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

Jackwraith wrote: For some reason these days, I can't see spoilers even when I click on them.

Yeah, Spoilers are busted.

I'm one of the few people I know who genuinely enjoyed Tenet. I don't think it's Nolan's best by any means, and in many ways he's too indulgent in his excesses, but I was highly engaged and have thought about it often the past few weeks.

My journey with it was an initial watch that I enjoyed quite a bit, but of course was left not totally understanding the plot and many of the finer details.

Then I watched a review/explanation Youtube video from a critic and worked my way through the various timelines that occur in the film. This grabbed me as I was struck by the narrative's complexity and depth of overall story.

Then I watched it a second time and was wowed. I could definitely watch it again right now and enjoy it.

Another review I watched stated that Nolan crafted this film to be watched multiple times. The pacing is dizzying at first and you feel as though you're in a sprint to keep up, offering no time to really think about the more esoteric elements occurring.

When you rewatch it the pacing feels much better and you can start to really evaluate the narrative and deconstruct the science (or fantasy) the film posits.

The reviewer contended a critic shouldn't really evaluate this film until they've seen it five times. That sounds amusingly familiar.

So then the natural question becomes, is it worthwhile to craft a film which must be watched multiple times to enjoy? Does a film have to provide a clear narrative upon initial watch?

All I will say is that I'd much rather watch this type of film than the a super hero movie or the latest remake. Much of mainstream art lacks real ambition and we're better for people experimenting and challenging us.

I’m with you on Tenet Charlie. It was our Christmas Day movie of choice, I picked up the Blu-ray so we watched the extras afterward which are really great and explain a lot of surprising things about the movie. For example, all the effects are practical - when they crash the plane they really went out and bought a decommissioned jumbo jet, painted it up, then drove it into a building. For the fight scenes the performers learned all the moves backwards so they had one person fighting forward and one backward, then reversed to shoot the scene again from the other perspective. Nolan also wheeled out Kip Thorne again to test the theoretical logic; when they started to plot the scenes in computer simulations they realised that all their presumptions were completely wrong about how something like this would work, so things that don’t seem to make sense at first really are logically correct. A stupefying amount of work went into this. It’s the lesser of the Nolan smart sci-fi trilogy for sure but still better than any of the other tentpole movies of the past few years.

ChristopherMD wrote: The whole thing up to and including the wheel is good and a fine follow-up to the second movie. Tina Turner and the soundtrack are good. The various characters and sets are good. Then it becomes a different movie. The kids subplot was not only shit, it was also unnecessary. The writers could have found another way to force Max back to Bartertown. Also the end car chase was the weakest across all the films.

They started with the lost kids story and were wondering who could save them and thought of Max and made it a mad max movie. The problem is their original idea was shit compared to the secondary stuff they came up with, but due to the history they were unfortunately always going to keep the original bad idea shoehorned into the slightly better film.

the_jake_1973 wrote: We realized that we actually miss going to the video store to browse through the rentals. I don't know why reading the backs of the DVD packages seemed to generate more interest with us when the offered information online is the same.

I feel the same way and there are a few reasons why IMHO.

1. Too much damned content! Between all the streamers and the traditional distributors we are getting FLOODED with stuff! So proper curation, once the domain of a few publishers and critics, is now totally decentralized or just absent. Marketers and AI algorithms are doing it for us now.

2. Lack of proper genre marketing. Used to be there were sections of the store and you knew what to expect. Now things are either overly segmented (netflix, ooph) or not at all. Is this really a rated R sci-fi film or just YA nonsense with some swear words and gore? I can't tell because it is all being fed to me with no real understanding why. Im not seeing the entire inventory, just what they WANT me to see based on what ive clicked. On amazon i have to dive through multiple "similar film" lists to get to some stuff, whereas at a video store it is just all up there.

3. No cover art/text. Never underestimate the power of that blue/orange box art or carefully written back text! Or a marketing campaign lasting weeks/months. Now it feels like most films are presented by a robot, not an actual human who has seen the film. The trailers are sloppy, or just a random segment of the film. None of this inspires enthusiasm IMHO.

4. Steady drip of stuff. We don't have summers of reruns anymore to whet our appetites for new stuff. Its just consume and jump right to something new, no matter how crappy it is.

5. Binge and purge. I watch entire seasons now in just a few days and then flush it to move on. Gone are the weekly water cooler discussions. Or it is all done in temporally staggered ways as viewers come in over weeks. Something like Lost, Sopranos, or even early GoT won't happen again i think.

All of this leads to low viewer engagement. Producers are forced to rely on tricks and cheap hooks to get viewers watching and i bet the bail out % of viewers (when and where they stop watching) is a hard core science now since streamers have exact data versus the old Nielsen surveys, so they can mathematically craft shows to try to maximize eyeballs on screen.

6. It's all too samey, as if not only the marketing but the greenlighting of projects is done by algorithm.

At this point I will only watch Netflix movies to sit down next to my spawn.

It seems like movies that are slightly shorter than 90 minutes are always bad. Is it just me? I don't have any recent examples, but I have noticed that when I sort through viewing options, I never see appealing movies of that length. The collective star ratings of Amazon prime viewers seem pretty reliable (most movies with at least 4 stars are good, most with less stars are bad), and they tend to rate these slightly short movies as worse than average.

Nodens wrote: 6. It's all too samey, as if not only the marketing but the greenlighting of projects is done by algorithm.

At this point I will only watch Netflix movies to sit down next to my spawn.

I certainly feel like some production studios, including netflix, have a very specific and lengthy checklist of what MUST be in the show, regardless of the creators intent. Now I'm not against diversity and inclusiveness and trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible but there are organic ways to do it and then there is shoehorned in stuff that just makes everything feel bland and samey. Plus when EVERY project starts doing it with the exact same 25 quadrant list vying for the same international appeal it gets real silly. You can't set all your shows in 18th century england but still cast/write as if it had 21st century international demographics for example. Find some new settings at least!

A clear unique vision by one person, tempered by an experienced producer to sand off some of the rougher edges, is far more my preference. You can't go full Chris Nolan for example or you end up with brilliantly incomprehensible things like Interstellar but you definitely shouldn't aim for Away or October Faction either.

jason10mm wrote: For me, the real problem with WW84 is that it apparently cost TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!!! Nothing in that film warranted or justified a budget that big. The set piece actions scenes weren't done that well, the CGI looked dodgy, and overall the more.... personal story would have been better serviced by a more modest budget so expectations could be more reasonable.

I wonder how much longer the studios can sit on these massive films. James Bond is slated for Easter, right? Not sure that date will hold either. How much longer can Disney hold Black Widow? Or Universal the F&F9 film? I'm sure I'm forgetting a dozen or more massive films, not to mention all the smaller ones that haven't been dumped to streaming yet.

I've been listening to the REWATCH WITH LOVE podcast , about the James Bond movies. One thing they do is note for each movie how much it cost to make, both at the time then adjusted for inflation. All those early Connery and Moore movies cost a FRACTION of what their eventual bpx office receipts totaled. We're talking about a 30-50 multiple return om the initial investment. With the prospect of theater movies dimishing, maybe even long term once streaming becomes even more widely accepted, I think some Hollywood execs would be smart to look at why movies cost so much. Sure, special effects are a big difference these days. But another IMO is when you look at credits for movies ( and TV shows are just as bad ) you see a huge list of producers at the end with varying titles, but their "job" it seems is to put in some money and then get that money back plus a hefty multple.

Thanks for the podcast rec. Downloading now. I see they cover NSNA, i have a warm spot for that sideline JB film.

Film budgets are legendary for NEVER turning a profit. Kevin Smith talks about it. There was a famous image of one of the Harry Potter films balance sheet showing a LOSS of hundreds of millions despite making a billion or so at the BO. Studios basically charge themselves outrageous fees for stuff just to keep films in the red.

Shellhead wrote: It seems like movies that are slightly shorter than 90 minutes are always bad. Is it just me? I don't have any recent examples, but I have noticed that when I sort through viewing options, I never see appealing movies of that length. The collective star ratings of Amazon prime viewers seem pretty reliable (most movies with at least 4 stars are good, most with less stars are bad), and they tend to rate these slightly short movies as worse than average.

www.vulture.com/2016/10/best-movies-under-90-minutes-long.html

My experience with Amazon Prime viewers is quite different. They may be reliable for pop culture stuff, but they fail on art house movies. They currently have First Cow at 2 stars, even though it's on most critics' top 10 of the year lists. I liked it a lot, but I can see how it would be too small & quiet for mainstream audiences.

jason10mm wrote: Thanks for the podcast rec. Downloading now. I see they cover NSNA, i have a warm spot for that sideline JB film.

Film budgets are legendary for NEVER turning a profit. Kevin Smith talks about it. There was a famous image of one of the Harry Potter films balance sheet showing a LOSS of hundreds of millions despite making a billion or so at the BO. Studios basically charge themselves outrageous fees for stuff just to keep films in the red.

Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump, sued Paramount for a share of the profit. That movie made insane amounts of money, and Paramount swore they were still in the red.

Which reminds me, I watched Forrest Gump last weekend. My mother-in-law had never seen it, so I got to see it. Again. It's not a favorite of mine, but a lot of folks really like it*. If you haven't seen it, you should.

*My youngest brother can't watch a movie without picking it to pieces, to the point that he really doesn't watch movies. But Forrest Gump is his favorite.

jason10mm wrote: Film budgets are legendary for NEVER turning a profit. Kevin Smith talks about it. There was a famous image of one of the Harry Potter films balance sheet showing a LOSS of hundreds of millions despite making a billion or so at the BO. Studios basically charge themselves outrageous fees for stuff just to keep films in the red.

Smart movie investors get "gross points," i.e. a percentage of the total revenue of the movie. Dumb movie investors get "net points," which means a percentage of net profit. If the expenses are higher than the revenue, they don't have to pay out any money to the investors with net points.

Hollywood movies make tons and tons of money. PILES OF MONEY. Scheming to hide profits from them to avoid paying net points is its own wikipedia article:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

RETURN OF THE JEDI didn't pay net points. FAST & THE FURIOUS didn't pay net points. It's all consumed by internal loans at outrageous interest rates and other nonsense that let a studio charge costs to a production and avoid crossing the net points line.

It's fun to watch an older movie and recognize a subsequently famous actor in a minor role. I just finished watching C.H.U.D. and spotted John Goodman in a very minor speaking part. It's impressive that he went from C.H.U.D. to Raising Arizona in just three years.