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[drsteelhammer]

*obligatory rant about derailing the thread and being the most nauseating forum on the internet*

Now, back to movies: How did you like Brooklyn? I have seen it just now and while the plot was decent, the score and Saoirse Ronan were absolutely amazing. I expect an Oscar for the latter as best female leading role.

On another note, I didn't like the Lobster. I loved the premise, but I did expect to see a different kind of movie.

[Jorbles]

What's the Lobster? I have not heard anything about this. *one google search later*

What didn't you like about it? It looks super weird and has all sorts of directions it could be going in.

[Teproc]

On another note, I didn't like the Lobster. I loved the premise, but I did expect to see a different kind of movie.

So you didn't like it because it didn't adhere to your expectations ?

[Witherweaver]

So you could just watch it again, and then like it, right?

[drsteelhammer]

On another note, I didn't like the Lobster. I loved the premise, but I did expect to see a different kind of movie.

So you didn't like it because it didn't adhere to your expectations ?

I was unclear, that is not what I meant. I like it when a movie toys with my expactations or takes a different route than what I expected.

What I meant was that I loved the premise so much I was already prepared to love the movie. Unfortunately for me, it evolved into a genre I can't get anything out of. And yes, I've tried.

So you could just watch it again, and then like it, right?

I honestly doubt it, the film had its genuinely funny moments and a few nicely edited scenes, but I'd rather watch another movie from the same director than watching this one again.

[Awaclus]

I happened to stumble upon Where the Dead Go to Die on imdb, and I noted that while it had overwhelmingly bad reviews, those reviewers were mostly focused on how offended they were and the only people talking about the actual merits of the movie were the few people who gave it positive reviews. And it was horror and animation, and the people who liked it also liked Heart String Marionette (which, I realized during the credits, might have been partially because HSM's director had a voice acting role in it). So I just absolutely had to see it.

I'm not entirely sure what to think of it, but it was most interesting, and certainly not a bad movie.

[Asper]

Watched "My neighbor Totoro" recently. Given how famous it is, i expected something clever or touching, but it was just a straightforward children's movie. I was disappointed.

[Awaclus]

Watched "My neighbor Totoro" recently. Given how famous it is, i expected something clever or touching, but it was just a straightforward children's movie. I was disappointed.

There's somewhat convincing speculah that it's metaphorically about the Sayama Incident.

[Witherweaver]

Watched "My neighbor Totoro" recently. Given how famous it is, i expected something clever or touching, but it was just a straightforward children's movie. I was disappointed.

I found it very touching. 

[Teproc]

Watched "My neighbor Totoro" recently. Given how famous it is, i expected something clever or touching, but it was just a straightforward children's movie. I was disappointed.

You monster.

The Hateful Eight : if you like Tarantino, you will love it. If you're even a slightly conflicted about him, probably not.

[enfynet]

Watched "My neighbor Totoro" recently. Given how famous it is, i expected something clever or touching, but it was just a straightforward children's movie. I was disappointed.

You monster.

The Hateful Eight : if you like Tarantino, you will love it. If you're even a slightly conflicted about him, probably not.

I love Inglorious Basterds. I really enjoy Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained. Was pleased with Jackie Brown and From Dusk til Dawn. Did not care for Deathproof or Kill Bill.

[Teproc]

Huh, Kill Bill is an unusual one not to like. Hateful Eight does have Kill Bill-like amounts of gore at certain points if that's what bothered you.

Mostly what I mean is that Tarantino's best scenes tend to be people sitting down and talking with some kind of underlying tension and threat of violence implied. The Hateful Eight is that for about three hours.

[KingZog3]

Huh, Kill Bill is an unusual one not to like. Hateful Eight does have Kill Bill-like amounts of gore at certain points if that's what bothered you.

Mostly what I mean is that Tarantino's best scenes tend to be people sitting down and talking with some kind of underlying tension and threat of violence implied. The Hateful Eight is that for about three hours.

I didn't like Kill Bill either because I felt it didn't have those Tarantino moments of tension during long conversations. It was just silly action and lots of gore.

[Kuildeous]

Yeah, I'd say that Tarantino does a couple of scenes really well. He has conversation scenes that could be about mundane crap that grabs your attention (Reservoir Dogs). He also has action scenes that are homages to other genres (Kill Bill). And sometimes he'll combine them (Inglorious Basterds).

As much as I appreciate QT's handling of dialogue, I will say that I got pretty fucking sick of Deathproof. For the first time I wanted a QT conversation to just end and get to the next stage. And then the next stage was disappointing for me too. It probably would have been less disappointing if the gab wasn't cranked up to 17 (11 is as high as I'll go).

I'm looking forward to seeing the Hateful Eight. Sounds like it does what QT does well, and the fact that one of them is Samuel Jackson is additional icing.

[Witherweaver]

So I saw The Revenant this weekend, highly recommend it.  If you haven't seen it, I suggest going into it without reading anything about it or really knowing how other people reacted to it.  Not for spoilerage reasons or anything, but just because I think it's something that should be experienced without having many preconceptions or expectations.

I also saw Mad Max: Fury Road last night.  I missed it in the theaters.  Ultimately I really enjoyed it.. not sure I'd put it up among "top movies", but definitely worth watching.  And Tom Hardy is always awesome. 

[KingZog3]

I want to see the Revenent. Instead I just saw Star Wars. I don't get the hype. It's just JJ Abrams' Star Trek movies with the title Star Wars, terrible dialogue, boring action and a plot that is basically just lots of coincidences. Very underwhelming.

[enfynet]

What you mean is:

JJ Abrams Star Trek movies were more Wars than Trek, so his Star Wars felt like a Star Wars movie.

You have seen Star Wars before, right?

[Witherweaver]

I still never get the "coincidence" argument for why a movie is bad.  I always wonder if people have the same criticism for a novel like Great Expectations.

[drsteelhammer]

I still never get the "coincidence" argument for why a movie is bad.  I always wonder if people have the same criticism for a novel like Great Expectations.

If it wouldn't have anything else going on, then yes.

[Asper]

I still never get the "coincidence" argument for why a movie is bad.  I always wonder if people have the same criticism for a novel like Great Expectations.

I guess it's okay if coincidences are added for symmetry and structure, and it's done well. Such as when in A Clockwork Orange, Alex meets all the people he was cruel to before, and they pay him back. It's intentional - the repetition and reversal is celebrated, like the chorus of a musical piece you know after two people appeared, that now the third will appear. It's for art, for making a statement, not to drive the story.

In Great Expectations the coincidences are cheap, out-of-nowhere deus-ex-machinas to make sure good boy Pip gets rewarded in the end. It's so arbitrary and has so little to do with the rest of the story that i couldn't help feel i wasted too much of my time reading the book. And i like reading.

[GendoIkari]

I still never get the "coincidence" argument for why a movie is bad.  I always wonder if people have the same criticism for a novel like Great Expectations.

Me too. A lot of people complained about it in Star Wars. But to me, movies in general do that, because interesting events pretty much by definition have a low chance of happening. What people seem to miss is that for every 1 event that happens in a movie, there's a million other possibilities that didn't happen, which didn't get movies made out of them. Because they weren't interesting.

It's kind of like saying "what are the odds that John McClain would just happen to be in the right building at the right time when terrorists came to attack the building?" Well they are very low... it's quite a coincidence that he was there. But it wouldn't be an interesting story if he weren't there.

The fact is that extremely unlikely events occur all the time. If I ask my computer for a random number between 1 and a million, and it gives me 447,423, well, there was only a 1 in a million chance that that would occur. But no matter what number it gives me, there was only a 1 in a million chance of it occurring.

[GendoIkari]

So you could just watch it again, and then like it, right?

This happens to me. 1408 is a good example. Based on the previews, I was expecting a typical horror film. At the end, I was disappointed because it wasn't really scary. But I realized that it really was more along the lines of psychological thriller than horror. And I love psychological thrillers. So I watched it again at some point, and really enjoyed it.

[Grujah]

I was talking about the "coincidence" thing just the other day. Movie in question was Fury.. like, yeah, so out of all 5 tanks, it's them that survive, how convenient?

Well, if it was another tank (Murder Inc or w/e) that survived the skirmish, we would be watching a movie about them and not about Fury, wouldn't we?
You can't really follow this 5 guys in a tank, have them die 30 minutes in, and than go over to these other 5 guys in this other tank that managed to survive. 

And I actually saw a lot of movies since I last posted (also trying to get 100 movies in 2016, am at 7 atm), including the discussed H8ful 8, from which I expected a bit more (more intrigue, to be honest), but was a hit anyway. Also SW, Inside out but some older stuff too like Cool Hand Luke which was pretty fun.

Edit: did anybody see "Love Exposure" ? I am getting some good reviews but it's 4 and a half hours long adn I don't have that much time to spend on something I will regret halfway in.

[silverspawn]

I still never get the "coincidence" argument for why a movie is bad.  I always wonder if people have the same criticism for a novel like Great Expectations.

I don't know Great Expectations.

A plot with too many coincidences is bad because it's not believable. Lack of believability means lack of immersion and, if it's too much, lack of me caring. Real life is not an alignment of 1/10000 odds that all come true. It also makes the plot predictable.

The fact is that extremely unlikely events occur all the time. If I ask my computer for a random number between 1 and a million, and it gives me 447,423, well, there was only a 1 in a million chance that that would occur. But no matter what number it gives me, there was only a 1 in a million chance of it occurring.

That's missing the point.

You can explain every event away by listing a number of possible outcomes that all have equal probability and saying 'all outcomes have been equally likely!'. For example, if you buy a lottery ticket, you could say that it's not particularly unlikely that you got everything right, because the set of numbers that were selected has been exactly as likely as any other set.

What matters for a judgement of 'likely' or 'unlikely' is how you grouped/would group your sets of probabilities before the event happens. If you buy a lottery ticket, you'll group them in 'loss' and 'win' and 'win' is a lot less likely, so if it happens, it's an unlikely coincidence, whereas 'loss' is really likely, and you don't really care how exactly the loss came to pass.

Similarly, in your number example, if you generate 447423, that's not an unlikely coincidence. If you had gone up to it saying 'I want it to generate the number 447423 and then it does it, that would be an unlikely coincidence. Similarly, if you draw 4 cards and they're all aces, that's an unlikely coincidence, because you perceive aces as something special. If you draw 4, 7, J, J in three different colors, that's not an unlikely coincidence, because you had just grouped it in with a ton of other outcomes as 'nothing special'.

[Awaclus]

A plot with too many coincidences is bad because it's not believable. Lack of believability means lack of immersion and, if it's too much, lack of me caring. Real life is not an alignment of 1/10000 odds that all come true. It also makes the plot predictable.

That's the entire point of fiction, though. If you want something to feel realistic, there's this "real life" thing, have you tried that? It's pretty boring in my experience though, so I can't really recommend it too much.