Movies you've just watched

[kaicooper]

I actually thought War for the Planet of the Apes was... somewhat of a letdown compared to Dawn. There isn't any real action sequences, except for the beginning and the end.

sounds good..non straight to Action like Dawn..finally

[Skykid]

but the Marvel formula is starting to grate on me a bit because there's no sign of anything changing in it at all, it's basically settled on being just a bit too quippy for its own good
like, everyone's a smart-ass -- that was fine in Iron Man because that's established as part of the character, but everyone shouldn't be doing that shit all the time

I'm not sure what you are expecting. Spider-Man has always been quippy, though he's usually much less of the jerk than Deadpool (one thing, from what I have seen, that the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon got wrong). A Spider-Man movie wouldn't be Spider-Man without quips.

Spider-Man SHOULD be quippy, that's his character. If anything Raimi's Spider-Man wasn't quippy enough.

That said I know exactly what he's talking about. The Marvel formula is so trite that it partly relies on an abundance of bad quips coming all the time to relieve the tedium of the non-threats and non-plots. Downey Jr has officially become insufferable by this point.

[null1024]

Probably didn't make it clear, but Spiderman himself wasn't too bad about it, and I did mention the exception of where it's in character. Raimi's Spiderman definitely didn't talk enough shit.
but everyone with screen time shouldn't be making a smart-ass remark every single scene, like has become standard in Marvel movies

[boagman]

Saw "Baby Driver" last night. It was functional for some entertainment. Driving sequences are the highlight for me, as are the supporting cast. Whoever the lead in the movie is, he either ain't much in the acting department or he's not given much of a chance in this role, quite frankly.

Now, the supporting cast? They seem to be having a fun time together. Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Eiza Gonzales (she's...pretty) all seem to be having a good time in their respective roles, and even other, less famous supporting people join in the fun.

Very, very, *very* soundtrack-focused, but I wasn't bothered by it. It was actually cute in some ways.

[Skykid]

I think Edgar Wright is one of the best in the business today. Baby Driver is my most anticipated release this year!

[BrianC]

I liked Raimi's first two Spider-Man movies better than the first Andrew Garfield one (haven't seen Amazing Spider-Man 2, but it sounds like a bit of a mess), but I found Andrew Garfield to be a better Spider-Man. I haven't seen Homecoming yet, but I liked the MCU Spider-Man in Civil War.

[boagman]

I think Edgar Wright is one of the best in the business today. Baby Driver is my most anticipated release this year!

I think you'll like it, perhaps more so at the beginning than the end, but I enjoyed it well enough. Plus, enough humor to keep things light enough for it to be pretty fun throughout.

[Ixmucane2]

Wish Upon

An unusually weak and nondisturbing horror story about a music box that grants wishes to a rather inappropriate protagonist (Joey King as a mediocre and unattractive high school student).
Many characters die horribly, but not horribly enough, and the bad ending is traditional and highly conformist. The few sparks of smart behaviour exhibited by the characters are immediately, brutally, and gratuitously punished.
Modest shreds of artistic value can be found in the conventional but harsh portrayal of high school social pressures and teenager idiocy.

[Zen]

Courier X (2016) - Thomas Gulamerian

Not a bad effort at all, especially on a low budget. Hard to recommend unless you have a passing knowledge or interest in the subject matter. Although, it does star the velvet Udo Kier, so there's that
Kill the Messenger (2014) - Michael Cuesta, would give some background but I could not recommend that film as it is a very poor and does not do the broader subject matter much justice. Also, Jeremy Renner's melodramatic performance is particularly bad.

[Zen]

Rear Window (1954) - Alfred Hitchcock

Lost count of the amount of times I have watched this. The plot device of James Stewart's lack of mobility throughout, always led to, in my view, a very relaxed watching experience.
We get to watch a fascinating, beautiful film (hopefully on the big screen) about a man watching a beautiful, fascinating "film" on the enormous , full-wall sized screen of his Greenwich Village courtyard.
Meticulous and masterfully crafted by Hitchcock. The sounds, the music, the Technicolor. Wonderful.

And then, there is Grace Kelly.
It has been said that web porn ruined interest in real life sex but Hitchcock had that beat. Being exposed to the "Hitchcock blondes", at age eight or nine, could fuck you up for life, man.
You either went full gay on the spot, or spent a portion of your maturity cursing "hitch."
I think the correct description of Kelly in this film is; "Devastating".

[Some-Mist]

been hearing a bit about baby driver since edgar has been a guest on a few of podcasts I like - doug loves movies and comedy bang bang to name two. my buddy who went and saw it said it was a fun watch but not worth seeing it in theaters.

kumail nanjiani has been on a handful of podcasts as well, promoting the big sick which I haven't heard anything about outside of watching a trailer... and I really want to see it but I'll probably wait for the home release for that one too.

and then of course the disaster artist teaser just dropped, and that clip might've been the best thing james franco has ever done (not surprising). it's not coming out until december but that'll be a day one for me. after showing the lady the trailer I was able to finally convince her to watch the room last night.

I'm also waiting for the trailer for bob byington's infinity baby since it's gotten some really positive feedback.

[nissling]

Saw Dunkirk yesterday on 70mm in Stockholm. It was a piece of shit. Characters become ants and Nolan just stack every story line on top of each other in a random order, all of which becomes boring, sentimental and predictable. All quiet on the Warner front.

[Ixmucane2]

Kiss of the Damned

The daily (well, nightly) life of a bunch of vampires who would feel at home in Anne Rice novels.
Set in contemporary Connecticut and in a nearby city that might be New York.
Mimi, a rather wild girl who enjoys killing people for blood, antagonizes her more civilized sister (who limits herself to hunting animals) and the actress (no matinées...) who leads their apparently informal vampire organization and is even more pro-human.

An interesting combination of concrete details and action, vampire ethical and political issues, and sex. Almost no sense of humour.
More attention to covering up murders and corpse disposal would have been good, but on the other hand vampirism "rules" are straightforwardly explained, illustrated and hinted at; rigorously followed; and logically consistent and thematically well suited.

[Skykid]

Saw Dunkirk yesterday on 70mm in Stockholm. It was a piece of shit. Characters become ants and Nolan just stack every story line on top of each other in a random order, all of which becomes boring, sentimental and predictable. All quiet on the Warner front.

Christopher Nolan is the most overrated director of the last 20 years, but interested to see this anyway.

[xxx1993]

Valerian felt like a sort of spiritual successor to The Fifth Element. Interesting.

[GaijinPunch]

Valerian felt like a sort of spiritual successor to The Fifth Element. Interesting.

CNN's article title on the review is "'Valerian' makes early bid for worst movie of the year".

I'm going to see Dunkirk tomorrow, and unfortunately not in 70mm... As a pro-film photog I should, but the one theater that has it doesn't have the greatest seats.

[BrianC]

I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I can't wait to see Dawn (which I also have on Blu-ray) and War. I have also seen the original 60s movie recently, which I also liked quite a bit. I was perplexed at how it ended up with a G rating, though.

Today, I watched Race for Your Life Charlie Brown. Definitely as good as I remembered, though those bullies were annoying ("We're number 1, we're number 1"). Made it all the more enjoyable when Linus snapped his blanket at them.

[Skykid]

Boy Wonder (2010)

Great concept that happens to be poorly made crap. Badly handled at every turn, from directing, casting, acting and pace. It's a movie that gets sidetracked whenever possible from what makes it interesting, constantly meandering into moral procrastination that pulls the rug from the vigilantism that the movie is meant to be delivering instead.

It's junk, and I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on it unless you're interested in seeing a concept that it crying out for a rewrite and a remake from a credible director in 2017.

Unsurprisingly Roger Ebert thought it was very good and one was one of the only professional critics to praise it, which is par for the course for Ebert because he knew nothing at all about film and was a completely useless critic who got most of everything wrong. It's amazing a man so bad at his job can rank so highly in his profession for so long, but when I consider the general audience he's informing and it somehow makes sense.

[nissling]

I'm going to see Dunkirk tomorrow, and unfortunately not in 70mm... As a pro-film photog I should, but the one theater that has it doesn't have the greatest seats.

I honestly regret watching it in 70mm. I'm so freaking tired of celluloid and due to the two bladed shutter on the projector at "our" theater, the image gets so much flicker and has overall very little brightness. And I wouldn't call it soft, rather blurry. It wasn't uniform the slightest bit either. Both left and right side of the image had an obvious blue tint. DCP would've been much better imo. As a cinephile, I'm glad the theaters have moved over to digital.

I remember watching a 70mm print of Aliens, and although it was just a blown-up from the 35mm IP the image was a million times better than this. And I'll probably never forget watching Le Mans in 70mm. Dunkirk however was completely forgettable.

[BurlyHeart]

Dunkirk.

Good movie, but not one I will watch again. At least for a while. I left the movie thinking 'fuck war', which is a good thing but often at odds to the plentiful hero-centric war films we're so used to seeing. The sound effects are downright frightening at times, whilst the score stupendously adds to the drama unfolding. The cinematography is not as spell binding as some of Nolan's other works (but still very good), and the sound feels like the star of the show.

Spoiler

Somewhat paradoxically, a highlight is when the remaining spitfire's engine fails and it's gliding through the air silently.

The one week, one day, one hour thing worked well I thought, but I do wonder how many in the theatre actually got it.

Recommended, but only if you understand not to expect a typical Hollywood style story.

Also I'm a little drunk. Apologies for rambling.

[GaijinPunch]

I'm going to see Dunkirk tomorrow, and unfortunately not in 70mm... As a pro-film photog I should, but the one theater that has it doesn't have the greatest seats.

I honestly regret watching it in 70mm. I'm so freaking tired of celluloid and due to the two bladed shutter on the projector at "our" theater, the image gets so much flicker and has overall very little brightness. And I wouldn't call it soft, rather blurry. It wasn't uniform the slightest bit either. Both left and right side of the image had an obvious blue tint. DCP would've been much better imo. As a cinephile, I'm glad the theaters have moved over to digital.

I remember watching a 70mm print of Aliens, and although it was just a blown-up from the 35mm IP the image was a million times better than this. And I'll probably never forget watching Le Mans in 70mm. Dunkirk however was completely forgettable.

Sounds like you got wonky projectionists. There is a right and wrong way to do this shit, which is likely why most theaters favor digital and all of it's conveniences. From a business standpoint, I don't blame them.

The local theater here has proper 70mm projection (they even just did a 70mm festival which I missed, but they seem to do it regularly).

[nissling]

It's more that they're still using a pair of dusty of DP70s that hasn't been in use for many, many years.

If you're ever in Sweden, the only place where you can experience 70mm film with some kind of justice to the medium it's at Filmhuset in Stockholm. Their pair of Kinoton FP75Es are probably some of the best projectors for celluloid out there. I do still however prefer their Barco 4K DLP.

[GaijinPunch]

It's more that they're still using a pair of dusty of DP70s that hasn't been in use for many, many years.

If you're ever in Sweden, the only place where you can experience 70mm film with some kind of justice to the medium it's at Filmhuset in Stockholm. Their pair of Kinoton FP75Es are probably some of the best projectors for celluloid out there. I do still however prefer their Barco 4K DLP.

I'm not familiar enough w/ the equipment to comment, only on basics of operation that people that worked in theaters way back when have told me. The local arthouse theater here has 2k and 4k projection capabilities, and they list the format of every feature they do. They are sometimes a bit stubborn when it comes to film over digital. They played Akira two nights in a row and both nights played the streamline dub, as they can't get a subtitled version on film. I gave him a whole spiel about a festival in Japan, no less, that played both 35mm and digital versions... didn't get much of a response. Oh, well.

[nissling]

At Filmhuset you also get information about what format it is, where it's from and its resolution (in case it's a digital file). Many people have criticized them for screening more DCPs than celluloid but since all masters are DIs nowadays I'm more than satisfied.

My main problem with 70mm film is that they simply cannot be stored like 35mm. At 6-10 degrees Celsius, the magnetic track will over time be ruined and useless. At higher temperatures the image will be tinted and after enough time turns into vinegar, like in the example below (which is sourced from a theatrical print rather than an IP).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJE1xRwhmjI
65mm negatives seem very rare. On 35mm, things are much easier and there's rarely any need to make a decision for archiving those films.

[GaijinPunch]

I did a quick google search. I know nothing about magnetic audio stored on film (only that it's possible). But, doesn't 35mm only have basic stereo, so anything fancier than that (which is anything) is recorded and played separately? I've not looked at how any cinematic film is cut and spooled...definitely not when audio is involved. I have a few "film" film stocks in my freezer, too.

And on that note...

Dunkirk:
I can see what all the fuss is about. As one would expect, it's amazingly shot (especially the dog fights) and of course, powerfully scored. I won't go into spoiler territory, but story-wise, having seen a lot of WWII films now that i'm in middle age, the different take was welcome. My main negative comment is, and this is coming from someone who has never and likely never will see combat, something like Saving Private Ryan (while having some ridiculous plot lines) seems a more accurate portrayal of war, given the gratuitous violence. Whether that's required or not is another topic, but most of the time I'm in the camp that if your'e going to do a war movie, it should scare the fuck out of anyone that might go to war.

[nissling]

For 35mm prints, both the optical and magnetic tracks have been in use since the 60s so even if the magnetic one goes bad it can still be used for screenings. Thing is though that a 70mm print is nowhere near as likely keep either the soundtrack or the colors after 25-30 years of storage. Due to this some archives are actually splitting the films, having half of all prints in the freezer and the remaining features stored in higher temperatures. For this reason future 70mm screenings will degrade in either regard and after a certain point they have either turned into vinegar or become silent.

Today, the magnetic tracks are used for Datasat. Simply put the track contains time codes and those are then sent to a computer which is synchronizing the sound to the time codes its given. It's also used to synchronize subtitles, which are then projected with a separate projector.
No magnetic track = No time codes = No way to synchronize the soundtrack.

Now for archiving the 17.5mm soundtrack is usually available somewhere. Thing is though that if you have to add the soundtrack once more you have to get a new master to synchronize them and this is where things get tricky: Nearly every restoration being made today is done with a digital intermediate, usually scanned in 4K (rarely 8K) and worked with in either 2K or 4K. Since digital equipment have much more potential to easily recreate the original look of a 50 year old film than any analogue method, there's no use to go with a photo chemical process since it can all be done digitally. But once it is digital however, you may as well let it be that way. Of course some companies are still making 35mm prints of these restorations but we're still talking about a digital file.

So in other words, these old films will sooner or later not be watchable in 70mm without getting new prints and those will then be from digital masters. And if it's already digital, they may as well keep it that way.

In the old days most films were cut on the developed negative to be inverted to an interpositive. The IP would then be used for the photochemical process (which today is color grading) and later inverted again to an internegative. That internegative would be used to develop theatrical prints. TBH, very little is lost when a film is scanned to digital. The quality of celluloid decreases the more generations the film goes through and that's far more destructive than converting it to digital and doing all of the work there.

[GaijinPunch]

For 35mm prints, both the optical and magnetic tracks have been in use since the 60s so even if the magnetic one goes bad it can still be used for screenings. Thing is though that a 70mm print is nowhere near as likely keep either the soundtrack or the colors after 25-30 years of storage.

Why is this different from 35mm? I assumed that picture was non-magnetic... for simplicities sake, something like E6 (although I'm sure some films have their own chemical process) which is far less sensitive after development (colors, anyway), but still susceptible to other damage (dust, mainly). This is coming from someone that has a freezer tray full of E6 film (some from the 90's) but all my exposed & developed stuff is on the book shelves.

DISCLAIMER: I dabble in color but find it highly annoying when it comes to scanning, and of course dark room printing I just have no clue about. My knowledge on this is pretty cursory, even though I have an interest.

So in other words, these old films will sooner or later not be watchable in 70mm without getting new prints and those will then be from digital masters. And if it's already digital, they may as well keep it that way.

Totally agree w/ this. I'm sure loads of vinyl re-releases are mastered from digital. What's the point?

In the old days most films were cut on the developed negative to be inverted to an interpositive. The IP would then be used for the photochemical process (which today is color grading) and later inverted again to an internegative. That internegative would be used to develop theatrical prints. TBH, very little is lost when a film is scanned to digital. The quality of celluloid decreases the more generations the film goes through and that's far more destructive than converting it to digital and doing all of the work there.

That's to say, the end film which is a projected is a positive (naturally), but was developed as a negative... and then that was transferred to another film stock as a positive? Sounds tedious. Why would they just not shoot on a positive film?

Interesting stuff -- what is your background w/ this, anyway?

[nissling]

Why is this different from 35mm?

Because many 35mm prints have both optical and magnetic tracks, on each side of the perf. You don't have to take the magnetic track in consideration when archiving those 35mm prints.

Why would they just not shoot on a positive film?

I'm no cinematographer nor director so I cannot answer that question.

There are a couple of examples of films shot on positive film. One of them is Fucking Åmål (aka Show Me Love). In that case, the director wanted a gritty, grainy look and after various of testings they settled down with reversal 16mm. It was however a very complicated post-production and it went through many generations of 35mm intermediates until a theatrical print was made. And it wasn't until this year that the film was restored from the original positive. Former releases have had a strong yellowish tone and honestly looked like crap, but now it's probably as good as it gets.

Interesting stuff -- what is your background w/ this, anyway?

I'm just a hobbyist who've made a couple of visits at the restoration studio at the Swedish Film Institute and haven't been shy to ask questions. There are people out there with much more knowledge than me and could probably give you much better answers. I don't think I've ever even shot anything on film, not even stills.

[boagman]

"Dunkirk" (in IMAX, but not with laser projection or 70mm)

Pretty good. It's most definitely a Christopher Nolan movie. Very, very him. If that's something that bothers you, you won't like this movie. Sorry.

The aerial photography/footage is just amazing. I don't think I've been as impressed with cinematography like this since "Top Gun". It's certainly what I'd consider to be the highlight of the movie. From there, you can assume the typical Nolan-style of filming, with washed out colors, a too-intruding soundtrack, often hard-to-hear dialogue, and no shortage of different characters you're supposed to be able to keep better track of than you actually will be able to. Very few characters are actually identifiable by actual, you know...*names*. That's kind of a problem, and while other movies might throw bunches of characters at you (say, "Black Hawk Down", for example), at least most of those have names you can attribute to them that help differentiate characters and keep things a bit more organized in your mind.

Nolan plays around with the clock/time in this movie, too, and I can easily see where it could be quite confusing. I was able to keep up pretty easily, but I caught on early. Not everyone may be as accepting of the play as I am.

I think it's pretty well-acted, but again, there's a lot of different people involved, so there isn't one major person to be watching all the time, and the cuts from group-to-group or person-to-person don't give you as much of an opportunity to see character develop as well.

The soundtrack does become overbearing quite early. The movie is *loud*, and it's meant to be loud, considering the material, but even so: Nolan could stand to back away from his ever-booming soundtrack somewhat. It is, if nothing else, distracting at points, and interferes with dialogue that's meant to be heard and other noise you should be able to hear, too. It's not that the soundtrack is necessarily bad...it's just ever-present, and when at the end of the movie there's suddenly some silence to be had, you especially wonder why it couldn't have been better utilized in other parts, too. I still *like* the score, but its ever-present nature and volume do detract somewhat. The original "John Wick" had a somewhat similar issue.

Overall, though, I liked it. It was interesting, and had some pretty interesting storylines, I'd say. I could see it again, but unfortunately, IMAX 70mm isn't available anywhere in Michigan, where I am.

[Zen]

Ghost in the Shell (2017) - Rupert Sanders

Took three nights to get through this. I found it very boring indeed.
Still have not seen the original though, so I will give that a shot in case I am missing something.