Film Fanatics - Chat Thread II

Seen Battleship. **** film but still better than Transformers. The black woman looked familiar.

I think your latter point about him being underestimated because of his age is a good point. In the Alex Rider books, Anthony Horowitz set Alex's age at 14 when the British intelligence began sending him undercover under the reasoning that no one would suspect a kid, and they would underestimate him. And he began to lose that strength of his character as the books/years went by.

You went and watched Battleship? Did you lose a bet or something?

A friend asked me and another friend about what film might be included in our top films of the millennium so far, and both of us immediately responded Transformers in the most serious way possible. The other person bought it as well, and was really confused. We managed to keep it up for almost a minute, but broke down when we tried to start talking about Shia LaBeouf's acting merits.

All this leans towards MIB3 being utter ****.

Almost, I lost the vote to decide which film to watch. My friends are the type of people that like big explosions and action films so are the ones always inclined to watch such films as the Expendables, Transformers, Avengers, Mission Impossible whilst finding films such as True Grit and Inception 'mediocre'.

I'm surprised you didn't break down when saying Transformers. I liked Shia LaBeouf in the Even Stevens TV show and as a secondary supporting character in the Constantine and I Robot films. It's the main spotlight that he does not seem suited to.

The trailer should have told you enough about the film. Looks bland and uninteresting, and belongs in the 90s.

Apprehensive. Visually it looks great, but that's basically all Luhrmann's good for. Don't really know what else to say.

However if there is ANY autotune in the soundtrack, I will vomit in the theatre and feel no shame or remorse.

Yes, that's the morally right thing to do.

Still not sure what to make of it...It looks as if it could be watchable but Luhrmann's still probably got a few things up his sleeve that are yet to be seen but are bound to ruin the movie.

It also looks like Carey Mulligan is now officially one of the biggest actresses in the world, which is nice.

I think Baz Luhrmann is brilliant. Romeo+Juliet was a very brave and ambitious interpretation, and he's a director with tremendous flair. He also doesn't make a whole lot of films, so it's always refreshing to see him. The 3D backlash is all getting rather tiresome though - Martin Scorsese definitively showed that films you might not initially think need 3D can benefit from it, and still be excellent works in their own right.

It also looks like Carey Mulligan is now officially one of the biggest actresses in the world, which is nice. However, there's a distinct lack of Vincent Chase in that trailer.

EDIT: My 3D comment wasn't aimed at you Christien (I didn't see it before I wrote my post), just at the more general youtube crowd that goes "haha, 3D is crap".

It's been coming. It looks like she know how to pick her movies as well - An Education, Never Let Me Go, Drive and Shame in recent years (although also a blip with Wall Street 2).

Also, I'm wondering what was brave and ambitious about Romeo + Juliet. It's probably the only film of his I don't really dislike, but timeshifted Shakespeare has been done before: West Side Story, Branagh's Hamlet, the Ian McKellen Hitler version of Richard III (which is seriously weird but also great), etc. Is it the fact that it's pretty seamlessly integrated into the teen film genre, or am I missing something? Genuinely curious.

There's a lot of things I admire about it. I think it's partly because the starting point is that it is one of the most famous stories ever (more so than any other Shakespeare play, I'd say), so you're always going to face criticism with what ever you do with it. And yet it absolutely wasn't done by halves, Luhrmann had a vision and didn't compromise it for anything. I also think it captured the mood of the time in a way that was really damned impressive - it's pretty difficult to modernise something and sink it in reality without it just becoming a vacuous mess of pop-culture references. Although I know relatively little about it, I guess West Side Story did a similar thing at the time, but the key difference for me was Luhrmann's decision to retain the original language. It was the first thing I saw that really made me appreciate Shakespeare and become interested in it because of the language, in a way that West Side Story (which I'd seen before) didn't manage to. I personally think the ambitious part of it was that it was Luhrmann's attempt to switch on a generation to Shakespeare that didn't necessarily appreciate it by grounding it in a world they'd understand. And there's something very noble about that (and far cleverer than dry Shakespeare academics who look down their noses at anything they don't perceive as respectful and lament the fact that ignorant young people don't like the works), regardless of how well you think he succeeded.

I'm not sure I would ever appreciate a film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. For me the main attraction in reading it was the wonderful way it was written, and I'm not sure how that would ever be captured outside of a book (unless you attempt something like that really interesting-sounding play called Gatz where they just read the book - I don't know if you've heard of it?). But Luhrmann is one of the few directors I'd actually have the faith in to respect that language and make it a central part of the film.