[Aptorian]

Aptorian, on 04 February 2024 - 12:41 PM, said:

Why hasn't anyone posted the new Road House trailer yet?

This looks way better than it has any right to be. Gyllenhaal doesn't have the coolness of Swayze but this looks damn fun. McGreggor is a perfect movie villain.



(Also I liked Rebel Moon)

Just watched this.

There's a lot of little bits I like in Roadhouse 2024, but overall this a terrible movie. Not B-movie material. Just bad. Bad script, bad dialogue, so many missed opportunities.

Gyllenhaals version of Dalton is funny and charming in places, but it's with the hint that there's a violent sociopath hidden behind the smile and dead eyes. Second half of this film nothing he does is laudable from the audiences perspective. He's just bad at his job and apparently a terrible person.

Also I've not seen post-production dubbing this bad in a modern movie. Both Connor McGregor and the Sheriff dude sound like they're Italian actors from a Bud Spencer movie.

[amphibian]

The editing of Road House reboot is off. It's got several sequences that are better in a slightly different order.

Add to that a few things - spending less time with Gyllenhaal (Swayze got significantly more time), toning down the bad guys (monster truck scene from original plus the titties and drugs parties), the morphing of the gay attraction + legendary cowboy stuff (best shown in the shirtless tai chi scene from the original where two dudes watch Patrick Square and get turned on) into the more experiential, murderous Hulk in disguise stuff.

The movie warps into being The Equalizer. McGregor isn't awful, but there's scenes like when he goes to the empty house - it's not right. The camera angles sometimes just aren't the right fits either. Can't see the action clearly.

It's a fine movie, but there's not enough quotable lines and not enough Dalton interacting with the people at the bar.

We're left with a Western samurai drifter movie without a transcendent main character - even though Gyllenhaal is legit good in what he's doing!

[Mezla PigDog]

I saw The Flash movie. I liked it. I know nothing of The Flash other than he runs very fast and the Justice League movie. Are we allowed to like it after that dude was cancelled?

I also finally saw Dune 2. I liked it. Have not read the books. (I might have read the first one many many years ago slightly too young and it's morphed into weird memories.) Question for people who read the books:

Spoiler

How do you get a whole tribe on the back of a worm? I get how the main "rider" gets on the back but how do you get it to slow down so the olds and priestesses in palanquin's get on?

Harkenen fireworks rule.

This post has been edited by Mezla PigDog: 01 April 2024 - 08:59 PM

[amphibian]

Answer because it's not a spoiler: open enough scale gaps all around, which causes the worm to stop. Then board the worm, proceed to destination, and mind the gap.

[Mezla PigDog]

Thanks for the info. I assumed as much. Also assumed Villeneuve decided the visual of them all clambering on and finding a spot to sit down wouldn't be awesome enough.

[amphibian]

I'd spend 5 minutes watching Grandad and Grandma climb aboard a worm and get situated.

[Cause]

Did I somehow sleep through a Godzilla cinematic universe? I get the impression the current movie is part of a much larger series. Should I care?

[worry]

Started with Godzilla in 2014, and the track record has pretty much been putting out an amazing trailer followed by a movie that gets the monsters largely right and the people disastrously wrong (boring/stupid/generic in the way bad summer movies tend to do). And the majority of each film, naturally, focuses on these humans, so it's been a series of high potential --> C- to C+ movies. That includes the new Kong movies (even Skull Island imo). Anyway, I haven't seen the brand new one yet, but it looks substantially goofier than the previous ones, for better or worse.

This post has been edited by worry: 07 April 2024 - 10:08 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

At a time when pernicious iterations of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, are gaining a global foothold both culturally and politically, Monkey Man is a combative gesture toward a different vision. [...]

Spoiler

Monkey Man's setting is a fictional city named Yatana (the Hindi word for torment)[...] The movie includes real news footage from the street-level protests and pogroms of the Modi era—albeit sans specifics, so an unknowing non-Indian viewer could be pardoned for missing it.


[...] the intended real-life counterparts are hardly mistakable. [...] a clear stand-in for [...] the ultra-right-wing [...] chief minister notorious for his Islamophobic speechifying, calls for population control, and weaponization of cops against protesters and journalists. [...] resemblances to the many instances of Hindu nationalist vigilantes entering myriad villages and tribal collectives, often by force, to terrorize residents [...] the chant-heavy, bloodthirsty rallies [...] are hardly distinguishable from Indian political rallies these days.


[...] the representations of Hinduism encompass such a wide range [...] that it seems apparent Patel is taking religious fundamentalism as a whole to task. And there are even smaller allusions to the most disturbing impacts of Hindutva

Monkey Man: The controversy behind Dev Patel's compelling new movie. (slate.com)

Netflix decided not to release it because it was too obviously critical of Hindutva and Modi's BJP... and the movie was effectively forced to change some of the more blatant references (BJP saffron to red, for example).

[Traveller]

worry, on 07 April 2024 - 10:07 PM, said:

Started with Godzilla in 2014, and the track record has pretty much been putting out an amazing trailer followed by a movie that gets the monsters largely right and the people disastrously wrong (boring/stupid/generic in the way bad summer movies tend to do). And the majority of each film, naturally, focuses on these humans, so it's been a series of high potential --> C- to C+ movies. That includes the new Kong movies (even Skull Island imo). Anyway, I haven't seen the brand new one yet, but it looks substantially goofier than the previous ones, for better or worse.

The Monarch series on appletv is the opposite - a human story set around the monsters, which ties the legendary G movies and Kong ones together quite nicely.

The latest movie certainly goes down the showa era route of Godzilla movies with a goofier tone, but the movie was surprisingly much better than the trailer - it was dumb, but a lot of fun.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 12 April 2024 - 12:38 PM

[worry]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the show but have heard good things.

[Slow Ben]

Traveller, on 12 April 2024 - 12:37 PM, said:

The latest movie certainly goes down the showa era route of Godzilla movies with a goofier tone, but the movie was surprisingly much better than the trailer - it was dumb, but a lot of fun.

This is accurate. The kids loves it.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Watched The Roadhouse (while of course electrocuting my abs). Almost made me feel nostalgic for headbutts in MMA (MMMAGA---Make MMA Great Again, and toss Trump in there to get headbutted to death!). Overall, meh. There were maybe two witty parts. It was mildly educational wrt body language. Didn't like Gyllenhal's voice or McGregor's. Incidentally, the idea that some random, somewhat muscular tough guy who's a natural welterweight at most would pose such problems for a UFC champion---even with the occasional headbutt or slamming-head-into-wall-or-whatever---is absurd, but of course so is most of the plot; not really an issue though, since suspension of disbelief is assumed. Also, I doubt that's really Gyllenhal's ab routine, though I do like tossing in the one-arm planks.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 13 April 2024 - 06:09 PM

[worry]

Watched The Holdovers, and I liked it a lot. I didn't know that much about it, only some of the accolades and awards, and that Paul Giamatti plays a curmudgeon teacher at a private boarding school. I thought it was going to be a lot meaner than it is. Alexander Payne made Election, which I love but is one of the more cynical high school movies ever made. This one's like the inverse of that: instead of a few put-together-on-the-surface people making each other steadily worse, it's a few flawed/damaged people making each other better. There's a real strong 'found family' element to it, which I can imagine appealing to a board of SFF readers. I wouldn't say it's mind-blowing, there's a very deliberate throwback feeling to it, but it's very engaging and even heartwarming. I'd give it a good 4 stars out of 5.

[Tsundoku]

Trailer looks interesting. But ... I've been hurt before.

[worry]

Late Night With the Devil -- pretty good. Has a few cheats with its 'all footage' conceit, had some obvious budget constraints, and could have gone harder in the finale, but overall still pretty solid. A lot of care went into it for sure.