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Sam F wrote:Doctor Submarine wrote:This film has some of the most disturbing things you'll ever see on screen, almost all of them delivered in agonizingly long takes...
...He doesn't give you the safety of a cut. You're forced to watch this awful, awful thing, and what's more, you're forced to feel its duration. This film has "12 Years" right in the title. McQueen wants you to feel it.
Interesting, I didn't think the passing of time was handled very well. Those scenes were long and grueling, but it didn't translate to a lot of time passing. To me it just made a short amount of time feel longer. It felt more like 1 or 2 long years than 12. The way he chose to show the passing of time was with transition shots of willow leaves and cross dissolves between scenes. But I had no clue how much time had passed after each of those transitions. It could've been a year, or a day. There was no dialogue that helped with it either. There were no lines like, "I've been here for 6 years now," or "A few years back Master did blah blah." Text displayed the year in the beginning of the movie but it was never used throughout. The only indicator of passed time for me was that in one scene, his hair had started to gray all of the sudden.
At the end I was thinking, "Well he's free... I guess it's been 12 years then."
Very powerful film, but that part of it bothered me a bit. No sense of time. Also Brad Pitt and his Aldo Raine voice.
I get what you're saying, but there was only so much they could do. The movie is pretty much the book on screen, word-for-word. The events portrayed are the ones that Solomon thought were the most important. And given that the memoir is the only record of Solomon's experience, they had nothing else to go on. So they couldn't add new scenes to really make you feel those years. What they CAN do is use those long takes as a kind of visual metaphor for the length of time passing. Again, I understand this criticism. But given that the movie is called "12 Years a Slave," I think you're just supposed to get that this is taking a while.
And yeah, Brad Pitt was the only actor who really distracted me.
Watched the recent documentary Salinger. If you're a fan of "So Bad It's Good" movies, you'll have a good time. This movie is hilariously self-absorbed, and it presents its subject as Jesus-times-ten. It literally presents a never-before-seen photo of JD Salinger LEAVING THE POST OFFICE as if it's unearthed footage of Oswald in the window of the book depository.
paulou wrote:Thought it was excellent and full of dread in a really idiosyncratic and charming way. Probably one of the only true American independent films to get a legit release in the last ten years. Reminded me a lot of Amity.
If you don't understand a film you'd do well to consider it an emotional and intellectual challenge before you write it off as incomprehensible. What didn't you get?
Most of it wasn't a matter of not getting, but of getting too much. The film spends an hour beating it into our heads that American men like sex, with one groan-inducing visual metaphor after another. There was nothing intellectually challenging about it. You see more clever satire of the American family in shows and movies made by Disney. We get it already. And it moved at a glacial pace.
And then the last 30 minutes devolved into absurdity for the sake of absurdity. I would love to hear your explanation for what was going on in the last act, and what relation it had to anything that happened beforehand.
How can a movie be so thuddingly obvious and yet so maddeningly incomprehensible at the same time? I admire the filmmakers for the lengths they went to to shoot the film, but I wish the effort went towards something a lot more worthwhile.
Words don't do this movie justice. Probably the best film ever made about human atrocity, due to Steve McQueen's distant, almost dispassionate style. It doesn't become what so many other films about slavery (or any other horrible historical thing) do, which is treacly and and cloying. McQueen is almost saying, "I don't need to make you feel horrified by what I'm showing you. These images speak for themselves." And boy do they. This film has some of the most disturbing things you'll ever see on screen, almost all of them delivered in agonizingly long takes. Alfonso Cuaron used that technique for fun in Gravity. McQueen uses it to force you to think about what he's showing you. There's an unbelievable scene about a third of the way through the movie where a character is hung from a tree with a noose around his neck as a punishment. He's left just enough room for his toes to touch the ground, so he won't suffocate. But the ground is wet and muddy, and his feet keep slipping. McQueen holds on a wide shot of this for what felt like several minutes. He doesn't give you the safety of a cut. You're forced to watch this awful, awful thing, and what's more, you're forced to feel its duration. This film has "12 Years" right in the title. McQueen wants you to feel it.
Rikkitikkitaavi wrote:They chose some good properties to work with. Those characters can easily exist in the 'real world' and won't rely too heavily on special effects to make a decent action/crime series.
I am a little surprised they included Daredevil though. He's more of a major character and with the rights reverting back to Marvel I'd have thought they'd take a chance with another feature-length film.
I think the Affleck wounds are too fresh for another Daredevil movie. Plus, they're so focused on the MCU right now, and he doesn't really have a place.
I think that Daredevil is PERFECT for a TV show. It would be a superhero version of Law and Order. Half legal procedural, half comic-book mystery.
http://www.slashfilm.com/marvel-bringin … ers-event/
Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage (in that order) will all get 13-episode seasons, and then they'll do a "Defenders" mini-series. People who know more about comics, how excited should we be?
Ewing wrote:Yeah, there will be other monsters but Godzilla himself is not heroic. It'll be more like Jurassic Park style fights.
That fits in with the whole "Godzilla-as-force-of-nature" idea that the director keeps mentioning. It'll be that scene from Pacific Rim with all the people running to the bunker...but a whole movie where we get to know those characters.
Wait, isn't that basically Cloverfield?
That's funny, because I just finished White House Down, which I really enjoyed. It's essentially identical to Die Hard with the location switched out, but who cares? I love Die Hard.
Darth Praxus wrote:Uploaded:
Transformers
A pile of sewage (37:11-37:25)
Shit castle (2:09:07-2:10:44)
Banging bricks and screaming (2:32:29-2:33:06)
I think those were pull quotes for the poster.
Rob wrote:What made that really sting for me is, when I initially saw TTOL, the first half of the movie—dinosaurs keeling over and such—got me excited that maybe Malick was heading toward almost the exact opposite sentiment. I.e., the universe doesn't care about us, so we should jolly well care about each other.
That would be closer to the Herzog version of the story. Now there's a filmmaker who takes many of the same ideas as Malick and explores them in complex and interesting ways.
Hey, I've got a new one: Terrence Malick is awful.
"Hey, look at me! I'm filming people walking around in nature and mumbling banal philosophical platitudes! My films don't mean anything, but they sure seem like they do!"
I've been meaning to see Badlands, which I've heard is his crowning achievement, but based on The Tree of Life and The Thin Red Line, I just can't stand this guy. Everything he does just seems like the easiest form of intellectual engagement. "Here's a scene of Jessica Chastain chasing a butterfly, while she whispers about the importance of grace or something in voiceover! What does any of this mean? Who cares! It'll trick you into feeling really smart for watching." Ughhhh.
Mike Ryan makes a good point here.
Empire HAD to hit that May 1980 release date or Lucasfilm was in jeopardy of going bankrupt. If anything, that situation was more dire than the one we're seeing now.
Do you know what movies had very little behind the scenes drama? At least that we know about? The Star Wars Prequels.
Insidious is okay, but it's incredibly derivative of Poltergeist. It's directed by James Wan, the same guy who made the first Saw movie. It's funny how he's single-handedly changed the direction of horror cinema twice now. His film kicked off the torture porn trend, and Insidious started a wave of low-budget possession/haunting films. If you want a really good horror film from him, check out The Conjuring from this summer. If Insidious is him doing 80s horror, The Conjuring is him doing 70s horror. It's a lot of fun, and one of the smartest, most restrained horror movies I've seen in years.
To answer your question,
Showthey didn't know who Ruffalo was. Dave Franco apologizes for punching him or something.
You know how I read that twist? The filmmakers were like, "What's the most shocking, unbelievable, impossible-to-predict thing that could happen at the end?" And, well...that's the answer. The problem is that they were dumb enough to think that it would work.
Dorkman wrote:Well now I've got to see this flick. Pencil me in for the commentary.
Hahahahahaha you're going to lose your mind.
Ewing wrote:I saw a turd of a movie last night that is absolutely perfect for a dissection in the same way as Cowboys & Aliens. The film in question?
The dumbest plot twist I've ever seen. It's unfathomable.
I saw this movie for free and I still wanted my money back. It's hilariously inept.
Dave wrote:Does Disney have anything substantial set for a 2015 release at this stage? Without Star Wars, where do they make their profit in the financial year?
Avengers 2, Ant-Man, and 2 Pixar movies should hold them over.
I doubt even Disney expects us to open in the summer of 2015. My guess is they'll move it to Christmas.
Jdubs wrote:if you light it u i'll write for it.
Hey, that's great to hear! It'll probably need to start from square one, given all the changes that have happened in the past year. Maybe I'll start it up again in December, when I crawl out from under this mountain of work.
Jdubs wrote:is the wiki toast for the moment?
It didn't gather that much steam, and I'm perpetually slammed with work. Maybe someday.
Dunno if it's against the format you're going for, but Herzog probably deserves a whole episode.
Withkittens wrote:Followed by the individual spin-offs.
Wait, we did this all wrong. We should have had a film about each individual character leading up to the big team-up film. It worked for The Avengers.
Owen Ward wrote:So, when are we doing the sequel?
Well, obviously it'll be shot back-to-back with the third film, so as to complete the epic trilogy.
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