What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Had to miss the Oscar's due to my plane flight back to Kentucky being at that time, but was pleasantly surprised when I found out that Parasite won. This is definitely among the few times where I'm actually in agreement with the Oscars on the Best Director and Best Picture category. Also, it's just super awesome to see a foreign film getting it's due outside of just it's own category.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite. I didn't like the former all that much. The acting was good, and it was fun seeing all the references to 70s movie culture, but it never felt as fun as Tarantino's other films. Same issues I had with Hateful Eight, really. Though I admit I'm biased because I'm a little bitter Tarantino hasn't gotten to Kill Bill 3 yet.

Now Parasite, that was a beautiful film. Been hearing people argue that they think the Kims are more sympathetic than the Parks and vice-versa, when I really felt the first housekeeper and her husband were the biggest victims of the cast, even after what happened at the birthday party. I like that level of nuance with everybody though. It's also funny to see people misunderstand the film and assume one specific character was meant to be the parasite, like they thought they were watching a slasher film and thought the "Parasite" was going to be a monster or a serial killer instead of the wordplay for society forcing people to leech off of each other in order to thrive in life.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I may be in the minority in preferring Tarantino's later films to his earlier ones (by "later", I mean Inglorious Basterds and onward), but I also understand why slower-paced flicks like OUATIH wouldn't be to everyone's liking. It's admittedly a film that lives and dies by how engrossed you get in it's characters and setting, rather than any coherent plot or traditional narrative. If those aspects don't do anything for you, than the film will certainly be a bore. I watched it a second time on a flight last year during Christmas vacation and personally enjoyed it even more than on my first viewing.

And yes, Parasite is one of Bong Joon-Ho's best films to date. I also agree with you about the housekeeper and her husband being the most misfortunate characters of the film.

[Avaitor]

I personally much prefer stuff like OUATIH to Kill Bill, although I don't really have much use for Hateful Eight, myself. I've been really wanting to see Parasite again, and after I get to Portrait of a Lady on Fire on Hulu, I think that I will.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Watched Ip Man 4, and it's by far the corniest of the Ip Man movies. Every one of them except Ip Man 3 took inspiration from the plot and aesthetic of Rocky 4, but this one more so than the others. It's so heavyhanded in reminding the audience that Ip Man's Chinese martial arts are superior to every other nation's fighting technique. And it veers into After School Special territory when Ip Man walks into an American high school and beats up racist teenagers. Also funny that the film paints Ip Man as the pride of everything Chinese, when the real Ip Man chose to live in Hong Kong for most of his life even after his family was sent back to China. Not to mention by the time 4 happens, he should be around 70 when Donnie Yen doesn't look anywhere near that age.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Watched The Innocents and The Changeling back-to-back today. Both classic horror films for sure. The Innocents definitely deserves it's recognition as a masterpiece of the genre. I'm actually quite surprised at how often I forgot that I was watching a 50+ year old movie (seriously, I didn't expect to see some of the stuff that I did in a major studio production from 1961). I can definitely see the influence this had on more modern mainstream haunting films like The Others and Insidious, among many more. As for The Changeling, while I didn't necessarily find it scary or disturbing in the same way that The Innocents was (though it has some terrifically creepy moments), it works really well as a suspense story with the protagonist slowly uncovering the eerie mystery of what happened in the house he has taken up vacancy in. It isn't quite as perfectly put together as The Innocents, and does slightly drag in a few places, but it more than makes up for that with it's superb film-making craft (especially the excellent use of camera-angles and purposeful shot composition to great effect) and genuinely interesting mystery that keeps pulling you back in as each new piece of the puzzle is revealed. These are now both definitely among my more preferred pieces of horror cinema.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The Batman trailer led me to listening to a ton of Nirvana, and that led me to watching the documentary Montage of Heck. While it has no insight from some people like Dave Grohl, it tells a pretty complete look at Kurt's life. Everything's all so visceral, the combination between animated scenes and journal entries mixed together with interviews from all his friends and family. Those home movies from Kurt and Courtney were rough.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Tenet was bewildering. Not because of the plot, but the sound mixing. It's horrible and all of the cast sound like they're mumbling their words. Ironically, the movie will probably fare much better when it gets to home release just so everyone has a subtitles option. Anyway, for how much the film is a love letter to Bond films, it's not even Nolan's best Bond pastiche. The Dark Knight Rises was his answer to the campy Connery/Moore Bond films, while Tenet seems like his specific tribute to the Daniel Craig era. Kenneth Branagh's character reminds me of the villain from Quantum of Solace, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but it's still strange.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Glad I'm not the only one who had an issue with the audio. I was wondering if it was just my theater that screwed up. As for me, I'm mixed on the movie. It has aspects of Christopher Nolan that I both love and hate. The visual direction is fantastic and Nolan gets great performances out of all of the actors that he works with. However, the time-travel rules that he creates are sloppily laid out in exposition dumps (something that Interstellar also relied too heavily on), and also still isn't that well explained on a first time viewing, and the overall plot feels needlessly convoluted at times.

I do feel like the movie was still enjoyable enough even when I wasn't on board with some of the writing, though, so I'm glad that I saw it. Still, I'll wait for a home release to re-watch it, as I do believe that this is the kind of movie that I can better appreciate on repeat viewings.

Also, just wanted to mention that the Dune teaser made me giddy when I saw it. I love the original novel and while I understand that Villeneuve's style isn't for everyone, I'm personally a fan of his direction. I also went back to reread it recently, but now I'm also reading the sequels which I initially avoided for how polarizing they are, but I'm half-way through the second book and personally I'm really into it. It seems so far that some people understandably dislike how it takes the story in a much darker, more bleak direction, but that can work really well in fiction if handled well, and IMO it has been so far. It plays out sort of like a Shakespearean tragedy. I feel like I'll probably enjoy this and the third book, but the other three Frank Herbert entries in the series apparently polarize even the fans who like the Paul trilogy. I guess I'll get to them when I get to them.

With the teaser and released stills, though, I can definitely say I'm liking what I'm seeing, and the cast seems pretty fucking great. More than anything, though, I really just want to see a high concept Science Fiction movie do well at the box office. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of Alex Garland, I do wish that Ex Machina and Annihilation could have done better to increase interest in the genre. Likewise, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 (which I loved) did really poorly. And let's not even get started on how Harvey Weinstein utterly butchered the theatrical release of Snowpiercer. Sure, mainstream fair like the Matt Reeves Planet of the Apes trilogy did well enough (which I am certainly a fan of), but I view them more as action blockbusters first with Sci-Fi elements. I'd really love it if Dune could do for it's genre what Game of Thrones The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones did for adult Fantasy series in mainstream media.

It'll probably still underperform, of course, but I'd like to hope a bit of I can.

[Mustang]

Watched Ip Man 4, and it's by far the corniest of the Ip Man movies. Every one of them except Ip Man 3 took inspiration from the plot and aesthetic of Rocky 4, but this one more so than the others. It's so heavyhanded in reminding the audience that Ip Man's Chinese martial arts are superior to every other nation's fighting technique. And it veers into After School Special territory when Ip Man walks into an American high school and beats up racist teenagers. Also funny that the film paints Ip Man as the pride of everything Chinese, when the real Ip Man chose to live in Hong Kong for most of his life even after his family was sent back to China. Not to mention by the time 4 happens, he should be around 70 when Donnie Yen doesn't look anywhere near that age.

Personally, I love Donnie Yen movies. That being said, Ip Man should've stopped after the 1st one. I get it, we're trying to see the legacy of the man who taught Bruce Lee, but story wise I hated everything when it came to 2-3 (I haven't watched 4 yet but I can guess where it's going). IPM2 I just thought was overall terrible. Didn't even enjoy the fights. IPM3, I would've rather it been 2 and 4 be 3. However, IPM3's story irked me to no end. I get it, I don't know what Chinese culture is/was like back then but the premise of Ip man fighting just bothered me. I love the fight scenes though, especially the last fight, but the overall premise of everything. Surely, he could've told everyone why he would step away from fighting (and surely people would understand), but like I said, I don't know what their culture is like. IPM1 though, was just immaculate.

If I'm not watching comic book movies you can probably find me watching a martial arts movie. They are my go to's no matter how corny they can be. Even the good ole 70's-80's martial arts movies are still something I'd watch this very day.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, the exposition dumps were annoying. For a movie that's meant to be Nolan's Bond tribute, it lacks any of the snappy dialogue you usually get from Bond films. Speaking of, I think the most interesting part of the film wasn't the film itself but the intertextuality in Nolan making a movie in the style of 007 when Sam Mendes was heavily influenced by Nolan's films while making Skyfall. It's fun to see that mutual mingling between directors and franchises that doesn't actually involve the director touching the franchise.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Watched the Mulan movie and hated it. This video perfectly sums it up.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Kudos to you for actually making it through that. I wouldn't drop a penny on another live-action Disney remake let alone $30 of my money.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'll give it one plus in that it isn't a shot-for-shot remake like all the others, but it's so joyless and stiff that I'd have preferred the former.

[Avaitor]

Disney really seems to struggle with making these remakes notable. When they're basic remakes like Beauty and the Beast and Lion King, they're entirely superfluous, but when they venture off like Maleficent, Dumbo, and apparently Mulan now, they lose their point and become basically useless. They seem to do better with splitting the difference, like with Cinderella, Jungle Book, and Aladdin, but even those are hardly essential IMO.