[Abyss]

stone monkey, on 18 December 2023 - 11:06 PM, said:

Saw Godzilla Minus One over the weekend. I enjoyed it immensely. Definitely a return to the existential dread of the 1954 original; which is an incredibly grim film. Not sure if the guy who took his 2 young kids to see it was really prepared for sitting through a subtitled film about a failed kamikaze pilot with PTSD and Survivor Guilt making his way through life with his found family (literally for one member of it) in the burned out ruins of postwar Tokyo that occasionally contains an utterly terrifying monster that shoots atomic explosions - mushroom clouds and all - from its mouth. Along with a rather pointed take on the Japanese government's cavalier attitude towards spending the lives of its citizens during WW2.
For the nerds out there, they actually use some Operation Crossroads footage (the Able Baker shot, if I'm not mistaken) in the film as the inciting incident (sort of). This is accurate given the film is set in 1947. Films often tend to use footage of the later Castle Bravo test to depict nuclear tests - to be fair it is far more cinematic. The awful fate of the Lucky Dragon's crew (and others) following that test being the inciting incident for the Godzilla films themselves.
And yes, I admit to being unrepentantly nerdy about both nuclear tests and Godzilla movies.

does Godzilla bukkake appear at any point?

[Tiste Simeon]

I look forward to seeing SM on Mastermind with "Nuclear Tests and Godzilla movies" as his specialist subject.

[stone monkey]

Tiste Simeon, on 19 December 2023 - 03:56 PM, said:

I look forward to seeing SM on Mastermind with "Nuclear Tests and Godzilla movies" as his specialist subject.

Weirdly enough, there are things that I'm even more nerdy about than those two.

[stone monkey]

Abyss, on 19 December 2023 - 03:11 PM, said:

does Godzilla bukkake appear at any point?

Oddly enough, no... although Tokyo does get a good spraying from him.

[Tiste Simeon]

stone monkey, on 19 December 2023 - 09:30 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 19 December 2023 - 03:56 PM, said:

I look forward to seeing SM on Mastermind with "Nuclear Tests and Godzilla movies" as his specialist subject.

Weirdly enough, there are things that I'm even more nerdy about than those two.

I know you... And I believe this!

[Tsundoku]

Rebel Moon (Part 1, the something or other I can't give a fuck about) on Netflix. Oh wow, what a steaming pile of shit.

It's like an obsessive Zack Snyder fan doing their level best to take all the worst aspects of Zack Snyder's storytelling and dial them up to 12 (so very beyond 11), in order to out Zack Snyder Zack Snyder.

But it's Zack Snyder himself.

I'm sure you will read a lot of far better written and well-credentialled diatribes critiques than mine regarding this film. Believe them. For once 23% on RT is the critics being ... generous.
Normally I prefer the audience reviews but wow, this time I'm on the side of the critics. So sue me.

I mean, I knew it was a Zack Snyder production, but I had hopes it would be moderated and be more Justice League Snyder Cut than ... well, whatever epithet you want to give this.

I'd read earlier it was his proposed take on Star Wars which was rejected and so he set it in his own universe, and I guess I have to eat some humble pie and thank whatever lucid moment Kathleeen Kennedy or whomever it was that said "No".
This Universe strongly resembles Star Wars. Or the shittier parts of it anyway. Plus throw in some (a lot actually) of Warhammer 40K, Seven Samurai - ironic considering Star Wars was derived from another Kurosawa work The Hidden Fortress, so it's like a circle jerk or Ouroboros of influences. Think "Battle Beyond The Stars" - except crap.

I counted precisely 2 moments I thought were cool and/or pleasantly surprised me. Sum total maybe 3-4 minutes. And that was it. I'm tempted to spoiler them for you now so you don't have to wade through the shit like I did.
But I won't. Because not only am I not a spoiler, I'm also a sadist.

Let's go through the checklist of elements of a movie:

Plot: shit.
Writing: utter word salad diarrhoea. It's like ZS decided no two sentences could comfortably sit next to each other. Cliched dribble at best. Noone has any real reason to join up, they "just do". Dialogue meant to be inspiring or deep just comes off as cringey. It was like a room full of cymbals slowly being dropped on the floor one by one. I think ZS took a bunch of concepts he saw done far better elsewhere many times and threw them all in and figured more-er is better-er! Not so.
Characterisation: non fucking existent except in the previously mentioned 2 examples. Genuinely couldn't give a rat's arse about any of them. One of them is just abs. I imagine that was his entire character bio in the script notes or whatever it is they use. IMDB tells me his name is Staz Nair, but I thought he was Evan Evagora from Star Trek Picard (the Kiwi Romulan) after a course of 'roids, but I was wrong. Ladies, there's your eye candy but just switch on the active noise cancellation headphones.
Fight Choreography: Embarrassing - not even local dramatic society Shakespeare in the park level.
Cinematography: think "really shitty game cut scene" and you'll be halfway there.
Music: like someone just put a generic Wagnerian choir on repeat. Except not that good.
Direction: Ppppppfffftttt think of all the things you hate about ZS and max it out. Slow mo action. Style over substance (and the style isn't that good). Overdone unnecessary CGI. You name it, it's all there in spades.
Logic: absolutely non-existent.
Pacing: Snyder obviously thought JJ Abrams flitting all over the SW universe was just too slow.
CGI: OMFG for the amount of money they spent (I'm seeing estimates of $160-250 million) it looks cheap. Asylum cheap. The effects are shite. Everything looks like a really, really obvious shitty green screen.
Acting: absolute shite. Any previously decent actors knew it was garbage and went with it for the paycheck, and the unknowns were just seriously D-grade. Anthony Hopkins does a droid voice over and intro narration and it's obvious he just walked into the booth, read the lines as written in about 2 minutes, walked out and took his pay and thought nothing more of it. More power to him I guess.
Worldbuilding: just think shot-for-shot Star Wars A New Hope mixed with Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven/Battle Beyond the Stars. That's it.

So much more I could say but suddenly can't be arsed. Just like the cast, really.

I give it 2 overcrowded cliche riddled scripts out of 10. And that's only for those 2 moments I referenced earlier.

The most entertaining thing about this will be the ZS diehards contorting themselves into non-Euclidean shapes to support it, plus all the super lefties drawing some sort of parallel with colonialism and patriarchy and all that shit since everything these days is viewed through that sort of lens.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 22 December 2023 - 01:22 PM

[worry]

At least it's short.

[Abyss]

Tsundoku, on 22 December 2023 - 01:02 PM, said:

Rebel Moon ...Think "Battle Beyond The Stars" - except crap.

TL;DR'd that for you.

"Think "Battle Beyond The Stars" - except crap." needs to meme.

[Tsundoku]

worry, on 22 December 2023 - 01:30 PM, said:

At least it's short.

Unlike my crappy review, eh?

Unfortunately there's another 2 hours or so to go with Part 2: No More Fucks Given.
Which I will most likely end up watching just because I have to know how the plucky little dirt farming village in Idaho Veldt is going to go against those boo hiss baddies!
Who we know are baddies because they are bad. Like worse than cartoonish bad. Old Mate baddie Admiral chewed so much scenery he never need eat fibre again. And there were more sneers than a Royal Family get together at the Met Gala.

I half expected it to go to a sepia tone with train tracks and a piano accompaniment. Pity none of the baddies had a moustache to twirl.

Abyss, on 22 December 2023 - 03:41 PM, said:

Tsundoku, on 22 December 2023 - 01:02 PM, said:

Rebel Moon ...Think "Battle Beyond The Stars" - except crap.

TL;DR'd that for you. "Think "Battle Beyond The Stars" - except crap." needs to meme.

Thanks, the nerd rage just sort of flowed. Like finger diarrhoea. Except not as messy or stinky (though, YMMV).

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 23 December 2023 - 02:58 AM

[worry]

I mean it's less than 4 hours, so that's something. But ZS has already promised a director's cut that's an hour longer and Rated R.

[Primateus]

worry, on 23 December 2023 - 04:17 AM, said:

I mean it's less than 4 hours, so that's something. But ZS has already promised a director's cut that's an hour longer and Rated R.

It's for a goddamned streaming service, and not for theatrical release. Why even bother with a regular cut in the first place? Trying to recreate the hype around his coveted JL Snyder Cut?

[amphibian]

Primateus, on 23 December 2023 - 09:03 AM, said:

worry, on 23 December 2023 - 04:17 AM, said:

I mean it's less than 4 hours, so that's something. But ZS has already promised a director's cut that's an hour longer and Rated R.

It's for a goddamned streaming service, and not for theatrical release. Why even bother with a regular cut in the first place? Trying to recreate the hype around his coveted JL Snyder Cut?

Snyder appears to have made a deal - the execs can get a version they edit out now, while he takes a longer time to make a longer and "more of this" version that will come out.

So it's partially studio chopping this one up and partially an odd deal in which this one makes the holidays money and the other one maybe salvages the movie.

[Mezla PigDog]

We saw Wonka today. It is really very good. They use Hugh Grant Oompa Loompa very wisely. The songs are good. It doesn't feel like an abomination to the source material. The Brit actor cast is an homage to Peep Show.

Speaking of peep shows. My Chalamet lust was already confusing and now the confusion is off the charts. Willy Wonka should not be sexy!

[amphibian]

Rebel Moon was written and directed by people who don't understand what a revolution is.

Even with a studio hack job, the movie underneath doesn't understand what it's trying to do. It can't decide whether it's a movie about a ragtag bunch assembling to fight for something or a Kora/Arthelais palace intrigue story with some revolutionary flavoring.

This is another Sucker Punch.

[polishgenius]

I quite enjoyed Rebel Moon. Obviously it's objectively bad in quite a lot of ways, but I liked it a lot more than total space epic failures like Jupiter Ascending, Avatar, and Rise of Skywalker.


It should be said that the enjoyment was about 50/50 'that was pretty cool' and 'lmao Zach Snyder what are you doing'.




Godzilla Minus One was quite a lot better it has to be said.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 24 December 2023 - 08:25 AM

[Cause]

Rebel moon was a mess thematically and stroywise. It was like watching the IP of 20 franchises try and stand out in film that was trying to copy the styles of several famous films. In the end nothing stood out.

When the imperial guard (who are white Afrikaners! Seriously subtle) deployed the mechanics militarum I almost laughed. This could be a lawsuit.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Feast your eyes upon recycling
symmetries:




Symmetric Quasidoppleganger Perspectives

Quote

Why are so many of the best movies of 2023 set in hospitals? [...]

Passages’ explicit love scenes revived a familiar debate about whether sex belongs in cinema: Do we really need to see all that? For one, I’d argue that it’s important for art to include things that aren’t, strictly speaking, necessary. [...] “We don’t need movies the way we need food or water, but we need them to remind us that being alive is more than drawing breath.” [...] Like the concert films that took over multiplexes in the last quarter of the year, Passages is a movie you watch with your whole self, not just the part above the neckline. Whether I was dancing or getting turned on or wincing at a scalpel cutting through flesh, it felt good to be a person out in the world, part of the ad hoc organism that is an audience

Best movies 2023: Passages was the hot mess I craved. (slate.com)

... exchanging microrganisms with each other to spread to the rest of the world, like memes....

[Mezla PigDog]

I watched The Courier. Benedict Cumberbatch cold war spying based on a true story movie. It was released in 2021. It was good and a nice reminder that it must have been terrifying during the Cold War and maybe although things are shit globally right now, I think they have always been shit. Ordinary people have always muddled through when they are lucky enough not to be in the middle of the awfulness.

[the broken]

The level of hatred Snyder gets is weird. Not many other people get so much 'unfortunately, there's a sequel' talk whenever they make a fairly average film.

[Primateus]

I haven't finished Rebel Moon yet, but what I have seen was overall bad with a smattering of good stuff here and there.

I think its problem is that there's various pretty cool scenes spread out in the movie that has good ideas and look good. But these scenes just do not work well together.

Like with Sucker Punch, though it's worse with Rebel Moon, the sum of the whole is worse than its parts.

Then, of course, there is the acting, which is just pretty bad.