Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
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Originally Posted by lisarea
I haven't seen it since it came out, so I'm trying to remember specifics, but one major takeaway I always get from his movies is that they're supposed to be like that, I think. Like, you're supposed to be kind of discombobulated and confused and not sure what you just saw or why. And that humans are strange, stupid, cruel animals.
His movies are ones where I always like them much better a day or two after I see them. Not like a bad thing, just more a delayed reaction. I think because of the disorientation maybe. I think it took me at least a week before I liked Mr. Lonely, but then I really liked it.
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Originally Posted by Stormlight
Interesting. Now I’ll definitely give it another chance.
Instead I watched Trash Humpers. I mean, I think I liked it a bit better than Beach Bum but ...
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Oh no.
I wouldn't have necessarily recommended Trash Humpers to someone who was having a hard time with Beach Bum, but I respect your decision to take the make it make it make it don't fake it road to Harmony Korine's catalog.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Host 2020 (on Shudder)
Six friends think it might be fun to have a seance for their isolation Zoom get-together. The seance goes wrong and they start getting spooked by a malevolent spirit.
It's not a new concept (Unfriended did something similar a while back), but it was tense, scary and fun. The actors really sell it, even when the special effects are cheesy.
The novelty of it is that it's very much of its time. It's set during the pandemic and they're all in isolation, and this is their friendly get-together. There are particular features of video chats which are used to amusing effect, like a video background or stupid facial overlays. I wonder how it will look a few years from now?
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
I see Avengers: End game is already here once, so here it is again.
Finally got around to seeing this, and I was bored, yet there was nothing horrible about it, it was the perfectly average movie it needed to be to make sure the juggernaut franchise keeps rolling and nothing more.
It was utterly predictable. I predicted, As soon as I saw they had
made an Iron Man style shape shifting gauntlet that in the final battle Tony would get his suit damaged enough to lose an armored hand, to come up against Thanos wielding the gauntlet, for Thanos to make a quip about being puny while crushing his fist with the gauntlet, and Tony replying, “No, I’m Iron Man” before causing the Iron Man Gauntlet to shape shift onto his own fist. I neglected the need for a fake out. In my hammy guess.
Otherwise it has some of the same issues as many ensemble movies. Having a giant gun and cyber arm might be scary to little flesh and blood me, but when your other team members can warp the reality of space and time, while another delivers focused nuke blasts with her body, that machine gun seems kinda weak and pointless. But ya know, gotta have that comic book Heros vs Villians clash image so there’s poor flesh and blood Bucky out with literal giants.
It doesn’t help I also watched The Mandalorian as well, which does a great job at power differences.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
I finally got around to watching The Man Who Fell to Earth - a heartwarming story for Christmas viewing.
It was okay, not great, not terrible. It looked like it was filmed in my mom's backyard (and it was, sort of - parts were filmed in New Mexico). Very much a 70s movie.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
Alien: Covenant
Visually good.
A spaceship detects an unusual signal, lands on a strange planet, and gets into difficulties. They do stupid things, they don't take simple precautions, things happen without logic. There are aliens, they don't know anything about them, the aliens grow inside them. There is one android in the crew. One of the last survivors is a girl with a big gun and not much to wear.
I'm pretty sure I've seen other movies like this...
In a slight twist, this film has two androids and they are both Michael Fassbender, who is brilliant.
Russia has chosen a famous actress and an award-winning director to fly to the International Space Station and make what it calls the first movie in space.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
How to Be Single (2016)
I wasn't quite ready to go to sleep last night, so I turned on the TV, which was a mistake, because I caught this right at the start and watched it all the way through. I knew I'd never seek this out to finish it, but was still invested enough to wonder how it ended.
The main character is Alice (Dakota Johnson). She has dated only Josh (Nicolas Braun) throughout college, and wants to live independently for a while before marriage. Alice gets a job in New York, moves in with her sister Meg (Leslie Mann), and meets Robin (Rebel Wilson). Meg is a workaholic physician who has received IVF right before she meets someone. Robin is a partier, indulging in every hedonistic pastime she can, while she's young and single. Not long after Alice moves to the city, Josh dumps her, and so Alice can really learn how to be single.
This is an ensemble story where a bunch of interconnected characters have relationships, where some work out and others don't. The cast radiates from Alice and we get chunks and snippets of other people's lives and loves. Typical of a movie like this, each person has a theme, and most impart some sort of lesson to Alice, intentionally or not.
As a romantic comedy that's more concerned about the main character understanding who they are rather than ending in a relationship, this was good but not great. it had a bunch of romance movie tropes, but it had a lot of good comedic actors being funny, and it was rather charming. Dakota Johnson is a good "straight man" for the comedic actors like Rebel Wilson.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
The Amusement Park (1973)
A lost film by George Romero. From the description:
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Produced in 1973, The Amusement Park was shelved after the Lutheran Society, which had commissioned it as an educational film about elder abuse and ageism, refused to release it due to its disturbing content.
You hire George Romero (Night of the Living Dead) to make a film, and you wonder why it's so disturbing?
A kindly older man enters an amusement park. The amusement park is filled with attractions that symbolize different aspects of daily life that elderly people struggle with. The man and other elderly people are degraded and hurt by the people in the park, via indifference and hostility, and sometimes just because they're easier prey. He ends up bloodied and traumatized by the experiences in the park.
This is not straight horror, this is a PSA, so the movie is heavy with straightforward symbolism. Every aspect of the park has a clear parallel to dangers or humiliations an elderly person may experience. This is more abstract than Romero's typical work, but he just as competent in this work as he was doing horror movies.
Considering that I'm currently out of town managing my mother's affairs that I can't handle remotely and coping with her slow decline, this was not the movie to watch. But, if you're a George Romero fan, it's worth searching out.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
The Tomorrow War on Amazon Prime. It had some promise at the beginning but halfway through it started to throw out trope after trope - time travel, grown up kids, icky nasty alien bugs - so I bailed. I hope the human race survived at the end.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
We watched Maverick and that movie isn’t very good, with all the good bits pulled directly from Top Gun. It does have gorgeous action scenes in fighter jets, but the stupid detracts imo.
I was surprised as the movie is well reviewed and many people spoke highly of it, but
Maverick is a soso action movie that is basically a remake/sequel of Top Gun. Many scenes in Maverick are taken directly from the first movie.
The mission is profoundly stupid and basically a ripoff of star wars’ trench run.
The unnamed evil villain country is pretty absurd.
The tension comes from an insistence that we must not use drones because reasons, so let’s do a suicide mission instead. In the first one we had the background tension of the Cold War.
Double football (which is what they replaced the beach volleyball scene with)while playing defense and offense on both sides had to be dreamed up by someone who had never watched football.
Watch Top Gun, it’s still a good movie and has better performances and is overall less stupid.
Also, if Maverick wins the best adapted screen play Oscar for copying an earlier movie almost scene for scene, I will find that hilarious.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
We watched Barbie at the drive-in this weekend. We didn't have to see it opening weekend, but I was totally hype and I knew I was going to go crazy until I saw it, so we did.
It was fine. All of the funny stuff, except for one hilarious bit, was in the trailers. The rest was kind of slow and/or cringe for me.
The one hilarous bit not in the trailers:
When she has to learn how to drink from cups that have actual liquid in them, that slayed me. Margot Robbie is a comic genius.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
I dragged Sou to see The Marvels. It was OK, I enjoyed it, but there were clunky bits for sure.
The best bits of the movie are Kamala (Iman Vellani) being super excited to be a part of the team. As with many sequels they rely a little too much on call backs to the first movie, but it doesn't go too far.
I really liked Brie Larson in Captain Marvel and I don't really understand why she gets so much hate, but she wasn't great in The Marvels. Maybe she didn't have as much to do, but her acting didn't seem as good in this one.
Anyway, I wouldn't say it was a great movie and I wouldn't say it was bad, so I put it here.
Re: Movies that aren't really BAD -- but aren't very good, either
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