TV/Movies Megathread

[celedhring]

Inside a coffin, when she's already dead.

[Ideologue]

  So much hate for Kingsman, what is wrong with you Ide! 

http://kinemalogue.blogspot.kr/2015/02/brad-pitt-ate-my-sandwich.html?m=1

Edit : After finishing the 2nd half of the review, what a bait and switch.  You could at least keep consistent within the same review.

1. It's a standard rhetorical technique.

2.  This is the executive summary.  It's at the traditional place one begins to read a column, the top.

The excess is even wretcheder and the provocations even more hollow, but they're in service of something greater anyway.  Sometimes all it takes is a few scenes to make a movie.  On rare occasions, it takes just one.  Matthew Vaughn and Mark Millar (more the former than the latter) have done it again.

Nah, I agree with the jist of the review, if not on every single particular. Kingsman is a great joyful mess.

Harumph.  Yes.

I like Disney's Hunchback for the same reasons and others, but those gargoyles just about kill the fucking thing.

P.S. It Follows and Furious 7 were both very good.

[Eddie Teach]

Inside a coffin, when she's already dead.

Yeah. 

Though if they were going to give a Disneyfied happy ending, I'd have preferred her ending up with Pierre Gringoire* rather than Phoebus, who was the least likable character in the book.

*Obviously, they'd need to cut out the part about him loving her goat more than her. 

[Ideologue]

Oh, and Exodus: Gods and Kings was perfectly fine.  I don't know why people had a hate-on for that one.  It's nothing great, and I'll concede it seems to be of two minds about itself--the existence of God in the film's universe is in doubt, until it isn't; appropriate questions are asked, without being resolved--but I kind of liked that.  And it's hard to fuck up Exodus.  Ridley didn't.

Though if they were going to give a Disneyfied happy ending, I'd have preferred her ending up with Pierre Gringoire* rather than Phoebus, who was the least likable character in the book.

Well, Kevin Kline is likeable in the movie.  And it teaches a valuable lesson to unattractive kids about how you can be friends with hot people, but they won't want to fuck you even if you're awesome.  Maybe that's mean, but it is valuable.

[celedhring]

I found myself disliking Phoebus even though they go at great lengths to make him a likable guy, just because how much of an evil tosser he is in the original book 

To Ide, yeah, the gargoyles are annoying. Tacked-on comic relief made more jarring by how dark the film is.

[Eddie Teach]

Gringoire wasn't necessarily unattractive, though he was a coward. And some women really dig artist types.

[celedhring]

Gringoire wasn't necessarily unattractive, though he was a coward. And some women really dig artist types.

Oh yeah they do.

[Sheilbh]

No one digs paralegals

Watching The Imitation Game. Exactly what I expected from the trailer.

[Sheilbh]

Watching The Imitation Game. Exactly what I expected from the trailer.

Yep. Two hours of exactly what you'd expect with a fabricated Soviet spy thing thrown in to make it a little more exciting.

It was made by that British cottage industry of underwhelming award nominees that no-one ever re-watches

[Josephus]

In the book she ends up with Quasimodo. 

SPOILER 

[Martinus]

Watching The Imitation Game. Exactly what I expected from the trailer.

Yep. Two hours of exactly what you'd expect with a fabricated Soviet spy thing thrown in to make it a little more exciting.

It was made by that British cottage industry of underwhelming award nominees that no-one ever re-watches

I liked "The Imitation Game". Like "Dexter", it offered me useful insights on how to treat coworkers.

[The Larch]

Watching The Imitation Game. Exactly what I expected from the trailer.

Yep. Two hours of exactly what you'd expect with a fabricated Soviet spy thing thrown in to make it a little more exciting.

It was made by that British cottage industry of underwhelming award nominees that no-one ever re-watches

The Imitation Game was also extremely dishonest with its portrayal of history. The descendants of the character portrayed by Charles Dance made an official complaint about how they represent him in the movie, and they also downplayed a lot the presence of women in Turing's team, as well as the way they worked, downplaying the contribution of others while making Turing the "tormented genious" responsible for everything.

[Sheilbh]

The Imitation Game was also extremely dishonest with its portrayal of history. The descendants of the character portrayed by Charles Dance made an official complaint about how they represent him in the movie, and they also downplayed a lot the presence of women in Turing's team, as well as the way they worked, downplaying the contribution of others while making Turing the "tormented genious" responsible for everything.

Well Bletchley Park had hundreds if not thousands of people working on cracking Enigma, not the Famous Five. And you're right there were lots of women involved.

And Cairncross was at Bletchley but there's nothing to suggest that he even met Turing. Turing was never implicated or suspected in a spy ring. That one particularly annoyed me because it actually used the old official excuse for not banning gays from government work: that they were easily blackmailed and thus a higher security risk.

[Martinus]

If you want to start about historical accuracy, then Poles should have played a much more prominent role, to begin with.

But I do not think it is right to expect this movie to be historicaly accurate. It was a psychological drama loosely based on facts, not a historical documentary/biopic.

[Sheilbh]

Sure but I think it's extremely annoying in a historical film about a gay man wronged by his country to then reproduce and validate the exact slander that was used against gay men for decades - right up until the nineties they were banned from certain jobs as a 'security risk'.

It's a bit like I was annoyed by Milk. I don't think only gay actors should play gay men, obviously. But in a film where the overwhelming message was to come out - at home, in the workplace - it seemed sad that they couldn't find any decent gay actors in Hollywood and sad that Hollywood/movie industry still seems to be one of the most difficult places to come out in.

The other historical issues in the Imitation Game didn't annoy me. Though I kind of hated the reduction of a large collective group's success, to a group of plucky outsiders not because it was inaccurate, but because it's boring.

Why would the Poles play a more prominent role in a biopic of Turing?