiler

The bad guys have guns during a chase sequence, but they don’t want to shoot into the slow-moving car because they will hit a high value target. Why not just shoot the wheels? Why are some refugees being randomly tortured and executed and some released? How do the bad guys constantly know where the good guys are? Why introduce random characters at the beginning which have no role other than to provide the main character some paperwork? Why do the bad guys pay a gang to ambush the main characters when they could do it all along themselves? What’s with the shoehorned Muslim stuff? Why does a random bomb go off in the beginning, is there any kind of actually satisfying explanation?

So many pesky questions that don’t feel naturally resolved by the plot, or at home in the universe.

In a way I think the film’s frenetic pace tries and fails to cover big and small questions with these dues Ex machina situations, like shovel fulls of dirt. Even though it’s got this wired feeling and some strong characters, it doesn’t hang together afterwards the way a frenetic and equally bonkers Hitchcock does. Some of the metaphors are painfully heavy-handed: cat right next to the catlike protagonist, dog right next to the happy-go-lucky companion character, pregnant lady in a room full of cows, buoy in a foggy ocean and a boat named tomorrow. 

I really fondly remembered Michael Caine’s character but he only gets a few fun, warm scenes and then that’s it.

I think it’s very good and bold for a “modern” film but the modernity is painted on quite thinly if you think about it. I was craving some sci-fi but I don’t think it has anything much interesting to say about the future. “Things are a mess”, gee how specifically prophetic. “Refugees have it bad, and there a lot of Muslims in the world” wow, who knew? Gotta love the depiction as well, either a babushka, or chanting Allah stuff or getting shot, deep commentary, very original… 

in the final analysis, I think I just wish the movie had more to say. Less metaphor, more text. 

[FMPONE]

Watched the first episode of Barry, it was absolutely awesome. 

Spoiler

This was such a great example of building a character’s purpose. He’s aimless, he has no purpose in life, all he does is kill people, boom he falls in love with acting. It worked great in my opinion, despite being such a ridiculous premise.

I only hope the rest of the show is this good.

[blackdog]

Gemini Man (now on Netflix) wasn't as bad as I expected. I was expecting total crap but it was meh.
The story is the usual "agent hunted by the agency". The premise of pitting the hero against his younger self feels dated, I remember catching a comment by Ang Lee that "only now we have the tech to do this film", but I would tell him this would have felt innovative back in the late 90s*, now it seems everybody does this sort of thing and you can still discern the CG anyway. The film actually seems often filmed against a green screen when there would be no need at all (like first restaurant scene), giving a very artificial feel overall.

Young Will Smith rendering is impressive... I guess they have loads of imagery to source from, but I would imagine if you shown to someone that didn't know Will Smith, they would be easily fooled*. Illusion breaks when he talks, still looks robotic/gamey in facial animations... but what they skimped on/didn't manage to sell is action stuff: the final effect is still very "CG Neo", action doesn't get that crazy so it's not as heavy on the eye as Black Panther or Neo, but people like us will notice it.

What I don't understand is why they used the CG character for some background animation: it's bad. When the clone is stalking the original he does stuff that would have appeared much better if performed by a free runner. And that reinforced my feeling that many scenes where on green screen for no reason, it feels they done it to ensure consistency when they had to insert the clone.

*I feel they basically put themselves in a lose-lose situation: by choosing a very famous actor (everybody will know the clone is fake) and because they couldn't do the CG any better than the competition... hence why it felt dated from the announcement.

 

[FMPONE]

Watched this, Cure (1997), Japanese horror flick. Such a great lasting feeling of satisfaction from it. One of those masterfully directed movies in my opinion

 

[blackdog]

Despite being one of those straightforward gangster/feds-fucking-over-their-man flicks, I enjoyed The Informer, just solid, easy watching. Kurwa!

 

[FMPONE]

Squid Game! Highly recommended!

[-HP-]

No joke... the most creative thing I've watched in years. Don't want to overhype it, but skip trailers and just go watch it.

[blackdog]

Ah yes! It’s in my list!

Saw the trailer when it was about to come out and thought it was some crazy crossover between 13 Tzameti, Battle Royale and The Platform… in a Black Mirror packaging.

Just waiting not to feel overtired every evening so I can enjoy it (I’m running Billions for myself I keep falling asleep)

[Minos]

Got this master piece show up on my amazon recommendations and gave it a try, completely loved it. Hutger Hauer was a legend, this movie was pure cyberpunk fun. Like a poor man's supernatural Blade Runner. Highly recommended, will definitely watch it again!!

 

[will2k]

 

[blackdog]

This is such a crazy story that it’s hard to believe is real

@FMPONE tagging you since you enjoyed the other doc recommendation. 

[FMPONE]

Wow. This show is fucking hilarious and crazy. Between this and Squid Game, I've really been enjoying the last few months of television.

[cyberjunkie]

As @FMPONEsaid, The White Lotus is excellent!

 

Season 3 of the TV show, What we do in the shadows came out too, so that's a nice watch if you like that kind of funny.

 

Bad Genius is a nice Thai movie

 

Love on the Spectrum is a nice heartwarming, wholesome Netflix show of people on the autism spectrum, dating.

 

Succession Season 3 is nearly here, which I found to be damn funny and whacked.

 

Edited October 15, 2021 by cyberjunkie
Forgot to add Succession!

[syver]

Over the summer I started watching Star Trek. I used to be a massive Star Wars-fan and never really got into Star Trek. I had watched the modern (JJ abrams-)movies but they didn't really hit me any significant way and basically just seemed like action scifi movies. 

I later got to watching some individual The Next Generation episodes, based on whatever turned up in "best of"-google searches I did. Once I had went through a couple of those I watched through Discovery and then Picard (both new, modern, series). 

However, it wasn't until I started watching Deep Space Nine that I really started loving it. Admittedly it looks like fucking shit; desaturated and depressing, most likely caused by the technicalities of transitioning to modern media formats. Once I got past that I was consistently served with really good plots, character development and dialogue. I'm at S3 currently and loving it. It speaks to the skills of the writers that I went from immediately despising Quark, to absolutely loving him.  My favorite episode so far is "Duet" from season 1

[blackdog]

I never wanted to watch it because was already looking like shit in the 90s. I think was just how it was filmed.