Movie Discussion Thread

Just saw the film, and I think that there's a fine line between humanity and sympathy and the film treads it very, very carefully. Take someone like Hitler (yeah, going for the Godwin), he's a monster and nobody should ever, ever sympathize with him. But then there's the popular cartoonish caricature of him because people don't want to think of the idea that he's also a human being. And ultimately I think that we learn less from the tragedy that is WWII because of it.

The Joker isn't quite there, but I don't think that the director ever intended for the audience to sympathize with Fleck. He's an utterly unenviable but nonetheless very human character. Even the comic books have taken stabs at the idea - the Killing Joke had the flashback (the truth of which is left to the reader) which IMO is actually a sympathetic characterization of the Joker. The film is a similar study and as I see it, a very well executed one. Saying that "he's an incel" is a surface-deep description of a deeper character.

It's a depressing and tense film. A 7.5/10 for me maybe, almost a bit too heavy for one sitting.

 

@Zhanming057 while I agree with the gist of your message that's not a name to invoke lightly. I have less care than others talking about it because it's so far removed from me, and actually have had forthright conversations related to matters surrounding that individual (with close friends who ask for and appreciate candor), but the fact remains that the name is still to this day used as a byword for inhumanity.

Godwin can go eat dick, but again, I see the film the same way you do.

Definitely. It doesn't let up much and when it does try to force a laugh out of you, you hate yourself immediately afterwards.

 

Looks interesting. I've added that to my list. A quick look at the synopsis kind of reminds me of a movie from 2017 called Shot Caller. Gets mixed reviews but I really enjoyed it.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shot_caller

 

Don't let the synopsis fool you. It's unlike any film I've seen.

 

Brawl in Cell Block 99 was great, watched it with some friends. Was slow starting but picked up and we were so pumped. Vince Vaughn really showed off that he can do more than just comedies and that he is a real tall guy.

 

Watched "Joker" in the cinema last night.

Joaquin Phoenix gave the human inside the Joker a face. He is one of those actors who can make me cringe and I still keep my eyes on the screen. Arthur Fleck is an awkward person, the story is often awkward and when you finally understand why it all makes sense.

I really liked the film. Makes you like the villain more.

 

BREAKING BAD:
EL CAMINO REVIEW (sort of)

To get the obvious out of the way, I'm a huge BB fan. I think it's the greatest television show ever made (sorry The Wire/Sopranos/Mad Men) mostly because it has a virtually perfect track record. There is no filler, no bad episodes, no pointless digressions (and even the episode FLY, while flirting with degression, ends up being instrumental in understanding Walter White). The characters are perfectly cast and in some cases, reaching all time great performance level (Bryan Cranston). And its narrative ride is riveting from start to finish with oodles of subtext and social commentary. It is rhe perfect show IMO.

El Camino, while keeping in line with the rest of the series, has an interesting problem which stems from a question that's been on my mind for some time now.

What is a movie?

Since the inception of Netflix and other online streaming giants and the proliferation of content on demand options, the lines between movies and TV and just plain ol' "content" (YouTube skits, etc) has become murky. Will Smith hangs out with and makes short videos with YouTube stars now. Hell, YouTube stars are even a thing now! Movie stars like Smith and others have their own youtube content/channels now. A Netflix movie won top prizes at the most recent Oscars.

Why didn't Vince Gilligan just conclude Jesse Pinkman's story at the end of season 5? Why a movie? Watching El Camino felt very weird because people have different expectations watching a movie than they do watching television. Movie's are, or were, more of an event. They were bigger, bolder, louder, and to be taken more seriously. They used to be the center of the cultural conversation, but TV has recently taken that mantle with people talking more about the latest show you've never heard of than they do the latest movie.

Watching El Camino felt weird because it was this weird hybrid between the show and a cinematic experience. The film itself is very good. While it doesn't reach the dramatic heights of the show, it does a perfectly good job wrapping up this universe and Pinkman's personal journey. It has some clever twists and turns and manages to be funny and sometimes heartbreaking. And Aaron Paul is very good in it. But still, something just felt missing. It wasn't a show and it wasn't quite a Movie with a capital "M" either.

El Camino kind of hammers home for me the era we now live in and one that I've been hesitant to accept. An era of "content". El Camino isn't a show and it isn't a movie... it's just content. To be consumed, digested quickly and nearly forgotten, as most mere content is for me. It's a blurring of the lines between two warring factions that have been in battle since the 1950s.

Still, it's a high recommend from me, more for completionist sake than it being a great movie. BB fans will likely be satisfied

 

I agree with you on El Camino,I wasn't as thrilled with it compared to the BB show
which I only binge watched recently.

 

I did not see where Anne Hathaway's "Colossal" was commented on in this thread. It's on Hulu and since I am nursing my sick wife I got to watch it last night. I thought of @ColtMrFire comments about the difference between "movie" and "content" because no matter what you think of concept of this movie, it is a movie. I hate open ended, non-story (no real beginning, build, climax, end, "moral") "content", which is why I dislike most TV. Is Colossal a monster movie? Is it a psycho-drama, almost horror? Is it comedy, with some romance thrown in? Like the reviews say it is all that and more. The uniqueness of the concept forces some strange and forced writing/lines at times, but Anne and her co-stars pull it off in the end I think, much better than you think they will 1/3 or 1/2 through.

This movie is a throwback to when movies were movies and not billion dollar franchise vehicles or corp checkbox filler, or "content". It reminded me of how I used to like going to the movies even if the movie/writing/actors were not the greatest, or flawed (they are all flawed), etc. Two thumbs up.

 

I watched El Camino over the weekend. I liked it, just as I would probably like any character spinoff from BB to some degree. But I wasn't thrilled or blown away by it. If someone were to watch it without seeing the series I don't think it could really stand on it's own. It reminded me of when you watch the extra lost scenes from a movie where you get to see all the stuff that didn't make it into the original release. El Camino was largely made up of this kind of material with a lot of flashback/flash forward stuff. But it was probably better to put this into a movie rather than trying to do another spinoff series like Better Call Saul. There probably wasn't enough content to do a new series right.

I also couldn't help but notice how so many characters had gained weight and were noticeably aged. That made it weird when doing flashbacks that were intended to have happened during the same timeline as the series.

But I've also started watching the series again. This is the fourth time. This time my wife is watching it with me. She knows the general story and outcome, but had originally only watched maybe a half dozen episodes scattered among all seasons.

 

Watched Jojo Rabbit yesterday. Personally I found it intriguing and striking the right tonal balance on a rather sensitive subject, but I can see how people could find it leaning either way. Performances are superb all around - Waititi is hyper-energetic as a 10YO's personal version of Hitler, Scarlett Johansson gets a good amount of breathing space, Roman Griffin Davis also pulls out a surprising amount of emotional nuance for such a young actor.

The film is obviously played as a comedy but there's a progressing sense of unease about laughing at the characters. Not going into spoiler territory but I like how Waititi plays up the absurdity but still constantly reminds the audience that this is deadly serious stuff. On the other hand, the really nasty parts are mostly in the background and I would probably rate the movie even higher if the movie ventured a bit more into that territory. I'd assume that anything edgier would never get greenlit by the studio though.

I would personally give it a 8/10 if I were in a generous mood, but I can easily see someone giving it a much lower or higher score depending on their priors about how seriously/respectful Nazism should be handled in movies. If you enjoy any of Waititi's other movies, I would say it's a must see.

 

Was able to finally watch Under the Skin all the way through about a week ago. A mark of a truly creative movie is of course how much it grips your mind afterwards, and this one really sticks. Like Pharmaboy says, this film is one of just a handful to get across how utterly alien and 'other' an alien would really be.

I suppose I wanted more "explanation" or closure of certain things (to avoid a simplistic nihilism), but the film relies on the mystery to such a degree I don't know how it could have been done well.

 

I have UNDER THE SKIN queued up on Netflix, but haven't gotten around to seeing it a 2nd time. Honestly, I'm still not fully recovered from the 1st viewing. It's a disturbing, disorienting film & popped up in my dreams for a week or two afterward (that only happens with the most affecting films). One of the most disturbing things about this film was how badly humanity came off. I know those 2 aliens were here to prey on mankind; still. that final scene was awful because it was filled with cruelty (not something the aliens appeared to experience).

I'm on the verge of getting a solid/midrange 4K UHD Blu Ray player + 6-7 4K films just out of a sneaking suspicion I haven't yet seen 100% of what my LG C8 OLED can do (as it is, streaming 4K on Netflix, it looks insanely good).

There aren't too many 4K movies out yet. One I'm definitely getting is ARRIVAL--quite different from UNDER THE SKIN in mood & plot, yet covering some of the same ground (our inability to comprehend alien intelligence). Both films have mind-blowing soundtracks, w/UTS featuring more subtle menace & disorientation, while ARRIVAL has more of a modern classical music vibe (with moments of real beauty).

 

Mica Levi’s clever soundtrack for Under the Skin is wonderfully disturbing, especially the track “Andrew Void” with its creeping horror and otherworldly quality. Don’t listen to it alone, in the dark. “Love” makes for a great contrast, releasing the pent-up dread really well.

 

Sounds like you have the soundtrack. I really need to get it--and that of ARRIVAL. Film scores like these are true modern classical music IMO.

Speaking of Mica Levi's soundtrack: several months after I saw UNDER THE SKIN my wife & I were driving in Canada when a show came on CBC radio (Canada's terrific national FM programming) that featured new movie soundtracks. Suddenly we're hearing that disturbing music. I got excited & said, "This music is wonderful--it's from a great film I saw recently." My wife said, "This shit is creeping me out. It's worse than the shower scene in PSYCHO. Please change the channel!"

We were both right; I changed the channel.

 

If you have a bluray drive in your computer (no need for a 4k one!), you can rip 4k movies losslessly and play them through something like an Nvidia shield. I do this for all new bluray purchases, and the quality is outstanding on my C8.

 

Very interesting. You're ahead of me in the tech dep't: I don't have a blu ray drive in either computer & had to look up "Nvidia Shield" to get the reference. So you play the digital file that resulted from ripping it on computer; and you play it through an upscaling streamer?

Since the C8 has excellent upscaling capability by itself, a question: do you think you're getting a better picture by playing the ripped file through the upscaling streamer? Or would you get an equivalent picture by simply playing the blu ray (via blu ray player) into the C8?

At the risk of hijacking this (excellent) thread, 2 related comments:

1. I have a 4K stream through Netflix (ethernet from router to TV) and find it to be noticeably better in almost every way than the quite excellent upscaled 1080i content on Netflix.
2. And the 4K player I'm considering buying (Panasonic DP-UB420) has upscaling circuitry (shared w/2 higher-end models) that many videophiles praise and find better than the upscaling in their somewhat older 4K HDR displays.

All to say I really want to see native 4K blu ray discs, often described as the highest-quality source available (better than streaming 4K); and hope that w/std blu rays, I'll get to the same place you're at using a different system.

OK, back to movies. Later today I'm going to see the police drama, BLACK AND BLUE. The ratings & reviews have been middling at best, but I'm really in it to see 2 actors I liked a lot in past work: Naomi Harris from the Bond franchise; and Mike Coulter, who IMO did impressive work in Marvel's JESSICA JONES on Netflix.

 

No upscaling for the 4K rips. Playing the uncompressed digital file all the way through the chain. For 1080p content, I actually need to check which component is doing the scaling, as the streamer, the receiver, and the TV can all handle it. Not sure about how my Nvidia Shield compares to a midrange bluray player for upscaling, but the newly announced Shield is supposed to have a pretty nifty AI based upscaler that will get continued updates.

 

You may wanna consider springing for the UB-820. I have it. It's basically the same as the flagship UB-900 minus balanced outs.

And Netflix's steaming algorithm is extremely good and efficient, probably better than any other streaming setup you will try. Seriously doubt you will get better 4K quality than physical discs. Streaming is closing the gap but there are still noticeable differences since the bitrate on discs is much higher.