Movies The Movie Thread! - Continuation - Part 1

[Organizized]

To be fair though, Battle Royale is originally a novel. The film came out the same year the manga was serialized. But yeah, I like that film, have done ever since I first saw it.

Ichi the Killer... I saw that one when I was like 13. I remember thinking it was one of the strangest films I'd ever seen, but I was intrigued by it nonetheless. Can't vouch for its quality nor its faithfulness in adaptation.

Some will argue that the Japanese Death Note live-action films are the answer to your question, @Jammin. I wouldn't. Though compared to this new piece of garbage, they're masterpieces. But no, you can't turn the Death Note series into a two hour film. That's problem #1.

 

[Jammin]

I agree with you guys on 80% of live actions....being dank.
But i think Battle Royale and Ichi the Killer were good....for a live adaption that is

I haven't seen either so maybe those are the exceptions.

I just think that with all the money it takes to produce one of these live action adaptation they could produce something really special in the form of an anime miniseries. Especially with something like Netflix

Like I'd put the Castlevania adaptation over every live action adaptation ever. Some types of things just aren't suited to live action.

 

[xi0]

Has there ever been a good live action anime adaptation? Like, seriously, has there ever been even one? Because I don't think there has.

Well, not anime in these cases, but rather manga and light novels, but I'd say Oldboy and Edge of Tomorrow are ones that come to mind. But those might not have been the most faithful adaptations perhaps. I doubt this new Death Note abortion can really qualify as such either, though...

 

[kkck]

Oh, I saw the death note adaptation. It's not quite as bad as dragon ball evolution but it tries damn hard to be there.

Spoiler

I have two issues with the movie: The first is that light is basically a teenager in love. That's... not a thing, come on. The movie is basically driven by teenage hormones. My second gripe is the changes in the death note's rules. Rule changes make sense, if anything they need to simplify some stuff because of the format. But in turn the thing was made vastly more powerful than it was in the manga. The story itself is not quite about the death note but rather the battle of wits between light and his rivals. If the note is THAT powerful then intelligence stops being a factor here which kinda kills the point because any plot point can be resolved by writing increasingly asinine stuff into the book. The note should be but a tool while the spotlight remains on light/L. The series completely missed the point IMO.

 

[goldb]

Speaking of adaptation:

 

[Organizized]

Speaking of adaptation:

Saw that and am so torn. Takahashi Miike is such a hit-and-miss director (would be strange otherwise, since he's literally made a hundred films) and I remember really liking Blade of the Immortal. On the other hand, you can always count on his films to be great looking, and he's usually amazing at stylized action/violence. Just hope that's not all he'll bring to it.

Also, while we're on Miike and adaptations, I'll just leave this here:

 

[FetherMan]

anyone know when the "Fullmetal Alchemist" live action movie is being released next year?. really want to see this as well as the live action "Bleach" film.

 

[goldb]

anyone know when the "Fullmetal Alchemist" live action movie is being released next year?. really want to see this as well as the live action "Bleach" film.

It's scheduled for December 2017.

---

JJ Abrams will write and direct Star Wars Episode IX. I'm already very excited.

 

[Riku]

Thats somewhat reassurring. I'm kinda glad Trevorrow is gone, even if Jurassic World was a mega blockbuster, it wasn't really a good film and I never really had much faith he could do good for Star Wars. JJ did good with the first one and does mostly solid work.

 

[Styx]

I'm really glad to hear about the news for Star Wars! I was one of the few who utterly disliked the Jurassic World movie and I would have hated it if they put that guy in charge of Star Wars.

 

[Jammin]

I loved Jurassic World but I'm also glad JJ Abrams is doing more Star Wars.

He's a guy that really seems to get what Star Wars fans want these movies to be in a way I don't think he ever really did for Star Trek.

 

[Organizized]

I know I'm a slowpoke on this one, but John Wick Chapter 2 was even better than the first.

I'm a sucker for some good gun fu.

So far 2017 has been a pretty good film year, and I haven't even watched a lot of new films, or so it feels. My favorites so far:

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - 10/10
Get Out - 9/10
Baby Driver - 9/10
Dunkirk - 8,5/10
John Wick: Chapter 2 - 8/10
Logan - 8/10
Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 - 8/10
The Lego Batman Movie - 8/10
Loving Vincent - 7,5/10
The Big Sick - 7/10

The ones not so great:

Cars 3 - 5/10
Ghost in the Shell - 4/10
Beauty and the Beast - 4/10
Death Note - 2/10

Ones I have yet to see/haven't been released but want to watch:

Spoiler

The Disaster Artist
The Shape of Water
Blade Runner 2049
The Last Jedi
Lady Bird
The Death of Stalin
Lucky
Coco
Call Me By Your Name
I, Tonya
Mary and the Witch's Flower
Spiderman: Homecoming
Mother!
The Florida Project
Darkest Hour
IT
Okja
Logan Lucky
Phantom Thread
Ingrid Goes West
The Breadwinner
Mudbound
Detroit
A Ghost Story
God’s Own Country

Anyone got any others I've completely missed and need to add to the list?

 

[Styx]

I also watched Baby Driver. It was good until around the end, at which point I was not feeling it at all.

 

[Organizized]

Well it's definitely an extreme case of "style over substance" (the story was pretty eh) but I still loved it.

 

[Brandish μ]

Well if you want something intense and disturbing you could watch Mother! It was very good.

Spoiler

Saw Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence on the poster, directed by Darren Aronofsky... so why not.

It starts with Lawrence on fire and then Bardem places a small crystal in it's holder (for the lack of a better word) which starts to restore some burned parts of the home. Then it cuts Lawrence who wakes up. She's the young wife who spends her day restoring the house (which isn't burned at this point, but was) and Bardem is a poet. Eventually Ed Harris, one of Bardem's fans, shows up... invites his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) over to stay... and many others come after this... all of which are a bother to Lawrence. What follows are some truly gruesome scenes (including a baby being killed and eaten), and Lawrence burns everything down. By the end of all that, Lawrence dies as Bardem takes out her heart, which turns to stone, and he places it into the holder again. A new wife wakes up.

Now that was a very simple rundown of the events, and I missed out on some of the important symbolism. It should be pretty obvious that this isn't a story about a poet, his wife and some gate-crashers. It's very much a portrait or message of something... and tbh I'm struggling to think of what it actually is...

1) The insecurity and pressure of being a mother/having kids. There's several symbols of her angst towards this. Lawrence wants kids, we don't know if Bardem does but we do find out that he doesn't have sex with her much. Adding to that is the age gap which makes Lawrence feel insecure, and Bardem's job as a poet. He's struggling for inspiration, and uses that as an excuse to invite others into their home so he can be inspired... but he just loves adoration. When Bardem is around others he tends show more enthusiasm towards them than he does for Lawrence, he can be quite ignorant of her at times, even leaves her home alone after someone has been murdered. The 'other guests' in the film act lovingly towards Bardem while rude towards Lawrence. All of this is to establish the pressure the mother/woman would feel in these situations, and a lot of it is imagined or self-inflicted pressure; which is caused by the husband not being attentive.

However there's so much anger and intensity in the scenes toward the end that I find it out of place for the film to solely represent marriage/motherhood...

2) Because of the cycle (with the burning and the stone), it's possible the film's idea is about the environment, or mother nature. Land and vegetation can be burned as a way to manage/sustain the land, returning nutrients to the ground, and life is remade once more. This would mean Lawrence represents nature, and everyone else in the film represent humanity, with the 'other people' being large scale polluters of the environment and consumers who are ignorant of how they sustain this cycle. Mother nature gets angry enough in the end to wipe out humanity perhaps... and the new wife at the end of the movie is the new life that appears after the burning.

3) Another possibility is that the film represents ideas or artistic creations, and everything that happens is about how ideas and art can enrage and excite the masses. The cycle in the film is analagous to an artist creating a new piece, or even a paradigm shift.

---

I'm more for 1 and 2, probably 2 being the central idea and 1 being a vehicle for it and the scenes in the film. I did think of 3 because of the poet and his work.

I guess I really enjoyed the movie to write that much lol. It did make me think quite a bit as I drove home, and I'd like to see it again. Great performances by the actors as you'd expect from them.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 16, 2017, Original Post Date: Sep 16, 2017 ---

Previews I saw for Mother! were It, Jigsaw and Snowman. Jigsaw looks meh. It could be okay, as I understood it there will be at least 2 movies (it was a TV series ages ago). Snowman looked promising enough as a serial killer thriller. Directed by Tomas Alfredson who made Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Let the right one in...

 

[FetherMan]

IT (2017) 9 / 10

I usually not scared easily by today's horror films that to me seem to be silly and overrated, but what they did with Pennywise and the kids in this new version of IT was scary. It's almost like you think you know what Pennywise will do and suddenly something else happens and your taken back quite a bit. The one scene in the garage really caught me off guard.

Probably one of the best adaptations of Stephen King's novels in a long, long time and I think, most people will enjoy it. I was 9 years old when the original mini series came out in 1990 and they adapted the first half with the Losers clubs as kids, so there will be a second film that will focus on the kids being adults and reuniting to face Pennywise again.

Honestly, didn't know what to expect from this film, but it was surprisingly good and seeing it again.

 

[Styx]

Oh yea, I also saw It (2017 obviously).

Spoiler

Now, I still think the original was pretty scary when shit happened concerning It but in all honesty...this remake was considerably better in most aspects (note: I am NOT knocking the original!). I actually thought it was better than the book as well, though I guess that isn't saying much since I thought the book was incredibly boring and stale even when we had the first movie. I'm glad both movies decided to omit the disgusting and completely unneeded child orgy that happened "for the sake of the group", which to be honest, says something really disturbing about Stephen King's character. I mean he added Beverly in just to have sex with a bunch of boys, one of which was just eleven years old. /rant

Now while I say the movie was better and it was scary, it wasn't particularly amazing. It isn't a horror film with constant horror like, say Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, but it had its moments in my opinion. Maybe I'm biased because I find clowns to be the most terrifying thing on the planet besides wild fire, but there were several parts that were just freaky. For example, a scene when Mike is being bullied and he looks to his right at the corner field. You see Pennywise (The Dancing Clown) smiling at him from the corn waving a severed child's arm. That was pretty freaky.

The most annoying part to me was Richie's "jokes" or douche-bag behavior though. It seriously almost ruined the movie for me.

I give it a 7.8/10. It is really hard for a horror movie, in my opinion, to score that high. The last time I scored a horror film that high or higher was The Conjuring, and that was mostly because of how exceptionally well written and acted out it was. Before that it was "The Last Exorcism" simply for the ending, which freaked me the fark out.

 

[Riku]

Warner is marketing Blade Runner 2049 with 3 short films that take place between the original and the sequel, two of them are already out. First "Nexus Dawn" gives us characterization for Wallace (Leto) and the second "Nowhere to Run" focuses on Sapper Morton (Bautista). Pretty nice. I particulary liked the second one, Bautista was really good in that. Hope his character has decent screen time on the actual film, because I'm very curious.

 

[FetherMan]

mother! 8 / 10

This is one of the weirdest and confusing films I've ever seen and I liked it. From beginning to end, you don't know exactly what to expect to happen and your constantly waiting for something and it keeps going and going and going, until you get to the final 30 minutes. During this point, the movie goes bananas in a big way and ends leaving you with assumptions, questions and ideas on what the film was or could be about.

The actors were great, Lawerence and Bardem really worked well together with additional support from Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer. May see this film again, just to get a better idea of what I was watching.

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 7, 2017, Original Post Date: Sep 23, 2017 ---

mother! 8 / 10

This is one of the weirdest and confusing films I've ever seen and I liked it. From beginning to end, you don't know exactly what to expect to happen and your constantly waiting for something and it keeps going and going and going, until you get to the final 30 minutes. During this point, the movie goes bananas in a big way and ends leaving you with assumptions, questions and ideas on what the film was or could be about.

The actors were great, Lawerence and Bardem really worked well together with additional support from Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer. May see this film again, just to get a better idea of what I was watching.

Blade Runner 2049 10 /10 smile-big

Pretty much, yeah, it's that damn GOOD!!!.

 

[Faust]