TV/Movies Megathread

[Josephus]

Monger, if we ever have a date, we should most definitely not go to a movie.  Never.

I'm about half way and the satire is dismal.  They take swings at the oddest collection of targets and miss big on every one.  For example morning shows.  Yes, they're cheerful and lightweight, HA HA HA HA HA, but what do they have to do with a planet killing comet?

Don't know how they got such an all star cast for this dog, but Merryl's last movie was a bit of a dog too.

My brother strong-armed my mom into watching this and she hated it.  Made her feel sad.

Its a movie that is just a rather ham handed allegory for COVID. It has its moments, it isn't nearly as bad as Yi amkes it out, but overall it misses more than it hits.

I thought more it was about how reluctant we are to pay attention to climate change than COVID; but I could see the COVID allegory too.

[Razgovory]

It's a  climate change allegory.  However Covid has proven that nothing will be done about climate change.  You can't expect people to make sacrifices to stop a doomsday scenario in 60-90 years in the future if you can't get them to be inconvenienced slightly to save their lives own RIGHT NOW.

[The Brain]

Is 'Rumble Fish' worth a viewing?

I didn't regret watching it, but that was more than 30 years ago so I don't know.

[mongers]

Watching 'The Salisbury Poisonings' a drama about the chemical weapons attack on the Skripals, PC Nick Bailey and Dawn Sturgess, quiet well done focusing as it does on the public health official responsible for trying to contain the attack/the contamination.

What brings it home to me, in a very real sense is I'll be passing the crime scenes tomorrow afternoon when I go t meet my sister at the train station; through the little park where dawn sturgess boyfriend likely picked up the perfume bottle of poison, back past the pub they sat in, the restaurant they ate in and right past the bench were they collapsed.

[celedhring]

Finally watched Don't Look Up. It has its moments, but yeah it bats barely over the Mendoza line. Still Di Caprio/Lawrence are great in it and make it more watchable than it deserves.

Nonetheless, the movie is being a smash: https://top10.netflix.com/films/2021-12-26

[Admiral Yi]

I'm enjoying The Comey Rule.

[Josquius]

I finished Don't Look Up. It drags a bit. Not the direction I would have gone with bits of it. But it is interesting it doesn't follow a generic plot path.
I really wonder what the deal is winth those kids and elderly Musks stammer.

It's decent if over long.

[celedhring]

I finished Don't Look Up. It drags a bit. Not the direction I would have gone with bits of it. But it is interesting it doesn't follow a generic plot path.
I really wonder what the deal is winth those kids and elderly Musks stammer.

It's decent if over long.

Yeah, I definitely feel that this would have been a much better 100 minute movie than a 140 minute movie - stuff like Chalamet's character or the entire infidelity arc imho don't add anything of note. I mean, Doctor Strangelove is barely 90 minutes long...

[Sheilbh]

I say this about almost every Hollywood film I see

[The Brain]

So many movies are way too long. It's especially annoying when the director thinks that slow = profound.

[celedhring]

I say this about almost every Hollywood film I see

This only reaches 2015, but yeah, we're around historical highs for average movie length.

https://stephenfollows.com/are-hollywood-movies-getting-longer/

I mean, every two-bit superhero movie thinks it's doing War & Peace now.

EDIT: British films fighting the good fight 

[Syt]

I do miss the days of 80-90 minute action flicks. Hell, the original Star Wars movies were considered long at 2 hours. I feel that the Lord of the Rings movies normalized the extra long runtime of movies. Heck, Thin Red Line was "only" 170 minutes, and it had a freaking intermission when we saw it in theaters.

[Josquius]

I do wonder whether a trend towards long films with set intermissions may be brewing in the age of straight to Netflix.

[Sheilbh]

I do miss the days of 80-90 minute action flicks. Hell, the original Star Wars movies were considered long at 2 hours. I feel that the Lord of the Rings movies normalized the extra long runtime of movies. Heck, Thin Red Line was "only" 170 minutes, and it had a freaking intermission when we saw it in theaters.

I think basically if it's a standard-ish blockbuster it should be about two hours tops.

If you're an arty director where people know what they're getting (Malick, all Europeans etc), it's an epic or made in Bollywood then no rules apply

EDIT: British films fighting the good fight 

Thank God for low budgets

[Berkut]

If a movie is good, then I don't care how long it is - if I am enjoying myself watching it, then more enjoyment is a positive, rather then a negative.

However....there are two problems with this theory:

1. Everyone making a movie thinks they are in fact making a good movie, so if they think like I do (and think their audience largely thinks like I do) then they are not going to be careful about the length.
2. You can take a good movie, a very good movie, and add a bunch of crap to it, which will make it longer, but actually make it a less good movie overall. This is bad, of course.

But generally, I don't buy into the idea that a movie ought to be some particular length. It should be as long as it needs to tell the story well without becoming boring.