Movie reviews

general
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Marvel Studios is celebrating their 10th anniversary by re-releasing all of their movies exclusively in IMAX format, starting on Thursday, August 30th and running through September 3rd. A couple of the movies hadn’t been released that way before. Four movies per day, scheduled for Matinee, Late Afternoon, Prime and Evening.

On Tuesday, September 4th, the schedule shifts to themes: “Origins” for the 4th, “Team ups” for the 5th, and “Fan choice” for two movies on the 6th that you can vote for. Voting ends on August 17th.

To see the schedule, head to the Fandango page for the event.

The Deadline Hollywood article I saw this on pointed out that unlike the last marathon Marvel did, you can buy tickets for just the movies you want to see instead of having to pay for all of them ($75 or $100, depending on the location), and that last one was only in three theaters.

The page will let you search for theaters, but you have to check each one to see if it’s an IMAX theater. Better way is via the theaters’ own list of locations with IMAX:

  • AMC (participating theaters listed at the bottom of the page)
  • CineMark (searchable by location)
  • Malco
  • Marcus
  • Regal (full list of all their theaters)

AMC is also holding a sweepstakes for an upcoming Marvel movie if you buy the tickets through their AMC Stubs program.

This is just for the United States. Feel free to add theaters in other countries.

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The information about James Gunn probably needs to go over into the Random Musings thread, but I’ll add it here because I started it here.

Latest information is that Disney won’t reverse their decision. Public opinion is Disney is in the wrong for what they did, and they reacted without looking into why it happened.

Bobcat Gothwait pointed out that he really should be removed from the World of Color: Villains attraction that’s going to be opening soon. He reprised his character of Pain from Hercules for it and he doesn’t want Disney to appear hypocritical:

You see here’s the deal, years ago I made a lot of sarcastically shocking and offensive jokes. Many that I’m embarrassed about now, and I’d hate to make you guys look bad seeing that I’m openly critical of the president and his administration, and you seem to be taking your lead from some of his radical fringe supporters. I think James Woods may have recorded a voice for this new attraction, too. Why not check out some of his whacky past tweets?! They’re a hoot!

Cast members from Guardians have signed a letter supporting James Gunn and Dave Bautista (Drax) wants out if Gunn’s script isn’t used. At present, Disney looks like they will use his script. Whatever director is hired to take Gunn’s place will make changes to it and that will affect the tone of the movie. That’s what happened with Justice League when Zach Snyder had to leave and Joss Whedon came in.

Rian Johnson, director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, deleted 20,000 tweets after Gunn was fired. He says they were “written largely off the cuff as ephemera” that he doesn’t need any more, but he also doesn’t want to give trolls things to scrutinize as ammunition. Selma Blair left Twitter in favor of Instagram because Gunn was fired. Others are pointing out that it sets the precedent that no one can grow and learn to be a better person because what they did in the past will always condemn them. Others match this with, “What about forgiveness?”

That’s the difference I see here. If past actions are consistent with current behavior, especially when it comes to things that could result in criminal charges (Weinstein), there is a valid reason to bring those past actions back up. But if they are brought back up to invalidate and discredit someone, as was done to James Gunn, that’s wrong. The words “smear campaign” and “retaliation” could also apply.

We needed #MeToo to help correct problems that have been occurring. But we’re seeing cases that could be called #MeTooFar, where decisions are made in fear and panic. “We can’t have a Harvey Weinstein happen to us. Get rid of them now before we’re tainted.” The dismissals and firings of Garrison Keillor and James Gunn are two examples. We need need to look past the surface so that we don’t have collateral damage that will damage what #MeToo stands for. We need responsibility and reason, not fear and panic.

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We could treat this things on a case by case basis based on trials and evidence instead of massive online lynch mobs.

Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey, and others who have come up have had accusers, but no trials. Now, it appears that they are both guilty, but what’s the crime? Because they haven’t been charged they can be neither found guilty or exonerated…but likely will eventually be rehabilitated and sold to us again.

Also, what if your #metoo is also a #metoo oppressor?

Is her assault on a minor invalidate her own experience? And now that it’s public where are the charges? I’ve known a couple people run afoul of statutory rape without any party but the police wanting to press charges. And that is with barely more than a year separating them.

This is the environment people like Joss have created, I don’t think they expected d to get hit by so many of their own torpedoes.

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Teen Titans: GO to the Movies was hysterical. I expected little, but by the end I hadn’t laughed that hard since the original Deadpool.

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I can’t. I’ve heard it’s funny as hell, but I just can’t watch anything associated with Teen Titans Go. The art style is abominable, and having watched a good portion of the original Teen Titans cartoon, what this show does is basically urinating on it for cheap laughs and gags.

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I saw Crazy Rich Asians a couple of days ago.

It was a fun rom-com with a pretty typical K-drama plot. There wasn’t a lot of chemistry between the main leads, so it was a bit disappointing, but it wasn’t so bad that I want my money or time back. I give it a solid “It was okay”.

I’m about a quarter of the way through the book, and so far, the movie did the book justice. I’m surprised and pleased at how closely the movie has matched so far.

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I just watched the extended version of Deadpool 2 on blu-ray and loved it. My wife hates gory action movies and decided beforehand that she wasn’t going to watch it. She came in part way through and ended up staying through the whole thing. She has decided she is actually going to watch the first Deadpool now as well.
The whole movie was great, but some things I found particularly hilarious were the cameos by Terry Crews (2 minutes), Brad Pitt (10 seconds) and Matt Damon (2 minutes but completely unrecognisable).

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I am going to do a review on DP2’s Super Duper S@%!#& Cut at some point, but that’s the version to get if you’re going to buy it. Not only did they add in more of the “alt” jokes and a few more things, but from what I read, the longer version uses different music for some scenes. So in a way, it kind of does feel like a different movie.

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Yep, that’s the version I watched. The music was one of the highlights - it was just so hilariously inappropriate a lot of the time.

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For as much as Gone With the Wind is celebrated for being about a woman overcoming adversity in a time of war, most people gloss over the fact that some of the problems Scarlett encountered were ones she created by being a vindictive and manipulative person.

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I never saw the movie, but I did read the book. I hated Scarlett. She was selfish, vindictive, manipulative, and not too bright, in my opinion.

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Did you crap your pants in the first five minutes or what? I missed some of the credits, which were spot on, because I was so shocked.

I like that it’s not just a stupid movie, there is still a plot and character development and etc…

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It’s a favorite of my mom’s. I’ve only watched parts, but I think a lot of the appeal for many is the setting more than the actual story. Similar to my wife’s fondness for period dramas (mostly British in her case): The reality is ugly, and many of the movies/shows have unlikable protagonists, but the setting is usually what makes it enjoyable.

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And don’t forget the cameo by Alan Tudyk.

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For anyone who hasn’t watched the movie yet, my spoiler tags hide some really big plot things, so don’t cheat :wink:

Somewhat, yeah. It was a bit of a roller coaster. One of the credits was spot on - Vanessa was one of my favourite characters of the first movie and I was pretty sad when she was killed. I also missed some of the beginning credits because of it. I’m going to have to re-watch the beginning.. However, when they killed off all the other heroes I though that was hilarious.
I was pretty rapt when Deadpool brought Vanessa back to life at the end

I love spoiler tags btw :slight_smile:

Also for anyone who hasn’t watched the movie, make sure you watch the beginning credits as they are hilarious. I don’t think I need the spoiler tags for that.

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It’s Matt Damon opposite him in that cameo.

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So apparently a lot of the negative response about Star Wars: The Last Jedi supposedly came from Russian bots. And what happens when a professional writer decides to address this and do a review of the movie? Hop on over to Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter Nation blog and find out. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but the sentence “It sucked all the suck” has got me hooked.

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Wow. That was quite the read. I don’t even remember enough about those movies to give credit to his explanations. I dread having to watch them again just to get everything he wrote down as a problem.

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I love it when Larry does this crap.

There are a million reasons to not like that movie. Most of which are based on the people who worked on it deciding to not pay attention to any of the canon.

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My wife and I went to see A Star is Born in the weekend and it was actually really good. I saw the 1974 version (some time after 1974 as I was a bit young when it came out), and the new version is way better than that one.

Both Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga are excellent. Who knew that Cooper could sing and play the guitar that well* and who on earth would have suspected that Lady Gaga could act that well?

There are some reviews that say the second half wasn’t as strong as the first half, and other reviews that say the first half wasn’t as strong as the second half. But the one thing that they have in common is that it’s a good movie. Personally I think the first half was very slightly stronger, but that the whole thing works very well with strong performances all round.

  • Apparently Cooper had intensive lessons for both guitar and singing for 6 months before the movie.