I don't think Alien 3 was bad on its own, but it ruined a great ending for the series.
Aliens tied everything up in a nice little bow when it came to Ripley. They should've just left her character and moved on to a new protagonist .
Alien3was supposed to tie Ripley's story up with a neat little bow and let the series move on to a new protagonist, but we all know how that worked out...
The same way it worked out when Aliens did it because when there's money to be made, restraint goes out the window
Not at all the same way. Continuing a story of a character gets a lot more contrived when you have to bring them back from the dead
I don't think Alien 3 was bad on its own, but it ruined a great ending for the series.
Aliens tied everything up in a nice little bow when it came to Ripley. They should've just left her character and moved on to a new protagonist .
Alien3was supposed to tie Ripley's story up with a neat little bow and let the series move on to a new protagonist, but we all know how that worked out...
The same way it worked out when Aliens did it because when there's money to be made, restraint goes out the window
Not at all the same way. Continuing a story of a character gets a lot more contrived when you have to bring them back from the dead
Poorly.
They both worked out poorly.
Alien3 is a far poorer film than it should have been due to extensive studio meddling. I know the same could be argued for Resurrection, but Fincher, to this day, refuses to address anything to do with the production of that film.
ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
You know what is a great film? Gone Girl is a great film.
Which is unsurprising, but I was happy to find it was on par with the book. Also, I can now officially root for Rosamond Pike to win the Oscar, because goddamn.
I'm also stoked for Dark Places, which I didn't know was coming out this year. A little disappointed Flynn won't be doing the screenplay for it, though. I thought she did a good job with Gone Girl, which translated to the screen much better than I would have expected.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
My attitudes towards French action movie directors have come around since seeing La Femme Nikita and Brotherhood of the Wolf, but at the time, I was pretty furious that they gave the Alien franchise to Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Like, at the end of Alien: Ressurection, they specifically point out that they have 100 yards between them and the ship, and it's commented on that it'll be, like, the toughest 100 yards anyone had ever run (xenomorphs make Reggie White look like a border collie). And then you get all excited that it's going to be some balls-to-the-wall crazy action sequence.
Nope, Ripley just gets dragged through a grate and there's a big pile of WTF involving Ripley romancing a momma alien and a xeno-human hybrid. Everyone else gets to the ship without incident. Fucking hell, what was that?
Like, I'm told that City of Lost Children was great, but I couldn't stand Delicatessen despite its art-house cred, and I can't understand what made Jeunet get the nod for an Alien movie. Was Roger Corman unavailable?
I hated the fact that they brought Ripley back in Resurrection, even before I saw the damn movie. It was some of the worst fucking shoehorning of a character I've ever seen.
Alien 1-3 created a moderately fantastical universe filled with robots and aliens and space-flight, but it never struck me as a universe where people come back from the dead.
By itself as its own thing, Resurrection might've been alright. But as an Alien film it just felt like they'd tainted the existing universe with a bunch of stupid bullshit.
And the fact that she essentially comes back as Super Ripley is just extra dumb icing on the stupid cake.
RT800 on
+2
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Jeunet is an interesting director with a strong visual sense, and it's clear that after two movies made by incredibly strong craftsmen directors, whoever was in charge of the franchise wanted to go for people like that (remember, Fincher had only done music videos prior to Alien 3, which is always indicative of visual imagination over storytelling prowess). I can't imagine why, though.
How close is it to the book? I read it a few years ago because I was looking for other Joe Hill stuff while waiting for new issues of Locke and Key. I enjoyed it enough, but thought the novel was pretty average.
If Alien Resurrection hadn't been made I probably would be one of the people who write Alien3 off. But the fourth film has given me a greater appreciation for the third. It's also my #1 reason I dislike Joss Whedon, he might make all the excuses in the world but that film has his fingerprints all over it.
If Alien Resurrection hadn't been made I probably would be one of the people who write Alien3 off. But the fourth film has given me a greater appreciation for the third. It's also my #1 reason I dislike Joss Whedon, he might make all the excuses in the world but that film has his fingerprints all over it.
I wasn't really a fan of the writing in the movie, but, like, the script was one of the smallest problems of that movie. Joss wasn't responsible for shoehorning Ripley into the thing, he wasn't responsible for the ending, he wasn't responsible for whittling Winona Ryder out of a block of wood... just, the movie was terrible and I'm fine with Whedon taking some of the blame, it seems silly to base one's dislike for the man on this film, because, unlike most of his more recent work, he had a ton of executive meddling on this one.
Like, I think that A:R is a terrible movie, but it doesn't really make me actively angry, because it is so easy to write off as a blatant cash grab. Alien Cubed, on the other hand, is actually a pretty good stand-alone movie that makes me horribly angry for what it does to the previous films' continuity. All that work Ripley did in Aliens was just undone before the opening credits of the next movie. Low fucking blow.
0
Options
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
You're right, Alien 3 should have revealed the hidden continuity with the Cube series.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
I never got the intense dislike for Alien 3, since I liked that one from the first. It's more flawed than the two films that precede it, but IMO it's still an intriguing film that's beautiful to look at, and I cared about the characters more than I did about the Cameronian cartoons in Aliens. (The latter work very well in that sort of film, mind you.) Personally I didn't mind Hicks' and Newt's loss a single bit, and I like how especially Newt's death drives Ripley's character in the film.
I also think that the longer cut of the film messes as many things up as it improves, especially the alien's birth. The dead ox thing doesn't make much sense and it's not particularly effective IMO, whereas the dog is and makes much more sense with the alien that is eventually born.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I never got the intense dislike for Alien 3, since I liked that one from the first. It's more flawed than the two films that precede it, but IMO it's still an intriguing film that's beautiful to look at, and I cared about the characters more than I did about the Cameronian cartoons in Aliens. (The latter work very well in that sort of film, mind you.) Personally I didn't mind Hicks' and Newt's loss a single bit, and I like how especially Newt's death drives Ripley's character in the film.
I also think that the longer cut of the film messes as many things up as it improves, especially the alien's birth. The dead ox thing doesn't make much sense and it's not particularly effective IMO, whereas the dog is and makes much more sense with the alien that is eventually born.
I wouldn't have nearly the problem with the movie that I do if it hadn't been literally the very next thing that happened to Ripley. If they had skipped a few years, they made it back to Earth, Ripley adopted Newt and married Hicks, and then, on a later journey, their ship got infested (likely plot point: Weyland-Yutani instigates it, because Ripley's a liability/pest and that's how they roll) and then all the events happen exactly the same way... it would've been fine. Give a reprieve before the hopeless awfulness of the universe comes for them again. Hell, let Newt and Hicks actually be characters.
Making all that happen literally on the return journey from the previous movie tends to take me out of Aliens, because, they struggle and reach that well-earned survival ending, and then you can't help but think, "Poochie Newt & Hicks died on their way back to their home planet. Ripley, too. Also Bishop is evil."
i never knew just how many people who were probably around or under 11 when alien 3 came out, have such strong opinions of its quality.
(edit: before i get kicked again, i meant mostly comment sites like the site i linked a few pages back. i didnt mean you. no you dont have to hit the report button again goddamnit chill.)
i never knew just how many people who were probably around or under 11 when alien 3 came out, have such strong opinions of its quality.
(edit: before i get kicked again, i meant mostly comment sites like the site i linked a few pages back. i didnt mean you. no you dont have to hit the report button again goddamnit chill.)
Still kinda a goosey thing to say, though. When video on demand and rentals are as ubiquitous as they are, it doesn't matter when a movie first came out. The age at which you first see a movie makes a little more sense as an important factor, but still... maybe not the argument you want to lead with.
It's not really that difficult to grasp. If you want your film considered on its own merits, then maybe don't make a sequel.
If you are making a sequel and decide to completely invalidate the previous films ending in the title sequence of yours, I guess maybe make sure it's a damn good film. Which Aliens 3 sure isn't. Or else you don't get to whine when people refuse to consider your film solely on its own merits because you just crapped all over a film they liked better.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
The Voices, a film that is trying too hard to be all things and jumps so hard from absurd to comedic to srs biznez drama nothing is able to be accepted as true. It's the first film solo directed by Marjane Satrapi, the lady who wrote Persepolis, and it has a lot of euro absurd touches to it that feel more cheap and insulting than it should, but more on that later. And it has a trailer that completely misleads the movie and actually got my hopes up, implying it's more comedy than it is.
The story is Ryan Reynolds works at a bathtub and toilet manufacturer in the middle of nowhere, USA, where everything is run down and desolate because to some artiste this is what they think any part of the US is outside of LA and NYC. He's got some schizophrenia issues and believes his dog and cat talk to him, much like his mother heard angels when he was a kid. He lives in a small apartment behind a closed bowling alley with wood paneling and shag carpet because he's a dimwit on top of being a schizophrenic. While living his boring life where he sort of always sees the happier things, he organizes the company picnic with the temp office worker, Gretel from H&G Witch Hunters, and pines for her even though she doesn't like him, but that's ok because Anna Kendrick is there who really really likes him.
Suffice to say, and this isn't spoilers because it's in the trailer, accidents occur and Gretel is killed and Reynolds keeps her head in his fridge, where she can still talk to him and now he has three voices talking to him now. From there things go off the rails and goes from comedy to drama at a neck breaking speed and then there's stupid, then huh?, then what?, then "really?", topped off with an ending that is the p-word.
The acting is ok, but Reynolds has no real direction and because of that he's everywhere which makes him not believable for a crazy guy. He can do funny, he can do serious (though he's better at funny). but he's not talented enough to do both at the extremes being asked (and very few could, really). And the film doesn't peg his character enough to be someone like Dexter who is able to hide the crazy, or make him smart enough to be completely lovable as a goof. So the result is Reynolds just being this amalgam of autistic, stupid, angry, crying, vengeful, and nothing comes through or is believable. Gemma Arterton is good, Anna Kendrick is good and this is one of the few films she's done where I didn't feel like she's being crammed down our throats (I do like her but she's in like 5 movies a year enough already), and that's really about it for the actors. The voices done for the cat and dog are fine if the CGI for the animals is a little too obvious.
This is low budget VOD direct movie, but at the same time it tries to have an ironic look and feel to it and that clashes with reality. For instance, everyone in the town has beat up vehicles and nothing looks new or clean, but LOLZ GUYS the warehouse Reynolds works at makes the employees dress up in bright pink warehouse suit! There's a chinese Elvis singing at a Chinese restaurant with nobody in it but he's flailing around lolz! Ryan Reynolds has tattoos in real life on his wrist and calf but it makes no sense for this character to have them given his history and life story but screw it, we don't want to pay the 100 bucks for concealer or simply film these scenes differently. And the few scenes outside of the two major setpieces (apartment and warehouse) look hella cheap; a news report on the TV looks like it was filmed by making a desk out of pushing some Bingo Hall tables together with nothing in the background.
The film does have some interesting things in it, especially an impactful shift from reality vs. reality about 40 minutes in, but that is pretty much erased by the end with an ending that is just dumb. Not ironic dumb which is cool in France or SoHo or Venice Beach or whatever, or charming dumb like say....a Tommy Boy ending, but just undeserved and trying to make sure your last moments of the movie end on a happy thought as opposed to going WTF is this shit?
Still, I would recommend seeing it, but on the lowest level of recommendation, right above "whatever, I don't care." Don't pay to watch it, God no, but when it shows up on Netflix in a few months then give it a go. It's not a black comedy it thinks it is, not quite as serious it thinks it is, but under a better director or with better budget things could have gone better. And sadly it's the kind of movie that was supposed to let Reynolds rebound a bit from Green Lantern and RIPD but it doesn't. So hopefully Deadpool does that.
I watched Grand Budapest Hotel yesterday in my attempt to watch as many of the Best Picture nominees as possible (6 out of 8 at the moment, and I really have no desire to watch American Sniper or Selma).
I'm normally not a big fan of Wes Anderson's movies and this one also had some of his classic elements that I didn't like, but I overall I really liked it, surprisingly so. It's probably my favorite one of his movies. Best Picture? No, but still a damn entertaining 90 minutes.
I watched 16 Blocks the other day and I always forget how much I enjoy that movie. It's from Willis' string of movies in the early oughts that I think tends to get overlooked. Mos Def's inconsistent voice affectation aside I really enjoy his performance as a guy ernestly trying to change his life around and trying to do the right thing by testifying. Willis is great as a burnt out, alcoholic cop just trying to slide through to retirement. My only issue with it is the ending
For a self admitted real bad guy and bad cop the movie tries too much to play him as a hero at the end. There's like one line of dialogue recognizing that he went to prison that's easy to miss, They should have given a short montage or had Mos Def send his cake to Willis in the pen or something.
0
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
There's a very real chance that The Imitation Game will win the Oscar tonight for Best Adapted Screenplay. It has already secured 7 other nominations: Director, Score, Production Design, Editing, Picture, Actor, and Supporting Actress. Aside from the acting awards, these nominations and definitely any potential win tonight constitutes (ironically) a gross injustice. By and large, this film deserves as many accolades as its hero actually received before his contributions to the war effort were made public.
There is another forbidden p-word that is, to my mind, a far worse crime to level at any movie, and that word is pedestrian. From Desplat's uncharacteristically by-the-numbers score to the undistinguished production design and editing, the movie's presentation is as bog-standard as one could expect. I am not normally one for leveling charges of "Oscar bait," and I'm not saying The Imitation Game was designed as such, but it falls into that putative genre far more than most.
Worse than these, however, is the nomination for Best Director. Morten Tyldum has a few good ideas, but only a few; perhaps 80% of the movie is shot without even a hint of verve, imagination, or any effort to engage the mind or excite the audience. Characters are staged in lines across the screen, or in shot/reverse shot set-ups, as if the film were a made-for-TV movie. Whole scenes are orchestrated to convey one emotion or piece of information to the point of repetition. It's so boring that the movie barely rises to the level of "conventional".
Even so, the injustice of Tyldum's nomination--which takes a 5th slot in a very competitive category, a slot that might have gone to Ava DuVernay (Selma), Damien Chazelle (Whiplash), David Fincher (Gone Girl), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) or others--pales in comparison to the nomination and predicted win for Best Adapted Screenplay. The script is the most lackluster element of the whole project, and the blueprint for everything else. This is the first feature screenplay by author Graham Moore; he has learned the form but not the substance. A hybrid genre piece, The Imitation Game's script fails on multiple fronts--as a spy story, as a thriller, as a character study, and as a work of history. It's poorly structured; the dialogue is often rote and repetitive; certain aspects of the film are needlessly confusing (why is Knightly's character not allowed to work openly with them if, as the film states, only her parents cared?); traditional conflicts have been invented where none existed, and infused with virtually no life or meaning; little attempt is made to explain Turing's work or ideas, an essential aspect of the story that has been replaced by many people over and over telling the audience what a genius he is; and the story has, in almost 2 hours, perhaps 15 minutes of genuine interest and emotion in it. Cumberbatch and Knightly deliver fine performances during those 15 minutes but are largely wasted outside of them, as are the many other talented actors in the film (in particular Charles Dance, whose largely fictional and utterly facile paper tiger of a character only serves by contrast to highlight how wonderful he is in Game of Thrones, where he has had material to work with).
The movie's greatest crime is that, as Turing was forced by his government to undergo chemical castration, so too does the film feel impotent, weak, and desexualized. Although Turing's homosexuality is a major part of the story, it is never expressed in sexual terms (indeed, it seems impossible to imagine this Turing ever having sex with anyone), only in terms of social awkwardness and, later, legal punishment. There, too, the movie fails, essentially skipping over the key outrage of Turing's prosecution. It portrays Turing's arrest and conviction for homosexuality as an accident perpetrated by unthinking government agents ignorant of Turing's (then-secret) contributions to the war effort. We see the police, bent on prosecuting any discovered homosexual; we see a government agent, aware of Turing's story and sympathetic but possessing no jurisdictional ability to intervene; but what we do not see is a character aware of all the facts who consciously decides to step aside while bigotry targets and arguably destroys one of his nation's greatest heroes. Instead, the implication is that what happened to Turing was an unhappy coincidence--that, due to the necessary secrecy surrounding Enigma, Turing could not have been saved from prosecution. As far as I can tell, the truth of the matter is that the government knew and did not care, then and until 2013, when it finally issued a belated pardon.
This kind of writing and filmmaking would be offensively poor in any situation. For it to receive more nominations than almost any other film this year, not to mention the expected win for Best Adapted Screenplay, is simply inexcusable. I will be rooting against The Imitation Game tonight in virtually every category, and I hope you will join me in doing so.
Live-action adaptations of manga or anime always suffer the problem of having too much source material to fit into a feature-length film. They usually turn into a jumbled mess trying to hit all the high points or 90 minutes of people standing around waxing philosophical and then having one big action scene because the budget doesn't allow for proper scope.
Live-action adaptations of manga or anime always suffer the problem of having too much source material to fit into a feature-length film. They usually turn into a jumbled mess trying to hit all the high points or 90 minutes of people standing around waxing philosophical and then having one big action scene because the budget doesn't allow for proper scope.
The effects do look really good in that trailer I'll give them that. Changing the stone throw scene to a bow and arrow bugs me a bit but archery is all the rage now I guess.
And Righty acting all emotional in that trailer is definitely different from the source material.
Live-action adaptations of manga or anime always suffer the problem of having too much source material to fit into a feature-length film. They usually turn into a jumbled mess trying to hit all the high points or 90 minutes of people standing around waxing philosophical and then having one big action scene because the budget doesn't allow for proper scope.
Which is weird because anime and manga is usually packed with filler (even the non-shounen stuff). You'd figure authors would jump at the chance to tighten up their scripts.
There is another forbidden p-word that is, to my mind, a far worse crime to level at any movie, and that word is pedestrian. From Desplat's uncharacteristically by-the-numbers score to the undistinguished production design and editing, the movie's presentation is as bog-standard as one could expect. I am not normally one for leveling charges of "Oscar bait," and I'm not saying The Imitation Game was designed as such, but it falls into that putative genre far more than most.
Oh I think The Imitation Game is one of the most egregious offenders of Oscar bait in recent times. The movie could be about almost anything else and it would evoke the same feel and tone. It's no surprise that it got nominated, considering it was distributed by the Weinsteins, kings of Oscar bait.
Did anyone else watch the Independent Spirit Awards?
It was kind of bizarre watching an award show geared toward independent film that only seemed to showcase films starring well-known actors. Like, Birdman took home best picture, a film with a budget of 16.5 million. And sure that's small relative to big budget hollywood productions, but it's still millions of dollars.
The show seemed to be very gung-ho about supporting independent film but their concept of indie filmmaking didn't seem to include the little guy. You've got Julianne Moore accepting her award for best actress in Still Alice (budget: 5 million), talking about how small the movie was, how they didn't even have a decent light kit for shooting inside, and that she had to call up her friend Alec Baldwin and plead with him to be in the movie. I can't think of many low-budget productions that could just call up Alec Baldwin.
I'm all for supporting independent film, but it was weird watching people advocate that support go towards the filmmakers who seem to be doing just fine right now. It'd be nice to see the little guy get more representation.
You know what is a great film? Gone Girl is a great film.
Which is unsurprising, but I was happy to find it was on par with the book. Also, I can now officially root for Rosamond Pike to win the Oscar, because goddamn.
I'm also stoked for Dark Places, which I didn't know was coming out this year. A little disappointed Flynn won't be doing the screenplay for it, though. I thought she did a good job with Gone Girl, which translated to the screen much better than I would have expected.
He's better in comedy. He's a great lead in Waiting, just the righ kind of d-bag in Van WIlder (although he took the Jim Carrey speak-but-don't-look-at-people-in-the-eye-as-you-smart-aleck to a level everyone has copied since) he was one of the highlights in Blade Trinity, good in The Change-Up and Safe House, and was one of the few highlights in Wolverine Origins.
Did anyone else watch the Independent Spirit Awards?
It was kind of bizarre watching an award show geared toward independent film that only seemed to showcase films starring well-known actors. Like, Birdman took home best picture, a film with a budget of 16.5 million. And sure that's small relative to big budget hollywood productions, but it's still millions of dollars.
The show seemed to be very gung-ho about supporting independent film but their concept of indie filmmaking didn't seem to include the little guy. You've got Julianne Moore accepting her award for best actress in Still Alice (budget: 5 million), talking about how small the movie was, how they didn't even have a decent light kit for shooting inside, and that she had to call up her friend Alec Baldwin and plead with him to be in the movie. I can't think of many low-budget productions that could just call up Alec Baldwin.
I'm all for supporting independent film, but it was weird watching people advocate that support go towards the filmmakers who seem to be doing just fine right now. It'd be nice to see the little guy get more representation.
Indie films to me has just evolved to becoming a hipster counter culture thing in films which, ironically, isn't really counter culture. It just means these actors have vanity projects or have enough money saved up to get their friends script made or what have you. These days Oscars are seen as too glitzy so to show some jaded hollywood writers you're still of the people, you do indie films and act like you were filming Clerks. In some ways it's less the AA or AAA development league, but these older/less relevant actors looking to keep their time in the sun more by going down a weight class and trying to clean up there (sports metaphors still work for cinema!)
Independent should mean budget no more than 2 million these days. No way Birdman is independent, and I never saw it that way, it was just a small budget experimental film.
There's a happy middle ground out there between Birdman and a film school movie about gay cowboys eating pudding.
Did anyone else watch the Independent Spirit Awards?
It was kind of bizarre watching an award show geared toward independent film that only seemed to showcase films starring well-known actors. Like, Birdman took home best picture, a film with a budget of 16.5 million. And sure that's small relative to big budget hollywood productions, but it's still millions of dollars.
The show seemed to be very gung-ho about supporting independent film but their concept of indie filmmaking didn't seem to include the little guy. You've got Julianne Moore accepting her award for best actress in Still Alice (budget: 5 million), talking about how small the movie was, how they didn't even have a decent light kit for shooting inside, and that she had to call up her friend Alec Baldwin and plead with him to be in the movie. I can't think of many low-budget productions that could just call up Alec Baldwin.
I'm all for supporting independent film, but it was weird watching people advocate that support go towards the filmmakers who seem to be doing just fine right now. It'd be nice to see the little guy get more representation.
I was just thinking about this yesterday. My subjective opinion is that there are far more high quality indie films today than there were 10 years ago - the talent level has risen and a lot more prominent actors and film makers (directors, cinematographers, etc.) are doing indie's. I'd be interested in seeing someone chart the average budget of every Sundance film over the last 20 years to see if this suspicion is true.
Keep in mind technically Terminator 1 was an indie film. So was Pulp Fiction, Usual Suspects, etc.
Independent should mean budget no more than 2 million these days. No way Birdman is independent, and I never saw it that way, it was just a small budget experimental film.
There's a happy middle ground out there between Birdman and a film school movie about gay cowboys eating pudding.
Why should there be some kind of arbitrary budget constraint on whether or not a film is considered "independent?"
The early aughts-beloved Donnie Darko cost $3.8 million (or was it $4.5 million? Wikipedia disagrees with itself) but was financed pretty much by Drew Barrymore's production company because she had liked the script so much.
I'm sure The Fall cost more than $2 million to make, but it was funded almost entirely out of pocket by the director himself.
The Veronica Mars film was distributed by Warner Bros, but almost all of the film's budget came from the Kickstarter campaign.
It seems to me that you want to redefine what the term "independent film" means because you don't like how films can fall under the definition but feel "too Hollywood" or whatever to you.
Posts
My cheeks hurt.
Poorly.
They both worked out poorly.
Alien3 is a far poorer film than it should have been due to extensive studio meddling. I know the same could be argued for Resurrection, but Fincher, to this day, refuses to address anything to do with the production of that film.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Which is unsurprising, but I was happy to find it was on par with the book. Also, I can now officially root for Rosamond Pike to win the Oscar, because goddamn.
I'm also stoked for Dark Places, which I didn't know was coming out this year. A little disappointed Flynn won't be doing the screenplay for it, though. I thought she did a good job with Gone Girl, which translated to the screen much better than I would have expected.
It was alright.
Weird though.
And tonally all over the place.
Interesting enough to keep my attention at least.
Like, at the end of Alien: Ressurection, they specifically point out that they have 100 yards between them and the ship, and it's commented on that it'll be, like, the toughest 100 yards anyone had ever run (xenomorphs make Reggie White look like a border collie). And then you get all excited that it's going to be some balls-to-the-wall crazy action sequence.
Like, I'm told that City of Lost Children was great, but I couldn't stand Delicatessen despite its art-house cred, and I can't understand what made Jeunet get the nod for an Alien movie. Was Roger Corman unavailable?
Alien 1-3 created a moderately fantastical universe filled with robots and aliens and space-flight, but it never struck me as a universe where people come back from the dead.
By itself as its own thing, Resurrection might've been alright. But as an Alien film it just felt like they'd tainted the existing universe with a bunch of stupid bullshit.
And the fact that she essentially comes back as Super Ripley is just extra dumb icing on the stupid cake.
How close is it to the book? I read it a few years ago because I was looking for other Joe Hill stuff while waiting for new issues of Locke and Key. I enjoyed it enough, but thought the novel was pretty average.
Like, I think that A:R is a terrible movie, but it doesn't really make me actively angry, because it is so easy to write off as a blatant cash grab. Alien Cubed, on the other hand, is actually a pretty good stand-alone movie that makes me horribly angry for what it does to the previous films' continuity. All that work Ripley did in Aliens was just undone before the opening credits of the next movie. Low fucking blow.
I also think that the longer cut of the film messes as many things up as it improves, especially the alien's birth. The dead ox thing doesn't make much sense and it's not particularly effective IMO, whereas the dog is and makes much more sense with the alien that is eventually born.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Don't read the shit ending to the light novel!
I wouldn't have nearly the problem with the movie that I do if it hadn't been literally the very next thing that happened to Ripley. If they had skipped a few years, they made it back to Earth, Ripley adopted Newt and married Hicks, and then, on a later journey, their ship got infested (likely plot point: Weyland-Yutani instigates it, because Ripley's a liability/pest and that's how they roll) and then all the events happen exactly the same way... it would've been fine. Give a reprieve before the hopeless awfulness of the universe comes for them again. Hell, let Newt and Hicks actually be characters.
(edit: before i get kicked again, i meant mostly comment sites like the site i linked a few pages back. i didnt mean you. no you dont have to hit the report button again goddamnit chill.)
Still kinda a goosey thing to say, though. When video on demand and rentals are as ubiquitous as they are, it doesn't matter when a movie first came out. The age at which you first see a movie makes a little more sense as an important factor, but still... maybe not the argument you want to lead with.
If you are making a sequel and decide to completely invalidate the previous films ending in the title sequence of yours, I guess maybe make sure it's a damn good film. Which Aliens 3 sure isn't. Or else you don't get to whine when people refuse to consider your film solely on its own merits because you just crapped all over a film they liked better.
The story is Ryan Reynolds works at a bathtub and toilet manufacturer in the middle of nowhere, USA, where everything is run down and desolate because to some artiste this is what they think any part of the US is outside of LA and NYC. He's got some schizophrenia issues and believes his dog and cat talk to him, much like his mother heard angels when he was a kid. He lives in a small apartment behind a closed bowling alley with wood paneling and shag carpet because he's a dimwit on top of being a schizophrenic. While living his boring life where he sort of always sees the happier things, he organizes the company picnic with the temp office worker, Gretel from H&G Witch Hunters, and pines for her even though she doesn't like him, but that's ok because Anna Kendrick is there who really really likes him.
Suffice to say, and this isn't spoilers because it's in the trailer, accidents occur and Gretel is killed and Reynolds keeps her head in his fridge, where she can still talk to him and now he has three voices talking to him now. From there things go off the rails and goes from comedy to drama at a neck breaking speed and then there's stupid, then huh?, then what?, then "really?", topped off with an ending that is the p-word.
The acting is ok, but Reynolds has no real direction and because of that he's everywhere which makes him not believable for a crazy guy. He can do funny, he can do serious (though he's better at funny). but he's not talented enough to do both at the extremes being asked (and very few could, really). And the film doesn't peg his character enough to be someone like Dexter who is able to hide the crazy, or make him smart enough to be completely lovable as a goof. So the result is Reynolds just being this amalgam of autistic, stupid, angry, crying, vengeful, and nothing comes through or is believable. Gemma Arterton is good, Anna Kendrick is good and this is one of the few films she's done where I didn't feel like she's being crammed down our throats (I do like her but she's in like 5 movies a year enough already), and that's really about it for the actors. The voices done for the cat and dog are fine if the CGI for the animals is a little too obvious.
This is low budget VOD direct movie, but at the same time it tries to have an ironic look and feel to it and that clashes with reality. For instance, everyone in the town has beat up vehicles and nothing looks new or clean, but LOLZ GUYS the warehouse Reynolds works at makes the employees dress up in bright pink warehouse suit! There's a chinese Elvis singing at a Chinese restaurant with nobody in it but he's flailing around lolz! Ryan Reynolds has tattoos in real life on his wrist and calf but it makes no sense for this character to have them given his history and life story but screw it, we don't want to pay the 100 bucks for concealer or simply film these scenes differently. And the few scenes outside of the two major setpieces (apartment and warehouse) look hella cheap; a news report on the TV looks like it was filmed by making a desk out of pushing some Bingo Hall tables together with nothing in the background.
The film does have some interesting things in it, especially an impactful shift from reality vs. reality about 40 minutes in, but that is pretty much erased by the end with an ending that is just dumb. Not ironic dumb which is cool in France or SoHo or Venice Beach or whatever, or charming dumb like say....a Tommy Boy ending, but just undeserved and trying to make sure your last moments of the movie end on a happy thought as opposed to going WTF is this shit?
Still, I would recommend seeing it, but on the lowest level of recommendation, right above "whatever, I don't care." Don't pay to watch it, God no, but when it shows up on Netflix in a few months then give it a go. It's not a black comedy it thinks it is, not quite as serious it thinks it is, but under a better director or with better budget things could have gone better. And sadly it's the kind of movie that was supposed to let Reynolds rebound a bit from Green Lantern and RIPD but it doesn't. So hopefully Deadpool does that.
I'm normally not a big fan of Wes Anderson's movies and this one also had some of his classic elements that I didn't like, but I overall I really liked it, surprisingly so. It's probably my favorite one of his movies. Best Picture? No, but still a damn entertaining 90 minutes.
There is another forbidden p-word that is, to my mind, a far worse crime to level at any movie, and that word is pedestrian. From Desplat's uncharacteristically by-the-numbers score to the undistinguished production design and editing, the movie's presentation is as bog-standard as one could expect. I am not normally one for leveling charges of "Oscar bait," and I'm not saying The Imitation Game was designed as such, but it falls into that putative genre far more than most.
Worse than these, however, is the nomination for Best Director. Morten Tyldum has a few good ideas, but only a few; perhaps 80% of the movie is shot without even a hint of verve, imagination, or any effort to engage the mind or excite the audience. Characters are staged in lines across the screen, or in shot/reverse shot set-ups, as if the film were a made-for-TV movie. Whole scenes are orchestrated to convey one emotion or piece of information to the point of repetition. It's so boring that the movie barely rises to the level of "conventional".
Even so, the injustice of Tyldum's nomination--which takes a 5th slot in a very competitive category, a slot that might have gone to Ava DuVernay (Selma), Damien Chazelle (Whiplash), David Fincher (Gone Girl), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) or others--pales in comparison to the nomination and predicted win for Best Adapted Screenplay. The script is the most lackluster element of the whole project, and the blueprint for everything else. This is the first feature screenplay by author Graham Moore; he has learned the form but not the substance. A hybrid genre piece, The Imitation Game's script fails on multiple fronts--as a spy story, as a thriller, as a character study, and as a work of history. It's poorly structured; the dialogue is often rote and repetitive; certain aspects of the film are needlessly confusing (why is Knightly's character not allowed to work openly with them if, as the film states, only her parents cared?); traditional conflicts have been invented where none existed, and infused with virtually no life or meaning; little attempt is made to explain Turing's work or ideas, an essential aspect of the story that has been replaced by many people over and over telling the audience what a genius he is; and the story has, in almost 2 hours, perhaps 15 minutes of genuine interest and emotion in it. Cumberbatch and Knightly deliver fine performances during those 15 minutes but are largely wasted outside of them, as are the many other talented actors in the film (in particular Charles Dance, whose largely fictional and utterly facile paper tiger of a character only serves by contrast to highlight how wonderful he is in Game of Thrones, where he has had material to work with).
The movie's greatest crime is that, as Turing was forced by his government to undergo chemical castration, so too does the film feel impotent, weak, and desexualized. Although Turing's homosexuality is a major part of the story, it is never expressed in sexual terms (indeed, it seems impossible to imagine this Turing ever having sex with anyone), only in terms of social awkwardness and, later, legal punishment. There, too, the movie fails, essentially skipping over the key outrage of Turing's prosecution. It portrays Turing's arrest and conviction for homosexuality as an accident perpetrated by unthinking government agents ignorant of Turing's (then-secret) contributions to the war effort. We see the police, bent on prosecuting any discovered homosexual; we see a government agent, aware of Turing's story and sympathetic but possessing no jurisdictional ability to intervene; but what we do not see is a character aware of all the facts who consciously decides to step aside while bigotry targets and arguably destroys one of his nation's greatest heroes. Instead, the implication is that what happened to Turing was an unhappy coincidence--that, due to the necessary secrecy surrounding Enigma, Turing could not have been saved from prosecution. As far as I can tell, the truth of the matter is that the government knew and did not care, then and until 2013, when it finally issued a belated pardon.
This kind of writing and filmmaking would be offensively poor in any situation. For it to receive more nominations than almost any other film this year, not to mention the expected win for Best Adapted Screenplay, is simply inexcusable. I will be rooting against The Imitation Game tonight in virtually every category, and I hope you will join me in doing so.
I didn't even know about the anime adaption which is getting mostly rave reviews. The live action film is getting very mixed reactions though.
Edit: now I'm just trying to imagine what a live action Jojo will look like...
Then I figured it would look something like this:
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The effects do look really good in that trailer I'll give them that. Changing the stone throw scene to a bow and arrow bugs me a bit but archery is all the rage now I guess.
And Righty acting all emotional in that trailer is definitely different from the source material.
Which is weird because anime and manga is usually packed with filler (even the non-shounen stuff). You'd figure authors would jump at the chance to tighten up their scripts.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Oh I think The Imitation Game is one of the most egregious offenders of Oscar bait in recent times. The movie could be about almost anything else and it would evoke the same feel and tone. It's no surprise that it got nominated, considering it was distributed by the Weinsteins, kings of Oscar bait.
It was kind of bizarre watching an award show geared toward independent film that only seemed to showcase films starring well-known actors. Like, Birdman took home best picture, a film with a budget of 16.5 million. And sure that's small relative to big budget hollywood productions, but it's still millions of dollars.
The show seemed to be very gung-ho about supporting independent film but their concept of indie filmmaking didn't seem to include the little guy. You've got Julianne Moore accepting her award for best actress in Still Alice (budget: 5 million), talking about how small the movie was, how they didn't even have a decent light kit for shooting inside, and that she had to call up her friend Alec Baldwin and plead with him to be in the movie. I can't think of many low-budget productions that could just call up Alec Baldwin.
I'm all for supporting independent film, but it was weird watching people advocate that support go towards the filmmakers who seem to be doing just fine right now. It'd be nice to see the little guy get more representation.
Waitaminute
Darkplace?
The Great Beauty. Glorious. Every few decades an Italian makes a film about how corrupt and empty Italy is and stuns the world.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
The problems with Green Lantern were not Ryan Reynolds, he was fine as Hal Jordon.
He was also good in Buried.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I watched Buried on a plane. That was a baaaad idea.
He's better in comedy. He's a great lead in Waiting, just the righ kind of d-bag in Van WIlder (although he took the Jim Carrey speak-but-don't-look-at-people-in-the-eye-as-you-smart-aleck to a level everyone has copied since) he was one of the highlights in Blade Trinity, good in The Change-Up and Safe House, and was one of the few highlights in Wolverine Origins.
Indie films to me has just evolved to becoming a hipster counter culture thing in films which, ironically, isn't really counter culture. It just means these actors have vanity projects or have enough money saved up to get their friends script made or what have you. These days Oscars are seen as too glitzy so to show some jaded hollywood writers you're still of the people, you do indie films and act like you were filming Clerks. In some ways it's less the AA or AAA development league, but these older/less relevant actors looking to keep their time in the sun more by going down a weight class and trying to clean up there (sports metaphors still work for cinema!)
Independent should mean budget no more than 2 million these days. No way Birdman is independent, and I never saw it that way, it was just a small budget experimental film.
There's a happy middle ground out there between Birdman and a film school movie about gay cowboys eating pudding.
I was just thinking about this yesterday. My subjective opinion is that there are far more high quality indie films today than there were 10 years ago - the talent level has risen and a lot more prominent actors and film makers (directors, cinematographers, etc.) are doing indie's. I'd be interested in seeing someone chart the average budget of every Sundance film over the last 20 years to see if this suspicion is true.
Keep in mind technically Terminator 1 was an indie film. So was Pulp Fiction, Usual Suspects, etc.
He wasn't bad per se, but was he actually good? In the 6+ movies I can recall seeing him in, his ceiling seems to be 'acceptable.'
Why should there be some kind of arbitrary budget constraint on whether or not a film is considered "independent?"
The early aughts-beloved Donnie Darko cost $3.8 million (or was it $4.5 million? Wikipedia disagrees with itself) but was financed pretty much by Drew Barrymore's production company because she had liked the script so much.
I'm sure The Fall cost more than $2 million to make, but it was funded almost entirely out of pocket by the director himself.
The Veronica Mars film was distributed by Warner Bros, but almost all of the film's budget came from the Kickstarter campaign.
It seems to me that you want to redefine what the term "independent film" means because you don't like how films can fall under the definition but feel "too Hollywood" or whatever to you.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar