Forgot to add that Mad Max Fury Road's soundtrack is great. The people behind the sound recording and music are top notch.
This is my go-to music for driving if I need some added focus.
I love the music from section I like to call "Furiousa and Max become a team" as they drive out the other side of the canyon, shooting motorbike Bantha Raiders out of the air. The rest of the sound seems to fade out and let the music swell and take over. It's just majestic.
So I finally saw the new Mad Max myself tonight, and... I came away a bit disappointed. People here and elsewhere talked it up so much, but I saw it with a group of seven people who also hadn't seen it, and we all agreed that it wasn't as good as promised. I liked it more than they seemed to, but even then, it wasn't the defining movie of its genre that I was promised. Maybe I just missed something, but I came away from it feeling very, "it was pretty good," which seems to be different from most of the other forum goers here. Am I wrong?
Big Trouble in Little China. I don't think it was ever a great movie, but it remains fun. Wonky acting, wonky special effects, wonky story, but it all somehow holds together.
So I finally saw the new Mad Max myself tonight, and... I came away a bit disappointed. People here and elsewhere talked it up so much, but I saw it with a group of seven people who also hadn't seen it, and we all agreed that it wasn't as good as promised. I liked it more than they seemed to, but even then, it wasn't the defining movie of its genre that I was promised. Maybe I just missed something, but I came away from it feeling very, "it was pretty good," which seems to be different from most of the other forum goers here. Am I wrong?
There is a minority that goes "It's pretty good, but not best movie this year level." I can get that to a certain point, but I'd have to know what your key problems were. The most common complaints I've read are:
1. Max wasn't in the movie enough; just an observer. 2. Tom Hardy has a rough voice and doesn't have that force like Mel Gibson did 3. There was no real story and it was just a long car chase. (I personally disagree here, because the story is mostly told through the world building and the setup/execution of the car chase. There's so much to what Immortan Joe created, Furiosa, and other characters who pop up later in the movie)
You aren't alone, but I'm definitely in the camp of "it was fuckin' incredible."
Touching the Void is an incredible movie based on an incredible book of an incredible true story. Probably the best documentary I've seen in the last 5 years or so.
Liberace: Behind the Candelabra. I'd heard it was good, but it was better than I expected. Michael Douglas as Liberace is soooo good. Matt Damon puts in the required moody performance.
It Follows: best horror movie I have seen in years. Stunning cinematography, amazing chiptunes-ish soundtrack, clever conceit. Nightmare fuel even for adults. This movie is everything that modern torture-porn horror is not.
Keep Surfing is a documentary about the German surf scene, focusing on the Munich river waves and other river wave surfing. I put it on out of curiosity, and ended up watching it all in two sittings. It was surprisingly good fun. Kinda need to know German to appreciate it all though, so I admit I struggled in a few parts.
Touching the Void is an incredible movie based on an incredible book of an incredible true story. Probably the best documentary I've seen in the last 5 years or so.
Did the Bond series really need this movie? I think not. It seems like it was doing two different jobs: 1. Wrap up the last three movies so Daniel Craig can leave the role of Bond in a clean way. 2. Set up a new recurring villain for the following Bond movies. I think the movie did a good job with the first job, but a lousy job with the second, and the whole movie suffered for it.
Juliane had never seen it, and I'd only watched it once years ago. It holds up great. So many of the scenes and lines and characters were stuck in my head from 15 years ago. I think a movie being so memorable is a good sign.
Jurassic World I don't think I've been so pissed off at a for more than a few years. I kept watching as I was viewing with the family. I kept comparing it to Jurassic Park as the movie kept referencing the prior work. The plot was predictable and lame. The casting was poor. The acting was melodramatic, stereotypic and binary. The story itself was utter trash and deep as a side-walk puddle. The dimensions of the various dinosaurs varied through out the one movie let alone in comparison to Jurassic Park. The soundtrack was a pale shadow. Sound design seemed completely unbelievable. While there were more female cast members they were framed as stupid princesses. The structure of the movie was pretty poor.
Anyone who scores the movie over 2/10 is most likely watching the movie inebriated.
Does Hollywood think audiences are just way stupider or are dumb stories with recognisable brands rising to the top?
Jurassic World I don't think I've been so pissed off at a for more than a few years. I kept watching as I was viewing with the family. I kept comparing it to Jurassic Park as the movie kept referencing the prior work. The plot was predictable and lame. The casting was poor. The acting was melodramatic, stereotypic and binary. The story itself was utter trash and deep as a side-walk puddle. The dimensions of the various dinosaurs varied through out the one movie let alone in comparison to Jurassic Park. The soundtrack was a pale shadow. Sound design seemed completely unbelievable. While there were more female cast members they were framed as stupid princesses. The structure of the movie was pretty poor.
Anyone who scores the movie over 2/10 is most likely watching the movie inebriated.
Does Hollywood think audiences are just way stupider or are dumb stories with recognisable brands rising to the top?
I agree with everything you say (with the possible exception of casting if only because Chris Pratt was great), but the last ~15 minutes of that movie were awesome.
Got to see an advanced screening of Spotlight on Wednesday, the new Michael Keaton/Mark Ruffalo film about the Boston Globe Spotlight team covering the Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal starting in 2001-2002
This is so the opposite of Nightcrawler, where we watch hard-working, dedicated, investigative journalists unravel this big problem by doing research, interviewing victims, dealing with lawyers/clergy, and open public documents. The film gives a very realistic portrayal of a journalist in this regard when it comes to finding sources and understanding when to publish a story when all your bases can be covered. It's incredibly compelling to watch all the pieces fall into the place with what the journalists have to do and how the church scandal is on such a major scale. The director knew how to ratchet up the tension in a very grounded way as more evidence stacks against the church and how the journalists have to find a way to irrefutably nail them.
The worst I can say about it, is that it can feel very workman-like for an Oscar movie. No score, nothing too outstanding acting wise (Schreiber barely does anything), and there are only a few memorable scenes of cinematography. I highly recommend it, but you will want some coffee with it because I would have been distracted by something else if I didn't see it in a theater.
Just saw The Peanuts Movie. Blue Sky knocked it out of the park. They nailed the style of the comic strips perfectly. I highly recommend checking it out.
Trips to Europe mean airplane movies! Here are the four I watched during those flights.
Inside Out - Loved most of it. Basically the whole movie outside of the period where the imaginary friend shows up. I've never really liked that kind of character, so he dragged the movie down a bit with him. Other than that though, excellent film. I'll admit that I teared up during the climax.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Not a great film, but it was fun throughout. Wouldn't watch again, but would recommend to others to watch it once.
Ant-Man - Again, not a great film, but fun. The villain felt a lot more forced than most of the other Marvel films I've seen, which made it kind of hard to take any of it seriously. Luckily the good guys were entertaining enough to make up for that and bring it back to being a fun movie overall. Also wouldn't watch again.
Mad Max: Fury Road - Already saw this and commented here about it, but it was a lot different seeing it again without a peanut gallery. Being able to focus on the subtleties of the movie made it a lot better. Still don't know if I like it enough to watch a third time on my own, but I would gladly watch it again with others.
My mom really likes Zatoichi. I bought her the Criterion Collection boxed set that got released awhile back. But I only watched the first one.
I recently realized, all those movies are on Hulu, which I have. So I started watching them all in order.
If you don't know, Zaotichi is about a blind guy who is a masseur, but he's also the most skilled and deadly swordsman. A lot like Saitama from One Punch Man. Godlike powers in a body that you couldn't possibly imagine being that strong, and definitely not a godlike personality.
At least for the first three movies, and I assume many more to come, this is a serial. Straight up. Each movie follows directly from the previous one. They can still stand alone individually, but really you want to watch them in order. The original series has 26 films from 1962 to 1989. That's pretty crazy.
The content of the story is a relatively shallow and straightforward story from the Edo period of Japan. They involve Yakuza, Samurai, women, revenge, crime, romance. They really aren't high brow at all. Basically the same level stuff you get from a quality Hollywood Western.
What's really shocking is that despite being relatively low brow, the cinematography is just a step below the highest possible brow. Every shot is stunning. They put such tremendous effort into the production of what is summer blockbuster material.
Definitely going to keep watching them all. Probably watching #4 tonight.
as brow increases with budget, art value extremely high as brow decreases inverse to budget, art value high as brow decreases with budget, art value approaches nil
Comments
1. Max wasn't in the movie enough; just an observer.
2. Tom Hardy has a rough voice and doesn't have that force like Mel Gibson did
3. There was no real story and it was just a long car chase. (I personally disagree here, because the story is mostly told through the world building and the setup/execution of the car chase. There's so much to what Immortan Joe created, Furiosa, and other characters who pop up later in the movie)
You aren't alone, but I'm definitely in the camp of "it was fuckin' incredible."
Did the Bond series really need this movie? I think not. It seems like it was doing two different jobs: 1. Wrap up the last three movies so Daniel Craig can leave the role of Bond in a clean way. 2. Set up a new recurring villain for the following Bond movies. I think the movie did a good job with the first job, but a lousy job with the second, and the whole movie suffered for it.
Juliane had never seen it, and I'd only watched it once years ago. It holds up great. So many of the scenes and lines and characters were stuck in my head from 15 years ago. I think a movie being so memorable is a good sign.
I don't think I've been so pissed off at a for more than a few years. I kept watching as I was viewing with the family. I kept comparing it to Jurassic Park as the movie kept referencing the prior work.
The plot was predictable and lame.
The casting was poor.
The acting was melodramatic, stereotypic and binary.
The story itself was utter trash and deep as a side-walk puddle.
The dimensions of the various dinosaurs varied through out the one movie let alone in comparison to Jurassic Park.
The soundtrack was a pale shadow.
Sound design seemed completely unbelievable.
While there were more female cast members they were framed as stupid princesses.
The structure of the movie was pretty poor.
Anyone who scores the movie over 2/10 is most likely watching the movie inebriated.
Does Hollywood think audiences are just way stupider or are dumb stories with recognisable brands rising to the top?
@sK0pe is spot on.
This is so the opposite of Nightcrawler, where we watch hard-working, dedicated, investigative journalists unravel this big problem by doing research, interviewing victims, dealing with lawyers/clergy, and open public documents. The film gives a very realistic portrayal of a journalist in this regard when it comes to finding sources and understanding when to publish a story when all your bases can be covered. It's incredibly compelling to watch all the pieces fall into the place with what the journalists have to do and how the church scandal is on such a major scale. The director knew how to ratchet up the tension in a very grounded way as more evidence stacks against the church and how the journalists have to find a way to irrefutably nail them.
The worst I can say about it, is that it can feel very workman-like for an Oscar movie. No score, nothing too outstanding acting wise (Schreiber barely does anything), and there are only a few memorable scenes of cinematography. I highly recommend it, but you will want some coffee with it because I would have been distracted by something else if I didn't see it in a theater.
Inside Out - Loved most of it. Basically the whole movie outside of the period where the imaginary friend shows up. I've never really liked that kind of character, so he dragged the movie down a bit with him. Other than that though, excellent film. I'll admit that I teared up during the climax.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Not a great film, but it was fun throughout. Wouldn't watch again, but would recommend to others to watch it once.
Ant-Man - Again, not a great film, but fun. The villain felt a lot more forced than most of the other Marvel films I've seen, which made it kind of hard to take any of it seriously. Luckily the good guys were entertaining enough to make up for that and bring it back to being a fun movie overall. Also wouldn't watch again.
Mad Max: Fury Road - Already saw this and commented here about it, but it was a lot different seeing it again without a peanut gallery. Being able to focus on the subtleties of the movie made it a lot better. Still don't know if I like it enough to watch a third time on my own, but I would gladly watch it again with others.
I recently realized, all those movies are on Hulu, which I have. So I started watching them all in order.
If you don't know, Zaotichi is about a blind guy who is a masseur, but he's also the most skilled and deadly swordsman. A lot like Saitama from One Punch Man. Godlike powers in a body that you couldn't possibly imagine being that strong, and definitely not a godlike personality.
At least for the first three movies, and I assume many more to come, this is a serial. Straight up. Each movie follows directly from the previous one. They can still stand alone individually, but really you want to watch them in order. The original series has 26 films from 1962 to 1989. That's pretty crazy.
The content of the story is a relatively shallow and straightforward story from the Edo period of Japan. They involve Yakuza, Samurai, women, revenge, crime, romance. They really aren't high brow at all. Basically the same level stuff you get from a quality Hollywood Western.
What's really shocking is that despite being relatively low brow, the cinematography is just a step below the highest possible brow. Every shot is stunning. They put such tremendous effort into the production of what is summer blockbuster material.
Definitely going to keep watching them all. Probably watching #4 tonight.
as brow decreases inverse to budget, art value high
as brow decreases with budget, art value approaches nil