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The Film Thread


DeadlyDirk

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1 hour ago, Milfner said:

Watched The Last Duel yesterday. All that money spent and Matt Damon's accent was absolutely horrendous. Like they'd parachuted a cowboy into 14th century France. Awful.

What did you think of it overall? It absolutely tanked at the box office but it's found an audience on streaming.

Like you I took issue with Damon and Affleck's weird accents where they seemed to go from American to British to something sort of inbetween. It was jarring and I kind of wish they'd just ditched the whole "true story" thing and set it in Medieval England and cast a bunch of British actors.

It must be a challenge for a film maker though when you have a story set in medieval France with a star cast of American/British actors, what accent do you ask them to do? I remember a few years ago there was a Tom Cruise film about the von staffenberg and the uprising against hitler and they just basically went "**** it, everyone speak in your native accent" which was equally weird. Or you could go the other way and do Passion of the Christ where it's in the right tongue but you have to get actors nobody heard of.

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9 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

Moana is on and I have never watched it before. 10 minutes into it and it's gone off. It's so damn good I know my wife will want to watch it too so will save it. 

Its the best disney / pixar film in years, not sure how frozen got so big compared to it

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1 hour ago, desensitized43 said:

What did you think of it overall? It absolutely tanked at the box office but it's found an audience on streaming.

Like you I took issue with Damon and Affleck's weird accents where they seemed to go from American to British to something sort of inbetween. It was jarring and I kind of wish they'd just ditched the whole "true story" thing and set it in Medieval England and cast a bunch of British actors.

It must be a challenge for a film maker though when you have a story set in medieval France with a star cast of American/British actors, what accent do you ask them to do? I remember a few years ago there was a Tom Cruise film about the von staffenberg and the uprising against hitler and they just basically went "**** it, everyone speak in your native accent" which was equally weird. Or you could go the other way and do Passion of the Christ where it's in the right tongue but you have to get actors nobody heard of.

That doesn't bother me if I'm honest, Hollywood do it all the time 

Spoiler

My thing with it is that I'm not sure if the film is incredibly clever or did it unintentionally - the story is maguerites, the film is comers but its everyone look at the men... If Scott did that on purpose, made a film about 2 men with a woman in the background telling this story then yeah the film is a lot better than what it's getting credit for 

The most interesting thing for me was that he couldn't be charged with the rape by her but he could be charged  with however they called it damage to damons property, that is the story and the film, not the fight

 

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10 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

That doesn't bother me if I'm honest, Hollywood do it all the time 

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My thing with it is that I'm not sure if the film is incredibly clever or did it unintentionally - the story is maguerites, the film is comers but its everyone look at the men... If Scott did that on purpose, made a film about 2 men with a woman in the background telling this story then yeah the film is a lot better than what it's getting credit for 

The most interesting thing for me was that he couldn't be charged with the rape by her but he could be charged  with however they called it damage to damons property, that is the story and the film, not the fight

 

This is 100% correct. It would have been a much better film if they'd have played it much more like a legal/courtroom drama (something along the lines of "A Few Good Men" or "Trial of the Chicago 7"), and emphasising the fact that in this time it's essentially a property dispute with the added jeapody of her being executed for things she had no control over. Comer was the best thing about the film and steals pretty much every scene she's in, as expected because she's just a terrific actress.

I'm not sure it was on purpose from Scott to make it all about the men, it was just a natural consequence of him adding all the battle scenes, all the history of these two men's feud and the final duel. It was a subject matter that needed much more subtlety that a director like Ridley Scott has ever done. It doesn't help when you call something like that "The Last Duel"...you're starting with making it all about the duel and make that your big showpiece. I thought it drew a lot of comparisons to Rob Roy which I thought was a much better thought out and acted film and certainly dealt with the rape and revenge aspect much better.

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49 minutes ago, sne said:

Bit of a jump from The Lighthouse and The Witch by Robert Eggers but if it's anything close to them I'll be chuffed.

 

Yeah he's one of my favourite contemporary directors. Looking forward to this.

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1 hour ago, Designer1 said:

Yeah he's one of my favourite contemporary directors. Looking forward to this.

100%, I normally like to judge films on their individual merit but there are certain directors where I’ll watch without even seeing the reviews, he’s definitely one of them.

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Watched No Time to Die tonight.

What a weird film.

It's... Well. It's a tribute to the series, as a whole - you'd genuinely lose count of the references and callbacks and nods by the end. It's a send off for Craig's take. It's a full stop on the mangled mess of an attempt at an overarching plot for his Bond. And it's it's own thing.

It's a mess. That's not to say it's bad, per se, but holy shit it feels like the plot was actually bits of about 4 Bond movies they stapled the best bits together from and then did a plot over the top using some kind of 'line of best fit' methodology.. It's got an opening sequence that feels at least 25 minutes long, then it goes off and does another plot which introduces a bunch of new characters, then it stops for half an hour to pump it full of exposition, which is catastrophically stupid, and then it does a bit of a riff on the Skyfall 'it's personal' angle, and then it ends with a extended old school secret base action sequence. And the villain is on screen for about 10 minutes, and is a complete empty suit with barely any set up (unless I missed something, it's literally a single line). It's got about 6 acts. And genuinely if you put everything that happens without the context or the specific details ('Bond goes undercover at a dinner party to recover important thing, Bond has a car chase in exotic location, etc etc) it sounds like a decent Bond film, and it is, but the plot and context are crap. And tonally, Christ - one minute we're quipping next we're deadly serious.

On the good side, it's beautifully shot. Genuinely stunning more often than not. The actions good. The performances are good, mostly (Rami Malek, oof. I dunno if he got screwed by the script but he can't have been pleased when he saw the film). The score is less Zimmer-y (bwarp.... bwarp... bwarpbwarpBRAWP), which is good.

It's not bad, I enjoyed watching it, it's better than Quantum of Solace (but then so is gout) and Spectre (a bar so low an ant could step over it), but it's kinda no more than alright and wow is it strange on so many ways. That script must have been cobbled together, it has to have been.

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10 hours ago, Chindie said:

Watched No Time to Die tonight.

What a weird film.

It's... Well. It's a tribute to the series, as a whole - you'd genuinely lose count of the references and callbacks and nods by the end. It's a send off for Craig's take. It's a full stop on the mangled mess of an attempt at an overarching plot for his Bond. And it's it's own thing.

It's a mess. That's not to say it's bad, per se, but holy shit it feels like the plot was actually bits of about 4 Bond movies they stapled the best bits together from and then did a plot over the top using some kind of 'line of best fit' methodology.. It's got an opening sequence that feels at least 25 minutes long, then it goes off and does another plot which introduces a bunch of new characters, then it stops for half an hour to pump it full of exposition, which is catastrophically stupid, and then it does a bit of a riff on the Skyfall 'it's personal' angle, and then it ends with a extended old school secret base action sequence. And the villain is on screen for about 10 minutes, and is a complete empty suit with barely any set up (unless I missed something, it's literally a single line). It's got about 6 acts. And genuinely if you put everything that happens without the context or the specific details ('Bond goes undercover at a dinner party to recover important thing, Bond has a car chase in exotic location, etc etc) it sounds like a decent Bond film, and it is, but the plot and context are crap. And tonally, Christ - one minute we're quipping next we're deadly serious.

On the good side, it's beautifully shot. Genuinely stunning more often than not. The actions good. The performances are good, mostly (Rami Malek, oof. I dunno if he got screwed by the script but he can't have been pleased when he saw the film). The score is less Zimmer-y (bwarp.... bwarp... bwarpbwarpBRAWP), which is good.

It's not bad, I enjoyed watching it, it's better than Quantum of Solace (but then so is gout) and Spectre (a bar so low an ant could step over it), but it's kinda no more than alright and wow is it strange on so many ways. That script must have been cobbled together, it has to have been.

There was so much fanfare made about having that female writer from Fleabag work on this that she seems to of escaped any criticism whatsoever.

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1 minute ago, stuart_75 said:

There was so much fanfare made about having that female writer from Fleabag work on this that she seems to of escaped any criticism whatsoever.

I actually thought it was quite good until the opening credits. The first 20 minutes before that were like a proper Bond film

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19 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Moana is on and I have never watched it before. 10 minutes into it and it's gone off. It's so damn good I know my wife will want to watch it too so will save it. 

ormhiKlh.jpg

 

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20 hours ago, desensitized43 said:

What did you think of it overall? It absolutely tanked at the box office but it's found an audience on streaming.

Like you I took issue with Damon and Affleck's weird accents where they seemed to go from American to British to something sort of inbetween. It was jarring and I kind of wish they'd just ditched the whole "true story" thing and set it in Medieval England and cast a bunch of British actors.

It must be a challenge for a film maker though when you have a story set in medieval France with a star cast of American/British actors, what accent do you ask them to do? I remember a few years ago there was a Tom Cruise film about the von staffenberg and the uprising against hitler and they just basically went "**** it, everyone speak in your native accent" which was equally weird. Or you could go the other way and do Passion of the Christ where it's in the right tongue but you have to get actors nobody heard of.

It was just fine overall tbh. 

Yeah, I'd echo what v4e said. It just sorta missed the mark. Spent two hours telling the same story three times. The payoff was probably in the courtroom stuff but they spent about 1% of the film on that. The story is certainly interesting, but yeah. Maybe a three / four part TV series would've suited it better.

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