The last movie you saw Thread

[Dave_LF]

The Breadwinner. A beautiful animated film about a little girl in modern Afghanistan, currently available on (at least) US Netflix. Go watch it, then come back here and tell me how you interpret the symbolism.

[Alatar]

THat's Irish made I believe? Or at least it was one of our oscar hopefuls, so we must have been involved.

[Dave_LF]

The studio and director were both Irish. The writers (including the author of the book the film is based on) were Canadian. Wikipedia calls it "an international co-production between Canada, Ireland, and Luxembourg."

[Alatar]

Cool. In other news I saw Black Panther. Enjoyed it but I didn't think it was as groundbreaking as people were claiming. Maybe we just don't have enough black history here to feel the weight of it.

[Frelga]

Newsies with baby Christian Bale. I'm not sure why he is the one who grew up to be a star, but the movie resonates.

[yovargas]

I watched the Annihilation, the latest in a recent strong of sci-fi movies going for a more mature, intelligent vibe. I am happy for the trend but a lot of them have left me feeling pretty flat despite general acclaim and this one did as well. It was just oookaaaay and not much more, imo.

[Frelga]

Finally saw the Black Panther. What a fantastic movie. Visually gorgeous and unique, solid story, couldn't think of any "wait, but why" moments. The Dora Milaje are possibly the first movie female fighting force that is played for pure power and not hawtness (and I include the WW Amazons, although they weren't bad). And I loved how romantic plot lines played out.

Definitely best Marvel battle scene. PJ should take notes on how to shoot a battle of diverse forces and keep it exciting (note 1 - it shouldn't take two hours of screen time).

I still think Winter Soldier is the best MCU movie, but only by a whisker, and only because Pierce is not only a better villain, IMO, but the only Marvel villain not motivated by daddy issues, sheesh.

[Túrin Turambar]

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I actually wasn’t planning on seeing it, but the Oscar hype and the debate around it piqued my curiosity. I had reservations driving to the theatre, but I’m glad I went, because I found it very entertaining. Not as satisfying as I would have liked, but I can’t say I was ever bored. Perhaps my favourite feature was the various motivations of the characters - it's a film without heroes and villains.

I was one of those who liked McDonagh’s black comedy approach, even when it crossed the line into outright farce. Looking back, the style is actually hinted at with the title, which is so bluntly literal as to be quirky. I also think there’s a PhD thesis to be written (if it hasn’t been written already) on the portrayal of the American working class in film with this as a prime specimen for study. Interesting also that the director isn’t an American, although I can’t say exactly how different the film would have been if he was.

I’m still tossing up about seeing Black Panther. On one hand, it’s getting rave reviews. On the other, my experience of comic book films of late hasn’t been good and I’m afraid of walking into another Wonder Woman. I’ll think about it over the week.

[Primula Baggins]

As someone who also has trouble with many comic book films, I still recommend Black Panther. There were two fight scenes that went on too long for me, but that was it (most such films have many of these scenes, some lasting half the movie). The acting is quite good, the costumes and visuals are gorgeous, and there is actual emotion in the story. And it's funny. The Black Panther has a brilliant but sarcastic little sister who cuts him no slack at all.

I enjoyed Wonder Woman for many of the same reasons, and I will always love Gal Gadot's performance. But the loooooong climactic fight scene definitely wore out its welcome, and the comic sidekicks weren't always funny. Overall, Panther is better.

[Frelga]

My complaint about the Wonder Woman was that she was so overpowered compared to the rest of her team and most of her opponents that they ended up looking more heroic. Plus, while Themyscira was great, once Diana was in Europe we were back to the lone, special girl on the team of men.

Black Panther has women in various positions of power, and having lives outside the plot-related activities, and interacting with each other. As with the Last Jedi, the experience of watching that movie as a woman was a lot more enjoyable than sitting in a movie clearly made for men first.

I can only imagine how amplified this feeling must be for African Americans.

[Primula Baggins]

Yes. Women who play a part in the story who weren't obviously dropped into place an instant before the hero walks into the scene. And then disappeared the moment the hero walks out of the scene (as heroes must, when there are gurrrrllllls there; time to move on to the important stuff!).

I started reading Wonder Woman when I was five, which is more than half a century ago. I'm sure I've said here how I would walk up to the corner grocery with my allowance and spend all 12 cents on the latest issue. In those days she still wore 1940s hair and lipstick. But she was like me. And I recognized her in the movie (I loved her more than when I was little).

I can only imagine what it's like to be someone of color, or someone non-heterosexual or nonbinary, and only now beginning to see myself in movies like this. Or in stories and comics and books. Science fiction/fantasy is going through a kind of convulsion over this right now—and the good people are winning, I'm glad to say. Not just winning the moral victory, but winning Hugos and Nebulas and regional awards.

[Alatar]

while Themyscira was great, once Diana was in Europe we were back to the lone, special girl on the team of men.

But she was in WW1 era, how many women were you expecting to be in positions of power in England? That was kinda the whole point? The disparity between the two.

[Frelga]

That argument sounds so logical, it's easy to miss how pernicious it is. It depends on a vicious circle where only things men do are considered worthy of preserving in history, and because they were not recorded or celebrated at the time, men now can say, but the women weren't there, or they weren't important, so it's OK to exclude them.

Besides, how many invulnerable Amazon goddesses did you expect? If they sent one, they could have sent a team.

WW went for a ragged misfits team instead, which is fine, good genre. 30 seconds of wiki yielded this:

Women also volunteered and served in a non-combatant role; by the end of the war, 80,000 had enlisted.[2][3] They mostly served as nurses in the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), founded in 1907, also known as the “Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps”; the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD); and from 1917, in the Army when the Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), was founded.[4] The WAAC was divided into four sections: cookery; mechanical; clerical and miscellaneous. Most stayed on the Home Front, but around 9,000 served in France.[4]

They could have thrown a nurse in. Would have been a nice contrast to the warrior queen.

[Alatar]

I could have sworn we saw nurses in the destroyed town and trenches?

[Túrin Turambar]

My criticisms of Wonder Woman were dramatic rather than political, but now that I think about it, an invincible woman with magic powers coming from a society without men does seem like an odd choice for a feminist icon in 2017. But this was neither here nor there to me – having an invincible protagonist with magic powers sank the film from a dramatic perspective regardless of anything else.

[Impenitent]

And on top of that, there was the (romantic) love wins trope, which was the thorn that annoyed me.

Sent from a tiny phone keyboard via Tapatalk - typos inevitable.

[yovargas]

Definitely best Marvel battle scene. PJ should take notes on how to shoot a battle of diverse forces and keep it exciting (note 1 - it shouldn't take two hours of screen time).

I find it strange to hear you say that as one of my main complaints was that I thought the action sequences were mostly pretty weak. I get the complaints about the overlong, dragged out, CGI-fest action sequences that tend to be the climatic third act in these superhero movies and on that front, it was perhaps a bit better than most. But I thought the action itself, particularly during the grand finale, was amongst the worst of all these Marvel movies. A lot of the FX work and the choreography and editing I felt looked cheap and amateurish. The train sequence in particular I found quite bad. (Especially since from a dramatic standpoint, it is basically just two guys in invulnerability suits futilely punching each other.)

[Túrin Turambar]

Black Panther.

I was impressed. There is a certain sameness to these superhero films, and after a while I start to get the impression one climactic fight scene could be swapped for another without any of them changing all that much. But this is an example of the genre done well, I found it really interesting to see a world in a superhero film outside of New York or Chicago, and it’s a fun movie to think and talk about.

To take things piece-by-piece, I really liked the originality of the premise. I’ve got nothing against New York and Chicago, but it’s nice to see something entirely different in a superhero film. The plot was sound. Predictable at times, but then, these films do seem to be built on a formula. And people actually like predictability, or rather, that pleasing feeling of seeing something you’ve anticipated. It’s why songs have choruses, I suppose. Good script, although maybe a little bland, at least in comparison with some of the recent lower-budget and more artistic films I’ve watched.

Hat tip to Marvel for the great villain. The success of Star Wars and the Nolan Batman films show just how much difference a good antagonist makes. Killmonger is very intimidating but still completely comprehensible, which is a hard balance to get.

I liked the world-building, particularly the African-influenced futurism of Wakanda’s design. The visuals and sound are great, although like the script, the CGI comes across as a bit bland. Dunkirk showed how much realism you could get out of practical effects and good sound editing, and particularly compared to that style of film-making, the visuals in these big-budget sci-fi epics can look cartoony. For example, being hit by the wave of power from Black Panther’s suit and thrown through the air appears relatively painless, as if the people in the movie have no mass and are inflatable. But then these movies are adapted from cartoons, so that might be a stylistic choice.

The film has obviously attracted as much attention for its political and social commentary as for its visuals, characters and plot. I don’t believe movies can be either saved or sunk by their message (except in extreme cases – Birth of a Nation comes to mind). But giving you something to think or talk about is another way which a movie can entertain you. There’s an interesting discussion to be had about the value of feel-good fantasy movies. This struck me most forcefully in an early scene where the characters take on a very real and high-profile injustice playing out regularly in a part of Africa today. Having an African superhero stop it is obviously a bit of a wish-fulfilment fantasy. This doesn’t happen in the real world – but is it OK if we make ourselves feel better if we see it in a film? This isn’t a rhetorical question but something I’ve been pondering over today. Wakanda itself seems to be designed around western progressive and liberal sensibilities (and they conveniently speak English, but I’ll give them dramatic license for that). I’m no expert in traditional sub-Saharan African societies, but I understand very few of them would embrace female liberation and gender equality to the point that women command the Army and lead scientific research. Aside from granting wealth and scientific knowledge, Vibranium also seems to clear out ideas with which western 21st-century audiences would be uncomfortable. It’s a magic solution to a whole range of real-world problems. Speaking of which, it seems odd to me Wakanda would begin its outreach in one of the richest countries in the world on the other side of the Atlantic rather than in the severely-disadvantages nations on its own border, but this probably ties into the point about western progressive and liberal sensibilities above.

But then, this is a superhero film, so magic solutions are allowed. I prefer not to judge films by different standards based on their genres, but Black Panther is strong enough on its own merits I don’t think it needs special pleading anyway.

[Maria]

We tried to watch Blade Runner 2049 last night and quit after 50 minutes. It was just too depressing.

[Alatar]

Really? I loved that movie!