Last Movie You Watched (2017)

[VictorK]

That's the point I really gave up on the movie. I would have walked out but I think my kids would have objected.

Why was this plot point objectionable?

 

[JunkMonkey]

Because:

Spoiler

Because Ego had been around for millions of years. And the average human lifespan is what ? 70 + 80? He had by his own admission discovered love for the first time. He couldn't put his millions of years old search for meaning on hold for a decade just in case he'd found it?

And then (unable to cope with whatever unspecified whatever it was he was unable to cope with) his solution was to put a cancer in her head and then vanish? He didn't just go. Pop over to another of his mates on another planet till she'd snuffed it. Didn't just whack her on the head with a 4x2 or blow up the planet - he seemed to have no compunction about killing his children in vast numbers - so why get squeamish about a mere human? Why put a cancer in her head? It doesn't make any sense.

And then why tell the kid? What possible motive could he have for telling his child that he'd murdered his mother (albeit in a strangely convoluted manner) when he was trying desperately to win said son over to his side? The only reason, the ONLY reason, was because the movie needed to give Starlordy guy and Ego guy a reason to have a greenscreen CGI fistfightt. Retrofitting the cause of mother's cancer was the excuse the movie came up with. It was cheap, easy, lazy daytime soap opera writing.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The last one I watched was "John Carter" loosely based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs "A Princess of Mars". I had previously started reading the book series, but really I didn't think they were much good. The sound balance was terrible, had to turn it down and switch on subtitles. If you know nothing about the books, it might be OK. Actually it might be slightly better.

Previous was Van Helsing, which had the "gothic kitchen sink" chucked at it and obviously way too big CGI budget and too small script budget. I didn't think much of it.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Guardians of the galaxy 2
9/10
It's greater than the first movie.

I think I'll pass.
I bought Avatar for €3 in a sale last month. I'll watch it when I've finished current proofing. I thought it sounded like "Pocahontas in space", but I'm told "not really". The fact that it did massively well in the cinema isn't important, but I'm curious.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Oh god! Van Helsing...

The last film I saw was (like most of the films I watch outwith the cinema) bought in a charity shop for pennies. My criteria for buying films are simple:

1 Have I seen it before?
2 Does it look like it might have gratuitous nudity?
3 Does it have Rutger Hauer in in it?
4 Have I ever heard of it before?

Answering 'no' to 1and 2 and 'yes' to 3 and 4 means I will almost certainly buy it (if it's cheap). Any three correct gets a serious consideration.

Le Voyage de James à Jérusalem only scored two - but the blurb on the back was in French and the film was in Hebrew with subtitles... so...

And it's a delightful little film about a devout young African Christian discovering the realities of life in the modern 'Holy Land'. No sex, no violence (someone trashes a television) gently predictable but a very sweet and touching, honest little film.

 

[Prairie_Dog]

The last one I watched was "John Carter" loosely based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs "A Princess of Mars". I had previously started reading the book series, but really I didn't think they were much good.

John Carter was actually not too bad an adaptation of the source material. The special effects were first rate, because it was a Disney film. The novels were pulpy swashbuckling adventures, and the movie was more or less true to the genre. They got a lot right, but overall the movie wasn't a big hit.

 

[VictorK]

You just saved me from waisting two hours of my life. Thank You.

Hold up a minute there, friend. Let your pal Victor take a shot at this.

Spoiler

There are three elements of Ego's character, clearly established in the movie, that make everything he does make sense:

1. Ego is not human. He's an immortal superbeing who has convinced himself that his purpose, the reason for existence, is to spread across the galaxy and make all life him.

2. Ego really did love Peter's mom.

3. Had Ego stayed on Earth, he would have become mortal and perished.

So, some of your beginning premises are wrong. Ego wasn't looking for meaning when he found Earth and the only love of his long, long, life. He'd found it. He knew what his purpose was. And, he knew that he had found love, which he didn't expect to find.

This is where the movie's use of its soundtrack pays off in an intelligent way. Trying to explain Ego's motivation is kind of hard, he's an alien and no human beings think like him. Which is why the movie uses the song Brandi as a shortcut. It's hard to understand a living planet who wants to replace all life with himself: it's easy to understand a sailor who, despite finding a girl who would make a good wife, has only one life, love, and lady: the sea. That's an old story, and Ego's is really no different. He has his purpose, and having found love has to choose between them.

Because Ego can't have both. If he stays on Earth he dies. Nor could he simply go away and wait for Peter's mother to die. As he said during the movie, he visited her three times, and he knew if he came back a fourth time he would stay. He would become mortal, die, and his purpose would go unfulfilled. So he's saying quite clearly that he couldn't stay away from her. After all, he was in love. So Ego had to choose: Brandi or the sea. In the end he chose the sea.

So why cancer? Hard to say for sure, but we go back to the first point, Ego's purpose. He can't accomplish that purpose without another being like him, another celestial. So, however he gets rid of her he has to keep his offspring alive long enough to find out whether he's a reject like the rest or whether he has the same connection to the planet that Ego has. So sudden violence or blowing up the planet. That would frustrate his purpose. Better to have her raise the kid until he was old enough that Ego could send Yondu to go snatch him up. He might have even thought that brain cancer wasn't that bad of a way to go, like he was letting her down easy. That's speculation, but he's an alien god, so who knows. It's plausible. Recall point 2: Ego really did love her. She wasn't a mere human to him, even if she ultimately lost out to Ego's purpose.

So that just leaves the big question, the one that's the hardest to answer: why did Ego blab that he killed Peter's mom? It's obviously a plot point, and intended to motivate Peter to turn decisively against Ego. But it also makes sense. By the time Ego blabbed this, he'd come to believe that Peter was like him. He had finally found someone who, if not quite an equal, was still cut from the same cloth. Not only that, he had explained his purpose and literally put stars in Peter's eyes to demonstrate what it all meant. Ego is, well, egotistical, an obvious narcissist. It's not at all surprising that, in these circumstances, he wouldn't think that telling Peter he killed his mom would provoke that kind of reaction. Ego's not human, he never had a mom. He probably thinks of himself as a far more important figure in Peter's life than the woman who raised him. More importantly, he was talking to what he thought was someone just like him: he would think that Peter would recognize that he had to kill his mother so that he could realize his purpose. I don't recall exactly but I think he even goes back to our running allusion to Brandi, he had shown Peter 'the sea', and surely he would see why Ego had to do what he did. He certainly didn't say it like someone who thought they were confessing a crime: he wasn't proud of it, but I do think he wore it like a badge, the measure of his devotion to the overriding purpose for which he was created.

Surely, the only one other person like him to ever exist would understand that. Surely, he would be more celestial than human. Ego was wrong, of course, but his thought process is entirely reasonable given the circumstances.

That's my take on it, anyway. That character is the best villain in Marvel's admittedly weak villain stable, and GotG 2 has the strongest set of characters in any Marvel movie. It's a real winner.

 

[Hobbit]

Nicely counter-argued, Victor.

 

[Two Islands]

My wife and I rewatched the (in our opinions) execrable Prometheus, in preparation for the hopefully good Alien: Covenant. Alien is in both of our top ten lists for all-time fave films, so we're praying for a return of quality to the franchise.

Also, about to finish a reread of To Kill a Mockingbird, and will rewatch the wonderful film in the next few days.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Hold up a minute there, friend. Let your pal Victor take a shot at this.

Spoiler

There are three elements of Ego's character, clearly established in the movie, that make everything he does make sense:

1. Ego is not human. He's an immortal superbeing who has convinced himself that his purpose, the reason for existence, is to spread across the galaxy and make all life him.

2. Ego really did love Peter's mom.

3. Had Ego stayed on Earth, he would have become mortal and perished.

So, some of your beginning premises are wrong. Ego wasn't looking for meaning when he found Earth and the only love of his long, long, life. He'd found it. He knew what his purpose was. And, he knew that he had found love, which he didn't expect to find.

This is where the movie's use of its soundtrack pays off in an intelligent way. Trying to explain Ego's motivation is kind of hard, he's an alien and no human beings think like him. Which is why the movie uses the song Brandi as a shortcut. It's hard to understand a living planet who wants to replace all life with himself: it's easy to understand a sailor who, despite finding a girl who would make a good wife, has only one life, love, and lady: the sea. That's an old story, and Ego's is really no different. He has his purpose, and having found love has to choose between them.

Because Ego can't have both. If he stays on Earth he dies. Nor could he simply go away and wait for Peter's mother to die. As he said during the movie, he visited her three times, and he knew if he came back a fourth time he would stay. He would become mortal, die, and his purpose would go unfulfilled. So he's saying quite clearly that he couldn't stay away from her. After all, he was in love. So Ego had to choose: Brandi or the sea. In the end he chose the sea.

So why cancer? Hard to say for sure, but we go back to the first point, Ego's purpose. He can't accomplish that purpose without another being like him, another celestial. So, however he gets rid of her he has to keep his offspring alive long enough to find out whether he's a reject like the rest or whether he has the same connection to the planet that Ego has. So sudden violence or blowing up the planet. That would frustrate his purpose. Better to have her raise the kid until he was old enough that Ego could send Yondu to go snatch him up. He might have even thought that brain cancer wasn't that bad of a way to go, like he was letting her down easy. That's speculation, but he's an alien god, so who knows. It's plausible. Recall point 2: Ego really did love her. She wasn't a mere human to him, even if she ultimately lost out to Ego's purpose.

So that just leaves the big question, the one that's the hardest to answer: why did Ego blab that he killed Peter's mom? It's obviously a plot point, and intended to motivate Peter to turn decisively against Ego. But it also makes sense. By the time Ego blabbed this, he'd come to believe that Peter was like him. He had finally found someone who, if not quite an equal, was still cut from the same cloth. Not only that, he had explained his purpose and literally put stars in Peter's eyes to demonstrate what it all meant. Ego is, well, egotistical, an obvious narcissist. It's not at all surprising that, in these circumstances, he wouldn't think that telling Peter he killed his mom would provoke that kind of reaction. Ego's not human, he never had a mom. He probably thinks of himself as a far more important figure in Peter's life than the woman who raised him. More importantly, he was talking to what he thought was someone just like him: he would think that Peter would recognize that he had to kill his mother so that he could realize his purpose. I don't recall exactly but I think he even goes back to our running allusion to Brandi, he had shown Peter 'the sea', and surely he would see why Ego had to do what he did. He certainly didn't say it like someone who thought they were confessing a crime: he wasn't proud of it, but I do think he wore it like a badge, the measure of his devotion to the overriding purpose for which he was created.

Surely, the only one other person like him to ever exist would understand that. Surely, he would be more celestial than human. Ego was wrong, of course, but his thought process is entirely reasonable given the circumstances.

That's my take on it, anyway. That character is the best villain in Marvel's admittedly weak villain stable, and GotG 2 has the strongest set of characters in any Marvel movie. It's a real winner.

The counterpoint with the song certainly passed me by as I had never heard of it before - I was 13 when the song was originally released in 1972 - but, as it only made it to number 51 in the UK charts before vanishing from sight, I doubt if it made the same kind of an impact here than it did in the States. (Being told that a naff-sounding song I had never heard of was "one of Earth's greatest musical compositions, perhaps the greatest." left me wondering what kind of dickhead we were dealing with too*.)

The points you make are credible. But you could go into that kind of post hoc analysis of any daytime soap opera twist and make it sound like Dostoevsky. Film is an immediate and visceral medium. (Well films like this that spend so much time blowing s**t up and spoon-feeding jokes to the audience are.) At that point in the movie in the cinema I gave up trying to suspend my disbelief. I didn't buy the character - his taste in music was certainly dubious.

And the implied subtext that only a child conceived in love is of any worth feels weirdly morally dubious too. All Ego's other kids were part of a mechanical process and failed and were disposable. Peter was conceived with love and has godlike powers?

Oh! I remembered something I did like in the film. Something I think they got right. It's long bugged me that green-skinned aliens in movies (often shown leaking green blood when injured) always have pink tongues and gums. (It's understandable, given we only have human actors on this planet - though I have my doubts about Johnny Depp). Somewhere in this movie someone took the trouble to either dye the actor playing, murdering bastard with a heart of gold, Yondu's tongue blue or CGI colour it later. The guy has a blue tongue. I appreciated that.


* EDIT: Just gone and listened to it on Youtube. Dickheadness confirmed.

 

[JunkMonkey]

My criteria for buying films are simple:

1 Have I seen it before?
2 Does it look like it might have gratuitous nudity?
3 Does it have Rutger Hauer in in it?
4 Have I ever heard of it before?
.

I forgot one!

5. Did Ennio Morricone write the score? (Answering 'yes' to this this one and 'no' to number 1 and it's an automatic purchase.)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

5. Did Ennio Morricone write the score?

I thought, Spaghetti* westerns?
So I checked

Since 1946 Morricone has composed over 500 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. His filmography includes over 70 award-winning films, including all Sergio Leone films since A Fistful of Dollars

Still alive too, which surprised me.

(* For many years I thought it was because they were made in Italy, actually most were shot in Spain?)

 

[JunkMonkey]

I have found some splendidly odd movies using these rules.

Including:

in which Morricone pretty much dry ran the music he would use in Red Sonja. But he did also lead me into watching Mission to Mars which made me doubt my methods.

 

[Carl L. Sanders]

We saw King Arthur: :Legend of the Sword.
Although I despised Sherlock and its sequels, I enjoyed this film. The wife wanted some Lancelot and Guinevere; we both looked in vain for Merlin. Excalibur is still my fave version.
How goofy: the Round Table done as a British Crime Drama.

 

[Westy]

Just watched Alien: Covenant - enjoyable overall, though with a bit of been there, done that. As many other reviews mentioned, one of the best aspects is David and Walter, the androids played so well by Fassbender. A few reveals too, like a bit more on the evolution of the alien. And the ending I thought was very good, and nicely sets up the next movie in the series.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The wife wanted some Lancelot and Guinevere; we both looked in vain for Merlin. Excalibur is still my fave version

C4 Merlin on DVD (who pinched mine?) IMO one of the best. Like when they all turn their back on Queen Mab. Sam Neill great as Merlin. The more recent Arthurian TV series seemed absolute garbage.
Though most popular Arthurian myth conflicts with earliest versions. Shakespeare renamed Mab, Titania. Morgan Le Fay wasn't originally exactly an evil character, nor any relative of Arthur, though probably Fay (Sidhe like Mab who might originally have been Mabhe or Maeve).

 

[Hobbit]

Just seen The Guardians (2017) - a Russian version of the X Men, with English subtitles. Despite some of the unintentionally hilarious subtitle bloopers, it was surprisingly good fun. Visually quite impressive. Plot not that original, but quite well done.

 

[J.J.Kane]

Alien: Covenant - I enjoyed it but I was also frustrated with the movie. Watching the crew get picked off one by one gets under my skin (but I suppose that is what Ridley Scott was going for). The scenes between David and Walther were indeed fantastic but also felt like they came from another movie - like Prometheus 2.0

 

[Av Demeisen]

I wasn't able to finish the last couple of movies I watched (Logan, T2 Trainspotting). Movies have been kind of dead for me for years now. I am more interested in quality tv shows (no, not GOT). Perhaps we could start a similar thread for television watching?

Anyway, David Lynch is back in a big way with the brilliant Twin Peaks: The Return, showing us why he is the greatest living filmmaker.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I just watched Avatar for the first time.
As with all films in last 15+ years the dialogue clarity is poor and the effects WAY too loud compared with dialogue.
I found that the two SF elements were really just maguffins to make the thin plot work. It's really well into fantasy territory rather than any sort of SF.

Spoiler

1) The reason for the madness is a mineral called "unobtainium! Someone <insert name here> forgot to enlarge storyboard detail.
2) The fake aliens are grown and need to match the operators DNA in some way! Really?

I'd rate it 80% spectacle / visual effects (nice) and 20% actual story.
The plot / story is typical of some 1950s short stories. I've read at least four

Spoiler: Details

Gaia type sentient planet attacks evil exploitive humans from Earth

.
I was told it was Pocahontas in space. Other than that the humans seem like US Cavalry/ Cowboys and the aliens seem modelled on Native Americans, it's not, because

Spoiler

The natives win and a sentient Gaia

I'd rate it 2 out of 5, If the soundtrack wasn't a disaster, it might rate 3, but really it's too much spectacle and not enough actual story or character development. On a par with Disney's John Carter (over reliance on visual effects and poor dialogue, I had to put subtitles on).