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[Salt-Man Z]

 QuickTidal, on 27 November 2017 - 06:09 PM, said:

ALIEN 4 (RESSURECTION) is actually really good for most of its runtime, and I'd argue worth watching.

Alien Resurrection lost me when Dan Hedaya gets the back of his skull alien-tongue-punched, then reaches back, pulls a piece of brain out and stares it dumbly before dying.

[worry]

I watched Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Not bad! It's seriously jam-packed with ideas, at least visually and world-building, and the broad strokes of the story are pretty good even though there are a few big cliches in there. I like Dane DeHaan, but he's miscast here as a lovable rogue, like a young Tom Cruise role -- it never fits but he doesn't embarrass himself. The dialogue is occasionally awful, but that's Luc Besson for ya! It's a bit overlong and there are saggy moments (especially as it cuts back to a military control center time and again), but all in all I liked it. Never great, but usually pretty good.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

 worry, on 28 November 2017 - 08:13 PM, said:

I watched Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Not bad! It's seriously jam-packed with ideas, at least visually and world-building, and the broad strokes of the story are pretty good even though there are a few big cliches in there. I like Dane DeHaan, but he's miscast here as a lovable rogue, like a young Tom Cruise role -- it never fits but he doesn't embarrass himself. The dialogue is occasionally awful, but that's Luc Besson for ya! It's a bit overlong and there are saggy moments (especially as it cuts back to a military control center time and again), but all in all I liked it. Never great, but usually pretty good.

The visuals and worldbuilding were outstanding. The plotting and acting...not so much.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 29 November 2017 - 11:51 AM

[QuickTidal]

 worry, on 28 November 2017 - 08:13 PM, said:

I watched Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Not bad! It's seriously jam-packed with ideas, at least visually and world-building, and the broad strokes of the story are pretty good even though there are a few big cliches in there. I like Dane DeHaan, but he's miscast here as a lovable rogue, like a young Tom Cruise role -- it never fits but he doesn't embarrass himself. The dialogue is occasionally awful, but that's Luc Besson for ya! It's a bit overlong and there are saggy moments (especially as it cuts back to a military control center time and again), but all in all I liked it. Never great, but usually pretty good.

That entire Virtual Market sequence is as good (if not better) than anything in THE FIFTH ELEMENT. The rest of the film was only okay.

[worry]

I dunno, I thought it was generally better than okay...just had some persistent flaws as well. The pre-credits first contact montage was really heartening, and the whole first Mul planet sequence was like everything Avatar did but better and in 10 minutes. Once the main plot kicks in things get lumpy, but the movie stays entertaining and inventive.

Anyway, I watched Prometheus. I haven't read any posts here about it, but my general sense is that it's remarkably divisive, like more so than the average movie. I liked it.

Spoiler

It's very good for most of its run. It kind of frays like immediately after the C-section scene (which itself is awesome), insofar as motivations are concerned. Like Shaw has this whole surgery, very much one she has to fight for against people (and David) who are clearly manipulating her and killed her lover, but she never has any strong reaction to any of that. Like there's no sense whatsoever that she feels betrayed by the expedition, only that she wants the same answers she came to get in the first place. I'm not even sure why Weyland's presence, or that he was still alive, are kept secret, since Shaw and Holloway are the only two people who aren't hired guns. As presented, there's literally no way they would have refused to come even if they knew there was a Fountain of Youth motivation for the journey. What's so sinister about that anyway? I mean once David starts experimenting on Holloway, that's sinister, but it's an audible call based on new info. None of the other secrets had to be secrets.

Anyway, aside from all that, even the final third of the movie remains pretty compelling. The revelation about what this place was and why it existed were satisfying. The Engineer's immediate, no-holds-barred antipathy to the humans was awesome and unexpected. The Engineer vs the squid was tight. The rolling space ship was a great action sequence. The movie had Benedict Wong in it. I'm more or less happy with the final product.

[QuickTidal]

 worry, on 29 November 2017 - 08:26 PM, said:

I dunno, I thought it was generally better than okay...just had some persistent flaws as well. The pre-credits first contact montage was really heartening, and the whole first Mul planet sequence was like everything Avatar did but better and in 10 minutes. Once the main plot kicks in things get lumpy, but the movie stays entertaining and inventive.

Anyway, I watched Prometheus. I haven't read any posts here about it, but my general sense is that it's remarkably divisive, like more so than the average movie. I liked it.

Spoiler

It's very good for most of its run. It kind of frays like immediately after the C-section scene (which itself is awesome), insofar as motivations are concerned. Like Shaw has this whole surgery, very much one she has to fight for against people (and David) who are clearly manipulating her and killed her lover, but she never has any strong reaction to any of that. Like there's no sense whatsoever that she feels betrayed by the expedition, only that she wants the same answers she came to get in the first place. I'm not even sure why Weyland's presence, or that he was still alive, are kept secret, since Shaw and Holloway are the only two people who aren't hired guns. As presented, there's literally no way they would have refused to come even if they knew there was a Fountain of Youth motivation for the journey. What's so sinister about that anyway? I mean once David starts experimenting on Holloway, that's sinister, but it's an audible call based on new info. None of the other secrets had to be secrets.

Anyway, aside from all that, even the final third of the movie remains pretty compelling. The revelation about what this place was and why it existed were satisfying. The Engineer's immediate, no-holds-barred antipathy to the humans was awesome and unexpected. The Engineer vs the squid was tight. The rolling space ship was a great action sequence. The movie had Benedict Wong in it. I'm more or less happy with the final product.

Cool, I like it too. And you'll like COVENANT if you liked PROMETHEUS.

[worry]

Okay, watched Alien: Covenant and thought it was pretty good.

Spoiler

Not a masterpiece or anything, but It was what a good boilerplate Alien movie should be. These are pretty formulaic movies still, after all, even though we're in the prequel/mythos section in the franchise. But like, you make the characters decent enough and the action impactful, you add a few new bits of information about the aliens, and you don't screw up anything too bad along the way, and it's bound to be at least a pretty good monster movie. I guess I could complain about the David/Walter switch being obvious, but no biggie. It was held long enough to be a believable surprise to the other characters, if not the audience.

Also it was great to see the technology catch up to how a xenomorph can move and fight. Their tails are gnarly.

[Cause]

Covenant

Spoiler

Covenant left me unsatisfied.

I don't think they explore Davids motivation enough. He wants to wipe out humanity his creators, because he wants to be free to create? I'm not even sure if that is his motivation. Why kill the engineers? There was one seen that was possibly meant to be insightful where David names the wrong poet as the author of Ozymandias and Walter say one mistake can lead to chaos in a system. Is this meant to be a clue that David's programming is just corrupted and that he is insane?

Why do the engineers come across as a tribe of primitives? Also they seemed shorter? The internet tells me they are engineers but they did not look it

David creating the true Xenomorphs makes no sense as near as I can tell I alien lore. How did the first alien arrive in Alien 1? It was in an engineers space ship. Don't the predators hunt the alines for centuries? Is that regarded as cannon or just crossover fun?

This post has been edited by Cause: 01 December 2017 - 09:06 AM

[QuickTidal]

 Cause, on 01 December 2017 - 09:04 AM, said:

Covenant

Spoiler

Covenant left me unsatisfied.

I don't think they explore Davids motivation enough. He wants to wipe out humanity his creators, because he wants to be free to create? I'm not even sure if that is his motivation. Why kill the engineers? There was one seen that was possibly meant to be insightful where David names the wrong poet as the author of Ozymandias and Walter say one mistake can lead to chaos in a system. Is this meant to be a clue that David's programming is just corrupted and that he is insane?

Why do the engineers come across as a tribe of primitives? Also they seemed shorter? The internet tells me they are engineers but they did not look it

David creating the true Xenomorphs makes no sense as near as I can tell I alien lore. How did the first alien arrive in Alien 1? It was in an engineers space ship. Don't the predators hunt the alines for centuries? Is that regarded as cannon or just crossover fun?

Spoiler

David has a SEVERE god complex, to a level that would stun even his own creator (Peter Weyland). And he hated humans. He needs no further reason than that. He kills the Engineers because he hates them too, since they made humans and David finds humans flawed, so clearly their masters/creators are also flawed...whch I love because David cannot see that he being the child of humans is ALSO flawed. He doesn't see that. He thinks he's learned everything.

Yes, David is completely insane. There is a reason his model was taken off the market. He was the first, almost the prototype. They hadn't yet perfected the synthetic models that would become Walter and beyond (not counting Ash). David's programming is VERY corrupt, and becomes more corrupt as the years pass. A decade alone on a planet you yourself genocided...would only serve to help that insanity. But yeah, David's programming was fucked before he even boarded the Prometheus. That's what the opening of COVENANT with Weyland and David pre-Prometheus mission was meant to illustrate. That David has been long gone a while, and Weyland was simply too blinded by his own drive (and HIS god complex) to see it.

Ah, you mean the different between the "space jockeys & world-seed Engineers" of PROMETHEUS and the actual "makers" Engineers on their planet? Turns out that (and this isn't explained in the movie, but was explained elsewhere by Ridley) the planet form the first film is a Weapons Lab Outpost, stocked with the "warrior" breed of the species...who were "made" just like humans. Same deal with the ones from the seeding of our world. They are larger, and almost more sculpted and weird looking. You'll notice in comparison that the maker Engineers in COVENANT who die, look basically like us but with a few exaggerated features, but are still about our height ect. The warrior breed were genetically engineered for long space journeys and such.

This bit is in the novel but not the same in the movie. In the book David does not create the xenomorphs. He is RE-CREATING the egg and xenomorph notion that the Engineers already had created based on a dead one that he took from the Engineer base. I heard that Ridley changed this after the fact to indicate that David DID create the xeno's....so thats why it seems muddled in the film. Now, as to how this lines up with ALIEN. COVENANT takes place in 2104, while ALIEN doesn't occur until 2122. That's 18 years worth of time to see what David gets up to next. Getting his alien eggs onto a derelict Engineer ship in that timeframe is totally doable. Remember that David is now also in charge of the Covenant, with Tennessee and Daniels asleep in their stasis pods and the ship still on course for the planet Origae-6. We don't know what David will get up to now that he's in full control. I believe it's explicit in the book that because of the success David had using Shaw as the host/mother of his xenomorph eggs, he realized that Daniels is the key to future successes with her female biology. And I'm fairly certain he wants to use her to create his Alien Queen...which makes the species he created be self-sustaining, which I imagine is his ultimate goal. And since Ridley says that the third film in the trilogy will be about David as well, I think perhaps we can expect that he does create the Queen and she creates the eggs that inevitably end up on the Engineer ship form ALIEN that the Nostromo resounds to the distress call from.

Also, and this is important. Bear in mind that the xenomorphs that David has so far created, don't have any metal in them like their ALIEN, ALIENS, ALIEN3 and 4 counterparts do. They are entirely biological material at that point. I have a sneaky suspicion that sometime in the next 18 years, that a synthetic (whether it's David himself, or another synth) is somehow introduced into their biology to make up the metal portion.

And full disclosure, I FULLY feel like the "company" of Weyland-Yutani that exists in 1979's ALIEN and corrupts Ash's programming to go rogue...is run by David. I think that's where Ridley is heading with all this.

The Predator stuff isn't canon.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 01 December 2017 - 02:17 PM

[QuickTidal]

Saw THOR RAGNAROK finally over the weekend. Utterly phenomenal from start to finish. I would be more than happy if Taika Waititi and James Gunn were in charge of the MCU after AVENGER: IW. I like their tone of voice for the universe.

Also, Taika's on screen role as Korg is probably the BEST non-main character in the MCU to date. I adored every time he was on screen.

I full-on belly laughed at him kicking the wall with a "Piss off ghost!" after Loki disappeared.

Just a great, great film with a sensibility to know how to play every scene.

And now I have to go off and find the other stuff that Waititi has made!

[worry]

Eagle vs. Shark is some indie quirk in the post-Napoleon Dynamite sense but it's one of the better ones in that subgenre. I never saw Hunt for the Wilderpeople but I've only heard good things.

But I'm most surprised you haven't seen What We Do In the Shadows! Mockumentary may seem like a dead formula, the way TV has run it into the ground post-The Office and found footage horror self-immolated, but this movie is fantastic. Hilarious, horrific, and pretty original even though its influences are clear. Also it's just fun to watch.

[QuickTidal]

 worry, on 05 December 2017 - 08:22 PM, said:

Eagle vs. Shark is some indie quirk in the post-Napoleon Dynamite sense but it's one of the better ones in that subgenre. I never saw Hunt for the Wilderpeople but I've only heard good things.

But I'm most surprised you haven't seen What We Do In the Shadows! Mockumentary may seem like a dead formula, the way TV has run it into the ground post-The Office and found footage horror self-immolated, but this movie is fantastic. Hilarious, horrific, and pretty original even though its influences are clear. Also it's just fun to watch.

Cool. Yeah, I have a buddy who keeps recommending WWDITS to me, and I just never got around to it yet. It's on Netflix so I can check it out now fairly easily

I really want to see HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE as well.

Basically Taika Waititi made me into a fan with how amazingly well he handled a THOR movie.

[Brujah]

 QuickTidal, on 05 December 2017 - 06:57 PM, said:

Saw THOR RAGNAROK finally over the weekend. Utterly phenomenal from start to finish. I would be more than happy if Taika Waititi and James Gunn were in charge of the MCU after AVENGER: IW. I like their tone of voice for the universe.

Also, Taika's on screen role as Korg is probably the BEST non-main character in the MCU to date. I adored every time he was on screen.

I full-on belly laughed at him kicking the wall with a "Piss off ghost!" after Loki disappeared.

Just a great, great film with a sensibility to know how to play every scene.

And now I have to go off and find the other stuff that Waititi has made!

Almost went alone last night for the 7:20pm showing, but I lingered too long in Books-a-million. Did buy Emperor of Thorns, though.

[Abyss]

Really need to see RAGNAROK while its still on big screen.




Astounding how many of these I never heard about... https://io9.gizmodo....-but-1821021794 ...some possibly good stuff here.

[QuickTidal]

 Abyss, on 06 December 2017 - 06:30 PM, said:

Really need to see RAGNAROK while its still on big screen.

You ABSOLUTELY do. Highest possible recommendation.

[polishgenius]

 Abyss, on 06 December 2017 - 06:30 PM, said:

Astounding how many of these I never heard about... https://io9.gizmodo....-but-1821021794 ...some possibly good stuff here.

Oddly, although I've not yet seen any (several are on the list), I'd heard of every single one of those... except for the Polish one.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

 Abyss, on 06 December 2017 - 06:30 PM, said:

Really need to see RAGNAROK while its still on big screen.




Astounding how many of these I never heard about... https://io9.gizmodo....-but-1821021794 ...some possibly good stuff here.

Lowest of the low: that blog post mentions JJ Abrams is remaking Your Name..

[QuickTidal]

Last night watched KONG: SKULL ISLAND. It was fun. I quite enjoyed it. I would argue that Sam Jackson's character trajectory was a LITTLE convoluted, but overall the whole "Vietnam commander who doesn't want war to stop" kind of solves that problem to an extent. And Tom Hiddleston KIND of doesn't fit the role he played...but other than minor issues, I had blast and will see any "Monarch" films that come out next for sure.

Also watched WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS and loved it. Funny, clever, and enjoyable throughout. The whole opening with Viago waking up his flatmates had me in stitches and made me realize I was in for a treat! Great, great film! Up next in the Taika Waititi filmography HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE!

[Tiste Simeon]

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is an utter delight and so funny (Taika has a cameo in that too and it has me roaring with laughter!)