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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,880
5,535
136
AdamK47 said:
I finished watching The Rings of Power.

It's a very MEH show with a very WOW budget.

I found these two videos to be very insightful on the matter (contains spoilers).


Click to expand...

As the central ultra-evil bad guy, I felt like Sauron's character needed like 5 full seasons of development to really explain WHY he became so evil. Like when Celebrimbor lies to the Elf King about stopping the ring production & Sauron is like wow really, you're just gonna do that? Like he's almost still on the fence about things & is shocked that he would betray his king so easily, because in Sauron's mind, Sauron is doing the right thing in the right way! I think they should have shown it more as a personality disorder coupled with Morgoth "poisoning the well", where his vision was peace for Middle Earth, but in completely the wrong way. Like, Sauron is a non-self-aware narcissist:

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

Celebrimbor finally figures it out...in Sauron's head, Sauron IS the good guy! Sauron can see the vision & Celebrimbor is just a tool in the way:

1. Celebrimbor finally escapes the haze
2. Sauron makes him appear to yeet Mirdania
3. Hence "obstacle removed" & the glorious vision to bring peace to Middle Earth remains on track!

I feel like Sauron could have been an incredibly deep & well-developed character that gave justification to his LOTR status, rather than just "I'm a bad guy cuz I'm a bad guy". Like the ending with Galadriel where he invites her, gets turned down, and goes full angry-kid mode. The underpinnings were all there, it just didn't really feel fleshed out at all.

These two characters each need their own TV show tho:

 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
13,874
2,338
126
oh wow, ok so you may disagree, but i watched

Alien, whoops sorry i mean ALIEN Romulus - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18412256/

and i like it. Quite a lot.

I mean, yeah there's a lot of things that are obviously not Sci-Fi realistic. But this is purely a horror movie, and all those improbable things it does are not different from any ridiculous thing that a Friday The 13th film may do, but it delivers in spades.
I also thought it was visually excellent, i would say better than Prometheus.
.. i kinda felt the protagonist was the android, sorry i meant "artificial person" Andy (get it?), played by David Jonsson (i cant remember if Squished agreed if i was allowed to praise competent black actors), who was excellent, and the girls were all decent in their roles, despite the near constant screaming. I mean, there are giant fucking alien monsters eating them alive, you'd scream too.
The two male humans were .. okay, with the arrogant british prick being insufferable and thankfully gets killed immediately, which is exactly what you want from a good horror (because it makes you at least partly identify with the monster's intent).
There were quite a few 'memberberries, but they all kinda make sense in that particular universe.

My point is, since the franchise was in a hole, they did something that was actually decent on its own without trying to resurrect it by being great by design and then failing spectacularly. You might maybe argue that this film is bad, and yes ok it is, but it's not BORING. Alien 3 was boring. Alien 4 was boring. They took no risk, had no decently-executed new ideas between the two. Prometheus was ridiculously stupid, Covenant was stupid and boring, one of the two (dont remember which) Alien Vs Predator films was also bad but not boring, get my drift?

I would recommend it. Seriously. I had enough fun and satisfaction that when the occasional dumb idea came along i would just think "eh, it's only ONE bad idea", and in the end it paid off. I was kinda hoping for a more epic, winning finale, and i didn't get it, but at least these expectations came from watching the film, not from before the film started.

i think it's ok and enjoyable and actually well made. No match for Alien 1 or Alien 2, but still worth it. 7/10
 
Reactions: GodisanAtheist

Muadib

Lifer
May 30, 2000
18,009
876
126
DigDog said:
oh wow, ok so you may disagree, but i watched

Alien, whoops sorry i mean ALIEN Romulus - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18412256/

and i like it. Quite a lot.

I mean, yeah there's a lot of things that are obviously not Sci-Fi realistic. But this is purely a horror movie, and all those improbable things it does are not different from any ridiculous thing that a Friday The 13th film may do, but it delivers in spades.
I also thought it was visually excellent, i would say better than Prometheus.
.. i kinda felt the protagonist was the android, sorry i meant "artificial person" Andy (get it?), played by David Jonsson (i cant remember if Squished agreed if i was allowed to praise competent black actors), who was excellent, and the girls were all decent in their roles, despite the near constant screaming. I mean, there are giant fucking alien monsters eating them alive, you'd scream too.
The two male humans were .. okay, with the arrogant british prick being insufferable and thankfully gets killed immediately, which is exactly what you want from a good horror (because it makes you at least partly identify with the monster's intent).
There were quite a few 'memberberries, but they all kinda make sense in that particular universe.

My point is, since the franchise was in a hole, they did something that was actually decent on its own without trying to resurrect it by being great by design and then failing spectacularly. You might maybe argue that this film is bad, and yes ok it is, but it's not BORING. Alien 3 was boring. Alien 4 was boring. They took no risk, had no decently-executed new ideas between the two. Prometheus was ridiculously stupid, Covenant was stupid and boring, one of the two (dont remember which) Alien Vs Predator films was also bad but not boring, get my drift?

I would recommend it. Seriously. I had enough fun and satisfaction that when the occasional dumb idea came along i would just think "eh, it's only ONE bad idea", and in the end it paid off. I was kinda hoping for a more epic, winning finale, and i didn't get it, but at least these expectations came from watching the film, not from before the film started.

i think it's ok and enjoyable and actually well made. No match for Alien 1 or Alien 2, but still worth it. 7/10
Click to expand...
Did you go to the movies, or can I stream it?
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
13,874
2,338
126
i decided to give another chance to

Barton Fink - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101410/reference/

for years, i would find ways to get into discussions about film with other people, just so i could tell them this was the worst film i have ever seen. (saw this in the theaters, i was 19yo)
So, just a way to exorcize the horribad out of me.

On a second watching, yeah it's not as horrible (obviously now at 50 im less expecting of lasers and spaceships and explosions) but still not great .. or relevant in any way.
Now, i've seen a number of videos on youtube that explain the "secret" message in BF and, it's all shit. The actual themes are quite superficial, and they are the same that you can read on wikipedia; the struggle of creating art under employment, and the idea of "the common man", which Barton thinks he is, but - as shown in the scene of the ballroom fight - he absolutely isn't.

And .. that's really it. The figures of the movie producer and of the studio owner are somewhat comical, but nothing that is worth the effort to sit through. John Goodman really gets into his part, but the part itself doesn't have much of a meaning that i can discern. And the film has no .. plot, aside from, well, the main story.

Barton Fink is a so-so writer that has had a single theatre hit in NYC. He is convinced by his agent to move to "Los Angheles" (no idea why they pronounce it that way) where he is basically pushed into a fake-job-description contract; he expects to create art, but is instead assigned to write garbage. He struggles with this until he has a moment of revelation, produces "art", and is rejected because art isn't what the system wants".

I need to really pause here and point out that last year's American Fiction does this very same thing, but it's actually good, and really goes into depth to explain both the "stroke of genius" and the author's relationship with his work. And instead BF does nothing but show us a pile of paper, and tells us "hey, Barton writes a really good story now, trust me bro".

What above is made worse by the fact that the film both has this weird surreal scene just before the end (the fire in the hotel) and then Barton goes to the beach and the film ends. And it ends with the girl on the beach becoming the girl in the picture which has never been explained what the fuck she means. Again, Dark City has the same girl in the Shell Beach poster, but at least there she means something.

So yeah, no. This is still a ugly-bad film. I would not recommend this if the person was a Cohen bros aficionado and had never heard of Barton Fink.

my vote: 4.9/10
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
13,874
2,338
126
and then, because i'm a masochist, i also rewatched

Naked Lunch - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/reference/

Also from 1991. what a year of disappointments.

First off, this isn't the book. I never got around to digesting the book, but from what i gather the story in the book - albeit far more disjointed - is quite more complex than the film.
The film starts as a cross between noir and beat; William Lee (Peter Weller, aka Robocop) is an exterminator, which is not a euphemism. He kills bugs for a living. He's got two friends who are writers and are all about living life as it comes. And while Lee is stoic and unfazed, Lee's wife has given up, and spends her days in a haze of drugs - specifically, she shoots up the bug powder that Lee uses to kill bugs.
Lee is arrested for "bug poweder possession" and has a hallucination, which starts the incoherent part of the film - from now on, nothing is going to make sense.
This hallucination is of a bug (with a talking anus on its back, go figure) that tells Lee he's a secret agent. Lee for no particular reason kills his wife and travels to a place called Interzone, which is basically Algiers. This entire part is done with fake sets and they look pretty shabby.
In the interzone he finds quasi-Casablanca subterfuge, various spies who are either using drugs as a cover for homosexuality, or vice versa, and a further drug market where the drug is harvested from live aliens. Also all of this may or may not be a hallucination.
Throughout the film there are several body-horror scenes, but are done with extremely low-quality production, to the point where it's either unrecognizable, or just visibly fake.

Frankly, this is one of the biggest turds i have ever watched. Sure, there's been bigger failures stemming from ideological differences in filmmaking, but this film seems like the production team *thought* they were doing a great film, while failing and failing to see they were failing until it was on the screen. The current IMDb rating of 6.9/10 is probably due to normal people not revisiting this film, and only the pretentious idiots coming back to 10/10 it.

Note that, when i first saw it, it was purely because it was a film about drugs; and i was deeeeeep into drugs as a discovery of spirituality (mostly after having read Castaneda's Don Juan), and i still hated it.
On hindisght, the biggest problem is that Lee (Burrogh's alter-ego) pretty much immediately stop reacting as a human would. And once that happens, you can't relate to the protagonist. You will notice that in ALL films, regardless of how alien a protagonist may be, they still have some kind of relatable, or at least easily understandable, behaviour. This is absolutely necessary for the audience to identify with the main character, without which you don't have a film, but just a sequence of images.

To me this was seriously one of the worst films i had watched for a long time. Maybe not as bad as Barton Fink (at least for 19yo me) because it maybe had one or two decent visuals, but it's a film that has no narrative, while at the same time acting as if it does.

my vote: 4/10
 
S

stargazr

Diamond Member
Jun 13, 2010
3,996
3,404
136
DigDog said:
and then, because i'm a masochist, i also rewatched

Naked Lunch - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/reference/

Also from 1991. what a year of disappointments.

First off, this isn't the book. I never got around to digesting the book, but from what i gather the story in the book - albeit far more disjointed - is quite more complex than the film.
The film starts as a cross between noir and beat; William Lee (Peter Weller, aka Robocop) is an exterminator, which is not a euphemism. He kills bugs for a living. He's got two friends who are writers and are all about living life as it comes. And while Lee is stoic and unfazed, Lee's wife has given up, and spends her days in a haze of drugs - specifically, she shoots up the bug powder that Lee uses to kill bugs.
Lee is arrested for "bug poweder possession" and has a hallucination, which starts the incoherent part of the film - from now on, nothing is going to make sense.
This hallucination is of a bug (with a talking anus on its back, go figure) that tells Lee he's a secret agent. Lee for no particular reason kills his wife and travels to a place called Interzone, which is basically Algiers. This entire part is done with fake sets and they look pretty shabby.
In the interzone he finds quasi-Casablanca subterfuge, various spies who are either using drugs as a cover for homosexuality, or vice versa, and a further drug market where the drug is harvested from live aliens. Also all of this may or may not be a hallucination.
Throughout the film there are several body-horror scenes, but are done with extremely low-quality production, to the point where it's either unrecognizable, or just visibly fake.

Frankly, this is one of the biggest turds i have ever watched. Sure, there's been bigger failures stemming from ideological differences in filmmaking, but this film seems like the production team *thought* they were doing a great film, while failing and failing to see they were failing until it was on the screen. The current IMDb rating of 6.9/10 is probably due to normal people not revisiting this film, and only the pretentious idiots coming back to 10/10 it.

Note that, when i first saw it, it was purely because it was a film about drugs; and i was deeeeeep into drugs as a discovery of spirituality (mostly after having read Castaneda's Don Juan), and i still hated it.
On hindisght, the biggest problem is that Lee (Burrogh's alter-ego) pretty much immediately stop reacting as a human would. And once that happens, you can't relate to the protagonist. You will notice that in ALL films, regardless of how alien a protagonist may be, they still have some kind of relatable, or at least easily understandable, behaviour. This is absolutely necessary for the audience to identify with the main character, without which you don't have a film, but just a sequence of images.

To me this was seriously one of the worst films i had watched for a long time. Maybe not as bad as Barton Fink (at least for 19yo me) because it maybe had one or two decent visuals, but it's a film that has no narrative, while at the same time acting as if it does.

my vote: 4/10
Click to expand...
Yes, that was one fucked up movie. And the drugs didn't help me enjoy it, either. I haven't seen it since the early nineties.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,880
5,535
136
Severance 9/10

1. Treat it like the Sixth Sense...don't read about it, don't watch any trailers. Just enjoy the reveal.
2. It's a slow show AND a slow burn. If you can handle stuff like Troll Hunter (2010), it's a slower pacing like that.
3. Bit like Lost "Lite", but with actual payoffs. If you liked the Portal game story, it's a bit of a similar vibe.

Streaming on AppleTV. New season out in a few months. Really enjoyed it, best show I've seen in a long time! Slow on purpose; intriguing. Love the vibe!

 
Reactions: snoopy7548 and KLin

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,880
5,535
136
MrSquished said:
AppleTV is about to go off. Shrinked season 2 and Silo season 2 are all coming shortly.
Click to expand...

I did not have high hopes for Apple TV. But Ted Lasso is fantastic & Severance was great. Adding those to my list, thanks!
 

KLin

Lifer
Feb 29, 2000
29,788
309
126
Kaido said:
Severance 9/10

1. Treat it like the Sixth Sense...don't read about it, don't watch any trailers. Just enjoy the reveal.
2. It's a slow show AND a slow burn. If you can handle stuff like Troll Hunter (2010), it's a slower pacing like that.
3. Bit like Lost "Lite", but with actual payoffs. If you liked the Portal game story, it's a bit of a similar vibe.

Streaming on AppleTV. New season out in a few months. Really enjoyed it, best show I've seen in a long time! Slow on purpose; intriguing. Love the vibe!

View attachment 110152
Click to expand...


Will watch
 
Reactions: Kaido

thestrangebrew1

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2011
3,683
503
126
Kaido said:
Severance 9/10

1. Treat it like the Sixth Sense...don't read about it, don't watch any trailers. Just enjoy the reveal.
2. It's a slow show AND a slow burn. If you can handle stuff like Troll Hunter (2010), it's a slower pacing like that.
3. Bit like Lost "Lite", but with actual payoffs. If you liked the Portal game story, it's a bit of a similar vibe.

Streaming on AppleTV. New season out in a few months. Really enjoyed it, best show I've seen in a long time! Slow on purpose; intriguing. Love the vibe!

View attachment 110152
Click to expand...
The burn is definitely slow. So much that I'm having a hard time finishing S1, even though I like it. I think I have 1-2 more episodes left, and I actually forgot about it lol. Looks like I'll be finishing it up this weekend.

I am definitely looking forward to Silo S2, and also The Morning Show whenever that gets released.
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
13,874
2,338
126
i never made it to the last episode of Severance - too much of the same to hold my interest. There is no way that a second season can make anything better, if anything it can piss me off even more than S01 was so slow.
I'm not specifically against tv serials with many episodes, but i expect more content out of them. And the majority that i see has two problems,
1. the content is diluted as far as possible. It's like the authors think "moar episoads = moar good". And,
2. there are WAY too many characters or subplots all of which take up as much space as they can, rather than following the true & tested formula "focus on the protagonist, anything else is secondary".
Specifically with Severance, there's the final big scene of the party, where the characters have "escaped". But the show never explains WHY these characters want to escape. They have been hired to do a job that had the "severance" process built into it, they were happy to do it, nothing happened in their place of work that would make this think "i need to escape from here", aside from the general awfulness that everyone experiences when working in an office. So, if Ben Stiller's so important theme of this show is "oh gee, aren't offices horrible to work in?" then yeah, i don't need 10 hours for this.

Silo is in the same place.
Ep 1 is about THE PLOT, and then wooosh we're sidetracking and i already know it's gonna be 100% or 99% filler that i don't need until the season finale. So i just watch the first episode, then i watch the season finale, and then i check the other episodes to see if i've missed anything, and generally the answer is no, so i just leave it there.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
23,539
21,770
136
The last episode of season one of severance was excellent. Imagine watching everything but that? So strange.

Also, having read the silo books, season one was not mostly filler 😂
 
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