Movie Talk

JohnnyBlaze said:

Love me some Stephen King! I just watched Shawshank last week. Green Mile gets me weepy everytime. The Mist with its alternative ending is an improvement over the original novella. Dolores Claiborne is one of the few movies of his I don't have that I need to get my hands on.    

Really?! I hated the movie ending!

Ahavati said:

Really?! I hated the movie ending!

I can certainly understand why! It's the downer ending to end all downer endings haha. Quite often an ending like that would feel tawdry and undeserved to me, but I think it followed fairly coherently from the rest of the story in the film. They're ultimately the victims of a government conspiracy as opposed to just the monsters themselves, and what happens is an illustration of that needless tragedy. In my opinion, anyway. I do like the original story's ending too, which was cautiously optimistic in an uplifting way.

Ahavati said:

Really?! I hated the movie ending!

While it is a horrendous way to end the movie, it is a very poetic ending.

Be eaten alive or worse by a big, greasy monster or be instantly dead from a shot in the head. They choose to be shot because of their fear of the unknown. It illustrates the power of personal belief and how it can overwrite reality in every direction one turns. Fear cripples imagination and blinds the senses to alternative outcomes. That's the metaphor of the mist.

So in the movie, they died when it wasn't necessary, and David Drayton has to live with the knowledge that just a few more minutes of being hopeful would have saved them all. It's a powerful ending that makes you think twice about giving up on anything just because you don't have immediate answers or results.

The_Silly_Sibyl said:

I can certainly understand why! It's the downer ending to end all downer endings haha. Quite often an ending like that would feel tawdry and undeserved to me, but I think it followed fairly coherently from the rest of the story in the film. They're ultimately the victims of a government conspiracy as opposed to just the monsters themselves, and what happens is an illustration of that needless tragedy. In my opinion, anyway. I do like the original story's ending too, which was cautiously optimistic in an uplifting way.

When the woman who left the grocery store earlier on rides by in the truck with her kids, there's that gut punching message that states a positive outcome was indeed possible all along.

JohnnyBlaze said:

When the woman who left the grocery store earlier on rides by in the truck with her kids, there's that gut punching message that states a positive outcome was indeed possible all along.

Yes! That's really heartbreaking.

JohnnyBlaze said:

While it is a horrendous way to end the movie, it is a very poetic ending.

Be eaten alive or worse by a big, greasy monster or be instantly dead from a shot in the head. They choose to be shot because of their fear of the unknown. It illustrates the power of personal belief and how it can overwrite reality in every direction one turns. Fear cripples imagination and blinds the senses to alternative outcomes. That's the metaphor of the mist.

So in the movie, they died when it wasn't necessary, and David Drayton has to live with the knowledge that just a few more minutes of being hopeful would have saved them all. It's a powerful ending that makes you think twice about giving up on anything just because you don't have immediate answers or results.

I get all that but I still hated the ending!

Ahavati said:

I get all that but I still hated the ending!

All I have to say to that is

😜

Has anyone seen Chinatown? That has one of the most infamous unhappy endings in the movies, though it's also darkly, cynically beautiful, in how it makes you appreciate the horror of the situation, to empathise with the victims.

JohnnyBlaze said:

All I have to say to that is

😜



The_Silly_Sibyl said:Has anyone seen Chinatown? That has one of the most infamous unhappy endings in the movies, though it's also darkly, cynically beautiful, in how it makes you appreciate the horror of the situation, to empathise with the victims.

Yes!!!!!

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is a 2020 adaptation of a Japanese anime serial, which I haven’t seen and which I’m not sure I’d heard of before seeing an ad for this film at my local cinema. I decided to see it because it looked like fun and its overwhelmingly positive critical response (97% on Rotten Tomatoes) indicated that it wasn’t just fan service for those who’ve seen the serial.

Which it isn’t, quite, but if you’re going to enjoy this as a newcomer you’ll probably need at least some familiarisation with anime and its tropes. I can see this film baffling and annoying newcomers to the genre, let alone this particular franchise, although if you’re completely ignorant of anime it’s unlikely that you’d pick Demon Slayer: Mugen Train as a starting point.

Though the details of its world eluded me (I spent the longest time wondering why a little girl character wears a kind of horse’s bit clamped across her mouth), the general outline of the plot was clear and characters sharply drawn enough that I could follow along without trouble. A trio of young swordsmen board a train on which an older and more experienced warrior is travelling, and together they must fight a demon who, like all of his kind, seek to torment and destroy human beings.

The main character is Tanjiro Kamado, a boy of pure heart who must learn discipline, and the older swordsman (or slayer) is Rengoku, who offers the boy an apprenticeship. These elements will of course be familiar to anyone who knows anything about classical storytelling and the Hero’s Journey, or has just seen a movie before, from Jason and the Argonauts to Star Wars and Spider-Man.

The animation is glorious, alternating between colourful 2D, and 3D camera movements. Though most of the story physically takes place on the train we see a lot of different landscapes via memory and symbolism, including a beautiful depiction of a heavenly realm which represents a character’s soul. The film’s antagonist does battle in dreams, tempting its victims with nostalgic reverie before twisting the mental thumbscrews.

What surprised me was the level of compassion and emotional engagement in the plot. I’m not sure that I was expecting anything more than a slash-‘em-up, but Demon Slayer explores love, loss, and grief with heartfelt sincerity. Tanjiro and Rengoku must each come to terms with their childhoods, regrets, and the responsibilities they bear because of their power. There’s a point where pity is evoked even for the demon, who ultimately just wants what the young slayer wants: to be elevated among his kind.

The broad style of franchise anime represented by Demon Slayer isn’t particularly to my taste. Characters narrate everything they experience (‘it’s pitch-black’ says one character helpfully, after we see him appear in pitch-black), so that even fight scenes are filled with dialogue, and emotional moments are drawn out long past the point at which they should have ended. (The old Shakespearean thing of characters monologuing at the point of death, with most of their innards now outards, makes an appearance.) Certain practicalities of the plot are ignored (what happened to the passengers on the train?) and there’s a framing device which I’m sure makes sense to fans of the serial but seemed pretty pointless to me.

Yet Demon Slayer: Mugen Train stands out as a thoughtful and engaging (if minor) work of the imagination. Its heroes are loveable and villains memorable, while its violent and macabre aspects are effective without being too gross or sadistic. It isn’t complete in and of itself enough to rank alongside the great Hero’s Journey films, but for a franchise affair it’s refreshingly accessible.

3/4

I have a difficult time taking anime seriously enough to watch any of it. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because the art style of manga never seems to evolve and always seems fixated on Asian schoolgirls in short skirted uniforms. I dunno. But your in depth review makes me realize I'm selling genre short.

The film contains a lot of the stuff you’d probably recognise from anime and find annoying, like characters flailing their arms and acting cute and silly. But it’s offset by a controlled tone and story. My problem with a lot of serialised anime that I’ve sampled is its weird obsession with underage sex and gore. Even when a series contains neither overtly, little references creep in, as with a show I saw a preview of at London Comic Con a few years ago, where one of the protagonists is a little girl and characters joke about how a creature who’s been following her likes ‘em young. Thankfully that element is absent from Mugen Train.

Unfortunately, in the modern world, people have to pay for almost everything. To be honest, it really upsets me. It is challenging to find a site where watching movies will be free and in good quality, but the best thing I found was https://fmovie.vip. The thing is, I don't have to pay a monthly subscription to watch movies in HD quality. I also like that this site has a wide list of movies, unlike others like Netflix. My friend is a Netflix fan, but I don't like it at all. You know, I'm particularly annoyed by the ads that are on almost every site.Maybe the ads don't annoy people who watch a movie once a week, but when you do it often, it's really infuriating.

Lord of the rings is the best movie. It's not even competition in my opinion. Game of Thrones was good for a few seasons, but they ruined it with that ending...
LOTR has something that no other movies have. It's three four-hour movies that are easy to watch. I watch new movies that are less than two hours, and I get bored, but when I watch LOTR it's easy. I get sad when it ends because I want to see more. There are talks of a new LOTR TV show, and I hope it's good. It's being made by Amazon, and I hear they're spending a lot of money on it. I just hope it lives up to the hype.

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https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Gondor

I watched 'The Tomorrow War' on Prime earlier this week. I don't really have time to post a Silly_Sybill awesome review; however, I will say I enjoyed it. While Chris Pratt was awesome, he was also the typical hero in these types of movies. It was Yvonne Strahovski who stole the show.