what was the last movie you watched?

[hrdboild]

Have you read the book? The book is excellent. There is definitely more "science" than was shown in this movie - they must have cut out over 90%. Even so, the book seemed like it would still be accessible to "non-sciencey" folks. Not like Three Body Problem (while I still enjoyed it, that one was pretty out there).

No, I haven't read the book for this or for The Martian, but I've seen enough interviews with Andy Weir that I have a pretty good idea of how he thinks. I'm sure there are all sorts of details explained in the book which are interesting to read but didn't need to be in the movie...

Spoiler: Big unavoidable spoilers here as I try to articulate what I felt was missing...

But there were two sequences in particular where just watching this with no knowledge of the book it felt clear to me that the process of how the main character reasons through a solution to a problem was extremely significant to making the story believable. In the one case because it is what provides the fuel which makes this trip possible at all and in the second case because it is the answer to how our heroes are going to solve their universe destroying problem. In both of these cases the movie fast-forwards right past most of the science with a musical montage instead, the filmic equivalent of handwaving.

Which makes it clear that the filmmakers didn't think those details were important to the story that they wanted to tell. The movie's point of view appears to be that breeding amoeba is too boring to show on-screen, but we do need a sequence where our scientist hero teaches his engineer friend how to surf in VR. I'm not going to say that they're objectively wrong... And I did still enjoy the movie because a number of the emotional beats really landed for me and the visual presentation was rather stunning. It was really only a minor disappointment in the sense that I missed more of what made The Martian so special. Watching smart characters solve really difficult problems in innovative and unexpected ways is rather rare, even in sci-fi. We're more often presented with the broad strokes and a couple lines of techno-babble about warp drives are sprinkled in and then quickly forgotten. That was the approach taken here and given that this came from an Andy Weir book, I can't help feeling a little disappointed that the filmmakers took the easy way out.

I also didn't entirely buy that Ryland Grace spends about 5 seconds scribbling on a white board and evidently calculates a perfect intercept trajectory across multiple star systems to meet up with Rocky without any kind of communication system. How would he know his exact speed and that he hasn't stopped and turned back at some point once he realized that the Taumoeba was consuming his fuel supply? Or now that I think about it, we're shown a map of the galaxy where only one star system is not infected with Astrophage. So why is not having enough fuel to get home ever a problem? Can't they just use those other star systems like gas stations to fill up on the way?

I don't like to nitpick plot details if the story works emotionally though so I didn't need all of these questions answered. I can go along with Ryland Grace making the decision to save his friend instead of going home as a key turning point for his character, regardless of the how and why of it. I'm okay with this movie not being The Martian, it is its own thing. But in aiming for big emotional moments but short-cutting some of the steps the narrative needs to take to get there, those emotional moments didn't feel as earned here as they could have been. I often get accused of being overly critical when I try to articulate any kind of short-coming that I observe in a movie instead of just saying "it was good, I liked it". My reaction to any movie is what it is, I just try to be honest about it and examine what I think it is from a nuts and bolts storytelling point of view that I'm responding to, either positively or negatively.

 

[Warhawk]

No, I haven't read the book for this or for The Martian, but I've seen enough interviews with Andy Weir that I have a pretty good idea of how he thinks. I'm sure there are all sorts of details explained in the book which are interesting to read but didn't need to be in the movie...

Spoiler: Big unavoidable spoilers here as I try to articulate what I felt was missing...

But there were two sequences in particular where just watching this with no knowledge of the book it felt clear to me that the process of how the main character reasons through a solution to a problem was extremely significant to making the story believable. In the one case because it is what provides the fuel which makes this trip possible at all and in the second case because it is the answer to how our heroes are going to solve their universe destroying problem. In both of these cases the movie fast-forwards right past most of the science with a musical montage instead, the filmic equivalent of handwaving.

Which makes it clear that the filmmakers didn't think those details were important to the story that they wanted to tell. The movie's point of view appears to be that breeding amoeba is too boring to show on-screen, but we do need a sequence where our scientist hero teaches his engineer friend how to surf in VR. I'm not going to say that they're objectively wrong... And I did still enjoy the movie because a number of the emotional beats really landed for me and the visual presentation was rather stunning. It was really only a minor disappointment in the sense that I missed more of what made The Martian so special. Watching smart characters solve really difficult problems in innovative and unexpected ways is rather rare, even in sci-fi. We're more often presented with the broad strokes and a couple lines of techno-babble about warp drives are sprinkled in and then quickly forgotten. That was the approach taken here and given that this came from an Andy Weir book, I can't help feeling a little disappointed that the filmmakers took the easy way out.

I also didn't entirely buy that Ryland Grace spends about 5 seconds scribbling on a white board and evidently calculates a perfect intercept trajectory across multiple star systems to meet up with Rocky without any kind of communication system. How would he know his exact speed and that he hasn't stopped and turned back at some point once he realized that the Taumoeba was consuming his fuel supply? Or now that I think about it, we're shown a map of the galaxy where only one star system is not infected with Astrophage. So why is not having enough fuel to get home ever a problem? Can't they just use those other star systems like gas stations to fill up on the way?

I don't like to nitpick plot details if the story works emotionally though so I didn't need all of these questions answered. I can go along with Ryland Grace making the decision to save his friend instead of going home as a key turning point for his character, regardless of the how and why of it. I'm okay with this movie not being The Martian, it is its own thing. But in aiming for big emotional moments but short-cutting some of the steps the narrative needs to take to get there, those emotional moments didn't feel as earned here as they could have been. I often get accused of being overly critical when I try to articulate any kind of short-coming that I observe in a movie instead of just saying "it was good, I liked it". My reaction to any movie is what it is, I just try to be honest about it and examine what I think it is from a nuts and bolts storytelling point of view that I'm responding to, either positively or negatively.

Agreed 100%. A few comments:

Spoiler

The flight was preprogrammed. Rocky had been at that solar system for over 40 years when Grace showed up. Rocky did all the fancy piloting to get the ships close together. Grace did have to learn some basic piloting and centrifuge maneuvers but the instructions were in the computer system.

They cut out entire “minor” story arcs about the Astrophage and Taumoeba, including covering thousands of square miles of Africa in primitive mass production lines for “manufacturing” Astrophage as well as the Taumoeba breeding cycles they used to build up nitrogen tolerance.

They didn’t even address the use of nukes in Antarctica, etc., in an intentional effort to increase global warming to provide additional time for humans to survive until a possible “solution” was sent back to Earth.

The room on the ship with the video walls was not in the book. That was all for the film.

 

[hrdboild]

Agreed 100%. A few comments:

Spoiler

The flight was preprogrammed. Rocky had been at that solar system for over 40 years when Grace showed up. Rocky did all the fancy piloting to bet the ships close together. Grace did have to learn some basic piloting and centrifuge maneuvers but the instructions were in the computer system.

They cut out entire “minor” story arcs about the Astrophage and Taumoeba, including covering thousands of square miles of Africa in primitive mass production lines for “manufacturing” Astrophage as well as the Taumoeba breeding cycles they used to build up nitrogen tolerance.

They didn’t even address the use of nukes in Antarctica, etc., in an intentional effort to increase global warming to provide additional time for humans to survive until a possible “solution” was sent back to Earth.

The room on the ship with the video walls was not in the book. That was all for the film.

Ah yeah, that makes sense.

The reaction to this movie does support my hypothesis that truly great movies rarely score higher than around 76% on Rotten Tomatoes at time of release. You have to take some big risks to make a story which is personal enough to truly surprise and inspire people. And those personal details are really going to hit hard for some of your audience but also go right past others. When a movie scores in the upper 90s right away on RT that generally indicates to me that there is a whiff of the milquetoast about it. You can pull your best punch a bit and invite a bigger audience to jump on-board but by doing so you're probably also giving up any shot at a TKO. The growers -- works which take time to fully reveal themselves -- often are the ones I find myself turning back to more.

It's not a hard-and-fast rule, just something that I've observed starting with "Saving Private Ryan" (currently 94%) and "The Thin Red Line" (currently 80%) in 1998. I enjoy both movies but the one with the lower score stuck with me longer and it's the one I find myself thinking about more over the years. It's hard to go back and check on this after the fact though because scores tend to creep up over over time once a movie gets accepted into the pantheon of "Great Films" by the collective culture. "The Thin Red Line" was scored in the mid 70s when it came out.

William Goldman (best known for writing the screenplays to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "All the Presidents Men") wrote a book about his screenwriting journey called "Adventures in the Screen Trade" and a lot of his anecdotes are about how he felt star actors used their relative power over the process of getting a movie made to often (subconsciously) make decisions at the story level which were more about assuaging their own ego then telling the best story possible and often those decisions were to the detriment of the movies they produced and starred in. But then he (Goldman) was the screenwriter so it is also quite possible that this is his own ego speaking... "Obviously if we'd done things my way, this movie wouldn't have flopped." He apparently hates what was done to "All the Presidents Men" so maybe The. Writer. doesn't know everything?

 

[whitechocolate]

If you wanted us to talk Shakespeare you could just say so directly.

I just want to what everybody else wants:

Oh yes, I held on to this response for a month.

 

[coolhandluke]

Had some free time and went in blind to see The Sheep Detectives today. Turned out to be a great decision as the movie turned out to be such heartwarming fun. A whodunit with talking sheep playing detective? That sounds ridiculous but whoever greenlit this film deserves a raise. Reminded me of films like Babe that provided wholesome entertainment with emotional impact. Made my day. Can't ask for more.

Spoiler

Who knew a cloud can produce a lump in the throat?

 

[hrdboild]

This was a recent re-watch, but I thought it could warrant a little mini-review.

The Game from 1997 is a must watch if any of the following are true:

(a) You have liked at least 1 David Fincher movie and not seen this one.
(b) You have somehow not already had the plot spoiled for you -- which I think is more possible now than when the movie was new and still being talked about.
(c) You enjoy twisty thriller mysteries where guessing what is going on is a bigger part of the appeal than watching characters learn something.
(d) You simply appreciate well-made entertainment and aren't bothered if it skews a little dark.

On the technical side, the film is lensed by the late Harris Savides and makes fantastic use of it's San Francisco locale. Savides would collaborate with the same director (and city) 10 years later for Zodiac with similarly stellar results. Credit Howard Shore for the musical score which is sparse and haunting with the main motif being a few discordant piano notes which ring out eerily while our protagonist Nicholas Van Orton (played by Michael Douglas) continually sticks his nose into things that sure look like a lot of trouble. For instance... If you find an ominous life-size clown doll tossed in your driveway like a dead body would you take it inside your house to investigate further? Clearly not, right? But it'd be a lot more interesting if you did. And that little piano motif makes it feel like we're leaning right up in there close along with him.

The first half of this movie is a masterclass in slowly building tension. Without getting into specifics, the real barometer for a mystery-thriller though is how well it holds up once the conventions of the genre require the writers to start answering some of their own questions. I feel like The Game stumbles a bit in this area as the central mystery is sortof toggled back and forth like a light switch a few too many times. My overall impression of this movie over the years has been that it is a fantastic rollercoaster ride to sit through the first time and significantly less interesting to return to. It even appears to be self-aware about this as there is a scene early on when a side-character tells our main character that he envies him and wishes he too could go back and experience "The Game" for the first time.

This recent re-watch though surprised me for how much of the movie I had internalized and recycled into my own fiction subconsciously. That makes me think there is something more David Lynchian and culturally resonant about this material than I had given it credit for. It operates just fine as a genre thriller to be consumed and discarded. And on another level there is that fun bit of wish-fulfillment where we get to vicariously experience a character leading us down the rabbit hole we ourselves would more cautiously avoid. Underneath that I now see something even more interesting. This is perhaps better seen as an investigation of how thin the walls of our banal reality actually are. Hundreds of movies have mined similar thematic material before and since in more bombastic ways (Christopher Nolan bending the world back onto itself in Inception for instance, and the many many clever visual concepts in all iterations of The Matrix) but what transpires in The Game is considerably more plausible and in some ways even more troubling. How do we know that the people in our lives aren't playing a role? Why do we trust complete strangers enough to get into their car and tell them where we'd like to go? Did I actually read every word of that document I just signed?

In short () ... nearly 30 years later I'm surprised to say that I now see The Game as a movie to be thought about, and pondered over not just experienced. I don't know that our central character Nicholas Von Orton has really learned anything lasting by the end of the story. I rather suspect he will quickly slip back into being exactly what he was before. But that is perhaps the biggest gut punch this movie has to offer us. For we all find ourselves flipped upside down on the side of the road from time to time (figuratively speaking) and swear that we will make the necessary changes to keep our feet on the ground and yet... How often do we slip right back into the same patterns of behavior? We are acting out our role in the drama of our lives as well, after all, and as role-players we have to lie to ourselves to maintain the illusion that we have any control over it at all.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I re-watched it a long while back but it is a great film. I think I have the Criterion version (just checked, I do in fact) but haven't watched all the extras. Maybe I'll add that to my long queue.

 

[Warhawk]

I re-watched it a long while back but it is a great film. I think I have the Criterion version (just checked, I do in fact) but haven't watched all the extras. Maybe I'll add that to my long queue.

Never seen it, it's on Prime for 5 more days, will catch it this week. Thanks, @hrdboild for the recommendation.

 

[Löwenherz]

Perfect Blue (1997) - Internet Archive*

This shook me.

The third of Satoshi Kon’s films I’ve seen, having loved Paprika, and enjoyed Millennium Actress well enough. This is perhaps his most notorious, and I was warned this would be a chilling brain-bender, but I went in thinking I was prepared for Kon’s playfully trippy manipulations of perception, time, and dream logic.

But I was not ready for a searing, unblinking exploration of obsessive celebrity culture - the blurred line between public persona, the real person often trapped behind that mask, and the fans’ demands and disassociated feelings of ownership over who that person is allowed to be.

There are some super cool visuals and edits that are Kon staples, an uber-creepy villain with equally creepy and infamous “those scenes” that pop up on weird YouTube list videos, and an overall satisfying story with an appropriately earned ending.

But while I love Paprika more as a purely refined form of psychedelic mind altering entertainment and just a masterclass in art direction and editing, Perfect Blue is the more compellingly profound storytelling, forcing me to reflect on my own habits of unabashedly and at times cruelly criticizing those in the public consciousness in a dehumanizing manner that itself is entirely too human.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Perfect Blue (1997) - Internet Archive*

This shook me.

The third of Satoshi Kon’s films I’ve seen, having loved Paprika, and enjoyed Millennium Actress well enough. This is perhaps his most notorious, and I was warned this would be a chilling brain-bender, but I went in thinking I was prepared for Kon’s playfully trippy manipulations of perception, time, and dream logic.

But I was not ready for a searing, unblinking exploration of obsessive celebrity culture - the blurred line between public persona, the real person often trapped behind that mask, and the fans’ demands and disassociated feelings of ownership over who that person is allowed to be.

There are some super cool visuals and edits that are Kon staples, an uber-creepy villain with equally creepy and infamous “those scenes” that pop up on weird YouTube list videos, and an overall satisfying story with an appropriately earned ending.

But while I love Paprika more as a purely refined form of psychedelic mind altering entertainment and just a masterclass in art direction and editing, Perfect Blue is the more compellingly profound storytelling, forcing me to reflect on my own habits of unabashedly and at times cruelly criticizing those in the public consciousness in a dehumanizing manner that itself is entirely too human.

Saw this years ago. Enjoyed it, but I was not too happy about the way Kon used unreliable narration in a way that never really got resolved - at least for me. At the time, I wrote: "...the continual re-writing of facts and jumping from place to place in time and space...renders the second half of the film completely unintelligible. There’s no point to even thinking about it, because there’s no answer. David Lynch’s Inland Empire has people wearing huge rabbit heads. Perfect Blue has a second half." But to say that about a movie, and still like it, well it obviously did a lot of things right!

 

[KingsFanSince85]

This was a recent re-watch, but I thought it could warrant a little mini-review.

The Game from 1997 is a must watch if any of the following are true:

(a) You have liked at least 1 David Fincher movie and not seen this one.
(b) You have somehow not already had the plot spoiled for you -- which I think is more possible now than when the movie was new and still being talked about.
(c) You enjoy twisty thriller mysteries where guessing what is going on is a bigger part of the appeal than watching characters learn something.
(d) You simply appreciate well-made entertainment and aren't bothered if it skews a little dark.

On the technical side, the film is lensed by the late Harris Savides and makes fantastic use of it's San Francisco locale. Savides would collaborate with the same director (and city) 10 years later for Zodiac with similarly stellar results. Credit Howard Shore for the musical score which is sparse and haunting with the main motif being a few discordant piano notes which ring out eerily while our protagonist Nicholas Van Orton (played by Michael Douglas) continually sticks his nose into things that sure look like a lot of trouble. For instance... If you find an ominous life-size clown doll tossed in your driveway like a dead body would you take it inside your house to investigate further? Clearly not, right? But it'd be a lot more interesting if you did. And that little piano motif makes it feel like we're leaning right up in there close along with him.

The first half of this movie is a masterclass in slowly building tension. Without getting into specifics, the real barometer for a mystery-thriller though is how well it holds up once the conventions of the genre require the writers to start answering some of their own questions. I feel like The Game stumbles a bit in this area as the central mystery is sortof toggled back and forth like a light switch a few too many times. My overall impression of this movie over the years has been that it is a fantastic rollercoaster ride to sit through the first time and significantly less interesting to return to. It even appears to be self-aware about this as there is a scene early on when a side-character tells our main character that he envies him and wishes he too could go back and experience "The Game" for the first time.

This recent re-watch though surprised me for how much of the movie I had internalized and recycled into my own fiction subconsciously. That makes me think there is something more David Lynchian and culturally resonant about this material than I had given it credit for. It operates just fine as a genre thriller to be consumed and discarded. And on another level there is that fun bit of wish-fulfillment where we get to vicariously experience a character leading us down the rabbit hole we ourselves would more cautiously avoid. Underneath that I now see something even more interesting. This is perhaps better seen as an investigation of how thin the walls of our banal reality actually are. Hundreds of movies have mined similar thematic material before and since in more bombastic ways (Christopher Nolan bending the world back onto itself in Inception for instance, and the many many clever visual concepts in all iterations of The Matrix) but what transpires in The Game is considerably more plausible and in some ways even more troubling. How do we know that the people in our lives aren't playing a role? Why do we trust complete strangers enough to get into their car and tell them where we'd like to go? Did I actually read every word of that document I just signed?

In short () ... nearly 30 years later I'm surprised to say that I now see The Game as a movie to be thought about, and pondered over not just experienced. I don't know that our central character Nicholas Von Orton has really learned anything lasting by the end of the story. I rather suspect he will quickly slip back into being exactly what he was before. But that is perhaps the biggest gut punch this movie has to offer us. For we all find ourselves flipped upside down on the side of the road from time to time (figuratively speaking) and swear that we will make the necessary changes to keep our feet on the ground and yet... How often do we slip right back into the same patterns of behavior? We are acting out our role in the drama of our lives as well, after all, and as role-players we have to lie to ourselves to maintain the illusion that we have any control over it at all.

The Game is a classic as far as I’m concerned. I liked it as much as Flight Club and Seven. Another good one from Fincher IMO is “Zodiac”. Everyone knows and has their own ideas about the Zodiac case, but Fincher’s film still manages to captivate. Great cast, too.

Circling back to “The Game” I’ve always been a Michael Douglas fan and that film really fit him well. He was excellent.

 

[Löwenherz]

Saw this years ago. Enjoyed it, but I was not too happy about the way Kon used unreliable narration in a way that never really got resolved - at least for me. At the time, I wrote: "...the continual re-writing of facts and jumping from place to place in time and space...renders the second half of the film completely unintelligible. There’s no point to even thinking about it, because there’s no answer. David Lynch’s Inland Empire has people wearing huge rabbit heads. Perfect Blue has a second half." But to say that about a movie, and still like it, well it obviously did a lot of things right!

I agree Perfect Blue’s first half is stronger, and Kon’s signature manipulation of perspective and time if anything muddle the message a bit in the second half. But I don’t believe Kon is using Lynchian obfuscating symbolism to conceal intent. Rather I see it directly illustrating Mima’s deteriorating mental state subjectively for the audience so we can experience it with her.

It could be argued the unreliable narrator makes the specifics of the plot and ending ambiguous, but I honestly think the narrative is straightforward:

Spoiler: What is Real?

The blog is real, the murders are real, the TV show and Mima’s work on it are both real, CHAM’a success without her is real, both ME-Mania and Rumi’s obsessions are real, and it’s Rumi in the psychward at the end as Mima finds both professional success and herself.