The Films You Watched Thread VI: The Undiscovered Movie

[Dogg Thang]

It's on my list of films to watch, [MENTION=5490]wakka[/MENTION], but I'm never really in the mood to watch it as it sounds monumentally depressing.

I really liked it and didn't actually find it all that depressing. I mean, it's not a barrel of laughs but it's not miserable. My biggest criticism is that there really isn't much metal in it. I expected more.

[wakka]

I wouldn’t describe it as miserable but I found it quite harrowing. It’s a bit like something like Requiem for a Dream - I really like it, but I don’t really associate it with pleasurable emotions.

Maybe it just hit me harder than you for whatever reason though.

[Dogg Thang]

I think perhaps Riz Ahmed’s resilience and charisma carried me through it without letting it get me down. It’s not that I didn’t find it emotional but my watch of it definitely wasn’t something I’d describe as harrowing. That’s interesting in itself though, that it can hit you in different ways. Either way, it’s a very strong movie.

[wakka]

Maybe I'm just a softie!

[QualityChimp]

I watched Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone via Prime.

Monstrous Deja Vu on this, because I recently caned the whole series on Netflix and binge watched Shin Godzilla a few times, and there are a lot of ideas reused in that, like an evolving giant enemy, that uses lasers to destroy missiles as it romps across Tokyo.

As it's a film, not loads of episodes, a lot of the relationships seem truncated and they're at a position of people who've known each other years, not 3 minutes run time.

Still, it's very shiny and I LOVE the scenes of the Evas launching and the city moving around to pop up shields and guns.

I think it's a Thunderbirds thing?

[Dogg Thang]

I watched A Quiet Place Part 2. It's exactly what I expected. It's good. It works. But it's just exactly what I expected.

[fallenangle]

Just finished watching the 2017 French film Les Gardiennes on BBC2 :-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardians_(2017_film)

Best described as a Thomas Hardy-esque tale en France, which means dour, depressing subject matter and overlong but depicting a believable, almost documentary like picture of rural hardship and stoicism, this time set against the background of WW1.

Utterly predictable from the story point of view but often very beautiful creating almost timeless vignettes of rural life. That is underlined in one scene, evoking as I've just been reminded by another review: Tess of the D’Urbervilles, played out against a background of a pre-historic henge-like monument hidden in a forest. Plus ça change.

Particularly note worthy are the scenes where the main characters, mostly women, say nothing but what they're feeling and thinking is etched on their faces. Top quality acting.

[Neon Ignition]

Rocky II
Nothing much to add from before, still one of the best three in the saga

[Golgo]

Sound of Metal should've been called Immetal Beloved.

[Dogg Thang]

Last night I watched Better Luck Tomorrow. I hadn't seen it before and was always curious about it. It's about a bunch of overachieving school kids as they aim to get into college and they get into crimes, more for the fun of it than anything else. It's a small indie film from the early 2000s and it's really good. The performances are generally great. The story is pretty small but builds really well as things get a bit out of control.

The film is notable because it's directed by Justin Lin, who went on to make a whole bunch of the Fast and Furious movies and one of the main characters is Han, who would then go on to be a character in the F&F films. So it's almost a bit of an origin story for him, although in all honesty it's very difficult to imagine this film taking place in the same world as Dom Toretto catching people mid air and swinging cars around on ropes. Even Han's character feels quite different - he's volatile and aggressive. He definitely chilled out as he moved into F&F.

Anyway, regardless of that connection it's a good film.

[wakka]

Nice, that sounds really good. I think I'll give that a watch at some point.

[teddymeow]

Peter Rabbit 2 (again).

I like it. Better than the first. This was Nancy's first trip to the cinema and I was really impressed by her behaviour all the way through.

[Soundwave]

Watched a couple of films in the last week first up...

Detective Pikachu in 3D
Loved it, great fun, Ryan Reynolds was great in it, the whole thing worked so well
3D was really good & well used
Few nice pop out moments, well worth watching in 3D if you ever get the chance
Really glad I waited to make my first viewing 3D

After that was...

6 Underground
Another Ryan Reynolds vehicle & a Michael Bay movie to boot so you can probably guess what this was like .. amazingly bonkers OTT set pieces & Ryan's usual comedy involved
I loved it, such ludicrousness but just switch your brain off & enjoy the spectacle

Lastly today was...

Raya & the Last Dragon
This was good, a nice change to the style, story was good & the animation up to usual Disney standards
Worth a watch if you have Disney plus

Been a while since I've been able to get time for some films so I've enjoyed getting round to these

Neil

[QualityChimp]

I've been working my way through the Evangelion rebuilds over the last few days.

Generally speaking, they were visually stunning, but narratively a bit of a mess, like there's a story to be told, but they don't quite know how to tell it. The last couple were a chore to get through, if I'm honest, but I wanted to tick them off.

Animation is gorgeous, but I think there's an over reliance on CGI, if I'm honest. There are scenes where two characters are talking, but not moving, but the whole background is CGI.

Spoiler discussion for those who've seen it:

->Open Spoiler<-

It all makes sense when Earth is being attacked by Angels. Every country has their own defense system and work together to a certain degree to stop them. We don't even need a reason at the start, but the viewer needs to know eventually. Then this kind of took a back seat after 2.22 and the story goes in a whole new direction.

So, IIRC in the original series/films the Angels were attacking the base because they had Adam in it.
In this, I'm not sure it says why they were attacking, especially as there's talk of other countries (like France) that wouldn't have an Adam in it.

Then there's an apocalypse at the end of 2.22 and loads of people die.
Yet somehow, there are enough people to build loads more cool ships and mechs.
The original base is desolate, yet somehow Shinji's dad is able to build a load more new stuff too.

If someone sat down and told Shinji in the first five minutes of 3.33 what has happened in that last 14 years, things might've gone differently, but they're even more 'orrible to him than ever!

Finally, from what I can tell, Shinji's dad wanted to get a wish and then bring his wife back.
That's the whole motivation for everything, so I'm not quite sure how he got the sign off for the cheque to build everything from a bunch of mechs to a transforming city.

I think it's something that falls apart if you start overanalysing it, which is tricky when it's trying to be so deep and complex, maaaan.

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[wakka]

JFK

Outrageously ludicrous fantasy of the JFK assassination as a grand conspiracy seemingly involving most of the people alive in 1963.

Also outrageously long at 205 minutes, although it does fill its runtime well. I was reminded primarily of Zodiac. Perhaps Fincher was partly inspired by the construction of JFK when he made that film, because the theme of the obsessed investigator and the complex mystery are certainly echoed.

Fincher did it better, though. Most importantly, he incorporated blind alleys, which are so rarely incorporated into investigative films. That doesn't happen in JFK. Instead Costner is seemingly infallible as the heroic DA on the trail of the truth.

It's a fun, meaty watch, with plenty of great turns from terrific actors and a script that's smart enough to pack a huge amount in, but its positioning as fact rather than fantasy left a bad taste in my mouth.