[Abyss]

worry, on 15 March 2025 - 08:29 PM, said:

The Electric State: Decent idea, stacked cast, cool concepts, flawless CGI...all in service of one of the laziest most lifeless scripts in (my) recent memory. If this were a game or a series, it would have time to develop any of the emotions, relationships, or stakes this movie hints at. Both Station 11 and Fallout come to mind as far superior TV takes in similar territory. Even then it'd need better writing as this was entirely incompetent.


Anyway, in brighter news...I watched all four Bridget Jones movies. I hadn't seen the first or second one since they came out, and never caught the third one. Happy to report the first one is still a classic, the second and third ones are fun follow-ups even if they're not quite as solid, and the fourth one...might be my favorite of the bunch? It grounded things again after 2-3 had their broader comedy moments, and injected a little more gravitas while still being very funny, romantic, silly, and sexy. Chiwetel Ejiofor is more ripped than I expected. It's good to see Renee Zellweger again, just in general, she's so good at this. I don't know how this ran outside the U.S. but here it went straight to streaming (Peacock) and it really deserved to be in theaters. If this is the final film in the series, they did it right.
...

I was pleasantly surprised at 4, managed to maintain the spirit of the series while taking it to surprisingly mature territory. We were entertained.
Pretty sure it went direct to vid here too.

[HoosierDaddy]

Started watching Flow. Stopped after about 25 minutes. I was too anxious for the kitty.

[worry]

@Abyss: Dang, that's a shame. I guess I don't know anything about box office predictions but I think this could have been a moderate hit at least.

@Amphibian: Yeah! I watched The Menu and Triangle of Sadness pretty close to each other. Good double feature, cuz they're tackling broadly similar territory but not overlapping that much.

@HoosierDaddy: I won't spoil anything specific but if you want very broad reassurance --

Spoiler

I had the same concerns in the early stages, and the movie has moments of tension and melancholy, but it's ultimately benevolent rather than sadistic in spirit and doesn't take any sudden too-harsh turns.

[Abyss]

worry, on 18 March 2025 - 12:11 PM, said:

@Abyss: Dang, that's a shame. I guess I don't know anything about box office predictions but I think this could have been a moderate hit at least.
...

Probably wasn't worth the marketing cost vs streaming. Butts-in-seats #s for theaters are already down, the specific Bridget Jones target audience are even less likely to be tempted out to a theatre. Streaming, anyone who liked the first three will watch 4, decent chance they'll rewatch 1-3 as well, new viewers start from 1 and can marathon, are more likely to watch 4. Suspect they crunched those numbers and saw a better return for streaming.

[QuickTidal]

Was Re-watching the 2003 flick TIMELINE....and I maintain this movie is fun, but the weak link is Paul Walker....jeezus...the guy was fine when he was with a bunch of other hokey actors doing hokey lines in the F&F franchise, but in a movie with a tonne of actual GOOD actors (people like Billy Connelly, Gerard Butler, David Thewlis ect.), he sticks out like a sore goddamn thumb and it's SO glaring...but if you had a better actor in his role, it would have been much better because the rest of the film is fine (if a bit predictable) for a summer blockbuster in 2003...man I don;'t know who cast him, but I wonder if they know how much of a mistake it was. It's a Michael Crichton book...this could have been amazing....but he drags it down hard.

[Slow Ben]

Val Kilmer marathon this weekend!

[QuickTidal]

PLUG. DIRECTLY. INTO. VEINS. PLS.

[Tiste Simeon]

Watched a 1995 movie called Strange Days - what a great film with a surprising (for it's time) amount to say about injustice and racial inequality amongst a plot of a "futuristic" tech that could have you experience someone else's life via a neural transmitter placed on someone's head and the inevitable abuse that people used it for.

Holds up well.

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 05 April 2025 - 06:50 AM, said:

Watched a 1995 movie called Strange Days - what a great film with a surprising (for it's time) amount to say about injustice and racial inequality amongst a plot of a "futuristic" tech that could have you experience someone else's life via a neural transmitter placed on someone's head and the inevitable abuse that people used it for.

Holds up well.

One of my all time fave movies. I had the teaser poster in my room, and it is by far my fave Kathryn Bigelow film….plus written by her then-husband James Cameron.

Fun fact: Cameron and Bigelow wanted the tech to be futuristic but not too far gone from the mid_90’s, so they went to Japan and asked Sony what their R&D were working on that was cutting edge and they gave them widescreen TVs to shoot with…they were the first widescreen tvs shown in a piece of media.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 05 April 2025 - 10:42 AM