28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[dreamdead]

Watched Watership Down, which is the first conscious viewing I've had of the text. It was a rather sublime experience, translating a fable with intelligence and maturity, rather than feeling any need to water down elements. The opening visual style was absolutely breathtaking and if the rest of the film retreats a bit to more conventional visuals, the overarching themes of the film continue to allow it to resonate. The final confrontation between the two rabbits in the end was uncannily horrific, and even the coda had a quiet grace to it.

Surprised that I waited this long to visit this film, but this is exactly the kind of reason I'm happy Hulu Plus has access to the Criterion collection, even if I don't often take advantage of it enough...

[Qrazy]

Watched Watership Down, which is the first conscious viewing I've had of the text. It was a rather sublime experience, translating a fable with intelligence and maturity, rather than feeling any need to water down elements. The opening visual style was absolutely breathtaking and if the rest of the film retreats a bit to more conventional visuals, the overarching themes of the film continue to allow it to resonate. The final confrontation between the two rabbits in the end was uncannily horrific, and even the coda had a quiet grace to it.

Surprised that I waited this long to visit this film, but this is exactly the kind of reason I'm happy Hulu Plus has access to the Criterion collection, even if I don't often take advantage of it enough...

Check out The Plague Dogs for another collaboration between that animator and author.

[Russ]

Check out The Plague Dogs for another collaboration between that animator and author.

Taking such grim and relentlessly depressing material and producing such an immensely rewarding film was a neat trick. I recommend this one too (but avoid the shorter 'cut' version at all costs).

[Grouchy]

How many of you have seen Richard Stanley's Hardware and what's your opinion of it?

I personally loved every second of it, but I'm more surprised by how influential it seems to have been for sci-fi in general (specially the Fallout saga of videogames) and how little I'd heard about it.

[Yxklyx]

Watched Watership Down, which is the first conscious viewing I've had of the text. It was a rather sublime experience, translating a fable with intelligence and maturity, rather than feeling any need to water down elements. The opening visual style was absolutely breathtaking and if the rest of the film retreats a bit to more conventional visuals, the overarching themes of the film continue to allow it to resonate. The final confrontation between the two rabbits in the end was uncannily horrific, and even the coda had a quiet grace to it.

Surprised that I waited this long to visit this film, but this is exactly the kind of reason I'm happy Hulu Plus has access to the Criterion collection, even if I don't often take advantage of it enough...

Watership Down was OK - but on the topic of old animated films I just watched Allegro Non Troppo which I thought was pretty awful as a full length film. About half of the film is devoted to contemporary italian live action "comedy" while the shorts range from mediocre to pretty good.

[D_Davis]

I FINALLY got around to watching Django Unchained this past weekend. Longest I've ever gone without seeing a Tarantino film (not saying much, though, since every single one of his other films I saw opening weekend, except R-Dogs).

I thought I had out grown Tarantino's love of ultraviolence and pastiche, but I'll be damned if I didn't love every single minute of it.

Once DiCaprio is introduced, and the film quiets down, I was transfixed by Tarantino's brilliant direction. The dread and suspense build perfectly, and then.....BLAM! Wow! The explosion of action and violence we perfectly orchestrated. Man. Truly spectacular.

I guess I'm not as over QT as I thought I was.

[Idioteque Stalker]

Allegro Non Troppo is probably my favorite animated film. :sad:

[Spinal]

I guess I'm not as over QT as I thought I was.

I find that I am ambivalent about Tarantino until I am actually in the theater watching his movies. His personality is a bit grating. The hype and rumors surrounding his on-again/off-again projects grow a bit tiresome. But when I can shut all of that out and just interact with the film, I remember that I'm a pretty big fan. (Most of the time.)

[D_Davis]

At the end of the day, he's just a really, really great director. I wish he'd grow up a bit, and maybe do something a little more challenging, though.

[Grouchy]

Tarantino is a genius. I'm just thankful that he exists just the way he is.

There's something about Django Unchained that kept bugging me - I found the fact that the movie had two different showdowns anticlimatic and the Australian slavers scene seemed like it was stretching the plot for no good reason. Until I re-watched Corbucci's Django and I realized all QT was doing was following a genre convention of having the hero of a spaghetti western captured and tortured before his final victory.

[MadMan]

A few months back when Django Unchained hit Netflix Instant Viewing finally I tried to use it to fall asleep since I had already seen it one or two times. It didn't work. I watched the whole thing. I love that movie.

[dreamdead]

So Byrkit's Coherence is streaming on Amazon Prime and it's every bit the smart puzzle it was made out to be. The whole exploration of parallel universes is credibly made through snarky inferences about Sliding Doors and other films, but it's last twenty minutes takes the premise much deeper than it initially seems.

If there's a flaw to this film, and I think it is a slight error, it's that Emily, our lead, lacks just a bit of dimensionality to make her rash decisions more tragic. There's a sense through the first hour that the film could choose to zero in on any one of the ensemble cast, but that openness (while logical given the film's thematic focus) also undercuts the climax just a little too much for it to resonate more fully.

[Irish]

That's a terrific observation about the ending.

I loved the movie, especially since it takes such a pie-eyed premise and explains it effortlessly. The performances (largely improvised, I've heard) go a long way to selling the whole thing.

[D_Davis]

Guardians of the Galaxy was kinds of...OK? It was entertaining enough, but it felt like 1/2 the movie wasn't there. I learned very little about the characters, their motivations, the bad guys, the plot....

It was all surface level.

Was I supposed to care about those soldier and pirate guys helping fight the big bad at the end? Never even knew who any of them were except for that guy who was in Slither, the guy who is friends with Will Farrell, and that guy who was in Parks and Rec and was a voice in Dark Souls 2.

I'm surprised that audiences seemed to eat this up, especially considering how many weird creatures and people with red and green skin were in it. So that's cool that people embraced a space opera like this. However, on the other hand, I'm surprised that something so vapid seemed to capture the attention of so many.

[Irish]

I saw that again recently & liked it a lot better the second time. To you point, the set pieces are well imagined and more or less well executed, but everything between that is awkwardly written. The plot is threadbare and the movie barely manages to motivate anyone to travel from Planet A to Planet B. The character exposition is particularly bad. "Hey, I've known you for all of 24 hours but let me just bust out with my secret, childhood pain completely unprompted." (And every character has their own private exposition dump at different points in the film).

I kept thinking of Star Wars, which Guardians apes repeatedly, and how that movie had its own share of awkwardness but it sure as hell handled its characters a lot better. There's more development in 30 seconds of the Mos Eisley cantina and the line about "hoaky religions" and a "good blaster" than there is in Guardians' entire runtime.

That's the part that annoyed me-- Guardians' character exposition doesn't inform on the story at all. The fact that Rocket is a lab experiment doesn't matter to the larger story, or, really, any story.

[D_Davis]

Who was the bad guy? Who was he working for? Why?

Yes, Star Wars sets up its plot and its main conflict with ease.

I did like the grand cosmic scale of it all, and wish there were more cosmic films out there.

[Irish]

Yep yep. That's the other part that killed me-- whatever they might be in the comics, the villains in the film suck. They spend most of their screentime in throne rooms, glowering at their minions. The entire third act has no urgency, because the Guardians fight to save a planet we know nothing about, filled with one-off characters we've barely met.

I liked the cosmic scale too, and all of the planet sets/CGI were incredibly cool (they even managed to make yet another futuristic prison look interesting, and nobody can beat a planet made from the mined-out skull of a dead alien).

[D_Davis]

It just dawned on me what it felt like - the Firefly movie. Like it was a big episode of a long television series.

But with Firefly, we had the advantage of the TV series actually existing.

[Mysterious Dude]

I agree that the villain is weak. But it made me think of Star Wars and Darth Vader, and I'm not sure why Darth Vader works and Ronan doesn't. Even if you don't take The Empire Strikes Back or any of his backstory into account, he is a much stronger villain in A New Hope alone, and I don't know why. This requires further study.

[D_Davis]

They set up Vader's goal and establish the sides from the very first scene of the film - then it expands and evolves from there.

[Scar]

Ronan worked much better for me the second time through.

[Irish]

Ronan worked much better for me the second time through.

[Irish]

Ronan worked much better for me the second time through.

[Irish]

Ronan worked much better for me the second time through.

[MadMan]

Guardians of the Galaxy was highly entertaining. Sometimes that's all you need.