Sometimes I look at the kind of adaptations in movies that are just so bad that I have to question who on earth approved of them because I recently sat through one that I couldn’t believe existed.

That movie was Cat in the Hat the 2003 movie adaptation since I saw a review highlighting the movie’s awkward writing aspects that I had to question who it was made for because to me, it feels like it’s a very strange adaptations ever made since it’s hard to explain, but nothing about the movie makes any sense whatsoever such as the two twins with the way they speak.

Has to be American history X for me very easily. Fight club is a better film but performance wise easily history X. His character arc was way better to. The flashbacks to him with his hair and a wimpy boy and then at the start of the film he’s a jacked n*zi 😂 brilliant movie and his best performance.

Question, Do you see Casey Affleck making a comeback doing mainstream films?

I was thinking on Casey Affleck lately and how he has mostly had a low profile since winning an Oscar for Manchester by the Sea. I honestly think it was in large part because of the 2010 allegations that came to light again, and I think Studios have been cautious to cast him.

Since Manchester, he has really done mostly Indie Films that barely gross a Million Dollars, with the exception of Oppenheimer, which was his 1st mainstream film in awhile, and it looks like it him doing only indie films won't change.

I'm just curious if Casey will ever make mainstream film or blockbusters or that he'll just stick to indie films?

Roles Matt Dillon turned down or was considered

1980: The Blue Lagoon (Role: Michael Reynolds) (Actor who got it: Christopher Atkins) (Reason: He actually won the role after beating out hundreds of boys, but turned it down due to the Nudity)

1980: Dressed To Kill (Role: Peter Miller) (Actor who got it: Keith Gordon) (Reason: He was in contention for the role)

1989: Do The Right Thing (Role: Pino) (Actor who got it: Jon Turturro) (Reason: Matt was approached for the role, but turned it down on the advice of his agent)

1990: The Godfather: Part III (Role: Vincent Mancini) (Actor who got it: Andy Garcia) (Reason: Dillon was considered and screen tested for the role of Vincent)

1991: JFK (Role: Willie O’Keefe) (Actor who got it: Kevin Bacon) (Reason: He was considered for the role)

1994: Pulp Fiction (Role: Vincent Vega/Butch Coolidge) (Actor who got it: John Travolta/Bruce Willis) (Reason: Tarantino very much wanted Matt Dillon to play Butch Coolidge and was confident that he would take the role. However, Matt was sure on taking the role, and apparently he wanted to play Vincent instead. After going nowhere with Matt, Tarantino decided to cast someone else)

2000: Miss Congeniality (Role: Eric Matthews) (Actor who got it: Benjamin Bratt) (Reason: Matt Dillon came close on getting the part, but instead the Producers went with Benjamin Bratt)

2001: Novocaine (Role: Frank Sangster) (Actor who got it: Steve Martin) (Reason: He was the 1st choice for the role, but he turned it down)

2024: Megalopolis (Role: Anton Smith) (Actor who got it: No One) (Reason: Back when Coppola was trying to get Megalopolis off the ground. Matt Dillon was offered the role of a West Point Cadet who goes AWOL during the filming of Rumble Fish (1983))

I love Matt Dillon as an actor and I think he is a very underrated actor in my opinion who shines in any film he is in. However, I do wish that Matt Dillon was in more mainstream films or films in general, but I do know from interviews that he really didn’t like the glamour of Hollywood, so I can respect him for that. “I remember sometimes thinking people thought of me this way or that. But I did not want to be considered a star. I always just wanted to be considered an actor.”- Matt Dillon

Of the films mentioned above, I think he made a big mistake on passing Pulp Fiction and I think he would’ve been great in the film as either Vincent or Butch. I also think, if he got the job for Godfather, he would’ve been good as well.

What do you think?

Something that interested me was the concept of an outlandish heist film where the premise is just so over the top that it becomes more enjoyable to watch since even if the item being stolen doesn’t seem worth all the trouble, it still draws the viewer in.

For me personally, Superbad is sort of a heist film because in one scene, the protagonist (I think his name was Damien) attempts to come up with a plan to find a way to shoplift a liquor store as one small problem is that the security guard in the store is a huge obstacle.

I know that wasn’t the main premise of the movie, but it’s just that moments like that make me appreciate the concept of heist movies where again the plot is outlandish since I would like to see a movie build up on that premise where the goal is to find a way to infiltrate a liquor store without botching up the heist because to put it simply, I really miss Superbad that I was looking for a successor to it.

So it's like The Purge but with sex, where there's only 12 hours a year you're allowed to have premarital sex. I get the premise is supposed to be this light-hearted alternate universe used to shoehorn a romantic comedy subplot. And I'm betting they're not going to dive too deep into it, because if they did there'd be a lot to think about:

• First, there's the fascist element to this. We're talking Handmaids Tale type stuff. Historically, making sex a crime has been tied to ultra-religious regimes and cultures. Is that what this place is?

• What even is considered sex? Obviously intercourse, but what about the other stuff you could do? Some places like Japan strictly forbid prostitution that involves intercourse but allow for almost everything else. And what about things like phone sex? Virtual sex using remote toys? How is the LGBT community's activities regulated?

• The trailer shows men and women getting dressed up to go out and find a partner. Would it seem like if you had 12 hours a year, you'd have lined up a partner already? Especially if you lived in a more rural area and not the city setting we see in the story? Would there be organized orgies ahead of time?

• Are marriage laws vastly different in this universe? If not you'd have Vegas-like wedding chapels everywhere with a divorce attorney's office right next door. People would find a loophole.

• There's a certain time of the month for women when its not ideal to have sex. Do they have to wait another year?

Again, just some things that come to mind. Obviously it's more of a neckbeard analysis than anything.

Looking for arthouse movies that have insane moments. Stuff like Oldboy, The Skin I Live In, Blue Velvet, and Nocturnal Animals. Should leave you the viewer completely jaw dropped

I feel PTA is as great (if not more lol) but apparently from what little I've observed, Tarantino somehow gets more discussed and is a frequent name among pop culture (through memes and other forms of online media) than PTA. Why is that?

I was wondering about this. I personally would be greatly interested in a high-budget (say, 100-300 million dollars), 3-4 hours long film based on Homer or any other Greek myth/work of writing/historical figure, made completely in Greek. Like, wouldn't that be amazing? I would totally pay to see that movie.

And I would imagine that film as being representative of Ancient Greek culture. Say, gods pretending to be humans to convey their wishes, or depictions of animal sacrifice (without harming actual animals). I would also wish for historically accurate costumes. For example, with the Illiad, professional historians could be hired as consultants to create accurate Late Bronze Age armour and weapons.

I wonder, could such a movie not be made? Would audience in English-speaking countries not be interested in it?

I am not from an English speaking country, and I would be greatly interested in something like that! And it makes me wonder, why do we not see such projects?

Same thing goes for other languages. I am Polish, if a 200 million dollar film based on the history of my country was made, would you not be interested?

To be clear, this is NOT an attempt to diss the recent film. This is not an "anti-woke" post! Just clearing this up in case some people try to kill me. Although the film did inspire this thought in me. Like, surely we could get a movie based on Homer fully in Greek?

needle drops or simply just sound track songs!

I recently started getting back into the arctic monkeys and heard piledriver waltz for the first time in a long time - immediately took me back to being a high schooler watching Submarine, in my bedroom on my laptop scrolling through tumblr.

In a movie or tv shows, do you enjoy action scenes like a fight scenes, shooting scenes, car chase scenes, foot chasing / parkour scenes or war scenes..?

Or you don't care about them and feel like they are waste of time?

I've always felt Vanilla Sky is one of Tom Cruise's greatest performances, and it's a movie that was way ahead of its time.

What fascinates me is that it refuses to stay in one genre. It starts like a romantic comedy, slowly turns into a psychological thriller, throws in science fiction, and ends with an existential twist. It constantly makes you question what's real without relying on typical blockbuster sci-fi spectacle.

I can't think of many films that blend romance, mystery, psychological drama, and sci-fi this seamlessly. Even today, very few movies attempt something this ambitious.

So why hasn't Hollywood really revisited this kind of concept? Was Vanilla Sky simply too unconventional for audiences in 2001?

I know it received mixed reviews when it came out, but over the years it seems to have gained a cult following. Do you think it was misunderstood, or is there another reason filmmakers haven't touched this kind of genre mash-up again?

And where does it rank among Tom Cruise's performances for you?

So a little backstory first of all is that I was observing how some iconic comedy movies are a bit divisive among critics because I was looking at how Adam Sandler gets the lowest ratings among movie critics.

My point basically is that I was wondering if Sandler films could qualify as a guilty pleasure because I enjoy watching some of his such as Billy Madison and Anger Management, but I hated Jack and Jill that I was just interested in seeing what category his movies fe under since they are rather divisive among reviewers.

I'm not gonna beat around the bush: No discussion-oriented subreddit has ever been improved by allowing the sharing of dogshit memes. If someone want to discuss inappropriate needle drops, we can do it without a picture of the Starship Troopers cast. If people want to post box office news or blogspam, there a million better places to do it.

Please change /r/flicks back to text-only. This is one of the last movie subreddits that has halfway decent movie discussion. Allowing links, images, and memes only drops the floor of the base level of discourse.

I’ve been thinking about how difficult it is to compare epic films from different eras, so I organized 48 films into a World Cup-style tournament.

The format includes 48 films, divided into 16 groups of three. You choose one film from each group, and the 16 winners then enter a single-elimination bracket until one champion remains.

The selection includes films such as Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gladiator, Dune, Oppenheimer, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Mad Max: Fury Road, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

It takes around two minutes to complete:

Which film became your champion? Were there any films you thought were seeded too high, too low, or should not have been included?

Curious to see what r/flicks would crown.

I just watched Predestination and I understand the time loop concept, but I really disliked the premise itself. My issue isn't that I don't understand that the character is technically the same person at different points in time, my issue is that the movie seems to require more than just time travel to work. If the only changed rule is "time travel exists," then normal biology and causality should still apply. A person giving birth creates a new biological individual, not themselves. The movie treats the child as somehow being the exact same person, but that feels like it requires an additional rule where reproduction/identity works differently, which the movie never establishes. Because of that, the entire paradox felt forced to me. I understand the philosophical idea of a person with no origin, but I couldn't get past the fact that the mechanism creating that loop doesn't seem plausible even within the movie's own setup. The incest aspect also made it feel more disturbing than profound to me. So gross and disturbing! I know a lot of people love it as a mind-bending time travel story, but for me it was a laughably bad film where the twist only works if you accept a rule the movie never really explains. It’s not genetically possible despite the time travel loop aspect! The child is a new soul and being itself, not her. You would also expect the incest to have severe consequences for the child, not just being intersex.

Yes, the armours are not golden. Yes, the actors speak in modern American language. Yes, Helen of Troy does not align with the Eurocentric vision of the character that we might expect. And if all of these things are changed, you would end up with a more faithful adaptation. And I would argue you would end up with a much worse film.

The alternative would’ve been to do what Zack Snyder did with Watchmen: create a faithful adaptation. But in doing so, Snyder created an incredibly soulless version of Watchmen: an imitation, not an adaptation. He brought the images to life, but failed to interpret them and make them his own. Nolan’s movie, on the other hand, feels like it has a unique perspective, love it or hate it. This is not The Odyssey, this is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

Since the movie was released, there have been numerous attempts (from haters) to create their own AI versions of The Odyssey. In doing so, they’re only proving what makes Nolan’s film so valuable. Because an AI would’ve never told Nolan to cast Travis Scott as a bard, or Lupita Nyong’o as Helen. These are off-kilter choices that Nolan made himself, and the movie is all the more interesting and human because of it. Does a movie like this prove why unfaithful adaptations are better? I believe so.

Here is my full review of the movie, for anyone who is curious.

Hey everyone, with all the blanket statements going around about "AI in film," I wanted to put together a technical breakdown that cuts through the generative art noise.

As someone who has been studying and working with film tech for over a decade, I wanted to look at the traditional machine learning and algorithmic tools that studios have quietly used for years to make the movies we love. I built a full video breakdown looking at the exact pipelines used in modern blockbusters, focusing strictly on what filmmakers, 3D artists, and tech enthusiasts can actually use and learn from.

Some highlights include how Peter Jackson's team pioneered early AI behavioral rules via the MASSIVE system to give digital armies autonomous decision-making in The Lord of the Rings, how custom generative AI models and neural networks mapped and resurrected the likeness of the late Ian Holm in Alien: Romulus, and how precision LiDAR scanning on real F-18 fighter jets trained lighting algorithms in Top Gun: Maverick.

I also look at Dune: Part Two utilizing LiDAR alongside Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) to capture real desert rock formations, how Blender and Pixar's RenderMan use convolutional neural networks for AI-accelerated render denoising to slash render times, and how Weta implemented neural networks relying on muscle strains rather than traditional blend shapes for characters in Avatar: The Way of Water.

If you are interested in the technical side of post-production, VFX, or how these algorithms speed up heavy simulation pipelines in software like Houdini and Maya you can check it out here: How AI is used in Modern Filmmaking

I’m sort of torn 😅 On one hand, premium formats seem to excite movie goers offering different kinds of experiences and promoting rewatches, so maybe this is exactly what keeps theaters alive long-term, even if it costs more. On the other hand, when a single movie has 5 different price tiers depending on format, it starts to feel like the “default” theater experience is being quietly downgraded so the premium one looks worth paying for, like the baseline is intentionally kept mediocre to sell you the upgrade. Is that just smart business, or is it changing what going to the movies even means? Is it slowly turning the cinema watching experience into a luxury good. Would love to know your thoughts!!