The last movie you saw Thread

[RoseMorninStar]

I've read 'The Time Travelers Wife' but not seen the film. I might have to check that out.

[Alatar]

It's got both Ioan Gruffudd and Chris Evans, whom they show near naked at every opportunity. And I could write an essay on how the three good guys exemplify three types of positive masculine role models while the villain is toxic masculinity personified.

<sorta-tongue-in-cheek>If I joked that Sin City was my pick cause of all the half naked sexy women in leather, would that be the same as your pick, or would I be displaying toxic masculinity? </sorta-tongue-in-cheek>

I'll have a think about my picks...

On flights I normally try to avoid blockbusters that need big screen or anything likely to be heavily edited, like R-rated movies. As a result, I watched:

Moana - Absolutely gorgeous, and that Lin-Manuel soundtrack is just perfect
Tangled - Enjoyable, but forgettable
Lego Movie 2 - Not as good as the first, but still good
Dumbo - Absolutely dreadful. What were they thinking?

[Frelga]

Al, that is not an unexpected question. For the record, Fantastic Four also includes Jessica Alba, whom they show mostly naked (or in a skintight suit, same for Evans) at every opportunity. I can't complain about that, although the attraction is lost on me.

Personally, I don't have a problem with movies showing attractive people of either gender. That's part of the fun. I see a problem when a narrative only includes female characters to be sexy for male viewers/readers and male characters, and never allows women to have any goals of their own.

[Jude]

Anyone else see Mary Poppins Returns? I thoroughly enjoyed it. Great song-and-dance numbers. Not profound or deep or anything, just an enjoyable couple of hours.

I could nitpick here and there, but I won't

[Sunsilver]

I saw it when it came out in 2018, Jude, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had a few nitpicks, but they couldn't have been very serious, as I've forgotten what they were!

Dick van Dyke ROCKS!!! His cameo stole the show!

[RoseMorninStar]

I'd like to watch that film. I've put it on request from our library.

[Impenitent]

Marc and I saw Dogman last weekend (2018, Italian, with subtitles)

An outstanding movie with an extraordinary performance by the lead, Marcello Fonte, who rightly won Best Actor at Cannes for his performance, and director, Matteo Garrone, really doesn't put a foot wrong. The film is set in a dilapidated seaside area of Naples, and the deserted and rundown beach creates a bleak set.

The story is that of a mild-mannered dog-groomer, a very small-scale cocaine dealer for his friends, and his submissive relationship with a domineering, violent petty criminal.

There are some poignant and powerful moments depicting the beautiful, loving relationship between Fonte's character and his young daughter, but on the whole it is grim, dark, dystopian, violent. We saw it with another couple and Janine had to leave the cinema during the film, and I had to look away many times. The last long shot, which leaves the story unresolved, is impeccable.

[RoseMorninStar]

That sounds pretty grim Impy. I looked the film up on Rotten Tomatoes and one of the reviews states,

"The movie is a parable about what happens if we allow the takers, the bullies, and the ego-monsters to dictate our lives unopposed; as such, it's relevant to history and to today's headlines."

A little too much reality for me at the moment. :/

Over the weekend we watched 'Dunkirk' and 'Mary Poppins Returns'. It was too jarring of a contrast, we should not have watched them back to back.
We loved Dunkirk although I had a really hard time hearing the dialog, which is frustrating especially since I only knew the basics of the story.

Mary Poppins kind of surprised me.. how well they did with a new story and new songs but kept the flavor of the original. I think I would have enjoyed it more had we not watched Dunkirk right before it.

[Maria]

We watched "Paul" this week. It turned out to be quite good. We laughed a lot.

[Sunsilver]

I finally got to see Solo on Netflix. Definitely one of the weaker Star Wars offerings. The main problem was everything was just SO predictable! You KNOW Solo is going to wind up owning the Falcon. You KNOW the good guys are going to win...

Alden Ehrenreich does a passable job of the character. His voice and phrasing is uncannily similar to Harrison Ford's, and I think he fitted the role quite well. I had no problems with the acting or dialogue of any of the characters. I did not find myself rolling my eyes at lame dialogue the way I did in some of the other S.W. films. As for the title character, Han comes off as more mature and likable than Ford's Solo in the very first S.W. film. At least he's not leering at women and making sexist comments to them, and he remains loyal and true to his girl friend, while Ford's character came across as a space jock with a girl in every port. It's just the plot. Ho-hum, here we go again...

First time ever I can recall falling asleep during a Star Wars movie!

[Túrin Turambar]

Got around to seeing Aquaman now that it’s on Netflix.

I didn’t dislike it or find it a bad film, but I didn’t find it particularly striking or memorable given the resources which were clearly invested in it.

I found the worldbuilding interesting – the ocean motifs and the different underwater kingdoms with their different cultures – but it also became arbitrary at times. The story wasn't bad but the characters never really became interesting and the dialogue was pretty mundane. The visuals were sometimes spectacular but the scene after scene of CGI being thrown at the screen like confetti looked bland and artificial after a while.

Every DCEU director is going to be compared with Christopher Nolan, which isn’t entirely fair, as Batman offers much better source material than a lot of his DC cousins. But Nolan did seem to realise that a villain doesn’t need to have legions of minions at his command and be bent on world domination to be a threat. A villain with a comprehensible motivation and a realistic and modest objective can often be more intimidating. It occurs to me that this applies to the better Marvel films as well (at least those I consider better) like the first two Spiderman films, first two X-Men films, and Iron Man. Just as a hero who faces significant limitations and gets beaten up in the course of overcoming them comes out as looking more powerful in the end, so too a villain who shows they can overcome limitations as well.

And Aquaman is a bit overpowered, which is a consistent problem with DC heroes. But unlike (say) Wonder Woman, he is forced to face a series of foes who are a match for him.

There’s so much in the film quite a lot of its potential is left untapped. Aquaman’s Maori background is touched on but doesn’t seem to have any influence on his fairly flat character (and why does a small town in America have a Maori lighthouse-keeper?). The idea of a connection with water, the ocean and underwater creatures comes out front and centre when the plot demands it but otherwise is sidelined so we have more action scenes. There’s speculation on the knowledge surface-dwellers have of the Atlanteans but it also isn’t explored to the extent it could be (unlike in franchises like X-Men and Harry Potter, where the relationship between the mundane and fantastic is a key part of the story).

But making films like this seems to be profitable, so there’s no real demand to change. I do like realism in my stories, even the imaginative ones, but enough people are happy with the bright and animated worlds of these sorts of films to keep them going back to the theatre.

[Frelga]

I am genuinely and unironically impressed. I didn't realize that it was possible to write such a thoughtful analysis of Aquaman. My own, you may recall, was "wet Jason Momoa".

I didn't finish watching Throne of Blood because I had to go pick up my son, but I want to see it all the way through some day. It's Macbeth by Kurosawa and it's really cool to see a familiar story with the samurai esthetic.

[yovargas]

I saw Joker. It is a veeery dark, bleak movie which makes it hard to say I "liked" it, but I do think it was impressive and quite well done, and even beautiful in it's own sad way. As I fully expected, all the controversy around it is entirely unfounded and should be ignored as much as possible.

[Maria]

We watched "The World's End" yesterday. It was surprisingly funny, although it takes about 40 minutes to get to the sci fi part of the film. It's a bit hard to watch until then.

[Alatar]

How would any film by the Shaun of the Dead team be considered "surprisingly" funny?

[Maria]

I haven't seen Shaun of the Dead. I try to avoid the horror genre. Is it not horror?

[Alatar]

Comedy Horror. Same two guys as Worlds End and Hot Fuzz

[Frelga]

Rooster Cogburn with John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn. Westerns are not my favorite genre, but it's watchable enough and the scenery is pretty.

[Sunsilver]

Rooster Cogburn with John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn. Westerns are not my favorite genre, but it's watchable enough and the scenery is pretty.

That's one of those movies I'd be happy to watch again..and again...and again!

My other favourite John Wayne western is Rio Bravo, with Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuAjwvtxEM

[Túrin Turambar]

Joker

This is one of those movies I feel like I could write a PhD thesis on, but it’s late and I’d like to think about it some more.

It’s technically brilliant in pretty much every way, from Joaquin Phoenix’s performance to the cinematography and music. It’s made excellent use of its source material, and it’s a relief not to see such a good character wasted. It has a slow-ish start, and about halfway in I was wondering what all the fuss was about. Then it reaches a hook point where the various elements which have been fluidly moving around suddenly crystalise into a sinister edifice (those who’ve seen it will know what I mean) and it starts to reach its potential. I found the build-up and finale much more compelling than the usual ‘band of wisecracking heroes take down the CGI monstrosity’ climax of most superhero films and felt a weight in my stomach for parts of it.

I was perhaps expecting too much, but I still found it one of the best superhero films (in as far as it is a superhero film) and I think it might stay with me for a while. The reviews have been polarised, and having seen it I can understand why – the 68% score on Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t really reflect how I think most people will experience it. It’ll probably be more of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. But it’s a ‘yes’ from me.