Yori posted:

Absolutely Fabulous

sweetie dahling

Finding Dory.

I thought it was very cool that Dory's parents were actually using, like, legit methods of working with special needs kids. (Occupational and Music Therapy, for starters.)

dv posted:

Finding Dory.

I thought it was very cool that Dory's parents were actually using, like, legit methods of working with special needs kids. (Occupational and Music Therapy, for starters.)

just the whole way they treated exceptionalities is pretty amazing

considering today's society it's rather odd that no one thought of it befoe

Arrival

Hacksaw Ridge.

Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark (Netflix)

Really outstanding, much better than his Daily Show output.

We watched that the other day. It was funny as fiddlesticks.

Napoleon Dynamite
Showed it to my son who is in middle school. He asked me if that is what High School is really like.
This isn't one of those movies that get any better with repeated viewings.


Legend of Hell House
Some really decent creepy haunted house sets and location and cinematography. The score is good too, 1973 electronic music--always better than the stuff out now.
It did a decent job of catching a mood of an otherwise pretty silly story. As per usual, the skeptical/rationalist gets his from at the supernatural.

The Island (2005) Scarlett Johansson, Ewan McGregor, Sean Bean, Djimon Hounsou.
Stupid.

Zoolander (2001) Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor.
Stupid but fun.

Séamas posted:

As per usual, the skeptical/rationalist gets his from at the supernatural.

One of the things that frequently wastes me off.

Science does not remove the Terror of the Gods...it only opens it up to new venues.

Like god getting moved from living in the sky to another dimension?

That sounds deep but it's actually meaningless.

it was aliens

Allied. It was good, but one scene there was the cliche letter read aloud in the person's voice that you know the author of the letter never read aloud and that took me completely out of the movie and into cheesy production laughter.

Ship Ahoy! (1942) Eleanor Powell, Red Skelton, Bert Lahr. NAZI spies get their comeuppance when Eleanor Powell tap-dances Morse code to G-men. Some great dance routines. Tommy Dorsey, Buddy Rich and Frank Sinatra perform.

Vulture posted:

Arrival. Not bad, makes a mockery of human intelligence and military politics globally. Also expands the ideas on what is possible by the human brain that we deliberately and unknowingly limit by thinking we know what is right and necessary.

My guess is that I liked "Arrival" much more than you did.

On the other hand I do have to question what you meant by "what is possible by the human brain". The ideas expounded in Arrival are more akin to faster-than-light travel in that the main theme of the movie of language being the key to FULLY understand time-dimensionality is something which is possible in concept but we have no idea of how to get "there" (and, of course, the movie and I imagine the novelette than was the basis of the movie never explain this beyond the basic concept). This is not to say these concepts are impossible but likely will require a major upheval in our thinking in much the same way relativity and quantum mechanics STILL cause problems when we try to explain them in terms of everyday situations such as Schrodinger's cat.

Arrival does exploit the viewer by showing scenes in Louise Banks' (Amy Adams) life which we naturally believe are what HAD been her life BEFORE the appearance of the alien craft. By the end we know that through Banks' understanding of the Heptapod language she is granted the foreknowledge that her child-to-be that she WILL have with her fellow researcher, astrophysicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), will be the cause of the future breakup of that relationship because he will be unwilling to endure the upcoming trauma of losing that child in her mid-teens due to an incurable disease.

I wish that I could say that in similar circumstances that I could be stronger than Donnelly, but I'm afraid that all I can state is that I don't know.

In any case: I strongly recommend watching Arrival but equally strongly recommend NOT reading my spoilers above if you have not seen it yet.

Vulture posted:

Allied. It was good, but one scene there was the cliche letter read aloud in the person's voice that you know the author of the letter never read aloud and that took me completely out of the movie and into cheesy production laughter.

i thought it wasn't half bad but the degree to which that movie was a box-office disaster is nothing short of astonishing

i don't know if it was brad pitt's breakup or what, but man oh man

a bridge too far

i love those old ensemble war epics, most of them lost buckets of money but i've always been a fan

DEyncourt posted:

Vulture posted:

Arrival. Not bad, makes a mockery of human intelligence and military politics globally. Also expands the ideas on what is possible by the human brain that we deliberately and unknowingly limit by thinking we know what is right and necessary.

My guess is that I liked "Arrival" much more than you did.

On the other hand I do have to question what you meant by "what is possible by the human brain". The ideas expounded in Arrival are more akin to faster-than-light travel in that the main theme of the movie of language being the key to FULLY understand time-dimensionality is something which is possible in concept but we have no idea of how to get "there" (and, of course, the movie and I imagine the novelette than was the basis of the movie never explain this beyond the basic concept). This is not to say these concepts are impossible but likely will require a major upheval in our thinking in much the same way relativity and quantum mechanics STILL cause problems when we try to explain them in terms of everyday situations such as Schrodinger's cat.

Arrival does exploit the viewer by showing scenes in Louise Banks' (Amy Adams) life which we naturally believe are what HAD been her life BEFORE the appearance of the alien craft. By the end we know that through Banks' understanding of the Heptapod language she is granted the foreknowledge that her child-to-be that she WILL have with her fellow researcher, astrophysicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), will be the cause of the future breakup of that relationship because he will be unwilling to endure the upcoming trauma of losing that child in her mid-teens due to an incurable disease.

I wish that I could say that in similar circumstances that I could be stronger than Donnelly, but I'm afraid that all I can state is that I don't know.

In any case: I strongly recommend watching Arrival but equally strongly recommend NOT reading my spoilers above if you have not seen it yet.

I really really liked the movie, but I only said "not bad" because most alien movies are not good. What I meant by what is possible by the human brain has to do with the language that needed to be deciphered played an integral part in making the main character act in ways that only she could defend because of the altered aspects of the brain as was hinted when they talked about neuroplasticity and languages and how your reality is based upon what your native language is. I feel we actually face this same exact problem trying to decipher pictorial hieroglyphics of ancient civilizations on Earth but we don't have the same urgency and framework to care enough to work it out, outside of projecting too much of how we think now already. I may have been referring to more, but now I'd have to see the movie again just to be sure; I found the message very profound, relating directly to our linear understanding of time which gets violated in the movie yet causes the plot to exist.
As far as the Donnely character and what you mentioned, I saw that coming at first hint, that whole beginning sequence with cello music and the voiceover and daughter felt like such a setup and I related more with the main character than the wonderful ultimate THAT GUY, Jeremy Renner.

TOS posted:

Vulture posted:

Allied. It was good, but one scene there was the cliche letter read aloud in the person's voice that you know the author of the letter never read aloud and that took me completely out of the movie and into cheesy production laughter.

i thought it wasn't half bad but the degree to which that movie was a box-office disaster is nothing short of astonishing

i don't know if it was brad pitt's breakup or what, but man oh man

What's funny is I didn't even know the movie existed, I think it wasn't pushed enough or advertised correctly. It could have easily been done in such a way to draw huge audiences, especially the Casablanca angle.
Those two actors have been getting divorced for the last decade in the tabloids, and they are still together at awards shows so I don't know if it's wise to buy into that BS unless we actually hang out with them and know for sure.

Séamas posted:

Napoleon Dynamite
Showed it to my son who is in middle school. He asked me if that is what High School is really like.
This isn't one of those movies that get any better with repeated viewings.


Legend of Hell House
Some really decent creepy haunted house sets and location and cinematography. The score is good too, 1973 electronic music--always better than the stuff out now.
It did a decent job of catching a mood of an otherwise pretty silly story. As per usual, the skeptical/rationalist gets his from at the supernatural.

I remember watching Napoleon Dynamite for the first time on an Easter Sunday family gathering the year of its release, and my brother and I were dying laughing. The older adults watched reclined on couches silently, then eventually asked if this was a comedy and why we were laughing. The next true groundbreaking movie that nobody saw by Jared Hess was Gentlemen Broncos, which takes it to a new level where every character in the movie is equivalent to Napoleon Dynamite the character in oddity, yet the main character seems grounded and normal, confused by the world around him.

Stranglers of Bombay

A Hammer 1950's pseudo-horror historical adventure, containing what I believe to be the most natural and realistic portrayal of the East India Trading Company's uncovering and confronting the Thuggee Cult who were the longest lasting and deadliest organized crime syndicate who used the religion of Kali to perpetuate their evil.

While fully delivering on the Sadism Sells style of Gothic Horror, this is a much more true-to-life and historically accurate movie than Gunga-Din or the offspring of these movies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which obviously takes the character of Mola Ram from this film). This portrays India as a genuine, though foreign, society, rather than some epic fantasy. Most of the events are based on the true experiences of the man who devoted his life to thwarting the Thuggs, although they are highly dramatized in a pleasurable way in the Holy Hammer Fashion.

It plays out like a James Bond movie with plenty of gruesome suspense, and includes genuine Thugg mythology of Kali, alteration of the modern Vedic Shaktism in which Kali defeats the monster Raktabija, who with every drop of blood generates a new clone of itself. In the written Puranas, Kali defeats the monster by extending her tongue across the entire battlefield and thus drinking every last drop of blood and then finally eating the creature whole. In the Thugg version, Kali strangles The Beast with a silk scarf, so as not to spill a drop of blood. Considering the practicality, it's hard not to wonder which version came first. In any case, though Kali is portrayed here as a monstrous and evil god, at least the iconography is correct: for Kali is never the God of Death, but of Love, even a God's love that extends to those so desperate they must kill to survive.

A decent and enjoyable movie that features Doctor Who's original Master, Roger Delgado, as the chief Thugg's henchman. It also features a cinematic fight between cobra and mongoose no doubt inspired by Rudyard Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

Heathers (1988). I'd never seen it before. I'm not sure what the message was supposed to be, and I found the acting to be pretty sub-par for about 90% of the cast. Obviously a cult classic. Also, spooky and disturbing in a post-Columbine world.

Pithecanthropus posted:

Heathers (1988). I'd never seen it before. I'm not sure what the message was supposed to be, and I found the acting to be pretty sub-par for about 90% of the cast. Obviously a cult classic. Also, spooky and disturbing in a post-Columbine world.

Yeah, it was pretty messed up. However, the acting was supposed to be sub-part for about 90% of the cast. It was part of the movie's schtick.

The musical version is fuckin' amazing. See it if you have a chance.

Vulture posted:

[snip]
As far as the Donnely character and what you mentioned, I saw that coming at first hint, that whole beginning sequence with cello music and the voiceover and daughter felt like such a setup and I related more with the main character than the wonderful ultimate THAT GUY, Jeremy Renner.

Seriously?

I don't know how you could know that from the start of Arrival. As far as I know the novelette's idea and its depiction in the movie of FUTURE time becoming accessible like the past is through memory has ONLY been stated in both, so unless you had read that novelette before watching the movie I cannot see how anyone could have lept to that conclusion. Like I wrote before: that setup is somewhat exploitative of the viewer. Without having those ideas the viewer's only conclusion is that those scenes of Banks (Adams) with her daughter were from Banks' past BEFORE the start of the movie, perhaps with the daughter's death being only shortly so which could partially explain Banks' rather emotionless affect during the opening portion, though that exploitation is forgiven considering where the plot eventually goes.

Chaplin (1992) Robert Downey Jr, Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Hopkins, Mila Jovovich, Marisa Tomei.

Downey mimics Chaplin's mannerisms and style very well.

i enjoyed that flick, think i'll stream it tonight

constant gardener

man, so intense, very moving indeed

Logan. Great acting, lots of brutal and bloody savagery on display. Very sad.

i hope to see it sunday night

Every Harry Potter movie. Home sick all weekend and there's a marathon.

I did that over New Year's.

Dr. Strange. Pretty good for an origin story.

logan

holy crap

the thing that really stood out for me: a really upsetting dystopian vision of a trumpish america

probably not the only movie coming up like that

The Young Lions (1958) Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin. A war movie about three men, one German and two American, at odds with their situations. Their stories meet at a newly liberated extermination camp. A long movie but well worth it. All three leads are excellent.

Ribtor posted:

The Young Lions (1958) Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin. A war movie about three men, one German and two American, at odds with their situations. Their stories meet at a newly liberated extermination camp. A long movie but well worth it. All three leads are excellent.

i always loved that movie

though brando as a blonde always looked silly to me

TOS posted:

logan

holy crap

the thing that really stood out for me: a really upsetting dystopian vision of a trumpish america

user posted:

probably not the only movie coming up like that

i'm just blown away by how they nailed it ... and it's kind of odd because the screenplay would have been written long before the primaries were even finished

maybe it's just a fluke, but wow ... the poverty, the hopeless struggles of ordinary people, the fact that everyone's at the mercy of armed, authorized thugs

just so frightening

Vulture posted:

Séamas posted:

Napoleon Dynamite
Showed it to my son who is in middle school. He asked me if that is what High School is really like.
This isn't one of those movies that get any better with repeated viewings.


Legend of Hell House
Some really decent creepy haunted house sets and location and cinematography. The score is good too, 1973 electronic music--always better than the stuff out now.
It did a decent job of catching a mood of an otherwise pretty silly story. As per usual, the skeptical/rationalist gets his from at the supernatural.

I remember watching Napoleon Dynamite for the first time on an Easter Sunday family gathering the year of its release, and my brother and I were dying laughing. The older adults watched reclined on couches silently, then eventually asked if this was a comedy and why we were laughing. The next true groundbreaking movie that nobody saw by Jared Hess was Gentlemen Broncos, which takes it to a new level where every character in the movie is equivalent to Napoleon Dynamite the character in oddity, yet the main character seems grounded and normal, confused by the world around him.

Napoleon Dynamite only becomes a good movie upon later reflection. Neither my wife or I thought it was funny or good when we first saw it. It was only the next day talking about it that we began to truly enjoy how absurd it was.