What have you watched recently?

[ThunderKeil]

4 hours ago, will2k said:

 

Okay so please tell me if I'm wrong but is it just me or is Disney-Pixar converging with the CalArts singularity

I swear you could have told me this was made by Sony PA and I wouldn't have questioned it

Spoiler

I'm not saying it looks bad - or not in general anyway - it just looks a lot less distinctly Disney

 

[blackdog]

I’ve blazed through the three seasons of Colony.

I liked how they don’tthrow everything in your face right at the start, so the unsettling aspects of the occupation grow every episode, keeping you watching.

Disappointing ending but I imagine they were planning another season and got cancelled.

I would bet they sourced ideas directly from HL2, as the war with the alien lasts 8hrs, the drones have many points in common with the one in the game, and the aliens are heavily reliant on tech like the Combine, just instead of a citadel they have giant walls.

[Minos]

The new Resident Evil CG anime on Netflix, I really liked it, it's much more Resident Evil than anything they made after 3

[Radu]

Someone linked this to me and now I am compelled to watch it. Goddamn it's just the right amount of corny.

 

[FMPONE]

Started The Boys on prime. was quite hesitant to watch it because I'm sick to death of everything being superhero related or adjacent, but it is good

[will2k]

Revisiting movies from my childhood

 

[Minos]

Had an urge to watch a monster movie and ran into this UK version of Gamera (1995) that adds techno to key scenes. Makes the movie even better and more epic  Impressive city models on this one, and the pacing is very good. Just got the Bluray set with the 90s trilogy, looking forward to watching the next ones

Great fun! 8/10

 

 

[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. 

[ThunderKeil]

Sorry if not the best thread for this but I kind of wanted to call attention to the recent death of Sean Lock

I've been hooked on British TV for a good while now - QI, 8oo10c/dc, BFQ, TM, WILTY, etc. Sean was an integral part of that and I will miss him greatly

[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.