Hi all,

I just came out of watching The Odyssey.
It's always a tough one for me when a movie releases to so many rave reviews because it does raise expectations for what you are about to see (or well, at least for me it does).

So when the movie started I had to get used to it's pacing. It's a 2 hour and 52 minute epic (both in scale and runtime) and it takes its time to tell a story that at least to me, and I reckon many others, is quite well known.
It's a testament to Nolan his abilities that he is able to keep the story interesting by how he tells it to us as an audience.

But regardless of that, I do feel it could have been a bit shorter since, even if you are not familiar with its source material, it's easy to see where things will progress towards and the movie takes a very long time to get there.

The sound design was epic as was the cinematography and the performances were great as well though I think they could've done more with Jon Bernthals character as well as Lupita Nyong'o.
It's (at least to me) first and foremost a very well made movie all across the board.

I don't think I'd sit down and watch it a second time and I do wonder how people will feel about it when some time has passed and most have seen it.

The language used at times and some of the actors chosen (half the cast of the upcoming Spider-Man movie) did take me out of it at certain moments. hearing somebody scream fuck when it's supposed to be 800 B.C. felt weird as well

So at the end of the day I'd say it's worth the praise its getting but it lacks a bit of soul, it's almost too well made. There wasn't a scene that actually stood out, certain shots: yes, for sure, but not scenes where you feel you'll want to revisit them again.

Your mileage may vary depending on how you feel about Nolan as a director and the visual style he uses, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the movie!

Hello everyone! I'd like to know based from the title, what's an original or sort of new concept of horror antagonists or just general horror?

Like hearing the general suicide ghosts haunting a place, a serial killer lost somewhere, a person who hasn't left a place, a demon/monsters summoned, a cult killing,etc all sound like a copy of each other.

So please, I would like to hear yall opinions, or even give suggestions to films that may stand out from the rest.

Hi all,

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Given how negative and promotional these apps feel right now, a lot of tracking, ads, and paywalls, a hostile environment has developed around rating and review apps. We wanted to understand how common that actually is, and what people wish existed instead.

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Many Hollywood actors have done theatre, some for long time other had short experience and some never done theatre or started as young actor in TV or movies.

I am not trying to compare as each have good, bad and whatever between actors.

However every time I am amazed by an actor acting in Hollywood movies, I found they had theatre background experience.

Al Pacino and William Defoe are two of my favourite actors, they both have theatrical presence non theatre actors lack.

That scene of Al Pacino in the Godfather where he gonna do his first kill in the restaurant, how just with his eyes he can carry a scene is one of the best example why I love Theatre background actors.

Sometimes they over act and their acting becomes mix of cringe or funny, we see this especially with Defoe acting like his role in Spiderman movies.

But it still pull your attention and make you invested in the movie.

What you think about theatre actors?

Do you think theatre background help the actor to do great in the big screen or the most important thing actor should have is talent?

I watched The Odyssey today in an IMAX theatre. There’s a scene in the latter half where Odysseus and his men are battling a fierce storm in the middle of the ocean.

The thunder and lightning effects were incredibly intense. Honestly, there were so many rapid flashes that I actually had to close my eyes for a bit just to handle it. I normally never get headaches from watching movies, but I walked out with a mild one today which I think is because of that scene.

Did anyone else feel like the strobe/flashing effect was a bit much? Curious to know if I'm the only one who struggled with this part!

I hope this post can be light-hearted, as it was inspired by a fun conversation I had with a friend about "douchey" movie takes you will never change your mind on.

This isn't meant to be about "hot takes" - but takes that will get you ribbed in a good natured way by your buddies when being nerdy about movies.

A few of mine are: If you're favorite Star Wars movie isn't one of the original trilogy films I give you the side eye. Just how it is. I like the PT and appreciate a lot of aspects of the ST and spin-off movies. I'm a bit of a SW nerd in general. But I'm an old man yelling at clouds if your say your favorite SW movie is ROTS or Rogue One, etc. Its just my knee-jerk reaction, lol.

Ditto Evil Dead. A lot of horror fans rank the 2013 remake as their tippy-top, over any of the three original films. An Evil Dead ranking that doesn't have the first three films, in any order, as your top 3 isn't legit in my eyes. And I love the entire franchise. But the first three are immortal.

Theatrical Cut snobbery. I've seen a growing opinion that director's cuts/extended cuts are rarely, if ever, actually better than the theatrical cuts. I vehemently disagree with this. There ARE a handful of theatrical cuts I think ARE better than any DC's or EC's - but I'd personally say the split is 70/30 in favor of director's cuts being better.

Gatekeeping is good, actually. This is highly dependent on context of course. But what I mean in a general sense is that I don't think it's bad for people who have real passion for the arts to demand a certain level of knowledge and media literacy from others who want to offer their opinions. Not all opinions are created equal.

Edit: Fan edits are 98% of the time myopic, spiteful, shallow excercises in petty fanboy grievances that show that a lot of fans don't truly understand the craft of filmmaking. Simply cutting out things in a movie you don't like doesn't make it better. So many fan editors are so overly plot-brained they think movies are just plot generators and not execercises in rhythm and tone. You not liking a joke or thing a plot point is "pointless" doesn't mean you're an editor and making the film better. There are nuances to editing these people simply don't understand. I've truly never seen a fan edit that removes significat runtime from a film that doesn't feel like a choppy, incomplete mess.

To me, I feel the villains and settings go a long way. Die Hard had one of the best villains of all film history, while General McAllister is pretty forgottable and mostly it is the fight with Mr Joshua that is remembered.

By contrast, the villain of Die Hard 2 although engaging can’t match the level of Hans Gruber. Whereas, with Lethal Weapon 2, the South African villains carry it with “diplomatic immunity” alone and the hit campaign they carry out amongst the LAPD makes them seem much bigger fry that the dope dealers of the first.

Although I like Busey, I think Pieter Vorstedt is a much more self aware and better henchman.

I’m picturing a 3D animation studio like Pixar or Dreamworks but for exclusively making R rated/PG-13 movies. Something like that would be cool.

Doesn’t have to be crazy raunchy like sausage party. They could have more serious mature stories or comedies, either or. Maybe varied mix across different movies.

Idk, to me that’d be cool.

I would like the get "The Great Silence" on 4k or blu-ray but I prefer one of the two alternate endings to the original, dark ending. In contrast to most people, I very much prefer these alternate "happy" endings to the darker one. Is there any version available on physical media that features these alternate endings? I mean as a part of the full (alternate) movie, not as just a special bonus material. Either of the two alternate endings are fine with me, as long as it's not the original. So I'm essentially looking for a different version of the full movie.

I’m super excited to see this. It’s a dark comedy and satire…I love this stuff.

Now that the Mission Impossible franchise has ended, perhaps Tom Cruise will get back to great acting. To be clear I quite enjoyed MI (as well as James Bond, etc), but you don’t watch those for the acting really.

As for Iñarritu, you might know him from The Revenant or Babel. My favorite of his is actually Birdman. So I would see anything from him.

Also stars Riz Ahmed and John Goodman. Should be awesome.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31450459/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

hab mal wieder lust auf einen richtig guten crime thriller und diesmal such ich einen mit einem plot twist der einen komplett auf die falsche fährte schickt. nicht einfach nur ein überraschendes ende sondern einer bei dem man danach direkt den ganzen film nochmal durchgehen muss weil plötzlich alles sinn ergibt.

die bekannten klassiker hab ich größtenteils schon gesehen deshalb würden mich auch filme interessieren die vielleicht nicht jeder sofort nennt. am besten wäre natürlich wenn man sie gerade irgendwo streamen kann damit ich heute abend direkt loslegen kann. welcher crime thriller hat euch am meisten umgehauen und wo habt ihr ihn gestreamt?

Just wanted to get a better understanding of the movie because I just found out from a source that the movie tanked so hard to the point where it ended up being one of Disney's biggest box office bombs in recent times.

Like what I am getting at is that I have been observing the trend of the company's remakes to see what is going to happen next because if their remakes start to flop, then I wonder what Disney is going to plan next without focusing so much on the trend of live action type remakes.

Robert Eggers is one of the most interesting directors in the scene right now, I like his direction of making very symbolic movies that give you more questions than answers.

His way of exploring myths is perfect, it feel dark and beyond our simple human understanding, but at the other hand the stories make no sense and some could see the experience unsatisfying.

The lighthouse is the best example, no one know the meaning of that movie, some can see it dumb and make no sense other can see it as masterpiece of complex story telling.

I remember reading a book about magics and the occult. The author talked about how vocalization isn't always necessary for spells and rituals, but it doesn't mean that vocalization is useless in those cases; that it could help the caster or dancer in other ways.

This crossed my mind when I watched Minions and Monsters today. It's shown that Minions can't read, or they can read, but the language is their own even if the actual diction and text and alphabet is the same.

In turn, this made me wonder how they're able to use the magic. The way they say what they read won't be the same as the humans of that period. This must mean that the magic spells work in a way that doesn't actually require the exact sounds/words that humans used when casting. The closest thing I can come up with is intention. Maybe the magics worked by knowing a person knowing what they want and asking for it in the way that counts for them. Does anyone have any other ideas?

I recently started watching Bridgerton and am enjoying it far more than I expected. As an alternate-history romance, its lack of historical accuracy doesn't bother me at all.

What I am sceptical about is the claim that the show's diverse casting is, in itself, "progressive."

I'm not convinced that simply casting people of different ethnicities within the same dominant cultural framework is enough to make something progressive. The characters still largely follow the same Regency etiquette, fashion, language, and social norms. To me, that feels closer to assimilation than to genuine multicultural representation.

I also don't think the show needs to justify itself with historical arguments, such as whether Queen Charlotte had African ancestry. Bridgerton is strongest when it's embraced as a fictional world rather than defended as a reflection of real history.

So it made me wonder: Is representation alone enough to be considered progressive? Or should progress also involve allowing different cultures to exist and express themselves on their own terms, rather than primarily within a single dominant cultural framework?

I feel a lot of characters from movies (or also TV) are well liked by audiences due to their charm, their larger than life personalities, their tendency to ”play by their own rules“, and their unpredictability.

But if you really put yourself in the shoes of the characters they interact with, you’d realize it would probably be pretty annoying or even problematic to know, work with, go to school with, be friends with, or live with/next to them.

What are your picks and why?

I love both the games but I guess we can all agree the movies were quite awful. Which one would you like to see a remake of and why? Also feel free to mention your choices of cast and crew.

There are over 1 billion reasons why this live-action remake of Moana needs to exist, none of which are good on any creative or entertainment level. Look, I get that big-budget IP movies like this are designed to make money. But this is easily the most audience-insulting cash-grab in recent memory. F1: The Movie and Jurassic World Rebirth are masterpieces compared to this.

That opening paragraph is almost a word-for-word copy of my review for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. But Moana insults its audience so much more that it’s only fair and fitting that I review it through the Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V lens that characterises nearly every aspect of this remake. So, why partake in such a pointless exercise when I should be exploring the merits of this movie?

I could ask the same thing of Disney. I’m merely giving it the respect it’s showing us.

There’s no point in going through the plot because it’s the same thing as the original animated movie. In fact, virtually every line, shot, and sequence is basically the same thing, just with an uncanny valley sheen covering every inch of the screen. The script might as well have been a literal copy-and-paste job from Jared Bush’s original screenplay. Co-writer Dana Ledoux Miller must’ve had the easiest time of anyone working on this movie.

Okay, that’s not fair. In the original, Moana’s shtick to bait out Tamatoa (Jemaine Clement) involves her walking from the left of the screen to the right. In the remake, Moana (Catherine Laga’aia) walks from right to left. See, massive difference. Actually, I take my earlier statement back. This must’ve also been the easiest payday of Jemaine Clement’s career, as every single line Tamatoa has could’ve been an outtake from the original movie and no one would be the wiser.

The only thing more tired than the script is, weirdly, Dwayne Johnson as Maui. He’s saying the same lines as the original animated movie, but they’re all missing that extra 10 per cent of zeal he brought to Maui the first time around. When he first meets Moana, he looks bored and over everything rather than the excited mischievousness one would expect from being given a potential escape route. That persists in every moment he’s on screen. Maybe he also thought the Maui wig looked utterly ridiculous, or perhaps it was the residual disdain for the 40-pound body suit he had to wear.

The only positive aspect is Laga’aia as Moana. She does her best with the character, but there’s only so much one can do with a nothing-there script and blue screens to act off. The music video sequence of her performance of ‘How Far I’ll Go’ gives off the same lifelessness as the musical sequences of the 2019 version of The Lion King, which encapsulates Moana as a whole. It’s not offensive or impressive, nor is it misguided. It’s just… reductive with literally no reason for it to exist. At least we get to hear how great Laga’aia’s voice is.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/moana-2026

Thanks!

Knowing the twist didn't take anything away from it. If anything, it made me appreciate how much was hiding in plain sight the whole time.

What other films actually become a better experience once you've already seen them?