30 Day Movie Challenge - Day 21

[trinityvixen]

Our lab/floor dedication--a.k.a. a "Thank you for paying for our space, rich doctor man!" party--is tomorrow. I've done zero science today. I've just been tidying and tucking every last goddamned thing I can into cabinets or drawers out of sight. I still think my boss is going to come in tomorrow (she's home today grant writing) and find a million

Comments

[ivy03]

This is how I feel about Alien.

[trinityvixen]

You know, it's funny about Alien. I know it's good objectively, but it's never the one I want to watch. I almost always want to watch Aliens. Even Alien Resurrection. Alien is, perhaps, too arty for me.

[ivy03]

No one remembers that, for the first hour of Alien, nothing happens. And even after stuff starts happening, there's this completely incomprehensible plot about the ship's computer and it still moves pretty slowly. I was bored by that movie.

...and still haven't seen any of the others.

[trinityvixen]

The others are more entertaining because they embrace the horror instead of looking from the outside with slight detachment. I mean, for all that Veronica Cartwright was horrified in Alien, there's a lot of emotional voidage going on.

[gryphonrose]

Hm, it's been a while since I've seen it but I remember enjoying the Godfather. Then again, I'm a guy. :)

I'm tempted to say Matchpoint-I already posted that one, though. Moulin Rouge? I never saw the appeal. Same with Titanic.

[trinityvixen]

Titanic or Avatar would have been phenomenal choices, and they were almost my choice here. I hated Titanic, but I don't think the effects in that one were overrated. The story blew goats, but the boat sinking was fantastic. Avatar, I must grudgingly admit, did the special effects right as well, and as much as I think that movie was overrated, it, too, did something well enough to deserve at least some of they hype. (The key word there being "some.")

But The Godfather is this revered movie and I couldn't fathom why. This "tough guys being tough thing" is fine for a Jason Statham movie, but it's not art. Blech.

[gryphonrose]

I still haven't seen Avatar, though your statement sums up what I've heard from pretty much everyone. I remember enjoying the Godfather but I never revered it. There are plenty of über-hyped movies I didn't think were all that. Forrest Gump, for example.

[trinityvixen]

Honestly, Avatar probably isn't worth seeing not in a theater--or not in 3D. When I've seen it in the cold light of an HD TV, it's looked less good. In the theater, I was impressed at the nearly-reaching-the-other-side escape from the Uncanny Valley. But just one TV? It looked cartoonish.

[cbreakr]

The first Godfather is not a good movie anymore, except as a prelude to the second part; the only things that matter at all are Michael's character and the contrast that comes from the two films together. It was something completely new when it came out and spawned the whole genre, which has collectively proceeded to drain any meaning from it by turning the entire thing into a tired formula based pretty much on directly copying its original elements ad-nauseam. If it involves crime in any way, it's using the elements The Godfather defined - they're still pretty much the only ones. As such, it's interesting from a cinema-as-a-whole perspective much moreso than its own merits. It's kind of a shame that it's become what it has, really, considering how powerful it was on first release

[trinityvixen]

It may the stagnation of The Godfather that did it. Strangely, this hasn't deterred me from wanting to, eventually, see The Godfather II. I'm not excited about it, but it's definitely on my infinitely long list of want-to-have-seen, don't-want-to-actually-watch movies. It will just take a while to stop resenting the first one to bother.