Movie Thread

[FrankBurke]

"Bridge of Spies". Well made. Engrossing. About 20 minutes too long.

[domhnallj]

"Bridge of Spies". Well made. Engrossing. About 20 minutes too long.

Could've lost the last five minutes of schmalz for a start.

[The Doc]

Saw "Steve Jobs" and rather loved it.

Now I'm not enough of an Apple head to know what's true and what isn't....

Easy rule of thumb - when Sorkin writes about technology it's almost all fiction. This and the Facebook movie would have been better off using fictional names & companies as the holes in the facts take away from what could be just good dramatic scenes.

Don't undersatnd why you would have a film written by Sorkin directed by Danny Boyle. Boyle is a fantastic visual director but Sorkin fills his scripts so much they have to have a lot of talking heads and very little visual elements. Minimises Boyle's talents in my opinion.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

"Bridge of Spies". Well made. Engrossing. About 20 minutes too long.

Could've lost the last five minutes of schmalz for a start.

Agree entirely. Loved it up until then but once the main event was over I was just itching to leave.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Saw "Steve Jobs" and rather loved it.

Now I'm not enough of an Apple head to know what's true and what isn't....

Easy rule of thumb - when Sorkin writes about technology it's almost all fiction. This and the Facebook movie would have been better off using fictional names & companies as the holes in the facts take away from what could be just good dramatic scenes.

Don't undersatnd why you would have a film written by Sorkin directed by Danny Boyle. Boyle is a fantastic visual director but Sorkin fills his scripts so much they have to have a lot of talking heads and very little visual elements. Minimises Boyle's talents in my opinion.

The Social Network was based on a book by Ben Mezrich though. I'd already read that before seeing the film and from what I remember they weren't different. Admittedly Zuckerberg wouldn't talk to Mezrich but I don't remember hearing that the book was inaccurate.

[paddyor]

Saw the last Hunger games film. Won't have to go to one of them again!

[Donny B.]

Finally saw Sicario today. Dark stuff, very well done though and brilliantly filmed and scored...

[FrankBurke]

Finally saw Sicario today. Dark stuff, very well done though and brilliantly filmed and scored...

Totally agree. V well plotted, directed & acted.

[TerenureJim]

Krampus is good fun if you enjoyed either Gremlins or Rare Exports I'd recommend catching it

[fourthirtythree]

Are there any big movies opening this week? I think I heard something about a Tina Fay film or something....

[jezzer]

Are there any big movies opening this week? I think I heard something about a Tina Fay film or something....

No, it's all quiet on the Galactic front...

[RoboProp]

Star Wars
You had me at hello (tearfully) you had me at hello

[fourthirtythree]

Decent film. Just cracking good fun.

[FLIP]

I'd say its a very flawed film. Fun, but flawed. I'd even go as far as to say some of the prequels were better.

[fourthirtythree]

But the prequels weren't flawed at all: they were perfect sh!t. No nuggets of imperfection at all. Nothing good to say about them. They were among the worst films ever made. (why did they make them in the order 4,5,6 - 1,2,3? Because if they had made 1,2,3 first 4,5, and 6 would never have been made. Oh, okay, because Yoda in charge of the ordering was.)


Lucas has/had many qualities. But making a film with actors was not among them. They used to call him the best second unit director in America. And if you follow the edits he did on the first three films you can really see how terrible he was.

This film is a competently made entertainment, like The Empire Strikes Back was, which doesn't suffer from Abrams's biggest flaw (he can't handle a plot to save his life, he just chucks junk at the story meetings to make stuff happen and you end up with a clueless mess with no actual narrative purpose) as Star Wars has a very clear, and deliberately cliched story arc. That's the point. It's based on structural anthropological teardowns of story mechanics (Ivanovsky via Campbell). The cliched story is part of its pulpy charm, it's a feature not a flaw. Unless you don't like it which is fair enough.

[RoboProp]

Exactly. I love that Star Wars is unapologetically schmaltzy. Although, I think they owe more to Tolkien and Kurasawa...actually I never thought about it that deeply...I never think about anything that deeply. Me like. Me no like is the height of it

[fourthirtythree]

I sounded less admiring than I intended. I'm not sure what it is, but Lucas really has something.
http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/ ... ce1978.pdf

"He will dress like Bogart in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” Lucas says: “the khaki pants…the leather jacket. That sort of felt hat.” Oh, and also? “A bullwhip.” He’ll carry it “rolled up,” Lucas continues. “Like a snake that’s coiled up behind him.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultur ... lling-indy

I mean, that's a kind of genius.

[FLIP]

Massive spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't seen the film, be warned. I did think it was good, but...

Show Spoiler:

There's a whole truck load wrong with the film.

The constant foreshadowing of every plot detail in such a way that little was a surprise. Han Solo's death was so obvious as to take away all it's impact. And Chewbacca, bonded to life to Han Solo, is over it in seconds for the cause of the plot. Granted, Luke gets over Ben very quickly, but they didn't have decades together.

The fact that it was A New Hope all over again. Lazy story writing, made up by generally good characterisation.

The Empire blowing away planets that you know nothing about and care little for, because not one character in the film is personally linked to it - can you honestly say that it got you like Alderaan got you?

Reys 0-60 in the force with absolutely no training.

How Rylo Ken goes from being absolutely powerful in the first scene, to being mentally beaten by someone untrained in the force, then almost matched by a Stormtrooper who doesn't have any apparent force talent. A massive threat to a whiny millennial who has gone to the dark side because his parents didn't love him enough? Considering the wealth of awesome villains thrown away in Disney chucking away the EU, Ken and Snook are poor villains. Imagine how much better Benedict Cumberbatch as Grand Admiral Thrawn would have been?

The constant close ups in any scene of meaning. Where were the wide shots of Hoth, The Dune Sea, which showed you the wider world. Actually, the cinematography is poor in general, but that's what you get from Abrams.

The music made the original trilogy, but not one bit of the score stuck out at me.

I suppose the biggest thing for me is that even after the prequels I came out of the cinema feeling in awe. After Wednesday night, I just didn't have that. I felt like I saw a good film, but nothing like before.

I suppose I should just be glad that Abrams didn't ruin it like he's ruined Star Trek.

[Donny B.]

I suppose the biggest thing for me is that even after the prequels I came out of the cinema feeling in awe.

Awe in the sense of how much those movies sucked ass?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sKRRY5tQz8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nJS-LPcFfw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l5eZp8Ae9c

[FLIP]

I suppose the biggest thing for me is that even after the prequels I came out of the cinema feeling in awe.

Awe in the sense of how much those movies sucked ass?

No, awe in that I actually enjoyed the films for what they were as part of the wider story, even though they weren't anywhere near as good as the first films. I remember being with my friends leaving the cinema after episode 2 being deeply excited about the film and what was to come. The same friends and I went to see TFA and didn't have anything near the same reaction - I'd say we were split down the middle between my views and the current wider prevailing view.

The prequels have grown to be more critised and slated over time. So will TFA.