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hear hear. Ive always wondered about Red Dawn, whether it was worth watching. Any cinematically good parts? Or is it all just rambo with extra commie bashing
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So a “maybe if you’re stuck on a short flight” then
The Cube.
Most people saw it as an average horror movie where a bunch of people try to get out of a giant torture box. But there was a pivotal scene that stuck with me where one of the prisoners realizes he helped build part of it. The whole thing wasn’t some intentional torture device but just a bunch of people doing their day jobs that were lost in a bureaucracy not ever questioning what their work was creating.
A stark reflection of society and the systems we create and the dangers of not ever looking at the bigger picture.Of course they proceeded to shit all over this idea in Cube2 where it ended up being just another evil government experiment.
I actually liked Cube Zero for the backstory and set styles. I don’t remember much else so I’m assuming it was shit, but you can give it a try if you want.
I think OP pretty much summed up Cube Zero. The first installment is really just a horror fiction also depicting the structure of human society.
Yeah, Cube 2 is shit. It’s a scientific concept show.
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Yeah it’s not a bad film at all really, but even just within the horror/scifi genre it can’t compete with higher budget films for popularity.
There was this movie I saw once called Time Trap. I definitely would not call it good, but the premise was interesting.
Archaeology professor goes missing while exploring a cave which was once thought to be the location of the fountain of youth. His grad students go looking for him, find the cave, weird things start happening when they enter.
Spoilers below:
The cave is revealed to cause some sort of time distortion which grows in intensity the further in you go. The professor who had been missing for days was only in the cave for a few hours. By the time everyone realizes what is happening, months go by, then years. They exit the cave at one point only to find an apocalypse has occurred, with the cave becoming the only safe haven for them to exist in at this point. Without spoiling the rest of the movie, the story plays in to the fountain of youth legend by including a group of Spanish Conquistadors and a tribe of paleolithic cavemen living in a deeper part of the cave, all living as if only days have passed, but in reality centuries/millennia had gone by outside.
might give this one a watch!
Hey, I’m upvoting you and all but I gotta ask how do you do the spoiler thing? I’m using Apollo and it made me click to expand your comment so I could see the spoiler part. How did you format it?
It took me a few tries, but the format that was recommended to me by SoleInvictus in this comment appeared to work.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14390647
Ironically it doesn’t work as well in my own app because the app keeps trying to change the formatting to its own syntax, but it seems to work for the most people of all spoiler options.
I had a series of 3 stomach surgeries and I delved into some shows I wouldn’t watch. I stumbled on this one. I really loved the premise. It is one of those late night SyFy feeling movies. The end did get weird, but I like where they were going with it.
I’m surprised how many people in the comments have (A) seen this movie, and (B) liked it. I didn’t care for it, although I do like the basic premise.
The timing of your comment is a kind of a funny coincidence for me, because over the past few days I’ve been editing the next episode of my podcast, which will come out on Tuesday, and in it I mention Time Trap a couple times. Maybe the film is having a moment?
This was the first thing I thought of when seeing the prompt. I actually love this movie and have seen it several times, but the acting is abysmal.
The kind of spoiler tag you used is the kind that doesn’t work on every Lemmy app. Fortunately, that’s not a problem, as I’ve already seen Time Trap, and despite forgetting its name, do sometimes think about it.
Thanks, I actually went out of my way to look up the native Lemmy markdown format for spoilers because I was worried the one I was used to using wasn’t universal, but I guess the opposite ended up being the case. I’ll try to fix it.
Reign of fire. Don’t know if that’s what you were referencing in the picture but it’s immediately what came to mind when I saw the drawing.
Wait, but Reign of Fire is the best dragon vs. helicopter movie ever made!
Dude yes, I was so hyped for it, but it really underdelivered
Bits of it were good. Seems like something went wrong in production or they ran out of money or something. Some of the effects were really good and there was a real mood to the post apocalypse world but it was very uneven especially the way the entire process of civilization ending was just a montage of newspaper headlines. It’s ok to be post apocalypse of you don’t want to show the apocalypse but that was just cheese. Also there were the odd shots that were of just such a lower standard than the rest of the film. Like this scene where a guy climbs up a watertower and stands atop it getting ready to throw a spear and for some reason after the effects extravaganza up until that point in the film it looked a cheap television blue screen that was super awkward. I guess they wanted it to look taller than in reality and show the desolate landscape but it’s so weird that after all the aerial dragon combat they’d pulled off pretty well for the most part that THAT was somehow difficult. I seem to recall storywise there was some very disappointing ending too but it’s been rather too long for me to recall it now anyway.
Man in the High Castle tv show. The premise was interesting, Nazis taking over the US and the population figting back. However, the show quickly devolved into a confusing mess.
Nazis are in charge of the US government, yet there’s other Nazis on the run from the Nazis in charge? And they’re hiding bibles? I was left scratching my head wondering if there were any characters that weren’t Nazis. I guess it’s a story about how bad guys always turn on each other?
Also The Witcher season 1 tv show. I’ve never played the games before and knew nothing about it. I was hoping the tv series would be my introduction to the games, but… what in the actual fuck. Was the director drunk? Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I’m just not getting it?
As far as the witcher and time travel kind of. At some point in the future there was a disaster and Earth was destroyed. However some humans and lots of monsters from alternate realities ended up in the world of the Witcher. Elves and dwarves were the original inhabitants.
Humans used a mix of genetic engineering they had and magic taught to them by the elves to make the Witchers. The Witchers helped solve the massive monster problem and the world ended up with humans mostly on top.
Witchers age very slowly and if not killed can live a very long time. Powerful magic users are basically the same. So the stories from session 1 are spread over about 80 years with some long lived characters.
The first book that season 1 is primarily based on is also different from the other books. It’s a bunch of short stories that are based on classic stories. So there is Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, etc.
The witcher Netflix series was a mess behind the scenes. I think some of the writers were taking it as opportunity to show off their ‘abilities’ and were writing OC instead of the witcher.
If you didn’t actually finish high castle, it just keeps getting good weirder.
Season 1 is based on the first book, which was made some a bunch of serials in a fiction magazine. It’s honestly pretty spot on with the book and the following books and seasons are fully linear.
1st season had 2-3 timelines going at once, no time travel (this time) just poorly executed non-linear story telling
I felt like the story was amazing for season 1. Season 2 went downhill quickly because of the easy love triangle plot line. The main saving gave was the Rufus ‘Obergruppenführer Smith’ Sewell amd his son toryline. I couldn’t even tell you if I’ve seen/remember one episode of season 3.
Not a film, but a TV series? It’s called Jericho, and the synopsis in the Wikipedia reads:
Jericho is an American post-apocalyptic action drama television series, which centers on the residents of the fictional city of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.
But yeah, the execution is mediocre at best. Both the action and the drama are unbearably flimsy and cliche, even the argument flops as metal.
Nuts
I love Jericho. On my third watch right now actually. Would agree that it’s frequently cliché, but overall I’d say it’s very good. Skeet Ulrich is transfixing.
Did you read the season 3 in comic books? I was surprised about the following they’ve got as I was reading that Wikipedia entry.
yeah but it’s been aaages, I forgot about what happened in those.
As featured in the picture, Reign of Fire. I had forgotten about it. I truly don’t think there is a film out there that has represented dragons as I see them better.
I really think about Quinn’s character a lot. How the world entirely changed for him on that pivotal day he discovered that male dragon, and the decades he spent running and surviving and living in fear of something that he inadvertently set in motion, and then the turning point as an adult as he confronts his fear and wields it to put an end to what he started.
What I like about him, is that he’s not actually that unique – anybody could have woken that dragon, and if Quinn hadn’t been there on that day, one of his mother’s coworkers would have. He’s not particularly heroic as an adult either, opting to hide and scrounge for survival, and openly admitting to everyone that he’s winging it on the leader front. And yet he inspires his community with fierce devotion to keeping them all alive. When he finally goes to confront the dragon, he does it almost alone, inspiring no one with his courage other than himself.
As a character I find him weirdly relatable as someone just coping with heavy trauma the best that they can
Terminator Genisys
First creative use of the time travel the series ever had… And totally botched about every other aspect of the movie that wasn’t an action sequence.
That whole 30 second idea of a Terminator in the 70s with a young Sarah Connor was far more interesting than what the movie did with Kyle Reese.
Oof yeah, what were they thinking with doing that to Kyle? He was the one pure aspect of the entire franchise (a friend, a lover, a father, a sacrificial pawn) and they cheapened his sacrifice with that nonsense
A few favorites:
- Constantine
- The Last Jedi
- Jupiter Ascending
- Minority Report
- Prometheus
- Valerian
- Logan’s Run
I love Constantine, and genuinely do not get the hate that film got. Sure it was different from the comics, but it was good in its own right, and the casting and acting (with the exception of that guy from Even Steven) was spot on
Constantine and Minority Report shouldn’t be on that list, IMO. The former in particular is very well executed and thoroughly enjoyable!
I’ll be that guy that enjoyed The Last Jedi explicitly because it was something different, and leaned into more of the mystical side of the force while on the “big screen.”
Edit and spoiler just in case
I just remembered the hyperspace “weapon” moment, and both how cool it was and how much it could affect the empire. They probably didn’t mean for it, but that you could effectively point and shoot a ship like that was an amazing usage.
I was ok with using the ship as a suicidal torpedo, but I wasn’t ok with a single person being able to fully maneuver the thing all by herself, or the ensuing space rip conveniently doing that V shape and getting all 3 ships.
But the bombing run at the beginning of the movie really set the tone for “Prepare to be sorely disappointed”
What a stupid, stupid, stupid design for a ‘space’ bomber. Just utterly stupid. I can’t say stupid enough.
Bruh Constantine is one of my favorite films ever. It’s so fucking awesome!
Passengers had the possibility to be really creepy, I still liked it but without seeing Chris Pratts time alone first, we would have all been confused and on guard with Jennifer Lawrence.
Lucy
It’s entertaining as all hell. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more, so I don’t understand the hate it gets. Just turn off your brain, and have some fun. It’s not supposed to be hard sci-fi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film)
The audience for Lucy was split evenly between men and women, with 65 percent being over age 25.[54] Nikki Rocco, president for domestic distribution at Universal Studios, said, “To have a female lead in an original property absolutely made a difference. Scarlett is a star, and her presence [in the film] made it a lot more appealing for women.”[55] Michael Bodey of The Australian commented that women having comprised half the audience is “a seemingly new precedent for an action film” and that, because of its box office performance, Lucy is the film out of all of Besson’s film work “likely to have the greatest cultural impact.”[18]
It seems like it definitely resonated with a lot of people, will check it out. Luc Besson can be hit and miss, but his films are always memorable
I think in Scarlett’s Hot Ones episode, she mentioned that Meryl Streep told her she loved Lucy. Which makes me think Meryl might be a big stoner. Hilarious.
and it’s only 89 minutes, it doesn’t get stale or repetitive!
The original Purge. I thought all the background stuff and setting were super interesting, but the film itself was a generic home invasion movie. The sequel expanded on all the stuff I was interested in, though.
The sequels really explored the idea with impressive worldbuilding. I admit the first one was more a horror flick, but the others were definitely digging deep into social commentary
Yeah, it wasn’t even that the first one was bad, it’s just that all the things they mentioned in passing, like the New Founding Fathers and the exemptions for Level 10 Government Officials, were building a world that sounded super interesting. Then we got saddle with some boring rich family for 90 minutes. I only got around to seeing the first sequel, but it delivered on all the stuff I wanted to see after I heard that first announcement.
NostalgiaCritic did a pretty decent analysis on the Purge series a few years ago, and it touches on a lot of this:
I’ll be honest, I find that guy super annoying, but I appreciate you sharing it with me. It definitely makes me feel validated that someone else felt the same way
Oh I hate him too, and his needlessly pipsqueak voice and the stark unenthusiasm when reading out charity donations.
But his analyses can be pretty decent
Highlander II
The Dark Tower
It’s a long list but these two were painful.
Mind you, Highlander II would’ve made more sense as a non-Highlander movie that just revolves around space aliens dealing with Earth having a planetary shield now. As a sequel to Highlander its premise was really weird.
Highlander 2 is unsalvageable. That movie sucked so bad it wasn’t even fun to watch with friends to make fun of it
The premise of Highlander 2 was awful, too, though.
Fuck The Dark Tower. That movie doesn’t exist for me. Total waste.
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+1 for I do not give a shit about Chris Pratt
Gotta feeling the upcoming movie with SJ is going to be right on that list too. Just bad ideas getting recycled over and over.
I in no way call this “mediocre”; Its just a flat our terrible low budget bullshit film that the director made as an excuse to hang out with shirtless dudes.
But years ago the guys at Red Letter Media did a segment on “Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper”, and that premise alone (what happened after D.B. Cooper landed) has lived in my brain ever since.
It legitimately angers me that such a great high concept idea was completely wasted on what basically amounts to gay porn.
Lmao, the reviews are somewhat illuminating
Yep. And therein lies my frustration.
David Decoteau (or he’ll sometimes use his alias “Richard Chasen”) stole the perfect premise for what could have been a great shlocky low-to-mid-budget action movie. And no NO ONE can ever make it without being compared with…that…whatever it is…
