Let's have a films thread.

[RobHawk]

5 hours ago, Vlad the Fox said:

Might be ok then, my youngest is 12 and my eldest is 17 yet he seems most keen to see it so he must have heard something funny/good about it  

Margot Robbie 

[goose2010]

Watched the Tetris movie on Apple last night. What a crazy story! Really good film though.

[urban.spaceman]

 

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

Mate at work and missus both went to watch barbie the last few days and both said it was cringe and embarrassing, just pushing what some would refer to as 'being woke' over telling an engaging story was the consensus, not seen it myself so can't comment but certainly put me off the idea of streaming it when it drops. 

[Staff]

4 minutes ago, Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said:

Mate at work and missus both went to watch barbie the last few days and both said it was cringe and embarrassing, just pushing what some would refer to as 'being woke' over telling an engaging story was the consensus, not seen it myself so can't comment but certainly put me off the idea of streaming it when it drops. 

Together? You seem to be taking it well

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

2 hours ago, Staff said:

Together? You seem to be taking it well

Haha, well played, sir. 

[Scotch]

Just watched the movie 'Spotlight' really enjoyed it. Tough content matter but really engaging. 

[urban.spaceman]

5 minutes ago, Scotch said:

Just watched the movie 'Spotlight' really enjoyed it. Tough content matter but really engaging. 

Rewatched it last week the night Sinead O'Connor died. I hope she felt vindicated when that story broke. Fantastic film.

[Sparrowhawk]

On 29/07/2023 at 15:51, Vlad the Fox said:

Has anyone seen barby? I’m being pestered to take the family, now if it’s the Ken and barby from Toy Story I can get on board with that or is it something aimed at 8 year old girls?

Definitely not aimed at eight year old girls. I'd have thought they'd be a bit bored and/or confused by it. Lots to enjoy for anyone 12-ish or over though.

[Sparrowhawk]

On 02/08/2023 at 18:19, Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said:

Mate at work and missus both went to watch barbie the last few days and both said it was cringe and embarrassing, just pushing what some would refer to as 'being woke' over telling an engaging story was the consensus, not seen it myself so can't comment but certainly put me off the idea of streaming it when it drops. 

Having seen it, I really can't see how anyone could come out of it thinking that unless they went in to it expecting or intending to think that.

It's fun. Some bits are very silly, some bits are really good. It certainly isn't cringe or embarrassing, it's no more 'woke' than you'd expect something written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach to be, and the story is quite engaging.

It's not great, but it's thoroughly enjoyable.

Think 'Lego Movie' but Barbie.

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

1 hour ago, Sparrowhawk said:

Having seen it, I really can't see how anyone could come out of it thinking that unless they went in to it expecting or intending to think that.

It's fun. Some bits are very silly, some bits are really good. It certainly isn't cringe or embarrassing, it's no more 'woke' than you'd expect something written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach to be, and the story is quite engaging.

It's not great, but it's thoroughly enjoyable.

Think 'Lego Movie' but Barbie.

Not seen it myself just saying what I've been told by 2 people who have seen it. Not looking to be controversial. 

[Sparrowhawk]

44 minutes ago, Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said:

Not seen it myself just saying what I've been told by 2 people who have seen it. Not looking to be controversial. 

Not suggesting you are, and sorry if it came across that way.

I was just surprised that people could watch the film and come out with that reaction.

[marbles]

4 hours ago, Sparrowhawk said:

Not suggesting you are, and sorry if it came across that way.

I was just surprised that people could watch the film and come out with that reaction.

I’m also surprised by that reaction.  Can’t remember any reading and reviews/opinions slamming it as “woke” - and my feeds are full of people quick to point it out.

 

Maybe it’s a case of being overly sensitive to it, and seeing it where it actually isn’t.  Of course, they are in their right to have whatever opinion they want.

 

I know my daughter,her fiancée and my granddaughter absolutely loved it.

[urban.spaceman]

On 28/07/2023 at 10:26, Nugent said:

Saw Oppenheimer last night and loved it, was gripped for the whole three hours.

 

Did anyone find it difficult to make out some of the dialogue though? Not sure if that's due to me watching everything with subtitles or the audio!

 

Definitely one I'll be watching again once it's on the small screen.

 

On 28/07/2023 at 16:49, Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said:

Not seen it yet myself but never seen a Nolan film I could ever actually hear the dialogue of. So probs just that again. 

 

On 28/07/2023 at 21:04, ajthefox said:

 

I've just listened to Marc Maron's recent WTF episode with Cillian Murphy.

 

Murphy talked about Nolan being very much an 'analogue' type director and so doesn't have monitors on set and uses a lot of sound as recorded. These comments make sense.

 

I'm going to see it tomorrow and my hearing isn't the best, wish me luck 

 

On 28/07/2023 at 22:37, Samilktray said:

My hearing is awful and I didn’t struggle with it so I wouldn’t worry too much 

I remember reading reports before The Dark Knight Rises came out that Nolan had never intended for us to hear Bane's dialogue

 

He'd genuinely kept it as recorded or had scrambled it, and was apparently extremely reluctant to let Hardy do ADR until test screenings came back with complaints about it. People have had similar complaints about Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet but with the first two he insisted that it wasn't crucial to hear some of the dialogue. Oppenheimer was much improved on that front IMO. Not perfect, but at least he's listening to his fans.

 

 

On 29/07/2023 at 00:24, HybridFox said:

Saw Oppenheimer on 35mm at Phoenix tonight. Was pretty nostalgic seeing something on film again. I think it added to the aura around a historic drama.

 

Saw it on 35mm last night - I'd seen it on IMAX in Nottingham and I'm pretty sure it was LIEMAX, i.e a digital projection. I loved the film regardless, but seeing the cigarette burns last night, and the imperfections on the print alongside the beautifully crisp image is what I want from cinema. It's just better than digital projection and capture. More filmmakers need to embrace it.

 

I will say I was a bit annoyed about the unnannounced intrerval though. 

 

On 29/07/2023 at 00:24, HybridFox said:

 

Some brilliant acting from Cillian Murphy and others but there was just something that felt a little underwhelming about the film, particularly second half. And not as "explosive" as it could have been. But I do appreciate the craft of filmmaking that went into this as with most Nolan projects

On 29/07/2023 at 10:43, CosbehFox said:

Was something I felt with it is that it lacks a big punch.
 

Nolan is an extremely good set piece director but understandably this film doesn’t have it with the same impact. 
 

Hard to describe because I’m not criticising the film, or saying it could be better. Just yeah, just something not quite there to score super big with audiences 

Honestly the marketing for the film was genius from Universal. I'd thought WB put Barbie up against it out of spite (he'd spent his entire career at Warner Bros but fell out with them because they release their entire 2020 slate on streaming rather than waiting for the pandemic to end; he's a cinema purist so that was probably the most offensive thing they could have done to him). That might still be true but selling Oppenheimer as a blockbuster rather than the courtroom drama biopic that it really is was genius. It brought the crowds in to see an important story and left with a really harrowing message.

 

For me, Nolan's finest strength throughout his career has been his endings. He sets up multiple storylines and themes throughout his films, then in the finale, manages to tie them all together, while still bringing something new and often leaving us with a gut punch.

 

 

Think Inception, where they awake from the dream, Saito makes a call and Cobb walks through baggage and security before being taken home by Michael Caine's character. Cobb gets home, spins the top, then finally sees his children's faces, but we focus on the top, expecting to it to fall... but it cuts to black.

 

Interstellar, where Cooper finally meets his daughter as an old woman. Other films would just end on that scene, but Nolan introduces a new twist where Murph tells him it's not over, that he has more work to do; as Cooper steals a craft and sets off to find Brand, who we see standing in front of a makeshift grave for Edmunds on a viable planet where she's already setting things up to make it humanity's new home, just as Murph says.

 

Or Dunkirk, as the soldiers from the 'week' timeline arrive home utterly dejected and ashamed, thinking they'd failed and they'd be hated for it. Until Tommy gets a newspaper and reads out Churchill's famous speech, and we see Peter from the 'day' timeline going to a newspaper office, then showing Mr Dawson a newspaper honouring George as a hero, while Tom Hardy from the 'hour' timeline manually lands on Dunkirk beach to cheers from waiting soldiers, before burning the plane and being captured while Hans Zimmer Hans Zimmers the shit out of Nimrod over it.

 

In Oppenheimer we're finally shown the conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein, where Einstein tells him what will happen to him, and Oppenheimer reveals his horror at what he's unleashed, and we're shown the same shot of a rocket again but this time it revelals many more rockets, as he imagines himself in a plane watching them being launched all around him and the sky quite literally burning up. His devestating internal horror visualised.

 

 

 

Nolan is an absolute master of his craft.

[CosbehFox]

@urban.spaceman

What’s your favourite Nolan film? 
 

Me and my partner think Interstellar is his best but it gets a very hard time. I think the Water Planet one of the most scariest things I’ve ever watched. 
 

What I like about Oppenheimer is its very point about nuance. It’s lost now and you could argue the culture wars started at McCarthyism

Edited 4 August 2023 by CosbehFox

[AyewJoking]

Watchmen directors cut.

 

Enjoyed so much going to watch it again later.

[Daggers]

GOTG3 was super and I question anyone who doesn’t think the same. 

[Daggers]

Now for Happy Death Day II

[HybridFox]

I watched Barbie today to complete Barbenheimer. I think I actually enjoyed it more 

 

Brilliant concept and loved the cameos! I'm all for another one 

[urban.spaceman]

13 hours ago, CosbehFox said:

@urban.spaceman

What’s your favourite Nolan film? 
 

Me and my partner think Interstellar is his best but it gets a very hard time. I think the Water Planet one of the most scariest things I’ve ever watched. 
 

What I like about Oppenheimer is its very point about nuance. It’s lost now and you could argue the culture wars started at McCarthyism

Difficult to say but I would probably go with Inception. I can still remember the buzz before that came out - nobody knew a single thing about it until that first trailer was released. An original BLOCKBUSTER by the writer director behind Memento? That sort of thing just doesn’t happen enough. I remember one of my favourite screenwriting blogs reviewing the screenplay before it came out, and it sounded utterly mental, before revealing that his review was bollocks as not a soul in the industry had seen the script cos Nolan was so secretive. Inception was way crazier and more original than even that.

I just love the concept and the execution. People mistakenly say that Nolan doesn’t use CGI, which isn’t true - he just prefers to achieve as much as possible in camera. Knowing that beforehand made the hotel fight scene so much better - how the **** did they do that?! The emotional climax too - of Cobb telling Mal that they did grow old together but they had their time, and Fischer finding the pinwheel and his dad telling him he was disappointed he tried to be like him - was devastatingly cathartic.

 

To me, it is a genuinely - genuinely - perfect film.

 

———

I read a draft of the Interstellar script almost a decade before it came out, so way before Inception and The Dark Knight. It was originally written by his brother Jonathan Nolan and was to be made by Spielberg around 2006 i think, but it never got made and thank Christ. The script was great, but the eventual movie was 10x better and could only have been made by Christopher Nolan. Very little of the original script survived - some characters like Cooper and Murph, except Murph was his son and only child. Amelia and Proffessor Brand are there but I can't remember if they're related. CASE and TARS are definitely there but in a different form of robot. They do go through the wormhole like the film, and Gargantua is there but it's orbiting a nuetron star and another black hole. They find a planet similar to Mann's ice planet and discover the Chinese had got there before them and set up but had all died out. There's an alien lifeform that gives chase, there's a zero gravity sequence, there's radiation from the neutron star and extreme time dialation. Cooper goes back through the wormhole and meets descendants of his children on a space station just like in the film, then goes off in search of Amelia in a pretty similar ending.

 

More detail here: https://interstellarfilm.fandom.com/wiki/2008_script and I can try and find a better link to the script. It's much more Hollywoody and I'm very glad we got the film we did, but I would still like to see some of the concepts in a different film.

 

I do love Interstellar, I saw it at the IMAX in London back when doing so was affordable, and then at the Royal Albert Hall with a live orchestra which was utterly phenomenal. I think I saw it at the cinema about 8 times.

 

I honestly wouldn't want to rank his films at is would imply something was bad enough to come last. I genuinely don't think he's made a bad film yet.

[Foxdiamond]

Just a question for the film fans here. Do you go to the cinema to watch whatever the big releases are or does a film have to appeal more before going? How many films I wonder are box office successful but the audience comes out thinking what a load of rubbish 

[urban.spaceman]

17 minutes ago, Foxdiamond said:

Just a question for the film fans here. Do you go to the cinema to watch whatever the big releases are or does a film have to appeal more before going? How many films I wonder are box office successful but the audience comes out thinking what a load of rubbish 

The cinema is the best place to watch a film and there is no way anyone can convice me otherwise. I've literally avoided watching classic films on a TV or VHS/DVD/streaming for DECADES because I wanted to watch them on a cinema screen first - I only saw Casablanca and The Godfather Parts One and Two in the last couple of years because cinemas were trying to coax people back in amidst the pandemic.

 

I used to go and see almost anything at the cinema but I've become much more selected. I probably won't go and see another Marvel film (except Spider-Man) unless it actually adds to the MCU story AND has a decent story of its own. I'll try and avoid franchise films because the market has become utterly satuated with them in recent years. I genuinely loved Indy 5 but I'm really, really glad that it tanked at the box office. The studios need a bloody nose with the way they're treating their artists and the audience. I'll happily go and support writers/directors like Christopher Nolan, Edgar Wright, Pheobe Waller Bridge, Chloe Zhao, The Daniels, Donald Glover, Quentin Tarantino, Greta Gerwig, Ari Aster, Bong Joon Ho, Terry Gilliam

 

[marbles]

5 hours ago, Foxdiamond said:

Just a question for the film fans here. Do you go to the cinema to watch whatever the big releases are or does a film have to appeal more before going? How many films I wonder are box office successful but the audience comes out thinking what a load of rubbish 

I used to go weekly because I enjoyed the experience, and because I love watching movies immediately.  It didn’t matter.  If it looked like something I’d be interested in, I went.

 

Now, being older and have a hatred for others sitting in the theater with me - talking or looking at their bright phone screen in a dark room, have completely killed my desire to sit in a theater.

If I go now, it has to be something I’m really excited to see.

Pretty sure Spider-Man No Way Home was the last I saw, but I was taken as a birthday gift by my granddaughter.  The last I actually went on my own and watched would have been Godzilla vs Kong  - had to.  I’m a giant Godzilla fan

 

[SpacedX]

On 24/07/2023 at 01:05, urban.spaceman said:

Oppenheimer was incredible. Beautiful, and devastating.

SPOILERS!!!!

 

It's a masterful piece of filmmaking/cinematography. Beautifully shot, brilliantly cast, superbly acted and a wonderful dialogue and script. Robert Downey Jnr. in particular delivers a stunning performance as Lewis Strauss and Florence Pugh made a very compelling Jean Tatlock but perhaps the film could have afforded more exploration of the character, which was marginalised - in particular, struggles with her sexuality which were also instrumental in her suicide. 

 

However, for a movie that prides itself on its historical accuracy, what greatly disappointed me was some of the more fanciful and overly dramatised scenes which were needless. For example, the part with Niels Bohr and the apple was ludicrous and it's actually questionable whether he even laced it with potassium cyanide in the first place. I enjoyed seeing Tom Conti on the screen again but the relationship with Albert Einstein was greatly exaggerated. The discussion at the pond at the AEC was pure imagination and the idea that he had approached Einstein to scrutinise his chain reaction calculations is pure nonsense. Throughout Oppenheimer's mid to late career Einstein was more an acquaintance than a close personal friend. He said to his brother Frank 'I need physics more than friends". Perhaps Einstein was ultimately the source of both? I also thought that more could have been made of his at times unpredictable and erratic behaviour, his inherent contradictory personality traits together with his underlying depression. He was portrayed more as having an even disposition and equanimity, and at times being highly pragmatic although his esoteric arcane interests were captured alongside his enigmatic side. Finally, contrary to belief, following the successful detonation of Trinity, Frank recalled his first words as being simply "I guess it worked" he did not actually vocalise the Bhagavad Gita passage, "now I am become death, the shatterer of worlds." Oppenheimer later recounted that these and other verses were going through his mind during the explosion. 

 

I did like the emphasis upon his brilliance as a theoretical physicist and in particular his determination of the limit to how massive a single atomic nucleus, what we know today as the core of a neutron star, could be before collapsing entirely into a 'dark star'...which we now term a black hole. Oppenheimer, like Lawrence, would have undoubtedly won a Nobel Prize if he had continued his research into the latter. 

 

When I was watching this, I was struck by the similarity with the enmity and bitter resentment that Strauss held for Oppenheimer and the jealousy and obsessive vengeful hatred held by composer Antonio Salieri for Mozart depicted in the film Amadeus. Salieri is consumed by an inferiority complex and intent on orchestrating Mozart's downfall. I read in an interview with Nolan this week that this was very much the inspiration behind the motivation of Strauss. 

 

I do wish that they had included more or the Berkeley campus, it's beautiful. 

 

Finally, the screenplay of Oppenheimer is based upon the Pulitzer Prize winning  'American Prometheus' which is essential reading - although it shares many of the anecdotes and possibly apocryphal events. For anyone reading this post, I can also highly recommend the more accessible 'Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller'. I bought this twenty years ago and have revisited it several times. Written by the then senior curator and historian of the Smithsonian Institute, Gregg Herken, while he does not hesitate to comment on the personalities involved, he tries to stick to analysis rather than (moral) judgement. Its covering of Oppenheimer at least makes it more understandable why the suspicion and security fears arose during the peak of McCarthyism/'the red scare' largely because of the Chevalier incident. Having said that, I also enjoyed learning more about Teller and Ernest Lawrence. This book gives accounts of how their thoughts and opinions evolved, and explained the history behind the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories. While I knew there was competition between them, I never appreciated how scientific personalities and disagreements created that atmosphere.

 

I will definitely similarly be re-watching Oppenheimer over the years. A stunning piece of work. 

[The Bear]

Oppenheimer spoilers!!! 

 

He made the bomb and they dropped it on Japan. Twice...