Koete

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  5. Every film you've watched in 2016

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    The Gunfighter - Gregory Peck plays a legend of the west who's hoping to reunite with his wife and son before he moves somewhere nobody will know him, but his reputation won't give him a moment's peace. I was surprised how structurally similar this was to High Noon, which came out two years later. Also like High Noon, it's an early deconstruction of Western myth. 

    The Man from Laramie - Jimmy Stewart is out for revenge against whoever it was that sold guns to the Native Americans who killed his brother. That's actually the least interesting part of the movie, the most interesting being the conflict between two potential heirs to a ranch, and the question of whether blood or skill matters more. There's a shot of the desert at dusk that captures shadows in Technicolor in a way few directors could. 

    Coffy - Pam Grier's breakout role, where she wrecks havoc on pimps up through government bureaucracy in retribution for her sister getting addicted to drugs. It's directed by Jack Hill, so it's trashy and there's some offensive stuff, but you can see why Grier resonated with people. For all the schlock, it does also hit some social issue points. 

    Straight Outta Compton - I really liked the first half of this: putting together the tracks, the emphasis on what N.W.A stood for during the tour, and the implosion of the group. Then in the second half it slid into TV movie, with super villain Suge Knight and Eazy-E dropping the classic "I'm going to die" cough several times. O'Shea Jackson, Jr. as Ice Cube and Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre were great.

    Spectre - A middle-of-the-road Bond movie for me, I guess, largely on the interactions between the MI-6 cast.  The pile of problems with it is large though. Retroactively tying all the Craig films to SPECTRE is baldly that and doesn't work at all. The reasoning for Dr. Swann's storyline to go the way it does is weak, as is the backstory for Blofeld. The section where Blofeld and Bond finally meet face to face is pretty anticlimactic, really. And I know this isn't fair, but the lip-service paid to SPECTRE having control of a global security network doesn't instill much dread after having seen four seasons of Person of Interest. But, I've seen much worse blockbusters from last year, and certainly none look as good as this does. 

    Films: 55

  7. Every film you've watched in 2016

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Dillinger - Solid gangster movie, Lawrence Tierney's face is in a permanent scowl the whole time. There are a couple moments of implied violence, a broken beer mug jutting toward the camera and Dillinger walking off with an ax, that show the artistry that can rise above a low budget. The King brothers licensed the bank robbery from You Only Live Once, which just reiterates how masterful that sequence is. 

    Ant-Man - It's no secret that I don't like Marvel Studios movies, so I'm going to go through this quick. They should've chosen between Robin Hood or criminal instead of half-assing it. I don't care about the generic father-daughter motivation. I felt embarrassed for Michael Pena every time he was on screen. I wonder how much money Corey Stoll gave Kevin Spacey for using his performance from Superman Returns. To have Hope lay out why she was much better qualified to do the mission, and then have her drop the "it's about damn time" line mid-credits in such a self-satisfied way, was one of the most condescending things I've seen in a long time.

    The Visit - M. Night Shyamalan returns...and makes a pretty standard found footage movie. It examines how children deal with a parent running out on them and gestures toward family members beginning to suffer dementia, so there's a degree of thought put into it that these movies have no time for. There are also these inexplicable moments where you're not sure if you're supposed to laugh or be scared.   

    Films: 50

  12. The Flash

    in Comic Book Adaptations

    Posted · Edited by Koete

    Months of speculation about Zoom's identity, and the reveal's kinda disappointing. It's definitely a swerve that raises some interesting questions for the resolution, but Teddy Sears has been a weak acting link this season, so it's hard to see him as Zoom.

    Edit: Just read a brief bit from Andrew Kreisberg saying that the Hunter Zolomon bit was supposed to be a "here's the answer" for comics readers. But man, my response was "that's too easy." 

  16. Every film you've watched in 2016

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    River of No Return - Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe play a pair who can't stand each other but are forced to travel together down a raging river to a settlement. For Monroe, it's to reunite with her husband who's making a gold claim. For Mitchum, it's to get revenge on the same man for stealing his rifle and horse, putting him and his son in jeopardy. The opening is the strongest part, with the impressive mining camp set and Preminger's meticulous direction of the camera as it weaves through the settlement and around Monroe as she sings. The bulk of the movie is the travel down the river though, and that's where screeches to a halt. There's a lot of traditional Hollywood beats that really need to be sold, but Mitchum and Monroe don't have the chemistry to make the movie worth noting for more than the beautiful nature photography. 

    Carmen Jones - Preminger's adaptation of the Broadway play, which in turn was based on the opera Carmen. There's a noir-ish element to the storyline that resonates with Preminger's work in the form during the '40s and '50s, but it being a full color musical, he's not able to put it in that context. It's pretty remarkable as a major studio release from 1954 with an all-black cast, with Dorothy Dandridge being the first African-American nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.

    Bunny Lake Is Missing - A woman's 4 year old daughter goes missing from school, but a detective's investigation raises questions as to whether the child even exists. On a technical level, it's superb, a textbook on the filmmaking school of long takes and camera movement. The narrative gets caught up in the process and the details of investigation more than the story and characters at times, so it's not entirely successful. The weirdness of the ending (which has become stock now) ends it on a strong note. 

    Cop Car - Solid. The boys are good, Kevin Bacon switching between the frenzied search for his cop car and the "good old boy" persona he adopts when speaking to dispatch is great, and Shea Whigham threatens to kill the family and pets of a couple of kids. There's some tense scenes out of the kids screwing around with the car and what they find in it. The ending feels like it's from another movie though, so it leaves you a little disappointed. Jon Watts is directing the new Spider-Man movie, so I guess it worked. 

    Tomorrowland - A review I read equated it to the "I'd like to teach the world to sing" Coke commercial, which I'm not going to try to top.

    The Girl in the Book - Emily VanCamp plays an assistant editor who has to work on the re-release campaign for a novel, which the author wrote while taking advantage of her when she was a teenager. With the conversation sparked by Kesha's current situation, its story of an older man preying on a creative young woman and how it affected her life feels pretty damn relevant. 

    Films: 47

  17. Every film you've watched in 2016

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    The Magician - Not a great movie, but its influence on Universal's horror films of the '30s and '40s makes it interesting. 

    Laugh, Clown, Laugh -  Lon Chaney plays a clown tortured by the realization that he's in love with his adopted daughter. It's a melodramatic plot, but Chaney, being one of the greatest silent actors, gives it a degree of pathos no other actor could.

    The Howling: Reborn - Reviewed with Des on Dread Media 442.

    Films: 41

     

  20. The Flash

    in Comic Book Adaptations

    Posted

    Pretty ho-hum on this one. The Zoom stuff was great, from him wrecking shit to telling people what order he's going to kill them in to beating the crap out of Barry. I like how they've let Zoom be in the background and then come out with bursts like this that really sell him as the being that could hold a city hostage with terror. These are the times Tony Todd really gets to shine with his voice. The resolution to the Earth-2 story was pretty safe: appeal to the villain who you know as a good person, have one doppelganger encourage another, etc. They got a lot of heart out of the parallel worlds concept last episode, but this one felt hollow. The man in the iron mask's message being "Jay" adds an interesting wrinkle, thinking the reveal will definitely deliver.  

    The story on Earth-1 was still a drag. Iris' editor had a pretty reasonable point, especially since it was one Iris learned in Season 1. The guy playing Geomancer is playing the super-villain like a Saturday morning cartoon take on a super-villain. Jay getting stabbed and taken through the portal fits with the horror vibe of Zoom, but it was so telegraphed. 

  22. Agent Carter

    in Comic Book Adaptations

    Posted

    Finally catching up on this, two episodes in. They're really running with Peggy moving on from Steve at the end of Season 1. The Madame Masque plot is going differently than I thought and not from the obvious comic angle, which is interesting. Howard Stark having a James Bond car for hooking up further supports my view that Howard is better than Tony. There's a moment in episode two where Sousa gets furious and Enver Gjokaj carried it really well.