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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Apr 18, 2021 14:35:13 GMT
Lethal Weapon - It’s amazing how well this still holds up. Gibson and Glover had such instant chemistry. Still one of my faves.
Nobody - This was a lot of fun. It delivered exactly what I expected it to.
The Father - This was obviously the Anthony Hopkins show (and he’d make an all-time tier for Best Actor winners) but I was also quite impressed from the direction by Zeller. I’m very much looking forward to his nex project now.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 18, 2021 16:03:44 GMT
Rocks (2020)
Very natural and very real. I really loved how it was shot. It was moving and powerful, with enough humour sprinkled throughout it to make it even more genuine. Life is often full of comedy when it's at its lowest and a lot of film makers forget that when they are being heavy and having something to say. Bukky Bakray was so great. I hadn't heard of this film when I watched her pick up her rising star BAFTA last Sunday. I sure as hell know who she is now, and hope for a big future for her.
The White Tiger (2021)
Now we're talking 2021. This was bloody riveting stuff. Absolutely great story telling, it all flowed as smooth as silk. The development of Balram was completely believable, and completely understandable in how he let himself be treated as he was. Looking at it thematically, it seems like a fairly universal message. Balram is painfully far from a hero by the time it ends, but you're still kinda with him. That's down to the excellence of Adarsh Gourav offering up the best piece of lead acting I've seen on the male side since Daniel Day Lewis in Phantom Thread. I'll be shocked if he's not my win for 2021. The supporting cast were all on their game too, but this is his show. I don't know in terms of the social issues explored, how true to reality this is to the India of a decade ago, but looking at the film purely as a piece of entertainment, it was oh so great.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 18, 2021 17:32:14 GMT
Fish: I swear to God, I am sick to fucking death of cult films. If I have to watch one more cult film, I'm just gonna join a cult so I don't have to watch more movies. Now what's next on Netflix? ( It's Always Sunny theme plays) Fish Joins a Cult. I have a few on my queue for tonight and if any of them give me the slightest feel of a cult, I'm probably going to be turning them off. Orrrrrrrrrrrrr... maybe I move to Waco and start my own?
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Post by stephen on Apr 18, 2021 17:35:18 GMT
Fish: I swear to God, I am sick to fucking death of cult films. If I have to watch one more cult film, I'm just gonna join a cult so I don't have to watch more movies. Now what's next on Netflix? ( It's Always Sunny theme plays) Fish Joins a Cult. I have a few on my queue for tonight and if any of them give me the slightest feel of a cult, I'm probably going to be turning them off. Orrrrrrrrrrrrr... maybe I move to Waco and start my own? Maybe hold off on watching Cult 2: The Reculting.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 18, 2021 17:40:07 GMT
The Fourth Kind - This sort of thing is right up my alley. I love alien abduction stories (even if I don't believe 99% of them and that 1% I'm usually just me saying, "well that seems a bit more likely") and that's what this was. Very interesting but DEEPLY flawed in all aspects outside of the acting. I don't know why they decided to do the side by sides with the interviews (the acted and the "real") and while it sounds kinda cool, it didn't work most of the time. Should have just let the actors act it out and maintained the story that way. I would very much like to know how much of this was real. That would be a helluva doc to see. EDIT: so apparently The Fourth Kind isn't based off of anything. Well now I feel like a fool. A FOOL! My sister saw this in theaters and was so angry when she got home and researched it. After I wrote up my little blurb, I IMMEDIATELY went to go research all this stuff and I forget what I put into google, but one of the first articles was titled "The Fake Kind" and I went, "oh no... people are going to think I'm a fucking idiot for thinking this was real!" But I thought it was real, so I didn't alter my initial blurb, even if it does make me look stupid. But side note: (not sure if you remember but one of the recurring things is every one who has an encounter has a memory of an owl) while watching it, something triggered the motion sensor of my side light. No biggie, happens all the time. Go back to watching this and then for whatever reason I look back out my side door and I see a little body with two pointed ears and went "FUCK YOU!" It was just a cat, though. I wasn't getting abducted that night! Fish: 1. Aliens: 0.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 18, 2021 17:43:26 GMT
I have a few on my queue for tonight and if any of them give me the slightest feel of a cult, I'm probably going to be turning them off. Orrrrrrrrrrrrr... maybe I move to Waco and start my own? Maybe hold off on watching Cult 2: The Reculting. I swear I don't seek these out. I just put on whatever's popular or highly rated and 90% of the time it's a blind watch outside of the little two line description. I mean, these past two days aren't the first times I've complained about the overuse of cult in modern horror films.
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Post by Mattsby on Apr 18, 2021 18:00:50 GMT
Signs of Life (1968) Up to 9/10 ` rewatch Herzog 24-25y/o, a German in the middle of the Greek junta of ’67… permits revoked, forging ahead even threatening authorities (“I will do it even though it is forbidden” he told them). And so begins a career for the ages. His themes and fascinations were there from the start. The strangeness and stupidity of animals, nature’s seeming conspiracy and catastrophic potential, and our own psychotic mental regresses. As the blurred men fight in front of a thousand windmills… remember the Quixote line, “To surrender dreams… may be madness. Too much sanity… may be madness.” With a beautiful original score and frequent poetic interludes… Herzog, despite claiming very little exposure to cinema at the time, clearly has an instinct for composition and keeping an interesting gliding tone. I also love the tight attention to details… the function of contraptions… the state of animals… and the people not unlike animals, trapped in the open island air. “He didn’t kill anybody. He had to be content with a scorched chair.” The narrator says. That unique Herzog humor would stay… remember the line from Into the Inferno (2016), “We found an empty chair pretending to watch TV.”
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 18, 2021 18:54:18 GMT
Signs of Life (1968) Up to 9/10 ` rewatch With a beautiful original score and frequent poetic interludes… Herzog, despite claiming very little exposure to cinema at the time, clearly has an instinct for composition and keeping an interesting gliding tone. I also love the tight attention to details… the function of contraptions… the state of animals… and the people not unlike animals, trapped in the open island air. “He didn’t kill anybody. He had to be content with a scorched chair.” The narrator says. That unique Herzog humor would stay… remember the line from Into the Inferno (2016), “We found an empty chair pretending to watch TV.” What is amazing about this and Even Dwarfs Started Small is how much of their conception shows up in Aguirre - almost like that masterpiece is made up thematically of parts of each of his first 2 though they seem different - ie the quest of Aguirre can seem as absurd and impossible as the anarchy of the dwarfs.......and the madness of the soldier in Signs of Life could literally be Aguirre - particularly in the sparse dialog. It has one of my favorite lines - but I can't remember it exactly - something like "I was catching fish with my bare hands while they were still sh*tting their pants" - which could be in Aguirre's final mad speech!
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Apr 18, 2021 19:55:28 GMT
Minari. Really lovely family drama.
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Post by Mattsby on Apr 19, 2021 2:35:21 GMT
The Parisian Bitch: Princess of Hearts (2015) Hidden-camera comedy. Fun, a bit slight, hard to rate…. It depends on your swoon-meter for Camille Cottin, in a Cesar-nominated perf (Most Promising Actress). She plays “Camille” who thinks so highly of herself she can only entertain a future among royalty and, so, off she goes to marry Prince Harry (“ginger nut”). Cottin who has a background in sketch comedy originated the character in a snack size series that had 70 2-min episodes. As a feature, it steals the storyline drive from Borat, not to mention the form, but it’s often very funny on its own… and alright as a parody of self-image and reinvention… How easy it is to place yourself above others. But it wouldn’t work without Cottin who sells it with great off-the-cuff pep and hilarious line deliveries (“I was dragged into the greatest ripoff of all time…… Work”). Even though it feels a little squeezed and incomplete around the end… It’s sort of intentional, keeping the theme of shortcutting reality. And there’s the narration reveal… a life, basically, packaged and for sale. Other perks: Cottin speaking English often and trying out a British accent at times, as well as many great outfits… Some candid-cam “dream sequences” that pre-date the recent Bad Trip. And not only The Libertines on the soundtrack but a Pete Doherty namedrop that cracked me up. pacinoyes
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 19, 2021 9:14:23 GMT
Shadow in the Cloud - I put this on only because I KNEW there was like a 1% chance of it being a cult movie and it was near the top of the popular horror movies on justwatch. I probably broke out into more fits of laughter during this than I had during any recent comedy because I couldn't believe a bunch of people sitting around numerous table reads and edits didn't notice just how fucking bad this movie is. I went into this with the lowest of low expectations and I came out with something I'd immediately set on fire then give myself a lobotomy to forget it. Sorry Tom Wilkinson in Eternal Sunshine, you can't undo what I saw... this movie is like if someone read the comments section of a Weinstein article and thought, "hmm a horror movie in the skies! BRILLIANT! We'll use all these derogatory frat boy sayings and have it relayed to the main character! We'll also have them with zero cogitative ability, also brilliant!" This has to be one of the top ten of shittiest movies I've ever seen. I roll my eyes a lot in horror movies, but when I'm cackling like the Joker at it, it's fucking bad. Real bad. Two week old gas station sushi bad. I don't want to give away the ending, but yeah... yeah...
Seven in Heaven - I liked it! Kind of like Coherence with high schoolers, but it takes its own spin on things. Not scary, but I did like it quite a bit. Kudos.
It Comes At Night - Why did it take me so long to see this? I loved it. I can only imagine watching this at the start of lockdown... damn. Well done.
No cults today. Fuckers.
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Post by stephen on Apr 19, 2021 12:56:10 GMT
Shadow in the Cloud - I put this on only because I KNEW there was like a 1% chance of it being a cult movie and it was near the top of the popular horror movies on justwatch. I probably broke out into more fits of laughter during this than I had during any recent comedy because I couldn't believe a bunch of people sitting around numerous table reads and edits didn't notice just how fucking bad this movie is. I went into this with the lowest of low expectations and I came out with something I'd immediately set on fire then give myself a lobotomy to forget it. Sorry Tom Wilkinson in Eternal Sunshine, you can't undo what I saw... this movie is like if someone read the comments section of a Weinstein article and thought, "hmm a horror movie in the skies! BRILLIANT! We'll use all these derogatory frat boy sayings and have it relayed to the main character! We'll also have them with zero cogitative ability, also brilliant!" This has to be one of the top ten of shittiest movies I've ever seen. I roll my eyes a lot in horror movies, but when I'm cackling like the Joker at it, it's fucking bad. Real bad. Two week old gas station sushi bad. I don't want to give away the ending, but yeah... yeah... When I saw that movie, I was thinking of you.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 19, 2021 13:47:53 GMT
Come As You Are (2020)
Very funny film, with a huge amount of heart and warmth. It puts disabled characters front and center and explores the fact that they want exactly the same things and lives as the able bodied. It occasionally gets a little mawkish, but it earns those moments by being so frank throughout. The main trio of guys are all solid, and Gabourey Sidibe is lovely in support.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 19, 2021 17:57:05 GMT
Shadow in the Cloud - I put this on only because I KNEW there was like a 1% chance of it being a cult movie and it was near the top of the popular horror movies on justwatch. I probably broke out into more fits of laughter during this than I had during any recent comedy because I couldn't believe a bunch of people sitting around numerous table reads and edits didn't notice just how fucking bad this movie is. I went into this with the lowest of low expectations and I came out with something I'd immediately set on fire then give myself a lobotomy to forget it. Sorry Tom Wilkinson in Eternal Sunshine, you can't undo what I saw... this movie is like if someone read the comments section of a Weinstein article and thought, "hmm a horror movie in the skies! BRILLIANT! We'll use all these derogatory frat boy sayings and have it relayed to the main character! We'll also have them with zero cogitative ability, also brilliant!" This has to be one of the top ten of shittiest movies I've ever seen. I roll my eyes a lot in horror movies, but when I'm cackling like the Joker at it, it's fucking bad. Real bad. Two week old gas station sushi bad. I don't want to give away the ending, but yeah... yeah... When I saw that movie, I was thinking of you. Once I knew this was going to be one of the worst things I've ever seen, I was half expecting the fact that the air crew would be like Satanic ritualists and I wouldn't bat an eye. Probably would have made more sense.
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Post by JangoB on Apr 19, 2021 18:27:16 GMT
Really wanted to take a look at 1985's Revolution - a notorious flop for Al Pacino and Hugh Hudson which made the former take a 4-year break from movies. While I didn't find the movie to be downright terrible, it's definitely a missed opportunity. On paper an Irwin Winkler-produced historical epic made with a 'spare no expense' approach sounds quite interesting but the film simply doesn't have a strong narrative focus to elicit any significant emotion. It's a weird thing - Hudson definitely wanted the movie to feel realistic and gritty, which is a bit different from the way epics were made back then, and yet the script is just so basic and flat that this realistic approach just doesn't mesh with it. A by-the-numbers script is better off directed in a more appealing, mainstream fashion - we've seen plenty of decent epics like that. Here the realism may seem impressive on an idea level, and the handheld vérité cinematography style at least feels like a thing of its own and stands apart from the big budget films of the time, and yet the experience is a hollow one because behind this gritty aesthetic we find a very banal story without any meat on its bones. Relationships aren't developed, characters aren't explored. When the battles happen, they look decent and vast and yet you don't feel much while watching them aside from a passive admiration for their scale. And that's a problem.
Way too many happy coincidences (Kinski's character seems to just randomly stumble upon Pacino and his son a few times in the film, and these scenes drive the plot forward!), some very stupid stuff (the whole story sets in motion because Pacino's son, after being told to stand and wait for him in one place, goes off to join the army instead! It's borderline comedic), and just an overall feeling of detachment don't do this movie any favors. But I do think the technical aspects are worth praising, and if historical epics are your thing in general, you may find some redeeming stuff about the movie (which I did). Pacino doesn't seem to belong in this role but I thought he was okay - the acting disappointment here is Donald Sutherland who does nothing interesting and doesn't seem to care. He's also got the worst mole in cinematic history here. The makeup folks responsible for it should've been fired.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Apr 19, 2021 21:37:25 GMT
Internal Affairs. Really goes off the rails in the last act but think this is probably my favorite Gere performance.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 19, 2021 21:49:21 GMT
Willy's Wonderland (2021)
So for one night only a nonosylabbic, caffeine drink addicted, pinball loving Nicolas Cage is going to be battling animatronic, kids theme restaurant animals, possessed by the souls of serial killers, with the 'help' of some disposable teens.
This is the kind of ludicrous horseshit that I live for. This is the wildly stupid stuff that I love film for.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 20, 2021 17:40:29 GMT
Family Blood - You know what, I respect the hell out of this even if I think it was a bit of a misstep. What really got me excited was that it was a vampire film unlike any that I'd seen and it was interesting. If it just managed to get that last act right, I'd be all about this. The addiction metaphor was a little heavy handed but I didn't really mind, Vinessa Shaw sold the hell out of it.
Stephanie - Okay, I know I'm not the smartest person but I also know that I'm far from the dumbest... I was so fucking confused for the first 40 minutes or so watching this. Then it kinda made sense until it reaches the conclusion where I thought back and went, "wait a god damned second!" Trying to use the film's own logic the entire 40 minutes shouldn't make sense because IT CAN'T FUCKING HAPPEN! Even if it did make sense, this was very lackluster. I'm sure there was probably some sort of point they were trying to get across, but I don't know what it is. Youth will take over? I dunno. Hard pass.
Wander - I didn't realize this was even a quasi-horror film when I put it on, but it was more horror than most of the horrors I've seen. Now, that doesn't mean it's a good movie because it isn't. Any sensible person will notice right away where the twist will come and how it will come. Even still the overly convoluted plot seemed like writers throwing darts at some key words *throws dart* "secret underground laboratory! Yeah, write that down." At least this made more sense than Stephanie (barely).
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Post by Mattsby on Apr 20, 2021 17:55:04 GMT
Fitzcarraldo (1982) rewatch. As Ebert said, it’s “imperfect but transcendent.” It turns out, Burden of Dreams (1982) the making-of doc is the masterpiece. But this is essential too… Fitzcarraldo's ambitious steps becomes Herzog’s, or vice versa? In a way, a monumentally daring production as only Herzog would undertake. With several unforgettable sequences… Like the first pic above, and especially the shot that comes right before it - playing opera for the unseen, it looks as if the world is revolving around Kinski and his gramophone, or is it escaping by him? With no one apparently looking at him, he looks back at nothing but the jungle (“full of lies, demons, illusions”), with cryptic exhilaration. It’s part of the peculiar parody of the self-made (mad)man. “I will outbillion you! I will outrubber you!” he tells the rubber baron who calls him - “Fitzcarraldo, the conquistador of the useless.” (Don’t forget Herzog named his filming journal Conquest of the Useless.) And there’s the last sequence. To present (pretend) his own success, on his boat’s last ride, he demands the world’s greatest cigar and a velvet chair… that he only stands next to. I mentioned in my last post here Herzog's use of chairs. Well... he, and Fitz, defy what the Peruvian poet said - “Blessed be the one who sits.”
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 20, 2021 18:20:07 GMT
Minor Premise (2020)
Really tightly would, mind-bending psychological thriller. The fact it was so small scale and confined almost entirely to the one set of rooms really worked to its benefit. In the hands of a bigger director, with a hundred million dollars to spend and a freedom to be much longer, this could have been a convoluted mess.
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Post by DaleCooper on Apr 20, 2021 22:16:34 GMT
I saw Blackhat recently, and it was a mess in every sense of the word. Mann's visual flair is very much on display here and he still got the knack for intense action scenes. However, the script is all kinds of bad (some of the dialogue, like seriously) and Hemsworth is just so badly miscast. Not that he is bad or so, I think he is decent enough, but the suspension of disbelief needed to buy him as the best hacker in the US is a tad too much. It's like they didn't even try to make him believable in the role, they just kind of made him Thor but without his hammer, and because of this the movie kind of fails without even getting a chance to succeed.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 21, 2021 17:58:36 GMT
Fukushima 50 (2020)
Weird kinda tone in this film. It was really melodramatic, not too well written or performed, but as the same time is wasn't outright bad or anything. It mostly worked.
Ava (2020)
For a lot of this film, it felt like two disparate films and I wasn't liking either of them much. It did come together somewhat satisfyingly in the third act, which is good, as often with these sorts of films, it's the third act resolution when they fall flat. The fight sequences were pretty solid too.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Apr 21, 2021 21:04:55 GMT
One False Move. First watch. No idea how this flew under my radar for so long.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Apr 21, 2021 21:50:06 GMT
Willy's Wonderland (2021) So for one night only a nonosylabbic, caffeine drink addicted, pinball loving Nicolas Cage is going to be battling animatronic, kids theme restaurant animals, possessed by the souls of serial killers, with the 'help' of some disposable teens. This is the kind of ludicrous horseshit that I live for. This is the wildly stupid stuff that I love film for. YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE
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Post by isabelaolive on Apr 21, 2021 22:21:00 GMT
I watched this movie by chance, I was looking for a movie from the 50's that wasn't a melodrama and this seemed convenient. I saw that it was directed by Elia Kazan but apparently is not as popular as 'On the Waterfront (1954)' or 'A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)'. Anyway, the synopsis seemed interesting to me. I confess that the film was better than I expected, I was never a big fan of films with "social criticism" about media, journalism, mass manipulation, etc. due to the fact that the majority are films with an interesting theme and mediocre execution, or simply without originality. I always thought that most of them literally look like a recycling of 'Network', but because 'A face in the crowd' is older and directed by Kazan I thought it would be worth it. Andy's performance in this film is great, curious as I had never heard of him before and according to wikipedia, this was his first film role. He was already famous before for his roles on broadway and television miniseries and based on the little I read, I think his casting for this role could not have been better. Not only he but the rest of the cast is also great, I especially liked Patricia Neal's performance, having already seen her as a supporting role in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'. This is definitely one of the best examples of films that have been revalued over time, went unnoticed when released and now appears on several lists of 'Best of the Decades', 'Essential Films', etc.
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