Films The Official bit-tech Movie Thread - What have you seen lately?

As someone who enjoys Ep1 (was my first introduction to Star Wars and the score made me learn the French Horn!) but is up for trying the Machete order, where would it make sense to put it, just before 2,3?

Something like:
(R1, Solo maybe) 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9

Maybe? Ignoring the TV series as they're much bigger (watching seperately and coming to the end of The Clone Wars and will then move onto Bad Batch/Rebels I guess). Once Andor S2 is done then you could add that to the start as it is quite focused/relevant unlike Others like Mando, BoB etc

 

All of Us Strangers - so sad so many feels / 10

 

4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 is a good order - 1, 2, & 3 act to fill in the back story following the revelation of Luke's parentage in chapter 5.

 

Well he was drinking from the jar o' dark force while she was applying Naboo Goo Anti-Ageing creams

 

2000AD fans rejoice!!!

https://variety.com/2024/film/globa...lowden-duncan-jones-rogue-trooper-1235889907/

 

Please, please let it be good.
And if it is, can we have Strontium Dog next?

 

Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones is the guy who gave us "Moon", "Mute" & "Source Code" (also "Warcraft").
There is a "Best Noob"* BAFTA on his mantlepiece.
He's been a massive Rogue Trooper fan for years.

* Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for 2010

 

Morbius 7/10

I watched this because it popped up on Netflix, and I actually enjoyed it. Very surprised to see it has such terrible reviews. Granted, the plot is quite ridiculous and there's not a shred of originality in it, but it's an entertaining romp with some really nice VFX and fantastic action sequences. Both Leto and Smith are perfectly cast IMO, and they have great on-screen chemistry. As it's become virtually obligatory to dump on this movie, it's kinda difficult to find sincere and balanced critique of it; by my reckoning, it's nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be.

 

Gosh! Well, I'm not a negative Nancy, I'm glad someone enjoyed it. My wife and I went to see it blind, no preconceptions, and both separately concluded that it was one of the worst films we've seen in a long time. It doesn't commit any egregious sins, however; if I were being real, it'd be a 5/10, completely average. Its sin is being totally devoid of originality, creative passion or good ideas, for me. The most generic Marvel film, landing at a time when everyone was burnt out on them anyway, the most formulaic superhero film at a time when the formula was under very heavy attack in the press and the popular imagination for being so.

Matt Smith was terribly used, I thought. He didn't have a single good line. The female character was used the way 2000s games used them - the is attractive, then expresses motherly concern for the troubled protagonist, then gets in peril and must be saved. In fact the whole thing felt video gamey, on reflection. Like...amateur hour? It all works, it's just so derivative. I know "derivative" is the stereotypical snobbish reviewer criticism, but gosh darn it just is very derivative.

It was a runaway meme train, though, you're right about that. The hate was overblown. The internet seems to just pick random targets to sacrificially burn to vent the public spleen, nowadays (c.f. Kathleen Kennedy, who kinda sucks but not notably more than half her peers at the top of the entertainment industry).

You're plain wrong about the special effects though, I'll go 9 rounds over how awful the flying looked

But really, bravo for liking it and saying so, people get a bit cowed by mass opinion sometimes. I had that with Star Wars 8 and 9. I enjoyed them in the cinema, not great but still fun for what they were. Weird in places? Disappointingly disorganised with some stupid contrivance? Yes. But I honestly enjoyed them, and it isn't possible for that feeling - that "ahh!" satisfaction of getting your moneys worth 90 minutes of entertainment, to be wrong. It just is. But now as soon as you leave the cinema there's a small army of nerds ready to explain to you why that feeling IS wrong and why you're DUMB and not a real fan/moviegoer/whatever. No True Scotsman would enjoy that, ergo you're an imposter.

I was latterly quite entertained by the critiques tearing down Episodes 8 and 9, and Morbius. And internally the film industry does need to go through that reflective process to maintain quality control. But for us, the viewers? Whether you enjoy it or not is priorities 1 through 99. The risk that some nerd will use weird logic to convince you that you didn't enjoy it is concern #100. And also, I do kinda wonder about the negative Nancies who spend all their lives on YouTube tearing things apart to try and convince people to stop enjoying them. Plinkett was the OG and he was wonderful but he created an army of whining imitators, culminating in CinemaSins, the peak of pointless idiotic "stop enjoying stuff!" doomerism.

Anyway. I rewatched Moon recently and it's still banging. One of my all time favourites. So hooray for that man being involved in more things (though I'm told Warcraft was pretty poo?)

Edit -
I tell you what though, sometimes there is the opposite of hype backlash, where you hear so much histrionics about how awful a film is that when you see it, you're expecting every single thing to suck, and even the worst films have shreds of quality in them, because they're big collaborative hairballs of contributed talent. (Like the childhood backstory stuff in Morbius, actually. That was good.) So your baseline expectation is dogshit, and you are able to focus on the things you enjoy about it and not be troubled by the things that are as dogshit as expected.

I had this with Twilight. It has many redeeming features and a few very notable, glaring problems. The internet had a field day ripping it to pieces over those problems, and the positive qualities it possesses got basically never talked about, because the ground was so irradiated by the conflict that nobody bothered going there ever again.

 

The Creator don't know/10

Why don't I know? Well, gave it about half an hour as I thought it may be worth a watch but turned it off before I slipped into a coma.

Dull.

 

I sort of had this experience with Dungeons & Dragons: Hono(u)r Among Thieves. Not because of any criticism I’d read or seen, but because my expectations were just so low. I was very glad to have my expectations overturned, as it turns out that it’s now one of my favourite films to have been released in recent years.

At first I thought the plot & character archetypes were a little formulaic, but it more than made up for itself by being thoroughly enjoyable, well acted, and having really good visual effects. And not to mention giving me a big grin when characters name all these places I’ve heard of from video games: Baldur’s Gate, Waterdeep, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter, etc. But then I learned a bit more about D&D and I can see how the respect for the source material shone through in the final product.

The character archetypes seem formulaic, but that’s because they’re literally a personification of the D&D character classes they’re based on. There’s an utterly ridiculous (and very well done) Wild Shape sequence that’s straight out of a DM’s “Rule of Cool”: “that’s an absolutely ridiculous idea, I’ve no idea what you even need to roll for that, but it’s freakin’ awesome so I’m going to let you do it!”. In part of the final fight sequence, there’s roughly 6 seconds between each character’s attack - in D&D each combat round represents 6 seconds of “real” time (at least in 5e AFAIK). The sequence at the bridge in the Underdark is absolutely what a frustrated DM might do when a player bungles a dice roll and risks the elaborately crafted set-piece encounter they spent hours working on:

Spoiler: Minor film spoilers

DM: [guides players to elaborate trap sequence that leads to a carefully-crafted set piece encounter]
Player: [fumbles an easy dice roll, completely destroys the path to the encounter]
DM: [head in hands] God… damnit… [sighs] Ok. Fine. You realise that the walking stick you’ve been carrying around in your pack is actually a magic portal wand. You create a portal from one side of the bridge to the other using the staff.

It’s a great film. But I think I was even more surprised when I watched it a second time and my other half really enjoyed it as well!

 

Wife and I are in a combined total of 3 different 5e campaigns, and I do wonder how much of a factor that was in us loving the absolute **** out of the DnD movie, because so many people who aren't into fantasy culture, tabletops, RPGs and the like have told me that they thought it was total crap. Though, I do kinda wonder why they went to see THE DnD movie when it's so blatantly not their bag. I suppose because of Chris Pine...

 

Im not a dnd fan yet i actually really enjoyed it, the creative use of the mirror in the cart was brilliant.

 

@boiled_elephant Yep I was going to make a comment about expectations based on hype, and honestly if I had known that the film got absolutely slated, I probably wouldn't even have considered watching it, so I'm glad things panned out the way they did - I was entertained for a couple of hours, and even with the subpar flying VFX the movie did its job. I also have similar feelings re. the latter episodes of Star Wars; I don't care much for the deeper aspects of the lore and prefer to bask in the nostalgia of the original trilogy, which for me is going back to the late 80s when it was broadcast on terrestrial. The first SW movie I saw was Return of the Jedi, which premiered on ITV on Boxing Day in 1989 - we watched it as a family and I had not long turned 7 so I was utterly captivated. Probably one of my best memories as a kid!

 

Argyle. It's just silly.

Didn't really matter we just wanted to go into this awesome cinema, not in in the glorious central screen which I took a peek at but at the first screen seen on the fly through.

https://en.pathe.nl/tuschinskitheater

Comfy sofas to sit back and chill, as my OH says we've gone back with modernity. Love these type of cinemas.

 

How silly is 'silly'?

Are we talking Romancing the Stone? Or Jewel of the Nile, or is it the full Johnny English?

 

A cat in an argyle carry backpack attended the premiere. That silly!

 

I'd say more Jonny English silly.

Spoiler

Yes, it does feature a cat in a backpack throughout

 

Hypnotic - Hmm/10
Jury is out on this one. Started well, fairly decent twist(s) but not sure whether that ending was a bit poor. There is also a mid-credits scene that sort of carries the story on a bit (or sets it up for a sequel, if you're being cynical), which does help the ending somewhat, but it's still very expositional and in a basic way at that. Maybe watch if nothing else is on (which I doubt is ever really the case in these days of multi-provider streaming options).

 

Labyrinth.

Actually much better than expected. The Lindsay Ellis review had set me up many years ago to assume it would be a turd; I was surprised to find it really enjoyable and quite funny in places. It was even emotional once or twice. And the puppetry is just mind-bendingly good, to the point that I assumed Hoggle was a little person in a costume. He isn't - he's one of the most elaborate puppets ever, operated by 5 puppeteers simultaneously. It must've taken frickin ages.

Edit - I've also discovered a milestone of ageing by crossing it. I remember thinking Connely looked hot in this film when I was in my early 20s. I also remember around that age having a lot of creep anxiety to the tune of "what if I never stop finding girls her age hot?" Well, now she literally looks like a child to me, so that's a relief. Though it did make for uncomfortable viewing with all the scenes of Bowie waving his magic balls at her and trying to seduce her (this hasn't aged badly, he was coded as the film's creepy antagonist from the outset, so I'm okay with it.)