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

I finally watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on Youtube for $4. It was an interesting period piece that dragged a little and had an interesting ending. I honestly can't tell if Quentin Tarantino is a genius or kind of self-indulgent. Brad Pitt did a great job and was fun to watch. I was born in San Jose in the 1960s, so there were some evocative scenes that I enjoyed. I liked Rick Dalton's line about growing more useless with each passing day. Relatable.

Cranberries wrote: I honestly can't tell if Quentin Tarantino is a genius or kind of self-indulgent.

I think he's both. I enjoyed the film, but I wouldn't put it among his best.

Echo what hotseat said. Pulp Fiction was a transformative work that could earn the title genius. A lot of what's happened since then could be filed under the "doing this because *I* think it's cool" approach, although there are some high points amidst those later films, as well. I thought Once Upon trended a lot more toward the latter than the former.

dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2019/07/h...ack-of-interest.html

Yes, that's a good review. "languid" is the perfect word to describe it.

"And there is a message here; of transition, of social transformation, and of the continued presence of violence in all of it. But what's missing is anything particularly memorable about the film."

So I watched the D&D movie last night and .. "meh." It was better than the Irons/Birch version, but it was a weird combination of rote, rushed, and too long. I thought the banter was the right tone, and I liked the various easter eggs throughout. But it was basically a mid- to low-tier Marvel movie in quality. Fine, I guess. I'd watch a sequel, but whereas with this one, I was debating seeing it in the theater, but I'd definitely wait for streaming for any sequel.

I watched the latest Dungeons & Dragons movie -- rarely have I seen something so lacking in weight, in gravitas, in absolutely every aspect of its being.

It's been family feud week here, with a quick succession of Homefront and (as a recommendation for a better feud) Shotgun Stories. Homefront (with Jason Statham) is not a recommendation. It has one or two things going for it - Winona Ryder and a script trying to depict how real people actually behave, but then Statham doing Statham things shouldn't be in it. Maybe he turned up on the wrong set by accident and everybody just rolled with it?
Shotgun Stories (with Michael Shannon) otoh is a friggin' Masterpiece. Consider being raised with your three brothers by a dry alcoholic who turned to God and left three other boys behind when he started his new life. Imagine those three 'dogs' turning up at his funeral. All these clueless victims of shitty behaviour stumble around Arkansas like forces of nature, it's astonishing.
Statham has the biggest truck in the whole town, and everybody hates him for it. Money and class are quite an issue in both films.

I love Shotgun Stories. Can't find anyone who has ever heard of it, much less seen it.

Just perfect atmosphere throughout. Mud is almost as good, but not quite (same director).

I'm not a big fan of old movies. I tend to find them slow-paced, overly talkative, and corny. I really hated Citizen Kane and couldn't even finish it. On the other hand, I loved Seven Samurai. Anyway, I finally decided to watch Lawrence of Arabia (1962), despite the runtime of 3.5 hours. I broke my viewing into two separate evenings because of the runtime, only to discover just minutes into the second night that the movie included a five-minute intermission with black screen and the theme song playing.

Lawrence of Arabia is an amazing movie, especially for its time. The pacing is good, there is character development, great acting, some action, some big ideas, and it is all based on historical events. Peter O'Toole plays the role of a lifetime as T.E. Lawrence, a British army officer who served as a liaison to Arab forces who revolted against the occupying forces of the Ottoman Empire during the Great War. As played by O'Toole, Lawrence is a complex character: intellectual, idealistic, bold, soft-spoken, charismatic, arrogant, tough, and yet mentally fragile. Filmed on location in the Mideast, with otherworldly terrain and sandstorms. Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, and Claude Rains also deliver fine performances. However, the movie spectacularly fails the Bechdel test. Women are only glimpsed in the distance, entirely peripheral to this story of war and peace.

Shellhead wrote: I'm not a big fan of old movies. I tend to find them slow-paced, overly talkative, and corny.

A friend's 10-year-old daughter a few years back, watching Gone With the Wind for the first time: "There sure are a lot of cliches in this movie!"

Totally agree on Lawrence of Arabia. It's a great film and It's O'Toole's greatest role. (Thought he did really well in the Masada TV series in the early 80s, as Lucius Flavius Silva (across from Peter Strauss as Eleazar Ben Ya'ir), though.)

Shellhead wrote: I'm not a big fan of old movies. I tend to find them slow-paced, overly talkative, and corny.

Depends on the movie of course. One thing I loathe about far too many modern movies is the frenetic nature of editing; its refreshing watching older movies where directors aren't afraid to pan a camera, linger on a shot, or shoot an action scene that doesn't feature a cut every single fucking second to hide shoddy stunt work or give the allusion of fast pace, etc.

Here are my top five old movies not counting westerns.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
The Time Machine (1960)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Great Escape (1963)
Dr Strangelove (1964)


If they don't seem old its because you're old.

Don't get me wrong. Citizen Kane is a masterpiece. But I've seen it a couple times and listened to Roger Eberts commentary so feel that I'm done with it. Same with things like Casablanca. Its not that their too old, its that my tastes lie with stuff like the above.

If we're talking pre-1965 as the arbitrary date of "old", I think all of my favorites are by Akira Kurosawa and the Marx Brothers.

I saw The Great Escape when I was about eight years old and all I can remember is one terribly sad scene burned into my consciousness. I'll have to rewatch it.

Miles Morales and the Spiderverse or whatever that second animated miles spiderman movie is actually called is FANTASTIC. Still has that low frame rate jank feel but wow, they upped the neon colors and effects to 12. The hyperkinetic stuff feels so good as animation, when they try to do this stuff live action it just looks fake (which it is) so I'm glad we get to see a real spiderman at this level. I'm actually very surprised where wasn't an extended seizure warning before the film though, after seeing it on any TV show with even a microsecond of strobing, this film LIVES to hit you in the face with zany visuals.

Very astute deconstruction of the spiderman comic mythology as well. My kid just liked the fights, but there is a very deep critique of what makes a comic book character work and both praise and judgement about how comics in general, and spidey in particular, is treated across time. This second film is really more about Gwen though, and she delivers in spades. Can't wait for part 3, march 24 supposedly.

This is a GREAT fathers days film, BTW. For once the dads in the film are actual heroes who don't exist just to be an abusive driving force, a dead driving force, or a foil for the snarky teen character, but get to be REAL DADS with all that entails.