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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 11, 2020 6:39:24 GMT
A Warning To The Curious : A Ghost Story For Christmas (1972) - ~8/10 TVNever saw this before and it's kind of creepy as hell even though it's mostly just people standing somewhat near you and wind rustling through trees  Has an English folktale vibe not unlike The Wicker Man maybe or UK folk horror of the early 70s - although this is a cheaper TV production.......it evokes that type of thing in a strange way with the past looming over the present.....pretty terrific and free on Youtube..........and short (50 mins).  |
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michael128
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Post by michael128 on Dec 12, 2020 9:47:25 GMT
The Prom. It transformed my life.
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Post by stabcaesar on Dec 12, 2020 15:40:18 GMT
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - Felt really dated. John Candy was great, but he was about the only thing worth watching in it. 6/10.
The Crying Game - The tonal shift from the gripping political thriller/agonising love story of the 100 mintues to the poorly executed melodrama/romantic comedy of the last 20 minutes is disappointing. That said, the central performances are incredible. Especially Miranda Richardson. 7.5/10.
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 12, 2020 17:52:43 GMT
 Today We Kill.... Tomorrow We Die! (1968) 7/10. "No hard feelings - they really don't help." Written by Dario Argento, a streamlined gang-it-up revenger but with quite a lot of witty asides and familiar supporting actor faces like Bud Spencer and William Berger (who'd banjo strum in the next year's Sabata). Most interestingly, the great Tatsuya Nakadai is the villain here and he's confidently cruel. Tarantino is a big fan of this one and he possibly stole flashback style for Kill Bill and wardrobe ideas for his Django. 1968 was a helluva year for Westerns - OUATIW, The Great Silence, The Mercenary, The Scalphunters, The Ruthless Four..... |
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Post by stephen on Dec 13, 2020 1:25:14 GMT
Blow the Man Down. Been catching up on some early 2020 releases, and this one was a fine surprise. Confidently scripted and directed, this female-dominated ensemble is a mighty one, taking on a Coen-esque premise in a sleepy Maine fishing village. Margo Martindale is riveting, Gayle Rankin is superb (look out for both women come end of year as contenders for my lineups), the holy trinity of Annette O'Toole/June Squibb/Marceline Hugot deserved an entire film in their own right, and the two leading ladies acquit themselves very well. My only complaint is that the film feels like it wanted to do much more than it wound up doing. There's a Fargo-length series you could do about the goings-on in this town, and I ached for it.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Dec 13, 2020 21:14:18 GMT
The Assistant. I liked it overall and Garner was quite good, as was McFadden in his one scene. The movie was kinda slight though and felt like something was still missing.
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 14, 2020 2:47:16 GMT
Concrete Plans (2020) - 4.9 on IMDB ........yikes........a mess but more like a ~6 mess not 4.9......this has a lot to like in it particularly the premise - sort of a cross between Straw Dogs and Reservoir Dogs with some scenes of violence staged in way that are pretty memorable......and that doesn't cover the sappy part  Works on a scene by scene level not really believable overall.......Lovely Amber Rose Revah who I've seen in TV work steals the pic in a way yet her character is the most unbelievable part so maybe not....... 
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Post by TerryMontana on Dec 14, 2020 7:19:01 GMT
The Shawshank Redemption - rewatch.
No matter how many times I see it, remains a true masterpiece. Imo slightly better than the book!!
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 15, 2020 2:21:41 GMT
Cheap Thrills (2013) - 6.5-7/10I had never seen this and it's an incredibly mean-spirited and volatile mix of Indecent Proposal/Let's Shit In The Woods/Most Dangerous Game/La Grande Bouffe/an episode of Jackass etc.......it works in ways that Karyn Kusama's lame, pretentious The Invitation didn't and it works like escalating pornography or illegal wrestling matches might. Insanely watchable.....oh and often quite funny but.......  |
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Dec 15, 2020 18:46:34 GMT
Get Shorty. Haven’t seen this movie in ages. Still super enjoyable.
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Post by cheesecake on Dec 15, 2020 20:43:33 GMT
Got to watch Home Alone 2 in class today so that was a good day.
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 15, 2020 21:49:48 GMT
 Mad Dog and Glory (1993) 7/10. This movie did the impossible. It made me like David Caruso. It helps he gets a full plate of Richard Price's crisp dialogue. "If I had an intelligent thought, it would die of loneliness." Or another... "I never forget a neck." Decently into this I thought to myself, There's nothing wrong with this movie. For a while it's interesting, unexpected, funny, well-acted... Then by the serious/silly third act it sort of reverses all of those sentiments, but it's still damn good and enjoyable. Scorsese's gamble on John McNaughton checks out, and btwn this, Henry, and Wild Things the guy seemed to have quite a range of tone across similar-ish projects... but his career has flopped sadly. De Niro is very likable here (a small quiet cop, recharged - quite different from say Midnight Run) and he's hilarious when he serenades the crime scene stiff. Bill Murray is great and very interesting in this part, you want more of him. |
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 15, 2020 23:14:18 GMT
 Beware My Lovely (1952) 7.5/10 or more? I would watch new remake versions of this every year… It’s fun to think how else you could twist this tense, compact set-up. Only 75m but it's boiling with subtext... Scripted by Mel Dinelli (based on his play from his short story) - he specialized in domestic pressure cookers and wrote all of these consecutively: The Spiral Staircase, The Window, The Reckless Moment, House by the River, Cause for Alarm, Jeopardy. This was done on Broadway with Dorothy Gish vs Richard Boone. On radio twice with Frank Sinatra vs Agnes Moorehead & then Gene Kelly vs Ethel Barrymore. On TV with Audie Murphy vs Thelma Ritter (echoing mother/son instead of husband/wife). It’d make a pretty good appetizer in a double feature before The Shining, actually. Robert Ryan as the mind-fogged handyman gone mad is excellent, switching gears like never before, from boylike to petrifying. Lupino is very good too, with anxious warmth - her production company set this up and she turned down the option to helm but apparently directed “several sequences” (that’s all the info I could find; would be amazing to add to her list of directed projects). RKO delayed this and then bombed it by putting it behind, not kidding, eight live vaudeville acts (apparently Hughes hated Ryan). Extra points for being a xmas movie and for having a non-ending (ambiguous for its time). |
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 16, 2020 2:22:19 GMT
Exam (2009) - Free on Youtube 5/10Extremely relevant film addresses class, gender and more - heck this movie contains a virus, a pandemic (!) and it has neat inversions/assessments of our current US politics even (Example: a Black man - an "exam" taker utters the line of the new Fascist Left, "I tolerate everyone except the intolerant"......but he wears a cross suggesting the Right.......another man tortures a woman evoking the Right and the Guantanamo scandal ......but he's an Indian man himself). Unfortunately this all collapses - in every conceivable way - at the end which is just absurd and amateurish too.....   |
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Post by wilcinema on Dec 16, 2020 12:23:42 GMT
Blue Velvet (rewatch): This movie will never not be scary and unsettling.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Dec 16, 2020 15:47:38 GMT
Ordinary People. First watch. Really great debut “supporting” performance by Hutton. Hirsh was good but nothing too special. Sutherland and Moore were both outstanding.
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Post by jakesully on Dec 16, 2020 17:15:29 GMT
The Recruit (re watch) Pacino & Farrell were good together in this .
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 16, 2020 20:43:37 GMT
 The Family Man (2000) rewatch. It's amazing how well this works bc of Cage and Téa Leoni. They turn a trite, sap script into something actually hilarious, poignant, and sexy??  |
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 16, 2020 23:10:54 GMT
Antrum (2018) - ~6.5/10 on TUBI - Re-watched this horror mockumentary because this came up a little earlier on here today and my better half had never seen it.....and it's snowing here and it's quiet and creepy in this place ........so why not...... A lesser version of 2016's superior mockumentary Fury Of The Demon (2016) this attempts to go further and literally show us the film (wink, nudge) that drives people mad but it isn't made that well at all ........but then again that becomes part of the charm - ie the film the Devil would make wouldn't be that good would it? - because that's how the Deceiver's sick fncking mind works! It's just a great premise (that name drops Cigarette Burns at the start even), with so-so execution but it really looks like a long lost 1979 movie at least and feels weirdly like one too - a very Hills Have Eyes vibe permeates throughout. Works very hard to create a convincing backstory - maybe too hard .....This is a 4.9 on IMDB.......so when they say it sucks, it's boring and not scary they're right......... but also kinda wrong .....kinda 
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Post by jakesully on Dec 17, 2020 9:16:48 GMT
8 Mile (re watch)- Thought Em did a good job here considering he had no experience acting before. Great soundtrack and loved the battle rapping at the end.
solid 8/10
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 17, 2020 12:22:20 GMT
The Dark and The Wicked (2020) - very close to a 7/10There is absolutely no connecting story arc to the events shown here - but there is a coherent thread underneath the events - Death by suicide and the feeling of dreadful loneliness that accompanies it. If you watch this very slowly paced movie closely the theme is clearly parents abandoning children (also note how the farm animals, the "babies" come into play here as a parallel commentary) You'll probably feel ripped off by the end because it's quite allegorical ..........but I admire its complete contempt to give the audience answers and it made me think and scared me more in the 2nd half than lame failures like She Dies Tomorrow, Relic, The Rental etc. did..............an unrelentingly dour and bleak piece of work with the simple goal to absolutely bum you out ..........and possibly convert you from a life of atheism tbh. 
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 17, 2020 19:46:44 GMT
So Dark The Night (1946) - 7.5-8/10 .......... Mattsby , 70 min. This is a really compelling noir - style-wise at least not so much in plot but in the undercurrent of the story itself as an influence (on Memento in a way for one). This movie has a small time cast but technique to burn .....very reminiscent of My Name Is Julia Ross - same director Joseph H. Lewis - in terms of the director raising the material by his artistry alone. 
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Dec 18, 2020 1:47:56 GMT
The Fourth Man (1983) - Imagine a fusion of De Palma, Cronenberg and a Catholic discotheque and you might begin to wrap your head around this baby. Sex in this pleasurably demented 80s noir means dismemberment and excruciation. Featuring a bisexual hero who claims "being Catholic means having an imagination", and an androgynous femme fatale with a hilariously martyred past. God bless Verhoeven...  
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 18, 2020 3:10:11 GMT
 The Fearless Vampire Killers: Or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck (1967) Rewatch. Nearly 8/10.... I've been known to overrate this movie, and still do! Something about its frosting and vaudeville trotting thru the classic vampire setup sticks with me. On this watch I felt its flaws more than ever, though. Its plot goes as deep as about three sentences and it focuses too much on some characters (The Servant; The Inn Keeper) and not enough on others like The Count - played strongly by Ferdy Mayne who can intimidate with a turn. His son character and more crucially a lovely Sharon Tate are given zip to do, partly bc of MGM - the brunt of their script demands cut those characters down. Jack MacGowran, conceived as "a snow-dusted Albert Einstein" gives a miraculous, hilarious perf as a sort of narcoleptic broom with half a brain. He played the Fool a few years later but here his fool is Polanski doing a lot of running and eeking (his first perf since The Fat and the Lean; he's a usually underrated and limber actor). Directed with patient trust in the gag and with a visual richness - the designers had done The Innocents etc, and Douglas Slocombe was behind the camera. For the impatient and the fangless, this does have an instant classic climactic dance scene (blocked perfectly) and a great last punchline. They came to solve the problem, right! |
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 18, 2020 8:38:30 GMT
The Fourth Man (1983) - Imagine a fusion of De Palma, Cronenberg and a Catholic discotheque and you might begin to wrap your head around this baby. Sex in this pleasurably demented 80s noir means dismemberment and excruciation. Featuring a bisexual hero who claims "being Catholic means having an imagination", and an androgynous femme fatale with a hilariously martyred past. God bless Verhoeven...  ...............I love this movie and think its Verhoeven's best but what I really love about it is for a film to be that humorous to also be that surprising in its effect - there's no way that you can predict the very last scene and yet the very last scene and summary of how we got there is not a cheat or a gimmick but integral to everything that came prior .......it's great stuff, and wildly entertaining too. |
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...............I love this movie and think its Verhoeven's best but what I really love about it is for a film to be that humorous to also be that surprising in its effect - there's no way that you can predict the very last scene and yet the very last scene and summary of how we got there is not a cheat or a gimmick but integral to everything that came prior .......it's great stuff, and wildly entertaining too.