I recently got around to his King Arthur movie, and came to the same conclusion re the value of style. As a King Arthur movie it...wasn’t, but it had such a sense of Guy-Ritchie-style visual fun, complete with training and heist montages, that I ended up loving it.

That does all make a certain amount of sense - it just all seemed weirdly official. An active terrorist attack scene is not exactly a social context. It seemed like he was still ‘on the inside,’ for lack of a better phrase.  His (and Sam’s) official role is very unclear. 

While I’ll admit the show (like the Cap movies before it) is a bit optimistic about the effect of a good role model, it wasn’t *just* a speech. The equivalent would have been if MLK gave the “I have a dream” speech directly to members of Congress right after saving them all from being burned to death, with the entire…

Tangentially, did I hear one of the background officers/SWAT guys call him “Sergeant Barnes” at some point? Is he still technically part of the US Military, or is he a “sergeant” in the same way Sam is a “captain”? If Sam is ‘captain’ America, could Bucky by ‘sergeant’ something? 

Karli finally made sense to me as a character in this episode, with her emphasis on being willing to die for the cause. She has a martyr complex - she doesn’t have anything except the fight, so she’s willing to do anything to make sure she has a fight. It explains why she was so intent on escalation at the expense of…

Your first paragraph reminds me of something I heard in a KDrama - “Don’t use a tiger to catch a fox.”

I always want to ask “so you don’t trust the media - then why do you trust your media? If we concede that MSNBC has an agenda, isn’t that true of Fox News as well?” If people still learned critical thinking in school, then they might be less inclined toward ‘if it agrees with me then it must be right.’

I always want to ask “so you don’t trust the media - then why do you trust your media? If we concede that MSNBC has an agenda, isn’t that true of Fox News as well?” If people still learned critical thinking in school, then they might be less inclined toward ‘if it agrees with me then it must be right.’

The single shift that would probably help dramatically would be improving the education system (there’s a reason rednecks don’t want their kids going to those ‘liberal conversion centers’ known as colleges, critical thinking seems to be incompatible with the far right), but unfortunately simple =/= easy when the GOP…

I’ve decided the higher-ups behind the project named it Icarus as an in-joke because they knew the crew had to die, and assumed a bunch of scientists wouldn’t get a classical reference...

Huh - I’d call that a “reverse- Stephen King problem”. I generally find that King stories have unlikable characters and drag on for way too long, but then do something really interesting in last few chapters/pages.

I also loved Bucky dropping the shield next Sam with that look, like “get over yourself and do the damn job.”

I think it depends on whether the grade is supposed to reflect the skill of the movie, or the movie-watching experience. I came away from the review with “it’s visually clever, but consists solely of horrible people doing horrible things and will make you feel morally and emotionally exhausted (and not in a good way).”…

There were some silly moments for sure, but my main problem with it wasn’t even really the movie’s fault. The idea of ‘updating’ the movie to reflect the pulp sci-fi of the 50s was actually pretty clever, I just drastically prefer the 30s-40s pulp-adventure aesthetic. It’d be like if the fourth movie in a…

I’ll agree that “dark” is an unhelpful term. At least for me, when I use ‘dark’ I’m talking as much about tone / outlook as I am about plot / cinematography - but I can see the value in using more specific language to describe the problem. So: Man of Steel wasn’t as violent and monochromatic as BvS, but it was rather…

I’m willing to be that person who starts the Supernatural reminisces...

I can generally agree that war movies focus on ‘good fighting men,’ and that “war is bad” is a different message than “war is wrong.” That said:

I’m not sure I’d call Dunkirk or 1917 military propaganda, since their message was essentially “war is horrific and traumatizing.” The movies were well done (and spoke well of soldiers), but I’m not sure anyone came out of those movies thinking ‘yeah, that’s what I want to do for the next 4 years / isn’t combat awesome…

(1) Have you never felt the least bit jealous when your best friend finds a new best friend?

(1) Have you never felt the least bit jealous when your best friend finds a new best friend?