The last movie you saw Thread

[Smaug's voice]

I loved Arrival, Moonlight and Silence. None of these were perfect films per se, but they were so fresh,original and daring. Manchester by the Sea was very powerful as well. I was really glad that a low budget indie film like Moonlight won that night.

In contrast, though this year's nominees have a lot of variety, but none so far has crossed the "very good" tag for me. Most of them seem like retreads of familiar things. (Except maybe Dunkirk)
Hoping Ladybird or Phantom Thread changes that.

[yovargas]

I was in the minority in finding Moonlight and Arrival just okay.
Silence is in my (very long) "to do" movie list. The only 2016 movie I would have put in the very-good-to-great was foreign film The Handmaiden. (And Civil War on the more "pop" side of things.)



Whereas in 2017, all these qualified for me:
Get Out
Baby Driver
mother!
Ladybird
Shape of Water (though fully agree nothing comes close to Pan's)

And again on the more "pop" side:
Spiderman homecoming
Thor Ragnarok
Coco

[Eldy]

I wasn't quite as enthusiastic about Civil War as some people I know but I really liked Spider-Man and Black Panther in it, and I had a lot of fun with Spider-Man: Homecoming last year, so I'm fairly optimistic for BP. Fingers crossed, anyway! I wasn't able to see it opening weekend since I was at a convention but I hope to get there this week.

I was really curious about Silence when it came out but have been wary of actually watching it because it sounds like the kind of movie that would torpedo my mood for a couple days afterwards.

[Smaug's voice]

I was in the minority in finding Moonlight and Arrival just okay.
Silence is in my (very long) "to do" movie list. The only 2016 movie I would have put in the very-good-to-great was foreign film The Handmaiden. (And Civil War on the more "pop" side of things.)
Whereas in 2017, all these qualified for me:
Get Out
Baby Driver
mother!
Ladybird
Shape of Water (though fully agree nothing comes close to Pan's)

And again on the more "pop" side:
Spiderman homecoming
Thor Ragnarok
Coco

I thought we were doing only nominees.
If it isn't so, then I'd definitely add The Lobster from last year.
And The Handmaiden I have yet to get around to watching.

I admit I forgot about Get out for a second there. That's one movie this year which I found great and original! (And deserves to win but it won't)
Baby Driver started out good but eventually ended up being meh.
Mother! Is a weird film (to say the least) it's pretty well made. But the main metaphor is laid so thick and obviously in it that I ended up hating it.
Shape of Water is a good film. Great acting, directing, story, cinematography, music and everything. But something's amiss that I can't put my finger on. It's difficult to explain. I'll be watching Ladybird today.


I have a feeling you won't like Silence a lot, yov. it's a long and bleak film with long stretches of nothing really happening. But I do like slow, reflective films. I loved it for the acting, the mood, the music (or the absence of it), and direction.

[yovargas]

Mother! Is a weird film (to say the least) it's pretty well made. But the main metaphor is laid so thick and obviously in it that I ended up hating it.

It was definitely a love-it-or-hate-it movie and a whole lot of people hated it - understandably so! Aronofsky is probably my favorite filmmaker going today and he is not a lot of people's tastes but I love how boldly, wildly, and often weirdly over the top he pushes his movies. One may not like his movies but you would never accuse them of being boring!

I have a feeling you won't like Silence a lot, yov. it's a long and bleak film with long stretches of nothing really happening. But I do like slow, reflective films.

And I get bored of slow, reflective films so, yeah, you're probably right. But a good friend of mine who knows my tastes very well and whom I trust said he thinks I could like it in spite of that so I'm going to give it a shot one of these days.

[Pearly Di]

Phantom Thread ... hmmmm. Worth seeing for the gorgeous cinematography, the soundtrack ... and Lesley Manville, who is the only character I had any sympathy for. I'm delighted that American critics have discovered just how great this wonderful actress is. Vicky Kriepps is very good, but the story goes in a really unexpected, weird direction, and ultimately left me cold.

Give me the warm splendours of Call Me By Your Name ANY day.

I fully expect Oldman to get the Oscar for Darkest Hour (which I've yet to see), but I will be rooting hard for Timothée Chalamet. That young man has a stellar career in front of him, if he makes the right choices. Nothing else in cinema touches his performance as Elio Perlman in CMBYN. Nothing. (Armie Hammer also deserves an award.)

I finally got round to watching Get Out, and was iimpressed. I usually don't do horror, but what Stepford Wives did for sexism, Get Out does for racism. A clever film. Daniel Kuluuya is terrific. He's a London lad, too! - from Camden.

I was sad that my boy Timothée Chalamet didn't get the BAFTA Rising Star award on Sunday, but if he had to lose out to anyone, at least he lost to Daniel. Who made a lovely speech including a tribute to his mum. He and Timothée also seem to be good mates.

[Smaug's voice]

I do like Arrenofsky's movies. They're certainly different, daring, often engaging and very well crafted. But for me, mother! felt too self-indulgent and in-your-face. I do understand why people would actually enjoy it though!

And I watched Ladybird. The initial two-thirds of the film was amazing. Funny, sweet, warm and yet sad and heartbreaking at times. And the film had so much affection for all the characters, especially the adults (who usually end up as boorish caricatures in teenage comedies). In any other film, the Abbess or the sister-in-law would've been incompetent or slapstick antagonists.
That said,I felt the film kind of falters in the final act. It glides over the NY part too quickly and thus it does not hit really hard when Ladybird starts missing Sacramento.
I place it above The Shape of Water.

[Frelga]

You, the intellectuals: Oscar nominees, themes, characterization.

Me: The Legend of the Drunken Master was really excellent.

Which it was. Jackie Chan is fantastic and I hope someone writes an Oscar worthy script for him.

[yovargas]

I kind of felt the same way too. It doesn't totally nail the landing, as it were. It's so great all the way through and then at the ending is just kind of...nice. Still, excellent overall. IMO deserves screenplay of the year hands down.


Frelga -

It would be kinda cool if the Oscars had an award for something like best action choreography or best stunt work. I would totally get behind that.

[Alatar]

It would be kinda cool if the Oscars had an award for something like best action choreography or best stunt work. I would totally get behind that.

I was actually thinking something similar yesterday about how Cinematic some games are. Given a lot of the big set pieces in movies are entirely, or almost entirely CG, when will they have to start recognising games. I know we discussed this before in "Games as an Art Form" but seriously some of this wouldn't look out of place in a Marvel movie. Bear in mind these are not cut scenes but interactive scripted events

[Eldy]

I was able to catch the last evening showing of Black Panther on my way back from my night class; I'm way too behind on sleep to say much about the movie but my initial reaction is that I really liked it and it's at the very least in my top five MCU films, and possibly much more than that. I think I saw what yovargas was referring to in that some of the action scenes felt a little messy in a visual sense, but there were other action sequences that I thought worked better. There were a ton of great performances but Michael B. Jordan in particular knocked it out of the park. Uninteresting or underwhelming antagonists has been a recurrent problem even for many of the MCU films that I like (Loki being the main exception), but damn did MBJ and the screenwriters deliver. Not to sell the rest of the cast short or anything, especially Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong'o. And it's really cool to see Afrofuturist themes and imagery like this in a mainstream movie, especially one that's so phenomenally successful at the box office.

[yovargas]

I may not have loved the movie but the whole cast was amazing with Jordan a standout among standouts. I legit think he gives an Oscar-level performance here.

[Frelga]

I haven't seen it yet, but someone called Freeman and Serkis "two tolkien white guys" and that amused me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I saw that too and chuckled at it. I haven't seen the movie but I seen lots of stuff on Facebook of folks in the African-American drumming community doing impromptu drum and dance performances at showings. The impact on the American-American community has been pretty profound.

[Primula Baggins]

I'm definitely planning to see it, though probably at a matinee next week. Tom is not a superhero-movie guy.

[yovargas]

I haven't seen the movie but I seen lots of stuff on Facebook of folks in the African-American drumming community doing impromptu drum and dance performances at showings.

That is awesome.

[Túrin Turambar]

Lady Bird. I’ve tried to write a proper review, but I don’t have much to say beyond praising it for being a very well-made and entertaining film. Particularly the writing and the acting. It hardly needs to be said again, but it shows just how critical the script is to a film – while the performances are all great I feel the foundational strength of the movie is in the dialogue. I wish more big-budget directors would understand this.

[yovargas]

Lady Bird. I’ve tried to write a proper review, but I don’t have much to say beyond praising it for being a very well-made and entertaining film. Particularly the writing and the acting. It hardly needs to be said again, but it shows just how critical the script is to a film – while the performances are all great I feel the foundational strength of the movie is in the dialogue. I wish more big-budget directors would understand this.

This is why I think it deserves Best Screenplay. The movie makes writing dialogue that good, so natural and sincere, seem effortless, but given how rare it you know that it's really damn difficult.

[yovargas]

Did he? I guess I don't really remember it that well since I only saw it once (because I kind of hated it...)

Wanna rant about it? I watched for the second time just last week, and, well, did not hate it quite as much. Ultron is probably my second favorite Marvel villain after Loki, just for how done he is with humans.

I re-watched Ultron last night and, yeah, I really, really hate that thing.

[Frelga]

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