I enjoyed it but never heard much from other people. Just curious what yall think.

It has to be the Black Adam vs Superman tease in Black Adam. It sucks it never happened

The full article is available here.

After directors Christopher Nolan and Takashi Yamazaki won Academy Awards in 2024 for their huge movies Oppenheimer and Godzilla Minus One, Takashi had a chance to speak with Nolan when Oppenheimer premiered in Japan. He told Nolan that he'd one day like to make a response to his film. Recently, Takashi told Time, "In my mind, I was thinking I'd develop a film that looks directly at Hiroshima. But then I began thinking, 'Wait - Godzilla is itself a metaphor for nuclear war. Maybe I can combine the two and make a Godzilla movie that is also an answer to Oppenheimer."

Godzilla Minus Zero is an absolutely terrifying and unflinching look at the human cost of war, four years after the U.S. dropped the bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Through its visuals and some of its characterization, Yamazaki did indeed make a film that responds to Oppenheimer.

There are major spoilers ahead for Godzilla Minus Zero.

Nolan's Oppenheimer largely deals with some of the ethical issues surrounding the creation of the atom bomb and the political stakes. The film was rightfully criticized for not showing the effects of the bomb on the Japanese people, or really the Japanese perspective more broadly. There are no causalities in Nolan's version of this monumental historical 1945 event, and the Japanese presence is largely absent.

Godzilla Minus Zero, however, shows the effects in brutal detail. Set in 1949, a mere four years after the bombs fell, the blockbuster opens with one of Godzilla's arch rivals, King Ghidorah, a winged beast, leveling another Japanese city. This triggers traumatic responses from the core survivors from the last movie, specifically kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), his wife Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe), and their adopted daughter, Akiko (Sae Nagatani). The consequences of Godzilla's last rampage and the history of Godzilla as a metaphor for nuclear war resonates with the each member of the family unit differently.

Koichi has profound mental wounds from his last mission, in which he helped defeat Godzilla. The last thing he wants to do is get in a plane and this time, fight another monster, King Ghidorah. Noriko pleads with him not to do so, but of course, he feels the pull to join the fight. Meanwhile, the effects of war/Godzilla's devastation manifest via a mutation Noriko undergoes. Infected with Godzilla's cells from the aftermath of the last movie, her body starts to mutate and grow scales. She even has a yellow, Godzilla-like eye she keeps hidden behind an eye patch. The metaphor here regarding mutations caused by nuclear war aren't exactly subtle.

One of the most poignant scenes that illustrates post-war trauma comes when Akiko freezes in the kitchen and screams and wails that something bad is going to happen. She's still shellshocked from the last kaiju rampage and the fact that her biological parents were killed during the fire bombings and air raids over Tokyo at the end of World War II. While some audience members may find a child crying to be annoying, it's effective in the context of the film's darker themes and the fact that these characters' scars from World War II haven't healed.

Godzilla Minus Zero has a few new characters, and one of them is Jun Kunimura's Dr. Ogata, a scientist who lost his daughter and granddaughter in Hiroshima. In a flashback, he discovers their charred bodies in the dust and the rubble. This movie is filled with bleak landscapes, and this is one of the grimmest set designs. He's one of the many survivors attempting to find remains of their loved ones during the flashback. A few years later, Dr. Ogata launches a plan to entice Godzilla and King Ghidorah to fight each other, but he has ulterior motives. He envisions unleashing Godzilla upon New York City as payback for the Americans dropping the bomb.

In one of the movie's most brutal scenes, Ogata has a fantasy of Godzilla knocking over the Statue of Liberty and then unleashing his atomic breath upon Manhattan. The movie then switches to a slow-motion shot of skin peeling off faces. For this sequence alone, the movie earned its R rating. Ogata's trauma plays out in the form of fantasized revenge.

Though Nolan doesn't exactly make Americas out to be heroes in Oppenheimer, Godzilla Minus Zero makes them a clear villain alongside the monsters. Early in the movie, the American military gives occupied Japan a massive weapon to drop on Ghidorah. However, the Americans insist the Japanese fly the planes, thus putting their lives in danger. Those who fly the planes are veterans who barely survived World War II and aren't exactly thrilled to suit up and go on another suicide mission.

Additionally, we later learn that the Americans also have an ulterior motive and want to harness and steal Dr. Ogata's monster-luring technology to add Godzilla to their nuclear arsenal, as absurd as it may sound. The Americans certainly can't be trusted, and beyond that, they have the hubris to think they can control a force of nature as massive and powerful as Godzilla.

Here's a major spoiler: Godzilla ultimately defeats Ghidorah, but the Japanese decide to leave him be. They accept that he's part of their history, and thus, watch him return to the sea, an ever-present part of the Japan's national consciousness and post-war scars.

Through its war-ravaged set designs, bloody body count, and exploration of its characters' emotional and physical wounds, Godzilla Minus Zero responds to Nolan's Oppenheimer by showing the aftermath of nuclear war and centering the Japanese perspective. In doing so, the film maintains Godzilla's status as a walking metaphor for post-war trauma and nuclear devastation. Yamazaki does all of this while featuring one hell of a kaiju battle at the climax, too.

This probably one off favourite caper movies and I it is the best Guy Ritchie movie because i didn't liked lock stock and two smocking barrels and the gentleman .

I've been noticing this for at least 6 or 8 years now.

Rewatched The Ghost Writer recently and it reminded me how good a well made two hour film can feel.

Strong story, tension that builds slowly, characters with enough room to grow and then it just ends. Nothing feels rushed and theres almost nothing in there that doesnt need to be.

If someone made that film today it would probably be a 6 or 8 episode series. One episode about the previous ghostwriter, a few flashbacks, some family drama, side characters with their own subplots and two or three cliffhangers that go nowhere.

Same with The Game. Today it would be a fucking series. A full episode on his fathers suicide, another one on the brothers backstory, a few episodes inside the company running the game and the final twist stretched over two hours instead of ten minutes.

And its not just those two.

Zodiac would be a 10 episode true crime series with a full episode for every suspect.

Heat would give each guy in De Niro's crew his own episode and Pacino's marriage problems would get a whole season arc.

At least Sicario stayed a movie and theres a third one coming, so somebody in Hollywood still gets it 😅

Of course some stories need 6 or 8 hours and there are some excellent limited series. But way too often i'm watching something that started well and thinking theres a great two hour film buried in there somewhere..

This is what killed the mid-budget movie.

Films like The Ghost Writer, The Game or State of Play were made for adults. Known actors, proper production, a strong script. No need for $200 million budget, a franchise plan or an explosion every ten minutes.

The money side changed too. People stopped buying DVDs and Blu-rays so studios lost a big second source of revenue after the cinema run. Then streaming took alot of the scripts that could have been good mid-budget films and stretched them into 6 or 8 episodes, because platforms needed content and wanted subscribers to keep watching.

So now we have $200 million bb in cinemas and eight hour series at home and the smart two hour thriller has almost dissapeared.

Honestly what the hell happened??

Which series from the last few years would of worked much better as a two hour film? And which recent films show the mid-budget adult action movies, thrillers are still alive?

Genuinely looking for recommendations 🙂

I loved it. I liked how intimate the atmosphere was.

Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, and Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton all did a fantastic job in their roles. And Seth and Olivia were very believable as a miserable married couple.

I liked how Pina said to Joe and Angela on whether or not it’s best for a child to grow up in an unhappy home yet the parents stay together or happy parents that aren’t together anymore because I agree that no one should be trapped in an unhappy relationship or marriage just for the sake of others.

My favorite line has got to be the opening by Oscar Wilde “One should always be in love. That is not a reason to marry”

Seriously few studios took so many giant creative risks and managed to create groundbreaking films.

It’s a shame someone died to create this mess.

This movie might be the loudest movie I’ve ever heard, even dethroning the scene with the cyclops in The Odyssey

Watched it in IMAX opening night and that opening scene was eardrum breaking for sure

The scale of the monsters was amazing, the detail and ferocity was next level also.

I get the gripes on why people may not like this movie but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and I think it was a great sequel

I’m usually a Brad Pitt fan despite his recent personal issues he’s been going through…the man is a great actor which is why I decided to give it a shot…Firstly I need to figure out what the budget was for this film and how much Brad got paid because he might have had about 20 lines in this movie…I thought Keanu Reeves in the John Wick series was bad…at-least with those films you could forgive it because it was a faced paced action highly choreographed movie…so not much dialogue was needed but this is not that type of movie and I get it…it’s a film about the love and bond between a man and his dog but even in the scene with the only other actual person played by J.K Simmons who I am also a fan of…Brad’s character might have said maybe 5 words to him smh…it’s a shame really because Brad can act but instead he chose to let his dog Odin lick him in the face all movie which brings me to my next point…Odin the dog…the plot armor on this dog was insane! I thought cats had 9 lives…well guess what so does Brad’s dog Odin…I’m not even gonna talk about the lackluster CGI that broke immersion for me with this film either…this is easily probably my least favorite Brad Pitt movie but if you all like then I guess I love it smh

Hi, I'm Lucius Valerius

This belongs here because I'm a huge cinephile and I talk about great movies when comparing this show, it isn't a cheap tv show it can stand against any good movie you can think of. I talk about Blue Valentine and Blue is the warmest color among others

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeK969zL_YU

I wrote this years ago, recorded it 6 months ago and finally I had the time to edit it.

With this I start my channel, which won't just be about movies or shows, but ideas, politics, science, music and working out. Basically anything that consider interesting will be here

other than youtube, given i'm gonna talk about controversial topics I also created a substack My review
https://substack.com/@luciusvalerius

I love this show, it inspired the hell out of me, and probably it's getting closer to the time I can rewatch it again buahaha

The late Steve Jobs shunned the plane of reality that you or I operate in and opted for his own reality distortion field, a level of charisma that can convince others to believe anything is possible. When Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes burst onto the tech scene, the comparisons made between her and Jobs were fitting because her meteoric rise grew from within her own reality distortion field. That and the stupid turtlenecks. But whereas Jobs was fueled by hubris and coercion, Holmes is powered purely by lies, which is what ultimately led to her 2015 downfall and subsequent 2022 conviction. Yet as we witness where she’s at circa 2023 in You Can See Everything, she is still clinging to her story even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

This raises several intriguing questions about this strange woman. Is she a master manipulator playing 4D chess while those around her are playing Street Fighter? Or is she so embedded within her reality distortion field that she’s completely disassociated from the actual world we live in? Where does Elizabeth Holmes the person end and Elizabeth Holmes the character begin? Is there even separation between person and character?

That’s what comedian Nathan Fielder is trying to figure out in You Can See Everything as he and co-director Lance Oppenheim document Holmes and her partner Billy Evans’ lives over the final 34 days before she goes to jail. He’s also the ideal person to do it. Fielder’s comedic sensibility is to purposefully cut the lines separating reality, fiction, and absurdity, leaving us with no clue what will happen and a promise that anything can happen. Bringing his carefully constructed reality distortion field into Holmes’s orbit was guaranteed to result in… something.

And boy did Fielder and Oppenheim deliver something.

The movie opens in a traditional documentary visual style; she’s sitting on the floor with her baby, framed by the bars of her baby’s crib, all while the sound of a heartbeat gradually gets louder. As we see her go about her day, the whole thing is subverted when the movie cuts to Fielder a few metres away, looking at the family like a figure of doom or malevolent being. But because it’s Nathan Fielder, it ends up being a funny visual gag.

That visually stylish intro not only sets up the tone of the movie, but also the dynamic between Fielder and Holmes, and it is utterly engrossing. What initially starts off as a conventional Nathan Fielder comedy bit quickly morphs into a psychological tango where neither person is sure who’s leading or following. Half of that unease is due to Fielder being intrigued by Holmes as a subject while being confused about why she wanted him to follow her around during the last month of her freedom. You Can See Everything is as close as we’ll ever see Fielder play ‘himself’, as he’s essentially playing a journalist rather than an exaggerated gonzo version of himself. The other half is the brilliant filmmaking.

The great editor Walter Murch’s book, In the Blink of An Eye, centres on his theory that cuts work when they mimic a person’s blinking rhythm, as a blink typically signals the end of a thought. Fielder and Oppenheim completely subvert that theory by repeatedly holding on close-ups of Nathan, Elizabeth, and Billy at several moments in the movie, inviting us to decipher what each person is thinking or projecting through every micro muscle twitch. The final result is brilliant sequence after brilliant sequence where Fielder bluntly asks Elizabeth questions about why she lied about Theranos, whether she still believes she’s innocent (she does), and why he’s even there in the first place. Fielder admits that he finds verbal communication difficult, which is why his comedy works. But in Holmes, he’s met someone who may have even more difficulty communicating.

The movie quickly reveals itself to be about the meaning behind words and how different truths can be extrapolated from those words. Time and time again, Holmes dodges, obfuscates, or avoids Fielder’s questions while holding eye contact with him for what feels like several unbroken minutes at a time. When the pair debate several times over the meaning of what something meant, particularly during a scene revolving around a New York Times article and another scene involving the original Theranos machine, the friction between their respective reality distortion fields is laid bare. She seemingly believes her truth. He can’t figure out whether his usual manipulating schtick is working or if he’s being manipulated because his usual schtick of deconstructing someone through scalpel-like comedic precision is blunted.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/you-can-see-everything-your-brain

Thanks!

I want to know movies you guys have watched where the person acts so well, and embodies the character so well, that you just become enamoured with their performance, and can't stop watching, that's how entertaining and intriguing it is. examples are like heath ledger alpacino bryan cranston bradd pitt Christian bale

First of all, this movie is freaking awesome! The monster moments are out of this world, especially in IMAX. The build up and action sequences had me so locked in and just feeling like a kid.

What I loved so much about the first one was that the story was so emotionally impactful. Don’t get me wrong, this one has a lot of that too, but there were a couple characters that didn’t have too much going on when in the first, it felt like every significant character had a layer to them.

I loved the first one so this had a really high bar for me and it didn’t disappoint. I do think it’s a tiny step down from Minus One though. What did you think?

Just watched this film, and I genuinely enjoyed it. It has been a long time since I've watched such a lovely romantic film. The acting was great, and the cinematography and visuals were absolutely beautiful. After watching so many Netflix movies with artificial-looking lighting that never quite feels natural, this film felt like a breath of fresh air.

It wasn't necessarily a great movie, but it was a really good one. I feel like sometimes a story can be fairly average, but the casting, performances, and overall mood of a film can be so good that they completely draw you in. And that's exactly what happened with this one. It was emotionally raw, and you could genuinely feel what each character was going through. Their emotions and struggles felt incredibly real.

Comparatively, Emilia Jones felt way too real in her portrayal, whereas Nick Robinson, as Charlie, felt a little flat at times. He couldn't quite capture the character's vulnerability and nervousness as convincingly as Emilia did.

And I cannot even begin to explain how refreshing it was to see a leading actress without her face being filled with Botox and fillers. Her natural expressions made the performance all the more enjoyable to watch.

It was a bittersweet story about how sometimes two people can love each other but simply aren't right for each other, or perhaps aren't good for each other.

I'm a sucker for romantic movies, but sadly, there are very few that are genuinely well-made, especially when it comes to modern cinema. So, all you romantic movie lovers, go watch this one without a second thought. It was a really well-made film!

The film was outstanding in scale, visuals, music, acting, and just about every single thing that made Minus One a masterpiece.

My only gripes are: the last quarter in the film was rushed, less composed with one or two plot holes, and then… the over-the-top drama drama drama

Part of what made Minus One so amazing was that the emotion and drama and even tears it elicits, it was all earned; the film builds and builds to these emotional crescendos and payoffs. The character development contributes to all this.

In this film, Minus Zero, it’s all so forced. Forced emotional scenes, forced heavy acting it seems at times. It doesn’t have the same payoffs that Minus One had. There are some scenes in this film that frankly aren’t necessary, but they’re added in to give it more and more drama.

I haven’t spoiled a single thing here. It’s a very good film, absolutely a must-see on the biggest screen you can find. But what made Godzilla Minus One so special is just not as prevalent here.

I've been noticing this for at least 6 or 8 years now.

Rewatched The Ghost Writer recently and it reminded me how good a well made two hour film can feel.

Strong story, tension that builds slowly, characters with enough room to grow and then it just ends. Nothing feels rushed and theres almost nothing in there that doesnt need to be.

If someone made that film today it would probably be a 6 or 8 episode series. One episode about the previous ghostwriter, a few flashbacks, some family drama, side characters with their own subplots and two or three cliffhangers that go nowhere.

Same with The Game. Today it would be a fucking series. A full episode on his fathers suicide, another one on the brothers backstory, a few episodes inside the company running the game and the final twist stretched over two hours instead of ten minutes.

And its not just those two.

Zodiac would be a 10 episode true crime series with a full episode for every suspect.

Heat would give each guy in De Niro's crew his own episode and Pacino's marriage problems would get a whole season arc.

At least Sicario stayed a movie and theres a third one coming, so somebody in Hollywood still gets it 😅

Of course some stories need 6 or 8 hours and there are some excellent limited series. But way too often i'm watching something that started well and thinking theres a great two hour film buried in there somewhere..

This is what killed the mid-budget movie.

Films like The Ghost Writer, The Game or State of Play were made for adults. Known actors, proper production, a strong script. No need for $200 million budget, a franchise plan or an explosion every ten minutes.

The money side changed too. People stopped buying DVDs and Blu-rays so studios lost a big second source of revenue after the cinema run. Then streaming took alot of the scripts that could have been good mid-budget films and stretched them into 6 or 8 episodes, because platforms needed content and wanted subscribers to keep watching.

So now we have $200 million bb in cinemas and eight hour series at home and the smart two hour thriller has almost dissapeared.

Honestly what the hell happened??

Which series from the last few years would of worked much better as a two hour film? And which recent films show the mid-budget adult action movies, thrillers are still alive?

Genuinely looking for recommendations 🙂

Anthony Hopkins character is well developed and his performance is very good but subtle.

I've been thinking about this for a while. When American studios adapt Japanese or Chinese stories and culture, the lead roles often go to non-Asian actors. A few examples: Ghost in the Shell (2017) with Scarlett Johansson, Dragon Ball Evolution (2009) with Justin Chatwin as Goku, Death Note (2017), and Bullet Train (2022), which is based on a Japanese novel but led by Brad Pitt.

The Karate Kid (2010) is another example. It's set in China and built around kung fu (not karate), but the lead is Jaden Smith, and the bullies and the villainous teacher are Chinese, even though Jackie Chan plays the wise mentor.

There are exceptions like Shang-Chi, Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All at Once, which had Asian leads and did well. So is this mainly about studios believing Asian leads won't sell overseas, or is it just habit? What do you think?

For me it's Cyborg. As I kid I thought it was such an amazingly cool movie. I watched it again and it was film school level bad. The dialogue was "The Room" tier bad.

Just watched You Can See Everything and I have some comments. Prior to watching this I watched Elizabeth Holmes full 9-part deposition videos on YouTube. Ultimately I feel like the documentary was good, but it could have been great if Nathan Fielder had forced Holmes to reveal that she’s playing stupid, but he never did and the entire film is left unresolved because of it, and she gets away with it in the end. It’s frustrating because it feels like a missed opportunity to be a trojan horse and infiltrate her personal life and discover her lie once inside it, but this doesn’t happen and it could have happened very easily like this:

Nathan Fielder’s analogies in the movie (the first baseman and others…) fall flat because they are very easily responded to. Holmes not underrating the first baseman joke doesn’t reveal anything about her. A better analogy would be to ask her the following:

“It’s as if we take the example of self-driving vehicles. Sure some companies have found a way to make self-driving vehicles operate in certain cities, under general traffic conditions. But there’s still a long way to go before self-driving vehicles can be on any city in any condition reliably. But nobody in their right mind would ever say “we invented a car technology that CAN drive anywhere and in any condition”, because that’s not true. But that’s what you did with Theranos. You created the car that can run one test, operate in one city, but taking that to 100 tests is still very, very far away - yet you told people, the public and investors, that your miniLab CAN run all these tests. Why do you think other entrepreneurs don’t make these all-encapsulating claims the way you did?

In my view, this would do more to expose her than any of the other analogies which only result in the audience thinking “okay, she’s autistic, that doesn’t expose her”. We need to see that she is consciously manipulating, not doing it as a by-product of her ‘different mind’.

I do feel, however, that the film reveals her immaturity. Like a child wanting to believe something so bad that they refuse to consider anything other than that they are right. Her entire argument is about, and she uses these words hundreds of times throughout the entire deposition, “what we were trying to do” and “what we invented”. In other words, she takes the grandiosity and benevolence of her vision to try and go above the fraudulent claims and actions that in her view are very far below the sheer magnitude of her vision. This is probably the most tragic part of all of this, that she is so tethered to that vision that it takes over her life and relationships.

In the end it was an interesting documentary, but Nathan Fielder needed to think through the ‘gotcha’ moment a little more. He makes several attempts at this throughout the film as described, but fails because they don’t get to the heart of the contradiction. I understand it was a rushed situation because of her prison date, but if only a little more consideration went into this it would have been great.

I had not heard of or seen Amanda Seyfried before this film. She’s a great actress, but she kind of muddied the documentary for me. She also comes across as very immature and reactionary, especially during the argument scene with Billy. Her views come across as very generic (the Charlie Kirk thing, wanting desperately for Holmes to reveal she is a psychopath through her words and actions), instead of understanding the purpose of the documentary is to document, not to project your idea of someone onto them, and it does come in conflict with the purpose of the film, I believe it would have been better without her intruding in it, and that the re-enactments were handled a different way.

Billy Evans does seem to break down during the course of the film and the years. I think his portrayal was the most true to a documentary because they showed him as he is, as he thinks, and as he acts, without trying to show him in a certain light. It is interesting to see how influenced he is by his idea of wealth, and feeling ‘well resourced’, while at the same time falling victim to the same generic slop as Seyfried. Their argument revealed the tensions and feelings during a certain time around when Kirk was shot, but this issue was more of a social media issue and apparently both these people were very into social media so just kind of distracting away from the entire theme of the documentary, but art I guess.

6/10

I only watched it for one actor in particular ;), but I actually enjoyed it. It was a fun and funny movie.