This start straight off of the previous movie — and kinda undoes the climax from that movie. But I guessed they were gonna do that, so…

The first movie was all about getting the Scooby Gang together, so perhaps in this movie they’ll do some attacking.

The bokeh! I guess it’s CGI?

I’m over half an hour in, and basically nothing has happened yet? We got a flashback telling us what we already knew, but not even in a fun way…

And these people that are… er… supplying the empire with a huge amount of grain? Are using scythes. Sure, sure.

This thing has the same problem that many space operas have — it’s supposed to be all Huge and stuff, being an empire of innumerable worlds etc etc, but then all the writers can come up with is having a couple dozen people in a field cropping wheat as a pivotal action… It’s supposed to be Huge, but then it’s picayune.

Yes, they’re even threshing the wheat by hand. That’s just silly. They have space ships but not threshing machines (invented in the 16th century).

OK, up to one hour now, and we’ve gotten the backstories from all the Scooby Gang members. Which I appreciate, in a way, but it’s not exactly thrilling.

Man, they saved a lot of money on CGI when they realised that they could just pretend that it’s all out of focus. In the olden days they used to try to render it all…

Yes, the grain is so important… the grain that these dozen people… carry into the village… that the empire will… OK, I give up. This is just wilfully stupid. Perhaps it’s meant to make people surrender to the stupidity of it all and just let the movie wash over them?

Razor tech is trailing, too.

“Remember everybody… don’t shoot their dozens of sacks of grain, because we need porridge tomorrow.”

They forgot to install their catalytic converters for their coal-burning intergalactic space ships.

So much smoke.

Still so evil!

OK, is the movie finally starting now?

It’s nice that they have light sabers.

OK, is the battle on the Planet of the Village of Several Dozens of People of Wheat going to be the rest of the movie or is it going to move on at some point?

I mean, I liked the first movie. It was fun! It was all “establish eeevil person and then kill eeevil person”, and that’s entertaining. But this is just a slog.

It reminds me of that Avengers movie that ended with them all fighting an alien invasion on the roof a building, as if that would make any difference.

Oh yeah, I was making fun about these coal-power intergalactic space ships, but I forgot that that’s what they actually are… here’s people shovelling coal or something into the furnaces. Looks like these are max energy efficient.

OK, then. No porridge tomorrow.

I do really like these futuristic space army uniforms.

Such eeevil bangs!

No collar gap!

I don’t know what happened. The first movie was a classic Run Around The Universe To Collect A Scooby Gang. It was fun. Sure, it was kinda stupid, but not more so than these things usually are.

This, on the other hand, is just unbelievably moronic. I don’t mind stupid as long as it’s fun, but when every other scene is “er wha” it’s hard not to turn into that comics nerd guy from The Simpsons. And that’s not a fun place to be! I’d rather have fun with some entertaining sci fi thing! But I can’t! Because it’s just too stupid! It’s like the writers just gave up but they started filming anyway!

I think a slight reframing could have helped slightly? If they’d like done a “if you do this insurrection successfully then we’ll help you”, but instead the entire movie was about fighting in a sandy village of about 100 people, and then the people who could have decided the fight (the robot or the rebels) were swooping in after the action was kinda done.

This is a really good review, and it’s even more down on the movie than I am. I found the movie to be ugly, boring and stupid, but not really offensive. Despite everything, I’d be interested in watching Rebel Moon Part Three and Four.

Rebel Moon Part Two. Zack Snyder. 2024. ⚁

Oh, wow.

Huh.

I saw this movie back in the 80s, but… probably on VHS? I don’t recall seeing it in a movie theatre.

Columbo!

Heh, Tuxedomoon on the soundtrack. This really is the coolest movie of the 80s.

This 4K restoration really looks amazing — probably better than it looked in the theatres originally.

Commodore 64!

And now there’s Nick Cave.

I’m really enjoying (re-)watching this. It’s serious and portentous to the max, but really owning that; leaning into that.

There’s the “Oscar bait” term — movies that are designed to appeal to a typical Oscar voter (i.e., a famous actor playing a disabled person or something). This is kinda that, but for a different audience: It’s Cinematheque/film festival bait! It’s perfect: Mostly black and white, it’s all about life and death and all those serious subjects, it’s slow, it’s got Allan Falk, it’s about Germany and the war, and there’s even a film within the film! You couldn’t engineer a more perfect movie for that market if you try.

And I’m totally riveted.

Crime and the City Solution?

I love this movie — probably more now than I did back then. At the time, it seemed like just another European art movie, but now it seems like probably the last one of its kind: It’s a movie in the tradition of Bergman and De Sica — a serious movie done in a playful way. It’s an anachronism, really.

Der Himmel über Berlin. Wim Wenders. 1987. ⚅

I like that the movie has both a dash and a colon in its name. That’s how you know it’s gonna be good.

Yes, of course I’m watching the Director’s Cut version, which is even longer than the original version.

It’s got er not glowing reviews.

But let’s see!

It looks very 2023. DESATURATE! DESATURATE!

If there are no colours, it makes it easier to match up the real beige footage to the beige CGI backgrounds.

EVILEST PERSON EVER

That’s how you make a villain. I just hope he doesn’t get a tragic back story.

Urrr… Oh, this is chapter one of part one? Oh, he changed the name of Part One: A Child of Fire to Chapter One: Chalice of Blood. Sure, sure.

And, OK, the movie is three and a half hours long, so.

Rebel Moon: The Beigining.

This movie so relentlessly beige — Snyder’s taking things to extremes, as usual. And more lens flares than a JJ Abrams movie.

The beige… the beige…

Allegedly Snyder has said that he wants to create a whole new “franchise” or something with these movies. I.e., something like Star Wars? But Star Wars became A Thing by being a pretty fun adventure movie for children in 1977 — and then grown people obsessed about it way to much for decades and there we are.

It kinda seems like Snyder wants to jump straight to doing one of the boring back-story Star Wars TV series? Because I’m 40 minutes in, and nothing entertaining has happened yet, really.

And it looks like dog shit. (Did I mention that yet?)

I’m hoping Snyder is using this colour palette as a contrast to the real one he’s going to use once we leave er these planets.

(Not holding my breath, though.)

Such beige.

This is possibly the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen.

The robot is pretty spiffy.

Wow! Snyder’s got it! That was the most satisfying action scene ever! It’s like… an anti Vince Vaughn action scene.

But now we get a ton of backstory, and it’s the most boring thing ever. That Snyder drops into slo-mo seemingly at random really doesn’t help.

That’s another satisfying scene of ultra violence! Both scenes were set up very similarly, though: First establish that the bad people are really really bad (both involving sexual abuse), and then having all the bad guys killed while the audience can go WHOA YEAH!

I like it, but is the entire movie going to be just this scene repeated over and over? I’m just 90 minutes in, so the movie has barely started!

Harsh!

Actually, I’m not hating this movie? I don’t mind slow movies at all — I’ve got my “I Watched Out 1: Noli me tangere And I Survived” button, and this is just a … quarter? … of that running length. And that’s an absurd comparison, but still — they’re both slow movies with occasional high intensity interest? Yeah yeah OK.

There’s quite a lot of really silly stuff here, which I appreciate. And I now see what the structure of the movie is, which wasn’t obvious: It’s about that woman going around the galaxy gathering up a scrappy gang of rebels to help fight against the evil, evil empire, to save her adopted agrarian moon.

Heh heh. The totally evil general guy is also a total perv! Into tentacle sex! And drugs! But no rock’n’roll.

So this is fun, but Snyder is really gonna film this entire movie in beige-o-vision?

I was assuming they’d be having a preliminary showdown with the Forces Of Evil in this movie, but perhaps it’s just going to be three and a half hours of gathering the Scooby Gang?

I like the sheer humourlessness of the movie. It’s rare to see somebody dare to be this dour.

But the movie has a problem of scale: Is this insanely eeeevil general the only guy they have to kill, and then everything’s OK? That is, they seem to be fighting an evil galactic empire, but this guy is going around and personally killing nice people… which seems kinda inefficient, evilly speaking?

Yeah yeah, the raze the planets after he’s tired of killing people personally. But still!

Oh, perhaps this movie is gonna end with them killing The Eeevil Guy, and then the next movie is gonna be about conquering The Eeevil Empire? That’d make sense.

[even more time passes]

OK, then.

29% tomatometer? I understand that. But I think that if this had been a four episode TV series instead of a three and a half hour movie, the TV reviewers would have been creaming themselves.

I liked this movie! Yes! It’s fun. But it looks like dog shit, and there’s parts that are really boring. But still. I liked it. So let’s go with:

Rebel Moon Part One. Zack Snyder. 2023. ⚃