Board 8 > General Movie Discussion Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

I didn't hear about Brightburn until today, but now I'm curious
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the hustle sucked
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For whatever reason, there appear to be dozens of showings marked as sold out at my local theater on the AMC app...hopefully they get that fixed, as it's almost certainly an error - all but the 2:00 showing of Brightburn are sold out, including the morning one...

I 'luckily' have my Aladdin ticket at least.
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Alladin was better than I expected but still not great. Songs are worse but still good enough to enjoy. Looks pretty
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Here's what I saw this past week:

Brightburn:
https://letterboxd.com/foolfantastic/film/brightburn/

Aladdin:
https://letterboxd.com/foolfantastic/film/aladdin-2019/

Long Day's Journey Into Night:
https://letterboxd.com/foolfantastic/film/long-days-journey-into-night-2018/
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Saw Pokmon: Detective Pikachu. I enjoyed Ryan Reynolds in the title role and was amazed at how well the world of Pokmon was brought to life, but the story seemed to just rush from one setpiece to another without really drawing me in. Ranking this against movies I've seen over the past year I'd put this a tiny smidge above Rogue One and a slight bit below Captain Marvel.
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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Saw Pokmon: Detective Pikachu. I enjoyed Ryan Reynolds in the title role and was amazed at how well the world of Pokmon was brought to life, but the story seemed to just rush from one setpiece to another without really drawing me in. Ranking this against movies I've seen over the past year I'd put this a tiny smidge above Rogue One and a slight bit below Captain Marvel.

That's fair. Still easily the best video game movie ever though.
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Going to see four movies tomorrow...Ma, Godzilla, Rocketman, Shadow. I wonder if I can last, don't think I've ever watched this many movies in a single day.
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I feel as if I've been thinking about Africa a fair bit more than usual since watching Black Panther. Perhaps not helped by a brief visit to the National Museum of Natural History which has an African cultures exhibit.
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Survived my four movie marathon. That was a long but rewarding experience.

Current feeling is:
Ma: 2.5 or 3 stars
Godzilla: King of the Monsters: 2 stars
Rocketman: 4 stars
Shadow: 3.5 or 4 stars

Guess I'll figure out my final feelings with my reviews tomorrow.
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watched The Lego Movie 2

I loved the first and this had a lot of what I loved about the first in it, but just fell a little short for me, mostly because of repetitive and often unfunny jokes, the worst of which being the Dinosaur speak, the banana falling over, everything with Will Ferrell/Maya Rudolph, and, even though it's only brief, Batman flossing (seriously, having a character floss is the laziest, least funny joke you can write and it's in every goddamn movie).

The creativity and design of everything is still great though, and I definitely had a few laugh-out-loud moments
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Ma looked interesting to me so 3 stars sounds pretty good

4 stars for rocketman actually sounds like its a bit weaker than I expected.
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Hearing all these poor receptions for Godzilla and I'm still feeling pretty confident I'll like it. I've seen a majority of the Godzilla movies and the human element sucks more often than not. Give me trashy monster fights with great production value and I'll be happy.
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Just got back from Godzilla

Dope as fuck, could have used less humans but thats true of all Godzilla movies. This group of humans wasnt great but they were definitely better than a lot of others, and that definitely includes 2014 Godzilla

If they had gotten Bryan Cranston to be the boring dad in this one I think it would have been perfect

Right now its like a B or B+
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ScareChan posted...

Ma looked interesting to me so 3 stars sounds pretty good

4 stars for rocketman actually sounds like its a bit weaker than I expected.

4 stars for me is in my "highly recommended" zone, so that number means I really liked it.

I'm considering adjusting my star ratings a bit; the problem is I use a 1-10 scale with decimal places for my actual ratings, and I realized I had to make a strange conversion. Right now, I translate it as:
5 star: 9.0-10
4.5 star: 8.5-8.9
4 star: 8.0-8.4
3.5 star: 7.0-7.9
3 star: 6.0-6.9
And so on

So 4.0 and 4.5 is basically me splitting up my "great" films into two sections since I overall have more 4 star plus films than those below. But I think I really just need to make my scale a 0 to 10 scale and do some minor adjustments.

So what I'm trying to say is 4 stars from me signals a film I adored and I might be making a change soon that bumps most of them up to a 4.5 (and many of my 3.5 stars to 4). I use an 8 or higher score to signal a film's worthiness of being considered for the all-time top 1000 list I update each year.
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Ma:
https://letterboxd.com/foolfantastic/film/ma-2019/

Quick thoughts: dumb fun, but gosh, there were a lot of places it could have been better...or dumber! It isn't quite dumb enough to be a successful midnight movie-type but also nowhere near smart enough to be an effective horror

Godzilla:
https://letterboxd.com/foolfantastic/film/godzilla-king-of-the-monsters-2019/

Quick thoughts: Just meh; action isn't framed well enough to be interesting, story is really poorly conceived
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Booksmart is so damn funny. Best comedy I've seen in a while.
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Godzilla sucked

whats wrong with you guys
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Godzilla was 100% a completely legit Godzilla movie, from the pacing and tone to the human/monster balance and even the general quality of the writing

and that's why so many people hate it. I loved it though because it was exactly what I was hoping for - though I could honestly still stand for more focus on the fights. Hilarious to see so many critics saying there's too much monster.
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Just saw Booksmart. Great movie, definitely recommend it.
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Saw Rocketman last night and loved it. Really captured the feel of Elton John's music more than most musician biopics do, and treated it more like a musical than a biography, sort of like The Greatest Showman did (but also not as "full musical" as that)
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Going back to an older post, I have decided to make my own list of 100 movies to see from 2017 and 2018; I wanted to get a mix of critic's choices, Academy stuff, audience favorites, and more popular (though not necessarily liked) films. I should figure out a way to determine the big foreign films of each year outside of those categories...should probably make a list of the countries with the biggest industries and make sure they have a reasonable amount of representation. All my sources are very Western-focused.

Anyway, here's what I came up with:
https://letterboxd.com/foolfantastic/list/2017-key-films/
https://letterboxd.com/foolfantastic/list/2018-key-films/

I've watched 36 of the 2017 list and 39 of 2018. I'm dreading stuff like The Boss Baby (couldn't the Academy have just had 3 animated movie nominations that year instead?), but it should be fun to explore. I have a bad habit of sticking almost exclusively to art films and I think it will be good to check out some lighter fare; if they don't tend to leave as much of an impact, they at least tend to be easier to digest.
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I'm at 40 for 2017 and 45 for 2018 (still not sure why Maniac is listed as a movie when it's a miniseries)

thought it'd be higher for 2018 tbh
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oh same for Sharp Objects and Big Little Lies

like some of these are just very clearly tv shows

Big Little Lies is getting a 2nd season this week
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Mini-series exist in this weird state where they are TV shows but critics treat them like movies too. And Big Little Lies started as a mini-series but is now getting expanded...

I think it's due to an era where a bunch of foreign filmmakers were making gigantic movies that ended up being released as mini-series elsewhere, and once you include one, where do you draw the line? This seems to have gotten reignited with Twin Peaks: The Return, with quite a few critics featuring it on Best Movies of 2017 lists.

I outright excluded The Handmaid's Tale which qualified due to critics; that one isn't even a mini-series. The entirety of The Wire and the original run of Twin Peaks would also qualify for their years, which is dumb. But I'm fine enough including mini-series, as I feel many also get ignored when discussing television.
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Or, alternatively, I view mini-series as the middle ground for stories that are too long for standard theatrical releases while still being a singular, limited thing. I think they straddle the line between two mediums that are artistically very similar.

I wonder how many 'Best Film' lists Chernobyl will land on this year.
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I mean technically all of Fargo and American Horror Story are also miniseries

I'm fine if it's a "miniseries" like the 1990 It, where it's like a 4 hour movie aired over two nights

but like Maniac is a 10-episode, roughly 10ish hour series that was clearly never intended to be a movie
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Funny enough IIRC the new run of Twin Peaks actually *was* written and shot as a single 18-hour film and was then broken up into episodes after the fact.
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CasanovaZelos posted...

Or, alternatively, I view mini-series as the middle ground for stories that are too long for standard theatrical releases while still being a singular, limited thing. I think they straddle the line between two mediums that are artistically very similar.

see, I feel like that perspective relies on the assumption that television series can't be singular, limited things. Some of the best shows out there are ones that tell one specific, limited story.
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btw this isn't to criticize your lists, just the fact that they listed on letterboxd at all
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Yeah, it's a mess. I could just say 'films and mini-series,' I guess, but it's a personal project and I know mini-series end up being included so no need to mark that down for myself.

I also think the individual seasons of Fargo and AHS might as well be discussed in such a vein, along with individual episodes of Black Mirror. But I'm also of the mindset that television and cinema are mediums stemming from the same art form and they both should be considered in relation to one another; anything that blurs the line might as well be treated as both.
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My real problem with including a lot of these mini-series is that a lot are only qualifying through just one of my criteria, namely the fan rating one; Twin Peaks: The Return at least meets two, but most of these barely squeak by for inclusion. I could chalk it up to the idea that only fans are going out of their way to even check to see if these mini-series are included on the site and therefore their ratings are inflated...
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for what it's worth Maniac is really, really good
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Johnbobb posted...

for what it's worth Maniac is really, really good

This probably hits the real point; I'd rather have a few good mini-series than the next couple films that just happen to be popular, even if their eligibility is debatable.
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Just watched Fighting with my Family

Didn't blow me away. The cliches got to be hard to handle, especially the "freak" stuff and the monologue at the end that never actually happened but Florence Pugh was excellent and the movie was ultimately just relaly enjoyable
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Man, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a weird movie...
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I thought it was actually really really good. Like I'd put it on about the same level as the first Star Wars film and The Dark Knight.
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anyone here have A-List? I can imagine getting a good value out of it in certain months but in others I'm either way too busy or there just aren't enough movies I want to see. Has it been worth it so far for anyone here?
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It has been for me, but I've also been going to two movies a week...
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I would be getting value out of it

...If there was an AMC writing 50 miles of me
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LinkMarioSamus posted...

I thought it was actually really really good. Like I'd put it on about the same level as the first Star Wars film and The Dark Knight.

It's good, just really weird lol. The first 3rdish if the movie is like a completely different movie than the rest. It's like a creepy almost horror movie in the first part.
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You probably shouldn't expect anything less from a film conceived by Stanley Kubrick.
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I'm so sick of the MIBI trailer, I just left the theater just so I wouldn't have to see it a 10th time

It looks fucking awful and like every time it comes on I always see some kid go on his phone and nobody laughs at the terrible jokes

I really love MIB and Tessa Thompson is bar so it's heartbreaking to see
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ZenOfThunder posted...

anyone here have A-List? I can imagine getting a good value out of it in certain months but in others I'm either way too busy or there just aren't enough movies I want to see. Has it been worth it so far for anyone here?

I got it this month because there's a ton of stuff I want to see and the value is bananas. For context, the subscription was less than a single Atmos ticket for Godzilla and it gives you three movies a week of any screening type you want. So you can theoretically get like 12 times what the money was worth if you go to the theater regularly.
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Going back to that earlier discussion, if you want something that really walks the line between movie and series, Netflix recently put up the extended version of the Hateful Eight (which was released as as a movie in theaters and nomianted for several Oscars) as a 4-part miniseries.

Just the Extended Cut, the regular cut is still on there as a film
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Thanks for your A-List responses guys

I just got back from Brightburn, if anyone still wants opinions on that, here they are (with lots of spoilers I guess):

I worked at a comic book store for 6 years and in that time we had a customer named Glenn who would come in twice weekly. You know a Glenn: He's always wearing shorts, even in the winter, he has a chain wallet, a Megadeth T-Shirt and one of those hats only old people wear.

Glenn would often try to strike up conversation with us. He was very obviously a lonely guy. Glenn was private but over 6 years I got glimpses into his life: He had some medical problems and his strange attitude was off-putting to some people. The strange attitude would lead to conversation starters such as:

"Dude, wouldn't it be rockin' if Spider-Man was actually, like, a Spider, and he cocooned and ate people?"

When he was told he was going against the core of the character, Glenn would double down. He didn't care if he had a bad idea, he was just happy he had you in a conversation.

Glenn would love Brightburn. Hell, if Glenn were the shadow writer for Brightburn, I wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out Brightburn was actually about Glenn in some other reality.

My point here is: Brightburn is a movie every comic nerd has discussed already. "What if Superman were evil?" Does that make it bad? Not necessarily.

What does that make Brightburn then? Is it some fantasy wish fulfillment? Well, I'm not sure, because I don't think Brightburn is sure.

That movie is well structured, well shot and even well acted. But there's something missing there. Whether it's Brandon, the main character, feeling like he skipped a few beats to get from "shy, bullied kid" to "murdering alien machine" or the brutal execution scenes that tried to make the movie more than it needed to be.

Brightburn was in desperate need for a possible redemption arc for Brandon. We see him bullied once and then his parents tell him "No" and after that he finds out he has super powers and immediately becomes a murderous sociopath. Was it the alien ship his family keeps in the barn out back telling him to do this? Maybe. It's not clear. It seems to me it was just a kid who snapped once given an ounce of power.

The movie really doesn't play with any internal struggle at all and it suffers for that. Once it gets going Brightburn doesn't really stop. Brandon goes on a rampage, his parents struggle with their new reality and... that's it, I guess.

There was a Spider-Man one-shot that tied into the first Spider-Verse arc. It was around 20 pages and was the issue unfortunately sandwiched in between the first appearances of Spider-Gwen and Peni Parker SP//DR. "I Dated A Teenage Spider" was a retelling of Spider-Man's origin, only in this universe Aunt May is dead and Uncle Ben beats young Peter Parker with his belt.

So in this brief 20 pages, when Peter turns into a Spider-Monster and eats Uncle Ben and lays eggs inside Mary Jane, you completely understand his brief arc.

Brightburn needed more of that. Superman turned out to be Superman because his adoptive parents loved him. Brightburn... Has the same exact set-up, just with vastly different results. If played differently, this movie could have been great, but as it stands, Brightburn is just an edgy Glenn wank-fest come to life.

tl;dr: It's not great but it's not awful. It could have been so much more.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

tl;dr: It's not great but it's not awful. It could have been so much more.

I hate when you see something and your mind writes a better story than what you see
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I think a big problem with Brightburn is that "what if X character were evil" is like the #1 What If/Elseworld story and there's so many of them and while it's a mixed bag of results there are definitely good ones that already exist with more nuance in 20 pages than Brightburn had in its entire runtime.
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Rocketman was surprisingly good, especially considering it had the same director as Bohemian Rhapsody, which I thought was very cookie-cutter. He actually decided to have fun this time.
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Waluigi1 posted...

That's fair. Still easily the best video game movie ever though.

I would argue the first Silent Hill is better
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