AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
The other main thing I noticed about Die Hard this time around is the score--remember that joyous Christmas music when they finally get into the vault? The "bad guy" theme earlier in the movie is that, only slower and quieter so it sounds sinister. But it's still Christmas music!
I just came out of seeing The Hunger Games. I went in with no knowledge of what it was.
I left thinking i preferred it when it was called The Running Man, maybe that's just me.
Somehow it being a book of only a few years old makes it ok to be some kind of faux remake-ripoff thing, its exactly the running man, for teenages. Which is weird because the running man was for me when i was a teenager and a much better film.
I wouldn't even say its Battle Royale because that would be insulting to Battle Royale. i also seem to have got roped into seeing it in imax when i dont think it was even shot in 60mm, not from what i could tell at least, its annoying because i had to pay a surcharge on my unlimited card.
Seriously, its just The Running Man. that's really all i have to say.
I'm oddly excited to see it
I really like the aesthetic of the film from what I've seen, and while I like the core concept of The Running Man, I don't actually really enjoy The Running Man that much. Mainly because I didn't care about Schwarzenegger's character. I enjoyed Battle Royale a bit more because I at least cared about the characters a little bit. Hopefully Jennifer Lawrence (who is excellent) will be able to milk this performance and make me actually care about the protagonist in this style of film.
I think the distinction between a film like Super 8 and a film like Raiders is that the second film is trying to be a great film while evoking the tone and style of the serial adventure films of the 30s and 40s. What Spielberg is doing in that film is basically saying, "If they had the budget and know-how, THIS is how these movies would have looked." A lot of Raiders' plot is dependent on the trappings of the genre; if you need to jet-set around the globe and fight off Nazis, you have to do it in that time period. If Spielberg's concern was being faithful to the actual presentation of those serials, Harrison Ford would have fought cardboard Nazis in a giant warehouse filmed in grainy B&W. Instead, he chose to shoot in scope and in a much more romantic style, more reminiscent of David Lean and John Huston than the shoddy gimmickry of a Republic Studios' weekly adventure series. Spielberg kept the content, but created a style that would affect the tone of the film in a way that was more than just nostalgia.
Super 8, however, is just a monster movie and a coming-of-age tale, and it has a script fraught with inconsistency and a tone that never nails itself down. It's overall Spielbergian affect is just a wallpaper to make the audience feel something unearned. It's a crutch, and it's fairly shameless, especially considering how little of the script itself demands the style or setting. It's a movie built backwards, and for no other purpose than to remind people of early-period Spielberg, which frankly I don't need at all. It's not like the movies Super 8 is based upon suddenly disappeared from my collection. Abrams treats the warm tones and family drama of that period like it's a cheap shirt you can buy off the rack.
I see what you mean, but I'm not sure I'd mind it as much - it's been a long time since anyone, including Spielberg, managed to push the buttons that early-period Spielberg did. To my mind even Last Crusade, a fun film, feels somewhat stale and like self-parody compared to Raiders. If it's done well, I think I'd dig the sense of excitement and childlike wonder (as well as the occasional ruthless brutality) of early Spielberg. As far as my enjoyment of the films is concerned, the guy peaked between Jaws and E.T. Haven't seen Super 8, though - I'll try to catch it once it's on TV.
Somewhat off-topic: what you wrote about the style being "just a wallpaper to make the audience feel something unearned", that's pretty much how I felt about The Royal Tenenbaums to a large extent. I like Anderson as a stylist, but in terms of evoking an emotional reaction I very much felt that the film was coasting on the songs he'd selected for the soundtrack.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Somewhat off-topic: what you wrote about the style being "just a wallpaper to make the audience feel something unearned", that's pretty much how I felt about The Royal Tenenbaums to a large extent. I like Anderson as a stylist, but in terms of evoking an emotional reaction I very much felt that the film was coasting on the songs he'd selected for the soundtrack.
It seems to me that to a certain extent this is legitimate. Film is an audio-visual medium after all. If we always expect only the narrative itself to evoke emotional reactions from us, regardless of the medium's inherent qualities, I think we're doing something wrong.
To a certain extent, yes - but the emotions that came with the Royal Tenenbaums songs felt to me like they were primarily evoked by the songs, and the film put those on like a "wallpaper", in AR's terms. It's a bit like this: you have a war scene that you want to be all sad and tragic? Turn down the actual war sounds and play Barber's "Adagio for Strings". Instant Tragedy of War(tm), with the music doing the heavy lifting.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
As far as my enjoyment of the films is concerned, the guy peaked between Jaws and E.T.
There's a good argument for that. Funny thing about Spielberg is that he's been fairly hit-or-miss his whole career, but early in this career his hits were huge game-changers and his misses were small and cheap. I think I probably could do without Spielberg after Schindler's List; that would deprive me of solid films like Catch Me If You Can, A.I., and Minority Report, but also I'd get to ignore Amistad, The Lost World, KotCS, and War of the Worlds.
Spielberg is still working at a good clip like a man with fire in his belly, but that fire is forging some fairly half-assed product, and I don't know where his head is.
Somewhat off-topic: what you wrote about the style being "just a wallpaper to make the audience feel something unearned", that's pretty much how I felt about The Royal Tenenbaums to a large extent. I like Anderson as a stylist, but in terms of evoking an emotional reaction I very much felt that the film was coasting on the songs he'd selected for the soundtrack.
One of the rules of thumb taught in film school is, "don't let your music do your direction for you."
I think it's kind of a nebulous rule, because music (or even a lack thereof) can change the tone of a scene quite dramatically, and you can't really make a film wholly absent of musical/aural cues, and often you want to assert your tone as a director without the audience feeling lost.
I think, more than anything, the rule is meant to ensure that everything you do as director behind the camera informs the tone you want to achieve so that your score or soundtrack isn't doing all your work for you, just embellishing what's already present.
In regards to Wes Anderson's work, I think there's so much earnest stylistic work going on in front of the camera that any aural cues are just lagniappe, but I will agree that Anderson is a bit overbearing at times. He isn't letting the music do all the work for him, but he's letting it do as much as it can.
EDIT: Certainly in terms of "wallpaper," I would defend Anderson's work over Abrams' Super 8 by mere fact that while Anderson's work does indeed put on aesthetic pretenses, at least they're products of Anderson himself that he originated. Anderson makes Wes Anderson movies, not anyone else's.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
In other news, apparently MGM is set to take a loss on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but is trying to figure out a way to still make the sequels as long as they "can achieve better economics."
Meaning, I wouldn't hold your breath for David Fincher coming back.
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Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
In other news, apparently MGM is set to take a loss on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but is trying to figure out a way to still make the sequels as long as they "can achieve better economics."
Meaning, I wouldn't hold your breath for David Fincher coming back.
My first reaction is, uh oh.
Then I remembered that Fincher's movie actually wasn't that excellent, and I'm also not invested in the 'The Girl' series at all.
Maybe it would all be handled better in the hands of another, anyway. Fincher's had his shot, let's give it to McG now.
I see what you mean, but I'm not sure I'd mind it as much - it's been a long time since anyone, including Spielberg, managed to push the buttons that early-period Spielberg did.
I disagree completely with a previous forumer's assessment of The Hunger Games. It was, in just about every way, superior to the book. Granted, that's not a very high hurdle to clear.
Many of the terrible parts of the film were where they tried to adapt important scenes from the book, or used exposition to detail irrelevant background information. Some of the references to the book were out-of-the-blue; for instance, they start referring to a character (Foxface) with her nickname from the book with no discussion or explanation; they should have just referred to her as "the redhead".
They managed to rewrite the two worst parts of the book into something decent, but inexplicably mangled the direction of the final, climactic battle. They nailed the emotion of most of the scenes with Katniss, but because they didn't introduce or give background information on any of the non-main characters, some of their scenes fell completely flat. In particular, Foxface and Thresh. Why would anyone care about a character that's had less than 30 seconds of screen time and no spoken lines?
The camerawork, lighting, and scene design were all well done, and the direction was above-average for most of the film, with a few minor quibbles. The acting was outstanding. I wish they would have used less CGI (do you really need to use CGI for smoke coming out of a chimney? C'mon!), but such is the state of the industry.
Overall a decent effort. I award it a resounding three and a half meh's out of five.
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
What do you know about the character? There's nothing about Cap that Europeans would despise (that's U.S. Agent, Cap's arrogant, douchebag counterpart).
Despise is too strong a word, but a superhero that would appear to be a representative for the USA doesn't appeal in and of itself. I wouldn't be surprised if Superman is less liked in Europe for the same reason; he seems such an obvious representative for the whole "truth, justice and the American way". Europe seems to go more for cynical and jaded, to continue this gross over-simplification.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Despise is too strong a word, but a superhero that would appear to be a representative for the USA doesn't appeal in and of itself. I wouldn't be surprised if Superman is less liked in Europe for the same reason; he seems such an obvious representative for the whole "truth, justice and the American way". Europe seems to go more for cynical and jaded, to continue this gross over-simplification.
Originally I thought the same until I read some stories about him.
Oh, I don't doubt that there's much more to the character(s). It's just that there's a limited amount of time and so many novels, films, comics, plays etc. to check out, so if the little that I do know doesn't have some kind of hook (e.g. it's done by Joss Whedon ) I move on to something that does. What I've heard about Captain America (the film) makes me look out for it once it's on telly, but it didn't make me hurry to see it at the cinema.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
To me, one of the most impressive aspects about Captain America was its dearth of jingoism. You have a character that clearly "loves" his country, and is actually named after it,but his victory is not predicated on upholding values that are explicitly or narrowly American. My favorite moment in the movie sums this up very nicely -
A character asks the scrawny, pre-superheroic Steve Rogers why he wants to fight the Nazis. His response: a completely earnest, humble declaration that "I don't like bullies."
Saw Wild Bill the other night, new film by Dexter Fletcher, yeah that one.
enjoyed it, even if it had the usual british tropes of lock stock style music ques and character types (half the cast were in lock stock..) but if you ignore all that what you get is if ken loach made a western, this would be it. they even have
a saloon style brawl which was pretty well done
i like the redemption storyline between him and his two sons which were the core of the film.
at first i thought the main character was terribly miss cast for someone which the nick name of "wild bill" but he plays it fantastically when he gets "wild"
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
To me, one of the most impressive aspects about Captain America was its dearth of jingoism. You have a character that clearly "loves" his country, and is actually named after it,but his victory is not predicated on upholding values that are explicitly or narrowly American. My favorite moment in the movie sums this up very nicely -
A character asks the scrawny, pre-superheroic Steve Rogers why he wants to fight the Nazis. His response: a completely earnest, humble declaration that "I don't like bullies."
.
They also made the interesting choice to portray Cap as a propaganda tool, which allowed them to acknowledge the jingoistic aspect of the character without playing too far into it.
The only thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't use Red Skull to present the darker side of propaganda and the narrative of the superman. Instead, like a lot of the villains in comic book films, he's just sort of there.
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
To me, one of the most impressive aspects about Captain America was its dearth of jingoism. You have a character that clearly "loves" his country, and is actually named after it,but his victory is not predicated on upholding values that are explicitly or narrowly American. My favorite moment in the movie sums this up very nicely -
A character asks the scrawny, pre-superheroic Steve Rogers why he wants to fight the Nazis. His response: a completely earnest, humble declaration that "I don't like bullies."
.
They also made the interesting choice to portray Cap as a propaganda tool, which allowed them to acknowledge the jingoistic aspect of the character without playing too far into it.
The only thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't use Red Skull to present the darker side of propaganda and the narrative of the superman. Instead, like a lot of the villains in comic book films, he's just sort of there.
That's an interesting point. Although we're clearly getting better and more ambitious with comic book movies, the main struggle the heroes are dealing with lately seem to be about themselves rather than being properly matched against arch-opponents.
There's a lot of ways to read into that.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
To me, one of the most impressive aspects about Captain America was its dearth of jingoism. You have a character that clearly "loves" his country, and is actually named after it,but his victory is not predicated on upholding values that are explicitly or narrowly American. My favorite moment in the movie sums this up very nicely -
A character asks the scrawny, pre-superheroic Steve Rogers why he wants to fight the Nazis. His response: a completely earnest, humble declaration that "I don't like bullies."
.
They also made the interesting choice to portray Cap as a propaganda tool, which allowed them to acknowledge the jingoistic aspect of the character without playing too far into it.
The only thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't use Red Skull to present the darker side of propaganda and the narrative of the superman. Instead, like a lot of the villains in comic book films, he's just sort of there.
That's an interesting point. Although we're clearly getting better and more ambitious with comic book movies, the main struggle the heroes are dealing with lately seem to be about themselves rather than being properly matched against arch-opponents.
There's a lot of ways to read into that.
I think much of that may have to do with how often comic book movies go wrong in the other direction, with the villains being the more compelling and dynamic character.
One way to combat that is to write a better story with more rounding, engaging characters. Another, easier way is to just keep the protagonist and the villain's stories separate until the end.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
To me, one of the most impressive aspects about Captain America was its dearth of jingoism. You have a character that clearly "loves" his country, and is actually named after it,but his victory is not predicated on upholding values that are explicitly or narrowly American. My favorite moment in the movie sums this up very nicely -
A character asks the scrawny, pre-superheroic Steve Rogers why he wants to fight the Nazis. His response: a completely earnest, humble declaration that "I don't like bullies."
.
They also made the interesting choice to portray Cap as a propaganda tool, which allowed them to acknowledge the jingoistic aspect of the character without playing too far into it.
The only thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't use Red Skull to present the darker side of propaganda and the narrative of the superman. Instead, like a lot of the villains in comic book films, he's just sort of there.
That's an interesting point. Although we're clearly getting better and more ambitious with comic book movies, the main struggle the heroes are dealing with lately seem to be about themselves rather than being properly matched against arch-opponents.
There's a lot of ways to read into that.
I think much of that may have to do with how often comic book movies go wrong in the other direction, with the villains being the more compelling and dynamic character.
One way to combat that is to write a better story with more rounding, engaging characters. Another, easier way is to just keep the protagonist and the villain's stories separate until the end.
I think comic book movies tend to fall into the bland villain/overshadowing villain traps partially because of the structure that most of them follow; you have to spend a lot of time on the origin story (and by extension, developing the hero's character) in the first film, so the villain's character gets the short end of the stick. Then it's reversed in the second movie, since you've done most of the development for the hero and can spend more time exploring the villain. I'm thinking of Raimi's Spider-Man and Nolan's Batman in particular. Skilled writers can minimize the negative effects the structure has on the characters though.
I missed Captain America - I think it was on for about five minutes over here, and from what I'd seen the character didn't appeal to me. (I guess it's a European knee-jerk reaction. ) Will check it out once it's on TV, probably.
To me, one of the most impressive aspects about Captain America was its dearth of jingoism. You have a character that clearly "loves" his country, and is actually named after it,but his victory is not predicated on upholding values that are explicitly or narrowly American. My favorite moment in the movie sums this up very nicely -
A character asks the scrawny, pre-superheroic Steve Rogers why he wants to fight the Nazis. His response: a completely earnest, humble declaration that "I don't like bullies."
.
They also made the interesting choice to portray Cap as a propaganda tool, which allowed them to acknowledge the jingoistic aspect of the character without playing too far into it.
The only thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't use Red Skull to present the darker side of propaganda and the narrative of the superman. Instead, like a lot of the villains in comic book films, he's just sort of there.
That's an interesting point. Although we're clearly getting better and more ambitious with comic book movies, the main struggle the heroes are dealing with lately seem to be about themselves rather than being properly matched against arch-opponents.
There's a lot of ways to read into that.
I think much of that may have to do with how often comic book movies go wrong in the other direction, with the villains being the more compelling and dynamic character.
One way to combat that is to write a better story with more rounding, engaging characters. Another, easier way is to just keep the protagonist and the villain's stories separate until the end.
I think comic book movies tend to fall into the bland villain/overshadowing villain traps partially because of the structure that most of them follow; you have to spend a lot of time on the origin story (and by extension, developing the hero's character) in the first film, so the villain's character gets the short end of the stick. Then it's reversed in the second movie, since you've done most of the development for the hero and can spend more time exploring the villain. I'm thinking of Raimi's Spider-Man and Nolan's Batman in particular. Skilled writers can minimize the negative effects the structure has on the characters though.
I thought Batman Begins did a pretty good job with that, vis a vis, setting up the villain's story by way of setting up the hero's story.
Conversely, Iron Man 2 was pretty bad at telling anyone's story.
So I just got back from The Hunger Games. The cinematography and shakycam was so horrendous that it basically ruined the entire movie for me. It made me feel sick, Cloverfield wasn't even this badly shot.
So I just got back from The Hunger Games. The cinematography and shakycam was so horrendous that it basically ruined the entire movie for me. It made me feel sick, Cloverfield wasn't even this badly shot.
I actually really loved this
Definitely preferred it to what would have been otherwise - full of epic, sweeping outdoor shots
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
I disagree completely with a previous forumer's assessment of The Hunger Games. It was, in just about every way, superior to the book. Granted, that's not a very high hurdle to clear.
Many of the terrible parts of the film were where they tried to adapt important scenes from the book, or used exposition to detail irrelevant background information. Some of the references to the book were out-of-the-blue; for instance, they start referring to a character (Foxface) with her nickname from the book with no discussion or explanation; they should have just referred to her as "the redhead".
They managed to rewrite the two worst parts of the book into something decent, but inexplicably mangled the direction of the final, climactic battle. They nailed the emotion of most of the scenes with Katniss, but because they didn't introduce or give background information on any of the non-main characters, some of their scenes fell completely flat. In particular, Foxface and Thresh. Why would anyone care about a character that's had less than 30 seconds of screen time and no spoken lines?
The camerawork, lighting, and scene design were all well done, and the direction was above-average for most of the film, with a few minor quibbles. The acting was outstanding. I wish they would have used less CGI (do you really need to use CGI for smoke coming out of a chimney? C'mon!), but such is the state of the industry.
Overall a decent effort. I award it a resounding three and a half meh's out of five.
I pretty much agree with this assessment. When I got out of the movie, I said to my friends, "They need to adapt this into the book and replace the actual book, because the movie doesn't lose focus nearly as bad as the book does, and also, there was a lot of technology-magic bullshit in the book that was mitigated in the movie."
It had half my theater tearing up at several parts, and most of the folks around me hadn't seen it, because they were speculating to each other about what was going to happen next.
Most of the changes they made when adapting the movie were excellent, but there was a loss of detail that confused one of my friends (who went in blind) as to what exactly was going on most of the time.
But it sure was a pretty movie. And very intense. There was a lot of gasping in my theater at the beginning of the Games over how brutal it was. Even though I knew what was going to happen going in, it still felt very gripping.
EDIT: And I am in no way a fanboy of the book; the way the book handled certain details and situations drove me fucking batty, and a large swaths of the book are poorly written and framed, and the ending of the first book kind of retroactively ruined the previous two hundred pages. Being said, when I finished it, I thought, "This would work much better as a film."
MalReynolds on
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
So I just got back from The Hunger Games. The cinematography and shakycam was so horrendous that it basically ruined the entire movie for me. It made me feel sick, Cloverfield wasn't even this badly shot.
I actually really loved this
Definitely preferred it to what would have been otherwise - full of epic, sweeping outdoor shots
I didn't need epic shots, I just needed the movie to actually be able to breathe instead of being constantly stifled by the ultra zoomed-in shots all the time. The games themselves didn't feel brutal in the slightest because I had no idea what was happening in any of the action scenes because the camera was shaking all over the place.
Yeah. I dislike shaky cam but it does a great job of making things understandable and interesting in the fights.
Also to the person complaining that the movie was hurt from a lack of backstory for several characters having gone in blind I think you're wrong. The movie felt really well paced and I doubt it could have survived the added running time.
We care about Katniss. We are given more then a enough to "get" characters or at least see them as three-dimensional characters. I don't know who the hell "Foxface" or the guy from end's deal really was but it doesn't really matter when it comes to the plot. Which was tight and enjoyable.
I'm also very impressed with the sheer amount of exposition and the smoothness of it.
Just got back from the Hunger Games, I liked it a lot more then I thought it would. All the people going on and on about how it's Battle Royale really need to check out the Running Man. Because King did it first, and even he was riffing on Lord of the Flies and the legend of Theseus.
I think half the people saying Battle Royale > Hunger Games just want to name-drop it. We get it. You are cool & have seen a foreign film.
I pretty much agree with this. The comparison reeks of Internet nerd culture and having seen both, they really aren't that similar outside of "kids kill each other."
And honestly I would say that The Hunger Games is the better film.
I haven't seen Battle Royale, but judging from what I've read, the Hunger Games has a way better justification for why it happens then Battle Royale does.
I haven't seen Battle Royale, but judging from what I've read, the Hunger Games has a way better justification for why it happens then Battle Royale does.
Well, it has one better then the book of Battle Royal. Which was almost none at all.
Spirited Away does something interesting character arc-wise: at the beginning of the movie Chihiro's sullen and whiny and whatnot but then she grows over the course of the movie
and she becomes a go-getter. But then her memory is erased, and it seems like she's reverted back to her old sullen self. But then, at the very end, her father's like "A new home and a new school? It is a bit scary." And (while at the beginning of the movie she hated the fact that they were moving) she says, enthusiastically: "I think I can handle it!"
What a great ending! I got goosebumps. At first you think think the movie's going to end on a slightly unsatisfying note - but then bam! you learn that, while Chihiro doesn't remember her adventures, they still had a positive, unconscious effect on her.
But then I learned those last lines weren't in the original Japanese film! They were added in by Disney's localization team. In the original movie Chihiro is basically unchanged at the end of the movie - the only thing she gets out out of her adventures is a magical hairband with vague protective powers.
I have mixed feelings about those added last lines. Because while I like the American ending better, I feel like if one of cinema's greatest artists decides he wants to break the rules of storytelling and end his movie on a weird, unsatisfying note, well, isn't it best to let him do what he wants?
Spirited Away does something interesting character arc-wise: at the beginning of the movie Chihiro's sullen and whiny and whatnot but then she grows over the course of the movie
and she becomes a go-getter. But then her memory is erased, and it seems like she's reverted back to her old sullen self. But then, at the very end, her father's like "A new home and a new school? It is a bit scary." And (while at the beginning of the movie she hated the fact that they were moving) she says, enthusiastically: "I think I can handle it!"
What a great ending! I got goosebumps. At first you think think the movie's going to end on a slightly unsatisfying note - but then bam! you learn that, while Chihiro doesn't remember her adventures, they still had a positive, unconscious effect on her.
But then I learned those last lines weren't in the original Japanese film! They were added in by Disney's localization team. In the original movie Chihiro is basically unchanged at the end of the movie - the only thing she gets out out of her adventures is a magical hairband with vague protective powers.
I have mixed feelings about those added last lines. Because while I like the American ending better, I feel like if one of cinema's greatest artists decides he wants to break the rules of storytelling and end his movie on a weird, unsatisfying note, well, isn't it best to let him do what he wants?
I believe that the story must come first, even if it means changing the creator's intent. Take the Prestige, for instance. The film is only one part of the novelm but it perfectly encapsulates the theme of the book, while telling a kickass story.
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I'm oddly excited to see it
I really like the aesthetic of the film from what I've seen, and while I like the core concept of The Running Man, I don't actually really enjoy The Running Man that much. Mainly because I didn't care about Schwarzenegger's character. I enjoyed Battle Royale a bit more because I at least cared about the characters a little bit. Hopefully Jennifer Lawrence (who is excellent) will be able to milk this performance and make me actually care about the protagonist in this style of film.
Somewhat off-topic: what you wrote about the style being "just a wallpaper to make the audience feel something unearned", that's pretty much how I felt about The Royal Tenenbaums to a large extent. I like Anderson as a stylist, but in terms of evoking an emotional reaction I very much felt that the film was coasting on the songs he'd selected for the soundtrack.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
It seems to me that to a certain extent this is legitimate. Film is an audio-visual medium after all. If we always expect only the narrative itself to evoke emotional reactions from us, regardless of the medium's inherent qualities, I think we're doing something wrong.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
There's a good argument for that. Funny thing about Spielberg is that he's been fairly hit-or-miss his whole career, but early in this career his hits were huge game-changers and his misses were small and cheap. I think I probably could do without Spielberg after Schindler's List; that would deprive me of solid films like Catch Me If You Can, A.I., and Minority Report, but also I'd get to ignore Amistad, The Lost World, KotCS, and War of the Worlds.
Spielberg is still working at a good clip like a man with fire in his belly, but that fire is forging some fairly half-assed product, and I don't know where his head is.
One of the rules of thumb taught in film school is, "don't let your music do your direction for you."
I think it's kind of a nebulous rule, because music (or even a lack thereof) can change the tone of a scene quite dramatically, and you can't really make a film wholly absent of musical/aural cues, and often you want to assert your tone as a director without the audience feeling lost.
I think, more than anything, the rule is meant to ensure that everything you do as director behind the camera informs the tone you want to achieve so that your score or soundtrack isn't doing all your work for you, just embellishing what's already present.
In regards to Wes Anderson's work, I think there's so much earnest stylistic work going on in front of the camera that any aural cues are just lagniappe, but I will agree that Anderson is a bit overbearing at times. He isn't letting the music do all the work for him, but he's letting it do as much as it can.
EDIT: Certainly in terms of "wallpaper," I would defend Anderson's work over Abrams' Super 8 by mere fact that while Anderson's work does indeed put on aesthetic pretenses, at least they're products of Anderson himself that he originated. Anderson makes Wes Anderson movies, not anyone else's.
Meaning, I wouldn't hold your breath for David Fincher coming back.
My first reaction is, uh oh.
Then I remembered that Fincher's movie actually wasn't that excellent, and I'm also not invested in the 'The Girl' series at all.
Maybe it would all be handled better in the hands of another, anyway. Fincher's had his shot, let's give it to McG now.
Joe Johnson's Captain America did IMO.
Many of the terrible parts of the film were where they tried to adapt important scenes from the book, or used exposition to detail irrelevant background information. Some of the references to the book were out-of-the-blue; for instance, they start referring to a character (Foxface) with her nickname from the book with no discussion or explanation; they should have just referred to her as "the redhead".
They managed to rewrite the two worst parts of the book into something decent, but inexplicably mangled the direction of the final, climactic battle. They nailed the emotion of most of the scenes with Katniss, but because they didn't introduce or give background information on any of the non-main characters, some of their scenes fell completely flat. In particular, Foxface and Thresh. Why would anyone care about a character that's had less than 30 seconds of screen time and no spoken lines?
The camerawork, lighting, and scene design were all well done, and the direction was above-average for most of the film, with a few minor quibbles. The acting was outstanding. I wish they would have used less CGI (do you really need to use CGI for smoke coming out of a chimney? C'mon!), but such is the state of the industry.
Overall a decent effort. I award it a resounding three and a half meh's out of five.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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What do you know about the character? There's nothing about Cap that Europeans would despise (that's U.S. Agent, Cap's arrogant, douchebag counterpart).
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Originally I thought the same until I read some stories about him.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
To me, one of the most impressive aspects about Captain America was its dearth of jingoism. You have a character that clearly "loves" his country, and is actually named after it,but his victory is not predicated on upholding values that are explicitly or narrowly American. My favorite moment in the movie sums this up very nicely -
Thought the pacing was good, characters excellent, good monsters and lots of nice touches.
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enjoyed it, even if it had the usual british tropes of lock stock style music ques and character types (half the cast were in lock stock..) but if you ignore all that what you get is if ken loach made a western, this would be it. they even have
at first i thought the main character was terribly miss cast for someone which the nick name of "wild bill" but he plays it fantastically when he gets "wild"
They also made the interesting choice to portray Cap as a propaganda tool, which allowed them to acknowledge the jingoistic aspect of the character without playing too far into it.
The only thing that disappointed me was the fact that they didn't use Red Skull to present the darker side of propaganda and the narrative of the superman. Instead, like a lot of the villains in comic book films, he's just sort of there.
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That's an interesting point. Although we're clearly getting better and more ambitious with comic book movies, the main struggle the heroes are dealing with lately seem to be about themselves rather than being properly matched against arch-opponents.
There's a lot of ways to read into that.
I think much of that may have to do with how often comic book movies go wrong in the other direction, with the villains being the more compelling and dynamic character.
One way to combat that is to write a better story with more rounding, engaging characters. Another, easier way is to just keep the protagonist and the villain's stories separate until the end.
I think comic book movies tend to fall into the bland villain/overshadowing villain traps partially because of the structure that most of them follow; you have to spend a lot of time on the origin story (and by extension, developing the hero's character) in the first film, so the villain's character gets the short end of the stick. Then it's reversed in the second movie, since you've done most of the development for the hero and can spend more time exploring the villain. I'm thinking of Raimi's Spider-Man and Nolan's Batman in particular. Skilled writers can minimize the negative effects the structure has on the characters though.
I thought Batman Begins did a pretty good job with that, vis a vis, setting up the villain's story by way of setting up the hero's story.
Conversely, Iron Man 2 was pretty bad at telling anyone's story.
I actually really loved this
Definitely preferred it to what would have been otherwise - full of epic, sweeping outdoor shots
I pretty much agree with this assessment. When I got out of the movie, I said to my friends, "They need to adapt this into the book and replace the actual book, because the movie doesn't lose focus nearly as bad as the book does, and also, there was a lot of technology-magic bullshit in the book that was mitigated in the movie."
It had half my theater tearing up at several parts, and most of the folks around me hadn't seen it, because they were speculating to each other about what was going to happen next.
Most of the changes they made when adapting the movie were excellent, but there was a loss of detail that confused one of my friends (who went in blind) as to what exactly was going on most of the time.
But it sure was a pretty movie. And very intense. There was a lot of gasping in my theater at the beginning of the Games over how brutal it was. Even though I knew what was going to happen going in, it still felt very gripping.
EDIT: And I am in no way a fanboy of the book; the way the book handled certain details and situations drove me fucking batty, and a large swaths of the book are poorly written and framed, and the ending of the first book kind of retroactively ruined the previous two hundred pages. Being said, when I finished it, I thought, "This would work much better as a film."
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I didn't need epic shots, I just needed the movie to actually be able to breathe instead of being constantly stifled by the ultra zoomed-in shots all the time. The games themselves didn't feel brutal in the slightest because I had no idea what was happening in any of the action scenes because the camera was shaking all over the place.
Yeah. I dislike shaky cam but it does a great job of making things understandable and interesting in the fights.
Also to the person complaining that the movie was hurt from a lack of backstory for several characters having gone in blind I think you're wrong. The movie felt really well paced and I doubt it could have survived the added running time.
We care about Katniss. We are given more then a enough to "get" characters or at least see them as three-dimensional characters. I don't know who the hell "Foxface" or the guy from end's deal really was but it doesn't really matter when it comes to the plot. Which was tight and enjoyable.
I'm also very impressed with the sheer amount of exposition and the smoothness of it.
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I pretty much agree with this. The comparison reeks of Internet nerd culture and having seen both, they really aren't that similar outside of "kids kill each other."
And honestly I would say that The Hunger Games is the better film.
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Well, it has one better then the book of Battle Royal. Which was almost none at all.
Battle Royale seems like a cheap excuse to have Gogo Yubari: the Movie.
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What a great ending! I got goosebumps. At first you think think the movie's going to end on a slightly unsatisfying note - but then bam! you learn that, while Chihiro doesn't remember her adventures, they still had a positive, unconscious effect on her.
But then I learned those last lines weren't in the original Japanese film! They were added in by Disney's localization team. In the original movie Chihiro is basically unchanged at the end of the movie - the only thing she gets out out of her adventures is a magical hairband with vague protective powers.
I have mixed feelings about those added last lines. Because while I like the American ending better, I feel like if one of cinema's greatest artists decides he wants to break the rules of storytelling and end his movie on a weird, unsatisfying note, well, isn't it best to let him do what he wants?
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