The terrible movies and reviews thread

[LoooSeR]

Also

 

 

Neil Breen's plot points, at least some of them you can expect in almost any of his films:

 

[Sturgeon]

Jenny perfectly captures how I felt about Ready Player 1:
 

 

[Toxn]

31 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

Jenny perfectly captures how I felt about Ready Player 1:
 

 

Yup.

 

God damn but this book* deserves to be mocked as mercilessly as Twilight was.

 

 

* I'm hoping the movie is a loose adaption, although chances are low in this case.

[LoooSeR]

 

[Sturgeon]

Yes, yes it does. Here I was all, "I'd like a nice fun scifi book, what is out there? Oh, this Ready Player One thing sounds decent."

NARRATOR: But it was not decent at all.

[Toxn]

9 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

Yes, yes it does. Here I was all, "I'd like a nice fun scifi book, what is out there? Oh, this Ready Player One thing sounds decent."

NARRATOR: But it was not decent at all.

Mine was similar.

 

"Oh hey, I see that my kindle keeps pushing this thing at me. And the reviews seem pretty positive. Maybe its decent?"

 

Edit: the part where I'm going to become apoplectic is where everyone keeps pretending that this thing is some sort of amazing, groundbreaking experience for the next few years, before quietly 'recontextualising' it once the shine wears off. I'm expecting lots of humblebrags about how the writer overlooked the book/film's obvious flaws at the time because of some vaguely-explained zeitgeist-related thing; but have now come the mature conclusion that, upon reflection, it was more of a mixed bag than they remember.

 

As if you couldn't see from space just how crap and pandering this thing is, and how blatantly it thinks it can buy our favour by throwing us 'I get that reference!' ego boosts the whole time.

[Sturgeon]

50 minutes ago, Toxn said:

Mine was similar.

 

"Oh hey, I see that my kindle keeps pushing this thing at me. And the reviews seem pretty positive. Maybe its decent?"

 

Edit: the part where I'm going to become apoplectic is where everyone keeps pretending that this thing is some sort of amazing, groundbreaking experience for the next few years, before quietly 'recontextualising' it once the shine wears off. I'm expecting lots of humblebrags about how the writer overlooked the book/film's obvious flaws at the time because of some vaguely-explained zeitgeist-related thing; but have now come the mature conclusion that, upon reflection, it was more of a mixed bag than they remember.

 

As if you couldn't see from space just how crap and pandering this thing is, and how blatantly it thinks it can buy our favour by throwing us 'I get that reference!' ego boosts the whole time.

 

This is an immensely validating post for me lol

[Donward]

Hollywood can't even keep from fucking up "Peter Rabbit" and "A Wrinkle in Time". So of course "RP1" is gonna be drek too. 

[Sturgeon]

8 minutes ago, Donward said:

Hollywood can't even keep from fucking up "Peter Rabbit" and "A Wrinkle in Time". So of course "RP1" is gonna be drek too. 

 

Even if the movie's awful, it'll at least be better than the book.

[Donward]

1 hour ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Even if the movie's awful, it'll at least be better than the book.

 

Nah, I'm just being a grump about the whole bigger picture of cinema and the absolute shit running down the legs of Hollywood these days.

 

Here's what's in theaters and what's coming soon.

http://www.imdb.com/movies-in-theaters/?ref_=nv_mv_inth_1

 

http://www.imdb.com/movies-coming-soon/?ref_=nv_mv_cs_4

 

There is nothing even approaching original content with the sequels, prequels, comic book movies, reboots, and remakes that are being churned out. 

 

[LostCosmonaut]

I liked A Wrinkle in Time when I was younger, so I'm sure the new movie probably broke it horribly.

 

 

[Toxn]

I finally got around to watching Black Panther.

 

It's not terrible*, but is weird to see a movie set in Africa but told almost wholly through an African-American lens. For instance; there's a scene where Killmonger is having this argument with T'challa about why Wakanda wasn't helping all the dispossessed people 'like us', and it's meant to be this gotcha that the African super-science kingdom is only looking after its own. But I kept thinking, who the fuck is 'us' here?

 

I mean, I know pan-africanism is a thing. But I don't see too many South Africans (or Kenyans, or Nigerians) looking across the ocean and saying 'there are our people, suffering'. We honestly just don't give that much of a fuck about the plight of African-Americans (sorry guys, but its true) to spend much time worrying about whether we should set up an outreach program in Chicago or something. The sight of folk getting off the plane, kissing the ground and talking about 'coming home' is more likely to make us embarrassed than proud (especially since ORT is fucking far away from West Africa).

 

Oh, and the CGI rhinos were terrible. For some reason hollywood just cannot get rhinos to look and move right.

And watching a movie about a central African supersociety where they all speak Xhosa always tickles me.

 

*Edit: I should not make this too negative, since I liked the movie fine. So, as a counterbalance, here are some of the things I enjoyed:

- Decent, consistent characterisation on the part of the supporting cast

- The wakandan city scenes (although gtfo with the dust roads)

- The tech sat in a very nice spot in terms of looks

- Andy Serkis almost nailed a Seff Effrican accent

- A few Seff Effrican actors getting a paycheck. Although not the one guy playing one. Figures

- The leader of the Jabari tribe was entertaining as a side character (and his office looked great. Lots of time to prepare for a meeting, I guess)

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

Ready player one is the dumbest dumbed down version of Tad William's Other land. 

 

And it also seems somehow worse than 

.hack// for some reason.

[Toxn]

47 minutes ago, Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect said:

Ready player one is the dumbest dumbed down version of Tad William's Other land. 

 

And it also seems somehow worse than 

.hack// for some reason.

Weird that the more we all agree on this, the more I suspect that it will get heaped with praise come release.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

That's a guarantee. 

[Scolopax]

But there are characters that I like and know from other things

 

 

[Sturgeon]

Predictably, this movie was awful

 

 

[LoooSeR]

The most cliches per frame short action movie ever:

Including bad russians, Black guy die first and so on.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

On 3/21/2018 at 7:05 AM, Sturgeon said:

Predictably, this movie was awful

 

 

No one is surprised at this cock-up. 

 

I saw the poster in the theater when my wife and I saw Annihilation. The first thing she said was, "Why is the gigantic poster all about Oprah and the witches? That story revolved around the kids."

 

 

[Donward]

6 minutes ago, Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect said:

No one is surprised at this cock-up. 

 

I saw the poster in the theater when my wife and I saw Annihilation. The first thing she said was, "Why is the gigantic poster all about Oprah and the witches? That story revolved around the kids."

 

 

That's pretty much a similar reaction from Mrs. The Captain when we saw the preview at the theater. I had read the book but she is a fan of the series and was pretty aghast at the treatment.

 

Of course what had her up in arms was the treatment of Peter Rabbit.

[Collimatrix]

12 hours ago, Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect said:

No one is surprised at this cock-up. 

 

 

 

Actually, I am.  I expect Disney to quickly and efficiently produce mediocre adaptations of pre-existing franchises.  But they're slipping lately, and I'm curious why.

[Toxn]

6 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

 

Actually, I am.  I expect Disney to quickly and efficiently produce mediocre adaptations of pre-existing franchises.  But they're slipping lately, and I'm curious why.

Law of averages?

 

So much stuff comes out under the Disney stamp these days that some of it is bound to suck. Also: as you expand, your talent and control becomes more diffuse and your product tends more towards the average.

[Donward]

6 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

 

Actually, I am.  I expect Disney to quickly and efficiently produce mediocre adaptations of pre-existing franchises.  But they're slipping lately, and I'm curious why.

#MeToo

[Collimatrix]

19 hours ago, Toxn said:

Law of averages?

 

So much stuff comes out under the Disney stamp these days that some of it is bound to suck. Also: as you expand, your talent and control becomes more diffuse and your product tends more towards the average.

 

Except that what Disney seemed to be doing was tightening up the variance on the quality of their product.  They had gotten to a point where they could produce the movie equivalent of a middle-tier Chinese restaurant.  Longstanding IP goes in, enjoyable-but-in-hindsight-forgettable movie comes out.  Certainly not fine dining, but it had cleaned itself up enough it didn't feel grungy.  You could smell the corporate machinery grinding under the surface, and the films themselves were a mix of elements that were both well-proven (almost to the point of being cliched), and superficially trendy.  It was like putting lots of salt and MSG on food; they had figured out the easy ways to get the audience to respond in positive ways, and they just kept putting those flavors on top of an unremarkable substrate that they could mass-produce, and not doing anything too risky or outside of established parameters, and they were making oodles of money doing it with a roadmap for oodles more for the next several years.  What was remarkable was how unremarkable it was.

 

You couldn't help but admire the soulless efficiency of it.

But now they're fucking up left and right.  I'm a little hurt, because if I can't have faith in soulless efficiency, what is there to believe in?

[Toxn]

2 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

 

Except that what Disney seemed to be doing was tightening up the variance on the quality of their product.  They had gotten to a point where they could produce the movie equivalent of a middle-tier Chinese restaurant.  Longstanding IP goes in, enjoyable-but-in-hindsight-forgettable movie comes out.  Certainly not fine dining, but it had cleaned itself up enough it didn't feel grungy.  You could smell the corporate machinery grinding under the surface, and the films themselves were a mix of elements that were both well-proven (almost to the point of being cliched), and superficially trendy.  It was like putting lots of salt and MSG on food; they had figured out the easy ways to get the audience to respond in positive ways, and they just kept putting those flavors on top of an unremarkable substrate that they could mass-produce, and not doing anything too risky or outside of established parameters, and they were making oodles of money doing it with a roadmap for oodles more for the next several years.  What was remarkable was how unremarkable it was.

 

You couldn't help but admire the soulless efficiency of it.

But now they're fucking up left and right.  I'm a little hurt, because if I can't have faith in soulless efficiency, what is there to believe in?

Statistics.