What are you watching?

[starschwar]

I've only seen Kevin Smith's shared universe films (I really can't be bothered to care about his horror movies and so on).  Since they're in discussion, may as well throw out my general thoughts.

• Clerks is his "lightning in a bottle" masterpiece.  Art through adversity.  Walks the thin line between clever and deliberately dumb.  It's like the service industry equivalent of Office Space.  It's funny, but there's some heart and mind behind it all.  And the gritty night-for-day (yes, really) filming approach adds a unique style to it.
  
• Mall Rats is basically more of the same, but with a bigger budget and is just lesser.  Similar characters, different setting.  There's some great bits in there to be sure, but it feels like a very "safe" type of followup.  For the love of Yoda, stay away from the extended cut.  Those scenes were removed for a reason, and they're reinserted amateur level - there's obvious jump cuts within the same shots.  Sloppy.
  
• Chasing Amy - I disagree with notions of sexism or homophobia.  The movie is about male hetero characters being put out of their comfort zone, but it isn't endorsing those characters views.  Affleck's character learns (sometimes the hard way) and grows from his presumptions and misunderstandings.  And while Jason Lee's hateful stuff does lead to some of the movie's funniest moments, I don't believe the movie is ever meant to lead the audience to agree with him.  Are there things that aren't handled properly by 21st century standards? Absolutely.  But considering that it's from 1997, I think it was a pretty forward-thinking project.  The big problem is... it kind of abandons the comedy after a while, and Kevin Smith just can't handle protracted stretches of drama.  The guy's at his best when it's two characters (both ostensibly based on himself) shooting the shit about everything or nothing.
  
• Dogma:  Ambitious.  Smith uses his knowledge of his own religion as he would mining deep lore for a comic book adaptation.  He mixes his signature humor with deep theological questions.  Alan Rickman is an absolute delight here - along with Galaxy Quest, it makes me lament that he didn't do more comedies before his passing.  I know this one's controversial, and for obvious reasons.  But I really feel it came from somewhere in his heart, rather than trying to stir up controversy for the sake of stirring up controversy.  Probably my second-favorite of his films after Clerks.
  
•  Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back:  Self-indulgent?  You haven't begun to see the man self-indulge!  A love letter to - kind of everything Smith loves, including his own work, it's a crossover/spinoff that mostly works.  I think these two are at their best when they're supporting characters, rather than the focus.  The jewel thieves are mostly just dead air though.  But the high points are high - the edited "manifesto" tape, the internet message - good stuff.
  
• Clerks II:  Another contender for second-best.  It does a good job of revisiting the characters without completely rehashing the concept.  It's funny, but it's got some real emotion behind it all, too.  And that finale is arguably the funniest stretch of any of his movies to date.
  
• Jay and Silent Bob Reboot:  You know... I liked it at the time.  But I struggle to remember anything that happened in it?  Beyond an oddly poignant epilogue to Chasing Amy.  It's a mostly "more of the same" type movie that makes fun of lazy "more of the same" type movies.  I guess that was the point?
  
• Clerks III:  The feel-bad comedy of the 2020s!  I hate it.  I really, really hate it.  The few funny bits boil down to "remember the old movies?" and "are you familiar with the behind the scenes stories about the old movies?"  The rest is just... dour.  Spiteful.  Mean-spirited.  I know this was meant to be therapy for Smith's brush with death from his heart attack, but he's ruthless to his own creations.  He robs them of character development they had once earned.  They are railroaded into miserable situations.  He makes his characters suffer, and ham-fists what was once a good comedy series into a terrible drama with a message that... well as far as I'm concerned?  It's downright awful what I feel Smith is trying to say here.  If you're happy with how the characters turned out in the second movie?  Quit while you're ahead.
  

[NateDog]

I remember liking Dogma (though I don't recall anything about it) but remember liking Mallrats and Clerks (especially Clerks) more. Having worked retail, Clerks really speaks to me. Also, the dialogue was outstanding. Especially the Start Wars stuff.

"The Big Kahuna" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" are two films I adore immensely. They're basically set in one room and the characters just talk. I'd liken Clerks to those films but replace business men with high school underachievers and it still works. I think calling it a "stoner classic" does it a disservice. There's some very 90s stuff in there that hasn't aged well but the majority still stands up really well. Considering the budget, the lengths he went to in order to get it made and the unfortunate stench of Kevin Smith being high on his own supply for decades, it's still a great piece of work.

I watched Glengarry Glen Ross last month, felt it was more suited to the theatre but some incredible performances in it nonetheless. I'll give Clerks a go.

It was adapted from a stage play. So was The Big Kahuna. And they both star Kevin Spacey.

I love all the performances in GGR. He's only in it for one scene but Alec Baldwin's scene (not in the stage play) is my favourite scene. "Second prize is a set of steak knives. " Pure administrative cruelty. Also, Shelley Levine is the inspiration for Gil in The Simpsons.

Sorry that's what I meant. While I liked GGR, at certain points I could feel that this was something that to me felt more at home in the theatre. The performances are so good that they carry it through but it just still kept giving me that sense that it felt that the movie format felt a little too big for it.

Dogma:  Ambitious.  Smith uses his knowledge of his own religion as he would mining deep lore for a comic book adaptation.  He mixes his signature humor with deep theological questions.  Alan Rickman is an absolute delight here - along with Galaxy Quest, it makes me lament that he didn't do more comedies before his passing.  I know this one's controversial, and for obvious reasons.  But I really feel it came from somewhere in his heart, rather than trying to stir up controversy for the sake of stirring up controversy.  Probably my second-favorite of his films after Clerks.

Thanks for the in-depth thoughts, I really didn't expect everyone would feel so strongly about Kevin Smith's work! I agree on Alan Rickman, he was probably the one character I liked here. He was a treasure and I would have loved to see more of him here and in other similar roles, a shame so much of his time must have been taken up by Harry Potter in the 2000s. 

I saw some of the controversies about this (my copy actually also came with a small booklet of letters sent to Smith about his "heresy), but again as someone that grew up in Catholic Ireland that in my time has changed from having a very significant link between church and state to having very, very vocal opposition to the impact of that religion on our society, it just didn't land for me. It didn't feel as intelligent as it seemed it wanted to be, and seeing commentary on the corruption of the church over the years has been commonplace, and in most cases in a much more derogatory and direct manner (although again, given what things are like in NA perhaps this was the best he could attempt to do without having Dogma scuppered entirely). But I will give Clerks a go and report back. Maybe Chasing Amy too.

In unrelated news, I watched The Martian yesterday. I have no idea why it has taken me so long to watch this given I wanted to catch it in theatres on release and then had been close to buying it time and again over the years, it's exactly my type of jam. But I really enjoyed it. Was impressed at how engaging it was presented given it's a story about someone being so isolated and alone.

[Bread]

In order to prepare myself a little bit better for Doomsday, I watched Fantastic Four: First Steps for the first time last night, and like, I'm a bit nonplussed by the generally positive reaction the film got when it first released. I found a good 3/4 of the film to be so horrifically dull, just a whole lot of nothing happening with a shitload of generic science vernacular thrown in for good measure.

[NateDog]

In order to prepare myself a little bit better for Doomsday, I watched Fantastic Four: First Steps for the first time last night, and like, I'm a bit nonplussed by the generally positive reaction the film got when it first released. I found a good 3/4 of the film to be so horrifically dull, just a whole lot of nothing happening with a shitload of generic science vernacular thrown in for good measure.

I had a conversation with someone just a few hours ago about this lol. This was the first Marvel movie I had seen in an age when it came out, and the first I had seen in theatre since... actually had I seen any Marvel movie in theatre before this? I'm not sure. Anyway, I had a fondness for the old F4 movies and the PS2 game which was probably a bit shit but great fun in co-op so there was that, and I love Ralph Ineson so I wanted to see him as Galactus. But yeah, I saw the positive feedback and reviews so I thought it might be OK but it was incredibly boring. Nothing fun or interesting at all about it for me. I guess this is what the Marvel fanbase has had to endure? If this passed as good-great then I shudder to think of what they were served up for the years before it.

[starschwar]

First Steps was a bread sandwich of a movie.  They had a cool Jetsons world but spend a huge chunk of the movie in space so we don't get to see it.  They skipped the origin story, but also skipped early heroism so that already reformed villains can help.  Johnny deciphers an entire alien language from a small sentence - even for a comic book movie, I cannot suspend my disbelief that much.  Everybody - everybody - was miscast or mischaracterized.  I like Pedro Pascal, but that just isn't Reed Richards to me.  The Thing isn't a lovable grouch?  Why even adapt the character?!  The 2000s movies weren't very good, but Chiklis's Ben Grimm was just about perfect.  And that third act - I just kept predicting the two big story beats, and then they happened as I expected.

Some good, some bad, but mostly empty calories.  It's an aggressively C grade movie.  

As far as recent MCU film output (as in, post-Endgame), I'd put it above... Eternals, Doctor Strange 2, Thor 4, Ant-Man 3, Guardians 3, The Marvels, Captain America 4

But also it's substantially less enjoyable than... Spider-Man Far From Home, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Spider-Man No Way Home, Black Panther 2, Deadpool and Wolverine, Thunderbolts

I don't go to theaters anymore, so no opinion on the newest Spidey.  But it has action choreography by Jackie Chan, and The Punisher is in it.  If I walk away giving that anything less than a C, something is truly wrong with the multiverse.

[NateDog]

Finally got to my second viewing of Spider-Man: BND today and was a little bit worried I'd start to nitpick and find things I disliked in it but no, just cemented it as a top-tier superhero movie. That ending sequence just hits me in the feels so much. Been a long time since a superhero movie has made me feel the way this does.

[starschwar]

I've been enjoying Titanium Daydream. It feels like cutscenes from a lost Japanese game created at some point between 1998 and 2001. All sorts of intentional oddities in the visuals, dialogue, acting, etc. Depicting Iowa as being overwhelmingly coastal is just the tip of the iceberg. They roll out weekly as shorts, later get compilations (and as of this new season, the compilations are "open matte" 4:3 instead of 9:16). It's a very specific type of humor and surrealism, but I dig it.

Season 1 (complete):



Interlude:



Season 2's first compilation:

[Roger]

First Steps was a bread sandwich of a movie.  They had a cool Jetsons world but spend a huge chunk of the movie in space so we don't get to see it.  They skipped the origin story, but also skipped early heroism so that already reformed villains can help.  Johnny deciphers an entire alien language from a small sentence - even for a comic book movie, I cannot suspend my disbelief that much.  Everybody - everybody - was miscast or mischaracterized.  I like Pedro Pascal, but that just isn't Reed Richards to me.  The Thing isn't a lovable grouch?  Why even adapt the character?!  The 2000s movies weren't very good, but Chiklis's Ben Grimm was just about perfect.  And that third act - I just kept predicting the two big story beats, and then they happened as I expected.

Some good, some bad, but mostly empty calories.  It's an aggressively C grade movie.  

As far as recent MCU film output (as in, post-Endgame), I'd put it above... Eternals, Doctor Strange 2, Thor 4, Ant-Man 3, Guardians 3, The Marvels, Captain America 4

But also it's substantially less enjoyable than... Spider-Man Far From Home, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Spider-Man No Way Home, Black Panther 2, Deadpool and Wolverine, Thunderbolts

I don't go to theaters anymore, so no opinion on the newest Spidey.  But it has action choreography by Jackie Chan, and The Punisher is in it.  If I walk away giving that anything less than a C, something is truly wrong with the multiverse.

I feel like the major issues with Marvel films, is that they aren't being made to be good films. They're following a formula that "ideally" feeds the current audience with what they release. But what they release to people who actually know the source material, or enjoy films. It just comes across very mediocre. If they could take the time and actually make something with some level of care/interest we probably would have better MCU movies. Unfortunately, they're trying to catch whatever buzz the original MCU movies created. But I think we have come close to, or have already hit Super Hero movies fatigue.

Finally got to my second viewing of Spider-Man: BND today and was a little bit worried I'd start to nitpick and find things I disliked in it but no, just cemented it as a top-tier superhero movie. That ending sequence just hits me in the feels so much. Been a long time since a superhero movie has made me feel the way this does.

I really enjoyed this movie a lot too. Especially the Hulk Hallway sequence, so well choreograph. It finally feels like Spider-man is Spider-man. I thoroughly enjoyed the "office" scene with Yelena. With how out of nowhere it came for me.

[starschwar]

Some absolute heroic fans have been remastering ReBoot, with the blessing of the rights owners. The original all-CGI TV show is a cult classic, and the official DVD set suffers from really screwed up audio and improper framerate conversion. These Youtube uploads are upscaled to HD from the original 576p digital tapes, and are presented at the intended 25 frames per second without audio distortion. Details that were lost on even the original NTSC broadcast masters are now visible. They just finished up Season 1.