[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

Timmer you should really seek out that Hammer release of Never Take Candy From A Stranger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054116/
Thomas

BIG


It doesn't matter how many times I've seen this, everytime it's shown on TV I get sucked in, one of THE great feel good films.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Looking at the first one again (the only one that felt worth revisiting). And it's a charming film, lots of fun. An American film with some genuine wit in it? Interesting to see all the little things the first one got right that the later ones didn't really pull off.

The first Matrix film is one that I could watch over and over and over again. A modern day sci-fi classic! Reloaded is full of itself but has some very impressive action sequences while Revolutions is a bloated turd!

-Erik-

A 4th is on it's way.

That's the power of genre identity for you. Often the film didn't win - and still often it doesn't! (Although it's harder to tell the films of genres apart these days, so the composers could be forgiven for blurring the lines from film to film.)

Nice, want to see this!

Saw Iron Man 2 yesterday. I think the first one was better. It was still entertaining and fun, but what's the point of making a sequel if the characters don't progress? Stuff happens to them in this movie, but then they all end up exactly where they were at the end of the first film. Unless you have an awesome story, a sequel where none of the characters progress seems really useless.

I thought the score was pretty good.

Indubitably.

This is the way most sequels used to be. In the Marx Brothers films, they don't grow from film to film. (One might even say they were smart enough to know that that wasn't what their charm was about.) It's even the way most tv series used to be - standalone episodes rather than multi-episode arcs. It's interesting to see this shift to long-form storytelling and how audiences are starting to demand it. As much as they must like getting people on board for the long ride, some studio people must pine for the days when Charlie Chan or Francis the Talking Mule didn't have an arc.

Can't wait to see Back To The Future on the big screen tomorrow. Tickets already booked. And I'm listening to Silvestri's early ("darker") demos.

Star Wars has a LOT to answer for!


I'm not sure the analogy holds though, Michael (though I appreciate the historic context): none of the examples above actually ever pretended to be sequels. And the very fact that they were brought out in sequential fashion in our timeline, by no means suggested a progression within the story frame.
In fact, as you already state: there WAS no frame.

It was just a set of gags and sketches, with a couple of protagonists we'd seen before.
But The Marx Brothers characters in Duck Soup are not the same as in A Night At The Opera.
Even though they have the same faces, names, walks and talks, it's rather more like the film's internal reality had been erased to start all over again, with a new story. To do the very same iwth the next movie.

I'm quite sure that had there been a A Day At The Races 2, audiences WOULD have expected the same characters to return and progress (or have progressed), much like -for example- Son Of Frankenstein, or Return To Peyton Place.

The very title Iron Man 2 suggests progression (like Spider-Man 2 did, and proved!)
The whole issue probably wouldn't have even come up had they entitled the film "Iron Man: Stainless Steal" or someuch clever seventies' comics inspired title.

I thought what the Dark Knight did for the Batman story arc was excellent. By the end of the movie, things have definitely changed. At the end of Begins, Batman was fairly well liked by the public, Rachel Dawes seemed like she was still a romantic possibility for future films. At the end of the Dark Knight Batman is going to be hated by the public and hounded by the police, the girl is gone, and Bruce Wayne has undergone some harrowing stuff. I'd say he's a very different guy by the end of Dark Knight. Batman Begins moved the story from A to B, and the Dark Knight moved it from B to C.

At the end of Iron Man everyone knows who Iron Man is, SHIELD is considering his involvement in their operation. By the end of Iron Man two, we're at exactly the same spot. Now there's War Machine, and there is a token reference to Tony and Pepper's relationship there at the end, but all the conflict in the film felt made up so that we could just get back to where we were. It felt to me like Iron Man moved the story from A to B, but that Iron Man 2 moved the Story from B minus 1 back to B again. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I'm know I should expect much from Hollywood, but as good as entertaining and funny and Iron Man was I was hoping for more. Having Tony tell everyone he was Iron Man at the end of the film opened up some truly unique possibilities for a sequel that resulted in nothing but a drunken party at Tony Stark's house with him wearing the Iron Man suit. I was hoping for a sequel in the same league as The Dark Knight, or Spider Man 2, or The Bourne Supremacy. Instead we got something in the same league as Pirates of the Carribean 2. blah.

Back to the Future

What a treat to see this classic in the cinema (and in Belfast, the home of the Delorean!), it looked glorious after its recent restoration! The cinema was packed with people of all ages, great to see people showing it to their kids.