So I hadn't seen Moana before a couple weeks ago. Now I've seen it about eight times thanks to my daughter. Can confirm it holds up in repeat viewings better than Frozen.
Largely because there's no Olaf.
Olaf isn't that annoying. Arguably i'd say that's part of the problem. You'd see the wise-cracking non-human sidekick so many times in Disney movies that Olaf comes off as a damp squib, he's more like a bemused child than anything while Sven the Reindeer acts more like what you'd expect. Olaf just feels like a waste.
His subsequent portrayals seem to have more oomph to them (like in the new short fronting Coco).
I never saw JW.
Why must I be punished for their sins?
When I was in high school, some kid threw up on me between classes. Total accident, it happens. While I was waiting in the office for my Gaga to bring me a new shirt, English class began. Apparently there was a sub that day, and the other students got rowdy. One of them tossed a super bouncy ball on the ground, which ricocheted around the room before hitting the sub in the face.
Even though I wasn't there to witness this, the regular teacher still assigned me the same punishment. A fifteen page cited paper on an old English translation of The Canterbury Tales.
I protested this, as I was half a building away when the incident happened. He told me it didn't matter. It was about the message.
I didn't write the paper. It was a form of protest. Instead, I wrote a poem in the style of a Canterbury Tale about how unfair the situation was.
He actually really liked it. Still failed me, though, on the assignment.
It's not the individual who reaps punishment. It's all of us.
Even if we had just gotten puked on, MR. HOWSER, YOU SHIT.
"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!
When I was in high school sophomore year someone threw a pencil at me. I picked it up. I got assigned detention for that horrid act. I told the principal that I wasn't going to do it, I did nothing wrong. I tried to confront the teacher, but the goose wouldn't even tell me what she was accusing me of. Just I knew what I had done. Which was jack shit, lady.
So I didn't do it...until I was forced to senior year at graduation because it was still there waiting and I wasn't going to go back and argue about now.
So everyone is going to end up watching whatever Trevorrow makes, as TexiKen says.
It sounds like a script selection problem more than a director problem. I'm still more concerned that Jurassic World was boring and dumb. That he couldn't turn a bad screenplay into a good movie is not surprising and doesn't really tell me anything about his talents that I didn't know already.
1. The script they start with is changed immediately either doing pre production and/or on set, this is how Ridley Scott's attrocious Robin Hood movie got made from a killer script.
2. Unless the director is a powerless puppet for the producers/studio aka The Mummy the director gets a say in what gets on the script and the screenwriter did what they say or get fired/replaced. They're the most powerful rank in the above the line structure, unless it's s situation where they're outranked by a producer aka Tom Cruise or get kicked around by the studio aka Suicide Squad.
This is all on him. Disney needs to get rid of him asap.
Everyone's going to say it stinks but will still see it 5 times anyway.
Reap what you sow by letting Jurassic World make a billion dollars.
Disney have higher standards than that in the previous movies, this is why they have better reception and each broke the billion dollar mark over the Prequels.
So I hadn't seen Moana before a couple weeks ago. Now I've seen it about eight times thanks to my daughter. Can confirm it holds up in repeat viewings better than Frozen.
Largely because there's no Olaf.
Olaf isn't that annoying. Arguably i'd say that's part of the problem. You'd see the wise-cracking non-human sidekick so many times in Disney movies that Olaf comes off as a damp squib, he's more like a bemused child than anything while Sven the Reindeer acts more like what you'd expect. Olaf just feels like a waste.
His subsequent portrayals seem to have more oomph to them (like in the new short fronting Coco).
I still maintain that Tangled is the best of the new bunch--and honestly, it may be one of the best Disney animated films overall. The characters and storytelling just work, and I don't have to add any qualifications when I say that.
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I was kindof hoping Rian Johnson would get to do IX. Maybe I'll get my wish?
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Why's JW getting all this heat? It gives you decent to good dino action in a non-shitty package of actors and story. It's entirely unpretentious in that it knows this and does not pretend to offer anything else. Let the masses enjoy their entertainment.
Don't even bother comparing it to the original, btw. It should not have been as good as it is, it didn't need to be as good as it is. It's a freak occurence.
Why's JW getting all this heat? It gives you decent to good dino action in a non-shitty package of actors and story. It's entirely unpretentious in that it knows this and does not pretend to offer anything else. Let the masses enjoy their entertainment.
Don't even bother comparing it to the original, btw. It should not have been as good as it is, it didn't need to be as good as it is. It's a freak occurence.
I say this with no snark: what is anti-criticism? My guess is that it's giving a poor movie a pass because it's popular. In this specific case, I sincerely do not think JW is a poor movie. Uninspired and (to me) mostly boring, but I consider that more my personal taste rather than the overall movie.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
An uninspired and boring movie seems like it would be objectively not-good by most metrics.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I liked the part where Starlord was hanging out with raptors.
Uninspiring and boring like most everything else are subjective. Almost every single movie at Cannes or whatever I find boring. They must all be not-good too!
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
It was enjoyable enough when Star-lord was on screen and I could pretend it was a Guardians movie where he was stranded on Earth and needed a raptor crew for some space shit.
Everything else, not so much. The kids, the horrible babysitter, the horrible way the horrible babysitter got eaten by dinosaurs, the horrible aunt who looked like young Juliette Moore but with none of the charisma, the terminally stupid scientists.
The best thing about Jurassic World was the meta-commentary where they were talking about how they kept needing to make bigger and better dinosaurs because after so many years the populace had become bored with what had originally been groundbreaking. Just like the film series.
And I'm pretty sure that wasn't even intentional.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
It was enjoyable enough when Star-lord was on screen and I could pretend it was a Guardians movie where he was stranded on Earth and needed a raptor crew for some space shit.
Everything else, not so much. The kids, the horrible babysitter, the horrible way the horrible babysitter got eaten by dinosaurs, the horrible aunt who looked like young Juliette Moore but with none of the charisma, the terminally stupid scientists.
The best thing about Jurassic World was the meta-commentary where they were talking about how they kept needing to make bigger and better dinosaurs because after so many years the populace had become bored with what had originally been groundbreaking. Just like the film series.
And I'm pretty sure that wasn't even intentional.
Yeah, that metacommentary could have been interesting, if they leaned into it more.
As it is, I can't tell if the triumphant theme playing over the park is on purpose, or if they just needed to cram it somewhere.
An uninspired and boring movie seems like it would be objectively not-good by most metrics.
I find the entire PotC series (yes, the first one too) boring and uninspired. The costumes are so jumbled they wind up as dirty rags. Jack Sparrow is a tired, tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired cliche and I can't understand a thing he says. I've liked Depp in plenty of his other roles, so it ain't actor fatigue. Lots of other people like PotC, including people who are good at critiquing movies, so there must be something there.
My small point is that boring and uninspired are subjective enough (not totally, but enough) to not be enough to label a novie as bad. JW does enough other things right to be OK. Even if it was genuinely bad, I'm not concerned that it's popular.
Understand that I can't stand Inception and think Godzilla vs Hedora has legitimate artistic merit, solo what do I know.
Even if it was genuinely bad, I'm not concerned that it's popular.
I'm legitimately unsure what your point is. You expressed displeasure that some people thought a financially-profitable blockbuster sequel was less than satisfying, but aren't lauding the film yourself.
You seem to be upset that there's a consensus of negative opinion about this film instead of people simply keeping mum and letting the proles enjoy their lizard-monster rampage.
This is why it's anti-criticism: you're not arguing against the criticisms, you're arguing that the film is above critique.
Which just isn't a thing.
I hope my explanation is a little more clear here.
Even if it was genuinely bad, I'm not concerned that it's popular.
I'm legitimately unsure what your point is. You expressed displeasure that some people thought a financially-profitable blockbuster sequel was less than satisfying, but aren't lauding the film yourself.
You seem to be upset that there's a consensus of negative opinion about this film instead of people simply keeping mum and letting the proles enjoy their lizard-monster rampage.
This is why it's anti-criticism: you're not arguing against the criticisms, you're arguing that the film is above critique.
Which just isn't a thing.
I hope my explanation is a little more clear here.
I think he's more concerned with the notion that certain movies should not be made. That Star Wars needs to suffer to teach Hollywood a lesson about blockbusters. Critiquing art usually doesn't come with the goal of ceasing future art of that type.
It was enjoyable enough when Star-lord was on screen and I could pretend it was a Guardians movie where he was stranded on Earth and needed a raptor crew for some space shit.
Everything else, not so much. The kids, the horrible babysitter, the horrible way the horrible babysitter got eaten by dinosaurs, the horrible aunt who looked like young Juliette Moore but with none of the charisma, the terminally stupid scientists.
The best thing about Jurassic World was the meta-commentary where they were talking about how they kept needing to make bigger and better dinosaurs because after so many years the populace had become bored with what had originally been groundbreaking. Just like the film series.
And I'm pretty sure that wasn't even intentional.
To be fair, head scientist guy wasn't stupid, he just liked money and wasn't particularly concerned when his creations ran amok. He did, after all, skedaddle on a helicopter as soon as the mayhem started, with assurances that he'd be able to continue his work (if I'm remembering this correctly).
I watched my first Douglas Sirk this weekend, Imitation of Life. Definitely interesting, though also irritating; since I'm not used to his style, I found it somewhat difficult to distinguish the things that irritated me because of 1950s values combined with high melodrama from those things that the film wanted me to be irritated by - which is intriguing, because Sirk's definitely very smart in how he's layering his themes, but confusing, because I'm not sure to what extent I'm supposed to take which elements at face value. He has two characters that are presented to be very much the unsullied 'good guys', namely Steve and Annie, yet the former expresses some male entitlement that I'd think would sound odd even in '59 ("What makes you think you have [the right to tell me what to do and what not to do]?" "Because I love you. Isn't that enough?") and the latter is mostly a two-dimensional saint who is fatalistic and accepting of society's racism to an almost ludicrous extent. There are other elements and characters that irritate, but the film comments on them more explicitly (I'm thinking especially of the Lana Turner character), so when this commentary is absent I'm finding it difficult to say where interpretation ends and projection begins. I wonder if I'd find it somewhat easier to 'read' the film if I'd seen other Sirks beforehand.
As a side-note, I'm also kinda wishing that I'd watched at least some Sirk before watching films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Whenever I watch or read an artist heavily inspired by an earlier, seminal work or artist, (as Fassbinder was by Sirk) I find it pretty difficult to take the earlier works at face value. (E.g. I vastly prefer Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead to Waiting for Godot, even though Stoppard's play is clearly derivative of Beckett's, and it's pretty much the same for Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Günther Grass' The Tin Drum, although it's absolutely legitimate to say that Rushdie was ripping off Grass.)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Retroactively I kind of like Jurassic World more than TFA. Both were fine popcorn movies but I expected more from TFA and it didn't deliver.
Conan the Barbarian was on late night TV on Saturday, so I watched it again. Still terrific, still successful at what it tries to do way, way beyond what should be possible. I started watching the remake a while ago and couldn't get past about twenty minutes without thinking about how this wasn't very good at all and how I'd rather be watching the original again. I gave up and didn't finish it. Maybe it got good by the end. I've talked about the original before but OK here I am waffling about it again.
The original isn't trying to give you a plot, as the remake seemed to be. It's telling a myth. The raiders who destroy Conan's village don't need to be searching for plot coupons so they can send off to a special address and receive the movie's climax by return mail. Conan's origin is entirely without the structure of a plot hemming it in. Bad people exterminate his village and enslave him, he learns combat in gladiatorial arenas, is set free and seeks revenge. That's it as far as plot goes.
The score, by Basil Poledouris, is obviously, immediately superb. Propulsive, soaring and heroic, it is a thrilling piece of work all on its own. Milius originally wanted Carmina Burana to herald Thulsa Doom's riders appearing on screen, but apparently he found out that Excalibur was using it and got Poledouris to write something just as good instead. The cinematography and set design manage to do the impossible and portray a believable fantasy world in a movie made in 1982. Take an interesting landscape, whack a thing in it that looks real, and hey presto. Things like the wheel on which Conan builds his strength look weathered and detailed enough to convince an audience it's real and wasn't knocked up in a carpenters workshop two weeks before.
The voiceover, unlike most voiceovers, works a ton, especially the glorious opening (read in Mako's inimitable gravelly tones):
Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!
Sandahl Bergman gets far, far more dialogue than Arnie and does fine work with it. Arnie's at his best in the movie when he's completely silent, sharpening his sword as his companions suggest that they just need to rescue the girl, not try and kill Thulsa Doom. Arnie drags a whetstone over his blade and looks surly. The one definite exception is his speech at the end, when he prays to Crom, but generally the less he's saying, the better he gets. Leave it to others to provide the text. Jason Momoa is undoubtedly a better actor, but sometimes a better actor isn't what you want.
The action is nasty, brutal and usually pretty short. Someone swings a sword and it slices open someone's belly or cuts their head of and it's big, meaty, combat that kills and cripples the combatants. Sword blows carry weight, blood spills, the people involved are clearly trying to kill each other, not do that lightsaber thing where they aim at areas above each other's head and twirl around to no purpose. Even when Arnie does his twirly sword thing it looks dangerous, not done entirely for effect. Also he punches out a camel.
I love Thulsa Doom's two henchmen, who look like they're on a break from an extensive tour round Europe with a thrash metal band. They barely say two words between them, but they're brilliant, hulking, extensively well dressed bad guys, especially the moment when the one with the moustache sees Conan in his painted camouflage pulling shapes and butchering his men and says, open-mouthed, "You!". It's a terrific moment, as good as the bit in Point Blank where the boss sees Lee Marvin and plays all the badass things Marvin has done in the movie in his head or any other two second shot where a bad guy realises the good guy has come back and is very put out. And their boss is wonderful, James Earl Jones being given some unbelievably difficult dialogue to make work but coming through like a champ. "Now they will know why they fear the night" is a hugely theatrical piece of dialogue, but Jones absolutely sells it because he is James Earl Jones and can sell any line.
It all takes itself so seriously, which should mean we get a laughable po-faced mess of unintentionally funny camp nonsense. But it works, incredibly. It starts with a Nietzsche quote, for God's sake. After he kills the bad guy there's a wordless, five minute sequence of Conan sitting, thinking, doing a hammer throw and then walking off. It feels like the end of a story told round a fire to wide-eyed kids, not the climax of a sword and sorcery movie. It has achieved its ambitions to compile a myth.
The sequel, Conan the Destroyer, is a bit rubbish, much more a generic fantasy plot with generic fantasy characters and it loses entirely the grandeur of the first movie.
The movie being on TV came at just the right time. I've listened to the soundtrack a fair bit recently, and was in the mood to rewatch it, but finding a favourite movie on TV is always twice as good as putting in the DVD yourself, like how hearing a great song on the radio is better that queuing it up yourself. You get all the pleasure of watching it, plus the joy of surprise that you're doing so.
Jason Momoa is undoubtedly a better actor, but sometimes a better actor isn't what you want.
For Arnold's Conan, yes. Conan himself? No. IIRC the source material is different from Milius' incarnation, Conan wears armor for instance and he is much more than a barbarian. Momoa had it in him to be a solid Conan, he was let down by the director and the script - which hewed closer to the material than Milius.
The sequel, Conan the Destroyer, is a bit rubbish, much more a generic fantasy plot with generic fantasy characters and it loses entirely the grandeur of the first movie.
As a kid, I loved the sequel because it was SO FUCKIN' D&D. The obligatory party building sequence, Grace Jones just showing up for some reason, weird traps, a mirror monster trap straight out of a 1st edition classic dungeon crawl, Wilt Chamberlin and his awesome mace, the end boss monster, etc.
As an adult, I'm a little uncomfortable by how much they sexualized the princess. Olivia d'Abo was like 15 and they had her wearing a handkerchief.
Red Sonja is even worse. An evil queen whose lesbian tendencies are portrayed as villainous in and of themselves, Briggitte Nielsen making Arnie look like Daniel Day Lewis, an annoying child you want drowned after he's been on screen for eight seconds. The only redeeming quality is the Morricone score, and even that isn't one of his best.
Why on Earth didn't I post the score? If you're opening a movie that is trying to portray the mythic, this kind of trumpets blaring drums thudding soaring strings milarky is what you need.
The score for Conan the Destroyer isn't as good as that one, but it's still pretty good. It's music that fits a less mythic, more generic movie, but it does an excellent job of it.
It was enjoyable enough when Star-lord was on screen and I could pretend it was a Guardians movie where he was stranded on Earth and needed a raptor crew for some space shit.
Everything else, not so much. The kids, the horrible babysitter, the horrible way the horrible babysitter got eaten by dinosaurs, the horrible aunt who looked like young Juliette Moore but with none of the charisma, the terminally stupid scientists.
The best thing about Jurassic World was the meta-commentary where they were talking about how they kept needing to make bigger and better dinosaurs because after so many years the populace had become bored with what had originally been groundbreaking. Just like the film series.
And I'm pretty sure that wasn't even intentional.
The meta bit would have been an interesting theme, but they would have needed to do a lot more to establish it. Just saying that they need moar betterer dinos doesn't cut it when you have real world tourist attractions that get along fine year after year without constantly adding new things. Unfortunately that line was basically a lame excuse to explain why they kept developing new dinosaurs.
The most notable thing about the movie was how little chemistry there was between anyone. Pratt and Howard especially. I think that's the first time I've watched a movie kiss and wondered why they're kissing. The lack of charisma was pretty damn impressive too. Pratt's mojo was strong, but everyone else was reading off a cursed script of -10 charisma, compounded by liberal usage of the idiot ball.
The other thing that was interesting from a bad movie standpoint was how poorly the various reveals of the super-murder-dino's abilities worked for me. They're in there to provide threat escalation, because a 30' tall carnivore with the teeth and the claws just isn't enough these days, but every reveal felt artificial and designed entirely to drive the plot. It killed the suspension of disbelief because it was painfully obvious that the big bad was going to plot armor its way out of any situation until the climactic battle. Which is expected, but when the writers make it as obvious as
turning invisible and speaking Raptorese
, then the tension is gone and I'm just sitting there wondering what the body count will be and what ass pull the writers will come up with.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The Conan score is undoubtedly one of the all time best
And I love that movie. It's simple but so powerful and raw, the stark beauty of the landscape matching the harsh lives of these heroes, who have no home and live from one moment to the next.
Why's JW getting all this heat? It gives you decent to good dino action in a non-shitty package of actors and story. It's entirely unpretentious in that it knows this and does not pretend to offer anything else. Let the masses enjoy their entertainment.
Don't even bother comparing it to the original, btw. It should not have been as good as it is, it didn't need to be as good as it is. It's a freak occurence.
Here's a thread to read about why we at D & D didn't like it.
Basically, it had weird sexist undertones (especially with Bryce Dallas Howard's character on multiple levels), poorly written script, horrible characters with few redeeming features (Chris Pratt is their poster boy), the villain is an idiot,
the original Tyrannosaurus looks like shit
and, of course,
Katie McGrath spending her cameo being either a bad babysitter or having one of the most brutal death's in the entire franchise usually reserved for villains.
The masses deserve contempt for devouring this nearly Transformers monstrosity.
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Olaf isn't that annoying. Arguably i'd say that's part of the problem. You'd see the wise-cracking non-human sidekick so many times in Disney movies that Olaf comes off as a damp squib, he's more like a bemused child than anything while Sven the Reindeer acts more like what you'd expect. Olaf just feels like a waste.
His subsequent portrayals seem to have more oomph to them (like in the new short fronting Coco).
I never saw JW.
Why must I be punished for their sins?
When I was in high school, some kid threw up on me between classes. Total accident, it happens. While I was waiting in the office for my Gaga to bring me a new shirt, English class began. Apparently there was a sub that day, and the other students got rowdy. One of them tossed a super bouncy ball on the ground, which ricocheted around the room before hitting the sub in the face.
Even though I wasn't there to witness this, the regular teacher still assigned me the same punishment. A fifteen page cited paper on an old English translation of The Canterbury Tales.
I protested this, as I was half a building away when the incident happened. He told me it didn't matter. It was about the message.
I didn't write the paper. It was a form of protest. Instead, I wrote a poem in the style of a Canterbury Tale about how unfair the situation was.
He actually really liked it. Still failed me, though, on the assignment.
It's not the individual who reaps punishment. It's all of us.
Even if we had just gotten puked on, MR. HOWSER, YOU SHIT.
"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!
When I was in high school sophomore year someone threw a pencil at me. I picked it up. I got assigned detention for that horrid act. I told the principal that I wasn't going to do it, I did nothing wrong. I tried to confront the teacher, but the goose wouldn't even tell me what she was accusing me of. Just I knew what I had done. Which was jack shit, lady.
So I didn't do it...until I was forced to senior year at graduation because it was still there waiting and I wasn't going to go back and argue about now.
So everyone is going to end up watching whatever Trevorrow makes, as TexiKen says.
1. The script they start with is changed immediately either doing pre production and/or on set, this is how Ridley Scott's attrocious Robin Hood movie got made from a killer script.
2. Unless the director is a powerless puppet for the producers/studio aka The Mummy the director gets a say in what gets on the script and the screenwriter did what they say or get fired/replaced. They're the most powerful rank in the above the line structure, unless it's s situation where they're outranked by a producer aka Tom Cruise or get kicked around by the studio aka Suicide Squad.
This is all on him. Disney needs to get rid of him asap.
Disney have higher standards than that in the previous movies, this is why they have better reception and each broke the billion dollar mark over the Prequels.
Yeah, it's best to forget it ever existed.
I still maintain that Tangled is the best of the new bunch--and honestly, it may be one of the best Disney animated films overall. The characters and storytelling just work, and I don't have to add any qualifications when I say that.
Don't even bother comparing it to the original, btw. It should not have been as good as it is, it didn't need to be as good as it is. It's a freak occurence.
Man don't do this
This is anti-criticism
Everything else, not so much. The kids, the horrible babysitter, the horrible way the horrible babysitter got eaten by dinosaurs, the horrible aunt who looked like young Juliette Moore but with none of the charisma, the terminally stupid scientists.
The best thing about Jurassic World was the meta-commentary where they were talking about how they kept needing to make bigger and better dinosaurs because after so many years the populace had become bored with what had originally been groundbreaking. Just like the film series.
And I'm pretty sure that wasn't even intentional.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Yeah, that metacommentary could have been interesting, if they leaned into it more.
As it is, I can't tell if the triumphant theme playing over the park is on purpose, or if they just needed to cram it somewhere.
I find the entire PotC series (yes, the first one too) boring and uninspired. The costumes are so jumbled they wind up as dirty rags. Jack Sparrow is a tired, tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired cliche and I can't understand a thing he says. I've liked Depp in plenty of his other roles, so it ain't actor fatigue. Lots of other people like PotC, including people who are good at critiquing movies, so there must be something there.
My small point is that boring and uninspired are subjective enough (not totally, but enough) to not be enough to label a novie as bad. JW does enough other things right to be OK. Even if it was genuinely bad, I'm not concerned that it's popular.
Understand that I can't stand Inception and think Godzilla vs Hedora has legitimate artistic merit, solo what do I know.
Shimmer Lake was an excellent little movie, recommend it, don't read too much about it first
Now watching Man Vs. and it's slow to get going but it's actually pretty okay once it does
I will report back on the ending
one of the stills for shimmer lake had Ron Livingston in it so I made a mental note to watch it
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
I'm legitimately unsure what your point is. You expressed displeasure that some people thought a financially-profitable blockbuster sequel was less than satisfying, but aren't lauding the film yourself.
You seem to be upset that there's a consensus of negative opinion about this film instead of people simply keeping mum and letting the proles enjoy their lizard-monster rampage.
This is why it's anti-criticism: you're not arguing against the criticisms, you're arguing that the film is above critique.
Which just isn't a thing.
I hope my explanation is a little more clear here.
I think he's more concerned with the notion that certain movies should not be made. That Star Wars needs to suffer to teach Hollywood a lesson about blockbusters. Critiquing art usually doesn't come with the goal of ceasing future art of that type.
To be fair, head scientist guy wasn't stupid, he just liked money and wasn't particularly concerned when his creations ran amok. He did, after all, skedaddle on a helicopter as soon as the mayhem started, with assurances that he'd be able to continue his work (if I'm remembering this correctly).
I'm waiting for him to turn into this guy:
Don't hurry to watch this but it's fine if you're bored
As a side-note, I'm also kinda wishing that I'd watched at least some Sirk before watching films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Whenever I watch or read an artist heavily inspired by an earlier, seminal work or artist, (as Fassbinder was by Sirk) I find it pretty difficult to take the earlier works at face value. (E.g. I vastly prefer Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead to Waiting for Godot, even though Stoppard's play is clearly derivative of Beckett's, and it's pretty much the same for Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Günther Grass' The Tin Drum, although it's absolutely legitimate to say that Rushdie was ripping off Grass.)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I watched We're The Millers last night. For the second time. I don't doubt there will be a third in due course.
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The original isn't trying to give you a plot, as the remake seemed to be. It's telling a myth. The raiders who destroy Conan's village don't need to be searching for plot coupons so they can send off to a special address and receive the movie's climax by return mail. Conan's origin is entirely without the structure of a plot hemming it in. Bad people exterminate his village and enslave him, he learns combat in gladiatorial arenas, is set free and seeks revenge. That's it as far as plot goes.
The score, by Basil Poledouris, is obviously, immediately superb. Propulsive, soaring and heroic, it is a thrilling piece of work all on its own. Milius originally wanted Carmina Burana to herald Thulsa Doom's riders appearing on screen, but apparently he found out that Excalibur was using it and got Poledouris to write something just as good instead. The cinematography and set design manage to do the impossible and portray a believable fantasy world in a movie made in 1982. Take an interesting landscape, whack a thing in it that looks real, and hey presto. Things like the wheel on which Conan builds his strength look weathered and detailed enough to convince an audience it's real and wasn't knocked up in a carpenters workshop two weeks before.
The voiceover, unlike most voiceovers, works a ton, especially the glorious opening (read in Mako's inimitable gravelly tones):
Sandahl Bergman gets far, far more dialogue than Arnie and does fine work with it. Arnie's at his best in the movie when he's completely silent, sharpening his sword as his companions suggest that they just need to rescue the girl, not try and kill Thulsa Doom. Arnie drags a whetstone over his blade and looks surly. The one definite exception is his speech at the end, when he prays to Crom, but generally the less he's saying, the better he gets. Leave it to others to provide the text. Jason Momoa is undoubtedly a better actor, but sometimes a better actor isn't what you want.
The action is nasty, brutal and usually pretty short. Someone swings a sword and it slices open someone's belly or cuts their head of and it's big, meaty, combat that kills and cripples the combatants. Sword blows carry weight, blood spills, the people involved are clearly trying to kill each other, not do that lightsaber thing where they aim at areas above each other's head and twirl around to no purpose. Even when Arnie does his twirly sword thing it looks dangerous, not done entirely for effect. Also he punches out a camel.
I love Thulsa Doom's two henchmen, who look like they're on a break from an extensive tour round Europe with a thrash metal band. They barely say two words between them, but they're brilliant, hulking, extensively well dressed bad guys, especially the moment when the one with the moustache sees Conan in his painted camouflage pulling shapes and butchering his men and says, open-mouthed, "You!". It's a terrific moment, as good as the bit in Point Blank where the boss sees Lee Marvin and plays all the badass things Marvin has done in the movie in his head or any other two second shot where a bad guy realises the good guy has come back and is very put out. And their boss is wonderful, James Earl Jones being given some unbelievably difficult dialogue to make work but coming through like a champ. "Now they will know why they fear the night" is a hugely theatrical piece of dialogue, but Jones absolutely sells it because he is James Earl Jones and can sell any line.
It all takes itself so seriously, which should mean we get a laughable po-faced mess of unintentionally funny camp nonsense. But it works, incredibly. It starts with a Nietzsche quote, for God's sake. After he kills the bad guy there's a wordless, five minute sequence of Conan sitting, thinking, doing a hammer throw and then walking off. It feels like the end of a story told round a fire to wide-eyed kids, not the climax of a sword and sorcery movie. It has achieved its ambitions to compile a myth.
The sequel, Conan the Destroyer, is a bit rubbish, much more a generic fantasy plot with generic fantasy characters and it loses entirely the grandeur of the first movie.
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For Arnold's Conan, yes. Conan himself? No. IIRC the source material is different from Milius' incarnation, Conan wears armor for instance and he is much more than a barbarian. Momoa had it in him to be a solid Conan, he was let down by the director and the script - which hewed closer to the material than Milius.
As a kid, I loved the sequel because it was SO FUCKIN' D&D. The obligatory party building sequence, Grace Jones just showing up for some reason, weird traps, a mirror monster trap straight out of a 1st edition classic dungeon crawl, Wilt Chamberlin and his awesome mace, the end boss monster, etc.
As an adult, I'm a little uncomfortable by how much they sexualized the princess. Olivia d'Abo was like 15 and they had her wearing a handkerchief.
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The score for Conan the Destroyer isn't as good as that one, but it's still pretty good. It's music that fits a less mythic, more generic movie, but it does an excellent job of it.
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The meta bit would have been an interesting theme, but they would have needed to do a lot more to establish it. Just saying that they need moar betterer dinos doesn't cut it when you have real world tourist attractions that get along fine year after year without constantly adding new things. Unfortunately that line was basically a lame excuse to explain why they kept developing new dinosaurs.
The most notable thing about the movie was how little chemistry there was between anyone. Pratt and Howard especially. I think that's the first time I've watched a movie kiss and wondered why they're kissing. The lack of charisma was pretty damn impressive too. Pratt's mojo was strong, but everyone else was reading off a cursed script of -10 charisma, compounded by liberal usage of the idiot ball.
The other thing that was interesting from a bad movie standpoint was how poorly the various reveals of the super-murder-dino's abilities worked for me. They're in there to provide threat escalation, because a 30' tall carnivore with the teeth and the claws just isn't enough these days, but every reveal felt artificial and designed entirely to drive the plot. It killed the suspension of disbelief because it was painfully obvious that the big bad was going to plot armor its way out of any situation until the climactic battle. Which is expected, but when the writers make it as obvious as
And I love that movie. It's simple but so powerful and raw, the stark beauty of the landscape matching the harsh lives of these heroes, who have no home and live from one moment to the next.
It's great.
Here's a thread to read about why we at D & D didn't like it.
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/198744/what-do-they-got-in-here-king-kong-jurassic-world/p1
Basically, it had weird sexist undertones (especially with Bryce Dallas Howard's character on multiple levels), poorly written script, horrible characters with few redeeming features (Chris Pratt is their poster boy), the villain is an idiot,
The masses deserve contempt for devouring this nearly Transformers monstrosity.