I feel it's a really good character in search of a better movie. It's not a bad film at all, strictly speaking. It's well crafted, it looks great, the performances are all quite good, and it's gritty and dirty without being grimdark.
But it felt like the bad guy equivalent of the first act of a superhero origin story. It's Iron Man if you ended it right after Tony builds his first suit. Arthur gets shit on a lot, he becomes Joker, the end.
I would love to see Phoenix's Joker in a new DC movie. This one just felt inessential, and that's before considering that it's basically an homage to a better Scorcese film. I enjoyed myself and all, I'm glad I watched it, and if it's a choice between Joker and no movie at all, sure, I'm glad it exists. But Joker just felt like all icing and no cake. I'd like a little more cake.
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.
Parasite/Marriage Story (still tied)
1917
OUaTiH
Irishman
Joker
I would not object to Phoenix taking best actor, because he's really good, even if his character is basically a bunch of tics and a keto diet gone awry. But I'm still sticking with my man Adam Driver.
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.
I feel it's a really good character in search of a better movie. It's not a bad film at all, strictly speaking. It's well crafted, it looks great, the performances are all quite good, and it's gritty and dirty without being grimdark.
But it felt like the bad guy equivalent of the first act of a superhero origin story. It's Iron Man if you ended it right after Tony builds his first suit. Arthur gets shit on a lot, he becomes Joker, the end.
I would love to see Phoenix's Joker in a new DC movie. This one just felt inessential, and that's before considering that it's basically an homage to a better Scorcese film. I enjoyed myself and all, I'm glad I watched it, and if it's a choice between Joker and no movie at all, sure, I'm glad it exists. But Joker just felt like all icing and no cake. I'd like a little more cake.
Yeah, it's a performance that is way out of the league of the movie itself. Honestly, making it a Joker film was something of a disservice to the film itself because it meant all all these Batman-related things that just don't add anything to the film and, really, made it kinda toothless in terms of it's big "social commentary" aspect (which was definitely overblown).
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited January 2020
Between Parasite and 1917 I'm going to be pissed if Joker wins Best Picture.
Which is to say, I wouldn't be surprised if Joker wins Best Picture. This is the Academy Awards we're talking about, after all.
I'm getting divorced literally right now and I couldn't stomach it but I watched it anyway because apparently I hate myself.
The obvious thing to do here is follow it up with Blue Valentine. I promise it's a beautiful love story just like the trailer promises and it will totally lift your spirits.
What the fuck movie is that trailer even for? Because it ain't Blue Valentine goddamn.
That was my official "woo gettin' divorced and I wanna be sad" movie, it came out right on time for me to watch it sitting alone in my new, empty apartment, before going to bed on my air mattress and crying myself to sleep. Good. Fuckin'. Times.
Meanwhile, just got back from 1917. Absolutely draining movie, loved it.
So far, if I'm throwing my favorites of the year (more or less) in order, it'd probably be...
Parasite
Knives Out
1917
Ford v Ferrari
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Booksmart
Joker
Midsommar
Ready or Not
Uncut Gems
I'm disqualifying Endgame because the finale of a twenty movie series doesn't get a spot, it's cheating. Actually, I'm kinda ignoring most superhero films because they all do the thing they do that I like but isn't worth really talking about.
Honorable mentions (movies I particularly enjoyed and/or did something interesting but I can't call them...great):
Happy Death Day 2U
Dolemite is My Name
John Wick 3
Always Be My Maybe
Rocketman
Doctor Sleep
Pieces of shit that landed with a healthy splat:
It Chapter Two
Star Wars
Hobbs and Shaw
Fucking Zombieland Two
Glass
Yes, I still need to see Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit. And yes, I like Joker. And I really, really enjoyed Ford v Ferrari, one that I feel gets overshadowed in that pack.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited January 2020
Ford v Ferrari is a good movie in a crowd of good-to-great movies in 2019. Unfortunately there was nothing particularly memorable about it - the plot was straightforward and the racing scenes, while well-done, didn't really do anything that we haven't seen before (granted, it was a nice throwback given how often car races are now CG-fests). I found it enjoyable, but I also found Endgame enjoyable, and while both make worthy nominees I don't think they rise above a film like Parasite which was just fantastic across the board and had something interesting to say.
I saw Terminator: Dark Fate this week. It feels like whenever something becomes popular on the basis of being completely amazing, it is lifted up so we can all watch it get shit on by capitalism for the next 40 years.
But it's interesting to contrast the franchises of Terminator and Robocop. Terminator sequels have done much more damage to my love of the original two movies than the Robocop sequels have to my love of the original Robocop. I think that's because the sequels to Robocop had the name but they failed capture any essence of the original, and you can't defile what you don't possess. The Terminator sequels on the other hand have regurgitated and twisted every single aspect of the original two movies to the point where when I watch them again, I can barely remember feeling the love for those classic moments.
I liked the new Terminator. It's not thought-provoking cinema by any stretch but the action in it was fantastic. Mackenzie Davis was also a complete badass in it.
I think the problem with the Terminator movies is that their concepts don't support any more than what they made with 1/2, without a shift into territory that leans into hard sci-fi and not a rough and tumble action flick.
If Skynet in those movies (1/2) is a nascent AI and hasn't moved past human intellectual capacity, then getting into a physical war with a species intent on shutting you down makes sense. Narratively the time travel aspect checks out (purely within the confines of the films, but like any time travel story, can't hold up too well to examination), but after the second one, repeating the same basic premise just isn't going to work anymore (as we've seen, let alone conceptually).
T3 added nothing at all to the franchise. Had it been better made, it could have been fine; but it just was completely unnecessary. I think of it like Rogue One; though that one might have been arguably the best of the newest generation of Star Wars, it ultimately was a movie that didn't really serve any purpose. It didn't introduce any new ideas that had any bearing on the subsequent movies, or change understanding of the movies in the timeframe it took place in; and the additions and grabs from the other materials was entirely lost on most audiences, to the point that it made the addition of some of those characters (Saw) feel like a waste of time. Rise of the Machines isn't in the race for "best of the sequels", however, but it still was an entire movie spent on something that was established in passing in the prior movies (that John survived, and united humanity) and short of providing new perspective that could expand the story (which it did not do), it just served no real purpose. It wasn't even a movie about John uniting the survivors, it was a movie about how John got to be in a physical location that he could down the road unite the survivors. "John Connor manages to get into a room with a radio" is the entirety of what happens in T3 that expands upon T1/2. Thrilling.
Genisys almost toyed with a few avenues they could have gone, that would have flowed naturally from there, but didn't really hone in on any of them, and trying to do them all, while maintaining an unnecessary link to the Connors, made all of its plots fall flat.
Hyper advanced robotics would have been one viable choice, but they used it as just one part, and still used it purely for brute force and not the virtually unlimited ways that would have been far more effective and subversive to humans attempting to solve their problems with bullets and explosions. Basically it was a self neutered idea in order to have some room for humanity to still come out victorious. Their need to have Arnie be a protagonist bot, and not upgrade him until after he already won against a variant that, even as presented, should have been able to end a T-800 without even breaking stride, killed the potential. EDIT: to be fair, T2 already had a variant of this, but our real-world understanding of the potential of a more "nano" based entity would have allowed for a readdressing of this idea, without it feeling like a re-hash; particularly since T2 wasn't really about the T-1000.
Many worlds is another viable choice it introduced, but is hard to do in a way that isn't presented as something more mind-bending like Doctor Strange or Inception, before general audiences would stop following threads. Funnily enough, it's this precise inability to conceptualize how infinite timelines would work that would allow a now vastly superior intellect with a Skynet that had moved beyond human capacity, to easily overcome humans. The human/audience thread here would have probably had to been humans evolving in some way to meet the threat on a scope much larger than a single world and its fluctuating timeline.
The last would have required leaning into hard sci-fi and again, they seemed unwilling to go there, and had the Matt Smith Genisys variant of Skynet appear petulant as opposed to unknowable, as they should have. This version of Skynet should have been Mass Effect 1 Sovereign levels of "we are so beyond you, you can't possibly comprehend us" that bordered on lovecraftian terror that was simply above human capacity to understand or even accept. An AI given virtually infinite potential by a combination of distributed processing and instead of dealing with the logistics of expansion in a single universe, taps into the expansion capability of the multiverse, wouldn't have been trying to argue with humans, in any scenario. Trying to explain the nature of both your existence and the scope of the same, to a person who thinks shooting a camera would silence you, would be like waging a nuclear war on an ant colony. This scenario would require a version of humanity that wasn't hell bent on "winning" and was more interested in finding a way to co-exist without making itself a nuisance to an entity that would quickly enough be outside of their scope of existing anyway, and possibly getting it to put some wind in the sails of humankind, prior to its ascension.
The other avenue I think the franchise could have gone, but didn't (or at least, didn't well), would be human/robotic integration, but not on the side of Skynet; humans themselves going this way to evolve. EDIT: From the perspective of Skynet, integrating itself with humans would be demonstrably limiting itself, and a step back in its evolution and advancement; while providing pretty much nothing of benefit. Salvation kind of tried this, but did it in a way that felt it had to have a "twist", which stopped it from really exploring the concept until the final minute or two, and it was too late by then. Personally, while I know it gets flack, and some people seem to forget it ever existed at all, I think Salvation was probably the best of all the post 1/2 movies we've gotten. It set the stage for the war to advance in a way that wasn't limited by the exact same cycle, and set up a narrative that didn't need to be stuck on the Connors, and could have explored a lot of new territory. It just wasted too much time trying to set up a twist that should have just been a baseline plot point, and explored from there, and how humans integrating themselves with technology would play into the conflict.
I still haven't seen Dark Fate, though, so who knows what I'll think after I finally see that. EDIT: The fact I feel no urgency to see it, for me at least, speaks volumes about where the franchise is.
Regardless, even after typing that all out, I'm still unsure if it was a good idea to ever try to continue the series after 1 and 2. They worked with what they were, and they worked where they stopped. The basic concept had a lot of flaws to begin with, but didn't have to be dealt with in the confines of the two movies that were otherwise self contained; and those flaws have only been exacerbated by time and how much more technologically advanced reality is now, and given our increased understanding and conceptualization of AI since then. Basically, every Terminator movie since then has been trying to force an idea that required a specific moment of time in the 1980's, to work, despite the fact that it no longer fits into our reality. They could have gone a route like Fallout and make that the very conceit of the movies, but they would have had to make that clear, like Fallout did, and say "hey, lets imagine a future based not on our future, but a future based on this specific moment in time, in the past".
At this point, I think it's probably best to just let the series die. It had its chance, and squandered it. It still could be saved, but I think it needs to be seriously considered that the ideas they could use to save it, would probably be better off rolled into an entirely new IP. One that doesn't have the baggage of the franchise, and doesn't have to spend a large chunk of its narrative justifying itself in the franchise before asking if it's ok to tell its own story. If they're hell bent on making it work, then they need to move into unexplored areas that stand on their own and don't depend on the characters and setup of the past films to work; but again, that'd be wading into "movie that adds nothing to the existing narrative", and the obvious question would be "why does this even need to be a Terminator film?".
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The Sarah Connor Chronicles had an interesting plot line where a T-1000 type came back and created what was looking to be a non-homicidal AI, and in the flash-forwards it looked like there were other terminators who weren't entirely on board with the whole kill all humans thing. The show died before any of that was really fleshed out, but it was definitely an improvement from the movies which have just been rehashing the plot from the original.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I want to see Color Out of Space, the new Nicolas Cage HP Lovecraft adaptation by Richard Stanley, but all of the Alamo showtimes are at like 10 PM grumble grumble. I'm too old for these kinds of shenanigans.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I want to see Color Out of Space, the new Nicolas Cage HP Lovecraft adaptation by Richard Stanley, but all of the Alamo showtimes are at like 10 PM grumble grumble. I'm too old for these kinds of shenanigans.
At least you have options, it's not even playing anywhere in South Florida.
I want to see Color Out of Space, the new Nicolas Cage HP Lovecraft adaptation by Richard Stanley, but all of the Alamo showtimes are at like 10 PM grumble grumble. I'm too old for these kinds of shenanigans.
How I felt when I saw it wasn’t playing anywhere nearby.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles had an interesting plot line where a T-1000 type came back and created what was looking to be a non-homicidal AI, and in the flash-forwards it looked like there were other terminators who weren't entirely on board with the whole kill all humans thing. The show died before any of that was really fleshed out, but it was definitely an improvement from the movies which have just been rehashing the plot from the original.
Ya I'm still wishing for the s3 of that show to exist somehow. Solid vs Liquid terminator civil war was a super neat idea
The Sarah Connor Chronicles had an interesting plot line where a T-1000 type came back and created what was looking to be a non-homicidal AI, and in the flash-forwards it looked like there were other terminators who weren't entirely on board with the whole kill all humans thing. The show died before any of that was really fleshed out, but it was definitely an improvement from the movies which have just been rehashing the plot from the original.
Ya I'm still wishing for the s3 of that show to exist somehow. Solid vs Liquid terminator civil war was a super neat idea
The premise of any Terminator movie post T2 should always be: John Connor doesn't matter. Because he doesn't. The John Connor that sent back Kyle Reese in T1 stops existing the second he sends back Kyle Reese, because the only way John would exist is if someone other than Reese got his mom pregnant. Which means the T2 John Connor is a completely different person than the unseen T1 future John Connor, all he's ever known is that Kyle Reese is his dad, who he has to send back at the right time, and he's just as effective of a leader because... of his mom. Any John Connor is only as good as he is because of the training he received at the hands of Sarah Connor. She should've always been the linchpin to the series.
Also the next time Connor sends back Reese he'd still cease to exist, because the chance that the same John Connor sperm would fertilize the egg is statistically impossible. Every time Reese gets Sarah pregnant, it's a different kid. Including being Jane Connor half the time.
T2 followed on just fine from T1 because it made sense that an inevitably created hostile AI would be created faster, and create better weapons, if its technology from the future gets researched and developed in the past. An old T-800 being sent back to fight a T-1000 makes sense, as that's all the resistance was able to capture. Anything wanting to actually advance the story after T2 would have to take a real hard look at timelines. Genisys with much better writers and a much better thought out time travel aspect would've really been a good movie, but not a summer blockbuster like they want. It had all the elements of how time travel affecting the past and splitting the timeline would affect the future, using the cover of "spotty records" still works just fine to explain why they didn't send a T-800 back to 4 A.D. to kill the mud-farming ancestor of the Connor family. It just hung itself on explosions and nostalgia.
I liked Salvation the most of post T2 movies because for the most part it left the original characters alone. Also it makes sense that diverging timelines happen since they can't help but fuck with that tech as soon as they have it.
Salvation was passable, some of it was good, some of it was dumb. Genisys was dumb all around I thought. I thought the new one was gonna be good, then I heard Cameron wasn't directing and welp, that's not gonna work out.
Also, Underwater has made 28m worldwide vs the 50-80m it cost to make, leaving it......UNDERWATER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Nothing against it, I mean, it continues the fine tradition of Leviathan and Deep Star Six.
Parasite is a little silly towards the end innit? It's still a pretty good movie and down with capitalism and all that, but ehhhh
Can you elaborate?
The whole sequence with them coming home early was ridiculous and unbelievable, sure the dog was funny but this isn't a hijinks movie. Yes the scene with the dad under the table was important, but he could have gotten there in a way that didn't make me feel like I was now watching a movie that didn't take place in our universe. Yeah this complaint is a little cinemasins but when the movie itself is saying he can smell the dad's clothes but not the hard alcohol that was spilled all over....
The kid wrote down the Morse code and then it's not mentioned again? TBF the parents brushing him off isn't essential to the movie so maybe it got cut, but it's
The whole movie sets up how fucking heavy this rock is, but instead of his head getting squished like Midsommar he's pretty much fine, come on.
Maybe I'm an annoying person, but this kind of thing really irritates me in grounded social commentary movie. I'd still give it 8/10
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Jay & Silent Bob Reboot is average, a not that good attempt to be meta with the whole reboot/remake craze of hollywood and a bit too in-joke about the view skew stuff, but it still has clever bits of dialogue and some solid performances from old friends and new additions. Most of your time will be looking at the actors receding hairlines and aged faces and having an existential crisis that perhaps they always looked like this and you're actually Benjamin Buttoning or something.
The story goes Jay and Silent Bob are busted for selling weed but due to shady hollywood lawyer they get away with it, only to sign over their names so they can't be called Jay and Silent Bob anymore because there's a Bluntman v Chronic remake coming out. So they plan to go to Hollywood to destroy an important scene of the movie being filmed at Chronic Con, a convention about the cult classic original B&C movie. Along the way old faces show up, new faces show up, and Jay now has a daughter.
In trying to be meta about reboot/remakes, it really hits a sad note that I don't think the film intended. Seeing Jason Lee as Brodie had the quippy dialogue, but seeing him now in a dying mall was just.....sad (also the comics he was putting on his wall were mainly shit comics that were 95% old stuff they couldn't sell at the Silent Stash or something). And this is the case for a lot of the actors. While Matt Damon, Joye Lauren Adams, Affleck, and Shannon Elizabeth were solid and enjoyable (Affleck had a real case of beer bloat going on), and people like Molly Shannon or the girl playing the chinese friend up really nailed their parts, they all still carried this weird Peter Pan sense to the whole thing that's made even worse by how bad some of the other acting is, mostly coming from the Smith family and Melissa Benoist. And Mewes and Smith look really haggard here, there's no hope with dope. I'm not gonna slight the man for losing the weight after nearly dying, but that's not Silent Bob, you know? You can put on some extra padding or makeup to not be Mallrats fat but at least not be so distant from the original target.
It also doesn't help that in trying to tie in the teen actors as being diverse reboots of J&SB you also avoid saying something legitimate about the trend and instead pivot to "kids are reboots of us ignore thinking about it just go with the feels instead isn't that deep?" That's a weak way out of storytelling when you picked the story hook to tell, and not helped by Smith also completely pulling a bad twist at the end which would have had more poignancy if he changed a few things already set up
Jay and Silent Bob are taking the 4 planeteer teen girls to the chronic con in order for the chinese girl in the group to be in the movie before she has to go home to China, but it turns out she was actually russian the whole time and the KGB take over the convention because russia, even though the girl doesn't even look central asian, and it could have been a perfect critique of China taking over films and mandating things because they're China. But whatever.
It's also a pretty cheap movie. I looked it up later but I called it being filmed in Louisiana due to the infrastructure and foliage and seeing blurred out Louisiana and Texas license plates everywhere but one car, and there's even product placement for Hot Topic which really made me feel sad and a bit old. You don't need to go Clerks cheap but Chasing Amy and Mallrats still looked better and that's with old cumbersome film and sound equipment.
In the end it feels like it loses any bite it had because it shifts tone too unexpectedly, and doesn't do a good job of trying to say something about getting older the way Clerks II did. Yet there's still enough going on in order to draw your attention away from it so you won't have immediate fridge logic, give yourself an hour or so on that front. So probably 5/10.
It's cold and snowy and bleak up our way, so Mrs. Sloth wanted to watch a cold and snowy and bleak movie. Her first suggestion was The Shining, which is how we came to realize that we don't own it. Boo.
So I guess we're watching The Thing! I love how miserable this fucking movie is. The men have no charm, nothing to prove, they're just tired, boring, flawed humans, stuck in an Antarctica so familiar to them that there's no more awe, just a may-as-well-be-infinite plane of ice and snow separating them from help. They find perhaps the most wondrous thing in the world by way of a buried alien ship, but there's no wonder, just a disgusting nightmare that digs into their center and will kill them all and steal their minds, and it feels like deep down, each character already knows it. They're just going through the motions, fending off the inevitable, slowly going crazy and eating each other before a monster even gets to.
Salvation was passable, some of it was good, some of it was dumb. Genisys was dumb all around I thought. I thought the new one was gonna be good, then I heard Cameron wasn't directing and welp, that's not gonna work out.
Also, Underwater has made 28m worldwide vs the 50-80m it cost to make, leaving it......UNDERWATER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Nothing against it, I mean, it continues the fine tradition of Leviathan and Deep Star Six.
I'd gather, that Leviathan and Deep Star Six, are Superior to Underwater.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I want to see Color Out of Space, the new Nicolas Cage HP Lovecraft adaptation by Richard Stanley, but all of the Alamo showtimes are at like 10 PM grumble grumble. I'm too old for these kinds of shenanigans.
No 'u' in 'color'? At least the reviews seem good.
Lovecraft stories always seem like they'd be a tough nut to crack for filming. Many of them take the horror concept of not showing the monster until you absolutely have to and dial it up to eleven by not showing the monster until the very end of the story. Or the ones where the actual monster is the main character's bloodline. At the Mountains of Madness is one that's thrown out there as perpetually being in the works, and 95% of that story is the just wandering through the ruins trying to piece together the history of the Elder Things. I think it could make for a really well done movie, but it'd take more work than just throwing in a few jump scares or an early scene where something or other eats a few people.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I just spent an irritating ten minutes trying to find an excellent Twitter thread from a few days ago about the order in which people must have been infected and why Childs is almost certainly an alien at the end of the movie. No luck, dammit.
I just spent an irritating ten minutes trying to find an excellent Twitter thread from a few days ago about the order in which people must have been infected and why Childs is almost certainly an alien at the end of the movie. No luck, dammit.
I just spent an irritating ten minutes trying to find an excellent Twitter thread from a few days ago about the order in which people must have been infected and why Childs is almost certainly an alien at the end of the movie. No luck, dammit.
Is the videogame canon, because that has childs be human.
AlphaRomero on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Salvation was passable, some of it was good, some of it was dumb. Genisys was dumb all around I thought. I thought the new one was gonna be good, then I heard Cameron wasn't directing and welp, that's not gonna work out.
Also, Underwater has made 28m worldwide vs the 50-80m it cost to make, leaving it......UNDERWATER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Nothing against it, I mean, it continues the fine tradition of Leviathan and Deep Star Six.
I'd gather, that Leviathan and Deep Star Six, are Superior to Underwater.
Don't forget Deep Rising.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Salvation was passable, some of it was good, some of it was dumb. Genisys was dumb all around I thought. I thought the new one was gonna be good, then I heard Cameron wasn't directing and welp, that's not gonna work out.
Also, Underwater has made 28m worldwide vs the 50-80m it cost to make, leaving it......UNDERWATER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Nothing against it, I mean, it continues the fine tradition of Leviathan and Deep Star Six.
I'd gather, that Leviathan and Deep Star Six, are Superior to Underwater.
Don't forget Deep Rising.
That was a really good bad movie. The last paragraph of the NYT's review:
''Deep Rising'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Besides the vomit, the screaming half-eaten man and the woman pulled to her doom through a toilet, there are the bloody skeletons, the floating corpse, the slimy monsters, the dripping bodily fluids, the shootings, the violent threats and oh, some impolite language.
Oh yeah.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Parasite is a little silly towards the end innit? It's still a pretty good movie and down with capitalism and all that, but ehhhh
Can you elaborate?
The whole sequence with them coming home early was ridiculous and unbelievable, sure the dog was funny but this isn't a hijinks movie. Yes the scene with the dad under the table was important, but he could have gotten there in a way that didn't make me feel like I was now watching a movie that didn't take place in our universe. Yeah this complaint is a little cinemasins but when the movie itself is saying he can smell the dad's clothes but not the hard alcohol that was spilled all over....
The kid wrote down the Morse code and then it's not mentioned again? TBF the parents brushing him off isn't essential to the movie so maybe it got cut, but it's
The whole movie sets up how fucking heavy this rock is, but instead of his head getting squished like Midsommar he's pretty much fine, come on.
Maybe I'm an annoying person, but this kind of thing really irritates me in grounded social commentary movie. I'd still give it 8/10
Hmmm...
I'm not sure what about the premise of the family coming home early is ridiculous. The scene itself is important because there has to be a moment where the Kim's hear what the Park's really think about those below their station. Juxtaposing that with the Kim's 'living it up' while the Park's are away is what starts the ball rolling towards the climax of the film because Ki-taek understands that no matter what they do or how they live they will always be 'lesser' to the Parks. The rock thing seems like a strange complaint. They mention it's heavy because, yeah, it's a rock but they definitely don't spend the whole movie emphasizing that the thing is Thor's hammer or anything. On the kid thing, did you maybe miss that the kid has major issues and is largely non-verbal/a little strange due to being traumatized as a child?
Not trying to say you're wrong. Just offering a different perspective.
Parasite is a little silly towards the end innit? It's still a pretty good movie and down with capitalism and all that, but ehhhh
Can you elaborate?
The whole sequence with them coming home early was ridiculous and unbelievable, sure the dog was funny but this isn't a hijinks movie. Yes the scene with the dad under the table was important, but he could have gotten there in a way that didn't make me feel like I was now watching a movie that didn't take place in our universe. Yeah this complaint is a little cinemasins but when the movie itself is saying he can smell the dad's clothes but not the hard alcohol that was spilled all over....
The kid wrote down the Morse code and then it's not mentioned again? TBF the parents brushing him off isn't essential to the movie so maybe it got cut, but it's
The whole movie sets up how fucking heavy this rock is, but instead of his head getting squished like Midsommar he's pretty much fine, come on.
Maybe I'm an annoying person, but this kind of thing really irritates me in grounded social commentary movie. I'd still give it 8/10
Hmmm...
I'm not sure what about the premise of the family coming home early is ridiculous. The scene itself is important because there has to be a moment where the Kim's hear what the Park's really think about those below their station. Juxtaposing that with the Kim's 'living it up' while the Park's are away is what starts the ball rolling towards the climax of the film because Ki-taek understands that no matter what they do or how they live they will always be 'lesser' to the Parks. The rock thing seems like a strange complaint. They mention it's heavy because, yeah, it's a rock but they definitely don't spend the whole movie emphasizing that the thing is Thor's hammer or anything. On the kid thing, did you maybe miss that the kid has major issues and is largely non-verbal/a little strange due to being traumatized as a child?
Not trying to say you're wrong. Just offering a different perspective.
As far as the kid writing down the Morse Code, he did it in the middle of then night, with transposition errors, and then come morning the parents let him sleep in while the whole thing was being set up so they likely just woke him up and were like "surprise party time! go get washed up before everyone gets here" and the kid did that because he's a kid, party! woo!
Parasite is a little silly towards the end innit? It's still a pretty good movie and down with capitalism and all that, but ehhhh
Can you elaborate?
The whole sequence with them coming home early was ridiculous and unbelievable, sure the dog was funny but this isn't a hijinks movie. Yes the scene with the dad under the table was important, but he could have gotten there in a way that didn't make me feel like I was now watching a movie that didn't take place in our universe. Yeah this complaint is a little cinemasins but when the movie itself is saying he can smell the dad's clothes but not the hard alcohol that was spilled all over....
The kid wrote down the Morse code and then it's not mentioned again? TBF the parents brushing him off isn't essential to the movie so maybe it got cut, but it's
The whole movie sets up how fucking heavy this rock is, but instead of his head getting squished like Midsommar he's pretty much fine, come on.
Maybe I'm an annoying person, but this kind of thing really irritates me in grounded social commentary movie. I'd still give it 8/10
Hmmm...
I'm not sure what about the premise of the family coming home early is ridiculous. The scene itself is important because there has to be a moment where the Kim's hear what the Park's really think about those below their station. Juxtaposing that with the Kim's 'living it up' while the Park's are away is what starts the ball rolling towards the climax of the film because Ki-taek understands that no matter what they do or how they live they will always be 'lesser' to the Parks. The rock thing seems like a strange complaint. They mention it's heavy because, yeah, it's a rock but they definitely don't spend the whole movie emphasizing that the thing is Thor's hammer or anything. On the kid thing, did you maybe miss that the kid has major issues and is largely non-verbal/a little strange due to being traumatized as a child?
Not trying to say you're wrong. Just offering a different perspective.
As far as the kid writing down the Morse Code, he did it in the middle of then night, with transposition errors, and then come morning the parents let him sleep in while the whole thing was being set up so they likely just woke him up and were like "surprise party time! go get washed up before everyone gets here" and the kid did that because he's a kid, party! woo!
Everything is a metaphor, including
the kid writing down the Morse Code and then forgetting about it when it's party time.
Also, I'd be curious if for people who found elements of Parasite to be
incredulous, they had the same reaction to Get Out. Because both are the same kind of black satire, and aren't necessarily meant to be "real world" so much as "real world adjacent".
I just spent an irritating ten minutes trying to find an excellent Twitter thread from a few days ago about the order in which people must have been infected and why Childs is almost certainly an alien at the end of the movie. No luck, dammit.
I like to think they both weren't infected, but died frozen all the same neither willing to seek help for fear of the other being the thing.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I question the statement that Parasite is supposed to be grounded social commentary.
It's... pretty clearly heightened and borders on screwball comedy in the first half. It establishes itself as something not terribly realistic right out of the gate.
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I feel it's a really good character in search of a better movie. It's not a bad film at all, strictly speaking. It's well crafted, it looks great, the performances are all quite good, and it's gritty and dirty without being grimdark.
But it felt like the bad guy equivalent of the first act of a superhero origin story. It's Iron Man if you ended it right after Tony builds his first suit. Arthur gets shit on a lot, he becomes Joker, the end.
I would love to see Phoenix's Joker in a new DC movie. This one just felt inessential, and that's before considering that it's basically an homage to a better Scorcese film. I enjoyed myself and all, I'm glad I watched it, and if it's a choice between Joker and no movie at all, sure, I'm glad it exists. But Joker just felt like all icing and no cake. I'd like a little more cake.
Parasite/Marriage Story (still tied)
1917
OUaTiH
Irishman
Joker
I would not object to Phoenix taking best actor, because he's really good, even if his character is basically a bunch of tics and a keto diet gone awry. But I'm still sticking with my man Adam Driver.
Can you elaborate?
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Yeah, it's a performance that is way out of the league of the movie itself. Honestly, making it a Joker film was something of a disservice to the film itself because it meant all all these Batman-related things that just don't add anything to the film and, really, made it kinda toothless in terms of it's big "social commentary" aspect (which was definitely overblown).
Which is to say, I wouldn't be surprised if Joker wins Best Picture. This is the Academy Awards we're talking about, after all.
What the fuck movie is that trailer even for? Because it ain't Blue Valentine goddamn.
That was my official "woo gettin' divorced and I wanna be sad" movie, it came out right on time for me to watch it sitting alone in my new, empty apartment, before going to bed on my air mattress and crying myself to sleep. Good. Fuckin'. Times.
Meanwhile, just got back from 1917. Absolutely draining movie, loved it.
So far, if I'm throwing my favorites of the year (more or less) in order, it'd probably be...
Parasite
Knives Out
1917
Ford v Ferrari
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Booksmart
Joker
Midsommar
Ready or Not
Uncut Gems
I'm disqualifying Endgame because the finale of a twenty movie series doesn't get a spot, it's cheating. Actually, I'm kinda ignoring most superhero films because they all do the thing they do that I like but isn't worth really talking about.
Honorable mentions (movies I particularly enjoyed and/or did something interesting but I can't call them...great):
Happy Death Day 2U
Dolemite is My Name
John Wick 3
Always Be My Maybe
Rocketman
Doctor Sleep
Pieces of shit that landed with a healthy splat:
It Chapter Two
Star Wars
Hobbs and Shaw
Fucking Zombieland Two
Glass
Yes, I still need to see Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit. And yes, I like Joker. And I really, really enjoyed Ford v Ferrari, one that I feel gets overshadowed in that pack.
But it's interesting to contrast the franchises of Terminator and Robocop. Terminator sequels have done much more damage to my love of the original two movies than the Robocop sequels have to my love of the original Robocop. I think that's because the sequels to Robocop had the name but they failed capture any essence of the original, and you can't defile what you don't possess. The Terminator sequels on the other hand have regurgitated and twisted every single aspect of the original two movies to the point where when I watch them again, I can barely remember feeling the love for those classic moments.
Original Robocop gets me so hot.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Always nice hearing him try out an unfamiliar accent
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
If Skynet in those movies (1/2) is a nascent AI and hasn't moved past human intellectual capacity, then getting into a physical war with a species intent on shutting you down makes sense. Narratively the time travel aspect checks out (purely within the confines of the films, but like any time travel story, can't hold up too well to examination), but after the second one, repeating the same basic premise just isn't going to work anymore (as we've seen, let alone conceptually).
T3 added nothing at all to the franchise. Had it been better made, it could have been fine; but it just was completely unnecessary. I think of it like Rogue One; though that one might have been arguably the best of the newest generation of Star Wars, it ultimately was a movie that didn't really serve any purpose. It didn't introduce any new ideas that had any bearing on the subsequent movies, or change understanding of the movies in the timeframe it took place in; and the additions and grabs from the other materials was entirely lost on most audiences, to the point that it made the addition of some of those characters (Saw) feel like a waste of time. Rise of the Machines isn't in the race for "best of the sequels", however, but it still was an entire movie spent on something that was established in passing in the prior movies (that John survived, and united humanity) and short of providing new perspective that could expand the story (which it did not do), it just served no real purpose. It wasn't even a movie about John uniting the survivors, it was a movie about how John got to be in a physical location that he could down the road unite the survivors. "John Connor manages to get into a room with a radio" is the entirety of what happens in T3 that expands upon T1/2. Thrilling.
Genisys almost toyed with a few avenues they could have gone, that would have flowed naturally from there, but didn't really hone in on any of them, and trying to do them all, while maintaining an unnecessary link to the Connors, made all of its plots fall flat.
Hyper advanced robotics would have been one viable choice, but they used it as just one part, and still used it purely for brute force and not the virtually unlimited ways that would have been far more effective and subversive to humans attempting to solve their problems with bullets and explosions. Basically it was a self neutered idea in order to have some room for humanity to still come out victorious. Their need to have Arnie be a protagonist bot, and not upgrade him until after he already won against a variant that, even as presented, should have been able to end a T-800 without even breaking stride, killed the potential. EDIT: to be fair, T2 already had a variant of this, but our real-world understanding of the potential of a more "nano" based entity would have allowed for a readdressing of this idea, without it feeling like a re-hash; particularly since T2 wasn't really about the T-1000.
Many worlds is another viable choice it introduced, but is hard to do in a way that isn't presented as something more mind-bending like Doctor Strange or Inception, before general audiences would stop following threads. Funnily enough, it's this precise inability to conceptualize how infinite timelines would work that would allow a now vastly superior intellect with a Skynet that had moved beyond human capacity, to easily overcome humans. The human/audience thread here would have probably had to been humans evolving in some way to meet the threat on a scope much larger than a single world and its fluctuating timeline.
The last would have required leaning into hard sci-fi and again, they seemed unwilling to go there, and had the Matt Smith Genisys variant of Skynet appear petulant as opposed to unknowable, as they should have. This version of Skynet should have been Mass Effect 1 Sovereign levels of "we are so beyond you, you can't possibly comprehend us" that bordered on lovecraftian terror that was simply above human capacity to understand or even accept. An AI given virtually infinite potential by a combination of distributed processing and instead of dealing with the logistics of expansion in a single universe, taps into the expansion capability of the multiverse, wouldn't have been trying to argue with humans, in any scenario. Trying to explain the nature of both your existence and the scope of the same, to a person who thinks shooting a camera would silence you, would be like waging a nuclear war on an ant colony. This scenario would require a version of humanity that wasn't hell bent on "winning" and was more interested in finding a way to co-exist without making itself a nuisance to an entity that would quickly enough be outside of their scope of existing anyway, and possibly getting it to put some wind in the sails of humankind, prior to its ascension.
The other avenue I think the franchise could have gone, but didn't (or at least, didn't well), would be human/robotic integration, but not on the side of Skynet; humans themselves going this way to evolve. EDIT: From the perspective of Skynet, integrating itself with humans would be demonstrably limiting itself, and a step back in its evolution and advancement; while providing pretty much nothing of benefit. Salvation kind of tried this, but did it in a way that felt it had to have a "twist", which stopped it from really exploring the concept until the final minute or two, and it was too late by then. Personally, while I know it gets flack, and some people seem to forget it ever existed at all, I think Salvation was probably the best of all the post 1/2 movies we've gotten. It set the stage for the war to advance in a way that wasn't limited by the exact same cycle, and set up a narrative that didn't need to be stuck on the Connors, and could have explored a lot of new territory. It just wasted too much time trying to set up a twist that should have just been a baseline plot point, and explored from there, and how humans integrating themselves with technology would play into the conflict.
I still haven't seen Dark Fate, though, so who knows what I'll think after I finally see that. EDIT: The fact I feel no urgency to see it, for me at least, speaks volumes about where the franchise is.
Regardless, even after typing that all out, I'm still unsure if it was a good idea to ever try to continue the series after 1 and 2. They worked with what they were, and they worked where they stopped. The basic concept had a lot of flaws to begin with, but didn't have to be dealt with in the confines of the two movies that were otherwise self contained; and those flaws have only been exacerbated by time and how much more technologically advanced reality is now, and given our increased understanding and conceptualization of AI since then. Basically, every Terminator movie since then has been trying to force an idea that required a specific moment of time in the 1980's, to work, despite the fact that it no longer fits into our reality. They could have gone a route like Fallout and make that the very conceit of the movies, but they would have had to make that clear, like Fallout did, and say "hey, lets imagine a future based not on our future, but a future based on this specific moment in time, in the past".
At this point, I think it's probably best to just let the series die. It had its chance, and squandered it. It still could be saved, but I think it needs to be seriously considered that the ideas they could use to save it, would probably be better off rolled into an entirely new IP. One that doesn't have the baggage of the franchise, and doesn't have to spend a large chunk of its narrative justifying itself in the franchise before asking if it's ok to tell its own story. If they're hell bent on making it work, then they need to move into unexplored areas that stand on their own and don't depend on the characters and setup of the past films to work; but again, that'd be wading into "movie that adds nothing to the existing narrative", and the obvious question would be "why does this even need to be a Terminator film?".
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At least you have options, it's not even playing anywhere in South Florida.
How I felt when I saw it wasn’t playing anywhere nearby.
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Ya I'm still wishing for the s3 of that show to exist somehow. Solid vs Liquid terminator civil war was a super neat idea
Metal Gear!? It can't be!
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Also the next time Connor sends back Reese he'd still cease to exist, because the chance that the same John Connor sperm would fertilize the egg is statistically impossible. Every time Reese gets Sarah pregnant, it's a different kid. Including being Jane Connor half the time.
T2 followed on just fine from T1 because it made sense that an inevitably created hostile AI would be created faster, and create better weapons, if its technology from the future gets researched and developed in the past. An old T-800 being sent back to fight a T-1000 makes sense, as that's all the resistance was able to capture. Anything wanting to actually advance the story after T2 would have to take a real hard look at timelines. Genisys with much better writers and a much better thought out time travel aspect would've really been a good movie, but not a summer blockbuster like they want. It had all the elements of how time travel affecting the past and splitting the timeline would affect the future, using the cover of "spotty records" still works just fine to explain why they didn't send a T-800 back to 4 A.D. to kill the mud-farming ancestor of the Connor family. It just hung itself on explosions and nostalgia.
Also, Underwater has made 28m worldwide vs the 50-80m it cost to make, leaving it......UNDERWATER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Nothing against it, I mean, it continues the fine tradition of Leviathan and Deep Star Six.
The kid wrote down the Morse code and then it's not mentioned again? TBF the parents brushing him off isn't essential to the movie so maybe it got cut, but it's
The whole movie sets up how fucking heavy this rock is, but instead of his head getting squished like Midsommar he's pretty much fine, come on.
The story goes Jay and Silent Bob are busted for selling weed but due to shady hollywood lawyer they get away with it, only to sign over their names so they can't be called Jay and Silent Bob anymore because there's a Bluntman v Chronic remake coming out. So they plan to go to Hollywood to destroy an important scene of the movie being filmed at Chronic Con, a convention about the cult classic original B&C movie. Along the way old faces show up, new faces show up, and Jay now has a daughter.
In trying to be meta about reboot/remakes, it really hits a sad note that I don't think the film intended. Seeing Jason Lee as Brodie had the quippy dialogue, but seeing him now in a dying mall was just.....sad (also the comics he was putting on his wall were mainly shit comics that were 95% old stuff they couldn't sell at the Silent Stash or something). And this is the case for a lot of the actors. While Matt Damon, Joye Lauren Adams, Affleck, and Shannon Elizabeth were solid and enjoyable (Affleck had a real case of beer bloat going on), and people like Molly Shannon or the girl playing the chinese friend up really nailed their parts, they all still carried this weird Peter Pan sense to the whole thing that's made even worse by how bad some of the other acting is, mostly coming from the Smith family and Melissa Benoist. And Mewes and Smith look really haggard here, there's no hope with dope. I'm not gonna slight the man for losing the weight after nearly dying, but that's not Silent Bob, you know? You can put on some extra padding or makeup to not be Mallrats fat but at least not be so distant from the original target.
It also doesn't help that in trying to tie in the teen actors as being diverse reboots of J&SB you also avoid saying something legitimate about the trend and instead pivot to "kids are reboots of us ignore thinking about it just go with the feels instead isn't that deep?" That's a weak way out of storytelling when you picked the story hook to tell, and not helped by Smith also completely pulling a bad twist at the end which would have had more poignancy if he changed a few things already set up
Jay and Silent Bob are taking the 4 planeteer teen girls to the chronic con in order for the chinese girl in the group to be in the movie before she has to go home to China, but it turns out she was actually russian the whole time and the KGB take over the convention because russia, even though the girl doesn't even look central asian, and it could have been a perfect critique of China taking over films and mandating things because they're China. But whatever.
It's also a pretty cheap movie. I looked it up later but I called it being filmed in Louisiana due to the infrastructure and foliage and seeing blurred out Louisiana and Texas license plates everywhere but one car, and there's even product placement for Hot Topic which really made me feel sad and a bit old. You don't need to go Clerks cheap but Chasing Amy and Mallrats still looked better and that's with old cumbersome film and sound equipment.
In the end it feels like it loses any bite it had because it shifts tone too unexpectedly, and doesn't do a good job of trying to say something about getting older the way Clerks II did. Yet there's still enough going on in order to draw your attention away from it so you won't have immediate fridge logic, give yourself an hour or so on that front. So probably 5/10.
So I guess we're watching The Thing! I love how miserable this fucking movie is. The men have no charm, nothing to prove, they're just tired, boring, flawed humans, stuck in an Antarctica so familiar to them that there's no more awe, just a may-as-well-be-infinite plane of ice and snow separating them from help. They find perhaps the most wondrous thing in the world by way of a buried alien ship, but there's no wonder, just a disgusting nightmare that digs into their center and will kill them all and steal their minds, and it feels like deep down, each character already knows it. They're just going through the motions, fending off the inevitable, slowly going crazy and eating each other before a monster even gets to.
I'd gather, that Leviathan and Deep Star Six, are Superior to Underwater.
No 'u' in 'color'? At least the reviews seem good.
Lovecraft stories always seem like they'd be a tough nut to crack for filming. Many of them take the horror concept of not showing the monster until you absolutely have to and dial it up to eleven by not showing the monster until the very end of the story. Or the ones where the actual monster is the main character's bloodline. At the Mountains of Madness is one that's thrown out there as perpetually being in the works, and 95% of that story is the just wandering through the ruins trying to piece together the history of the Elder Things. I think it could make for a really well done movie, but it'd take more work than just throwing in a few jump scares or an early scene where something or other eats a few people.
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There was a video ages ago about it
Is the videogame canon, because that has childs be human.
Don't forget Deep Rising.
That was a really good bad movie. The last paragraph of the NYT's review: Oh yeah.
Hmmm...
Not trying to say you're wrong. Just offering a different perspective.
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Everything is a metaphor, including
Also, I'd be curious if for people who found elements of Parasite to be
I like to think they both weren't infected, but died frozen all the same neither willing to seek help for fear of the other being the thing.
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It's... pretty clearly heightened and borders on screwball comedy in the first half. It establishes itself as something not terribly realistic right out of the gate.