What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

I agree 100% with everything you wrote. It baffled me that it was so successful.

The funniest comment I've read about it was some critic on twitter wrote:
"Why did they bother to remake Walk Hard, but take out all the jokes?"

Just saw Free Solo. It was awesome. The camera work was amazing. Alex Honnold is a really odd bird (as you might expect) and it seems like he might be borderline autistic in some ways because he has a hard time with emotional connections. He can make them. They're just very structured. He's hilarious to watch, though, because he's so focused and so committed to his goals. I'm really kind of envious. I know I was like that, at one point, but then I had trouble connecting with people, then, too. It's really a great film and it's not too terrifying for those of you with vertigo issues or who don't like heights. There's a great amount of tension but it's really exciting tension, IMO.

Had some time to myself late last night. Thought I'd watch a movie. Combed through netflix for about 20-25mins. Lots of interesting stuff, so couldn't decide. Almost went with nothing.
Settled on Bright.

This movie was _great_! Tarred as 'worst movie of 2017' is a joke. Reading around online, most who saw it enjoyed it. I'm inclined to agree with the theory that there was a smear campaign against this film.
It was the first netflix 'blockbuster' and maybe it is in Hollywood's and the Critic's best interest if Netflix didn't take off as a film studio. This movie was far more enjoyable than most Marvel films. How it was rated so low...seems it must have been orchestrated.

I liked the little touches like the dragon flying over the city, or centaurs as mounted police.
There was one scene that looked to be pulled straight from the SNES shadowrun game
Anyway, I'm glad they're going forward with a sequel. I hadn't had as good of a time watching a genre film as I did last night in a while.

There were only two small nits I'd pick with the world building of the film, but overall...highly recommend.

EDIT: Oh, also been watching some flicks with the kids. Back to the Future is still as close to movie magic as films get. Crazy that there's now more time between 2019 and 1985 than between 1985 and 1955. I had to explain a little tech/social stuff for both the 50's _and_ the 80's. 2015 would have been a fun year for a reboot where the characters go back to 1985. Oh well. The two sequels are ok. Part II being a little better than III, IMO.

Barry Gordy's The Last Dragon I forgot how innocent this film was and went in with some hesitation. Great, family fun beyond a cheeseball song about finding stag mags. This was a surprise hit at the house and has renewed interest in revisiting authentic martial arts films in the near future.

Captain Marvel is pretty good. Overall it's mostly a slow build origin story that reaches a satisfying climax. Ben Mendolson was the standout performance for me. Cool to have the cosmic Marvel stuff expanded more. I also liked Captain Marvel being sort of laidback in a way that nobody meeting her assumes she's anything but a reasonable person. For someone at her power-level I think that's a good trait. I also liked how there was no fish-out-of-water moments on Earth. She's not an idiot and has been on other planets before. Really looking forward to her in Endgame now.

I watched The Hard Way on Netflix. This is a dumb movie, but it stars Michael Jai White and you get to see him beat some ass.

Note to screen writers. No one is surprised at your "guess what character is going to double cross the hero" bits. Stop it, or get better at it.

Took the kids to see Apollo 11. We're going to reach peak Apollo nostalgia this summer, but this is still really well put together.

It's all (aside from some explanatory animations and mission clock overlays) from archival footage. Much of I'd never seen before, or had only seen tiny clips.

The landing sequence (even 50 years on and knowing what I know about it) is pretty fucking intense on the big screen, and the shots from the surface with those Hasselblad cameras are gorgeous as well.

Apparently this was run on IMAX before Captain Marvel kicked it, and I'm sorry I missed that. Get out to see it if you like space. Even if you think you don't.

ChristopherMD wrote: Captain Marvel is pretty good. Overall it's mostly a slow build origin story that reaches a satisfying climax. Ben Mendolson was the standout performance for me. Cool to have the cosmic Marvel stuff expanded more. I also liked Captain Marvel being sort of laidback in a way that nobody meeting her assumes she's anything but a reasonable person. For someone at her power-level I think that's a good trait. I also liked how there was no fish-out-of-water moments on Earth. She's not an idiot and has been on other planets before. Really looking forward to her in Endgame now.

That's a great point about no boring "fish out of water" moments. That would have been really tiresome.

The first five minutes of Captain Marvel are worrisome, with a bunch of really terrible, clunky dialogue and exposition. But it smooths out after that.

Two things I really liked:

- It's not the Marvel boilerplate "selfish asshole gets superpowers and has to learn how to be a hero" origin story. Carol is a hero right from the start. She just has to figure out who she's fighting for. A nice twist on the usual origin story formula.

- No love interest. The two main relationships in the movie are Carol's friendship with Maria, and her partnership with Fury. No boring romantic love story shoehorned in here, like Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman.

It's probably not top-tier MCU, but it's certainly in the upper-middle. It's funny, great action scenes, solid cast, etc. Everything you expect. Man, Marvel just makes it look so easy.

One of the downsides of already-present, extensive, shared universes is that there will ALWAYS be that block of exposition. Game of Thrones has it, too, although they discovered a way to make it easier by having most of it occur in bedroom or brothel scenes (hence, "sexposition".) There's no way out of it in a Marvel film, since there's so much to clue the non-indoctrinated in on, as well as make sure the fanatics are served by getting all the lore correct.

I also saw Apollo 11 last week, but I made a point of seeing it in IMAX because I knew it wouldn't be there long. Phenomenal.

I really loved the decision to use only archival footage and sound. There are no talking heads to explain things, no voice-over narration. You just experience it. It's really great.

The thing that surprised me the most was how (for me) anti-climactic it was. I was soo amazed by the shots of the Saturn V that I could have just stared at that all day. When they got the moon, I was like, "Yeah, yeah, great, but let me see that rocket again!"

Jackwraith wrote: One of the downsides of already-present, extensive, shared universes is that there will ALWAYS be that block of exposition. Game of Thrones has it, too, although they discovered a way to make it easier by having most of it occur in bedroom or brothel scenes (hence, "sexposition".) There's no way out of it in a Marvel film, since there's so much to clue the non-indoctrinated in on, as well as make sure the fanatics are served by getting all the lore correct.

That's a fair point, but with Captain Marvel, all that clunky exposition wasn't even "in case you haven't seen the previous 21 movies, here's what you missed." It was all new (to the MCU) backstory, about the Kree, the Skrulls, Starforce, the Supreme Intelligence, the Kree home world, and so on. All stuff we needed to know, but just handled in a really ham-fisted way. Jude Law's character says to Carol, "Well, as you know, the Supreme Intelligence blah-blah-blah." UGH. That's some Fiction Writing 101 there, to never start a sentence with "As you know...." If the other character knows it, then why he is SAYING IT?? Honestly, they would have been better off with a Star Wars-style opening block of text.

Anyway, the movie thankfully gets much better, and ended up being very enjoyable! The cat steals the whole movie.

Ha! I love that method. "Let me repeat stuff we casually know but that the audience doesn't and make it sound totally genuine!" My favorite version of that is Kim Cattrall's character (Gracie) in Big Trouble in Little China regurgitating huge elements of the backstory every time someone's name gets dropped.

You're totally right. But, like you said, even regular Marvel moviegoers don't know shit about the Kree and the Skrulls, so they had to wedge that in somewhere, both to give some relevance to the whole Mar-Vell thing (still among the stupidest pseudo-onomatopoeias in comics history) and introduce them to something that has been a central element of the Marvel Cosmos stuff since the 60s. You'd think they could have dumped a bit more of it in the Guardians movies to kind of build things up, but whatevs.

Ugh, I hate the "hey, remember when we took that walk down by the river? blah blah blah Yes I remember I was fucking there"

Gregarius wrote: I also saw Apollo 11 last week, but I made a point of seeing it in IMAX because I knew it wouldn't be there long. Phenomenal.

I didn't even know this movie was a thing until like last Thursday. IMAX was blown for me by then. Maybe I'll get another chance in July.

I guess I've seen the rocket and liftoff so much that while it was cool, it wasn't (to me) significantly more awesome than the Apollo 13 or From the Earth to the Moon sequences. I mean, in some goofy way I watched that footage once an hour on MTV when I was a kid...

I did like the music fading just a bass thump right before ignition, though.

The docking sequences and the editing of the landing totally sold me, as well as the return. And astronaut dad jokes.

I finally bought a 21st century television, complete with big ass screen and a sound car that replicates the modern theatre experience, i.e. sound alternates between loud whisper and GIANT BASS. So I have watched or re-watched several movies lately.

Inception was a bit easier to follow this time around, thanks to the big screen, but I had to keep lunging for the remote because the sound level went from soft mumbling to LOUD NOISES. Shit, maybe I'm going deaf. It's a fine movie, though I think that Christopher Nolan always tries to cram in a few too many plot twists, leaving each one to fall with a bit less impact. Interesting ideas abound, but somehow the sci-fi aspect didn't quite add up for me.

Iron Man 2 was better than I expected, but a bit uneven in quality. As you might guess from my avatar here, I am a big fan of Iron Man. But I went through a rough, busy time in my life back when the early Marvel movies were in theaters, so I just never got around to seeing this one until now. The movie builds on the strengths of the first one, and the final battle remained interesting instead of stagnating like in the first movie. Instead of going directly with the classic Demon in the Bottle storyline, we get a lite version here, with Stark partying a bit too hard because he thinks that he is dying slowly from the battery in his chest. Marvel usually does a great job with casting, but geeky Don Cheadle seemed like an even more questionable pick to play Rhodey than the humorless Terrence Howard of the first movie. Mickey Rourke was an interesting but rewarding deviation to play Whiplash, and Paltrow and Johansson were just as good as I expected. The overall story was good, but maybe a touch long, and the real celebrity cameos were more distracting than good.

The Matrix trilogy. Wow, 20 years since the first Matrix was in theaters. This was a second viewing of the first two Matrix movies, which I originally saw in the theater. Due to bad word of mouth by friends back when, I had never seen the third installment before. The original Matrix stills hold up well, but it's a slower-paced movie than I remembered. The green palette of the Matrix scenes makes sense to disguise the green screen effects, but it was made me a little nervous about the picture quality of my new tv. The second movie includes an all-time great fight scene and also an all-time great car chase scene, but it is just an okay science-fiction movie. It's also the best of the trilogy despite one lengthy and pointless fight scene between Neo and Agent Smith. The final movie is better than I had hoped and reasonably good, but runs a little too long.

Valerian and the City of Stars is a visually spectacular movie, and should be seen on the largest screen available. The story is complex but decent, but the whole affair is undermined by the lead actors, who look and act like teenagers despite being highly-trained government agents. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show without analyzing it too closely.

It sounds that way because you're outputting 5.1 into a 2.1 soundbar. Normally in 5.1 the dialog comes from the center channel and you don't have one and your tv isn't made for downmixing. Try changing output settings on your tv and players to pcm and/or seeing what other options are there for audio output. Ultimately there may be nothing you can do depending on your equipment.