I thought it might be practical to have a general movie thread for some random musings and discussions!
Anyway, here goes:
Josh Gad has been doing a series of nostalgia movie talks to benefit a fundraising drive (eg Goonies, Splash & Lord of the Rings coming up this sunday…). He is VERY gushing and obviously all in on just telling everyone that they are the greatest thing ever!!!
However it is still fun to see some of these creative teams get together via zooms for a chat.
I just watched the Back to the Future one and was wondering about Zemeckis and where his creative compass has led him during the past 20 years.
The BTTF trilogy is an all time classic and I do love those movies to bits. Contact was amazing, I really enjoyed old Forrest Gump (though not as much as I used to anymore), Who framed Roger Rabbit was awesome, Romancing the Stone was great…
And then after Cast Away the 2000s rolled around and he got bogged down in mediocre motion capture movies, then plodded along with some odd drama movies, none of them even close to his earlier fun heights.
What happened? Lots of his earlier work evoked a sense of fun, wonder and adventurous spirit. Now he’s pegged for Disney’s live-actionification of Pinnochio? I guess that could see him return to the spirit of the earlier work, but I suspect that’ll be doomed to mediocrity like all the Disney redos these last few years…
Well, once he got on the mo-cap train, it seems that Zemeckis lost a bit of mojo. I will say however that I enjoyed Beowulf and although Flight wasn’t a great movie, it had a hell of a plane-almost-crash scene and a strong lead by Washington.
I have to confess, I never actually watched Flight. A pilot crashlands a plane and gets torn apart by the media? Yeah! Sounds like fun!
Ok snark aside, there might be an interesting story there so I should go watch it, but that sounds like horrible reality and his early movies represented fun escapism and this sound depressingly different. But I guess his tastes changed? (kinda like Spielberg)
Most, Malificent is fantastic IMO. The rest range from passable to poor though. I have high hopes for Mulan though, that one has the right setting and story to shine in conversion.
Zemeckis has gone the way of Ang Lee and (I think) James Cameron in getting so tied up in movie technology that their storycraft gets sidelined. How else to explain Welcome to Marwen? Nevermind. There’s no explanation for Welcome to Marwen.
Even though I love Once upon a time in the West, I’ve just never had any interest to actually watch that one as the gangster/mafia genre (Godfather et al) just doesn’t do anything for me. Perhaps I need to give it a chance?
Well, I mean you need to come at it with some patience as it is a rather long one. If you’re at all a fan of Sergio Leone I’d suggest checking it out. But if you’ve not watched the Godfather and have no interest in that genre/subject could be just as well you took a pass.
So I guess I just played both sides of that answer, haha
Yep, pretty much. I like Leone, but have fallen asleep on Godfather a few times. No interest in Scarface or Goodfellas…etc So yeah, on the one hand I want to give Leone a chance to wow me, on the other hand I see a 4 hour mafia epic and am weary to dive in…
I’m with tom on not liking the idea of a random movie thread. Why would I ever post in a tread about specific movies anymore (besides Star Wars and MCU movies). I can just post in this one instead. Weeeeeeeeeee!
I haven’t seen The Ice Storm yet. I always meant to.
Hehe… Sorry to make an issue out of it Tom, and if you have strong feelings about it, obviously feel free to rename the thread again.
However I do think there’s a niche that a random thread serves as it gives room for short discussions or thoughts that might not warrant a thread of their own (or necessitate a resurrected dormant zombie thread which might even only have followers that aren’t around anymore). And if we create a new thread for every small thought, it’s very possible that it would get drowned out between bigger / faster discussions happening elsewhere and not everyone who might have something to contribute, would notice it in time. With a random thread we could have a quick and possibly interesting exchange about Ice Storm for example, before moving on to Star Trek or other things…
Once a few people have this thread “subscribed” and a regular smattering of thoughts are posted here, the audience (& potential contributors) would be a larger group and the post then has a greater reachability than in a thread that’s been dormant for years / or is new and needs to be discovered. If its clear that a more in depth discussion is warranted I fully agree that things should then move into a relevant thread.
I suspect that over the years you’ve had to “sort” through quite a few threads in order to split off various discussions that have become too dominant, which is probably the reason you are weary of a catch all “random” thread as it might create work further down the line… If we do it right though, it might not come to it?
Hope that ramble makes sense? It’s also very possible that I’m alone on this and the thread will wither away into obscurity immediately…
I haven’t seen Ice Storm, but it sure has quite a cast: Ripley, Frodo, Spiderman, CJ Cregg, Wednesday Addams! Looks like a rather traditional thanksgiving-family-skeletons-in-the-closet drama? What sets it apart from the various other iterations of this trope?
I saw The Ice Storm years ago after Tom’s repeated praise. I liked it as a period piece. As with many of the movies that were brought up week after week on the podcast, knowing what was so beloved about the movie made it better.
