What was the last movie you've seen?

[samsonlonghair]

I saw Spider-man Far from Home over the weekend. Cool flick. Plotwise, they borrowed a lot of story beats from James Bond flicks and from class trip / european vacation style movies. It's cute, and light hearted. This movie feels like a break from the heavy-handed serious tone of Infinity War and Endgame.

They really nailed the physics of Spider-man swinging from a web. The way Spider-man has to improvise in the middle of a fight looks exactly right. Having seen every Spider-man movie and cartoon of the last thirty years, I can honestly say that I've never seen a Spider-man action sequence look any better than this.

Jake Gyllenhaal really knocks it out of the park as Mysterio. The costume designers need to win an academy award for somehow making Mysterio look cool, heroic, and even threatening.

Spider-man Far from Home is a solid superhero flick. I recommend it.

I think the last Spiderman movie I saw was the one with Jamie Foxx. Which of the newer ones are good? I generally like superhero movies but not when they are dumbed down like the "Michael Bay" movies. Why did they replace Garfield, not much of money drawer?

Yes, that's partly true. Garfield was replaced in part because The Amazing Spider-Man 2 wasn't as commercially successful as SONY had hoped. In fact, it was one of the poorest box office returns of any Spider-Man movie. It still made millions, but in today's movie industry the investors expect a big budget superhero flick to return tens of millions of dollars.

There's also office politics. Apparently Andrew Garfield wasn't well-liked at SONY for other reasons. There was a SONY email hack a few years ago that spilled the beans on internal conflicts at SONY.

The biggest reason of all is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sony wanted to make the kind of money Disney was making with their MCU. SONY tried to set up a Sinister Six spinoff and a Venom spinoff with mixed success. Everyone in the movie industry wants to make Marvel Cinematic Universe money, and everyone else is failing at it. Warner Bros. "monsterverse" already failed after Dracula Untold underperformed and The Mummy bombed. Legendary pictures has seen lower than expected profit from their Godzilla and Kong movies. Even Disney themselves have failed to turn Star Wars (a proven moneymaker) into the cash cow they were hoping for.

SONY struck a deal with Marvel to bring Spider-man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-man movies have seen a huge increase in revenue (a win for SONY) and Spider-man has made cameo appearances in Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame (a win for Marvel/Disney) plus that lucrative merchandising (another win for Marvel/Disney) . Details about these negotiations were leaked in that aforementioned email hack.

So which Spider-man movies are good? I agree completely with isiola. Spider-man Homecoming and Spider-man Far from Home, are very good MCU films produced by SONY in cooperation with Marvel.

Into the Spider-verse (the animated movie) is also very good in a different way. The animation is Cell shaded with a low frame rate. You're either going to love that or hate it. It's cool and clever with a lot of easter eggs and inside jokes.

The most important thing (from SONY's perspective) is that Into the Spider-verse teaches the audience that there can be multiple versions of Spider-man. This is important because SONY still really wants to make their own Spider-man movies without Marvel/Disney. That brings us to Venom...

I'm going to be completely frank here: I don't like the movie Venom. It seems that SONY is still trying to build their own cinematic universe outside of the MCU. Venom reminds me more of a big, dumb movie. Instead of being a genuine menace, the Venom symbiote is played off as more of a creepy joke. My opinion aside, many other people did enjoy Venom and the movie was surprisingly profitable for SONY. Venom didn't earn as much revenue as a full-fledged Avengers crossover, but it made revenue comparable to a smaller (no pun intended) MCU movie like Ant-man and the Wasp. That's a victory as far as SONY is concerned. They're going to be making another film about a Spider-man villain next: Morbius the Living Vampire. Expect that to come out next summer.

[marurun]

The Marvel MCU has kinda screwed up movie-making something fierce. It is a bit sad that something I enjoy is also so artistically destructive.

[samsonlonghair]

The Marvel MCU has kinda screwed up movie-making something fierce. It is a bit sad that something I enjoy is also so artistically destructive.

I never really thought of it that way. I guess you make a valid point. I cannot deny that the MCU has inadvertently screwed up the movie industry, mostly by being so successful. All the other movie studios are trying to copy that success, but they don't really seem to understand how much care it makes to make a successful franchise like this.

Disney has some of the most skilled film makers working together to make these movies. They write, rewrite, and polish the scripts. They plot the MCU out in phases laid out years in advance. They have Kevin Feige (who previously worked on the X-Men franchise) overseeing the whole MCU. They also build up a lot of talented directors like the Russo Brothers (who previously directed for television) and Taika Waititi (who directed ultra-low budget indie movies in New Zealand) and James Gunn (who worked on low and medium budget horror films) into bigger, better film makers.

[Michi]

The Marvel MCU has kinda screwed up movie-making something fierce. It is a bit sad that something I enjoy is also so artistically destructive.

All the other movie studios are trying to copy that success, but they don't really seem to understand how much care it makes to make a successful franchise like this.

Yeah, most everyone else has treated their idea of a 'Universe' as a quick cash-grab. Which is a real shame, because Universal's 'Monster Universe' had some serious potential, but then they went and fouled up The Mummy by turning it into The Tom Cruise Show. If I'm going to see it, I want to see the super-awesome dead chick, Universal, not Cruise running around acting like a prick.

[RCBH928]

I really hate the "copy cat" method in business. When you see something making a ton of money and you just want to make a quick cash by replicating it. Marvel has been long in the making, they have been building a movie fanbase for like 20 years, not to mention a prior of like 100 years of comic I think. Its the same with guys who tried to copy GTA's success and you all can probably give similar examples.

Sony is stupid to think they can match MCU with 1 spider man vs the plethora of Marvel characters.

Sucks for that Garfield guy, now he will be marked as the guy who was put off because he doesn't bring in enough money. I must admit though, I was never a believer of the idea that the actor is the one who brings in the money, its the movie itself. Good actor+bad movie= not going to work.

I also do not think the MCU movies are good, they are cheesy and mindless entertainment IMHO. Avengers Infiniti War and Endgame had a good story. That said not all MCU movies are same, some are better than others.

[Michi]

New write up: House (1986)

[REPO Man]

The Evil Clergyman, a short adaptation of the Lovecraft story of the same name. Originally conceived for a later-aborted horror anthology film in the '80s, the short was lost until less than a decade ago when a VHS transfer was found. Starring Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs, the short follows a woman who returns to find that her lover, a priest, has committed suicide... or so she thought. But after making passionate love with the priest she discovers that nothing is as it seems, especially her lover.

It was alright.

Also I recently scored a Steelbook Blu-Ray of Tommy, the Ken Russell adaptation of the brilliant rock opera by The Who. In it, a young boy sees his father, thought to have died in WW2, killed by his mother's lover. Seeing this shocks Tommy and renders him blind, deaf and mute. But as the years pass it's discovered that his loss of senses made him a pinball prodigy (in the Broadway adaptation of the source material, if I recall correctly, it's said he's more in tuned with vibrations). While his family becomes wealthy, his mother and stepfather are distraught about Tommy's condition. But when Tommy regains his awareness, he becomes a messiah-like figure and starts a new religious movement of sorts.

Excellent.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Really liked it. After being disappointed in Hateful Eight, this is a real come back in my mind.

[REPO Man]

Phantasm. Recently bought it (and the other four, including the OOP Scream Factory release of Phantasm II for $40).

God, this series is a mindfuck.

[jp1]

Last theater visit was Midsommar in a mostly empty theater. The movie itself was amazing and I hope it did better elsewhere than it presumably did in my area. Such a cool way to explore themes of depression, anxiety, and struggling relationships wrapped in a beautiful little horror movie. The gore was a bit heavy handed, but it made the movie feel more visceral which was welcome. Florence Pugh was definitely a highlight with some of the best on screen depictions of mental illness I've seen.