• Most new users don't bother reading our rules. Here's the one that is ignored almost immediately upon signup: DO NOT ASK FOR FANEDIT LINKS PUBLICLY. First, read the FAQ. Seriously. What you want is there. You can also send a message to the editor. If that doesn't work THEN post in the Trade & Request forum. Anywhere else and it will be deleted and an infraction will be issued.
  • If this is your first time here please read our FAQ and Rules pages. They have some useful information that will get us all off on the right foot, especially our Own the Source rule. If you do not understand any of these rules send a private message to one of our staff for further details.
  • Please read our Rules & Guidelines

    Read BEFORE posting Trades & Request

The Last Movie(s) You Watched... (quick one or two sentence reviews)

Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) (1997)

I've been curious about this film ever since I saw Vanilla Sky (a very ambitious but disappointing effort) a couple years back. This version is a nice improvement. I like that all of the plotlines were spread out through the entire movie (as opposed to the remake, where it's all thrown haphazardly into the first half). The main character being a shallow, self-indulgent brat makes way more sense for the material, and I also think the ending was more effectively executed as well. All in all, this movie gets a high recommendation.
 
I saw airport on Netflix - kinda silly action/drama thriller/disaster? Basically, about a tough day for an airport it’s crew one flight and it’s passengers. Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin , George Kennedy and Jacquelyn bisset , no weak links. Bo super humans , no thousand cuts , no cgi cloud monsters. Apperently there’s a bunch of sequels as well. Not the greates movie of all time but an easy watch
 
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is not the masterpiece everyone made it out to be, but it's still a pretty fun movie.
 
Eyepainter said:
Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) (1997)

I've been curious about this film ever since I saw Vanilla Sky (a very ambitious but disappointing effort) a couple years back. This version is a nice improvement. I like that all of the plotlines were spread out through the entire movie (as opposed to the remake, where it's all thrown haphazardly into the first half). The main character being a shallow, self-indulgent brat makes way more sense for the material, and I also think the ending was more effectively executed as well. All in all, this movie gets a high recommendation.
Click to expand...
I just watched this a couple of months ago and liked it less actually. Just sloppier writing and a weaker ending and a weak lead actor... but that said, the overall film still looks great and the core story is great. The remake took a lot of the film verbatim.
 
AIR (2023)
Needlessly vulgar. Forced nostalgia and emotion. It felt much like the shoe complex episode Damon, Tucker and Affleck were in, namely unnecessary. If you aren't a shoe head, this movie probably won't be of interest.
 
DigModiFicaTion said:
AIR (2023)
Needlessly vulgar. Forced nostalgia and emotion. It felt much like the shoe complex episode Damon, Tucker and Affleck were in, namely unnecessary. If you aren't a shoe head, this movie probably won't be of interest.
Click to expand...
See, I don't care about shoes at all but I really enjoyed this. I agree about the forced nostalgia. "Hey, it's the 80's, did you know it was the 80's? Remember that one 80's song? What about this one?"
For me I think maybe it just reminded me of Madmen enough to keep me interested.
 
Saw the color purple for the first time - and I had some problems with it, I love Danny glover but he was totally miscast. I was never scared of him - he was too silly and slapstick, I don’t know actually if that was his fault or the script. There’s been some terrifying stuff by Steven I couldn’t believe how he couldn’t sell the terrifying abusive husband. Even the guy on sleeping with the enemy was scarier. Anyways pretty good movie very sad though.
 
^Oh wow, The Color Purple is right up in the top of my ranked Spielberg list. It's also on my list of Great Films Too Tough to Rewatch, so I haven't seen it in quite awhile. I remember thinking Glover was terrifying though, because I was in the world of the ladies and they were terrified. I've met some abusive, manipulative guys in real life, and it's funny how often they aren't particularly big or tough or intimidating, which is probably why they go so overboard in exerting that on anyone they perceive as weak enough around them. It's the truly vile nature of abuse in families/partners, where it's so hard from outside that situation to effect any change. Police can go to a house for a domestic violence call, but chances are that the person victimized will just suffer all the more when they leave. The insidiousness of it is what's terrifying.
 
mnkykungfu said:
I just watched this a couple of months ago and liked it less actually. Just sloppier writing and a weaker ending and a weak lead actor... but that said, the overall film still looks great and the core story is great. The remake took a lot of the film verbatim.
Click to expand...

The reason I think Abre los Ojos' ending is superior is because the ending of Vanilla Sky is Hollywood-ized.

The ending to the original was vague and ambiguous for a reason. Having us question what was really going on at the end added so much psychological depth to the film, and left the audience thinking about what was real and what was fiction long after it was over. There was also a very strong implication that the cryonics company is actually trying to kill the protagonist (especially after the moment when he shot the security guard to death before he disappeared), which is why the original film ends on a blank screen. It's because of some dark Minority Report-level stuff (coincidentally, that movie also stars Tom Cruise). But in Vanilla Sky, that implication is nowhere to be found, and the final shot of the film, implying that our hero woke up, lived happily ever after, and got back with Penelope Cruz, makes little sense, especially if the whole "cryogenically frozen for 150 years" logic in the original comes into play in the remake (although I don't remember if that was in Vanilla Sky, since it's been a while, but if it's a ripoff of the original, it's probably in the remake too).

Now, in spite of that criticism, I can't say Vanilla Sky is a completely awful film. It almost works, and I respect Cruise and Crowe for taking a risk on something like this. But overall, it's a C-minus kind of movie. I think a good fanedit could fix a lot of its problems (I've heard that the blu-ray release is very generous, and contains a lot of alternate scenes, even an alternate ending). But the theatrical cut's disadvantages slightly outweigh its advantages for me.
 
mnkykungfu said:
^Oh wow, The Color Purple is right up in the top of my ranked Spielberg list. It's also on my list of Great Films Too Tough to Rewatch, so I haven't seen it in quite awhile. I remember thinking Glover was terrifying though, because I was in the world of the ladies and they were terrified. I've met some abusive, manipulative guys in real life, and it's funny how often they aren't particularly big or tough or intimidating, which is probably why they go so overboard in exerting that on anyone they perceive as weak enough around them. It's the truly vile nature of abuse in families/partners, where it's so hard from outside that situation to effect any change. Police can go to a house for a domestic violence call, but chances are that the person victimized will just suffer all the more when they leave. The insidiousness of it is what's terrifying.
Click to expand...
The movie looks amazing - the cast was great, i totally felt for Whoopi too and found myself saying come on girl just run away!!!. And honestly I just love Spielberg every time he surprises me . I remember thinking no way I’ll like war horse - impossible ! And then there I was captivated lol. And in agree I’ve had friends or family that have been with abusive guys and you never would guess it - they can be little non threatening even wimpy ! Maybe I just like Danny too much?
 
Eyepainter said:
The reason I think Abre los Ojos' ending is superior is because the ending of Vanilla Sky is Hollywood-ized.

The ending to the original was vague and ambiguous for a reason. Having us question what was really going on at the end added so much psychological depth to the film, and left the audience thinking about what was real and what was fiction long after it was over. There was also a very strong implication that the cryonics company is actually trying to kill the protagonist (especially after the moment when he shot the security guard to death before he disappeared), which is why the original film ends on a blank screen. It's because of some dark Minority Report-level stuff (coincidentally, that movie also stars Tom Cruise). But in Vanilla Sky, that implication is nowhere to be found, and the final shot of the film, implying that our hero woke up, lived happily ever after, and got back with Penelope Cruz, makes little sense, especially if the whole "cryogenically frozen for 150 years" logic in the original comes into play in the remake (although I don't remember if that was in Vanilla Sky, since it's been a while, but if it's a ripoff of the original, it's probably in the remake too).

Now, in spite of that criticism, I can't say Vanilla Sky is a completely awful film. It almost works, and I respect Cruise and Crowe for taking a risk on something like this. But overall, it's a C-minus kind of movie. I think a good fanedit could fix a lot of its problems (I've heard that the blu-ray release is very generous, and contains a lot of alternate scenes, even an alternate ending). But the theatrical cut's disadvantages slightly outweigh its advantages for me.
Click to expand...
If by "Hollywood-ized", you mean that the ending was built up to through music and had a clear plot throughline, then...yes. I know some people like the more scattershot endings of some foreign films, but I don't take that as "ambiguity" so much as "lack of control working at scale." I didn't find the ending of Abre Los Ojos to be ambiguous at all actually, just somewhat poorly explained, as I wrote up here.

It's essentially the same result as in Vanilla Sky, they just don't really explain the reasoning. In both films, the protagonist is starting to notice that he's not in the real world, and the company is trying to fix that. However, in Abre Los Ojos, they just represent it as a flaw in the early technology that the company doesn't initially admit, at least not within the virtual program. In Vanilla Sky, they represent it as a natural process of having mentally recovered enough from his trauma to be capable of choosing to re-enter the real world. In neither one is he going to "get back with Penelope Cruz" and "live happily ever after". He's been asleep too long and his former life is completely gone. That's actually the core of his dilemma! The only way he gets to have those things is if he chooses to stay in the virtual reality.

One of the problems with Abre Los Ojos is that the program tells the protagonist that he shouldn't wake up, that he could die. I never got any impression of any "Minority Report" stuff or that the cryogenics company was trying to kill him??? Not sure where you get either idea from, as the Spanish doesn't say anything like that that I recall, but maybe poor subtitling? Anyway, the ending is fine but essentially it's just the program trying to convince him to reset it and stay in. Whereas in Vanilla Sky, the program is actively giving the protagonist the choice. They say: you can wake up now, but it'll be a whole new life. Will you choose an uncertain reality or something fake but blissful? That classic Matrix dilemma.

I think that Crowe's use of music and the more toned-down performances in Vanilla Sky bring the ending to an emotional resonance that ends with a philosophical gut punch. It has a clear resolution sure, but the resolution is to choose life, choose the future. It's far from pat or Happily Ever After. Abre Los Ojos has a boring score and melodramatic performances where there are fake characters still making long speeches about how they're not fake well after you know what's happening. It's a dragged out ending that just leaves you with the question of if the protagonist lived or not. He makes the same choice, but we don't know if abandoning the fake reality allowed him to wake up or to kill him, hence the black screen. It's still a nice touch, but I like the embrace of an emotional theme much more, which is presented in the remake.
 
mnkykungfu said:
If by "Hollywood-ized", you mean that the ending was built up to through music and had a clear plot throughline, then...yes.
Click to expand...

No to the former and yes to the latter.

mnkykungfu said:
I know some people like the more scattershot endings of some foreign films, but I don't take that as "ambiguity" so much as "lack of control working at scale." I didn't find the ending of Abre Los Ojos to be ambiguous at all actually, just somewhat poorly explained, as I wrote up here.
Click to expand...

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree. "Lack of control working at scale" is a term I would use for something like Star Wars: The Last Jedi, rarely for something like a foreign film that has to deal with the restraints of its low budget.

mnkykungfu said:
It's essentially the same result as in Vanilla Sky, they just don't really explain the reasoning.
Click to expand...

I see that as more of a vice than a virtue for Vanilla Sky. The explaining is pretty much a dumbing down of the original, and it gives me some serious "studio interference" vibes. You can easily imagine some studio exec saying, "Oh no! We have to explain everything to the audience, or they'll be confused, and we don't want that!" The ending doesn't trust people to make their own judgments and conclusions, and that's not a good thing.

mnkykungfu said:
In both films, the protagonist is starting to notice that he's not in the real world, and the company is trying to fix that. However, in Abre Los Ojos, they just represent it as a flaw in the early technology that the company doesn't initially admit, at least not within the virtual program. In Vanilla Sky, they represent it as a natural process of having mentally recovered enough from his trauma to be capable of choosing to re-enter the real world. In neither one is he going to "get back with Penelope Cruz" and "live happily ever after". He's been asleep too long and his former life is completely gone. That's actually the core of his dilemma! The only way he gets to have those things is if he chooses to stay in the virtual reality.

One of the problems with Abre Los Ojos is that the program tells the protagonist that he shouldn't wake up, that he could die. I never got any impression of any "Minority Report" stuff or that the cryogenics company was trying to kill him??? Not sure where you get either idea from, as the Spanish doesn't say anything like that that I recall, but maybe poor subtitling?
Click to expand...

Considering that much of my reasoning why I think the company is trying to kill him stems from him shooting a security guard to death, I highly doubt it's poor subtitling.

I bring up Minority Report because that movie involves arresting or incarcerating people on whatever things they think about, and given the actions of the protagonist at the end of Abre los Ojos, it's entirely plausible that the company "saw" those actions (such as when he shot the security guard to death, as I mentioned above) and decided that it was best to kill him. It reminds me of Total Recall, where the film leaves you questioning if the hero is saving the mutants, or if his brain is getting fried. This also leads me to another possibility that the hero is insane. All these theories are exactly why the ending of Abre los Ojos is more effective and interesting. It doesn't spoonfeed you the conclusion, but rather, it leaves you to make your own interpretation on what happened at the end.

And as for the whole "The program is telling him he shouldn't wake up" issue, If we're going by the idea that it's mostly all in the protagonist's head, and he has some form of control over the program now, then one can easily interpret it as hesitation by the protagonist, which backs up my theory that the company is trying to kill him. He's sensing danger, and it's being projected in the program.

Finally, the flaw in the early technology is just further reason for the company to kill the protagonist.

mnkykungfu said:
Anyway, the ending is fine but essentially it's just the program trying to convince him to reset it and stay in. Whereas in Vanilla Sky, the program is actively giving the protagonist the choice. They say: you can wake up now, but it'll be a whole new life. Will you choose an uncertain reality or something fake but blissful? That classic Matrix dilemma.
Click to expand...

It sounds like what you wanted out of the film was a more traditional cookie-cutter plot. But that usually doesn't work so well in movies that blur the line between reality and fantasy.

Making the movie about the character's choice is a common trope in movies, but it doesn't work in Vanilla Sky. The main character spends most of the movie in fantasyland, and there is very little screentime given to the real world. So when our hero has to make the big choice at the end, he's too poorly informed for the choice to make any meaningful impact. It seems like he only made that choice because "Well, the whole fantasy world was lame. I guess I'll go to the real world instead." And that's a weak argument for the themes that the film is trying to express. In all fairness, Abre los Ojos is guilty of the same mistake, and it would've been better for both movies if the screentime between real world and fantasy world was more 50/50, but at least Abre los Ojos attempts to correct the mistake by blurring the line between reality and fantasy even further at the end than Vanilla Sky did. This is also why explaining everything is a problem, not a solution.

mnkykungfu said:
I think that Crowe's use of music and the more toned-down performances in Vanilla Sky bring the ending to an emotional resonance that ends with a philosophical gut punch. It has a clear resolution sure, but the resolution is to choose life, choose the future. It's far from pat or Happily Ever After. Abre Los Ojos has a boring score and melodramatic performances where there are fake characters still making long speeches about how they're not fake well after you know what's happening. It's a dragged out ending that just leaves you with the question of if the protagonist lived or not. He makes the same choice, but we don't know if abandoning the fake reality allowed him to wake up or to kill him, hence the black screen. It's still a nice touch, but I like the embrace of an emotional theme much more, which is presented in the remake.
Click to expand...

I did not experience any of this "emotional resonance" or "philosophical gut punch" you're speaking about. Sorry.

Anyway, I'd better stop. This discussion is going way off-topic.
 
just saw three colors blue - definitely original, and captivating, I was never bored never able to predict what would happen next. Basically it wasn’t your Hollywood sentimental trope - that we’ve seen a million times. Which also I think is now about 90 percent of holloywood but that’sa different conversation. So I respect the film I respect the performances but I can’t say I loved it. Maybe it’s the type of movie that grows on you?
4/5 stars
 
@Eyepainter yeah, I guess we just had very different experiences with the films. I didn't have any doubt about what was happening in Abre Los Ojos and didn't find it ambiguous at all. I'm glad you got so much out of it though!

Weathering With You (2019)
I have yet to watch "Your Name", which seems to be the non-Ghibli anime of choice for film critics to praise, but everything else driven by Makoto Shinkai has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. I don't love the way he uses CG with the hand-drawn animation, and his characters often start out as really believable and interesting but then end up conforming to melodramatic anime tropes...

Moonage Daydream (2022)
This starts out as a concert film for Bowie's "Spiders From Mars" tour, but then becomes a kind of stream-of-consciousness collage of pop culture elements drifting around in a Bowie-tinged space oddity. I can't say as it really follows any chronological or thematic order which gives you a full picture of Bowie or helps you understand his life or work, but it does give an accurate impression of how eclectic, esoteric, and truly inimitable his style was.

Savage (1973)
A pilot for a Martin Landau-led TV series that was never picked up, this early Spielberg directorial effort has some real flair in the opening moments. Generally, the show is like The Newsroom but with a very '70s "one man and his team get justice" take on things. The show has the guts to not give the ending payoff narratively or fall into an action spectacle... probably a big reason it fell behind while Spielberg moved on.
 
I recently re-watched Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome since im going through Mad Max footage on getting content/ideas for a live action music video im doing for an upcoming convention contest. It feels so watered down from what The Road Warrior did, as though it was trying to appeal to a younger audience (i guess it did since it had kids the second half of it). Despite it being watered down and really the cheesiest of the series, its still not a bad film. I guess you can only do so much with Tina Turner since her screen time is probably a third of the film over all, maybe that was due to contractial mumbo jumbo or whatever.

I plan on re-watching Fury Road next, i.e. "The Road Warrior Miller REALLY wanted to make 40 years ago."
 
Today I finished reading Fight Club, and decided to rewatch the movie after. I have mixed feelings on the adaptation. I'd always heard that it was pretty accurate to the book, and I can't disagree in regards to the plot and themes, but the presentation is vastly different. The book is more or less written as a stream of consciousness. All from the protagonist's perspective, bouncing around between topics, without much real dialogue. It's not entirely viable to make a successful film following the book's structure, so it does the best it can while adjusting things to be a tad more conventional, and overdramatized. In the movie, the narration is very clearly shown to be talking to the audience. There's also a bunch of times where narration in the book is repurposed as dialogue in the movie that feels like awkward exposition. The movie works just fine, and I love the ending shot and song, but there's just so much more to the book. The presentation really aids the story, the insomnia and uncertainty themes feel more believable, and some things are just explained better and make more sense. There's a lot I could say here, but I'll just end it here and say that the movie is really well made and I still love it, but it fundamentally isn't supposed to be a movie.
 
Jrzag42 said:
Today I finished reading Fight Club, and decided to rewatch the movie after. I have mixed feelings on the adaptation. I'd always heard that it was pretty accurate to the book, and I can't disagree in regards to the plot and themes, but the presentation is vastly different. The book is more or less written as a stream of consciousness. All from the protagonist's perspective, bouncing around between topics, without much real dialogue. It's not entirely viable to make a successful film following the book's structure, so it does the best it can while adjusting things to be a tad more conventional, and overdramatized. In the movie, the narration is very clearly shown to be talking to the audience. There's also a bunch of times where narration in the book is repurposed as dialogue in the movie that feels like awkward exposition. The movie works just fine, and I love the ending shot and song, but there's just so much more to the book. The presentation really aids the story, the insomnia and uncertainty themes feel more believable, and some things are just explained better and make more sense. There's a lot I could say here, but I'll just end it here and say that the movie is really well made and I still love it, but it fundamentally isn't supposed to be a movie.
Click to expand...
Pretty much all of that guy's books are like that I think. I've read Choke and Survivor. They're stream of consciousness anecdotes strung together in order between plot beats, but Fight Club is probably the best of them so if you read more and don't want to be disappointed, don't go expecting Fight Club 2.

...Although he did do a Fight Club 2, too, as a comic. Haven't read it.
 
addiesin said:
Pretty much all of that guy's books are like that I think. I've read Choke and Survivor. They're stream of consciousness anecdotes strung together in order between plot beats, but Fight Club is probably the best of them so if you read more and don't want to be disappointed, don't go expecting Fight Club 2.

...Although he did do a Fight Club 2, too, as a comic. Haven't read it.
Click to expand...
Those are the three I read as well - fight club, choke and survivor. There’s actually a choke movie that’s really different from the book. I have a funny history with fight club - I saw it as a boy in high school and I loved it! I wanted to blow up the world. Then I saw it after college and thought wow how silly - almost like a cartoon. Then I saw it after working in an office for years and in thought how true it seemed. And I realized the first time I saw it I related to Tyler, I was punk, “anarchist” minimalist, and would rather be dead than a yuppie. the second time i saw it I was trying to get my degree and start my career and I focused on Tyler and he seemed so over the top and immature, I didn’t like the movie. the third time I saw it was after working in an office for a decade and this time I gravitated towards the narrator and I was like wow! I’ve come full circle I now feel his pain and I get why he needed Tyler and his youthful enthusiasm!!!
 
Air. A missed opportunity. I like Affleck as a director generally, but he didn’t seem to have his footing here. Early in the movie he seemed to be trying to use camera tricks presumably to make it more cinematic. B roll 80s footage seems out of place and the 80s nostalgia s leaned in to way too much. There’s a good story there but much of the most interesting parts are treated as footnotes. There are attempts to give characters depth but they aren’t really followed up on. It’s not bad, but it could’ve been much more imo. I should note that I’m a huge Jordan fan (had Bulls seasons tickets from 1979-2002 and met him on two separate occasions) and also spent twenty years in marketing. That said, like Moneyball, I don’t think you need to have an interest in these subjects for the story to be interesting. I just didn’t think it was particularly well directed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom