Movie/film thread: resurrected

Batman vs Superman (2016)

Critically panned. I don't know why. You could replace Superman with Captain America, Batman with Iron Man, and Lex Luthor with more or less any villain and you'd get any recent MCU movie. They didn't milk the drama to anything like the extent they could have, and there was a greater emphasis on preparing for later movies than on the story at hand, but there were gadgets and explosions and a lot of things you need a widescreen monitor for.

Two things. First, the Knightmare is jaw-dropping, I hope it becomes a movie. Second, when I realised who she was, I, as they say in books, cried out. Luckily my various neighbours weren't home or they would have heard the wooting

I found the Nightmare sequence baffling...and who is this she you talk about?

I found the Nightmare sequence baffling...and who is this she you talk about?

It was indeed baffling. But chock full of content too. As a nightmare, it was exciting, both in terms of straight up film content, but also in terms of the Batman's psyche. And it was different in style and tone from the rest of the movie. And it presented some altogether more compelling Batman scenario, I thought. City-bound crime-fighting Batman is all well and good, but dystopian future warlord gladiator Batman in a duster is altogether more impressive on the woot-meter. (Batman's actually a character that can fill that role, he can transcend Gotham; whereas some character like say Daredevil can't.) Within the context of the movie there's reason to believe it was as much a vision as a nightmare too. Which is cool.

And "she"? Why, *spoilers*:

WONDER WOMAN OF COURSE! I had forgotten that she was to be introduced in this movie. I enjoyed the reveal. The surprise made me happy. (That Wonder Woman is in the movie is not really a spoiler since it's in the trailer and everyone knows, but for the sake of what the movie was supposed to be, let's whiteout.)

Fire Walk With Me (1992) (Remastered)

Did you have to have seen Twin Peaks first? To recognise how iconic Dale Cooper is, maybe. But he's barely in the movie. The movie is all Laura. ALL Laura. To love or hate Laura is to love or hate the movie. Anyway, 25 years ago, Laura told Agent Cooper "I'll see you again in twenty-five years," and the revival/reboot season 3 of Twin Peaks will start showing in 2017... so I watched the 1990 pilot, and I watched the 1991 finale (plus the two penultimate episodes), and I watched the movie, Fire Walk With Me. Twenty five years ago I did watch all of Twin Peaks too. Could the movie stand on it's own? I have no idea.


 

(Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me - SPOILER ALERT)

Not sure if they modified it or not, but the original "Twin Peaks Pilot Turned Into A Movie" was 97% pilot and 3% "Hey, we need to solve this murder in the next few minutes or we'll go over budget, so let's invent some some guy in the basement who hasn't been referenced before in the movie and pin it on him!"

(Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me - SPOILER ALERT)

Not sure if they modified it or not, but the original "Twin Peaks Pilot Turned Into A Movie" was 97% pilot and 3% "Hey, we need to solve this murder in the next few minutes or we'll go over budget, so let's invent some some guy in the basement who hasn't been referenced before in the movie and pin it on him!"

Yeah, the "international" pilot, which was the pilot I watched recently. Apparently, "they" thought Twin Peaks wouldn't succeed as a series outside the US, so the "international" pilot has 20 extra minutes tacked on at the end in which Cooper dreams the Black Lodge, meets the One-Armed Man at the hospital, gets led downstairs with Sheriff Truman, and they all find BOB in the basement being weird. One-Armed Man shoots BOB "dead". The end.


/25-year-old spoiler

Let's hope the return of Twin Peaks keeps the original weirdness, but maybe with just a little more planning and focus.  For example, the sudden ending of the chess game killings in the series was reported to be because David Lynch got bored with it and wanted to do something else.

And I've always wondered what would happen if David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino decided to collaborate on a film.

Reportedly, Tarantino said once "After I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him."

I don't get it, personally. I remember watching Twin Peaks back in the day and finding season two to be a chore by the end, and like everyone, I found it redeemed by the finale. Then I saw Fire Walk With Me, and I don't remember what I thought, but I probably liked it because I liked it a lot this time around. Fire Walk With Me is not hard to understand. It's not that wanky either. It contains a great deal of ambiguity, for sure, but little vagueness, so it's not that difficult to navigate.

Tarentino and Lynch pull in different directions I think. There's a similarity between them in the way they use culture and groups of people, but they focus differently.

The Missing Pieces (2014)

Fire Walk With Me was originally conceived as a miniseries and apparently ran to 5+ hours in its first cut. The eventually released single movie  was still pretty long at 134 minutes. Then in 2014 appeared The Missing Pieces, 90-minutes worth of deleted and extended Fire Walk With Me scenes cut together into one long, largely coherent narrative movie of its own. It's fascinating. You get to see the Bowie scenes in full (not much of a bonus) and you find out why Laura calls herself The Muffin (interesting). Numbers of the cut scenes were cut because they're redundant and some were cut because they contained needless extra info. Some, like some of the scenes Above A Convenience Store are just opaque. Some of the extensions are a bit clunky. Some of the deleted scenes are wildly awesome in their own right. The Ring gets more attention. Teresa Banks does too. Leland shows more of who he is. I watched the whole thing and it all made sense. Worth it.

 


《The Pink Room》 — Angelo Badalamenti

Even Lambs Have Teeth (2015)

2 giddy girls get treated badly in the countryside. Then they escape.

More rape-revenge exploitation than horror, but almost camp enough to be in the horror camp. It works though. Makes you root for the murderers after the gritty first third.

 

Green Room (2015)

A punk-ass punk band gets locked in a neo-Nazi skinhead clubhouse after walking in on murder. Densely-packed action thriller, and you don't realise how camp it all is until maybe after (and that that was Captain Picard).

 

Batman vs Superman Extended Ultimate Edition (2016) *spoilers*

The first Batman v Superman I watched was a cam. Then came the bluray rips. And the first 1080p version I found was the Extended Ultimate. This super mega ultra Ultimate version is 3 hours long, and it seems to me a lot of the extra footage is at the beginning. there's probably more elsewhere too, but the beginning of Ultimate is the better for the additions. It's still kind of a wtf movie. I mean,Wonder Woman's in the movie because...? And why is there a Doomsday? And for the love of god, Lex Luthor saves his biggest reveal for the lastest  minute *after* creating a Doomsday?!??! (And btw, how did he even know how to make one of those?) Etc.

Biggest are-you-kidding-me moment: Batman cowers. I mean, please. Who was kidding who right there? And that's in both movies.

Nonetheless, all in all, Ultimate Extended is better than Theatrical.

Sing Street (2016)

In 1985 inner-city Dublin, a boy starts a band to impress a girl. Musical comedy drama. Uneven but charming. Fun soundtrack.

 

The Nice Guys (2016)

As flabby as Russell Crowe.

 

The Big Short (2015)

Seems legit