What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The First Slam Dunk is a toss-up on whether someone will enjoy it without the context of the entire manga leading up to it. There are a number of people who liked it without context. I personally loved it, but I have the entire build-up to the final match and character development to go along with it which is why it works for me, personally.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I thought that Slam Dunk being something I only really know thanks to osmosis and having old T-shirts of it as a little kid created that disconnect for me, but I know people who haven't watched or read the series beforehand who loved it, So I don't know. I've heard people say it's basically the anime equivalent of Top Gun Maverick in a ton of aspects (beloved legacy installment of an old franchise, MC overcoming grief, lots of spectacle), and that's another movie where I thought "...okay, I guess".

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The problem with the Top Gun Maverick comparison is that the movie in question doesn't have an entire series of events with interconnected character dynamics and development through various arcs naturally leading to a climactic conclusion. While I think it can still work for someone unfamiliar with the source material, it will inevitably still mean less to them than someone already invested in the characters. It's kind of like watching Avengers: Endgame without seeing any of the movies before it. You can still enjoy it for what it is, but you still lose a lot of impact due to far less context.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Speaking of Top Gun Maverick, still surprised by how well-received it was. Like even the guys who go "Every Marvel movie is imperialist military propaganda" loved the film even though I remember there was an army recruitment booth right outside the theater when it came out. Saw a few "I hated the old Top Gun, but this one was great!" or "Who cares if Tom Cruise is a Scientologist? Let him make more movies like this!" reviews too. Because I thought the movie was okay, but nothing about it warranted the level of praise I saw. It wasn't good enough for me to overlook Tom Cruise co-running a UFO cult, no.

[Dr. Insomniac]

For other recent movies I've been meaning to watch, saw Weapons which was all right. And I saw Marty Supreme. I love how they can make a main character who's just an unlikable cunt I want to see suffer and somehow make their story endearing despite all that.

Speaking of Weapons, after hearing the director's doing Resident Evil, I somehow ended up watching those Resident Evil movies recently. The ones by Paul WS Anderson, where he turns the series into what amounts to fanfiction where his wife kicks ass while the RE characters people care about like Claire or Jill just stand in the corner and watch. I'm shocked there are 6 of these movies. The fight scenes are fucking awful, Milla Jovovich keeps sleepwalking through scenes, all the sequels contradict the preceding films in egregious ways. And yet, I found them oddly watchable because of how stupid it all was. Like that scene where Milla Jovovich imagines all the ways she can kill Jorah Mormont, but then Jorah goes "I predicted all that!" using his magic contact lenses that allow him to predict every scenario. It all feels like a very cheesy  Mad Max/Matrix knockoff that I ironically enjoyed for how dumb they got. How are these actual theatrical movies Capcom signed off on instead of bootleg trash made exclusively for Tubi or some Walmart dollar bin?

[Mustang]

Wow, I haven't watched a new release since Dr. Strange 2. I forget how many years ago that was. People might call me petty for it, but my reasoning was, I was holding movies hostage lol. I wanted a martial arts movie. Haven't really had many good ones since Ip man, The Raid, etc. A couple movies popped up recently on my recommendation feed. Furious is probably what gets me back into watching movies. Not on the regular though. These movies nowadays can't do much to get me interested (Love for martial arts / samurai / ninja is first love). The other movie, I forgot what it's called, but Jet Li is making a return, and I'm hyped for it. I know he's been focusing on getting healthy (he looks good compared to how pictures made him look 5+ years ago) and I know he has a youtube channel as well. Anyway, looking forward to Furious.

[Dr. Insomniac]

More recent movies I should've watched earlier: Anora, that was good, but not Best Picture/Palme D'Or good that I was told it'd be. It kinda trails off after the Vanya plot's over and keep going well after it should have ended. And I was a little disappointed the movie wasn't darker, but still, I liked it.

And in terms of animated shit, Hoppers was fun. Very un-Pixar despite its studio, which would normally sound like a bad thing years ago when Pixar had an unbroken track record, but now, it's some fresh air.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Now for new movies I went out of my way to watch as soon as possible, The Odyssey was cool. Nolan should have some stern words for whoever edited the trailer, because I was worried when watching those. But that's me being foolish for doubting him. Loved how he interpreted the cyclops cave scene and the part where Circe turns Odysseus' men into pigs. It's almost Robert Eggers in how it interprets the original myth. Almost, because the American accents were my one nitpick. Obviously, you don't want a "Keanu Reeves in Dracula" situation, but it's a little funny watching Jon Bernthal and Tom Holland just talking like Frank and Peter instead of something more period piece-y.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It was a good movie, albeit with a few Nolanisms that always bug me like some really poor lighting choices in certain scenes and some questionable sound mixing in various moments (nowhere near as bad as Tenet in that regard, though).

I was able to mostly enjoy this as it's own interpretation of the Epic Poem, but to me it ultimately makes aspects of the story feel less interesting in execution. Like, there's the deliberate omission of having Odysseus converse with Polyphemus and instead opting to just make him a generic monster, or the downplaying of the role the Gods play in this story. And yeah, I get that Nolan still implies their involvement tangentially as an off-screen presence, but in general the Odyssey is a very strange choice of story to adapt if you want to take a grounded approach to it.

Again, though, I think it's more enjoyable if you just take it as it's own thing that's loosely inspired by the original poem.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, upon thinking it further, the parts where Nolan recycles his old ideas becomes obvious. The Trojan horse scene takes parts of Dunkirk. And he noticeably changes the ending of the original poem, which admittedly isn't without precedent because he borrowed from a Tennyson piece about Ulysses, to have yet another film of his where his main character and his love interest retire and leave to distant lands. Except this time without Michael Caine looking at the camera and nodding. It doesn't detract from the experience at all, but it definitely lacks the whimsy from other adaptations. It's nowhere near as fun as O Brother, Where Are Thou? or the 90s one with Bernadette Peters for instance. And it's not trying to be like that at all, there's far more emphasis on how the Trojan War was a horrible slaughter of innocents, but it's a bit like whenever we get those Shakespeare adaptations that take out all of Shakespeare's jokes like Titus or the Polanski Macbeth movie.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Saw Spider-Man Brand New Day and genuinely really enjoyed it. I know it's been pretty hit or miss with the MCU post-Engame, with the misses seeming more plentiful, but a good movie is a good movie, and they got it right with Spider-Man in my book.

I do think they could have gotten to the "character reveal" a bit quicker, especially since anyone who would have gotten the significance of the reveal likely already figured it out months ago after the first trailer. That said, I really dug the more laid back moments of Peter casually interacting with other people, and I especially loved the Chemistry between Spider-Man and Frank Castle. All this time for as much as everyone clamored for a Daredevil crossover, I don't think anyone would have anticipated that Spidey and Punisher could have worked as well as it did. Granted, it's a little weird that Spider-Man would be on quite as good terms with him as they are in this movie given how violent and unhinged he usually is. I'm guessing Peter hasn't been exposed to the darkest side of Frank like Matt and Karen have, though.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, surprisingly fun movie. In a way where I'm like "Why didn't the Watts trilogy do this years ago?" Because Bernthal and Holland, they have amazing chemistry. I know they auditioned together for Frank and Peter over a decade ago, and it's insane it took until now for them to be a double act.

Spoiler

So... I knew about the leaks saying that Sadie Sink would play Jean, but I really wasn't expecting her as the main villain (or at least before Damage Control takes over). On one hand, a very confusing choice for a Spider-Man movie antagonist. Definitely not who I'd pick. And I'm pretty sure she killed a ton of innocent people (she did the exact same thing Charles did in Logan by mentally freezing a ton of civilians). But for what it's worth, a very unique take on the character. And ironically, probably the most a Marvel movie's done with Jean Grey since ever. I really don't remember what she did in the Fox X-Men movies besides make out with Logan, turning into the Dark Phoenix, and dying.

Poor Scott fans, they had to deal with Logan/Jean for decades, and now they have to deal with Peter/Jean. Which reminds me, it was funny seeing a few people react to X-Men 97 with "Cyclops does stuff?!" Those Fox movies did long term damage to Scott's reputation.

Anyway, Peter bit the entire Mutant race in the ass by inventing power inhibitors, right?

[close]

I also finally watched Obsession because nobody would stop talking about it. So much that I heard a YouTuber is being massively shit on for sympathizing with Bear. And yeah, that movie's great too. Really loved the performance Nikki's actor gave.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Got to see an early screening of CVA, and while I'm still disappointed that we got CG characters instead of traditional hand drawn animation like with WFRR, I did come away enjoying the movie quite a bit. I do think some critics are maybe elevating it's quality a bit much due to the circumstances of it's release (and the fact that it almost didn't get one), but it's also hard to deny that the fact of it almost getting shelved by a greedy and indifferent corporation really plays perfectly into the theme of the story in a way that can enhance the experience somewhat if you know that background going into it. In that regard, I'm definitely glad that it got released at all, even if it will likely underperform financially.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Saw the Coyote movie that people are talking about, and yeah, this and The Day the Earth Blew Up, it's wild it took this long to get good Looney Tunes movies. Looney Tunes movies that are actually about something and aren't just merchandise plugs or an assault of pop culture references. Because even Back in Action, the one that up until the recent movies was seen as the best LT feature film by default because the others were dogshit, was such a mess that you can almost get why Space Jam got the ironic fandom but this didn't. And I think Coyote vs Acme helped me understand why, because Will Forte's funny, like really funny. But Back in Action had Brendan Fraser, and Fraser's charming and generally a pleasure to watch, but he's never been funny imo. And BiA suffers for it because Fraser just can't bounce off of Bugs at all. Doesn't help he isn't even really playing a character, he's just playing himself with a different name. While Forte works great with Wile E. Coyote here. His character's Lionel Hutz attitude mixed with his genuine desire to get some justice done was fun and helped him stand out from Fraser, Jordan, or LeBron. Because all of these movies try to be Who Framed Roger Rabbit again but this is the only one that remembers WFRR worked because Bob Hoskins was funny and knew how to hold his own against Looney Tunes characters.

I do think some critics are maybe elevating it's quality a bit much due to the circumstances of it's release (and the fact that it almost didn't get one),

Yeah, it's undeniable the controversy surrounding how the movie was handled added a new critical lens there, and made it impossible for people to see a movie about an exploitative corporation hiding secrets at the expense of its own employees and not think "Wait a minute..." And that probably wasn't the intent if the film just had a normal release, imagine if the NBA was caught in the middle of a horrible corporate shitstorm at the same time Space Jam came out and made people think that film had an anti-capitalist message because the main villain there was an evil executive abusing his staff, but I certainly can't blame audiences for seeing a real-life subtext in this if it makes the movie more interesting to them. If a piece of media has a really unorthodox production history or release, of course it's gonna affect how audiences engage with the work. Because it certainly did for me. If WB's gonna accidentally turn the film's existence into a political statement just because they got stingy, let them reap what they sow.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Finally watching Project Hail Mary. The quippier cousin of Denis Villeneuve's Arrival. Figures that the one time I see Ken Leung in a role where he isn't a hardass, he immediately dies. But I do like it. A bit more than I did The Martian movie that was also an Andy Weir adaptation.