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I'm just tired of gak overhyped huge budget crap films that a large majority of film goers worship as masterpieces.
Fury.
The last jedi.
90% of anything marvel or DC.
All the CGTRANSFORMERS.
Zombie WWII.
Etc etc blah blah.

Hollywood keeps cranking out garbage and idiots still go watch

ValentineGames wrote:
I'm just tired of gak overhyped huge budget crap films that a large majority of film goers worship as masterpieces.
Fury.
The last jedi.
90% of anything marvel or DC.
All the CGTRANSFORMERS.
Zombie WWII.
Etc etc blah blah.

Hollywood keeps cranking out garbage and idiots still go watch

Maybe it depends on the area you live, but here nobody says that any of the movies you listed are masterpieces. In fact for masterpieces the critics considers movies like dunkirk, moonlight, la la land, 3 billboards, the shape of water etc... not the last avengers or star wars episode.

The critics actually quite liked the last Star Wars movie, for some reason.

 Vulcan wrote:
The critics actually quite liked the last Star Wars movie, for some reason.

Quickly, make the sign of the evil eye to ward off the evil..... quickly!

This thread will be cursed..... CURSED!

 Vulcan wrote:
The critics actually quite liked the last Star Wars movie, for some reason.

True. But a masterpiece? Not even the most enthusiastic critic would rate it equally to Episode IV or V.

ValentineGames wrote:


Hollywood keeps cranking out garbage and idiots still go watch

its almost like there some kind of link but I can't quite join the dots

its also partly hype culture of x being the best thing ever, well till the next best thing ever arrives (see also video games, gw releases and streaming shows)

ValentineGames wrote:
Hollywood keeps cranking out garbage and idiots still go watch

Do you honestly think this is a new thing? There are plenty of garbage movies in the past, we just don't remember them because they weren't worth remembering. Of course when you compare a full list of movies from 2018 to the carefully selected best movies of the past you'll find that nostalgia wins, but that doesn't mean anything has changed.

 Peregrine wrote:

ValentineGames wrote:
Hollywood keeps cranking out garbage and idiots still go watch

Do you honestly think this is a new thing? There are plenty of garbage movies in the past, we just don't remember them because they weren't worth remembering. Of course when you compare a full list of movies from 2018 to the carefully selected best movies of the past you'll find that nostalgia wins, but that doesn't mean anything has changed.

Just look at the Mini-Movie review thread (or MST 3K) to see the garbage churned out in the past......

Backfire wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
in the case of Dunkirk I think they would have been better off CGI’ing in a “real” 109E rather than a fake Merlin 109, but then I’m an aircraft nerd and to me the silhouette of a Merlin powered aircraft is completely different to a 109E.

Going to have to disagree with this one. One of the brilliant things about Dunkirk's aircraft scenes is that they didn't CGI it, and as a result it has a sense of realness that CGI just can't capture. There's just a subtle wrongness to most/all CGI aircraft, they don't quite move the way they should (too clean, I think, without the slight wobbles and vibration of real planes) and it really hurts the realism for me. It's the same reason that Top Gun IMO has the best aerial photography work ever to appear in a gay porn film. Sure, modern CGI could add more flash and maybe they wouldn't be using black F-5s as "MiGs", but I doubt it would capture the beauty and energy of the real thing.

Agreed, for example airplane scenes of 'Pearl Harbor' were cringeworthy. They had mixed in real aircraft flying with relatively leisure pace (for safety reasons probably), then CGI aircraft doing super-fast clean computer game maneuvers. It was SO stupid.

Regarding 'Fury', until the final battle scene I thought it was an ok movie, with some heavy-handed scenery and way too old cast (50 year old Lieutenant?), but battle scene put it right on 'stupid' category. I couldn't enjoy it at all, it was so illogical. Why did the tank not employ it's considerable range advantage over infantry unit but let them close enough so they could be damaged with assaults and anti-tank weapons? It would have been MORE dramatic had they followed bit more realistic take where infatry attempts to close or get around the tank.

Would not work. The infantry would have just went around.

I was at a pub quiz last week.

One of the questions.

"What year was "Billy The Kid versus Dracula released?"

 Blackie wrote:

ValentineGames wrote:
I'm just tired of gak overhyped huge budget crap films that a large majority of film goers worship as masterpieces.
Fury.
The last jedi.
90% of anything marvel or DC.
All the CGTRANSFORMERS.
Zombie WWII.
Etc etc blah blah.

Hollywood keeps cranking out garbage and idiots still go watch

Maybe it depends on the area you live, but here nobody says that any of the movies you listed are masterpieces. In fact for masterpieces the critics considers movies like dunkirk, moonlight, la la land, 3 billboards, the shape of water etc... not the last avengers or star wars episode.

Three Billboards was awesome. I still love Fury for all the tank boom boom.

I liked fury. I liked the grittiness. I think it was designed to portray the desperate brutality of that stage of world war 2, and it did it like a punch in the face. Sure it was Hollywooded up with the end scene which got a bit silly, and also one on one tank fight(but damn that scene was exciting) I also liked how the explosive effects of the HEAT rounds were portrayed accurately.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Fury is an interesting example.

The climax of the film is a battle in which a single immobilised Sherman, short on ammunition and with no communications or support, parked in the middle of a well-marked for enemy artillery crossroads but fairly close to lots of convenient cover for infantry, fights a night action against hundreds of well-equipped, elite Waffen SS panzer grenadiers, and essentially wins by somehow killing loads of them and bogging down their advance for hours, when they could have simply by-passed it.

As a piece of historical recreation it's ludicrous, but it's a hell of a dramatic action sequence.

Easily the worst part of the movie. It was pretty great up until this point though. The ending is so bad that I just stop watching once the fighting in that scene starts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I liked fury. I liked the grittiness. I think it was designed to portray the desperate brutality of that stage of world war 2, and it did it like a punch in the face. Sure it was Hollywooded up with the end scene which got a bit silly, and also one on one tank fight(but damn that scene was exciting) I also liked how the explosive effects of the HEAT rounds were portrayed accurately.

Yeah for me the tiger battle is the best part of that movie.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I liked fury. I liked the grittiness. I think it was designed to portray the desperate brutality of that stage of world war 2, and it did it like a punch in the face. Sure it was Hollywooded up with the end scene which got a bit silly, and also one on one tank fight(but damn that scene was exciting) I also liked how the explosive effects of the HEAT rounds were portrayed accurately.

I think the tone was a bit muddled. The movie seemed to bounce randomly back and forth between portraying tanks as awesome because they can blow people up and run them over, and war as terrible because people get blown up and tanks can run them over. Half the slow drama scenes seemed to be about men breaking down into something baser because of war, and the other half were about glorifying the heroes because they're kicking ass.

It created a little mood whiplash for me even acknowledging that I really enjoyed the movie for the tank porn.

EDIT: Oh and as for the final scene of Fury, it's worth nothing there is an incident in WWII that are similar to the ending scene. Audie Murphy basically did the end of the movie himself, and got the Medal of Honor for it. The only real difference is that he commanded an M10, and had most of his men retreat into a tree line to cover his flanks. He spent an hour firing a mounted M2, killed four dozen German troops, and directed artillery fire the entire time.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
Question - would be ok to have Japanese actors for a movie with characters based on the Bantu Mythology?

I don't have this, but I have Japanese actors for a movie with characters based on the US Western myth, as told by the Italians with a huge influence from the Japanese themselves :

Honestly that looks kind of awesome. Like someone just decided to make a movie and say "feth it to realism this gak is gonna be awesome"

Yeah, I discovered that movie at one of my favorite film festival, the Festival des maudits films, and they had the best timing, because the festival was happening when there was a lot of ruckus about Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, so they were like, “Hey, we'll show you a movie with Tarantino that has Django in the title", lol.
Most good action movies say feth it to realism, I guess. Or at least most of the action movies I enjoy. Don't care how accurate the guns from A gun for Jennifer are, don't care about how the realism of the very oneiric Jailhouse 41, don't care about all the legal intricacies that would make Mayhem not work, and so on and so forth.
Realism is for historical movies, so we can learn about the past, I guess.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Prometheus' Xenobiologist petting the alien king cobra in full threat display is a perfect example of unrealistic behavior.

Precisely what made me hate the movie so much. It wasn't the meandering story, it was the people doing such immersion-breakingly stupid things. I can take get on board with the amoral robot, I can just barely accept Weyland's surprise appearance, I can even get with the lady running in a straight line - she's under extreme stress and has imperfect information.... but the guy who just took his helmet off (yolo!)? The whole snake alien thing? So many parts that were infuriating. Alien Covenant had the same issues, although they were less egregious.

At least that had one character try to enforce a quarantine, briefly.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I liked fury. I liked the grittiness. I think it was designed to portray the desperate brutality of that stage of world war 2, and it did it like a punch in the face. Sure it was Hollywooded up with the end scene which got a bit silly, and also one on one tank fight(but damn that scene was exciting) I also liked how the explosive effects of the HEAT rounds were portrayed accurately.

To be perfectly honest, I think WW2 movies peaked with the likes of A Bridge Too Far and Kelly's Heroes (honourable mention to Bridge on the River Kwai, Where Eagles Dae, Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen) and have just gonedownhill from there.
The effects may not have bern slick, but at least those movies understood pacing.

Those are a little before my time. I know they are classics but I find them harder to watch due to their age. I do like the great escape though.

What I find allows a movie or show to have sufficient "realism" is if it stays within the rules and "expectations" it has set-up.

- Hero movies we expect to see heroes that can fly, shoot energy from their eyes and can blend science fiction with magic.
- Star Wars we expect to see people block energy shots with laser-swords, move things with their minds and fly faster than light.
- Star Trek we expect to see people teleport, ships turn invisible and counselors that can read minds.
- Zombie movies rarely make only a passing mention of the "stench" a horde of decaying corpses wandering around would make.

What we tend to get a bit upset about has had a name for centuries:

Deus ex machina: (English ‘god from the machine’) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and seemingly unlikely occurrence, typically so much as to seem contrived. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device.

You create your story and world, lay down the rules and what magic / tech operates in this world and then spin your story: just do not "actually" break those rules in a key plot development.
I was a fan of Isaac Asimov who created his "Three laws of robotics" as a plot device to seemingly break those rules and then show they had not been with some surprise twist.

It is like any good murder mystery: the audience likes to feel like they had warning of a given key development in a movie about to be sprung on them, if no effort is made to give "hints" the audience feels they were treated unfairly.

 Vulcan wrote:
The critics actually quite liked the last Star Wars movie, for some reason.

You have to remember that critics see a LOT of movies. Like, several a day in many cases. It leads to a situation where doing something different gets them more invested than giving people what they want. You also have to realize that most critics aren't Star Wars nerds. They probably like the films, but they don't really know or care who Exar Kun is, they don't care about parsecs or Mandalorians or anything like that. They're pleased by novel ideas and unique cinematography and story structure and a lot of the other things TLJ does well.

Everyone should know and care that Exar Kun is a terrible addition to the setting.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Everyone should know and care that Exar Kun is a terrible addition to the setting.

The only real problems with Kun are that 1) his story is completely overthetop dramatic, and they really really wanted to emphasis how dramatic it was to the point it was just exhausting and 2) they just wouldn't let the poor guy stay dead. Exar Kun not staying dead is a cliche.

 Blackie wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
The critics actually quite liked the last Star Wars movie, for some reason.

True. But a masterpiece? Not even the most enthusiastic critic would rate it equally to Episode IV or V.

TLJ was certainly better received by critics than TFA. Even the prequels got quite good reviews occasionally. As I recall, Roger Ebert gave 'Revenge of the Sith' 4 stars. I also remember 'Attack of the Clones' getting some rave reviews at the time.

When you have a very visual movie with lots of things going on, like Star Wars movies tend to be for example, even for an experienced critic it is easy to get distracted. Personally I remember coming out from Ep. II with mildly positive vibe - "Hey, it wasn't the greatest but at least they had fixed the worst flaws of the Phantom Menace". Now, with couple of rewatchs and some perception, I actually think it is the worst of the Star Wars movies.

The thing I've noticed about professional movie critics is that they tend to put a high value on novelty and technical execution.

I don't think anyone can say TLJ wasn't a technically excellent film. They probably had a huge effects budget and boy did they use it. Good sound quality. Good music. Good camera work. From a technical standpoint there's nothing wrong with the movie.

From a novel stand point the film attempts deconstruction, and does a semi-decent job at it even if they wussed out at the end. I don't think I know of a deconstructive film with good technical execution that wasn't well reviewed by movie critics.

Some films are made to win Oscars, some are made to do well with critics and the box office. Neither assures people will actually like the movie when they see it.

There is some good editing in TLJ. The lighting is good. The camera is in focus. Everyone remembered their lines.

I still wouldn’t call it technically excellent because the structure is weak, the characterization is poor, the story is not engaging, etc.

 Manchu wrote:
There is some good editing in TLJ. The lighting is good. The camera is in focus. Everyone remembered their lines.

I still wouldn’t call it technically excellent because the structure is weak, the characterization is poor, the story is not engaging, etc.

OH no. Narrative, theme, characterization, flow. That whole side of the movie is like a grab bag of kind of good, awesome, what were they thinking, and dreadful moments all mixed together into a story best described with the letters W, T, and F.

I strictly mean in terms of the mechanics of a film. I have no idea what the most accurate way to describe that is though. I just call it technical cause it feels apt to me, and generally a movie with good effects, strong camera work, and capable sound/music will get good reviews from critics on those merits alone so long as the story isn't too terrible. I think TLJ gets around a lot of its story pit falls by dabbling in things that normally get critics excited, even if it did those things poorly.

Begone TLJ demon! You have tainted this thread far enough!

The power of George Lucas Compels you! Be GONE!

I understand the sentiment you are expressing, LoH, but I think that closer examination reveals the distinction to be rather arbitrary. TLJ is no more “technically” competent than a raft of other films that cost hundreds of millions to make and market. When we talk about why critics praised it so highly, I think it’s not a matter of the huge amount of professional skill leveraged to create it - otherwise, movies like Solo would be just as highly praised. Nor is TLJ particularly novel. Indeed, I think critics liked TLJ precisely because it was familiar to them, in a certain sense.

To wit: I think you’re on the right track, however, when you cite the deconstructive perspective being highly regarded by professional critics. After all, that’s the same perspective with which most of these critics are viewing films. It follows that they would “click” with the methods and motives of TLJ very naturally.

I heard a music critic today talk about how the majority of what he thought were the best albums of 2018 were by female artists. He also said that, in 2018, he has been focsued on the perspective that female artists are bringing to popular music. That makes sense: his tastes follow his interests. This is true of most people. But the result is, if your main interest in music in 2018 has been something other than the perspective of female artists on their gender, this critic’s top picks may not be very relevant to you.