Topic: Movie thread.

@Professor_Plumber Oh please tell me your thoughts when you do!

@jump I found the book of The Great Gatsby to be no great shakes either.
Always amused me that the 'Jazz Age' seems to refer to an exclusively white milieu

But Fitzgerald's wife was called Zelda - hence, er, Zelda.

@Rambler You mean this scene wasn’t lifted straight from the book then?

@jump I can't remember Peter Parker being in the book?

@Rambler Venom’s girlfriend is in it too.

Also two posts back I forgot to say... Yeah, I heard the Zelda story before. Christina Ricci was in an alright mini-series about her called Z: The Beginning of Everything. They don’t mention the games in it though which is an outrage.

@jump I thought it was called Word War Z

@Link-Hero it's made by Baz Luhrmann, though I do agree a novel set in the 20s would be better off with some period music.

Luhrmann's in his late 50s I think

@Link-Hero The entire film is like that, you are watching scenes where jazz bands are playing at a party but the music you’re hearing is Kayne West.

That scenes sums up the film perfectly as it starts with Spider Man talking about how confused he is as he watches people partying to Izzo in the car.

@Rambler Bazza has a habit for this. He did the same thing with Moulin Rogue where in the 1800s Paris in a film about cabaret he filled it with Nirvana, KISS and The Beatles. At least Moulin Rouge was thrashy fun though, The Great Gatsby is just vapid rubbish.

@Professor_Plumber glad you liked it. I saw it last week lol.

@jump
And Romeo + Juliette.

(And before anybody says anything about Tudor / Elizabethan music, I've seen someone play a bass lute - it was bloody massive)

That Moulin Rouge film is the one with the Missy Elliot / Maya / Lil Kim / Xtina cover song isn't it?

One of the points of the novel is the vapid lives of the characters, but I dont think making the whole film into an showy, empty spectacle is best way to articulate that!!

@Professor_Plumber I also watched

Loving Vincent: 9/10

Creed: (I don't think I have done a score for this one yet but if I did) 8/10

Super Marios Bro. Movie 9/10

His Romeo & Juliet was set in modern day though right, I can give the music a pass in that case. I think that movie was alright, I watched it years ago but I vaguely remember not hating it. Tromeo & Juliet was better though!

The bit you said about empty spectacle being a plot point is why I wanted to see it as I thought it’d compliment Babylon which I saw a month or two ago and still thinking about it. It deals with a similar theme of how empty everyone is but with Babylon it’s over the transition of old Hollywood from the silent era to talkies also had a change in culture there too, before it was wild debauchery to posh gatherings but those parties were just as scummy however it’s about presentation to mirror the change of presentation from silent movies to talkies. That and the movie is just mind blowing.

@jump Tromeo and Juliette is one of the best films ever. The trailer on YouTube is pretty incredible too.
But yes, that is true about R+J, for some reason that was blocked from my mind!

I'll check out Babylon sounds fun!

James Gunn's non-superhero films are criminally underrated.

@Hydra_Spectre
Bloody hell, at least someone else here knows about Gunn's pre-Disney career! Bet it would give the average Marvel film fan nightmares. Bit like fans of Hairspray watching Pink Flamingos or LoTR film fans putting on Braindead and Meet The Feebles.

I'm honestly not being rude, but I still cannot work out the internet definition of 'underrated' - anybody give me some pointers?

@Hydra_Spectre Tromeo & Juliet is up there (although he was just the writer) but I think his best film is Super myself which yeah, is a superhero flick but more of a horrible deconstruction of the idea of a superhero. It’s a shame all the kids are who like his DC/Marvel films won’t give any of his other films a chance.

@Rambler there’s a few moments in Babylon that I could mention to help sell it but then my post would just be removed. However I will mention there is one scene where Margot Robbie is filming a scene for a movie in this movie and it keeps going wrong, 3 people I know who work in the industry said that is the most real thing they have seen about movies in a movie.

@Rambler at this point underrated in movies means any movie/actor/director that doesn’t have CGI in it.

It’s just an overused word.

It's overrated, you mean. Geddit? GEDDIT???

Akira (4K UHD BD)

Recently rewatched this as I got in the 4K BD.

All these years later & it still looks absolutely stunning. It's really strong until the end where it kinda loses me. I mean, I think I understand it a bit more everytime I watch it... maybe.

Anyhow, there's just something about the gritty sci-fi anime of the 80's that I can't get enough of.

Ant-Man & the Wasp Quantumania (Disney+)

This was fine.

It's visually a bit of a mess (I know they wanted the Quantum Realm to come off as strange, but a lot of it is just CGI noise), some scenes looked really cool (like when Scott was being split up into "possibilities") while others looked 10-15 years out of date (the scene in the "desert" where Janet negotiated with those raider types).

Otherwise it was okay. A bit too lighthearted of a character to really sale the higher stakes adventure it was trying to be (given that it was building up the next major villain post Thanos).

Watched Les Misérables the other night. Apart from the obvious comparisons to La Haine, there is a bit of The Wire in there. A review I read mentioned Do The Right Thing, and I can see that, but maybe that film is so influential it just becomes part of the fabric (and it is certainly not as stylised as that film).

Really really good, with some excellent pen-portrait characterisation of its huge cast, great soundtrack.

I thought the script had some plotting issues, and -maybe this is an age thing - it didn't feel as urgent or angry as La Haine. Plus for a film concerning racial tension and disparity, the Gypsy characters were depicted as sentimental thugs.
But if you can get past that, it's a thought-provoking, tense thriller