[Ghost of V]

Prince did it with Lenny Kravitz, so I don't doubt Saddam's theory.

[Saddam Hussein]

Quit taking my silly comments seriously.

[beardo]

The serious tension

[Vindictus]

I also thought Jai was in the last terminator, although that's probably because Sam Worthington was playing the same Attractive White Male role that Jai does.

[Snupes]

Oh wow, I've been mixing them up this whole time. They're both such generic tough white action star

[rooster]

Jai is hideous. He has a gross fat head. And I've also never seen him in anything.
Worthington is actually attractive because his head is of a normal size and he does do a great squinty scowl.

Worthington was also the guy in Avatar so he has one big movie under his belt already. I don't think Jai has done anything really noteworthy.

[Snupes]

Oh yeah, I know them both and I realize they don't actually look super-alike, it's more just their genre and style. They play the exact same kind of characters and both have a really generic look.

I have a little bias towards Jai because he was in a Die Hard movie, and the latest ones are my guilty pleasure even though I realize they aren't very good...I just love Die Hard a lot

Also,


Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)

I can't believe I'm saying this, but this was an amazing movie, and I don't mean just as a dumb action movie. I mean, it kind of is, but in a very self-aware way. I'm way too high on medication right now to describe what I feel accurately, and combining that with how fucked up my mind and thinking abilities are after the accident I think this is literally the best the description is going to get.

But still, it's a really, really good movie. The action is all really well-done, and the majority of the film is all practical effects (at least so I hard), which ends up being very impressive. The most surprising part is just how beautiful the movie and its cinematography is, from the weird speeds parts are filmed at that are reminiscient of some older films to the extreme colouring in many parts of the film. The characters are surprisingly fleshed-out and likeable despite not having much time to know them, and a lot is conveyed through very few words. Even the actual hand-to-hand fighting is really unique in parts, and honestly the film never lost my interest, which is very rare for me. Most films, even if I like them, can't quite manage that. And I'll admit, it's nice watching a fun action movie that doesn't feel the need to inject one-liners in every moment that would fit.

So yeah, to be honest I would really recommend this movie, ideally in 3D since the effects are done very well and immersively (to me, especially in the sandstorm part), but I understand some people really just can't stand 3D so it's fantastic without it as well.

[rooster]

We were going to see Mad Max yesterday but that fell through. The trailers have gotten him really excited about it but I loved the originals. The post apocalyptic dystopia setting is my thing.

This movie seems to have the same feel of the originals so in my mind there was no doubt it would be great. I just have to actually see it.

[beardo]

I'll wait for the blu-ray rips for that one.

[Blanko]

Mad Men (2007-2015)

My favourite show on television is now over.



What I find really compelling about this show is that it really takes full advantage of the television serial format, and what I mean by that is that it never falls into a loop of having episodes that simply progress the plot or are simply there to fill time. Every episode is a contained narrative, yet every episode is a part of a larger narrative and a development in someone's character arc. There are no bad or "filler" episodes, and Matthew Weiner's uncompromising vision really shines through every moment of it. The amount of character depth, symbolism, foreshadowing, call backs and parallels that exist in this show is staggering. It's very patient in its methods too, with many plot elements being set up seasons in advance. And of course, it's all explored through the underlying themes and political climate of its time period. There are a lot of acclaimed shows I haven't seen yet (The Sopranos, The Wire), but until I get to those I'm willing to claim that this is the best television I've ever seen and may even be as good as it gets.

[Crudblud]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony & Joe Russo)

Cap is thrust into a world of paranoia as shady forces threaten to give up a lot of other people's liberty to gain a little security for themselves. I have more problems with this film than I did with First Avenger. The fight scenes seem to be shot by a Parkinson's addled five year old on a sugar rush and edited by someone with ADHD, and it's a shame that the action element of the film is so marred by this almost Michael Bay aesthetic, because it really took me out of the film while it was going on, especially when the rest of the film is shot perfectly well. The Winter Soldier himself is also an issue, despite his back story he really just feels like a generic heavy and I had a difficult time giving a shit about him because of that.

Overall I'd say it's slightly lesser than the original in terms of quality overall, but the conspiracy stuff was very engaging, the sense of paranoia worked well, and the humour, when it wasn't trying to be glib and referential, was serviceable. I really like that Cap out of all the MCU sub-series seems to focus on melding capeshit with other genres, the first was a war movie, and this one's a conspiracy thriller, and it is the surprising flexibility of the main character that makes it work. The tonal shift from First Avenger to Winter Soldier is surprising but well handled, and while the film is considerably less goofy than its predecessor, it makes for a fitting follow-up.

[Crudblud]

Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Thailand, where people will give you money to shoot a bunch of stuff that kind of has a plot in a hospital plus some random shit that has nothing to do with anything. This is a fucking weird film, made even weirder by the fact that so much of it is completely mundane, and to talk about it isn't really going to get the point across, so I don't really have much to say about it that's worth saying. It's a perplexing collection of scenes (or maybe sequences is a better word) that are at least thematically related, for the most part, and some of them (one sequence in particular) are atmospheric to the point of being ungodly creepy, while others are just kind of there and I don't know why. I like it, but I'm not sure why, I'm not even sure what it is.

[Ghost of V]

I'm on season 2 of Hannibal. Pretty good series, and I like the guy that plays the titular character. Has anyone else watched this show? Impressions?

I feel like it convolutes itself a bit too much at times, and the pacing is also a little weird. It relies too heavily on dream-sequences and hallucinations for narrative purposes, which can make it seems kind of pretentious sometimes. The show has its flaws, but I'm still watching it and excited about the episodes to come, so it's obviously doing something right.  I haven't read any of the books or seen the movies about Hannibal Lecter, so being completely ignorant of the source material is also helping me appreciate the series more, probably moreso than someone who already knows what is going to happen. I feel like I'm watching it mostly because Mads Mikkelsen is so perfect for the role that it seems meant to be. Watching him simply converse with non-main characters is exciting by itself.

[Blanko]

Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu, 1953)

I really don't know how to feel about Ozu. His style just seems to... mundane. And not even in a way that is eccentric or endearing, unlike in the film I'm about to review next. Ozu diverts very rarely from his trademark shot composition: extremely low camera height, single point perspective and no camera movement whatsoever. Frequent use of shot-reverse shot for one-on-one conversations where the people only look ever so slightly off camera. Aside from his occasional use of ellipsis, his storytelling is very straightforward. The film is essentially a commentary on post-war urbanisation in Japan, told through an elderly couple visiting Tokyo, who find that their children have no time for them. Only their widowed daughter-in-law treats them with hospitality. I guess it's good for what it is, but I didn't find it very interesting. 7/10

Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003)

This film was made as an homage to Ozu, and sure enough, there are some indirect references here. An affinity for trains is a prominent one - I'm pretty sure that a certain shot of a passing train in this film is shot in the exact same location as another in Tokyo Story. Use of ellipsis is another, although this is a prominent Hou trademark as well. Lack of camera movement is typical for Hou as well, but here in Ozuan fashion he also occasionally places his camera at a very low height. This makes for some interesting compositional decisions, as the wider aspect ratio makes it serve an entirely different purpose as what Ozu used it for.

The references to Tokyo Story are there, but it's not really a Tokyo story itself; although it is set in Tokyo as well, there isn't an actual story in it. Instead I would characterise it as a portrait of everyday life in modern Japan, painted with vignettes from the life of Yoko, a writer who is obsessed with a Taiwanese composer, and her endearing encounters with a bookshop keeper who is obsessed with recording the sound of trains. The motif of generational shift is repeated here with Yoko's parents, who don't know how to respond to Yoko's intention to raise the child she is expecting by herself.

What keeps this film from falling into the realms of mundanity has a lot to do with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin. I probably didn't emphasise enough in my Millennium Mambo review how great this guy is. Hou's long and still shots look like paintings under Ping Bin's lighting, with reflective surfaces and high exposition. It's like a modern day Barry Lyndon. He also jointly did the cinematography in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love, another film that looks absolutely gorgeous. As for Hou himself, it seems the more I see of his films, the more I'm obsessed with him. 9/10

[Crudblud]

Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn)

So, this is it, the last movie on the list. 2015: A Capeshit Odyssey is officially done and dusted. Despite the fact that I found most of the films either okay or mediocre, the overall experience has been an enjoyable one, and there are some really fun movies in there, stuff I wasn't expecting to like at all. Iron Man 3 was the big surprise, since I had given the worst reviews of the entire Odyssey to the previous two films in that particular series, but I really liked it. Captain America: The First Avenger surprised me too, and I really enjoyed its goofy 1940s wartime escapism in conflict with the realities (well, with some extreme liberties taken in regard to the definition of the word) of war itself. The third highlight, I am happy to report, is Guardians of the Galaxy, which isn't so much capeshit as a space romp in the manner of Star Wars, although I have to say I enjoyed it much more than any Star Wars film.

Right from the start with the cold open I wasn't really sure what to expect, I think the fact that the film does mislead the viewer tonally at the start does work well, because the surprise of first meeting Starlord is a really good reveal that wouldn't have worked so well otherwise. The overall levity of the film combined with its gleeful violence, which certainly does outdo anything prior in the MCU, really works for me, and I think it suits the characters very well indeed. The Guardians are a disparate bunch of outlaws who have good chemistry and their group-based humour really works because of it, at least ~90% of the time, while occasionally a one liner will fall flat, usually because it's unnecessary. This superfluity does infect other parts of the film at times, and many of the action scenes suffer because of this, having to them a similar aesthetic as those of The Winter Soldier, in which shots cannot be held for more than one second without the director apparently getting bored. This is a shame as shots are occasionally held, usually for comedic effect, and they work much better whether as jokes or as straight action than the constant motion of the camera in most scenes.

So, I don't like everything about the film, but I'm more than willing to overlook these admittedly minor problems and say this is one of best films I've seen all year. It rips along, it's full of good humour, the villains and side characters all add something to the growing lore of the MCU, especially nice to see Josh Brolin as the imposing Thanos and Benicio del Toro reprising his role as the gloriously flamboyant Collector (it's kind of hilarious to think they were making this and Inherent Vice together around the same time), and you know, John C. Reilly is always good. So, while this is the last film on the list, I'll probably be sticking around to see if Guardians of the Galaxy 2 can live up to this.

[Blanko]

Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1998)

This film is about brothels in 19th century Shanghai and the conditions the prostitutes have to work in. It explores how beneath the ostensibly glamorous surface their lives are that of slavery, and how their only goal in life is to be bought out and married to rich clients. The narrative is very elliptical and fragmented, and with a large cast of different prostitutes from different brothels and a variety of regular clients, it can be difficult keep up with what relation characters have to each other and what events are being referenced.

The setting lets Hou's mise en scène perfectionism run wild, and combined with Ping Bin's always great cinematography, the film is as beautiful as is to be expected. It's shot in a very similar manner to Millennium Mambo: very long shots with a lot of camera panning and actor movement. Right off the bat, the film opens with a highly choreographed nine-minute shot of 10+ actors all working in perfect sync, with the camera always finding the right target to focus on. I believe there's a total of 30 cuts in the entire film. Hou constructs his shots as if they were complex dance routines, and his dedication to his craft is always admirable.

So, visually speaking it's pretty much a masterpiece, but the narrative left something to be desired. It's something that's bound to improve on repeated viewings, since I'll at least know what's going on. 8/10

[rooster]

Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)

So so fantastic.

I know this is weird to say, but I was so excited when the first woman died. And then even more excited when the second woman died in combat. No weird waif-fu bullshit in this movie. Women fight and die just like the men and it's such a relief.

Like Snupes said, the characters are pretty fleshed out without a whole lot of dialogue. Expressions and gestures go a long way in this movie. And there's a lot of small little details that make the fucked up world more developed and realistic.
Hooray for great dystopian stories!

[Vindictus]

Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)

So so fantastic.

I know this is weird to say, but I was so excited when the first woman died. And then even more excited when the second woman died in combat. No weird waif-fu bullshit in this movie. Women fight and die just like the men and it's such a relief.

Like Snupes said, the characters are pretty fleshed out without a whole lot of dialogue. Expressions and gestures go a long way in this movie. And there's a lot of small little details that make the fucked up world more developed and realistic.
Hooray for great dystopian stories!

If anything they got killed way too fast. The mothers were hyped up a bit as being badasses, but the two on the bike bit it within the first minute of combat. Granted, they were on a bike, I just expected more. Would've lasted longer if they were on the war rig.

[rooster]

How do you think they were hyped up? I never got a sense they were supposed to be super badasses. Just old women who could shoot a gun, which they definitely could.

[Vindictus]

Well, for starters it seemed to me that anyone capable of living in such a wasteland was a badass already. Furiosa was from their group, and she's a badass. Ontop of that, they had that short scene where one of them bragged about being an amazing shot. When I saw the war rig and the bike leading in to the final sequence, I just thought the bike would be zipping around while the war rig is destroyed slowly or something.

It's mostly me reading in to them, but thinking back now it does seem retarded to have been on the bike at all given how useless it was. Ultimately, being forced to be this nitpicky goes to show how great the movie was.