Shout by Jordy
VIP8This is one of those films that is just impossible to hate.
It’s such a well made crowdpleaser; from the acting, to the score, to the camerawork.
From the very first scene, you know you’re in the hands of a filmmaker who knows what he’s doing.
It’s long, but you don’t feel its length at all.
The predictability of the story is the only real issue.7.5/10
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@elicx There are several storytelling and editing techniques that prevent a writer from following a predictable story format (think about non-linear storytelling, witholding information, etc). I personally wasn’t familiar with this story, so I had no idea what to expect going into the film. The point that I’m making is that if you know how movies work, you can fill in where everything is going after the first 20 minutes. It’s a what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach, which is fine, but it also makes the movie safe and unsurprising.
Review by Jordy
VIP8Well, I'll never listen to That's Life by Frank Sinatra in the same way again, that's for sure.
Before I start, there are two groups of people who need to be addressed:
- Regarding the people who are saying that it's too violent, and a movie based on comics shouldn't be like that: please, go back to watching Dora: The Explorer.
- Regarding the people who are calling it a Taxi Driver or King of Comedy rip-off: Is Mr. Robot a Fight Club rip-off? You have to see the difference between ripping something off and taking inspiration + adding your own ideas to it. Also, Taxi Driver is a vigilante story, something which this isn't.So, most of the praise you heard about this movie I can absolutely get behind. The cinematography and score are without a doubt Oscar worthy. Joaquin Phoenix is front and center, and he absolutely shines. It is a full on character study, and the movie shows everything from the Joker's point of view. It keeps the movie focussed, but it has to be said that there are no other interesting characters to get invested into, something that other character studies don't forget. The pacing is also very well done. It doesn't feel like a slow movie, and the final 20 minutes are something special. To me, however, the first 90 minutes are a lot more interesting. I love the fact that we get to see an in-depth exploration of the causes of social exclusion and what leads to Arthur's downward spiral. Phillips very wisely points to a variety of causes at very different levels of society (elites, government, punks), while not forgetting that some blame also falls into the hands of Arthur himself (e.g. his megalomania). This is a very strong and nuanced message.
And then there's the film's other message. When it comes to a film like this (a protagonist with a downwards spiral), the movie often starts with making you feel sympathetic towards the character. The Wolf of Wallstreet does that. Breaking Bad does that. And Joker also does that. But then there's a point where the character crosses the line, a moment which you can almost pinpoint in this movie, namely the scene where he kills his mom . From that point on, a movie should clearly condemn what he's doing in order to not give out an immoral or wrong message. In The Wolf of Wallstreet, Di Caprio starts to lose everything. In Breaking Bad, Walter White starts to lose everything. Phillips, however, goes out of his way of condemning what his character does. Instead, he plays swelling and upbeat music during the film's darkest moments. Moreover, Joker gets a happy ending , and no other characters have a sincere conversation about the atrocities of what he's doing. In other words, the movie gives off the impression of still being on his side, thereby presenting violence as the answer to this man's problems, and I can totally agree with some of the critics who have a moral problem with that. I understand that they wanted to stay with Arthur's perspective through the end, but this comes at the cost of one of the biggest mistakes a film like this can make. At the same time, one major flaw doesn't make a film bad. I mean, Gone With The Wind is immoral in the sense that it is racist, but is it a bad film? Absolutely not.
7.5/10
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@omegancq You mean cliched because it’s visually so heavily inspired by Scorsese movies? I don’t know, I thought it was kinda beautiful. I really loved the neon lit night scenes in particular, as well as the scene where he kills the guys on the tube. Definetely Oscar worthy if you’d ask me.
This one doesn’t sit well with me.
So we should blame big tech companies for making us addicted to their products, and the nasty consequences that come of it?
I very much question that morality.
Addiction is a problem of the individual, something you have to fix by yourself (with the help of others).
It’s not something that a company, seeking to make profit, should be held resposible for.loading replies
@mokins It’s not politically connected. It’s conducted by a large group of scientists and independent journalists. That way only articles with inaccurate facts are being marked. They’re not allowed to mark opinion pieces with no facts in it, for instance. And even if they did, well, people would notice, because they can’t delete articles. The response to it has actually been largely positive thus far.
This one doesn’t sit well with me.
So we should blame big tech companies for making us addicted to their products, and the nasty consequences that come of it?
I very much question that morality.
Addiction is a problem of the individual, something you have to fix by yourself (with the help of others).
It’s not something that a company, seeking to make profit, should be held resposible for.loading replies
@mokins Very good point. Yes, those companies have a lot of influence, and there’s a problem of power there. But, they’re far from untouchable. Facebook got fined in the States for disrespecting the privacy of its customers. Google got fined in the EU for creating a power vacuum. There’s restrictive legislation for those companies everywhere. Where I live, they’re experimenting with marking fake news on Facebook, for example. In other words, safe and correct use is being stimulated. Does that make it impossible for people to get addicted to it? No, of course not. But still, you yourself chose to be on Facebook in the first place, maybe under societal pressure, but Facebook surely didn’t force you.
Review by Jordy
VIP8Damn, it must really suck to have been snapped while being on a plane.
Pros:
- First and foremost, props to its ambition.
- There are major goosebumps, as well as emotional, moments.
- The acting is top notch. And especially the people who need to be top notch, are really top notch.
- The action has fantastic ideas at play.
- The amount of cameos in this film is unbelievable. Spoiler: Loved the fact that Jarvis from Agent Carter got a cameo!
- It celebrates the MCU in a good, and sometimes also very clever, way.
- The right characters are highlighted.
- A good score, and finally some more musical continuity.
- The villain is still great.
- It wraps up in a very satisfying way. Characters whose story ends here, get a great wrap up.
Cons:
- The first hour is a little hard to get through. It's very dialogue heavy, which in itself isn't a problem, but the Russos aren't good at directing long sections with just dialogue, while keeping you interested. And when that's a problem, you also start to notice the slow pacing, as well as flavourless direction of those scenes.
- The time jump feels like a lazy way to force inorganic changes into the story (e.g. The Hulk & Banner issue, a big plot point in the previous film, has been solved off screen; or the Civil War conflict that has been sort of resolved now, neither one of those feel earned. )
- The choreography and editing of the action aren't good. Moreover, the action that involves a lot of CGI feels weightless.
- Not a fan of the direction they took with Thor. They made him a tragic, but badass hero in the last film. I get that he's sad in this film, but did they really need to turn him into a joke again, like Thor: Ragnarok so annoyingly did?
- The time travel mechanics in this film don’t make enough sense. As a result, the continuity of the MCU is fucked now, because of the huge plotholes in this film. If half of the population is now 5 years older, do we just have to assume that the entirety of Peter's school got snapped? Do we have to assume that all the important Wakandans that play a future role in Black Panther sequels got snapped? What about any of the tv shows that are loosely (although not as loose as once before) connected? Also, how come we can't bring back anyone who died? If a past Gamora, Nebula and Thanos can come to the future, then why can't we bring back Natascha, Gamora, Pietro, Vision, etcetera? Also, going forward, anything that goes wrong can now be fixed with time travel (as long as they don't place restrictions on the Pym particles). It's issues like these that make a lot of time travel movies fall apart, and Endgame is no different.
6/10
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@emadrid I haven’t seen it. And you’re right, there are mechanics in place that can fix any continuity issues that exist now. But that’s all for the long term. I don’t expect the next Spider-Man movie to give us more of an explanation besides “well, everyone important just got dusted”, which to be fair is possible, but also lazy.
Really well done, a nice reinvention of this genre.
8/10
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@rdmf95 a film can go for whatever tone it wants, realistic or not. However, it then shouldn’t break from that. The first 90 minutes are quite realistic, but I think it breaks that tone with the Hollywoodized ending.
Saw this last night at a screening and was an incredible film. Recommend NOT seeing 3D Imax if you are sensitive to 3D films - as the 3D is HEAVY. The acting was well done, the cinematography was incredible - definitely NOT for kids though even though half the theater was young kids (under 13). SUBTITLED!!!!! They do NOT speak English in this film and the language is 100% subtitled. I think having to read the subtitles and deal with the 3D element at the same time was what didn't work for me personally - but im highly sensitive to 3DNausea. I'd see this again NOT in 3D for sure though.
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@sdccmanda Say 3D, one more time
Make the show a little more streamlined, dial down the pretentiousness (for example, no more shifting aspect ratios), turn up the philosophical complexity (which I felt was completely lacking in this season, except from a few speeches by Anthony Hopkins), and keep the emotional reasonance (Dolores/Bernard, William/daughter and Maeve/daughter relationships), and we might just return to the greatness of the first season.
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@alantroll that’s the only deeper aspect in this season, which is also what I referred to with the speech by Anthony Hopkins (as he reveals their purpose towards Bernard in the seventh episode or so). It doesn’t compare to all the bicameral mind /self concious talk of the first season.
And on the action scenes: no they don’t distract me, I actually think they’re some of the best on tv. And you care about the people that are in those scenes, so no, they’re not hard to get invested into. What I don’t like, is that they’re using those scenes to hide and distract from the story that isn’t as deep this season. In intself, that’s enough for me to like something (most Blockbusters aren’t very deep, yet you care because the characters work) , which is why I still ended up liking this season, I just found it a vast step down from the previous one.
This is one of Marvel Studios’ riskier projects, the hyperlink structure combined with the villain being the main character immediately makes it stand out in the genre. It’s because of those two aspects that the film works as well as it does. Thanos is a great character with an interesting motivation. The animation is so detailed and lifelike that it never fails to bring out the emotion, in fact I’d argue that the scenes between him and Gamora have the most emotional punch (courtesy of Zoe Saldana and Josh Brolin, who both put in a really solid performance). The balancing of all the different plot lines is also quite well done as there’s a relevancy to each one, nor does the tone feel too disjointed at any point. Some transitions or the sudden pop culture riffing during serious scenes can be awkward, but it’s handled about as well as it could. The exposition is handled tastefully and kept to a minimum, it instead chooses to focus on unexpected interactions between characters from different branches of the Marvel universe, which is the more exciting part. I’m less into the action and filmmaking, however. Not a lot about the camerawork or score jumps out to me, I feel like what little vision the Russos brought to their previous MCU projects is completely lost here. The washed out colour palette (which for some reason is slightly more vibrant during scenes in space) and obvious music embellishments don’t evoke all that much. The staging and editing of the action is a little too quick for my liking, the moments that are meant to be memorable don’t leave much of an impression because the editing doesn’t take its time to punctuate the stunts properly. Some of the CGI also feels a little weightless, for example Stark’s suit looks and feels like its made from paper. The resulting scenes, such as the final battle on Titan, feel more like small scale, digital mush than the big epic scenes they’re aiming for. Once the film decides to slow down for the dramatic conclusion, I find its intent to be manipulative and disingenuous. I felt that way after watching it the first time in the cinema, and after every ‘death’ in this movie having been retconned in one way or another, it turns out I was right. Even in its riskier films, Marvel will find ways to take most of the edges off. Overall, it’s still decent but it’s lost a lot of its flavour for me over the years.
6/10
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@jarvis-3326813 That’s actually a result of several reasons. I felt that the conflict in Civil War wasn’t properly set up, nor explored. Therefore, I didn’t feel all that much during the airport or final battle. The second reason, which isn’t nearly as substantial as the first, is the fact that everything looks so washed out and bland, which doesn’t exactly add a flavour to the film. It’s a style that worked for TWS, but I feel like CW should’ve been more grand and operatic in its style.
It’s not the worst example though. There was a certain movie released around the same period (that had the same plot as CW) that one could describe as the definition of soulless.
I’m sorry, but at the risk of sounding like a prententious asshole:
If you think this is good, watch more movies.
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@superrob1500 that’s why I said good, not anything about whether you should like it. Second, I do not have a pretentious arthouse mindset. I’m a film fan, and from that perspective I can objectively tell you that this script sucks. The dialogue is unnatural, it’s cliche riddled, and it simply doesn’t have a good structure. If you don’t care about that and still like it nonetheless, more power to you.
It's mediocre, yet also really entertaining sometimes. In that regard, the closest comparison to this is Jurassic World.
Pros:
- Visuals and cinematography.
- Conflict within the group of characters.
- The characters of John C. Reily and Toby Kebbell (although underused)
- Action, particularly the climax.
- The editing stands out a few times.
- Nicely paced.Cons:
- Too many characters, meaning you won't care about pretty much all of them. They also don't take their time to develop them, meaning that most of them come across as Fast and Furious cartoons.
- Some iffy CGI (not with Kong, but with the other creatures).
- Some minor moments that felt out of place or coincidental.
- Besides a few gags, all the humour falls flat.
- The second act drags a bit.
- Sometimes, the colour grading is overdone.Grade: 5/10
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@blakblu Like I said, it's a functional plot that drives the action. Yes, the character motivations aren't explored well enough (which I actually listed as a con), and the island people purely exist for exposition. At the same time, you shouldn't expect a Kubrick/Nolan layered plot. If you keep that in mind, I think you can't criticize it too harshly, since it's a focussed story in which nothing happens that feels too out of place.
It's mediocre, yet also really entertaining sometimes. In that regard, the closest comparison to this is Jurassic World.
Pros:
- Visuals and cinematography.
- Conflict within the group of characters.
- The characters of John C. Reily and Toby Kebbell (although underused)
- Action, particularly the climax.
- The editing stands out a few times.
- Nicely paced.Cons:
- Too many characters, meaning you won't care about pretty much all of them. They also don't take their time to develop them, meaning that most of them come across as Fast and Furious cartoons.
- Some iffy CGI (not with Kong, but with the other creatures).
- Some minor moments that felt out of place or coincidental.
- Besides a few gags, all the humour falls flat.
- The second act drags a bit.
- Sometimes, the colour grading is overdone.Grade: 5/10
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@blakblu I think the plot works just fine. Nothing to rave about, but I don't see how it's horrible. It's just a vehicle to drive the action.
