Movie Recommendations
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You're getting my hopes up.kurczak said:
Wached MIB: International the other day. I know Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson are really popular right now,
but combined they have the charisma of a concrete wall - to a museum - of pottery - from Lower Saxony.
I watched a few films on the plane: Goodfellas which was as amazing as I remember, Alita: Battle Angel which was silly but pretty enjoyable, and T-34 which was a dumb tank movie.
I also watched Aniara which is a swedish scifi film about a spaceship that gets knocked off course and the passengers are forced to spend an eternity flying into space. An excellent premise, but it's one of the worst films I've ever seen, and yet more proof that Scandinavians don't deserve the privilege of free speech.
The cinematography is the absolute worst blurry, shakycam, extreme close up, poorly edited 2010s crap I have ever seen. About 90% of the shots are just the face of a character or even closer, with blurry foreground objects blocking much of the frame. Dozens of times during the film I had no idea what was happening and had to guess through context, or via dialogue. A scene where a side character gets tazed features shots of the back of characters' heads, blurry shots of a guy falling down, near-isometric shots of people running, and then a shot of someones feet. The editing overall is horrendous, with some important establishing shots lasting half a second followed by long, pointless closeups of a character's eyes. I am not exaggerating when I say the 1:30 trailer contains most of the wide shots in the film.
Look at these two scenes, which are about average representations of the rest of the film:
The plot is even worse. With these high concept scifi films you often get a to point where you realise you're watching a bad movie and the whole thing starts to fall apart as they run out of ideas. In Aniara this happens after about 20 minutes. The tone is broken every few scenes as they focus on this ultimately pointless, kitschy lesbian romance between the protagonist and the pilot. Scenes of them playing with their baby and laughing are sandwiched between mass suicide and a lesbian sex cult.
Overall the premise has a tonne of potential and they explore none of it. There are thousands of people on this ship but they seem to fluctuate between total social collapse and complete normalcy depending on the scene. There is a plot about a VR machine which allows people to escape into a natural wonderland, and then the machine commits suicide (!!!) and it's implied that everyone is addicted to it at this point, but nothing really happens. Years afterwards, the pilots are still drinking wine in the cafe.
It is honestly the worst film I have ever sat through, and is the main reason I am reluctant to watch many modern TV shows or indie films. Whenever I see stuff shot this way it makes me want to kill myself. It's like trying to watch a film on someone's phone who is 5 feet away from you in a crowd. Most of the frame is wasted space and the cameraman has epilepsy.
I am really hesitant to call any piece of art pretentious because I think that's an anti-intellectual and unwarranted label most of the time, but this Aniara really is pretentious garbage. Don't watch it even as a joke, it's boring, ugly and disappointing.
I also watched Aniara which is a swedish scifi film about a spaceship that gets knocked off course and the passengers are forced to spend an eternity flying into space. An excellent premise, but it's one of the worst films I've ever seen, and yet more proof that Scandinavians don't deserve the privilege of free speech.
The cinematography is the absolute worst blurry, shakycam, extreme close up, poorly edited 2010s crap I have ever seen. About 90% of the shots are just the face of a character or even closer, with blurry foreground objects blocking much of the frame. Dozens of times during the film I had no idea what was happening and had to guess through context, or via dialogue. A scene where a side character gets tazed features shots of the back of characters' heads, blurry shots of a guy falling down, near-isometric shots of people running, and then a shot of someones feet. The editing overall is horrendous, with some important establishing shots lasting half a second followed by long, pointless closeups of a character's eyes. I am not exaggerating when I say the 1:30 trailer contains most of the wide shots in the film.
Look at these two scenes, which are about average representations of the rest of the film:
The plot is even worse. With these high concept scifi films you often get a to point where you realise you're watching a bad movie and the whole thing starts to fall apart as they run out of ideas. In Aniara this happens after about 20 minutes. The tone is broken every few scenes as they focus on this ultimately pointless, kitschy lesbian romance between the protagonist and the pilot. Scenes of them playing with their baby and laughing are sandwiched between mass suicide and a lesbian sex cult.
Overall the premise has a tonne of potential and they explore none of it. There are thousands of people on this ship but they seem to fluctuate between total social collapse and complete normalcy depending on the scene. There is a plot about a VR machine which allows people to escape into a natural wonderland, and then the machine commits suicide (!!!) and it's implied that everyone is addicted to it at this point, but nothing really happens. Years afterwards, the pilots are still drinking wine in the cafe.
It is honestly the worst film I have ever sat through, and is the main reason I am reluctant to watch many modern TV shows or indie films. Whenever I see stuff shot this way it makes me want to kill myself. It's like trying to watch a film on someone's phone who is 5 feet away from you in a crowd. Most of the frame is wasted space and the cameraman has epilepsy.
I am really hesitant to call any piece of art pretentious because I think that's an anti-intellectual and unwarranted label most of the time, but this Aniara really is pretentious garbage. Don't watch it even as a joke, it's boring, ugly and disappointing.
Now I'm wondering, is T-34 as enjoyably dumb as White Tiger?
Also, yesterday I finally watched Michiel de Ruyter; it's all very patriottic and dramatic, with lots of slow-mo shots of (rather small) explosions during the sea battles and waving of various kinds of Dutch flags. There is a surprising lack of gore though! And Charles Dance, playing English bad guy king Charles, does a much better job than the Dutch actors, although to be honest it's not easy to sound dramatic/heroic in Dutch... As could be expected from a film like this, it's very much a romanticized portrayal of de Ruijter and the battles he fought in, but hey, it's not often we Dutch get to be patriottic about our history!
The guy playing Willem III was pretty much spot on though.
Edit: And of course the English admiral is drinking tea!
Also, yesterday I finally watched Michiel de Ruyter; it's all very patriottic and dramatic, with lots of slow-mo shots of (rather small) explosions during the sea battles and waving of various kinds of Dutch flags. There is a surprising lack of gore though! And Charles Dance, playing English bad guy king Charles, does a much better job than the Dutch actors, although to be honest it's not easy to sound dramatic/heroic in Dutch... As could be expected from a film like this, it's very much a romanticized portrayal of de Ruijter and the battles he fought in, but hey, it's not often we Dutch get to be patriottic about our history!
The guy playing Willem III was pretty much spot on though.
Edit: And of course the English admiral is drinking tea!
T-34 is really silly and has pulpy cartoon nazis but if you put your autism aside you could probably enjoy it.
Saw Ready or Not, and really enjoyed it. Had some pretty similar themes to Midsommar, but obviously a very different style. I felt like the trailer gave a little too much away for the first half of the movie, but overall things felt very satisfying. I liked how it maintained tension without feeling contrived or unrealistic (e.g., having a character fumbling with their keys to open the door), I liked how there were clear and coherent "rules" to the game and conflicts among the bad guys about how to implement those rules, and I liked
I'm a bit torn on the ending. Overall I think I appreciate it, but I wonder if I would have appreciated an ambiguous ending more (a la It's a Disaster)?
the character arc of the husband - I expected that outcome, but it developed in a way that felt natural and meaningful to the themes of the story.
I'm a bit torn on the ending. Overall I think I appreciate it, but I wonder if I would have appreciated an ambiguous ending more (a la It's a Disaster)?
Just watched Mystery of the Third Planet (Тайна третьей планеты), a 1980s animated soviet scifi film. The animation is consistently fluid throughout and it's focussed on little believable details in character movement rather than florid set pieces like a disney film.
It's on youtube and like 40 minutes long.
It's on youtube and like 40 minutes long.
Captured Joe said:
Oh my god another 17th century epic in cinematography. This is SO are. And with Charles Dance?! I absolutely have to see it. I wonder how much of a period treat its going to be. How much attention was given to the uniforms, fashion and military equipment of the period, too.
Not particulary much, I'm afraid. It's allright.
NUQAR'S Kentucky "Nuqar" James XXL said:Just watched Mystery of the Third Planet (Тайна третьей планеты), a 1980s animated soviet scifi film. The animation is consistently fluid throughout and it's focussed on little believable details in character movement rather than florid set pieces like a disney film.
It's on youtube and like 40 minutes long.
>"little believable details in character movement"
>random bad guy's ass gets bodily thrown towards the audience for absolutely no discernible reason
Joker was a huge disappointment. Phoenix is great, pretty much everything else is mediocre. The movie appears to be stealing from other films (Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, Requiem for a Dream) a little too much. Also, there is surprisingly hardly any character development at all, making the film fail at working as an origin story to Joker.
I felt like certain parts and themes of the film were too much on the nose and it did feel like the director indulged himself a bit too much at times. Phoenix was definitely the highlight of the film, as well as the soundtrack.
Too much of we live in a society, too little actual craziness.
Too much of we live in a society, too little actual craziness.
They way in which time was used in the film was great, though. I loved the part where you finally realise he had been imagining his girlfriend all along.
