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Post by JangoB on Sept 28, 2024 21:59:34 GMT
Typhoon Club by Shinji Sômai...  I found it, I finally fucking found it. My A Brighter Summer Day. Not that I dislike A Brighter Summer Day (it's excellent) but I didn't quite experience the feeling all cinephiles have while watching it. But I think I experienced it now, just with a different movie  This is cinema, etc.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Sept 29, 2024 15:07:10 GMT
The Wild Robot. Wonderful movie. Beautiful animation with an emotional story. Quite fantastic theatrical experience
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Sept 29, 2024 15:24:04 GMT
Apartment 7A -
Basically a made-for-TV version of Rosemary's Baby. Garner's good, but it never escaped the whole "I've seen this before" mentality of mine.
Cuckoo -
I was kinda into it for the first bit... once the reveal came, though, I no joke went "I'm sorry, what did you say?" So dumb.
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Archie
Based
Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Post by Archie on Sept 29, 2024 17:25:35 GMT
Just finished a Longlegs/Megalopolis cinema double feature.  |
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Post by Martin Stett on Oct 2, 2024 0:17:04 GMT
2003 Scavenger Hunt #1
Maqbool (Director: Vishal Bhardwaj)  Macbeth, but make it Goodfellas. An intriguing premise to start off Bhardwaj's excellent Shakespeare trilogy ( Omkara and Haider are both brilliant), and for the first 80 or so minutes, this sings. The gangland politics setting is appropriately violent, and Maqbool's ambition - as well as that of Nitti, his boss's mistress (who will become our Lady Macbeth) - slots in to this horrific world perfectly. Everybody is appropriately awful, and Maqbool's drive to succeed is such that it is hard to imagine Macbeth being anything other than a gangster again. However, Bhardwaj did tone down the supernatural elements heavily, to less desirable results. The presence of Evil is a constant in Shakespeare's play, with the presence (or non-presence) of any divine "Good" being one of the core themes that the story rests on. In a modern world, productions tend to downplay this element (such as a production I watched that portrayed the witches as incompetent CIA agents that have accidentally placed a power-hungry madman in charge of a nation they want to exploit, turning them from eldritch horrors into bleakly comic buffoons), and that makes sense. But the final 50 minutes or so rely on a divine justice being meted out in some way - a stripping of Macbeth's power, wealth, wife, sanity, and his own life - and by removing so much of the supernatural from proceedings, Maqbool and Nitti falling into guilt-induced madness comes off as very fake. These two are ruthless and calculating at every step in the spectacular 80 or so minutes that we begin with, and I don't buy that they suddenly go mad. They were hardened murderers already - why would this be any different? It's a slight disappointment after enjoying with Bhardwaj's later adaptations much more, but it still ain't a bad movie. It has some terrific acting from Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Pankaj Kapur, Om Puri and Nasseeruddin Shah, and it has a rip-roaring start. It just can't quite follow through in a totally believable way.
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Post by Brother Fease on Oct 6, 2024 14:45:32 GMT
The Fall Guy (2024) - Solid action comedy 7/10. You have seen it before. The plot is irrelevant. I can see why it under-performed at the box-office. There wasn't much chemistry between Gosling and Blunt.
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Post by Martin Stett on Oct 11, 2024 23:26:41 GMT
2003 Scavenger Hunt #2
A Tale of Two Sisters (Director: Kim Jee-woon)  This is dogshit. A movie that "deceives" the audience by refusing to tell us what is going on at any point. There's no mystery if there is no way to tell what is "real" and what is not. But hey, we have LOUD NOISES and SUDDEN MUSIC CUES to scare us. And due to the excessive volume, it succeeds. But it's all hollow, because there's no soul. It can't have a soul, because it is so intent on hiding what is happening that it can't have characters.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Oct 13, 2024 19:16:21 GMT
Salem's Lot -
Maybe I'm missing something but it felt like there was so much left on the table... or maybe even the kitchen. I dunno, but to me it felt like there should have been another hour or so for this movie to actually make an impact for me.
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Post by mhynson27 on Oct 14, 2024 1:16:25 GMT
The Wild Robot FUCK YOU CHRIS SANDERS  Got me crying in the club |
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Post by DanQuixote on Oct 14, 2024 12:24:58 GMT
Harvest - 7/10
Misericordia - 9/10
Caught by the Tides - 8.5/10
Grand Tour - 7.5/10
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Post by taranofprydain on Oct 15, 2024 3:03:11 GMT
The Wild Robot FUCK YOU CHRIS SANDERS Got me crying in the cub I saw that in the theatre on Sunday, and it certainly got my waterworks going too. It's DreamWorks' strongest animated film since Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron 22 years ago. (The Prince of Egypt is still their pinnacle though) |
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Post by Martin Stett on Oct 18, 2024 23:55:49 GMT
2002 Scavenger Hunt #1
The Son (Directors: Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne)  A basic melodrama told without any melodrama. A carpenter (Olivier Gourmet, excellent as always) who teaches his trade to foster kids and juvenile offenders discovers that his new pupil murdered his son five years ago, and is now out of prison and looking for work. He is the only one who knows their connection. And so he tries to teach and mentor this kid the same as he would any of his others, but is also tormented by the knowledge he possesses. I appreciate the lack of frills or overt tearjerking, even if this is solidly in the middle of the Dardenne filmography. The patented Dardenne cinematography (I'd argue that not even Wes Anderson is so easily identifiable, if only because he has imitators and the Dardennes do not) does a lot of heavy lifting, focusing on Olivier and letting the actor's body language speak in place of words. It's a simple story, and I think that is its greatest flaw: there's no ambition to tell something richer, like in Rosetta or Lorna's Silence. But it's all solid. Every point of this is engaging.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Oct 20, 2024 14:02:07 GMT
Caught some new decent Netflix fare.
It’s What’s Inside (2024) - better than I had anticipated. Teen popcorn thriller but some nice twists along the way
The Shadow Strays (2024) - a bit too bloated but some truly fantastic and gnarly action. If you just want some badass action then I highly recommend
Woman of the Hour (2024) - felt the narrative was too lacking but there were several very effective scene. Nice debut from Kendrick and would like to see what she could do with a better script.
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Post by mhynson27 on Oct 26, 2024 4:30:50 GMT
Monster's Inc. (re-watch) Pretty damn perfect that my favourite animated film of all time was playing at my local cinema on my Birthday  |
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Archie
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Post by Archie on Oct 26, 2024 18:23:23 GMT
Like Father, Like Son - 7/10
A melodrama about the worst father in Japan. Didn't connect with it emotionally but it was alright.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Oct 28, 2024 17:55:29 GMT
a few rewatches: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) - sci-fi horror masterpiece in the vein of Pakula's paranoia trilogy. Continue to be obsessed by the lingering cinéma vérité shots of extras going about their day, walking down the street, especially in the first half. Allows the viewer to see the world through paranoid POV of the protagonists. Everyone -- your neighbor, your coworker, some rando on the street corner, even your sexual partner -- could be "in on it", and everything you knew about the world you inhabited was horribly wrong. Existential horror at its best. 8.5/10 Prisoners (2013) - gone back on forth with this one, but I liked it a lot more now than when I rewatched it in 2020. Still think the "war on god" angle is hokey and underbaked (was this written by Ben Shapiro??) but Villeneuve's presentation is flawless Fincherian neo-noir pulp. The 2010s' answer to Se7en. Even though I've gone back and forth on it I've always loved Gyllenhaal's work and that hasn't changed. I know some ppl don't like the eye twitching and it is really noticeable, but I think it's really well utilized in strategic moments to emphasize Loki's fragility underneath the macho antihero angst. He always seems on the verge of coming apart and in a couple brilliantly tense moments he does. 8/10 The Silence of the Lambs (1991) -- flawless filmmaking. Clarice talking about the screaming of the lambs is still edge-of-your-seat breathtaking, and just when you don't think Demme can ratchet up the tension anymore he does by pulling the camera even closer. So many of its sequences remain memorable -- the interviews, the escape, "Goodbye Horses", the climactic blackout terror in the basement, and yes Demme brings a lot of suspense to these moments, but Clarice remains the heart of soul of this film and her character is why it remains an untouched masterpiece. Demme subtly speaks to her "otherness" as a woman in law enforcement (so subtle you can miss it), and only hints at her backstory with two brief flashbacks, but everything else we learn about her comes through organically and fits seamlessly in the crime procedural structure. Beneath the vulnerability and self-doubt, she's driven, serious and perseverant, and Demme fully explores those contradictions in the scenes with Lecter. As he picks apart her psyche, so too is Demme and Foster laying bare her character for the audience. Thrilling cinema. 10/10    |
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Post by Martin Stett on Oct 29, 2024 22:55:58 GMT
2002 Scavenger Hunt #2
The Man Without a Past (Director: Aki Kaurismäki)  Not too much to say on this one, as it's a pleasant enough experience that I am mostly indifferent towards. The portrait of all these nice people being nice to the nice man that has lost his memory completely is nice. It's nice fluff. I liked it for what it is, but this is far from Kaurismaki's funniest or most comforting movie. It's a blip in his career that functions as a nice fairy little fairy tale. That's okay.
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Post by mhynson27 on Nov 1, 2024 2:18:08 GMT
Bodies Bodies Bodies Not our neighbourhood getting a blackout half way through me watching this |
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Nov 1, 2024 13:43:38 GMT
Alien, The Thing, The Exorcist... my horror trifecta that I watch each Halloween. Perfection.
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Post by Martin Stett on Nov 6, 2024 0:23:48 GMT
2002 Scavenger Hunt #3
Tokyo.Sora (Director: Hiroshi Ishikawa)  The early 2000s equivalent of A24 wankery. A meandering portrait of lonely twentysomethings in Tokyo being miserable and occasionally having moments of joy and success and IT IS ALL SO FUCKING DULL. There are too many characters, not enough connective tissue. None of the big moments have any power because this movie doesn't put any damn legwork in to make me understand the first thing about any of these people. But it has lots of shots of people sitting in corners, looking depressed, and sometimes even hopeful or happy! Get the fuck out of here, learn to write a screenplay with cause and effect you poser.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Nov 8, 2024 17:16:22 GMT
My Old Ass (2024). Nice little movie. Fairly predictable on there the main arc was going but the story still landed. Plaza and Stella were what really made this work as well as it did.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Nov 8, 2024 19:44:44 GMT
Prizzi’s Honor (1985). How the fuck did this get nominated for so many Oscars?
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Nov 12, 2024 1:11:49 GMT
After reading Salem’s Lot last month, I finally got around to watching all 3 of the adaptations. I had originally only intended to watch the new version, but I was disappointed by it and decided to check out the others to see if I would like them any better. I kept seeing people describe the newest adaptation as the best one so far, but it actually ended up being my least favorite of the three. I think the main reason is that the miniseries format of the first two adaptations simply allowed them to do more, whereas the 2-hour runtime of the recent version just made everything feel too rushed. 2024: Certain things are shown/revealed too early, the vampire attack scenes are quite hokey in their execution (a big part of that is the vfx), Barlow himself looks like ass, there’s not enough Straker, and in general things move too quickly, there’s not enough time for certain characters to act convincingly skeptical of the situation before things escalate. Because the story feels rushed, things don’t have much of an impact and overall the film lacks weight and feels kind of hollow as a result. I will say that one thing the film does better than the book is the meet-cute and early scenes between Ben and Susan, which are far less cringe than the dialogue that King wrote for them. 2004: Marginally better, but mostly because things are simply more fleshed out. Vampire stuff is still hokey at times with not-great vfx, and overall the series has a dated early aughts TV aesthetic, but I still found the horror elements better executed here than in the new version. There are some weird changes/additions to the book that feel unnecessary and pointless (including attempts to update the story to modern day), and I didn’t care for the voiceover narration at all. Some of the casting, however, is pretty on point (Rob Lowe aside) – Donald Sutherland as Straker, James Cromwell as Father Callahan, Samantha Mathis as Susan (which is pretty much exactly how I imagined her), and especially Rutger Hauer as Barlow. I appreciate that this version actually made Barlow more human-like than how he’s depicted in the other adaptations since that’s how he’s described in the book. 1979: Still the best adaptation imo. Not without its flaws (like the sometimes cheesy music stingers and freeze frames, awkward editing/scene transitions), but overall it’s the version that’s most successful at conjuring a sense of creepiness. Still, it’s disappointing that every single adaptation manages to do Father Callahan dirty... which is a shame considering he’s the character with the most interesting arc in the novel imo.    |
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Post by Pavan on Nov 12, 2024 12:50:11 GMT
The Wild Robot (2024)-
Sweet, sentimental, gorgeously animated and entertaining for the most part. Good vocal work from Lupita and Pedro- 7.5/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Nov 13, 2024 21:22:12 GMT
Director Deep Dive: Naoko Yamada #1
A Silent Voice (2016)  This will be the only entry in Yamada's filmography for a little while. Her first movie as a director was K-On! The Movie, and I would need to get through the show first. (I sort of liked what I got through, but I felt it was a bit repetitive.) That said, Yamada directed a contender for my favorite movie of all time, so I'm checking out the one standalone movie entry in her filmography thus far. And that is her super-popular A Silent Voice. The main thing I've got to say is... HOLY MELODRAMATIC EXAGGERATION, BATMAN! Tone it down, for Chrissakes! There is some good stuff here - there is one scene in particular that is so dang beautiful that I almost wanted to hug it... and then whisk it away to a better film - but it gets overshadowed by on-the-nose, pandering melodrama that spells out all of its themes and ideas IN BOLD NEON COLORS that kneecaps any point the writer (screenwriter is Reiko Yoshida, but I'm guessing all of this is a fault of source writer Yoshitoki Oima) was making. For every moment of Ishida meeting Yuzuru in her school uniform, we get two or three of Ueno being an EVIL ALPHA-MEGA-BITCH or blunt PSAs on Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It!). And here's the thing. Conceptually, Ueno is an interesting character. But the writing fucks her over by having her spell out every damn thought in her head in case you're too stupid to follow along. Conceptually, Ishida's long-harbored guilt over bullying Nishiyama (leading to his self-imposed isolation) is powerful stuff, but the movie feels the need to have him explain his every thought over voice-over. Even Nishiyama - who exists primarily as a plot device for every character to angst over - is given very blunt and over-the-top motivations for her depression and self-loathing. There is a really, REALLY good movie with this concept. Each of the characters and events would be strong if this was tackled with any subtlety at all. But this puts fucking Patch Adams to shame on the manipulative ridiculousness (I actually liked Patch Adams, but there's no denying that it's all a bit much). As far as directorial touches that connect with her work on Liz and the Blue Bird... well, the character design is unorthodox compared to the standard anime look - every character has a distinctive face and body type - and there are some directorial flourishes like the X's appearing over the faces of people Ishida is uncomfortable with that force her to focus on body language (which she would take to a nigh-experimental extreme in Liz). It doesn't have the careful editing of Liz, but that's because it doesn't need to go to the same extremes. In the visual sense, she reins it in, trying not to distract from what the characters are going through. Although I could have used the distraction, because the script is a well-intentioned disaster. I don't blame Yamada at all - and as I said, I'm not sure if Yoshida is to blame or if she's simply adapting a crass, over-the-top teen drama faithfully - but the writing lets down the many good ideas present.
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This is cinema, etc.
