Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

I love Orville. It's really well done and you're right, it lacks any preachy undertones.

 

Unfortunately, yes.

Unless it’s written and done really well, tactfully & intelligently, adding current sociopolitical commentary to sci-fi just ends up just feeling cheap & lazy to me. (Even if I agree with the allegorical theme.) Idk if anyone would agree with me (and I’m bound to be wrong about a lot of things in life), but I tend to think Star Trek/TNG tackled broader, more timeless themes of humankind’s shortcomings. And, it felt like they tended to cover sociopolitical trends of their day (the 20th century...) in shorter bursts. I kind of liked it not being tethered to one storyline for the entirety of a season (or series.)

I can nitpick & be critical about it, but really, however they approach Picard, I’m still going to watch it. And, probably enjoy it.

Sir P. Stewie is...well, awesome.

Edit: Yes! What he said about Seth MacFarlane

 

On the topic of Joaquin Phoenix (an actor I generally admire), I recently saw his 2017 collaboration w/director Lynne Ramsey, YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE. Between the dark subject matter, TAXI DRIVER influences & good imdb.com score, I anticipated an excellent film. But it was not to be...

IMO Phoenix is an actor who needs to be reined in, confined to an agreed vision of his character; only then can he do the wonderfully nuanced acting he's known for. But if he's given free rein to improvise take after take, the result is bloated excess with occasional flashes of brilliance. Here many of his scenes are glacially slow, very little dialogue, often mumbled & indistinct.

Not all of this movie's issues are on Phoenix: the director includes at least 5 overt attempted suicide scenes, making the point (in the most heavy-handed way imaginable) that Phoenix' character is psychologically scarred by war. We do need to know that: but w/1 exception, the scenes are unconvincing, actorish: suicidality being "played" in a showy way. 2 or 3 of those scenes would've been more than enough.

The whole film is slack, unfocused, overly improvisational--too much of one thing & not enough of another. There are also glaring plot holes; the "narrative" is fractured & incoherent. I still have no idea who was behind all the bad stuff & with what motive.

The pre-teen actress who played the sex-trafficked victim was quite good, IMO far better than the wisecracking, flashy performance by Jody Foster in the same role in TAXI DRIVER. But that's just not enough.

I'd much rather have a film succeed than deflate in front of my eyes, as this one did.

 

On Netflix there is a series named Giri/Haji. It starts off well. Characters develop in a timely fashion. Then the storytelling starts to stall out a bit until it ends in what felt like a jumble of film school styles that were unnecessary and incoherent.

Spoiler

The whole interpretive dance thing on the last episode was so out of place, it is mind boggling why they put it in at all.

If they kept it serious, shortened it by cutting some useless crap out, and tried developing a good twist, then I could recommend it. Otherwise, it's maybe a 6/10 in my book - a generous rating simply because I like the genre.

 

Regarding Picard -

I’ve watched up to the current episode, 3, and it’s actually pretty good. I’m going to enjoy this as long as nobody (or, until somebody) fucks it up too badly...

(Looking at you, Benioff & Weiss.)

 

I can't stand Roddenberry's utopian society. Luckily so couldn't some of the writers and directors of the last shows either. Deep Space 9 is maybe the best stuff to ever come out of the Star Trek universe.

 

Dude if that is anything like the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, this is going to be must watch TV.

 

DS9 is my favourite ST series. Start at season 3 though when the Defiant comes along and Sisko shaves his head.

 

I just shit myself laughing so hard.

 

Yeah Picard is sucking big time. More like a bad soap opera than great sci-fi. I’m pretty ticked about it. WTF is up with not being able to write decent sci-fi? Geezuz. At least for me it’s free/included with channels I already subscribe to (comes on a regular subscription TV channel up here in Canada), and I’ll keep watching for now hoping that it’ll improve, but I have my doubts that it will. Sometimes the first season sucks, and then they manage to course-correct (if it even gets renewed that is, which it probably won’t).

 

I agree about Picard. I thought it started with a bit of promise, only to fail to deliver on that promise. It's now a full on space soap opera and the most recent episode (Ep 5) made sure I was done watching.

 

Yeah exactly. The overall story at a high level, and the major plot structure is interesting. But they’re focusing and spending way, way too much on emotional character relationship/development bullshit in way too much detail right from the start. People who would be interested in this series out of the gate don’t give a shit about a romance between a millennial android and a Romulan, or the challenges a drunken middle aged bad mother experiences. And what’s up with the abandoned samurai child? I feel like they’re being way too blatantly obvious in trying to broaden their appeal to non-Sci-fi nerds and bring in a more female audience. Screw that, and focus on your core fans and captive audience - they’re turning them off massively and this will kill the show. Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, if he was real, would be disgusted by this series so far.

Most of the characters are emotionally crippled and barely able to function. Piss off. They can weave in the emotional character development stuff later once you’re actually invested in the story and characters and as they get further along trying to solve the major plot issues.

 

Hopefully Hollyweird will realize at some point that alienating your core audience to be "woke" doesn't work and results in flops and angry fans.

 

For years I've looked beyond Hollywood for intriguing content, finding it in foreign films and alt-financed indies. Just finished watching a very fine example of that: the S. Korean film BURNING (on Netflix). I'm not sure I ever saw a more elusive, mystifying film (meant as praise).

The mood in the film is dissonant, seemingly aimless yet ominous. Clues abound, but clues to what, exactly? A number of sequences recall Hitchcock's San Francisco surveillance scenes in VERTIGO, in that we're not sure who's stalking who.

The more I ponder this story, the less I understand. I find myself doubting virtually everything in the narrative. I'm not even sure all 3 main characters (4 including the cat) actually exist. The ending feels more like a nightmare than trad denoument.

I dreamed about it last night, something that only happens when a story has burrowed into my subconscious. Now I have to find the Japanese short story that was the inspiration for the screenplay (Haruki Murakami's Barn Burning).

Films like this drive some people nuts, but I love them: they hint at a consciousness far beyond my own.