Media itt: movie/film discussion - Beware Spoilers

THE_IRON_...KENYAN?

Banned deucer.
Its definitely immoral to not like objectively good art. You dont have to like watching it, but you do have to like it in and of itself for the reason of propping up good taste in art and reinforcing that in our culture. You have to like every good movie; in my opinion you arent allowed to dislike any of them if they are good. Like, you are obligated to like Citizen Kane. You could not like watching it, but you are obligated to like it full stop. You have to appreciate Wolf Gang Puck, or Tony Hawk, or Tiger Woods, or Morgan Freeman, or any great craftsmen or craft. You just have to. Ive never watched Citizen Kane
 

Hulavuta

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The only mindset I refuse to have is to pretend that these films still exist in a very tiny sample size as they once did. I don't know if Citizen Kane was once one of the best movies ever made, but I do know I once thought Mystery Men was one of the best movies ever made and seeing a lot more movies corrected that, but for some reason Citizen Kane will always be one of the best films even though over 1000 times more movies exist now than did back then (worth noting in particular than a lot of the "best" films that were made during WWII suck, just like how music sucked during the Korean war). And if you do give olds films a chance, you might find that some were better than Citizen Kane anyway. I'm pretty sure you only brought this up because I said Citizen Kane felt dated compared to an even older film, so what's the actual problem here? The real problem is with specific time periods, regions, and studio controls. Hollywood sucked in the late 90s and it sucked from WWII through the McCarthy era. It's got nothing to do with films being old.
I think there is a common mindset that films have somehow plateaued, sometime between the late 1930s to the mid-1980s or so. That everything before X movie, well, it was still people learning, and then afterward, it was people just copying what was finally mastered. In the first few decades of film, people were still learning how to integrate narrative, still learning what the best length and pacing for narrative is, still learning how to integrate sound, camera effects, cinematography, visual effects, what have you. Then there was this period where all of that stuff was "perfected", and now everything else after that is just riding its coattails, so to speak.

The most common defense I hear of why Citizen Kane is the best movie is because it was a pioneer in so many different camera techniques and effects as well as visual effects, and many of those techniques and effects are still used today. And the logic goes, if every movie going forward was highly influenced by that, can they really be said to be "better than the original"? In some ways, they can only exist in reference to it and owe a lot of their qualities to it. And if many great movies have come out then, they still can ever pioneer the same things again, just like the wheel can never be "re-invented" (this argument probably applies to the top 5 or 10 "best films" since obviously Citizen Kane didn't pioneer everything). Art always exists inter-textually and it's impossible to judge it without reference to how it was influenced by other works. I agree with this argument insofar as Citizen Kane should get credit for what it accomplished and influenced, but I don't think that means it's necessarily better than all the other films it influenced.

I don't think I'm really qualified to say what is or is not the greatest film ever; I'm not even sure a category like that isn't too subjective to exist, which is probably why most people go for the technical and legacy argument when defending Citizen Kane, which are largely objective and can never be changed no matter what other films come out. I like it, among a lot of other old movies, though it isn't one of my favorites. But I think for many people there really just is no way to avoid a sense of age-based bias when it comes to films. It seems to me this is the trend with a lot of art forms, there always seems to be a certain point where it was the best and everything before it was building up to that and everything after was just copying it. Whether that's Baroque music or Victorian literature or whatever (painting gets a little different, I grant). At least film has only been around about 100 years or so, who knows where it will really go when it's been around for a thousand and what we'll consider to be "old" at that point.
 

Myzozoa

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I saw Captain Marvel today, jus got back:

In short, I rate it, most enjoyable movie I've seen in a while (I barely watch movies so that could be why). I enjoyed the staging of the narrative of her powers. I am still trying to unpack it for fun, because it is likely that this was extremely thoughtfully done by the writers, especially in the scene where she escapes from and in a sense destroys at least a symbol (the hologram in her mind connected to a computer, kind of complicated) of the 'Supreme Intelligence'.

Anyway I rarely enjoy movies especially these movies, but I liked this one even if it lagged at the very end.
 

brightobject

there like moonlight
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i think a movie being dated shouldn't detract from its enjoyment. you have to look at it as it was released and not through a modern lens or else youre going to find a lot that you don't like about older movies.
so should i be an asian guy or a white guy when i astral project back in time to the 1950s. trying to "replace" ur lens with some hypothetical person in that time period is sisyphean at best and completely nonsensical at worst.

imo its possible to understand the industry standards / target audience / creators' intent through our relative historical understanding of the period and still retain the integrity of ur personal reactions without sacrificing either. u can understand how important and groundbreaking a film is, and still say, wow its kind of shit now, or its problematic, or whatever. I don't have to watch the female lead fall in love with 007 in From Russia With Love bc he bought her some dresses and then say that Bond has any kind of meaningful attractiveness or charm at all just because that's what the writers thought chivalry meant.

e: in extension that means i should just watch what makes me happy, i don't have to force myself to sit through a movie that makes me bored or uncomfortable bc of some dated aspect of it. if i dont like it i dont like it, right? There's plenty of older movies where the "dated" aspects add to the appeal, but in other cases it just doesn't bring enough to the table and that's ok. I'm not really missing out by noping out of a movie I'm not thrilled about anyway
 
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vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
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I enjoyed Endgame for the 3 hours of fanservice it was, but the more time that passes after seeing it, the more bones I have to pick with it.
 

Hulavuta

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My one sentence opinion on Endgame is that the smaller emotional moments worked very well, and I appreciated the focus and closure on the original Avengers, but as a giant epic action movie it felt way too bloated and way too much like checking off a list of things that should happen, in a way that Infinity War really had no problem with.

I guess I'll stick with spoiler tags out of courtesy, since it hasn't been a week yet.

It did seem by the end of Infinity War that Thor was strong enough to kill Thanos on his own, and Captain Marvel probably was as well, so it was probably a smart decision to have them kill Thanos off in the first ten minutes and make the main conflict about having them return everyone, instead of fighting Thanos.

The problem with these alternate timelines is that it always makes me not care, if there are just an infinite number of universes with the same people with the same problems it makes it harder for me to care about the one we're watching. What makes it special besides the fact it's the one we're watching? I think the time travel bits barely scrape by for me as what they enabled (Tony to finally confront his father, Thor his mother) were very powerful.

I have the same gripe with alternate universe Thanos being the "final boss". There was no emotional connection, it's like we spent already almost 3 hours in Infinity War with Thanos as the main character, and then that Thanos dies in 10 minutes. Now we got a new Thanos but he doesn't have the memories of what he did in Infinity War so we don't connect with him the same way. He's very much just an obstacle, not a character, here.

Captain America's ending also fell a bit flat for me as I never really bought that he and Peggy were really all that in love with each other. They only spent one movie together and I don't think they ever got to know each other that well. It always seemed more that he idealized what he could have, since he didn't know any better. I give a little leeway to the endings of the Avengers as this was a 10 year storyline and the Avengers never really had character arcs in the strictest sense; they had definite character development but a lot of it was in stories that weren't even about them. So in a way it's hard to give them an end that seems to be the culmination of their character "arc", hard to figure out what the most "fitting" end should be.

One thing that really impressed me was how many of those kind of one-shot actors they were able to get back, like the Asgardians. Robert Redford in particular though. Just wow. Really made the whole time travel thing believable and gave the sense of this holistic world and continuity. Though I wonder if Natalie Portman actually was there or if they just used old The Dark World footage and movie continuity editing magic to make it seem like she was there.


Final note: Nebula really was the star. In this and Infinity War they really took a character I did not care for at all before and made her part of the central heart of the team. She got as much screen time and importance as the original Avengers despite not being one. Definitely one of my favorites now. I just wish she and Tony Stark had more scenes together since they were such an unlikely pairing; I don't think they really talked much again after returning to earth.

EDIT: There's another major thought I had about the movie a while after writing this:

I don't know if they totally addressed this great idea that was brought up in Infinity War, the parallel between Thanos and Tony. Thanos paralleled a LOT of the characters of Infinity War in his quest, but most of all Tony, in that they both have plans for the greater good and are frustrated that nobody else sees it, i.e. Ultron and Civil War. That's why the "You're not the only one cursed with knowledge" line was so poignant. They addressed that obviously Thanos was wrong, but they never really said whether or not Tony was wrong. At the beginning of the film, he's still clinging to this idea that a suit of armor around the world would've prevented it. I guess in a roundabout way it did show that Steve was right, and that as long as they stuck together they would get through it. And this is kind of shown with Tony leaving the group for 5 years, but then eventually coming around to rejoining them. I guess I just wish it was more explicit. And again it's hurt by Thanos being a different Thanos; 2014 was before both Ultron and Civil War, Tony really didn't get into most of his big plans yet.
 
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Surgo

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Endgame was absolute garbage that, along with Infinity War, pretty much killed both my own and my wife's faith in anything Marvel related. In fact, I'd even rank it in my top 6 disappointing media list. But strangely enough, the one thing that everyone seemed to hate about the movie I didn't actually mind.

I didn't mind the Thor fat suit. Because when he powered up at the end and fought like he always had...he was still fat. And that was fine, because being fat was never his problem. If they had somehow done away with that this wouldn't be the case, but luckily they didn't do that. I could have done without playing it for laughs throughout the movie, but the message there was actually decent.

The rest of the movie was shit though, and it just falls apart more the more you examine it.
 

Mr.E

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And the logic goes, if every movie going forward was highly influenced by that, can they really be said to be "better than the original"? In some ways, they can only exist in reference to it and owe a lot of their qualities to it.
Absolutely they can. There are many businesses out there that don't make their own stuff at all and simply improve upon existing designs of whatever product or service they're drawing from. Most artists are never satisfied what what they produce, even if their work is universally praised, because they have an eye for the microscopic imperfections in their work that the average viewer doesn't notice. Advances in modern science are obviously predicated on basic principles people discovered hundreds of years ago. Originality is overrated.
 

Hulavuta

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Absolutely they can. There are many businesses out there that don't make their own stuff at all and simply improve upon existing designs of whatever product or service they're drawing from. Most artists are never satisfied what what they produce, even if their work is universally praised, because they have an eye for the microscopic imperfections in their work that the average viewer doesn't notice. Advances in modern science are obviously predicated on basic principles people discovered hundreds of years ago. Originality is overrated.
I agree with you, as I said:

I agree with this argument insofar as Citizen Kane should get credit for what it accomplished and influenced, but I don't think that means it's necessarily better than all the other films it influenced.
Though I am not entirely sure that you can necessarily make an equivalency between scientific and technological achievements and artistic ones.
 

brightobject

there like moonlight
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just saw Three Billboards, what a mess of a movie. It nails its emotional beats when it matters but the entire structure it's built on is so full of holes--Reminds me a bit of Coco in that sense (weird connection to make, I know. I just had been talking about the film a bit with a friend recently). There are so many random arcs that just exist to be cruel, I guess? But it doesn't really feel like a fleshed out world or one that even has any real irony to it--the jokes in the movie also felt extremely wooden and out of place to me. I'd go so far as to say it vaguely reminded me of Precious in the same kind of torture porn movie vein, although obviously not anywhere near as egregious. But i dunno. I guess the movie is ambitious and its heart is in the right place, but ultimately it really feels like it makes stumble after stumble and doesn't really have a concrete destination in mind (though that kind of meandering narrative kind of let me have more fun with it).
 
Recently watched the last part of the Avengers. I liked the movie. Interesting and complete intrigue. The end was a little upset, but the great author wanted it that way.
 
Am currently in Cannes, watched Eggers' THE LIGHTHOUSE last morning. Bloody brilliant, fantastic script, insane visuals, incredible performances, and Eggers has such a strong handle on archaic dialogue. Please don't miss it when it comes out xox
 

Surgo

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John Wick 3 was kinda disappointing. The first two were surprisingly big brain affairs, but this one had terrible continuity throughout and just didn't feel cohesive. Needed more time in the oven.

The scene with the two dogs was great though. Overall a C-.
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
Went to the movies to watch Toy Story 4 today, and given it was a sequel I didn't know what to expect. Saying I was pleasantly surprised would be underselling it, I absolutely LOVED this film. Perhaps it's because I haven't watched the original Toy Story in a long time but right now I feel like Toy Story 4 was the best in the series.

I don't want to spoil it so I'll just say it managed to combine the usual themes one expects from Toy Story (adventure, friendship, and nostalgia) with others that hadn't been as present before. There's finally some romance and this time it's not the kid the one that grows up, and the movie managed to thread all its themes while feeling coherent and it never overstayed its welcome. As a plus, it had some very funny moments that everyone at the theater enjoyed.

I rarely recommend movies but this one certainly deserves it.
 

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
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As in it was better? Or just you regret your analysis.
I don't know what the difference is in your head

It was stupid in some ways (hurr hurr Picasso will never amount to anything) but very brilliant in many others. Quite a difference between the score I gave it and what I would now, as it would now slide in somewhere in the 30-20 range.
 

UncleSam

Leading this village
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I don't know what the difference is in your head

It was stupid in some ways (hurr hurr Picasso will never amount to anything) but very brilliant in many others. Quite a difference between the score I gave it and what I would now, as it would now slide in somewhere in the 30-20 range.
Well there’s a difference between reevaluating a review on its’ content vs saying the tone or arguments behind the review weren’t something you agree with or support any longer. I honestly wasn’t clear what you meant in your initial statement or if it meant you thought it was better or worse strictly on its’ merits.

I have been thinking of sitting through Titanic for a while now so maybe I’ll give it a shot
 

TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
Sam it kinda feels like you're misunderstanding something about film criticism. It's merits are if it conveyed emotions well. You can't change your feelings and also feel like your original arguments weren't flawed or lacking. Well I guess you could you'd just be wrong.
 

Hulavuta

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Did anyone else see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? I liked it well enough, though it was a big change of pace from his other movies. As a big Western fan who had hoped Tarantino would just keep making Spaghetti Western tributes for the rest of his career, I appreciated how much of that influence he was able to work into it here, despite the story being so different.


I just found the Bruce Lee scene so confusing though. I get that there's quite a bit of a controversy over how good of a fighter he actually was, considering he didn't do tournaments and there is little reliable documentation of his actual feats. And Brad Pitt's character does voice that point with the whole "you're a dancer, not a fighter" line. Hey, I'm a big Bruce Lee fan and I grew up watching his movies, but I'm fine with admitting that he was just a great martial arts philosopher and not necessarily the best fighter.

It just seemed weird to me that Tarantino would want to invite that kind of controversy, smearing the reputation of a dead man, to his movie. Especially in a scene that overall wasn't that important to the narrative, with a one-off character (that starred a great impression that probably shouldn't have gone to waste, I admit). I did some reading online and it looks like I wasn't the only one who thought this either. Apparently the scene was changed so that there wasn't a clear winner, when originally Brad Pitt's character did win. I wonder if that was even worse, because now the scene still exists, just without conviction. If it's basically a tie, is it trying to say that Bruce Lee was just a poser, or not? I don't know. Seemed like such a weird thing to throw in, a Bruce Lee cameo could've been a million different things, and Brad Pitt getting into an altercation and fired could've been a million different things too.
 
I prefer when tarantino's plots consist of a little more than homages to old shit he likes, fairy tale ideal about the 60s and what was ruined by the manson cult aside, but I still liked it a lot. probably his straight up funniest film too; it was hilarious throughout, especially the beginning and the end, the latter of which was also cathartically violent. classic QT. also phenomenally tense when it needed to be. good mix of everything tarantino, well worth watching
 

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