Movies (and occasionally face slaps) (Part 2)

Article talks about Apple cutting back on theater release projects. Also mentions how movie theaters have been counting on streamers to release movies so they have more content but Netflix and Apple cutting back, Amazon targeting smaller budget projects.

The movie market is so fucked right now. All these companies, like Apple, who got rich from monopolistic situations decided to enter into a business with tons of fair competition and high costs. Itā€™s a bad business for business people, but a nice hobby for rich people and execs.

The Wild Robot (2024)

I went into this movie blinder than I usually do, basically only knowing what the poster and title give me, and honestly: after a fun opening sequence where we meet the title character, when the movieā€™s plot began to unfold, I internally groaned with some skepticism that it was going to really connect for me.

Thankfully, that was wrong. While this movie doesnā€™t reinvent the wheel, its execution is pristine and the emotions absolutely hit. Add that to strong animation and a really solid score, and this turned out to be a great experience that justified the positive buzz.

With the caveat that this is only the second 2024 animated movie Iā€™ve seen, I definitely expect this to be in the running for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, and for my money itā€™s easily better than the very solid Inside Out 2.

4/5

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Saw a positive YouTube review of Megalopolis that referred to it as a stoner movieā€“not a movie for stoners, but a movie by a stoner. That seemed apt, disjointed and a bit shallow, but also often insightful, original, and well intentioned.

the lord of the rings the fellowship of the ring extended edition (2001, 3h49m)

sure why not. havenā€™t seen the non-extended edition. havenā€™t seen the theatrical version in maybe 20 years. so much of it is familiar, itā€™s such a foundational text. neat to see ned stark and lydia tar before they were famous. 5 bags of popcorn i donā€™t even know what they could have cut, it all seemed necessary to me.

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Merry and Pippin.

But I share your love for the movie. Five stars for me too.

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What about replacing Barry Lyndon with The Shining?

how do you people have the attention span for this stuff

yeah sure Iā€™ll sit down and watch such and such directorā€™s movie, Foo (1953, 3:23). You all know him from Bar (1971, :98), of course, where he expertly and briefly deconstructed the life and times of Hollyhock Manheim-Manheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlug-Zhung-Fonzerelli-McQuack, but Foo really strikes a different chord.

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Bodies Bodies Bodies was decent.

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itā€™s a lifestyleā€¦you spend decades like this, and then through a beetlejuice post you find out about ā€œon cinema at the cinemaā€ and realize the more you talk about movies the closer you get to becoming Gregg Turkingtonā€¦then the only remaining hope is to achieve ā€œtranscendenceā€ on the chart below

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God damn that chart is hilarious

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The Verdict benefits quite a bit from David Mametā€™s screenplay as well, IMO, I would consider it as much his work as Lumetā€™s.

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Chart is pretty good but there needs to a middle step where they claim Tarantinoā€™s best film is Jackie. Brown.

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fixed

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Disliking challengers is a sign of mental illness. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Rewatchables for The Verdict alerted me to something that I surely should have realized, that the juror I hate so much from 12 Angry Men is played by Jack Warden. The younger him just looked too much different for me to clock that at all.

Definitely spent my whole life to this point not realizing that the baseball juror

image

was also Artieā€™s dad from Dirty Work.

image

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First time Iā€™ve stumped in these tourneys. Good, Bad, and Uglyā€™s GOAT theme needs your help in the tourney

richard iii (1995)

iā€™ve never seen a shakespeare movie that i liked, and from what i can tell, the closer the adaptation gets to actual shakespeare, the less i like it. but i was high on ian mackellen after watching the first extended-edition lord of the rings movie so i gave it a go for him.

the language is incomprehensible. it was like watching a foreign film without subtitles. but foreign in a language that you kind of know, like if you took 4 semesters of it 20 years ago, so i somewhat understood the broad strokes of what was happening most of the time. it wasnā€™t completely unenjoyable. but you want to know what WAS completely enjoyable? The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers Extended Edition (2002, 3h56m) and The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King Extended edition (2003, 4h24m).

itā€™s going to sound like iā€™m being sarcastic or doing a comedy bit but iā€™m telling you on my word i breezed through these back-to-back. i wouldnā€™t even trim the long goodbye ending, i remember it being too long, but as an ending to 13 hours of film you can give the audience 15 minutes to wind down. and i spent most of that part of the movie standing and applauding at my television anyway. wilhelm scream at 2:51:03. 5 bags of popcorn

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On Golden Pond (1981)

Iā€™ve heard this film be panned as boring on a number of occasions. But it doesnā€™t seem like any slow and contemplative drama can ever fully avoid those charges, and I disagree often enough that I clearly had to see for myself. The verdict on the ā€œboringā€ charge? Mixed, to some extent; this film does have some kind of boring sequences, and it isnā€™t firing on all cylinders for the full run time. The verdict on the film itself doesnā€™t feel mixed really at all: the Henry Fonda performance is so good that it basically makes the movie a worthy endeavor on its own, and Katharine Hepburn is really strong as well. Without having seen every nominee, it does not seem out of line at all that they both won Oscars for this.

The family dynamics are a bit of a weak spot for me; I was expecting more from the on-screen Henry and Jane Fonda relationship. At best, those beats in this story are hit-or-miss, as they do seem kind of underdeveloped. But watching Henry Fondaā€™s character deal with the deterioration of old age really tugs at the heartstrings, and especially feels poignant given the knowledge that this was his last movie and that he would die a year later.

If youā€™ve watched his big works and enjoyed him as I expect that most anyone would, this is absolutely worth taking in as a fitting cap to a legendary career.

3.5/5

iā€™m not gonna reveal what movie iā€™m watching rn because itā€™s embarrassing but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has a wilhelm scream at 2:14:18

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