The Films You Watched Thread VI: The Undiscovered Movie

[fuse]

Three Thousand Years of Longing. It is quite a departure from the last George Miller film I saw. There's some fun visual stuff going on, and some good moments in general, but for a story about stories, and trying to escape the trappings and predictable outcomes of them, it really falls short.

Pre-warning that it features gratuitous use of the Papyrus font in its subtitles, and a writer typing on a keyboard using a single finger. I've also got it into my head that Tilda Swinton is transforming into Su Pollard.

[wakka]

I liked The VVitch. *Shrug*

I did not like Napoleon Dynamite, which has dropped on Netflix.
It's got a cult reputation and seems popular to quote but the whole thing is weird for the sake of it.
Not quite my tempo.

Yeah The Witch is a great film.

Napoleon Dynamite is one that I bet has aged so badly. As a teen when it dropped in the 2000s I was right in the target market for this - every 'alternative' or emo kid had some kind of Vote For Pedro pin badge or t-shirt. Even then I thought it was trying too hard to be quirky, but the biggest problem was that it wasn't ever actually funny.

I remember actually trying to like it, because it was A Thing, and not really being able to. Watching it in the cold light of grown ass adulthood in the 2020s, I can't imagine it connecting except as a nostalgia piece for people who loved it in their teens.

[Atticus]

I watched Flatliners this week for only the second time since it came out. Still a lot of fun. Yeah, it's pretty daft too ... but I didn't sit down to watch it for its medical and scientific accuracy. Coming after The Lost Boys it's understandable it didn't make quite the same impact but you have to admire Joel Schumacher, closing the book on the brat pack reign with a story straight from the pages of an EC horror comic.

[Colin]

My wife has went home for ten days to see her family in Canada, so far be watched The Warriors and now I’m settling in to Escape From New York. With beer. What a time to be alive.

[teddymeow]

Watched Jurassic Park III (2001) with the boy this afternoon.

What. A. Pile. Of. ****!!

[Brad]

The Lost City

An enjoyable romp! Some decently funny bits. Nice easy watch.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Watched Jurassic Park III (2001) with the boy this afternoon.

What. A. Pile. Of. ****!!

Yeah. It's saving grace is that it's short.
All the characters are annoying. How many times does she have to shout his name?? And that ****ing mobile phone that keeps ringing!

[Neon Ignition]

Jurassic Park III is at worst the third or fourth ranked film in the franchise. Take of that what you will of the ones that are lower than it



Orphan
It's too long and lacks scares, it's also coupled to how they can't entirely override the casting issues, but generally the film just about pulls off its tale at least enough to justify the one watch

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
On rewatch it feels much like watching IT if it had been released with absolutely no balls to it at all. A toothless film that largely just feels like an excuse to show off one or two monster designs del Toro didn't know what to do with.

Spider-Man 2
Finally got JR1 to sit down and watch his third MCU movie, trying to steer him along the timeline now after he first started with No Way Home. Other than him hoping every film will contain around 10 villains or Venom in it he was fine barring some loss of interest at the romance bits. The film remains the king of the franchise and one of the jewels of the genre.

[Neon Ignition]

Spider-Man 3
The missus struggled with the often discussed bits, Jr1 was utterly enraptured by much of it, Venom reduced Jr2 to absolute tears so we had to stop it till she'd gone to bed. Still a flawed trilogy closer with some really good bits mixed with some not so good but still more enjoyable than several other SM entries.

[QualityChimp]

Nice work on mentally scarring your kids for life, Neon!

Not sure if it's Venom or the dance sequences that did it, though.

[fuse]

Finally got round to watching Everything Everywhere All At Once. Think it'd been slightly overhyped for me at this point, and honestly I just found myself needlessly overwhelmed for a large part of it. I do think however, that the close redeemed it.

->Open Spoiler<-

The "In another life..." line was gut-wrenching.

[Finsbury Girl]

I saw this small James McAvoy movie called My Son I thought it was pretty good, I like McAvoy so it got a headstart there. Ended abruptly was realistic in that sense other bits not so much, the teasing of hints about his line of work didn't necessarily end up making too much sense about his actions throughout. Nonetheless it was an enjoyable thriller.

The real winner for me was the Scottish Highlands and how it was shot by the DP ; my God you forget how absolutely stunning Scotland can be.

[fuse]

Went to see a documentary about micropubs last night. While perhaps not the most bleeding edge investigative journalism, it's a nice, brief little thing about the origins of the movement, following a few examples of folks who've been bitten by the bug, and how they fare getting theirs off the ground.



Was screened in a community cinema, and the makers of the film were there along with the owner of one of our local micropubs, who features heavily in it and ran a pop-up there for the night so you could sit and have a beer or three for the screening and during the Q&A after. It's available to stream already on some of the smaller indie sites, and is planning for wider distribution later on, but they're currently touring it round the country (screenings list here) with a particular effort to visit communities they featured in it. Would definitely recommend if it there's one near you; it was a nice, relaxed, heart-warming night out.

[Colin]

Will check that out later as I have my own wee micro. I think I spotted The Dodo in the trailer.

EDIT: No I won't, no screenings up here!

[Dogg Thang]

I watched Tenet and it frustrated me. I felt like it spent so long on trying to make me understand the time inversion that it forgot to let me know the basic plot, which I think was essentially a James Bond story. But who knows. I came away feeling like it was an insanely complex way to tell a stupidly and poorly-motivated simplistic story but really I have no idea if I’m right about that because I definitely missed stuff. Maybe it’s a very smart film and I’m an idiot. Maybe I’ll watch it again at some point.

I did get distracted by the time stuff, which is maybe why they spent so long on that topic. Again, it’s entirely possible that this all made sense but sometimes things happened that baffled me. For example -

->Open Spoiler<-

A while after the main character is inverted, it cuts to a conversation he is having with the Priya character but that conversation is clearly happened in forward time. Then after that scene he is seemingly back to being inverted. I’m not sure what I missed there in terms of how that worked.

Similarly smaller moments threw me out of the movie because I thought they might be important plot things but felt like inconsistencies. Like there is a part where they are in the plane section and forward Neil is chasing the inverted protagonist but Neil is running after him forwards in spite of the fact that we should be seeing this play out backwards and, again, I wasn’t sure why this was.

Then I got caught up on the cause and effect. For example, pre-existing bullet holes. How does that work in the normal flow of time? Were those bullet holes always in that glass or did they pop into existence somewhere? Was the glass manufactured with the bullet holes in place and installed that way? How else would it work? If it didn’t work that way, that means the bullet holes come into being twice. Anyone know what I’m missing there?

Anyway, it was an interesting film but I didn’t quite get the main plot. Or didn’t think I did. And yet I have this feeling that it was really basic - insane bad guy wants mcGuffin weapon. Not sure I’m right though.