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What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?
WadeMonnig wrote:
Sam Raimi really Sam Raimied the hell out of this movie. It's filled with his signature touches.ChristopherMD wrote:
Doctor StrangeStephen and the Multiverse of Madness - I'm not a big Doctor Strange fan but I like Sam Raimi's films so not too surprising I liked this.
I saw this last night and really enjoyed all the Raimi-tastic action. I didn't know until about an hour before the movie that it was a Raimi joint. Loved the Bruce Campbell cameo, the '73 Olds cameo. The music dropping out at key points and the camera zooming in on the actor's ragged breathing. So good.
As far as everything else, it was a fine Marvel movie that advanced the metaplot of the MCU just fine. Acting was great, effects were hyper-kinetic.
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- hotseatgames
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I won't spoil anything, but I'd say this film is squarely average. Your time could be worse spent, and could also be better spent. Maybe flip a coin.
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I would say it's big-screen worthy just so you can get the full immersion without distractions, but honestly that's how I feel about every movie. Going to the theater is a ritualistic experience for me.
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Anyway, the tight Blum house budget is on display here, it feels cheap. Unlike the slick Invisible Man this version just plods along, not really diving into anything or playing with the themes other than a faint acknowledgement that pyrokinesis is kind of a superpower. A bit disappointing to be honest and not as fun as the 80s version.
The real star here is Zac Efrons face. A stoic, immovable, plastic mask that I initially thought was just bad deaging but nope, that's his face now. He's still in his 30's, right?
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Three Days of the Condor (1975) nicely captures the paranoia of the post-Watergate period in America. Robert Redford was 38 at the time, but easily passes for late 20s in his lead role as a CIA researcher who accidentally gets caught up in intrigue and treachery within the agency. Faye Dunaway is fine as a bystander who is pulled into the mess, and Max von Sydow gets a few good lines as a mercenary assassin. The story strains credibility as the bodies pile up, and the ending feels like a tidy deus ex machina due to an inability to translate the entire book into a two-hour movie. Redford is good here, and makes a solid case for his subsequent casting in All the President's Men. If you squint, Three Days of the Condor possibly works as a prequel to Sneakers (1992).
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If you haven't seen it already, The Conversation is an excellent companion to Condor.
Additionally, Soderbergh's recent KIMI is an updated combination of those two, and is quite good.
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- ChristopherMD
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- hotseatgames
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- Legomancer
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I just don't see a lot of movies I guess.
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dysjunct wrote: The Spawn Cultural/Historical Education, Movie Edition (SCHEME) project continues apace:
ALADDIN (1992). Never actually saw this before, I was a teenager when it came out and too cool for Disney. Had the Disney cultural depiction warning at the front and I can see the need — everyone except Our Hero and Heroine had a prominent accent and the villains were so, so swarthy. But boy, what a movie. The plot and songs were fine, but absolutely gorgeous animation, so fully realized and really a complete worldview expressed dynamically onscreen. RIP Robin Williams and Gilbert Gottfried. Both of them took the movie to the next level.
THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967). Another disclaimer movie, I guess because the monkeys spoke some variant of AAVE? Didn’t seem as necessary to me as the one in Aladdin, but no one’s hiring me as their cultural sensitivity reader, so don’t trust me on this. Has kind of a picaresque feel to it for large parts of the movie, which makes it come off as a bit random. But the two main songs are stone classics. Gorgeous animation, although you see some hints of the decline coming that would plague Disney for the next 20 years.
Continuing with taking the spawn through the classics:
THE ARISTOCATS (1970). Decent enough, but still suffers from the episodic slapstick elements that really sum up the Disney Doldrums of the 60s-80s. Makes it feel like a Saturday morning cartoon -- I love the golden age of Warner Bros. and will still watch the Bugs Bunny classics today, but it's not what Disney is best at. The (literal) jazz cats are great.
101 DALMATIONS (1961). Better -- the backgrounds really do it for me in this one, lovely stippling and sponge work to make both dreary London nights, breezy London springtimes, and the dour countryside where the pups are held captive. Amusing fun fact: the brief wedding scene (where the humans are married, along with their dogs) was changed to be more secular at the last minute, due to fears that people would be offended if dogs exchanged religious vows.
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The Band is one of those lesser-known but highly influential bands, somewhat like the Velvet Underground. Originally known as The Hawks, they were the backing band for Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins in the late 50's/early '60s. In the mid-60s, they backed Bob Dylan for a couple of years, then did several albums on their own. Their music ranged from folk to country rock, and they had three hits that you may have heard: The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek, and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. I have nothing nice to say about the Confederacy, but The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is such a great song that I forgive the sentiment every time.
The Last Waltz was intended to be their final performance, and included a Thanksgiving dinner for the audience of 5,000 fans. The documentary is excellent, with camera shots from a variety of angles and nice coverage of individual singers and instrumental solos. It's like the musical equivalent of good hockey coverage, with a camera crew that is adept at following the puck. The Band only had a few hits, but this concert was amazing for the killer line-up of guest performances, including: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and Van Morrison... with most of them in their prime. Each guest star performed one of their own hits, with the Band ably backing them up.
Country rock isn't one of my favorite genres, but I enjoyed nearly song in this movie due to the quality of the musicians. Band member Robbie Robertson steals the limelight in most of the intercut interviews between each song, but it's understandable because he is reasonably articulate and photogenic compared to the rest of the group. I also didn't mind because I am a fan of Robertson's first two solo albums.
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This is a bizarre film that walks the line between family fun and adult appeal in an amazing way. It is 100% safe for all ages because it uses double entrendres, adult level inference, and "blink and you missed it" jokes to hint at everything so there are very few "daddy...what does that mean?" awkward conversations other than trying to explain what a bootleg is.
If this is the end result of amalgamating a trillion IPs under one roof, bring it on! (though it hits plenty of non-Disney owned things so it mut be using some other form of pprotection from infringement like being a parody or something)
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Shellhead wrote: Country rock isn't one of my favorite genres, but I enjoyed nearly song in this movie due to the quality of the musicians. Band member Robbie Robertson steals the limelight in most of the intercut interviews between each song, but it's understandable because he is reasonably articulate and photogenic compared to the rest of the group. I also didn't mind because I am a fan of Robertson's first two solo albums.
Being the only one not absolutely wasted may have helped there too. This is the film that was famous for having had to rotoscope the gigantic coke booger out of Neil Young's nose during his closeups (back in the pre-digital age).
Great film, damaged people. My favorite line will always be Richard Manuel saying that he wanted to call the band "The Honkies". I've had the chance to see this in an actual theater, which is more important from a soundtrack perspective than visual. If you're watching it, use the good speakers.
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