General Film Talk Thread

Life is short, like Tom Cruise.

 

Life is short. Like Tom Cruise.

If the youth of America is that fckn retarded that they don't know how to pop popcorn, this country is in worse shape than I thought.

 

Well, I'd like to think they could put a bag of microwave popcorn in the oven and set the correct time for it.. BUT, how often have you smelled burnt popcorn coming from a microwave?

 

Microwaves! That tart Drew Barrymore left Jiffy Pop on the stove and we all know how that turned out! Everybody knows that teenagers in horror movies get killed right after sex! As it should be! Too bad it isn't that way in real life! Well she was probably thinking about it anyway! Back in the day we used to pour them kernels with a tablespoon of oil right in the popper! Not the pooper you gutter brain! Kids today don't even know how to light a match! Unless they're committing arson! Or burning down the neighborhood! Like Soxxx!



Signed,
-Mrs. championjets69

 

I called him short twice by accident. Fck it, that moron Scientologist deserves it. I can't wait to tell @FJF that I quoted myself (rubs Coronavirus hands together)!

 

'Jesus Camp' (2006). I saw this documentary last night, and I've never been so horrified. No, it's not one of those fucked-up Christian camps that are used as punishment that should be shut down, all of which are privately owned for profit and part of the Juvenile Justice System. What I'm talking about is dyed-in-the-wool Evangelicals. I mean, I know it's there; but to actually see people who really think the way they do in motion, it's not only perplexing, it's terrifying. It's not even Evangelicals that are considered way out there, they're basically considered mainstream. What the fucking fuck.

Well, it was called the Cult of Jesus 2,000 years ago for a reason, s-o-o-o-o . . . All of these kids are actually convinced that they're not the least bit brainwashed. At least they're kids, I guess. The adults are certifiable, but as usual, they skate because it has Jesus's name slapped on it. Brainwashing sermon to children at Jesus Camp: "Let me say something about Harry Potter. Warlocks are the enemy of God and had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death. You don't make heroes out of warlocks! (applause)!" "I sense in my heart tonight, what I heard the Lord say, is that there's some kids here who say they are Christians, but they're one thing when they're here in Church and they're another thing with their friends at school. You're a phony and a hypocrite! We can't have phoneys in The Army of God! Come up here and get washed!" :/

 

So far my quarantine movies are:

With just my boy: Once Upon a Time in the West; The Good, The Bad and the Ugly; and A Fistfull of Dollars.

Once Upon a Time... is an absolute masterpiece and arguably the best directed film of all time. Sergio Leone truly had mastered his style with this film.

The Good, The Bad... arguably Leone’s best film, it never feels as long as it’s 3 hour run time, maybe because nearly every scene is a great moment in western filmmaking storytelling.

A Fistfull of Dollars — Great because it’s kitschy coolness. Leone hadn’t quite mastered his style to elevate the story above if silliness (unlike Once Upon a Time...) but his intention was to make a parody of American Westerns so perhaps he accomplished what he set out to do and we simply consider the film to be more of a serious endeavor because of its importance in history to the genre.

With the whole family:
Pirates of the Caribbean series: the first still holds up as a fantastically fun film. Things go awry with 2 and 3 as the get darker and needlessly complicated. 3 is an exercise in endurance to get through. I had seen these three previously and felt the same way when they were released.

On Stranger Tides is brutally bad, and you could argue it’s to blame for the decline in performance of the 5th film. The cinematography and design make it look low budget, and the director was clearly the wrong choice. He had no idea how to stage action scenes, the film had such little energy, especially the fight scenes, and it felt like somebody trying to imitate the style of the original movies moreso than actually understood the style.

Dead Men Tell No Tales — Not only a surprisingly good film but arguably the second best of the series, behind only the original. The directing had energy again, the story was simple which allowed you to simply enjoy the ride, and the characters didn’t feel like parodies of themselves like the 4th one. It’s a shame it didn’t do better and continue the series because it deserved it.

The Lone Ranger — I’ll start by saying the end train chase is one of the greatest chase scenes you will see. The rest of the movie is brutally bad. Whatever energy Gore Verbinski brought to the Pirates of the Caribbean series he must have forgot, because the movie is so slow, with next to zero adventure. And don’t get me started with ripping off the cicada scene from Once Upon a Time in the West.

Arnie Hammer is not good as The Lone Ranger, but I blame Verbinksi for that. He never seems to understand that the story he is telling is a comedy. He gets that Tonto is comedic, but the Lone Ranger is too. He is unaware and stuck in his ways, and as a result is his own worst enemy by not grasping the lessons Tonto is trying to teach him, but because Verbinski films him so flat and straight laced he simply comes across as stupid instead of unaware. He actually has a great character arc that gets lost in the mess. A potentially good film undone by a bad job from a good director.

Seabiscuit — a film that stands the test of time. The script and the directing great. This could easily have been a cheap, run of the mill movie but never is.

 

I re-watched Groundhog day over and over again...

 

lol. You could also not bother with the film and just watch the Jets year after year. Oh, wait . . .

 

Best western film you've ever seen
Mine = probably the good the bad and the ugly
But just watched unforgiven for the 2nd time(first back in the 90's)and it's certainly up there

 

Django was good
Have you seen the hateful 8 think it was the follow-up to it that's good also

 

Watched through the Indiana Jones films with the family. As a kid I remember everybody loving Temple of Doom, so it was surprising to read, as an adult, it wasn’t well received by critics and audiences at its release because of its dark departure from Raiders. Seeing the series again, the criticism of it is wrong.

to start, just like I remember when I was younger all my friends loving it, all of my kids declared it their favorite and for all the same reasons I remember all the kids loving it back then — kids love Short Round, the crazy food, the most thrilling action of all the films (the diamond shootout and car chase, escaping the plane, the rail car chase, the bridge collapse), all iconic moments. As kids the ripping out of the heart, while shocking, was never frightening, and even my 6 year old daughter found it fun and exciting, not scary, and she’s easily frightened.

Temple of Doom is truly a misunderstood movie. It’s the most fun of them all, despite the dark theme of it, and still the best of the series. In fact, I’d argue the change in tone was vital the The Last Crusade being so good; had Temple had the same tone, by the time we get to Crusade I think it would have been formulaic and boring, but with a break in between Crusade feels like a fun return to the Raiders style.

my order of the three:
Doom
Crusade
Raiders

and then comes the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. My oldest daughter liked it until the end, my son didn’t want to watch it again because he’d seen it before and even at 8 (remembering seeing it at 6) knew it was terrible (he kept snidely commenting on what was about to come — here come the ants, he’s going to swing like a monkey), and my wife said it wasn’t as bad as she expected it to be based on how bad I said it was, but the movie is a true George Lucas disaster.

and it didn’t have to be. They had the basics of a good story in it — 50’s setting, Russians in place of Nazis makes sense, greaser son (despite the actor), and even aliens were a good backdrop which had a great character arc for Indy to go from non-believer to believer (here’s a guy who believes in all these ancient mystical things but not aliens, that could have been fun to play with), but there was simply no need for the mystical mind reading nonsense that served no purpose other than to give Cate Blanchett a crazy death at the end like in Raiders or Crusade. “I vant du know!”

The action pieces are terrible, and the movie looks terrible, clearly being filmed on sets and green screens. and Karen Allen is terrible; she seems so happy to be in a movie again she’s just smiling in every scene, and Steven Spielberg doesn’t seem to care. He said he made the movie simply because it was the story his buddy George wanted to tell, and it shows. He doesn’t seem to care at all at how bad it is; it’s George’s movie.

My kids asked if there was another one and I joked they were making a fifth one about Indy having to escape an old folks home. They all thought that would be a better movie than Crystal Skull.

Unforgiving is brilliant and the perfect ending to Clint Eastwood’s western career because William Munny could have been any of the characters he played in his career.

 

Tarantino has said he started writing the Hateful Eight as a sequel to Django (Django was the Sam Jackson character) but he changed course because the story lost its impact if you had an established hero who you’d expect to succeed within the conflict.

 

Temple of Doom deffo best one me
Never knew that about hateful 8 but still a good film

 

Just watching original Halloween with daughter (15)
It's so much better than the remake

 

Objectively, Crusade is the better movie, but emotionally Doom nudges it out for me. I quote “He chose...poorly” so much in my daily life. Sean Connery is perfect (my kids always asked me to dress up with them for Halloween so two years ago I made a deal with my boy...if he went as Indiana I’d dress as Professor Henry Jones, so I do love the movie and the character). I had read Skull was originally written with Henry Jones in it (probably the William Hurt character) but Sean Connery thankfully refused to come out of retirement to be in it. The movie would have been better with him but I’m glad the character didn’t get taken down with the movie. Not having Brody and Henry Jones certainly hampers the movie.

it’s certainly as bad as you described, but watching it again I simply caught some good ideas that were in it that if handled better could have resulted in a good movie. But, ultimately, George Lucas wanted this movie. Nobody involved should have conceded to him. The biggest problem is Indy isn’t an expert in the McGuffin, and his relationship to it is forced so he’s basically a passenger in the story, along for the the ride of someone else’s pursuit. Contrast that to Crusade where he isn’t an expert in the holy grail so this is his fathers pursuit, with Indy after his father, but you get a vital components to his character (backstory, motivations, etc) that build the character.

 

You tell a good story JetBlue and obviously like the Indie films but for me Harrison Ford will always be Han Solo