Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Hiding some gems in here are we Watchlisted!

Wen't treasure hunting/ diggin' in the crates here, my loot for today;
The Boston Strangler, The Railway Man, The Hired Hand
I'll be bach

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There's always future HoFs starting up. The next one will be hosting by yours truly and will be the big main HoF...Hall of Fame 20...You're welcomed to join when it starts (in a few weeks I'm guessing).

Cool, I'm glad to hear someone will be watching The Hired Hand And if MoFo's next big countdown is Westerns, then it would be a timely watch

Will the Westerns countdown take place after the big main hof?

I have no idea actually, that will be up to the MoFos and of course to whoever will host it. But last time around when we talked about what the next countdown should be, Westerns was a very popular idea.

Here's a link to that thread link

Since I'm still relatively new here, how exactly do the HoF's work?

This is a link to the last one, the 19th Hof. Just read the opening post for the rules and also click on the box that says SHOW for more rules.

Ah, I get what it is. It looks fun, but with college starting back up in a few days, I don't know if I'll have enough time to commit myself to it. I'm sorry. If one happens at the start of next summer though, I could probably participate in it.

That's cool, I was just mentioning it. They do take a lot of time to do, that's for sure.

Coco (2017)
Directors: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina (co-director)
Voice Actors: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family
Studio: Pixar


Coco does world building par excellence! I've never seen another movie that was packed with so much rich detail in the background scenes that it felt like you were right there.

I've been to different parts of Mexico and a lot of what I seen in the film looked very familiar and that is one huge plus for Coco. I loved the whole look at the traditional Mexican families way of life. I was amazed not only with the detail that went into the animation but also with the details of the story. Loved the way the trucks parked halfway on the sidewalks, yup they do that alright!

I loved the fore mentioned street scenes, but even more I loved the village of the dead, that was world building done up right! Coco has such a richly developed story and superb animation that I think this will finish right towards the top of my list.


World Building: 5/5

Animation: 5/5

Character Development: 3/5 Nothing outstanding in the richness of the characters, but fore the scope of the intended target audience they work fine.

Story Premise: 5/5 Had this just been about a boy who dreamed of being a musician in a family that hated music, then the story would have been OK average. But the whole world of the dead with the reverences for past family members who needed to be remembered to exist in the nether world was genius.

Believability: 5/5 I believed it.

Originality: 5/5 Yes I know Coco seems a lot like Spirited Away (another film I loved) but that's OK as no idea in art is completely original. All unique ideas are built on the back of other ideas.

Other Thoughts: I disliked the way the dog was animated. With it's eyes bulging out and it's tongue flying around like a flag in the wind...it looked grotesque. It reminded me of Ren and Stimpy (which I did love for it's grotesqueness) but here I'd have liked the dog to be more enduring. Better yet the sidekick dog idea is overused, so I'd preferred it dog free.

Favorite Moments: Frieda! OMG that scene was so bizarrely surrealistic. I loved the art work so created, damn that was crazy stuff! I could've watched an entire film about Freida in skeltonville and been pleased as punch!

Rating

World Building: 3/5 Builds from the world created in Monsters, this is a prequel. As a prequel it seemed unique in it's own identity.

Animation: 4/5 Like most all Pixars no complaints about the animation.

Character Development: 4/5 Decent, as expected.

Story Premise: 3/5 Interesting plot for a Pixar film.

Believability: 3/5 Pretty far fetched, but then again that's not a problem.

Originality: Prequel so not too original.

Other Thoughts: There was nothing I didn't like in the film, no complaints about annoying characters or anything like that.

Favorite Moments: Lots of good moments, loved the whole college campus life and the competition for top scare team.

Rating

Visited the thread, think it's going to be a long while before the Westerns countdown kicks off.

Director: James Cameron
Writer: James Cameron
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi


Aliens, a satisfying watch with a little something for everyone. I'd only seen this once many years ago. I mostly didn't remember it, mostly.

I was engaged from the get-go and entertained by the antics of the overly confident space marines. Bill Paxton was the best! He really had a lot of good lines and made the film memorable. Especially after the alien guts hit the fan and he literally soiled himself with reconstituted marine food rations.

I liked Paul Reiser's weaselly 'yes man' from the evil space corporation. He was good at being only a touch weaselly and yet oh so convincing with his fake sincerity. He added a lot to the film. So did Carrie Henn who played the little girl 'Newt'.

Director James Cameron uses Newt and Ripley to give the story some touching moments. This is the same type of sentimentality coupled with a horrifying situation that Cameron used in Titanic, so as to give the audience an insight into the human cost of such a large tragedy...or in Aliens case a window into the human cost to the horror of the planet.

What I mostly liked about Aliens was that the film never was too graphic or overly torturous of it's characters. For a sci fi horror film it almost had a light touch especially with the humorous marines and that made for a fun time watching Xenophobe aliens doing some naughty things!

+

LOL!

Aliens is one of my all time favorite action movies - one of my favorite sci-fi's, and one of my favorite sequels - different enough from the first in tone to make it it's own film yet still a great continuation and expansion on the first!

Glad someone got my reference I agree with you on Aliens it is all those things you mentioned. It's so weird that was my only second time watching it, and it had been so long that it was like watching a new movie. I have seen Aliens 3 (don't remember what the exact title is) but it was like 20 years ago. I really need to watch that one sometime.

Aliens is really good. I feel like Cameron did a fine job with this one as, instead of trying to repeat what Scott did with his film, he changed the tone enough without losing the charm which the original had, kind of making the concept his own (more action-y than horror), not a variation of Scott's (mainly horror). It was also a more than fine example of one as well with its far share of standout scares, sequences, and set pieces. I still prefer Scott's film by a pretty wide margin, but this one also stands among the best horror and sci-fi films of all time.

Director: Byron Haskin
Writers: Ib Melchior, John Higgins (screenplay)
Cast: Paul Mantee, Victor Lundin, Adam West
Director: Adventure, Sci-Fi


I'll be the first to admit that Robinson Crusoe on Mars does get slow at times, and yes, those pesky animated alien ships from War of the Worlds keep doing the same scene over and over and over...But I still really like this film for the human element of it.


I'll tell you specifically why this film speaks to me, it's because of the gentle & caring relationship that Kit (Paul Mantee) has with Mona the woolly monkey. At a time when animals were often thought of as disposable and treated in inhumane ways, this movie has the Commander, sharing his rapidly dwindling oxygen and food with Mona.
Mona counts as a living breathing being in this movie and that's what I remembered most about this movie from my childhood. And of course, as this is inspired by Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe we see one man risk his life to help a free slave. Maybe that's sentimental, but I'll take altruistic movies any day over CG drenched, 'rock em sock em robots'.

Yes the film does get many things wrong about Mars. But guess what? This was made in 1963 right after America launched the first manned space orbit, Mercury...and 1 year before the Mariner 4 Mars probe sent back the first video images of the planet, dashing long held beliefs that Mars might be habitable. At the time the film was made all that was really known of Mars was it's relative size and mass, it's orbit and rotation, it's distance from the sun...and through telescopes they appeared to be red areas that some thought were volcanic in nature and white areas at the poles that suggested ice caps. So at the time this movie was made it was trying to be fairly scientific based on the limited information that was available, while still telling a speculative fictional story of course.

I know it's hard for people to judge films by the past but that's just how this film should be judged. In the 1950s and early 60s most sci fi was aimed at kids or drive-in theater goers, with atomic mutated monsters eating people etc. The big exception was Forbidden Planet. Now I don't put Robinson Crusoe on Mars on the same level as Forbidden Planet. But I think it was a unique sci fi for it's day, that tried to show science being used in the near future and got a lot right.




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When I first saw The Incredibles, I thought it was a fun movie, but I also thought that it was just an animated copy of The Fantastic Four. But it seems to get better each time I watch it. My favorite character is definitely Edna "No capes!" Mode. She's adorable, and so much fun.

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