MOVIES 2018

@LHoffman:

@Charles:

I recently watched the Mario movie from the 90s.

I am still in rehab

:lol: :lol: :lol:  Oh but it is such a masterwork. That is one of those movies I really enjoyed as a kid, but if I watched it now I am sure I would see all its flaws in the light of day.

Thanks a lot! I just laughed so hard coffee came out my nose!  :P

Just back from seeing A Quiet Place. What a great film. A handful of actors, virtually no dialogue, very little gore, but the whole 90 minutes is edge of your seat stuff. Wow! :-o

The best comedy:

Don’t be a menace while drinking your juice in the hood

Normally this would be a documentary, but it is something more…

Movie about Zeppelins made in 1971…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLs50oRrL7Q&t=24s

I tend to agree with almost all of RLM’s commentary on Infinity Wars; it was long but they did a very capable job threading so many characters with serial comic-style mini-plots that worked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ-zAOnxikU

And they nailed the reason subverting norms worked so well for IW and failed miserably for Star Wars. The problem for SW is that Kathleen Kennedy and her cronies have done a terrible job establishing a framework for the films -we hear about drastic rewrites and reshoots far too often- while Marvel films are tightly planned and controlled -almost to a cynical level for a creative process, but hey, it works!

IW did a great job fleshing out a villain with far more depth than anything we’ve seen from these types of movies. As tired as I was of these movies I am interested in seeing the sequel, so the Disney churn continues…

@Imperious:

Movie about Zeppelins made in 1971…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLs50oRrL7Q&t=24s

Going further back, the 1930 film Hell’s Angels (produced by Howard Hughes) has a lengthy and dramatic sequence about a Zeppelin raid on London.  Two of weirdest parts are the scene where a bombadier is lowered from the airship in a little compartment supported by a cable and the scene where the Germans obediently and patriotically jump overboard one by one on command to lighten the load of the airship.  (I wonder if that’s where the Monty Python gang got the inspiration for their Zeppelin sketch, in which Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin tosses one German officer after another overboard for daring to call his dirigible airship a “balloon”.)

@General:

I tend to agree with almost all of RLM’s commentary on Infinity Wars; it was long but they did a very capable job threading so many characters with serial comic-style mini-plots that worked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ-zAOnxikU

And they nailed the reason subverting norms worked so well for IW and failed miserably for Star Wars. The problem for SW is that Kathleen Kennedy and her cronies have done a terrible job establishing a framework for the films -we hear about drastic rewrites and reshoots far too often- while Marvel films are tightly planned and controlled -almost to a cynical level for a creative process, but hey, it works!

IW did a great job fleshing out a villain with far more depth than anything we’ve seen from these types of movies. As tired as I was of these movies I am interested in seeing the sequel, so the Disney churn continues…

I have heard it is good, but I still need to watch Thor Ragnarok first. Honestly the only reason I want to see a lot of movies nowadays is so I can watch Half in the Bag reviews with more understanding of their commentary.

I’ve heard Chapaquiddick is good

The lovable David Niven, AKA “Crisp”

Some Movie Recommendations:
The First of the Few
The Guns of Navarone
The Best of Enemies
The Way Ahead
Dawn Patrol

If you like him, there are plenty more films to watch.
No matter how poorly the plot is written, this actor always managed to make me smile with his gentlemenly charm.  It is peculiar how he managed to keep his unique character intact, whether he was a burglar, suave lover, disciplined British officer, or a somewhat eccentric old man.  He was in nearly every sort of movie genre and actually fought in the Second World War personally.

Great actor.  Love the mustache.
:x
…all right you bloomin’ Scotts, “moustache.”

There happy?

Without even getting into anything else Solo features the worst cinematography of any Star Wars film, and it’s not even close.

@General:

Without even getting into anything else Solo features the worst cinematography of any Star Wars film, and it’s not even close.

I wanted to see it.  Should I just wait until it comes out on DVD?

@General:

Without even getting into anything else Solo features the worst cinematography of any Star Wars film, and it’s not even close.

Since this comment conforms with my world-view, I second it.

@aequitas:

I am going to watch Solo tonight,  don’t what is going to happen.

I was reading this thinking to myself, “What’s Solo?”

I probably would not even know what Star Wars is had it not infiltrated other markets.  My juvenile brain always summed it up as a cheesy yet brutal free-for-all in space about aliens, supernatural power, and technology.
  :|

I think I would like to keep my interpretation that way.

Got it.  So I will watch it on my TV at home, and not pay $17 for a ticket, popcorn and sit in a nasty theater.

For anyone who enjoyed the first Deadpool, I’d strongly recommend Deadpool 2.

I’d have to rewatch the original to say which is funnier … but Deadpool 2 has a much more interesting storyline.

@Cmdr:

Got it.  So I will watch it on my TV at home, and not pay $17 for a ticket, popcorn and sit in a nasty theater.

I saw it over the weekend.  It was enjoyable, in a fast-moving popcorn movie way, and it certainly wasn’t dull, and frankly I liked it better than Episodes VII and VIII, but it tended to feel like empty calories.  The main problem I had with it, in contrast with Rogue One (which I liked more), is that there wasn’t a clear and compelling storyline that drove and unified the plot; the film felt more like a checklist of elements from Han Solo’s past, which were being dutifully checked off as the film progressed.  As a result, the film seems a bit unfocussed.

The fact that we already know (from the earlier movies) various things about Solo’s background also undercuts some of the suspense.  Without spoiling anything, here’s one example: About halfway through the film, we think we’re going to witness a major event in Solo’s life which we already knew about from the earlier films…but it deviates from what we were expecting in a critical way, and in fact it doesn’t have the expected outcome.  Since we know perfectly well that this event has to happen to Solo, it’s clear that at some point the film is going to revisit that event so that it can happen…and sure enough, that’s what happens near the end of the film.  The payoff only felt mildly satisfying because, even though we didn’t know for half of the film how it was going to happen, we did know it was going to happen somehow.  And when we finally get to that scene, the film drops a clear advance hint about how the events are going to unfold, which does in fact turn out to be the case.

Several elements of the movie are highly contrived, so before you watch the film it’s best to turn off some of the parts of your brain that control your higher reasoning functions.  For example, there’s a gigantic space monster that exists, for no discernible reason, near a spatial phenomenon so dangerous that no sensible ship captain (a category that excludes Han Solo, which is why he’s such a popular character) ever goes there.  Where the creature came from, and what it lives on, is never explained, and the creature is quickly dispatched once it’s served its plot purpose.  It reminded me of those stock monsters and enemy knights in Arthurian legends whose only purpose in life is to hang around a particular road or bridge and wait for the arrival of someone against whom they can fight, and who are hard to take seriously as a credible threat because they’re so arbitrary in nature.

One thing that really bugged me (again, without spoiling anything) is that there’s a “major reveal” towards the end of the film that I found utterly baffling because it involves someone who died long before the events of the film and yet who’s still alive in this one.  This made no sense to me.  Perhaps the answer is somewhere in one of the many Star Wars spin-off novels, but I haven’t read any of them, so this plot element completely lost me.

On the up side, most of the characters are reasonably well-drawn, with distinct personalities, and are interesting to watch.  In fact, one of the characters whose personality comes across the most vividly is a droid, L3, who in that respect is as good a scene-stealer as the droid K-2SO from Rogue One.

So all in all, I’m glad I saw it but I didn’t like it enough for me to plan getting it on DVD when it’s eventually released (unlike Rogue One, which I did like enough to buy subsequently).  Jen’s planned tactic to do the reverse with Solo is a completely valid alternative too.

@CWO:

One thing that really bugged me (again, without spoiling anything) is that there’s a “major reveal” towards the end of the film that I found utterly baffling because it involves someone who died long before the events of the film and yet who’s still alive in this one.  This made no sense to me.  Perhaps the answer is somewhere in one of the many Star Wars spin-off novels, but I haven’t read any of them, so this plot element completely lost me.

I believe there was some old EU stuff in which said character was “not really dead” as it appeared. Not sure of the backstory behind it all, but I am positive it was just because the character was too popular to have been shortsightedly killed off so soon. Doesn’t matter how far fetched the “back from the dead” story would be, it would elicit more interest.