Seen any good movies lately?

[glduck]

wow. i'm essentially dead inside and i found dunkirk kicking at whatever emotional capabilities i have left. 

perhaps it's a generational thing, but i find your criticisms of dunkirk to mirror mine of tora tora tora. i find tora to be sweeping but mostly distant. dunkirk focused on several storylines, too, but felt far more personal. 

[KUGRDON]

21 minutes ago, glduck said:

wow. i'm essentially dead inside and i found dunkirk kicking at whatever emotional capabilities i have left. 

perhaps it's a generational thing, but i find your criticisms of dunkirk to mirror mine of tora tora tora. i find tora to be sweeping but mostly distant. dunkirk focused on several storylines, too, but felt far more personal. 

Interesting to know an I appreciate your response.  My 28 year old nephew had the same response I did, he is the one Who first voiced the "silent narrator documentary" description that I used.  Love your "sweeping but mostly distant line".  If I could have thought of it I would have described Dunkirk as "sweeping but emotionally distant".  

Every take is valid.  One take I had that I didn't use was that if there was a woman in the movie, I couldn't remember her.  Certainly no boobs.

93 on Rotten Tomatoes, so more folks agree with you.

[Orange]

9 hours ago, KUGRDON said:

Television is so much better than the movies this summer.

Saw "Dunkirk."  Good music, good cinematography, good action and intensity.  Yet on the way back to my car, I felt oddly empty.  It was a hollow experience for lack of character development and story.

I wanted more from a movie about such a significant event so rich an opportunity for a storyteller.   The real story of Dunkirk centers on the docks of England, the flotilla of small craft and the private citizens heroically manning them and rescuing soldiers.  Instead of focusing on that, this movie spent far too much time on a Belgian beach where soldiers did nothing but wait and walk through pointless "action scenes" contrived to fill time. 

"Dunkirk" had no story, nobody's eyes to see it through and nobody's heart to feel it.  The chief exception to this was the one small craft and crew featured with the best character being it's captain subtly played by Mark Rylance.  I'm going to look for more of his work.  The closing scenes with Kenneth Branagh on the dock and the boy going to the newspaper office seemed afterthoughts which played out as fruitless attempts to infuse heart into a corpse.

The silent narrator, pseudo-documentary, multiple pov technique employed was oddly similar to (copied from?) Tora Tora Tora without the acting or character development.   I would recommend renting TTT while you wait for this to come out on DVD.  I take it back,  AzGreg had it right, see this movie in 70 mm or IMAX to best appreciate the technical expertise, then rent TTT to fill the emptiness it leaves you with.  Or if sterile stimulation is your thing, I'd imagine you'll do better to ride a roller coaster without a date.  For more on that, ask Org.

C+  So many better war movies.  For PG, start with "Bridge Over The River Kwai".  

I'm glad I went to the theater, the trailers for "Wonder" and "Victoria and Abdul", the latter with Judi Dench and Ali Fazal, looked promising.

Org, you make a cheap Pollyanna-ish Siskel to my rich fat Ebert.  Now die.

Sucks being wrong.  My condolences.

[KUGRDON]

7 hours ago, glduck said:

wow. i'm essentially dead inside and i found dunkirk kicking at whatever emotional capabilities i have left. 

perhaps it's a generational thing, but i find your criticisms of dunkirk to mirror mine of tora tora tora. i find tora to be sweeping but mostly distant. dunkirk focused on several storylines, too, but felt far more personal. 

One thing I would add is that I did find it stimulating, but not emotional.  I didn't give a rats ass about anybody dying because I didn't know them.  Put another way, parts of Dunkirk were like the intensity of watching a qb get a compound leg fracture in week 10.  Never once like watching my qb get a compound leg fracture. . .

[Orange]

I think the lack of character development in Dunkirk kind of created a blank canvas for you to put one's self in any character's shoes.  I kept thinking about how terrified I'd be in just about every scene.

Also, this was a war movie without heroism.  War is MOSTLY just trying to survive, not performing great feats that save lives.  It's refreshing to see a war movie that doesn't glorify any combatants.  Hardy's character was as close to a hero as we had, but even his character was more or less just doing his job, with partial success. Then we get no absolution.

The best service you can do for an audience that's never personally experienced war is to provide zero jingoism.  That's what Dunkirk did.

[KUGRDON]

16 minutes ago, Orange said:

I think the lack of character development in Dunkirk kind of created a blank canvas for you to put one's self in any character's shoes.  I kept thinking about how terrified I'd be in just about every scene.

Also, this was a war movie without heroism.  War is MOSTLY just trying to survive, not performing great feats that save lives.  It's refreshing to see a war movie that doesn't glorify any combatants.  Hardy's character was as close to a hero as we had, but even his character was more or less just doing his job, with partial success. Then we get no absolution.

The best service you can do for an audience that's never personally experienced war is to provide zero jingoism.  That's what Dunkirk did.

So knowing a character is jingoism?  Who said anything about making combatants heros.  Just wondering.

Moreover, there may not be any moment in history where noncombatants played a greater role in war than they did at Dunkirk.  They were a minor part of the movie Dunkirk.

[Orange]

25 minutes ago, KUGRDON said:

So knowing a character is jingoism?  Who said anything about making combatants heros.  Just wondering.

Moreover, there may not be any moment in history where noncombatants played a greater role in war than they did at Dunkirk.  They were a minor part of the movie Dunkirk.

Uh, no, knowing a character is not jingoism.  All I said is that Dunkirk lacked jingoism.  Because it did.  It was not patriotic hogwash, it merely illustrated the horror of war, which is how anyone being honest should depict war.

Why are you so hung up on the non-combatants?  I think Dunkirk did a fine job of illustrating the heroism of the English pleasure-cruisers who helped them escape.  Mark Rylance was as close as we had to a main character in the movie, and he was a civilian rescuing soldiers.

How you gonna tell the story of Dunkirk without spending most of the time in Dunkirk, anyway?

[KUGRDON]

2 minutes ago, Orange said:

Uh, no, knowing a character is not jingoism.  All I said is that Dunkirk lacked jingoism.  Because it did.  It was not patriotic hogwash, it merely illustrated the horror of war, which is how anyone being honest should depict war.

Why are you so hung up on the non-combatants?  I think Dunkirk did a fine job of illustrating the heroism of the English pleasure-cruisers who helped them escape.  Mark Rylance was as close as we had to a main character in the movie, and he was a civilian rescuing soldiers.

How you gonna tell the story of Dunkirk without spending most of the time in Dunkirk, anyway?

Simply because most of the story of Dunkirk did not occur in Dunkirk.  The unique quality of the rescue at Dunkirk was the role of the non-combatants.  The role of the noncombatants in the movie Dunkirk was significantly less than that of the combatants.

My principal critique of Dunkirk was its lack of character and story development. It remains so.

[Orange]

10 minutes ago, KUGRDON said:

Simply because most of the story of Dunkirk did not occur in Dunkirk.  The unique quality of the rescue at Dunkirk was the role of the non-combatants.  The role of the noncombatants in the movie Dunkirk was significantly less than that of the combatants.

My principal critique of Dunkirk was its lack of character and story development. It remains so.

There were 400,000 allied combatants (not even counting German combatants).  There were far fewer non-combatants.  And non-combatants made up a disproportionate amount of screen time as compared to your typical war movie.  Your complaint is invalid.

If you followed the metric of time that Nolan used (minutes in the air, hours by boat, days by land), the story development was actually kind of brilliant, and the best possible way to tell the story in a limited amount of time.

[KUGRDON]

10 minutes ago, Orange said:

There were 400,000 allied combatants (not even counting German combatants).  There were far fewer non-combatants.  And non-combatants made up a disproportionate amount of screen time as compared to your typical war movie.  Your complaint is invalid.

If you followed the metric of time that Nolan used (minutes in the air, hours by boat, days by land), the story development was actually kind of brilliant, and the best possible way to tell the story in a limited amount of time.

Not surprisingly, we disagree. Thank you Gene.  Almost 350,000 soldiers were rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk. If not for Kenneth Branagh's ass covering monologue at the end of the movie, no viewer of the movie Dunkirk would have a hint of that.

[Orange]

On 8/15/2017 at 4:03 PM, KUGRDON said:

Not surprisingly, we disagree. Thank you Gene.  Almost 350,000 soldiers were rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk. If not for Kenneth Branagh's ass covering monologue at the end of the movie, no viewer of the movie Dunkirk would have a hint of that.

You missed the part of the movie where massive numbers of flotillas were arriving at the beach, picking up soldiers by the hundreds and thousands?  I don't understand.

[azgreg]

Saw BR 2049 tonight. Loved it.

 

[Orange]

14 hours ago, azgreg said:

Saw BR 2049 tonight. Loved it.

 

I never was able to sit through Blade Runner (the original) in its entirety.  Is that required?

[Mano]

Trailer looks pretty good:

 

[azgreg]

6 hours ago, Orange said:

I never was able to sit through Blade Runner (the original) in its entirety.  Is that required?

Knowledge of the basic concept of the original helps but that's it.

 

[Mano]

6 hours ago, Orange said:

I never was able to sit through Blade Runner (the original) in its entirety.  Is that required?

Just watched it all the way through for the first time the other day. Available for free on demand on xfinity (I am sure from many other sources as well).

[Orange]

On 10/10/2017 at 11:33 AM, Mano said:

Trailer looks pretty good:

 

Looks awesome.

A few thoughts:

1. What, did Luke's fleshy hand rot away or something?  You mean to tell me they had better prosthetic technology 37 years ago?  Did a Donald Trumpian figure take over the Empire and cut healthcare to the galaxy?

2. I hope Mark Hamill's acting doesn't ruin this. 

3. I have renewed sadness over Carrie Fisher's death.  How ironic she survives the films, but Harrison Ford -- indestructible in real life after multiple plane crashes, breaking his ankle on a door, etc. -- does not.  Harry's a man's man, even if if his pilot's license needs to be revoked.

4. The younger actors in this version of the franchise are PHENOMENAL.  So glad they've found actors with charisma, as that was basically the foundational weakness of Phantom Menace, et al.

5. Can someone remind me of the mystery regarding the girl's lineage?  Aren't there rumors that she's somehow related to a jedi or two?  Did I completely miss a reveal in Force Awakens?

[Mano]

35 minutes ago, Orange said:

Looks awesome.

A few thoughts:

1. What, did Luke's fleshy hand rot away or something?  You mean to tell me they had better prosthetic technology 37 years ago?  Did a Donald Trumpian figure take over the Empire and cut healthcare to the galaxy?

2. I hope Mark Hamill's acting doesn't ruin this. 

3. I have renewed sadness over Carrie Fisher's death.  How ironic she survives the films, but Harrison Ford -- indestructible in real life after multiple plane crashes, breaking his ankle on a door, etc. -- does not.  Harry's a man's man, even if if his pilot's license needs to be revoked.

4. The younger actors in this version of the franchise are PHENOMENAL.  So glad they've found actors with charisma, as that was basically the foundational weakness of Phantom Menace, et al.

5. Can someone remind me of the mystery regarding the girl's lineage?  Aren't there rumors that she's somehow related to a jedi or two?  Did I completely miss a reveal in Force Awakens?

https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Who-Rey-Parents-Star-Wars-Force-Awakens-39514428

We don't really know, part of the mystery.

[RogueDuck]

A great review

[RogueDuck]

The Black Panther looks like it will be very good