I gotta agree with you on the Tarantino films.
However, I really loved BR2049. I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions on it and I haven’t figured out yet exactly what other people hate about it. I think it captured the original vibe of BR really well and carried on the story in a realistic and exciting way. Maybe people miss the voiceover narration? But the original BR director never wanted the voiceover and only added it because the studio said people wouldn’t be able to follow the story otherwise. I think the lack of voiceover in BR2049 is a compliment to viewers for assuming we are smarter now and able to better understand scifi without being spoonfed.
I find your opinion on Dune very interesting too. I have not seen the old movie but I have read the books. From my perspective, I think new Dune does a fantastic job of adapting the book to screen. There are way too many slow parts and introspection in the book that would not play out well on screen. There were a lot of added scenes too that were entirely not in the source material, but which I believe really enhance the plot, giving the characters more motivation for the actions and doing a better job at world building which I think the book glosses over too much.
AzazariDanger@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 1 year ago
To be completely honest, many of these films took me a second viewing to really appreciate. Blade Runner 2049 is not a good sequel to the original, imo, but if you let it stand on it’s own a bit, it’s got some real interesting ideas at play, and of course, all of Denis’ movies are just visually beautiful. Similarly with his Dune, I’m a huge fan of the Lynch version, so it’s hard not to let that color my perception, but if you let it, it’s a visually stunning movie with amazing world design and it just nails the vibes I got reading the book.
Tarantino, too, I would have mostly shared your opinion two years ago. The first time I watched Basterds, Django, and Eight, I was pretty unimpressed, but I think I was letting my love of his earlier works color my opinions too much. Then, I got a copy of “Taratino: A Retrospective” for xmas, and that got me to go back through his entire filmography: I’d watch a movie, then read up on it in the book afterward. Even absence the additional stories and details from the book, I found all of those films really hit much better for me the second time around: no, they’re not doing that same effortlessly cool “Tarantino” style from the earlier works, but it’s clear that the man was interested in building on his own writing tropes and slowly branching them into different stories, and I really loved watching that evolution.
Fury Road: Fair enough, though at this point, Mel was probably a bit too old for the types of stunts they wanted to put Tom Hardy through.
Peele, I’ll just have to disagree, but mostly because I don’t see them as horror movies, but dark comedies. They’re not scary, not really, but boy did I laugh my ass off watching them. Nope, especially, manages to tell a funny, dramatic story with real stakes, imagination, and literally inventing a new way to do night filming that’s probably going to be mimicked by the entire industry going forward.
Jump Street: you’re not wrong about Jonah Hill, but in this case, the surprise is how funny Channing Tatum can be, and how expertly Lord and Miller bounce the two of them off each other. The standard Hill schtick just works in this screwball set of movies, and plays a perfect complement to Tatum. Oh, and that clip is amazing.
The Apes trilogy is criminally overlooked, again, probably because of “CGI Monkeys” and cultural memory of the old films, but they’re really amazingly good. Well, the first is just regular good, but the second two are great. A lot of it comes down to just how great Serkis is at working within the CGI character space: he plays the lead ape, Ceasar, but also does a lot of the motion capture for the rest of the apes, and nails it in movement and manerisms. All in all, the movies are able to create an epic about the decline of one civilization and the rise of a replacement, not because “apes good humans bad”, but because at every point, every character makes choices displaying their innate “humanity”, and have to deal with the consequences of those choices, good or bad.
Anyway, Dredd was awesome, Karl Urban is my husbando, and his DOOM movie is the best video game movie of all time. Thanks for coming to my TEDx talk!