Serious Movie Discussion XLI

[Flemmy Stardust]

I wore bright yellow foakleys in 99-00, and boy did i think i was cool.

 

[JSN]

haha I was just tell him about foakleys!

this style was so big dawg circa 1997:

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

haha I was just tell him about foakleys!

this style was so big dawg circa 1997:

Haaa, mine were like this, but bright yellow.
And i had dyed blonde hair.

 

[JSN]

Haaa, mine were like this, but bright yellow.
And i had dyed blonde hair.

omg total forgot about the sun-in era.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

omg total forgot about the sun-in era.

I'm thinking about bringing it back.

 

[ufcfan4]

Seriously great, that's all. Fun movie. Will have to watch again to see if it still stands up.

The middle schooler I was when that movie came out fucking loved it. Can't say how many times my brother and I would quote that exchange between Troy and Archer early in the movie "Blow some shit up..it's more fun." "Shut the fuck up. "You WATCH your FUCKING mouth." just cause we were so amused by Cage's delivery.

Man Cage and Travolta killed it in that one. You could tell they each had the time of their life playing the villain for the stretches of the film that they did.

 

[therealdope]

haha I was just tell him about foakleys!

this style was so big dawg circa 1997:

I have found 3 more pairs of Oakleys.

 

[JSN]

I have found 3 more pairs of Oakleys.

you have to hang on to them for like 15 more years. At this rate the hipstas aren't leaving the 80's until at least 2030.

 

[therealdope]

you have to hang on to them for like 15 more years. At this rate the hipstas aren't leaving the 80's until at least 2030.

And the weird thing is that i'm not a pack rat. I throw out a lot of stuff. I just happen to have most of my oakleys and still wear them. The only pair that is no more is pair of Iridium lens Frogskins.

 

[The Hug Dog]

Of everyone, i remember his sensibilities the least. I just remember he was a little more serious than the rest of us.

But he did have my favorite post of all time in a thread where you had to draw a cat in ms paint with your eyes closed.

Tbh I have forgotten a lot of the different personalities specifically. I recognise the names straight away though and some of the guys I remember very clearly. It must have been years and years ago this whle thing started. I remember before it was a pinned topic (briefly) and the early days of voting for the official SMD top movies list. That list has some great and some not so great entries!

I have a vague memory of him coming back once. Otherwise, he just straight up bolted. What you mentioned about YeahBee and not remembering his sensibilities, I don't remember Johner's. I remember his Tory Lane AV but not much else. I think he was one of the ones particularly pissed at me for hating Children of Men (along with Will Jacobs, who I think was the most devastated). I think he joined up with The Hug Dog to give me shit for hating The Assassination of Jesse James, as well.

Will Jacobs was the guy with the paid account right? I remember Johner, funny dude. I stand by Assassination of Jesse James to this day. Oddly I watched it about a month ago for the first time in years and still really loved it. It's a little plodding but it's kind of part of the atmosphere. Plus it has Nick Cave in it. What's not to like.

[/USER]

Aha thanks man. Been way too long. I should be in here a fair bit more from now on. Really cool to see some familiar faces

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Tbh I have forgotten a lot of the different personalities specifically. I recognise the names straight away though and some of the guys I remember very clearly. It must have been years and years ago this whle thing started. I remember before it was a pinned topic (briefly) and the early days of voting for the official SMD top movies list. That list has some great and some not so great entries!

I think i have too, actually. You brought up Yeah Bee's taste and i couldn't remember anything. But now that i think about it, i can remember very little about who liked what.

I remember you were a huge fan of Old Boy.

Almost every time a new thread gets started that top 25 gets shitted on by a newcomer, and we have to explain that it wasn't meant to be some pretentious list. Then we talk about doing a new one. Then we don't do a new one.

Aha thanks man. Been way too long. I should be in here a fair bit more from now on. Really cool to see some familiar faces

Yeah I'm having a blast in here this week. Would be awesome if you guys kept posting. I would probably step my movie discussing game up for that.

 

[The Hug Dog]

I think i have too, actually. You brought up Yeah Bee's taste and i couldn't remember anything. But now that i think about it, i can remember very little about who liked what.

I remember you were a huge fan of Old Boy.

Almost every time a new thread gets started that top 25 gets shitted on by a newcomer, and we have to explain that it wasn't meant to be some pretentious list. Then we talk about doing a new one. Then we don't do a new one.



Yeah I'm having a blast in here this week. Would be awesome if you guys kept posting. I would probably step my movie discussing game up for that.

Yeah massive Oldboy fan. I recently introduced my gf to it and she loved it after initially wondering wtf she'd just watched. One of the most crazy and visceral movies ever made. I'm not a huge fan of the other 2 movies in the trilogy these days though.

My tastes over all have somewhat shifted from back in the early SMD days. I used to be big into emotionally deep but subtle foreign cinema. These days I've reverted to my taste as a kid. I like stuff to be slightly more light hearted and throw away. I've really liked a couple of the more recent blockbusters, Jurassic World was utterly ridiculous but really fun at the cinema, Force Awakens did an extremely good job of catering to both new and old Star Wars fans and I really enjoyed The Martian with it's light hearted take on sci-fi isolation. Really fun movies. Hateful 8 was so, so good. Despite Tarantino being a bit self indulgent dragging out the opening hour or so. I wasn't a big fan of The Revenant (think I mentioned this back along) but overall I've really liked a lot of the big films of late. Been a fairly frequent cinema goer and am looking forward to seeing Money Monster next week. I am even going to see Turtles 2 (I somehow enjoyed the first one despite it being objectively dreadful).

As for the top 25 list we cooked up all those years ago. There's some embarassing inclusions I guess (The Dark Knight?!) but the list is great. It's a list of favourites, not some grand list of most important films in cinema history. It speaks volumes of the average age and taste of the posters that were in here and there's nothing wrong with that!

 

[europe1]

First half of Civil War was really bad yet the second half of Civil War was really good.

Seriously, did anyone give a shit when Tony Stark was flashing that photo of the black kid who died and tried giving this heartful speach about how their actions affect other peoples lives? That stuff was mind-numbingly terrible. This whole "superheroes cause collateral casualties" angle is getting pretty damn stupid becuse if the superheroes wasn't have been there in the first place, a whole shitton of more people would have died than did. In literally every situation their presence save an immense amount of lives. Those aliens would have massacred the entierty of Manhattan instead of just a few hundread people, for example.

Luckily, they actual Civil War was a great deal of fun when it at last arrived. Marvel film crew really managed to blend the fighting and laughing. As usual, Captain America and his crew was the best part of the show. Everyone is always praising Robert Downey, but Chris Evans does as amazing job at playing someone that is prinicpled, idealistic and just generally wholesome and level-headed as a person.

 

[Strikes Again]

I wonder why the decision to market the Ghostbusters reboot to young girls was made? Rather than to the immature 18 - 30 male demo of course.
I would suspect it was do the the possible stories that they could have used to interest the males was limited.

 

[Bullitt68]

@aquamanpunch

So Basic held up. Blood Work, not so much. That's got to be one of Eastwood's lamest films. I've read a lot of Michael Connelly and it's like Eastwood walked into his world and turned on all of the lights. Way too bright and chipper for a serial killer whodunnit, and the "comedy" is so fucking bad that even europe in a Ford movie couldn't possibly have been cringing as hard as I was during Blood Work. The only saving grace was that the scene where Eastwood spots a tail and just pulls out a shotgun and starts shooting at the car is still just as awesome as it ever was. Past that, I don't ever need to watch that movie again.

The good thing that came out of rewatching Blood Work, though, is that I'm thinking about having an Eastwood marathon. The number of his films I've yet to see is unacceptably high, plus it's been forever since I've rewatched most of his stuff. I'll probably start that next weekend, though. For the next week, I'm going to be watching and rewatching old school martial arts movies ahead of a talk I'm doing next week at some movie theater in Bristol where they discovered a bunch of rare old-school martial arts movie trailers. Lots of Brucesploitation and other B-movie goodness on my plate for the next week

Face/Off does not qualify as a serious movie.

I think the saddest part is that it is a serious movie. It's just fucking awful. I used to love that movie when I was a kid. I tried to rewatch it like a year ago or so, and holy fucking shit, it's just one of the worst things ever. John Woo just sucks in general, but that movie is in a whole other league of suck, way past "so-bad-it's-good" to the point where it's so bad it makes me want to scream.

It's proven effective on everyone except @aquamanpunch

The thing is, i was a lot more opinionated then. I argued hard cause i wanted to change minds. I am totally ok with people not agreeing with my taste now.

I wouldn't say I'm totally cool with people not agreeing with my taste, but I get not fighting to literally change everybody's mind. At this point, if I disagree with somebody, I'll still argue all the way down, but it's because I want to make sure that we cover everything so that if, at the end of it, you still disagree, you've at least gotten every angle from the other side and you've taken competing positions into consideration prior to solidifying your opinion. If I've done all I could do, then I can be happy. Not only might my mind get changed over the course of the debate, but even if that doesn't happen and we both go back to our separate corners in a draw, the fight still went down and we'll be the better for it.

Though we might have to have a talk about Back to the Future and Jaws.

To clarify, I don't mean to imply that they're not awesome. I just don't think they're that awesome.

Plus I'm posting from phone, so i am forced into brevity. Even if i were into an argument, the effort it requires to be expository will take me out of it.

I forgot about this. I guess I just assumed you'd get sick of posting from your phone. Do you not have a computer?

Will Jacobs was the guy with the paid account right?

Ha, I actually remember him as the only green name, too. Yes, he was an old school Plat.

I stand by Assassination of Jesse James to this day [...] What's not to like.

That.

I should be in here a fair bit more from now on.

My tastes over all have somewhat shifted from back in the early SMD days. I used to be big into emotionally deep but subtle foreign cinema. These days I've reverted to my taste as a kid.

I don't know your relation to these movies, but seeing the word "reverted" makes me think you're short shrifting your taste. It's not necessarily a step backwards if you embrace movies you used to love. I've posted this a lot, but I always think of this like the Zen thing Bruce Lee talked about in martial arts. He used to say: "Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch and a kick was just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer just a punch, a kick no longer just a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick." LIke you, I spent some time exploring "deep" movies. That didn't make me a "better" film fan. It was just one step on the path. And thankfully, I came back around to Bruce and Seagal and BASEketball and all the shit I grew up loving and which I can now appreciate, with a critical eye wisened from years of general movie watching and intellectual growth, on deeper levels than ever before.

Hateful 8 was so, so good. Despite Tarantino being a bit self indulgent dragging out the opening hour or so.

I've only seen it once when it was in theaters, but I loved the fuck out of it and had no problems with the pacing. I'll keep this in mind when I rewatch it, though.

I wasn't a big fan of The Revenant

I enjoyed the theater experience, and the opening action sequence was fantastic, but yeah, it was pretty meh overall. And Leo may have crawled his ass off, but I thought Hardy stole the show.

As for the top 25 list we cooked up all those years ago. There's some embarassing inclusions I guess (The Dark Knight?!) but the list is great.

The Dark Knight is a much more respectable choice than Oldboy at least.

Spoiler

First half of Civil War was really bad yet the second half of Civil War was really good.

@Dragonlordxxxxx

I haven't seen this, and I haven't gone into Dragon's thread since it came out, but I do confess that, for as awesome as this looks, I've been having trouble buying RDJ's motivation. I'd be curious to hear what you and Dragon think about that. For me, I would've assumed that Stark would hate the idea of control while Cap would want control. Isn't it the case that Cap basically becomes the boss in The Winter Soldier? He's not against what Shield was trying to do, just the way they were trying to do it. He still thought there needed to be control, needed to be oversight. Just not in the form of giant guns pointed at everybody's heads. Stark, meanwhile, just flies around doing whatever he wants. Yet, in Civil War, it's like opposite day in the MCU, with Cap wanting to be able to do whatever he wants and Stark wanting to lock shit down.

Does it come off as incoherent as it seems on paper? Or am I being really reductive here?

 

[europe1]

and the "comedy" is so fucking bad that even europe in a Ford movie couldn't possibly have been cringing as hard as I was during Blood Work

If that is actually true then I might have to finally sit down and watch The Quiet Man just so to retain that record.

though, is that I'm thinking about having an Eastwood marathon. The number of his films I've yet to see is unacceptably high, plus it's been forever since I've rewatched most of his stuff

Cool. Time to hear if The Gauntlet really is an hidden Eastwood classic or a film that saddly stumbled a few meters into the sprint.

Lots of Brucesploitation and other B-movie goodness on my plate for the next week

Haha. You know, I actually watched The Clones of Bruce Lee before seeing any proper Bruce Lee film. I was at a friends house who was a massive Bruce Lee nerd and he had just got the VHS so we decided to watch it on his birthday. Man was it a werid sit. Maybe you shouldn't see stuff like that in your formative years. Of all the exploitation trends out there, Brucesploitation may be the weirdest.

John Woo just sucks in general

It's been over a decade since I saw most of John Woo films, but "sucks"? "Sucks"!? Seriously!? Sucks!?

Can you really say that a director that can be summerized as Jean-Pierre Melville + Sam Peckinpha = John Woo, sucks?

Hard Boiled is just intense as fuck. That Hospital one-take gundown should be the textbook example in how to direct a badass scene. And Bullet in the Head is superb as well (but no... you probably luuuuuve the Stallone film with the same name, you evil-minded philistine).

And I don't even really like John Woo past those two films!

I've only seen it once when it was in theaters, but I loved the fuck out of it and had no problems with the pacing. I'll keep this in mind when I rewatch it, though.

The pacing was basically the deathblow for Hateful Eight for me. Still a good film though but probably one of my least favorites Tarantinos. Though, I'm starting to suspect that my pacing-senses are just unortodox somehow. For example: I've always been majorly annoyed by the pacing and rythm in some of Orson Wells films like Citizen Kane or Touch of Evil (despite really liking them past that).

Isn't it the case that Cap basically becomes the boss in The Winter Soldier? He's not against what Shield was trying to do, just the way they were trying to do it.

Well... if memory serves, there is a bit of diffrence between Winter Soldier and Civil War.

In Winter Soldier, the main beef between Cap and Fury was over Freedom vs Surveillance. Fury had basically designed a war-machine so powerful that it keeps a gun pointed towards every humans head at all times. Cap tinks that this interveenes with personal freedom and privacy, the punishment before the crime and all that. And when Hydra seizes control over SHEILD, this war-machine, surveillance-state obviously backfires.

In Civil War, it's more a question of autonomy vs top-down goverance. Cap wants Avangers to be able to call their own shots, while Stark wants to put Avangers under the vassalage of the UN. Stark argues that by placing Avangers under the leadership of the UN, their actions will be sanctioned and agreed-upon by the world-powers, and thus accountability for the Avengers actions will fall upon the UN, and not the Avengers themselves. Cap argues that by not being able to make their own decisions, the Avangers would give up their moral-right to decide what they think is right-and-wrong and possibly be in a situation where the UN forces them to act against their own morals.

So I feel that Cap's position is consistent through the series. He wants autonamous, low-level operations where some super-state won't be able to call everyones shots.

Stark, meanwhile, just flies around doing whatever he wants.

Yeah and now he's... a goverment-shill.

There is definitively a disconnect between the Iron Man who gave the goverment the finger when they demanded that he'd hand over the tech for his armour, and the Iron Man who now wants regulations and state-control and all that.

The movie tries to underpinn this development in various ways. Tony does come off as someone who has been traumatized in a way, due to the close-calls during Manhattan and Sovakia (not to mention that it was he who created the AI in the Second film, so blame for that kinda falls on him), as well as his failling love-life. He's also guilt-ridden due to all the collateral damage that the Avangers has caused. They have the obligatory scene where a mother of one of the victims come up and says "my baby died becuse of you blablabla!" Tony's desire to place the Avengers under the UN's thumb is basically a way for him to ease his guilty conciouss. It was he that took the decisions that cost innocent people their lives (through collateral damage), so if the decision would have been called by the UN instead, there wouldn't be any guilt over the dead since it wouldn't be them that took the decision. So responsibility for the dead and all the emotional repercussions that come with it would fall to the UN instead.

I just find this stupid and short-sighted by Stark. Even assuming the UN is uncorrupt and well-meaning (which, as seen in the previous films, big-state organizations never seem to be), the end results would be the same. Even if the Avangers decided to fight in Sovakia on their own accord, or where ordered there by the UN, collateral damage would still occur. Those innocent civilians would still be dead. The only difference would be if the Avangers decided to go there by their own will or if they where ordered there. Who takes responsibility does not change who ends up dead.

Also (and this may just be conjecture on my part) Stark may be fine with being completely autonamous and accountable-only-to-himself. But I don't know if he would be fine extending that ultimate freedom to everyone else. He trusts himself to handle ultimate freedom, not sure he trusts everyone else with the same privilige.

 

[europe1]

I wonder why the decision to market the Ghostbusters reboot to young girls was made? Rather than to the immature 18 - 30 male demo of course.

Is it just me or does it seem that the Box Office for Ghostbusters is going to be more intresting to follow than the actual movie itself.

Hell, I'm not even a fan of the original. One of those 80's movies that -- while good -- I never got the supposedly great appeal of, alongside Back to the Future and ET.

Jurassic World was utterly ridiculous but really fun at the cinema

Agree. It was... frivolous fun in a good way, despite it's rather jaded undertones as times (nobody cares about Dinasaurs and all that). Plus it was one of those films where I just said, "eh, the main actress is sexy so I now care about her".

Force Awakens did an extremely good job of catering to both new and old Star Wars fans

Intresting that you would say that since scores of old-school Star Wars fans are up-in-arms about how it's just a rehash of the original. And I kind of agree. While some of the new additions are cool (like the very striking iconography of the Empire) it still feels like an uninspiring films since iat heart it's just a rehash. And going back to pacing, the middle of the film is just a mess that I completely couldn't give a shit about, though the beginning and end are rather good.

and I really enjoyed The Martian with it's light hearted take on sci-fi isolation

Wouldn't say I "really enjoyed" it, but I enjoyed it.

Hateful 8 was so, so good. Despite Tarantino being a bit self indulgent dragging out the opening hour or so.

I find it intresting that would would label this under "light-hearted and throw away", since the racial subtext that Tarantino was going for was really the only thing that kept me invested in it from beginning-to-end. Tarantino always had a thing for cool dialoge making cool characters but here I didn't care as much as in his older flicks.

I wasn't a big fan of The Revenant

It got a bit samey in the middle but overall I thought it a really cool experience.

 

[Dragonlordxxxxx]

@Dragonlordxxxxx

I haven't seen this, and I haven't gone into Dragon's thread since it came out, but I do confess that, for as awesome as this looks, I've been having trouble buying RDJ's motivation. I'd be curious to hear what you and Dragon think about that. For me, I would've assumed that Stark would hate the idea of control while Cap would want control. Isn't it the case that Cap basically becomes the boss in The Winter Soldier? He's not against what Shield was trying to do, just the way they were trying to do it. He still thought there needed to be control, needed to be oversight. Just not in the form of giant guns pointed at everybody's heads. Stark, meanwhile, just flies around doing whatever he wants. Yet, in Civil War, it's like opposite day in the MCU, with Cap wanting to be able to do whatever he wants and Stark wanting to lock shit down.

Does it come off as incoherent as it seems on paper? Or am I being really reductive here?

You are correct in the way you have profiled Stark. In Age of Ultron, they just glossed over the consequences of Stark's actions while in Civil War, they really focused on the real-world ramifications of what the Avengers did. Something happens early in Civil War that made Stark realize that his actions hurt a lot of people and in order for the Avengers to still function and not be shut down by the government, he had to compromise. Basically, it's Stark's trying to atone for his sins so to speak.

Hope you get a chance to see this in the cinema. Airport scene was just bonkers.

 

[theskza]

. I am even going to see Turtles 2 (I somehow enjoyed the first one despite it being objectively dreadful).

That movie twas awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing the second one, and am even more stoked another SMD vet is seeing it.

As for the top 25 list we cooked up all those years ago. There's some embarassing inclusions I guess (The Dark Knight?!) but the list is great. It's a list of favourites, not some grand list of most important films in cinema history. It speaks volumes of the average age and taste of the posters that were in here and there's nothing wrong with that!

I think Snatch is the consensus eye sore. Seriously, we all hate that it's on the list. But to your unpleasant surprise, Old Boy is also brought up on occasion.

@Flemmy Stardust Friday Night Lights TV show > Friday Night Lights movie. You'd love it.

@aquamanpunch have you seen Chopping Mall?

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

I wouldn'tsay I'm totally cool with people not agreeing with my taste, but I get not fighting to literally change everybody's mind. At this point, if I disagree with somebody, I'll still argue all the way down, but it's because I want to make sure that we cover everything so that if, at the end of it, you still disagree, you've at least gotten every angle from the other side and you've taken competing positions into consideration prior to solidifying your opinion. If I've done all I could do, then I can be happy. Not only might my mind get changed over the course of the debate, but even if that doesn't happen and we both go back to our separate corners in a draw, the fight still went down and we'll be the better for it.

It's gotta be a) a movie i love and b) a major disagreement with c) someone i like to argue with.

That's why I'm going to mildly get into it with Friday Night Lights. Even though I'm kind of cool with you not liking it and the reasons why.

To clarify, I don't mean to imply that they're not awesome. I just don't think they're that awesome.

You just robbed me of a throwdown. But I'll say this:

It's pretty gay that you don't love Back to the Future.

I forgot about this. I guess I just assumed you'd get sick of posting from your phone. Do you not have a computer?

I have one of those laptop/tablet hybrids. My glory days were done from desktop before i had a smart phone.

I'm not around my computer that much anymore, and I've gotten so used to doing everything from my phone. My computer mostly collects dust.

@Flemmy Stardust Friday Night Lights TV show > Friday Night Lights movie. You'd love it.

Ok I'll watch it. SIKE!


I did catch like 3 episodes of Silicon Valley tho and was pretty into it. Since they're only 30 minute episodes and there's not much to catch up on i think I'm going to give that one a go. Plus my friends in the building over from me watch it, so it would something to do Sunday night.