Ipickthiswhiterose

How are the reviews for Brahmastra looking? Seeing it tomorrow.

Yep. Tossup I think. Trailer for Hatching, Smile and Prey for the Devil have been playing a lot the last few weeks but only seen trailer for this online. Hopping I can't see Crimes of the Future this weekend. And yet Fall, 3000 Years of Longing and Bodies Bodies Bodies were shown everywhere no problem. UK cinemas can be weird beasts.

Mate, Mel Gibson portrayed armies from hundreds of years apart fighting against each other, changed the nationality of the combatants, shagged a 4 year old French princess, portrayed complex historical battles as one-sided ROFLstomps, and produced deceptive propaganda that has fuelled jingoistic nationalist factionalism based on humbug for two and half decades and Hollywood couldn't bung him Oscars fast enough. I don't think they're afraid of "something like this".

Looks interesting and like it will be an entertaining romp. The relatively untouched history of Africa as a setting for films of this kind will definitely help. It is very fertile ground for historical epics of both the fairly accurate and the artistic license kind. All I hope is that anyone who complains about anything problematic, propagandaic or history revisory better have a clean cabinet when it comes to previous comments on films like Braveheart.

Could do much worse with Bond following a long-term era to announce something like a triptych of One-Offs: allowing for casting off the beaten track, trying some experimentation and maybe seeing is they can use people like Hardy, Edgerton or Kaluuya who probably wouldn't want the gig full time. Then start another long-term era in a decade or so with a relative unknown. Crawdads has quietly done really well. Of course majority DOM since the book's doesn't have much impact outside the English speaking world, but 90, final looks pretty great. Not sure how to feel about Beast. Having seen it yesterday it seems to be exactly the sort of film that's aiming for a 30-40m impact. It's restricted in scope and not really a big scale film at all, nor was that what was promised from the trailers. Not sure what people were expecting but for what the income will be it does seem overbudgeted by 10m or so.

I think "Big yikes" is a tad much. The high DOM proportion is a double edged sword - it indicates Peele is shrinking worldwide (and that the delayed WW release for this movie was a bizarre and awful choice) - but it also means the % take is good and this should be enough to be a solid moneymaker long term. And we're talking about a filmmaker who can just tone down the budget if that's what he's asked to do long term (a la the Branargh Poirot stuff post Nile). Depends on his long term goals somewhat. He hasn't got the Nolan "Do whatever you want" card unconditionally. But I think he would still retain it up to a 50m or so budget.

Get Out: 79m Us: 80 Nope: 20m Sure, relative to US dom, black-lead movies have a tough time internationally. Not sure that's enough to cover this case though given Peele's previous record. Also note that Escape Room, another horror film with Black lead, was breakout international hit with comparable numbers to Peele's previous also.

Feels like the OS numbers on Nope are a rather overlooked story. Basically playing like an arthouse movie. Currently number of 20.1m, and seems like it's not going to have much more. That's lower worldwide totals than Hereditary, Ready or Not, Happy Death Days 1 and 2, Northman, Midsommar, BOTH Escape Rooms, Pet Sematary....modestly released and budgeted films that Nope doubles, trebles and even quadruples in both domestic gross and budget.

The word "shills" is.....? Yes, 10/10s are also just as dismissible in terms of establishing quality as 1/10s. Is there a difference culturally though? Yes. Everything from well established franchises - MCU, DCEU, Potter, Twilight, Star Wars gets a collection of ridiculous 10/10 before the film has come out and just after it has come out - from overexhuberent enthusiasts and kids who think its a way of supporting a franchise they want to succeed. Dismissable? Yes. Unique to the MCU? No. Any franchise gets such "positive review-bombing" to a significant degree. To do that with a 10/10 requires overexhubert enthusiasts and kids (not "shills" which implies payment and dodgy dealings beyond the longterm goodwill that comes with fixated fandoms)...look, is it dismissible quality-wise? Yes. Do I pay attention to those 10s? No. But good lord at least the behaviour comes from enthusiasm and naivety. To review bomb negatively in significant quantities though? That comes from agendas and negative elements of social contagion. It's pathetic and it has a clear visible pattern by comparison to authentically poorly reviewed items.

It is incredibly easy to look at basic metrics - %s of 1/10 versus 2, 3 and 4/10s - and tell the difference between review bombing and genuine poor reception. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous pandering to youtube trash.

Spider-Man No Way Home made a gazillionty dollars and had a ton of mainstream buzz and it was just fairly mundane pandering stuff born of still-recent nostalgia (I think it's safe to say that in these parts now that the sheen has worn off). Strange and Thor were both messy and still the former made far more than the first Dom and Worldwide and the latter made more Dom and matched Worldwide if you just factor in China and Russia null-releases. I definitely see your point: Minions 2 and the Jurassic Films show that you don't need "Buzz" to make bank. We're certainly missing a zeitgeist something that Top Gun has filled for now but either Black Panther or Avatar 2 are probably going to do that. But I suspect the MCU don't mind entering that territory for now. Jurassic World is quietly racking up its very mundane billion with nearly everyone thinking its a bit rubbish and it never entering any kind of zeitgeist. As for "if Marvel keeps being unexciting"...that's what holding back the X-Men has all been about. And the "MCU 1-3" era is going to be, whether one likes it or not, soon perceived as incredibly lame by the generation coming up now regardless as it's what their parents were into. I don't think there's going to be a "new exciting thing" from Marvel, without there being a big risk taken by someone. It might be Avatar, and if it isn't it'll still be something LIKE Avatar (or Potter) - ie something that invites World Exploration, something that has lots of tags and strings for people to pick up to want to live in that world, lots of ways with engaging in that world 'as yourself' not necessarily as a main character in the story. That's the spectatorship era we're in now.

This is an interesting parallel. Yes, they were more STARS in the past in a way many film actresses and actors aren't now. But is that a bad thing? I mean for all their stardom Florence Pugh could act her way around either of these two with no problem. Harry Styles has STAR power though. So does Jason Momoa and Gal Gadot. And mostly so do the Kardashians. I'd argue that siphoning off STARDOM to TMZ nonsense and the reality TV and Social media genres has generally improved the overall standard and range of acting in films as it's allowed actual actors to gain prominence in a way that didn't always happen - especially in women. Most top actors now are....actually very good - and especially versatile - which is more than can be said for the era you're evoking here where they were generally only good in narrow manners that films had to work around in order to get the best from (and which we now only see the best versions of, because all the rubbish the old movie stars were in has generally been lost to time and only the great movies remembered)

Florence Pugh, Gemma Chan and Chris Pine are going to stroll quietly away from this just fine. They don't need this and they know it. Wilde and Styles are, for very different reasons ironically, looking like they're going to struggle. The irony is.....I'm not convinced it's going to flop. Certainly not at its budget. I think it'll still make money, possibly to the mild chagrin of those top three, especially Pugh. Of course, massive success will salve all problems. But it's hard to see much universal critical acclaim when you expose a non-actor across from one of the best young actresses in the world in an all-out drama act-athon.

Saw the Invitation at a preview last night here in the UK. It is VERY similar to Ready or Not in many ways, albeit slightly more straight-faced. Ticks every gothic box in the ledger and while not necessarily the most original narrative in the world (though film-wise is far more female gazey than most films like this...there's lots like it in literature though) it a lot of basic, clean fun. Very good date film. Might have a chance of word-of-mouthing its way around female audiences. But regardless at the budget it has, that it gets to be a/the featured film for a weekend is rather serendipitous for it.

Saw Bullet Train last night. I really enjoyed it. No idea frankly why this isn't playing as a super fun action set piece film. I will say the trailer wasn't great and it got caught between deciding it was an ensemble film (which is when it was at its best) versus a Brad Pitt-specific starring vehicle (when it was weaker). But it was a lot of fun, there was frolic and enjoyment all around and it's what I wanted from two hours in a cinema. Some of the commentary I've seen though just seems way, way off what the film was trying to do so maybe there is a little confusion of what the film is. But, yeah, I think this one should pick up fans along the way if people give it good WOM. Not great so far though.

Thanks for Panda for this fantastic achievement and commitment.

Oooooh *surprise face*. Was expecting it to repeat watching the open lists. Tension fills the room.

At the risk of this thread being waylaid again as I know this is a sensitive issue. I do find this to be a deeply problematic statement when it comes to the evaluation of women making movies, and especially women in the industry. Lily and Lana went through their education, went to film school, had their first films commissioned, and had the Matrix commissioned during a time when they were perceived as men. That is not insignificant as any woman who has tried to go along the same path would attest. Especially in the 90s. To this day, there is not a single instance of (a) inexperienced female director(s) being given the opportunity to make an ORIGINAL action film with anything even approaching the budget and scale of the Matrix. Not one. There are only a handful even vaguely comparable even outside of that caveat and they are with very experienced directors being given very estalished franchises. As such, to be cautious when using The Matrix as an example of women filmmakers when talking *in terms of women's achievement in film and women's opportunities in filmmaking* is very reasonable.

1. The Apartment is great and everyone should watch it. 2. Jaws had never been in the Top 10 before? Madness. 3. I forever shunted The Matrix off my Top 100ish lists when I realised how similar it actually is to The Truman Show, which in terms of the same themes, credibility, social critique and existential exploration, IMO, is superior in every way and came out earlier. The Matrix is still a great movie and it's hard to replicate how zeitgeist it felt to people who weren't there at the time. But it has pseud qualities that TTS treated much more accessibly and skilfully IMO. 4. If any franchise series is super high up on these lists that I don't mind, it's LOTR. It was genuinely an all-round remarkable achievement and a generational release. Everything was engineered into place, and the casting (Weinsteining apart) was well thought through will a balance of experience and appropriateness - big celeb casting would have sunk it.

Franchise power. And along with Star Trek it was the first. Can construct identities (both in a limited, casual healthy way and in an obsessive, unhealthy way) around it. I think we're seeing the end of those days (as the miiiiiild drops in franchise films and miiiiiiild increase over time in unique films on lists like this kind of indicate) as people realise the fandom wars are neither important nor interesting and give an inflated sense of where the films involved stand in the grand scheme of things but it will be a slow death. Star Wars' first trilogy was for many their first exposure to epic storytelling on a grand scale and that's extremely powerful. I didn't have any franchise movies (in terms of being *Intended* to be franchise, sure there were movies that subsequently had sequels) in my entire list until Fellowship at 73 and then Raiders at 100. Until the last 5 years I tended to squirm at lists like this generated by broad fandom. This list hasn't made me squirm much. Indeed there have been some really nice surprises. Heck, even TDK of all films finally fell out of the top 10. They'll be crying into their skateboards and Hot Topic Tees.

In among some of the greatest movies ever made..... The Dark Knight Rises at 124 Dunkirk at 117 And the Dark Knight at the very least above Schindler's list, Jurassic Park, Lawrence of Arabia and Godfather Part 2. I mean I don't want to make fun. But lordy, it's hard not to. FrootShoots all round.

I hope Willem Defoe at some point gets the full force of the recognition he deserves. And by that is recognised as Top 10 all time. His top tier stands up against any of the "greats" and he has more strength in depth and good performances in bad films than most of them. And has shown, as discussed here, that he can mix it up in megabudget blockbusters and stand toe to toe with the biggest stars of the day with aplomb.

Inception that high and we still haven't had TDK yet? As much as 90s Kool Kidz and Bloggistas were giddy-silly with Tarantino Red Bull, it was topped so fully by 2000 and early 2010 Kool Kidz and Bloggistas with Nolan Monster. ET isn't my thing but I got over it long ago. It's still beautiful, universal, a defining moment of an important filmmaker and defined an entire year at the cinema.

I NEED to see Nashville, one I've missed out on for many years. Alien is such a wonderful film, an easier watch than I sometimes remember it as. (Same with Rear Window, actually) It does a great job of mixing the tension of the unnatural uncanny spook environment, THEN body horror parasite story, THEN slasher runaround: three horror movies in one and the audience barely notices the switches. Fantastic audience manipulation. Having loved Heart of Darkness as a young lit geek I never see Apocalypse Now as a war movie - it's just a background for the internal journey and witnessing of abused power and chaos, just as the Belgian Congo is in the original. I was very familiar with the book before I watched the film so my first viewing was a little tainted by that and I was, if anything, disappointed, but multiple re-watches have been really rewarding and valuable in discovering what it has to offer. Saving Private Ryan on the other hand...It's a great 40 minute docudrama (albeit of ultra-dodgy accuracy given what it's aiming for) followed by some padding and then a very good pilot episode for Band of Brothers. But the stitching between those two things and the idea that the two elements put together represents a complete whole is IMO a good-faith leap of credence given by some just because it's Spielberg. It's not that I think it's a poor film: Mostly, it's just that I don't think its *a film*. And given the thematic and visceral qualities of other war movies in existence despite it's technical excellence I don't think it really *says* all that much either. Genuinely surprised to see Ghostbusters miss out. It seems to be a standard on popular Top 100s. I think it was on my list too, albeit not super high - which I suspect was it's reason for missing out in general, lots of people including it but it being quite low.

Especially considering it was just a physics lesson. Ba-dum-tish! I'll get my coat.