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

Well if anyone from around here ever goes, I hope you'll say that you're playing to save the site.

Or, if anyone from around here goes to the World Boardgaming Championships instead, you'll find a lot of other people from around here.

hotseatgames wrote: Korean, I have not seen the American one and have no desire to do so.

The Korean one was beyond fucked up, even for my high tolerance of fucked up situations.

Disgustipater wrote:

Cranberries wrote: Did Irulan get pregnant from Sting in the book?

No, you are confusing characters/actors. That was Lady Margot Fenring, played by Léa Seydoux.

Yes, because they wanted to preserve the bloodline for future use.

Is the genre of a movie important? Maybe not, because there are good movies in every genre. Or maybe so, because an identifiable genre may make it easier for a viewer to select a movie without watching a spoiler-laden trailer. A woman that I have been dating lately asked if we could go see American Fiction together. I watched a lengthy trailer and got the impression that American Fiction would be a great comedy with scathing commentary about race in America.

American Fiction is actually a good movie, but a weak comedy. The funny material was all in the trailer, and revolved around a single funny idea: American readers only want to read works by black authors if they are gritty stories weighted down with racist tropes and urban vernacular. Jeffrey Wright absolutely nails the lead role as a black author who reluctantly and cynically sells out just so he can afford quality care for his mother with Alzheimer's. The movie spends a lot of time establishing that this author grew up in an affluent family and received an excellent education. This setup does enhance the comedy of the scenes where he pretends to be an ignorant fugitive from justice who just happened to write a book. Unfortunately, aside from the funny scenes shown in the trailer, this is a slow and somewhat sad movie. The racial commentary is interesting, but too restrained. There was potential for this movie to deliver some brilliant insights about our society's dysfunctional attitudes about race, but somebody lacked the courage to go there.

The ending is a bit surprising, pulling back from the story to reveal that it was just a story and the real story is just a more cynical character played by Jeffrey Wright pitching a movie about the story.

I kinda think you missed it...? All of those messages about dysfunctional communications and perspectives about race (and sexuality) were present, from the very subtle (Agnes referring to Monk as "Monkie") to the blatantly obvious ("I think heeding Black voices is important right now!" except, of course, the two Black voices in the room telling you the book is awful...) All of those brilliant insights are right there.

The ending wasn't a "dream sequence" thing. The events did happen. It's Monk having written the screenplay about those events for the producer (who is currently sitting on the set of Plantation Annihilation, the film he was telling Monk about at the restaurant) which is how he's planning to reveal the whole ruse behind the book.

It was the best film of last year's Oscar season, by far, IMO. Certainly, having been in Monk's position many times, seeing what becomes popular because it fits the purpose of people wanting to turn their brains off in the theater, it definitely appeals to me on probably more levels than it will for others. But just the writing and Wright's and Sterling K. Brown's performances put it way over the top for me.

I liked the original Battle Royale (2000) well enough, as a violent parody of reality tv, but Battle Royalle 2: Requiem (2003) was disappointing. Both movies have a similar beginning, but this time the contestants are tasked with hunting down a terrorist group started by the survivors from the first movie. That's an okayish premise, but the government constantly undermines the contestants by mindlessly applying restrictions and obstacles that would make sense only if they were just re-running the original game format. For example, all of the contestants are randomly assigned to male-female pairs, and if either member of the pair dies or moves more than 50 meters from the other member, both of their collars explode and blow their heads off. So the directness of the original premise is lost and replaced with an inferior concept that the writers sort of ignore. They even kept the idea of the shifting random danger zones, which only hinders the new contestants and does nothing to inconvenience the terrorists.

A few hours after I ran a Deadpool deck while playing Marvel Champions with a friend, I re-watched the original Deadpool movie on Max. Still funny, but some of the shock value of the shocks was diminished upon repeat viewing. It was fun to see the origin of the MC Deadpool card called Maximum Effort.

Shellhead wrote: The ending is a bit surprising, pulling back from the story to reveal that it was just a story and the real story is just a more cynical character played by Jeffrey Wright pitching a movie about the story.

The ending is no longer a bit surprising.

I decided to pretend there was no film called Cocaine Bear immediately when I first heard about it. A couple of months later, a voice I trust told me to see it immediately. You should, too.

The good folks at Roger Ebert are often correct, let me quote them for you:

There will be Before “Cocaine Bear” and After “Cocaine Bear.” This is how we will mark time from now on as a society. That’s how transformative this motion picture is.
OK, perhaps it’s not that profound. But it is an incredible blast, especially if you have the benefit of seeing director Elizabeth Banks’ insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed crowd. The communal experience is essential here. “Cocaine Bear” will bring people together. “Cocaine Bear” will save cinema.

Dune 2 - If you liked the first, then you'll like the second. Lots of great scenes. I really liked Paul's worm ride and the outdoor stadium on Geidi Prime.

Bullet Train was an absolute delight. The platonic ideal of a Guy Ritchie film of a sprawling cast of colorful crooks not quite up to the task and their shifting alliances and priorities leavened with the visual humor of Edgar Wright. The script was subversively smart in a way where everything made sense, every loop closed without feeling desperate to avoid some low-hanging YouTube channel make a list of plot holes.

David Leitch knows what he’s doing.

I watched the new Road House film on Prime. This movie sucks, mainly due to the horrid writing. It makes a few nods to the original film, but probably none of the nods you would want or expect. Odd choices were made.

The only impressive thing about this film is the shit ton of work that Jake G put in at the gym.

It is pretty rare for me to give up on a movie and stop in the middle. I nearly did so during The Road, when my hand hovered near the remote for the first half hour of the movie. Yesterday, I watched less than an hour of The Revenant before quitting the movie. I actually put it on pause first and looked at the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, which is not at all how I would normally watch a movie. The Revenant had a respectable 78% at RT, and an even higher score with the audience, but the negative reviews were quite harsh. I decided to ditch the movie because it felt like I was watching torture porn like Hostel. Relentless cruelty in service of a stupid story. Yes, DiCaprio did a decent job. Tom Hardy brought a bit of nuance to his loathsome role, and Will Poulter was, um, present and accounted for. The cinematography was great.

What stupidity? The natives were stupid for attacking such a large and well-armed group of trappers with insufficient force. One of them even strolls up to some horses and shoots one dead, despite the significant value of horses in that setting. The trappers were moronic for deciding to hike back to the fort by land instead of taking the river. Okay, maybe they would have been "flanked" by the savages if they used the river, but they still would have been relatively secure, shooting from behind partial cover on their boat and the distance across the water, as opposed to completely exposed to attacks while on land and forced to deal with the beginning of winter. Leaving their guide behind to likely die a slow and painful death while under the care of his one obvious enemy just compounded the stupidity. I can only deal with so much stupid in one movie, and the unmitigated cruelty and mindless violence just made the viewing experience that much more miserable. And there are all kinds of medical reasons why DiCaprio's character should have died early on, but then we wouldn't have had this stupid and cruel movie to watch.

While you are certainly right about the value of horses, isn't this supposed to be close to the personal account of the guy Leo's character is based on? That would mean a pretty unreliable source, and everything that happens without him present is close to conjuring.

That said I have no problem at all to believe that the trappers actually were hateful and dumb and did hateful and dumb things every single day because millions of people behave like that to this day.
You're reasoning as a seasoned watcher of critical situations in film, but you have a lot more information. What I'm trying to say is: if you knew you were in a horror flick, you wouldn't leave the group.

Come to think of it, the natives were probably starving and intended to eat that horse anyway. I have no problem believing you don't care about the odds that much when you're out of food.

It's still a cruel film, no doubt. I wanted to see Leo get mauled and it delivered on that promise.

hotseatgames wrote: I watched the new Road House film on Prime. This movie sucks, mainly due to the horrid writing. It makes a few nods to the original film, but probably none of the nods you would want or expect. Odd choices were made.

The only impressive thing about this film is the shit ton of work that Jake G put in at the gym.

Jake's trainer should get an Oscar .

The one call out to the original was a blink and you'll miss it shot showing a restaurant called the Double Deuce when Dalton gets off the bus in Florida.

Msample wrote:
The one call out to the original was a blink and you'll miss it shot showing a restaurant called the Double Deuce when Dalton gets off the bus in Florida.

There was more than that, like the bartender bringing Dalton breakfast, and Dalton befriending a local business. But overall the connections are very thin.

I fully expected a scene about "But be nice..." but nope.