1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 3, 2021 0:15:34 GMT -5
Finally watched mine from last round.
Bed now. Thoughts maybe tomorrow.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 3, 2021 21:05:57 GMT -5
Frankenweenie I had meant to see this movie when it came out, as I had seen the short film years prior and was curious how it would be beefed up into a feature film. I didn't get around to seeing it in theaters, and time went on and, ya know, stuff falls between the cracks. Eventually I just forgot a Frankenweenie movie happened at all. When I got Disney+ to watch Soul, this became the natural go-to selection on PG Cooper's list. Done in the stop motion style of previous Burton projects including the co-directed Corpse Bride and the produced only but heavily Burton influenced Nightmare Before Christmas, Frankenweenie is a classic monster movie homage based on Burton's short film of the same name about a boy version of Victor Frankenstein who's dog Sparky is hit by a car and Victor reanimates his corpse. Since little Victor is playing god, this obviously ends with angry villagers with pitchforks and chaos. Frankenweenie underperformed when it came out, which was probably inevitable. Tim Burton's appeal skews toward older goth gen-Xers, though animated films primarily need to capture the imaginations of children in order to succeed. Frankenweenie probably had the premise to do so, as the concept of losing a beloved pet is universal among all children, but in an attempt to pay closer homage to classic monster movies Burton chooses to film Frankenweenie in black and white (like the original short). I know from experience that kids don't do well with black and white. Children love bright colors, and you can claim that it's just razzle dazzle, it will make them sit down and watch. The Lion King is a great movie on its own, but if you drained the color from the landscapes and characters, children wouldn't watch it. A child doesn't care about what James Whale's Frankenstein looked like and how it relates to this film, they need visual engagement. The cinematography works for Frankenweenie artistically, but it doesn't do anything for the movie demographically. The movie was pretty much doomed from the first trailer. That being said, sometimes if help a child stick with something they'll find it to be in their taste. Last year I was watching old Three Stooges shorts around several children, who were initially uninterested because they weren't visually stimulating immediately, preferring to watch Big Hero 6 for the fiftieth time, but as the Stooges became more active onscreen, the children became more engaged. Eventually they ask if they can watch "the kooky guys" whenever I'm babysitting them. I can see Frankenweenie having a similar outcome, though getting a child to stick with it is the hurdle. Frankenweenie might do better with older kids about ten or on the verge of becoming tweens, a small window when they give up cartoons and start paying more attention to girls/boys. Frankenweenie does have that emotional grip of departed pets at tits core, which is where it's strength lies. The loss of a pet can be brutal for a child, and accepting that there is no reversing it is a rough lesson to learn. So the escapist fantasy of actually finding a way to reverse it through macabre means has value. More than once it occurred to me that this was a really bizarre film choice to watch after the passing of my father, because dealing with the futile issues of mourning a loved one do hit home for me right now. Incidentally, I believe that's also the reason I enjoyed the new Wonder Woman movie more than most, as I connected with the story of bringing a loved one back from beyond to spend one last window of time with them. It was messy, but it got me in the feels. This makes Frankenweenie a solid concept, though I'd dare say the movie feels padded to hell. If I hadn't had already known the movie was based on a short film and someone told me it was after the fact I would have responded "That seems about right." Quite a bit of this movie seems superfluous, as concepts seem to needlessly branch off to pump the movie's runtime up to the minimal 80 minutes. Frankenweenie wears it's nostalgic love for monster movies on its sleeve, sometimes to a fault. Almost everything is a reference to something. Victor's classmate Elsa is a reference to Elsa Lanchester, who played the titular Bride of Frankenstein, Edgar is based on the Igor trope based on the hunchback Fritz character from Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi's Ygor from Son of Frankenstein, while Victor's teacher bears a remarkable resemblance to horror legend Vincent Price. You could probably create a few dozen bingo cards out of the homages in this movie. I find this largely becomes a problem in the third act, where the movie decides it needs more than just angry villagers as its villain and uses the premise as an excuse to introduce a half dozen pet themed monsters for Victor and Sparky to contend with. It's a funny idea in theory, but reanimating them from the dead like Sparky was and having them turn into different themed horror creatures makes a movie a little chaotic. Sparky becoming a Frankestein monster makes sense as that's the whole homage the core of the movie, though a gerbil becoming a money, sea monkeys becoming gremlins, and a turtle becoming basically Gamera makes the simple premise of the movie a bit too bananas. The worst offender of the film is the vampire cat Mr. Whiskers, who was a mostly harmless living cat who was caught in the experiment and fused with a bat and became pretty much the supervillain of the movie for some reason, and the movie ends with him trying to kill Sparky and getting impaled by a wooden stake. As the movie willingly kills the animal who was accidentally turned into a monster, it seems to be a bit of an undercut to its theme. But while the movie is way too much, or at the very least a draft away from making it less messy, the movie is an enjoyable experience. I'd say it's at the very least on a par with Corpse Bride (which I admittedly haven't seen since it came out, so my memory may be sketchy). I'd say more things work here than don't, mostly because the short was tight and worked pretty well already, giving the film the backbone it needed. They just had to beef it up. That beefing up has promise, but could be more refined.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 6, 2021 19:52:09 GMT -5
Ash Is Purest White
One of the many reasons I try not to know a whole lot about a movie before watching it and attempt to keep any outside influences separate is to stop myself from making any presuppositions beforehand. If you were to read the brief synopsis of Ash Is Purest White it would sound like a dramatic gangster movie. It is dramatic and there are gangsters but that doesn't really do the movie justice at all. It's much more of a study of a relationship (if you can call it that) over the course of almost two decades. By relationship I don't mean people romantically involved throughout, I mean the interaction between two people and how things seem to evolve before being reigned back in. It's about a connection, however intense or volatile, over a span of time while characters learn that the more things change the more they stay the same.
The film opens with Qiao, the girlfriend of up and coming gangster Bin. Bin's boss is soon murdered and one night Bin and Qiao are surrounded by a motorcycle gang. While Bin is being beaten to death Qiao brandishes his gun and threatens to shoot the gang, thus saving Bin. She's arrested however and takes ownership of the weapon, sending her to prison for five years while Bin is sentenced to one. Upon her release she finds herself alone and discovers that Bin had since moved on and is now working in legitimate enterprises. Years on Qiao, now working in the same gambling halls that she and Bin frequented at the beginning of the film, is contacted by Bin, now wheelchair-bound due to a stroke. She is soon caring for him once again and old feelings well up but she finds herself in a similar situation as before.
Qiao's journey takes place over almost twenty years and several locations. She's at first an opinionated lover to a powerful man, she's then a prisoner who's released with nothing and then finds herself back where she started. She goes through changes in her life while seeing the outside world change with her. Although it's an emotional movie that tries to delve into its characters I did find it slow in several parts while there seemed to be some non sequiturs that could have been trimmed. Some sequences felt involved and rich while others seemed to run out of gas. It's certainly an interesting film that held my attention through most of it, I just wasn't as captivated by it than it wanted me to be. Still, there's a lot that you can take from it and I admire what it was trying to say.
B so says Doomsday
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 11, 2021 15:48:09 GMT -5
One week left.
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jan 13, 2021 21:25:21 GMT -5
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 13, 2021 21:43:07 GMT -5
Zombie Ass! Zombie Ass!
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 14, 2021 6:01:28 GMT -5
Oh hush. You didn't even do Zombie Ass and I had to pick up your slack.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 14, 2021 11:53:36 GMT -5
Oh hush. You didn't even do Zombie Ass and I had to pick up your slack. I'm not subscribing to CONtv!
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jan 14, 2021 12:45:09 GMT -5
I'll have my Pelham review up today or tomorrow.
It was off streaking, and I bought it for a buck more instead of renting on Amazon.
Good choice.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 14, 2021 12:47:22 GMT -5
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Post by Dracula on Jan 16, 2021 11:11:01 GMT -5
Dracula I’d like to amend my list if possible. Have you seen Black Dynamite? I just saw that it’s available on Hulu. If you haven’t watched Scarlet Street yet I’d like to very enthusiastically submit Black Dynamite as an option. Well, I checked and Black Dynamite isn't on Hulu anymore so... Scarlet Street (1945)
I should probably say upfront that my viewing of this was somewhat compromised: the film has apparently fallen in the public domain and consequently there are something like five versions of it on Amazon Prime, many of them rather janky looking. When I decided to watch Scarlet Street I had not realized that it was a remake of Jean Renoir’s 1931 film La Chienne, a film I saw about two years ago and have fairly hazy memories of. I remember that movie being essentially a comedy, one predicated on some rather misogynistic attitudes. This remake directed by Fritz Lang is decidedly more “Hayes Code Compliant” in its content and leans less towards misanthropic satire and fits more in the language of film noir. The film stars Edward G. Robinson as a slightly naïve hobbyist painter who is being conned by a lady who’s pretending to be interested in him but is really just trying to get to his paintings, which are worth more than the guy thinks they are. So, that’s certainly a good setup for some film noir fatalism and this movie does indeed have a pretty dark ending, at least conceptually but I must say that in a number of ways the movie never quite came alive for me. Robinson is interesting here to be sure as he was sort of trying to extend the comeback he started in Double Indemnity the year before, but that comparison isn’t the most flattering. I don’t know, on some level I’m not sure I gave this thing a fair shake (that public domain transfer was really bad), maybe I’ll give it another watch some day, at present I would say it was interesting enough to be called “good” but I didn’t connect with it. *** out of Five
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 16, 2021 12:36:31 GMT -5
I watched it when it was available on Criterion Channel a while back as I was going through a noir phase. I enjoyed it more than you did but I get your points.
And blast Black Dynamite for being taken off Hulu. I’ve recommended it to a few people in the film club previously and it’s had a good reception. Check it out sometime.
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 18, 2021 11:27:59 GMT -5
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 21, 2021 11:12:20 GMT -5
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jan 21, 2021 11:24:33 GMT -5
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 21, 2021 11:31:48 GMT -5
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jan 21, 2021 11:32:18 GMT -5
I'll write it tonight. Might have to rewatch, didn't really take notes.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 23, 2021 10:58:23 GMT -5
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jan 23, 2021 12:30:43 GMT -5
I only need one response.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 23, 2021 13:28:10 GMT -5
I only need one response.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jan 23, 2021 14:37:12 GMT -5
I’ll happily trade in my gifs for reviews. I don’t want to be the one to tell Donny and Drac that we can’t get a new round going.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 23, 2021 16:11:57 GMT -5
Every day that PG Cooper delays, another Disney Channel original movie gets added to his next list from me.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jan 23, 2021 16:18:19 GMT -5
I'ma just level with you tonight probably won't be the night. Gotta finish season two of thrones.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 23, 2021 16:27:49 GMT -5
I'm so sorry. My condolences for the waste of your time.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Jan 23, 2021 18:27:02 GMT -5
I'ma just level with you tonight probably won't be the night. Gotta finish season two of thrones. Blackwater, baby!
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