JFF: Last Movies You Bought or Rented

@Breumaster​ 

Tell me what you think of it. in 2021, I swore to never watch a new superhero film until they make something truly different. Having seen other Matt Reeves films, my expectation aren't high.

I think it's not really Batman. And the movie runs way too long. They should have shortened it about 45 minutes by faster takes. On the side they destroy the reputation of Martha and Thomas Wayne. On the other hand it was interesting in some moments and technically ok. But according to the high rating and by having watched the former movies (best the Nolans and second best the successors of Nolans trilogy), I was disappointed. I was in hope it could be as good, but it's not. The three hours felt like five, that's what the movie has in common with 'Eternals', but at the end it was better than that one.

@Breumaster​ 

I just watched it. It is a 4/10. I regret breaking my serment for such a bad film. I gave my 4k copy of the film away to my brother.

The scene where Batman escapes from the tall building of the GCPD headquarters was interesting. I can appreciate the way expectations were subverted toward the end of that scene. The overall feel of The Batman was that of a detective story (maybe a little bit like Se7en), but whereby the murder investigator is an anonymous vigilante equipped in such a way as to be considered a superhero. I wasn't disappointed with it, because I didn't buy into the usual insane levels of hype and post-quarantine excitement. On the other hand, the movie being so long, I probably won't watch it through-and-through very often. I might like to see how a Batman movie directed by the Coen brothers or the Safdie brothers would look like, or maybe by Paul Thomas Anderson or David Lynch, except I'm somewhat tired of the story of Bruce Wayne being revisited so frequently, when there are scores of other comic book protagonists that have never before been adapted.

@jeorj_euler​ 

Kill me, but I think Paul Thomas Anderson isn't the right guy for the stuff. David Lynch has such a bizarre style. I guess the fictional new Batman movie would be like a scary version of Burton's. I think the idea of giving it to the Coen's is promising, somehow. Safdie? What did they before? 

I must admit, that I'm also tired of the new and new and new ... arrangement of Batman. I thought that Pattinson is the wrong choice and I still think so. The action was ok. I agree with mostly all of your points. And still I'm mediocre disappointed by The Batman. That doesn't match with other peoples perception. When I look at the rating, I'm baffled.

@jeorj_euler and @Breumaster 

I'm not sure how the wingsuit scene indeed subverts expectation. I expected him to jump what surprised me is the choice of shots. POV, Close-up and camera attached to the wingsuit, but I don't like it. I prefer Nolan's way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kegTUOn9FA

That being said, it was just way better in The Dark Knight. The helicopter rotating for us to have a 360-degree view of the tower. Batman looks small in comparison to it. It sets up the impressiveness of the feat. Gotta say I love the blue light, It looks pretty too.

The subtle pan of the camera. It gives a closer look of Batman while showing the height of the jump is about the make. The other towers look far and small in comparison. Suspense is increased by Batman just standing there on the edge of the tower. The pace isn't rushed. See time stamp, Batman hasn't yet jumped, the camera established the location in anticipation for that jump. 

Cutaway to the bomb Batman has placed below. To be fair, a flaw is that it isn't unclear at this point that it is a bomb. The quality of the shot comes after the cutaway. You still hear the sound effect of the bomb sticking to the window of the building without seeing it. The sound coming from an unknown place actually indicates that it is very far. 

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I don't think any of the directors cited should make a superhero film. At least, they don't need to, there are a lot of thingss they should do before trying to conform with the codes of the superhero films. You first need to be somewhat of a good action director. Paul Thomas, David Lynch and the Safdie are definitely not good action directors. Maybe the Coen brothers could do the job, I'm not sure.

@cinephile​ 

Good points.

The expectations were subverted in the sense that Batman didn't have a perfect and injury-free landing.

O, also, earlier today, I saw Freaks, starring Lexy Kolker. Such a movie roughly turned out to contain all that I might've ever wanted in an X-Men movie. The visual effects seemed to have a lower production value but sufficient.

I've also been thinking about how the Nolan brothers could possibly be, on account of their penchant for exposition, pretty darn effective if an Assassin's Creed film adaptation was handled by them in some capacity. Seemingly exposition was lacking in the only film (the Callum Lynch story) belonging to the aforementioned franchise thus far, as it might be a little hard to follow by folks who are not intimately familiar with the video games. At the time that I saw it, I had only played Black Flag, so I was rather lost when watching the movie. I dawned on me that, I probably didn't really understand Black Flag, and certainly not the part where the Helix Initiate, the out-of-simulation protagonist, briefly encounters some characters from previous installments of the game. Certain franchises are simply too big, though. In order to save time and finance, an audience may find themselves reading the corresponding Fandom site, sometimes Reddit, in order to gain something of an understanding.

@jeorj_euler​ 

He didn't have a perfect landing, but it was very much injury-free landing. He is grunting a bit when he gets up. But, other than that, he seems pretty fine (no blood, no broken bones).

@cinephile​ 

But streams are rented or bought, too. I understand your issue. I'm one who still has vinyl records at home. Just my player is broken at the moment, but vinyl records were the best. They avoid digital clipping and things like that. I had and partly have sorrows about the streaming-platforms. To have a disc in the hand feels like independecy, somehow. If a provider changes a stream, you can't do anything about. De-centralized copies are still incoruptible. I was very sad, too, when our DVD-Rent-and-buy shop around the corner vanished.

Ah, but thus far, streaming services have not surpassed DVD/Blu-ray discs with regard to special features, scene selections, audio track selections, subtitle track selections and extra content, sometimes physical posters. A lot of consumers don't really value that kind of stuff, but those kinds of features are important to a significant degree. That's the roughly exclusive beauty of modern physical home media, for the time being. Perhaps in the future, torrents or at least multi-homed swarm-based distribution will compensate for all that would be lost in the absence of basic themes surrounding DVD/Blu-ray discs. That way, people can incorporate alternate (possibly custom) audio/subtitle tracks at a whim, or maybe much of it would be automated in regards to language translation.

@jeorj_euler​ 

Completely agree. Same for vinyl records.

Another point is that in times of high traffic, the quality vanishes somehow by limiting the bandwith of movie or TV-series stream data. I was totally upset, when in one of the final episodes of Games of Thrones, when passages of dark screens offered digital artefacts which were bigger than a few centimeters. It nearly destroyed the creepy atmosphere. On Bluray that wouldn't have happened.

Amazon streaming service has a bit of an edge with the X-ray feature, thanks to its relationship with IMDb, no doubt. Even so, it would be nice to have an interface likeable to that of an optical disc menu (or a Web page) instead of an interactive TV Guide menu. In the future, we probably will, but seemingly it would be a very distant future.

I should also point out that certain movies, e.g. Dogma (along with some other flicks featuring Jay & Silent Bob), will not be available for streaming for a very long time, due to licenseability being stuck in limbo.

I present "The Lost Art of DVD Menus" by Greg Kon:

@jeorj_euler​ 

"Like all good art form, DVD menus revealed who I am to myself, they helped me see what I wanted out of life."

I never thought of DVD menus that way. It is a stretch to say it is art, it is a branch of advertising. It is very optimistic to say it is "life changing". But, in this "dark times" for physical media, all love to the physical media format is welcomed. 

Some DVD menus are more or less artistic than others. Usually they merely consist of cosmetics synthesized from the featured material, as to augment the utilitarian aspects of the design, but sometimes they are like an interactive poster or a video game even.

@cinephile​ 

There are no more DVD-Blu-ray stores in my city. I must travel 45 min to find a store.

I have now, resigned. I will buy my DVDs/blu-rays online. I have already bought online the Bergman/Rosselini box set, The Man with a Movie Camera, Damnation, Ashes and Diamond, and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. So that is 7 films on 28. But, how long with this makeshift solution last, they will soon stop producing DVD/Blu-ray player so studios will discontinue their DVD/Blu-ray collections, that day even label such as Criterion and Arrow will fall. Without newer releases, the market for classic films has no chance of surviving.

@cinephile​ 

My copy of Les deux anglaises et le continent is Region 2 locked 🤬

I have a compulsive DVD-buying habit. I know will spend 500$ on buying a region free 4k blu-ray player that is why I am mad.

Gnu/Linux is often the answer to these kinds of problems.

Well, you didn't really miss anything, Breumaster​. I mean, it's not a terrible movie, but there is certainly far more interesting material to watch, especially when dealing with a streaming service that has a gigantic library.

@cinephile​ 

no more places in my library. I don't know what I will do, I don't have space to expand. I'm either gonna stack them or hang them from the ceiling with twine.

Wow. Something like fewer than a hundred DVDs, fewer than a hundred LDs and fewer than a hundred VHS tapes are in my home. Probably more books and magazines are present than the movie box sets. I don't even watch or read these things, most of my days. They are almost only treated as reference materials.