Movies you've been watching...

SenorDingDong

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Finally watched Hereditary. Wish I hadn't, it was awful. So vaunted and built up and it was 2 hours of silly attempts at atmosphere that resulted in an ever-lowering bar of dissatisfaction.
 

PunkBillCarson

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I still stand by The favourite as being my favorite movie of the year. Unlike Wankerness I love period pieces and costume dramas, plus it's just too much fun to watch Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz be emotionally manipulative conniving bitches. Plus it's kind of an absurd film at times, and I like that.
I rewatched Company of Wolves last night. It was a cool atmospheric take on red riding hood/werewolves, but mostly I just like it for the transformation scenes, especially the flesh ripping one, though the later transformation scene is still cool where the wolf bursts from the man's skin. The practical effects hold up quite well like other films from that time period (ie American Werewolf, Aliens, etc).


Where is this movie? Netflix? Want more werewolf movies. Dog Soldiers and Howl are among my faves.
 

wankerness

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I dunno, I bought the disc. You might have to rent it on amazon.
 

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wankerness

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Just saw that black panther won a bunch of SAG awards. Also Emily Blunt somehow won best actress over Rachel Weisz or Emma Stone for Quiet Place :lol:

She’s better. I didn’t like that movie much, but that birth scene was insane. She’s really good. It’s not a stereotypical “best actress” part but what she did is not easy and I’m really glad they recognized it, cause the Oscars won’t touch anything other than stereotypical Oscar performances the vast majority of the time.

Toni Collette in Hereditary might have been better. Those were two amazing performances regardless of how you feel about the movies.

Black Panther acting was nothing special across the board, I’m right with you there.
 

SenorDingDong

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Just watched The Mule, from 2014 (not the new Clint Eastwood movie). Hilarious and ultimately dark movie about a seemingly simple-minded man manipulated and extorted into smuggling drugs, due to his need to escape the controlling nature of his family. It plays far better than it sounds, as nothing about it was political, routine or generic.
 

KnightBrolaire

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hereditary was solid. I thought i'd hate it but surprisingly i didn't. the first half is pretty tedious but the second half swings around and salvages the movie for me.

blackkklansman was good, but felt way too on the nose and contrived with some of its references. It was interesting seeing washington's character struggle with being pigeonholed by both whites and blacks into certain molds and stereotypes.
I liked how much of a caricature some of the klansmen were, particularly felix. He was an excellent counterpoint against the more refined and insidious duke. The scene where the klan is watching birth of a nation while the black student union listens to the lynching story was another great use of contrast. the inclusion of the charlottesville footage didn't particularly add to the film except to further emphasize how deplorable duke and the neo nazi/kkk are.
 

wankerness

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hereditary was solid. I thought i'd hate it but surprisingly i didn't. the first half is pretty tedious but the second half swings around and salvages the movie for me.

Hmm, I had kind of the opposite reaction. I thought it built tension quite nicely and peaked at the incredible sequence from the party through the next morning. After that it kind of turned into more standard horror goofiness, even if it was effective at that. I need to watch it again, though. I intentionally read nothing going in after seeing a review or two that stressed to avoid spoilers, and I think some of the back half might function better knowing where things were going.

Just watched Ocean's 8. I've never seen any of these before. It was pretty good, I guess. I sure don't like that Mindy Kaling. I have no desire to see more of them now. I guess this one had a new director, and clearly he's not a Soderbergh. It's funny how Soderbergh managed to extract good leading performances out of Gina Carano and Sasha Grey, yet this guy couldn't do anything about James Corden being the same annoying mugging doof that he is on his late-night show and totally upsetting the tone of the movie when he shows up 1:30 in. Then again, they might be better actors than him.
 

KnightBrolaire

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Mother - It was kind of tedious tbh. It becomes increasingly nightmarish and weird as the film goes on but it didn't really do anything for me. The end sequence had some interesting gory bits but overall the film just left me felling meh. I'm usually a huge fan of Aronofsky's work but this wasn't that great. I'm glad I didn't pay money to watch it.

Destroyer- a strangely compelling character study/mediocre noir film. nicole kidman is excellent even if the film is kind of a standard noir bad cop kind of film, but with a woman as the grizzled, hardened bad cop instead of a man. she manages to bounce between the frail, gaunt and grizzled version, and her younger fresher self. there's two really stand out scenes that give off serious Heat vibes. the chronology of the film is a bit haphazard, but it's only to try and make a ho hum bank robbery/revenge film more interesting. It's at least worth a rental/watch on netflix imo, but not worth seeing in theaters.
 

Demiurge

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Watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs last night. Apparently, the Cohen brothers were going to make an anthology show taking place in the Wild West but smushed the episodes/segments together into a feature-length instead. Some good comedy, violence, weirdness, but some draggy parts. If it ever gets split up, the part with Tom Waits as a crazy gold prospector is definitely worth watching.
 

wankerness

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Widows (2018) - very good heist movie, but briefly seeing Jon Bernthal as a wife beater made me rage with the heat of a thousand suns, he's way too reprehensible of a creep in appearance (i think he's fine IRL based on the one time I read an interview). Occasionally reminded me of The Wire with the overhead view of politics and crime etc, but obviously it didn't have anywhere near the space to flesh everything out. I hated Viola Davis cause of Suicide Squad, but she definitely won me over here despite playing another (superficially) stonefaced jerk. Really, really good character development and acting with her character. The secondary widow is also quite great, I've only ever seen her before as the gold woman trying to kill the Guardians of the Galaxy! Michelle Rodriguez is a non-entity, and I didn't recognize the others. Daniel Kaluuya is a scary enforcer guy for a corrupt politician, Colin Farrell is the other corrupt politician, etc. The actual heist is really intense. 4/5

Burning (2018) - weirdo character study that turns into...a thriller? It's about a REALLY socially awkward guy that hooks up with some chick, gets dumped for a slick cretin (Steven Yuen!) who seems very...off, and then becomes convinced that she's disappeared and gets ever more frantic trying to uncover the truth. It is very, very slow and long (2:30), and the first hour or 90 minutes really tested my patience, but it steadily turns the screws so by the pretty incredible ending you're totally wrung out. I don't know if I'd ever watch it again, but good movie! 4/5

Holiday (2018) - Danish movie about an arm-candy girlfriend of a violent criminal from her perspective. You never really get to see these characters from their perspective. Adriana or Carmela on the Sopranos have way too much of an actual relationship with their gangster beaus to compare to this woman (well, more like a girl with her emotional maturity). It's....something. It's quite well made, but is a car crash in slow motion, and has one unexpected scene that is probably going to shock and/or offend just about everyone besides, uh, fans of violent porn. It is probably necessary to the story, though! 3/5

Iron Man - I got the old computer out this time to take notes, trying to actually figure out Jeff Bridge's character's motivation. And I was right that it makes no sense - in fact, it makes LESS sense than I thought it did! This movie's plot is a goddam train wreck. It also doesn't hold up at all as entertainment when you've seen all the movies that it launched. There are a couple entertaining scenes (the suit Mark 1's escape, the building of the real suit and testing of components), but there's a lot of filler and garbage like gratuitous Burger King product placement, and especially gratuitous Jon Favreau product placement. 2/5

Neighbors 2 - I have to admit I laughed, A LOT. It almost felt too short. I liked the trio of girls (Chloe Moretz, some person, and Saoirse Ronan's friend from Lady Bird), I liked the characters from the previous movie, I liked just about everything other than the way they took that stupid CGI "Seth Rogen gets hit with huge ball" gag and bore down on it, probably including at least 6 of such gags. It's a pretty realistic movie besides those weird Looney Tunes injuries done with CGI and/or stunt wires that would have killed any of the characters deader than dead. I think I laughed the hardest when Seth Rogen's friend put on the horrifying clown mask and started running through the girls' fund raiser with an air horn. 3.5/5

Suspiria (2018) - the big climax hit me really hard this time and was so good that I don't even know for sure how I felt about the previous 2 hours. I think they're pretty good. The ending makes it great stuff. 4/5

A Cure for Wellness - That really unappealing creep from Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Chronicle is our hero, getting trapped in a weird Swiss mental hospital while trying to bring back a coworker. It's got ridiculous details right and left, so it veers between Shutter Island and a haunted castle movie. And then throws in really, really disgusting incest and graphic sexual assault in the bizarre last 30 minutes, that seem like they're tacked on after the real ending anyway!!! It sure is nice to look at, though. 3/5
 

KnightBrolaire

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Cold Pursuit- it's apparently a remake of a norwegian film called "in order of disappearance". I loved it. The trailers made it look like a straight up revenge/action film but there's a lot more to it than that. It's first and foremost a pitch black comedy, with some minor social commentary about native americans being exploited/their culture being appropriated and sold. There's also some subtext about grief and dealing with loss, but they don't fixate too heavily on it. The cinematography and sound effects are excellent, with some of the best bone crunching sounds I've heard in a while. The movie gave me a very Coen bros vibe with the "everyday characters in absurd situations/extreme violence" pastiche but it does it really well. There's some absolutely absurd scenes that I don't want to spoil but let's just say they're on par with the wood chipper scene in Fargo.

The Horseman- It's an australian revenge film that came out years ago, and I felt like this was a perfect counterpoint to Cold Pursuit. It's relentlessly bleak and sad. You can feel the anguish and rage emanating from the main actor as he systematically tracks down the people responsible for his daughter's death. It's quite gritty and down to earth, as he only uses tools from his toolbox to exact revenge (no big shootouts or anything fancy here).
 

Bloody_Inferno

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Alita: Battle Angel

Really interesting pairing James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez together. The former known for extremely meticulous to attention to detail, while the latter being a gonzo auteur who can seamlessly cobble together a movie on a weekend with just a laptop and a team of friends. Getting them both to tackle a live action adaptation of a gritty deconstruction of anime/manga in the 80s/early 90s, is not playing it safe. And the result shows. It's a complete mess. And quite a sincere, fun and beautiful mess a that.

Trying to fit as much of the source material as possible, the film suffers from structure issues that feels like small chapter acts that end and reset over the course of 2 hours then doesn't end at the finish line. It is surprising that they managed to capture the spirit of the source material so well. Also helps when you have a team of fantastic actors playing their A game. With the exception of the guy who plays Hugo, who in fairness, only lags behind when surrounded by an exceptional cast playing complex characters. Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Mahershala Ali, Jennifer Connelly, freaking Jackie Earle Hayley are all exceptional, Waltz in particular being the best I've seen outside a Tarrentino movie in recent memory.

I had as much trepidation approaching this as a typical anime snob, but even with it's flaws, I still enjoyed it. Probably my favorite Robert Rodriguez film next to the Machete movies.
 

Spaced Out Ace

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Just watched the trailer for The Dirt (the Motley Crue movie) and compared to BoRhap, it's like one of those "Online vs when it arrives" memes. :lol:
 

KnightBrolaire

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Battle Angel Alita
I'm a big fan of the manga, so I was really hoping they wouldn't fuck this one up. They didn't, but it felt very clunky pacing wise for the first 20 minutes or so, and there's some seriously cringey dialogue in the film. The fight scenes are actually pretty brutal (not as brutal as the manga imo but close), and the motorball scenes are super fun and bombastic. Christoph Walz and Rosa Salazar carry the film hard, but the supporting cast (barring the kid playing Hugo) are excellent.
Overall the only thing that I really disliked was the uncanny valley vibe of Alita having big eyes while everyone else looked normal. I eventually got used to it, but it just looks...wrong. That being said there's lots of cool little details in the art/costume design that I really enjoyed like the floral scrollwork on alita's first body, zipan's awesome buddhist esque back armor, etc.
This is probably the first decent film Rodriguez has made since Planet Terror.
If you're in the mood for some good dumb fun, then definitely see it in theaters. Otherwise I'd say wait to rent it.
 

wankerness

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You guys didn't like Sin City 2, but still like 1? I got the impression that it was really not that different in quality and most of the bad reviews it got from critics would have been exactly applied to the first one had it been released in 2014 instead of 2005 due to social acceptability standards changing considerably in that time :p I've only watched it once, though, so maybe it just benefited from low expectations.
 

KnightBrolaire

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You guys didn't like Sin City 2, but still like 1? I got the impression that it was really not that different in quality and most of the bad reviews it got from critics would have been exactly applied to the first one had it been released in 2014 instead of 2005 due to social acceptability standards changing considerably in that time :p I've only watched it once, though, so maybe it just benefited from low expectations.
Sin City 2 is solid, I just liked Planet Terror way more.
 


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