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Dude, Where's My Car (2000): D God help me, but I sat through this entire stupid, brainless loving movie, and it amazes me that anyone could have ever found any of this funny. Part of the problem might be that I'm watching as a 40 year old; not a dumbass teen who thinks "clever" puns about smoking weed are hilarious. On the other hand, none of this is anything we haven't seen many times before, and usually done a lot more entertainingly (e.g: Cheech and Chong; Spicoli, etc). The Conker's Bad Fur Day-esque plot was slightly interesting just to see where it would go (oh look, there's Brent Spiner!), but Conker is funnier and better written. There was a single fairly good joke in the whole thing: an "it's like being in a country music video" quip when Kelso and Stiffler were walking in the "space nerds'" barn. The rest was Not Good. Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990): D Over the course of this film, the US a) puts boots on the ground in a sovereign Central or South American country to save the life of a handful of narcs, b) commits 'regime change' against the leader of said country, and c) lays waste to a Native village that is used as a playground for a firefight. Shouldn't be surprising given Norris' regressive politics, but this moment in history was an awkward time to watch a movie that took such obvious delight in bellicose American imperialism. Besides that, the movie is a cheesy cliche fest whose plot reminds me most strongly of License To Kill. You have a charismatic villain that the movie reminds us at every turn is eeeevil. You have the "hero" entering a sovereign country to get him, you have a woman victimized by the villain, and you have plenty of eye rolling one liners from the hero. I didn't think it was all that terrible until the sequences in "San Carlos", when the politics of the movie and cheesiness of the fights became a bit too much to tolerate.
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Apr 16, 2024 00:11
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Steve Yun posted:One of the things my screenwriting professor said that stuck with me is that you can’t help but reveal your worldview in your writing. Oh for sure, and also, I think a lot of people don't actually identify their perception of normalcy as having ideological content.
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Apr 16, 2024 00:23
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The movie (and director) do have a clear "this side is fascist and thats bad" position, but also walks enough of a tight rope to not piss off either side that it makes it entirely irrelevant to the film. https://x.com/kermodeandmayo/status/1778772594038108226 I find his "the president is clearly depicted as a fascist" line to be more than a little eye raising. The movie also opens with a suicide bomber blowing up a water truck where protestors are clashing with police, murdering the cops and fellow citizens for ??? reasons Also, there are lines that are deliberately vague like "your iconic photo of the Antifa massacre" that could be read in two ways. Garland is trying to have his cake and eat it to and that's honestly more annoying than if it were truly apolitical and just trying to tell a story about conflict journalists.
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Apr 16, 2024 00:54
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There are two literal Nazis in the special thanks for the movie
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Apr 16, 2024 00:56
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Yeah, that too. Garland is a toothless coward even if he tries to claim his movie is sending a clear message (which it utterly fails to do)
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Apr 16, 2024 01:03
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Now I'm questioning whether any of his movies had a clear message. Or if he just enjoys flirting with controversial topics and powerful imagery.
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Apr 16, 2024 02:19
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Oh hey, I'm watching movies again. The Craft (1996, Andrew Fleming) [digital] 3/5 Late Night with the Devil (2023, Cameron Cairnes/Colin Cairnes) [theatrical] 3.5/5 Ingagi (1930, don't care) [Blu-ray] 1/5 Girl Gang (1954, also don't care) [Blu-ray] 2/5 Wonka (2023, Paul King) [Max] 4/5 The House Bunny (2008, don't care) [digital] 2/5 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024, Adam Wingard) [theatrical] 3.5/5 Bring It On (2000, Peyton Reed) [digital] 3/5 The Blonde Pick-up/Racket Girls (1951) [Blu-ray] 1.5/5 Clifford (1994, Paul Flaherty) [theatrical] 1.5/5 Dante's Inferno (1911) [Blu-ray] 2.5/5 Dance, Girl, Dance (1940, Dorothy Arzner) [Blu-ray] 3.5/5 High Sierra (1940, Raoul Walsh) [Blu-ray] 4/5 90 Degrees in the Shade (1965, Jiri Weiss) [Blu-ray] 3.5/5 I'm honestly shocked by how good and fun Wonka is. It's like a love letter to golden age Disney live-action musicals. I can't believe I saw Clifford in a theater before a single Hitchcock film.
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Apr 16, 2024 02:58
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Bottom Liner posted:The entire time, all I could think about was how Children of Men did everything this movie wants to do 100x better 20 years ago. Man I loving hated that movie, so now I'm curious if I'll hate Civil War more,.or appreciate the differences.
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Apr 16, 2024 04:47
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After watching Civil War my hot take is that it was pretty good and will probably stick with me for a bit. People will also probably argue about it all year.
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Apr 17, 2024 04:47
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Revenge of the Ninja (1983): B Someone on imdb said it pretty succinctly: "Hokum, but enjoyable hokum". This movie is ridiculous as hell, with a convoluted plot (something about smuggling heroin into or out of the country using traditional Japanese dolls?), ethnic stereotypes (stock Italian "goombas" and even a Native American wielding a bowie knife and axes), lots of gratuitous fights, and a B-movie production. But it was a far more entertaining time than either Dude, Where's My Car? or Delta Force 2 (though the latter wasn't too bad). I would watch this again in a heartbeat.
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Apr 18, 2024 00:52
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the Zone of Interest 2023 So I saw this on HBO/Max the other day and was a little, I don't know, confused by the blurb because I wasn't clear on the premise. I thought it was going to be some weird take on "good Nazis" or something so I wasn't actually going to watch it, however, last night I started it (figuring I'd watch some and get an idea of what it was like, go to bed and see the rest today if it held my interest). Instead I stayed up until 3 am to finish it because I was enthralled. Unexpectedly great, really fine performances. This movie is incredibly powerful and moving. 10/10 ...as an aside, I'm in a FB group of globe collectors and someone recently picked one up from Germany around this same time that actually has a "zone of interest" on it and that was the first time I'd ever heard the term, other than this movie. It's actually part of the reason I watched it, when I saw this before I assumed it was just the title they went with.
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Apr 18, 2024 22:43
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Some of the best sound design of all time. Incredibly effective concept executed perfectly.
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Apr 18, 2024 23:42
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Civil War. 3/5. Some parts were pretty great. Others fell flat hard. Overall I enjoyed it though and it was often very pretty. Valoa valoa valoa. 3.5/5 Very gay and quite sad. I like that. Wish there was a little more meat to that story though.
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Apr 20, 2024 21:55
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They really did Challengers a disservice with the name because practically everyone I've heard talk about it or talked to it about has made the "is it about the space shuttle? is there more than one?" joke. Also, I was extremely turned off by the marketing campaign of, "HEY DO YOU WANT TO SEE ZENDAYA gently caress TWO GUYS????????????????????" But man times are tough right now, and I really need a distraction, I have a ton of free movie credits and hate the Ape movies and some people I trust said Challenger was good so I figured, what the heck, might as well. It was pretty darn good. I kind of understand the marketing because "a modern French New Wave film/tennis sports movie" is probably tough sell. It's not a total bait and switch, it's definitely about the relationship of the three protagonists, but at its heart it's an experimental film: it doesn't really reveal itself as such as first, but by the end it's doing some really interesting things with editing, camera shots, angles, sound and music,. You can probably figure out how it's gonna end 10 minutes into the movie (and indeed I wonder if the writer [Justin Kuritzkes] wrote that first and went backwards from there) but that's not the point. It's really about everything building up to that moment. Definitely worth seeing.
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May 13, 2024 10:32
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Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi – My local theater was showing these last week and I figured it would be nice to see them on the big screen. I was a little apprehensive, since I wasn’t sure if I’d still like these films now that I’m older. I’d seen them before on home video and the 1997 re-release “special edition”, but I hadn’t watched them recently. Also, when I saw The Force Awakens I almost walked out of the theater and I didn’t bother seeing Last Jedi or Rise of Skywalker. I did enjoy myself, but I must admit I’m starting to age out of these kinds of movies (or it might just be that I’ve seen them so many times before). I understand that Star Wars is a simplistic good vs evil story, but there were points in the films where I “overthink” some of the plot. Also, these were the "second-special" edition versions of the films, which in addition to the changes that Lucas added for the first special edition in the 1990s, had some subsequent changes that were added later. I felt that the added/modified scenes, which were most notable in the Mos Eisley scenes in New Hope and Jabba's palace in Jedi were extraneous, but I probably thought they were cool when I saw them as a teen in the 1990's. Wikipeda has a good article on the various changes. Again, I did enjoy these films. At no point did it feel like the plot was dragging and there is a good balance between character development, world building, and narrative to keep the films going. From what comments I've heard the prequel movies leaned too heavily into the world building, while the sequels went too far in the opposite direction. My rankings: New Hope - 4.5/5 Empire - 5/5 Jedi - 4.5/5 Also, one thing that always bothered me (as an adult, I probably didn't think about when I was a kid) at the end of Jedi was how the empire just falls apart after the Emperor is killed and the second Death Star destroyed. The special edition even had scenes of celebrations on various worlds. However, historian Bret Devereaux, whose blog teaches history via analyzing works from pop culture, gives a good explanation while analyzing the development of the Star Destroyers. He basically compares the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire to the Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of powers that each had their own governing system. When Palpatine tried to centralize them with a single system that would make the Galactic Empire unpopular even if the world wasn't particularly oppressed. EDIT: Dammit, "good vs evil", not "good vs email" The_Other fucked around with this message at 19:48 on May 14, 2024 |
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May 14, 2024 19:29
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The_Other posted:I understand that Star Wars is a simplistic good vs email story, gently caress. This is the missing piece we've all gotten wrong for so long.
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May 14, 2024 19:38
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The_Other posted:He basically compares the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire to the Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of powers that each had their own governing system. When Palpatine tried to centralize them with a single system that would make the Galactic Empire unpopular even if the world wasn't particularly oppressed. Or just America.
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May 14, 2024 20:38
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Yeah it was more directly Vietcong and United States if I remember.
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May 14, 2024 20:44
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Yes, from the get go it was always a new-left pulp allegory of NLF vs genocidal colonizers. Historical antiquity need not apply.
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May 14, 2024 20:54
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