Best movie you've seen

Stereodude

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I watched Chappie over the weekend. I had only a very rough idea what the movie was about. Still it wasn't what I was expecting. I did enjoy it, but I'm not sure I'd say it was really good.
 

Mercutio

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BBC List of 100 greatest films of the 21st century, which is perhaps most interesting as a reason to look at a lot of movies and say "Come on? Really? That one?" Come for the twee adventures of everything Paul Thomas Anderson has done in the last 15 years (which, granted, I really like PT Anderson movies) but stay because they did include approximately every other Pixar movie.

The Dark Knight is #19 and wasn't even the best super hero movie of that YEAR.
 

LunarMist

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BBC List of 100 greatest films of the 21st century, which is perhaps most interesting as a reason to look at a lot of movies and say "Come on? Really? That one?" Come for the twee adventures of everything Paul Thomas Anderson has done in the last 15 years (which, granted, I really like PT Anderson movies) but stay because they did include approximately every other Pixar movie.

The Dark Knight is #19 and wasn't even the best super hero movie of that YEAR.

Dark Knight was rather poor. Anyway, it's very early in the century to be making a top XXX of the century list. How many will make the cut in 2100?
 

Stereodude

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BBC List of 100 greatest films of the 21st century, which is perhaps most interesting as a reason to look at a lot of movies and say "Come on? Really? That one?" Come for the twee adventures of everything Paul Thomas Anderson has done in the last 15 years (which, granted, I really like PT Anderson movies) but stay because they did include approximately every other Pixar movie.

The Dark Knight is #19 and wasn't even the best super hero movie of that YEAR.
Someone wrote a piece about the list: http://thefederalist.com/2016/08/25/5-movies-critics-love-actually-complete-garbage/
 

Newtun

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Mercutio

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Spring Breakers is sort of subversive fun, given that it stars a bunch of former Disney TV show sweethearts who spend 80% of the movie running around in string bikinis. I'm sure that's somebody's fetish.
 

sechs

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I thought that "Spring Breakers" was overhyped garbage.

I haven't seen any of Harmony Korine's other directed films, but "Kids" was really good. I was very disappointed.
 

Stereodude

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So my 3D copy of Captain America: Civil War arrived on Blu-ray yesterday but I haven't even watched my copy of Avengers: Age of Ultron yet. I suppose I should do that first. I've also got the whole season 2 of Agent Carter recorded and unwatched and the 2nd half of the 3rd season of Agents of Shield to watch. I'm rather behind on my MCU.
 

Mercutio

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The BD Extra on Civil War is fantastic, for what it's worth.
Oh wait I guess this isn't on the BD. Oh well. Just watch it. It's funny.


Luke Cage launches in two weeks by the way.
 

Stereodude

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I finally watched my Furious 7 Blu-ray last night. It was entertaining, but pretty much over the top in every possible way. It was like they turned all the dials to 11 Michael Bay style, but it was still entertaining. I kept expecting them to kill off Paul Walker's character, Brian, but they didn't. I did get a chuckle of how they lightly retcon'd The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift to take place between Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7 in their Fast & Furious-verse timeline despite being the 3rd movie in the series. It didn't really take much retcon'ing though.

I'll be back for Fast 8.
 

Mercutio

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Ghost Rider looks a lot cooler than I thought he would on Agents of SHIELD. He's also got a pretty cool Bear McCreary leitmotif, something that hasn't been done much on that show.
Also, nine days to Luke Cagemas.
 

LunarMist

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WTF are they doing by remaking 7 Samuraita again? 1960 version was decent enough, but a shadow of the Kurosawa masterpiece.
 

Mercutio

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Chris Pratt assures that it will at least be charming, even if it doesn't have the star power of the 1960 version. Also, if it gives any visibility at all to the Kurosawa films, that's only a benefit to the moviegoing public.
A better question in my mind is who in the hell thought an IMAX remake of Ben-Hur was a good idea in 2016?
 

LunarMist

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Chris Pratt assures that it will at least be charming, even if it doesn't have the star power of the 1960 version. Also, if it gives any visibility at all to the Kurosawa films, that's only a benefit to the moviegoing public.
A better question in my mind is who in the hell thought an IMAX remake of Ben-Hur was a good idea in 2016?

Ben-Hur was ridiculous. :smack:
 

LunarMist

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Apparently they only show porn and comic films in Merc's hometown. :lol:
 

Mercutio

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Well there are still two screens devoted to "Sausage Party" (which FWIW is mildly amusing and probably insanely funny if you're stoned while you watch it) and four screens showing Suicide Squad, but definitely no Kubo. I know I can watch it as an illegal stream, but that's the sort of movie I'd pay to see on principle.
 

LunarMist

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Not even within a 25 mile radius? You must really live in the tules.
 

Mercutio

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I do. On a related note, I know exactly one unmarried human female under 40 with a college degree who is unmarried but I can find hundreds of women whose dating profiles include phrases like "Biblical living" and which also indicate that they are divorced. Correlation does not equal causation but holy hell I do not belong here.
 

LunarMist

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I do. On a related note, I know exactly one unmarried human female under 40 with a college degree who is unmarried but I can find hundreds of women whose dating profiles include phrases like "Biblical living" and which also indicate that they are divorced. Correlation does not equal causation but holy hell I do not belong here.

So you must go closer to Chicago for anything more civilized?
 

Mercutio

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I'm moving. Maybe Tannin will sponsor me for an Aussie visa. I'll be his goddamned computer fixing slave so he can go take photos of fanged, stinging birds and Jellyfish that walk on land and whatever other miscreations of nature are in the Outback.
 

Handruin

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If you are serious about the move, congrats. I know you've shared your unhappiness with your area for quite a few years now. A fresh start in a different area may help.
 

Mercutio

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Luke Cage took me longer to watch because it turns out that sitting comfortably was a bit of an issue this weekend.

Stupid nitpick, right off the bat: The President of the USA in the MCU in 2015 is named Matthew Ellis, so named in Iron Man 3 and Agents of SHIELD. Barack Obama's name kept coming up in Luke Cage. Was he President during the first Iron Man? Is he a Senator from Illinois? This bothers me more than it probably should.
Nitpick part deux: The climax of The Incredible Hulk took place in Harlem. It's mentioned one time and only in the most oblique way, but a lot of characters say things about how the super guys never come up town. That just ain't so, unless Hulk and Abomination tearing down buildings and using cars for boxing gloves doesn't count for some reason.

I like what I saw more than Daredevil Season 2 or Jessica Jones. First, Luke Cage isn't an unceasing trigger warning of sex trafficking, child abuse and sexual assaults. It's about an invulnerable guy in a hoodie taking out the trash. The production team is almost entirely African American. Writers, directors, most of the cast and I can see the legitimacy of the culture they've baked in. The show gets a BIT preachy about Harlem-the-place at least once in almost every episode but it's nice to see that the MCU isn't 100% whitewashed, even if I'm absolutely the audience that is prepared to accept whitewashed super heroes as normal.

Other strong points: Cottonmouth, Shades and Black Mariah. These are complicated villains. They're normal humans who each have their own sort of power. Black Mariah in particular seems very real as someone somewhat familiar with Chicago politics. She's evil in a personal way but she's still trying to improve her community. I like it. Netflix-Marvel seems better equipped to create memorable villains, moreso than even the movies (Loki being the single exception) have been.
Mike Colter is a very charismatic dude. He is not of Harlem. He's not a thug (comic book Luke Cage has been a jive-talking thug at times). He pulls off his place as an outsider really well, but he's clearly grounded in that place now. I appreciate this. Daredevil should be rooted in Hell's Kitchen in that way, but to this day I have no idea what that means in terms of real life NYC. Harlem, with its hopeful street art and history as the center of black culture, is given depth and its due.
Luke Cage is not filmed entirely in NYC street lights or the sort of flat, cool colors that most daytime scenes in most Marvel productions use. They make use of shifting focus even within a scene to center our attention, something I don't remember seeing in other Marvel productions. Luke Cage seems a lot more colorful somehow. These are technical choices that I noticed, something I'm not usually all that attuned to, but I noticed it here.
Music. Hip-Hop is not my thing, but the soundtrack is integrated in the production much more deeply than I remember from any other Marvel effort. We get bits of jazz and blues and enough homage to Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield in the incidental music for me to see that this is an extension of something that has grown from the 70s origins of the character. I have a feeling that the hip-hop/rap stuff that does show up is deliberate and iconic in ways I'm too white to know about, but I can tell efforts were made. In any case, after mostly-forgettable Marvel scores, I'm glad somebody got music production right this time.
I love the way police are used. They're not incompetent. They're not hostile. They're not all corrupt. Some of them are actually pretty good at their jobs and some are not. Their relationship with the community is complex and mildly adversarial. A police therapist come in at one point and is actually helpful. This seems particularly unusual for super-hero fiction. Luke Cage has a surprisingly large police procedural component to it that I would not expect to see, but at times it was definitely the A story and something we haven't seen before from Marvel. Simone Missick should be a big character in Iron Fist, which is good because I really like her.
Marvel stuff is much more thoroughly part of the plot. The Avengers come up a lot. Hammer Industries and Chitauri technology are important. Luke escaped from the same prison where Justin Hammer and Trevor Slatterly are incarcerated.
I liked the complexity presented in the ending of this series in the most vague and spoiler free manner possible.
I felt like there's a bit of an in-joke in the number of cast members from The Wire made appearances. If someone had said "Omar comin'", I think I would've lost it. Also, Mama Mabel is Samuel L. Jackson's real-life wife.

Bad stuff: Diamondback. He does stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of sense given his apparent resources.
Fight sequences. We are spoiled here because Captain America movies and Daredevil have done fight choreography so well. Luke Cage is super strong and invulnerable. He DOES know how to fight, but he doesn't have to. Most fights are played for laughs, with Luke casually flicking a thug through a wall. In this way, we have a more comic book style of violence, but that's a big shift from everything else in the MCU.
Sermons about Harlem. I think there's one in every episode. I appreciate them but message received after the ninth one.
Luke is openly super-powered. He's tossing people around in public and even on camera. New York Police are ultimately armed specifically to deal with him. One way or the other, this should at least rate a mention of SHIELD. I understand why Agents of SHIELD stuff doesn't come up in the movies but can someone at least bring up Netflix NYC events on AoS soon?
 

Howell

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We watched the first ep last night. Besides the main story I had this vague feeling of being educated about the progression of music from jazz to hip hop. But I'm afraid I'm below the threshold to get it.
 

Mercutio

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We watched the first ep last night. Besides the main story I had this vague feeling of being educated about the progression of music from jazz to hip hop. But I'm afraid I'm below the threshold to get it.

I think they only did it in the first episode, but the thugs were mostly given hip hop for background music and the guys at the barber shop mostly got some kind of pre-1980s root music.

Luke himself is also shown reading writers of the Harlem Renaissance, while Cottonmouth (later shown to be a talented keyboardist) issues forth about the painting of the rapper on his wall. We are ultimately given some explanation for this difference and its origin, but just observing it may be enough to paint the picture that needs to be painted.

There's some stuff going on there in that barber shop that relates to the idea of upstanding black men that we who are not black really can't talk about without sounding real, real racist. One might be familiar with some comments best made by Chris Rock comedy routines and the show does seem to have that viewpoint in mind as well.
 

Will Rickards

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Sweet Christmas

The timeline is what seems screwy to me. Based on Jessica Jones I thought Luke was with her.
And at first I thought this was in the 1970s. But then other events place it after the Jessica Jones series. It just seemed weird.
 
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