Been a while since I've posted an update. Since I have a lot of movies this time I'll be dropping the usual poster gimmick this time to save space (
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). Anyways here we go- ULTIMATE MOVIE UPDATE CANNON! FIRE!
71.
Dunkirk (2017) - I'll just quote what I said about Dunkirk in the other thread.
Raxivace wrote:Just got out of the movie and quite liked it overall. I know Nolan mentioned being influenced by silent cinema and such, but I was surprised by how much I found myself thinking of Intolerance and even Battleship Potemkin to an extent while watching this- namely in the structure of the film with the cutting between Hardy/Rylance/the other guy, and also how they're meant to be less fully realized characters and more stand-ins for the diversity of an entire people, if that makes (Which perhaps makes it more nuanced than Battleship Potemkin's more propagandized depictions of the Soviets but whatever I'm half asleep and am badly in need of a nap). Even the one intertitle in the film's beginning kind of feels like it was written for that kind of film.
Also it was kind of funny how after all of the exposition of Inception and Interstellar the most we get in the movie is this:
If I had a major complaint its that I think that Interstellar probably had some stronger imagery overall, but was generally less effectively used than what Dunkirk did and had- the
plane gliding at the end seems to genuinely hit hard, for example.
Dunkirk seems like a move in the right direction for Nolan after all.
72.
Gilda (1946) - Solid noir with scenes from Rita Hayworth that are very iconic for a reason. Not sure I have a whole lot to really say about it, but I can't help but wonder if the ending isn't too optimistic. One of the Criterion special features suggests that the two leads won't actually stay happily together once the high of being in a dangerous situation together wears off, and I think that's the better way to read the film.
73.
Shin Godzilla (2016, Rewatch) - I'll just quote what I said about Shin Godzilla in the other thread.
Raxivace wrote:My copy came yesterday. I'm a bit annoyed that the actual credits are not translated in the English release of the movie itself- the box itself advertises Shin Godzilla as being "from the mind behind Evangelion" and yet I'm not sure Anno's name can actually be read in English in the damn film, to say nothing of the hundreds of others who worked on the movie. At least its on the box in tiny print.
The "Godzilla vs. the Nerds" featurette is alright. It's a 30 minute roundtable discussion of nerds from Funimation geeking out over the film. It's not up there with like, Criterion special features but its hard to be mad at people liking a movie so unabashedly. They at least touch on some interesting ideas with the movie, even if they don't go into as much depth as I would have liked.
The blu-ray release has a reversible cover! That's pretty cool.
Shin Godzilla itself is still super watchable and I had a lot of fun with my second visit. I mentioned when the movie came out that I had heard there were accusations of the movie being fascist propaganda, and watching the movie a second time I even more strongly disagree with that notion than I did before.
74.
They Live By Night (1948) - Kind of the prototype for movies like Gun Crazy and Bonnie & Clyde. It's a pretty rough noir with a bleak ending, and the special features in the Criterion release really made me appreciate how unique the soundscape of the movie is for when it came out.
75.
Macross Plus: Movie Edition (1995) - A compilation film for the OVA series Macross Plus. It was kind of odd to me that one of these was even done for Macross Plus since it was pretty short to begin with at merely four 30 minute episodes. This movie is basically those four episodes stitched together with a couple of redone scenes and only really one notable scene dropped as far as I could tell. It's still a good watch at any rate- who can't love a story with the premise of “What if HAL 9000 was a pop idol that still wanted to kill everyone anyways?".
76.
Macross Frontier: The False Songstress (2009) & 77.
Macross Frontier: The Wings of Goodbye (2011) - These two are basically the exact opposite of Macross Plus: Movie Edition.
Macross Frontier was a 2008 anime series and the last one in the Macross franchise I had yet to see. The basic storyline, much like Macross 7 (1994) before it, follows a love triangle between of three residents of the Frontier Fleet of ships- a pilot (Alto Saotome) and two musicians (One a popular and a relatively experienced veteran named Sheryl Nome, the other a rising upcomer named Ranka Lee (Put them together and you get Sheryl Lee! Ahahahahahaha…this probably wasn't intentional.
)) set against the backdrop of a space war against a race of alien bugs called the Vajra.
What's interesting about the two movies is how they reuse very little animation, and actually use the same basic setup as the TV version with a major alteration- the movies introduce the idea of Sheryl potentially being a spy for a separate space fleet trying to play the Frontier and the Vajra against each other while they can reap the benefits afterwards. This idea changes the dynamic of the story pretty heavily, and the two movies ultimately have a much more bittersweet ending than the TV version does.
78.
Macross FB7: Listen to My Song! (2012) - An attempt at condensing Macross 7 into a 90 minute film that really, really doesn't work. That show was 49 episodes long for a reason. There's framing device here with the characters of Macross Frontier watching “historical footage" of the older show that leads to a few cute moments, but I think the movie would have better had there been more of that and less footage of the older show. There's probably only half an hour of new footage total (Including a kind of cool concert at the end featuring Sheryl and Ranka performing a collage of Fire Bomber songs), and it probably would have been better with more of that. Unfortunately, of the four Macross movies I watched for this post this was easily the worst one despite Macross 7 probably being my overall favorite series in the franchise.
79.
Alien: Covenant (2017) - So from what I can tell this is a remake of Prometheus. In terms of plot it's an actual sequel to Prometheus, but the story is basically just Prometheus' again but with the stuff people complained about in that movie filed off.
Its fine I guess. Michael Fassbender is basically the new face of the franchise, and he's a hell of a lot more charismatic and interesting to watch than Sigourney Weaver ever was, as good as I think she is. The movie looks amazing as Prometheus did (And as The Martian somehow didn't), but when you take away the dumb parts of Prometheus I'm not sure how many memorable scenes there really are left. Prometheus was nothing if not memorable, if the number of people still bitching about it online are any indication (A group I was part of until I watched it a second time).
80.
Alien: Resurrection (1997) - I'm not sure what the hell this was exactly. Joss Whedon wrote it, and he cheated on is wife apparently and is now being accused of not being a feminist.
It was an Alien movie I guess. I had enough fun watching it but it very much feels like what you'd imagine a generic clone of the Alien or Aliens to look like- perhaps fitting since Ripley in this film is a clone of the Ripley from the first three movies.
81.
Passengers (2016) - So the premise here is that on an intergalactic travel to a far away planet, Chris Pine wakes up from cryosleep about 80 years too early. Alone. After spending about a year alone on this space cruiser he goes insane and wakes up another passenger (Jennifer Lawrence) from their cryosleep. The drama becomes about whether Lawrence will find out whether Pine is the one who woke her up far too early, and how she'll react.
I think these are the stronger parts of the film- towards the end of the film a third passenger coincidentally wakes up and an existential threat to the spaceship is introduced, and I don't think these parts of the film are nearly as strong. It kind of feels tacked on just to give the movie a resolution.
82.
Diary of the Dead (2007) - Romero's second to last movie. It's done in kind of found footage style, as a bunch of film students attempt to survive the zombie outbreak.
If you're able to accept the stylistic premise, it's kind of interesting. Romero is specifically tackling how the internet has changed the world here- both the negatives of people obsessively filming themselves and wanting to post about it online, as well as the positives. It's probably the weakest entry in the overall series but I don't think it's a bad movie.
83.
Survival of the Dead (2009) - Romero's final zombie film and his last film altogether. This is a weird premise- a group of Irish families living on an island have been warring with each other for many years, and then the zombie outbreak happens. One group of families wants to keep the zombies alive and banishes the patriarch of the other family off the island, as he has wanted to kill all of the zombies. On the mainland United States (For some reason), this patriarch meets up with several former National Guardsmen (Who previously appeared in Diary of the Dead as minor antagonists, interestingly enough), and eventually they team up to take over the island.
It's probably the second weakest of these movies overall, but it's still decent. If anything I really appreciate how Romero tried to make all six of the movies unique entries into his series- especially when how I think something like Telltale's Walking Dead games kind of run into the problem of repeating themselves often. I honestly think all six of them are worth a watch, especially Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead, which people seem to have ignored despite both nearly being as good as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
If anything the final shot of Survival of the Dead, featuring two zombies eternally firing empty guns at each other sure is boss as hell and is a nice cap on Romero's filmography.
84.
Mr. Lucky (1943) - A sort of gangster movie that's World War II propaganda in the vein of Casablanca. Cary Grant plays a gangster that falls in love with a woman working for the War Relief effort, and tries to use his gangster ways to help it (It kind of reminds me of the earlier Cagney movie Picture Snatcher (1933), where Cagney uses his tough guy attitude to make it as a proto-paparazzi). Grant's gangster ways come back to haunt him as the movie continues on, though not-too-subtly this happens as he becomes more and more genuinely involved with the War effort.
It's a solid film- surprisingly a lot about class struggle in here, though like most movies of this type it's ultimately an uplifting tale about supporting the war effort.
85.
Friday the 13th: Part III (1983) - This is the third Friday the 13th movie. Remember that iconic scene where the camp counselors get in a scuffle with an interracial biker gang at a convenience store? You don't remember it, and there's a reason for that.
Other than the weird biker gang vs. counselors angle, this is just a generic slasher picture. The only notable thing about this film, other than the bad 3D effect shots, are that this is the one where Jason gets his iconic mask. Off-screen, mind you.
"[Cinema] is a labyrinth with a treacherous resemblance to reality." - Andrew Sarris
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