Roderick

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Roderick


  1. Well, color me impressed. I just watched Thor: Ragnarok and it's a delight. [Not just because of Jeff Goldblum.] [But also kinda because of Jeff Goldblum.] The 80s aesthetic and music (thanks composer Mark Mothersbough!) hits home and the movie is - save for some less-interesting bits where there's a necessary ramping up of plots and stakes - basically a superhero spoof/comedy. Thanks director Taika Waititi! After two passable outings, it's good to see Thor finding its groove by taking itself way less seriously. It's like Marvel finally dared to go all the way due to the success of GotG. It also reminds me a bit of how Ubisoft started doing crazy things in expansions, starting with Far Cry: Blood Dragon, which then saw this hausse of 'anything goes, let's go apeshit' high concept stuff unleashed on what used to be so predictable a field.

     

    Anyway, Marvel is on a roll this year. Where they were flopping about last year with meh stuff like Dr. Strange, it's been nothing but Spider-Mans and Guardians of the Galaxys and Thors up until now.


  2. On 22-10-2017 at 12:42 AM, Gormongous said:

     

    Remember when it was a plot point in Man with the Golden Gun that Christopher Lee had three nipples and Roger Moore had to get a fake nipple to infiltrate the organization? The seventies were truly the height of filmmaking...

     

    Veering dangerously off-topic: I recently read Ian Flemings You Only Live Twice, and where the movie has a terrific plot concerning volcanic lairs and stolen spaceshuttles (setting up the very archetype that Dr. Evil later played off of), the book's plot is legitimately bonkers.

     

     

    Blofeld poses as a herbologist to create a deadly castle garden in Japan, filled with toxic plants and animals, for the express purpose of capitalizing on the Japanese people's inherent death wish and lure them in for exotic suicide. I'm not making this up. This is the actual plot of book.

     

    All I'm saying is, the Bond movies are the sane ones, triple-nipples and all.


  3. The reason this one jumped out at me was because it made me believe there was way more to the mystery than there was, and because of it I didn't fully 'get' the reveals and emotions the movie was setting up. I don't mind movie logic, except when it undermines my experience of said movie. But it's not a big deal or anything, just something I needed clarification on.


  4. This all sounds like movie logic to me, designed to enable K to think he's the one and then have a twist that he's not. It doesn't make much sense otherwise. The very fact that there were two records with identical DNA was what made the file jump out during his investigation in the first place! If they had not done that, probably no one would ever have noticed. Beyond which, if they were able to tamper with the files, why not differentiate the DNA instead of making a duplicate? A computer could cross-reference that in no time and alarm bells would go off.


  5. Well...

     

    Now I feel as if I might be dumb and didn't get some obvious thing. But K discovers that Rachael had two kids, a boy and a girl. And he suspects that he is that boy. Later it turns out that his memories were of the girl and that she's the chosen one or whatever. But I didn't understand why there was even a boy, I was thinking there might've been twins or something? Or if it's a ruse, I still don't get it. Why conjure up a genetically identical boy just to have the girl pretend to be a boy and claim she died? Because this was rather unfathomable, both during the movie and now, I kept thinking there was this major plot thread unresolved. About the boy.


  6. Up to date again, and despite some misgivings, what sticks out to me is how much fun I'm having. Every episode has at least one neat little scifi idea going on, the characters are growing on me, and the latest ep had a very very very old acquaintance checking in, which pleased me.

     

    I'm shocked at how easily Starfleet humans win in fisticuffs with Klingons though. Those guys should be physically way out of our league.


  7.  

    Oh, I'm totally not down on this movie, it's just that I'm surprised I didn't love it more. But it's a very neat scifi movie with lots of stuff going on and reading that article, I came to realize a much neater plot than I assumed after seeing it.


    But man, did I mentally groan hard when Wallace started telling Deckard that the whole plot of Blade Runner was engineered to get him and Rachael together. I only barely backed away from that by putting it as a hypothetical scenario, but mannn that was awful. Do not retcon old movies to make your new movie seem more special, please! [See also Spectre.]

     


  8. I just came out of the film and my feelings are equally conflicted. I did like the film, the experience of seeing it, quite a lot. The visuals are superb and all in all I think it does a great job of respectfully adding to the Blade Runner universe. At first I didn't think a sequel was a good idea at all, but whatever this is, it's not a throwaway film. It has something to say, it says it with great gusto, and it's a miles better cinema experience than half of what I see. So, props for just putting out a thoughtful and interesting science fiction film.

     

    The length is an issue. It really is long and the characters largely don't support that length. I always defined Blade Runner as a movie that felt like it was 45 minutes long, no matter how often I watch it. It just flies by. This, in contrast, takes its time. There are also loose strings that reek particularly of setting up a sequel, which I didn't really care for.

     

     

    Particularly the resistance movement, the mystery of the boy and the unfinished business with Wallace. Feels like this could've been resolved in the film. Some of this was fine to keep the mystery going, because, yeah, the best part of this was Gosling figuring stuff out. The pure detective stuff. Sure, it was a callback to the first film - which is largely Deckard going from place to place gathering clues and at the same time exposing the world to us - but that's fine.

    But wait, did K die at the end? That's not what I read into it at all. He was just resting on the stairs, having lost everything and getting ripe for the job of terrorist/freedom fighter for the replicant resistance. Right? Earlier we saw him recover from some pretty harsh wounds quite easily.

     


  9. Wait, is Discovery not on Netflix in the US? I see everyone talking about another streaming service, but over here in the Netherlands it's on Netflix. It's even a Netflix Exclusive! What gives?

     

    I hesitate to see The Orville. I can just about smell the kind of cheesy humor involved. I'll pass up on Star Trek with dick jokes. But I might be wrong. It's a tough deal to have to go  up against Galaxy Quest and I really doubt MacFarlane can pull it off. I don't doubt it's lovingly made, with great fondness for Trek, but the execution of it I'm less sure of.


  10. I am finishing up Mario + Rabbids, currently in the process of getting the final few perfect scores for levels and the ultimate challenges. Time for thoughts!

     

    The game is really well paced and has a good length. One more world and I'd have gotten quite bored with it.

     

    Looking back, I played 95% of the game with the standard team of Mario + Rabbid Peach + Rabbid Luigi. That is just such an unkillable setup (vampire + healing abilities) that I never bothered with the others. I sometimes switched it up with Rabbid Mario or Luigi Actual, but those felt less versatile. Specialists like Rabbid Yoshi or Peach - I just never found a good use for them. On the one hand, it's good that the game never enforces one over the other (save for a few moments when Luigi Actual's movement bonus is a MUST), but it makes it all too easy to stick with the team you like and never venture outside of that. That's also a personal flaw, I know. When something feels comfortable and good, I am loath to abandon it.

     

     

    Why did the girl from the beginning never show up again at the end? I was expecting her to wrap the story up, since it so obviously starts in 'our world', or at least a Rabbid-infested human future.


    Also a tad disappointing is that the anticipated difficulty spike never came. Reviews called the game pretty hard every now and again, but it was anything but. I breezed through the whole thing. I wonder if there is a hard cap on skill, regarding these systems. Once you've optimized your positioning and damage output, maybe there's just not a whole lot more in the way of strategy that they can implement before it just gets unfair? At the same time, some of the challenges had amazing movement-based puzzles, where you had to allow yourself to get smashed or thrown into just the right spot. Forcing you to do those tricks in battle might be way too chaotic and hard though, I don't know.

     

     

    I think it's safe to say Ubi will release a Kingdom Battle 2 in a few years. They've got an amazing engine running (Snowdrop), the assets are easily reused and the game is I believe a big hit. Hopefully not too soon though: if I play another one in a year, I'll burn out on it.


  11. I too liked the third ep a lot better than the second. I see promise for the Discovery! I liked how they portrayed the captain as ultimately a solid guy, but then didn't like that they instantly flipped back and showed him with his weird alien menagerie. Saru is still great, he has exactly what was good about Spock: a character that is good for both comedy and drama in the show.

     

    The energy-eating bugs in the beginning were neat. I don't mind action at all (Star Trek is full of it), as long as it has some scifi cause and it's not all just characters butting heads or political stuff. That's super fine for Battlestar Galactica, but Star Trek needs to have a bit more scifi going on.


  12. Oh yes, the Duke Nukem Forever timeline of previews and teasers is a joy to follow. Related: do not forget to watch the classic, official trailer 3D Realms put out to its Duke trilogy in 2008.

     

     

    When it comes to my gaming appetite, I notice that I need quite some variety. It just won't do to play two Mario games in a row for instance. I need to switch up between platformers, adventure games, action, 3D stuff...


  13. See, I was denied even that. There was duality of elderly people who left, but that was in stealth mode during the break. Not even a single goddamn tantrum. To be fair, I don't think mother! especially deserves a non-silent storm-off, but it may have been my one chance.


  14. Now I'm a little miffed that audiences are generally really quiet and to themselves over here. For 99,9% of movies, that's bliss, but I would've loved some shocked gasps or horrified 'well I never'-s during mother!.


  15. It's still a thing in the Netherlands. The Pathé line of cinemas has done away with breaks, which I prefer (for movies <2hr), but Vue (formerly JT) and others still have them. It's a bit of an interruption most of the time, but you get used to it and it's nice to at least be able to go to the toilet and get some refreshments.

     

    For mother! it didn't feel particularly like respite. I had steeled myself especially for the second half, so I knew I was going into heavier territory after. The films breaks up exactly in between the two major visits to the house. In the second half we (unfortunately) no longer see Harris of Pfeiffer, and it's when Lawrence gets preggers. I prefer the first half, where it's more 'death by a thousand cuts' than one big wallop of misery.


  16. Oh yes, Bardem is absolutely the worst to her. He is continuously going behind her back and ignoring her wishes when he's inviting people over. Lawrence may annoyingly never dig her heels in the sand (possibly because she's so completely ineffectual at getting anyone to listen to her, which in fact does resonate with some feeling of powerlessness inside me), but her husband should absolutely take her needs and desires into account.

     

    Possibly my favorite thing about mother! is how Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer suddenly become like little children after breaking Bardem's little doodad. They get apologetic and churlish and sulk.

     

    Part of why I wanted to see this movie was the wildly diverging reactions to it. My friend was also highly entranced and unnerved by the film, while I was totally the only one in the theater chuckling. An elderly couple walked out during the break. These sort of divisive experiences are usually worthwhile, since they have something real on offer, something that may do something with you or not, but at least they're not unisexually appealing, committeed-to-death entertainment.


  17. I was never into Stargate, and whenever I saw shards of the show on tv, it was Richard Dean Anderson not being MacGyver and people with snake heads jumping through shrubs. Honestly, it always looked a little cheap compared to Star Trek TNG or other concurrent shows. But I figured that if so many people liked/loved it, it must have some qualities.

     

    A few years ago I watched the movie for the first time since my childhood and it was complete scifi schlock. I was kinda shocked by how few ideas there were. I was expecting bombastic world building, but most of it is just setting for action set pieces. It didn't feel coherent or all that interesting. I'm sure the show has a lot more going for it though. It has Teal'c! Whom I know to be a character!


  18. Alright, let's talk about mother!, the new Darren Aronofsky film. Which I at first was hesitant to see, because I had heard people being shocked and upset about it, and I generally dislike upsetting films. Then again, Aronofsky is responsible for one of my favorite films, The Fountain, so I felt I had to at least give it a try. With some trepidation I entered the cinema yesterday, ready to quite possibly walk out at the sight of - well, I had already spoiled myself for the big shock at the end, which was the only way I could ever steel myself to watch it. I was prepared.

     

    Then it turns out to be a comedy. Well, probably not deliberately so. I facetiously texted this to a movie-loving friend:

     

    mother! - a comedy film about how introverted people feel at crowded parties

     

    I appreciate mother!. I want to see it again. It's not a good film per se, it's kind of a big mess. By which I mean: some performances are so good, some are so bad, and the whole thing feels like a big budget student film trying to be Meaningful(TM). It is serious about shocking you and disturbing you, but the reason it's a comedy is because of Jennifer Lawrence. I have nothing against her, but she is almost comically miscast in what is essentially a really difficult part. Her character is constantly reacting to what other people do, keeping her feelings inside, or freaking out. But when Lawrence gazes at the camera blankly, unlike say Javier Bardem, there's nothing there. Nothing happening. And when she's screaming, she unfortunately tends to lose her voice and all that comes out is awkward squeals. You need someone there that you believe has so much inner turmoil going on inside when all they do is stare in front of them.

     

    I feel sorry for the actress, but part of the reason mother! made me laugh out loud multiple times is how un-sorry I felt for the character. And it's unfair too. Lawrence has to go up against awesome actors like Ed Harris, Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer, who each get to play characters that are alive and joyful and weird in ways that Lawrence's is not. So begins a game where she is taunted over and over by these horrible home invaders. And it's often hilarious because Lawrence cares so deeply about all of it. 'Hey! You can't come in here!' is her signature line. 'Don't sit on that sink, it's not secured.' In contrast to Bardem, who is hilariously shrugging everything off. 'It's just stuff, we can buy new!' he says. He keeps apologizing, even when, well, the end thing happens.

     

    The end. It's pandemonium taken a little too far. The movie kinda lost me there for a while, as the house devolves into a warzone and a church. It was more fun when the whole thing was about social micro-transgressions wrought upon an ever-suffering Lawrence. Then again, when it happens, it's so suggestive and bizarre that I was more marvelling at its weirdness than grossed out. It's not gross, not really.

     

    I feel little need to delve into the symbolism of the film, in the way that I needed to figure out what was going on in The Fountain. mother! is so on the nose with everything it does, it robs itself of mystery, strangely. There's even a throbbing heart in the house shrivelling up and I swear that is straight out of my own graduation film at art school. I almost couldn't believe I saw Aronofsky do it in his film. So, yeah, it's really not his best film, or even 'good'. But there's so much in there that's worth seeing. Harris and Pfeiffer and Bardem! Superb whenever they're on. You'll laugh, if you've got my inclinations.