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Rate the last movie you watched

ozsportscardcollector said:
What's going on here? I can't remember this section. This feels like the nerdiest section of the website.

I watched the movie Taxi Driver about 10 times around November. Not fully but always rewinding before the end and starting again at the job interview. Probably my favourite film after the Exorcist.

"You lookin' at me? Why who the hell are you lookin' at.....are you lookin' at me?

I'm standing here. You make the move.

Faster then you, you f....sob.

Oh yeah?
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there is a crew of us that keep the film/TV section constantly ticking over...yes, we're film nerds (and proud)
p.s frigging love TAXI DRIVER viewed far to many times over the years.
 
Are movies nowdays made to be forgettable. Are too many movies produced. Some of the quality is garbage and few fall in to the so bad that theyre good category.

Almost frustrating watching a movie or choosing one to watch as you know you will probably get to the end and have wasted two hours. Better off watching something you’ve seen before that you know you will enjoy
 
bigrob2307 said:
Are movies nowdays made to be forgettable. Are too many movies produced. Some of the quality is garbage and few fall in to the so bad that theyre good category.

Almost frustrating watching a movie or choosing one to watch as you know you will probably get to the end and have wasted two hours. Better off watching something you’ve seen before that you know you will enjoy
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it's amazing how many times I have rewatched a film over watching a new film.
Most notably it's flicks from the 80's - horror and action flicks are just prime rewatch material.
Just don't get the magic feel off current day films compared with the old VHS days of movie magic!
 
Rebel Moon Part one 5.5/10

its okay. star wars from temu/wish kinda feel. The actors really did nothing for me in this movie. kept thinking if Emilia Clark was the lead how much better would it be.

watched on netflix on 1.25 speed to reduce the time and i really dont think it suffered in the slightest as its a bit slow

i was looking on imdb and just saw this hahaha Zack Snyder first conceived this as a Star Wars movie, and pitched it to Lucasfilm shortly after it was bought by Disney in 2012, but it never got off the ground.

also the story kinda felt a bit like drawing by numbers. where they are just going through the motions of the story to get to the ending of this part. still a better part one than dune though.....
 
bigrob2307 said:
Rebel Moon Part one 5.5/10

its okay. star wars from temu/wish kinda feel. The actors really did nothing for me in this movie. kept thinking if Emilia Clark was the lead how much better would it be.

watched on netflix on 1.25 speed to reduce the time and i really dont think it suffered in the slightest as its a bit slow

i was looking on imdb and just saw this hahaha Zack Snyder first conceived this as a Star Wars movie, and pitched it to Lucasfilm shortly after it was bought by Disney in 2012, but it never got off the ground.

also the story kinda felt a bit like drawing by numbers. where they are just going through the motions of the story to get to the ending of this part. still a better part one than dune though.....
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I have held off watching this because of all the reviews .. hate the old plastic acting some of these movies give us.
 
bigrob2307 said:
Are movies nowdays made to be forgettable. Are too many movies produced. Some of the quality is garbage and few fall in to the so bad that theyre good category.
Click to expand...

The movie industry is in massive flux right now and a bit of a shit show.

Theatrical releases by and large these days are either school holiday fodder (ie low effort eye candy) or cookie cutter CGI theme park rides (Marvel, DC, Fast/Furious** movies). Cinema tickets cost a small fortune now so people have become more selective about what they see, and the biggest selling point is a flashy extravaganza that'll look good on the big screen. No one is forking out to see the latest Woody Allen melodrama, or a Will Ferrell comedy, you get the same experience at home with your big OLED flat screen, without the kids on their phones, or the Karens chatting, or the incessant noise of packets crinkling, and the BO.

This has resulted in this widening divide in film production as the ROI has dwindled. Wonka cost $125m to make, the new Aquaman $210m (and you can roughly double those numbers to account for marketing and promotion). Yet both those movies combined have only brought in $442m at the box office. Back to the Future Pt2 cost the equivalent of $98m and brought in close to $810m. Honey I Shrunk the Kids cost a paltry $44m, and brought in $543m.

So wide release films now cost more, follower similar structures, and rely on existing ideas (remakes, reboots, franchises, popular properties), to ensure a return on the massive investment. What really gets me is that the production costs should be lower. Back in 1989 when those previously mentioned movies came out, they largely relied on practical effects; miniatures, sets, animatronics; where as now they can film scenes in a big green warehouse and have everything filled in by computers. And they sub a lot of the VFX grunt work to studios in India where the labor is cheaper.

Its almost as if film production is a massive scam.


Theatrically released Dramas are dead, theatrically Comedies are dead. Liar Liar was the 3rd highest grossing movie of 1997; today that would be a direct to Netflix release. The Irishman, a movie Scorcese struggled to get made, rejected by several studios, due to the high production costs and lack of "mass appeal", until Netflix came to the rescue. It only got a limited theatre release to make it eligible for the Oscars.

If a renowned auteur like Scorcese can get rejected, anyone can.

Which means movies are losing their voice. Tell me who directed Antman and The Wasp, or Captain Marvel, or Black Adam, without looking it up. Those movies have no identity, they're design by committee and often put into the hands of up and coming directors who had some level of indie success. Josh Trank had success with indie superhero movie Chronicle, so Fox gave him the Fantastic Four. They butted heads all through production and ultimately made a turkey.

Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Michael Mann, Martin Scorcese, Oliver Stone, Quinten Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Guillermo del Toro, Luc Besson... they all have their own vision, and voice, that you can identify in their films. Hell even a Michael Bay movie is instantly recognizable. Del Toro and Rodriguez's last movies came out on Netflix, Mann's most recent was going to be shipped off to Showtime, Stone makes documentaries now, and Scott's latest Napoleon was a joint effort between Sony and Apple TV.


Lastly, technology. Movies heavily laden with CGI ultimately feel souless as nothing is real. They feel like video game cutscenes. For mine practical effects will almost always trump plugged in computer effects, as it is something tangible, something real. Compare the animatronic monsters in The Thing (1982) to the CGI creatures in the 2011 remake. A slimey pile of puss and tumors that you could reach out and touch will always resonate more than something that looks like it stepped out of Resident Evil 4.
And then there is also digital de-aging, which is prolonging careers while not allowing others to flourish. Brad Pitt is 60, Tom Cruise is 61, Harrison Ford is 81, Tom Hanks is 67, Robert De Niro is 80, Liam Neeson is 71... digital de-aging keeps them looking younger, because as mentioned earlier, they're known familiar quantities which sells tickets.

Don't get me wrong, everything has its place. A movie like Ex Machina benefitted from CGI, but when more of the scene is rendered in a computer than actually exists on set, then I wonder why they bother using actors at all. After all, the two best reviewed Spiderman films are the animated Spiderverse movies. But when done right practical effects will always hold up. The imposing dense cityscapes of Blade Runner were all miniatures, and it still looks amazing today. All for a budget of $73m.

And now its only going to get worse as generative AI creeps in (which was one of the two major points the strike earlier this year was about). Need Bruce Willis to be in your Russian Telecommunications commercial but he can't actually be there***; deep fake it. Star Wars was already doing this with Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher before the technology was as advanced as it is today. Imagine how much more convincing the CGI Audrey Hepburn chocolate ad would be today. And Disney has already been called out for using cut and paste AI extras to fill in a basketball stadium in their film Prom Pact, a worrying trend given the people whose likeness they are using are not being paid any form of royalties. But its not just visuals, need a line delivered by a dead actor; generative AI. The Simpsons could practically run forever long after the voice cast are dead. I still expect in the not to distant future they'll bring back the characters that were voiced by Phil Hartman and Marcia Wallace.


Oof that snowballed into a bit of a rant.

tl;dr the movie industry is a mess, the cinema is dead. The fault lies with both audiences and the studios, and the whole thing needs to collapse so it can be rebuilt.

Also buy physical media of the movies you love now, because Best Buy in America no longer stocking physical media come 2024, and Disney no longer shipping physical media to Australia is just the beginning. We don't get Blu ray releases as it is and once JB HiFi starts phasing it out of their stock we'll be left to boutique distributors (ie Vinegar Syndrome for Horror, Terracotta Distribution for Martial Arts) and VOD services. And digital distribution of TV and Movies is not like Music, as its all wrapped up in DRM and anything you purchase is trapped to that platform.

**I still don't understand how the Fast movies went from petty crims stealing VCRs and 9" TVs, to super secret agents foiling international conspiracies.
***tbf it also means Bruce Willis can still draw a paycheck given his failing health.

EDIT; god I didn't even get into the whole Chinese market aspect of it either. They loved those Transformers movies, a were the reason the first 4 movies made a $1billion each.
 
Lazlow said:
The movie industry is in massive flux right now and a bit of a shit show.

Theatrical releases by and large these days are either school holiday fodder (ie low effort eye candy) or cookie cutter CGI theme park rides (Marvel, DC, Fast/Furious** movies). Cinema tickets cost a small fortune now so people have become more selective about what they see, and the biggest selling point is a flashy extravaganza that'll look good on the big screen. No one is forking out to see the latest Woody Allen melodrama, or a Will Ferrell comedy, you get the same experience at home with your big OLED flat screen, without the kids on their phones, or the Karens chatting, or the incessant noise of packets crinkling, and the BO.

This has resulted in this widening divide in film production as the ROI has dwindled. Wonka cost $125m to make, the new Aquaman $210m (and you can roughly double those numbers to account for marketing and promotion). Yet both those movies combined have only brought in $442m at the box office. Back to the Future Pt2 cost the equivalent of $98m and brought in close to $810m. Honey I Shrunk the Kids cost a paltry $44m, and brought in $543m.

So wide release films now cost more, follower similar structures, and rely on existing ideas (remakes, reboots, franchises, popular properties), to ensure a return on the massive investment. What really gets me is that the production costs should be lower. Back in 1989 when those previously mentioned movies came out, they largely relied on practical effects; miniatures, sets, animatronics; where as now they can film scenes in a big green warehouse and have everything filled in by computers. And they sub a lot of the VFX grunt work to studios in India where the labor is cheaper.

Its almost as if film production is a massive scam.


Theatrically released Dramas are dead, theatrically Comedies are dead. Liar Liar was the 3rd highest grossing movie of 1997; today that would be a direct to Netflix release. The Irishman, a movie Scorcese struggled to get made, rejected by several studios, due to the high production costs and lack of "mass appeal", until Netflix came to the rescue. It only got a limited theatre release to make it eligible for the Oscars.

If a renowned auteur like Scorcese can get rejected, anyone can.

Which means movies are losing their voice. Tell me who directed Antman and The Wasp, or Captain Marvel, or Black Adam, without looking it up. Those movies have no identity, they're design by committee and often put into the hands of up and coming directors who had some level of indie success. Josh Trank had success with indie superhero movie Chronicle, so Fox gave him the Fantastic Four. They butted heads all through production and ultimately made a turkey.

Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Michael Mann, Martin Scorcese, Oliver Stone, Quinten Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Guillermo del Toro, Luc Besson... they all have their own vision, and voice, that you can identify in their films. Hell even a Michael Bay movie is instantly recognizable. Del Toro and Rodriguez's last movies came out on Netflix, Mann's most recent was going to be shipped off to Showtime, Stone makes documentaries now, and Scott's latest Napoleon was a joint effort between Sony and Apple TV.


Lastly, technology. Movies heavily laden with CGI ultimately feel souless as nothing is real. They feel like video game cutscenes. For mine practical effects will almost always trump plugged in computer effects, as it is something tangible, something real. Compare the animatronic monsters in The Thing (1982) to the CGI creatures in the 2011 remake. A slimey pile of puss and tumors that you could reach out and touch will always resonate more than something that looks like it stepped out of Resident Evil 4.
And then there is also digital de-aging, which is prolonging careers while not allowing others to flourish. Brad Pitt is 60, Tom Cruise is 61, Harrison Ford is 81, Tom Hanks is 67, Robert De Niro is 80, Liam Neeson is 71... digital de-aging keeps them looking younger, because as mentioned earlier, they're known familiar quantities which sells tickets.

Don't get me wrong, everything has its place. A movie like Ex Machina benefitted from CGI, but when more of the scene is rendered in a computer than actually exists on set, then I wonder why they bother using actors at all. After all, the two best reviewed Spiderman films are the animated Spiderverse movies. But when done right practical effects will always hold up. The imposing dense cityscapes of Blade Runner were all miniatures, and it still looks amazing today. All for a budget of $73m.

And now its only going to get worse as generative AI creeps in (which was one of the two major points the strike earlier this year was about). Need Bruce Willis to be in your Russian Telecommunications commercial but he can't actually be there***; deep fake it. Star Wars was already doing this with Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher before the technology was as advanced as it is today. Imagine how much more convincing the CGI Audrey Hepburn chocolate ad would be today. And Disney has already been called out for using cut and paste AI extras to fill in a basketball stadium in their film Prom Pact, a worrying trend given the people whose likeness they are using are not being paid any form of royalties. But its not just visuals, need a line delivered by a dead actor; generative AI. The Simpsons could practically run forever long after the voice cast are dead. I still expect in the not to distant future they'll bring back the characters that were voiced by Phil Hartman and Marcia Wallace.


Oof that snowballed into a bit of a rant.

tl;dr the movie industry is a mess, the cinema is dead. The fault lies with both audiences and the studios, and the whole thing needs to collapse so it can be rebuilt.

Also buy physical media of the movies you love now, because Best Buy in America no longer stocking physical media come 2024, and Disney no longer shipping physical media to Australia is just the beginning. We don't get Blu ray releases as it is and once JB HiFi starts phasing it out of their stock we'll be left to boutique distributors (ie Vinegar Syndrome for Horror, Terracotta Distribution for Martial Arts) and VOD services. And digital distribution of TV and Movies is not like Music, as its all wrapped up in DRM and anything you purchase is trapped to that platform.

**I still don't understand how the Fast movies went from petty crims stealing VCRs and 9" TVs, to super secret agents foiling international conspiracies.
***tbf it also means Bruce Willis can still draw a paycheck given his failing health.

EDIT; god I didn't even get into the whole Chinese market aspect of it either. They loved those Transformers movies, a were the reason the first 4 movies made a $1billion each.
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A damn good outlook on an industry in demise.

I have been considering buying an open region blu ray player because of the fact 90% of the movies I want to buy are not available in Australia.
As you say getting your hands on the Martial Arts movies, leaves you dealing with rather dodgy looking websites.

The industry has become too much about the Dead Presidents and less about the Art.
 
8/10

IMG_5645.jpeg
 
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