heywood on 16/5/2013 at 09:17
Same here.
I think holding up The Avengers as an example of good character development is a bit odd. I'll probably get flamed for this, but I haven't seen a comic based movie yet that didn't have shallow, stereotypical characters (TDKR is no exception).
Morte on 16/5/2013 at 10:01
Sure, TKDR is packed to the brim which a bunch of stuff but none of it forms anything coherent, either in terms of theme or character.
The Avengers builds to a genuine payoff: it starts off with a bunch of disparate individuals and ends with a team working together, epitomized in that awesome panoramic shot. It's not complex or heady stuff, but it an arc and it actually works.
faetal on 16/5/2013 at 10:08
The Avengers is kind of a special case, since they used 5 other films to develop its characters.
[EDIT] Also, as far as I'm concerned, the whole of The Avengers builds to that shot in the shawarma shop.
SubJeff on 16/5/2013 at 19:47
Well I watched The Seventh Seal.
Wonderful.
The rest do summer is going to be a let down.
demagogue on 16/5/2013 at 21:15
The original Bergman? Or has there been a remake?
Just because the way you worded that could make it sound like it's in competition with the rest of the summer movies, not just for you but for everybody... Or you could mean just for you.
This movie had never been on my radar just because I mixed it up with The Seventh Sign (which I've seen before & was so-so), but looking it up now of course it's a completely different movie on a completely different level of critical acclaim. So it looks like that's going in the queue.
Edit: Incidentally I *finally* got around to seeing Prometheus yesterday. It was a fun movie, fun premise, a few clinch scenes. Also a bit... too liberal with the homages to my taste. But at least they had fun with them. As I said when it came out, it was running with the same premise I had written a story for back in the day -- and I still think it's a cool premise that hasn't gotten enough treatment -- but TBH I like the treatment I gave in my story better. But the movie wasn't really delving too deep into that part of it anyway (it seemed the next movie they set up would do that), but that was fine... I mean in the sense it's a better movie watching it scene for scene than for the big picture, but that's what I went into it hoping to see (a fun movie scene to scene).
Angel Dust on 16/5/2013 at 22:42
The biggest surprise of The Seventh Seal for me was how funny it was. Bergman had always seemed to be pretty much the archetype for po-faced art house cinema but while it wasn't packed with gut-busting laughs, Death's dry wit had me chuckling more than I expected. Of course, some of his films are very serious but they are all just as striking to look at. So if you're looking for more here's the stuff one guy (me) liked:
Wild Strawberries
Persona
Fanny & Alexander
The Faith 'Trilogy' (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence)
I've been meaning to check out Hour of the Wolf, since it's apparently the closet Bergman came to making a horror film and the freaky stuff he did in films like Persona makes this a very enticing proposition indeed.
SubJeff on 17/5/2013 at 06:16
Yep, not a remake, the 50s black and white Bergman/Max von Sydow one. Inspired by Vivian's mention.
It's darkly hilarious in places (Death is great) but just hilarious in others.
It's the antithesis to Summer blockbusters, a fabulous for it.
faetal on 17/5/2013 at 09:09
Quote Posted by demagogue
...Prometheus...
I wanted to like that film. So much. Best things about it were Fassbender and Theron. Everyone else just felt like mannequins. The worst part for me was
at the end when they made the decision to ram the escaping alien ship (and die in the process), the two co-pilots make some throw-away "I told you I'd win that bet" quip without the slightest hint of emotion - totally sucked any sense of gravitas from the scene, which should have been about making the hardest decision any person can make. Instead, it was basically a "YOU GUYS" scene.
DDL on 17/5/2013 at 11:33
I thought pretty much everything was fundamentally terrible in that film. I was having doubts at the beginning, just based on how dysfunctional the group seemed to be (these are supposed to be hand-picked experts, but even a room full of top-flight PIs isn't going to be that fractious), but when they found "nature does not build in straight lines!" and decided to investigate by treating this utterly unprecedented archaeological find first as a runway, and then secondly as a road, I think I just wanted the movie to hurry up and murder the lot of them. Geologist bloke shouting "I just fucking like ROCKS, ok? FUCK YOUR ALIEN CIVILISATION, IF IT'S NOT ROCKS IT CAN GTFO!" was just the icing on the cake really. I mean...seriously? "Hey, we've found aliens!" "Well, bully for you, but I'm a biochemist. If it's not mashed up and in an eppendorf tube, I really couldn't give a shit."
So that was grating, but even if you give it massive, massive benefit of the doubt for 'movie science' or something, it still didn't work as a movie: the black goo was just so...inconsistent. It does..."whatever the fuck we think would be cool right now". Dissolves aliens. No wait, makes people full of eye worms and then makes them into superstrong monsters. No wait, dissolves faces. No, makes vagina snakes out of whole cloth. No wait, dissolves faces AND THEN makes people into superstrong monsters. No wait, can cause people to impregnate others with face-eating octopi.
The Alien movies at least had consistency: queen>>eggs>>facehuggers>>people>>aliens (+possible queen): it was a stupid cycle, but it was a functioning one with pseudo-biological plausibility. Black goo was just...liquid plot device.
faetal on 17/5/2013 at 11:48
I agree with all of that.
