Donomark
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Posts posted by Donomark
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I thought Des' comments on Lolita being "It's a comedy, right?" and laughing most of it off by his lonesome was darkly hilarious. I read Lolita for a bookclub and despised it, so I have some reference for that convo, potentially.
I echo Ian's sentiments on Eyes Wide Shut and said as much in my feedback for Hey! An Actor, but I'd be interested in pursuing Chris' line of thinking should I re-watch it.
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Hahaha that looks exactly like a "live-action" Pinoccho remake would look like.
Understandably, they're more of that promotional Hunchback of Notre Dame style whimsy being frontloaded, obscuring the innate horror story beneath the surface. Looks like it'll be both boys and girls taken to pleasure island this time.
Tom Hanks looks perfect, although the house looks huge in comparison to the humble original. Jiminy looks...I wish his face were rounder.
I might go out and see this because I went out and saw Aladdin, having loved the original.
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Slight historical correction, Andrew Johnson was the first US president to be impeached, not Bill Clinton. Clinton was the second, then Trump for the two-peat. But yes, Nixon was all but guaranteed to be impeached but he ducked out just before it happened.
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On 5/17/2022 at 12:00 PM, Dread said:
Regarding the Illuminati:
It definitely feels like a late addition to the story. At least as far as the lineup of the Illuminati. Do any of them even appear in the same shot as Olsen? It's hard to care about the coolest part of the movie when some of the characters are murdered and Carter and Captain Marvel just sort of look at each other like "well, here we go..." Seems odd.
I thought the whole scene was weird that she was able to kill them all so easily. I get that they're versions of the characters we probably will never see again, but still. Weird to create a team that can easily imprison Dr. Strange and America and have them get their asses handed to them by one person in a few minutes.
But also, the death of Black Bolt was *chef kiss
SpoilerI personally do not like the whole slaughtering superheroes thing that's gained popularity in the past several years. From Injustice to Invincible and Apokolips War, is comes across to me as perverse, and only done for the sake of portraying these superpowered heroes as victims in a slasher movie. Like, after a lifetime of combat, would they really get punked out so immediately?
That said, the death scenes of Black Bolt and Reed were really cool on a visual level. I talked with my brother about Captain Carter and Captain Marvel's lack of sufficient reaction at seeing their teammates die, and I think it's because Marvel constantly wants to have their cake and eat it too. If someone let out a blood-curdling scream and lost it at the sight of a horrific murder, it would be too intense for the tone they want their films to go for. Violence is one thing, reaction to it is another. That's another aspect about No Way Home I enjoyed - Peter was allowed to cry after his mother figure was murdered. We actually saw Tom Holland sob into Zendaya's arms even several minutes after Aunt May died. That's real life human behavior, and the MCU often lacks that. No one cries, no one shows a loss of emotion that doesn't seem desperate or instinctual.
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Finished Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which was furiously recommended to me by a co-worker.
I liked it. It's a solid 2000s era series that doesn't really watch like any Shonen I've seen. It's a kind of byzantine plot with the world and warring factions, much more like an average Gundam series. It also subverted my expectations a number of times. The two leads are likable, whereas I went in thinking Edward would be far less tolerable and typical of a yelling anime protag than he ended up being. The cast overall are far more intelligent than the average anime cast. Several times they'll have outwitted the bad guys in ways which made total sense and wasn't a simple game of one-upping each other. The show is also a lot darker than I was expecting, right away with the creepy father and daughter tragic episode.
I liked it but I didn't love it, and I'm still mulling over why. The only thing that I noticed throughout the show, definitely in the second half is that the focus on the other characters often puts Ed and Al in the backseat. Their storyline of trying to regain their bodies is far more concrete than Col. Mustang's aspirations of overthrowing King Bradley and everything else with Briggs army and Scar and the various Homunculi and Father and Van Hoenheim and all that. I got to thinking that if I watched this on Adult Swim over and over again, the plot would've become more familiar and less abstract to me, and I might've liked it more than I did. For some reason I kept comparing it in my head to Yu Yu Hakusho, which is a very different series and one of my all time favorites. I wondered that if started that series now, would I still have the same feelings for it that I do since I watched it in junior high...
FMA: Brotherhood is a very solid show, and one that I respect, but it's not something that deeply affected me. Recent series' I've seen like My Hero Academia, and even further back like Kill la Kill and definitely Evangelion I found far more affecting. But at the same time, I definitely enjoyed the show. I really liked the Elric brothers and can see why this captured a young millennial American audience when it did.
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Nixon: I've got a lot of thoughts on this one, and hope to get them e-mailed over to Hey! An Actor to be heard/read out soon. Long story short, I really enjoyed it.
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: I saw this one twice, and overall I really enjoyed it. Like No Way Home, it's a fun movie with a lot of very evident flaws. Unfortunately one of those flaws isn't shared by No Way Home in that there's not really a story here. It's a very two-dimensional film with zero thematic heft and hardly any scenes beyond moving from point A to point B. There's a repetition of Strange's sense of happiness and the idea that his hubris and arrogance leads him to ruin and that he's got to change his ways somehow, and that's more said than shown. In a larger context, I do like the fact that the film directly addresses Strange's needlessly dickish persona and works to soften him. Like Chris said in the Flickchart episode we did with Ian, there's no real reason for Strange's story to be about karma or anything. At the shame time it's a shame that this is the first sequel to a movie six years old, and the filmmakers don't seem to be positive on what makes Strange tick, or the WHY of him. To quote my QnoA regarding Batman and Robin, they didn't really have a character arc, they just said that they did. I liked where they ended up with Strange, but they cheated.
On a far larger concern, my main issue is how Wanda is depicted. Is it a spoiler to say
Spoilershe's the villain
since the trailers don't hint at it?
SpoilerThe whole Scarlet Witch fake kids storyline, while honestly interesting and a classic from the comics, is ne of the most problematic storylines from the comics, and it seems they learned no lessons in adapting it here. It's really inescapable how sexist of a portrayal she has in this, being "Baby Crazy", and the film has zero interest in redeeming her. My problem is that I didn't feel at the end of WandaVision that this was where she'd lead to. I got the sense that that was the darkest we'd see her go, and she more or less learned her lesson in the end. But between that last episode and this movie, she goes full on evil offscreen, and if you did not see WandaVision and are coming straight from Endgame to this, you are fucked because she is already a villain in progress, after attacking Thanos and mourning Vision at the end of her last movie appearance. But Dr. Strange and the film at large makes very little attempt to reconcile or suggest that their former friend and teammate can come back from the dark side. Even in both versions of Dark Phoenix, the X-Men still thought something could be done to rescue Jean. Elizabeth Olsen was fantastic, and is arguably the best actress in the entire MCU. Every scene she's in, she's frightening, threatening, heartbreaking and surprising. And Sam Raimi directs the hell out of her menace. But I've got no idea what Feige and the other MCU filmmakers thought in terms of audience acceptance to go from following her as a protag in WandaVision to seeing her callously murder people and die at the end in this. It was far too much of a jump to not leave me completely disturbed.
But the Illuminati were cool, especially Krasinski as Reed and classic costumed Black Bolt. Those may have been reshoot moments, but as a comic fan I properly geeked out hardcore, as well as with 90s cartoon Patrick Stewart Prof X.
Sam Raimi really carries this movie though, ESPECIALLY in the third act. The thing with Doctor Strange is that his best comics were gothic and supernatural and creepy. The final act felt like the best of the Ditko/Gene Colan era, and I loved how it got nuttier and nuttier and nuttier with nary an insipid wise-assed comment to distract from the mood. YMMV on how effective Raimi's wacky directing played for you, but I loved it, especially they line "They don't have to be living..." In terms of being a Dr. Strange movie, this kicks the first film's ass ten times over.
This movie is flawed, severely so. Des is right that America Chavez, ultimately, is a plot device and her character could've been anybody. This is one of the most surface-written, in-need-of-more-drafts MCU movies in a while...but the Raimi directing as the film goes on is so much fun. It just gets darker, and wilder, and more violent and weird, that that's worth the price of admission. The spectacle really puts it over and salvages what I honestly understand to be a lesser-written film to be firmly solid by sheer style alone.
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But what does Ian Levine think???
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Moon Knight was a very mixed show for me, in part because the demands of the source material's tone got swept up by the needs of it being a Disney Plus Marvel show, and the fact that this thing's totally swallowed up by the now tried and true MCU formula.
From the beginning I disliked what they were doing with Steven Grant. It makes more sense by the end, but for a while the episodes he was carrying made the show mostly broad comedy, and the viewing experience really tedious. Once we saw more of Marc Spector though, especially as Moon Knight, things tightened up. The best part of this whole thing is Oscar Isaac, who never needed to prove himself as a great actor, but he so seamlessly switches back and forth between Marc and Steven that you instantly forget they're the same man.
Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow was a very good performance for a middling, sometimes better than average villain. I know Hawke's like 50 but he did a great job playing even older, and even though the character archetype (villain who sees himself as a hero and wants to save the world through mass genocide) is way past played out, I did believe the character insofar as his convictions went. He was even better in episode 5 as the Ned-Flanders-Meets-Stan-Lee psychologist.
That 5th episode is one of the best single eps Marvel has had since the Netflix days. It represented the potential for drama that Moon Knight as a character promised, and really dug its heels into the tragedy of Marc Spector, even if they fudged his backstory from the comics a bit. I even liked the invoking of Egyptian Gods like Tawret, as it kept the mythical elements of the character uncompromised. Sure, the CGI was dodgy but I rarely care about stuff like that. And, like Loki, the ending credit music of the 5th episode was blazingly exciting and moody.
The season finale exemplified my mixed feelings. Too many things happened way too easily, like Harrow easily dispatching of the other Gods, off-screen even. But the Moon Knight final battle was kickass, and terrifically choreographed and storyboarded. Layla being a surprise super hero feels like...a need for female heroism that the show hadn't been screamingly requiring, yet I'm not gonna say it bothered me either. It did kind of come out of nowhere, but so what. I liked Marc resolving not to kill Harrow in the end, as that was built up over the series.
SpoilerThe VERY very end with the reveal of Jake Lockley was great, and a great way to keep Khonshu tied to Moon Knight and to make Marc's DID even more tragic.
Overall, I keep thinking that if Moon Knight and been the last Defender show and Iron Fist was Disney Plus, the tones would've been better applied for the betterment of the shows. Credit to Marvel for finally introducing a brand new hero after seeding this Disney+ experiment for a year with the Avengers also rans. I can't say it's the best of the shows, and they're all flawed, but I felt the first three series definitely had more going for them than this or Hawkeye did.
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5 hours ago, Davedevil said:
The clips I've seen were really funny.
This is the best post I've seen.😆 Mild NSFW warning.
Hahahaha
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I think the comic book community did an admirable job of making sure the man knew he was universally adored in the final moments of his life. That makes this tragedy just a bit easier to live with. RIP.
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I'll never watch this movie cuz spiderz, but the conversation on the tonality of the film given the racial politics of post Civil War vs. the late 90s was very interesting. I doubt Will Smith spoke in ANY kind of period accent, but would've been neat if he did.
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Figuring this was recorded before that news about Peter Dinklage speaking out against the live action remake of Snow White bringing back the seven dwarves? He gets namechecked here, but I'd totally forgotten about it until then.
I've seen Snow White only once, in high school. I remember being very impressed with it then, and completely forgot about the Queen's death and the Huntsman. My favorite part of PART OF YOUR WORLD so far is the comparing the animated movie with the original text, seeing what works better and what was a downgrade. Fun first episode, Siblings!
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Enemy of the State: caught some of the first act on TV and torrented the rest cuz it's an old-ass movie by now.
I was honestly expecting to rag on this once I was finished because the film hinges on the scariness and paranoia of government surveillance, and it's clear that the filmmakers though they were being cutting edge with all the zoom-out sped up overhead shots and satellites in Earth's atmosphere zooming across the screen. But the acting quality still makes this at worst a mixed bag and at best a very watchable thriller. Will Smith is the main character and he's a slightly more serious 90s Will. Jon Voight is the government bad guy and Gene Hackman is the reclusive government good guy. It's those two actors that keep this a good movie. Gene Hackman is really excellent. I was sort of taken out of the movie from the start with the whole murdering a congressman because he won't vote the way you want him to thing, as that seems totally fantastical in today's day and age. The movie is essentially a 2 hour chase scene with technology and science, pioneered by a bunch of nerd actors like Seth Green, Jaime Kennedy and Jack Black. It's really interesting at the end of the day.
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On 4/7/2022 at 5:39 PM, Professor said:
I thought Morbius sucked. The script (or edit. Not sure which is to blame. I'll assume both) was the main weakness. Everything felt unearned. A lot of tell, not show. The friendship, the romance, the internal struggle all felt like boxes that were checked, rather than actual parts of the story.
I think we disagree on the special effects. The vampiric effect could look good, and did from time to time. It also looked really bad more often than not. And the final fight CGI was just a mess that I struggled to follow. Very similar to how I felt in Carnage so it may just be the Sony 'house style'.
Whatever strengths this film has are with Leto & Smith. They are trying, but are let down by the material. And even saying that, I kinda feel like they were in different movies.
One thing about the ending that I do not understand, and since I'm not gonna watch this again
Michael makes two doses of the vampire killing serum, basically saying he is gonna kill Lucien, then himself. Did I miss something as to why he is still alive at the end? What changed his mind?
SpoilerYeah, I agree, I thought of that. Where did his death wish go?
The flaws of the movie have been pointed out to me since I made this post last week. I still don't think Morbius is Z-grade, and that people are a little too eager to bash it, but it's not great. The weaknesses in the script, which I went it kind of expecting therefore it didn't faze me as much, are still genuine weaknesses. Those shouldn't have no effect on the quality of the movie, so it's definitely below average. Still don't think it's awful, but my positivity might've been a little premature.
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Jujutsu Kaisen 0: Adaptation of the original four chapter manga series that led into the JJK series proper. It's a little confusing if you're not understanding when this takes place, which I wasn't until I got home. But it has a very Shinji-esque protag (voiced by Megumi Ogata) and heavily feature the babe Maki.
Morbius: It's a fact that since...2016ish, people have stood their ground against the Sony Marvel films. Is that entirely undeserved? I guess not, since their plans to include every Spider-Man character in a solo film is a really lame attempt at the cinematic universe clout. But it's also kinda weak to just write off the films on sight at the drop of an announcement. But also, Jared Leto has been burning through his Oscar goodwill for years as well, so Morbius had a lot going against it.
I liked it fine. The character is well adapted, and has a far better reason to exist separate from Spider-Man than Venom does. He probably has existed separate from Spidey in more of his appearances than not, he's not a rotating member of his rogues gallery. Jared Leto is good casting, and looks just like him from start to finish. The vampiric effect on his face I think look good, and the CGI I didn't find any more noticeable than any other special effects film. The character isn't the deepest, owing a lot in cinema familiarity with Bruce Banner's Hulk right down to Edward Norton's stopwatch. But in the final battle, he's got his black and purple look from the 90s, which was neat.
The real highlight is Matt Smith as the villain Lucien. As a self-respecting Doctor Who fan, I caught more than a few twisted takes on the 11th Doctor in his performance (it recalled Tennant's Killgrave essentially being an evil 10th Doctor), but it still makes for a terrific performance. His motivations blur as the film goes on, but his sense of enjoyment and threat presence are really entertaining. I found him sympathetic in the beginning, and entertaining by the end. IDK if Lucien will go down as a great villain or anything, but the performance is far better than the dregs of Yellowjacket.
The movie's choked with tropes and cliché's we've seen before. Tyrese and Al Madrigal play investigating agents that don't really add to much. Adria Arjona is the love interest. Jared Harris is the mentor father figure. Lots of things we've seen before, told initially at a breakneck speed. Morbius and Lucien's childhood friendship is told thru a flashback that's boiled down to a single scene, that's probably the biggest technical blip in the viewing experience. This film's a brisk hour and 44 minutes, but it would've benefitted from another 15 for breathing room. There's a really strong film here, with less clichés and more violence, although it's violence level is passable.
Here's the thing tho, the two mid-credits scenes are A.W.F.U.L. Like, SHOCKINGLY terrible. I know they've leaked online, and you might as well see them there. They're of a basement quality that's far below the metric that the film set itself at, and really justifies everyone's disdain for the Sony movies. Morbius is fine, nobody's gonna get mad at it, but holy crap those last two scenes honestly actually almost killed the whole thing.
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*EDIT* Wrong Thread
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On 3/20/2022 at 3:42 PM, slothian said:
Go onnnnnnnnnn.......
Logan's a very solid film, arguably the most technically proficient X-Men film ever.
It's just way too bleak to watch as enjoyment for me personally.
Between the apocalyptic setting, the state of Professor X (not the film's fault but that hit a little close to home) and the overall oppressive nature of the film, it just wasn't my cup of tea. But I'll never deny it's high quality.
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I need to rewatch Blade II since for a long time that held the reputation as the best of the trilogy. I'd sooner watch it though than Logan, which is the best movie I never wanna see again.
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*pushes up glasses* I believe you're are referring to NO WAY Home.
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Batman and Robin (1997):
This is the third time I've watched this movie in the last three years, since Ian held the Flickchart Forum for Batman's 80th anniversary back in 2019, this time done for the purposes of a commentary and discussion on Questions: We Don't Have Answers. The only thing worth mentioning here that I don't get too much into in that recording is that a lot of Arnie's wacky dialogue has stayed with me in the following week. Just his rampant glee and enjoyment at being evil despite his "tragic" backstory, it's really incongruous but that's what makes it really funny. "Let's kick some ice" doesn't really make any sense, you're about to destroy the city, whose "ice" are you kicking exactly? But that's exactly what makes it awesome.
End of Days (1999):
Arnold's follow-up after Batman and Robin (a two year hiatus allegedly due to health issues), and guess what: B&R is a better watch. This movie's a laborious, portentous slog that goes for atmosphere over everything else, and has more cuts per action sequence than Taken 3. Kevin Pollack is Arnold's bff cop buddy (recalling somewhat Jim Belushi in Red Heat), and I like Kevil Pollack a lot, but it's a thankless role. C.C.H. Pounder is wasted, the guy playing the Devil (Gabriel Byrne a.k.a.- "not-James-Woods") is wasted despite an earnest performance. Part of the last lingering thread of my Catholic upbringing is a bit offended at all the sacrilege, but that's more to do with how bad the Devil's plan was. He just ran around kind of hoping that Arnold would do his bidding, while showing a more vast amount of power, thus leaving so much to chance for no reason. That really kept me from getting invested, the incredulity of it all. And like Raw Deal, you can't play Arnold as just a guy. He's bigger than life, you gotta have him be bigger than life. By this point, Arnold's a decent actor. He's not that bad a performer. He can pull off dramatic scenes, but it doesn't work if he's written to be too normal. The whole thing's just a cock-up from start to finish. Boring and annoying to watch.
Turning Red (2022):
So I was barely aware of this until Twitter started popping off about angry wypipo kvetching about not relating to goofy school age kids. I really didn't know what the movie was about until I sated watching. I've been pretty consistently enjoying Disney's output in the last year or so, since Soul, but this is by far my favorite movie they've done in a while. Right away we're introduced to Meilin and her friends, who are a set of silly, energetic, lovable tweens. They balance the line between OTT and completely believable with a verve that reminded me of Steven in the early days of Steven Universe. It's a film about puberty and family and friendship and culture and learning who you are and want to be and handles all of those themes so amazingly, it almost makes your head spin. Legitimately funny without any of the 2010s era irreverence or overreliance on pop culture (the movie takes place in 2002, with Meilin being the same age I would've been, there are some cultural incongruences but they don't totally distract), unabashedly sweet and wholesome, this is easily my favorite movie of the year not starring my two favorite comic book super heroes. I want tot watch it again.
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Mask of Zorro is one of my favorite movies.
Ooh! Maybe Fracture? I had forgotten I'd seen that...
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Yeah, those are definitely mood specific...gosh, I'm not sure.
Episode 04 - Dumbo
in Part of Your World
Posted
Halfway thru the ep and enjoying it. Speaking for myself, I actually find the crows ironically funny. Partly because they're so over the top, and partly because there's a real flummoxed "AW HELL NAW WTF" sort of response black people I know have with them. Like, laughing because they are so cartoonishly offensive, like obviously meant to be black guys in such a way that it's funny, but not in the same vibe as a Ralph Bashki kind of thing. Honestly, the whole "I ain't NEVA seen an Elephant fly!" series of riffs and the fact that the movie ends with that song just makes me laugh. It's not fuckin' cool, but it's also funny in a that's-so-wrong kind of way. YMMV.
That roustabout song tho is really hurtful and offensive, in a backhand-fools-in-the-mouth reaction kind of way.
Race will be an interesting challenge going throughout the series, because one might argue that it still doesn't get better until the 21st century. Your mileage may vary on this, but I know for a fact that there are people who found/find Aladdin offensive (rewritten song lyrics notwithstanding), Mulan dicey (the Huns having yellow eyes of evil), and even some lore mythology stuff like in Brother Bear. It'll be tricky waters to wade through, which should add to the fun!