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Films II : The Filminator


Bob
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Well I just went and rewatched the original Matrix for the first time in 15 years. I guess the film is sort of perfect, or something, cause it doesn't seem like there's a flaw you can pick out

 

Dare I continue this journey, best to not. Revolutions just stands out in my mind as being kinda one of the worst blockbusters I've ever seen

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3 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Well I just went and rewatched the original Matrix for the first time in 15 years. I guess the film is sort of perfect, or something, cause it doesn't seem like there's a flaw you can pick out

 

Dare I continue this journey, best to not. Revolutions just stands out in my mind as being kinda one of the worst blockbusters I've ever seen


When I saw that first at the cinema I’d have given it a nine. Upon rewatch a 7. It has a very dated look. Very 90s aesthetic generally and ideology as to what it means to look cool.

 

I too had intended to watch all 3 but stopped after 1 hadn’t held up and knowing what a disappointment the next two where the first time round and not the brilliant trilogy the media would have you believe on the run up to the release of resurrections (which I am looking forward too honest).

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The old fashioned styles work for me in the context of the fiction cause it is just a 1999 time capsule (literally). I don't question their sense of style even though their sense of style is now very questionable. Nor the bullet time stuff, which I do still think looks cool. 

 

The thing that's cool about the Matrix 'now' though imo isn't how it looks. IMO the issue with the sequels is their wholesale replacement of the original's themes of nervous excitement at unearthing this grand conspiracy, coming to terms with these life changing truths and undergoing a path to self acceptance. That was what the original film was about. The sequels? These are dumb films about doing cool shit bogged down by laden philosophical mumbo jumbo. Said philosophy wasn't exactly solidly grasped by the first film even.

 

20 years hence it kinda seems like Lana figured out what went wrong though, as Resurrections tries to be way more like the original than the sequels. Like a middle aged version of it or something. Doesn't quite get there though

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The Italian Job (1969)

 

"This movie contains outdated humour"

 

I must admit, that is the first time I've heard this particular warning. Easily the most ludicrous one to date and further indicative of how lame this era is. 

 

Weirdly enough, I've never actually seen this film before all the way through. Michael Caine, is always entertaining. Noel Coward was a weird character, in retrospect and Benny Hill was ..Benny Hill. Minus the theme song.  The pacing of the film is faster than I thought and the story holds up for the most part. I was entertained more by this than any of the Fast & Furious films, as Car Movies go. 7/10

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It's funny. I looked it up via search engine and apparently there is also This warning: "This film has outdated attitudes, language and cultural depiction, which may cause... - offense today.” 

 

Which is the most pathetic, mollycoddling thing I've ever heard. "offense" isn't fatal. It won't kill you FFS

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😄

I don't have a problem with it. I mock the absurdity of it. It is completely unnecessary. At this rate we'll have such "warnings" as: This film contains sustained eye contact/hand holding.

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I have no issue with the 'warnings' albeit my understanding is they are as much to disassociate the owner / distributor from film's (outdated) social & moral content (whilst allowing them to still earn from it being shown) than it is to necessarily warn the viewer.

 

So I'm content to view with a disclaimer rather than a company withdrawing their back catalogue, if the substance is not reflecting of modern (company) values 

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4 hours ago, OCH said:

😄

I don't have a problem with it. I mock the absurdity of it. It is completely unnecessary. At this rate we'll have such "warnings" as: This film contains sustained eye contact/hand holding.

I can't say for The Italian Job in particular as it's been a long time since I've watched it, but I do believe people shouldn't just be 'assaulted' by racist, homophobic, and disablist depictions and jokes. Take something like dumbo, it's undoubtedly racists at points, but should it be hidden away never to be seen again? Maybe, maybe not, but while people work it out at least they can know roughly what they're about to watch

 

I watched Crank last summer, there's a bit in that that's pretty racist, I had no memory of it being like that at all, times change, things age 

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Ugh, it usually goes like this: Some 19 y/o humanities student sees an old movie where in a scene a male boss slaps his female secretary's arse and she does a flirty giggle, then in either an innocuous or spicy way, it doesn't matter, says 'thats sexist' on Twitter to their 50 followers.  It then gets spread a little, then it gets in front of some big accounts that use this as 'content' to prove that it's 'pc gone mad' and others do similar on other side of the argument, then Twitter does it's thing because it loves engagement so it snowballs and now it's spread everywhere and it's discourse of the day with normal to wild things being said from all directions whether honestly, performatively, flippantly, jokingly, stupidly; it doesn't matter, it's all in the mix.

 

Then it's to the point the distributors feel as though they have to do something about it and it's pretty much what Shiny said.  They still want to sell this stuff but appear like they don't condone secretaries arses being slapped.  Which, okay, but they tend to find the most embarrassing ways of doing it just to get infront of something that doesn't truly exists.

 

So barely anyone is offended, it's just the result of all this nonsense.  The vast majority understand that old films usually have old values.

 

It gets tiresome.

 

 

As a sidenote I'm pretty much for content warnings but this is more about how they come about in cynical ways.  I think it becomes hard when you have that depiction doesn't always mean endorsement and things can get misunderstood with warnings alone.

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Whenever this comes up I think it's useful to play the devil's advocate to yourself and challenge yourself by asking 'why would someone be badly effected by the content I'm watching'? It could be corporate ass covering, could be something else. Ultimately, these are just warnings so being 'triggered' by the warning itself is kinda silly imo. If they were removing the scenes wholesale from the films itself, I'd agree that this would be harmful over-curation of art just cause art doesn't change with our own times. This isn't new. But these are just warnings.

 

These 'cultural turns' happen all the time, where certain representations of people, cultures or other things are challenged by evolving/shifting acceptance criteria. It's not a new thing, it's constantly happening. Expect these conversations to happen again when more awareness is being demanded in our treatment of people who are neuro-atypical, and other disabilities. If you get outraged at every single one of these warnings then you will be too exhausted to watch or read anything. Might as well quit now and just read victorian literature or something!

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This reminds me when I was working in a cinema when Me Before You came out which was sold as a wholesome romantic film about a girl falling in love with a guy in a wheelchair which ended up being very ableist.  Not just a badly thought out or inconsiderate scene or two but the guy actually thinks due to his disability he can't give the girl the life she wants and is a contributing factor to him going through with assisted suicide.  It's played as a romantic gesture.

I only became aware since I hadn't seen it because during one screening I was seeing people out and there was a young disabled woman on crutches telling me how disgusted she was at the film as she was leaving, it wasn't what she was expecting with the conclusion of the film saying you're holding the able bodied people back.

 

This was 2016 so there's still a lot of blind spots and this was an adaptation of a novel so a bunch of people wanted to tell this story not once but twice.

No adequate content warnings there, unsurprisingly.

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1 hour ago, one-armed dwarf said:

'why would someone be badly effected by the content I'm watching'?

That in itself isn't something new:

 

How can I toughen up my sensitive teenager?

(just putting in the above title into a search engine, opens up a wellspring of similar articles)

 

The level of corporate "sensitivity" that requires a 'play by play' forward of the film. It isn't something that should be cynically pandered to. But a concern that should be helped. Old films have old ideas, that much should be obvious and redundant to even point out. In a similar vein, you don't talk about the negatives of foods to an anorexic, for example. Age ratings for films have associated warnings. Strong language, bloody violence etc, etc What is the aim of the excessive warnings above? Is the implication that to watch them, you'll become brainwashed by the ideas of a film from sixty years ago.

As an arty-farty type. It doesn't anger or upset me at all. I find it funny, maybe even a little bit sad. That revisionist history is en vogue. As if this is some golden age of human interaction, when the opposite is closer to home.

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