Level 12/9 Technomancer/Doomscroller

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 28th, 2023

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  • To be completely honest, many of these films took me a second viewing to really appreciate. Blade Runner 2049 is not a good sequel to the original, imo, but if you let it stand on it’s own a bit, it’s got some real interesting ideas at play, and of course, all of Denis’ movies are just visually beautiful. Similarly with his Dune, I’m a huge fan of the Lynch version, so it’s hard not to let that color my perception, but if you let it, it’s a visually stunning movie with amazing world design and it just nails the vibes I got reading the book.

    Tarantino, too, I would have mostly shared your opinion two years ago. The first time I watched Basterds, Django, and Eight, I was pretty unimpressed, but I think I was letting my love of his earlier works color my opinions too much. Then, I got a copy of “Taratino: A Retrospective” for xmas, and that got me to go back through his entire filmography: I’d watch a movie, then read up on it in the book afterward. Even absence the additional stories and details from the book, I found all of those films really hit much better for me the second time around: no, they’re not doing that same effortlessly cool “Tarantino” style from the earlier works, but it’s clear that the man was interested in building on his own writing tropes and slowly branching them into different stories, and I really loved watching that evolution.

    Fury Road: Fair enough, though at this point, Mel was probably a bit too old for the types of stunts they wanted to put Tom Hardy through.

    Peele, I’ll just have to disagree, but mostly because I don’t see them as horror movies, but dark comedies. They’re not scary, not really, but boy did I laugh my ass off watching them. Nope, especially, manages to tell a funny, dramatic story with real stakes, imagination, and literally inventing a new way to do night filming that’s probably going to be mimicked by the entire industry going forward.

    Jump Street: you’re not wrong about Jonah Hill, but in this case, the surprise is how funny Channing Tatum can be, and how expertly Lord and Miller bounce the two of them off each other. The standard Hill schtick just works in this screwball set of movies, and plays a perfect complement to Tatum. Oh, and that clip is amazing.

    The Apes trilogy is criminally overlooked, again, probably because of “CGI Monkeys” and cultural memory of the old films, but they’re really amazingly good. Well, the first is just regular good, but the second two are great. A lot of it comes down to just how great Serkis is at working within the CGI character space: he plays the lead ape, Ceasar, but also does a lot of the motion capture for the rest of the apes, and nails it in movement and manerisms. All in all, the movies are able to create an epic about the decline of one civilization and the rise of a replacement, not because “apes good humans bad”, but because at every point, every character makes choices displaying their innate “humanity”, and have to deal with the consequences of those choices, good or bad.

    Anyway, Dredd was awesome, Karl Urban is my husbando, and his DOOM movie is the best video game movie of all time. Thanks for coming to my TEDx talk!






  • That’s a pretty good list you’ve got, my friend; at least those I’ve seen from it. Allow me to make some suggestions from the last 11 years:

    • All three of Jordan Peele’s movies: Get Out (2017), Us (2019), but especially Nope (2022).
    • Denis Villaneuve’s work, specifically Siciario (2015), Arrival (2016, one of the best sci-fi book to screen adaptations I’ve ever seen), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Dune pt1 (2021).
    • Edgar Wright had both Baby Driver (2017) and Last Night in Soho (2021).
    • Rian Johnson did both Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion (2022).
    • George Miller gave us Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and the practical effects alone are worth a viewing.
    • Shane Black’s The Nice Guys (2016) was amazing.
    • Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) had me grinning from ear to ear all the way through.
    • Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018) is not only the best looking animated movie of all time, but one of the best superhero movies ever made.
    • And while we’re on the subject of Lord and Miller projects, both 21 Jump Street (2012) and 22 Jump Street (2014) just squeeze in. Honestly, anything these two touch seems to be gold.
    • Both of the Matt Reeves directed Apes movies, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) are in the window, though honestly the whole trilogy is fantastic and Andy Serkis needs a fucking CGI Ape Oscar already.

    That’s off the top of my head, at least.

    Even Tarantino has dropped the ball IMO.

    Man, how you gonna do Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) dirty like that? Django is pure revenge fantasy good times, Eight is beautiful and tense with some amazing character acting, and Hollywood just revels in being part of a mythological time and place in movie history.




  • At first, we grumbled but did it because we knew that running the services had a cost. Then it got normalized. “Eh, it’s the price of one game a year, and I get to play whatever online and get three ‘free’ games a month, so it’s a good deal.”

    Now, it’s not a good deal anymore, at least for me. Hit the “Cancel” button on my sub not 5 minutes ago.

    I grew up on consoles, spent my teens on PC, and my adult life I’ve always kept both around, because I love games, regardless of where they are, but yeah. Most of my multiplayer was already on PC, this just solidifies my PS5 as a media/single player game appliance.