Last Movie You Watched

Watched this with my family. It took two days since we got a late start yesterday and my sister needs sleep as a mother to a five month old. Heck, my sister staying to watch (read: scroll through Instagram and Pintrest) with us despite declaring early on yesterday that this movie wasn't for her is a win.

I don't think I've actually seen the original Magnificent Seven. I mean, yes, I've watched Seven Samurai with my dad, but I can't remember seeing the original Magnificent Seven. That didn't matter much here, because while the main plot remained, certain things changed. For example, the romance with Shino was taken out, and Chico's role - a combined version of Katsushiro and Kikuchiyo from what I'm reading - was more or less distilled into Chris Pratt's character's role and Red Harvest, the Native American ally. These aren't bad changes, as they did create some surprising subversions, but overall they weren't the changes the movie needed.

Going off of that, this movie definitely needed some stronger bonding moments. The moments really consist of the seven spatting, drinking, and laughing over jokes we don't really get to see because the scene is about something else entirely. I didn't feel like these men bonded with each other*, because all of the bonding happens off-screen, or so it felt. And while the actors did phenomenal jobs with their characters, there didn't feel like a lot of chemistry within the cast.

Denzel Washington is the major exception in both character and chemistry. His character, Sam, knows pretty much every other ally as he's the one recruiting them and is easily one of the best actors in the movie (I'd say he's above Pratt and next to Vincent). His interactions with The Widow are far better than any flirting scene Pratt's character has.*

All of these critiques don't mean the movie was bad. Not at all! The action was good (which is good because there's a LOT of it), the acting was very solid, and the score did its job. The main set pieces felt tangible, if a little artificial, and the quiet moments were well directed.

Overall, this is a fun popcorn flick. That may be a disappointing if you were expecting a great, modern remake of a classic movie...that itself is an adaptation of a classic movie...but compared to other remakes out there - Total Recall I'm looking at you! - this is a win. Besides, this may be a good place to introduce younger viewers and children into Kurosawa films by explaining the origins of this film, watching Seven Samurai, and comparing and contrasting the two films.

Tomorrow we're watching Seven Days in May as a family at my dad's behest, as he thinks we'll enjoy this (...well, me and my sister anyway. My mom will either suffer through it or fall asleep during it since she doesn't like black-and-white movies...my money's on the latter...)





*It's weird because of the four things I've seen Chris Pratt in, his best onscreen romance was easily with Aubrey Plaza in Parks and Rec. Maybe it's the type of role they cast him in, where he fits the build, swag, and character, but not the charm. Maybe it's the script of these parts. But something is off in the romances when Pratt is playing these roles. Be it dinosaur wrangler, Star-lord, or sharpshooter.

EDIT: I forgot to add, I may or may not be creating a Star Wars movie in my mind based off of this modern adaptation of The Magnificent Seven as well as Seven Samurai...and it is pretty interesting so far! (And yes, I've seen TCW episode. It was good, but I don't think it did the OG movie justice.) I think Synder mentioned wanting to do a movie like Seven Samurai with Jedi before, and if that's the case, this is inception. But I'm going to take his idea and run with it!

 

One of the ten best War Movies ever made!!!

 

Quite happy to say that the last movie I watched was the unaltered 1977 theatrical release of Star Wars: A New Hope. I recently snagged the Limited Edition DVD set that includes the original theatrical versions of ANH, TESB and ROTJ. I hadn't seen that version of ANH since sometime before we got rid of all of our VCR's. Seeing the version of the film that I grew up with was awesome. Han Shoots first, no CGI Jabba, rotoscoped lightsaber blades that aren't always lit up properly...it's like my childhood all over again.

 

A Fistful Of Dollars

With the exception of watching the Star Wars Rifftrax (which uses the Special Editions) I haven't watched the Special Editions since they first came out on VHS, once the novelty wore off I went back to my old VHS editions and when that DVD set with the old Laserdisc transfer of the theatrical versions as a bonus feature came out I got that. Then later on I downloaded the Despecialized versions and they're great, look a lot better than the version on my DVDs.

 

Just finished Seven Days In May! Overall it was a really good film. I've been having a pretty rough day, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd like to or as much as I think it deserves to be enjoyed, but it was good nonetheless. The themes of the movie feel very topical to current U.S. politics, and the acting was well done. The movie wasn't as tense as I'd like, but there were some quality moments. And I have to say, I miss the long-takes that older movies have. There's a level of artistry and skill in those. We see actors shine in those scenes, and I'm pretty bummed we don't see them more often...at least in the movies I usually watch. The romance aspect was awful though. There was so little chemistry between Kirk Douglas' character and Ava Gardner's character, which felt weird because both are amazing actors. The score was...1960s...so not good, but serviceable. And my sister enjoyed it (my mom spent the movie doing my sister's hair, so she listened mostly instead of watched)!

Overall it was a solid movie to wrap up my sister's time home.

Hopefully next up will be either Sword of the Beast, Three Days of the Condor, or Tenet. Then again, my mom and I are overdue for a re-watch of Crazy Rich Asians.

 

I watched Oceans 11 last night, I don’t know what I was expecting but I was pretty impressed. I think the ending was well done and it is a pretty enjoyable film! I would recommend it at like a 6.5 or 7 out of 10.

 

The original or the remake? It's been so long since I've seen the original I can't remember much about it but the remake was a lot of fun. Though it was one of those movies that was played on cable so much that I got tired of it but I'm kind of nostalgic about it these days. I think that's why I never bothered with any of the sequels, by the time they started coming out I was burned out on the first movie and the poor reviews weren't helping to convince me.

 

The remake, I want to watch the og though.

 

Midsommar


This was an interesting film.
I'm a little conflicted about the film.

Firstly, in a nutshell, this is a film that is effectively one part The Village, and one part Rosemary's Baby.
So, this...


Mixed with this...


That is, with an attempt to not spoil anything, it's a film that works on the principle of the uncanniness of feeling like something's terribly wrong, but having everyone around you behave as if everything's fine - which pushes one into a surreal position of questioning one's own state of mind.

In both cases of The Village and Rosemary's Baby you have this effect in place, and it's wrapped in social pressures to go along with strange and morbid cultural traditions that shock the protagonist in some manner or another.

The kick is always, with these kinds of films, what will the protagonist do - where do they draw the line...will they draw the line?

In a way, such films are a reflection upon the peculiarities of group thinking and how we are susceptible to such things, and examine the line between invested self will and brainwashed from cultural social pressure.

Midsommer follows in the footsteps of this long tradition, but it ante's it up a notch by adding in the effect of the "primal abyss" which the other two films principally lack.
In that one respect, it is as if someone has tossed in a dash of Altered States into the mix.

The film which punched audiences in the face with images of a primal abyss such as:




The Primal Abyss is something that human culture has relied upon for an incredibly long time.
It's basically a tool to evoke absolute primal fear that one has in the presence of extremely massive and powerful nature presenting itself in full force right in front of you with absolutely zero ability by you to do a d*** thing about it.

The typical response by people experiencing the primal abyss is to be absolutely shaken to their very core to such an extreme that it rattles off all of the cobwebs of assumption and jadedness that comes with experiencing the same phenomenon in one's daily life so frequently that most of reality is not examined, but just simply passed by.

Essentially, it's to cause a person to go back to being an infant and take in the world brand new.

In older cultures, this was absolutely valuable because it meant the person could offer radically different insights into doing things, and potentially give advantageous approaches to things that would help the community.

A sort of "fresh blood" in the thinking room, so to speak.

In the modern era that kind of fell away as it's only usually needed when most of one's surroundings are very uncertain and unknown.
In almost every cultural history, as certainty and physical knowledge grew, customs centered around the primal abyss faded in step.

Some fringes still hang on to it, but at that point it shifts from being a communal gain ambition to one of individualist gain ambition - the ambition to better the self in some way.
By extrapolation, it can be seen as communal in the sense of a shared experience, but it's typically not - in modern iterations - looked to as bringing survival insight that aids the community in progressing further in the physical world.

Our modern version of this is something like a writer's team's "sweat room" - the effect of shoving a bunch of people, or a person, into a closed off isolation until they come up with a solution or new insight into whatever the problem is, after which they emerge victorious with some accomplishment.

Midsommar is interesting because it takes the position back to communalism and away from individualism, but it guides the understanding of the system by the hand of individualism by giving us a protagonist with an individualist narrative motivation that is digestible for the context of the communal mixture.

This is where Midsommar soars, in exploring that primal abyss.

Additionally, it soars in reprising many of the French Wave cinema elements that made films like Rosemary's Baby and Altered States such good films.
In fact, it is remarkably similar to Rosemary's Baby in tonality of its cinematography.

It says quite a lot with the lens that isn't being said anywhere inside the frame, and it uses it to evoke the emotional state's dry texture repeatedly.

Where it slips, in my opinion, is with its handling of violence.
Violence is almost always critical to the primal abyss effect, and I'll take my hat off to Midsommar for quite effectively accomplishing that primary and visceral experience no better than I've ever seen put to film - it will punch for you to have that experience, and it may even take time to emerge from your subconscious as your mind attempts to lock into jadedness out of primal shock.

But it kind of undercuts itself by overusing that trick of violence as the film goes on.
The thing with primal abyss is that it's a one time impact that viscerally shakes you to your core and the reverberation of it while you go about an environment that continues on as nothing ever happened and everything is just dandy normal.

That reverberation is what causes the shaking of one's views, causes one introspection, and to see society differently (and if society isn't aware or responsive to the effects of the primal abyss and that you're going through the aftershocks of it, then it can drive you somewhat insane).

This is effectively what many soldiers coming back from war go through - they have a visceral experience of the primal abyss in the most brutal way and then get dumped back to Sunday church, children playing at parks, and grocery stores.
It's not during the violence that they have breakdowns (some do, but most - no). It's after when everything seemingly ignores that violence almost absolutely.

It's amplified if we can't make sense of the violence. If we can't make sense of it, it was out of our control absolutely, we were forced to witness it brutally and directly, and then we suddenly snap to a world that moves as if such things never happened, it can drive us absolutely mad.

And the longer we go without anything violent, the more maddening it gets actually.
Which is why some soldiers end up trying to find violent environments to get into after war.

This is the effect that Midsommar kind of misses the mark on.
So the last 1/3rd of the film somewhat drops in the effect it could have had.

That by no means indicates that the film is bad.
Absolutely not.

It's mostly like a great spaghetti that doesn't have parmesan (if you love parmesan on your spaghetti).
It doesn't mean the spaghetti is bad, it just means it could have been amaze-balls over the top had there been parmesan.

And that's about how I'd put this.
It could have been amaze-balls outstanding if it had started with brutal violence and then walked it down over the course of the film with the final act lacking any violence, rather than repeated punches of it in pointed places like it does.
It does not waste its violence pointlessly, don't mistake me. Every instance is used very specifically.

It just causes me to examine the theatrical effect of violence in juxtaposition to primal abyss and what other effective ways it could be used, and for THAT reason I would say that it's an AMAZING film.

I enjoyed watching it, AND it makes me think about a topic of cinema as a craft that very, very few films touch on.

This is not a horror film.
This is a traumatic shock film.

DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM IF YOU HAVE ANY FORM OF PTSD!
DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM IF YOU ARE HIGHLY SENSATIVE TO VIOLENCE!

THIS FILM CONTAINS BRUTAL REALISTIC VIOLENCE THAT WILL NOT DIAL IT BACK FOR THE CAMERA.

I do suggest this film, but I suggest it with EXTREME CAUTION. You NEED to be in a position for watching it.
For best viewing, if possible, watch when it's sunny out. Not because it's scary, but because it will amplify the aftertaste of the film - trust me.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I love that movie, especially with the foreshadowing with all the drawings on the walls.
Also I love that at the Attestupa, everyone is shocked, but Christian just looks like he has mild heartburn.

 

Gods, I loved that movie when I was a kid, but... I assume it is actually utter, utter garbage? This is one I should re-watch with my buddy during our bad-movie-night sessions, LOLz!

 

Can't say it's actually a good movie, no but it's kinda fun with some decent action and it's cool because of van damme. I enjoy these type of movies because of the action, cool characters and entertainment like most movies are meant to be enjoyed.

Oscar bait films usually aren't my thing!