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2020 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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Have now seen Tenet. Absolutely does NOT deserve a separate thread called TENET (Spoilers). There's really nothing to it. It feels quite a lot like he had a consultant come in and explain the theory of how theoretically time reversal could work and what the complications of that would involve, but he could only understand it to a point. Which is way every time someone starts in with some exposition, they then stop expositing and say "Never mind, you wouldn't understand". Either that or he knows his audience is very big on Hard Magic and this is a Soft Magic* story, so he's trying to give himself the wiggle room to say "It just works the way I want it to work" when normally people analyse and try to work out the rules. Or possibly he's assuming that the majority of cinema goers are idiots who can't understand the level of complexity he likes to play with.

Also has the most pointless sequel tease ever.

Spoiler

You just told us that there's literally going to be no jeopardy for any of these characters in the future. Why then should we care about what happens to them further in the future (or past)? They aren't going to die until they do.

It does feel like Nolan's stuck himself in a rut creatively. Like having made Inception, he now feels he has to try to make infinite remakes of Inception forever more. And let's be honest, Inception wasn't actually that good. He peaked really early, with Memento and The Prestige. The Batman movies really gave his mid-career a boost because they forced him to actually just tell a story and not get too pretentious and masturbatory. To just go Beginning - Middle - End. Left to his own devices, he really goes way too far up his own arse. He goes further up his own arse than he can even comprehend. He goes so far up his own arse, he crosses into an alternate dimension of endless infinite everlasting rectum.

* I just heard these terms yesterday. Basically Hard Magic is a story where it's like D&D where every spell/power/miracle/scientific advancement has a specific rigid way or working and can never function in any other way. Whereas Soft Magic is more malleable and the power is either uncontrollable or misunderstood, so it can work one way and then not another as and when the demands of the story (or whatever) require.

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Yeah, not going near that.  There's nothing I've seen or read bout that makes me think I won't get a visit from the FBI if I click on it, so just went ahead and blocked it out completely from all my Netflix profiles.

 

It's like "A Serbian Film",  I've researched enough on it without actually watching it to know I don't want to fucking watch it.

Edited by Raziel
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I've clicked through the scene while reading an article on it that I believe everyone is riled up about and yea - it's pretty bad and I regret even seeing that much of it.  

Edited by CSC
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11 hours ago, Raziel said:

Yeah, not going near that.  There's nothing I've seen or read bout that makes me think I won't get a visit from the FBI if I click on it, so just went ahead and blocked it out completely from all my Netflix profiles.

 

It's like "A Serbian Film",  I've researched enough on it without actually watching it to know I don't want to fucking watch it.

I'll do the same. I vaguely know what happens in A Serbian Film and there's no fucking way I'll ever watch it.

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Watching Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Method Man showed up wearing an Inner Circle hat. Jericho hasn't appeared yet... this movie is not very good. What happened to Kevin Smith? He used to make movies featuring characters who seemed like real people, who had conversations that they might believably have. But this is some cartoon nonsense. He's breaking the Fourth Wall to acknowledge that he makes bad movies in this movie. Which makes you wonder why he doesn't just make good ones instead. Or, if he's developing a movie project and realises it's going to suck, why not just NOT make it?

OK, Jericho showed up now. He's playing a KKK guy. He's just shouting.

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And general aging. And so on.

To be fair, I enjoyed Reboot for what it was, a silly little call back to good early work and what not, and it had a couple scenes that really worked for me. But I wouldn't defend it as a good movie, not for any useful definition of the word "good" at least.

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Who is the greatest director who never made a great movie? Like, from a technical perspective is terrific, but never had a great script to work from or the movie just doesn’t quite work. I was watching Highlander 2 on Pluto TV the other day, and Russel Mulcahy has some incredibly gorgeous shots in what is universally considered an all-timer bad movie. I’d definitely put him up there even though some of his not-great movies are near and dear to my heart from my childhood (the first Highlander, The Shadow.)

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Watched Scoob! and The High Note today. Scoob! is really fun I liked the incorporation of other Hanna-Barbera properties and the voice cast seemed to be having a ball and High Note is pretty by the numbers but i thought it was good Tracee Ellis Ross essientally plays a version of her mother.

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On 9/12/2020 at 2:32 PM, Ace said:

A combination of weed and not having to answer to anybody since he distributes himself.

 

I saw a bit of that post-heart-attack stand-up thing he did, and the weed has not done him well. He sounds like a stranger who randomly walks up to you on the street or the bus and tells you his entire life story in order to eventually ask you for a cigarette: "And fuckin...this fuckin' guy he says to me...he says...*cough*...like he just fuckin' says to me..." I found it completely unwatchable.  He actually sounds/talks like Jay from the first 'Clerks' movie but no in an ironic way.

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As we were discussing in the Collector's thread, I watched Split Second. I didn't like it as much as I probably would if I was watching it in middle school. Rutger Hauer is in full scenery chewing mode as a psycho cop whos partner got killed by a something, which is back and stealing hearts from its victims. Kim Cattrall (!) is his love interest, who was incidentally the dead partner's wife. Rutger gets hooked up with a nerdy partner because of course he does. Every line of dialogue in the film is a quip or a one-liner which gets really tiring; the effects are plentiful but not very good. Lots of blood at least, and some tits at the start (and Cattrall gets naked if you wanted to see that). The explanation for the Xenomorph-ish creature is some inspired black magic bullshit that makes no sense at all. There is a nod to Blade Runner with Rutger's apartment having pigeons in it, and of all people Pete Postlethwaite and Michael J. Pollard play side roles. It's funny that the film is also based in a climate change-beleaguered London that's flooding... in 2008.

So, here it is if you wanna give it a watch. 6/10 on the Nemesis Scale, a little too jokey for its own good. 

EDIT: Ya know, it should be a Terminator Scale, or at least a Hardware Scale. Futuristic sci-fi/action and horror/action pictures post-1985. You could fit movies like Death Machine and Screamers on a list like that too. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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DOUBLE FEATURE~!

Since I found Split Second I thought I'd go and finally find Nemesis, which I failed at previously, and this time succeeded. It's not streaming but, you know, I have my ways. Anywho, I was surprised to find that not only is it an Albert Pyun film (notorious director of all kinds of terribleness along with some gems like Cyborg) but -- shock, horror -- it is actually GOOD! Like, real good, in a Good Film kinda way. You can tell it's cheap as hell because all the sets are a series of hotel rooms, abandoned buildings, and some stuff in the jungle, but they manage to craft an interesting and well-thought-out Terminator clone story with some decent acting and lots of dialogue, but cool dialogue (unlike Split Second). Olivier Gruner is your Van Damme stand-in for the lead role who plays a weary Robocop that keeps getting parts replaced and ends up dependent on future-dope. People are always pulling him this way and that and he ends up in a series of explosive gun battles where he can do all kinds of running, jumping, falling, and an absurd amount of shooting. There's one great scene where he blows away the floors beneath him and falls through about five of them to ground level, and another where he gets to do the John Woo backwards-slide-with-both-guns-blazing move. Tim Thomerson and Brion James show up and we even gets some stop motion at the end. 9/10 on the Terminator Scale, this one's a keeper. 

 

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In quarantine land, my wife and I have date night every Friday, in which one of us programs a double feature(unless Joe Bob Briggs comes back, then we just have him do it.)  Last week she did Tammy and the T-Rex and Spookies...which was a pretty incredible night.

For Friday's double feature I did Yes, Madam, with Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Motherfuckin Rothrock followed by Angelina Jolie's  CYBORG 2. The idea was to show the beginning of the Girls With Guns subgenre, and then show a major actress who has heavily benefited from it. And of course both movies were the lead roles for all three actresses.

Yes Madam has a great opener and a tremendous closer. Tsui Hark, Mang Hoi, John Shum split the movie with the ladies with "in over their head" comedy. Tsui Hark has a memorable sequence where he uses his apartment to defend against an intruder. Michelle Yeoh looks INCREDIBLE in nearly every scene. She changes her wardrobe to ridiculous degree and they're all bangers. I mean she'll be at the police station in one outfit, get the call to bust some perps, and apparently change clothes on the way there.

Cyborg 2 is one of those movies that I watch for inspiration not because the story is particularly satisfying. Most of the time I had no idea why anything was happening or what the goal of any given moment was. However - the world was cool. Jack Palance hacking TVs and talking to people is cool. It's got some fun cyberpunk world building ideas, like mega corporations that live underground away from the low class people above ground. Billy Drago is out of his goddamn mind every scene and it's wonderful. It's a great scrap heap movie if you're the creative type that wants to pick weird little details out and repurpose them. Also 90's cyberpunk is just the fucking best.

 

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I had the Cyborg 2 poster on my wall when I was a kid. They had free posters at the Circus Video I lived near so I grabbed that one. I also grabbed this one but my parents deemed it a little too adult to put up...

MV5BY2EyNzkwMzMtZGE4NS00NzY1LTgxOTItMDM1

EDIT: I still think it's a badass poster

cyborg-2-movie-poster-md.jpg?v=145648034

I remember absolutely nothing about the movie, of course

Edited by Curt McGirt
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Irresistible starring Steve Carrell and Rose Byrne directed by Jon Stewart was disappointing, it always stayed in cutesy political satire mode it never went for the jugular like say The Campaign did.

I also watched the Big Ugly that stars Ron Pearlman Malcolm McDowell and Vinnie Jones that was pretty good, Appalachian Noir is a good way to describe it. If recommend that not so much irresistible. 

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