Adventure Gamers - Forums

Any movies you’d like to discuss, recommend or burn to the ground: this is your thread.

I mentioned ROBOT JOX in another thread: it’s a good B-movie. Not one of those post-ironic sharks in a plane tornado types, it’s the real deal, 100% sincerely rolling with it’s own premise. And it’s pretty cool and dumb: war has been outlawed (finally) - all conflicts are settled in Mecha Fights, operated by ROBOT JOX. It’s a cold war movie, so the sides are basically the US (MARKET) and the USSR (the Confederation). There’s some domestic socio-political stuff going on with new, lab-made jox and potentially the first woman to jox a Mecha for the USA.

The acting is just honest, nobody phones it in. It’s never over the top, though one dude is riding that line pretty hard throughout the movie. It’s pretty good.

It has fine effects for a movie of, let’s say, a very moderate budget. The script.. holds together. The characters are not that deep - which makes sense and is fine. The Mechas are pretty cool. The final confrontation is amazing. I cheered.

seething wolf - 05 July 2022 06:20 AM

Vegetable Party - 04 July 2022 04:55 PM

Not one of those post-ironic sharks in a plane tornado types, it’s the real deal

You mean not postmodern irony; post-irony is when such reverts back to honesty.

Lol well that’s what I get for casually throwing around terms like that!

There’s an interesting discussion - I think post-irony mostly has that meaning in literature, which seems to me like a reaction to postmodern irony, treating it as a necessary phase that has overstayed its welcome, starting to reveal its less appealing tendencies. An open door to cynicism, or blurring lines in ways that are a perhaps too convenient for reactionary intent.

Postmodern irony in literature (personal non-academic take) seems more playful, using irony as a tool in clever ways, rather than sporting it as a blunt weapon. It never saw the 80s coming.

As for me, I’ve recently watched the blu-ray of the 1986’s Arion: written, drawn and directed by the one and only Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. It’s essentially a what if scenario of Greek myth with beautiful buttery animation.

That sounds awesome. Particularly watching stuff on blu-ray; watching any movie for me starts with a 20 to 30 minutes negotiation with my second-hand dvd-player.

I’m really behind on animation, though. Japanese and otherwise. I saw the most obvious ones (Akira, Ghost in the Shell 1 + 2, most of the Studio Ghibli output).

If I can find Arion somewhere, I’ll pick it up.

That’s Ray Bradbury’s best story among the many good ones he wrote.

i recently watched two of my favourite movies of all time, The Conversation and Sunset Boulevard. Both movies depicting legends in their respective fields, caught up by time, unraveling.

We think of our time as series of events. We see action and consequence, chronological order. It’s how we experience our bodies, consciously on the way to a moment in the future when we’ll cease to be. But we experience our past and our future in the present. Both may be over-determined, but it’s the devastating lack of certainty we have in every waking moment and the way we cope that ends up being the catalyst of our undoing.

Well, that certainly set the tone for another movie i watched more/less recently: The Death of Stalin. It is as grim as you might imagine. it’s also a comedy, of sorts. How does that work? For one, it isn’t some kind of wacky fun depiction of a brutal dictatorship. It doesn’t go for shock value or irreverence. Characters make cruel jokes, but the movie doesn’t use cruelty as a source of comedy. It turns it around on these petty, scheming men. It is a farce, as a reenactment of tragedy.

Watched again Misery (1990) with James Caan and Kathy Bates, based on a novel by Stephen King.

It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, mostly because of the eerie atmosphere brought solely by two characters in one room, and incredible acting by Kathy Bates who won an Oscar for this role.

“He didn’t get out of the COCKADOODIE CAR!”

Last weekend I saw You Won’t Be Alone, a Macedonian folk-tale about a witch who can shapeshift and turn people into witches. The story is presented through the eyes of a young girl whose mother hides her in a cave for protection until adolescence, when the witch finds her and becomes a mentor of sorts to her in her newfound witch-ness. Although it’s got the typical gory horror scenes, it’s unique in how it uses the girl’s innocence as a clear perspective on the world and our human existence and all its joys and agonies. It’s fascinating at times and really drives home how strange and multifaceted are the bodily experiences we consider ordinary, and how those experiences simultaneously attract and repel us. The ending and final third of the film weren’t entirely satisfactory for me but I’m glad I saw it and would recommend it - unless you have a strong aversion to blood.

diego - 07 February 2023 03:42 PM

Watched again Misery (1990) with James Caan and Kathy Bates, based on a novel by Stephen King.

It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, mostly because of the eerie atmosphere brought solely by two characters in one room, and incredible acting by Kathy Bates who won an Oscar for this role.

“He didn’t get out of the COCKADOODIE CAR!”

Misery! That was one scary movie! I had no idea what I was letting myself in for and I was exhausted afterwards, must be from being stuck in flight-or-fight mode. Kathy Bates was indeed incredible but James Caan’s performance was excellent as well. Two scenes that made a lasting impression: Kathy Bates going oink! oink! with her pig and the scene where she breaks his leg again with the hammer.

Nice! Both sound pretty good (even if the latter also sounds potentially terrifying).

If you’re up for a German language movie: watch Toni Erdmann. Fair warning: a lot of people find it slow, not very comedic and maybe not relatable. I think it’s not really a comedy or a “dramady” but rather, a depiction of lives, where some are content, others unhappy and most are awkward about making a genuine connection. It’s about the EU and the PMC. It’s also about caring about each other, about being someone, not just as an individual but in relation to others.

It’s a hit-or-miss recommendation, i think: it really depends on whether it clicks. It’s not an American movie - and i don’t mean that in a disparaging way in either direction. It just reads different.

The next movie definitely is American: Jungleground. A b-movie from the time they knew how to make ‘em: i’m talking snappy lines, fun characters, lots of fires, muscles, bullets, the works. It wobbles the line between a naive kind of subversive and just a straight up trope-laden action flick.