Cinema Geeks

Cinema Geeks – Episode 57 – Movie Rankings & The Master

Today on Episode 57 of the Cinema Geeks ….. we discuss the future of the James Bond franchise and why it is up in the air, We let you know about A Disney Live-Action film you probably didn’t see coming, we debate the merits of Slow West and The Master and we dissect the term Original when it comes to Hollywood.

CinemaGEEKS2

Box Office: [00:02:51]

https://boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

News: [00:09:10]

Night on Bald Mountain

Obi Wan Trilogy

Stephen King’s Dark Tower

Big Trouble in Little China

Six Shortlist Spider-Man Suitors and Two Directors

Tron 3

Layer Cake Remake

Independence Day 2 Casting

Andy Serkis Character Revealed

Harry Potter Casting

Iñárritu Can’t stop talking

Aquaman finds director

Star Wars Crowd funded Film

Nolan on Inception Ending

Eastwood Next Project

Little Mermaid loses Director

Bond Future up in the Air

 

Trailer Talk [00:50:30]

Pawn Sacrifice Trailer #1

A Walk in the Woods Trailer #1

Cop Car Trailer #1

What We Did on our Holiday Trailer #1

American Ultra Trailer #1

The Face of an Angel Trailer #1

The Good Dinosaur Teaser

Joe Dirt 2 Trailer #1

99 Homes Trailer #1

Suffragette Trailer #1

Paper Towns Trailer #2

Main Attraction: [01:07:40]

Discussion: How we rank/rate movies

What We’ve Been Watching: [01:40:40]

Elephant Man

Jack Reacher

Welcome to the Punch

Pitch Perfect 2

San Andreas

Slow West

Homework Assignments:

Open Grave

The Master

Question: [02:16:00]

What would you add to our ratings discussion?

Geeks:

Kevin @OptimusSolo

Dan @MovieRevolt

Amanda @HardCandiMandi

Show More

Kevin "OptimusSolo"

OptimusSolo is a Cartoon Historian and even has an actual History degree to go with it. He's also an avid Toy collector boasting an over 1,000 piece Star Wars collection and nearly 400 Transformer toys. He is one of the hosts of the Powers of Grayskull series. He also has a passion for cartoon Theme Songs, Star Trek, MacGyver, Baseball, and is a major Movie Geek!

4 Comments

  1. I prefer the classic A to F scale but all in all its pretty much the same thing. I personally can’t stand it when people never use the perfect score raring whethere it be A+ or 10 out of 10. Ithe reminds me of those professors and teachers that would never give A’s cause there are always ways to improve.

    1. Yea I hated that in school too. I don’t give out a lot of perfect scores though admittedly. Those I think should honestly be reserved for the absolute best of the best!

  2. Spoiler alert. Don’t read if you haven’t seen The Master.
    I was amazed by the performances in this film because they were just so good, and the characters so true to life..Joaquin was simply breathtakingly transformed. I thought the film created a lot of questions for one to think about and no real answer that I can think of anyway, just like life. Even minor characters had a lot of importance in the sense of expressing the types of people who exist in this world in relation to religion or truth. To me Lancaster the cult leader, is a functioning alcoholic and mentally ill having delusions of grandeur, and probably paranoid schizophrenic (for ex. the desert scene where he’s got a gun and he’s looking in the sky before they leave to make sure no one has followed to “steal” his masterpieces”. Cult leaders terrify me but at the same time fascinate me because I want to understand how people believe in them so much they drink the koolaid It’s hard for me because I don’t buy any religion. Still Phillip Seymour succeeded better than most anyone could have in demonstrating to me how possible it is for people like him to make people see them as “masters” or messiah s(Just like L. Ron Hubbard did, and Dave Miskovige still does).To some people cults are nuts but if you think about it how do religions like Scientology sound any crazier than more traditional religions in what they present as gospel. Lancaster is complex in that we can’t really understand how much of what he does is con, vs, insanity, vs. a true belief that he’s got the true path. He’s charasmatic, charming, he seems compassionate yet he’s clearly a liar about even who he is presenting himself as a physicist and an MD. He takes money telling people he can cure disease like luekemia. .I guess on some level he sincerely believes he is helping people by giving them what he knows most humans need, a Master to follow. I guess he thinks he’s a better than the master that many choose to follow. He makes his religion up as he goes along and yet maybe he thinks it’s true too. Lancaster’s son see’s the truth and he tells Pheonix’s character straight out asking “don’t you see he’s making it all up as he goes along?” and Phonenix seems to me like he does get that truth but wants to believe this is a path that will save him so he gives it an honest try, by doing the required actions as told. I thought it was interesting that the one guy in the film who wee see call Lancaster out as a farce gets the crap beaten out of him. Then there’s Peggy, Lancaster’s wife, who wants a perfect life even wants to be perfect no matter what the cost to truth….she clearly knows on some level that Lancaster’s religion is bull yet she follows it and is even perhaps the driving force behind him creating it. She tells Lancaster he can do anything he wants just as long as he hides the real truth from her and from anyone she knows (meaning the ugly things). Another interesting character is a rich convert of Lancaster who is played by Laura Dern. She financially supports him, and helps him bring in followers and she believes it all. Then when he publishes his second book, the next step in his religion, she dares question him about a change he makes to one word…the word is “recall” which he changes to “imagine”. He actually tells her the truth which is that he’s made the change to widen the religions appeal, to open it up to a wider audience. She looks devastated and shaken and when she questions him on the validity he verbally slaps her with yelling at her impatiently “what do you want from me?”. She looks devastated, her faith shaken. I wonder does she wake up or not. Near the end of the movie Lancaster’s son appears briefly, looking like a true believer in this bogus religion. He looks like a vacant robot albiet a happy healthy blind follower.
    Now, Pheonix’s character is so tortured and sick when he meets Lancaster. He’s a drunkard who is really totally lost, and on . A offers him affection, and attention that he hasn’t had before. He gives him purpose for a while, and maybe a way out of the pain. This tortured soul gives this religion a sincere try…but ultimately it’s as unfullfilling and unreal to him as the sand lady he tries to fuck on the beach during the war. A war, that may be part of why he’s in so much pain though there’s clues that he’s just a messed up human being with some real sexual and mental problems. He’s partying on a beach on a pacific island somewhere with other sailors who create a sand lady. He goes through the motions of trying to fuck her but of course he can’t find fullfillment because she’s made of sand, so so he runs to the shore and jerks himself off. Yet he goes back to the woman built of sand and lies next to her like a lover after completion. This film is asking me I think who is better off the people who choose the path of a false religion but attain some degree of peace and happiness or comfort despite it all being built of sand, or those who see the truth and follow that even if it makes them miserable and unhealthy and to a premature death. Pheonix’s character rejects Lancaster ‘s false religion and chooses alcohol as his master even though it’s obviously killing him, even though he’s still lost, still in pain. He’s able to find some comfort in a having sex with a real woman though, even if it’s temporary. There isn’t an exploration that I can recall of any characters who just choose to believe in themselves and find happiness in that. Ironically at one point Lancaster makes a BIG REVEAL and in that reveal he tells his followers that the answer is YOU, as in themselves but evertheless presenting that the only way they can find themselves is through his religion. It’s an unsettling movie, and it’s a gorgeous movie too and I think its brilliant in the way it flows. Anyway, I guess no one will ever read what I wrote here but I was affected and didn’t have anyone to talk it over with who would care so I decided to put the thoughts down for myself just to work it out. Oh, also one more thought in case anyone does read these thoughts. I read several comments elsewhere from people who really hated the movie and said it was the worse they ever saw. LOL. I couldn’t help but be so arrogant as to think there’s an awful lot of shallow people out there, and wonder why they would go see a movie like this one.

  3. This is how I rate movies. Took many days to come up with this.

    1. ‘Do Not Want’
    God awful, makes you want to gouge your eyeballs out with a spork, and either headbutt the TV or try to hit the cinema screen with projectile vomit. Everything about this movie is bad to such a degree that it doesn’t even become good in its badness. You really wish you had done something more worthwhile during the movie’s running time, like trimming your nose hairs. If someone would give you this movie, you would microwave, burn, blend or eat it, to avoid the risk that other human beings could be exposed to it.

    2. ‘Awful’Still awful, but has at least one thing that is done well, like one decent scare in an otherwise pathetic horror movie, one good laugh in an otherwise decidedly unfunny comedy, one clever plot element, etc. You would never ever want to watch this again except maybe for that single good part.

    3. ‘Bad’Bad, but you agree that watching this film was an OK pastime on a lazy weekend evening because there was nothing else on TV and you were too lazy to dig up anything better. Or, you felt the need to expose yourself to something crappy to recalibrate your appreciation for movies, and without being a totally shameful waste of time it reminded you how bad a film can be. You could have better spent your time, though. You will definitely avoid watching it again, even on the next lazy weekend evening.

    4. ‘Nice Try, But No Cigar’Still bad, but is ‘almost there’. Either it has some good parts that are ruined by bad parts, or it stays at a constant level of “it had promise but the good part never came”. You still would never want to watch it again.

    5. ‘Meh’The threshold for ‘OK’. It’s not good, not bad, just acceptable. This is the kind of movie that only just makes you feel you didn’t waste 90+ minutes and/or the price of a cinema ticket. You would only want to watch it again under the conditions of 3, but you would never ever consider doing more effort than pushing a button on your TV remote to watch it again. This movie is either an equal mix of good and bad parts, or is just so forgettable that each time someone mentions the title, you need to read the plot and look at screenshots to remember what it was about. If you would be given this movie as a present, you would sell it or give it away.

    6. ‘Not Bad’It has some aspects that lift it above mediocrity and make it quite enjoyable to watch, but it either never becomes really good, or if it does, it still has some bad parts that drag it down. You would only watch it again spontaneously if it were a long time ago since you saw it and you re-watched all your movies scoring 7+ too recently. You would only recommend this to someone if they’re really into the genre, but you would still warn them that it’s not that good. You would never buy it, but if someone would give it to you, you wouldn’t bother selling it unless you need to make room or are in desperate need to gain a few bucks.

    7. ‘Good’This movie is really worth watching and you would watch it again spontaneously, but not too often. It’s just not that good that you would say to your friends that they would really miss out on something if they didn’t watch it. It’s very enjoyable despite some noticeably uninteresting parts, subpar acting, plot holes or other negative points that you’ll always remember when thinking about this film. If you would find it in the bargain bin of your media store for a bottom price, you might buy it.

    8. ‘Very good’This is the kind of movie that you could watch again several times, even though it is clearly not perfect. There are still some minuses about this film, but the rest is good enough to almost forget those. You would recommend it to friends unless you know it’s not their cup of tea. You would be prepared to pay the normal price in the media store, or buy it immediately if it’s discounted.

    9. ‘Excellent’It’s almost perfect. You could watch this movie again almost an unlimited number of times. It still has something significant you don’t like, therefore you don’t give it an outright 10. You would recommend this movie to your friends even if you know they don’t like the genre, maybe it could change their mind. You would be prepared to pay more than the average price in the media store.

    10. ‘Perfect’You could watch this movie until eternity without ever getting bored by it. With each viewing you discover something new or see something in a different light, and/or the key scenes still thrill you even though you know them by heart. This movie has nothing in it that is less than good. If there’s anything that is not perfect, it is greatly compensated for by something else that is stunningly brilliant or gripping. You would recommend this movie to everyone, even total strangers. You would not be satisfied with a simple regular release when buying it, but you would seek out a special edition in a fancy box or wait for the ultimate director’s cut and be willing to pay a premium price.

Leave a Reply to BeyondHumorCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button