Good point, I ammend my comment. Millennium Films seems to not fund or give proper time to their FX artists

It's weird though, its a 100 million dollar production. I know the cast takes up a lot of that, but you'd think there wouldn't be Asylum level effects-work all over the place.

Finally caught up with it and saw it. It's so close to being great, but as Trey said, the story is overly cluttered, and I really think they dropped the ball with their ending. The whole appeal of this story is that they're not superheros, they're just ordinary folks coming together to save the day, and then they pull a bullshit

I would say the first half is fantastic, and the 2nd half needs to lose about 25 minutes of plot and repetitive action and replace it with more of the characters just hanging out together. You know, having a massive end-movie dogfight battle is a lot more impactful if you didn't just do a big mid-movie dogfight battle 30 minutes ago.

All that being said, it's easily my favorite of the marvel movies, the closest to something that genuinely feels like it has a personality to it instead of their usual generic machine-like productions. It's also the first of their movies I've seen where I think the cinematography is great and that's got genuinely impressive FX work throughout. I've complained in the past about how flat and TV-like a lot of their movies look, but that's definitely not the case here. Great designs, integration of practical and CG, and creature effects (I thought Rocket was great for the record).

Recently re-watched it on the big screen, and I'm convinced Apocalypse Now is the best film ever made. Don't think anything before or since will ever reach that combination of artistry and incredible big-budget scale. The lighting alone makes me want to cry its so gorgeous.

The movie is SO good, it makes you depressed at how unambitious and ugly 99% of movies, especially in the last 15 years, are by comparison.

Also, Hearts of Darkness is a must-see, to really show you what it takes to create a film like that.

Ya, Rodriguez's career is depressing as hell. To have a "big budget" debut with something as awesome and passionate as Desperado, and then with each successive movie embracing the worst elements of the previous movie and just getting gradually and gradually shittier, instead of the opposite. If his takeaway from his first 2 films had been a greater sense of restraint and better focus on story, he could've turned into a filmmaker on the level of Tarantino, but he went the exact opposite route. Much as I like From Dusk Till Dawn, it's blindingly apparent with those 2 halves why Tarantino became a great and why Rodriguez didn't. I can't think of another case of a successful, exciting genre filmmaker devolving over the course of a decade to making essentially shitty youtube fan-films.

Ya Buscemi woulda been perfect for that

Between this and your lukewarm feelings on Her, I think dorkman might be onto something

That's actually pretty cool. He did Terminator 1 and 2 back to back, and had no idea in T-2 that arnold was the good guy until the reveal happened, and then he gets super excited.

The fact that Godzilla opened to 93 million and will likely not make it to 200 mil domestic is really telling. These blockbusters are getting almost 0 repeat business or shelf-life, and the openings on their own aren't enough to sustain these budget levels. This is the year where international box office is now the only thing keeping these releases alive and profitable.

Just rewatched it again Start to Finish, which I haven't done in years. It's remarkable how well thought-out, plotted, and character-driven it feels. Part of it is how awful the summer blockbuster has gotten that this seems like high art by comparison, but I would also say that I genuinely think the movie nails completely the right earnest, cornball tone and rides it perfectly the whole way through. The characters are likable, there's just enough science sprinkled in there to feel semi-grounded (I actually have zero problems with the computer stuff),  it doesn't take itself too seriously, but it still commits to the story it's telling and has a good story structure and pacing.

Zarban, check out this tutorial on projection stuff for some ideas on how to accomplish some of this stuff practically

Ya, it's really weird like that. I'm literally now trying to pare down which episodes are essential and which are skippable so I can tell other people "Watch 1, 3, and 6 onwards", otherwise I can see how it would be tough to get someone new into the show.