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

Shellhead wrote: This is a good premise for a board game or a one-shot rpg, and very definitely the inspiration for The Hunger Games franchise.

Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games author) claims she had never heard of the 1999 novel or the 2000 film until she had already finished The Hunger Games (novel published in 2008, film in 2012). There was quite an intense flame-war at the time between true-believer Hunger Games stans & folks calling bullshit.

I was a pretty big fan of Battle Royale, as weird as it is to say given the topic. But the novel, Manga, and live action film were all great in their own ways. A very influential concept at the time, but an extremely disturbing idea as I sit next to my own kids.

Kinda like with Godzilla and I'm sure many other concepts, the Japanese have a way of tapping into a very primal aspect of dark humanity.

jason10mm wrote: Kinda like with Godzilla and I'm sure many other concepts, the Japanese have a way of tapping into a very primal aspect of dark humanity.

A lot of that stems from the fact that we dropped bombs on them. Their media represented "post apocalypse" because it was.

I was tempted to do the Barbie/Oppenheimer double-feature, but I'm too busy these days to block out that much consecutive time. So I saw Oppenheimer today and will see Barbie tomorrow. I can't remember the last time when I saw two movies in a theatre in the same month, but it was probably in the '90s.

From history classes, I knew just the basics about Robert Oppenheimer, and it seemed a bit thin for major movie treatment. Real quantum physics is a difficult topic for a big movie, and the historical aspect also seemed like it would be dry. I was also concerned that even director Christopher Nolan wouldn't be able to pull this off. He tends to err on the side of making movies with great concepts that are slightly undermined by avoidable problems like long run times, plot holes, excessive complexity, and even dialogue that can't be heard clearly.

But I am glad to be wrong. Nolan totally pulled this movie off, and with considerable flair. Great performances, deft shifting between multiple time frames, and a excellent job at communicating the basic science to all the laymen in the audience. The choice to address quantum mechanics with music video tactics was novel and interesting. He not only got a talented cast but he got strong performances. The movie did run about three hours, but the audience seemed spellbound, at least up to a point.

All that said, I feel that it was a mistake to spend so much time on the security clearance hearing in the 50s, and the subsequent Cabinet confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss. We already had a very good movie by the two hour mark, and these two hearings added an hour to the movie. I did observe some members of the audience get a bit restless around 2:20 hours into the movie, when it became obvious that the movie wasn't about to wrap up and we were going to watch a lot more hearing stuff. Those scenes were not gratuitous, I know, they were crucial to the overall structure of the movie and featured some fine performances. But this long coda diminished the impact of the research scenes and the Trinity test.

After the movie ended and people were getting up to leave, I was a bit surprised to notice that the members of the young family of four seated on my left were all conversing in Spanish about the movie. They were latino, but still it surprised me that they were here to watch a period piece movie about a famous anglo scientist. Otherwise, the audience skewed old, with quite a few senior citizens present.

Barbie today. My sister and I were raised according to very traditional gender roles, though my parents were very much equal partners in both their marriage and the business that they started together. So my parents strongly encouraged me to play sports, fight bullies, learn how to work on cars, and to spend my teenage summers working for the family construction business. Much of my childhood wardrobe was blue, while my sister wore a lot of pink. Even as a major comic fan, I was unwilling to read comics starring female heroes like Supergirl or She-Hulk.

As an adult, I am a heterosexual male who still doesn't own any pink clothes. Anyway, you get the idea. I definitely had no prior interest in a Barbie movie. But the reviews for this movie were so good that I was lured into the theater.

Rather than shamefully slink into the theater dressed in my usual dark attire, I decided to cosplay as Ken, based on the previews I saw in recent months. I wore an aqua t-shirt, powder blue (like hospital scrubs) shorts, and beige/off-white mesh shoes from Hey Dude. Based on seeing Oppenheimer the previous day, I expected the theater to be chilly, so I topped off my outfit with this short-sleeved button down shirt that is like 50/50 tight stripes of salmon and powder blue, though it somehow appears completely pink at a distance of six feet or more. I share all this in order to disclose that I went in with high hopes and not a neutral and open mind.

So how was Barbie? It was fairly amazing, as a deeply subversive and funny movie about gender politics. Barbie World seems like a utopia, so the contrast with our own deeply flawed world was illuminating. The movie is dense with ideas, and many viewers will likely find some of those ideas uncomfortable or disturbing. It took me a long time to recognize that my male gender has been a definite advantage throughout my life, but once I saw it, I couldn't un-see it. At my previous job, I was distinctly over-paid and underworked compared to a female counterpart in a different department there, and I might have said something on her behalf if she hadn't been so hostile to me starting with my second and final interview with the CEO.

I realize that a large majority of the regular posters at this site are men, probably skewing older like early Gen X and late Boomers, so it is second nature for many of us to overlook or directly ignore the greater challenges faced by women in every society. Since this is a movie discussion, let me provide a useful visual aid to illustrate one particular example:



Aside from the expected challenges to the patriarchy, there were other interesting ideas offered. When the main Ken (Ryan Gosling) faces an existential crisis late in the movie, he repeatedly tries to latch onto the main Barbie (Margot Robbie) as his significant other and apparent justification for his existence. But she rejects that and encourages him to find his own purpose in life, one not defined by his relationship to anybody else.

As a guy who has been single and struggling these last two years, it was a refreshing endorsement of what I have been really feeling lately. For a very long time, being in a relationship with my ex was a core part of my identity, and moving on has been hard. Especially this year, when I have had five first dates and zero second dates. But I have recently focused on some home improvement projects and expressing myself through finally decorating the house that I have owned for the last 12 years. It also helped to discover that my ex is getting married in six weeks, so moving forward is the only option.

If someone had told me a couple of years ago that there would be a Barbie movie, my instinctive reaction would have been Hard Pass. I would have assumed that it was a lame cartoon aimed at getting little girls to ask for more Barbie dolls. But this Barbie movie isn't aimed at a single demographic. It is a movie for us all, whether we love or hate or even just don't care about Barbie. Men, women, other genders, and children can all find things to enjoy about this movie, if they keep an open mind. When a young girl called Barbie a fascist, I was shocked and delighted. When Barbie eventually inspired that same young girl, I was equally delighted.

My only disappointment was that Will Ferrell was in this movie and wasn't very funny. I'm not a huge fan, but just seeing him made me expect a good laugh or two. The movie was actually funny, but Will Ferrell wasn't part of the humor. While there were a variety of famous faces in this movie, the talented Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling carry the movie, with some able assistance from America Ferrera. Rita Perlman (best known as Carla from Cheers) shows up, looking good for her age and delivering a decent performance. As with the Spider-verse movies, most of the music in Barbie wasn't my sort of jam, but it was deployed well.

So which was the better movie? Barbie or Oppenheimer? They are both great movies, and they both exceeded my expectations and fired up my imagination. Barbie was very accessible and entertaining, but felt a little to light and airy in spots. Oppenheimer was more serious and formidable, but spent a lot of time on the disappointing ending to his career, which still feels like a bad directorial choice. But Oppenheimer never wavered in quality, and powered right through that sad coda with confidence. So I consider Oppenheimer the better of the two movies, but would definitely recommend both movies.

I watched They Cloned Tyrone on Netflix. This is a fun movie, and features Jamie Foxx as a pimp named Slick Charles, who wields a golden revolver.

Brief plot description: John Boyega plays Fontaine, a dude who discovers that something is very wrong in his neighborhood, and decides to make things right.

I also enjoyed watching They Cloned Tyrone. It was a fun sci-fi experience.

I forgot, I also watched Smile, the horror film about people with a creepy smile... it was... fine. Seemed very much like a few things I had seen before, with a premise similar to The Outsider or even Ringu.

Watched The Night Stalker, the tv movie from 1972. This was inspiration for the X-Files.

This and the sequel stuff is cool. Sometimes not so scary or well done, sometimes very good. But it’s the characters that make it enjoyable. Annoying reporter getting the scoop on supernatural events is well played by Darren McGavin (who is best known as Ralphie’s dad in Christmas Story).

I watched Knock at the Cabin on Prime, from M. Knight Shyamalan. A family is vacationing in a cabin when they are set upon by 4 whack jobs telling them the world will end if one of them doesn't make a sacrifice.

I think the movie is well done and is worth a watch, but it's not amazing and you certainly won't be thinking about it for days after watching.

The twist is different, I guess....

THEY CLONED TYRONE; thanks all for mentioning it, as I'd never heard of it. It was super fun.

It's taken four years, but Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has finally been dethroned as the finest entry in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles filmography.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was a delight. Someone saw Across the Spider-Verse and learned all the right lessons. There was a distinct visual style that fit the material. There were tweaks to well-established characters that made them feel fresh but still themselves.

Here's my theory on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: every lasting interpretation of it has focused on a different one of those four words. The 1987 cartoon was clearly turtles what with the Turtle Blimp, Turtle Van and dining on turtle soup. The 2003 series emphasized ninja and the 2012 series was all about mutants. Rise tried the hardest to be about teenagers, but Mutant Mayhem just blew it back to Dimension X. The boys wanted to go to high school and screwed around making videos of themselves and talked over each other. It was great. Fabulous voice work by a bunch of nobodies that transcends Seth Rogen's inability to entirely avoid his puerile impulses.

It doesn't quite reach the heights of Spider-Verse because its themes of wanting to belong were geared a little younger and more obvious than Miles' reflections on heroism, but there's nothing wrong with being second to one of the best of the last ten years.

Across the Spider-Verse - Not as great as the first one, but it is great. Although I do think the first one was the right amount of Jake Johnstons' Spider-Man. His story feels completely done and Miles doesn't need him as a mentor anymore.

I would read a Pavitr Prabhakar, Spider-Man in Mumbattan graphic novel.

n815e wrote: Watched The Night Stalker, the tv movie from 1972. This was inspiration for the X-Files.

This and the sequel stuff is cool. Sometimes not so scary or well done, sometimes very good. But it’s the characters that make it enjoyable. Annoying reporter getting the scoop on supernatural events is well played by Darren McGavin (who is best known as Ralphie’s dad in Christmas Story).

I was in grade school when that Night Stalker tv movie (and subsequent series Kolchak: the Night Stalker) came out. It seemed so scary and thrilling at that time, but I worry that I will be disappointed if I watch it as an adult. I did watch the modern re-make of The Night Stalker (2005) that got canceled after six episodes. My dvd set includes four more episodes that were completed but not aired. There was one very good episode and the rest was mediocre.