Rate the Last Movie You Saw

[WestRider]

10 hours ago, paxmiles said:

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. (Netflix)

4/5

Odd film. I had missed it before because it doesn't present as my kind of film. Reminds me a lot of Kung Fu Hustle - not sure if there's a genre yet that speaks to this type of film. Maybe action comedy, but I think slapstick when I hear that, and this isn't slapstick. Plot is decent, actors are fine, but it's the setting and visual gags that make this into a good film. Sort of a cross between Kung Fu Hustle and Dude Where's My Car....

I enjoyed it.

It's one of the best I've ever seen at converting comic/cartoon aesthetics and tropes into live action. It is odd and kind of hard to categorize, but very well done.

[VonVilkee]

9 hours ago, WestRider said:

It's one of the best I've ever seen at converting comic/cartoon aesthetics and tropes into live action. It is odd and kind of hard to categorize, but very well done.

Ranks in my top 5 single movies, I had to separate out series or sequel type movies to keep it less cluttered. Another on this list is Big Trouble in Little China while Indiana Jones would fill out the top of it wasn't on the top five multiple movies!

 

Sweet money! Ah man not even enough for the bus... that is so every game with money in it the joy of your first little bit just to figure out you can't really afford anything good, then at the end so much money everywhere you don't even bother picking it up. All the references hit a chord with me. 

 

Wreck it Ralph 10 outta 10 quarter machines. This had a place in my top five single movies but oh man am I excited for the sequel. Those games were my jam!

[Ish]

Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet, took the kiddos tonight. Did you like the first one? Do you want to see the same movie but with most of the nostalgic video game references replaced with family-friendly internet memes? Well, have we got a movie for you!

Not a bad film, but probably not one I could recommend watching unless you’re watching it with your kids. 3.5 outta 5.

[Raindog]

The Dead Pool - The firth and final of the Dirty Harry films staring Clint Eastwood with roles played by a very young Jim Carey, a wooden Liam Neeson, and Guns and Roses before they were a hit. Clint is fine, but the rest of the cast has trouble. Carey and Neesen overact. The script is odd, the directing is awkward., and the lines are a bit cliche. It is a fine film to paint to, but it is not in Clint"s top 20 movies. It's on Netflix. 6/10

Deadpool 2. I have watched it twice in a week. It was even better the second time. I am an official fan of the movie series. It is funny and over the top without being cliched, stupid, obscene, or grotesque. 8/10

[Ish]

Really kinda sad to have seen the Dirty Harry films close on such a weak entry. I mean, it's not a bad film by any means... But the tone and style of it make it feel more like an Eighties Buddy Cop Movie than the modern noir-sploitation of the earlier Dirty Harry movies. Like... If it had been a Die Hard or Lethal Weapon flick with Murtaugh and Riggs or John McClane instead of Harry Callahan, it'd probably be one of the better films in those series. But, as it is, its the weakest entry in its series.

For the record, I'd rate the series from best to worse as: Dirty Harry (1971) > The Enforcer (1976) > Magnum Force (1973) > Sudden Impact (1983)  > The Dead Pool (1988). 

 

[Brother Glacius]

Wralph Breaks the Internet or (The Emoji movie with Disney licenses). Meh. I won't say the movie is bad. But if Wreck it Ralph is good, then this ain't no Wreck it Ralph either. There were moments that made me laugh, but most of the time I was just waiting. I was waiting to be engaged, and that just didn't happen. WIR is good because it engages you. It sucks you in and holds you there through the whole movie. This does not. I will sit and watch WIR whenever it comes on because its good. I don't see myself seeing this one again.

[Weav]

41 minutes ago, Brother Glacius said:

Wralph Breaks the Internet or (The Emoji movie with Disney licenses). Meh. I won't say the movie is bad. But if Wreck it Ralph is good, then this ain't no Wreck it Ralph either. There were moments that made me laugh, but most of the time I was just waiting. I was waiting to be engaged, and that just didn't happen. WIR is good because it engages you. It sucks you in and holds you there through the whole movie. This does not. I will sit and watch WIR whenever it comes on because its good. I don't see myself seeing this one again.

I don't watch children's movies, but I heard it was REALLY preachy...no thanks

[Brother Glacius]

4 hours ago, Weav said:

I don't watch children's movies, but I heard it was REALLY preachy...no thanks

I'll have to disagree with you on the tag "children's movie". I think it would be much more accurate to say they are "Family Movies". Normally, I am almost always able to connect or relate in some way. This movie just missed the mark. The original plot is fine, gotta save her game. But then it takes a creepy turn into poor decisions and gets mired in selfishness. The bad part is, they only reconcile one of them instead of both. If you don't like family movies, then yeah, skip this one. 🙂 

[Romans832]

Robin Hood (2018) - 9/10 - Excellent movie, really enjoyed it and the plot twists

[WestRider]

A Wrinkle in Time: Good stuff. It didn't really have the length it needed to convey the weight of that story, but other than that, it all worked really well. I was very impressed by the child actors. Not a lot of 9 year olds who can project gravitas like that.

[Guest]

22 hours ago, Weav said:

I don't watch children's movies, but I heard it was REALLY preachy...no thanks

No clue on this particular film, but I've noticed that, lately, the movie industry doesn't understand what a children's movie is. I strongly suggest against using the "children's movie" tag as any indication on what age group is supposed to be watching the film. Typically, children's movie just means that the film lacks swearing, sex scenes, and gore, with zero impact on what the film is actually about or who the target audience is. They also tend to assume that anything animated is for children.

[Duckman]

7 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

No clue on this particular film, but I've noticed that, lately, the movie industry doesn't understand what a children's movie is. I strongly suggest against using the "children's movie" tag as any indication on what age group is supposed to be watching the film. Typically, children's movie just means that the film lacks swearing, sex scenes, and gore, with zero impact on what the film is actually about or who the target audience is. They also tend to assume that anything animated is for children.

It's worth noting that only Hollywood (i.e. the US film industry) that has these problems (this particular combination anyway) and I wish I understood why.  As recently as the 60s, this was not the case.  The Flintstones, for example, had a bunch of innuendo which was aimed at adults in the audience.  In theory, the ratings committee is supposed to weigh subject matter when they give a rating so a PG-13 film should have more mature subject matter but since that gets convolved with all the other things like language there is no pure review of subject matter content indicating whether or not something is aimed at or even appropriate for children.

That can also be taken a step further as evident in Princess Mononoke.  The US film industry is really not good at grokking shades of grey, especially as it applies to films aimed at children.  The original dialog for Princess Mononoke was very clear that there was a protagonist but there was no moral high or low ground for the cast.  The antagonist was actually providing hospice for a leper colony and in many ways was a genuinely good person, for example.  In the English translation that entire subject is stripped out so that the antagonist can be a simple evil which should be destroyed.

 

There are examples of films which lack clear-cut good and bad characters in US cinema but film-makers are more and more often reluctant to introduce this ambiguity (Han shot first, damnit!).  Personally, this is one of the things I enjoy about foreign film, whether it is European or is Japanese Anime.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Duckman said:

That can also be taken a step further as evident in Princess Mononoke.  The US film industry is really not good at grokking shades of grey, especially as it applies to films aimed at children.  The original dialog for Princess Mononoke was very clear that there was a protagonist but there was no moral high or low ground for the cast.  The antagonist was actually providing hospice for a leper colony and in many ways was a genuinely good person, for example.  In the English translation that entire subject is stripped out so that the antagonist can be a simple evil which should be destroyed.

That film is actually pretty clear cut. The antagonist is "hate" (and sin in general). It's a disembodied antagonist, but by the end of the film, they defeat hate as it has affected their community and have a positive resolution.

"To see with eyes unclouded by hate"

I love that film.

[Romans832]

I had no clue princess mononoke got rewritten for Americans. Sad Panda

[Guest]

I've noticed a trend in US film and TV, where they all seem to be heavily focused on social justice topics. They have some good points sometimes, but it's become boring due to how often it happens.

Another common one is to have an evil protagonist whose actions are supposidly justified by a much more evil antagonist. This one get's depressing quickly because it never really feels like the story resolves the true issue, which is that the writers are evil.

If not those two, the topic is usually why you should fear or hate other people/places/things.

One reason I go to cartoons and anime is to avoid these. 

[Duckman]

Just now, Romans832 said:

I had no clue princess mononoke got rewritten for Americans. Sad Panda

They had Billy Crudup, Billy Bob Thornton and Jillian Anderson revoice it.  Watching the English language dub with the literal translation of the original Japanese subtitles is like a really bad drinking game.

The US script tries to avoid the use of a concept as an antagonist and makes Lady Eboshi the antagonist.  It also eliminates any redeeming quality Eboshi has so that it becomes a simple black-and-white film about hero and antagonist.  (It also ignores completely the idea that A[big bad swear word]aka is possessed by a demon.)

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Romans832 said:

I had no clue princess mononoke got rewritten for Americans. Sad Panda

I don't know what he's talking about on that front. The version I have is in english (dub) and it totally includes the leper colony bit. Granted, my dvd is from before Disney bought that studio, so maybe they did change it. My copy also has the original japanese with subs.

I have been told that the dub/sub is different than the actual japanese (if you just listen), but that's true of any language translation. Heck, those english closed captions on netflix don't even line up with the english being said.

[Ish]

C’mon guys, they got Neil Gaiman to do the English dub’s script and it’s actually very well written.

Gaiman opted to make some changes to things that referenced very specific Asian social contexts or references to mythology and specific groups, such as Jibashiri and Shishigami, that wouldn’t be understood by a Western general audience... Gaiman was writing for a general-market theatrical release, not Japanophile Otaku.

Roger Ebert put it in sixth place on his list of best films that year. 

[Duckman]

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/princess-mononoke-dvd-1997/6111356.p?skuId=6111356&ref=212&loc=1&ds_rl=1266837&ref=212&loc=1&ds_rl=1266837&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz-X7wsf33gIVk1mGCh3aSA56EAQYAyABEgLeTPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

The rewrite seriously westernized the subject matter.  It made Eboshi the antagonist instead of, as Pax put it, the disembodied idea of Hate, and it minimized conflict between Moro and A[big bad swear word]aka.

I am not aiming this critique at Gaiman who was put in a bad place writing with existing animation and demands from Miramax that the film be accessible to a US audience.  I am just sad that Miramax made the choices it did...  See this commentary from Gaiman at slashdot:

1) Mononoke's Disappointing Box Office - by RobertB-DC 
Mr. Gaiman, after the time, effort, and research you put into the dub of Princess Mononoke, were you disappointed by the film's performance at the US box office? Do you feel that the film was mishandled by Miramax, or were US audiences not quite ready to have their expectations of animation stretched that far?

Neil: 
Not particularly disappointed, but then I've never equated sales, good or bad, with quality, and Princess Mononoke was pretty much the first ever attempt to release something like that into movie theatres in the US. I took much more pleasure in seeing how close we got to 100% at RottenTomatoes.com than I was ever bothered by its box office.

Do I think Miramax could have handled it better? Probably, in a lot of ways -- for example, there was some silliness in the beginning where, once I'd written five drafts of the script, each word having to be approved each time by Ghibli and Miramax, they gave my final draft to someone to make sure that the mouth movements matched the script, and then cut me out of the loop for six months. The person who did the mouth-flap draft didn't like my script, and rewrote it. His version was what was recorded, initially. They screened it. It was a disaster. Then they called me back in and let me work with the director, Jack Fletcher, and he and I went back and put as much of my original dialogue back in as we could, but it all had to be recorded fairly fast at this point. I was proud of the final product, but wished that I'd been included during the period when everything went wrong: it would have made things a lot easier, and we could have been polishing at the end rather than desperately fixing things.

Harvey Weinstein really wanted to trim it. It's a long film. If Ghibli had let him trim, Miramax might have gone much wider with the film, and more movie theatres might have taken a chance on it -- but then, the audience would have been (rightly) complaining about not having been shown the whole film, as it was made, and I'd probably now be answering questions on Slashdot about whether the restoration of the missing minutes on the DVD made up for losing them in the cinemas...

Having said all that, Miramax didn't throw it away: they released it into the "ten major markets", and if the audiences had come out for it, then its theatrical release would have got much wider. Probably best simply to view it as a step on the way to something...

 

I owned the Miramax US release and was happy that it included the original Japanese language version and the literal English translation.  I watched the entire film (exactly) once in the Gaiman adaptation (note, Miramax uses that word and not translation for a reason).  I started cringing as soon as A[big bad swear word]aka was "infected" (because the concept of demon is too different in Western literature) and didn't stop.

Personally, I don't like adapting cultural films to different cultures for a reason.  First, if you want to watch a cultural film, learn something about the culture so you can appreciate it for what it is.  Second, changing cultural references to match a new audience is painful to those who understood the original references.  Imagine adapting Transformers for an Arabian audience and changing dialog between Shia and Bumblebee to asking why Megan Fox is not wearing her burka.  It's neither relevant to or respectful of the original material and that bothers me.

 

As for Ebert and his ranking, he's commenting for a specific market.  The same market that he touted Avatar for.  Avatar was the worst, derivative piece of drivel to ever hit the screen and it was simply forgiven all those evils because it had incredible special effects and an immense marketing budget.  We discussed it at gaming and when we came to the "monstrous plot hole" we discovered that the 8 of us in the discussion were each talking about a different monstrous plot hole, each of which was equally valid.  I get that his ratings are based on his entire experience with the property which, in his case and based on his comments I am sure includes the original Miyazaki work but at the same time that means that they cannot be taken as strictly representative of the English work either.

[Duckman]

Apologies for the bad formatting.  I was amused by the other thread here where BroG is asking about formatting since this is a case of bad tagging code.  I ended the quote before my paragraph about "I owned" and that means that the rest of the "quote" cannot be edited now so I cannot fix the above post to be correct.

[Guest]

Well, might have to watch the new version, just to see it. I do feel that there should be some sort of law against changing a film and keeping the same name. At least give it a version 1.5 distinction.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Duckman said:

Apologies for the bad formatting.  I was amused by the other thread here where BroG is asking about formatting since this is a case of bad tagging code.  I ended the quote before my paragraph about "I owned" and that means that the rest of the "quote" cannot be edited now so I cannot fix the above post to be correct.

You could fix it. Edit the OP. Copy and past the entire quote into a non-quote section. Delete the original quote (the box itself can be selected, then either delete or backspace will remove it). Highlight the section you want quoted. Hit the quote button on the top. Should look right. This method would lose the source of the quote, but since you didn't already have one, it won't lose anything.

Hard to do on a phone or via the PS4's internet, as I'm now typing on, but you can fix it on a PC.

[Duckman]

It won't let me copy the quote.  The quote tag is so broken when you try and apply it manually that it becomes unusable.  😝

[Romans832]

2 hours ago, Duckman said:

They had Billy Crudup, Billy Bob Thornton and Jillian Anderson revoice it.  Watching the English language dub with the literal translation of the original Japanese subtitles is like a really bad drinking game.

The US script tries to avoid the use of a concept as an antagonist and makes Lady Eboshi the antagonist.  It also eliminates any redeeming quality Eboshi has so that it becomes a simple black-and-white film about hero and antagonist.  (It also ignores completely the idea that A[big bad swear word]aka is possessed by a demon.)

I only watch my anime in subtitles.

I have to be careful I don't fall asleep to their rhythmic voices

[InfestedKerrigan]

The Velvet Vampire 6.5/10 

1971 Campy Vampire flick

Young attractive couple stays at friends ranch in the southwest. The porcelain skinned caretaker and her "last of his peoples" groundskeeper, Juan, show them a good time until our lead lady begins having prophetic dreams.  

An amazing amount of man butt that was unexpected. Possibly some man mound, too. A fare amount of titties, without pushing the boundaries of distaste or gratuity.  Don't let me disproportion things, there wasn't much man butt, but it was more than I was expecting, as they'd skipped other chances to show Lee's assets. This plays into the girls, as well, that it wasn't the 60s/70s pushing for all the nudity they could get.

Oh yeah, the Yeoman on the episode with people worshiping the computer, Vaal i think it was. The Apple? She's one of our ladies.