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

I've watched two old satires and I've been a bit dissapointed by both of them.

Perhaps it was silly to expect much from RoboCop, but it flopped when I watched it with a couple friends. It's not bad by any means, but I expected a funnier or more satirical film than it actually is. If anything, it comes across more as slow and moody, with quite a few scenes dedicated to the main character's lost humanity. That's solid, but I don't think it's the best part of the film. If you ask me, the best part, without question, is the early robot demo with the executives where one is asked to put his gun down and is shot for 5 seconds straight despite complying.

I also was a bit dissapointed by Network. Despite being 50 years old and even looking the part, its themes don't seem irrelevant. At times, it seems it was talking about Youtubers. Some of its criticisms would actually apply better to them than they do to television. The setup is great, the cast of mostly amoral executives is a great choice and it's directed by Sydney Lumet (12 Angry Men), who can put half a dozen people on screen and make all of them interesting. But it is too long, heavily didactive and, like RoboCop, I did not find it too funny.

There's a lot of talking in this movie. Much of it is great and I think I lost quite a bit when I watched it dubbed. It's an old dub and they miss much of the inflection and nuances in the dialogue*. But I think you could have cut a quarter of the film, an entire 30 minutes, and you wouldn't have missed much in terms of satire, plot development or jokes. The secondary storyline, with an old executive having an affair a younger female executive, fell flat to me, if simply because there's no reason for him to ever love her.

The "you are television incarnate" speech is well-written but it seems more of an excuse to put down the then current generation of young who were "raised on television". Diana isn't a character, per se, she's an idea, or a concept and she's on the receiving end of the main writer. The points about shallowness, commodification, treating real life as it if were a movie and so on are good. But the whole anti-television angle isn't really great. In the end, it's just the same prejudices about how TV makes you dumb, inattentive and you should read book instead. And I don't watch TV, never have.

I also watched the first Read or Die OVA. It was one of the first animes I watched and it's nothing special today. It doesn't even seem particularly well-animated, the standards have risen so much that most shows made today would surpass it.

*In fact, it made me wonder how it was receivedin Spain as it was released two years (1976) before the death of Franco (1978). There were no private television channels, only two State TV stations controlled by the regime. The first private channel wouldn't arrive until 1988 and the current ones until 1990. Even today, Spanish television is a duopoly.

I think part of the appeal of Robocop back in the day was how over the top it was in its satire. Now a lot of things are like that and have built upon that perspective. Verhoeven later did it himself with Starship Troopers, which is even more in-your-face with its political messaging. But it's also much funnier in that respect because it's willing to go to extremes that Robocop simply wasn't set up to do. There's some advantage to being farther in the future, I guess. I never found Robocop to be a great or even good film, but I did appreciate what Verhoeven was trying to do with it.

Robocop has some great lines that are still memorable. And I can't tell you how many times I hear Murphy saying "DROP IT!" in my head. Perhaps I should see someone.

I LIKE it !!!!

I like Robocop a lot, but it's been a while since I've seen it. I'm sure your criticisms are valid.

Network I never thought was supposed to be comedic. Satiric, sure, but not funny.

Robocop I think got too much of it right, so now you watch it and it just feels "normal" compared to attitudes about 80's excesses. Corporate dickery and police abuses are almost expected these days.

By the way, I know I'm far from the only one but I noticed two things.

First, the corrupt corporate executive sa a character has pretty much dissapeared from popular culture. The only example that comes to mind is Tony Star and it only gives him a cool antihero vibe. It's far more common for such figures or the culture surrounding them to be presented as a sign of success, particularly when it comes to female characters.

A friend of mine often complains that heroes have moved from being outside the system to being the system itself and I think that's unfair but he's not exactly wrong.

I also feel Network is where most other movies, shows, etc, got their corrupt executives from.

Second, sex has dissapeared from modern mainstream cinema. We live in far more open times, yet you see less and less of it. It's making me want to overcome my well-founded prejudices towards Spanish cinema and watch Lucia y el Sexo or whatever. But I wouldn't even know what to look for, most suggestions online are terrible. Seriously, there's way too many people recommending Caligula, which I know is often considered one of the worst films ever made.

Caligula is not good, and I wish I could eternal sunshine it from my mind.

It is kinda odd how ultra-violence has trickled down into kids cinema but ANY skin has moved firmly to the realm of porn. Heck, I remember when PG films (Beastmaster, Splash, etc) had nudity, it just wasn't overtly sexual. It's so fascinating that the liberal hippy side got shockingly prudish of late, interesting how sides can change over time with different reasons to get to the same end result.

As for corp bashing, no film could get greenlit like that now, corps OWN all the dev houses, distribution, and streaming venues! Gotta suck up to that money teat. Guess how many films have an unsympathetic Chinese character these days? The lure of the billion dollar BO has really warped creative cinematic risk taking.

jason10mm wrote: It's so fascinating that the liberal hippy side got shockingly prudish of late, interesting how sides can change over time with different reasons to get to the same end result.

I think a lot of former hippies sold out by the '80s. Both of my parents came from big Catholic families, but only one of my many relatives was a serious hippie who even lived in a commune in the mid-'70s. He married a woman from the commune and they moved out on their own. Within a few years, they both became born-again Christians. Now they own a hobby farm out in the sticks. They are both serious Republicans and anti-vaxxers. They might not have cashed in like most of their boomer peers, but they definitely abandoned the ideals of their youth.

There’s a great podcast, “Conspirituality,” that’s been exploring the strange crossover of traditional left-leaning spaces (communes, yoga studios, alternative medicine practices) into bizarre right-wing conspiracies.

It was very rare until pandemic lockdowns, which accelerated it. But the common seeds were there from the beginning: distrust of experts, belief that everything bad has a cause, belief that you are special.

Fascinating from a sociological perspective. The hosts are all yoga teachers and alt-med types who wanted to explore WTF was happening to their communities. Recommended.

Shellhead wrote:

jason10mm wrote: It's so fascinating that the liberal hippy side got shockingly prudish of late, interesting how sides can change over time with different reasons to get to the same end result.

I think a lot of former hippies sold out by the '80s. Both of my parents came from big Catholic families, but only one of my many relatives was a serious hippie who even lived in a commune in the mid-'70s. He married a woman from the commune and they moved out on their own. Within a few years, they both became born-again Christians. Now they own a hobby farm out in the sticks. They are both serious Republicans and anti-vaxxers. They might not have cashed in like most of their boomer peers, but they definitely abandoned the ideals of their youth.

I think people like like that don’t abandon their ideals. I think they were actively searching for ideals and lifestyles that fit them, changed until they found it.

Watched The Big Sleep this weekend. Bogart and Bacall are great and there's a lot of fun but man I couldn't follow it. Partly because the sound on my PS5 was fucked up and I couldn't always hear it right and partly because I can never follow these twisty noir things, even though this one is comparatively straightforward. But jesus what a beautiful cast.

Also saw the fourth movie from my movie battle, and the second place winner, Young Frankenstein. It was some fun and I liked it more than Blazing Saddles, but again I was not doubled over in laughter. I just don't gel with Mel and I'm okay with this being my final Brooks movie. (There is no goddamn way this was the second best movie in my list of 32 for my movie battle, so clearly my methodology is suspect.)

All that remains from the movie battle is the winner, Seven Samurai.

Erik Twice wrote: I've watched two old satires and I've been a bit dissapointed by both of them.

Perhaps it was silly to expect much from RoboCop, but it flopped when I watched it with a couple friends. It's not bad by any means, but I expected a funnier or more satirical film than it actually is. If anything, it comes across more as slow and moody, with quite a few scenes dedicated to the main character's lost humanity.

I think Robocop's reputation has been retconned by film buffs as some sort of statement satire piece. I can tell you that when it came out, it was just another big dumb 80's action movie that the papers thought was "too violent" & any pretentions to being a meditation on anything deeper wasn't particularly front-of-mind to most American moviegoers in 1987. The fact that anyone would care about most 80's action movies in 2022 is kind of remarkable.

oh and Teri Garr is almost too hot to look at without special goggles