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

King and I, Sound of Music, Pirates of Penzance … there’s lots of great musicals. Anything Gilbert & Sullivan, Rogers & Hammerstein and there are other greats …
In fact it would be hard to find a pop tune that doesn’t have some kind of roots in that medium.
 
unapologetic said:
God I hate musicals.
I just watched season 2 of 'Strange New Worlds'. (the current Star Trek series)
The musical episode was unbearable.

The only musical I ever liked is 'Across The Universe'. (2007) It's all Beatles music. I bought the DVD.

I also like 'Yesterday' (2019), but it's not technically a musical. It is a parallel universe fantasy about an unknown musician taking credit for the Beatles music.

'A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum' (1966) was bearable.

Those three are the only musicals I can stand.
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How about Rocketman? I liked it.
 
Generally I don’t care for musicals but I’ll admit some stories work as musicals and some don’t.
The original Willy Wonka, also Moulin Rouge work. Les Miserables did not. The story is just too good to have some asshole interrupting it with song. Might as well go take a piss.
 
Grease, Mamma Mia, Mamma Mia - Here We Go Again are good musicals. Rocky Horror Picture Show was decent.

Evita with Madonna was dreadful.
 
I agree that Across the Universe (2007) is a GREAT movie. The plot might be fun anyway, but the Beatles music, sung by non-Beatles (some of them amateurs) made it outstanding.

Amadeus is even better; it should be near the top of any Greatest Movies list. The story is excellent but it's Mozart's music that makes it so outstanding.

Recently I mentioned that Good Thief is one of my favorite Nick Nolte movies. It gets that distinction only because of the sound-track, especially a Leonard Cohen song.

I also enjoy movies with music starring Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe. (These are perhaps the two most beautiful actresses ever: Pleasuring my eyes is more important to my enjoyment than the music.)

I am less interested in more conventional "musicals," and do not understand the adulation for the boring Singing in the Rain. Rodgers and Hammerstein are good but the only R&H movies that are candidates for my Top 100 List are South Pacific and Flower Drum Song.
 
unapologetic said:
God I hate musicals.
I just watched season 2 of 'Strange New Worlds'. (the current Star Trek series)
The musical episode was unbearable.

The only musical I ever liked is 'Across The Universe'. (2007) It's all Beatles music. I bought the DVD.

I also like 'Yesterday' (2019), but it's not technically a musical. It is a parallel universe fantasy about an unknown musician taking credit for the Beatles music.

'A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum' (1966) was bearable.

Those three are the only musicals I can stand.
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You're not alone.

 
The Creator

Available on Disney+ and Hulu.

The west, mainly the United States, adoption of AI caused AI to attack Los Angeles with a nuclear weapon. After that it rejected any use of AI of any kind. EastAsia adopted AI and accepted it fully into their society. The west went to war to destroy all AI, and a helluva lot if people along with it.

It moved at a brisk pace with a protagonist assigned to find the "one" AI. That's all I'm going to tell you.

Very well done with a great story. 8/10.

Definitely worth a watch.
 
ZiprHead said:
The Creator

Available on Disney+ and Hulu.

The west, mainly the United States, adoption of AI caused AI to attack Los Angeles with a nuclear weapon. After that it rejected any use of AI of any kind. EastAsia adopted AI and accepted it fully into their society. The west went to war to destroy all AI, and a helluva lot if people along with it.

It moved at a brisk pace with a protagonist assigned to find the "one" AI. That's all I'm going to tell you.

Very well done with a great story. 8/10.

Definitely worth a watch.
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Sounds familiar. Is it based on a story by Linda Nagata? I seem to recall her novels having a similar premise (though now I am thinking about it, it may have been nanotechnology, rather than AI, that was the 'big bad' in that case).
 
bilby said:
ZiprHead said:
The Creator

Available on Disney+ and Hulu.

The west, mainly the United States, adoption of AI caused AI to attack Los Angeles with a nuclear weapon. After that it rejected any use of AI of any kind. EastAsia adopted AI and accepted it fully into their society. The west went to war to destroy all AI, and a helluva lot if people along with it.

It moved at a brisk pace with a protagonist assigned to find the "one" AI. That's all I'm going to tell you.

Very well done with a great story. 8/10.

Definitely worth a watch.
Click to expand...
Sounds familiar. Is it based on a story by Linda Nagata? I seem to recall her novels having a similar premise (though now I am thinking about it, it may have been nanotechnology, rather than AI, that was the 'big bad' in that case).
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According to the credits the director wrote the story.
 
The Half of It

Another remake of Cyrano.
Or an homage, or "inspired by" or subverted version or something.

Delightful. I've watched it three times.
 
I just watched Emily the Criminal on Netflix, a 2022 "crime thriller" that seemed so bad I got confused, literally mystified. How did this film get four award nominations? 6.7 IMDB, 94% Rotten Tomatoes?

The plot is boring and predictable with no hint of romance; the characters and dialog boring and predictable. The ending was drab. I did feel captivated to finish it, if only hoping to discover the point. But the whole movie seems pointless to me!

I'm afraid I'll be in a minority here. Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars:
Roger Ebert said:
The film plays like a bat out of hell, all adrenaline, similar to the Safdie brothers' recent "Good Time," although "Emily the Criminal" is more bare-bones and straightforward in its style. The film's view of the "land of opportunity" could not be more cynical. This is John Patton Ford's directorial debut, and it is an extremely impressive piece of work.
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Here's what Wikipedia says about the movie's "Themes":

Thematically, Emily the Criminal explores harsh realities that resonate notably differently today than they would have in past eras. Critic Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com wrote, "In a different world, a different time, Emily the Criminal may very well have been a romantic drama, similar to Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone, mixing romance, criminality, class divides, and moral/ethical dilemmas." While these are still aspects in play, they are approached in a matter-of-fact way, without Emily or her counterparts dwelling on them.

Emily finds herself in overwhelming debt compared to previous generations, and her employment options are further limited as she faces discrimination due to her criminal record. She subsequently chooses to work as an independent contractor in food in the gig economy, receiving low pay without benefits, and struggles for control over her hours. Unionization and unpaid internship are among other themes addressed.

"The pace of the film is deliberately relentless", stated Vanessa Zimmer of Sundance, with the character of Emily charging "'full-octane' through her difficulties." Confirming this in an American Film Institute interview, writer and director John Patton Ford says he intended "to grab you really unapologetically and just take you on this ride, and to never really give you much of a choice but to watch it…to have that kind of a raw effect upon an audience."
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This makes it sound like the movie's BLEAKNESS is to hold up a mirror to post-modern America's own bleakness. Perhaps that explains why the movie doesn't resonate me: I am out-of-touch with modern society.
 
Murder on the Orient Expreas - Maybr this was better when when it came out, but I felt Truman Capote in Murder by Death. 2 of 4
 
The Retirement Plan

An action comedy starring Nicholas Cage.

Cage's estranged daughter and granddaughter get involved with gangsters. The daughter sends the grandchild to the Cayman Islands where Cage has retired to the beach bum life. The Gangsters nab the mother so the gangsters follow along to the Caymans to retrieve a hard drive the daugher's husband stole from the gangsters. I won't give anymore away.

It took me 45 minutes before I even got a little chuckle. Ron Perlman added a little heart to the show as a gangster that bonds with the granddaughter. The action part was actually not bad though but there's nothing new about these types of movies. I give it a 6/10. If you've got a couple hours to burn you could do worse than watching this.
 
Today My husband and I saw "Wish".

The film was garbage.

I wish I could say it had been good, but the message was confused and, honestly, wrong.

The villain was telegraphed from a mile away, and while I liked the "handsome isn't a reason to trust" initial part, I disliked the explicit "never trust handsome". It seemed like a heavyhanded direction at something intended to be explicit and relevant.

While the villain was evil and deserved their end, there were things they were not wrong about. Some people dream of being sick fucks. Just today I read a NSFL story about a man from Mississippi with a birthday wish. "Mississippi birthday man" is an unsafe Google term, now.

It's my firm thought that the sorts of wishes people are allowed to pursue should be in some way limited by society.

That said, the songs of the movie were just as confused, functioning more like opera and meandering across topics. No large portion of the movie is remotely memorable as part of any larger structure, other than the broad structure of the plot, which was to have a revolution over an evil king stealing dreams from people while saying it was to keep them safe, which is a metaphor that finds no real place in the world today, or in the past, or even in the future other than maybe "taxes"?

Most plot progression was some combination of luck and hoping really hard and just chaos in general; they were plenty of opportunities to allow protagonist decisions to lead to plot progression, and they just didn't including missing out what would have been a very good self fulfilling prophecy trope execution.

Various plot elements of the movie were left completely unexplained and unexplored, while other aspects were extremely heavy handed or completely unnecessary, including a reference to mushrooms that was completely unnecessary and which could damage the purity of an actual mushroom trip.

All in all, "Wish" is much more on the "Raya and the Last Dragon" side of the scale, or perhaps even "Atlantis 2"
 
Dune (2021). 7/10

I missed it in theaters, and was just about to rent it from Prime. Today I was looking for something to do (it's my weekend) and since my sister is in town I'd already done all the cleaning and laundry, etc. so I needed something to kill time while she was at her conference. I checked out the local theaters, and AMC was showing Dune....apparently because the new one is coming out.

Lo and behold, I remembered that I had a gift card from years ago I hadn't used. Checked the balance, and bought a ticket online.

Movie was good. I had seen clips on YouTube, but overall it was very well done. A bit rushed (they had a lot to cover) and I wasn't sure how I'd like how far they veered from the dialogue in the book, but it worked out pretty well. It is also beautifully shot, and the sound was terrific. Really glad I got to see it on a big screen.

The only thing I can complain about (aside from AMC's popcorn being pretty weak) is the price. Matinee on a Monday with a discount because it wasn't a 1st run movie, plus a medium popcorn and medium drink...$30.48. The gift card was $30, and if I'd bought the popcorn and drink online it would have been even more due to service fees. Thirty bucks for one person to see a film is nuts, especially since I could get the same (movie, drink, and popcorn) for half that at the very excellent discount theater in Tempe. Except they're closed on Mondays.
 
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