What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Avaitor]

Tonight was film club tonight, and the presidents know me as the guy who's seen mostly everything they've shown thus far. Although to be fair, of what we have seen, Snowpiercer and The Truman Show were new to me prior to their screenings during the club.

Anyway, this week's film was They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which even the presidents haven't seen before. The club's projectionist, who's also a professor here, gave a big lecture on it and was surprised to see that not only was the movie familiar to me, but I wanted to see everyone's reaction to it. Needless to say, I think everyone needed a cigarette afterwords.

The best part of tonight, though, was this story that the projectionist told of his UCLA days, when he and a friend actually went to see a preview of the film a good month before its release. Apparently,

Spoiler

the film originally ended right after Michael Sarrazin's character was arrested for shooting Jane Fonda, and the sequences of Sarrazin being incarcerated and tried throughout the film weren't in, despite being a part of the original novel

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They went to dinner afterwords at a restaurant where the cast and crew were also hanging out at, and he was able to meet Sydney Pollack. One thing he told Pollack was that the film ended a little too abruptly, and that it could have used a final scene at the contest. Pollack told him that this isn't the first time he heard the idea, and lo and behold, that is how the movie ends!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I really like the film. It's garnered a lot of unnecessary hate just because of how massively popular it got back when it came out, but I'd say that it earned that popularity. It basically made the found footage genre as obnoxiously popular as it is today, but I think that it actually managed to do that by being legitimately creepy in tone and having decent enough actors who weren't well known to really sell the premise of the story. I also like how it follows the horror tradition of "it's what you don't see that's scarier than what you actually do see" when it comes to what's on the screen. That, and the use of sound was excellent in this movie.

[talonmalon333]

I agree. Blair Witch Project was great.

So I was just thinking about Godzilla. And I think I may have once said that I'm opposed to the sequels and their representation of the monster. I especially don't like portraying him as a sort of hero, having to protect the world from other evil monsters like Mechagodzilla. On the other hand, do you know what I kind of like? Admittedly, I haven't seen the movie where this happens, but I do know there is a movie where Godzilla is the bad guy, and Mechagodzilla is the good guy. To me, that's how it should be. Godzilla being the symbol of destruction, and Mechagodzilla being built as a weapon against him and as humanity's ultimate hope.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Personally, I've always liked the idea of Godzilla as an antihero rather than a straight up hero or villain. That's one thing that I actually really liked about the 2014 movie. Some people claim that it portrayed him as a hero just because of that last line, but those people clearly don't pay attention to what's actually happening on screen, and even what the director said about the movie. Godzilla is not a hero, but a force of nature. He's not some pure evil that just wants to wipe out humanity, but a creature who is basically doing nature's bidding. The fact that people die because of him doesn't even phase him at all. I believe that was also true in the original Godzilla. He was specifically taking revenge on people because he's a "bad guy" or anything like that. He was awoken by nuclear testing and clearly feels threatened by the destruction used against him, so like an animal would naturally do, it strikes back in its own defense, trying to take out its threat. Had Godzilla just started attacking cities and destroying them for no reason, then he'd be a villain. But much like with King Kong, a monster that truly helped inspire the creation of Godzilla, the destruction and chaos that he causes is heavily implied to be the destruction that people have brought on themselves through the actions of humans tampering with nature in gays that they were never meant to, and should never have done.

[talonmalon333]

Let me rephrase my post.

I like Godzilla as a natural force of nature (as he is in the original movie). And I don't mind Mechagodzilla being portrayed as a weapon to stop him.

I'm pretty much with you on what you just said. In my last post, I just kind of simplified it for the Mechagodzilla point.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just re-watched Blade. You know, for a 90's comic book movie with a ton of flaws that movies in this genre from that era tended to have, it honestly hasn't aged all that badly. It's still an entertaining movie for what it is, IMO, and it's one of the few times that a Marvel film was ever allowed to get away with an R-rating. We'll probably never see that again in the current age of Marvel cinema being that characters like Blade and The Punisher don't fit in with the Universe that they are creating. That's fine, really, but movies like this serve as a nice time capsule for a period when comic book movies were much more experimental and risky on a regular basis. Not that films like GOTG aren't risky either, but those earlier era movies had much lower budgets to work with, and much harsher critics at the time, so you so at least have to respect the effort and heart that was put into them.

[Rynnec]

Blade is a good film, and the sequel is even better. Kinda sad to hear that Marvel is probably not going to make more R-rated films again, since a Ghost Rider movie done in that style would be really badass.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, I always enjoyed the first 2 movies, sort of as guilty pleasures, but to their credit, they put a ton of effort and some actual decent talent into those films. Trinity was a piece of shit, though, from what I remember of it.

That said, while we won't be getting any R-rated movies from Marvel Studios themselves, I've heard that the Deadpool movie that FOC is producing will supposedly be a "Hard-R" movie, so there's that, assuming that it turns out to be any good.

[gunswordfist]

that's pretty much how i felt about blade years ago. it seems a bit off, even if you accept it for what it is but it's still a pretty good film.

[Speedy]

Boggy Creek.  The first one, not the one featured on MST3K.

Just when you thought it was safe to sit on the toilet...

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I saw John Wick this weekend with my dad. It's a really, really entertaining action movie and the best that I've seen in a long time in terms of just actual awesome action scenes.

I'm not saying that it's Die Hard or Hardboiled levels of awesome, because it's not, but compared to most modern action flicks, it's great, with the just the right amount of seriousness, yet still enough of a tounge-in-cheek tone going for it so that it doesn't take itself way too seriously (something that I never liked about the Taken films, which are incredibly overrated, IMO).

Keanu Reeves IS pretty monotone, as you would expect, but in this case they wisely gave him a character that doesn't have such a wide range of emotions, so he fit the role perfectly.

Other than that, I really can't praise the action scenes in this movie enough. It puts all other modern shoot-em-up movies to shame, and while it's not quite on the level of a John Woo masterpiece, it's at least as good as something like Desperado, which in and of itself is still a huge complement. Most notably, there's absolutely no shaky-cam bull-shit here, with all of the shots and angles being clean and easy to follow. Furthermore, the actual choreography is excellent, and thankfully the guys making this movie knew a thing or two about proper gun-action, as in how to even hold a gun in the first place, without any of this one-handed, sideways crap that every other movie seems to think is cool, but is actually incredibly stupid and completely neglects the fact that guns have a huge recoil to them which makes such a style incredibly impractical. And finally, there is absolutely no Matrix or Zack Snyder style slow-mo, which nearly ruined movie fight action for me whenever it came to fist fights or gun battles. I mean, I love slow-mo in a game like F.E.A.R. and Max Payne, but please keep them out of my action movies. This is just old-school style shoot and kill, which I love.

If you're not really into this type of movie, then you can skip it, but for me it was a really refreshing experience in action movie cinema. What it lacked in originality, it made up for in excellent execution, by smartly taking inspiration from old-school, actual good films in the genre, rather than most of the other modern Hollywood garbage.

Oh, and also it has Theon Greyjoy in it. I figured that had to count for something.

[talonmalon333]

So recently, I showed Jaws to one of my friends, who hadn't seen it before. As a few of you may know, I frequently call this my favorite film. However, I will say, there is one minor part of the movie that I could do without. I'll put it in spoilers, since I imagine it's recommended.

Spoiler

I don't like how you can see the shark here.

This sequence takes place during the July 4th portion of the movie. Personally, I love how you really don't get much of a look at the shark until the second half of the film, when they get out on the boat, with its first appearance that point on being when it leaps up toward Brody while he's throwing chum out. From that point on, the shark is featured fairly prominantly, but before then, you rarely see it. You mostly just get certain looks at things from its point of view, or occasionally you'll see its fins. In one of the more effective moments, it's identified by the half of a dock that it ripped right from under people trying to catch it from the beach, which creates an especially chilling moment when said dock turns and starts drifting toward shore while one of the men is trying to climb out of the water.

However, in the picture above, you get a look at it. That's something I could do without. Admittedly, it's not a big problem because you really don't get that good of a look at it. It's mostly just part of its head that you can see. But I wish that scene had gone with showing the man screaming while being pulled underwater, with the shark remaining unseen. Still, as things are, I'm certainly glad that we saw no more than at least that until the second half of the movie. If the mechanical shark had worked properly while filming, this movie wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

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But anyway, I also wanted to mention the look of the shark itself. I've heard some mixed opinions. Some people say the shark looks fine, and some say it looks fake. Personally, I think it looks good enough. It may look a bit strange, but to be perfectly honest... sharks are pretty strange looking animals. Seriously, just take a look at them, with those big black eyes, and that spray paint looking color covering only half of their body. Of course they're awesome and very nice looking animals, but they're also pretty odd looking. Some of the most interesting animals in the world look goofy or weird. I suppose the shark in the movie does look a bit bulky. But I think that works. We have to remember this isn't just a regular great white shark. For all intents and purposes, it's a monster shark.

[gunswordfist]

i watched most of night of the creeps. i missed the last 8 or so minutes. it was a pretty good horror comedy. jc was easily my favorite character.

[talonmalon333]

Has anyone seen Network?

[Avaitor]

A couple of times, yeah. It's pretty fantastic.