What’s the last movie you watched?


Connie
 Share

Recommended Posts

On 10/2/2017 at 11:24 AM, Vort said:

Wonder Woman.

Awful movie. Just awful. Worse because I had been told by many that it was a good movie. They were wrong. It was an awful movie.

Note that the directing and acting were both passable. Even the writing was decent. But that it maybe a bit like saying that Mein Kampf was a pretty good read.

Despite my hyperbole, the Nazi reference isn't that far off. Here, one of the most horrific occurrences in recent history is hijacked as a vehicle to forward DC's mythology. Seriously, that alone is just despicable. We're not talking the Peloponnesian War here, or the Battle of Hastings, or even the US Revolutionary War. We're talking World War I, which was happening less than a century ago! There are people alive today who have memories of that period!

But that's maybe a bluenose thing, crying "Too soon!" So let's get into the story.

An island full of beautiful warrior women. Why does this sound familiar? Oh, yes. It's because a current trope is the femme fatale, specifically the woman who shows the stereotypically male characteristics of physical aggression and violence -- except she's far better at it than the men, routinely killing scads of armed baddies (almost always male) with barely more than a flick of her wrist. Think Black Widow, Melinda Mae -- heck, Charlie's Angels. It's the latest big thing: Women who routinely beat the stuffing out of men. Great theater.

Big deal. Big Budget Theater Based on Tired Trope. What else is new? There are far worse tropes, both stupider and more dangerous. (E.g. the Out for Vengeance trope, which is also on full display throughout this film, as well as pretty much every "action" movie or TV show made in the last seventy years.) That's the complaint?

No. Just one complaint among so many others. Honestly, I don't have time to list all the stupid and objectionable parts of this movie, and it would challenge my organizational skills to try to do so in a coherent way. So let me just touch on a few.

  • Male principle humblebrags on his penis size, to the delight and raucous laughter of the audience. At least, that was the intent, I'm sure.
  • Lots of coy (or perhaps that should be "coy", as in affectedly insincere) sex talk. I guess this is what passes for clever dialogue.
  • At some point, the male and female principle finally fornicate. We as viewers are supposed to feel a sense of completion, that all is finally right with the world. Thank heavens the two finally "got together"! That's A Good Thing!
  • Watching people get killed is always fun.
  • Ain't it glorious to see Wonder Woman wipe out literally three dozen German "bad guys" -- mostly soldiers following the orders of their superiors -- but then graciously and sagely spare the life of the woman who actually developed the weapons of destruction? Clearly there is zero chance that the evil chemical mastermind will ever actually kill anyone else, unlike those horrible soldiers acting under orders of their superiors.
  • I do have my problems with modern Germany, as I have told in other places. But the German infatuation with generational self-loathing because of the great European wars of the 20th century, especially World War II -- as demonstrated even in our own just-finished General Conference -- is not an appropriate thing for today's German population to indulge in. This movie positively revels in it. Despicable.
  • After centuries of build-up, Wonder Woman vanquishes her unbelievable powerful foe -- by getting sufficiently angry. No, wrath is no mere male deficiency! Behold the triumph of female hysterics!

Clearly, my extreme distaste for this movie is affecting my ability to write about it. I can't even coherently express the reasons for my disgust for this film, only point at a few obvious lowlights. I had such high -- well, at least moderate -- expectations. This was much worse than a mere disappointment. It was a sewer bath.

Overall, this movie is almost pure dog feces with a generous sprinkling of sugar topping and a dollop of whipped cream on top. Except I don't think that's really whipped cream.

I had a grand total of none of these responses.

Am I desensitized or do you suffer from bitter-old-man syndrome?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/9/2017 at 3:36 PM, The Folk Prophet said:

I had a grand total of none of these responses.

Am I desensitized or do you suffer from bitter-old-man syndrome?

It's weird for me to find myself in the middle of @Vort and TFP.  I had a lot of the same reactions to Vort but I enjoyed it more than I did Man of Steel.  DC movie universe is flop flop flop for me so far.  Suicide Squad was saved by one scene - Harlequinn's shoes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Ironhold said:

"The Foreigner"

It's a slow burn at first, but generally worth the wait. 

Now that the kids are not keen on going to movies with their parents we've been spending a whole lot less time at the theater.  I was debating whether to see this one or the Idris Elba plane crash one.  I decided against this one because for some reason, I can't get into Jackie Chan in a serious role.  In any case, we ended up not going to the theater and just watching college football on TV instead (boooring).  With the money we're saving, we'd be able to afford a Star Wars cruise pretty soon!

So, you think I made a good choice with the Idris Elba movie over Jackie?

Edited by anatess2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

I saw Arrival. It is the story of aliens come to earth. Some aspects of the story are nonlinear and I could not follow these aspects at all! Just like reading Isaiah!  I watched several YouTube videos on Arrival so I am now up to speed!

Fun movie. Nominally science fiction, but like all the best science fiction, the fictional elements serve as a backdrop for the real story being told. In this case, the whole "future as experience" thing was kind of a fun puzzle to figure out, where we finally realize what's going on just a bit before she does (but for very different reasons). Though there were a lot of things about the movie that I disliked, on the whole I gave it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I'd like to watch it again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mr. Holland's Opus.

I had my son's musical friends over for the weekend.  I can't believe they haven't seen this movie!  Their review:  It was a great story but the opus was horrible.  Whoops.  Never ask students from the music department of the arts school to review a movie about music.  LOL.

Edited by anatess2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, anatess2 said:

Mr. Holland's Opus.

I had my son's musical friends over for the weekend.  I can't believe they haven't seen this movie!  Their review:  It was a great story but the opus was horrible.  Whoops.  Never ask students from the music department of the arts school to review a movie about music.  LOL.

Opus is Latin for "work", and in modern usage means a great or significant work in one's life, especially (but not necessarily) a work of music. I think your son's friends missed the point that Mr. Holland's opus was not musical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Vort said:

Opus is Latin for "work", and in modern usage means a great or significant work in one's life, especially (but not necessarily) a work of music. I think your son's friends missed the point that Mr. Holland's opus was not musical.

They get that.  That's why they said the story is good.  They were referring to the symphony titled by the students as Mr. Holland's Opus that was performed at the end of the movie (and also at the intro music at the beginning of the movie) critiquing it for its musical quality.  Same critique for Rowena's Theme... basically, they think Mr. Holland was not a good composer.  Good thing he stuck with being a teacher.  Hah hah.  

Also on Holland's first day as a teacher he asked a question, "What is music?" and he read an answer from the textbook... the kids groaned... "how did he not correct that textbook!".  Hah hah.  Like I said, don't take music students to a movie about music if you don't want to hear them critique the music ruining the movie! 

Oh yeah, August Rush.  Same thing.  But but but... Lala Land.  They LOVE that movie.  What can I say, they'll forgive anything jazz... even that kind of horrendous kind of jazz where each instrument sounds like it's playing something totally un-related to each other.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stranger Than Fiction

One of the better Will Ferrel movies. I just think this is the cutest, funniest thing. Also, I identify greatly with the writer's experience. I'm not a tragedy writer but the creative process can be jump started by the most innocuous things and connections.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/9/2017 at 12:36 PM, The Folk Prophet said:

I had a grand total of none of these responses.

Am I desensitized or do you suffer from bitter-old-man syndrome?

I'm curious which of my bullet points you disagreed with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Vort said:

I'm curious which of my bullet points you disagreed with.

I'm not sure I "disagree" specifically with them. I just didn't respond to them in the extreme negative way you did. Some of them I didn't read as problematic. Some of them I wrote off in the same way as I do in all movies. Not good -- but ignorable enough. I'll point by point it for the sake of entertainment.

  • Male principle humblebrags on his penis size, to the delight and raucous laughter of the audience. At least, that was the intent, I'm sure.

I honestly thought this part was funny. (edit: Note, I didn't read the joke as specific to his genitalia, but his overall ripped nature. Not sure if the joke was or was not meant to be dirty. The "what's that?" misunderstanding about the watch was, however, obvious -- but, once again, I found it funny.)

  • Lots of coy (or perhaps that should be "coy", as in affectedly insincere) sex talk. I guess this is what passes for clever dialogue.

Just didn't find this that big of a deal.

  • At some point, the male and female principle finally fornicate. We as viewers are supposed to feel a sense of completion, that all is finally right with the world. Thank heavens the two finally "got together"! That's A Good Thing!

This is just typical Hollywood and I responded to it by ignoring it in that they didn't actually show naked bodies writhing under sheets. Almost a win in that regard.

  • Watching people get killed is always fun.

I'm curious what you think of movies like The Dirty Dozen or Star Wars.

  • Ain't it glorious to see Wonder Woman wipe out literally three dozen German "bad guys" -- mostly soldiers following the orders of their superiors -- but then graciously and sagely spare the life of the woman who actually developed the weapons of destruction? Clearly there is zero chance that the evil chemical mastermind will ever actually kill anyone else, unlike those horrible soldiers acting under orders of their superiors.

I'm not sure these two relate. The German bad guys were literally shooting bullets at her from a trench on the font lines when she wiped them out. I'm not sure she should have saved the woman...but I'm not sure cold blooded murder was the answer either.

  • I do have my problems with modern Germany, as I have told in other places. But the German infatuation with generational self-loathing because of the great European wars of the 20th century, especially World War II -- as demonstrated even in our own just-finished General Conference -- is not an appropriate thing for today's German population to indulge in. This movie positively revels in it. Despicable.

I think this is an oversensitive response.

  • After centuries of build-up, Wonder Woman vanquishes her unbelievable powerful foe -- by getting sufficiently angry. No, wrath is no mere male deficiency! Behold the triumph of female hysterics!

This was less than ideal, I'll agree. But typical, and unrelated to "female". Take Man of Steel -- that's exactly how Superman beats the terrain machine -- he gets extra angry. It's a movie cliche. Kind of lame any time (except in the case of Obi-wan with Darth Maul...that was cool).  I didn't find it particularly offensive in any regard. Worse than that is the fact that all the soldiers start hugging each at the end. That was kind of stupid.

Edited by The Folk Prophet
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/20/2017 at 10:12 PM, Ironhold said:

Only The Brave. 

It's rare to see a movie be this respectful of such subject matter. 

WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

I didn't know the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots!   I was so mad at how it ended!  And man... when they showed the real characters in the end and their ages...

I'm kinda bummed they didn't show whatever became of McDonough.

But yeah.  I loved this movie.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Grunt said:

I watched Arrival last night.  Meh.

Guess it's not for everyone. I thought it was a fantastic movies, despite its manifest flaws.

My wife and I watched the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie on Friday. Interesting to compare that movie with Wonder Woman. GotG2 is not any more Godly or righteous a movie than WW. It's equally trivial, pretty much equally morally repugnant with respect to sexual activity, equally unbelievable in areas that should not have required suspension of disbelief (i.e. areas of internal consistency), and more or less equally hung up on silly cultural tropes.

Yet GotG2 was by far the more enjoyable experience. If I didn't quite rise to the level of caring about the characters, I at least took some interest in their journey. It was much more skillfully written than WW; the dialog was tighter and more engaging. True, they were different movies in that GotG2 was basically a comedy while WW aspired to be an action movie, but that's actually to GotG2's credit; comedy tends to be harder to pull off successfully. Maybe some day I'll sort through my thoughts and distill out why I came away from GotG2 not feeling like I had wasted two hours of my life, as I did with WW.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share