AndyDursin wrote: ↑Tue Sep 04, 2018 9:01 pm I didn't say it was bad -- but falsely propped up? Absolutely. Nothing more than a run of the mill Marvel film, portrayed in the press (and by many critics) as a cataclysmic cultural moment worthy of Academy Awards. By that standard BLADE should've been TITANIC back in the '90s!

Totally agreed. Black Panther is fun, sure, but it's also shallow fluff. Had the main characters been Caucasian, it certainly wouldn't be treated as the Roots of superhero cinema.

Now that this movie is out, its remarkable how many people I have heard express often profound disappointment over it -- from all ends of the ideological spectrum. Boring, inaccurate, misleadingly marketed seem to be the recurring themes from everybody I know who has seen it.

The "flag issue" seems to be symptomatic of a morose biopic that actually flat out made stuff up...

FIRST MAN
6/10

One would’ve thought the story of the first man to walk on the moon would’ve been a surefire subject for a great motion picture. It still may be, but “LaLaLand”’s director, Damien Chazelle, and star Ryan Gosling turn it into an often downright peculiar cinematic experience – a movie graced with a convincing and authentic looking visual design, but stalled out constantly by tedious “domestic scenes” that never generate any narrative momentum, much less establish an emotional connection for the viewer with the material.

Gosling’s mannered performance as Armstrong also never feels convincing, as the movie tells us – repeatedly – that the astronaut was a soft-spoken man haunted by the death of his young daughter from cancer. That point is understandably a big one at the heart of “First Man,” but surely there were other components to Armstrong’s journey that are never believably rendered – one only has to seek out interviews with the real Armstrong to see that he actually did have a sense of humor and didn’t always sound like Forrest Gump. Even worse are the tiresome scenes of Armstrong’s wife dealing with raising their son in his frequent absence and complaining to NASA about a lack of transparency – poor Claire Foy is saddled with these repetitive sequences and is unable to inject anything to counterbalance Chazelle and writer Josh Singer’s downright shrewish portrayal of Janet Armstrong.

Saddled with a capable supporting cast that’s given very little to do -- Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke, and Lukas Haas are among those who basically disappear into the background -- plus a score by Justin Hurwitz that’s “introspective” at best (and unsupportive dramatically at worst), and it’s no surprise that “First Man” failed to find much support among audiences. This is a movie that tries so hard not to be “The Right Stuff” or “Apollo 13” that you wonder what the filmmakers found compelling about the subject matter to begin with.

Universal’s 4K UHD of “First Man” is out next week. The HDR/Dolby Vision enhanced transfer (2.39, though opened up briefly for an IMAX aspect ratio during the moon walk itself) is superb, and does boost the movie’s visuals – clearly its strongest asset. Chazelle and cinematographer Linus Sandgren capture the look of vintage NASA films and there are individual moments – especially the film’s opening sequence – that are superb, making the disappointment of the surrounding sequences all the more striking. The Dolby Atmos sound is as immersive as a viewer would hope, with commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes, the BD and a Digital Copy also included.

Instead getting things done like I should be today, I've been perusing old threads.

I had completely forgotten First Man even existed! Yet another example of how forgettable most movies (especially "Oscar bait" flicks) have become in the past 20 years.

A movie that nobody saw and was very quickly forgotten by those who saw it pretty much.

That is one other thing about the current pop culture -- if nobody finds it straightaway, nobody is going to. There isn't even a $5 dump bin at Walmart for these to sit in anymore. Unsuccessful movies are basically vanishing straight into thin air

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 1:03 pm A movie that nobody saw and was very quickly forgotten by those who saw it pretty much.

That is one other thing about the current pop culture -- if nobody finds it straightaway, nobody is going to. There isn't even a $5 dump in at Walmart for these to sit in anymore. Unsuccessful movies are basically vanishing straight into thin air

I was reading a while back about how studios these days quickly withdraw movies that initially under-perform. Of course a lot of the time they aren't good films to begin with (and I'm not in any hurry to see First Man!), but there are those rare cases when an unsuccessful movie eventually does find an audience (It's A Wonderful Life, Somewhere in Time, Blade Runner, etc).

However, it's becoming more rare with the increase of the "streaming only" business model, and that's a shame.