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2019 Q3 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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1 hour ago, Brian Fowler said:

Rewatching Rocketman, and it almost physically pains me that a shitty ass movie like Bohemian Rhapsody made almost 5 times as much money at the box office.

Plus Taron Egerton sings and doesn't mime like Rami Malek.

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Just finished watching (almost all of) Heaven's Gate. Granted I was multitasking for some of it and I just walked out on the rape scene but I did see pretty much all of it from the credits on! That's more than most can say. 

I'll throw my hat in with those that think it's unfairly maligned. Now there are things I certainly didn't like: the gauzy cinematography where everything is seen through a fine layer of dust or smoke or something, the "epic" dance scenes (I just ignored those, except for the part where the Dude threw up on roller skates), the somewhat dragging pace. But it isn't the cesspool of wankery and boredom that it was claimed to be at all, and it has some very prescient issues in it, and even quite powerful moments. The topic of class warfare with the rich ending up as the winners through the unwarranted slaughter of the poor is something that never gets old and is probably another reason why critics and viewers hated it. It's a massive bummer. The end especially, where 

Spoiler

Cimino actually has Kristofferson have a flashback just so they can kill off his woman, the heroine, in cold blood! 

is particularly blackhearted and a real downer. But it makes a statement. The scene where the townspeople are arguing for or against battle with one saying "we are all immigrants here" and eventually spitting out the claim of "collaborator" at a guy who makes the argument that in Russia they managed to fight the army until they hit the river is to me the centerpiece of the entire film and the most important part of any of it. The final battle is as epic as anything in cinema (though unfortunately leading to the need for animal rights watchdogs in the US film industry). 

There are two other parts that really made my day and also summed up the film. The first is during the final battle when the commander moons the townspeople firing back and Kristofferson says to the dude next to him "That man is a friend of the President." The second is earlier, when Christopher Walken walks into the militia leader's office, shoots the final rapist in the head point blank, and listens to the leader tell him that the townspeople are basically vermin to which he answers "Have you ever killed a man yourself?" The leader responds with all the offices he's held and how his grandpa held high office and that he's even a friend of a friend of the president to which Walken says "And fuck him too."

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Finally got around to watching Taken 3. This film is very stupid. You'd think at some point in the planning stage they would have though to ask Liam Neeson if he could run or not, and then realised they shouldn't script him to do something he physically couldn't. Then again, quite a lot of the plot is nonsense. Perhaps we should consider the Taken trilogy the way we think of The Matrix trilogy: One good film and then two awful, shameless cash ins to follow. Although Taken is tainted by Neeson deciding to out himself for historical racism, whilst Keanu's stock has only risen.

Stratton (2017) was on telly, and I'd never heard anything about it, but I thought it might be interesting. Simon West directs Dominic Cooper, Gemma Chan and some other actors is a movie about a military stealth operation that goes wrong and missing WMDs, and... it couldn't hold my attention. A few alright action scenes, but the plot lost me early and then it was just things happening. Not often you see a movie with a car chase where one of the vehicles is an Alfa Romeo though.

EDIT: OK, the final climactic chase/ fight was actually really good. But this seemed like a pretty high budget movie, with explosions and helicopters and streets in central London shut down. So how come it's not been released anywhere and it's just airing on Film Four?

Edited by AxB
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I think opinion on Heaven's Gate has mostly come around to "wildly misguided, but not actually the disaster it's reputation holds"

-----

Once I get through Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, I think Jacques Demy is the next director I'm going to deep dive

Edited by Brian Fowler
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People compared Waterworld to Ishtar. They called it Fishtar.

But I don't think Waterworld is going to get a critical reappraisal over the next few years, and start to be considered a flawed classic.

Do reverse critical appraisal's also happen, where movies that were greeted as universally beloved instant classics on release suddenly find that everyone thinks they suck? Because I was going to say Titanic was like that, except mainstream opinion still seems to like it quite a lot. Even though it's terrible. Except the Billy Zane bits.

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

People compared Waterworld to Ishtar. They called it Fishtar.

But I don't think Waterworld is going to get a critical reappraisal over the next few years, and start to be considered a flawed classic.

Do reverse critical appraisal's also happen, where movies that were greeted as universally beloved instant classics on release suddenly find that everyone thinks they suck? Because I was going to say Titanic was like that, except mainstream opinion still seems to like it quite a lot. Even though it's terrible. Except the Billy Zane bits.

I don't care what anyone says, Waterworld was awesome. 

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7 hours ago, elizium said:

Crash as well.

Didn't everyone hate Crash when it came out? I thought it was one of those "These awards have no credibility" winners. Everyone preferred Brokeback Mountain, but the out of touch old white man's academy didn't favour it. #OscarsSoStraight didn't trend because twitter wasn't much of a thing yet.

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6 hours ago, Tabe said:

I don't care what anyone says, Waterworld was awesome. 

I'd recommend just watching actual Mad Max.

Hell, you can get most of the way through The Road Warrior as well in the amount of time it takes to suffer through Waterworld.

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1 minute ago, AxB said:

Didn't everyone hate Crash when it came out? I thought it was one of those "These awards have no credibility" winners. Everyone preferred Brokeback Mountain, but the out of touch old white man's academy didn't favour it. #OscarsSoStraight didn't trend because twitter wasn't much of a thing yet.

That was my memory as well, but then I looked and it is at 74%, so it wasn't everybody. Still, pretty low for a Best Picture winner (average score was like 7.X/10 as well)

Ang Lee has twice won best director without getting best picture (although those two have been splitting a lot more often lately than traditionally)

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12 hours ago, AxB said:

.Stratton (2017) was on telly, and I'd never heard anything about it, but I thought it might be interesting. Simon West directs Dominic Cooper, Gemma Chan and some other actors is a movie about a military stealth operation that goes wrong and missing WMDs, and... it couldn't hold my attention. A few alright action scenes, but the plot lost me early and then it was just things happening. Not often you see a movie with a car chase where one of the vehicles is an Alfa Romeo though.

EDIT: OK, the final climactic chase/ fight was actually really good. But this seemed like a pretty high budget movie, with explosions and helicopters and streets in central London shut down. So how come it's not been released anywhere and it's just airing on Film Four?

I'm not sure if it ever received a theatrical release here in the States, but I do remember catching bits of it when it was on the Cinemax Networks rotation.

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11 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

I'd recommend just watching actual Mad Max.

Hell, you can get most of the way through The Road Warrior as well in the amount of time it takes to suffer through Waterworld.

Does Mad Max have Kevin Costner smacking a kid upside the head for waving to the bad guys? No? Then Waterworld > Mad Max. 

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1 hour ago, Tabe said:

Then Waterworld > Mad Max. 

That might be the single most incorrect sentence in the history of this message board.

And I'm including both times I predicted the Patriots would blow out the Giants in the Super Bowl.

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2 hours ago, Tabe said:

Does Mad Max have Kevin Costner smacking a kid upside the head for waving to the bad guys? No?

That would be tricky, considering he's not in the movie.

Quote

 Waterworld > Mad Max. 

Someone's going to put that in their sig, so it haunts you forever.

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