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OT: Movies/TV Shows

As long as we agree that the greatest action director of all time is either John McTiernan or Paul Verhoeven we're all good.
 
Watched "What We Do In The Shadows" (movie) last week and loved. Been binging the TV series ever since and I think it's even better. It's hilarious.
 
zeke said:
As long as we agree that the greatest action director of all time is either John McTiernan or Paul Verhoeven we're all good.
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McTiernan made Predator (87) and Die Hard (88) back-to-back.
Also, 13th Warrior is fantastic but got screwed by the studio.

Verhoeven? Meh
 
zeke said:
Most war movies are epically boring thanks to them just re-hashing battle scenes.

sure, superfluous Cameos can be distracting. Then again, the acting in the movie is pretty terrific, especially by Penn, Harrelson, Nolte, and Koteas. Unfortunately the weakest link acting wise was the lead Cavaziel, and that really hurt the movie's ability to stay centered.

The battle scenes were fantastic, and of course the cinematography and music were elite.

The Thin Red Line is based on a novel written by an actual soldier which was every bit as philosophical as the movie:

""When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. Life was pointless. Whether he looked at a tree or not was pointless. It just didn't make any difference. It was pointless to the tree, it was pointless to every man in his outfit, pointless to everybody in the whole world. Who cared? It was not pointless only to him; and when he was dead, when he ceased to exist, it would be pointless to him too. More important: Not only would it be pointless, it would have been pointless, all along."

so you can take up his personal experience of war and what were the important things to discuss about it with him.

Of course you play a character on here, so i'll just assume you actually claiming to believe that war movies should be nothing more than battle re-enactments is a bit. Just like you not understanding that Clooney being talked over is symbolizing the meaningless of what he's saying must also be a bit.
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I get the symbolism. What I don't get is using George Clooney in a role that any bit player could have done. If you want the voiceover to have gravitas, don't distract the audience with George Clooney. Because when the viewer sees George Clooney appear on the screen they start wondering what he's going to do and say because they assume his character must be important to the plot. So they sit through the entire voiceover only half listening to it, straining to hear what the Clooney character is saying thinking it must be important somehow because George Clooney.

And on a deeper level a viewer could also think that the selection of Clooney is the director's way of fucking with the viewer; being deliberately obtuse just to screw with them. Just to demonstrate what an "auteur" he is. Yeah, well fuck you, Terry.
 
zeke said:
And of course the entire plot of Saving Private Ryan was bullshit. The story was based on a guy who had three brothers dead/missing, but they didn't have to send some crazy rescue party after him, he just showed up at a camp looking for his brother and was sent home when they found out who he was. One of his brothers was actually stuck in a japanese camp and they didn't rescue him, they just assumed he was dead, until the camp was freed at the end of the war.
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"The mission is the man".

The whole story of SPR is about the juxtaposition of masses of lost lives against the attempt to save one life and all the moral and philosophical arguments such things entail. SPR was far better at telling the audience what it was about than TTRL because Spielberg wasn't trying to be clever or take the piss with his audience. He clearly has his ego in better check than Malick and it shows.

That said, I do have a couple of quibbles with SPR using hackneyed Hollywood movie tropes like the inevitable wise cracking guy from Brooklyn who is apparently standard issue in any US infantry platoon and the naïve hick with the photo of his sweetheart back home in Bumblefuck Kansas.
 
zeke said:
Come on how often have you re-watched private ryan to the end? You watch the opening scene and then "pause for later".
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Actually the scene where Mellish dies in hand to hand combat while Upham is frozen in fear, unable to come to his aid is far more visceral than the opening scene on the beach.
 
zeke said:
but like that's the entire point of the film - that the US army would care so much to send an entire rescue unit out in the middle of the war to bring back a soldier. but they didn't and wouldn't.
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Uh, yeah they would and they did.

In WW2 Elmer, Clyde, and twins Rolon and Rulon, were all killed within a few months of each other in 1944. Their parents then successfully petitioned for their fifth son Boyd, who was also on active duty, to be released from service. Their sixth son, Elton, who had not yet reached conscription age, was exempted from military service.

The three Butehorn brothers of Bethpage, NY, Charles, Joseph, and Henry, were all deployed during World War II. After Charles was killed in action in France in November 1944 and Joseph was killed in action in the Pacific in May 1945, Henry, who was serving with the Army Air Forces in Italy, was ordered home by the War Department.

And after WW2 the US instituted the "Sole Survivor" Policy which specifically exempted people from serving if they were the last surviving member of the family.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
I get the symbolism. What I don't get is using George Clooney in a role that any bit player could have done. If you want the voiceover to have gravitas, don't distract the audience with George Clooney. Because when the viewer sees George Clooney appear on the screen they start wondering what he's going to do and say because they assume his character must be important to the plot. So they sit through the entire voiceover only half listening to it, straining to hear what the Clooney character is saying thinking it must be important somehow because George Clooney.
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(A) you really love George Clooney eh?….couldn’t even think straight once he appeared.

(B) he had a much larger role that was filmed and was part of the first 5+ hour cut, but was ultimately largely chopped out of the film in the editing room. He wasn’t hired to be a cameo.

WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
And on a deeper level a viewer could also think that the selection of Clooney is the director's way of fucking with the viewer; being deliberately obtuse just to screw with them. Just to demonstrate what an "auteur" he is. Yeah, well fuck you, Terry.
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You sound livid that other people got it, and enjoy the movie….and are directing that rage at Clooney’s appearance.
 
CH1 said:
Wrapped in a very entertaining collage.

Spielberg also assumed that we have seen a war movie or two… so he pushed the medium and literally showed us something novel that created a different viewing experience
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This!

First and foremost, Spielberg didn't insult his audience or try to show them how clever he was. And no matter how many war movies you'd seen prior to SPR, NOTHING (short of being a veteran of actual combat) could possibly prepare you for that first 30 minutes. A cinematic masterpiece is one that affects you like no other film has ever affected you before. Spielberg took a well worn story about an event that many movies before have tried to recreate, and did something totally different with it. It blew the audience away and every scene that comes after that opening sequence is built on that visceral reaction. I've seen lots of war movies, read lots of books about war, and have a high tolerance for blood and guts but the first time I saw that in a theatre, when I saw that soldier on the beach who had been disemboweled, holding his bloody entrails in his hands and screaming for his mother, I was genuinely disturbed. That's what a great movie can do. That's the power it has in the hands of a skillful director.

Thin Red Line just bored the shit out of me. The only power it had was to induce the desire in me to take a nap.
 
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