The Imagineering Movie Discussion Thread

Disney-Universal Fanboy

Disney-Universal Fanboy

Active Member
@PerGron and @TheOriginalTiki here is my Illumination movie tier list. Most of their movies are good if you ask me, so here is the list of the ones I have seen:
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And here is the guesses for the ones I have not seen:
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TheOriginalTiki

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
Sasquatch Sunset was...certainly something else haha. For the first ten minutes or so the crowd was collectively into it, but as the movie went on you could physically FEEL the divide in the audience starting to form. I respect the film for the craft, the sheer originality, and some of the physical comedy, but I'll likely never watch it again.

My breaking point (spoilers just in case, third act stuff...)
The stuff with the baby in the third act was a bridge too far for me. The design of the thing was just entirely unsettling and I more or less checked out after it was introduced. A shame because if the third act would have focused more on the Sasquatches interacting with actual civilization instead of just teasing it through the second half of the film I think the overall movie would have stuck to landing a bit more.

I saw Monkey Man and definitely liked it, but it probably won't stick with me all that much. The most exciting element is that it feels like a very confidently directed artistic vision and I'm excited to see what else Patel does in the future. Definitely a very promising debut for a first time director, just not really my type of movie even with the added cultural stuff. I will say it absolutely has some of the coolest trans representation I've ever seen in a mainstream movie and the thought of "Disney=WOKE" folks walking into this expecting John Wick and having an existential meltdown over those elements of the story is just soooo freaking delicious to me haha.
 
TheOriginalTiki

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
Watched "Hundreds of Beavers" last night and I'm pleased to say this is one of those rare times where I go into a movie with a ton of hype surrounding it and the film actually manages to exceed my expectations. What a freaking master stroke! The technical aspects alone are just mind-blowing. We've got another really great example of how genuine CRAFT is just so infinitely more impressive than the 300 million dollar CGI vomit most of the 2023 blockbusters were plagued with. Then you add in the insanely original premise and genuinely hilarious running gags and the movie is just almost perfect. My only note is that I would probably trim a few minutes off the top to make it so the titular beavers show up a bit sooner (that's a bit of an issue with rewatches tbh. The first act is a little on the slow side...)

The "saw" scene in the third act is genuine nightmare fuel and I love it. I know for a fact it would have traumatized the hell out of me as a kid haha
 
Disney-Universal Fanboy

Disney-Universal Fanboy

Active Member
Heres the DreamWorks list, and this is mostly just predictions of almost ALL the movies cause for some reason I hated them back then so the Entire list would only be Captain Underpants and Puss in Boots The Last Wish.
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PerGron

PerGron

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Month list for April coming later than expected. I had to push challengers back from last Friday to this Friday so I’m waiting for that to list April
 
TheOriginalTiki

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
PerGron said:
Month list for April coming later than expected. I had to push challengers back from last Friday to this Friday so I’m waiting for that to list April
Click to expand...
Have you seen Boy Kills World? I definitely wouldn't say I loved it but it was a super original action movie that gave me some pretty major "Scott Pilgrim by way of Hunger Games" vibes. Some incredibly creative set pieces. I'll have more detailed thoughts on that, Abigail, and Challengers soon.
 
PerGron

PerGron

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
TheOriginalTiki said:
Have you seen Boy Kills World? I definitely wouldn't say I loved it but it was a super original action movie that gave me some pretty major "Scott Pilgrim by way of Hunger Games" vibes. Some incredibly creative set pieces. I'll have more detailed thoughts on that, Abigail, and Challengers soon.
Click to expand...
I have! I enjoyed it, but where it falls we’ll have to see lol
 
TheOriginalTiki

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
As promised, here's some thoughts on the movies I caught over the last week.

Abigail - Not really as big of a fan of this one as others seem to be, but I liked it for what it was. I don't subscribe to the notion that the trailer shouldn't have given away the vampire thing, but the trailer does kind of spell out a lot of the movie outside of that which is a pretty big problem. At this point I'm getting SOOOOO sick of Giancarlo Esposito playing "vaguely sinister boss man", and his character being SOOO stock and cliche kind of dragged the rest of the thing down. It was definitely fun seeing Martin Keamy from Lost in a pretty major role, and Dan Stevens kind of solidified himself as a really solid leading man between this and Godzilla X Kong. I liked a lot of the vampire action and some of the twists deep into the film, but vampires aren't really my thing to begin with and the whole movie kind of has a "look how clever we are" air to it that I really didn't vibe with.

Challengers - I'm seeing it again today, and while I hesitate to use the word "masterpiece", it's about as close to a perfect character study as you can get. Really fires on all cylinders. Absolutely electric performances across the board, some really stellar editing using the non-linear timeline, camera work that is straight up innovative, and arguably the single best Trent Reznor/Attitcus Ross score since The Social Network. I can absolutely see this being a really major contender across the board at the Oscars next year. It's not "instant Classic" territory like Dune, but it's still a hell of an experience. I'll see if a second viewing elevates it.

Boy Kills World - Wow, this was a HUGE surprise! While I think the film really should have been 90 minutes and it definitely feels like it runs out of steam towards the end, the whole thing is an incredibly original ride. The voiceover gimmick with H. John Benjamin was such a fantastic addition and really holds the movie up on its shoulders. The world building and production design hit the spot for me in a way I think that stuff hit the spot for other people in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Much like that movie however, I do think this film is a bit too clever for its own good, and the third act kind of devolves into a series of "WHAT A TWIST!!" moments that became kind of exhausting. Still, I'm not going to forget the sheer excitement I felt during the first hour or so. Truly has the same "I've never seen action like this on screen before" energy as something like Scott Pilgrim, just a lot more violent.
 
AceAstro

AceAstro

Well-Known Member
Got to see two great movies the last two days in Challengers and Fall Guy. Both were great movies, for different reasons.

Challengers, like Tiki said, is just such a great character study. You get to see so much from all of these characters that’s really raw and different. On top of the story, the camera work is unreal. The tennis ball shot, to some of the different variations of the court was just insane and I loved it.

Fall Guy on the other hand, is one of the most fun movie experiences I’ve had in a while outside of maybe D&D last year. It definitely drags a little in the middle (maybe 10 minutes too long but it’s fine) but the third act is so perfect, it doesn’t even matter. Act 3 spoiler but it’s too funny to not talk about:
Act 3 is basically Act 3 of Big Fat Liar, down to the Lee Majors cameo. And the fact that it is, makes me love it even more.
 
TheOriginalTiki

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
Reaffirming that on a rewatch Challengers is even more electric. Knowing where the story is ultimately going makes literally every little interaction between the three characters completely packed with subtext and intrigue. I also think I like the non-linear "jumping around in time" editing A LOT more in this than in Oppenheimer, and that approach feels way more critical to the overall style and mission statement of the film as a whole. EASILY my #2 after Dune.
 
PerGron

PerGron

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I meant to do this the other day but time got away from me.

Anywho, April was definitely the strongest month so far in terms of movies, though at the same time it was the month I saw the fewest new releases on account of getting settled into my new job, a big surprise blizzard that knocked out power for a while, etc. Still, I was able to catch 15 new releases in the month of April and May is already looking like I’ll be getting my numbers up more.

I got most of the big boys this month so at least there’s that. Today I’m catching The Fall Guy and an early screener for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes so I figured now would be a good time to get April done with and move on. As always, these opinions are subject to change and may not be the same come my end of the year list.

#16- Spy x Family Code: White
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[Watched in theaters]

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not an anime guy. I love most of Miyazaki’s work and I grew up enjoying Pokèmon on Cartoon Network, but beyond that I just am not a fan of the medium. I never would’ve chosen to see this movie on my own free will, but it was one of the Mystery Movies at Regal last month and I decided to tough it out despite my complete disinterest.

This movie was bad, like really bad. The kid was ridiculously annoying, the story made very little sense, the characters were unlikeable, and there was literally a whole 5-minute plus sequence poop joke. I’ve seen fans of the show love this and think it worked, but I’ll never be watching the show nor the movie ever again.

#15- Rebel Moon- Part Two: The Scargiver
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[Watched on Netflix]

Part one of this two-parter was in my top 10 worst of last year, but I held out hope the second part would at least make the story make sense and watchable. Unfortunately, it was not. This was insanely boring and full of characters whose names I don’t know and whose motivations I know less. Thank God that Disney and Lucasfilm rejected Snyder’s pitch to make this a Star Wars movie, because this is significantly worse than anything even they’ve put out recently. Zack Snyder is a hack whose never made a good movie and I’ll die on that hill.

#14- Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths- Part Two
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[Watched on VOD]

Another part two I decided to watch against my better judgement. Part one came out earlier this year and it wasn’t particularly good, but when part two came out, I decided to give it a shot because I know Crisis on Infinite Earths is a very popular comic and I was hoping it would end up at least entertaining. While it wasn’t as bad as the first two on this list, I just can’t bring myself to enjoy the Tomorrowverse and if it weren’t for Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy being in part three, I’d absolutely be ignoring it whenever it comes out.

#13- The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem
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[Watched on Netflix]

This one hit a little close to home as I grew up in the epoch of the alt-right pipeline through things like Reddit, 4Chan and iFunny and I lost a lot of friends to it. Unfortunately, this documentary is more interested in showing how cool the people behind Anonymous are (trust me, they’ll tell you how cool they are) rather than discuss the actual interesting topic at hand. I wish it was better because the topic is serious and interesting all at once.

#12- The Long Game
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[Watched in theaters]

This was a really generic sports drama. Like if you’ve ever seen The Mighty Ducks or Next Goal Wins or any of those other inspirational underdog sports movies, you’ve seen this one. It’s fine for what it is, but it’s really nothing special and I’ll probably never think about it again. It was another Regal Mystery Movie that I probably wouldn’t have checked out if it weren’t for that experience.

#11- Sting
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[Watched in theaters]

The final Regal Mystery Movie I caught this past month (technically I saw it in March), I left pretty disappointed, but upon a rewatch I had some fun with it. It’s very inspired by movies like Alien and mimics it to an enjoyable degree. The spider puppet is also fun and kind of scary, the characters are forgettable cannon fodder, but it works. Definitely not the best horror movie of the year, but I did have more fun with this one than I expected to.

#10- Civil War
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[Watched in theaters]
{oops, forgot to put this one in}

I love a lot of Alex Garland’s other works, especially Ex Machina so going into this one, I was really excited and looking forward to it. I love a good political commentary and when I realized this wasn’t one, I was sort of disappointed as I wanted to see that take, but for what it was, I enjoyed it enough. I have soured on it a little bit and it’s fallen a bit, plus I forgot to put it in the list, so that has to speak for something lol. It’s absolutely gorgeous to look at though.


#9- The Greatest Hits
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[Watched on Hulu]

I love a good romantic drama sci-fi thing. The setup here was really interesting with some absolutely phenomenal needle drops. The movie is really predictable and you know where it’s going immediately upon starting it, but I enjoy this type of movie and I enjoyed this one.

#8- DisneyNature’s Tiger
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[Watched on Disney+]

I have a love-hate relationship with DisneyNature. On one hand, the documentaries always feature some absolutely amazing footage but on the other, it’s just too anthropomorphic and personified that a lot of the information given feels less like actual information about the animals and more like a concocted story. It just feels a bit too “Disney.”

Still, the footage here was amazing and Priyanka Chopra’s narration was among the best celebrity narration I’ve seen in one of these in a while. Plus, as bad as Disney can be as a corporation, the Conservation Fund does some really great work and funds some great research and projects so I’m happy to support DisneyNature films when they release.

#7- The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
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[Watched in theaters]

I like Guy Ritchie and I like dumb action movies, so I ended up really enjoying this movie, at least while I watched it. The action is great and Henry Cavill is charismatic as hell, plus the rest of the cast is fun too. The movie is full of violence against Nazis which I can always enjoy, and the Nazis get absolutely brutalized here so that’s a plus. Unfortunately, over time I have soured on this movie, just because it was overly long and stylized, but it was still a fun watch initially and I’m sure I’d enjoy it in the moment on a rewatch. It’s made to be fun, not amazing and I respect that.

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