Movies you've seen lately

[Renegade]

Out of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft.

-40hz (November 29, 2014, 06:36 PM)

I need to check that out again.


If you like dystopian movies, try this:

Divergent



I really want to comment on this, but... sigh... I don't want to ruin it for anyone. So... No commentary.

But if you like the genre, it's worth a watch.

Meh... Fuggit! Don't click if you don't want to ruin the film!

THIS WILL RUIN THE FILM FOR YOU!!!

The film is rather bland with a lot of the same kinds of action and all that stuff. The interesting part is the plot and the meta-story.

The thesis focuses on the primacy of the state and the acceptance of the state as we see in our own reality.

However, the "divergents" step outside the state's ability to control people's thoughts.

This film explores mind control a bit (in a very superficial way), and people's roles in "society".

Overall, this is pretty weak for any kind of argument, but the film is entertaining and fun to watch. Even if you're an anti-state anarchist like me.

[Shades]

Open Window - Reasonably good thriller applying capabilities of current computer and smartphone technology to the NSA's wet dream happen.

[40hz]

@ Ren - Divergent looks very good. Adding it to my list. 

Note: the trailer also has what I suspect might be a spoiler scene in it. So probably best skip that too.

@Shades - adding Open Window to my list too. Thx!

[4wd]

Divergent

-Renegade (December 13, 2014, 07:36 AM)

I'm starting to find these movies rather tedious being, seemingly, rather teen oriented.

Divergent
The Maze Runner (first of what seems to be a series)
The Hunger Games
The Giver (which reminded me of a toned down PG13 version of the far better Equilibrium)
etc

[Renegade]

Open Window - Reasonably good thriller applying capabilities of current computer and smartphone technology to the NSA's wet dream happen.

-Shades (December 13, 2014, 08:19 AM)

Ooooh! Sounds good!

Divergent

-Renegade (December 13, 2014, 07:36 AM)

I'm starting to find these movies rather tedious being, seemingly, rather teen oriented.

Divergent
The Maze Runner (first of what seems to be a series)
The Hunger Games
The Giver (which reminded me of a toned down PG13 version of the far better Equilibrium)
etc

-4wd (December 14, 2014, 01:18 AM)

Sigh... yeah... I know what you mean. There are very, very few really good movies in this category.

Beggars can't be choosers?

I figure it's just a matter of enjoying what's available. And even bad ones are better than romantic comedies/dramas.

Two of the best dystopian films I've seen in the last few years are Atlas Shrugged I & II.

FWIW - Equilibrium was excellent! But for some reason, it always reminds me of Gattaca.

[40hz]

Agree with Ren. The last dystopian flick I saw that really did it for me was Michael Radford's 1984.

When pickins is lean, ya takes what ya gets.

(Note: FWIW I thought Hunger Games was pretty lame and vastly over-hyped. Nothing new there either. The theme of a government sponsored death match has already been done several times too many in scifi. Haven't seen The Giver. But I read the book and thought it was a little too contrived and obvious about where it was going. Veteran scifi fans can figure the reveal out pretty quickly.)

[wraith808]

I'm starting to find these movies rather tedious being, seemingly, rather teen oriented.

Divergent
The Maze Runner (first of what seems to be a series)
The Hunger Games
The Giver (which reminded me of a toned down PG13 version of the far better Equilibrium)
etc

-4wd (December 14, 2014, 01:18 AM)

I don't get it.  They *are* teen movies, aren't they?  Based on teen books?  No more adult oriented than If I Stay, or Fault of Our Stars, right?

[40hz]

BTW - Am I the only one here who wasn't impressed by Equilibrium?

[wraith808]

BTW - Am I the only one here who wasn't impressed by Equilibrium?

-40hz (December 14, 2014, 02:11 PM)

Maybe not the only one.  But I'm not in that camp.  I loved it.

[MilesAhead]

BTW - Am I the only one here who wasn't impressed by Equilibrium?

-40hz (December 14, 2014, 02:11 PM)

The plot holes were gaping.  But I enjoyed Christian Bale's intensity.  It was similar to Fahrenheit 451.  F451 was a flick of much higher quality though.  This was kind of like a high tech F451 the way the movie AI was a high tech Pinocchio.

[Renegade]

BTW - Am I the only one here who wasn't impressed by Equilibrium?

-40hz (December 14, 2014, 02:11 PM)

I think a lot of it depends on expectations. It wasn't the best dystopian film, but it did well in other areas. The gun kata were novel. They managed to create a world that was quite different from many others. The merging of religious themes was certainly a nice twist.

[4wd]

@wraith808: I guess if you'd read the books or any of the hype then you'd know they were aimed squarely at teens.  I usually just go, "Sci-Fi, I'll have to give it a try."  

Plus, I guess, it's the hope that maybe one of these films will actually be worth the time

@Ren: Unfortunately those aspects of Equilibrium didn't carry over very well into Ultraviolet.

[40hz]

I'll man up. I only bothered with Ultraviolet to get my dose of Milla.

[4wd]

^me too 

[wraith808]

@wraith808: I guess if you'd read the books or any of the hype then you'd know they were aimed squarely at teens.  I usually just go, "Sci-Fi, I'll have to give it a try."   

Plus, I guess, it's the hope that maybe one of these films will actually be worth the time

-4wd (December 14, 2014, 05:58 PM)

Or have a teenager.    I'm just glad that she reads all the time... and if that's what she wants to read and watch, then more power to her! 

[Renegade]

I'm starting to find these movies rather tedious being, seemingly, rather teen oriented.
...The Giver...

-4wd (December 14, 2014, 01:18 AM)

Ok, while perhaps it's not the best flick out there, it's certainly better than a lot of others.

I enjoy subtext and themes a lot. Even if a film doesn't particularly "float my boat", I'll give credit for other things -- the core message is one of those things that I'll cheer for.

Don't read this as it contains possible spoilers - and is somewhat ranty

I found that the theme in the The Giver was really good. Sure, it was in your face and blatant, but it is a worthwhile theme (free will and being informed).

When I look around me, I see far too many people screaming for that exact same "sameness" in The Giver. People don't want choices. They want conformity. They hate free will with a demonic fury that I find sickening. "Let's all do things *this* way and no other way at all."

Those are the people that I think are extremely dangerous. Their ideas are a cancer that infects society. The society in the film there was completely cancerous. People were emotionally and intellectually castrated. With that "soma" element playing a part there.

The idea that your life should be determined by anyone other than you is nothing other than outright evil. And not some candy-assed caricature of evil. Really, deep seated, sinister evil.

Eliminating free will is the ultimate evil.

And yet we have throngs of people screaming for exactly that. Multitudes of them eager to strip you and everyone of choice.

While the film is pretty simple in that message, I appreciate that someone took the time to at least say so. It's probably even more important for teens to understand that, because from my generation, there are far too many seriously sick and evil people out there that somehow think that they have right to dictate how other people live.

And that doesn't even get into historical accuracy, which the film doesn't address, but it alludes to it in a subtle way.

So, yeah... I really do enjoy seeing films that promote free will and similar ideas. Even if they're not all that deep.

Rant over.

Verdict on "The Giver": Worth a watch for those that enjoy the genre, or the message.

[40hz]

@Ren - from the The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Liberty

n. One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.

   The rising People, hot and out of breath,
    Roared around the palace: “Liberty or death!”
   “If death will do,” the King said, “let me reign;
    You’ll have, I’m sure, no reason to complain.”
                                                            - Martha Braymance

Freedom

n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint’s infinite multitude of methods.
A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. see: Liberty. The distinction
between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen
of either.

[40hz]

Moonrise Kingdom.

All star line-up in one of the best send-ups of a small-town-young-lovers-runaway-coming-of-age flick ever.

Dry surreal humor. If you like this sort of thing it's well worth a watch. Recommended.

[40hz]

Did you ever watch a movie that had a very good premise, a mind blowing opening, ridiculously flawed plotting, and an ending that absolutely crashed and burned - and yet you still liked it?

I have. And I watched it again last night and still liked it



It's called Smilla's Sense of Snow based on a novel of the same name by Danish author Peter Hoeg. Great cast (Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Vanessa Redgrave, and Richard Harris in major roles) and some beautiful cinematography throughout. Part scifi, part murder mystery, part - oh, I don't know what! It's a complete and total mess. And a fun one as long as you don't expect to come out of it knowing exactly what is going on; or why what you think is going on should even be an issue.

Even reading the book (like I did) won't help. There's a great deal in it that is presented as significant, but doesn't do more than prompt a "so what?" out of me. Perhaps you need to be from Denmark, or live there, to appreciate the subtext and context of the information in the story.

Either way, I liked the film. Maybe for no real reason other than to imaging how much I'd like to rework the script into something that made sense. And possibly to have another look at Ms. Ormond doing her thing. She's an extremely talented actress who's largely disappeared off the radar these last few years. Not too hard on the eyes either.

[MilesAhead]

I watched Smila myself awhile back.  My premise is that many full length feature films have a good 20 minutes at the start.  You don't know where it's going.  Maybe the film has an original premise or bohemian lead characters.  But too often around the 20 minute mark the cliches start to kick in.  Often it's possible to predict the plot line.

I don't remember much about Smila other than that I watched the whole thing.  

[40hz]

I don't remember much about Smila other than that I watched the whole thing.

-MilesAhead (December 15, 2014, 04:50 PM)

Bet if you think back you'll remember that controversial confrontational scene at her father's home between Smilla and her father's dancer-girlfriend (or maybe new child-bride?) Benja played by Emma Croft. When Benja gleefully informs Smilla: "I've called the police - and I told them you're here."



The way Smilla choose to add 'emphasis' to her warning: "Leave me alone, Benja. Leave me alone!" was one of the big takeaways from the movie. Everybody remembers that moment.

[MilesAhead]

@40hz your post about Smila reminded me of another foreign flick I saw.  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

It was "covered" I guess you could say in English.  But the original flick wasn't hard to follow with the subs.  I didn't get to see the others in the series though.

[40hz]

^I couldn't really get my head around that book or the movie. All of the characters seemed extremely weak (I can only take so much northern euro angst before I want to dope-smack somebody) or flat-out crazy. Maybe it's also because I had trouble with how the story seemed to present virtually every male as a sexual predator - or inferred they were a potential sexual predator. Must be rough if you're a woman living in Sweden if that's even partially true.

Or maybe that was just my take on it.

Not a single half-likeable character anywhere in it either. Something I think is very important in a movie since there's so little time to build enough backstory for a viewer to independently develop sympathy for a character without a little nudge from the director.

In truth, the characters in Dragon Tattoo seemed rather flat to me. Take the two main characters. Mikael is a frustrating study in blundering ineffectual dithering. Odd for someone who's supposed to be a crackerjack investigative news publisher. Lisbeth is completely over the top. To be expected considering the degree of damage she's endured. But the humanity is so crushed out of her, that there's little most people could ever hope to relate to. She has more in common with the absolute rage of a Greek fury than a victim who's learned to fight back. And because of that she comes across as very one-dimensional. And it was also very hard for me to buy into her uber-hacker prowess. But in fairness, I have the same problem with virtually any hacker character you'll meet in a movie. Maybe knowing something about how hacking really works has spoiled it all for me. "So it goes."

I dunno. It was a well made movie to be sure. But something about it just left me feeling cold and detached from it all. Others may see it differently.
 

[Renegade]

^ There are movies and TV shows where I keep hoping to see each and every character's throat slit with a nice, sharp serrated blade. Clean through to decapitation. So that I can friggin' cheer. Because they're so friggin' annoying.

It's horrible when the whole time you're watching, you're also screaming in your head, "PLEASE JUST F***ING DIE ALREADY!!!" About the main characters.

I'm thinking I'll skip the dragon girl whatever flick.

Besides, I can't stand reading captions any more. Did that for over a decade. No longer fun.

[Vurbal]

BTW - Am I the only one here who wasn't impressed by Equilibrium?

-40hz (December 14, 2014, 02:11 PM)

I've tried watching it 3 times now, and haven't made more than half an hour in before the IMO entirely paradoxical setting made me turn it off. It's well produced, and skillfully acted, but entirely too silly for me to ignore its major flaws. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, not hang it by the neck until it's dead.

The other night I watched a movie that's sort of the opposite of that, called Radio Free Albemuth. It's an adaptation of the posthumously published Phillip K Dick book of the same name. I say book, rather than novel, since the story is clearly part pure fiction and part autobiographical stream of consciousness from Dick's famously mentally ill and drug addled mind.

It's an extremely low budget production and, frankly, poorly directed. Despite that, I found it extremely compelling, and not just because it makes Phillip K Dick look like a god damn profit in light of certain aspects of modern society.

Well, except for...

Admittedly, it was a little hard not to giggle every time someone referred to the secret police as fappers.