What movies made in the last five years are worth watching?

I've never liked Superman much either as a character. My flirtation with comics started when I was in College, at our campus coffee shop. The place looked kind of like a hippie hangout, but instead of standard hippie paraphernalia, there were comic books all over the place, along with a couple of pinball machines, and a television with an Intellivision video game system. We used to go there late at night to decompress from studying, maybe get a burger or milk shake (they used to turn the milk shakes upside down, and if anything fell out, you'd get that one plus a second one for free -- that's how thick they were).

That was back in the late 70s/early 80's, and they had all sorts of DC and Marvel comics. I always found that the writing in the DC comics was so incredibly stilted and awkward to the point that they were unreadable. Marvel Comics were not always much better, but some of them were. This was back during a time when Marvel was really pioneering making their comic book heroes real human beings, with real problems. I'm sure that DC eventually moved in that direction, but at that point I just hated DC comics. They were just bad, no question about it. Later on they got cool also, especially with Sandman and Watchmen and the reinvention/reinvigoration of the Batman franchise, and so on. But at the time when I was first discovering them, it was Marvel all the way.

 

Watchmen and Sandman are a completely different kettle of fish to mainstream DC and Marvel. You can't really compare them (and this is said as someone who isn't a fan of Watchmen).

 

I agree that they aren't mainstream and that's my whole point. They were of an entirely different quality and substance. You can't just say that it's different so it doesn't count -- it's that very difference that is what I'm praising. Of course you can compare them -- that's how you signify how they are different. (I recognize that tastes vary -- that's inevitable).

It's not that you CAN'T compare apples to oranges. It's that the differences are so many that it's difficult to know where to start.

 

Watchmen and Sandman were written and illustrated - largely - by British creators for a mature audience. Superman and other 'capes' titles are generally American-dominated for a wider audience. They're still mainstream titles - Sandman and Watchmen are two of the most critically acclaimed comics series of all time and are published by one of the world's biggest comics companies - but you can't compare them to American capes titles because they are written and illustrated by people with an entirely different professional path and outlooks, not to mention the audiences are different.

It's like comparing a French-language film (say, Amelie) to an American rom-com (um... You've Got Mail?). Whilst they may share some attributes and themes, they're made for different audiences by different creators and as such there's no level base for comparison.

 

You see, you just compared them. And I don't disagree.
BTW, Neil Gaiman is an American now lol. So he made his choice. Rah Rah, America Rulez! (j/k).

 

I contrasted them, I did not compare them. Contrasting is highlighting the differences (which I did), comparing is highlighting the similarities.

 

Actually, Compare includes contrast. I always thought that 'compare and contrast' was redundant, since It means to note the similarities AND differences.

BTW, it's impossible to note the commonalities between two things without noting the differences. Unless two things are exactly alike, it's impossible.

 

Nothing's impossible.

 

It's intrinsic to the comparison. If I say that both an orange and an apple are fruit, that compares it to all things that are not fruit, but the fact that I had to state a commonality directly implies that there are differences. You would never say that an apple and an apple are both fruit.

 

They're both fruit, but that's where the similarity ends.

 

I think there may be a difference in the definition of the word for different English speaking nations.

I rarely use those words for that reason alone. (I sometimes use compare, but I tend towards using "Opposed" rather than "Contrasted".)

For example, "I like apples opposed to oranges". That sounds more fluent to myself than "I like apples contrasted to oranges".

And just to be an ass, I must point out that some things are very much impossible. Getting the truth from a politician for example.

 

BTW, I live in Macintosh Apple country. When my family moved here (I was about 5 years old or so), there were Apple orchards all over the place. Nowadays there are very few if any left, and they are small. Ask me to compare apples to oranges, and I can do so with ease. I love Macintosh apples, which are always good, but you don't see them around as much. Oranges, on the other hand, are a lot less consistent in quality and have been becoming less sweet and tasty in recent years. I'm not sure why. If I have to compare them, I'd say I like Apples better than Oranges. I haven't always, but nowadays, it's a definite preference. Apples, particularly New York Macintosh Apples, are always tasty, Oranges are not.

/edit -- In general, when people say 'you can't compare two things', what they are saying is that you can't say that one thing is better than another. Of course you can. I just did.

 

Althea, you did not compare them intentionally.

As you said, you contrasted them, which means highlighting the differences. But as soon as you highlight all the differences, it becomes clear what the similarities are even if we don't see the exact details. Which is why contrasting something can result in comparing it too.

But really, it doesn't matter if you did. The point you were trying to make is that it's impossible to compare things which are too different accurately and objectively, and you managed to show this point with none of us disagreeing with your words on that particular matter (well, there's the things Haldurson is saying, but so far I don't see him talking about the exact same thing but rather about something merely closely related).

But it is a personal comparison, one that is subjective due to your bias. Not that it means you can't make it (because you can), but it is not the sort of comparison Althea was talking about (as you have probably noticed).

You like apples more because in your past you had access to them and always found them good due to the fact that they were cultivated locally, as opposed to oranges which were imported from various places and thus varied in taste. The taste which, mentioning it now, changed over time due to the changes in climate and the fact that subsequently, trying to keep the same quality and taste of the fruit would result in raising the prices which is not optimal for people who cultivate oranges. Though it's possible to make them somewhat sweeter if you let them lay around in the sun for a day or two, but most people don't have the patience to just let their fruit lie on a patio or balcony.

Also, your act of capitalising "Apple", "Orange" and "Macintosh" made it a bit confusing to get through the whole thing at first. I'm pretty sure you are aware of the reason so I'm just mentioning it.

 

I recently saw "Beasts of the Southern Wild", and I definitely recommend it. It's a movie that I'd been wanting to see for quite a while, and I finally got around to it.

This is a kind of movie that doesn't get made all that often, about people living with the kind of poverty that often gets ignored or that people pretend doesn't exist. The whole story is told from the point of view of a six-year-old girl named Hushpuppy who lives with her alcoholic father in a home that looks like it's made from junk found in a scrapyard in the Louisiana delta on the wrong side of the levies. Her relationship with her dad is a complicated one, and the film shows that. He's not a good father by most standards, but possibly, he's about as good a father as he could be given the circumstances.

Anyway, this was a terrific movie, and I highly recommend it.

 

While many good movies have been made in the past 5 years none of them are worth the moral implications of doing something that aids the MPAA and the organizations it represents, not after they came so close to getting SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA passed.

However if you're in some place like Hong Kong where bootleg movies are at least tacitly legal I recommend The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

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In regard to the apples and oranges debate earlier in this thread, this may be useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_Phylogenics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA-DNA_hybridization

 

The MPAA is a trade association, and they don't make the movies, nor do they make a profit from those movies (least not directly). It's very similar to the relationship between a senior citizen and the AARP. Seniors can pay into the AARP, but if you don't like what the AARP is doing, you don't kick your grandma to get back at them. In any case, buying bootleg videos is criminal, and the message you send is kind of bass-ackwards. The people who lose out first by buying bootlegs is not the lobbyists and lawyers in the MPAA. Your ticket money and rental fees don't pay their salaries.

 

Not directly...

 

Well, it's a bit older than 5 years (it's just about 15 years old, actually). But I wanted to talk about it since it's one of my favorite fantasy films, and I just watched it again for like the 4th or 5th time.

I think that one of the reasons why I so strongly relate to the film and why hits close to home is that I was a child of the '60s. I was born in 1960, and can remember what television was like then. Everything was changing, and what the movie really is about is change. In the movie, Toby Maguire plays a nerdy teenager with a twin sister (played by Reese Witherspoon) raised by a single mother (Jane Kaczmarek) who's kind of a wreck (but who isn't)? He escapes his realtiy through this old television show called "Pleasantville" which is modeled after some of the black and white shows I used to watch as well as a young kid (for example "Father Knows Best"). He just loves the show so much that he knows all of the stories and can recite the lines from each episode, and so on.

Anwyay, without spoiling too much, it's about what happens when two modern teens (Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) get sucked into the world of "Pleasantville", and what happens when "Pleasantville" starts to change as a result. It helps maybe to know what television (and the world) was like and how it was changing and why, back in the 60s and 70s. And I started to tell you a bit about it, but then I decided it's better if you just see the movie and decide for yourself what it all means. The film works on several different levels at the same time, as a metaphor or as a straight-forward fantasy. Just watch it. It's funny and it's charming and it has a great cast, and maybe it will make you think.

 

So are you saying that you would kick your Grandma? (J/k).

 

We will destroy this thread if we keep talking about the MPAA. That said, I agree they are less useful than a bag of rocks. But they are used the exact same way. They *DO* get money donated from all major movie and television studios in America, so that much is at least debatable. They are involved in political movements that are a direct and very insulting step backward for free society. But again, we should focus on speaking of movies here. We can make a thread to discuss political organizations like this, but any thread that does will almost instantly be locked to keep this from turning sour.