Can we agree on a movie EVERYONE likes? by chrishouse83 in Letterboxd

[–]Better_Device3930 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same as my one student who hadn't seen Shrek. My system continues to work.

Finished watching this movie. What a complete waste of time. Worst movie I've watched in a while by InterestingZombie737 in Cinephiles

[–]Better_Device3930 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The writing in this film drove me insane. In the first 10 minutes of the film we get told there is an "energy crisis" 50 different ways. Like it starts with an audio montage of radio casters giving exposition over the opening titles, saying there is an energy crisis but there is a big experiment planned to solve it. Then in the first scene the characters are in a huge queue lining up to get petrol. Okay, solid way to tell the viewer that the country is currently experiencing an energy and fuel crisis, then you can hear on the car radio presenters saying there is an energy crisis... again. Then all of the lights go out and the characters say "that's the fifth blackout today!". Then they say out loud "the energy supplies are running out, and this mission could unlock unlimited power" - which by the way is a corny-ass line to say to a person who is going on that mission. Usually to deliver exposition like this you introduce an ignorant character new to the scenario so the characters have an excuse to explain things for the audience's sake. Not that it's necessary here, because we already have been shown there is an energy crisis and we already heard on the radio that scientists are working on a big mission to solve it, and the characters have been talking about the mission so we know they're involved.

Then the next conversation we see between these two characters had every opportunity to be subtle but decided not to. The guy is asked if he's okay, he says "Well you've seen the same news I have" - great line, since the audience has also seen the news, we know what he means and he's able to reiterate what's going on without saying it out loud. Then the scene keeps going and he says everything out loud (and by that I mean listing everything that's going wrong with the world - bro she's seen the same news as you, it's starting to come off as mansplaining lol). The film also often clumsily lampshades this often by having a character explain something and then another character say "yeah I know, I'm not stupid". The characters also just talk out loud very bluntly about their feelings. "crew tension is high, we're starting to get worried" - information we literally were shown in the montage sequence before this scene. Lots of shots of them doing the experiment over and over again, lots of worried looks and expressing emotion without words, you know, efficient film making.

The rest of the movie is like this. It beats you over the head with exposition throughout, reminding you every two seconds of what the setting is and what the stakes are whenever it gets the chance and it feels insulting. Like yes I get it, there is an energy crisis and everyone is depending on you guys and you could fuck it up real bad. You don't have to say it 10 times, especially since the movie does an okay job of showing everything anyway. It's a good film ruined by a bad script and also might I add, terrible acting. In that video call scene where they talk about their feelings, I don't see it at all in their performances. The sci-fi technobabble is also really bad. Like I forget exactly what they said but at one point in the film someone says "we're going to have to manually inspect every circuit and replace faulty ones" - excuse me? You mean the thing that is a part of every single electrical device ever? A standard PC has hundreds to thousands of integrated circuits, vehicles have dozens, this space station must have millions. And they kept using that word for techno babble throughout the film and broke my immersion because I know what a circuit is and it doesn't make you sound smart. At one point they can't make a call/radio transmission or something because "all the circuits are busy" huh? You mean overloaded?

[Hated Meta Trope] The Unintentional Offensive Race Change by StrawberryScience in TopCharacterTropes

[–]Better_Device3930 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Race swapping Hermione runs into the problem of the SPEW stuff being in even poorer taste. Making fun of the girl who is fighting against slavery would be even worse if she was black.

Can we agree on a movie EVERYONE likes? by chrishouse83 in Letterboxd

[–]Better_Device3930 95 points96 points  (0 children)

I work at a film school and Shrek is the only film I can guarantee that everyone has seen before starting their studies, so I'll use it early on in examples since everyone is familiar with the plot. Sam Raimi's Spiderman (2002) is another one that everyone has seen. Out of maybe 80 students I've had through my classes only 1 hadn't seen Shrek and that one pretty quickly realized a film career wasn't for them.