Hudson Hawk is the reason I drink cappuccinos.

I've never tried one. Are they any good?

Quote from: Unbeliever on October 22, 2023, 11:28:33 AMI've never tried one. Are they any good?

Lived IN Sicily for three years. Lived ON cappuccino for three years.

Chaos walking

I don´t rally know about this one.
Like the cast. Tom holland, mads Mikkelsen, Daisy ridley.
(Not the biggest 'Rey´ stan  but she does act her role well in those SW-flicks. It is just not written well.)
Premise was alright. But, not having read the books, I feel like I am missing much needed context.
A movie doesn´t have to explain everything, but this, to me at least, didn't give me enough to understand quite a few things.
Also feel like they just shouldn´t have had the aliens actually show up if they were going to do so little with them. Keep ´em more mysterious, could be handy in case you make a sequel. Just keep the far of spackle-noise and a Quick view of the town, maybe. Not even sure of the latter.

It has it's moments. But overall; lukewarm.

Couldn't gen up any caring for that one. Still only 1/2 through.

More than fair

Watched "The Firm" with Tom Cruise. I thought it was a "The Devil's Advocate" redo, but it actually came out years before. Decent flick. Wife Jeanne Tripplehorn is gorgeous and played Dr. Beth Garner in Basic Instinct. 3.5/5

Also watched "How to lose a guy in 10 days". Some too-clever lines and cute moments but the story was so obvious. Kate Hudsen looked pretty. Matthew McConaughey annoys me for some reason. He's like that dickhead jock you knew in high school. 3/5 cuz I'm a sucka for romance comedy.

I can't be the only one who has movies playing continuously in their head, can I? Watching "Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death". Very SoCal.

I'm not really partial to westerns, but I can watch them occasionally. I just finished one called God's Gun, with Lee van Cleef, Jack Palance and Richard Boone. I haven't seen Richard Boone since he was in Have Gun Will Travel, waaay long ago!
This movie was pretty good, about a gang of hoodlums, led by Jack Palance, who are making all kinds of trouble.
Lee van Cleef is a priest who gets killed fairly early in the plot, and he also plays the brother of the priest, who has to avenge his brother's murder.
🤠

So I watched a critique about both Avatar movies and I've gotta say, I think it hit upon a good point.


Avatar made a big splash for its CGI, but its ideas weren't particularly well received or conceived.  We've all seen at least half a dozen movies which explore colonialism and its injustices or environmental destruction by modern society against comparatively less technologically advanced peoples.  Dances with Wolves.  Fern Gully.  Lawrence of Arabia.  Heart of Darkness.  Last of the Mohicans.  Last Samurai.  Captain Planet.  We've had this message hammered home time and time again - modern lifestyle kinda sucks, imperialism sucks, racism sucks, environmental destruction sucks, and "primitive" peoples aren't so primitive and the Earth and nature and all that jazz is something to be cherished.

Avatar's main problem isn't the message - that we should treasure nature and learn to respect it and not bulldoze the crap out of it is a message that everyone to the left of Rupert Murdoch can agree with - the problem is that Avatar explores this issue in such a lazy way that it turns people off.

For starters, there's such a stark black-and-white dichotomy between humans and Na'vi.  Almost every human is either a piece of garbage and almost every Na'vi is pure good.  I'm not saying they have to be totally balanced - but jeez, we can't have any treehugging humans?  Imagine Captain Planet with no human environmentalists.  That's Avatar.

My idea to spruce up the series would be to have an outpost of humans who actually really like Pandora and try their best to observe and study without harming the natural world, which makes some intuitive sense to me because that's how lots of people behave here and now.  Plus, don't make me feel bad about liking spider-bots.  They're so lovable!  Ahem, the treehugging humans of course would be outvoted by the militaristic, expansionist ones and we could have some fantastic story just about humans taking divergent, mutually-exclusive approaches to Pandora specifically and nature in general.  Instead, we get humans vs Tau Na'vi.  Cowboys VS Indians.  That's just fundamentally uninteresting - not the least of which is that we already know that the Na'vi are going to win.  (Unless you want to depress everyone)

The video guy points out one scene in particular as a missed opportunity - a Na'vi is gravely unwell and some of the rare not-awful humans are trying to scan her and figure out what's wrong.  But before they can do much, they're whisked aside so that a shaman can somehow fix the problem (surprisingly quickly and without much difficulty, too).  That would've been a nice time to showcase that a modern lifestyle, as crummy as it may be, also has some things going for it, like modern medicine.  Hell, maybe both societies have beneficial things that they can learn from the other.  But nope, tribal healing trumps modern medicine.  Hooray.

Another thing is that humans have such awful motivations.  Mr...Selfish?  My mistake...Mr Selfridge states outright that the only reason they're on Pandora is for profit.  Just money and nothing else.  Not a new home for humanity.  Not for scientific research.  Not even for cultivating a better understanding of an alien species like the Na'vi.  I guess humanity doesn't give a crap about aliens.

It's just such a bleak setting for anyone who isn't a Na'vi.  Earth sucks.  Human militarism sucks.  Human corporatism and consumerism sucks.  Human racism sucks.  Humanity sucks.  The end.  Everyone happy with that message?

Would a tree hugger volunteer for Pandora?

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on October 24, 2023, 06:33:42 AMWould a tree hugger volunteer for Pandora?

Maybe?

It's been confirmed that the third movie's antagonists will be a group of Na'vi who are less than virtuous. Also, I think the main theme of the second movie is about what it means to be family not environmentalism. The environmentalism is there, but it's a minor point. Both the protagonist and the antagonist are fathers. Both come from military backgrounds, yet have wildly different approaches. Sully is firm, but he listens to his wife and children, and he respects their opinions. They give up their home and community to live in safety, but they're okay because they stick together. They have an adopted daughter (Space Jesus), who they treat no differently than their biological children.

Quaritch, on the other hand, doesn't even know he's a father at first. Once he does, he essentially kidnaps his son from the only home he's ever known to try to win him over. It doesn't work. The son rejects him. The two can't be more different. However, even after all that Quaritch did, his son does save his life. So maybe a small part of him cares for his biological father? Probably something to be explored in the next movie.

You know, I still haven't seen these movies.

It really shouldn't feel like I dodged a bullet, James Cameron.

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on October 24, 2023, 06:33:42 AMWould a tree hugger volunteer for Pandora?

There are actually some humans there in the first movie, who are there to study or build relationships with the Na'vi. The whole reason the Na'vi speak English is because of the schools humans built for them. Although, they shouldn't logically ALL speak English as fluently as they do. I would hope if we ever found alien life and had the ability to get to them, studying them would be our primary concern, but maybe that wouldn't be profitable enough.