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Post by Pavan on Mar 17, 2023 10:52:24 GMT
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)-
Has its moments. The group's camaraderie and a few heartfelt moments makes it watchable while the scattershot screenplay and CG overkills holds it back. A stepdown from the first film but not a bad one- 6.5/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Mar 17, 2023 22:54:14 GMT
Hit the Road (2021)
Road trip comedy, art house style. Meaning that everyone is a half-assed philosopher musing on the meaning of life and there's a fucking kid that no jury in the world would convict you for butchering.
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Barbie
Full Member
Posts: 881
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Post by Barbie on Mar 20, 2023 13:41:44 GMT
Emily the Criminal
It was a nice watch but one part of the ending was really stupid. I’d like to see Aubrey Plaza in more dramatic roles. I think comedic actors can do some of the best dramatic acting
Also bring back movies like this! Easy 90 minute watches that aren’t Oscar material. Just fun movies with good acting
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Post by stephen on Mar 20, 2023 13:45:41 GMT
It was a Jack Lowden weekend here as Casa Del Stephen, as I watched the first two series of Slow Horses (magnificent stuff, Gary Oldman is turning out a career-best performance and it satisfies any who currently itch for a John le Carre-esque spy thriller, theycallmemrfish should be watching this on loop) and followed it up with Benediction, which hit like a sledgehammer to the gut. Well done, Mr. Saoirse Ronan.
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Post by stephen on Mar 20, 2023 14:18:52 GMT
I also watched Marlowe last night. It feels like a minor mystery more than anything else, but Liam Neeson feels much more into the role than anything he's done since The Grey and even though he's a little long in the tooth for this to be a realistic franchise-starter, ten years ago I would've been entirely cool with him doing this as an ongoing series. I really liked Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Cedric; he and Neeson have a great rapport and their dynamic, brief as it is, is the main thing I loved about this. Jessica Lange and Diane Kruger are fun with stock femme fatale roles and Alan Cumming is hamming it up to the rafters (in a fun way), but this script is pretty much live-action DLC from L.A. Noire.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Mar 23, 2023 15:57:57 GMT
Witness for the Prosecution (1957). This was pretty great. Thanks pacinoyes for the rec in my courtroom drama thread. Very compelling story with some great humor mixed in. Charles Laughton was particularly great.
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Post by Martin Stett on Mar 25, 2023 0:20:19 GMT
2012 Scavenger Hunt #1
Gangs of Wasseypur - Parts 1 and 2 (Director: Anurag Kashyap) Note: The DVD copy of part 1 from Eagle Media had subtitles that I am fairly confident came from Google Translate, and I am guessing I would have enjoyed it more if a professional job had been done on translation. Part 2 (from the same company) did not have the same issue.A five hour gangster epic is NOT my kind of thing at all, but I can appreciate this for what it is. Spanning the course of 60+ years and three warring gangland families, this is a gigantic, sprawling and VERY violent saga. Part 1 (spanning the first 40+ years) feels like it desperately wants to be The Godfather (parts 1 and 2) but is hampered by all of the characters being horrible, awful, violent people. There is no corruption of Michael Corleone here, it is just vengeance simmering and boiling and exploding over and over again, and even the moments of respite are obviously short-lived because there is a whole second movie to follow and a short prologue makes it clear that the war will continue long after part 1's end. The whole thing is fine enough, but forgettable and not at all noteworthy. Part 2, on the other hand... is more of the same, really, but better. The key is that it is much more focused, with a much shorter timespan to cover (10-15 years, I think) and with very different motivations for its characters. Whereas part 1 builds the whole gang war on blood ties and vengeance, part 2 has more independent characters who have their own motivations that are not entirely built on "your daddy killed my daddy's daddy" and holding onto a grudge forever and ever. Their motivations are mainly "I like killing people", but hell, it's fresh compared to the dour first half. The few attempts at making anybody at all sympathetic in both parts are misguided, but more easily disposable in part 2 where it seems that Kashyap knows there isn't any tragedy to this story. It's just ugly violence, and he's willing to show it as nothing more. All in all, I think this was overhyped to me (and as I said: this is NOT my kind of movie), but it's solid enough for what it is. I enjoyed it.
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Post by Pavan on Mar 25, 2023 11:06:43 GMT
Boston Strangler (2023)-
Its Zodiac-lite. Employs similar beats but lacks the grit and precision of Fincher's far superior film. That said i was invested in for a good portion watch of it but it in the end fizzles out. Anything with Carrie Coon is an easy watch for me but i'm not gonna remember the film after a few days. Knightley is alright- 6.5/10
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Post by mhynson27 on Mar 25, 2023 11:23:19 GMT
Bullet Train (re-watch)
Waste of Zazie Beetz, but other than that, still a whole lotta fun.
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Post by stabcaesar on Mar 25, 2023 17:20:38 GMT
Gladiator - First watch for me (yeah I know lol). Personally I find the script pretty weak. To me the entire narrative is driven forward by plot devices (aka the characters being dumb or eavesdropping), and I find Commodus a really poorly-written villain and Joaquin quite bad in this (hot take in the house), but the masterful direction, the magical score, and the scale of the whole thing really saved it. Crowe is quite good too. The MVP of the film is easily Richard Harris imo though.
Mrs. Miniver - This seems pretty unpopular around here but I actually quite enjoyed it. I find Garson, Pidgeon, and Wright all engaging and compelling. The air raid shelter scene is in particular quite brilliant. It does drag on for quite a bit though and for Wyler, who is usually very good at keeping things grounded and down to earth, his approach in this does feel quite heavy-handed and clunky at times. But given the timing under which this film was made as well as the main purpose of this film (unabashed propaganda for the allies) I'm not that bothered by it.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Mar 27, 2023 18:26:37 GMT
Contagion (2011). Forgot how great this was. Also wild to revisit it post-Covid and see how accurate so much of it was. Also, Dmitri Martin playing a doctor and having zero lines was pretty random. And Marion Cotillard basically being held prisoner so that like 50 people in a remote village can jump the line for the vaccine is insane.
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Post by mhynson27 on Mar 28, 2023 1:18:15 GMT
Boyz n the Hood
Really liked it, but I wish we spent a little more time before the time jump. Who knew Ice Cube had that ending scene in him.
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Post by mhynson27 on Mar 28, 2023 5:41:16 GMT
The Guard (2011) Really did feel like Martin-lite, but that isn't a bad thing at all. Also, ok Queen Maeve, I see you
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Mar 28, 2023 13:59:13 GMT
Lolita (1962). Pretty mixed on this. Great cast but some pretty bizarre decisions throughout. I wonder how Kubrick would have approached this material in the 80’s/90’s?
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Post by mhynson27 on Mar 29, 2023 5:16:37 GMT
Tropic Thunder
Thank you RDJ, for properly representing Australians everywhere.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 4, 2023 5:16:02 GMT
Contagion (2011). Forgot how great this was. Also wild to revisit it post-Covid and see how accurate so much of it was. Also, Dmitri Martin playing a doctor and having zero lines was pretty random. And Marion Cotillard basically being held prisoner so that like 50 people in a remote village can jump the line for the vaccine is insane. I hate the fact that this movie aged like fine wine. Which means it’s really good and dripping with dread, and eerily prescient, but I hate that it didn’t become dated hyperbole.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Apr 4, 2023 13:35:50 GMT
Body Double (1984). A lot of this movie is pretty great and a good amount of it is pretty ridiculous. Like it overall but have enough issues that hold it back. Would have preferred a different lead actor as well.
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Post by Martin Stett on Apr 5, 2023 23:58:18 GMT
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021) (directed by Ana Lily Amirpour) One of the best soundtracks ever, and the neon-drenched cinematography is to die for. The plot is simple, but there's no need for it to be more: this is an exercise in VIBES, and god damn what vibes they are! The characters don't act like real humans so much as strange animals in an exotic zoo, forming their own communities and tribes to keep themselves safe from the other, whatever it may be. Which is exactly how Mona Lisa sees everyone, so major points to Amirpour to soaking us into her viewpoint so thoroughly from the very start. The cast is uniformly excellent, perfectly inhabiting their roles in their tribes (the one exception being Evan Whitten as a precocious ten year old metalhead who loves drawing things - he's an annoying kid bingo card that feels like he walked out of a Hallmark movie). But the real star of this thing is the atmosphere. That music. That lighting. That way everything feels one step off from reality. It's truly like being in a different dimension, and solidifies Amirpour as one of the most exciting directors working today. Imagine if this woman made Nightmare Alley instead of Guillermo del Toro. It wouldn't look like a noir at all, but would just be one big circus act with Willem Dafoe acting as M.C. Edit: I forgot to mention that this movie has a chase scene featuring a man hobbling on a cane and a knee brace pursuing a woman in stripper heels attempting to walk down the street without falling over. There are so many little comedic touches that make this a surprisingly funny film.
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Post by mhynson27 on Apr 7, 2023 3:28:55 GMT
Ferris Bueller's Day Off THEY HAD PAYPHONES IN SCHOOLS?!? A lot of fun, but The Breakfast Club still reigns supreme. Mia Sara
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Post by Martin Stett on Apr 7, 2023 22:35:54 GMT
Akiyuki Shinbo Deep Dive #1
Twilight of the Dark Master (1998)What in the fuck? Since I'm such a fan of Madoka Magica, I'm doing a deep dive into its director's work (what pieces I can find anyway), even though he doesn't seem to have the greatest reputation. Twilight of the Dark Master is... well, it's bad. But let's start with the one thing it does very, very well: CONCEPTUAL IMAGERY. A man trapped on a giant vulva, embraced by sinuously undulating arms and legs. A sex club where are you can copulate with monsters straight out of Alien. A man drawing a gun whose hand holds in his pocket for several seconds as his head falls off and stares screaming into the camera. This world is violent and horrifying and disgusting and the gore and sex couples well with the futuristic metropolis lit by noir streetlamps (naturally). The trouble comes with the editing. Simply put, this has some of the very worst editing I have seen in my life. I could not tell if people were in the same room while having a conversation, and things are somehow even more confusing in action scenes, when characters would shoot an energy beam in to the right of their frame and the edit would show somebody getting hit head-on, throwing off my internal compass. Things get worse when Shinbo is splicing between multiple scenes, when I would routinely get confused if somebody was holding a conversation with somebody in a fight on the other side of the city. I'm not kidding, it's that bad. Maybe part of that is down to the script. If you can call it that. God only knows what this movie is about. Angels and demons apparently fighting each other in future-Japan is what the opening narration tells us, but most of the movie is spent on some sort of Blade Runner-esque investigation into some pharmaceutical company that wants to create a virus that turns people into giant monsters or something? I have only pieced together that much and how it ties into the whole angel/demon thing because I finished the movie and I've worked my brain into a pretzel to make sense of things. It's utter nonsense. And all of that is a shame, as there is some truly captivating grotesquerie to be found here. That said, it's the kind of grotesquerie than any 90s direct to video anime could pull off just as well, and the quality is... pretty consistent with most of those as well. But then, this is a direct to video 90s anime, so that checks out. Let's hope that the rest of Shinbo's career isn't as awful as this was.
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Post by mhynson27 on Apr 9, 2023 1:27:46 GMT
John Wick: Chapter 4
Initial feeling is that this is the best one yet (slightly over #2).
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Post by mhynson27 on Apr 9, 2023 2:22:50 GMT
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
I love this new animation style Dreamworks is experimenting with.
Also, Shrek 5 hypeeeeee.
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Post by mhynson27 on Apr 11, 2023 5:25:04 GMT
Air And just like that, I have my first film of the year that I can conceivably see still being in my Top 10 come years end. THAT Messina scene
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 11, 2023 7:11:40 GMT
I have no joke about 70 horror films to do my thing on... but I need to highlight two:
I'm Haunted and Horror on the High Desert 2... because they were actually scary. Both are on Tubi.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 11, 2023 9:11:54 GMT
I have no joke about 70 horror films to do my thing on... but I need to highlight two: I'm Haunted and Horror on the High Desert 2... because they were actually scary. Both are on Tubi. I still can't get over her first name being "Genesis" ffs .......like if you name your fncking kid after a book of the Bible you're just inviting that demon shit ......I've talked about my ex-friend "Revelations" (her middle name was "666" btw) on here before, right?...... Ugh...........what a complicated bitch she was
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