Movie/TV recommendations

[jmbossy]

I am highly doubtful they can ever be "good" again. Especially as most people can't even determine when community was at its best.

(A good portion of community fans I know think season 3 is the best, but I think season 1 was clearly the most well written.)

 

Either way, I guess it probably won't kill me (though it'll give it a good try) to watch the new episodes.

[melmer]

Lee Ryan is a complete bastard #CBB

[Lu]

Alright, let me rephraise: Community had a good episode again! Yay!

[Ben X]

I love Frank Oz's Little Shop Of Horrors, and just missed out on seeing the director's cut at the cinema recently, which I was gutted by.

How does the 'new' ending work? Does all the footage integrate well?

 

Well Ben, it integrates very well in that it looks just as good as the main feature and all the effects are fantastic. However, even though it is definitely a superior ending to the post-test-screening whitewash, this version of it doesn't work as well as it could, because they haven't finalised the editing or sound and optical effects (and probably not the sound mix either). It's too long and very loose, and the song "Don't Feed The Plants" isn't great anyway (although it may be compromised by this cut's unfinished state) - it doesn't stand up to the melancholy of Rocky Horror's "Superheroes" and yet doesn't quite match the B-movie action onscreen. It's a real shame that they didn't/couldn't put the time and money into properly finishing it, but you can mentally squint a bit, and it's brilliant to finally have an ending that matches the dark nature of the whole film. Just needs a fan-edit to tighten it up now...

[tegan]

I feel like watching something in the same vein as "Monsters" or "The Mist," but I can't think of anything else that falls under that umbrella.

[melmer]

Um, troll hunter (I really didn't like that film, don't watch it)

[elmuerte]

Um, troll hunter (I really did like that film, do watch it)

[jmbossy]

I feel like watching something in the same vein as "Monsters" or "The Mist," but I can't think of anything else that falls under that umbrella.

 

Super 8?

Cabin in the Woods?

[Ben X]

Cloverfield?

[elmuerte]

Nope, nope, nope.

 

1408 (the 3rd ending) is closer to The Mist. Rose Red is also good.

[melmer]

Is that that john cusack hotel room film, that was fantastic. Steven king isn't it?

[elmuerte]

Yes, It's all Stephen King. If asking for King-like, the best answer is usually King-like.

 

Note, I said 3rd ending. There are 3 different endings, and there's only 1 good one (if you've seen it, you know which one I mean). King isn't always nice to the main character(s).

[elmuerte]

Btw... The Mist is a lovecraftian. So if that's you're thing, then there's other stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraftian_horror#Film_and_television

 

And although not really actually lovecraftian, I can recomment The Poltergeist.

[tegan]

Apropos of nothing, I ended up watching Gwoemul/The Host. Neat movie!

 

From Wikipedia:

Because of its themes that can be seen as critical of the United States, the film was lauded by North Korean authorities,[13] a rarity for a South Korean blockbuster film.

[jmbossy]

OH! The Thing!!! That movie was all kinds of good!

[Frenetic Pony]

OH! The Thing!!! That movie was all kinds of good!

 

Soooo awesome. So good. In fact, the John Carpenter 80's quadrilogy is a must watch IE: Escape from New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, They Live. All four were supposed to have Kurt Russel as the star, unfortunately things went wrong for They Live. Still worth it though.

[tegan]

The Thing is easily one of my favourite movies, though I strangely do not own a copy.

 

The things I like about The Mist and Monsters are that they have at times beautiful creatures with very Lovecraftian anatomy that you never quite get a good look at and are largely secondary to a different story. Everything about those two movies is emotional and and mysterious.

 

 

 

 

Everyone who hasn't seen Monsters should do so, by the way. The entire thing's on Youtube, even:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94AkakJAmR0

[elmuerte]

Soooo awesome. So good. In fact, the John Carpenter 80's quadrilogy is a must watch IE: Escape from New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, They Live. All four were supposed to have Kurt Russel as the star, unfortunately things went wrong for They Live. Still worth it though.

I think They Live would have been worse if it didn't star Roddy Piper (and Keith David)

[Frenetic Pony]

Just because others did it:

 

Top 5 movies of last year

 

5. American Hustle: Slick and fun and funny and engaging and... a bit too slick and smooth for real life. It's another scam movie that feels too slick for its own good, too commercialized, too conscientiously holding back to appeal to a broader audience. It could have been messier and wilder and more messed up, and maybe should have been. I'm still gonna watch it again though.

 

4. Iron Man 3: God damn it but Shane Black is funny. "Dad's leave, it happens, don't be a pussy about it." I hope the billion+ gross gets him any gig he wants, I'd love another rated R movie from him.

 

3. Gravity: Finally, a good video game movie. Because damn it but this could have been a video game practically shot for shot, yet it worked as a movie too. Just plain fun as a ride.

 

2. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Oh my god this is funny. "Stop reading my mind!" Will Smith showing up in the entire god damned fight scene. Anything with Brick in it. "Brick you're not dead!" "Brick... no, no you're Brick. Brick you aren't dead because you are Brick!" It doesn't always work, but when it does it's one of the funniest comedies in years, or over a decade even.

 

1. The Wolf of Wallstreet. "Benny Hana? Benny fucking Hana?" If there's a movie that's going to be remembered for a long, long time from last year then Gravity might be one of them. Or maybe not. But The Wolf of Wallstreet definitely will be. It is an absolute, non step mess of debauchery and amusement and amazement. Where American Hustle pulls its punches as slickly as possible wherever possible this movie bites and kicks and shakes it for everything it can get. These are bad people, every one of them, and The Wolf of Wallstreet is going to send you along for the ride with all of them, in every gross and funny and ridiculous detail it can cram in.

 

 

Honorable Mention:

 

12 Years a Slave: This is an award bait exploitation flick if there ever was one. "Slavery was terrible, and were going to spend over an hour of gratuitous shots reminding you of that. Don't you feel guilty about what happened to a bunch of people you were never involved with that lived a hundred+ years ago?" Maybe if it had gone in more for the actual story rather than guilt tripping torture porn I'd have enjoyed it more. But it didn't.

[Stuart]

Honorable Mention:

 

12 Years a Slave: This is an award bait exploitation flick if there ever was one. "Slavery was terrible, and were going to spend over an hour of gratuitous shots reminding you of that. Don't you feel guilty about what happened to a bunch of people you were never involved with that lived a hundred+ years ago?" Maybe if it had gone in more for the actual story rather than guilt tripping torture porn I'd have enjoyed it more. But it didn't.

 

You're seriously underselling that movie, despite the fact that you kinda' liked it. "Exploitation" never came cross my mind when I watched that film. Sure, it was very gratuitous but that doesn't make a film worthy of being called torture porn or exploitative, specially if the film doesn't present those films in a prideful, cathartic, and/or pleasurable way. It didn't aim to make audiences go "Aw, fucked up shit, bro!" like when watching a Saw film, nor did it want to use the imagery to ham-fistedly/brutally nail its themes in the audiences' skulls (ala' Salo or A Serbian Film, both which I've admittedly not watched but read extensively about).

 

It's an honest film and one that wants to see its main character tortured not for the sake of guilt-tripping or pleasuring its audience, but for it to be a testament of human struggle and resistance in the face of extreme prejudice, hatred, oppression, and human savagery disguised as civility. For this reason, the film seems to be a continuation of director Steve McQueen's focus on showing human resistance in moments of intense oppression. Hunger and 12 Years a Slave are films that very literally demonstrate these things, while Shame did it in the context of a man resisting his sexual depravity that clouded his capacity to feel love and be loved. 

 

Also, 12 Years a Slave is based on a true story, and in this case, that's not an excuse.

[Twig]

Watched the last episode of this season of Sherlock.

 

GOTTA BE HONEST: NOT TOO PLEASED ABOUT THAT ENDING

 

IT BETTER PAY OFF NEXT SEASON

[Frenetic Pony]

You're seriously underselling that movie, despite the fact that you kinda' liked it. "Exploitation" never came cross my mind when I watched that film. Sure, it was very gratuitous but that doesn't make a film worthy of being called torture porn or exploitative, specially if the film doesn't present those films in a prideful, cathartic, and/or pleasurable way. It didn't aim to make audiences go "Aw, fucked up shit, bro!" like when watching a Saw film, nor did it want to use the imagery to ham-fistedly/brutally nail its themes in the audiences' skulls (ala' Salo or A Serbian Film, both which I've admittedly not watched but read extensively about).

 

It's an honest film and one that wants to see its main character tortured not for the sake of guilt-tripping or pleasuring its audience, but for it to be a testament of human struggle and resistance in the face of extreme prejudice, hatred, oppression, and human savagery disguised as civility. For this reason, the film seems to be a continuation of director Steve McQueen's focus on showing human resistance in moments of intense oppression. Hunger and 12 Years a Slave are films that very literally demonstrate these things, while Shame did it in the context of a man resisting his sexual depravity that clouded his capacity to feel love and be loved. 

 

Also, 12 Years a Slave is based on a true story, and in this case, that's not an excuse.

 

It's a different kind of exploitation, in a similar vein to what The Walking Dead season 1 and Game of Thrones pull. It's not traditional exploitation, but it goes far, FAR beyond getting the message across to the point of just browbeating you repeatedly with the gimmick it's found that gets an emotional response out of you. You already know that he's being treated horribly, and what his responses are too it. As long as you understand that the message is gotten through in the story. But then the scenes are repeated ad nauseum and gratuitously long, with McQueen behind the camera just shouting how much he wants to get into the audiences head with it.

 

This is why I called it guilt trip porn. It's just as much exploitation as a Grindhouse film, but while those are for kicks, this is the same thing but for making you feel bad for a person, without actually advancing the story or characters anywhere. If several of the more brutal scenes were cut short and/or cut out, would the story have changed any? Not one bit from what I can see of it. But they aren't, you're just made to stare it to really dig in the horror of it all. Take a better done example, all Saving Private Ryan really needed was it's opening scene for being gratuitous, that was enough to get the horror of war across. They didn't need to go back to another scene like that, and didn't. But 12 Years a Slave has multiple, and extensive shots of such, even when the audience already understands it. It just reminds of The Walking Dead (game) or Game of Thrones killing off yet another character you like, just because it can and doesn't know what else to do. Or a book I quit, the Assassin's Apprentice. The entire first half is just the main character getting fucked up, time after time after time. it's gratuitous and worse monotonous at the same time.

[jmbossy]

Personally I felt 12 years wasn't very sympathy-inducing. If that is what McQueen was going for than he failed to get that to me.

 

I saw it more as I see something like, a Scorsese or a Coen film. Shit happens, whether or not its telling a story, or evolving a character, this is a universe we've made, and this is how our universe goes. What is the moral to The Departed or Burn after Reading? There isn't one, nor is there really any universal change (except for the characters involved). 12 years did something like that, except it used an universe we recognize and one we (as a culture) regret almost indisputably. I didn't feel McQueen ever said to me "this is your fault", instead he just showed me a man struggling to breathe and said "this is how shit is [was], you can't change it, and neither can he".

 

That being said, I don't think the film was flawless, and felt there was definitely a level of "award-bait" sterility to it.

[Brannigan]

I saw Her earlier today, really enjoyed it a lot.

 

Bonus points for poking fun at games without making me cringe.

[jmbossy]

And Community is good again!

 

Dammit. I just watched the first episode of Season 5 and it actually wasn't that bad.

In a lot of ways it reminded me of what I liked about the first season.

 

-Chang no longer has some stupid shtick and is back to being an awful teacher.

-All of the characters are returning to when they actually had promise

-The jokes are bleak and satirical again

 

You can feel the Harmon return.

I love they are adult enough to admit their mistakes (referring to the 4th season as a "gas leak year")

Even with Donald Glover leaving, they're making the best of his character again.

 

I can't speak for the entire season, but it's at least so far back to the quality of seasons 2 or 3.