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What do your prefer?
Crystal clear DVD-picture or VHS-patina with 90s-atmosphere?
Crystal clear DVD-picture or VHS-patina with 90s-atmosphere?
Just finished "The Force Awakens", the second to last stop on my complete Star Wars marathon prior to seeing "The Rise of Skywalker" later in the month. It does have incredibly derivative moments, yes, but I still like that there's moments where the film shows guts (killing off Han Solo was a ballsy, but not entirely unexpected move). It clearly was playing it safe, likely ordered by The Mouse, to woo original trilogy fans back in after Lucas' Prequels left a bad taste in their mouth (not mine, but the prequels alienated a lot of fans). Little did they know, that Star Wars fans are never happy, and this sequel trilogy has been easily just as divisive as the prequels served to be.
The writing is lackluster at best, and it's just another bloated CGI destructathon, but I'll admit I was in it more for Jason Momoa and Temuera Morrison than anything else.I saw 25 minutes of Aquaman and didn't enjoy a second of it. Waste of a perfectly good Nicole Kidman in what seemed to be an unnecessarily dull screenplay.
I think of it more as VHS/DVD era clairty (actually, the lack thereof) vs Blu Ray clarity. I prefer the former. I don't need to be able to count the pores on an actor's nose.What do your prefer?
Crystal clear DVD-picture or VHS-patina with 90s-atmosphere?
Thank you, as I was beginning to think that my wife and I are the only ones critical of this rather poor effort. A great many critics are giving it high marks and it appears on many of their 'best of' lists. Is it a emperor has no clothing moment here and they can't bring themselves to criticize Scorcesse et al in their golden years?I got my hair cut today and the barber always has the tv on, usually documentaries, but this time it was The Irishman. I saw about 30 minutes of it, the part straddling the joining of the De Niro and Pacino characters, so about 15 minutes before and after that story juncture. I didn't see any more.
I had expected something good, given the generally positive comments I've seen on it, but boy, it was awful, truly awful. The storytelling was disjointed and didn't flow and wasn't interesting, the camerawork was all over the place as if they had 30 different directors, the acting was lame, the dialogue was wooden and banal and seemed almost ad-libbed, there was zero 'atmosphere', it looked like it had been filmed on video, and overall it just sucked. I was stunned at how bad and amateurish the whole thing looked, like some sort of straight-to-dvd effort, with a couple of big-name actors participating as a favour to the producer or something. The only good things were the costuming, set design, and old cars.
It was horrible. I do not believe that I can find one good thing to say about it. I stumbled upon Shazam the other day and could not believe how bad it was as well. It was poorly written and acted.I saw 25 minutes of Aquaman and didn't enjoy a second of it. Waste of a perfectly good Nicole Kidman in what seemed to be an unnecessarily dull screenplay.
I saw this movie in '74 at a film festival at my University. Don't remember much about it except I hated it!Fontane - Effi Briest (Germany, 1974)
I watched both new big guns on Netflix, Marriage Story and The Irishman.
I really liked Marriage Story, it's splendidly acted and sensitively written/directed, and tries to be fair in apportioning both the reasons for and the tortured pains of its divorce. I'm not a big fan of Noah Bumbach in general, but it deserves the praise and nominations. My only real complaint is a standard one with Bumbach: his characters live in a rarified world of privilege and accomplishment not far from the Upper East Side of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman films. While the family divorce story is universal... it's a bit hard to be sympathetic to experimental theater directors winning genius grants and second-generation LA actresses who walk effortlessly into lead roles in TV shows.
I was initially thrilled with The Irishman, it's a classic Scorsese mob story. But it's ultimately closer to the Casino and The Departed side of this filmography than Goodfellas. It is just too long at three and a half hours, it eventually becomes something of a slog. And as another narrated-from-later mob history, it's a lot like Goodfellas... but without the then- (and still-) exciting, palpably new storytelling and technique. The much-vaunted de-aging of De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci isn't effective, because they don't look the way these familiar actors actually looked when they were younger. A subplot about one of De Niro's daughters who's aware of his criminal life (eventually played as an adult by Anna Paquin) is surprisingly badly botched with no payoff. Anyway, while it has its charms, I'd much rather see Marty push himself to doing something different (like Silence) than revisiting the mob again, even with these great actors.
"Overlord" - Sigh what this picture could've been. Nice premise. Airborne soldiers on D-Day drop behind enemy lines to destroy a radio jamming tower. It's a pretty straight forwarded premise till the secret Nazi lab starts spewing out reanimated Nazi Zombies. We could've had a lot of fun with that premise BUT in a classic instance of "colorblind casting run amok" they decided to integrate the 101st Airborne with black soldiers. While I'm sure my uncles would've loved the Jump Pay it's an obvious fact that the U.S.Army was completely segregated at the time. Still, this wouldn't have been a deal killer if they'd done it Tarrantino style like "Inglorious Basterds" and taken it over the top to say... "Castle Wolfenstein" territory. As it is the film doesn't know what it wants to be and winds up being nothing...
Worf
What do your prefer?
Crystal clear DVD-picture or VHS-patina with 90s-atmosphere?
Just finished "The Force Awakens", the second to last stop on my complete Star Wars marathon prior to seeing "The Rise of Skywalker" later in the month. It does have incredibly derivative moments, yes, but I still like that there's moments where the film shows guts (killing off Han Solo was a ballsy, but not entirely unexpected move). It clearly was playing it safe, likely ordered by The Mouse, to woo original trilogy fans back in after Lucas' Prequels left a bad taste in their mouth (not mine, but the prequels alienated a lot of fans). Little did they know, that Star Wars fans are never happy, and this sequel trilogy has been easily just as divisive as the prequels served to be.
I saw 25 minutes of Aquaman and didn't enjoy a second of it. Waste of a perfectly good Nicole Kidman in what seemed to be an unnecessarily dull screenplay.