|
Movies
Oct 25, 2017 16:17:33 GMT -6
Post by Captain Ally on Oct 25, 2017 16:17:33 GMT -6
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Prime Sweet Home Alabama Denial Wolverine Bitch Ray Donovan Oh Brother Where Art Thou Notting Hills The Room 500 Days of Summer Before I Go To Sleep Limitless The Ladykillers The Help Forest Gump Fried Green Tomatoes Just Go With It Selfless Sixteen Candles Can't Buy Me Love Ferris Bueller's Day Off Xanadu Tomorrow Land Sweet Home Alabama Jurassic Park 500 Days of Summer Limitless The Ladykillers Wolverine Avengers Captain America: The First Soldier Captain America: The Winter Soldier Captain America: Civil War Lemonade Mouth Deadpool *And probably the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I'm too lazy to type right now Moana | Princess and the Frog | 13 going on 30 | Radio Rebel | Scooby Doo | The Maze Runner Star Wars series | Harry Potter Series
|
|
|
Movies
Mar 22, 2021 0:40:31 GMT -6
Post by Captain Ally on Mar 22, 2021 0:40:31 GMT -6
I don't know the reason but that post just exudes embarassing vibes for some reason. Anyways I find myself watching multiple movies a day lately. The best one I watched recently was called, Julie and Julia. It wasn't amazing or anything but I did really enjoy it. Tbh I really love the movies that Meryl Strepp stars in.
I don't know what I want to do with this thread, I guess I'll just post every so often about a good movie I seen. I wish there were more users so I could talk with them too
|
|
|
Movies
May 12, 2022 1:32:02 GMT -6
Post by Captain Ally on May 12, 2022 1:32:02 GMT -6
Correction from the last post, I do not in fact like every movie meryl streep appears in LOL Recently I was watching Out of Africa and it honestly wasn't that great. If you've never seen it, basically streep plays the lead actress in the movie. Her character marries her guy best friend out of mutual convenience since the two of them aren't in any romantic relationships. As a wealthy woman she moves to africa in order to start up a new buisness which was supposed to be a dairy farm (which doesn't work out, suprise suprise). That's fine and dandy but I found myself bored out of my mind around the point that her character starts to have marital problems and contracts syphilis from her husband. There's a lot of drama that happens and I guess I wish the movie was written in a different direction from that point. It's not some great romance that I was lead to believe. Because even the second love interest is a terrible person. meh.
Something else I watched recently that was somewhat good was Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness. It was a cool concept and it made me realize that sam raimi is somewhat good at a scary movie concept. Nothing like gorey or bloody, but he delivers well on shock factors and hard hitting moments. Which reminds me of when I first seen that Doc Oc scene where the arms kill the entire surgery room full of people. That was scary but intriguing to me when I was younger, lol it made a lasting impression seeing as I can recall exactly what happened. Anyways doctor strange was okay. I thought it lost it's focus in the middle but it recovered by the end of the movie pretty well. It's solid as far as marvel and action movies are concerned. I like that it pushes both doctor strange's character and Scarlet Witch's characterization forward. Especially for the latter, I seen so many fans shocked and that was cool because it's like, no one's action are perfect. and for strange I thought his dynamic with wong and the new character with the multiverse hopping powers was great. Before I thought they handled the first movie terribly so I was a little scared for this one because like I said I didn't think they handled it well at all. I was pleasantly surprised.
I didn't see these two movies in theaters, but they're called Alice, and then Moonfall. For Alice, it's a wash. Which is a total bummer. Because by watching the trailer it looks like such a well written film, I thought the way that she encounters the modern world by facing a giant truck was so enticing given the fact that she was running away from her slave masters. But once you get into the actual film it falls so flat. The movie focused on the wrong moments, and they floundered with such a good cast. it was so unfortunate. With Moonfall I thought it was great. I don't expect the world's best writing from this type of movie, but I know that lionsgate always delivers on the visuals. Actually watching these styles of sci-fi movies is like my guilty pleasure. They're very trashy in all honestly. Think day after tomorrow, geostorm, 2012 - type of movies. You know it's not great but it's an interesting hypothetical that they deliver on. Anyways, I had fun because it explores space and the, what-if-we-were-the-result-of-an-advanced-human-civilization-that-had-to-run-from-complete-annihilation. lol. the ending scene makes me think it's very plausible that there could be a sequel. Basically one of the main characters sacrifices himself and the entitity that was protecting the moon that's not actually a moon, was like "we still have work to do, let's go". I wouldn't mind a sequel. Maybe I would actually pay to see it haha.
some other movies that weren't quite that good: The Green Knight, and the Adam Project. I felt a little bit of a fool when I went to watch the green knight. I thought it looked visually stunning from the trailer, but then I had to sit there awkwardly when some of the weirder scenes happened and I told my mom and younger sister that it would be a good movie. I read through the entire canterbury tales so I know the general gyst of this story in particular. yeah anyways, I think the adam project was a big miss. It felt too short yet also too long. And as soon as ryan reynolds came on screen i was bombarded with his weird samey type of acting that he always does. It's that way that he talks where he swears but at the same time it's pg strangely. It slapped me in the face anytime something remotely interesting happened. Good looking movie though but yeah, meh again.
|
|
|
Movies
Jul 16, 2022 1:11:18 GMT -6
Post by Captain Ally on Jul 16, 2022 1:11:18 GMT -6
I watched Jurassic World: Dominion and it honestly just pissed me off the more I thought about it. It's fun to see it, but if you're expecting anything good from it...then no.
There's so many shameless moments that they took from the previous jurassic park movies. Like the guy in the hyperloop train dying with the barbasol can to the Dilophosaurus just like Dennis does in Jurassic Park 1 (I know that's because he was the one who bribed dennis..but still meh). Or the group getting stuck in a tall building, just like in the first Jurassic park movie where they take to the treetops. I still think, and I will continue to think this way, that chris pratt sucks in any action role he takes. For Jurassic World that might just be the fault of the writing, but I don't imediately take pratt for a serious actor anyways. I thought what Dominion had going for it were those moments in the Dolomites where it was high stakes. I thought when Clare was hiding from the edward scissorhands dinosaur that it was the coolest moment in the entire trilogy. There needed to be more of that and less everything else. To me the locust subplot was the dumbest shit I've seen spawn from this franchise. It just relegated everything else as background content because the plot never left how the corporate locust were going to ruin everything. The franchise was at it's peak in the first three movies. I usually get mad at hollywood for endlessly rebooting stuff, and I thought with jurassic world handing over the main character buisness to two different actors that this would be different. But it wasn't. I'm honestly just disappointed, I thought it would be hard to fuck up content about dinosaurs, but they prove they can do that with anything.
My fondest memories of this franchise are when there's a focus on the decaying locations from Lost World and Jurassic Park 3. Like how it was once supposed to be a flourishing attraction that showed off the power of human science. And then it's left to rot because that failed and the dinosaurs take over everything. That's what is cool about the first three movies. I think that's what I miss in the jurassic world movies. It's too clean and they rely on endlessly one upping the wow factors for the movies. LIke big and scary dinosaurs that almost kill your "beloved" main characters (that never actually happens either). It's almost comical thinking about it, but I love Kayla Watts and the returning characters more than the main cast. Claire and Owen are boring.
Speaking about the dinosaurs. They never stayed with any of the newcomers long enough. I don't even remember the edward scissorhands dinosaur name but I remember it's impact. I know more about what appeared in jurassic park movies because the newest predator got it's moment. There was too much and too little at the same time for dominion. I also thought it was just cheap overall. They should have done the whole, dinosaurs now live in your backyard thing a little better. Isla Nubar is too iconic that the fact that they went to, "haha they're everywhere now"..it backfired. I only ever am used to them being in some remote location that's usually tropic. And they also just defaulted to t-rexes and raptors. Boring. I am of the opinion as well that they wasted the og cast. Are you telling me that Dr. Grant wouldn't be losing his godamn mind about not studying dinosaurs across the world. living dinosaurs?? he wants to keep sitting in his tent digging up older dinosaurs instead of the ones roaming across the world? get out of here. Owen also is just laughably stupid. His whole schtick is that he trained the raptors. And that's cool, but you're telling me that those same tricks work on everything else. He can stick his hands out and every dinosaur just understands that he's "non-threatening"? And then he continues to have some strange way of understanding dinosaurs. He makes a promise with Blue earlier in the movie, and apparently the damn thing is just like, well okay my baby will be back because he said so. I imagine that in reality the damn thing would have gone on a rampage in the town or something. Like there's no way it just happily sat there and waited.
Wait also as I was reading other people's opinions, how did the dinosaurs spread across the world? In Fallen Kingdom, most of them were being bought by private collectors. I forgot the amount of time between theese two movies, but how did the entire world get populated with dinosaurs. In the 30 years of dinosaurs being a thing in this universe, how did now of all times did the dinosaurs populate everywhere. There's no way that many collectors had enough dinos that they spread so much to be in competition with humans and existing ecosystems of animals. I think all of the faults of this movie is just hollywood at the center of it all. this is just a lifeless husk of a movie. it's so far removed from the original source content now and I hate that it reminds me of countless other movies and tv shows. That's sad. the new trilogy should have been telling it's own story but it had been relying too much on what came before it. Dominion was too concerned with it's image rather than what the characters were trying to tell us, it never focused long enough on any plot point. There was just exposition plus more and more exposition. None of the characters went on any meaningful arcs. I still know that there's something between own and claire but that's it. And with dr. grant and Sattler, they meet, there's something between the two of them. But the film doesn't want us to linger on that, because the next moment is always more important than the one that was just trying to be set up. I hate that Jurassic Park itself is set up on such a high pedestel within this film. Like dominion might as well of had the damn name in the title. This is just the definition of nostalgia baiting. I admit I was somewhat excited myself to see laura dern and sam neil again in this franchise. And it just turned out that this movie was relying on them and jurassic park itself. that's so unfortunate. Do you know that dodgson (the character I called some guy) was supposed to only be a joke in the original movie? It was that "nobody cares" who he is. I hate that original movies nowadays are treated as sacred. like why did we focus on dr. grants hat. who cares! also the fucking barbasol can was lost in the mud in the first film. I don't care that it returned either, we weren't supposed to care anymore about like in the original film. I hate that the jurassic world movies feel as if they're trying to surpass what came before them, but ultimately can't get any better because they keep focusing on the wrong things. I'm sick and tired of nostalgia! do you know that steven spielburg scoffed at the idea of a sequel to any of his movies but had to give in because he hated what they did with Jaws 2? that sucks.
THey might as well of had made the entire planet go into extinction with the last movie. That would have really been better. Actually that's what i thought the focus was when they showed that the island was in danger because of a volcanic explosion. After this movie I miss the thought that this franchise could have ended already. Then we all could have forgotten the tradegy of the jurassic world movies. I don't doubt that after the numbers this movie is doing that the stupid little execs in their dumb suits sitting in their loser offices together aren't salivating at the thought of making more trashy films. They're sitting there like oh boy I can't wait to fuck up another movie in which we make a director focus on the wrong things, make a movie that misses it's goals completely, and pisses of more diehard fans. Don't make anymore dinosaur movies, please omg.
|
|
|
Movies
Aug 17, 2022 1:39:26 GMT -6
Post by Captain Ally on Aug 17, 2022 1:39:26 GMT -6
I have more Dominion opinions. So, it's just completely missing that good adventure movie charm. What I mean is that there's no weight to the action we're watching. In the first jurassic park movie, as the audience we could emphasize with the main characters. They had no clue what they were getting in to. Like I said, the park was supposed to be this miracle of human science, and then it just goes horribly wrong. With the dinosaurs we got properly introduced to them. The movie had no problems going on a lecture about what they are and how they came to be on the island. And when we do meet some dinosaurs, it's from a human perspective. Like, I remember things more fondly because it had impact. That's the way it is in Lost World as well. There were deliberate moments where it wasn't in human perspective, but for most of the movie we were experiencing watching everything like another human. Some characters seemed completely arbitratry but they were so important. Like remember the man who gushed about dinosaurs, he gave us such important information and it was always followed up with dinosaurs interacting with human objects. Like cars, camps, etc. And then later in the movie where the t-rex parents destroy the trailer. The character Eddie was there trying to help them, he wasn't just some perfect action movie character. In the jurassic world movies this whole 15 minutes of trying to save them would have ammounted to a few scenes of characters doing something to get to the actual moment the movie wanted us to see. Eddie trying to save Nick, Sarah, Ian, and Kelly was something impactful. The movie didn't rush to get to where we have anxiety about the mc's surviving. It took it's time, and when Eddie shows up it really hammered in that he was just another guy. Not like Owen who is this indestructible hero who saves the day every time. Eddie doesn't even get to survive, although what he did while almost failing helped those four characters make it out alive instead. It's just so unfortunate how the new trilogy went. You could tell the director had a vision seeing as fallen kingdom had moments it wanted to set up for dominion. But it just loses it's identity so quickly. Even in the first movie. We get to the park but at every turn we're constantly told by the main characters that people there are not happy. They don't think the park is interesting and that it's not doing enough. So that's why we get this psychotic genetically modified super dinosaur in isolation. Like, there is finally a working park but the audience never gets to experience it. The movie is too busy moving us along to let it breath at all. Like that 15 minutes with Eddie, that is missing sorely in this movie. Even with the two boys, by the end of the movie and even now, I don't really care about them. I don't care to remember their names because they only ammounted to a damsel in distress. I also think that everything with these three movies is too perfected. The cgi, the enviroments, and especially the characters. With the two boys, since one is a teen and the other a kid, why are their clothes so neat looking? Owen also is not that messy. With the exception of the aunt there wasn't really a sense of progression. In the jpark movies whenever we see the characters at their destination they have these lived in clothes that are also clean looking. I can tell they're just people. And as the movie wears on, and the action increases, we see their clothes look increasingly dirty and bloody and their hair gets disheveled. They look tired because so much shit was going on. Even though I say the aunt was the exception, even her messy hair looks deliberate. It wasn't allowed to just be messy. A hair out of place was put there on purpose. I hate it.
These movies don't embrace being clumsy. They don't get into how everything falls apart when you need to survive. It's all calculated, these new characters aren't treated like people. Lost World is so perfect in other ways too. Sarah for example is an enthusiastic scientist. Ian says it best when he mentions that she needs to feel everything. And she does. She's in the river without a care that her outfit is wet, she's face to face with a herbivore dinosaur because she really wants to see it. And she just has this energy that says how much she wanted to be there. That is the same for Nick. These characters are invested. Even Roland is someone that as a human you can connect with. He goes out of his way to get to the island in order to satisfy his cravings to hunt a t-rex. Throughout the entire movie he gets closer and closer to that. You can tell what he really wants. As a human we have desires, it's only human to be curious and to get out and get things done. To get back to that point I made about human perspective. The way I'm talking about it is different. The camera work in the first two movies is very prescise in what it does. It lets us linger long enough to understand. I can practically feel the cold, rain, dust, wind and all the envroments the characters walk through. They have a space in that world. To me, the new movies and the camera work make it feel like I'm a drone following everyone around. It's all floaty and light. Nothing packs a visual punch. Sure I get to watch the characters around the same height of another person. But it doesn't make me feel like I'm sitting down and getting lost in their adventure. I'm not a part of it. And that also reminds me to bring up the CGI. It's terrible. Sure there was double the animatronics compared to the jpark movies. But they get it all wrong. The dinosaurs run and interact with the world without a care about how they affect their surroundings. Like a stegosaurus I imagine should be moving like an elephant does. It's joints should move in a way that makes me feel as if their bodies are heavy. All the big herbivores in these movies are so weightless and when they're running from danger they're really fast. Much faster than if you were to compare to lost world. Fallen Kingdom and Dominion made me feel like I was watching a fake plastic movie. I was getting abuse left and right from these movies doing everything wrong.
When I mentioned that it felt like the director had an idea about the franchise and it getting fucked up. I mean that they really wanted a moment that would make sense for dominion to be a movie. Like making dinosaurs a part of the entire world. What I really loved about dominion was those early montages, it made the dinosaurs something that you couldn't avoid. Those slice of life moments were the best of the movie and it just gets worse from there. This happened in the first movie, but that big scary predator that is supposed to corner the characters in a life or death situation? it happens again. but this time it's just murdered for the sake of killing a dinosaur. And seriously, fuck that dumb subplot with the locusts. They shouldn't have made dominion. I honestly think jurassic movies were dying with the third movie. It all started there because that's right when you get this sense of "no one wants to be here". The goal is just to get the fuck home. In jurassic world the boys get there and near the end the aunt is just concerned with returning those two to their parents. Fallen Kingdom also has it. And in dominion that's especially true because owen and clare didn't even want to leave at all. they just wanted to hide maisy the whole time.
Story telling is losing that magic combination that makes it work. It needs three dimensional character development in conjunction with a believable plot and good writing. The Adventure/Fantasy genre is losing that art. I remember when Martin Scorsese had that opinion about marvel movies not being true cinema and people clowned hard on him. It was never about how much he hated marvel, that was a comment about everything. In everything that Disney owns, the sucess of what they do has this terrible trickle down effect on everything else. Things gets disney-ified. What works for them might work for something else, right? I think lately there's just not enough of a carot and stick thing going on. Before it felt like more a race for directors and companies to find sucess. And this shift has been going on with capitalism and big franchises that they don't need to work that hard. Make it pretty and it will do well. I'm so sick and tired of all this bullshit. I wish people would stop seeing those shitty franchise revival movies. Hollywood thinks that's the only money maker around here. For like the past twenty years at least. You can't sit down and watch a movie without being reminded of where that referance came from. Annoyingly everything has this callback to something else. And it's no longer a haha funny do you understand? now it's like shamelessly a part of a cycle to make the most money. Nothing stands on it own.
|
|
|
Movies
Nov 29, 2023 5:40:14 GMT -6
Post by Captain Ally on Nov 29, 2023 5:40:14 GMT -6
God a Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is so wonderful. I'm obsessed. Rachel Zegler was the perfect actress to portray Lucy Gray. I don't think anyone could have brought her to life. I respect Suzanne Collins so much. The original hunger games franchise was wonderful, and I became a big fan because of the movies. She set the bar high. With her skillful writing, and books that were easily adapted for screen. It's no wonder it's popularity skyrocketed. Even though this prequel was written much later. I think there is no one else who could have done this better than her.
If you're not aware this story is from Snow's point of view. There are three parts of the movie, which never make it feel rushed. The most interesting aspect to me is that we know the village song existed, and the children of district 12 learn of the songs that are sung. However Lucy Gray Baird's name is gone from history, her name is not known. It's important to me that the addition of her character doesn't take away from the original story, she's instead a huge bonus. I like that we know Coriolanus would have always become a tyrant. Before he's driven insane by the stress of getting caught (and Lucy leaving), he would make decisions to better himself over others. In the academy his goal was to get the award to solidify his path to presidency. He was always a capital citizen against the people of the districts. There are even characters that create flags for his future. Like Tigris who says he can be different from his father. And Lucy who sings her song and says how we're all born as clean as a whistle. Just like in real life, you don't become prosperous or a political figure by the grace of god. Shit happens. And most of which are shady decisions. Corio casuing the death of his so called best friend, and perpetuating the lie of their closeness so that Sejanus's family backs him with their fortune was especially evil. It makes you happy that Lucy left him behind.
|
|
|
Movies
Dec 9, 2023 18:58:37 GMT -6
Post by Captain Ally on Dec 9, 2023 18:58:37 GMT -6
I was able to watch The Boy and the Heron in theater earlier, and walking away from it I'm still in complete awe
So, I would say there's two stories Miyazaki is sharing with us. There is our MC and his goal to save Natsuko (who he eventually refers to as his mother) and there is the personal story from Miyazaki himself. I felt like there was a piece of him in the tower master. Near the end of the movie Mahito reaches the peak to have a chat with his great granduncle. He talks about how he's given his world one more day as he was able to move the blocks once more, but that's all the time he can offer. Meaning that his life overseeing the tower, and time itself is about done. I felt like when he begged Mahito to take the blocks which were not touched by malice and stack them up in his own way, that was also about Miyazaki telling us make with life what you will. I liked that.
A lot of this movie is about Mahito attempting to accept. He still dreams about not saving his mother, and he grieves because of it. Obviously it's hard when your distant father tells you that he loves someone else and there is already a sibling coming along. I don't mean that he needs to accept his mother dying in a fire. But it's accepting his pain, and the true beauty of the world. You can see that when he cries in the tower when the heron plays a cruel trick and his fake mother melts away. That hurts him. In the first half of the movie, Mahito constantly stands out. It's like its him against the world, and everything is telling him how he doesn't fit. This is especially true when his new classmates hurt him. His surroundings are so large and then there's his small figure. And once again he creates pain for himself when he gets injured from bashing a rock against his head because he doesn't want to admit what (or who) actually hurt him.
Later in the movie when he embarks on his journey to save Natsuko we're greeted with this gorgeous and wonderful fantasy world. There are beautiful backdrops, and his most prized people are there on his journey with him. There's one of the grannies names Kiriko who becomes young and helps him move along, and Himi who makes an early cameo although we don't know who she is yet. Eventually the heron and Mahito become bonded. Circling back to the tower master. Another important lesson is learned here. He can continue his great-granduncle's work, and make a world for himself. But ultimately Mahito chooses the pain of real life. This is a lesson for all young adults. It's almost like Miyazaki is giving us a push, yet saying that we can still return whenever we like. That's his love towards the viewers. These movies show us how to live. For Mahito picking the real world, that was his acceptance. He is strong enough to make it work in the real world. He doesn't need a fantasy even if his true mother could reside there with him.
One final thought I had was also that the parrots are cruel because so was the tower master's ideal world. He trapped them in there thinking it was a safe haven. That's why they cry when they exclaim that their ancestors were there. And for the gulls it was mean because they tell Mahito that as living creatures they got hungry with food dwindling, so it's a cruel cycle because the warawara are their new food. That's why I love it when all of those birds, Kiriko, Natsuko, the heron, and Mahito get out of the tower. I would say this is a 9/10 for me. I wanted the ending to be a little longer but I love it regardless :)
|
|