The last movie you've seen thread 2016

[Mr. Morden]

"Interstellar"

Loved it.  Yeah, it's overly melodramatic, and the characters cried too much, but I won't knock it too much for that.

[Mr. Morden]

My biggest problem with Interstellar was (highlight to read major spoilers): The revelation that most of the movie was due to manipulation by future humans to allow the humans of the time to ensure their survival. That stable time loop crap never makes sense and it was kind of silly to see it in a "harder" sci-fi movie.

Well...

Time travel in which there is one timeline, it is immutable, and events "cause themselves" (the "ontological paradox") has a long history in SF, even respectable SF, at least going back to "By His Bootstraps" by Heinlein in 1941:

link

It's one possible way that time travel could work.  Does time travel actually work that way?  I don't know, because time travel isn't real.

[Mr. Morden]

I saw the following three SF/F movies on my flights earlier this week:

Predestination
What We Do in the Shadows
Snowpiercer

What We Do in the Shadows was probably my favorite of the three.  Has that come out in the US yet?  I guess it was produced in New Zealand, in collaboration with the folks behind Funny or Die.

[Mr. Morden]

A Most Wanted Man

If you're familiar with the director's other work, then you'll know why this isn't for everyone. It's actually a very action-less movie for the most part and isn't even really a Law & Order or CSI style procedural either, it's mostly about people. It's slow but can be interesting and rewarding, Hoffman was fantastic, it was another one of his roles that he just totally blended into and was totally believable as someone in Germany intelligence. One rather silly thing about it is that all the allegedly German characters still spoke English to each other and in fact there wasn't a single line of German in the film. Expected with an English-speaking writer and mostly American cast, but still...

I just saw the movie myself.  I don't really see the English as being silly, because that's a nearly universal convention of the movies--that if Country X produces a movie set entirely in another place or time that speaks a different language, they just "translate" the whole movie for the home audience rather than subtitle the entire thing.  There are very few exceptions to this.  (The Passion of the Christ would be one of the rare counterexamples, I guess?)  I mean, an American produced movie set in Ancient Rome or an American-produced movie about Joan of Arc is going to have the actors speaking English.  How is this any more silly than that?

[Mr. Morden]

I saw Ex Machina last weekend.  Definitely enjoyed it.  Though I think if I'd been writing it, I would have written the final conversation between two of the main characters somewhat differently.

[Mr. Morden]

Watched "Coherence" last night.  Pretty good movie.  I'm flying back to Australia tonight, so I guess I'll see plenty of movies on the plane.

[Mr. Morden]

The kid sitting next to me on my flight from LAX to Sydney was probably about 9 or 10 years old (and she was Asian, so Tender Branson would probably mistake her for Kim Jong-un’s sister).

Anyway, I bring this up because the first movie I watched on my personalized video thing was “Mad Max: Fury Road”.  Wow, there are quite a few images in that movie that are liable to induce nightmares.  I tried to block this kid’s line of sight to my screen at the worst parts by cupping my hand over the side of the screen when necessary.  I’m assuming that was good enough, though if not, I blame her mom for not switching seats with her.

[Mr. Morden]

Just watched "Upstream Color".  WTF was that?