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2021 MOVIES DISCUSSION


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Well, I guess I'll mention the new Space Jam since I'm 40 minutes into it so far.  But I'll say that while it might be fun for families compared to the original it's trash.  Jordan wasn't an Oscar-winner but he might as well be compared to Lebron.  And it's one giant advertisement for all the stuff on HBO Max with all the things they have on there.  While amusing at points I would suggest going into it with super low expectations.  Which sucks because I kind of want to like it in some way.  But I will give credit for Don Cheadle who is trying the best he can.

I need to watch much better movies so I have something worthwhile to talk about here.  But that's what happens when watching HBO Max on a slow work day.

Edited by NikoBaltimore
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On the subject of HBO Max, @NikoBaltimore has reminded me to do the following post. We don't have HBO Max where I'm from unlike Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime as key examples. Curious for that reason where The Suicide Squad streams at the same time of release in cinemas. Guessing it might go to Sky Movies if you have that subscription as that's where Zack Snyder's Justice League wound up. Titans is HBO Max as well, right? In the UK, Netflix.

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It's a weird situation and I wish I had a good answer for all that.  I do appreciate them putting on services like Max especially with the pandemic going on.  I'm also glad they're doing that this year though don't know about next year and beyond.  Might need to tag in @AxBon this one.  I have heard of folks using VPN to get the services but it's not fair to assume that everybody would be up for doing that.

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1 hour ago, NikoBaltimore said:

But that's what happens when watching HBO Max on a slow work day.

Watching Space Jam to kill time when HBO Max has BANSHEE on it is a crime.

Caveat: I'm assuming you're working from home.  DO NOT watch Banshee at work.  There's a good reason my nickname for it is FIGHTIN N' FUCKIN.

Edited by Technico Support
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8 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Watching Space Jam to kill time when HBO Max has BANSHEE on it is a crime.

Caveat: I'm assuming you're working from home.  DO NOT watch Banshee at work.  There's a good reason my nickname for it is FIGHTIN N' FUCKIN.

Well to be fair I've been going through Batman: The Animated Series recently (almost done season 1.  Yay!)  So I hope for my crimes that it's a mere slap on the wrist for my troubles.  Plus after finishing the movie I feel like I suffered enough.

But yeah I'm thankfully working from home so movies like that will do just fine here.  And since I need to further justify using the app for the price I'm sure I'll be seeing that relatively soon.

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7 minutes ago, NikoBaltimore said:

Well to be fair I've been going through Batman: The Animated Series recently (almost done season 1.  Yay!)  So I hope for my crimes that it's a mere slap on the wrist for my troubles.  Plus after finishing the movie I feel like I suffered enough.

But yeah I'm thankfully working from home so movies like that will do just fine here.  And since I need to further justify using the app for the price I'm sure I'll be seeing that relatively soon.

You already had my approval, more so watching Batman: The Animated Series. That's my #1 Batman thing ever. It's why I particularly seek out Batman: The Animated Series merchandise even though it's hard to get, so pricey. How you finding it?

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35 minutes ago, The Natural said:

You already had my approval, more so watching Batman: The Animated Series. That's my #1 Batman thing ever. It's why I particularly seek out Batman: The Animated Series merchandise even though it's hard to get, so pricey. How you finding it?

Considering this is the movie thread I'll likely have a post about this in the DC TV thread.  But I absolutely love the series so far.  If I'm lucky I'll have season one finished fairly soon.

But going back to Space Jam the one thing that I find incredibly concerning is how bastardized a lot of the IPs were in the movie.  Batman and Robin for example were seen cheering with the villains and even the Mad Max goons were hooting and hollering like crazy.  If I created something that is now owned by WB I would be personally mortified to see what my creation's become.  And I bet whoever created the DC characters for one would be rolling over in their graves.  And yeah, it's owned now by a company who can do as they wish with it.  I get that but I just with in this world of mergers that there was still some level of respect for what they have.

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15 minutes ago, NikoBaltimore said:

Considering this is the movie thread I'll likely have a post about this in the DC TV thread.  But I absolutely love the series so far.  If I'm lucky I'll have season one finished fairly soon.

But going back to Space Jam the one thing that I find incredibly concerning is how bastardized a lot of the IPs were in the movie.  Batman and Robin for example were seen cheering with the villains and even the Mad Max goons were hooting and hollering like crazy.  If I created something that is now owned by WB I would be personally mortified to see what my creation's become.  And I bet whoever created the DC characters for one would be rolling over in their graves.  And yeah, it's owned now by a company who can do as they wish with it.  I get that but I just with in this world of mergers that there was still some level of respect for what they have.

Glad you love Batman: The Animated Series.

Batman and Robin cheering the villains? What. The. Fuck? Fuck that shit. Still real to me dammit!

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HBO Max is still doing the free trial week right? Because I need that for the Sopranos movie, badly. Especially considering I'm binging all the seasons again now.

Also, and I doubt this, but would the free trial give you HBO On Demand? Because there is A LOT of documentary stuff I could delve into on there.

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19 minutes ago, AxB said:

So is the Space Jam remake actually just Ready Player 2, Basketball edition?

I honestly haven't seen Ready Player 1 but from what I heard about it you're not far off.  Only difference is if you forget about the bullshit there's some humorous Looney Tunes moments sprinkled throughout.

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3 hours ago, NikoBaltimore said:

But yeah I'm thankfully working from home so movies like that will do just fine here.  And since I need to further justify using the app for the price I'm sure I'll be seeing that relatively soon.

Banshee is a TV show.  An amazing TV show whose off-color nickname from Technico Support is 100% accurate.  Tons of great fight scenes and hot people doing...hot people things.  The premise is ridiculous but they make it work and it's great.  Highly, highly recommended.

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Movie producer Dillon Jordan has been arrested for running an international prostitution ring:

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/entertainment-celebrity/hollywood-film-producer-jordan-dillon-accused-of-running-international-prostitution-ring/ar-AAMeF0d?li=BBnb7Kz

 

His resume includes The Kindergarten Teacher, as well as Skin, and The Kid.

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More crap I watched that you don't care about:

Lucy - well, this had some pretty things in it, and this is probably one of Scarlett's more compelling performances (thinking about it now, I'd put this behind Under the Skin and Lost in Translation, but not a whole lot else springs to mind as being obviously better), but of course I hate the premise because it's the laziest shit in the world.  Plus, the rest of the movie is dreadful, like they didn't know what else to do to kill screen time, so Besson just said, "Fuck it" and decided to have a bunch of car chases and shootouts that delay the plot more than serve or advance it.  I guess Besson has been chatting a lot with Shamalamadingdong about how to tell-not-show in the most insufferable way possible.  "Yeah, well, I got Sarah Paulson to exposition all over my audience!" "I got Morgan Freeman, bitch!" "...Awww..."

Moonlight and Valentino - here's another movie that got absolutely ripped by critics at the time and is just...totally average.  Given the people in it (Whoopi Goldberg, pre-A-list Gwyneth Paltrow, Kathleen Turner at the end of her run), people probably expected something besides a movie this uneven.  But it sort of deflates as it goes and doesn't really end up anywhere.  There are 3 or 4 scenes that really work well, but they're not connected together enough to maintain any sense of momentum.  It was adapted from a play, apparently, and you can definitely tell there are moments and transitions that would work on stage but fail in this format.  Also, Jon Bon Jovi is in it, and I seem to recall him getting massively shit on at the time, but he's not that bad.  There have definitely been far worse famous-person film debuts than this.  But really I managed to get through it because Elizabeth Perkins is the main character, and I will probably always have a crush on her thanks to Big.

The Mule - don't you love how Clint Eastwood keeps playing characters that are 10x more woke than he is?  This has to be the single most absurd vector for a "Piece-of-shit dad learns to bond with his estranged family" story I've ever seen.  This should've ended in about a dozen different ways that would have ranged from quick and shocking to so massively bloody and violent that Sam Peckinpah would've said, "Hang on, now..." but we get none of that.  Just knock it off, Clint.  You can be done.  It's fine.

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On 7/16/2021 at 12:32 PM, AxB said:

So is the Space Jam remake actually just Ready Player 2, Basketball edition?

Having finished it a few hours ago it's Space Jam 1, NBA Jam, Ready Player One & TV/ Movies on HBO MAX mixed in a blended. 

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Clint had a pretty good stretch with Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima all bunched together (the latter two are not really talked about enough as great movies), but that was 15 years ago.  Frankly, I'd bet they're happy to throw that money at him if it just turns into Mules & Gran Torinos over and over.  Something like American Sniper, which I guess I should watch one of these days, is just gravy.

I also watched I, Robot, which...ugh.  Wow, was this just the fucking worst.  I haven't read the book, so I can't say how bastardized it is, though I do seem to recall a lot of flak thrown its way when it came out.  But with or without that, this is just a bad movie.  Mediocre CGI (even for 2004), dull-as-dishwater plot, poor casting.  The last act really shows you how much better Marvel Studios is at this than everyone else, even if you think their third acts are predictable; you see something nowadays that's preposterous and over-the-top like Black Widow in its final act, and you think it's a ding on the movie.  But then something like this from years before is just so much worse, so thoroughly unbelievable in practically every sense of the word, that you want to go back and give Black Widow the Citizen Kane clap, because clearly Marvel understood how to avoid these kinds of debacles all the way back to Iron Man.

Will Smith is just sort of...Will-Smithing his way through this role, like he just wanted to pretend this was Men in Black 3: Robot Edition.  Having said that, though, his one "hear the emotionally-damaged guy's backstory" bit still works well.  It's just a shame he didn't do that believably for, you know, the other 110 minutes of the film.  And it's not like he can't do that; I liked him in I Am Legend for that very reason.  But, he's subpar, and pretty much everything they put around him is subpar, and had I remembered one critical detail, I would have known to expect exactly that, since this was co-written by Akiva "A Beautiful Mind looks more and more like a fluke all the time" Goldsman.

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On 7/18/2021 at 12:07 PM, Contentious C said:

I also watched I, Robot, which...ugh.  Wow, was this just the fucking worst.  I haven't read the book, so I can't say how bastardized it is, though I do seem to recall a lot of flak thrown its way when it came out.  But with or without that, this is just a bad movie.

I, Robot is an anthology of previously published short stories with a framing device added to turn them into a novel. I haven't read it either, but I've read at least some of the stories that composed it. Asimov's Robot stories are generally thoughtful explorations of the implications of creating a thinking machine, and generally come to the conclusion that if you make something that's more intelligent and more logical than a human being, you're inevitably going to wind up with something more moral than a human being too.

I, Robot: the Movie was... not that, as I recall.

Also, turning Susan Calvin into Generic Action Movie Love Interest was pretty awful.

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I did the Lord of the Rings challenge today. Watched all of Fellowship, Towers and Return, in the extended editions, in one day.

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On 7/16/2021 at 2:43 PM, Tabe said:

Banshee is a TV show.  An amazing TV show whose off-color nickname from Technico Support is 100% accurate.  Tons of great fight scenes and hot people doing...hot people things.  The premise is ridiculous but they make it work and it's great.  Highly, highly recommended.

The show's creator was a big fan of They Live, especially the fight scene.  Which is really all you need to know.  My wife and I watched Banshee and, in the 2nd or 3rd episode, where Hood just mercilessly beats up the rapist MMA fighter, we were like, "man, this is just gratuitous."  Then, an episode of two later, it hit us that it's supposed to be gratuitous and it was all good from there.  The episode where the crime boss who lives in a tractor trailer kidnaps Hood is like something out of  video game, gimmick-wise.  Also, if you do watch it, remember that the opening credits change every episode to reflect what you're about to see, and that most episodes have a post-credits scene.

Oh, and look out for LANA in a pre-wrestling role in one episode.

@NikoBaltimore, while I'm on the HBO tip, check out Chernobyl.  Depressing and infuriating, but really, really good.

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