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

Sagrilarus wrote: I watched the first half of Red Tails last night.

Oh, and I dangled this worm on a hook and no one bit down on it. That's my ten-word review of the film.

RobertB wrote: I used to think Roger Ebert was a good reviewer, but I have to seriously rethink this now.

As someone who started reading his reviews only a few years ago, I think he's a great writer but not so great of a critic critic. Not bad, mind you, just not great. He was just...too easy to please.

Had he been a boardgamer, he would have been the kind to enjoy the average run-of-the-mill euro that is hot one month and forgotten the next. It's not that he was wrong, or ignored flaws, it's that for him a generic film was already in the three star range. At some point, he started giving out 4-star reviews to stuff like Polar Express, Golden Compass, Avatar and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which I don't think is defensible on any critical level.

The guy also had some annoying blind spots. He had surprisingly backwards views on animation, gave movies a pass on his perception of what children like and his hate of videogames wasn't a one-time thing, many reviews of his have gratuitous attacks against the medium. He was also fairly inconsistent, but passionate, on violence.

As a pet peeve, I find the ocassional comment on how hot actresses are to be sleazy. He also penned a profoundly sexist article about how women are better than men and there wouldn't be wars in the world if its leaders were of that sex.

Still, he was a great writer and solid enough as a critic to make his massive archive of reviews a great read. Being able to check reviews of 95% of noteworthy American films released in the last 40 years is amazing.

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Roger Ebert also makes me wonder what I get wrong on my own reviews. I like to think that I wouldn't give the game equivalent of Avatar a perfect score but I haven't reviewed ten hundred games, have I? Perhaps we all have our own fantastically stupid opinions.

Sagrilarus wrote: Or you get it on DVD, watch it on the exact same screen for what is likely cheaper and will last until your DVD player dies.

I appreciate some people want to see it right away. I mentioned it to my daughter who is the one excited about it (she's 23) and her response was, "it's going to be included free at some point, I'll just wait." God bless her, cheaper than I am. There's a lucky man out there that's going to be her husband someday.

I understand Disney doesn't want to take a hit on the cost of making the film (just shy of a quarter billion dollars). But they've now tiered their channel. That's more in line with Amazon's model, but Amazon Prime comes with huge additional perks. You start looking at Disney+ as a store where you buy premium things at high prices instead of a buffet where simply take what you want. Changes the business relationship with the customer.

Eh, maybe Disney can make it work. Hollywood has to make movies to make money, but a lot of folks (raises hand) aren't in any particular hurry at the moment to go into a theater. I wouldn't pay $30 to see Mulan at home, but I'd have done it to see Avengers: Endgame. I might have even preferred it.

Sagrilarus wrote: Apple Dumpling Gang! Uh, ok, haven't seen it.

I remember liking it when I was a kid -- silly Don Knotts humor.

My favorite Don Knotts movie as a kid was The Incredible Mr. Limpet. No way am I watching it now - I'll just keep the memories.

RobertB wrote: My favorite Don Knotts movie as a kid was The Incredible Mr. Limpet. No way am I watching it now - I'll just keep the memories.

The Ghost and Mr Chicken for me. Also not re-watching it though.

Space Ghost wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Apple Dumpling Gang! Uh, ok, haven't seen it.

I remember liking it when I was a kid -- silly Don Knotts humor.

I saw The Apple Dumpling Gang when I was 10. I remember that Don Knotts was in it, but I don't remember anything else about it. Maybe I have PTSD from the trauma of seeing it.

WTF is going on that is the second out of nowhere reference to The Apple Dumpling Gang I’ve run into in as many days.

Michael Barnes wrote: WTF is going on that is the second out of nowhere reference to The Apple Dumpling Gang I’ve run into in as many days.

In the future, everything will trend for five minutes. Or at least that was my reaction when looking at the very random things that my Roku account claimed were trending right now.

I finally watched Prometheus tonight. All of the Alien films are on HBO right now. I had never seen this one, and for the most part never heard much positive about it. That said, I enjoyed this film on its own merits. The visuals are great, and while it certainly didn't tread any new ground, I found myself wondering why it got all the hate.

I'm a big fan of the board game Nemesis, which I had previously thought was a combination of Alien and Aliens. Now I see that it's actually a combination of Aliens and Prometheus. I think Awaken Realms watched Prometheus and said "let's do that."

My problem with Prometheus is that there's really no story there. It's all a setup to either serve the tenets of another story or to create cheap shocks in this film. It's backfilling of the most obvious and clumsiest sort. The characters are so mono-dimensional that Scott managed to make actors like Fassbender, Elba, and Theron look like they'd just stepped on a set for the first time. Theron's role was particularly bad. He also managed to make Guy Pearce invisible. And most of that can probably be traced to the fact that the screenplay wasn't about servicing an idea. It was about servicing other films. It's the equivalent of people talking on Reddit and saying: "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" and then spending $120 million on it without considering if it made a decent story in the first place.

My main issue with Prometheus is shoehorning a xenomorph into it. Would have been much better to keep the focus on the Engineers in contrast with our attempt at creating synthetic lifeforms. Could even have still taken place in the Alien universe. Like make it more of a cerebral film instead of a stupid xenomorph origin story or whatever it was supposed to be. That being said, I do like enough of the movie to say that overall I like the movie.

I nearly purchased a used DVD of Prometheus on Sunday, while at Second Hand Books. I was tempted because it was a visually spectacular movie with a great cast and some interesting ideas. But the writing was sloppy and some of the characters were unbelievably stupid. When I saw it in the theater, I enjoyed at least the first half hour or so, and then things started to fall apart. I could give a whole list of examples, but I will pick just one extreme example. Two crew members have this amazing piece of 3D mapping equipment that they are using while exploring this alien place. We the viewers can see the precision and detail of that 3D map, and also get the general idea that the place they are exploring is roughly a big circular loop. And then they get lost. HOW do they get lost? They just do, because lazy writing.

My wife and I watched Spiderman Far From Home last night, and it continued the trend of recent Spiderman movies being great. Not as good as Homecoming, solely because Mysterio wasn't as great as Keaton's Vulture was. But he was still a solid fun villain, and they got to do some fun illusion scenes. I love Tom Holland as Parker/SM.

I'm still a bit confused as to Mysterio's grand plan.