The Films of 2024

Discussions of specific films and franchises
Message
Author
User avatar
pianocrash
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 11:02 am
Location: Over & Out

Re: The Films of 2024

#26 Post by pianocrash » Thu Sep 19, 2024 7:50 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
Wed Sep 18, 2024 3:28 pm
I know her mainly from Game of Thrones where she had precisely one expression, a worried pout from under raised eyebrows.
To be fair, I didn't even realize Hannah Waddingham was even on that series until recently, because it was Game Of Thrones, wherein every character was practically a statue/chess piece, each with only one discernible emotion and/or expression.

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#27 Post by beamish14 » Sat Sep 28, 2024 4:06 am


User avatar
spectre
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:52 am

Re: The Films of 2024

#28 Post by spectre » Sat Sep 28, 2024 8:17 am

Really looking forward to this one. Just hope I won't have to wait all the way until next year's Melbourne International Film Festival in August (or longer!)

User avatar
Never Cursed
Such is life on board the Redoutable
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 12:22 am

Re: The Films of 2024

#29 Post by Never Cursed » Mon Oct 07, 2024 1:35 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Sep 08, 2024 2:01 pm
Posters on the antagonist awards forum think this means A24 is giving up on Queer (and they may have already realized they blew Sing Sing), so perhaps y’all are right and I am mistaken— I want to believe the hype for this one being a masterpiece, at any rate
Oh-kay, A24 gave up on Queer (and bought the Corbet) because it is not much of a marketable awards season film, which is hardly a demerit against the film - or the one I'd apply to it first! Much of Guadagnino's recent work (Challengers exempted) has been characterized by an ellipticality that comes with the director's expressive if shy attitude towards fleeting, sensual pleasures, but it is rare to find a conventional film that so forcefully jettisons narrative and relies so completely on a twitching, id-controlled lead performance to carry a film as Queer. Its first hour is formless, which works in the moody, needle-drop-scored early scenes of Daniel Craig wandering around the streets, but quickly that pump-up energy is lost as the movie descends into a repetitive blend of bar visits, dreams, and chance encounters. (That said, even if he isn't given much more to do than complain about ex-partners, Jason Schwartzman kills during his limited screen time in said repetitive bar visits). Thankfully, Craig is completely magnetic and displays a withering, self-contemptuous charisma opposed to the conventional hero roles found his recent film work. His gusto imbues the quadtych of sex scenes with an energy that their relatively conventional staging (and their over-editing, a problem that the movie is burdened with more generally - exactly one sexual act, performed on Craig and communicated through his intensifying facial expression, is captured in a single long take, and that scene is far superior to all the others) would not otherwise provide, and connects his high sex drive with his addictive tendencies in a surprisingly sour fashion. By so effectively being a frayed wire, he sells the film's many and unexpected jaunts better than the story itself deserves, culminating in a truly confusing trip to Lesley-Manville-in-freakish-hag-makeup in the jungle that resolves with some of the strangest uses of visual effects that filmgoers will see outside of Megalopolis. An Oscar nomination appears to be in the cards for Craig, thanks in part to the field being relatively weak and other challengers for the wild-card fifth slot (Phoenix, John David Washington, Sebastian Stan) repping movies that appear to be terrible, but I wouldn't complain even if he won.

flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

Re: The Films of 2024

#30 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Oct 07, 2024 3:42 pm

Red Rooms was a pleasant surprise, in how tense everything is but gives way to its fascinating twists, a word I am loathe to use usually, but I found there to be some twists within itself that push the very fabric of cliches you find in these types of movies into a different light. Immediately questioning everyone and everything, and being replenished by maybe not the direct answer but the feelings behind the truth, behind the blank faces, and ultimately confronting an evil itself that is as clearly corrosive to those closest to this particular crime.

It’s also a kind of warning about human nature and how it all becomes monopolized and manipulated. By the media, by the ignorant masses of public given to whatever injustice they perceive. This is embodied in the main character, at least on the surface. Her own motivations do not read clear, even through to it’s perhaps too tidy of an ending but is at least in complete harmony with the choices Juliette Garièpe brings to the role to Kelly-Anne. Much credit to Pascal Plante for assembling this puzzle in a way that exudes our worst instinct about humanity, while keeping its heart beating true to what is still noble about it.

User avatar
Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: The Films of 2024

#31 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Oct 07, 2024 4:38 pm

I didn't mind that Red Rooms had a tidy plot resolution, because for me the ambiguities were all in the main character's layered, fascinating psychological state than the court case at hand. There were so many ways the film could've opted for a flat, easy satire, and instead invested in a character whose mental state becomes harder to read the more we learn about her. A non-judgemental movie about an increasingly common fascination in our culture.

Did it just get released in America or something? I remember watching it last year.

flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

Re: The Films of 2024

#32 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Oct 07, 2024 4:45 pm

Just made available to stream, not in 4K yet but I will spring for it if it comes out (this was a rental).

User avatar
Yakushima
Joined: Mon Dec 01, 2008 1:42 am
Location: US

Re: The Films of 2024

#33 Post by Yakushima » Tue Oct 08, 2024 1:27 pm

Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron documentary by Kaku Arakawa is by far my favorite film of 2024. It is a delicate but piercing look into Miyazaki and his team's creative process by the filmmaker who gained Miyazaki's complete confidence and became essentially a fly on the wall during some of the most dramatic moments of the production, including the stretch during the pandemic. Absolutely essential viewing for anyone even remotely interested in Hayao Miyazaki's work and life.

User avatar
Never Cursed
Such is life on board the Redoutable
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 12:22 am

Re: The Films of 2024

#34 Post by Never Cursed » Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:26 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Oct 09, 2024 4:52 pm
Blitz is now but the latest Oscar hopeful to fizzle out once screened. Every year always has a couple would be misses, but I have never seen such a high degree of high profile award failures in the decades that I’ve been following this kind of thing. Incredible. I have no clue what the top ten for Best Picture will look like, but my guess is it will closely resemble that first year when things like District 9 made it in, because no top ten I can come up with seems plausible right now
Having now seen it, I'm surprised that the huge and generic movie in question found little purchase with film-fest frequentees and easily-impressed trade critics. Hell, 1917 almost went the distance a few years ago, and that's a similar and superior film. So what's the problem here? I don't mind necessarily that the film feels "stock," that it is an attempt to make a big Spielberg disaster movie (War of the Worlds is the obvious point of comparison, but one can make others very easily) where each setpiece bleeds into the next and communicates the texture of a huge Event through the eyes of likeable ordinary people, but its construction is very shoddy and extremely old-fashioned, moreso than the serials that Spielberg emulates. The characterizations are mostly grating, with Benjamin Clementine exempted and Stephen Graham and his gang of circus freaks by far the most annoying, but that's not a dealbreaker in a film that depends upon these people being easily digestible archetypes. Honestly, the political angle of the film is more self-destructive, with any anti-elite, anti-imperial subtext mostly nullified by the nationalism inherent to McQueen's nostalgia for a liberal-multicultural London that was itself the product of horrific imperial abuses. It's great that McQueen got to make a film highlighting the government's incapacity or apathy towards many of its citizens, controversy over Tube station shelters and all, but he's still romanticizing the events from a different perspective.

I was far more shocked to watch a McQueen film that largely eschews the long takes central to the most interesting scenes in his previous films (there are a couple, but mostly in quite bad spots for them) - I don't know if he was working more around the limitations of the main kid actor or the period-accurate but inflexible sets, but some creative element that he decided to protect prevented him from employing the fluid camera work so essential to Spielberg's approach. In its place is a hodgepodge of traditional coverage and duplicate angles; watch this movie and you'll know what it would look like if Yorick Le Saux's pretty colors were employed in a Chaos Walking-esque project. The editing is uniformly bad as well, with lots of hypercut action scenes, transitions that aren't very intuitive (one major piece of exposition is delivered in a flashback in a flashback in a cross-cut, a early scene at a factory begins in a big master shot with a lot of choreography that immediately fades into an unrelated scene of a train), and even one straight-up mistake, where a shot of some bombs falling is placed before bombs start falling.
SpoilerShow
And I don't know exactly what words to use to criticize this, but the movie also just, like, ends with zero wrap-up? Like, the kid gets back to his house, sees his dead grandfather, finds his mom, they embrace, wide shot of destroyed London, THAT'S IT.(?) Paul Schrader can get away with adding or deleting the button from his recent movies because he's both a better screenwriter than McQueen and one who embeds a feeling of pained finality into those projects. In this movie, it feels like the DCP accidentally skipped a scene.

User avatar
John Cope
Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2005 5:40 pm
Location: where the simulacrum is true

Re: The Films of 2024

#35 Post by John Cope » Fri Oct 11, 2024 6:32 pm

Wow. Caddo Lake was absolutely fantastic, a really wonderful surprise, the kind any cineaste longs for. Produced by Shyamalan, so that gives you I suppose some idea of what you may be in for, but far greater than anything he's given us lately or maybe ever. The central conceit, which I won't give away and around which the entire narrative revolves, could have easily been just a stock device or even a gimmick in lesser hands but here its revealing is handled with sublime sensitivity as we only gradually discover it along with the characters. There is both space and pace to be able to do that and for it to then have effective, naturally emerging meaning and that makes a world of a difference (somehow something this good doesn't even get a theatrical run but goes straight to Max--do not be fooled by that in terms of quality). Co-lead O'Brien has been to similar territory before with the equally superb but still underseen and under appreciated Flashback. This also reminds me somewhat of The Outwaters with the flow of it all, the endlessly unraveling and all encompassing reveal. Film has a welcome ecological theme, once again handled with real care and artistry, in which ecosystems are seen as precarious and fragile and at risk of constantly collapsing into chaos (and here yet again this film excels on Shyamalan's similarly themed one). A perfect ending too, and deeply moving without being forced. See it by all means.

vibeway
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2024 3:24 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#36 Post by vibeway » Sat Oct 12, 2024 3:29 pm

Blitz is just heartbreakingly and shockingly bad. Fails on every cinematic level: story, pacing, character, directing, editing. So sad. Endless minutes of scenes that have nothing to do with the "story". Ronan is given nothing to work with in the script, no emotional place to inhabit. The score is completely off, wrong. Characters are all kept apart for most of the movie when for emotional impact they should be together for most of the movie. B stories that bring nothing, many even disturbing and offensive. Exhausting and preachy racial tropes and "Hamilton" like historical rewriting. This literally could be taught in film school for how to do everything wrong in a film. Bombs and planes should not have been shown. What is unseen is scarier than what is seen. The flat expository time jumps served little purpose and there were too many of them, took the audience continually out of the "story".

User avatar
Aspect
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 3:36 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#37 Post by Aspect » Sat Oct 12, 2024 4:55 pm

John Cope wrote:
Fri Oct 11, 2024 6:32 pm
Wow. Caddo Lake was absolutely fantastic, a really wonderful surprise, the kind any cineaste longs for. Produced by Shyamalan, so that gives you I suppose some idea of what you may be in for, but far greater than anything he's given us lately or maybe ever. The central conceit, which I won't give away and around which the entire narrative revolves, could have easily been just a stock device or even a gimmick in lesser hands but here its revealing is handled with sublime sensitivity as we only gradually discover it along with the characters. There is both space and pace to be able to do that and for it to then have effective, naturally emerging meaning and that makes a world of a difference (somehow something this good doesn't even get a theatrical run but goes straight to Max--do not be fooled by that in terms of quality). Co-lead O'Brien has been to similar territory before with the equally superb but still underseen and under appreciated Flashback. This also reminds me somewhat of The Outwaters with the flow of it all, the endlessly unraveling and all encompassing reveal. Film has a welcome ecological theme, once again handled with real care and artistry, in which ecosystems are seen as precarious and fragile and at risk of constantly collapsing into chaos (and here yet again this film excels on Shyamalan's similarly themed one). A perfect ending too, and deeply moving without being forced. See it by all means.
Watched this too based on your recommendation and, while I didn’t like it nearly as much as you did, I will say that the point of comparison is not so much Shyamalan’s work (even though he produced it) but rather
SpoilerShow
Christopher Nolan’s, especially Interstellar.
Once I made that connection, which didn’t take long (how are these characters connected?), I predicted how the whole movie would play out. It takes a very silly concept and plays it very seriously, which is fine because a lot of movies do that, but I definitely wished it was more original.

User avatar
Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: The Films of 2024

#38 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Oct 21, 2024 3:36 pm

Woman of the Hour discussion moved here.

User avatar
The Curious Sofa
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2019 6:18 am

Re: The Films of 2024

#39 Post by The Curious Sofa » Tue Oct 29, 2024 9:53 am

Whenever I tell people that I like horror films, they either recoil or respond with something to the effect that they don't like gore and that horror movies work better when they are suggestive rather than explicit. But a film like Terrifier 3 is the most primal expression of the fear of dying and one's own mortality, which to me is the key to the genre. You can work through a worst-case scenario from the safety of the cinema or your sofa in the knowledge that in the end, your death will probably not be as painful and messy as this.

While no one here seems to have written about these movies yet, I noticed that in 2022, Terrifier 2 showed up on a number of the year's best lists (including mine). Terrifier (2016) was notable for its memorable villain and some genuinely shocking gore, aided by appropriately gnarly and convincing makeup effects. Apart from its sleaze appeal, it didn't have that much to offer for anybody but the most devoted gorehounds. But one of the great things about this horror franchise is that you get to see a filmmaker come into his own and each film in the series has been a significant improvement over the previous one. Terrifier 2 was a huge step up in quality. It was a far more polished piece of filmmaking, with better character development than I've seen in most "elevated" horror. Lauren LaVera has rightly received praise for being one of the better final girls the slasher genre has seen, but Elliot Fullman as her younger, troubled brother is just as good. The relationship between these two gives the film its emotional core. It's a miracle what Damien Leone achieves on a $250,000 budget. Halloween Ends was released the same year and is not only a toothless slasher movie, it doesn't look that much better on a budget of $33 million.

This time Leone had 2 million, still minuscule by Hollywood standards but not only does Terrifier 3 look like it cost ten times as much, it is also the most profitable movie of the year, kicking Joker: Folie à Deux's butt at the box office and as the best homicidal clown movie of this (or any) year. Terrifier 3 has great cinematography and an excellent score, it's tense, it's as gory as these movies have ever been, and best of all, it never loses sight of its characters. Much of the movie is about the PTSD that the heroine suffers as a result of the events of the previous film. I can't think of another slasher sequel that deals so much with the trauma of its surviving heroine, not the Scream movies and not Halloween H20 (which was the best attempt at dealing with trauma in a slasher sequel I've seen and was the best thing about an otherwise mediocre movie). Despite her fantasy heroine alter ego, LaVera's Sienna Shaw never falls into any "strong woman" tropes. She's smart, courageous, and empathetic, but also deeply vulnerable and emotionally scarred.

At the same time, for a true horror fan, there's something deeply satisfying about how ruthlessly gruesome these movies are, something that mainstream Hollywood horror can't compete with. I was both (pleasantly) grossed out by the gore and in awe of the technical wizardry with which these gags are pulled off. As modern grindhouse movies that restore some disrepute to the horror genre and pay homage to 70's and 80 exploitations, they also put Rob Zombie's efforts to shame. The Terrifier movies go much further when it comes to delivering the gory goods, but unlike Zombie's movies, they understand that for a horror movie to be scary, you have to be invested in the victims.

This movie doesn't suffer from the pacing problems of its predecessor. While I admired the ambition and commitment to excess of a micro-budget slasher sequel that's nearly 2.5 hours long, it's easy to see where the movie could have been trimmed down (the whole Clown Cafe sequence for one). Terrifier 3 is still long, clocking in at just over 2 hours, but it moves along at a brisk pace, keeping several plots going until they all converge at the climax. While I look forward to the inevitable Terrifier 4, I hope that Leone will soon branch out and make a horror movie that doesn't rely on Art the Clown. He produced and did the makeup effects on this year's Stream, but that movie lacks the style and talent that Leone brought to the last two Terrifier movies.

User avatar
Red Screamer
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:34 pm
Location: Tativille, IA

Re: The Films of 2024

#40 Post by Red Screamer » Sat Nov 02, 2024 10:19 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Oct 13, 2024 6:02 pm
domino harvey wrote:
Wed Oct 09, 2024 5:05 pm
What if Eastwood saves the day and Juror #2 is another Million Dollar Baby?
Like a bad comedy skit, this year won’t stop: WB is dumping this with no ad campaign whatsoever in 50 theaters on Nov 1st, and with no plans to expand. So no, this isn’t coming to save us
Even beyond the disrespect to Eastwood, Warner is soon going to realize this is a mistake: I just saw it with a nearly packed audience that was vocally appreciative the whole way through. It’s intentionally minor genre fare without the director’s screen persona to give it that movie-myth gravitas that some cinephiles cherish so much, but it’s effective on its own terms. I’d personally put Juror #2 above Cry Macho and the Mule, finding it more robust / less sloppy formally despite its theatrical four-set framework. The generally overbright images (dogged by slight DTV touches, like cityscape stock footage with mismatched color correction) are actually cut through nicely by doses of the high contrast Eastwood noir style, particularly when it comes to how the flashbacks are deployed. It winds up being kind of the old-fashioned, no-subtext companion to Hit Man’s satire of hypocrisy. With some awards push maybe there could’ve been some traction for Hoult’s performance or Jonathan Abrams’ brisk, economical screenplay that knows how to exploit both the “12 Angry Men with a twist” template and the expected courtroom rhetoric without wearing out their welcome. But in the end, it’s really not that kind of movie; it’s a fun family holiday weekend hit waiting to happen.

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#41 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 03, 2024 10:04 am

zedz wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2024 7:50 pm
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran) – Is this great contemporary filmmaker finally going to get his due? This is an impossible movie to ignore. In this film, Rasoulof turns his attention from the obvious victims of the Iranian regime to the establishment, and finds characters subject to the same means of suppression and control. Set against the backdrop of the popular protests following the state murder of Mahsa Amini (the documenting of which in this film via phone footage would have been more than enough to send Rasoulof to prison), we observe the slow motion conflagration of an investigating judge’s family. As tensions escalate, the film itself transitions from genre to genre in unexpected ways.
I thought this was a masterpiece, with three of the best lead female performances I've seen in recent memory, particularly Soheila Golestani as the mother figure whose diverse reactions are complexly rooted in elided family dynamics clashing with sociopolitical unrest. While resisting subtlety and emerging as perhaps the angriest Iranian film I've ever seen, I admired the gradual progression that hints at subtext regarding unseen interpersonal family history and the exact strength of personal allegiances.
SpoilerShow
It's a bold move to begin by aligning the audience with the father's predicaments. He seems genuinely troubled by his unjust assignments to seal fates, and when the gun is lost we are trained to feel for him as a symbol for the entire family unit's stability.. but then as actionable information graces us, we witness just how divorced the father is from the family unit, and we couldn't be less aligned with him by the film's end. There are all sorts of minute hints that the daughters are aware of their father's "true colors" without ever overstating them beyond the extreme, removed actions taken - and how much of those actions are deeply personal vs. political is graciously kept hidden, because how can such complexity possibly be explained in any succinct manner?

User avatar
Red Screamer
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:34 pm
Location: Tativille, IA

Re: The Films of 2024

#42 Post by Red Screamer » Thu Nov 14, 2024 12:15 pm

brundlefly wrote:
Thu Nov 14, 2024 11:04 am
Magnus von Horn's The Girl with the Needle.
I hated this so much I had to skip the screening I had tickets for afterward: miserablist, calculated melodrama recycled from 19th-century fiction magazines that pretends to provoke with its endless escalations of punishments and screaming while looking like a Saint Laurent ad. The Euro equivalent of the worst A24-type artsy trends while searching for extremes of unpleasantness. It also has one of the most insulting endings of recent memory, where
SpoilerShow
a literal serial killer of babies is given a gloss of pathos as she justifies herself in speech with the gist that society was the real criminal all along. Really makes you think! Then we get an utterly syrupy happy ending with a shot of a child smiling serenely as she's adopted from an orphanage, all of the horrors somehow forgotten.
You've been warned.
Last edited by Red Screamer on Fri Nov 15, 2024 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
brundlefly
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:55 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#43 Post by brundlefly » Sat Nov 16, 2024 4:55 am

Aspect wrote:
Sat Oct 12, 2024 4:55 pm
John Cope wrote:
Fri Oct 11, 2024 6:32 pm
Wow. Caddo Lake was absolutely fantastic, a really wonderful surprise, the kind any cineaste longs for. Produced by Shyamalan, so that gives you I suppose some idea of what you may be in for, but far greater than anything he's given us lately or maybe ever. The central conceit, which I won't give away and around which the entire narrative revolves, could have easily been just a stock device or even a gimmick in lesser hands but here its revealing is handled with sublime sensitivity as we only gradually discover it along with the characters. There is both space and pace to be able to do that and for it to then have effective, naturally emerging meaning and that makes a world of a difference (somehow something this good doesn't even get a theatrical run but goes straight to Max--do not be fooled by that in terms of quality). Co-lead O'Brien has been to similar territory before with the equally superb but still underseen and under appreciated Flashback. This also reminds me somewhat of The Outwaters with the flow of it all, the endlessly unraveling and all encompassing reveal. Film has a welcome ecological theme, once again handled with real care and artistry, in which ecosystems are seen as precarious and fragile and at risk of constantly collapsing into chaos (and here yet again this film excels on Shyamalan's similarly themed one). A perfect ending too, and deeply moving without being forced. See it by all means.
Watched this too based on your recommendation and, while I didn’t like it nearly as much as you did, I will say that the point of comparison is not so much Shyamalan’s work (even though he produced it) but rather
SpoilerShow
Christopher Nolan’s, especially Interstellar.
Once I made that connection, which didn’t take long (how are these characters connected?), I predicted how the whole movie would play out. It takes a very silly concept and plays it very seriously, which is fine because a lot of movies do that, but I definitely wished it was more original.
Wouldn't scare people away from this, though if your end-all is puzzleboxing things away I guess I can see how you might shrug. I appreciated how much time this spent on its characters, protagonists perpetually out-of-sorts, struggling for answers and connection, and I found far more emotional payoff in this than in the work of the director you cited. I enjoyed its modesty and its restraint and the use of its twisty location -- first time in a while I haven't audibly gone ughhh at god's-eye drone shots -- though I never bothered mapping everything out.
SpoilerShow
I think viewers are meant to be well ahead of the film by the time Ellie gets to the internet cafe, but that's a place where the rescue quest turns into the awe of acceptance, an appreciation of how people can adjust and reconfigure their lives and go on under the most extraordinary circumstances. Profound difference from Nolan's gung-ho can-do 5D game-playing. It's also a whole hour shorter than Interstellar, which is an hour I'd rather spend watching "The Girl in the Fireplace." (Though aspects of Caddo Lake may be closer to "Blink," even has a similar hospital scene.)

Simply by staying low to the ground, Benson and Moorhead may be closer touchstones than Nolan or Shyamalan.

User avatar
The Curious Sofa
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2019 6:18 am

Re: The Films of 2024

#44 Post by The Curious Sofa » Sat Nov 16, 2024 5:42 am

In terms of plot, Caddo Lake plays like the first few episodes of
SpoilerShow
the German Netflix series Dark, which over three seasons, a couple of centuries and four families linked by a time portal
takes this kind of premise so much further. The beginning of the series also revolves around the mystery of a missing child, and the revelation, which is pretty much identical to the end of Caddo Lake, is only the first major plot twist.

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#45 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 18, 2024 11:14 pm

Gladiator II is on par with the first's self-serious shlock, has one of the worst scripts I've seen played out in a while (Oh, he's fueled by rage? Oh, he's Maximus' son, is he? Let's talk about it some more), and I'm convinced that Ridley Scott is a horrible director of action - there's no continuity and everything looks like shit. Poor Denzel is trapped in a cage of predictable, tedious garbage, but he gives the ol' college try to make this worth seeing. The movie is basically an externalization of Fred Hechinger's character's mind, except far less funny or interesting than that would be.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

Re: The Films of 2024

#46 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Nov 18, 2024 11:40 pm

I only saw Gladiator because I was traveling -- and it was pretty much the only things available to watch on TV in the evening. I can't imagine being subjected to a sequel. ;-)

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#47 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 18, 2024 11:56 pm

The only risks this movie takes are trying to squeeze humor out of pet monkeys

User avatar
Altair
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 12:56 pm
Location: England

Re: The Films of 2024

#48 Post by Altair » Sat Nov 23, 2024 3:11 pm

I just saw Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, having finally now seen all of Powell and Pressburger's films together. It's not an especially sophisticated documentary - a visual essay in essence, covering most of their films, but Scorsese makes for a wonderful guiding presence and you come away with a deep understanding of how thier films have shaped him. The passages on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and The Tales of Hoffmann are especially wonderful and really make you see those films through Scorsese's eyes - other highlights are Scorsese talking about how British cinema shaped his childhood, because they would be shown on New York television when Hollywood studios wouldn't sell their films to television, and the final few minutes of the film, talking about his friendship with Michael Powell in the 1970s and 1980s, where Powell became a father-figure for him. It also makes you realise that Raging Bull is somehow Scorsese's most Powell and Pressburger-esque film. Really only for fans of the duo's films, but a delight nonetheless.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: The Films of 2024

#49 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:59 am

It was very enjoyable, with Scorsese talking in depth through the plots and impact of specific films in the manner of his "Personal Journey Through American Cinema" and "My Voyage To Italy" films, which means that if you have not seen the films in question that you are going to get major spoilers! He speaks extremely movingly about the impact that The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp had on him with its message of shared humanity taking precedence over the worldly forces that attempt to divide us up into separate camps. And he does an extremely thorough examination of what A Canterbury Tale means to the idea of a shared English identity, especially in the middle of the war period, in a manner that it would probably take an outsider's eye to articulate as well! That's the most valuable part of this piece, I think.

Along with expected valourisations of I Know Where I'm Going!, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death and The Tales of Hoffman (it was weirdly fun to hear Scorsese shouting out George A. Romero as one of its other fans from his generation!), it was particularly good to see 49th Parallel and The Small Back Room get large sections of the film devoted to them as well. We also get a good run through of the decline period too, with an outline on the troubles working on The Fighting Pimpernel (where Powell & Pressburger wanted to turn the hackneyed material into a comedy; whilst the producer wanted a straight adaptation); the problems with Selznick (but not Jennifer Jones!) on Gone To Earth/The Wild One; the listless attempt to recapture past operatic glories of Oh... Rosalinda!!; and the large-scaled but rather impersonal war film The Battle of the River Plate. Then Scorsese briefly gets into Pressburger's solo work with a mention of Twice Upon A Time; and Powell's work with of course Peeping Tom and some behind the scenes footage of him shooting his 'last' film, Age of Consent.

Some small quibbles with the film (which I would guess is due to having to compress things as much as anything else since this ran for two hours rather than the three to four hours of the previous Scorsese film docs) is that One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing gets omitted entirely and in the post-Powell & Pressburger period there is no mention of Powell's other solo-directed Australian film They're a Weird Mob (which is co-written by Pressburger), and the 'real' final collaboration between Powell & Pressburger with the Children's Film Foundation piece The Boy Who Turned Yellow.

User avatar
Toland's Mitchell
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2019 2:42 pm

Re: The Films of 2024

#50 Post by Toland's Mitchell » Tue Dec 03, 2024 5:37 pm

The pros and cons of Gladiator II are virtually the same as Ridley Scott's previous film. Like Napoleon, Gladiator II features excellent craftsmanship from below-the-line. The camerawork, production design, digital art (minus some clumsy CGI), costume design, etc. were all-top notch that deserve the big-screen experience. However, also like Napoleon, the film feels rushed and incomplete. Gladiator II is a bit more complicated than its predecessor. Gladiator had a fairly straightforward story and an easily-defined hero and villain, who remain consistent, making their actions and motivations believable. The sequel has more characters and more subplots despite a shorter runtime. And as you might have guessed, the development of these plots and subplots, and the characters within, are not well-executed. Thus, many creative directions come out of the blue. The villain of the story changes twice. Mescal and Washington make sudden character changes that don't make sense. The co-emperor characters have nothing to work with and overact their parts (by far my least favorite aspect of the film). Given Ridley Scott's body of work, it should come as no surprise many scenes were edited out of the movie but an extended cut may be released later, which could be a good and bad thing. On the one hand, it should make Gladiator 2 flow better, and fill in missing story and character gaps. But on the other hand, like Napoleon, the theatrical version has so many issues already, it's hard to get excited for more.

Post Reply