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Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews
- Thread starter Rascally Badger
- Start date
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- Tags
- movies
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
And his first body horror-centric movie in 20 years. I've heard some of his latter movies after Eastern Promises are a bit wobbly but I'm still hear for it.
Only one I haven't seen is Dangerous Method, but both Cosmopolis and Map to the Stars are great.
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
If you were in a Cronenberg film, you could literally be beside yourself. At least until yourself ate you.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
It was called Dead Ringers. It was good.
If you guys like Cronenberg, check out his son's film, Possessor.
Rewatched Guardians of the Galaxy
Still probably my favourite Marvel movie and also probably the only one that truly works as a standalone.
James Gunn knows a thing or two about making a good action-comedy
Still probably my favourite Marvel movie and also probably the only one that truly works as a standalone.
James Gunn knows a thing or two about making a good action-comedy
Moonfall is a profoundly ludicrous movie that exists for anyone who thinks that Armageddon or The Core are, you know, *fine*, but entirely too grounded and realistic.
This is the most Roland Emmerich-ass movie ever made.
This is a movie where it's briefly brought up that NASA is behind a conspiracy to trick the human race into thinking that The Moon is real.
Does it have world monuments being tossed around like lawn darts? You better believe it does.
Does someone use the expression "Mounting Moon Terror"? Hell yes it does.
Is there a sequel hook for some reason? YOU BET YOUR ASS!
Moonfall: God Damn, What a Film!
This is the most Roland Emmerich-ass movie ever made.
This is a movie where it's briefly brought up that NASA is behind a conspiracy to trick the human race into thinking that The Moon is real.
Does it have world monuments being tossed around like lawn darts? You better believe it does.
Does someone use the expression "Mounting Moon Terror"? Hell yes it does.
Is there a sequel hook for some reason? YOU BET YOUR ASS!
Moonfall: God Damn, What a Film!
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Grand Piano is a very dumb movie with a multitude of plot holes and clunky exposition but I still love it because it's Speed on a piano.
Last week, in between episodes of Star Trek, my girlfriend noticed The Lost City on Paramount+ and wondered what its deal was. We watched the trailer and were both fairly surprised to find ourselves admitting that it looked...kinda decent? Decent enough to agree to watch it at some point, which we did yesterday. And it turns out, it was actually pretty good! The writing is sharp, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum play their characters well, and Daniel Radcliffe (who appears to be having the time of his life) completely chews the scenery every time he's on screen in a great way. If you're looking for a little Indiana Jones in your rom-com, you could do a lot worse than this one.
The other night I had 90 minutes or so to spare, and so it occurred to me to sort my Watchlist on Letterboxd by film length and pick the shortest flick I felt like ticking off. So I ended up watching Stand By Me for the first time (I think I caught part of it on TV as a kid around Xmas and didn't really get into it). It was enjoyable enough, though I definitely got the impression that I missed a large part of its appeal by not being a real 80s kid and not having watched it properly when I was significantly younger. There are interesting adult-thinky things in there to reflect on but most of the film is still just kinda little goofy moments in between walkin' and talkin'. Which was fine, but didn't make it a standout experience for me.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch is still pretty good. It's nice that Joe Dante got a literal blank check for mayhem and though a lot of it is pretty standard late 80s/early 90s big city satire, Dante is clearly having a ball just making a monster movie with any pretext of real investment removed in favour of just being fun. And those gremlin and mogwai puppets look REALLY good.
I think the movie is more for adults than kids. It's about the end of innocence and nostalgia for a past you can never return to.
Definitely. The last line of the movie really sums it up: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
Anyhow, the thing that really stood out about Stand By Me the last time I watched it was that Wil Wheaton was absolutely phenomenal in it. One of the best performances I’ve seen from a child actor.
I feel like it had moments that were definitely there to be appreciated by adults (such as that ending line, and the ending in general with the kids separating off and not being friends anymore), but the bulk of the film felt more like a kids adventure movie.
Kids going an adventure to find a dead body. There's stuff in the movie that kids can enjoy but I really don't see it as a story for kids.
You, A Fool: "You know, Octo, there are other movies besides Gremlins 2 someone could consider "the best movie ever made""
Me, Wise and Placid: "You are Incorrect"
Me, Wise and Placid: "You are Incorrect"
If the movie has any flaws (and none of us are perfect so it’s allowed one and a half), it’s that there’s that one guy where the whole joke is “He’s Japanese so of course he is experienced with cameras”, which didn’t age well at the time and it became baffling as well as racist as time went on, and also they gave John Astin a cameo and it’s such a low key minor part that it’s been years and only on this viewing, looking through the cast list that I realized he was even in it.
How can John Astin be low key?!?
How can John Astin be low key?!?
Lol it was always racist.
That was the read I was shooting for, yes
That's still like, same kind of issue though. It was always baffling as well.
When you say something "hasn't aged well" - it's an admission that people didn't understand and/or care about that problem back when it was new, and only through a public consciousness awakening does the average person begin to realize something was wrong here. But that's always through the view of the majority. Any Asian person back in the day instantly cringed and lamented Breakfast at Tiffany's. It was always racist and hurtful and wrong, Same with this, tbf to a lesser degree than Tiffany's. And tbh, same with things that are still beloved on average like Karate Kid or The Goonies. It's always good to see progress being made and people learning to care/understand more than they used to, but it's still always going to be frustrating for those of us who lived through those times because it was always that way and this understanding and compassion is coming frankly way too late and still way too slowly.
This isn't meant to callout or shame anyone, and I didn't take offense either, just sharing the that this is the experience and perspective of minorities for these kinds of things.
Sure. Also, a lot of people become more aware of issues with media as they get older. I’ve revisited a lot of old movies and shows over the pandemic and many of them don’t hold up. It’s good that I’m more aware of racism & other issues now, even if I was blind to a lot of that as a kid.
I assumed the newly arrived level of baffling being referred to was just that Japanese companies aren't as strongly associated with cameras anymore and so the racist connection being made is no longer obvious as to why it's being made. Like, the racist stereotype it's riffing on no longer exists.
I’m open to that being the intent here; I’m not trying to put words in people’s mouths. But nah that doesn’t really pan out logistically. If anything, most of the American camera companies have fallen by the wayside, and companies like Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Olympus, and Sony have cornered what’s left of the market.
Korean and Chinese brands have made huge inroads and taken over a lot of common, cheap consumer goods that Japanese brands used to claim dominion of in the 80s/90s. But Western outlooks still typically look at Japan and the Far East in general with exotic and scary stereotypes concerning technology with singing robotic toilets that assault your anus and other spooky/wondrous technological marvels from The Future.
This is born from general stereotypes about Japanese tourists that would come to American tourist traps. And it’s inherently pretty racist. The notion that these foreigners come in, crowd these places we want to be in, and stand around looking dorky taking pictures all day and act like rude outsiders who don’t know how to behave well. It’s no actual behavior that’s any different from your average ugly-American tourist, the only thing noteworthy is that they’re foreigners and don’t look like or sound like us. These stereotypes are still alive and well today, and they’re particularly pernicious and used to slander Asians. They’ve just shifted from Japanese to Chinese in recent decades as China’s middle class has begun to balloon and Japan’s has shrunk. I don’t know how many times I’ve read people online whining about Chinese tourists in the last decade or so with overtly racist overtones. And any Asian-American is caught in the crossfire because no pig headed racist American knows or cares about the difference between the different cultures, or someone Asian-American or not.
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While I agree that stereotypes are hurtful (even when unintentional), particularly racist ones, and I'm not a fan, I'm not sure this is a uniquely American thing. In my experience there's a significant stereotyping of foreigners in most other countries (and their media).
I have seen more than a few western stereotypes on an anime that could be considered hurtful. In China, apparently they like to dress foreigners up on TV in Tang dynasty clothing. I've had the personal experience of being an American in Europe and the Middle East and being profiled or stereotyped because of it. I have absolutely been treated as a rude outsider who can't blend in well despite my best efforts, and been pigeonholed as an average ugly American and mocked outside of the US.
Again my point is not to minimize the hurtful stereotypes of Asians in the US, those are wrong. I do, however, think this is a common problem when one culture represents another in media, and I think that larger context is important to remember when critiquing media stereotypes.
I have seen more than a few western stereotypes on an anime that could be considered hurtful. In China, apparently they like to dress foreigners up on TV in Tang dynasty clothing. I've had the personal experience of being an American in Europe and the Middle East and being profiled or stereotyped because of it. I have absolutely been treated as a rude outsider who can't blend in well despite my best efforts, and been pigeonholed as an average ugly American and mocked outside of the US.
Again my point is not to minimize the hurtful stereotypes of Asians in the US, those are wrong. I do, however, think this is a common problem when one culture represents another in media, and I think that larger context is important to remember when critiquing media stereotypes.
Interesting to hear that within the US, the old Japanese tourist stereotypes have shifted to Chinese tourists now. I've noticed that, outside of the US, Chinese tourists have been attacked with a lot of what used to be stereotypes of American tourists in the 50s - loud, entitled, obnoxious, ignorant, destructive, littering, etc. I suspect it's a knock-on effect of a group being fairly new to tourism, where many people are traveling for the first time and haven't picked up or cared to pick up the etiquette, and folks on the receiving end tar the whole nationality with that brush. The same set of stereotypes exists among Chinese urbanites applied to rural Chinese tourists coming to major cities, and again I think there's a link between how new that phenomenon of domestic tourism is for the rural population.
Or maybe it's the stereotypers just getting bored and moving their generalizations onto whichever group is the new hotness.
Or maybe it's the stereotypers just getting bored and moving their generalizations onto whichever group is the new hotness.