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I will leave my error that this joke may live.

Wow.  What a strange and terrible movie. 

The thing that hit me most was the way it had this weird, dream-like (but not in a good way) quality.  It was like, I literally understand every word that the characters are saying.  (The movie was in English after all.)  But every time I tried to actually think "OK, what did that sentence just mean?" or "How does what's going on in this scene relate to something else that's happened in the movie?", I just had no idea.  It was exactly that sense of untethered bafflement that you get in dreams:  "Wait, I was on a boat earlier.  How did I get on to this train?  And why is my old high-school girlfriend here?", etc. etc.  (Funnily enough, the last movie that I really remember coming away with that same feeling from was Batman and Robin.)

I think I concur with the general opinion that Ben Affleck is actually one of the better things about the movie, but in general a lot of the other creative decisions didn't work for me at all.  I have no idea why they decided to play Lex Luthor the way they did.  Now granted, I don't know much about him as a character beyond what's in Challenge of the Superfriends, but a kind of watered-down Joker mark 2 wasn't what I was expecting.

And then of course at the end

And then there's all the weird God vs. Man stuff, which is clearly supposed to be an Important Theme in this movie, and which for me didn't come off at all.  It's like the rest of the film actually, now that I think about it.  It's amazingly somehow both heavy-handedly ostentatious and diffusely incoherent at the same time.  People explicitly talk about it a lot.  There's whole scenes about it.  But I didn't get what point was being made.  It's like they said "OK, God vs. Man is going to be a big theme in this film", but then never decided what, if anything, they actually wanted to say about this opposition.   

So there's something about God, and absolute power, and absolute goodness.  And maybe Superman can't be absolutely good until he's not absolutely powerful, which is where the kryptonite comes in.  And then somehow this ties into courage, because Superman can't really do anything courageous, being invulnerable.  But then Batman....and now my head hurts.

And then there's supposed to be something thematically relating to parents and children I think, but I understand that even less well than the God bullshit (as Howard Beale would say).  Lucky both Superman and Batman's moms were named Martha though, right?

I do think though that they've maybe got something interesting to explore with Wonder Woman, even if I wasn't particularly excited about her scenes in the film.  This idea that The Great War (aka The War To End War) caused her to give up on humanity could lend a *really* interesting perspective to that character.  I would look forward to seeing that done well, though I have no confidence that it will be. 

Anyway, at least the movie seems like it'll stick with me, even if it's in exactly the way that dream about talking hotdogs sticks with me.  I guess that's something.

I saw footage from that thing in a fan-made trailer for "Star Wars Obi-Wan". Wondered where it came from. Will watch!

See: Legend of the Guardians.

I'm going to skip over my repeat viewing of Beyond this weekend and mention last week's random decision of Ben-Hur. I've never seen much of the original, but I thought this new one was really good. A little non-traditionally structured, as in unafraid to spend more time on things it finds interesting instead of just "the main arc", but very enjoyable.

Plus:

Can I offer anyone a man-crush?

My g/f informed me that the book was entitled "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ" and we couldn't stop laughing at the suggestion of a Bible Cinematic Universe.
"This is a race, isn't it? I'm a racist."

Last edited by Vapes (2016-08-29 17:24:07)

A 1958 submarine thriller that still holds up. Although Robert Wise focused mostly on character drama (some of which must've inspired parts of Star Trek: The Motion Picture), he also delivered some great practical effects (including impressive model work and some shots of a real submarine) that don't look very dated even today. Overall, a very solid entry into the underwater warfare genre.

Every work of fiction involving an obsessed ship captain owes something to Moby Dick. The Asylum must've had a circular inspiration involving Run Silent, Run Deep when they put Ahab on a submarine.

Prompted by both Teague's post about it here and the fact that it leaves Netflix on September 1st, I took it upon myself to finally watch this behemoth. I'd had it in the back of my mind as something I needed to see for ages—classic movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi, so on and so forth—and I was counting on a masterpiece.

This movie makes me so sad, you guys.

Because it totally could have been a masterpiece. The story at the heart of the film—Alec Guiness determines to prove the superiority of British civilization to his captors, becomes so obsessed with this project that he ends up blurring the line between displaying dignity and aiding the enemy—is extremely compelling, and every single frame of the movie that focuses on it is Grade A stuff. Guiness' performance remains powerful even some six decades later, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous (some dodgy day-for-night bits aside; hey, it was the fifties, I don't expect miracles), and the final sequence of

So the center of the movie isn't the problem. It's the damn other movie that keeps trying to invade it.

The other movie that's been stuffed into this movie, that of the American escapee who's conscripted by the Brits to return to the River Kwai to help demolish the bridge, is almost ruinous. We need to see bits of it—the commandos can't just pop up out of the blue near the end of the movie's runtime—but the director and the screenwriter seem to think that the American is the movie's main character. They devote what feels like a good half of the film's runtime to his recuperation in a British hospital, his hemming and hawing about going back to the River Kwai, and the subsequent journey to the bridge. The problem is a.) the American is not the main character, or at least shouldn't be—the heart of the movie is Guiness' character and his journey—b.) by spending so much time with him, the film completely undercuts the tension of what's happening back at the bridge. Even cutting back and forth between the two stories in a more even-handed manner would have mitigated this somewhat, but instead we spend interminable lengths of time with the American before briefly wandering back over to Guiness, becoming interested again, and then being snatched back to the boring part of the film.

So when I say my biggest problem with the movie is its runtime, I don't mean that all the fifties shoe leather should be stripped away. Leave it. Just cut out a good 60% of whatever parts of the film aren't focusing on Guiness and his surroundings, shoot a few more scenes that better flesh out his arc once the bridge-building begins in earnest, and move back and forth between the two plotlines with a bit more finesse. Now that would be a masterpiece.

Here I am, the asshole who's presuming to tell Bridge on the River Kwai what it got wrong. But it's because I love the parts it nails so perfectly that I'm disappointed in the rest.

Last edited by Abbie (2016-08-31 23:55:43)

Dang. Shame.

I could have done something else.

With each passing week I am less and less disappointed that I missed that movie.

Great movie. Teague having gotten me interested in ATC stuff, it was cool to see this. Would've liked a little bit more of the technical stuff, but that's probably just me. The human side was the focus, and it was well done.

I'm sure there was some dramatisation I appreciated they calmed down and showed respect when it became clear what went down.

Went down. Heh.