Topic: Movie thread.

@Zuljaras There’s a scene in Scooby Doo where a male character gets transported into a female character’s body and he makes it obvious that there’s a lot of bad things he wants to do. If it was cross gender it’d be super wierd especially if Steve took over a woman’s body. At least it would establish Wonder Woman as an LGBTQ+ icon, maybe.

@theJGG She's established as bisexual in the comics already, even the early 40s comics hinted at her being bisexual. She does live on an island with only other women after all, gotta do something to pass the time.

@theJGG I am against making already established characters LGBTQ icons. However I am all in for making brand new characters that will serve as icons for that community.

@jump That "Martha" thing just killed the movie. The comic and the animation ("The Dark Knight Returns" I think) are 100% better than that crap!

@jump Makes sense there. Amazonians gotta do what Amazonians gotta do.
@Zuljaras I wholly agree with you. Don't change someone's entire sexual identity for the sake of appealing to people. Don't just make that change for the sake of it. Like the main plot points of Star Wars Episode IX, you need to at least foreshadow it.

Meh, I'm yes and no on the idea, I don't like the idea of characters been changed for the sake of gay icon-ness or marketability but I think it's important, particularly comic book characters evolve and if that involves being gay or trans then so be it.

A lot of them were created in the 40s and an entirely different sensibility was about and have already been changed/updated since then to stay relevant. Like Superman originally couldn't fly and there was no Krypton, Wonder Woman originally had a theme of submission & bondage in her comics which was later dropped and the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan Batman films are wildly different from the Adam West Batman movie. They have already made far bigger changes to the characters than if they are straight or gay.

As long as the characters defining traits are kept (it would be very sad if a character's major defining trait was that they are straight thinking about it) and there's actual logic to it then I don't have a problem with it. Like it's wrong to make Superman suddenly gay as it would mean undoing the iconic relationship with Lois Lane but Wonder Woman if she was presented as bi or lesbian in a film it's seems fair enough.

Although my actual preference is for the gay or straight romantic subplot in superhero films is to be dropped altogether. It's too tropey at this point unless they are gonna do something unique in the movie with it.

@jump Agreed on all fronts. No need to appease everybody with holier-than-holy pandering! Write a movie that is real.

@Slowdive Yeah, I like Casino Royale and Skyfall for completely different reasons, Casino Royale felt like a contemporary take on the spy genre (where all espionage becomes about looking at someone's phone rather than actual spying lol) whilst Skyfall felt like a return old skool bond. I kinda would have liked a new Bond casting for Skyfall just so it would have been a cleaner change in tone.

Speaking of Spectre...

I seriously recommend soul. I still like certain Pixar movies better, but it definitely deserved its spot among the rest of them. Like seriously, watch it, it's the best movie anything under Disney has came out in years.

@GilbertXI I wouldn’t quite say it’s the best thing to come from Disney or Pixar in years as there has been some good stuff but Soul is a great flick. I wouldn’t be surprised if it won the Oscar for best movie due to the lack of competition (which isn’t to take away from how great Soul is), it’s only really The Trial Of The Chicago 7 that I could see winning it over Soul.

@jump yeah of course it's just my opinion, I did like other things, but soul was one of the most well rounded experiences I've had from Disney since Coco. I think it definitely deserved an oscar, especially considering the competition.

For all the bad press and reviews Songbird got, I watched it and thought it was pretty decent. I generally despise Michael Bay films because they're just EXPLOSIONS! EXPLOSIONS! EXPLOSIONS! but this was entertaining. I'd say 7/10.

I couldn't sleep so I ended up watching a bunch of films instead.

Oculus. A very smart horror flick, it's set up the rules of how the spooky evil works and then plays around on that. I looked the director, Mike Flanagan who turns out directed a lot of other films I've really enjoyed too. I need to follow this guy's films from now on.

Sorry To Bother You. An interesting premise of a black telemarketer making himself sound white to get more sales which is also what the film is NOT about in a weird way. Really funny and alot more depth then I thought it was gonna be. Turns out is was directed by the guy from The Coup which explains the choice of themes.

Destination Wedding. A brilliantly bitter and sour rom-com. It's probably too bitter and sour for it's own good but it's refreshing for a rom con.

I've just realized that despite how 2020 was barren for new films I somehow managed to watched enough films to do a end of year top ten list!

10. Tenent, too Nolan-ish for it's own good but some really cool set pieces.
9. Run, despite how you can see the story coming a mile away it still builds tension and suspension which is what you want from a thriller.
8. Invisible Man, Elizabeth Moss showing a masterclass of crying through mascara acting.
7. The Hunt, I really liked how it mislead people with the premise and it was fun trying to figure out who the protagonist was going with everyone dropping off dead early on.
6. Birds Of Prey, fun, looks great and had a vibe of it's own although I wish more time was actually spent with the non-Harley characters.
5. Scare Me, fun no budget indie film which really comes alive thanks to it's great performances and nothing else.
4. Borat 2, I find it a better film/story than the first one but it lacks the first's impact.
3. Trial Of The Chicago 7, a tad too much like a play but damn it was compelling.
2. Parasite, technically a 2019 release but it didn't make it to the West till 2020 so it counts. Legit brilliant!
1. Soul, it ticks all the boxes of what makes a great Pixar film great.

I'm bored, so I want to post for a moment in defense of Bee Movie.

I think the movie gets unfairly criticized as terrible from all the memes, and I feel like people fail to revel in the beautiful stupidity of what the film actively seeks to be. Do you really think a movie about a bee who falls in love with a woman and suing the human race takes itself seriously at all?!

I think it's kind of interesting, because it's basically an intentional so-bad-it's-good movie.

@iKhan I’ve not watched it for ages (and don’t want to ever watch it again) but I vaguely remember it just being a star vehicle for Jerry Seinfeld rather than a film on its own which happens to have him in it. As I’m not a 90s person I don’t have the same love of Seinfeld as people from that era and not really a fan of his comedy.

It’s not like how Sarah Silverman is in Wreck It Ralph where she’s portraying a new character outside of her comedy bits (although I’d love a foul mouthed Sarah Silverman Disney princess movie) that happens to be a good movie or a closer example of Sausage Party which has more going for it than just another Seth Rogen comedy.

@jump No question, it's a Jerry Seinfeld movie through and through, to the point that the entire mechanism of comedy is Seinfeld's classical style of situational comedy without a lot of punch lines*. But I'm cool with an animated Jerry Seinfeld comedy. I'm grinning when I see clips of the movie.

*There are definitely punchlines, but I feel like the humor aimed at adults is the absurdity of the whole thing, rather than the bee puns.

First look at the new Mortal Kombat movie! It's too early to really tell but it's not looking as bad as the 90s ones at least however it's still a video game so it will probably suck.

https://ew.com/movies/mortal-kombat-first-look-lewis-tan-joe-...

Movies I've seen recently.

BlacKKKlansman (FX) - A film set in the 70's about a pair of Black & Jewish police officers who infiltrate the klan, in an effort to uncover whether or not they're simply hateful, or actually dangerous. It was a really good watch, though the actor who played David Duke (the klan's president at the time) was Eric from that 70's Show, & I just saw him as Eric pretending to be really racist for some reason, lol. Being a more recent Spike Lee production, it also drew some parallels to "Trumpism", with Duke leading an "America First" chant (not sure if that specific phrase is something they used), and later transitioned from a Cross burning to footage of the 2017 Charlottesville riot & Trump's response to there being "fine people on both sides", as to point to the movement "changing guises" rather than going away.

Ghostbusters 2 (Blu-Ray) - I intended to watch this around Halloween, but just never got around to it at the time (made time for the first though, of course). It's never too late for a bit of ghost busting fun though, so I watched it more recently. Yeah, it's not as good as the first, but it's still a pretty fun time. I actually got a kick out of some of the deleted scenes, such as the one where Rick Moranis' character tries out the ghost busting gear by trying to hunt down Slimer in their office.

One Night in Miami (Amazon Prime Video) - Film covering the night Cassius Clay took on the name Mohammed Ali, with Ali/Clay, Malcom X, Jim Brown, & Sam Cooke spending the night in a motel room discussing & debating the issues affecting Black Americans at the time. Really interesting watch.

Otaku no Video (Retro Crush) - Anime film (really, two OVA's bundled together as one) that's kinda a parody of Japanese Otaku culture of the time. It follows a young sociable university student who reconnects with an old friend from high school who drags him into the world of Otaku, and after being immersed in the culture & "rejected from society", decides to transform the world into an "Otaku paradise". The narrative is regularly interrupted with mock documentary style live action segments, with interviews with "real world" Otaku, covering various aspects of the culture (themes usually tied to events happening in the story proper) & their integration into wider society. It was a pretty fun watch, with lots of blatant references to series such as Macross, Lupin the 3rd, Gundam, Urusei Yatsura, & more. An aspect of the culture regularly touched upon that doesn't seem to be a big part of anime/Otaku culture these days is a fixation on realism (the characters would fawn over how the designs of the fighters in Macross are inspired by real world military designs & advancements of the time, such as them featuring Liquid Crystal Displays, "Which is What NASA is currently using!", as well as the realism displayed in special effects & weapon models), which I thought was interesting (simply because when I was young, it was the more serious, real world connections of a lot of anime which drew me to the medium over traditional cartoons, and that doesn't seem to be a big appeal for the fandom/medium anymore).

Space Adventure Cobra (Amazon Prime Video) - 90's sci-fi anime flick, that I think is an adaptation of an even older manga (based on the art style I had assumed it was from the 80's). It follows a legendary space pirate known as Cobra, who gets involved with a female bounty hunter who is at odds with the galaxy's biggest crime syndicate. It's pretty decent. Not that I have much experience with it, but it comes across as a more graphic take on something like Buck Rodgers.

The trailer for the new Mortal Kombat movie is freaking awesome!!!

Ooh looking pretty good, not bad graphics at all

It has blood and gore so that's a good sign at least.