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Post by masterofallgoons on Jun 13, 2022 21:32:31 GMT
I've heard of the title Seraphim Falls, but I wouldn't have had any idea who was in it. Worth a watch? It's not must-see but I think it's worth watching it if you like westerns.
I don't know about Netflix US but on Netflix Canada it will no longer be available past the end of June.
It's on tubi here in the US.
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Jun 14, 2022 12:07:32 GMT
It's not must-see but I think it's worth watching it if you like westerns.
I don't know about Netflix US but on Netflix Canada it will no longer be available past the end of June.
It's on tubi here in the US.
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Post by masterofallgoons on Jun 14, 2022 12:32:43 GMT
It's on tubi here in the US. It's hilarious that this is a real commercial. It couldn't seem more like a parody.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Jun 15, 2022 6:59:12 GMT
Ohhhhhh. What have we here. Looks like a good one. Free horror via Showtime. 'Lamb' (2021) - 'A couple encounter sinister forces after discovering a strange and unnatural newborn in their barn.' Here's my guess folks - it's the Devil (kind of legit creeps me out because 3am is the 'Witching Hour')
86% Rotten Tomato Score / 61% Popcorn Score Let's Give It A Whirl!
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Jun 15, 2022 11:27:09 GMT
Ohhhhhh. What have we here. Looks like a good one. Free horror via Showtime. 'Lamb' (2021) - 'A couple encounter sinister forces after discovering a strange and unnatural newborn in their barn.' Here's my guess folks - it's the Devil (kind of legit creeps me out because 3am is the 'Witching Hour')
86% Rotten Tomato Score / 61% Popcorn Score Let's Give It A Whirl! I bet you didn’t expect THAT, did you? Did you like it? Did you finish it?
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Jun 15, 2022 11:34:56 GMT
I bet you didn’t expect THAT, did you? Did you like it? Did you finish it? I"m halfway thru! Got it on in the background and have to stop at times. I love it!
** SPOILERS BELOW! ** . . . . . . . This is the ONLY movie with subtitles I've ever had the patience to sit through. Beautiful scenery/imagery. And some creepy imagery/scenery.
I'm at the part where the lamb is a kid and taking a bath his his mom and was just holding her hand
Can't wait to see how it all unfolds - I'm still predicting the Devil is the Dad
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Post by klawrencio79 on Jun 15, 2022 14:41:41 GMT
Ohhhhhh. What have we here. Looks like a good one. Free horror via Showtime. 'Lamb' (2021) - 'A couple encounter sinister forces after discovering a strange and unnatural newborn in their barn.' Here's my guess folks - it's the Devil (kind of legit creeps me out because 3am is the 'Witching Hour')
86% Rotten Tomato Score / 61% Popcorn Score Let's Give It A Whirl! I actually really liked that movie. Enjoy!
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Jun 18, 2022 7:58:55 GMT
Ohhhhhhh. What have we here. Free horror via Prime Video and Tubi starring Walt Jr. from Breaking Bad The Oak Room (2020) - 'A drifter tries to settle an old debt with a grizzled bartender by telling him a story.' Here's my guess folks - the drifter (Walt Jr.) is probably the grizzled bartenders long lost illegitimate son out for revenge because Pops abandoned him. 91% Rotten Tomato Score / 5.6 IMDB Score / 6.1 Metacritic Score / 69% of Google users enjoyed the movie - these scores are all over the place Only one way to find out who's right Let's Give It A Whirl!
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Jun 20, 2022 15:33:16 GMT
My Lightyear review. A basic introduction, then I'll get into spoilers. So I've never seen a Toy Story movie. I've seen parts of them, I couldn't tell you which ones. Never found the idea of talking toys hanging around doing nothing particularly interesting. I don't hate the concept or anything, I just never got into it. The rides are fun at Disney, I'll say that. So it's fascinating to me that I had more interest in this movie than most Toy Story fans (at least among those I've spoken to on this site). It seems most saw it as an unnecessary exercise in capitalism or whatever, though I don't see the difference between this and literally every other prequel/sequel/spinoff ever. Though I'll admit I was confused as to how exactly it related to the Toy Story franchise. Buzz is a toy, but this Buzz was real? How? Not really a spoiler (and maybe anybody paying attention to the marketing already knew), but it's explained at the beginning of the movie that this was the film that Andy saw which inspired the toy. Anyway, to me it seemed like a fun little space adventure, something the whole family could enjoy. spoilers ahead The movie starts off with Buzz Lightyear and his fellow space ranger Commander Alisha Hawthorne investigating an alien world. The planet is habitable, though it has some nasty bugs and carnivorous plants. They quickly determine there are dangerous alien life forms and decide to take the ship (filled with colonists) off world ASAP. Things go sideways, Buzz ignores the autopilot and tries to fly the ship to safety, ultimately crash landing. Buzz blames himself for the crash, because he didn't accept help from the autopilot or the rookie ranger he had with him-- though to me it's unclear what anyone could've done to help. After a year of the colonists building a basic infrastructure, Buzz volunteers to test experimental hyperspace fuel so they can continue on their journey. Upon his return, Buzz learns that while four minutes went by for him, four years have gone by for everyone else. Alisha is in a relationship, she seems happy. Haunted by his failure, Buzz keeps trying again and again to perfect the hyperspace jump, to rescue the colonists from this planet and continue their journey. A montage shows Alisha building a life, a family, and aging while Buzz, obsessed with his mission, remains static. Alisha gets him a robotic cat, Sox, for an ageless companion. Eventually Buzz comes back from another failed attempt to find Alisha has passed away of old age, leaving Buzz a video message saying goodbye. Buzz, already racked with guilt about their circumstances, is devastated to hear her say, "I always thought we'd be space rangers again." It's a heartbreaking scene. Now more than ever, Buzz is determined to complete the mission, to get the colonists off of this planet. What he doesn't understand is that the people are happy here. They've made new lives and accepted this planet as their home. Buzz's new commander decommissions his ship and tells Buzz to stand down. They even send security to take his cat (though I'm not sure why this was necessary). Buzz takes Sox, who has been working on a new hyperspace formula and makes a break for it. He's able to make it to his ship and achieve faster than light speed, going 22 more years into the future. He returns to a dystopian world taken over by robots who have imprisoned the rest of the colony except for a few outcasts whom Buzz befriends, including Alisha's granddaughter. Some hijinks ensue, and Buzz comes to appreciate and trust his new companions, which is quite a feat because again, Buzz never trusts anyone other than himself to do the job right. Along the way, Sox is damaged, necessitating a reboot which causes a holographic image to appear of when Alisha was first setting Sox up. "You're for my friend Buzz, he's going to save us all." Devastation washes over Buzz (and me, to be honest) all over again. He eventually comes face to face with the villain, a future version of himself. He explains he came back in time as far as he could to get his hands on the experimental fuel Sox developed. With it, he can go back farther in time and prevent all this from happening. Complete the mission. Young Buzz realizes this would wipe out the lives everyone has built since then, and erase his new friends from existence. Buzz decides to destroy the fuel which apparently kills future Buzz ('Zorg,' as the robots call him, and of course he's not dead), defeats the robots, and frees everyone. The movie ends with Buzz headed on another adventure with his handpicked space rangers (his new friends, naturally) as the colony continues to prosper. So I have a few thoughts here. I loved some of the themes explored in this movie, even if I didn't love the movie itself. It's fine for what it is, but I feel like it doesn't really have a defined audience. It seems like it was aimed at military/veterans. At least, that's who I think the themes would resonate most with. Buzz has several conversations with Alisha about joining up to make a difference, he wants to do something 'that matters.' He struggles with the idea of life beyond his service. He has to be shown that you don't have to be a space ranger to do something that matters. You matter to someone regardless of your vocation, you can make a difference in people's lives many different ways. This is a common struggle for many veterans, as they lead such regimented lives and were so focused on the mission (or just survival) that it's difficult for them to adjust to normal life afterward. What they're doing doesn't seem important in comparison and they have no set objective that needs to be accomplished. Ultimately Buzz has to face the reality that he'll never be able to complete his mission, because his mission has changed. Whatever got them where they are, that's exactly where they want to be. He can still save them, just not the way he originally set out to do. He can't make up for what he saw as his earlier failure, but he can still do right by them. This seems like odd stuff for a family movie. I haven't seen many Pixar movies, but I've heard the more recent ones are thematically more for adults than children, and I'd definitely say it's the case here. The montage of time passing while Alisha builds her life and Buzz keeps taking test flights, his dejected look as the word FAIL reads across his ship's screen over and over again. Complete the mission. It's certainly a metaphor anyone can relate to regarding taking time to appreciate what you have, trying to prioritize life properly, etc., but combined with the 'doing something that matters' material in the script, it truly feels military specific in that regard. But that montage is poignant, and the later video message of Alisha saying, "You're for my friend Buzz, He's going to save us all," they even make it glitch so she says it twice, "...going to save us all." Just brutal stuff. Really hits you in the feels. I wish it had been in a better movie. Again, Lightyear is fine for what it is, but I wasn't exactly blown away. I like the Incredibles movies better (the only Pixar movies I've seen--wait that's not true, I recently saw Ratatouille. Been meaning to post my thoughts, but you know how it is.) in comparison. And again those are definitely relatable to a broader audience. Speaking of Incredibles or any Pixar movie for that matter, having seen bits and pieces of them over the years. I didn't feel like Lightyear had enough of anything. It wasn't goofy enough, didn't have enough adventure, not enough slapstick, didn't have enough memorable characters. I think that was its problem. Buzz was never around anyone long enough to get close, so it really only felt like his feelings were ever at stake. He acted in principle at the end and made the right choice I suppose, but honestly I didn't care about those characters as a viewer. If the girl wasn't Alisha's granddaughter, the audience definitely wouldn't have cared at all. I think what bothered me the most is that the film leaves so much unresolved. It isn't clear (to me at least) what Buzz could've done to prevent the disaster at the beginning. I get his guilt, he was the one flying the ship, the crash is on him. But the way it's depicted, the ship was doomed from the start (alien vines had wrapped themselves around it and it doesn't get the clearance it needs to take off, clipping a cliff face and crashing). Again I understand the guilt from Buzz's perspective, but he expresses this guilt to everyone and nobody ever tells him it wasn't his fault. So are we supposed to believe it was his fault? Is "Remember kids, its ok to ask for help," a secondary theme here? And the video message from Alisha's deathbed. She spent years trying to convince Buzz she was happy, that her life mattered whether or not she was a space ranger. But on her deathbed she lays that shit on Buzz?! "I always thought we'd be space rangers again..." Jesus, woman! On a similar note, I wished they had Buzz hear Alisha in his head one last time, as he decided to destroy the hyperspeed fuel so Zorg couldn't use it. Something that made it clear to the audience that Buzz was, in a sense, still getting to complete the mission. Would that be handfeeding the audience? Sure, but in this case (especially since they hit us with the second video message later about how she thought Buzz would save everyone), it would've been useful to point out that Buzz is not only doing the right thing, but also saving everyone like Alisha said he would. Jep Gambardella had a great idea in his thread about the movie on another board here on the site. Instead of revealing in an opening crawl that this was the movie Andy watched in 1995, just play the movie straight and then at the very end pan out and show Andy in the audience asking to see it again. Great idea, jep. The only reason I can think of that they wouldn't do that, is maybe they thought it would undercut the emotion of the end of the movie. It ends on a high note for the central character; essentially having a director say "CUT!" as Buzz takes off his helmet and asks for a drink or something kind of kills the mood of the story you just watched. Maybe show Andy sitting down in the theater at the beginning? That would at least check off the nostalgia box you're looking for and make the whole thing feel a bit more connected to the Toy Story universe? As far as rating goes, again I'm not the guy to ask because I'm not Pixar or even Toy Story aficionado. I could see myself watching it again just for the parts I really enjoyed, but I'm not itching to see it again any time soon. It's worth noting my son thought it was 'ok,' which for him is a pretty bad rating. When he likes something, he loves it. Temporarily, anyway. To be fair he's seen the Toy Story movies and he's never raved about them, either. It isn't doing gangbusters at the BO but it isn't flopping. I think it's being eaten alive by Jurassic World. To me it's worth a watch if you're a Toy Story fan, but there are better options if you're looking for animated adventure.
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Post by Ass_E9 on Jun 20, 2022 19:44:34 GMT
Golden State Warriors championship parade
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Jun 21, 2022 7:43:31 GMT
Ohhhhhhh......What have I stumbled across? A movie about a killer impersonating Jason Voorhees starring horror icons? Free Horror via Showtime - 13 Fanboy (2021) Corey Feldman / Dee Wallace / Debi Sue Voorhees - 'An obsessed fan stalks his favorite actors from "Friday the 13th", mirroring Jason Voorhees. 4.1 IMDB Score / 52% ( that's more than half!) of Google Reviewers approve Let's Give It A Whirl!
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Jun 22, 2022 16:37:04 GMT
I saw on the Film General board that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the release of ‘Frenzy’, one of only a handful of post-1940s Hitchcock movies I had never seen, so I decided to watch it in the evening. There is a serial killer terrorising women in London and an unlucky innocent man becomes the prime suspect.
There is a rape joke early on, the gist of it being that some women might enjoy being raped, that left a very bad taste in my mind, but once I was able to put that aside it’s a pretty decent thriller. Sir Alfred had been making movies for nearly fifty years at that point but he hadn’t lost his touch. There are many moments where it’s clear that a lesser director would have made a more mundane choice that wouldn’t have been as effective.
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Jun 23, 2022 12:44:34 GMT
Finished season 1 of Outer Range last night on Amazon. I loved this show, though I'm not sure how best to describe it. The official premise:
There's a lot more to it than that. It's 'out there' in a Twin Peaks kind of way, but only one character ever feels like he's overacting/overdirected/really going for it in an almost distracting fashion. Other than that the performances are solid. There are mysteries within mysteries, and each character has a compelling backstory that pulls you into that aspect of the overall narrative. A few twists I saw coming, a few I didn't.
I'm not going to spoil anything directly, but I will say that despite several key revelations, the story isn't resolved by the end of the season, and I fear it won't be renewed for a second season. Still worth a watch if you appreciate contemporary sci-fi in a modern western setting. Fingers crossed for season 2.
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Post by masterofallgoons on Jun 23, 2022 17:03:53 GMT
My Lightyear review. A basic introduction, then I'll get into spoilers. So I've never seen a Toy Story movie. I've seen parts of them, I couldn't tell you which ones. Never found the idea of talking toys hanging around doing nothing particularly interesting. I don't hate the concept or anything, I just never got into it. The rides are fun at Disney, I'll say that. So it's fascinating to me that I had more interest in this movie than most Toy Story fans (at least among those I've spoken to on this site). It seems most saw it as an unnecessary exercise in capitalism or whatever, though I don't see the difference between this and literally every other prequel/sequel/spinoff ever. Though I'll admit I was confused as to how exactly it related to the Toy Story franchise. Buzz is a toy, but this Buzz was real? How? Not really a spoiler (and maybe anybody paying attention to the marketing already knew), but it's explained at the beginning of the movie that this was the film that Andy saw which inspired the toy. Anyway, to me it seemed like a fun little space adventure, something the whole family could enjoy. spoilers ahead The movie starts off with Buzz Lightyear and his fellow space ranger Commander Alisha Hawthorne investigating an alien world. The planet is habitable, though it has some nasty bugs and carnivorous plants. They quickly determine there are dangerous alien life forms and decide to take the ship (filled with colonists) off world ASAP. Things go sideways, Buzz ignores the autopilot and tries to fly the ship to safety, ultimately crash landing. Buzz blames himself for the crash, because he didn't accept help from the autopilot or the rookie ranger he had with him-- though to me it's unclear what anyone could've done to help. After a year of the colonists building a basic infrastructure, Buzz volunteers to test experimental hyperspace fuel so they can continue on their journey. Upon his return, Buzz learns that while four minutes went by for him, four years have gone by for everyone else. Alisha is in a relationship, she seems happy. Haunted by his failure, Buzz keeps trying again and again to perfect the hyperspace jump, to rescue the colonists from this planet and continue their journey. A montage shows Alisha building a life, a family, and aging while Buzz, obsessed with his mission, remains static. Alisha gets him a robotic cat, Sox, for an ageless companion. Eventually Buzz comes back from another failed attempt to find Alisha has passed away of old age, leaving Buzz a video message saying goodbye. Buzz, already racked with guilt about their circumstances, is devastated to hear her say, "I always thought we'd be space rangers again." It's a heartbreaking scene. Now more than ever, Buzz is determined to complete the mission, to get the colonists off of this planet. What he doesn't understand is that the people are happy here. They've made new lives and accepted this planet as their home. Buzz's new commander decommissions his ship and tells Buzz to stand down. They even send security to take his cat (though I'm not sure why this was necessary). Buzz takes Sox, who has been working on a new hyperspace formula and makes a break for it. He's able to make it to his ship and achieve faster than light speed, going 22 more years into the future. He returns to a dystopian world taken over by robots who have imprisoned the rest of the colony except for a few outcasts whom Buzz befriends, including Alisha's granddaughter. Some hijinks ensue, and Buzz comes to appreciate and trust his new companions, which is quite a feat because again, Buzz never trusts anyone other than himself to do the job right. Along the way, Sox is damaged, necessitating a reboot which causes a holographic image to appear of when Alisha was first setting Sox up. "You're for my friend Buzz, he's going to save us all." Devastation washes over Buzz (and me, to be honest) all over again. He eventually comes face to face with the villain, a future version of himself. He explains he came back in time as far as he could to get his hands on the experimental fuel Sox developed. With it, he can go back farther in time and prevent all this from happening. Complete the mission. Young Buzz realizes this would wipe out the lives everyone has built since then, and erase his new friends from existence. Buzz decides to destroy the fuel which apparently kills future Buzz ('Zorg,' as the robots call him, and of course he's not dead), defeats the robots, and frees everyone. The movie ends with Buzz headed on another adventure with his handpicked space rangers (his new friends, naturally) as the colony continues to prosper. So I have a few thoughts here. I loved some of the themes explored in this movie, even if I didn't love the movie itself. It's fine for what it is, but I feel like it doesn't really have a defined audience. It seems like it was aimed at military/veterans. At least, that's who I think the themes would resonate most with. Buzz has several conversations with Alisha about joining up to make a difference, he wants to do something 'that matters.' He struggles with the idea of life beyond his service. He has to be shown that you don't have to be a space ranger to do something that matters. You matter to someone regardless of your vocation, you can make a difference in people's lives many different ways. This is a common struggle for many veterans, as they lead such regimented lives and were so focused on the mission (or just survival) that it's difficult for them to adjust to normal life afterward. What they're doing doesn't seem important in comparison and they have no set objective that needs to be accomplished. Ultimately Buzz has to face the reality that he'll never be able to complete his mission, because his mission has changed. Whatever got them where they are, that's exactly where they want to be. He can still save them, just not the way he originally set out to do. He can't make up for what he saw as his earlier failure, but he can still do right by them. This seems like odd stuff for a family movie. I haven't seen many Pixar movies, but I've heard the more recent ones are thematically more for adults than children, and I'd definitely say it's the case here. The montage of time passing while Alisha builds her life and Buzz keeps taking test flights, his dejected look as the word FAIL reads across his ship's screen over and over again. Complete the mission. It's certainly a metaphor anyone can relate to regarding taking time to appreciate what you have, trying to prioritize life properly, etc., but combined with the 'doing something that matters' material in the script, it truly feels military specific in that regard. But that montage is poignant, and the later video message of Alisha saying, "You're for my friend Buzz, He's going to save us all," they even make it glitch so she says it twice, "...going to save us all." Just brutal stuff. Really hits you in the feels. I wish it had been in a better movie. Again, Lightyear is fine for what it is, but I wasn't exactly blown away. I like the Incredibles movies better (the only Pixar movies I've seen--wait that's not true, I recently saw Ratatouille. Been meaning to post my thoughts, but you know how it is.) in comparison. And again those are definitely relatable to a broader audience. Speaking of Incredibles or any Pixar movie for that matter, having seen bits and pieces of them over the years. I didn't feel like Lightyear had enough of anything. It wasn't goofy enough, didn't have enough adventure, not enough slapstick, didn't have enough memorable characters. I think that was its problem. Buzz was never around anyone long enough to get close, so it really only felt like his feelings were ever at stake. He acted in principle at the end and made the right choice I suppose, but honestly I didn't care about those characters as a viewer. If the girl wasn't Alisha's granddaughter, the audience definitely wouldn't have cared at all. I think what bothered me the most is that the film leaves so much unresolved. It isn't clear (to me at least) what Buzz could've done to prevent the disaster at the beginning. I get his guilt, he was the one flying the ship, the crash is on him. But the way it's depicted, the ship was doomed from the start (alien vines had wrapped themselves around it and it doesn't get the clearance it needs to take off, clipping a cliff face and crashing). Again I understand the guilt from Buzz's perspective, but he expresses this guilt to everyone and nobody ever tells him it wasn't his fault. So are we supposed to believe it was his fault? Is "Remember kids, its ok to ask for help," a secondary theme here? And the video message from Alisha's deathbed. She spent years trying to convince Buzz she was happy, that her life mattered whether or not she was a space ranger. But on her deathbed she lays that shit on Buzz?! "I always thought we'd be space rangers again..." Jesus, woman! On a similar note, I wished they had Buzz hear Alisha in his head one last time, as he decided to destroy the hyperspeed fuel so Zorg couldn't use it. Something that made it clear to the audience that Buzz was, in a sense, still getting to complete the mission. Would that be handfeeding the audience? Sure, but in this case (especially since they hit us with the second video message later about how she thought Buzz would save everyone), it would've been useful to point out that Buzz is not only doing the right thing, but also saving everyone like Alisha said he would. Jep Gambardella had a great idea in his thread about the movie on another board here on the site. Instead of revealing in an opening crawl that this was the movie Andy watched in 1995, just play the movie straight and then at the very end pan out and show Andy in the audience asking to see it again. Great idea, jep. The only reason I can think of that they wouldn't do that, is maybe they thought it would undercut the emotion of the end of the movie. It ends on a high note for the central character; essentially having a director say "CUT!" as Buzz takes off his helmet and asks for a drink or something kind of kills the mood of the story you just watched. Maybe show Andy sitting down in the theater at the beginning? That would at least check off the nostalgia box you're looking for and make the whole thing feel a bit more connected to the Toy Story universe? As far as rating goes, again I'm not the guy to ask because I'm not Pixar or even Toy Story aficionado. I could see myself watching it again just for the parts I really enjoyed, but I'm not itching to see it again any time soon. It's worth noting my son thought it was 'ok,' which for him is a pretty bad rating. When he likes something, he loves it. Temporarily, anyway. To be fair he's seen the Toy Story movies and he's never raved about them, either. It isn't doing gangbusters at the BO but it isn't flopping. I think it's being eaten alive by Jurassic World. To me it's worth a watch if you're a Toy Story fan, but there are better options if you're looking for animated adventure. I saw it last night and have some similar thoughts, but from a different perspective. I've seen all of the Toy Story and, I think at this point, Pixar movies. I think what people are all little put off by is Pixar in general doing more sequels and spinoffs in general and in so doing becoming a little more generic and less special than their roots, and conforming a little more to their corporate overlords at Disney. They really never intended to do any sequels in the first place, but then were compelled to do so when Disney was going to make another Toy Story movie with or without them. So then they made their own Toy Story sequel and it was great, and it seemed that while they mostly would make original stuff they'd then turn their flagship title into a trilogy, and the 3rd movie was the best and most resonant of the lot. But they're making more stuff now, and that includes more prequels, sequels, a 4th Toy Story that was perfectly ok but sorta tarnished the impeccable trilogy, and now even an abstract spinoff. It just feels a little cheap for them. As an aside here, Pixar, in its earlier incarnation at least, may have had the greatest run of quality of any studio in history. They made quality films again and again with a majority of them being absolute instant classics (and then they made 3 Cars movies). But this was a full on studio with an artistic identity, as its leadership was essentially a collection of 5 or 6 writer/directors who guided the enterprise and assisted each other's projects. This one though, was fine. It's not up to par with the best of Pixar/Toy Story, but I wasn't expecting it to be. The Pixar expectations have officially been lowered, and so this one being just decent enough wasn't really a disapointment. It gets to its requisite make-you-cry moment fairly effectively (you almost lost me with saying 'gets you in the feels' but I'll overlook it), but not to the level that the best of them do. The Toy Story movies have always been a mix of great fun animation and slapstick with rather stunning emotional maturity, particularly by the time 3 rolls around. The final sequence in that movie was clearly meant for the adults that watched the predecessors in their collective childhoods. This one though feels... not exactly more mature, but also not as engaging for the younger audiences. There are some lofty and intricate scientific and philosophical ideas and themes, but not as much fun to be had as some of the other lofty-in-concept Pixar properties. Then again, I thought the same thing about Wall-E, Ratatouille, and Inside Out; and doubted that those movies would connect to the assumed child audiences that they'd usually go after, and they all did just fine. And the kids in my theater seemed to mostly be having a good time. About the 1995 of it all: that was on thing that kinda bugged me throughout. It very obviously doesn't look like a movie that came out in 1995. I get why they wanted to make a cool new action adventure space movie, but this could have been a really cool opportunity to make some lo-fi special effects to go along with their brilliantly rendered backgrounds and character animation. That might have been something really cool and fun for them to play around with, but the closest thing we get is some ultra high end bit of technology/software that has to be pulled and blow into in order to work like it's a Nintendo game cartridge or something, which is a good gag. Also, not that I care about it today, but his partner would not have been a black lesbian in a movie in 1995, and again that wouldn't have stood out if they hadn't told us ahead of time that this was a movie made in 1995. Although, I still have my doubts that this was Andy's favorite movie. And also, again it may not matter to some viewers, but the reveal of who Zurg is sort of betrays what we know from the Toy Story movies. I won't spoil who he is here, but in Toy Story 2 we get a sense of the back story of this fictional character's story by seeing someone play a Buzz Lightyear video game, and when a different copy of the Buzz toy who is still clueless that he's a toy meets a Zurg toy in a toy store. It's a kind of throwaway gag, but it's very clear that Zurg is supposed to be a Darth Vader type of character since he's called Emperor Zurg, and those two clueless toys have the 'I am your father' and 'nooooo....' exchange. Again, just kind of a good joke in the movie, but this one doesn't seem to play by its own rules. I'm sure a lot of people won't care, and that reveal is fine for this movie, but to set this connection and then not adhere to it is kind of an odd decision. Mostly, I was surprised by how contained the movie was. Some of the other materials associated with this movie, including the video game within Toy Story 2, and a cartoon series in the vain of this movie from the 90s suggest a far reaching star trek/star wars -ish type adventure. It would seem like he was a character who would travel from planet to planet fight against various monsters and aliens for the 'galactic alliance.' This takes place across many years, but essentially in just one location. The ending seems to suggest they want to make a sequel that might be more in line with that idea (and Buzz's suit at the very end is much more like the Toy Story character design), and I'd guess that perhaps that next movie, or some spinoff cartoon, would be what all the kids would go nuts for and would inspire all of the toy sales. Andy in a theater would have been cool, but even after sitting through the credits I was still expecting to see the commercial for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the first Toy Story movie to conclude the movie. That really would have been the most obvious tie-in, and it's weird that it was never done. Anyway, I've gone on and on and on, but the movie was ok. It's neither great nor bad, and all of the inconsistencies are kinda minor in the scheme of this as it's own thing. It's just kinda like some fan fiction for the character, which pretty much everything else feels like it is these days... It's just that Pixar used to be better than everyone else.
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Jun 23, 2022 17:41:24 GMT
I saw it last night and have some similar thoughts, but from a different perspective. I've seen all of the Toy Story and, I think at this point, Pixar movies. I think what people are all little put off by is Pixar in general doing more sequels and spinoffs in general and in so doing becoming a little more generic and less special than their roots, and conforming a little more to their corporate overlords at Disney. They really never intended to do any sequels in the first place, but then were compelled to do so when Disney was going to make another Toy Story movie with or without them. So then they made their own Toy Story sequel and it was great, and it seemed that while they mostly would make original stuff they'd then turn their flagship title into a trilogy, and the 3rd movie was the best and most resonant of the lot. But they're making more stuff now, and that includes more prequels, sequels, a 4th Toy Story that was perfectly ok but sorta tarnished the impeccable trilogy, and now even an abstract spinoff. It just feels a little cheap for them. As an aside here, Pixar, in its earlier incarnation at least, may have had the greatest run of quality of any studio in history. They made quality films again and again with a majority of them being absolute instant classics (and then they made 3 Cars movies). But this was a full on studio with an artistic identity, as its leadership was essentially a collection of 5 or 6 writer/directors who guided the enterprise and assisted each other's projects. This one though, was fine. It's not up to par with the best of Pixar/Toy Story, but I wasn't expecting it to be. The Pixar expectations have officially been lowered, and so this one being just decent enough wasn't really a disapointment. It gets to its requisite make-you-cry moment fairly effectively (you almost lost me with saying 'gets you in the feels' but I'll overlook it), but not to the level that the best of them do. The Toy Story movies have always been a mix of great fun animation and slapstick with rather stunning emotional maturity, particularly by the time 3 rolls around. The final sequence in that movie was clearly meant for the adults that watched the predecessors in their collective childhoods. This one though feels... not exactly more mature, but also not as engaging for the younger audiences. There are some lofty and intricate scientific and philosophical ideas and themes, but not as much fun to be had as some of the other lofty-in-concept Pixar properties. Then again, I thought the same thing about Wall-E, Ratatouille, and Inside Out; and doubted that those movies would connect to the assumed child audiences that they'd usually go after, and they all did just fine. And the kids in my theater seemed to mostly be having a good time. About the 1995 of it all: that was on thing that kinda bugged me throughout. It very obviously doesn't look like a movie that came out in 1995. I get why they wanted to make a cool new action adventure space movie, but this could have been a really cool opportunity to make some lo-fi special effects to go along with their brilliantly rendered backgrounds and character animation. That might have been something really cool and fun for them to play around with, but the closest thing we get is some ultra high end bit of technology/software that has to be pulled and blow into in order to work like it's a Nintendo game cartridge or something, which is a good gag. Also, not that I care about it today, but his partner would not have been a black lesbian in a movie in 1995, and again that wouldn't have stood out if they hadn't told us ahead of time that this was a movie made in 1995. Although, I still have my doubts that this was Andy's favorite movie. And also, again it may not matter to some viewers, but the reveal of who Zurg is sort of betrays what we know from the Toy Story movies. I won't spoil who he is here, but in Toy Story 2 we get a sense of the back story of this fictional character's story by seeing someone play a Buzz Lightyear video game, and when a different copy of the Buzz toy who is still clueless that he's a toy meets a Zurg toy in a toy store. It's a kind of throwaway gag, but it's very clear that Zurg is supposed to be a Darth Vader type of character since he's called Emperor Zurg, and those two clueless toys have the 'I am your father' and 'nooooo....' exchange. Again, just kind of a good joke in the movie, but this one doesn't seem to play by its own rules. I'm sure a lot of people won't care, and that reveal is fine for this movie, but to set this connection and then not adhere to it is kind of an odd decision. Mostly, I was surprised by how contained the movie was. Some of the other materials associated with this movie, including the video game within Toy Story 2, and a cartoon series in the vain of this movie from the 90s suggest a far reaching star trek/star wars -ish type adventure. It would seem like he was a character who would travel from planet to planet fight against various monsters and aliens for the 'galactic alliance.' This takes place across many years, but essentially in just one location. The ending seems to suggest they want to make a sequel that might be more in line with that idea (and Buzz's suit at the very end is much more like the Toy Story character design), and I'd guess that perhaps that next movie, or some spinoff cartoon, would be what all the kids would go nuts for and would inspire all of the toy sales. Andy in a theater would have been cool, but even after sitting through the credits I was still expecting to see the commercial for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the first Toy Story movie to conclude the movie. That really would have been the most obvious tie-in, and it's weird that it was never done. Anyway, I've gone on and on and on, but the movie was ok. It's neither great nor bad, and all of the inconsistencies are kinda minor in the scheme of this as it's own thing. It's just kinda like some fan fiction for the character, which pretty much everything else feels like it is these days... It's just that Pixar used to be better than everyone else. Yeah I can see why hardcore Toy Story fans would see the entire concept as uninspired. I just posted in a thread about it on the film general board where people were trying to decide where the movie went wrong with audiences. My conclusion was that it was a forced prequel/spinoff that barely seemed connected to the original franchise, featuring a different voice actor. That's the recipe for those direct to video sequels Disney used to pump out, and audiences treated it accordingly. And from what you're saying, it really messes with how you understand the characters of the original. I hate when franchises go on too long and start messing with canon when they run out of ideas. I had that thought as well, the film was way too progressive to have come out in 1995. Though it's really a nitpick detail that I don't think we're supposed to think about too much. Honestly, by the end it seems like they want you to forget it was only a movie in the Toy Story universe; almost as if that detail was tacked on at the end of production when they realized the entire thing made no sense within the established Toy Story universe. I like your idea about focusing more on the 'movie' aspect of it and dating it with more references to that era or just filmmaking in general. Could've had a lot of fun with that concept, and maybe it would've felt more on brand for the Toy Story universe. One other thing I forgot to mention in my original post: that sexual innuendo joke at the end of the second trailer really surprised me. I thought we might see more of that in the film, which could've made it more fun for the adults. I'm not surprised we didn't; in fact it makes it kind of awkward that the one joke exists in the final cut at all. It got big laughs in the theater as a trailer before Top Gun, but zero laughs with the (decidedly different) actual Lightyear audience in my theater. Odd that they threw it in the trailer when it doesn't set the tone for what to expect at all. I mentioned in my previous post that my son was 'meh' upon first viewing, but he was already looking for it on Disney+ the other day. That hardly makes it an all time classic, but I think he might've enjoyed it more than he initially realized. Enough to say in fairness that the movie isn't a total failure, anyway. For the sake of Toy Story fans, I hope this teaches them to stop milking the franchise. (Though I wouldn't mind an update of Space Ranger Spin at Disney World to include Sox somewhere.)
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Jun 24, 2022 12:28:03 GMT
After I watched Charlie Kaufman's "I am Thinking of Ending Things" a couple of weeks ago I looked up his filmography and saw that he wrote a movie called "Human Nature" directed by Michel Gondry back in 2001 (a few years before the two collaborated on "Eternal Sunshine..."). I don't think I had ever heard of it, in spite of the well-known names behind and in front of the camera (Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette). I got the DVD from the library and watched it last night.
The basic story is about a man raised as an ape in the forest (played by Rhys Ifans) who is found by the couple. He is a scientist and wants to transform him into a civilised human being, whereas she is a nature writer and lover who wants the "ape" to remain in his "natural" state. Hilarity ensues, sort of. It has the trademark wackiness of the writer and the director but I didn't think it was at the same level as some of their other work. Still, worth watching it if you can find it.
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Post by kiwi on Jun 24, 2022 13:21:29 GMT
After I watched Charlie Kaufman's "I am Thinking of Ending Things" a couple of weeks ago I looked up his filmography and saw that he wrote a movie called "Human Nature" directed by Michel Gondry back in 2001 (a few years before the two collaborated on "Eternal Sunshine..."). I don't think I had ever heard of it, in spite of the well-known names behind and in front of the camera (Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette). I got the DVD from the library and watched it last night. The basic story is about a man raised as an ape in the forest (played by Rhys Ifans) who is found by the couple. He is a scientist and wants to transform him into a civilised human being, whereas she is a nature writer and lover who wants the "ape" to remain in his "natural" state. Hilarity ensues, sort of. It has the trademark wackiness of the writer and the director but I didn't think it was at the same level as some of their other work. Still, worth watching it if you can find it. Thanks. Hadn't heard of this but really like his other films. Rhys Ifans strikes me as a good choice for the part.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Jun 24, 2022 19:35:22 GMT
Ohhhhhh....What have we here.
Free Horror via Peacock
A Bigfoot movie I never heard of with decent scores. 'Big Legend' (2018) - 'An ex-soldier ventures into the Pacific Northwest to investigate his fiance's disappearance.' 60% Popcorn Score / 4.9 IMDB Score / 78% Google Viewers Approve Sounds Good To Me! Let's Give It A Whirl!
** Edit - this looks sooo low budget and Lance Henriksen's name just popped up in the credits - he has no shame - pretty much like Danny Trejo
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Post by Carl LaFong on Jun 24, 2022 23:40:58 GMT
Force of Nature on Amazon Prime.
I thought this was just out but it turns out it was from 2020.
A Mel Gibson heist movie set in Puerto Rico during a hurricane.
Even worse than it sounds. Avoid.
Only good thing about it was Stephanie Cayo ... very cute.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Jun 25, 2022 13:52:33 GMT
moral tales about big rig truck drivers are favorite genre of mine.
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