Topic: Movie thread.

The Last Jedi sucked. I'm sorry, but for me-- It did. It seems to have disregard everything that was set up before hand and gives us moot answers to the questions we had about characters earlier on. I also didn't like how they characterized some of the characters, like, Luke. The humorous gags where way too prominent, which detracted from the overall serious atmosphere it was supposed to have.

If there was anything to like, it was some of those action sequences. One in particular, but I Don't want to spoil it.

@Peek-a-boo We go on a Disney cruise every once in a while (the family), and they show pretty much everything Disney has released recently in a big, on-ship theater, so I've just been skipping everything Disney-related aside from Star Wars. Why waste the money when it'll be free on the ship? Anyway, I'll be seeing it there in half a year or so (and Coco. And Thor: Ragnarok. And Black Panther.)

That's (mostly) a great list of movies you have there. Although I haven't seen Early Man. That was the cartoon about the cavemen, right?

@Ralizah Ah!

That sounds like a pretty nice family holiday to me.

I guess you’ll catch up with all the Disney/Marvel films there and then.

As for Early Man, it is a new claymation film from Aardman, made by those jolly British folks who are best known for Wallace & Gromit.

Unfortunately, it didn’t do very well at the box office outside of the UK, as it came out at completely the wrong time and is much more British in terms of humour than their other films like Arthur Christmas, The Pirates! and Chicken Run.

Whilst I haven’t been to the cinema lately, I did rent Paddington 2 and Call Me by Your Name on iTunes ~ both films are absolutely brilliant and are completely far removed from each other too. I reckon your family would be delighted with Paddington 2!

@Peek-a-boo As I recall, those of us who saw Paddington 2 did enjoy it. My mother can't abide anything British, and, while I enjoyed the first Paddington, I wasn't dying to see the sequel, so I went with her to see something else.

I'll check it out on DVD if it's really something I shouldn't miss, though.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - Nothing amazing, but it was at least consistently fun. I was suprised to find out that it rides the line between sequel and reboot (I thought it would be a full on reboot, but it's made perfectly clear that it takes place in the same continuity as the original). My only disappointment would be that the more fantastical creatures of the original (giant man eating plants, giant spiders) were completely left out, and in their place was a generic gang of machine gun toting motorcycle stunt driving baddies.

Thor: Ragnorok - This was a great time. Not really much to say that hasn't already been said, but it's a fantastic popcorn flick.

Just saw Infinity War, I won’t spoil anything of course, and needless to say when it comes to these movies it was really good. Definitely go in as spoiler-free as possible, your depriving yourself if you do. Not my favorite, but it’s a solid 8/10.

In This Corner of the World - Slice of life anime film that follows the day to day life of young housewife Suzu during the years of WWII. During the course of the film there's both happy and (many) sad moments, but it ends on a hopeful note. It's not one of my favorites (I.e. I won't be buying it), but I'd say it's still worth a look if you like anime or early 20th century period pieces (I will say some shots of the countryside were beautiful).

@TheTetrisGuy Likewise.

I will say that Marvel has a much, much bigger pair of balls than I give them credit for though! I am amazed that the higher ups gave the go ahead for some of the scenes in Infinity War...

Overall, I enjoyed the most recent two Marvel films (both Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther respectively) - strong empathise on the word ‘enjoyed’ - whereas the surprising complexity and layered depth of Infinity War, mostly due to Thanos motivations, made me appreciate the film more so than any of their previous eighteen features in the Marvel Cinematic Universe... if that makes sense?

PLEASE DON’T REVEAL THE SPOILERS UNTIL YOU HAVE SEEN THIS FILM!

The good:

The bad:

After leaving the cinema on a high, I was in a OMG! frame of mind however, upon thinking about the film on a whole, it is more than worthy of an 8/10.

For the love of God, please avoid spoilers – the impact of certain scenes would not be as effective or as profound if you do so.

I loved the new Avengers. Probably the best of the Marvel movies yet. Thor 3 and Captain America 2 were my favourites until this one.

The one thing that fell completely flat though was Thanos' motivation. It was presented as if it was a serious legitimate agenda that maybe we should understand. Not sure why exactly.

Um... any release date for Pokemon Stars Movie ?
Will that anime aired on Indonesia ?

Can I just say the Infinity War spoilers without context memes are great? I wouldn’t look them up before you see the movie, for fear of clicking on the wrong article, but definitely look them up after you see it.

@TheTetrisGuy

I'm pretty sure you could post that here, given that they don't spoil anything until you've seen it (therefore aren't spoilers)

@Dezzy Truth be told I have no idea how to upload images. Even If I did, there not really relevant to this thread, I just wanted to make a note of them.

Can you make a superhero movie where a group of scientists and economists just explain to a purple alien giant that actually the amount of starvation on earth has decreased as the population has grown, so he'd literally be making the problem worse that he claims he's solving.....?

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011):

This was the only MCU movie I hadn't watched yet. It was on TV years ago, but I wasn't playing much attention.

It's an ok superhero origin movie. Red Skull was a good villain.
Winter Soldier and Civil War were much better imo.

@Dezzy MAJOR INFINITY WAR SPOILER!!! To be fair, it was a universe wide thing, not just earth. Although one has to wonder why Thanos just didn’t double the amount of planets in the universe rather than commit mass genocide...

@TheTetrisGuy @Peek-a-boo would you recommend watch it in cinema or wait for blue ray

@Dawgzila That’s tricky... if you really want to avoid spoilers then definitely see it in theaters, but if your good at avoiding them, you wouldn’t be missing that much by waiting.

I'm going to drop spoilers about a 35+ year old horror film that everyone knows the plot to already, but, err, don't read if you're one of the few people who doesn't already know what The Shining is about

So, I finally watched The Shining all the way through! Despite leaving it with extremely mixed feelings, I think it was still worth watching. The sound design is absolutely amazing, especially as the film descends deeper and deeper into madness, and the "music" (if that's what it can be called) becomes a reflection of the indescribable chaos of Jack's mind. The acting, as far as that goes, seems pretty effective: Jack Nicholson has never been scarier (although, as I've said before, Jack Nicholson only ever plays Jack Nicholson... in this film, he's just doubling down the creepy aspects of his performances), and Shelley Duvall's Wendy spends most of the film seeming pretty genuinely terrified. The cinematography is really awesome during the opening scenes, with its vast, panoramic scene setting. And, even if the film eventually devolves into Steadicam: The Movie once the characters reach the hotel, there's a wonderful sense of irrationality to the set. The way it's designed is physically impossible, in certain respects, giving it an unnatural air from the beginning. I guess I should also mention that the film makes effective use of shocking imagery.

So, why did I say I left it with mixed feelings? Well... the film is close to three hours long, and the pacing kind of dies when the characters actually settle in to the hotel. It turns into a series of random creepy scenes that just kind of happen. One of Stephen King's criticisms of the film is that Jack Torrance is pretty clearly nuts from the get-go, and while he may get worse over the course of the film, there's no feeling of a 'descent into madness.'

The film also dispensed with a ton of the narrative from King's novel, which makes his inclusion of Danny's "shining" powers, and the discussion surrounding that, stand out all the more. There just doesn't seem to be a narrative function for his abilities. They exist to service a plot and character development that was filtered out of the adaptation.

The characters... kind of suck. Jack is insane and unpleasant to begin with, and that just becomes more the case over the course of the film. Wendy is a shrinking violet who exists so that the men in her life can terrify her (not necessarily uncommon in horror films, but I'd like to think something heralded as art would go beyond this; Stephen King was certainly unhappy with her portrayal in this film, which he called "misogynistic"). Hallorann is the most blatant example of the Magical Negro trope I've ever seen in a film; he's only there to dump exposition about his and Danny's psychic powers and then to be killed as a sacrifice when the film demands blood. These aren't people: they're one-dimensional abstractions brought to life. Although, I will admit, I like how subtle but unmistakably potent the theme of child abuse is in this film. They don't run it into the ground like almost any other film would, but it's clearly there, in the subtext of several scenes, of Wendy's terror when she sees marks on Danny's neck, and, most notably, in Danny's own behavior.

While I pointed out the film's effective use of imagery, and it's true, I think it does a good job showing it, without the context of a meaningful narrative to ground it, a lot of the creepy stuff happening in the film just seems more 'lol random' than anything, such as the woman in Room 237, the creepy twins, and especially the random gay furries having sex near the end of the film. I'm sure these have clear narrative functions in the original novel, but they almost feel like they're included at times so that Kubrick can market this as a horror film. I'll give the famous blood elevator imagery a pass as foreshadowing, but that's as generous as I'm being.

Oh, and the climax sucks. Wendy and Danny leave in Hallorann's car (because who wants to see the nice white woman and child get chopped up when you can summon the magical negro from hundreds of miles away to come sacrifice his property and life in their stead, as the film seems eager to do?), you get a brief flash of Jack Torrance wearing a goofy expression after freezing to death, and then the film ends with a tacky, Twilight Zone-esque twist that's not really meaningful in the context of the film it caps off.

Overall, though, I think the good overwhelms the bad... I just don't think it's the masterpiece people think it is.

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018): I realized it had been a while since I watched a DC Animated Original Movie, so I decided to watch this new one.

The movie is probably the most gruesome animation DC has ever done, a lot of people literally explode!
The plot was kind of silly in my opinion: Amanda Waller, the responsible for the Squad (which has lost a lot of weight, btw) wants a card that can make whoever is holding at the time of their death go straight to heaven (???), and sends the squad to find it

One of the best aspects of the movie is how the squad is actually shown as a bunch of oportunistic backstabbers, who are just crazy to get the card for themselves.

Overall I really liked it, I'd say more than the 2014 animated movie. Great action, Deadshot and Bronze Tiger were amazing in this. I felt like Harley was a kind of comic relief character, saying the random stuff she usually does...

Batman and Harley Quinn (2017): I remember people were pretty excited for this one last year, but I... just completely forgot about it for some reason, and just checked it out now.

This one follows the same style as the Batman Animated Series! At first I was really enjoying the artstyle and jazz score, but then the movie really starts and oh man...

Poison Ivy wants to turn everyone into plants because humans keep destroying nature. Batman needs to find Harley so she can convince Ivy to stop. Then Harley joins Batman and there's a lot of sex, poop and fart jokes.
The tone of the movie is just weird compared to the animated series, and the plot is really, really boring.

Other than that I'm watching Samurai Champloo, currently at the 12th episode.