thomasnash

Icewind Dale, probably. I was a huge fan of Baldur's Gate, but I was also pretty young, only about 11 or 12 when I first played it.

IWD is a much tougher game than BG. BG is quite a forgiving game, really. Even some of its toughest fights are a bit of a breeze on easy, so I was able to force my way through and see the story. Crucially, I never really learned the rules. It doesn't matter if your a dumb kid basing your party based on what seems cool, rather than what is optimal.

IWD has a much less engaging story, and demands a lot more tactical thought in its combat, and a lot more knowledge of the actual rule set. It was just a bit beyond me at that point. I still always loved the look of those games though, so I would occasionally revisit it. It was probably when I was 17 that it really clicked how you actually need to play those games.

For some reason me and my wife rented the Assassin's Creed movie today.

Even with our expectations set somewhere in the mariana trench, it was disappointing.Somehow the first half an hour manages to boringly rehash stuff you already know about from the games, and also completely fail to adequately set up the story. It's like they started out thinking they'd need to ease in the non-gamers, and then decided that they didn't care about that section of the audience. The characters are absolutely tissue thin. Some time is spent establishing the motives of Jeremy Irons' villain, and some of that is then unceremoniously moved onto Marion Cotillard's character as well, but almost no effort is given to giving the audience any sense of Fassbender's character or motivations, beyond a strand about his resentment of his father that goes basically nowhere. That's before you get on to the numerous supporting characters who drift in and out of the movie with almost no impact. It felt like once every 5 minutes we would be sarcastically yelling "oh no, not that guy" as another nameless character is killed, in a way the film seemingly wants us to care about.

Some of the action is OK, but the past and present are frequently laid over each other in a very confusing way. It's an ambitious way of trying to represent the confusion of the main character, but given the total collapse of the narrative about 5 minutes in, it just ends up spoiling any chance that the film might be enjoyed as a straight action adventure movie.

The ending is perhaps the worst element of it all. The climactic action sequence barely registers; look away for a second and you'll miss it, just in time to see Marion Cotillard tell you to come back for the sequel. It's a wet fart of an ending that feels like they just decided to pack it in at the point where cast lost patience with turning their considerable talents on this absolute dross.

I'd love to see some behind the scenes inside baseball on the making of the film, tbh. I thought Justin Kurzel's Macbeth had a lot of vision, even if it was a histrionic, overly macho presentation of the play. A very small amount of that vision is present in the - sadly too few - historical scenes, but in a very muted way, but it doesn't say great things about his future prospects as a director, really.

Have you seen Dazed & Confused, and if you have how do you think they compare?

I've seen both, and enjoyed them both, but it's just a question I'm interested in. In a lot of ways Everybody Wants Some!! is a more restrained and mature film - although it is more consciously funny. At the same time, I think something about Dazed & Confused relatively immature (or maybe I should say youthful) outlook captures something more universal.

I think dubbing is quite an interesting area of film and film history. I'm not a fan of watching dubbed films either but I think we might be victims of our era on that one. Films from the 60s and 70s, particularly European ones, seem to frequently have been dubbed in all versions. I think this is partly due to the limitations of technology. I believe I'm right in saying that the reason Herzog had to redub all the dialogue in Aguirre: The Wrath of God is because they couldn't get a good recording on site due to the noise of the river. Supposedly, neither the German or English versions feature the voice of the star, Klaus Kinski, because he demanded too much money to go back into the studio.

There were also occasions where films were dubbed over because the international nature of the production made it necessary. In Once Upon a Time in the West, the female lead (Claudia Cardinale) had all her lines dubbed over by someone else for the English release, along with a number of other actors. I think I'm right in saying that in a number of spaghetti westerns, Italian actors would actually say their lines in Italian and have the English dubbed over.

Even now, lines will often be switched in the edit, usually by inserting the voice from a different take, or perhaps a later ADR session, and putting it on top of a reverse shot of the actor. It's hard to disagree that you lose something of the performance in those older films, though.

I watched two films today: John Wick which I thought was OK. Maybe not as revelatory as the reaction to it suggested. I quite enjoyed the silliness of the weird, super sophisticated and regulated criminal world that it created, but thought the action sequences got quite samey. It was fun, and on Amazon Prime so I can't complain.

Also watched Bad Moms, which I remember thinking looked OK when it came out, if only for Kathryn Hahn. I was very wrong because it's actually complete trash. Part of it is just that I find Mila Kunis a very irritating presence at the best of times, but it's not just that. It totally dodges any of the hard questions about its subject matter, giving them the most milquetoast treatment possible, whilst still having huge stretches of heavy handed moralising. The "villains" of the piece are so cartoonishly horrible that the struggles of the protagonist(s) never feel real or relatable. Their problems never seem to actually be stopping them doing what they want to do, and when they do decide to become bad moms, they do it in the safest, most PG-13 way possible. At the end of the film it tries to "rescue" the main villain by giving her a bit of human emotion, but this comes literally out of nowhere and seems like a cynical attempt to copy the format/structure of Bridesmaids almost exactly. That is something of a running issue with the film, but it never comes even close to getting past the very surface of what makes Bridesmaids great. It feels like a germ of an idea desperately scrabbling around for a plot, papering over the cracks with a lame attempt at right-on politics. I honestly enjoyed Dirty Grandpa more than this film.

It's some variation of a maltese cross, I think. Presumably it is supposed to be reminiscent of the Iron Cross which is often used by White Nationalists, or the crosses used on KKK insignia?

(Edit: I should readto the end of threads before replying)

I'm cautiously interested, but feel like they are leaning more into the religious aspect. When I first heard the rumours about Montana, I was hoping it would be more straight up about militias and sovereign citizens and so on. I realise that all of those movements have a certain amount of evangelical baggage, but by leaning into that it seems like it would be really easy to create a bunch of grotesques rather than interesting, challenging characters.

But what about regional accents in the same country?

That's interesting really. If it was a widespread issue, and all reviews were similar, each reviewer would have essentially done the same thing as Dan Stapleton has done here, so I don't see why anyone would think it isn't a valid review or anything. He's reviewed the experience he had.

Just saw Alien: Covenant.

It's trash. Marginally more enjoyable than Prometheus but only because it mercifully jettisons all it's thematic content about a fifth of the way in. But it's also very disjointed. It barely attempts to generate any tension in any of its action sequences (with one notable exception). The narrative goes to extraordinary lengths to justify a link to the first film, but then jettisons most of the leftover questions from that film in a flashback sequence that feels massively out of place. The film is a subtext free zone, with clanking dialogue signposting all of the thematic content. There are numerous attempts to call back to the original two films that are unfortunate in that even in trying to remind you of what you loved about those films, it does so very poorly. The way the film fits into the timeline of the films around it makes the entire film feel basically pointless. It's never scary.

So yeah. Not very good at all, to be honest. It was nice to see Amy Seimetz in it, however briefly.

This is dumb, but knowing that Walton Goggins is in this makes me sort of interested, even after cooling very quickly on the demo.

I basically agree with everyone here. I found the story really intriguing, but the combat was maybe a bit too close to System Shock 2. The goo gun improved things a bit, I suppose.