Well, Rogue One is a separate movie but it is both solid as an individual movie and overall contributes rather than detracts from the story.
Solo is okay from what it does to the story, but I don’t really feel like that is the same Han Solo. Also, it opens the door on death not mattering in the live action (I know this was already a problem in the cartoons) universe by bringing in Maul. Death has to matter or the series loses its weight.
This argument makes sense.
I don’t remember much from the prequels, though.
EDIT:
I look at them as both individual movies and part of the Star Wars universe. I think the prequels were much worse when watched as the former other than The Rise of Skywalker, which I think falls into the “so bad, it’s good” territory. I can’t even describe how hard I was laughing when The Emperor went and did his Force Lightning thing on the rebel fleet at the end.
Wait, I think I was laughing almost as hard when Yoda appeared and struck the tree with lightning in The Last Jedi. The look on Luke’s face was gold.
For the prequels, the dialogue and acting were horrific. The action scenes were boring. I literally fell asleep in the cinema during Attack of the Clones. Characters were just walking around and talking non-stop seemingly oblivious to their surroundings probably because it was all filmed with green screens. They just didn’t work for me.
As for the Star Wars universe, from a no-fan perspective, every movie is just stuff happening leading up to about blowing something really big up. It was the 70s/80s kind of “adventure movie” style which the original trilogy was made that really made it work. The prequels never got that. At least the first sequel did.
I also didn’t like Rogue One very much. It was so emotionally dead it seemed like the filmmakers were so obsessed with creating the visuals that the scenes needed to move the plot forward were reluctantly filmed like they had a checklist they needed to check off. I get that fans who recognized the use of certain things like aircraft models, weapons and characters that I can’t remember other than Jimmy Smits and Admiral Ackbar would have been thrilled seeing them anyway but for a non-fan, it wasn’t something I really cared for.
It wasn’t “bad”, though. Just lacklustre. Donnie Yen brought nothing other than a 1min action scene. And why the fuck was Jiang Wen even in the movie. No one anywhere knows who he is other than the older generation in China who knew him as a matinee idol back then lol. He’s now just known as a good director. He turned out later to be pretty character actor, though, but I doubt many people outside of HK has watched The Soong Sisters.
EDIT:
Wait, no. I think they cast Jiang Wen because he once got banned from filmmaking because of politics and shit. Real rebel stuff, I guess.
The Vast of Night
This movie is so well crafted I wanted to give it a 9/10 but then I realized I was more mesmerized by it’s technique than the overall movie itself. They know exactly why long takes are used and when to use them. Sound, lighting, framing and dialogue are used so skilfully and efficiently that anyone who wants to make any form of film media and doesn’t want to go to school to learn this shit should watch this fucking movie. The direction is fucking amazing too.
The plot is something out of an old Twilight Zone episode. I’ve never liked them. Some viewers who don’t look at the shit I mentioned above may find themselves pretty bored and that’s ok. I would too if I wasn’t doing some of this shit for a living. It’s the same reason why I couldn’t rate the Suspiria remake, although that was also because they went full retard at the end plotwise. This movie doesn’t have that problem although the ending may be kind of a downer after all the build up.
I can’t rate this. If you’re in the mood for something different or a fan of the old Twilight Zone series, give it a watch.
HC was so bad, I’m convinced George Lucas is a closeted homosexual (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who gave HC the role after a “casting couch audition”.
This is gold dude, hahaha
All I remember is that the prequels were so consistently bad in almost every aspect his acting fit in so well I didn’t even notice how bad it was.
“I don’t like sand…”
Fucking Charton Heston couldn’t have made that line sound any better.
Only good thing to come of them was Star Wars Pod Racer for N64.
I have no idea what that is lol.
A ‘99 video game that was lotsa fun.
Shit, it was that long ago? That means I watched Attack of the Clones when I was still in the military so it was probably on a weekend when I could book out. ANYTHING would have been entertaining at that time. I can’t believe I fell asleep.
Halt and Catch Fire (AMC series now on Netflix) is pretty good. Just started S3 (out of 4) last night. The female lead (Cameron) is incredibly obnoxious, but that’s the point of her character so it works. Lee Pace’s character is a like a cross between Walter White and Steve Jobs, so he’s pretty compelling. I’ve been a fan of his since Guardians and The Hobbit trilogy, and I’ve been kinda puzzled why he doesn’t get more big roles.
So far it’s an 8/10. It could slide as low as a 5 or 6 or maybe jump up to a 9 in the last 2 seasons.
Watched 2 episodes of Invincible, I think it was @unreal24278 who mentioned it.
First episode was being kinda boring, I almost bailed but it won me over towards the end. We’ll see, seems promising so far. Has a “The Boys” kind of thing.
Watched Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan 0n Netflix, I really liked it.
Now Netflix is pushing the movie Blade of the Immortal.
Anyone seen it? @dt79 ?
Nope, but I think I’ve seen some clips of some of the fight scenes. They were really good.
Takuya Kimura’s a good actor.
I watched a Belgian zombie movie called Yummy (2019).
Chick with really big boobs goes to some obscure hospital for breast reduction surgery because random dudes on the street keep heckling her. She’s accompanied there by her boyfriend and mother. Dumbass.
A zombified patient gets loose because of her boyfriend because he’s also a dumbass. Duh. Would you let your girlfriend with A FUCKING F CUP get breast reduction surgery and act all excited while she’s about to do so? Fuck no. He’s the kind of dumbass that even dumbasses regard as a dumbass.
All hell breaks loose with more and more patients getting bitten and turning into zombies.
It turns out they were experimenting with stem cells or something on the zombified patient.
The characters switch back and forth between 3 languages, one of which is English, and sometimes the subtitles don’t show up for the other languages which I don’t understand a single word of so I’m not really sure what was really happening but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a zombie survival flick.
It all plays out with mostly deadpan seriousness with small doses of black humor, kinda like the short-lived French New Wave gore flicks like Inside (2007) but a little lighter in tone. I think the movie had lots of potential but it was just too messy narratively and tonally. I really wish they had nailed it. It could have been another Demons if it was entertaining enough to become a cult classic and re-released internationally with really bad English dubbing.
Here’s a brief test:
There’s a scene in a dark room where a dude, who was there for penis enlargement surgery, accidently washes his dick in boiling water after fucking a hot chick. Then the chick applies some kind of ointment on it before she reads the label, which causes him more pain. She lights a match to see what’s on the label which makes his dick catch fire.
She then douses it with liquid nitrogen to put out the flames, which makes the tip fall off. He goes into shock, puts it in his pocket and then walks into a hoard of zombies looking for a doctor and gets ripped apart. It’s played for laughs and it really is quite funny because the scene is so absurd while the acting isn’t over-the-top.
If you find shit like this funny, you’ll probably enjoy this movie.
5.5/10
I watched Hold the Dark. It’s really good. Shit, I can’t believe I’d never heard of it. I don’t think I can talk about the plot without giving anything away lol. Let’s just say at the start, I was thinking “why didn’t she call Liam Neeson” and then I felt silly at the end. It’s kinda like one of those HK genre flicks by Johnnie To that I’m always the first to watch when they’re released in a half filled cinema.
To anyone who’s not watched it, it’s one of those movies where the storytelling is so good you want to go into it without knowing anything and watch it all unfold so don’t go google anything about it.
Spoilers in case you think the movie makes no sense because you have my wife’s attention span:
They’re supposed to be siblings.
8/10
Like i said I really liked it too. There is also the wolf transformation idea laid in there.
Don’t know why my wife doesn’t like these movies. The ones that make you think are the best.
I loved the direction. That calculated stabbing which was a definite kill while allowing the guy time to bleed out was just fucking awesome.
LOL. I think I mentioned somewhere else that the Shang Chi trailer had a scene that seemed to have literally ripped off/paid homage to Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers.
Okok, look, I’m speculating that one of the main reasons is that the lead actor doesn’t have “Han Chinese” features, or at least the kind of features Chinese people in Asia find attractive. He looks more like a “Manchu”. Hey, I’m just saying what it’s like out here, not making a statement. Don’t cancel the messenger.
#canceldt79
Oh come on. I don’t even know whether “Sima” is his first or last name since we write our surnames before our first names over here UNLESS we have English first names too. “Liu” is a common surname. “Sima” is one of a small amount of double syllabic surnames in existence, which was derived from “a Royal vocation”, so it’s common amongst people with such surnames. The dude is like a reverse Ricky Bobby.
Hollywood also still doesn’t get that the small eyes and single eyelids (which was the standard of beauty for females a very fucking loooooong time ago which was called “Phoenix Eyes”) don’t appeal to us anymore. There’s a reason why every single fucking popular Chinese actress other than maybe that chick from Mulan has had plastic surgery for bigger eyes and sharper chins.
Even JACKIE CHAN used to have single eyelids. Go watch his old movies if you don’t believe me. I think the last movie I saw him in when he still had single eyelids was Amour of God 1.
This was the guy everyone was pushing for the role of Shang Chi:
He’s a TAIWANESE. China has NO PROBLEM WITH HIM.
Extrapolating from this, they’re probably expecting “foreign” interpretations of what people living outside of the West like in every other aspect of the movie, which is probably a little insulting due to the obvious pandering.
I don’t really give a fuck. I just find this shit entertaining.
EDIT:
Seriously, I mean no offense to Chinese people in the US who really want representation. I’m not even going to pretend I know what you guys feel about this over there.
It’s just that we’ve had our own Chinese movies all this while here all the way back when HK was the Hollywood of Asia. When I go to a Hollywood movie, I wanna see a Hollywood movie. Why would I go and watch a “Chinese” movie made by Hollywood when I can go see one made here?
Maybe they should just stick to co-funding and distributing overseas productions especially from HK, which doesn’t have enough of a population of people buying tickets to make authentic HK movies with higher budgets.
People are getting extra eyelids sewn on?
It’s just a slice creating a “line” above your eyes. Actresses used to use glue to create a small fold there to achieve a similar look before plastic surgery became cheap and common. I have natural ones lol. Prior to the mid 2000s, you would have to fly to South Korea to get reliable and reasonably priced ones done. Now it’s like a hundred bucks in USD in China. Probably cheaper but I don’t wanna do math and shit.
