Random movie and tv thoughts

[Dread]

American Gods is fucking great. Some unknowns and a selection of the finest actors of television's modern age. Also, Crispin Glover.

[Donomark]

My girlfriend found this old-ass Nickelodeon show called "Fifteen" (or Hillside, as it was Canadian). It's basically a proto-Degrassi, a drama starring teens and only teens. It's cheesy as hell, but you can tell the writers are really trying to make a sequential drama for kids. The child actors are mostly staid and unexpressive with a few standouts. Ryan Reynolds plays one of the younger characters, and he's decent enough at age 14. The two mean girls, Brooke and Kelly, are the absolute best and the reason to watch the show. The actors stand head and shoulders over the rest, any they're endlessly hilarious with their petty plots that lead into eventual schemes for revenge. Kelly was played by Enuka Okuma, who I was shocked to discover later voiced both Lady Une from Gundam Wing and Rhodanite from Steven Universe: two wildly different characters and performances. She's my new stanning idol because of it. 

[JackFetch]

So I finally sat down and watched the first season of Broadchurch. I wish I hadn't waited so long as that was some of the best acting I've seen in my life. Jodie Whittaker in particular was amazing and David Bradley made feel emotions I didn't think Mr. Filch from Harry Potter could make me feel. It was a little basic mystery trope heavy and I guessed the murder around the halfway point but it was a beautiful show. There were some things I didn't understand because I'm American but it was pretty easy to figure out from context what they were talking about. If I remember correctly there was an American version that I kind of want to check out just to see how bad they screwed it up.

[Missy]

If you continue with the original -- and I hate to say this -- skip season two and jump to three.

[Missy]

 

[JackFetch]

So many trailers this week.

We got Toy Story 4, John Wick 3, Stranger Things Season 3, and Avengers: Endgame.

 

[JackFetch]

So I just rewatched Captain America: Civil War and noticed a couple of things I didn't before.

1. Captain America beats Spider-Man in a test of strength. When Spidey webs his hands and they both start pulling Cap actually sends him flying. Now Cap is nowhere near the strength of Spider-Man so I think this is due to a couple of things. Cap uses leverage by flipping to gain momentum and Peter has only had his powers for six months so he doesn't know the extent of them yet.

 2. Wakanda is one of the signers of the Sokovia Accords, yet T'Challa runs around breaking them the whole movie and at the end even hides an enhanced fugitive. This wouldn't matter except everyone knows who he is and doesn't say anything. He took his mask off in front of about a dozen people and everyone keeps referring to him as "your highness" while he is in his Black Panther outfit. Then there is the whole time during Black Panther that he is running around using his powers in another country to apprehend a fugitive. The accords are still in effect so he shouldn't be doing that.  I understand he is a King but wouldn't someone like Ross be throwing a fit about it?

[Missy]

4 hours ago, JackFetch said:

So I just rewatched Captain America: Civil War and noticed a couple of things I didn't before.

1. Captain America beats Spider-Man in a test of strength. When Spidey webs his hands and they both start pulling Cap actually sends him flying. Now Cap is nowhere near the strength of Spider-Man so I think this is due to a couple of things. Cap uses leverage by flipping to gain momentum and Peter has only had his powers for six months so he doesn't know the extent of them yet.

 2. Wakanda is one of the signers of the Sokovia Accords, yet T'Challa runs around breaking them the whole movie and at the end even hides an enhanced fugitive. This wouldn't matter except everyone knows who he is and doesn't say anything. He took his mask off in front of about a dozen people and everyone keeps referring to him as "your highness" while he is in his Black Panther outfit. Then there is the whole time during Black Panther that he is running around using his powers in another country to apprehend a fugitive. The accords are still in effect so he shouldn't be doing that.  I understand he is a King but wouldn't someone like Ross be throwing a fit about it?

I wish we had more Cap / Spidey scenes, because the few moments we got in Civil War were really good. Hell, it'd be fun to watch the modern Queens kid take the old time Brooklyn boy around the city. It would also serve to give Peter another father figure while keeping him grounded. Tony is showing Peter the stars with all of the tech and super-suits (and spaceship), whereas Steve would remind him who and what they're fighting for.

[Donomark]

I figure Steve just used his leverage. Just  couple of minutes earlier, Spidey solo'd The Winter Solider, who at that point was repeatedly proven to be the big bad beast of the MCU. They got Spider-Man's strength level exactly right I thought.

[JackFetch]

Disney Plus is launching November 12th at 6.99 a month or 69.99 a year. That is pretty much right where I expect the price to be to compete with Netflix out of the gate. He worded it as launching with that price, so don't expect it to stay there. This is to jumpstart memberships. 

[JackFetch]

So I finally decided to watch Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I didn't like the first couple episodes but I got into it after the first story wrapped up and they moved on. I have to say, Sabrina is kind of an asshole and I wasn't expecting that. Almost every crisis is her fault because she does things out of selfishness disguised as love for her friends. 

[Missy]

 

[JackFetch]

That is some terrible CGI on that motorcycle slide. They obviously spent all of their money on the young Will effects. 

[Donomark]

I see no reason not to watch this.

[Missy]

 

[Missy]

Sonic fan s, what do you think of his look?

[dc20willsave]

It's about what I expected from a Sonic Movie.

[Donomark]

I am a Sonic fan, and I'm not as outraged as everyone else seems to be eager to be. Now, this doesn't look good. Who wants to see a Sonic film where he's out of his element for the first one? But Jim Carrey doing a 90s throwback performance looks fun. IDK, this looks pretty lame but I can't really get upset over it. Maybe I'll see it, maybe not. 🤷‍♂️

[JackFetch]

I think it looks like any other kid's movie. I don't know why people are so upset about it. It's freakin Sonic The Hedgehog. There isn't a lot of lore to go off of like there is for Pokemon. It wasn't a good fit for a theatrical release in the first place. 

[James D.]

On 4/19/2019 at 2:29 AM, JackFetch said:

So I finally decided to watch Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I didn't like the first couple episodes but I got into it after the first story wrapped up and they moved on. I have to say, Sabrina is kind of an asshole and I wasn't expecting that. Almost every crisis is her fault because she does things out of selfishness disguised as love for her friends. 

Watched the final episode last night. While it was overall a good episode (and an entertaining show on the whole), the very last line ruined the finale entirely for me. Talk about 180'ing any character growth your main character developed. And what she wants to do is stupid on every conceivable level. 

[S-T]

I watched a YouTube clip the "ice cream man" scene in the 2018 Death Wish remake.

Wow.

WOW.

I didn't notice how bad this was the first time I saw this, and I can't believe they got away with that. That was obscenely racist.

[JackFetch]

I don't see how it is racist. He is in a neighborhood that is full of poverty and crime so they took advantage of the drug dealer getting killed by stealing the drugs. It says more about poverty than race. 

[Donomark]

6 hours ago, JackFetch said:

I don't see how it is racist. He is in a neighborhood that is full of poverty and crime so they took advantage of the drug dealer getting killed by stealing the drugs. It says more about poverty than race. 

The optics of a white guy just waltzing up to whomever he wants to, specifically a black person,  and gunning them down, was just about the last thing cinema needed in 2018. Speaking as a black man, that scene in the trailer (essentially unedited) disturbed me so much that I thought I was gonna get nightmares. Gun culture in America is sustained by fear of The Other, and for Willis to just go up to a guy on his own property and murder him in broad daylight, and then get away with it, was far too realistic to be helped by "But the guy was a drug dealer" excuse. 

Coupled with the fact that the hoodie has been taken up as a symbolic totem recalling Trayvon Martin, and that Willis was co-opting it to present himself as some kind of urban underdog, and this movie got the "Go fuck yourself" double-fingers from me almost immediately. 

It's NRA White Savior Revenge Tentacle Porn, and a problem with vigilante movies that goes back to the original Death Wish movies which, for the record I do enjoy, but on an ironic level. You don't solve poverty and drug dealing by blowing black people away, but most of the country thinks you can. That's how we get so many deaths of black men yearly by police, because the narrative that they represent criminality is the understood narrative in films like this. 

 

[slothian]

Can we all agree that Eli Roth helming a Death Wish remake was a bad idea? I'd be happy if that prick never made another movie ever again.

[JackFetch]

On 5/26/2019 at 8:36 AM, Donomark said:

The optics of a white guy just waltzing up to whomever he wants to, specifically a black person,  and gunning them down, was just about the last thing cinema needed in 2018. Speaking as a black man, that scene in the trailer (essentially unedited) disturbed me so much that I thought I was gonna get nightmares. Gun culture in America is sustained by fear of The Other, and for Willis to just go up to a guy on his own property and murder him in broad daylight, and then get away with it, was far too realistic to be helped by "But the guy was a drug dealer" excuse. 

Coupled with the fact that the hoodie has been taken up as a symbolic totem recalling Trayvon Martin, and that Willis was co-opting it to present himself as some kind of urban underdog, and this movie got the "Go fuck yourself" double-fingers from me almost immediately. 

It's NRA White Savior Revenge Tentacle Porn, and a problem with vigilante movies that goes back to the original Death Wish movies which, for the record I do enjoy, but on an ironic level. You don't solve poverty and drug dealing by blowing black people away, but most of the country thinks you can. That's how we get so many deaths of black men yearly by police, because the narrative that they represent criminality is the understood narrative in films like this. 

 

I could see it being racist if the guy wearing a hoodie gunning down people was black, but it goes against the stereotype so it isn't. The whole point of the movie was a guy taking revenge on crime because of what happened to his family. He didn't target the guy because he was black. He was a criminal that hurt people. That doesn't mean he needed to die, but that is the question this movie is asking asking vigilantes. He kills a lot of white people in the movie but this one scene is bad because the person he killed was black and in a black neighborhood? Sometimes a movie scene is just a movie scene.