Movie/TV recommendations

[Patrick R]

Why would someone steer a car towards a cliff when they could steer a car towards a vast featureless desert? I imagine it's to seek thrills?

[Erkki]

Except none of that is communicated.  His relation to Kirk isn't identified in the scene, only that Kirk and his mother live in his house.  He could be an uncle, cousin, family friend, etc. (I know the credits list him as Stepdad but resorting to the credits just shows how weak that scene is).  The recklessness and self-destructiveness I get, but I felt that was far better demonstrated in the bar scene.  If they had cut the scene with kid Kirk altogether it wouldn't have changed anything.  In my opinion it would probably be better.

 

I'm nitpicking a lot about one relatively short and forgettable scene in a movie but that whole thing just really bugged me.

I know almost nothing about Star Trek, except that Kirk is a captain. I certainly didn't know that kid was Kirk until he named himself, but what Patrick R and Ben X said was obvious to me just from watching and reading cues from the trailer. I didn't read credits.

[SecretAsianMan]

Why would someone steer a car towards a cliff when they could steer a car towards a vast featureless desert? I imagine it's to seek thrills?

 

He didn't drive toward the cliff for kicks, he was driving away from the cop.  I got the impression that he was a mischievous delinquent, not an adrenaline junkie.

 

 

I know almost nothing about Star Trek, except that Kirk is a captain. I certainly didn't know that kid was Kirk until he named himself, but what Patrick R and Ben X said was obvious to me just from watching and reading cues from the trailer. I didn't read credits.

 

Kirk's mom didn't strike me as the type to get remarried so I assumed the voice on the phone was his uncle.  Given the dialog, I think that's an entirely reasonable position.  And as I said before, I think the bar fight scene does a much better job of showing that side of Kirk.

 

 

This is the last I'm going to say about the subject because I don't want to talk about it anymore.  I've said how I feel about the scene, and I still like the movie.  If people want to disagree with me that's fine.

[BadHat]

I don't know I thought that was a pretty good trailer for Dude, Where's My Enterprise?

[Ben X]

The recklessness and self-destructiveness I get, but I felt that was far better demonstrated in the bar scene.  If they had cut the scene with kid Kirk altogether it wouldn't have changed anything.  In my opinion it would probably be better.

 

This is a good point. I probably agree, and perhaps I kind of took the scene's existence for granted as it was made into an early trailer. I just don't think it's confusing, was all i was saying. Anyway, weren't we moving this over to the Trek thread?!

 

Well, enough about Jimmy T and The Beastie Boys. I just saw Ant-Man and boyyy was I disappointed. I think it got given a lot of slack for being an MCU movie. Just full of dialogue and scenes and narrative tricks I'd seen many times before, characters who barely exist (maybe Judy Greer will make the hat-trick by being wasted in a pointless mother role for a Star Wars or Trek movie next!), bullshit busywork and muddy motivations/relationships. I enjoyed the

Falcon scene and the final (pre-credits) scene

but everything else just washed over me in a wave of bleh.

[melmer]

Talking of Marvel reminds me I saw a new piece of art for civil war earlier which showed the vision and scarlet witch fighting. I thought they were setting them up for a romance, I suppose it could still happen

Interesting that Hawkeye isn't fighting anyone, maybe he'll turn coat during the movie.

[melmer]

Guess I should link to the image

I just need the antman Hawkeye team up

That scene would steal any movie

[Twig]

I'm pretty excited for Civil War. The Captain America movies have been the best Serious (although not TOO serious ala the NEtflix serieseseses) things in the universe they've created. Ahhh! I wanna see it.

[Ben X]

maybe Judy Greer will make the hat-trick by being wasted in a pointless mother role for a Star Wars or Trek movie next!

 

I just watched Tomorrowland and it turns out she's already made that hat-trick - she plays the mother in that movie for a single two-second shot. It's like she lost a bet or something.

 

As for the film itself, it's got a fair few of interesting ideas and good performances but it's pretty bloated and directionless.

[BadHat]

Tomorrowland was a weird fucking movie. I had no idea what to expect from it going in, and I kind of still don't know what I got.

[castorp]

I just watched The Descent. I really liked it, as far as horror goes I found the characters and their actions to be quite believable, the cast in general was very refreshing. Not sure about the ending, even the non-american, original version does not work for me that much. Still, great movie, watch it!

Not really a spoiler, but it feels strange to make a point of it when the movie so greatly does not...

Seeing an all female cast of believable, capable, strong, brave, funny, mean, weak, selfish characters is nearly the best!

[Patrick R]

I don't want to venture into the spoiler filled Star Wars VII thread, so I'll ask here: Is Kenny Baker in this again? I saw that R2 is in it, but did shove a dwarf into a tin can in the desert again? Why did they ever put a person inside of R2-D2? This seems to me to be the most baffling thing in Star Wars history.

[brkl]

I don't know, but R2 is barely in the movie and probably didn't need an actor in him. R2 is great in the originals, though, I really don't see how they could have achieved the same personality without someone in there. Can you imagine C3PO done with 70's puppetry?

[Patrick R]

I can't imagine C3PO done as a puppet, but isn't R2 literally on wheels for 90% of his shots? They couldn't have just used remote control?

[SecretAsianMan]

Kenny Baker is listed as a "R2-D2 consultant" in Force Awakens.  Also R2 does a lot of bouncing on his two legs, something that is probably less convincing when done without someone inside.  And remote control ability at the time of the original trilogy was less reliable than it is now.

[Patrick R]

I guess in my head I can see how fast-paced motion controlled dogfights in space are a different technology than radio controlled puppetry, but the disconnect between this watershed moment in special effects still putting a dwarf inside a can so it can wiggle it's head always blows my mind.

[SecretAsianMan]

It's weird, for sure.

[Ben X]

I think Kenny Baker said at one point that he knew George didn't need him to be there for the prequels and George knew that he knew that; it was basically for nostalgia/respect reasons rather than practicality.

[TheLastBaron]

And it's also one of the reasons behind the Kenny Baker/Anthony Daniels feud, with Anthony Daniels feeling that Kenny Baker doesn't deserve any credit as he's more or less a prop.

[namman siggins]

Two movies I'm going to be watching soon

 

[Erkki]

I just binged through Season 1 of You're The Worst earlier today and that series is great, even if it has a few things that bug me (like how dumb the nerd guy is made out to be through most of the season, and the jokes about not remembering Killian[s name] -- Arrested Dev reference?). Maybe it's just because I'm not an immigrant but it felt more relatable than Master of None. I kind of liked how it ends and wasn't really expecting another season, but I'm not too disappointed to find out that there is more -- maybe it will work out, and I could just binge through the second season during Christmas.

[SecretAsianMan]

Google Play had a coupon for 75% off a movie rental so I watched Ant-Man.  It was ok.  Didn't feel like a superhero movie until the very end when he was fighting the badguy.  Up until that point it felt like Ocean's 11 except one of the dudes can shrink and talk to ants.  Pym kept talking about how important their heist was and how it would save the world and everything, but it didn't have the same weight as the other Marvel movies where the threat is much more obvious and present.  Still, it was amusing in moments and Paul Rudd was much more enjoyable than I was expecting.

[Erkki]

Oh god, the second season of You're The Worst is even better. This show is really hitting the spot for me. Episode 7 had me jump from laughter to tears and back (and back) within seconds. And Episode 8 was just great fun.

[Erkki]

Man, what an ending to the season. I may be under influence, but I so enjoyed that! Also, you know what's also great about that show? It lets a fat(-ish) person look fucking hot! Lindsay is seriously the hottest-looking person on that show.

[thefncrow]

So I watched The Hateful Eight tonight.  And man, am I down on that movie.  I can't overcome how gross (and not in terms of gore, although there's plenty of that too) it is in general.  There's some elements to it that I could recognize as good, but, man, they are overshadowed in a huge way by other stuff. 

 

And here's some more text to pad out this opening so that I can keep this spoiler out of the post preview.  Need some more length here to keep this safe.

 

(Minor plot spoiler)

The plot from a very early stage in the movie focuses on a bounty hunter who has captured this woman and is taking her to collect the bounty.  The movie then uses this setup to make a running joke out of people abusing this woman.  There is hardly a moment in the film where she doesn't have a black eye, or a broken nose, or blood visibly running down her face.

 

And things go downhill from there.  This next thing is a major plot spoiler, and even the trigger warnings I want to give are kinda spoilery.  So, trigger warnings:

racism, homophobia, rape

 

There's a scene between Major Warren (Samuel L. Jackson's black, former Union soldier character) and a confederate general who has traveled to the area to make up a headstone for a son who has been missing long enough that he's surely dead.  Warren wants to kill this old man, but decides to give him a gun and try to infuriate him into drawing the gun so that Warren can gun down the old confederate and have it be "right".  And so he begins telling the general that he ran into the boy, who mentioned his confederate general father, at which point Warren starts detailing what he did to the boy.  This involves stripping the boy naked and walking him through the snowy mountains until he collapses from hypothermia, and then raping him.  It's ugly enough when it's a story being told to the general while Warren is focusing on pushing the general's buttons in terms of racism and homophobia, but Tarantino decides to add visuals of this scene while Sam Jackson's character continues to narrate.  And if you watch the 70mm version, this is the last scene before the intermission, giving you a good 10 minutes to just stew on this gross shit.

 

Ugh.