chronicle super hero movie max landis josh trank michael b jordan alex russell dane dehaan cool

the only character that was really a problem with was the philosophy-quoting cousin/hero kid, but even he had some throwaway line about how he used to be one of the "popular kids" before getting tired of it, so it kind of made sense.

this was good!

this was alright. Terrible ending, tho how they were gonna end it with anything other than a big fight I don't know. I liked how the camera turned into this malevolent force half-way thru the film, shame they didn't really go anything with it.

Kind of loved this

i wish i'd seen it in theaters, looking forward to catching it on dvd anyway

lol I guess ppl didn't really want to talk about this movie, huh

I thought the editing conceit was genius

I'm not sure about the editing conceit (although my annoyance at the way it was crowbarred in almost evaporated on the second viewing) but I really enjoyed this film anyway.

Loved how the camera turns from a simple tool to record stuff into almost a malevolent force later in the film. There's a theme in there somewhere about how the viewer creates the psycopath, I think. Also loved the sections where the first learned to fly, it really captured the thrill of it all.

Not sure what the point of the blond girl the good guy hooks up with. She doesn't really do much, and for me, her having a camera too really highlighted the artificiality of the conceit.

The boss-battle at the end went on a bit.

what was teh editing conceit

this was pretty solid! i thought i remembered something about a "rewind" moment, so i kept expecting it to end by one of them getting powerful enough to roll back time to the point before/just after they got their powers. glad that didn't happen.

what was teh editing conceit

whoops, missed this q! Less the editing conceit (called that wrong, sorry), more the decision to have everything filmed on handheld cameras and wotnot, then having their cake and eating it with the mind-controlled camera in the last 1/3rd. I found myself being taken out of the action, and instead of concentrating on the film I found myself concentrating on the camera positioning. It may well have been meant as a comment on the filmability of everyone's lives and the way that celebrity is all powerful (it's called Chronicle, after all) but I found it distracting, at least on 1st viewing.

A rewind moment would have been terrible.

The way the boss fight happened, with the jumping security cam/phone cam footage, was really cool, I thought

i thought this was pretty good

What utter drivel. Three of the most irritating teenagers get become the most powerful people on Earth... so they put on a magic show in order to impress girls. And that's about the most imaginative use of their powers, otherwise it was all 'watch me levitate Pringles into my mouth', and sub-Jackass pranks. The most mystifying use of 'found footage' yet, as well (except the footage was never 'lost' for it to be found) - the rules of which the filmmakers couldn't even stick to, so why bother in the first place? The whole thing was just so badly executed and completely unimaginative, and the characters were tedious and risible - especially the lead: a Schopenhauer-quoting bullied-by-everyone loser who starts off wanting to go to, like, Tibet and meditate with the monks, dude, but ends up talking about being an 'apex predator' and having super nerd-rage. So, so bad.

finally saw this, loved it

basically if you like carrie, blair witch project and recent marvel movies you need to see this

intentionally put in blair witch project because yeah if you don't like "found footage" movies with mundane people in them you will be butthurt like DavidM

the idea of a movie made entirely out of footage that no one would ever be able to actually piece together is silly but you know what else is silly? super-powers. if you accept the conceit they did a ton with it.

DavidM was right

just watched this, wasn't bad. very short. i really wish for once the pseudo-intellectual w/a chip on his shoulder would make the heel turn, not the angsty abused boy. glad they did something with the conceit, the whole 'surrounding myself with flying ipads' thing was a good choice to drive it home (in the most melodramatic way). and wrt the "found" problem, not that this isn't the loldumbest thing ever to whine about, but isn't good guy cousinbro capable of doing whatever he wants with the footage? and if not, that's... sort of a wonderful idea, to make this kid's whole subtext "the need to be known and remembered" and then destroying all of his great work and damning him to meaninglessness? we (the viewers) don't exist in the movie's universe after all.

and lol if you're complaining about the most powerful teens in the universe using it to play pranks, someone's gotta break out the old doctor faustus cliffnotes

GEE I WONDER IF THIS KID'S INABILITY TO HELP HIS SICK MOM AND ANGER AT HIS DRUNK DAD WILL DRIVE THE PLOT? THANKS FOR KEEPING IT SUBTLE, MOVIE!

This was the very definition of "meh." Flying football scenes were good, doing magic tricks to pick up girls is probably exactly what most kids would do in this situation, everything else was boringly predictable if competently executed.

really liked this. totally missed hearing aout it until recently, great 'it's late wtf is on tv' find.

also apparently landis and trank off the sequel, which doesn't bode well. landis leaked his script plot for part 2 and it sounded fucked up (no recurring characters, focusing on an insane woman who martyrs herself to become the first super villain). fox said no thank you, you are fired.

Love this movie. It absolutely does not need a sequel.

People really like this film? I thought it was pretty bog standard and forgettable.

really liked this. totally missed hearing aout it until recently, great 'it's late wtf is on tv' find.

I liked this and yeah, that probably has something to do with stumbling across it on a weeknight when i was bored

The three leads are possibly the most authentic teenagers I've ever seen on film.

Not gonna start an anticipation thread but this director's Fantastic Four reboot looks like complete ass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI2J9ixAZdw

FANT4STIC? ffs

hard to really tell anything about this at all from the teaser. only thing I really noticed was how much older sue looks than reed (not a dig at kate mara, it's just that miles teller looks about 15)

Glad to see this one will be a lighthearted lark and not some more ponderous apocalyptic stuff.

looks like they're doing the Ultimates storyline

I know the rights issues are a mess, but does Fox have access to not just the characters but to all the FF storylines as well? New and old?

It's unclear what they do and don't have rights to. I do know that Marvel wasn't able to use Skrulls in the first Avengers movie because Fox owns them, but I fail to understand how Skrulls are more FF-centric than, say, the Inhumans.

ben grimm 'n' gritty

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ttOQyN3q--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/mzx0ik6rarrqcpokaiaa.jpg

Re skrulls, reportedly marvel COULD use them, its just that fox could too. Marvel just wants to avoid another issue like the two quicksilvers that will exist.

I think the difference re the inhumans is that they had they're own title, which marvel didn't sell and therefore they're not just supporting characters to other titles

Granted quicksilver had his own comic and the inhumans did debut in Ff, so there must be some nuance in the contract language

If Wikipedia can be trusted it doesn't look like the inhumans showed up in ff enough to argue their inclusion in blanket "supporting character" rights esp after marvel announces they're making their own film of them, while with quicksilver it's very easy to retort to "he's an avenger" with "he's also a mutant"

Or as if with skrulls, "they're a major enemy of the avengers" and "they're a major enemy of the ff"

I just read that sean Howe marvel bio and its hilarious that marvel is resenting fox over character rights the way some freelancers have resented marvel

Having just finished reading all of Marvel's '60s output, I can confirm that the Inhumans appeared almost exclusively in FF until they received their own split title with Black Widow. The Skrulls, conversely, only had a handful of appearances (mostly in FF) until the Kree/Skrull War, which was an Avengers affair. So these particular rights issues don't really make any sense to me.

iirc the language usually lists a few key characters specifically and then gives them broader rights to assorted closely-related villains and supporting characters. in the case of quicksilver and the skrulls, nobody's pretending they're individual properties, and treating them as supporting cast. while marvel has announced a specific The Immortals movie. so if Fox was like "no, no, they're supporting characters in the fantastic four, black bolt's gonna fly down and high five miles teller in fantastic four 2" that'd be relatively in bad faith, like if marvel said "no no, wolverine was introduced in the hulk, he's going to show up in blue and yellow and annoy mark ruffalo in avengers 3"

and as much as fox and marvel hate each other, i don't think anyone wants to actually have that big legal throwdown

Having just finished reading all of Marvel's '60s output,

I've talked about it a bit in the Marvel Comics Blabbery thread, but basically: the former, not much, and most of it. Recommended for completists and Silver Age art lovers only. Things pick up a bit by the early '70s, though.

I'll head over to ILC - thanks

Fascinating stuff here. What was he thinking with that tweet I wonder??

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/why-josh-tranks-indie-to-fantastic-four-trajectory-could-spell-doom-for-the-next-spider-man-20150807

Think "Bottle Rocket" vs. "Rushmore," or "Bound" vs. "The Matrix." But when the first thing they make after the world has heard their voice is a corporate-controlled franchise film, that voice is stifled, and in some cases never heard again. "(500) Days of Summer" had many waiting for Marc Webb's second act. After two uninspired "Amazing Spider-Man" movies, does anyone care what he's up to now?

hmmm so back in the day artists were free to make joel silver action movies but now we'll never know what the music video director who brought us 500 Days Of Summer is capable of becuz he was magically sucked up into a corporate sphere.

does he realize that directors CHOOSE to take on big-budget franchise projects? that the wes anderson of today has to DECIDE to make a harry potter spin-off rather than his own fanciful creation for a lower budget?

Blog try very very hard to blame the failure of american indie film to be just the slightest bit interesting on Hollywood. Except on, y'know, every indie film either being a low budget genre flick, or a film about young new yorkers finding their way in life.

that's not fair sometimes it is young angelenos

also young Chicagoans but I kind of like (some of) Joe Swanberg's movies

Generic film school dudes eagerly taking first paychecks to make Hollywood product shocker. The dif between these wannabes and McG and his like is the latter cut their teeth on and cash out early with commercials rather than indie film promo reels. Wes Anderson clearly was a dude with career defining vision from the start. what did any ever expect from Trank or Webb? Success of Jurrasic World or the Russos with Marvel or even Reed with Antman shows once again that any dude can make an OK blockbuster as long as he plays ball. Personality optional.

the article didn't support its argument especially well but i think it's a convo worth having. why did everyone get so caught up in hoping Ava DuVerney would follow up her highly awarded historical drama with a Marvel movie? there seems to be this weird rush now to give every new director a chance to make a Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson-style turn towards a big budget franchise without thinking of how long those guys did their own thing before that happened.

Though I guess these big budget sequels and tent poles are the only movies Hollywood makes these days. Not a lot of dipping your toe in. It's all or nothing.

i would imagine that studios are desperate to find something, anything that would make a fantastic four or spiderman reboot interesting, so why not try a promising young director? of course that doesn't make it a good idea.

p sure they were just desperate to keep the rights

well you could let me direct it and keep the rights, there has to be a lightning-in-a-bottle hopefulness involved

you're hired

ty qualx, i won't let you down

i heard call all destroyer's hamsters did $200k worth of damage to pinewood atlanta

wait how did i manage to miss that philip glass did the score to trank's ff movie

(along with marco beltrami)

did anyone else see this in the end? i watched it over the weekend and it is catastrophically bad, one of the worst big-budget movies i've ever seen. at least the ff movies with chris evans etc were at least competent, if totally uninspired - this was embarrassingly poor.

it reminded me of hancock a bit - a bad movie made even worse by reshoots and re-editing. helpfully, you can tell every time the reshoot footage appears because kate mara is wearing a terrible wig which looks nothing like the hair she has in the rest of the movie.

maybe in a decade someone will make a documentary about all the shit that went down behind the scenes and the whole disaster might at least be entertaining in retrospect

I knew it had to be as bad as it seemed when Richard Brody at the New Yorker raved about it. He's a Rosenbaum level contrarian, so of course he would praise the universally derided FF flop.

wonder what armond white thought

it got a quick dismissal at the end of his Ricki and the Flash review

We’re almost done with this season’s comic book–based blockbusters. How many more insults will fanboys take? Comic-book franchises are being remade faster than old TV shows, as proven by the new Fantastic Four, a remake of the 2005 film with Chris Evans as a white Johnny Storm; here Michael B. Jordan plays a black Johnny Storm. Yet, this Obama-era Fantastic Four isn’t updated — or incendiary — enough. The visual style of director Josh Trank, who made the visionary Chronicle, deserves more moral substance. Chronicle suggested that Trank could make emotionally potent action films, but most franchise fans’ only criterion is to see their fav comics sanctioned. Hollywood persistently pushes such fanboys (and other filmgoers) away from their deepest feelings. No wonder the end credits of Ricki and the Flash advise: “Be Moved.” While comic-book blockbusters regularly insert postscript teasers, Demme reminds us what movies are for.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/steven-spielberg-kathleen-kennedy-frank-902545

Kathy, did you think of Steven to direct Star Wars: Episode 7?

KENNEDY No. Steven and I had many conversations about J.J.

SPIELBERG I brought J.J.'s name up. I thought J.J. would be the best person to direct Episode 7 and I called J.J. and said 'Would you do it if it was offered to you?' He said, 'I would but my wife won't let me 'cause she doesn't want me to restart any more franchises.' But I went to Kathy and asked if I could get J.J. to say yes to this would you consider it? Kathy said 'Are you kidding? Of course I would. But why would J.J. do Star Wars; he's already done Mission Impossible and Star Trek.' So I take Katie Abrams and J.J. to dinner that night to Giorgio with my wife, Kate, and right in front of Katie Abrams I popped the question. I said to Katie, 'I think there's a chance that J.J. could direct Star Wars. What do you think of that?' And Katie turned to J.J. and said, 'That would be amazing. Really?' And I went outside the restaurant, picked up my phone, called Kathy and said, "When can we meet with J.J.?" And that's how the whole thing began.

So when you look at young directors, how do you know you're not hiring another Josh Trank [who directed the Fox bomb Fantastic Four]?

SPIELBERG Who is that?

I forgot to ask max when i saw him a couple weeks ago how many superhero movies he has either disliked or skipped.

you could probably look it up on youtube i bet he has several dozen videos on the subject since his main talent seems to be being a professional 7 year old