What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

I didn't care for Signs but in defense of the ending, we want to go colonize Mars and the entire airless planet is death to us.

Mad Dog wrote: I didn't care for Signs but in defense of the ending, we want to go colonize Mars and the entire airless planet is death to us.

Unless we someday terraform the hell out of Mars, only a scientist should want to live there. It would be like living in Antarctica, only colder and without oxygen.

New Thread: Would you colonize Mars?
fortressat.com/forum/35-mos-eisley-canti...colonize-mars#242386

Mad Dog wrote: I didn't care for Signs but in defense of the ending, we want to go colonize Mars and the entire airless planet is death to us.

such a good post.

Also, they didn't seem interested in living here or anything. They were capturing a bunch of us, no? For food? I don't know why.

Just saw Lion. Wow. Powerful true story about a boy who is lost on a train from his small town in India, ending up 1,000 miles away in Kolkata, and his later search to find his home.

The first 45 minutes of this are particularly poignant, as we follow the (incredibly adorable) boy and his journey into a new land and new life, harrowing as it is. It's heartbreaking to see he is one of thousands, though a very fortunate one to later be adopted into a nice Australian family.

The later parts of the boy (now a man) living in Australia and doing his search via Google Earth bog down just a little, but there is a very emotionally powerful ending. And there is a detail in the epilogue text that is absolutely huge and gives some incredible weight to some of what came before, and to the whole story, really. (So whatever you do, don't look up the details about this story before seeing the movie.) I can't think offhand of a film where the epilogue text was as impactful. But it also made sense to save that information until then.

Anyway, I hadn't even heard of this until very recently, but it will likely make my top 10 of 2016.

Black Barney wrote: Also, they didn't seem interested in living here or anything. They were capturing a bunch of us, no? For food? I don't know why.

What I liked about Signs, that was probably done much better in the Tom Cruise "War of the Worlds", was the sense of an invasion from an average joe, who isn't privy to what is really going on. It is not about big battles and grand speeches, just a bunch of scared people in a house clueless as to what is really going on. I really liked that aesthetic for the first 2/3 of the movie, and then the ending ruined it.

About two weeks ago, my wife and I decided to screen The Raiders of the Lost Ark for the boy. It was a huge success. Two weeks later, I think I've watched all Indy movies 2-3 times. The boy declared that from now on, these are his favorite movies, Star Wars being relegated to 2nd place. He even made pictures of Indiana Jones fighting Darth Vader, in which it looks like Indy is getting the upper hand (maybe I'm speculating).
Anyway, I had a lot of fun because I haven't watched them myself in many years. Here are some assorted thoughts in no particular order.

1) Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the best movies ever made. Every time I catch it on TV, I get glued to it. I just want to watch until the end of whatever scene it is on, but then there's the next scene, and I remember that's one of my favorites, too, so I keep watching, and so on. It is a very tight movie, in the same way as Fury Road (the truck chase also helps that comparison). There're just two or three bits of exposition, and even then there's something else going on the background, to make those bits tense (like the poisoned figs, or the weapons being passed from hands to hands in that saloon). It is never dull.

2) I was wondering that maybe time would give me a better perspective on the Kingdom of the Skull, and maybe there would be something in that movie that I failed to see the first time. The answer is no. It is just as awful and disgusting as when it came out, like watching Spielberg and Lucas trying to milk an old, half dead cow. And I am not a Shia Labeouf hater, but the chemistry between him and Ford is so non-existent, that I never remember that he is supposed to be Indy's son (even though I kinda watched the movie 2 times in a week). Just imagine not being able to remember whether Sean Connery is Indy's dad, uncle or some random old man. Anyway.

3) I like Indy's girlfriends a lot. Their parts are well-written and funny, the actresses are very charismatic, and they each feel like a character with an agenda (yes, even Willie), and not as window dressing. And in each movie, they have a couple of scenes that they 100% own.

4) I kind of liked The Temple of Doom more than The Last Crusade this time. ToD is just so unabashedly pulpy and ridiculous. TLC starts on the wrong foot - instead
of Harrison Ford we get 15 minutes of some teenager, it has way more exposition than I remembered, the part when they go to Berlin and "no ticket!" zeppelin scene feel wrong... and the only great set piece is the tank (which is still awesome). All in all, TLC pacing is kinda off compared to Raiders and Temple. And I also like Willie a lot. She's making this "dumb blonde" stereotype, and obviously having so much fun with it.

How old is the Boy? I like RAIDERS a lot, but it's got legit face-melting and head asplode. And that guy that gets propellered. Yeesh.

6,5
I warned my wife about the face melting. Twice. In the end, it wasn't such a big deal.
The worst scene is the sacrifice in the Temple of Doom, heart and all. It was the last movie we showed to the Boy (now his favorite)...

I would still give the edge to Last Crusade, but I do like Temple of Doom a lot. Just a lot of really fun stuff in there. It has a reputation of being so dark, but it's really just that one heart scene. Otherwise, I think it's a pretty light and breezy film that has a lot of humor and charm.

And call me crazy, but much as I was disappointed like everyone else by Crystal Skull in the theater, watching it a couple years later on DVD I enjoyed a lot of it (including the fridge nuke, which to me was one of the more clever and over-the-top Indy moments that the rest of the film didn't have enough of). It's still a distant fourth behind the other three, but it is still an Indiana Jones film in most of the good ways... just not as good in most of those ways. Regardless, I have faith that #5 will be a lot better, as they have something to prove at this point.

Raiders is a masterpiece, though. Even with the submarine issue and the plot not requiring Indy...

My daughter declared Indiana Jones to be "terrible", but my son loves them. He was six when he watched them first, he just turned seven. I was six when I saw Raiders for the first time. I thought about the face melting and head chopping...but I am totally OK with him seeing those things. I think it's actually GOOD for kids to see some things that sort of toe the line like that instead of insisting that they only watch Fireman Sam until they are 10. I think Spielberg has a similar perspective- the violence is really pretty extreme conceptually, but it's also not cruel or masochistic. It's also brief. There's a shock moment that is HUGELY impressionable, and then it's done. It's more like a "did that really happen" kind of thing that speaks to our natural curiosities about death and the limits of the body. The heart thing is going pretty far though, that is just short of being too much, I think.

Crystal Skull plays better now than it did when it came out, IMO. It's still wracked with shortcomings and Shia LeBouef, but it is not as bad as some think.

Anyway...why didn't any of you bother to tell me that Sing Street was GREAT. I absolutely loved it, what a charming and heartfelt picture. Being a music snob, I especially liked how it showed how Conor and the band would get inspired to change their style or their sound by what they are seeing and hearing. I loved how things said by characters turned up later in songs. It's like the Morrissey song "Sing Your Life".

Eamon was the man, that kid rules. "What were you doing?" "Oh, just some rabbit stuff". I would enjoy seeing more of those kids, all of them.

I also really liked how their shoot for "Riddle of the Model" was really quite like how a lot of videos were back in the early 80s...a band/kids just kind of fucking around on the street with random elements like those vampire teeth.

There were two things I thought were kind of incongruous. One was how Brendan says "no woman can truly love a man who listens to Phil Collins (when it was actually Genesis)...but then he plays Hall and Oates for them. Which is probably worse. The other is that Conor is talking about being a "futurist" and not having any nostalgia, but then his fantasy video shoot (which was really awesome) was TOTALLY nostalgic in that weird kind of 1980s nostalgia for the 1950s way.

When you step back from it too, the plausibility of these kids just sort of getting together and hammering out an at least rudimentarily competent (if sloppy) cover of a production-heavy, complex song like "Rio" is stretching it.

But who cares, it was a funny and sweet movie that anyone that's ever been in a band, written a terrible song for a girl or boy, or just struggled to get through the teen years can enjoy. Another thing I really liked was how it was practically an encyclopedia of teen movie touchpoints...but it didn't really dwell on that at all. It was kind of like "here's the troubled kid", "here's the authoritarian schoolmaster", "here's the crappy boyfriend", etc. and it moved right on.

Probably the best movie of 2016. But I don't really like most of the big Oscar-class movies anymore so there's that.

I totally agree with Barnes' on Spielberg's violence. It is very kids oriented, and "disgusting" stuff like bugs, monkey brains, snakes... the boy just loves it, because he loves disgusting stuff in general.

We watched Crystal Skull a couple of nights ago. We were about halfway through it, and I was thinking, "This isn't as bad as I remembered." Then we got to the Amazon set piece, and I thought, "Yep, it's as bad as I remembered."

Barnes, I've only said how Sing Street is incredible, and the best movie of 2016, oh, probably 20 times here. :oP

The first time, I loved it but it was just kind of a fun little indie film that reminded me of things I did and felt at that age (about exactly how old I was at the time), but seeing it again later was the clincher. It has so much packed in there; coming of age, finding your style and your voice (literally and figuratively), dealing with fighting/divorcing parents, experiencing a new school with bullies and authority figures, getting a band together (of friends and musicians), the complexities of relationships and the joys and disappointments of connecting with someone, going for your dreams... And the whole thing with the big brother (Hall & Oates aside) was its own wonderful little side thing, and how he gets to mentor and appreciate Conor living more of his dreams. All of that has some nice weight and attention to it, in and around the really cool experience of starting a band and seeing it grow into something meaningful, with fun songs and videos.

Have you seen Once, the same writer/director's first movie? That has a beautiful rawness to it, though Sing Street is better and more polished overall. But you might really like Once, too.

Repeating myself, but temple of doom is gross and dark but not that bad until you watch it as an adult and realize how nasty, colonial, and racist it also is---but I think I like that too because it actually reflects how horrifying real pulp was too on those issues, which raiders and crusade whitewash.