ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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I watched a few movies recently. I saw Birdman, which I had kinda mixed opinions on. I thought the dialogue felt very...artificial, I guess? It's hard to put my finger on but the writing never really sat quite right with me. But the whole one long shot thing is cool and mostly works and even with that main complaint of mine in mind, the acting is good so I'd still say it's worth checking out.

 

I also just watched Blood Simple, which isn't exactly new, but whatever because I loved it. I think that's the only Coen bros movie I hadn't seen. Those guys are pretty talented!

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I think Fury was amazing. Best war/antiwar movie I've seen. (though yeah I do like Jarhead, Full Metal Jacket, and Apocalypse Now). I think a big thing Fury has going for it beyond the soul crushing grit is that it never felt too long for me while still being fully realised.

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I've been on the fence about seeing Fury, it's getting a lot of praise but i've also heard:

The ending misses the mark to a significant degree

 

I'll probably see it on Monday.

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I've been on the fence about seeing Fury, it's getting a lot of praise but i've also heard:

The ending misses the mark to a significant degree

 

I'll probably see it on Monday.

I did wonder if the ending had been reshot to make it less bleak. It might have gone over better with a more pronounced return to civvie life section like The Hurt Locker or Jarhead.

Still though it's definitely worth seeing.

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Watched John Carter yesterday, because I only found out that it exists this week. I had to watch it because I really liked the books as a teenager. If I had to read them now, I would probably think that they were too simplistic. Which is why I thought it really weird that they would make a movie out of it now -- and the actual movie was even more simplistic as it seems they had to skip any philosophy that was there in the books, to fit it into a 2+ hour movie. But there was still a small bit of fun there. I wouldn't watch it again, but I might watch a sequel if they made one (which I understand is a slim chance since it tanked?)

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So I finally watched Fruitvale Station because I already feel sick and angry. I needed that experience because i'm pretty geographically and culturally distant from the specific climate of racial tension in America, so it's easy for me to become impassive and complacent. Well I don't want to be impassive and complacent.

 

Maybe at the end of the day it's still a petty and selfish reason to want to watch a film, with no greater effect on anything important in the world, but never forgetting what happened to Osacar Grant (and countless other people) is something that at least is achievable by me.

 

Not sure what prompted me to over-explain why I watched Fruitvale Station, I think it's my pre-emptive counter to the criticism that topical, and other 'based-on-true-events' films seem to always receive (12 years a slave, Selma). Sorry.

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Interstellar is now getting criticised for its sound mix.

 

I had no issues with the sound, personally. There was one scene where a couple of lines of inconsequential dialogue were drowned out by the score, which I took to be an interesting choice. The score can get noticeably loud, but not uncomfortably so.

 

This story reminds me of when a load of "anonymous industry people" said the Hobbit 48fps footage looked crap, and when cinemas had to put signs up reminding people that Terrence Malick films can be slow. I hope this isn't the beginnings of a trend towards wide-release movies doing anything different being berated by critics and anonymous industry people, and complained about by mouth-breathing movie-goers.

 

Late to this, but I just wanted to say that while I enjoyed Interstellar (I pretty much agree with the interesting but flawed assessment), the part I liked the least was the music. It wasn't really the mix, but more that there's was music all the time and it's was always really overbearing. The only time I enjoyed the music was on the planet with Mann, when it was equal parts awed and eerie, but the rest of the time I just wished it would shut up and let some other parts of the movie do the talking. A lot of stuff felt like a trailer, not a movie.

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Rewatched eXistenZ again after at least five years, such a great film. Considering doing a Cronenberg rewatch binge to see how his work holds up and if my feelings towards him have changed now. Haven't seen any of his stuff after Eastern Promises, which I expect I might appreciate more now. The notion of watching Crash again is a bit scary I must admit.

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I've been on the fence about seeing Fury, it's getting a lot of praise but i've also heard:

The ending misses the mark to a significant degree

 

I'll probably see it on Monday.

 

I felt it did. There is also an attempted characterisation of a German soldier that goes completely in the wrong direction

 

But, yes, some amazing performances. The way that all the machismo of the characters ends up making them look like children is perfect. Shia Labouef is surprisingly good too but it is Pitt's central performance that is important.

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I saw Guardians of the Galaxy and thought it was a lot of fun! Very smartly written, even if some of the gags smacked a little of tryhard Whedonism. Only real criticism I have is that, because a lot of plot seems heavily abridged to make room for all the stuff they tried to cram in, many character moments wound up feeling very forced, like they happened more because they "had to" than because they were a result of anything that was set up beforehand. Like, it's not a crime for a big dumb action movie to crib heavily on established tropes, but when it's using them without a lot of the substance that usually keeps those tropes afloat, it starts to feel a little like they're exploiting the audience's tacit acceptance of those things in lieu of actually earning an emotional response.

 

BUT, at least it's not another fucking superhero original story where nothing happens.

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Watched Strange Days, the apocalyptic millennial paranoia feels really dated (and should have been even during the time of the movie's release), the racial-political tensions seem prescient and transgressive for a Hollywood film, the cyberpunk aspect is fascinating and disturbing but ultimately underexplored (apparently episode 10 of the first season of ghost in the shell was influenced by strange days which explains why i thought the premise felt familiar).

The film is a hyper energetic mess that feels unique and captures a specific zeitgeist really well. There's also a lot of violence and rape, which complicates my already jumbled thoughts on Kathryn Bigelow's work.

In short, watch it if you want.

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I randomly saw Magical Girl (2014) yesterday, as my Spanish teacher had an extra ticket. I liked it a lot. It starts off as a sort of light weight, but dark slightly comedic drama, but then starts to spiral more and more into darkness. Every hint of the characters' motivations and every move is very calculated, though. There are never many things hinted at once, at least not as it seemed to me. It is very readable, if you can use that word for a movie. During watching it, I thought "well factored" as it applies to software, maybe well-layered would be more appropriate.

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I've never heard of him, but holy shit this line:

 

So Michael Bay makes his little art-house film to show us into his soul and we find ourselves looking into a void-like abyss of blackness, the depth and enormity of which is impossible to comprehend.

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Insider knowledge about Mark Kermode:

 

he consistently has very strong body odour

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I don't remember if it was from a recommendation here or not, but I tracked down Äkta människor (Real Humans) recently. The first series is pretty good, the second has its moments but gets really silly though, and not in a good way. It starts to feel like it's just finding excuses to prolong itself.

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Finally got around to watching Interstellar tonight.  It's definitely flawed, but interesting.  I keep asking myself about the editing, though, because I feel like there's a better movie there if you could trim some of the fat.  For example:

So much of the last third.  I could 100% do without everything past the Tesseract, I could have done with about half as much of that scene, and I feel like there's a ton of padding in the end of the Evil Matt Damon arc which is probably intended as dramatic tension but just comes off as repetitive.

  I'm not saying you make those alterations and you've got a world-beater, but I think there is a better movie underneath.

 

Since I finally caught up on watching some things, I went back through a few pages:

Did you get that thing I sent ya?

 

I watched Birdman at the Alamo Drafthouse here, and before the movies they show a little thing of video clips which are somehow related to the film.  For the last few minutes before Birdman started, they just showed one of the really old original Birdman cartoons.  Really strange to watch that after having gotten my initial exposure to the Harvey Birdman versions.

 

On Birdman, it's a fun movie with some really great performances.  I wasn't all that hot on it coming out of the theater, but it's a movie that's been stuck in my head for a while and I just keep thinking about.  I feel like it's a movie I need to take a second run at.

 

Yeah that was incredible. Also I'm so sad there's no more John Oliver this year. ):

 

Do you listen to The Bugle?  Because it seems like those episodes are going to be at least a little more regular until Last Week Tonight starts back up.

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Do you listen to The Bugle?  Because it seems like those episodes are going to be at least a little more regular until Last Week Tonight starts back up.

...I had no idea he was on The Bugle. I'd only heard of it in passing. Well I'm listening to it now I guess.

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...I had no idea he was on The Bugle. I'd only heard of it in passing. Well I'm listening to it now I guess.

 

Yep.  The Bugle is just him and Andy Zaltzman, who it seems was his writing partner for some of his early UK work that I have basically only heard of through The Bugle.  The Bugle is basically what got me to start listening to podcasts in the first place, so it has a place very near to my heart.

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