What Movie Are You Watching?

[Huntn]

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)- Again... Strong story following Thor: The Dark World. Technically it’s not safe to assume anything about Hela in the end, although Cate Blanchett is super in the role.

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Next: Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10648342/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

[Edd]

Anyone ever see GI Jane? I learned from this video Demi Moore got a Razzie award, which is just wrong. Moore and Viggo Mortensen are both fantastic in it.

BTW, the JoBlo videos on YouTube are often great watches.

 

[Huntn]

Black Panther (2018)- Again... Power struggle in Wakanda. Sad that the lead, Chad Boseman died young. A sequel is planned for 2022. The cast has yet to be announced. Bucky Barnes makes an appearance in the 2nd post credits scene.

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) ⭐ 6.7 | Action, Adventure, Drama

2h 41m | PG-13

www.imdb.com

 

[lizkat]

A re-watch of The English Patient is on tap for me tonight. I had purchased a digital download and do tend to watch it again at least once a year or so. Acting and cinematography remain memorable. The scenes with the biplanes over the North African desert... wow.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

As I understand it, you could’ve brought T. S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” with you and had basically a libretto of the whole thing.

Thta is a brilliant book (I have two copies, two different editions).

A thoroughly enjoyable - witty, entertaining, clever - read.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

A re-watch of The English Patient is on tap for me tonight. I had purchased a digital download and do tend to watch it again at least once a year or so. Acting and cinematography remain memorable. The scenes with the biplanes over the North African desert... wow.

A terrific movie, - intelligent, interesting, thought-provoking, moving, unsettling, stunning cinematography, superb cast, acting, script, and a fascinating book (yes, boring, I know, but I read it).

And biplanes over the North African desert......yes, wow. Agreed.

I'd love to travel in a biplane; but, yes, I have been flown in small planes - turbo props - across parts of north Africa, landing on what were basically grass (well, dusty, dry, red earth, with lots of dust, camels, and archaic windsocks)...... and in central Asia.

 

[Huntn]

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)- Again... Epic story which is fairly straight forward if you have watched the lead up Marvel Movies to what I consider to be the climax of this story arc as compared to Avengers: End Game which imo is a convoluted time travel mess trying to reverse what was wrought in Infinity War.

Spoiler: Plot Spoilers

Sadly both Peter Quill and Thor blow their chance to defeat Thanos.

 

[Huntn]

A re-watch of The English Patient is on tap for me tonight. I had purchased a digital download and do tend to watch it again at least once a year or so. Acting and cinematography remain memorable. The scenes with the biplanes over the North African desert... wow.

A terrific movie, - intelligent, interestig, thought-provoking, moving, unsettling, stunning cinematography, superb cast, acting, script, and a fascinating book (yes, boring, I know, but I read it).

And biplanes over the North African desert......yes, wow. Agreed.

I'd love to travel in a biplane; but, yes, I have been flown in small planes - turbo props - across parts of north Africa, landing on what were basically grass (well, dusty, dry, red earth, with lots of dust, camels, and archaic windsocks)...... and in central Asia.

Not trying to start any fights, but The English Patient is artsy, and boring but I don’t insist on agreement as it is a matter of personal taste. Not judging relative taste either. Points to Sceptical for using the B word.

I’d lump it with Out of Africa, and Bridges of Madison County. And to add evidence it’s not just a man’s perspective, my wife dislikes all those titles too. However she tends to dislike turning adultery into a love story, even though she acknowledges there are examples where it is understandable that unpleasant relationships can result in finding true love somewhere else.

 

[Huntn]

Antman and the Wasp (2018)- This is a good sequel to the original film, the effort to find Hank Pim's wife lost in the quantum universe. Of interest while there is mention of the ramifications of Avengers: Civil War, it was released after Avengers: Infinity War and there is not a peep about that until the End Credit Scene.

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[Thomas Veil]

I watched "Avengers: Age of Ultron" the other day. It was...okay. Plenty of action, but not much in the way of characterization. I don't know what it is about Marvel movies, but try as I might I just can't get into them ("Black Panther" being the only exception).

On the other hand...

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We tend to think of space movies as high adventure, but as with "Gravity", there's also a dark side to space exploration.

There's a good chance "Aniara" (Hulu, Swedish with subtitles) is the bleakest space film ever. Though it shares a concept with a couple dozen other movies--Earthlings fleeing a dying planet to colonize one--it's definitely not something you've seen before.

Shortly after the start of the mission to resettle humans on Mars, the ship suffers an almost comically tragic accident. The ship--a giant, elegant, floating hotel--is disabled by bits of space debris, one of which is a lowly bolt. The ship's reactor pierced, they're forced to dump the nuclear fuel supply, which leaves them no navigational ability. The ship has sufficient auxiliary power for life support, but it's not only going to miss Mars, it's going to go on into space with no hope of returning.

That's the setup. Most of the film involves how people react to that. You know how, this past year, people have reacted to Covid and politics with everything from heroism to degeneracy and despair? Well, the same thing plays out on the good ship Aniara. Just because these people have gone to space doesn't mean that human nature is any better than it was at home.

In one of those ass-backward time warps that occurs sometimes, I realized that the HBO series Avenue 5 that I watched last year is in many ways a riff on the same concept, right down to the hotel-in-space setting...albeit Avenue 5 played it for laughs. So it was weird to see the two stories in reverse order, as it were.

 

[lizkat]

Not trying to start any fights, but The English Patient is artsy, and boring but I don’t insist on agreement as it is a matter of personal taste. Not judging relative taste either. Points to Sceptical for using the B word.

I’d lump it with Out of Africa, and Bridges of Madison County. And to add evidence it’s not just a man’s perspective, my wife dislikes all those titles too. However she tends to dislike turning adultery into a love story, even though she acknowledges there are examples where it is understandable that unpleasant relationships can result in finding true love somewhere else.

I liked Out of Africa --although maybe only for "artsy" reasons, certainly not for the compression of related geopolitics-- and for a memorable quote about how "the world is made round so we don't have to see too far down the road"...

Bridges of Madison County I do remember liking the one time through, but maybe not as regular rewatch material.

The English Patient though, I see more in that one, and differently, every time I watch it.

No fights over movies from me, I figure reception of film fare is a complex thing and intensely personal.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Not trying to start any fights, but The English Patient is artsy, and boring but I don’t insist on agreement as it is a matter of personal taste. Not judging relative taste either. Points to Sceptical for using the B word.

I’d lump it with Out of Africa, and Bridges of Madison County. And to add evidence it’s not just a man’s perspective, my wife dislikes all those titles too. However she tends to dislike turning adultery into a love story, even though she acknowledges there are examples where it is understandable that unpleasant relationships can result in finding true love somewhere else.

Well, yes, I suppose it is a matter of taste, but, many of the movies I like could be classed as "artsy".

 

[lizkat]

A terrific movie, - intelligent, interestig, thought-provoking, moving, unsettling, stunning cinematography, superb cast, acting, script, and a fascinating book (yes, boring, I know, but I read it).

And biplanes over the North African desert......yes, wow. Agreed.

I'd love to travel in a biplane; but, yes, I have been flown in small planes - turbo props - across parts of north Africa, landing on what were basically grass (well, dusty, dry, red earth, with lots of dust, camels, and archaic windsocks)...... and in central Asia.

From you a lot of us do expect that book someday. Your adventures surely justify at least one, and who knows if a movie would not then spin off it.

I actually thought about that the other day when picking up copies of two of Norwegian author Erika Fatland's books "Sovietistan" and "The Border" -- the former of which is about her experiences and understandings of central Asian countries formerly part of the USSR, and the latter about people living near the borders of all 14 countries along outer edges of today's Russia. My actual thoughts ran along line of "I'm going to like these but I bet @Scepticalscribe would have a more informative and entertaining account of some of these places."

 

[Scepticalscribe]

From you a lot of us do expect that book someday. Your adventures surely justify at least one, and who knows if a movie would not then spin off it.

I actually thought about that the other day when picking up copies of two of Norwegian author Erika Fatland's books "Sovietistan" and "The Border" -- the former of which is about her experiences and understandings of central Asian countries formerly part of the USSR, and the latter about people living near the borders of all 14 countries along outer edges of today's Russia. My actual thoughts ran along line of "I'm going to like these but I bet @Scepticalscribe would have a more informative and entertaining account of some of these places."

Actually, I'm fascinated by borders, and border regions, those regions where identity, culture and geography (not to mention economics, religion, social stuff, and politics) are flexible, malleable, mixed, messy, merged, melded, permeable, and sometimes porous, andything but neat and tidy, depite those who seek to map such things with coloured pencils.

And yes, I realise that I am very privileged to have visited, experienced, lived in, worked in, - and travelled to - some of the places (settings, situations) I have seen - and met some of the people I have passed time with.

 

[Huntn]

The Last Picture Show (1971)- A rather bleak, intriguing portrayal of a small dying 50s Texas Town, novel written by Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove- 1986 Pulitzer Prize), based on his 1966 novel of the same name. This put a cast of young actors on the map.

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This story comes from the same ecosystem as Hud (1963, another novel written by McMurtry called Horseman, Pass By), about a 50s ranching family facing crisis.

 

[Thomas Veil]

“Independence Day”. Must be at least 15 years since I last saw this.

It was more engaging, in its formulaic way, than I remembered it.

But my god, the cheese! There were so many scenes that simply cried out to be made into a Zucker-Abrams-Zucker parody movie along the lines of “Airplane!”

 

[Huntn]

Crimson Peak (2015 Netflix)- 5/10. Guillermo DelToro gothic horror, a bit over the top, with some pretty good ghost animations. I read it was a flop, but getting a second wind on Netflix.

https://www.looper.com/384776/the-tom-hiddleston-horror-flop-defying-odds-and-dominating-netflix/

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[Thomas Veil]

Interesting that this film is getting a warmer reception now than when it was first released.

I for one had never even heard of it, and that may be part of the problem. I don't know it for a fact about this film, but a lot of times studios show a movie to a preview audience and if the reaction isn't good they play if off quickly with minimal advertising or publicity.

 

[Huntn]

Quantum of Solace (2008)- 10/10. Second part of Casino Royale (2006). Quantum is a modern scary organization. We have people everywhere. Incredible high fidelity air sequence.

 

[Huntn]

I watched "Avengers: Age of Ultron" the other day. It was...okay. Plenty of action, but not much in the way of characterization. I don't know what it is about Marvel movies, but try as I might I just can't get into them ("Black Panther" being the only exception).

On the other hand...

View attachment 4491
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We tend to think of space movies as high adventure, but as with "Gravity", there's also a dark side to space exploration.

There's a good chance "Aniara" (Hulu, Swedish with subtitles) is the bleakest space film ever. Though it shares a concept with a couple dozen other movies--Earthlings fleeing a dying planet to colonize one--it's definitely not something you've seen before.

Shortly after the start of the mission to resettle humans on Mars, the ship suffers an almost comically tragic accident. The ship--a giant, elegant, floating hotel--is disabled by bits of space debris, one of which is a lowly bolt. The ship's reactor pierced, they're forced to dump the nuclear fuel supply, which leaves them no navigational ability. The ship has sufficient auxiliary power for life support, but it's not only going to miss Mars, it's going to go on into space with no hope of returning.

That's the setup. Most of the film involves how people react to that. You know how, this past year, people have reacted to Covid and politics with everything from heroism to degeneracy and despair? Well, the same thing plays out on the good ship Aniara. Just because these people have gone to space doesn't mean that human nature is any better than it was at home.

In one of those ass-backward time warps that occurs sometimes, I realized that the HBO series Avenue 5 that I watched last year is in many ways a riff on the same concept, right down to the hotel-in-space setting...albeit Avenue 5 played it for laughs. So it was weird to see the two stories in reverse order, as it were.

So they could just float out in space self sufficient, or will auxiliary power fail too? I could see this morphing into some chance that pops up that gives them a second chance to get off the ship alive, but if it’s just a downer story I might not want to take the time to watch it.