General Movies Thread

[Skull]

So after the disappointment that was "The Grandmaster", I needed a good Donnie Yen flick to cleanse the palette. And I settled on "Wǔ xiá" (Dragon), a 2011 movie that is equal parts film noir as it is actually a martial arts film.

The gist of the plot is its 1917 in China and two bandits rock into town and try to rob the general store only for a local paper miller to try to stop them and accidentally kills them in the struggle. The man is praised as a local hero by the police and townspeople and everything goes well, until upcoming detective Xu Baijiu arrives an pulls a BBC Sherlock and realises that there's more to this situation than meets the eye and it all ties back to a dark conspiracy ten years ago...

So yeah, a really good film - very few fights compared to your standard Donnie Yen flick but they really up the stakes in each one so they hold much more weight individually. Very gory and surprisingly dark with a lot of emotional scenes, I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a more non-standard Chinese MA film of recent years.

[Iceblade44]

Are you feeling the dread yet

[pinetree]

what the actual fuck

[SpoonyViking]

That's gotta be a fake! Right?

[Rafflesiac]

SONIC WUZ HERE

[forumghost]

Goetia was right.

[Iceblade44]

That's gotta be a fake! Right?

Maybe. I heard some people saying it was fake. But then I had some people refuting that and saying it's legit so I dont know

[Mattias]

Fantastic Beasts 2 was a mess of a movie. It starts alright, and has lots of character stuff that's full of interesting places for the characters to go after last movie, but it turns into a massive clusterfuck at the climax where main characters suddenly decide they want to be Nazi's even though they're in love with someone that is #1 on the extermination list. Then there's the concurrent long lost family plot which ends with two named HP characters having no living ancestors to beget them, and another which is basically a daytime soap plotline with sudden hidden relatives that only work if two people manage to have a child years after both their deaths.

The only bit I actually enjoyed during the whole climax was Zoe Kravitz's big scene, because it's exactly what I always want someone to do in those situations. It fails, but at least she tried.

[SpoonyViking]

Fantastic Beasts 2 was a mess of a movie.

One which basically completely undoes all the things the first one did in something like five minutes.

[Deathhappens]

I mean, the first one wasn't exactly a coherent movie to begin with, so

[SpoonyViking]

Hm? I don't remember it being incoherent?

[pinetree]

It was really, really boring, but I don't remember any inconsistencies either.

[Deathhappens]

It was a movie that absolutely couldn't decide what kind of movie it wanted to be- jumping from Magical Apartheid to Grindelwald being nefarious to Constance's teenage issues to the mayoral election D plot to the titular Fantastic Beasts to Newt's past to the disgraced Auror to her sister and the random NoMaj... in short, a mess.

[Toa of Gallifrey]

Just watched Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, which dropped today on Netflix. Probably my second favorite film of the year after Isle of Dogs, still yet to see The Favorite and Into the Spiderverse. Roma is a movie I can't really recommend to anyone who doesn't care about filmmaking or presentation. The story is good, if not too special when familiar with Latinamerican literature, and the ties it has to the director's real life are very cool, but the directing is the selling point. The cinematography and sound design are absolutely on point. The only instances of music in the movie come from a discernible source and don't form part of a soundtrack. There is no OST; rather, the surround sound effects of the bustling streets of Roma, Mexico are the soundtrack. The movie is presented in grayscale and features many an uncut shot, some of which are really hard to pull off and really satisfying to view. It's beautiful to look at and harrowing when it needs to be, but without ever feeling melodramatic. If I had to complain about something, it'd be that some of the acting feels somewhat stilted. It fits the film's presentation and in general I didn't mind it, but every now and then I think that the performances were slightly hindered by the long shots. There's also a character that came across as hilariously cartoonish in one scene and I'd have liked it if it was put together slightly differently, because it clashed with the movie. It cemented the idea that this character is an unpleasant, worthless piece of garbage, but there were more subtle ways of doing so. The lead actress did a great job in most of her scenes but I do think that every now and then she could come off as too detached. After a certain point this is not a problem, but there is one scene where a little more emotion might have been in order. Nevertheless, I would rather it be too stilted than melodramatic. Roma could've easily been a more conventional drama, but it opted to be a more unique project and I'm very happy this was the case. I've never seen a movie like it and this was a pretty good warmup for La montaña sagrada, which I intend to watch soon. As of the first viewing, for me this is a strong 9/10.

[SpoonyViking]

It was a movie that absolutely couldn't decide what kind of movie it wanted to be- jumping from Magical Apartheid to Grindelwald being nefarious to Constance's teenage issues to the mayoral election D plot to the titular Fantastic Beasts to Newt's past to the disgraced Auror to her sister and the random NoMaj... in short, a mess.

A lot of those plots were intertwined, though.
But yes, Rowling had trouble adapting to writing for film, and her plotting was never the best.

[Deathhappens]

They were connected, yes, but I wouldn't say they were intertwined. It would be a much better movie if they were, but I suspect most of it ended in the cutting room floor.

[Historia]

Maybe. I heard some people saying it was fake. But then I had some people refuting that and saying it's legit so I dont know

I believe it's real. And it has me scared.

Though, honestly, it'd be hilarious if a sequel would be a Ugandan Knuckles live action movie.

[aldeayeah]

Fantastic Beasts 2 was a mess of a movie.

Nothing Really Happens 2: Still Setting Up For Some Big Climax

[Laserman]

I was thinking about Men in Black a few weeks ago. Excited for this movie.

[Spartacus]

Watched Bumblebee. For a Transformers movie, I'm impressed.