MUWT 2: The Quickening

Input Cinephile Shodown
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I watched The Martian on a plane and then had to wait a full two weeks to see if they rescued Matt. What a fine forgetable film.

I turned off Pan 10 minutes in. I was on a plane. I couldnt be bothered. I did watch Hotel Translavania 2 because I saw a preview at a theater and laughed about 4 times during it. That preview is clearly the best part of the film and is funnier without contest. It is filled with jokes and barely has a plot but didnt particularly laugh at any of it.

Did I do bad not watching Thailands Back To The Future?

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I saw Deadpool this afternoon. It was pretty good! I was worried all the self-aware, fourth-wall-breaking humor would fall flat but they make it work surprisingly enough. Colossus and Negaton Teenage Warhead were cool too. I enjoyed myself and left the theater wishing I’d read the comic book before now.

Also I stayed until the credits rolled completely to see if there was a hidden scene and was not disappointed.

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Saw Deadpool also, I was on the fence but pushed over to the other side after watching a video about all the synths the soundtrack composer used to write the score, only to find the soundtrack mostly cheesy 80’s 90’s pop and hip hop and the score was kind of buried in there somewhere until the final few scenes, when it was admittedly pretty cool sounding. I don’t know why I’ve started to pay so much attention to film scores lately.

I didn’t really like the movie all that much, a lot of the jokes fell flat. But that might have been because I saw it in a nearly full theater and hardly anyone was laughing–this is Taiwan though, so that probably just means whoever was writing the subtitles did a shitty job. Admittedly, this movie would be really horrible to translate since so much of the humor comes from silly word play and unusual combinations of swears.

One thing I really liked about it was the (non) presence of the X-Men, this is the first thing to convince me that the “alternative” marvel cinematic universe might actually turn into something pseudo-interesting. Officially more eager to see what they do next than DC, now.

Speaking of audience reactions and the “stinger” at the end, once the credits rolled a man (must have been staff?) yelled out to the audience that there was another scene after the credits, and then when it finally happened the guy sitting next to me said “We waited around all this time for that?” But it was kind of a funny gag–not quite as good as howard the duck at the end of GotG though.

edit:
Apparently some Canadian tried to rob a 7-11 in Taipei while dressed as Deadpool? This doesn’t really require much translation, and is a great reminder of how amazing Apple Daily is. Oh, one interesting bit is that he was apparently robbing the store to buy money for a plane ticket to see his Danish girlfriend. Great!

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watched ‘still the water’ today, on a sticky-hot afternoon! it’s the first time i watch something directed by naomi kawase (the torrent for ‘moe no suzaku’ won’t seed for a thing in this world).

the film is so well-realized. the first few shots are really conflicting in style (still-to-slow-panning-to-shaky-camera) but they all end up stabilishing themselves in the movie’s rhythm and don’t seem out of place, apart from being gorgeous.

really: the stuff it does in execution re: long, moving takes and scenes is a hundred times better anything a guy like inarritu could ever dream of doing. it also has a tender care for the characters, their fears and their own worlds. it’s a nice little film about places and water.

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continuing on talking about asian coming of age movies, i saw the first ‘die hard’ last week and forgot to write my thoughts here. i had only seen chunks of it on tv before. god damnit. just, whoa, how is it possible for something to even be this good? people who have access to die hard should go to jail for making bad action movies after 1988. i mean it’s all there for christ’s sake.

okay so:

  • it takes 1’30" for a gun to appear onscreen.

  • it’s the ultimate family-time movie (as in, with your mom and dad).

  • the first time a gun is drawn is at 17’51". the first time a gun is shot is at 17’52".

  • the characters don’t need arcs or flashbacks or much expository dialogue for you to figure out how everyone is different (an example being the elevator scene [“no one kills him but me”]).

  • the impact the bullets make on contact might be of my ideal strength. in a movie like django unchained it’s cool that when in contact with flesh they explode in a bag of blood or how in hard-boiled it’s like a bulldozer is puncturing walls with all the smoke and sparks, but for me the ones in die hard are the most satisfying, overall.

  • everyone is really well-dressed.

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But such tiny shoes!

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Nine million terrorists in the world and I gotta kill one with feet smaller than my sister.

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Oh Yeah D E A D P O O L is just every other boring superhero origin story in gore/boobs/swears drag.

Very few of the jokes work.

A couple of the gore gags are OK.

Would of course be much better if the action wasn’t a pedestrian closeup shakefest between drawnout slowmo keyframes.

I did laugh when Colossus barfed, as easy as it was to see the inciting joke coming.

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For shrugs: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/bayghazi/

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I finally am hip with the world and saw the comic book man comedy movie. Ant Man. That’s what all the kids are into now, right

I think it would have been a better movie if Wright ultimately directed it, but I still don’t think it would have been a great movie. Like, it just feels like a lukewarm heist comedy crashed into an origin movie and never really finds its footing. The best thing I can think of is when is his flying ant buddy get killed and the entire thing rings hollow.

Also caught Ghostbusters at a midnight show in the city. I have not ever seen Ghostbusters in this much detail on that much screen and now I can see how they did all the effects and I still like it a bunch and remain cautiously optimistic about the reboot, which will probably be bad anyway because even GB2 was pretty bad.

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My reference was more oblique and better try harder shrug.

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I was conversationally reinforcing your reference what is wrong with you and your butt

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how about you try harder

AT NOT BEING A DUMB JERKBUTTFACEHEAD

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Going back to my Netflix list culling, I watched Turbo Kid. It’s like the recent wave of movies and shorts expressing their love for low-budget 80s kitsch with a thick veneer of irony, except actually good (like, a legitimately good movie) and totally sincere. It’s a good low-budget B-movie, but it’s not a “B-movie”. And man, that synth score is some good shit.

80

Zero Focus (black and white 1960 version) is 50 minutes of a pretty good mystery with excellent modern day editing followed by 45 minutes of very slow exposition that you already knew. And it keeps getting sadder and there is this character that is a cartoon surrounded by real human beings. They are over the top when everything else is grounded. It’s very silly.

81

I feel like In the Heart of the Sea should probably be preserved for posterity, just so that, from now until the future, when someone sees The Revenant and doesn’t get why it is good, you have a handy example of something made in the same year that treads very similar ground and yet does everything significantly worse

it mainly just made me want a movie about Hard Men Surviving at Sea that was put together as wonderfully as The Revenant was

additionally, the movie is essentially “How can we do Moby Dick, but in such a way that we don’t have to make a person of color one of the main characters?”

edit: Here is a short incomplete list of some of the things about it that were dumb:

-the score
-the acting
-the dialogue
-the “where are they now”-ing over the most interesting part of the story
-the totally pointless frame story

Here is a complete list of everything about it that was good:

-Whale action
-maaaayyyybe some parts of the sequence where they get temporarily stranded on a desert island
-Some parts of the Life of Pi w/ no tiger sequence were OK

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