Watched the movie “Mary” on Netflix last night. It chronicles the story of Mary from her birth through her childhood and ultimately to the birth of Christ and events shortly there after. Have to say it was quite a well made and entertaining movie. I’m not a Biblical scholar by any means so there were a lot of scenes that didn’t seem true to any of my church upbringing lessons, but it’s defintely worth watching for any Christian (or anyone for that matter)looking for a new quality movie during the Christmas season.
The Movie Thread
- Thread starter Maddox
- Start date
So I saw Gladiator 2 and you were not far off. Terrible movie.
Starts off with a woman (Lucius' wife) in a battle scene. She ends up dying. A black man (Denzel Washington) trying to become emperor. Sharks in the Colisseum, a gladiator riding a rhino like it's a horse or something. Pretty much everything in the movie was woke and/or unrealistic.
Originally there was even a scene with two men kissing, but they ended up deleting it thankfully.
Some positive indications that wokeness is on the downswing finally, at least in the movie and TV biz.
Wouldn't have been innacurate in Ancient Rome, but would've been just as hard to watch regardless.
I was turned off by the horrible CGI of those animals in the preview. This is 2024. How can CGI look so awful in a movie???
Since you saw the entire thing, was it as bad in the film as it looked in the trailer?
Yeah I thought it was bad. There was a scene with monkeys that was especially obnoxious with the CGI.
I hadn't seen a movie in theaters for a long time, so I wanted to give this a shot. Now I remember why I stopped going. Modern movies are terrible. The wokeness, CGI, terrible and unrealistic stories, the expensive tickets.
And the amount of people that talk during the movie. There used to be a joke about blacks talking during movies (which is accurate), but that should apply to everyone now. Insane how inconsiderate and trashy people are becoming.
The whole "it's the current year" thing doesn't mean much anymore as we've been on the downwards slope for quite a while now.
For anyone that's interested;
Dog Day Afternoon is an interesting film with interesting characters and some interesting narratives.
I'm watching the Limey. One of my favorite movies. I don't even watch movies, but I'll think of this and find it and play it.
I think the last time I watched a movie before this was The Limey also, a couple of years ago!
Terence Stamp plays a hard core English guy who's been in and out of jail. Peter Fonda is a slick businessman in the music industry with underworld connections. Great stuff!
I think the last time I watched a movie before this was The Limey also, a couple of years ago!
Terence Stamp plays a hard core English guy who's been in and out of jail. Peter Fonda is a slick businessman in the music industry with underworld connections. Great stuff!
I watched a bunch of stuff lately...
Mostly Christmas themed stuff and now I struggle to remember any of it....
An odd rip off of it's a wonderful life called 'One Magic CHristmas' with a similar message of 'hey, think your life sucks? Well it could be even worse!' but just not as well-written.
Something called Chilly scenes from winter:
A truly pathetic main character hung up on a girl who doesn't particularly like him. It's so 1970's in a certain way that it has a bummer ending, it subverts the romantic comedy in a way by having a lead male who puruses a woman pathetically. It just felt very dated to me, as a lot of 70s movies seemed to indulge in nihilism for nihilism's sake which just strikes me as sad and trying to romanticize self-destructive behaviour (which a lot of 70s movies did).
Bad Santa was actually...good. I mean it was funny and had an arc. I hear the Coen brothers were behind it and it does have their tonal fingerprints all over with some of the twists and turns. I'm a sucker for films about completely alienated individuals who are hopeless yet still with a small glimmer of redemptive hope that isn't totally fulfilled so this worked for me.
I'm a little embarassed to admitt I watched 'Bridget Jones' Diary' which I had seen before as a teenager and watching it again now I realised that some parts of it -the drinking alone listening to music- were painfully close to experiences I've had. I don't want to identify with this woman so it left me uneasy though it overall did have a lived in feel to it plus it just didn't feel as awful as a 2024 interpretation of this material would be. There was still some sense of balance but the key thing I felt watching this was that without critiquing the modern life of serial monogamy there is this sense of being single leading to a misery ...and I see this in so many movies where you have this 'lead' guy or girl who is 'cool' in a way for not settling and being a maverick BUT ...does it end well for them? YEs there IS an arc. Yet without an eventual gravitation towards what is healthy and ultimately right (family and stability) it's a dark end...
Also watched 'Enemy of the State' which is set around CHristmas. Very eerie aspect of this was that I told my girlfriend that in 'The Matrix' Neo's passport expiry was 9/11 and then she laughed it off and then moments later in this VERY movie the antagonist's date of birth is revealed to be 9/11 just moments before a huge explosion....hmmm...
It was a decent thriller though I just felt like maybe it was 'predictive programming' and therefore was unsure if it can be assessed as art and instead more of a weird propaganda piece.
This whole idea of government overrearch was explored again in Marvel's Civil War in a less interesting way. What I thought watching is that they don't make these 'man against the system' type movies anymore yet you couldn't escape them in the late 90s. It's almost as if collectively people have given up and instead of making some kind of artistic rallying cry people want to indulge in complete escapist fantasy. Mario movie! Sonic movie! Bridgerton! Give me a world that looks NOTHING like the real one so I can just forget instead of presenting some allegory for how the very real issues could be overcome. It's insidious and quite disturbing.
Mostly Christmas themed stuff and now I struggle to remember any of it....
An odd rip off of it's a wonderful life called 'One Magic CHristmas' with a similar message of 'hey, think your life sucks? Well it could be even worse!' but just not as well-written.
Something called Chilly scenes from winter:
A truly pathetic main character hung up on a girl who doesn't particularly like him. It's so 1970's in a certain way that it has a bummer ending, it subverts the romantic comedy in a way by having a lead male who puruses a woman pathetically. It just felt very dated to me, as a lot of 70s movies seemed to indulge in nihilism for nihilism's sake which just strikes me as sad and trying to romanticize self-destructive behaviour (which a lot of 70s movies did).
Bad Santa was actually...good. I mean it was funny and had an arc. I hear the Coen brothers were behind it and it does have their tonal fingerprints all over with some of the twists and turns. I'm a sucker for films about completely alienated individuals who are hopeless yet still with a small glimmer of redemptive hope that isn't totally fulfilled so this worked for me.
I'm a little embarassed to admitt I watched 'Bridget Jones' Diary' which I had seen before as a teenager and watching it again now I realised that some parts of it -the drinking alone listening to music- were painfully close to experiences I've had. I don't want to identify with this woman so it left me uneasy though it overall did have a lived in feel to it plus it just didn't feel as awful as a 2024 interpretation of this material would be. There was still some sense of balance but the key thing I felt watching this was that without critiquing the modern life of serial monogamy there is this sense of being single leading to a misery ...and I see this in so many movies where you have this 'lead' guy or girl who is 'cool' in a way for not settling and being a maverick BUT ...does it end well for them? YEs there IS an arc. Yet without an eventual gravitation towards what is healthy and ultimately right (family and stability) it's a dark end...
Also watched 'Enemy of the State' which is set around CHristmas. Very eerie aspect of this was that I told my girlfriend that in 'The Matrix' Neo's passport expiry was 9/11 and then she laughed it off and then moments later in this VERY movie the antagonist's date of birth is revealed to be 9/11 just moments before a huge explosion....hmmm...
It was a decent thriller though I just felt like maybe it was 'predictive programming' and therefore was unsure if it can be assessed as art and instead more of a weird propaganda piece.
This whole idea of government overrearch was explored again in Marvel's Civil War in a less interesting way. What I thought watching is that they don't make these 'man against the system' type movies anymore yet you couldn't escape them in the late 90s. It's almost as if collectively people have given up and instead of making some kind of artistic rallying cry people want to indulge in complete escapist fantasy. Mario movie! Sonic movie! Bridgerton! Give me a world that looks NOTHING like the real one so I can just forget instead of presenting some allegory for how the very real issues could be overcome. It's insidious and quite disturbing.
Exactly as I expected it would be. Thanks for watching this so I don't have to.
Trailer made it look like Game of Thrones: Mary edition.
Can’t vouch for that, never saw the Mary trailer and only watched first 2 episodes of Game of Thrones. There were some moments where the filmmaking and subject matter felt a little bit like the Omen though if you could probably imagine.
What I see now is a plethora of dystopian films being produced. There's so many of them that they've practically created an entirely new genre.
I guess we're at the point now where we're being conditioned to expect things like lack of privacy, government overreach, and mistrust of others to be normalized so we, the populace, can accept and adapt to this new way of life.
I don’t really know if there is more now than in to past decades. 70’s and 80’s had a ton of them. 90’s was kinda a lull overall but a bunch of Y2K fear movies like Armagedon and Deep Impact etc. also Gattaca. Last 10-15 years has been an uptick with the zombie apocalypse stuff, Black Mirror show, new Mad Max universe stuff etc.
I recall reading something (may have been from Mark Steyn) that said women like to think that, faced with an apocalyptic scenario they'll be Charlize Theron in Mad Max, but really they'll be more like Charlize Theron in The Road. Ouch
Bill Duke's "the thing I don't understand" line is always funny.
The line that always resonates is Fonda waxing poetical about the "golden" 60s, then harshly and cynically sums it up:
I finally watched The Godfather yesterday for the first time.
I don't feel any need to write a review - mostly because i'm still digesting it - but I understand your quoted message above a little clearer now.
I will say this though, for a movie made in the early 70's and how long it is, it is superbly paced. That point alone says a lot about modern film making.
I will now follow up in your honor @GodfatherPartTwo and watch The Godfather Part Two.
One of my all time favorites free to watch on YouTube:
"The film is based on the 1923 memoir Dersu Uzala (which was named after the native trapper) by Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, about his exploration of the Sikhote-Alin region of the Russian Far East over the course of multiple expeditions in the early 20th century. Shot almost entirely outdoors in the Russian Far East wilderness, the film explores the theme of a native of the forests who is fully integrated into his environment, leading a style of life that will inevitably be destroyed by the advance of civilization."
"The film is based on the 1923 memoir Dersu Uzala (which was named after the native trapper) by Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, about his exploration of the Sikhote-Alin region of the Russian Far East over the course of multiple expeditions in the early 20th century. Shot almost entirely outdoors in the Russian Far East wilderness, the film explores the theme of a native of the forests who is fully integrated into his environment, leading a style of life that will inevitably be destroyed by the advance of civilization."
I think it might even be worth rewatching the first one before you jump into the second. It's something I've done with many of what became my favorite films. Taxi Driver, Rocky, Godfather. First time I watched Taxi Driver, I watched it again a day later. Great films get better the more you watch them.
Godfather one is intentionally misdirecting for newcomers. Most people go into the film thinking it's about Marlon Brando's character when it's actually about Al Pacino's, who feels like a side character for most of the film. For that reason, you might consider a rewatch to solidify your thoughts on it.
The restaurant scene in The Godfather is pivotal to the last season of The Sopranos. It gets referenced over and over again. Maybe I'll make a post about it on The Sopranos thread.
