Movie News, Reviews, and Discussion Super-Thread

[Madrun Badrun]

[TVC15]

Fuck Marvel. Two days until The Disaster Artist, my most anticipated movie in years.

[Great Rumbler]

Then next week it's I, Tonya.

[TVC15]

And Shape of the Water.

[toku]

One of the keys to a good villain is they have to win...sometimes. That means someone has to die, or many someones but they do their best to make you not think about any real consequences to dropping cities and leveling buildings. They push it so far out to the periphery it makes a lot of their villains feel toothless when we're never dealing or looking at the consequences of say, an alien invasion in new york city. When they do try to face it (Civil War) they make it all about how some of the heroes don't want to face government oversight and that it's bad like lmao.

Typing out that sentence just kinda made me sick ngl

I will give them some credit though, the last 2? or so years they've been doing better with make these ppl actual suffer long term consequences im just ranting and raving on the bore and in the minority with all these movies so just ignore this post i have gone full benji i need to take some medication now xo

[BlueTsunami]

I hope Infinity Wars main set piece takes place in an Arbys parking lot. Wide open spaces, no need for green screen, Thanos destroying an Arbys, Spidey quips about Black Widows roast beef etc

[Diunx]

I just wanna take a moment to thank our lord and saviour Kevin Feige 

[Tasty]

Lame trailer but the movie, and likely subsequent trailers, will kick ass.

The hype is gonna start for real with the first Infinity War 2 trailer. I can just see IW ending with Tony or someone huge dying and everyone being at their low point.

[Momo]

I hope Infinity Wars main set piece takes place in an Arbys parking lot. Wide open spaces, no need for green screen, Thanos destroying an Arbys, Spidey quips about Black Widows roast beef etc

[toku]

scott adkins finally got his passion project made:


great interview if you have the time and a fan of action cinema/guys

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

man, when was the last time that a solid, purely British action movie came out?

Welcome to the Punch, Centurion, The Tournament?

any that I'm missing here? I'm thinking this is a small list to compile.

[Mr. Gundam]

Kingsmen?

[Rahxephon91]

There was Free Fire. It was solid.

[Great Rumbler]

man, when was the last time that a solid, purely British action movie came out?

Welcome to the Punch, Centurion, The Tournament?

any that I'm missing here? I'm thinking this is a small list to compile.

Does Skyfall count?

[Mr. Nobody]

John Wick 1 & 2 - Great action with some exceptionally beautiful scenery in the second.

Chinatown - Polanski might be a piece of garbage but this was a fantastic film. I'm seriously about to go on a noir kick in a bit because of this.

Throne of Blood - Found it a bit slow at times but the payoff in the end 

The Hidden Fortress - Nice adventure flick. Was lowkey more engaged during than any Star Wars movie I've ever watched 

[Mr. Nobody]

Taxi Driver was good but I can't help but roll my eyes at the end.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

so tonight I went to the same theater where The Room plays once a month on the regular and saw The Disaster Artist. I remember well my first time seeing The Room. Its not so much a movie as it is an object of interest, I couldn't see it without wanting to know more about it, about its very strange creator. Why, how, and so on. Something that was always patently clear about Tommy Wiseau, through his work and now his sorta-biography, is that he's a sad and lonely man. The Disaster Artist plays well upon the whole wounded-child aspect of his personality, which is good because otherwise the whole thing just becomes a pile on towards an admittedly weird guy. It is a funny movie on the whole, and it is sometimes a poignant film, but its not quite the slam dunk it could have been and for some stretches is. It is however, an unqualified success in depicting how such a weirdly fascinating movie like The Room got made, and the shambolic production is a hoot to watch, even if the film could stand itself to be a little more weird itself. It leans towards convention, which was perhaps a necessary compromise to make in order to get an actual Hollywood film out of the Outsider-Art spectacle of The Room, but so little of the unlikely existence, production, and eventual success of The Room follows any sort of formula, so why should its film?

I'm sounding maybe a bit harsh here. I did like the movie, and the sold-out crowd I saw it with was clearly digging the hell out of it. But I dunno how this thing is gonna strike non devotees of its source material. If you don't know what it means to toss plastic spoons in the air, it might only be a pleasant movie about a far reaching auteur and his endlessly patient friend/enabler/co-dependent. That's still not bad, but it can't help but feel like a bit of a missed opportunity.

[benjipwns]

One of the keys to a good villain is they have to win...sometimes. That means someone has to die, or many someones but they do their best to make you not think about any real consequences to dropping cities and leveling buildings. They push it so far out to the periphery it makes a lot of their villains feel toothless when we're never dealing or looking at the consequences of say, an alien invasion in new york city. When they do try to face it (Civil War) they make it all about how some of the heroes don't want to face government oversight and that it's bad like lmao.

Typing out that sentence just kinda made me sick ngl

I will give them some credit though, the last 2? or so years they've been doing better with make these ppl actual suffer long term consequences im just ranting and raving on the bore and in the minority with all these movies so just ignore this post i have gone full benji i need to take some medication now xo

i mean that's the thing they can do here though, and their films are actually set up to do it "in theory"

Avengers: Infinity War has Thanos collecting the gems and beating the shit out of everyone like Vision in the trailer, wailing on all sorts of nameless dudes and injuring a bunch of named ones and ending with him killing off half the galaxy.

The Carol Danvers Captain Marvel film that's coming inbetween the two Infinity War parts is set in the 1990s, the Ant-Man sequel takes place after Civil War but before Infinity War and that's all they have set inbetween the two parts.

The second Infinity War can start with everything all fucked up and bleak, and sacrifice Robert Downey Jr. (if he wants out of the ensemble at this point) to beat Thanos plus anyone else they need to...the main problem is that I don't know who they'd feel like they can kill off in the first part that they won't need in the second part.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

ideally they'd do this to Captain America in the first one since he's seemingly useless once the film goes into space/cosmic/whatever and then the Gauntlet can bring him back once Captain Marvel claims it from Thanos

plus the Time Gem can make Stark and Fury younger for new actors!

although I've always wondered why any of the other gems are ever needed when the Reality Gem literally lets you remake any aspect reality even in the violation of laws like gravity or whatever

[close]

Thanos can be alright as a villain (he's better as kind of a grey area or anti-hero character)

His whole plot in Annihilation was the best.

Funny enough (to this larger conversation about comic film villains), the original script for the Fantastic Four reboot featured Annihilius and the Negative Zone before Trank ditched everything for his "realistic" career tank. Which means along with Doctor Doom, not to mention everything Mutant, Fox has sat around with the rights to a good chunk of Marvel's largest villains while Marvel struggles to find decent ones to put in their films.

I've always wondered what exactly that Fantastic Four license entailed. Because since it was the dominant Marvel comic outside of Spider-Man for the early Stan Lee/Jack Kirby years, most every major character appeared in its run. And Fiege has stated that Namor exists in a kind of rights limbo. I have to imagine a bunch of characters from that era are stuck similarly.

Something the Disney purchase of Fox's film arm would at least fix.

I think that sometimes get lost in the fanboy wars, is Marvel had blockbuster level successes with what were relatively some of their lower tier characters. When you consider Spider-Man and all his foes, the entire array of Mutantkind and whatever was tied to Fantastic Four, along with a few other things here and there like Ghost Rider and Punisher were all not in their hands when they started this endeavor. Marvel hasn't even tried to make another Hulk film*!

Warner Bros has owned the entire array of DC Characters (aside from Superboy temporarily) but made nothing but Batman and Superman movies other than the one attempt at Green Lantern for nearly 50 years. They made more stuff out of Vertigo or similar (Watchmen/Jonah Hex) than anything from their main line of DC heroes outside of Superman/Batman's universe until Wonder Woman appeared as a character. Hell, they've made more TV shows based off their characters than anything!

*Apparently because Universal still owns the distribution rights and that Disney's actual dispute with Universal is over theme park rights to Marvel characters which Universal apparently holds and won't sell so Disney can use them in theirs. Megaconglomerate legacy disputes.

[benjipwns]

 

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

Does Skyfall count?

all the James Bond movies are Hollywood productions, so I wouldn't toss them in. The dividing line does get a bit blurry though. Kingsman was made by British people, in Britain (off a comic that's written and drawn by British people), but backed by a multi-national consortium, does it still count? Much of the same could be true of The World's End which I consider unquestionably British, but there's no real substantial difference between them.

I guess my criterion would be is it made for a worldwide audience first or not? But feel free to disreguard this whole thing, I don't wanna bog down this thread in a question of semantics. By all means, lets only get back to talking about comic book movies.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

well... kinda.

The Room isn't exactly a joke of a film. If it were simply lousy it wouldn't be any better than any of the films on MST3K. Instead its a Mobius strip of bizarre, inept and sincere. Its enduring appeal to a cult audience is perhaps in part due to not only how strange it is, but how resistant it is to any sort of mainstream acceptance. Yeah, its a big deal on the midnight movie circuit, and yeah lots of people wear T-shirts or some shit based on it. But the movie itself may invite an ironic appreciation, but its mawkish vulnerability combats that urge even while watching the film, it achieves its power through radiating a queasy and potent aura of discomfort. If anything The Disaster Artist sands off the coarseness a little too much. That such a magnificently odd achievement should get watered down into a more palatable form of a crowd pleaser struck me as a bit perverse (great) and disingenuous (not great).

Its still a good film. I think its actually my favorite James Franco performance. Your mileage may vary.

[Mupepe]

I had no idea The Disaster Artist was about Wiseau or The Room.  For some reason I kept thinking about that stupid movie with Joaquin Phoenix when I saw any posters and thought it was something similar.  I'm totally in now though.

[VomKriege]

Yeah as someone who consumed his fair share of terrible movies, The Room is not that special or notable there's tons of weirder, more entertaining films. Even as far as a self financed ego trip it's pretty tame and "intimate". HyperZone is on the money that it is an actual cult movie (with initiation and congregation central to the thing) whose appeal is gonna be lost to new generations (IMHO) because in the end it's a TV movie, just with weirdly off acting and writing.

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

Neil Breen has taken the crown from Tommy Wiseau for terrible film auteur.

I'd highly recommend reading the Disaster Artist book (or listening to the audiobook) since it's fucking hilarious and there's no way they can condense everything into two hours.

[TVC15]

The Disaster Artist was pretty damned great. Franco da gawd.

[Joe Molotov]

Gotta wait until next week to watch it around here.

[BlueTsunami]

Disaster Artist better come out next week here. Surprisingly hasnt hit my local independent theater.

[TVC15]

James will get all the credit because he disappears into his role, but Dave Franco is really great in it, too. Seth Rogen does his usual thing, but he’s not in it much, so it works well.

[BlueTsunami]

Kind of buzzed, decided on Orange County to watch. I really need to choose a film before my shit is compromised

[benjipwns]

all the James Bond movies are Hollywood productions, so I wouldn't toss them in. The dividing line does get a bit blurry though. Kingsman was made by British people, in Britain (off a comic that's written and drawn by British people), but backed by a multi-national consortium, does it still count? Much of the same could be true of The World's End which I consider unquestionably British, but there's no real substantial difference between them.

I guess my criterion would be is it made for a worldwide audience first or not? But feel free to disreguard this whole thing, I don't wanna bog down this thread in a question of semantics. By all means, lets only get back to talking about comic book movies.

I'd quite like to see a series of films straight adapting Moore/Gaiman's Marvelman.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[thisismyusername]

Watched Ghost in the Shell just a few minutes ago. Outside of the fact that Rupert Sanders is totally not the director for something like this (or movies in general) there is a good idea for a GitS film behind the plot/movie. It's a shame with only 2 hours it can't be realized.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

If the Major is the first of her kind (which IIRC in the manga and anime is not the case?) it'd be totally worth exploring more of her feelings and thoughts on that in more "episodes" of a series like the Stand Alone Complex anime does a meta-plot.

[close]

Too bad it's badly handled and the movie bombed (and rightly so). I do think if Dreamworks did a second crack at the IP with a more competent team, they'd have a decent Live Action adaptation on their hands.

[chronovore]

Watched Ben Wheatley's '70s gun deal gone wrong flick, FREE FIRE. The ambiance was good, the dialog audio levels were too low, the performances were uneven but largely appropriate to the tone: somewhere between comedy and drama.

One of those movies where everything goes wrong, but it's okay because everyone is unlikable.

Probably my least-favorite Cilian Murphy performance, which is to say, he was still good but had no real reason to be there. Brie Larson does nothing to show why she previously won an Oscar. Armie Hammer is a big, dopey fixer who doesn't really seem like he fits in any of the scenes. Probably the best performances were Sharlto Copley and Michael Smiley, who sell the movie's tone more effectively than anyone else.

A solid 7/10.

[chronovore]

https://twitter.com/warnerjp/status/936514111780696064

[ToxicAdam]

The funny thing about the Fantastic Four debacle is that it was Pixar that screwed it up. With The Incredibles they basically sucked the soul out of the FF franchise and made it their own.

The big story they (FF rights owner) still have to tell is the Franklin Richards one. That's an angle you can build a movie around and still feel unique.

[VomKriege]

Watched Ghost in the Shell just a few minutes ago. Outside of the fact that Rupert Sanders is totally not the director for something like this (or movies in general) there is a good idea for a GitS film behind the plot/movie. It's a shame with only 2 hours it can't be realized.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

If the Major is the first of her kind (which IIRC in the manga and anime is not the case?) it'd be totally worth exploring more of her feelings and thoughts on that in more "episodes" of a series like the Stand Alone Complex anime does a meta-plot.

[close]

Too bad it's badly handled and the movie bombed (and rightly so). I do think if Dreamworks did a second crack at the IP with a more competent team, they'd have a decent Live Action adaptation on their hands.

Don't take my word for it, regarding your spoiler, but I'm fairly certain the answer is "no" for the manga. That's really not the type of story beats Shirow emphasizes anyway.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The major has a high end top of the line milspec body. The fact she's almost fully cybernetic makes her elite and a rarity but not unique. I mean this world has body swapping, children routinely abducted to serve as mastermolds for sex robots, autonomous tank drones with IA so advanced it can be mistaken for conscience and an actual self aware computer program.

[close]

[toku]

the film just isn't as smart as pretty much any plot line GiTs has tackled in the past...manga OR anime. That's the problem. I still like Michael Pitt's Kuze though, I think he did a good job. Love that scene where he has the talk with Major as she's strung up. One of the few things in the movie that just works.

[Great Rumbler]

The biggest problem with the movie is that the script is just garbage. It relies too heavily on the anime/manga but doesn't replicate the impact of the stories nearly as well and ultimately ends up being too predictable/cliche. I wouldn't even be against bringing back Rupert Sanders, but they've gotta have a different writing team for a sequel.

[benjipwns]

So that made me look it up. Not being a fan or anything but enjoying production stories. The credited writers are very interesting as is how long this thing was in production. In 2008, Dreamworks acquired the rights to produce a Ghost In The Shell adaption, apparently on Spielberg's interest. (There was, iirc from that Dreamworks rise and fall book I read, a period where he watched a bunch of anime with one of his sons and had Dreamworks buy up the rights to them which he did nothing with.)

By October 2009 one of the credited writers, Jamie Moss was already off the film after having done a screenplay that much survives in the final film I assume in that time or he wouldn't have a credit. In January 2014, Rupert Sanders was hired as director and he brought in William Wheeler, another credited writer, who has said he worked on it for a year and half and indicated that he was not the final writer and was given three prior drafts.

They originally were talking to Margot Robbie for the lead, but when she signed to do Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Suicide Squad they responded with the $10 million offer to Scarlett. (Ultimately it took another year and a half before they were ready to even begin production so Robbie would have been available and coming off Suicide Squad, although she's also problematically white and extra so in Suicide Squad.)

Now I digress in all this because wikipedia no longer mentions any other writers, though Wheeler indicates at least six people took a crack at it. In the end, him, Moss and one other person were determined by the Guild for credit: Ethen Kruger.

Ethan Kruger has a fun writer credit resume:

Dumbo (screenplay) (filming)
  The Talisman (screenplay) (announced)
2017 Ghost in the Shell (screenplay by)
 2014 Transformers: Age of Extinction (written by)
 2014 Tin Man (TV Movie)
2011 Transformers: Dark of the Moon (written by)
 2009 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (written by)
 2007 Blood and Chocolate (screenplay)
 2005 The Brothers Grimm (written by)
2005 The Skeleton Key (written by)
 2005 The Ring Two (written by)
 2005 Rings (Video short) (written by)
 2002 The Ring (screenplay)
 2001 Impostor (screenplay)
2000 Reindeer Games (written by)
 2000 Scream 3 (written by)
 1999 New World Disorder (written by)
 1999 Arlington Road (written by)
 1998 Killers in the House (TV Movie) (written by)

As a further aside, apparently Disney who had first right refusal to outstanding Dreamworks films started before 2015 just gave this to Universal and Paramount, for free after seeing it. And Paramount didn't screen it for critics either. (Wikipedia also notes that Scarlett Johansson made only a couple tweets about it and before release )

Although the film's budget was only $110 million and it made $170 million globally, Paramount and Universal apparently spent another $140-150 million on advertising, especially overseas, so it may have lost $60-90 million. It made $10 million in Japan which is apparently pretty good for the market size, and it also apparently did better with reviewers there. It totally bombed in China as it didn't crack $30 million with 75% of that coming in the opening weekend (46% of its total came from the first weekend in the US) and Chinese reviewers were apparently way more savage than American ones.

Aside from Japan, it seems to have done "best" in Australia, France, Germany and the UK.

Egypt, totally not fans. Made $33,000. Half of that in the first weekend.

Russia had the best opening weekend outside of the US and China, but almost instantly died after the first week, South Korea had a similar response, no word on North Korea's opinion.

[StealthFan]

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

That was some shit right there. 8.5/10

[TVC15]

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

That was some shit right there. 8.5/10

Lumet da gawd

[chronovore]

It premiered at a discount on iTunes, or at least was offered super-cheap within weeks of launch — a rarity, so I snapped it up. 42" screen beats the 8" seatback screen on which I saw and enjoyed it, so I'm ready for a re-watch soon.

[desert punk]

I watched GitS too two days ago. While I was entertained, the movie is indeed rather mediocre. The script is not completely garbage; I liked how they interpreted the origin of the Major and Kuze in this iteration, but everything else was really not that good, or clever. It was also a bit tedious at times. The same can be said for Oshii's interpretation, but that one tried to tackle philosophical and existential issues. This one is a blockbuster action flick trying to mask its shallowness with a semblance of profunditiy, and kinda failing on both accounts.

What also bothered me was how they wasted the rest of Section 9. The anime movie was wise enough to keep it confined to the Major and Batou, with Aramaki and Togusa in the periphery. In this one they bothered introducing them all in a scene at the beginning, and then giving them shit to do, with almost no screentime for anyone not the Major, Batou or Aramaki. Even Togusa had a stronger presence in the Oshii movie than here. The actors were good tho, especially Johannson and the guy playing Batou.

Also, Oshii's movie had excellent visuals and a haunting soundtrack, both creating a unique and heavy atmosphere. Maybe I did myself a disservice watching the new GitS after Blade Runner 2049, but I thought the visuals here were excessive and artificial looking to me. Maybe that was on purpose, given the subject matter, but I guess I'd be giving too much credit here. The only time I was impressed was when the Major was fighting that garbage disposal guy in the shallow waters. That scene, particularly the background, was adapted almost one-to-one from the Oshii movie, and it worked really well.

[VomKriege]

I never was hot on Kuze (or anything neutering the work to the same cheap little boxes of an obligatory childhood trauma) but SAC did a perfectly decent job with him tho. I'm not surprised to read the film also botches the team aspect that is a secondary yet essential element to Shirow's best works (if not the characterization, certainly the sense that the protagonists belongs to tangible institutions and work under orders).

[desert punk]

I never was hot on Kuze (or anything neutering the work to the same cheap little boxes of an obligatory childhood trauma) but SAC did a perfectly decent job with him tho. I'm not surprised to read the film also botches the team aspect that is a secondary yet essential element to Shirow's best works (if not the characterization, certainly the sense that the protagonists belongs to tangible institutions and work under orders).

The team work and the chemistry between the members of Section 9 in SAC was perhaps what I liked most from the show. It wasn't just a solo stage for the Major; every member was well defined (even the quiet ones like Pazu and Boma) and an integral part in a well oiled military machine. It was so much fun watching these pros in action; they were almost unstoppable.

The manga did well in that aspect too, tho to a lesser extent than SAC.

I don't really fault Oshii's movie for ditching the team aspect in favor for exploring the Major character (though after watching it only after finishing the first SAC season first, I was disappointed to see the other members being sidelined), but what kinda pissed me off was that the new movie tried to have it both ways in the beginning, only in ditching it (or cutting it out) later on.

[toku]

https://twitter.com/TwanTargaryen/status/937402369788301313

[Mr. Gundam]

the film just isn't as smart as pretty much any plot line GiTs has tackled in the past...manga OR anime. That's the problem. I still like Michael Pitt's Kuze though, I think he did a good job. Love that scene where he has the talk with Major as she's strung up. One of the few things in the movie that just works.

I thought GitS was absolutely gorgeous to look at, Kuze was good, Kitano was perfect, but good lord do we really need to fall into that stupid "she's the ultimate weapon, if she ever finds out our horrible secret she'll turn on us and we'll have to destroy her" trope? No. We don't. They honestly didn't steal enough from the source material. I adore Stand Alone Complex, both seasons.

Glad I rented it from Red Box. Pretty decent $2 spent.

[Tasty]

Free Fire was good fun yeah. I think I gave it a 3/5.

Also I wanna see The Book of Henry.

[Dickie Dee]

Everyone should watch Mudbound on Netflix. It's really, really good.

[TVC15]

https://www.avclub.com/quentin-tarantino-is-developing-a-star-trek-movie-1820997800?rev=1512437481534

Star Trek franchise saved. Samuel L. Jackson to presumably enter Star Trek universe.

[Great Rumbler]

Taratino and the Coen Bros. are the two active directors that I'd most like to see do fantasy or scifi, so I'm pretty excited about this possibility.

[Momo]

Yes please Hollywood, stomp the corpse of Star Trek further into the dirt so I no longer feel the need to care.

[Cerveza mas fina]

It's not Philip K. Dick 

Would be much cooler if Ridley did Altered Carbon, from Morgan.

Prayers semi answered

[Momo]

Since the new one is coming up, thought this was funny -  from my feeds

[Momo]

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/05/disney-and-fox-are-closing-in-on-deal-could-be-announced-next-week--sources.html

And Disney's plot to buy everything and churn out mediocre works continues

[Freyj]

Holy shit Three Billbords was way better than I thought it would be. If there aren’t Oscars for this movie it’s a tragedy.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

It would be a major tragedy if Disney shutters all the non-franchise stuff Fox makes. Fox Searchlight, amd Fox productions proper. They're one of the only major studios that will release films that cater to adults. I dont care if the X-Men get to crossover with the Avengers, no way no how anybody at Disney ever greenlights Ridley Scott's The Counselor or its ilk in the future.

[Tasty]

Eh they have Dreamworks, Touchstone, etc. that regularly do adult stuff.

[chronovore]

https://www.avclub.com/quentin-tarantino-is-developing-a-star-trek-movie-1820997800?rev=1512437481534

Star Trek franchise saved. Samuel L. Jackson to presumably enter Star Trek universe.

He'll be "James Tiberius Motherfuckin' Kirk."

[Mr. Nobody]

Strangers on a Train was good.

Dial M For Murder was fantastic. 

[TVC15]

Strangers on a Train :unf :unf
Farley Granger
Patricia Highsmith