Last movie watched...

[Jim_Campbell]

there's some troubling subtext in here

Not to mention Diana's apparent lack of concern that [spoiler]her dead boyfriend's spirit/whatever has over-written the personality of a living human being whose life has simply been... stopped. She actively acknowledges that this is the body of someone else but "only sees" Steve Trevor. Well, to hell with that poor schlub and whatever life he was having previously — Steve and Diana are quite happy to use his body as a proxy fuck toy. Diana's moral dilemma, her supposedly noble sacrifice, is to reluctantly give another human being back a life that was taken away from him without his consent. How very heroic.[/spoiler]

[karlos]

Can't argue with any of that.

I still loved WW84, for all it's faults, though.

It legit made me tear up, as well.  Twice.

[Hawkmumbler]

The second we hit the Israel/Palestine stuff I had to clock out and comeback to it later.

I did not want to deal with a corporate movie produced and starring Gal Gadot dealing with this subject, hell no.

[Colin YNWA]

The second we hit the Israel/Palestine stuff I had to clock out and comeback to it later.

I did not want to deal with a corporate movie produced and starring Gal Gadot dealing with this subject, hell no.

Oh that thought has put me off any desire to see this. Unless, against my expectations, anyone can tell me its done with any balance? I had no idea it went there (as a subject as opposed to geography).

[Professor Bear]

Gadot certainly has expressed problematic opinions, but she's just an actor, and the script being co-written by Geoff Johns makes me think that a lot of what people might find troubling may very well just be tropes he's copied from elsewhere without fully appreciating what subtext they carry.  I didn't read Doomsday Clock, but I was told there's a bit where all the non-white supervillains lead a Black Lives Matter mob in an attack on the Whitehouse, so if you're going to apportion blame to anyone for Wonder Woman 1984 being propagandist/tone-deaf, I suspect it should probably be the guy who wrote that.

EDIT: I guess there's an ethno-nationalist desert city that has a wall around it in the movie and which is painted as an unambiguously Bad Thing in the context of the film, and now I think about it, this happens in an explicitly Muslim country complete with stereotypical 1980s action movie 'Evil Arabs' for the goodies to duff-up, so there's a case to be made that the film is ascribing certain behavior to Muslims and Muslim nations.
But again, all this is really on the writers.

[Hawkmumbler]

Gadot was also a producer on WW84.

[Professor Bear]

But look at it from the other way around, HM - what the movie is saying can be thrown in Gadot's face every time she makes another bone-headed endorsement of the IDF.

So I say: good for Gadot for making a movie about how a desert country walling itself off and practicing apartheid is bad.
I particularly liked the bit in the film where the American oil company deposed the ruler of a Muslim country, causing the nation to fall to chaos and forcing all the Arabs to be bad, so the violent things they do are explicitly the fault of the US - if only all American movies so openly portrayed how capitalism is destabilizing the Middle East and vilifying Muslims.
Especially liked how US television was portrayed as a vehicle for pro-capitalist propaganda that promises to fulfill your desires but ultimately just leaves you much worse off than you were before, and guarantees the destruction of the planet.

[Funt Solo]

When I was visiting alternative 23 at the weekend, I saw Guy Gadot in Wonder Man 1848 - it was just as bad.

[TordelBack]

Peterloo. Wow, that's a flick. Mike Leigh leaves us a bit cold at the end, with no real picture of the aftermath (Obligatory: other than the world we live in now) beyond a single funeral and an audience with Prince Regent Percy Percy, but other than that it's a pretty flawless piece of formal work that feels like it belongs in another era of cinema, not 2018. The anti-Bridgerton.

[repoman]

WW84 had a million problems.  Gadot's bit to camera towards the end made me think of that awful Imagine video she made.

Anyway, yesterday I watched the fantastic After Hours (1985) and today Death of Me (2020).

The latter was interesting enough.  It reminded me of Blair Witch in some ways but instead of the scary woods it was the equally scary South East of Asia.

Maggie Q is great in it.

[Colin YNWA]

Teen Titans Go to the Movies, based in the kids TV show loosely based on the comics, have to say that was really quite good fun. Its a kids movie but with enough nerdy references to keep the nerdy adults happy - and actually very funny in a fun childish way.

Want to say all superhero moveies should be like this, but they shiouldn't, but I'm quite glad this one is.

[Funt Solo]

Extinction (2018) - not perfect, by any means, but a neat slice of action sci-fi that you could rate as Black Mirror+, but it wouldn't land in your sci-fi Top Twenty.

A man has visions of aliens landing on earth, which frustrates his wife - wait, that's the plot of Close Encounters! But this gets mashed up with an Independence Day vibe, because these aliens aren't those cute little pixie-types, but land more in the Mars Attacks! bucket as regards consideration for the current occupants of the planet.

And then it gets weird, [spoiler]with a Cronenberg / Asimov vibe[/spoiler] and I don't want to spoiler it for you by saying any more.

[Hawkmumbler]

Peterloo. Wow, that's a flick. Mike Leigh leaves us a bit cold at the end, with no real picture of the aftermath (Obligatory: other than the world we live in now) beyond a single funeral and an audience with Prince Regent Percy Percy, but other than that it's a pretty flawless piece of formal work that feels like it belongs in another era of cinema, not 2018. The anti-Bridgerton.

It's important to consider how this movie impacted how Lancastrian history was taught and understood.
Growing up I had no idea one of the single worst acts of domestic genocide in our countries long, sordid, blood soaked history happened within meters of the hospital I was born in.
Now it's part of a number of collage curriculums here in Bolton. Bury, Salford and Greater Manchester.

Indeed, it needed a bit more follow through post massacre, but my god does it deliver in every other sense.

[TordelBack]

It really does. Still thinking about it.

Interesting what you say about how Peterloo wasn't widely taught, it was definitely an important part of at least one of my school history courses, sitting on the far side of the Napoleonic Wars from the French Revolution as another sad act in the Age of Revolutions, and a sort of a prelude to the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

I suspect this is because our heavily revolution-focused history teaching was always keen to set Irish independence movements in the context of social unrest, economic policy and resistance to reform in Britain. And a bit of British brutality elsewhere was seldom overlooked.

[von Boom]

It wouldn't be the Christmas season if I didn't watch the most classic Christmas film of all time, Die Hard.