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Which movie did you watch today and how would you rate it?

Jimmy Higgins said:
repoman said:
Luc Besson needs to work with a co-director who works on narrative and characters. His other skills are so good, it is a shame these other aspects drag it down.

Perhaps this is the result of too little studio meddling.
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The truth is Besson ran out of unique ideas a while ago. The Transporter and Taken work well as he offers input on creating the protagonist, but honestly, his protagonists are very similar. Leon is one of my favorite all time movies and The Fifth Element is a mastery of telling a story with unique visuals. And The Messenger, while not widely praised, was decently honest with history. But since then, not much.
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The casting in those movies was perfect, and the characters were well defined and engaging. "Valerian" was not, and I agree it's a shame because Besson and Jean-Pierre Jeunet are my favorite french directors right now.
 
Thomas II said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
The truth is Besson ran out of unique ideas a while ago. The Transporter and Taken work well as he offers input on creating the protagonist, but honestly, his protagonists are very similar. Leon is one of my favorite all time movies and The Fifth Element is a mastery of telling a story with unique visuals. And The Messenger, while not widely praised, was decently honest with history. But since then, not much.
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The casting in those movies was perfect, and the characters were well defined and engaging. "Valerian" was not, and I agree it's a shame because Besson and Jean-Pierre Jeunet are my favorite french directors right now.
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Oh, one other thing... the music. I love the sound/soundtrack in The Fifth Element. Eric Serra provides an eclectic palette for the ear. The music is all over the place and the soundtrack, even when subtle, is just wonderful. He did the soundtrack for several Besson films, also Goldeneye as well.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Thomas II said:
The casting in those movies was perfect, and the characters were well defined and engaging. "Valerian" was not, and I agree it's a shame because Besson and Jean-Pierre Jeunet are my favorite french directors right now.
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Oh, one other thing... the music. I love the sound/soundtrack in The Fifth Element. Eric Serra provides an eclectic palette for the ear. The music is all over the place and the soundtrack, even when subtle, is just wonderful. He did the soundtrack for several Besson films, also Goldeneye as well.
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Kong: Skull Island

Lots of great action and special effects, which is balanced out by the seemingly required stupidity that accompanies almost all films of this nature. But one does not intend to see a movie like this in the hopes that it's going to be mentioned in the same breath as Citizen Kane or the The Godfather.

It is what it's supposed to be, but it still wouldn't hurt to have a small team of people whose sole job is to tell the director, writers, and editors, "Don't do that. It's stupid."

6/10
 
Thomas II said:
Underseer said:
Valerian 6/10

  • The female lead was OK.
  • The male lead stunk. I don't know if the problem is with the actor, the screenplay, or the director, but I just didn't care about the character nor did I care about anything he did.
  • The "whodunnit" aspect of the story was too easy to figure out. I had the "badguy" identified pretty early, so the big reveal had zero impact.
  • On the plus side, if you're getting sick of same-old same-old in Hollywood summer blockbuster movies, at least this one is based on a European comic book instead of an American or Japanese comic book, and it definitely feels like a European comic book brought to life.
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The male lead stank!!!

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View attachment 11956

Bad casting!
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Like I said, it feels like a European comic book brought to life. That alone made it worth seeing at least once, even if I felt nothing for the eponymous character.
 
Valerian is Supposed to Be About Love — Why is it So Unromantic?


Which brings us to Valerian’s greatest problem and central conceit—the plot revolves around the idea that Valerian is a galactic sex machine (he has an encyclopedia of women he [has] rolled around with, which he and Laureline call his ‘playlist’ for some godawful reason) who doesn’t believe in long-term relationships, but find himself in love with his partner. She insists that he only wants what he can’t have, but he asks her to marry him, and the question of whether or not she’ll say yes is what the audience is meant to follow with rapt interest throughout a story that has much bigger fish to fry. There is one gaping problem with this: Valerian is an unlikable crapsack...
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Hey, would you guys consider Casablanca a world war 2 movie? How about Raiders of the Lost Ark?

The reason I ask is because I think that if Nazis are used as a generic villain, that doesn't make a movie a war movie, and how much actual war elements are needed to make a war movie.

I'll be revising my list on remembering a number that I neglected to list.
 
Sarpedon said:
Hey, would you guys consider Casablanca a world war 2 movie? How about Raiders of the Lost Ark?

The reason I ask is because I think that if Nazis are used as a generic villain, that doesn't make a movie a war movie, and how much actual war elements are needed to make a war movie.

I'll be revising my list on remembering a number that I neglected to list.
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You can get lost there: The Sound of Music, Watch on the Rhine, Life is Beautiful, 1942. Typically, I would see a war movie meaning within the fighting itself.
 
The list could get much longer if you included holocaust movies.



But one I didn't see said yet, The Caine Mutiny.
 
Sarpedon said:
The reason I ask is because I think that if Nazis are used as a generic villain, that doesn't make a movie a war movie, and how much actual war elements are needed to make a war movie.
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Wake Me When the War Is Over doesn't use Nazi's as generic villains, but specifically uses the threat of Nazis as villains...

Did anyone mention The Secret War of Harry Frigg ?
 
Dunkirk 8/10
I can't think of any other war movie that never really included the enemy, up close and personal. The Nazis were portrayed almost as a natural disaster in this one, which was an interesting change.
 
I'm deliberately excluding the Holocaust movies. They are emotionally quite different. I can see comparing Dunkirk to Battle of Britain, but can I compare them to Schindler's List? It would be difficult.

uGH, I just remembered another one, and I have a new worst World War II movie: Windtalkers.
 
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Ok, here's the revised list. I consulted the big list on wikipedia, so I'm fairly certain this is all I've seen. Or at least remember well enough to rate. Note that the vast majority of these I consider "good" or "great" movies, with only the last 6 or so as "bad" and the 10 or so above those merely being "boring" or "problemmatic." Those I added since last time I marked with an asterisk. I corrected a couple of titles. I decided I couldn't leave Casablanca off, as it was actually a WW2 propaganda film.

Rank Name
1 Dunkirk
2 Letters from Iwo Jima
3 Battle of Britain
4 Casablanca*
5 Come and See
6 Diplomacy
7 Saving Private Ryan
8 A Bridge Too Far
9 Bridge over the River Kwai
10 Das Boot
11 The Great Escape*
12 Guns of Navaronne
13 Downfall
14 Flags of our Fathers
15 Patton*
16 Valkyrie
17 A Man Escaped*
18 Where Eagles Dare
19 That one about the Louvre art theft.
20 Empire of the Sun*
21 Run Silent, Run Deep
22 Tora! Tora! Tora!
23 Stalingrad
24 Stalag 17*
25 The City of Life and Death
26 The Longest Day
27 The Army of Crime*
28 Mr Roberts
29 Red Tails
30 Enemy at the Gates
31 Memphis Belle
32 Max Manus*
33 Tuskeegee Airmen*
34 The Frogmen*
35 White Tiger
36 Flame and Citron
37 Mosquito Squadron
38 Operation Petticoat
39 Battle of the River Plate
40 Return to Navaronne
41 Inglorious Basterds
42 Inglorious Bastards
43 Fury
44 Windtalkers*
 
Sarpedon said:
Hey, would you guys consider Casablanca a world war 2 movie? How about Raiders of the Lost Ark?

The reason I ask is because I think that if Nazis are used as a generic villain, that doesn't make a movie a war movie, and how much actual war elements are needed to make a war movie.

I'll be revising my list on remembering a number that I neglected to list.
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It depends what you mean. Do you mean a war movie (they're not) or are they set during or around WW2 (they are).
 
Masterminds. 8/10. Some pretty good scenes. Based on a real story. lol
 
Pontypool 2/10

This is a zombie film that I watched because it was repeatedly listed as one of the best zombie films ever. It's not. It's awful. Here's what I don't like.

1. The name. What a dumb name of a film. It's just terrible.

2. More than half of the film has gone before any zombie appears. I don't think they ever kill one. I can't remember it. There's very few zombie all together. So slooooooooooow. In most of the film there's too little suspense. There's too much talking. Too little action.

3. The method of infection is the dumbest shit ever devised. This isn't a spoiler because any smart person can work it out immediately. It's certain words that turn people into zombies. There's more to it, and more "twists". Those are somewhat interesting. So I won't ruin it. But the moral of the story is so fucking stupidly obvious it's insulting to watch. Listening to lies and fake news can turn good people into not so nice people. Memes can be dangerous. Newspeak is bad. Saying the truth and aiming for accuracy matters. Well... whoop-de-fucking-do. Mind not boggled. After googling it there's also something about the French/Canadian conflict in Canada. Well, I didn't get it even after having it explained.

The dialogue is well written. Acting is great. The characters are also wonderful. it's pretty. Too bad it's wasted on this crap idea.


My favourite line is when somebody dies and a woman bursts into tears. "Where you close?" "Well, no. He was a paedophile. I think"



This film would probably work better as a stage play or even monologue. One that doesn't take itself seriously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontypool_(film)
 
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