avnermoriarti
Badass
Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
Posts: 2,388
Likes: 1,270
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Post by avnermoriarti on Jun 24, 2019 7:04:47 GMT
Not exactly under 5 but between that and 6:
Suburbicon Downsizing The Beach Bum
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 24, 2019 17:11:19 GMT
IMDb: 4.8/10 Dark Obsession aka Diamond Skulls (1989) Plot: A group of young rich British guardsmen cover up a hit-and-run. Released as NC-17 in America, praised by Ebert, NYT etc - an arguable gem hidden on Amazon Prime in VHS quality. I’d go close to 7/10 - it’s a little unfocused and the editing is rough, but a very good script in terms of dialogue and themes. Nick Broomfield the director said: “A great cast, producer, writer, cinematographer… but I think I screwed it up.” He shouldn’t be so tough on himself. The trouble is he (a documentary filmmaker) forgoes a tighter psychological study of the protagonist Gabriel Byrne - whose degenerating, depraved, envious mind is only to some degree our study. His predominant interest is in the cold self-governed aristocratic world - the rituals, the mundane details, the moral stagnancy. We get some great marginalia like how a barber cuts hair with just a comb and a candle, as if scissors and their little violent snips are below its elite members heads. The movie seems bothered by actually having to address the plot, it staggers some thrills that should come earlier, such as a damning anonymous letter. Reminded me of Phantom Thread between its tone, its coiled, perverse romantic ideas, and upper-class spaces - just checked and both filmed in London and North Yorkshire! Also the score by my least fav composer Hans Zimmer is very good at times hallucinatory.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 27, 2019 23:27:07 GMT
I don't think it's very good but since TCM for some reason plays it all the time -- Final Exam (1981) 4.7 on IMDb, I'd go slightly higher. College slasher, takes its time exploring the campus and characters, some mind-blowing dated aspects which also kind of work to highlight the prank prone jocks and their disregard towards violence. Awful performances that give it the tone of satire - note the director's follow-up is an out and out vampire comedy that's actually pretty wittty called My Best Friend is a Vampire. But this, in the stretch, is sort of chilling partly bc the killer is given no identity and no motive. It's a sudden spree, and the final shot of the final girl is upsetting - what just happened? sort of thing.
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Post by getclutch on Jul 29, 2019 14:31:53 GMT
Raise the Titanic. It's just not a movie that ever comes up in conversation these days.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 2, 2020 1:46:32 GMT
Ghosts of Mars (2001) Rated 4.9 on IMDb, 21% on RT (over 100 critics). eyebrowmorroco mentioned this in the first post. I’d go 6.5 or so. Considered by some to be one of worst movies ever made, and I believed them - even as a big Carpenter fan, I’ve stayed away. But this is much better than just bad and very entertaining if you're in the right mood. And before I defend it , know Ebert and Rosenbaum both praised it too. This is fundamentally Carpenter - another under-siege horror-action, including evil transference and a derangement of the senses, but with goth-ghost Mad Max esque martians as villains, the unfazed violence of a video game (JC is a big gamer in real life), an unmistakably schlocky, heightened artificiality to its tone and design (two words: leather jackets), campy one-liners, and a ridiculous heavy metal score…… that's a dangerous lot, and Carpenter commits to it - as Ebert puts it, “delivers on its chosen level.” Especially benefits in the structure and editing: the framing device could excuse the inside mission’s artifice (we know there’s told at least one crucial lie), the pacing is kept quick, and the constant dissolves (usually a pet peeve) serve here to compound the action with a fever-dream absurdity. The cast hits their marks - Ice Cube as a prisoner named Desolation, Pam Grier as a lesbian general, Jason Statham as a perv, and a sexy, kickass lead in Natasha Henstridge. Also isn’t entirely empty-brained - key elements include drug addiction and colonialism (“As far as they’re concerned, we’re the invaders”) and the types of people (indigenous, criminals) gov’ts strand and misunderstand. Having said that this is mostly just mindless fun.
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coop032
Full Member
Choose life.
Posts: 657
Likes: 222
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Post by coop032 on Mar 4, 2020 21:52:01 GMT
Harvard Man Freddy Got Fingered Dog Eat Dog Black and White The Island of Dr. Mureau Black Rock Shorts
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 9, 2020 21:28:58 GMT
The kinds of movies rated under 5.0 vary, most are just bad, some are so bad they become peculiarly watchable, some are slightly misunderstood and underrated and at least enjoyable, and some are just head-scratchers bc they're genuinely good and worth seeing ...... like Kitten with a Whip (1964) - 4.8 on IMDb but all around well-made - visuals have the harsh lighting of a noir, it's tightly edited, with a jazzy score, a dynamite, seductive, teasing, malicious Ann Margret, and goes about its themes cleverly, right to the subtle and unforgettable ending note. 7/10 around there, could go up on rewatch. Then again, I personally love the psycho-interloper type movie. One that's better than the damning "cheesy and cliche" pans, Turbulence (1997) 4.9 on IMDb, but I'd go 6/10. Sort of Die Hard 2 meets Con Air, with a lot of xmas light bokeh.... it isn’t convincing for a second but it isn’t really trying to be either and Liotta’s perf is a Cage-esque wig-out, some of which has to be seen to be believed. Mostly worthy to entertain Liotta fans.... And lastly, the so-bad-you-cant-look-away movie: Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), 3.7 on IMDb, a jungle sci-fi schtick comedy starring two rip-off club entertainers who parody Martin+Lewis, I watched this very late at night a while ago and it took me months to realize it wasn't a batshit dream I had. Not going to argue with the 3.7 but this is for the Wiseau and Ed Wood school of fans I believe...
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 20, 2020 23:44:56 GMT
Off Beat (1986) - 5.0 on IMDb, a sweet, lightweight romance-comedy that others might find a little more charming than I did, though I enjoyed it, 6/10. Idk how they got the cast/crew: next to the leads Judge Reinhold and Meg Tilly (who I usually like! but here she gives an awkwardly dim perf) - Joe Mantegna, Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, Fred Gwynne who are all funny. The great Dede Allen edited right after finishing Breakfast Club, Carlo Di Palma shot it between Hannah and Her Sisters and Radio Days. Oddly, some of this just plays as a parody of Coppola/Lumet - the first scene directly lifts from The Conversation, and the second scene is right outta You're a Big Boy Now, there's a Dog Day Afternoon reference later, etc. Also.... There's an appeal for those who like NYC set movies, with its use of famous locations, Central Park, Times Square, NY Public Library, Katz Deli....
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speeders
Based
Posts: 4,093
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Post by speeders on Mar 21, 2020 11:38:01 GMT
It's not under but Dark Water (2005) has a 5.6 rating on IMDb and has a terrible rep but I absolutely love it. Found it extremely moving and incredibly acted by Jennifer Connelly and a very strong ensemble cast. Not to mention an amazing Angelo Badalamenti score.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 1, 2020 19:41:48 GMT
Salt and Fire (2016) - 4.2 on IMDb, 14% RT audience score. "A tablet, a toy, and a spoon." Expect the worst, know that it's Herzog eschewing the eco-thriller for an absurd meditative-comedy, and you may enjoy it like I did. With dialogue of nonsense and non-sequiturs, a parrot monologue, hostage selfies, Gael Garcia Bernal with bowel troubles, and sending a methuselah of champagne on an electric wheelchair into the salt-flat abyss, like Encounter at the End of the World's dissenting penguin ("But why?" Herzog asked), we know we're watching something off-center and strange, where the apocalyptic sits and waits near the criminal ego, vast emptiness, and general stupidity. Maybe it doesn't all work, it's not very good to be honest, and some of the performance are amateur like the lead and Michael Shannon's feigned-disabled sidekick with steampunk eyewear. Still, it isn't short of details (fingerprints on a dusted lamp, the blind board game), has some striking locations of course, and I found myself laughing..... There's an early airport scene of the three scientists lost at the luggage belt and in its cutting and spurts of score it already felt like an odd comedy to me, but maybe that's just me...
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Post by dadsburgers on Jul 1, 2020 23:48:33 GMT
Baby Geniuses Cats Jaws: The Revenge The Emoji Movie The Neverending Story III The Adventures of Pluto Nash
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 2, 2020 6:06:11 GMT
Thunderpants (2002)!!!
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Post by JangoB on Jul 2, 2020 16:34:32 GMT
Just finished watching Spike Lee's "Red Hook Summer" which has an even 5 on IMDb. A shame that it does because it's a very good film. Very underseen so I'd definitely recommend it to Lee's fans.
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Post by Mattsby on May 9, 2022 19:19:27 GMT
Dear Mr. Wonderful (1982) - 4.4 on IMDb. Recently added to RareFilmm in great quality and the original 116min length. For how long, it's only been available in horrible quality and crammed, varying versions... 87m, or 100m. It's an odd, forgotten movie, and an unlikely German production. From the producer of Satantango! Shot by the brilliant Michael Ballhaus, his first English language movie I believe, coming off Fassbinder, and he went right from this to Baby It's You with John Sayles and then After Hours with Scorsese. Speaking of Marty, this is filled with faces we know from his movies.... Paul Herman, Frank Vincent, raspy Joe Rigano. But it stars and feels quite written by Joe Pesci who filmed it while Raging Bull was still in theaters. He plays a disillusioned lounge singer at a rinky dink bowling alley in Jersey City. I think it works really well as a character study of a man with a dream and bland pride, and the ways we have to make ourselves feel worthy of what we are not. "People? You need people?" The only review I can find on release is Janet Maslin of NYT.... "Even when it drifts it does so in intriguing ways." She says the movie has "an odd but genuine immediacy" and that Pesci is "credible and touching." I can agree with all of that and I'd rate it 7/10 or more maybe bc it's a gem, very neglected and pretty underrated. I don't get why it'd have a 4.4. I like how the movie takes its time and it reminded me of The King of Marvin Gardens a bit. Or as one Letterboxder put it... "a slowed down, melancholy Uncut Gems."
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Post by Mattsby on May 16, 2022 17:51:51 GMT
We're No Animals (2017) - 4.9 on IMDb. It was January 2017... I went on Netflix and saw Pacino's face on a poster of this "new" movie. Where the hell did it come from? It was filmed in early 2011 in South America, cowritten and starring Cusack and his real-life lawyer (!??). It was released without any press (at least in the US) and it was gone from the streamer a few months later. So it remains sort of unreleased. I have a theory Cusack was approached to do some ho hum international thriller and instead of turning it down, fueled by his Hollywood dismay he got some of his friends to make a movie about them NOT making the movie. It's a slightly satiric and revealing view of artists circling and avoiding their ideas, their motives.... it's a little Cassavetes-esque in its intuitive, very messy structure..... at least one sequence seems lifted right from Husbands. It's also interestingly informed by Argentina, questioning its cultural legacy... as Cusack steeps into his own ego-raffled, fading legacy as a movie star. Pacino plays his distracted agent... his last scene is a comedic highlight.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 16, 2022 18:36:01 GMT
We're No Animals (2017) - 4.9 on IMDb. It was January 2017... I went on Netflix and saw Pacino's face on a poster of this "new" movie. Where the hell did it come from? It was filmed in early 2011 in South America, cowritten and starring Cusack and his real-life lawyer (!??). It was released without any press (at least in the US) and it was gone from the streamer a few months later. So it remains sort of unreleased. I have a theory Cusack was approached to do some ho hum international thriller and instead of turning it down, fueled by his Hollywood dismay he got some of his friends to make a movie about them NOT making the movie. It's a slightly satiric and revealing view of artists circling and avoiding their ideas, their motives.... it's a little Cassavetes-esque in its intuitive, very messy structure..... at least one sequence seems lifted right from Husbands. It's also interestingly informed by Argentina, questioning its cultural legacy... as Cusack steeps into his own ego-raffled, fading legacy as a movie star. Pacino plays his distracted agent... his last scene is a comedic highlight. I might be remebering this wrong but I think this is the movie where you see a copy of China Doll (maybe?) - in this scene above (?) - though that doesn't match the 2011 shooting date.......I could be wrong........
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Post by Mattsby on May 16, 2022 18:49:08 GMT
I might be remebering this wrong but I think this is the movie where you see a copy of China Doll (maybe?) - in this scene above (?) - though that doesn't match the 2011 shooting date.......I could be wrong........ I'm not sure we see China Doll but there's a MAMET sign behind him thru most of the scene. There's also a later scene where he reads passages from a Picasso book to Cusack and I'm petty sure it's actually just Pacino out of character.
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tep
Full Member
formerly known as Ban
Posts: 577
Likes: 149
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Post by tep on May 21, 2022 17:56:44 GMT
Simon Says (2006) is super fun imo
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Post by Martin Stett on Nov 15, 2022 5:28:25 GMT
I just watched and LOVED Mickey Reece's Agnes, sitting comfortably in Shitsville with a 4.0 rating (with a considerably higher - but still shit - 2.6 on Letterboxd). I wrote more on a dedicated thread that it is likely nobody else will ever post in, but I dug this movie's wildly WEIRD comedic style and intelligently observed questions of faith. I totally understand WHY this movie has such negative scores, but I adore the movie for those same reasons. Pretty sure this will make my top ten first viewings at the end of the year.
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Post by Martin Stett on Nov 15, 2022 5:45:51 GMT
Come to think of it, Abel Ferrara's Siberia is also a lot of fun, sitting at 4.8
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Post by popperthekungfudragn on Nov 15, 2022 12:19:58 GMT
These are mostly nostalgic choices, but I love them. Not sure if others would though.
Anyway:
Suburban Commando (1991) Collision Course (1989) Shootfighter II (1996) College Kickboxers (1991) Bloodfist (1989) Bloodfist II (1990) Bloodfist IV: Die Trying (1992) Blackbelt (1992) Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor (1994) Double Dragon (1994) Carpool (1996) The Room (2003) Squirm (1976) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) Heroes Stand Alone (1989)
And from your list I liked Super Mario Bros., Jason Takes Manhattan, and Texas Chainsaw 3D
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 15, 2022 14:11:38 GMT
Skinamarink (2022) - 4.6 atm on IMDB- bet that goes waaaaaaaaaaay up maybe (?).........it's 100% on RT........yeah that sounds about right I guess .........love it or hate it ......experimental, Art-horror game changer that is going to be ripped off a lot over the next 20 years I bet .........will cause a lot of fights, arguments of what makes a movie "a movie" and many appointments to therapists to deal with suppressed childhood trauma I reckon....reviewed by me recently in Skinanarink thread I Blame Society (2020) Divisive, amateurish horror (not really)-comedy (very much so) - that depends how inside baseball you are with movies, and genre tropes.......I like it a whole lot and it's got a bunch of blink and you'll miss them one-liners.......5.4 IMDB, 90% RT ........reviewed by me in the October Horror Thread 2022
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Post by Mattsby on Nov 15, 2022 20:22:33 GMT
I forgot to drop all the 5-and-unders I enjoyed in 2021 and recently, besides my two posts from this year.... Month late but a lot of horror, of course. The Undead (1957) - 4.6 - from Corman's breakout year imo (one of nine films; take that, Fassbinder!), a microwaved production - shot in six days in a converted supermarket - but I think the peanut budget gives it a community-theater fun, and it's pretty thematically tricky and well-played by the cast. Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory (1961) 4.8 - almost works as a b-movie, a goofy Italian production but specific precursor to sorority slashers and the giallo... starring Barbara Lass (Polanski's then wife). Ghost Keeper (1981) - 5.0 - sort of Symptoms meets Straw Dogs, a half-realized plot of Canadian lores, but forget the plot, it's that damn lodge, all snowed-in, candlelit, freaks afoot. Cutting Class (1989) - 4.5 - very underrated, even baby Brad Pitt is actually good in it... pre-Scream, a scheming teen slasher satire? Lotta red herrings and ridiculous props. The director's only film but he produced-cowrote Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) - 3.8 - where I side with Scorsese and Kael that it's quite good (why such vitriol?) and quite visionary, even terrifying at times. Love is a Gun (1994) - 4.9 - lotta Eric Roberts I could mention (Slow Burn, Dark Angel, Sensation, etc) but this one illuminates why Cage flans often find themselves in ERob's bakery. His perf is campy, possessed, a glitching rush that raids this Lynchian Memento. Between Worlds (2018) - 4.0 - maybe I've mentioned this too much lately, bc it's not that good...but it is? If Cage having sex with his clairvoyant lover's daughter bc she's inhabiting the soul of his dead ex-wife while reading a book of poetry written by (squints) Nicolas Cage...doesn't make you laugh then ignore this one. 2.0 on Letterboxd? It can't find a fanbase anywhere it seems. Also a rare movie for this thread that's fem-helmed (I Blame Society is as well). // Okay folks, we're leveling up. Bandie (1978) - 4.8 - Netflix has had this bonkers Bollywood pic up for years. It might be the most bizarre, funniest, obscure movie on there. Only 36 votes on IMDb, only 9 views on Lbox ....To me, this should have monthly screenings and The Room-esque cult, but bigger, bc it's so much better than The Room. Twixt (2011) - 4.7 - a Coppola nightmare, a tintinnabulation on the writer's tour, torments, topics. If you think it ticky-tacky, just consider it Tales from the Crypt with digital digs (a hack's look). Flowing with Poe, including the big-browed man himself, it's a genre conversation, and Tom Waits narrated! Bruce Dern is fuzzy and hilarious as the bored sheriff longing to fictionalize the local lurid. One of Val Kilmer's career best perfs - very funny, fallen. Coppola was treated badly here...... it's a full circle film, right back at his schlocky Corman-budget origins, referencing his career but also, heartbreakingly, negotiating with his life's greatest tragedy... an event he places within a dream within a dream.
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Post by Mattsby on Nov 15, 2022 20:43:20 GMT
Really liked this. Like a surprising amount, and right away - the opening credits are terrifically done. It has a really lived-in, diner-coffee Southern feel and a convincing group of actors (besides the arrogant, annoying male lead). Some gnarly practical fx too. "Strangest thing--the lines are back up but nobody is answering their damn phone!"
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