MOVIES 2017

They’ve come a long way from their ST TNG movie reviews, with their Phantom Menace takedown being their coming out party to the world.

Their monotone Covenant clip is a good contrast to one of my favorites, Grown Ups 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCkl-Vgc4-I

@LHoffman:

I will say that the scene you reference may not be what you think. I am not certain the direction they were trying to go with it, but I don’t feel as though it was meant to be, at least, primarily homosexual. There are a number of ways to look at it. It also wasn’t as gratuitous as you described.

If that sways you at all. I am trying not to reveal anything that may be unknown prior to watching.

Just as an update - based on your interpretation I went and saw Alien Covenant yesterday and - good grief - the scene I saw on the internet wasn’t even in the movie! Stupid internet! The actual movie scene was no big deal at all - and as you said - was left wide open for interpretation.

What really ended up disappointing me was the over reliance on CGI effects which did not look convincing, combined with  some nonsensical scenes which did not match the original Ridley Scott masterpiece.

For example (spoiler) - instead of the traditional snakelike chest burster coming out of a victim, an entirely developed obviously CGI mini-alien comes out? Huh? The little white aliens spawned from spores looked unconvincing and moved so fast I couldn’t follow the action.

I liked the original slow moving alien much better - it moved as if it knew it was so bad-ass it didn’t need to be in a hurry.

As far as the universe of Alien goes, I feel like Ridley Scott is trying to tell a good origin story… but it is at times inconsistent. Some of the new elements added, like David’s role in the rise of Alien, are interesting, but they clash with other established information. The youtube vid from Red Letter Media that Flashman posted does a good job of pointing many of these out.

@Der:

Just as an update - based on your interpretation I went and saw Alien Covenant yesterday and - good grief - the scene I saw on the internet wasn’t even in the movie! Stupid internet!

This problem actually predates the Internet by several decades.  Movie trailers produced by the studio itself are (and historically have been) produced before the final cut of the film is completed.  As a result, they sometimes contain scenes which end up being chopped out during the editing process.  An example is the scene in the Casablanca trailer in which Rick tells Major Strasser, “All right Major, you asked for it” before Rick shoots him.  In the actual film, Rick doesn’t say that; the Major draws his gun first, and Rick manages to shoot him before getting shot.  (Kind of like the Han Solo / Greedo re-edit in Star Wars.)  A variant of this phenemenon involves a trailer using one particular take of a scene and the finished film using a different take.  An example would be the sweater scene at the end of the Ed Wood film Glen or Glenda (which is remarkable for the fact that the financially-challenged Ed Wood almost never shot more than one take of anything).  In the movie, Delores Fuller takes off her angora sweater and hands it to Ed; in the trailer, she takes it off and tosses it at him.  (The scene lighting is also appreciably different in the two takes.)

Or the 2001 Spider Man movie that had Spidey capture a helicopter by spinning a web between the Twin Trade Towers in NY… this was in one of the first teaser trailers… then vanished before the film’s theatrical release.

D U N K I R K

Finally out next week!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-M4Zt9Bl50

Too many white people in Dunkirk I hear…

I will see it on the 23rd.

70mm IMAX!

@General:

70mm IMAX!

YES! Way to go!

I wish there was an IMAX 70mm playing near me, but there isn’t. Going to have to settle for normal 70mm and hour’s drive to Detroit.

Interstellar was utterly mindblowing in IMAX 70mm when I saw it at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. Never had a theater experience like it. The monumental subject matter helped too. For some reason, the museum is not playing Dunkirk this time.

For some reason, the museum is not playing Dunkirk this time.

:oops:

@wittmann:

I will see it on the 23rd.

I’m looking forward to your review. I’m going to wait to watch the film with Dad.

Dunkirk: 70mm

Awesome film. Didn’t let up, even to the very end. It was visually beautiful. The audio was striking. The tension of war more visceral than I have ever seen in a movie. Definitely going again.

See it big while you can. As it is meant to be.

Dunkirk was a terrible movie. No explanation of why or how 400K got to the beach, in reality Goering tells Hitler that his Luftwaffe will take care of the beaches… what do we get… a constant repeat of the same Heinkel He-111 flying over, getting shot down, then another reappearing to get shot down. Then a Bf-109 ( just one that’s all they had, like the He-111) gets shot down every which way, then another BF-109 gets shot down by guys in planes that have no gas. Excellent. I never knew Hermann had 5 total planes, you got a real appreciation of the great trouble these guys got. Kenneth Branagh is the only redemption to keep this thing going. Nolan should never be able to get a hold of 175 Million to make these kinds of movies. This wont even clear 100 million back and everybody here writing these CNN reviews knows it.

Watch

Battle of Britain

if you want to see how a real movie is made. I think they spent the 175 million of guys lining up for boats in British uniforms, nothing more. Avoid at all costs.

@Imperious:

Dunkirk was a terrible movie. No explanation of why or how 400K got to the beach, in reality Goering tells Hitler that his Luftwaffe will take care of the beaches… what do we get… a constant repeat of the same Heinkel He-111 flying over, getting shot down, then another reappearing to get shot down. Then a Bf-109 ( just one that’s all they had, like the He-111) gets shot down every which way, then another BF-109 gets shot down by guys in planes that have no gas. Excellent. I never knew Hermann had 5 total planes, you got a real appreciation of the great trouble these guys got. Kenneth Branagh is the only redemption to keep this thing going. Nolan should never be able to get a hold of 175 Million to make these kinds of movies. This wont even clear 100 million back and everybody here writing these CNN reviews knows it.

Watch

Battle of Britain

if you want to see how a real movie is made. I think they spent the 175 million of guys lining up for boats in British uniforms, nothing more. Avoid at all costs.

In fairness, he wasn’t trying to make a 70s WWII epic. The lack of backstory and exposition was deliberate. The style and austereness gave it an independent film flavor, but one that I think worked to convey the basic emotions of war.

Battle of Britain is one of the all time greats in its own way, but it is a narrative mess; too many main characters with almost as little exposition on them as those in Dunkirk. Its 133 min runtime feels far longer because there is so much film of battle footage. Thrilling stuff, but it becomes fatiguing. Say what you will about Nolan’s film, but it was tight for sure. There is no bloat in it. Painting a smaller picture (of the battle) excellently trumps painting a larger picture shoddily.

I saw Dunkirk tonight - it was pretty good, not great. One problem was that I had a hard time understanding the British accents - my wife and I were only catching about 1/2 of what they said. Then the scenes that I expected to be epic were kind of underwhelming - I saw about 7 or 8 rescue boats in any one scene, not hundreds. Men were lined up on the beach by the hundreds, not thousands. CGI would have helped a lot there. Some scenes were drawn out way too long, like the Spitfire pilot that ran out of gas seemed to glide forever - my wife and I finally chuckled “What? He’s STILL gliding?” Another strange thing was that no Germans were shown (other than their machines) until the very last scene and even then they were out of focus. Was this to make them more scary and inhuman? Maybe. Then all the soldiers were really hard to tell apart - I kept thinking “Is that the one guy? No - I think that’s the other guy.” Then to make it even harder everyone got coated in black oil. It was still pretty good  - I’ve seen worse…it was worth paying for to support the genre.

Caught “Dunkirk” yesterday and it is a solid/good war picture. The issue for me is its biggest strength is also it’s biggest weakness. It is a rather tight picture with a small primary cast. So you follow a few guys through various spans of time which the film handles editing together very well without turning the picture into straight up flashbacks and “Groundhog Day” sorts of repeats.

But this closeness also doesn’t always convey the particular scale that is being dealt with or the broader events.

Very tense movie with terrific flying sequences. Way too much shaky-cam though especially given that it is already on the water. Solid film.

I really enjoyed it. Very glad I got to see it.