AzazariDanger

“Marketing research says that’s the movie that our tween demographic is most likely to be familiar with!”

This is one of the ones I always wanted to get around to watching, but never did.

I immediately went to Crunchyroll to add it to my watch list.

Then I came back, dejected, and saw you already pointed it out. Salt in the wound.

To be completely honest, many of these films took me a second viewing to really appreciate. Blade Runner 2049 is not a good sequel to the original, imo, but if you let it stand on it’s own a bit, it’s got some real interesting ideas at play, and of course, all of Denis’ movies are just visually beautiful. Similarly with his Dune, I’m a huge fan of the Lynch version, so it’s hard not to let that color my perception, but if you let it, it’s a visually stunning movie with amazing world design and it just nails the vibes I got reading the book.

Tarantino, too, I would have mostly shared your opinion two years ago. The first time I watched Basterds, Django, and Eight, I was pretty unimpressed, but I think I was letting my love of his earlier works color my opinions too much. Then, I got a copy of “Taratino: A Retrospective” for xmas, and that got me to go back through his entire filmography: I’d watch a movie, then read up on it in the book afterward. Even absence the additional stories and details from the book, I found all of those films really hit much better for me the second time around: no, they’re not doing that same effortlessly cool “Tarantino” style from the earlier works, but it’s clear that the man was interested in building on his own writing tropes and slowly branching them into different stories, and I really loved watching that evolution.

Fury Road: Fair enough, though at this point, Mel was probably a bit too old for the types of stunts they wanted to put Tom Hardy through.

Peele, I’ll just have to disagree, but mostly because I don’t see them as horror movies, but dark comedies. They’re not scary, not really, but boy did I laugh my ass off watching them. Nope, especially, manages to tell a funny, dramatic story with real stakes, imagination, and literally inventing a new way to do night filming that’s probably going to be mimicked by the entire industry going forward.

Jump Street: you’re not wrong about Jonah Hill, but in this case, the surprise is how funny Channing Tatum can be, and how expertly Lord and Miller bounce the two of them off each other. The standard Hill schtick just works in this screwball set of movies, and plays a perfect complement to Tatum. Oh, and that clip is amazing.

The Apes trilogy is criminally overlooked, again, probably because of “CGI Monkeys” and cultural memory of the old films, but they’re really amazingly good. Well, the first is just regular good, but the second two are great. A lot of it comes down to just how great Serkis is at working within the CGI character space: he plays the lead ape, Ceasar, but also does a lot of the motion capture for the rest of the apes, and nails it in movement and manerisms. All in all, the movies are able to create an epic about the decline of one civilization and the rise of a replacement, not because “apes good humans bad”, but because at every point, every character makes choices displaying their innate “humanity”, and have to deal with the consequences of those choices, good or bad.

Anyway, Dredd was awesome, Karl Urban is my husbando, and his DOOM movie is the best video game movie of all time. Thanks for coming to my TEDx talk!

That’s a pretty good list you’ve got, my friend; at least those I’ve seen from it. Allow me to make some suggestions from the last 11 years:

• All three of Jordan Peele’s movies: Get Out (2017), Us (2019), but especially Nope (2022).
• Denis Villaneuve’s work, specifically Siciario (2015), Arrival (2016, one of the best sci-fi book to screen adaptations I’ve ever seen), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Dune pt1 (2021).
• Edgar Wright had both Baby Driver (2017) and Last Night in Soho (2021).
• Rian Johnson did both Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion (2022).
• George Miller gave us Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and the practical effects alone are worth a viewing.
• Shane Black’s The Nice Guys (2016) was amazing.
• Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) had me grinning from ear to ear all the way through.
• Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018) is not only the best looking animated movie of all time, but one of the best superhero movies ever made.
• And while we’re on the subject of Lord and Miller projects, both 21 Jump Street (2012) and 22 Jump Street (2014) just squeeze in. Honestly, anything these two touch seems to be gold.
• Both of the Matt Reeves directed Apes movies, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) are in the window, though honestly the whole trilogy is fantastic and Andy Serkis needs a fucking CGI Ape Oscar already.

That’s off the top of my head, at least.

Even Tarantino has dropped the ball IMO.

Man, how you gonna do Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) dirty like that? Django is pure revenge fantasy good times, Eight is beautiful and tense with some amazing character acting, and Hollywood just revels in being part of a mythological time and place in movie history.

Heh, fair 'nuff. I’m pretty agnostic most of the time, unless a particular show has a known “better” version. For example, IMO, Cowboy Bebop (of course), Trigun, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners are all fantastic English dubs, but as counter examples I can’t stand the English dubs of Naruto or FLCL, off the top of my head.

But which is better for this show (in your opinion)?

Added to my watchlist, which is getting very long, lol.

Veeeeeeery interesting! I haven’t kept up on Warframe, but this looks to me like a big nod to Dark Sector, the studio’s first attempt at a “Warframe” style game that ended up getting scoped down into a weird single-player game. But, most of the design language and ideas of Warframe came from Dark Sector first. I wonder if this is them finally making some explicit in-universe connections to the two games, as opposed to spiritual nods and references?

Oh, and anyone who hasn’t seen it, NoClip’s documentary series on Warframe is a great watch, even if you have no interest in the game itself: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-THgg8QnvU7Weo1mCM9H2AXljC7UrDm8

That’s right, they cancelled The Peripheral but we’re getting more Upload.

Pretty sure Upload filmed quite some time ago, it was probably better calculus to just finish editing and SFX work and release it, vs Peripheral being to early in production and delayed indefinitely by the strikes.

I mean, I’d rather have both, but I can see the potential logic.

You know, I’m pretty sure that I watched this movie, forgot all about it, watched it a second time, turned to my wife halfway through and asked, “Have we seen this before?”, and we eventually decided we had, but finished watching it again anyway.

And right now, I can’t tell you a GD thing about it other than Clive Owen was in it.

Huh. I was watching that one when it aired, and I didn’t even notice, due to the mostly episodic nature of it. Not surprised, given Fox’s history (Browncoats will never forgive and never forget), but somehow it snuck by me.

Way more upset it didn’t get renewed. I’m a bit of an Urban fanboy and was really enjoying the show.

…guess I’ll go watch Doom again.