Movie Recommendations

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:
Bahubali are just brimming with enthusiasm and fun and defy irony and cynicism entirely.
Click to expand...
Exactly this. They're honest. They don't act like it's historical, realistic or "smart". They don't try to be gritty, dark or whatever most movies are gunning for these days. They just want to show a good time. Taming an angry elephant by slamming a giant statue of Ganesha into it, making it kneel, lift the hero's feet by the trunk into its head, and roar while the hero is majestically posing on top of its head? All while a mass song praising the hero is playing in the background? **** it why not. It's dope.



MadVader said:
Arguably, Wiseau was very passionate about filmmaking and acting, and that's why they even made a good movie about him. Being creepy just adds to his anti-charisma.
Click to expand...
I feel bad for saying this, because Wiseau is such a charming guy, but he's not competent. That's why it's got an ironic following, unlike Bahubali with its spam of CG.
 
Last edited:
I hate Bollywood over-the-top stunts and Chinese high jump obsessions because my suspension of disbelief is ruined (and my disappointment is immeasurable). It's cheap entertainment that breaks the fourth wall because it doesn't care. They might as well show all their female actresses topless, for more cheap thrills. And Tarantino licking all their feet, **** that guy too.
The 80s action B movies are not a good example to follow, the brain needs more than that from movies.
 
MadVader said:
The 80s action B movies are not a good example to follow, the brain needs more than that from movies.
Click to expand...
The difference is that 80s movies are still trapped in the mindset that they have to be ironically detached and cool. It's only hollywood which is this irony-poisoned. The whole point of Captain Alex is to make people laugh, even if it risks the coolness or detached artiste status of the creator. Tarantino films for example are obsessed with being stylishnin a way that can become insufferable after a while.
 
Gonna leave a post of the last things I saw. There's a few, and they aren't in order.

Don't Look Up started with some promise, but it fell on its face pretty hard. A lot of the human felt dried out really fast, because it was repetitive. I wouldn't say it was a terrible movie, but I'm certainly never going to think about it again. lol

Encanto was really good though, but it suffered super fast pacing at the end, which I thought really destroyed any moral story it was trying to tell about Mirabel and how the family viewed her.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife was....okay. It felt like a kid's movie, which if that was their intent, good for them I guess. I expected more out of it, which was stupid of me. Paul Rudd was probably the highlight of the film.

Spider-Man: No Way Home was a very big surprise. Definitely the best in the trilogy, and one of the best Marvel movies. I wouldn't say it is fantastic though, and I certainly am aware that half of the reason I went to see it had to do with the rumors, but it was okay. Holland felt more like a Peter Parker/Spider-Man in it, though he still has far more room to go. The first step being erasing himself from any association whatsoever with Stark--which I thought was their biggest mistake. Forcing Peter to be dependent on Stark tech was dumb as hell.

And I can't remember if I made a comment about it, but...

Dune.

I loved it.

It changed a lot or reworked a lot to make it work on screen, but I thought they did fantastically and I can't wait for Part 2.
 
I watched The Matrix Resurrections against my better judgement...

It was absolutely terrible and probably one of the worst movies I have seen in recent memory in most aspects. The plot, the camerawork, the visual effects, the scene settings, the casting decisions, the editing decisions... I could go on.

That the movie started with a near shot-for-shot remake of the opening scene of the first movie with one of the new characters basically giving a commentary track was not a good sign, and the first hour was peppered not only with actual heavy-handed flashbacks and frequent flashbacks (a pivotal scene takes place in a theatre which is playing the mirrored pivotal scene from the first movie) but also a meta plot so far up its own ass that it should never have seen the light of day. The audience's nose is very deliberately rubbed in the **** that is this movie with joyous accusation, and I could forgive the detour into hand-biting if the rest of the movie was actually good.

It's not. The casting decisions are atrocious - Lawrence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving made the right decision in passing on the opportunity to return (if it was even offered to them - a strong reliance on archival footage suggests yes), a decision which Jada Pinkett Smith should have taken since she spends her time here doddering around in old-woman makeup and doing basically nothing. The replacement Morpheus is a charisma void where his predecessor ate the scenery and successfully walked that razor edge between gravitas and ham, and his comedic moments fall as flat as his posturing in the action sequences he finds himself in. The replacement Smith is a little better and handles the physicality of the role well enough, but comes up short with the constant flashbacks to Hugo Weaving's performance, sometimes layered over his dialogue. His role in the story is also almost purely just to be there, as he pretends to be the main villain for a hot minute before disappearing, only to show up again out of nowhere with a barely-coherent hobo Merovingian (who is ranting about getting a sequel spinoff trilogy - a dig at Marvel or an actual proposal? The latter is an unpleasant thought) to fight Neo for reasons which are promptly forgotten as he disappears again only to show up at the climax to help Neo, because of course he would.

Aside from recast characters, the new additions either fade into the background or feel wasted on this movie - Neil Patrick Harris is great as always but his character has his trademark touch of silliness that doesn't quite mesh with the vacillating snark and dolor of the plot. Neo's new crew are all the leather and sunglasses with none of the characterization of previous Matrix casts, to the point where I couldn't tell who the heroes and villains were in a particular fight scene. There's a point where one of them is about to be killed by Matrix zombies and it's supposed to be very distressing but I mostly just had trouble recalling if she'd ever contributed anything significant to the plot or if it had been established that she possessed a single character trait beyond being part of the ship's crew.

The action choreography is wooden and stale and feels like a paint-by-numbers affair. The original trilogy was appealing because you got the sense that they did the sequences the way they did because they thought it would be cool - there was a style dictating how they were directed. This feels like a robot was fed Matrix movies and asked to produce action sequences as a result. There is absolutely none of the passion and artistry that was on display in previous movies (despite some scenes being shot-for-shot remakes of identical action sequences in the originals) and it was probably the biggest disappointment for me that even the action felt bland and tasteless. I consider The Matrix Reloaded to be one of the greatest martial arts movies made in the West (and in the top tier worldwide) and there was only one singular scene that evoked close to the same Baroque chaos and visual drama.

The Matrix has also been no stranger to dodgy visual effects (even my beloved Smiths vs. Neo scene has the unfortunate cameo of CG Keanu in Reloaded) but something about this movie overall felt cheap. Morpheus' real-world form as a bed-of-nails swarm of nanites looks more at home in a Tool music video circa 2005, the new machine friends look like WALL-E design rejects and the way they decided to film the Analyst while time was paused was very off-putting when watching the film in high definition.

I could go on but my verdict is that this is a sloppy movie that spends a good amount of its runtime castigating you for its own existence. Do the "franchise" a favour and put it out of its misery.
 
Last edited:
I actually liked the new Matrix very much. Primarily because it was very unpredictable and fun. It changed the genre (sometimes even bordering parody), the plot was actually kind-of-okayish and I think the transition from the original trilogy to this new thing has been done quite sensibly and carefully (lol at Star Wars for example). Script-wise, I think it is definitely respectable (maybe short of the last third where it became rather boring and more akin to previous Matrixes - not good for the new movie). It could be a little longer because the second half felt a bit rushed. Also, there is too many characters for the screentime available.

One question I have on my mind is whether the action was poorly done or was idiotic on purpose. I think the latter might actually be the answer; scenes with Morpheus against SWAT are simply ridiculously bad - which actually goes well in tone with ****ting on Matrix trilogy seriousness that this movie does often. Apart from the action, it lost the visual clarity of the previous movies as the new one is quite a incomprehensible mess at times.
 
I had to see it, and it was much worse than I imagined.
I appreciate their attempt to be 'meta' but most of the film is like one big reference to the previous films, with excessive use of "callbacks", like the (déjà vu) cat, bullet-time, red/blue pill etc. and all the previous characters in new versions. With all the old characters back and all the new ones, there are too many and the story is rushed. Neo finding Trinity as plot is too thin and it never gets interesting.
But I admit I never understood why Neo was brought back to life by the Analyst. His code is used to control the other blue pill people? How does that work?
And the chemistry between Neo and Trinity is somehow magical?
 
The meta stuff is kind of interesting I guess. If the point of the movie was to make an intentionally soulless soft-reboot, and completely take away the things that made the original great (while simultaneously crashing the value of any more Matrix movies) in an effort to get paid while simultaneously giving a middle finger to the current state of Hollywood, I can respect that. The movie itself was an absolute chore to get through tho, and I didn't really enjoy any of it. The action, cinematography, plot, and aesthetic overall was so inferior to the 99 film that I almost have to believe it was on purpose.
 
Antonis said:
I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing pretty young. Clockwork Orange isn't news to anyone by now. :razz:
Click to expand...
It's time for you to start a new thread, "Ask Grandpa". :smile:

I was 18 when I read the book. I'm so old we didn't even have movies back then, we drew dickbutt in the mud in front of our cave for entertainment.
At that time, I was impressed by its sheer brutality, and at that age you think brutal=real. At best, it gets you thinking about conditioning through propaganda, and, if you are very lucky, media narratives.
 
Last edited:
The Forgotten Battle was entertaining, but the Battle of the Scheldt that it depicts at the end is literally a battle honor that my Regiment earned and it was kinda bothering me that we only see English speaking Canadians at the end.
 
Uncharted is surprisingly boring. It's filled with well made action scenes but the characters are dull and uncharismatic.
The story is very linear with few surprises. In fact it's mostly classic Hollywood tropes. Why was the script even greenlit?
Many scenes make little sense to me. Like, how does a 500 year old Spanish galleon lifted up in the air with two ropes not fall apart?
And how does a helicopter even lift a galleon? The smallest were perhaps about 500 tons, and easily up to 1000 tons.
Or a 500 year old treasure hidden under ground, but visible through a manhole cover (or something)? I might have missed something, dozing off.

The French Dispatch is visually marvelous with a soundtrack to boot. Short cartoon segments in the style of Hergé is stylishly included. It consists of 3 main stories, where I think the first one - The Concrete Masterpiece - is the best. The second one, inspired by the '68 student protests, is a little stiff and affected/feigned.
Since the segments are relatively short and the style is concise with stiff, punctuated dialogues you never really get attached to the characters. The short moments of intensity and pathos/poetry is due to the excellent actors. Again, the The Concrete Masterpiece, shines. The viewer remains distanced to the events, but such is the style of the director, Wes Anderson.
The segments also don't seem related to each other so the film as a whole doesn't really come together, but that is also not the goal, I think. But with really condensed storytelling filled with quick dialgue and visual impressions you never sort of digest the events before being introduced to the next many charactes and stories. It's a mental bombardment of impressions.
It's shot in alternating colour and black/white, which seems random and a little confusing (but not annoying). I fail to see if it has any meaning, related to the story, symbolism or chronology.
All in all, though, a wonderful film with great acting and storytelling.
 
Last edited:
New Top Gun is great. I consider the first one memey but a very mediocre piece, this one is just marvellous. Very simple, very old fashioned, very masculine, very good at walking the nostalgia / cringe line and the flying looks great, considering this is the CGI era after all.

And Cruise might very well be the last great Hollywood action hero.
 
Jacob's ladder ( if you loved donnie Darko ) you will this. Its an old but great .
Sixth sense ( i see dead people )
Bone Tomahawk (horrible but i couldn't turn away)
Hateful 8 ( Brilliant dialogue )
Platoon ( amazing best war movie ever made imho)
Braveheart ( not based on facts but such a good loosely historical epic i hated the English and i am English lol )
Gladiator ( like Braveheart not historical accurate but beautiful )
Excailbur (made in 1981 and my most favourite film ever)
these i can recommend .
 

giphy.gif

I have not seen it but it looks good
 
Confess, Fletch was just released. A sort of reboot of the two '80s movies with Chevy Chase, but with a new, contemporary story.
Fletch investigates some stolen art when he finds a murdered woman. While being a suspect of the murder he attempts to solve it.
The murder mystery itself is not particularly interesting. The film relies on the characters and their chemistry.
Its forte is the banter between Fletch and the two police officers. That works well, but the rest is lackluster.
Jon Hamm as Fletch is lacking the charisma the character needs and as a whole it might have been fun in the '80s, but it doesn't translate very well to today (I think the novel(s?) its based on is from the '70s).
It has its charms with entertaining moments, but it feels dated and overall a mediocre experience.
Watch it if you liked the original movies - or true crime podcasts - and want to kill some time (pun intended).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

_Benedict_
[EU] Spartan's Inn - TDM with custom maps multiplayer server ** looking 4 maps!
Replies
5
Views
61
Oberyn
Oberyn
JustSomeDude
How to setup your modding environment on Linux(Tutorial)
Replies
1
Views
50
Namakan
Namakan
Need More Info Game Crash
Replies
4
Views
82
pajlos
Back
Top Bottom