list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

1930s science-fiction film predicting the next 100 years over three generations from World War Two, about which it gets certain things very right and others very wrong, over a post-war chaos where feuding Chiang Kai-shek-style warlords are defeated by a corps of commandos in stealth aircraft operated by a top secret think tank that survived the war, to the establishment of a 21st century technocratic utopia that feels like Plato's Republic by way of the Soviet Union.

As risible as many of the predictions feel to a modern day viewer, to say nothing of how characteristically "1930s" the set design is, I not only find its utopian faith in progress as charming as sometimes disturbing (again it reminds me of Soviet propaganda in many ways) but also think it's clear the people behind the film put a lot of thought into figuring out how future societies would look in terms of political organization. Also, the special effects and scale of the sets as well as the choreography of some of the big action scenes are as genuinely impressive by the standards of the day as Fritz Lang's Metropolis.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - December 10 2015 at 13:45

^ This is probably the thread you are looking for.

shaun the sheep the movie

Last week I saw:

I love how even the less cerebral Italian horror films actively forsake traditional narrative structure in favour of running more on surreal "dream logic", which always makes for a very distinctive viewing experience compared to most other entries in the genre from the rest of the world.

This strange hybrid between a Dawn of the Dead-style zombie apocalypse movie and a virus outbreak post-apocalypse film is a good example - gets a lot of the mileage from everything going on represents the total breakdown of civilization on a symbolistic level.


Then yesterday I watched something very different... and at the same time not yet:

A Russian film from the mid-1970s about a middle-aged man looking down through his life story and how it interweaves with his family's civil war through several generations, constantly switching between nesting narratives from the time of the Spanish Civil War (which the main character's father fought in) to the modern day and jumping perspective between his relatives. Like the Italian horror film above, it's told less like a traditional narrative and more like a hazily remembered dream where ideals crumble under the weight of entropy and chaos. Right down to the flashbacks being buried within each other like a Matryoshka doll.

Also, in a typical example of director Andrei Tarkovsky being Andrei Tarkovsky it presents a rather pessimistic view of modern civilization's faith in progress though it contrasts that with some very beautiful imagery of the Russian countryside and some rather inspiring portrayals of rural people's ingenuity in folk wisdom. The visual side of this movie also exactly matches the mental image I got of the locales when reading Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, just with people's fashions updated by a century. (which in Soviet-era Eastern Europe doesn't amount to that much evolution)

It's definitely worth seeing just for the camera work, though I wouldn't recommend this as people's intro to Tarkovsky.

Inside man (2006)
nice movie, starring Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Willem Dafoe
it's heist movie, very smart plan, I won't spoil it, I recommed it, a good way to spend a couple of hours in the evening.


Edited by Cristi - December 13 2015 at 03:54

TeleStrat wrote: Ant-Man

I've seen it a couple of days ago. Rented it on iTunes. Overall a decent one. I, too, thought I wouldn't like the thing with the minuscule size. But the way it was shot and choreographed made it look like the Ant-Man was appearing and disappearing. Also, oddly enough, it's a Marvel movie where the dramatic element (Scott Lang's family) worked very well. As far as comedy goes, it worked on me about half the time (mainly because Lang's buddies got some extra lines in the cutesy family humor style, of which I'm not a fan).

Edited by Dayvenkirq - December 16 2015 at 11:41

Best of Enemies

The ten riveting and at times blasphemous 'debates' conservative journalist William F. Buckley and progressive author Gore Vidal had during the 1968 Dem's Convention are documented, culminating in Buckley calling Vidal a "queer" and blowing open the divides the U.S. was facing by the late 60s for all to see in bleak detail.   A reasonably significant moment in American political discourse and confrontation, made more interesting by the intellectual prowess of both men.

Fantastic Four   (2015)

^ I try not to be too critical (but it's hard) about Ant-Man and Fantastic Four because they may have stood well on their own. 

The Big Short

Based on Michael Lewis's 2010 book about the credit default market that was growing out of control by 2006 and came tumbling down in '08, The Big Short illuminates the complexities of Wall Street banking and the odd individuals who swirl around it.   JC Chandor's Margin Call from 2011 was a superior film and I would not estimate The Big Short to be Picture of the Year (as it's being praised), but a very good cast and screenplay makes for an absorbing story.