Official Movie Review Thread

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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Siege »

I know I'm late to the party (again) but Gravity is the most intense thing I've had the pleasure to watch this year and I loved every second of it. First movie after Avatar that had me convinced that 3D was absolutely worth it, too. See this movie if you haven't, because you're missing out.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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So. Thor: The Dark World.

I was going to be saying "Best Superhero movie so far this year" Thinking I was hilarious because it was the only superhero movie this year so far. Then I realised no, there have been others. Man O Steel, and Iron Mang 3. But I think I may just stand by that statement anyway.

Thor was pretty darn fun. Full of flash and spectacle and wacky hi-jinks. And magical action. A dark elf is trying to destroy the entire universe with a macguffin that ends up in Jane Foster (of course) and Thor must team up with Loki to stop it. And everyone's distrust of loki and his personality leads to some of the best moments in the film.

On the other hand, it does have problems, after Thor's character development in the previous film he's fairly flat in those one. He's pretty much just the hero. There was room for such. He starts the film doing his duty but pining after jane. But afterwards his esire for her and his duty to save the universe never really conflict. He has a rocky relationship with Odin though and it might seem like them resolving that would be the theme. But the last scene throws that out.

Sif/The Warriors Three/heimdall/the villian were all underused and you could have dropped selvig and darcy and not really lose much.

But all in all, yes it was very fun. And while you could make an argument for iron man 3 being a better film. (it did go for characterisation and development though i didn't like it.) It certainly a lot better than man of steel. Like I said; fun. Fun counts for a lot with me.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Invictus »

NEXT MARCH

RUSSEL CROWE IS



NOAH
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Invictus »

So, this is pretty SOTS:

"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Siege »

I don't know what's even going on in that trailer :D.

Looks pretty though!
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Invictus »

I'm cheating here since this film is still soliciting funds on kickstarter, but:

"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

Post by Heretic »

I dunno what the hell I just saw.

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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier which I just saw through means.

In the manner of films, I never saw on the big screen its actually pretty good. Maybe Marvel's best since Avengers.

So Cap is an old time hero trying to come to terms with his place in the modern age and not getting very far with it. Plus he's too shy to ask any girls out which is always a nice thing to see in a hero. He's working for SHIELD and having throw downs with Nuck Fury on the whole freedom vs security issues and is pretty much dead right to come down on the side of freedom because SHIELD is really run by HYDRA who is going to kill a whole lot of people with SHIELD's new hellicarrier/battleships. So Cap stops them by swapping out their targeting info so they shoot each other.

Now in that brief recap. I didn't mention the Winter Soldier at all. That's because he barely figures in the plot at all. He's just a brainwashed dragon that can reasonably stand up to Cap and barely figures beyond that.

There's a lot of good action, mostly gun play and hth and some good character moments for Cap and Black Widow. Given the SHIELD centric nature of the plot, the only Avenger that really feels noticeable by his absence is Hawkeye. Who despite being a highlevel agent doesn't even get a name drop. But then i heard jeremy renner is on the outs with marvel. Likewise Iron Man is mentioned early on but I'd feel happier if Cap and BW had a couple of lines of dialogue bringing up the possibility of hiding in stark tower and why they weren't doing. Avengers tower did seem to be a target in the hydra attack though.

So yeah, pretty good flick which I am telling you about way too late.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Crimson Peak was gorgeous and very well made and everyone was great, a treat for people who love his work and/or who are into period-y marvelously costumed pieces but... in mein opinion Guillermo Del Toro works best when there's nothing holding him back from the fantastic. With Pan's Labyrinth, while the truth or untruth of the supernatural aspects were left to the viewer to decide, Ofelia's perspective allowed the narrative to just indulge in it.

On the other hand, with Crimson Peak... while the drama and the human horror and villainy and suspense and thrills were all well done... in these fields alone, what Guillermo did seems more... subdued. Maybe it's just the story, the plot, it's relatively normal compared to his usual insane fare. He does best in unrestricted spaces, in making wonders and horrors. Blade 2, Pacific Rim, the Hellboy films, feasts of grotesqueries.

I don't know, I can't help but compare it to The Strain. It's still great horror, but Guillermo can be seen making some missteps when portraying what seems to be normalcy, when he does these masquerades his work seems strained (aaah that's why its called The Strain!). Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass, but the fact that I'm befuddled over this whereas in other Del Toro works click instantaneously must mean something.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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... ya know what, this might be fun after all!
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Spectre (spoilers ahead)

Man, this movie was disappointing. Not only was it not as engaging as Skyfall, to me it's actually worse than Quantum of Solace in terms of how engaging the movie actually was. And maybe the worst thing is that it starts off promising. The first shot is glorious, the first half of the movie was mostly fine, but then it's completely let down and ruined by the second half, which is just going through the motions of 'well this is what Bond movies do' and consequently does a bunch of awful trope-y stuff that just makes me feel like somewhere some hack screenwriters were going 'eh that's good enough they'll eat it up anyway' before snorting lines of coke off their sponsored McLarens.

Some of my gripes, in no particular order:

* The car chase in which nothing happens. Seriously this is the worst chase I've seen in a while. Two hypercars drive through the completely deserted streets of Rome whilst Bond makes a phonecall - what the fuck? The entire sequence felt like it was squeezed dry of any potential by the car suppliers, Aston-Martin and McLaren. I could almost hear car executives veto anything interesting the movie makers may have come up with. McLaren: "No, the Aston cannot shake our car." Aston: "No, the McLaren cannot overtake Bond." McLaren: "No, the bad guy cannot have any visible problems handling our billion horsepower monster even on cobblestone roads." Aston: "No you cannot ram, crash or otherwise damage our car." McLaren: "Ok you can set our car on fire but you can't noticeably impair its actual functioning." And so on. I felt like I was watching a car commercial - no scratch that, actual car commercials are often shot in a more engaging fashion. I could put on Top Gear and see more exciting footage of cars like these.

* Speaking of which, the main henchman was criminally underused.

* What the fuck James I know you like the booty calls but why are you getting your rocks off with the target of the world's biggest crime syndicate that's ACTIVELY TRYING TO FUCKING KILL THE PERSON YOU'RE SLEEPING WITH WHILE IN HER HOUSE THAT THEY KNOW SHE'S IN. STICK TO YOUR GUN NO YOUR OTHER GUN. This isn't brash or cool this is just fucking stupid.

* Blofeld's "it was me all along!" No, sorry, not buying it. You did not at any point explain how Da Silva was your guy, or what he did for you, or why you'd even be connected to him. And you didn't tie Quantum to Spectre in any meaningful way either, even though that would've been super easy to do. Come to think of it, what the fuck was his plan anyway? I'm going to have access to intelligence services... Okay, but if you're the mastermind behind Quantum then you already did, or did we conveniently forget how Quantum "had people everywhere", and all the high ranking government officials connected to its network? How the fuck does faster access to a few more computers constitute a diabolical master plan? Super underwhelming. Also his name reveal "i go by Blofeld now" is just a dumb moment. The audience is supposed to GASP, except everybody with any knowledge of the Bond franchise already knew who he was, just like anyone with any knowledge of StarTrek knew Khan was Khan even when the movie makers insisted he wasn't. Also the name obviously means nothing to Bond because he's never heard it before so the entire moment falls totally flat on its face.

* Most of the callbacks fell flat because no appreciable time was taken to set them up. It felt like someone tried to shoehorn in as many references to older Bond movies as possible just to go "there, that's pretty good innit". No. It's not. If I wanted Connery Bond I would go watch his movies instead. Stop the incessant nostalgia already. Be your own goddamn thing.

* Fuck movies trying to tie everything important in the world directly to our protagonist. The villain cannot just be a villain, no, he has to have a deep personal connection to the hero too. Really, fuck everything about this. It makes the world seem small and it makes the villain come off as petty: suddenly all their Machiavellian scheming is just because of daddy issues. Who the fuck comes up with this shit?

* Inconsequential action sequences that don't feel like there are any stakes involved whatsoever abound in this movie. Just two examples: Bond escapes the villain's lair despite the fact that ten minutes ago fucking drills were being shoved into his head. Does this render him in any way more vulnerable? Is this a stressful, tension-laden escape? NOPE! It's five minutes of zero peril, zero effort mook-gunning. For a moment there I forgot whether I was watching James Bond or John Matrix. In fact Matrix is more entertaining because at least Arnold delivers a well-timed one-liner every once in a while. Compare this to the final fight in the hotel in Quantum of Solace - oh dear. Second example: James Bond gunning down Blofeld's helicopter. With a pistol. From a speedboat, at high speed, on the Thames. Jesus Christ come the fuck on. After you spent three fucking movies establishing a reasonably grounded universe you do this to us? Especially since we know that if Blofeld appears in a sequel he'll just escape whatever prison ANYWAY. Just let him get away and be done with it.

* And finally, the rescue-the-girl scene near the end. God fucking dammit. Throughout this movie Madeleine Swann is built up as a competent character and then suddenly near the end she has to walk away because 'oh James I cannot do this anymore' and then promptly gets kidnapped OFF SCREEN just to be reduced to another box on the checklist of random things ancient Bond movies used to have because, well you know, the frankly obscene standards of the time. I can forgive stereotypical sexist boilerplate bullshit in ancient movies because they're relics of a sort, but this is a movie from 20-fucking-15. Why? Seriously, why the fuck is this in the movie? In my mind I can see a fat rich movie CEO stereotype going "okay we did the modern progressive thing, now can we have our damsel rescue scene?" It's not only borderline offensive, it bores me to tears. Here, you know what would've been interesting? If she wasn't there. She just disappeared like she said she was going to, because she knows how her father's 'friends' operate, and so when Blofeld's goons came to snatch here - NOPE, NOT THERE SUCKERS. So Blofeld decides to fuck with James because that's what he does, and James being the sexist pig that he is immediately assumes that she HAS TO BE IN DISTRESS, but she isn't, and so he gets himself into trouble and almost gets his face blown up except she comes to save his ass. THERE BETTER ENDING MAKE A BILLION DOLLARS.

Goddamn it feels like I could go on ranting for a while. Seriously fuck this movie it's the biggest of letdowns. Nothing about its narrative feels genuine or organic. It feels like a committee made a movie by compiling a checklist of gross throwback stuff from ancient movies.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I just got back from Spectre myself and it was just mediocre and boring. I was bored by the car chase. the one with the gadget car. This basically means you've failed as James Bond movie to me.


etA: Wrote that before seeing your review Siege but damn did you nail it. Agree completely.


eta2: The new Q and gadgets simply fail to impress. The car gadgets especially with the blatant welded on switch box and labels. urgh. Stop making his gadgets crappier than the old ones. Skyfall pull the same shit with the huge radio. if you don't want to do them don't do them. that's fine. but don't half-arse them and don't make them the butt of jokes. People like the old movies and their gadgets.

the nanoblood made sense though. subdermal trackeres that can't be cut out.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I really wanted to like this movie, you know.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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If it's any consolation everyone else my office seems to like it.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Booted Vulture wrote:eta2: The new Q and gadgets simply fail to impress. The car gadgets especially with the blatant welded on switch box and labels. urgh. Stop making his gadgets crappier than the old ones.
The car was the worst. Here's a special one-of-a-kind Aston Martin developed exclusively for the nation's most secretive spy-assassins! Wait, what? How does that make any sense? Is the SIS actively trying to advertise the identities of its elite operatives by handing them cars NOBODY ELSE CAN BUY so their enemies will see them coming from a mile away? Also good job hiding the fact that it's got weapons and shit by labeling the buttons right there on the dashboard so every person taking a look at this SPECIAL UNIQUE ASTON MARTIN will immediately see that holy fuck it's weaponized.

GEE I WONDER HOW SPECTRE FOUND OUT BOND WAS AMONGST THEM WHEN HIS SPECIAL SPY CAR WAS PARKED RIGHT THERE OUTSIDE.

the nanoblood made sense though. subdermal trackeres that can't be cut out.
But like everything in the movie it was criminally underused. The movie goes NANOMACHINES SON and then only uses it as a glorified GPS that Q disables for the entire movie so it never factors into anything. BORING.

(PS if they wanted to track Bond why not just stick to that super special phone they went OUT OF THEIR WAY TO HAVE MONEYPENNY GIVE HIM THAT THEY THEN NEVER DID ANYTHING WITH.)


This movie is way too long and yet simultaneously never does anything with any of the half billion potentially interesting elements it sets up.

Nanomachines? Wasted. Henchman? Wasted. C potentially making a reasonable argument that Cold War assassins are chaotic and obsolete? Wasted. Supercar? Wasted. The consequences of a gigantic international criminal cartel being deeply interwoven with espionage agencies? NOPE SON WASTED. Blofeld, Swann, even Mr. White... None of it went anywhere, nobody developed, nothing got done, the entire movie is pretty pictures stretched over a vile empty vacuum of reason and sensibility so regressive and so desperately wanting to be a Connery movie it's nothing short of sad and pathetic.

I've been thinking about my alternative ending - where Swann saves Bond instead of the other way around - and I'm now convinced it's a far more natural end to this movie. It highlights Blofeld's manipulativeness and Bond's issues, and it dovetails perfectly with what the movie has set up earlier. It also doesn't require random easily hotwired boats conveniently left in the basement of a soon-to-be-demolished Secret Service HQ.

Instead, Swann drives a speedboat into said basement to get Bond out. How is this set up? How does she know Bond and Blofeld would be there? FOR GOD'S SAKE SHE'S A PSYCHOLOGIST. A good one, as the movie tells us, and the first one in decades to get a good close look at Blofeld and Bond. It doesn't take her long to determine that Blofeld is - to quote a way better movie - "a full-tilt diva" who wants flowers and parades and a monument built to the skies with his name plastered over it. OF COURSE he'd stage his big theatrical showdown in the MI6 building. And OF COURSE Bond would just waltz in like a fucking idiot the way he always does.

I mean, god, men, am I right?

It's just BETTER. But no, let's do the traditional conservative bullshit thing we've done 20 times already instead. FUCK. Seriously I haven't hated a movie this much since Resident Evil 2. It genuinely feels like it's going out of its way to insult not just fans of the previous three movies, but me personally. Holy shit my blood pressure, I'm gonna have a chai latte.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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The techno-torturing scene and the exploding desert lair was so much worser than Quantum of Solace's desert base. It was just so... ugh. It was all so inconsequential for Bond as a person so... it was thus narratively worthless.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Caught up with MI5: Rogue Nation and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. over the weekend.

Both are far better Bond movies than the Bond movie. I feel U.N.C.L.E. is the superior movie, partly because it has hidden Nazis and Hugh Grant being Hugh Grant, but also because the Mission Impossible movies all seem to do the same thing. The IMF is compromised, the team has to go underground, and then they out-McGuyver the crazy bad guy who wants to blow up the world. They do this very well, admittedly, but that seems the general trend of literally all the MI movies. Also it's that it doesn't take itself too seriously but MI really feels like there's a checklist of 'things Tom Cruise does in every movie' they have to run down: the running scene, the shirtless scene, the motorbike scene, the fighting a taller guy scene...

Still better than Spectre though.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Good job JJ Abrams. 8/10. This is probably the best we could have ever gotten. The producers must have had an extra dose of Ritalin so even the unnecessary JJ Abramsisms and McGuffenings and unnecessary twists and Diet Michael Bay stuff he had in Star Trek and moreso Into Darkness were parsed down, resulting in a pretty Star Warsy Star Wars. (Face it, the good parts of nuTrek were the parts where it Star Warsed.)
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I'm a bitter old man and i don't want TFA to be good.

I can't even explain it.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Jessica Jones, like Mad Max: Fury Road, does not make a spectacle out of the victims' suffering despite having its entire narrative based on said terror. It takes their word for it and shows the significance of the trauma they experienced by... letting the audience see how the characters are affected in their lives and in their stories.

It doesn't dodge the trauma at all, it can be said that its focus on the aftereffects actually explores the matter in a deeper, more thoughtful/meaningful way than, for example, Game of Thrones where the abuse is made into a spectacle, with the lingering views, where it is used to rouse audiences, thrill them with the horror of it.

With Jessica Jones - and also Furiosa and the wives in Fury Road - there is, by all means, no magic bubble protecting beloved characters from any and all depictions of harm (contrary to whatever is in the imaginations of those who decry "oh no politically correct sensitivity," no one is asking for squeaky clean Brady Bunch protagonists!). No way, since the characters there are significantly damaged without being "used" for "shock value," without turning the victims - and their suffering - into trivial plot deviceses to serve another's character growth.

So by discarding "shock value spectacle" and focusing on the trauma and the aftereffects and the difficulties of recovery, failures and successes and all, with depth that actually makes it more realistic and actually quite darker, we get better and more powerful and intelligent works, we get better narratives on the specific subject and better narratives in all aspects.

Recently, there were articles saying that the Game of Thrones' creators and directors and such were going to "tone it down" (I don't think it is a matter of upping or downing tone). Perhaps they can also see these other examples and learn how to do things differently and arguably better.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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I've not watched much of Game of Thrones, but what I've seen always struck me as a little too gleeful in the misery it inflicted -- not so much in the sense of what happens to the characters so much as the way the camera dwells on it in perfectly lit colour corrected full-HD. It feels pornographic.
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I am thinking that once upon a time the shock value "woah look horror upon victims, follow messed up survivors" approach came to be because such subjects were taboo and naturally it became shock value and of course societally the issues were barely being discussed in the mainstream or something, but media/art/shit has to graduate from that and evolve into something else as time goes on, as people and their understanding of the subjects advance.

It's like how, once upon a time, the Magical Negro or Token Heroic Minority Whose Sacrifice Inspires White Savior could've very well been groundbreaking tropes to get people to care about the Na'vi or Mohicans or so on... as things progress and change, these become tired dated cliches and just stagnating and relying on them becomes racist/sexist/whateverist. So it *has* to be replaced, instead of token minorities we now get the fukken Fast and Furious behemoth which is like super-progressive compared to Antvengers: Dawnage of Justultronstice or whatever.
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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Y'All need to go watch Star Trek Beyond.

It's not perfect but it's trying so much more than the previous two to be Star Trek and insert some heart and character into them all.
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Agree one hundred percent. This was the first movie of the rebootverse that felt like genuine Star Trek to me, where Kirk and Spock felt like they actually were Kirk and Spock instead of cosplayers in some kind of young adult fan film imitation. The previous two movies always struck me as looking like Star Trek but wanting to be something else. Beyond has the jokes, the themes and the characters just right. I genuinely loved it. Scotty cowrote one hell of a script.

If I have to have one reservation it's that Idris Elba's talents are kinda wasted, and whenever I see the movie title I always hear Madness' One Step Beyond play in my mind. STAR... TREK... BEYOOOOND!

(Also the visuals for Yorktown are genuinely jawdropping.)
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Re: Official Movie Review Thread

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My only gripe with some bits of Tsar Trek was that some of the fights and the chases, particularly the ones before they freed the captives, were really so fast, the cuts and the low-lighting, kind of made some parts hard to follow.

But yes, I liked how it allowed more characterization between the Enterprise crew.


Speaking of reboots, I found the new Ghostbusters to be really really goods.
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