I guess I am just not the target audience at all but I don’t know why anyone would want to watch a six minute trailer for an upcoming film. If it’s good, I don’t want six minutes worth spoiling large chunks of it. If it’s bad I just don’t want six minutes.

Agree on all of those points. I thought the slow-burn setup as various characters prepared for the evening was extremely well done.

I didn’t think it was as good as the first, mostly because it didn’t dedicate enough time to those themes or its villains. It’s the same runtime but has more characters and way more action/chase scenes. Something has to give, unfortunately. Having said that, it’s an animated family film so I don’t particularly care if it’s a bit light on story. The action/chase stuff was at least as funny and creative as the first film, and there was way more of it. That’s definitely more than enough reason to go see the film.

Possibly, but it’s not like he has to do all.of those things simultaneously and he does have prior experience with some of them too.

WHAT ARE NEEEEEEEXT?!

His films have rarely been that short, though. Even before streaming allowed him to make very long films like The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon, he was still averaging well over 2 hours.

I completely agree with you. Cameron always gets so triggered whenever he’s faced with this criticism as well, like all rich white American liberals. He doesn’t even try to hide these views because he’s so incredibly clueless:

In an interview with The Guardian in 2010, Cameron said the Lakota Sioux Nation was a “hopeless” and “dead-end society”.

The interview was prompted by Cameron’s visit to the Xingu tribe, located in the Amazon, who were fighting against the development of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam.

During his time there he witnessed cultural ceremonies.

“I felt like I was 130 years back in time, watching what the Lakota Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and they were being asked to displace,” he said.

He noted that ‘this was the driving force’ in creating Avatar.

“I couldn’t help but think that if [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rate in the nation… because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society – which is what is happening now – they would have fought a lot harder.” Source

I think that’s more of a reflection of the non-linear technological leaps rather than effort/creativity on the part of the filmmakers. No modern CGI films really wow me in the same way the big features from the 2000s did.

It was pretty good! It was more of an adventure film, rather than a mystery film like the first one, so the story wasn’t quite as enjoyable for me. Interestingly, it was also the same run time as the first one but felt much longer, perhaps because the pacing is all over the place. They try to cram in as many chase sequences and creative visual moments as possible (which I loved) but that didn’t leave much time for exposition so it infodumps in a few places and those tend to be the scenes that drag the most. There is a post-credits scene (after the crawl) which is worth staying for.

Sounds like a free surround sound upgrade for everyone else in the cinema!

MUNCHMUNCHCRUNCHMUNCHMUNCHCRUNCHMUNCHCRUNCHMUNCH

I’m seeing this tomorrow at my local cinema. Started rewatching the first one last night and it was way better than I remembered. Very funny and visually creative. I hope the sequel delivers!

Old white people who think “respecting” Indigenous cultures = combining them all into one amorphous noble savage trope and repeatedly saving them from other white people.

If you like historical dramas The Convert is very good. It’s a fairly basic premise with good acting and the cinematography is beautiful.

Paramount+ has all seasons of the French spy thriller The Bureau, which is extremely good.

The Galaxy games are more popular and more recent, so in terms of making money I think it’s a logical next step. I’d love a mystery film set on Isle Delfino, though!

Why is Paramount+ so much more expensive in the US? Do you guys get a lot more content over there? It is fairly bare-bones in Australia (although it does have a lot of live football, which is why I pay for it) but the price gap is still massive:

New US prices (in USD):

The Paramount+ Essential (ad-supported) plan will increase by $1 to $8.99 per month, and the Paramount+ Premium (ad-free) plan will rise by $1 to $13.99 per month. Annual plans will also increase, with the Essential plan moving to $89.99 per year and the Premium plan to $139.99 per year.

New Australian prices (in AUD):

The Basic with Ads plan has gone up from $6.99 to $7.99 per month. The Standard plan has gone up from $10.99 to $12.99 per month, and the Premium 4K plan has gone from $13.99 per month to $17.99 per month.

The Paramount Plus annual plans have increased in price too. Basic with ads has increased from $61.99 to $70.99 per year, Standard from $97.99 to $115.99 per year, and Premium from $124.99 to $159.99 per year.

It was okay but it’s still just K-Pop. It’s bizarre how easily hallyu brainwashing works on people who are otherwise very sceptical of soulless commercial pop music.

Did you watch Alien: Earth? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that as well.

I watched a few Korean films last week:

• Lover (2005)
• Love Guide for Dumpees (2015)
• Thirst (2009)

All three were quite middling but enjoyable enough. Lover was a very strange film that starts off almost as a softcore porn film but tries to become a serious romance film towards its conclusion. I didn’t find that transition at all believable, but it does have one or two very realistic and relatable scenes focused on emotional unavailability and lack of commitment in relationships which made it worth watching. Love Guide For Dumpees was pretty stupid but it did make me laugh and the two leads had good chemistry so it was also worth the time investment. It also had some surprisingly complex and dark themes around depression and suicide which I did not expect at all. Thirst was a much more serious film from Park Chan-wook, arguably my favourite director, but I found it to be inconsistent and not up to his usual high standard. I think it could have worked well if he’d played into the religion angle more and made it an allegory about the Catholic Church (there is a lot of potential with the themes and visual symbolism), but he doesn’t take that idea far enough so it ends up being this sort of quirky vampire/romance/dark comedy thing which is interesting but fairly predictable and never really that entertaining.

I don’t understand why they need to try so hard to make people connect with the Yautja.

It seems inevitable for these monster franchises. Alien did the same thing, started trying to explore the origins of the xenomorph and make it relatable (Covenant, Earth). I don’t know if it’s because the writers have just run out of ideas about how to make a scary monster movie, or because they are pitching these projects to the lore-obsessed fans who can’t accept that the original premise of these films is just a monster movie for cheap thrills and nothing deeper, but it inevitably ends up derailing everything. People lose interest, and then the studios panic and think “we have to make a reboot to bring fans back” and you get regurgitated slop like Romulus that just feel like a greatest hits (but worse) of every previously successful film. Prey was a rare example of something interesting and different that retained the core image of the monster.