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Aladdin - 3/5: Pretty happy with Will Smith's take on the genie and felt like he really did his own thing. Aladdin and Jasmine were well cast as well. Everything was great except the direction. Who the gently caress thought Guy Ritchie was a good choice for this property or anything Disney? He really went in on his stylistic moments and they stuck out like a sore thumb, particularly in a big musical moment. Probably would have been the strongest live action Disney if they'd just waited until Lion King was done and gotten Favreau.
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Jun 10, 2019 06:47
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OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies 6/10. It;s an okay spy spoof I guess.This one takes the approach of playing up the main character spy being a clueless condescending cad but overall plays itself rather seriously and realistically. None of the ridiculous gadgets or schemes like Our Man Flint, Austin Powers, or Casino Royale '67 are to be found here. Not to say there's isn't a funny scene or situation, but most are centered around our spy, OSS 117, making an rear end of himself. Also the opening credits were nicely designed, but I'm a sucker for the 1960s aesthetic (even though the bulk of this movie takes place in 1955). Maybe I'll go watch the other movie, OSS 117: Lost in Rio, maybe I won't. You'd think with my deep and abiding love of Eurospy trash films from those same 60s and 70s I'd be all over this but eh.
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Jun 11, 2019 04:13
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If you didn't love Cairo I wouldn't bother with Rio
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Jun 11, 2019 04:20
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morestuff posted:If you didn't love Cairo I wouldn't bother with Rio I looked at the trailer and it looks alright to better than Cairo, but I don't know how much was played up for said trailer. It seems the female Mossad Agent character in Rio gets better digs in on OSS 117 than the secretary in Cairo. But again that could just be the trailer's focus. I think I might just toss Cairo on the "out" stack and forget about it for now, I still have an embarrassing amount of DVDs still shrink wrapped; hence the reason I'm doing this. I'd get a cheap DVD here and there and set it aside for "later" and well later is now, dammit.
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Jun 11, 2019 04:34
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X-Men Dark Phoenix 1.5/5 real bad. Not as bad as Apocalypse maybe I don’t know. Nothing loving happens.
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Jun 11, 2019 06:56
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Lincoln: It was ok. At least it focused on one specific time frame. But scenes were just strung along and I got bored. Terrible music.
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Jun 11, 2019 11:40
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So my local theater frequently shows older movies as part of it's "Retro Revival" series. Here are two I recently saw: 2001: A Space Odyssey I don't think I have to tell anyone that this is a great film. I've seen it several times before and I never get tired of it, especially if I get to see it on the big screen. While watching it this time I was amused by the fact that several of the brands used in the film (Pam Am, Howard Johnson's) have been defunct for years. Arabesque First time seeing this film and I really enjoyed it. Don't ask me to describe the plot since it's mainly an excuse for Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren to trade quips with each other. Interestingly, both films featured the song "Daisy Bell", HAL sings it during it's deactivation and Gregory Peck sings it after being pumped full of truth serum.
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Jun 11, 2019 16:20
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The_Other posted:While watching it this time I was amused by the fact that several of the brands used in the film (Pam Am, Howard Johnson's) have been defunct for years. Same with the original Blade Runner, and the cool thing is that 2049 just loving runs with it.
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Jun 11, 2019 19:40
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The Battery It was supposedly filmed on a $6,000 budget, and pound for pound I've never seen a better movie. It's about the relationship between two pals wandering around the zombie-infested post-apocalyptic landscape of Connecticut. It's taken as a given you know what standard zombie rules are (and these are pretty slow and weak, they're not the running kind we've seen recently) and as such there is refreshingly no exposition. Who cares how it happened. The bickering between our two characters is great, it's almost like Clerks but with zombie, though better than that sounds. The final scene is really what makes the film though. Some might find it interminable but I've never seen a better depiction of the claustrophobic horror one must feel from being trapped by a zombie horde. The film does show its budget at times (who tended that freshly mowed field?) but it's all very forgiveable. 3.5/4
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Jun 16, 2019 00:27
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Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996): 3.5/5. God the music in this is so good. Except for, y'know, that one gargoyles song.
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Jun 16, 2019 19:02
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Bottom Liner posted:X-Men Dark Phoenix 1.5/5 real bad. Not as bad as Apocalypse maybe I don’t know. Nothing loving happens. Is there at least a fun Quicksilver scene in this one?
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Jun 16, 2019 21:03
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Ego-bot posted:Is there at least a fun Quicksilver scene in this one? I don't think so, unfortunately.
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Jun 16, 2019 21:53
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Ego-bot posted:Is there at least a fun Quicksilver scene in this one? Also I didn’t even mention it before because I forgot about them immediately but the villains make the MCU baddies look incredible by contrast.
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Jun 16, 2019 22:03
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Ego-bot posted:Is there at least a fun Quicksilver scene in this one? From what I've heard it's worse than no scene because the quicksilver scene is basically a fake out gag.
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Jun 16, 2019 23:20
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Men in Black International: 1/5. Barely a movie. A loving waste of time, money, concept and cast.
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Jun 17, 2019 08:27
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Yeah it was pretty bad.
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Jun 17, 2019 17:47
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Dreamcatcher (2003): B+/B This is a weird yet enjoyable movie, but you should not watch the cinematic trailer before watching it. The first time I saw this movie, I loving hated it because the trailer loving lies to you about the plot. This is a Steven King movie that hits lots of familiar tropes: 1) a group of boys who grow up to be friends, 2) special abilities, and 3) aliens. It's very important to pay attention to what all of main characters say and do because the movie packs a lot of weird ideas in it, and it's easy to get lost if you zone out. There are major problems with the plot/conflict (like how the antagonist plans to win), but characters (especially Damian Lewis) are fun to watch. I'm not qualified to comment on Duddits' portrayal as a person suffering several disabilities, but I offer a content warning. Night School (2018): B I needed a comedy movie to watch to make me laugh and feel less depressed. I'm insane and happen to think Kevin Hart is funny, and that Tiffany Haddish is even funnier, and they both delivered in this movie. Not going to lie, it's a broad comedy that doesn't do anything new. It's founded the tired trope of a man dating a woman out of his league, the man lying to her because he thinks that will keep her, the woman finding out, and the woman forgiving him after the man confesses both to himself and to her about who he really is. However, the movie also includes a more compelling story about the importance of teachers helping students identify their learning disabilities, and helping them overcome them in order to succeed. The supporting cast also helps keep the movie from getting overly sappy, with Mary Lynn Rajskub (AKA "Gail the Snail") standing out in particular as the frustrated mother of three who is trying to get her GED to prevent her family from having to live in her in-laws' laundry room.
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Jun 20, 2019 05:42
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john wick 3 - it's more of people getting shot in the face/head region with an even dumber plot then the 2nd one somehow. I think everyone knows what to expect from jw3 and subsequently 4,5, 9, 15, etc etc. Weird sidenote, the action choreography in these films are so rhythmic they tend to make me sleepy for some reason..and i've heard the same thing from friends. hypnotic shooty mans. brightburn- what if superman, but evil? there, that's the whole movie..you're welcome. it was ok..ish..one of those perfect for a random netflix in the background selection. I legit felt bad elizabeth banks got talked into this one, she's way better than this movie acting wise. game night - better then i thought it would be, but still pretty generic comedy wise..actually does some cool things with the visuals which I wasn't expecting. a solid c kind of flick, like a less likeable/fun "we're the millers" the last black man in san fransisco - my fav of 2019 so far. killer visuals/score/editing/performances...the story isn't anything ground breaking but everything coming together knocks it way out of the park where it could have easily been a fairly forgettable piece. i'm almost willing to forgive a24 for "high life" after seeing this one. seriously, go see it when it gets wide release...i hope it snags some awards...
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Jun 20, 2019 07:21
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Some more kung fu movies: 36 Crazy Fists 2/10 Mostly this movie taught me that Chansploitation is as bad as Brucesploitation and I really should have known that. Jackie Chan did the fight choreography for this film, so that's good, and nothing else. Plot was too all over the place on which kung fu schools the main character was in and out of and who was helping him prepare to take on the bad gangsters. Also never heard an English/Australian/some kind of British Empire accented dub voice before. Snake in Eagle's Shadow 6/10 This one actually has Jackie Chan in the lead role and you can tell this is a precursor to the Drunken Master films as it has a very similar feel but doesn't go as deep on the comedy as the Drunken Master movies do. The plot was comprehensible (kung fu school's whipping boy learns kung fu and saves the day by defeating rear end in a top hat who's been killing people) but does feel a little drawn out at times. Still worth a watch though.
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Jun 20, 2019 14:25
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I wish TLBMISF was a wide release instead of limited/slowly expanding..I want to discuss this film so bad... It's maybe one of a handful movies I've ever come home from and looked up the score/played it front to back immediately. Plan B/A24 at it's best. Did any of y'all go see it? It's doing decently for an indie so maybe it'll stick around for a week longer than most limited releases.
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Jun 20, 2019 17:50
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I know the cinematographer and before I knew anything else about the film I knew it’d be beautiful. Really excited to see it eventually.
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Jun 20, 2019 19:41
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RWD (2015): I'll need another view to fairly rate it (had some phone issues about halfway through and I decided I could totally do both things, which was objectively untrue), but I actually think I liked it? Like, the first 30min or so was boring and base-level Found Footage Horror, but then the twist that the movie is a time travel film and all of the 'horror' being done is actually the two of them loving with their previous selves for funsies is one that I found engaging to the point of needing to rewatch it. Soft Recommend at this point.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:42
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The Dead Don't Die the latest by Jim Jarmusch. Just came back from seeing this film and I have to say I wasn't too impressed. It feels like Jarmusch was throwing a bunch of zombie cliches against the wall and seeing what stuck. It deals with a zombie outbreak in a small town in middle America and the reaction of various individuals to it, but it never really comes together and one group, three inmates at a juvenile detention center, could be cut from the film and you wouldn't lose anything. At times it seems like the film wants to be a parody of zombie films, at other times it wants to use zombies as a metaphor for social ills, and at other times a parody of using zombie films (does what I wrote make any sense?). That said the film wasn't a total loss. It has a ensemble cast that includes Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Adam Driver, and Danny Glover just to name a few. They all give really great performances and do what they can with the roles they are given. I got a few big laughs out of it, the biggest being towards the end when Murray asks the Driver character why he keeps saying "this won't end well". Driver's response? He read the script Jim gave him. All and all The Dead Don't Die isn't a bad movie, but you won't miss anything by not seeing it either. 2.5/5
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Jun 21, 2019 03:35
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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932, Mervyn LeRoy) [DVD] - 4.5/5 3 Bad Men (1926, John Ford) [Blu-ray] - 3/5 The Sea Hawk (1940, Michael Curtiz) [Blu-ray] - 4/5 The Sea Wolf (1941, Michael Curtiz) [Blu-ray] - 4/5 Private Property (1960, Leslie Stevens) [Blu-ray] - 3/5 Drive a Crooked Road (1954, Richard Quine) [Criterion Channel] - 4/5 Nightfall (1956, Jacques Tourneur) [Criterion Channel] - 4/5 Human Desire (1954, Fritz Lang) [Criterion Channel] - 4/5 You Only Live Once (1938, Fritz Lang) [Blu-ray] - 4/5 Diary of a Lost Girl (1929, G.W. Pabst) [Blu-ray] - 4/5 Really enjoying the Criterion Channel's Columbia Noir and I'm hoping to finish it out over the weekend. I skipped In a Lonely Place and The Big Heat since I've already seen them (and I watched My Name is Julia Ross and So Dark the Night right around when it came up). Really impressed with Mickey Rooney's performance in Drive a Crooked Road and it was fun seeing Kevin McCarthy play a heavy. The Lang noirs are fun, especially having seen The Woman in the Window earlier this month. Really need to see the rest of his silents and noirs. You Only Live Once has to be the most nihilistic American film I've seen from the 30s. The Sea Hawk is a fun swashbuckler starring Errol Flynn and The Sea Wolf is based on a Jack London story starring Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, and John Garfield. Both a lot of fun (and the Blu-ray restorations are loving gorgeous). I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is pretty drat bleak and lays on the ACAB attitude really well. Need to see more Paul Muni films, but I love the original Scarface and The Life of Emile Zola. 3 Bad Men is a decent Ford western. Might just be me, but I think George O'Brien had one of the most interesting faces in silent film. Private Property isn't exactly very plot-based, but an interesting film. Kind of forgotten, but it does have some nice photography by Ted McCord (with Conrad Hall as camera operator!) Diary of a Lost Girl is only the second Pabst film I've seen (besides Pandora's Box) and it's wild. Fritz Rasp really had a talent for playing awful characters. And Louise Brooks still has one of the finest faces in silent cinema.
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Jun 21, 2019 04:53
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zer0spunk posted:
Not gonna score it atm but just finished watching and it really hosed me up. What a film! 
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Jun 22, 2019 05:43
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:Not gonna score it atm but just finished watching and it really hosed me up. What a film! Better come to fucken Pittsburgh
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Jun 22, 2019 06:20
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Toy Story 4: 3/5. Not as good as the originals, but still a fairly good movie. There were many bumps in several of the departments- writing, some music choices, character choices (the movie basically does an 180 after a certain point and basically abandons Forky)- but it was still a very fun experience. There's a very particular scene that just got to me (when Gabby meets the lost girl) but other than that it was just good.
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Jun 22, 2019 07:24
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:Not gonna score it atm but just finished watching and it really hosed me up. What a film! that last montage of mont is soul crushing..but those final shots of j in the rowboat are stunning...i have so many questions..where is he going??? the thing feels like a suicide ending with that note he leaves mont (i wasn't crying, it was just a dusty theater) but i didn't really get that vibe from the character..i'd like to think he's just starting over somewhere over the bay..ending it all because you've tied your identity into a house/gentrification *shakes fist* seems a little too farfetched for this kinda flick. also i read a review where the critic kept saying mont was autistic..i straight up did not get that, or didn't think it read that way and it's the only thing thats even mentioned that..he came off as quirky/artsy/hipster to me rather then on the spectrum..maybe socially awkward but not some kinda rainman cliche savant dealio, that also seems like a lame cop out too good for this movie love love the random moments interspersed in there jello as the dickhead segway tour guide..the drunk trolley chanting this guy fucks at the naked homeless guy...ahhhhh sooooo gooooooooddddd my fav piece of randomness, the dude who does the acapella san fran cover is the dude who sings the chorus of the actual "i got five on it"..makes his little interaction at the end of the song that much cooler yo that score tho. whole thing is on youtube including the last track which is just spoken word by jimmie in character telling a story of how he and mont met. this movie hit me like requiem for a dream (maybe way less fuckin' depressing tho) in that it's a fantastic piece of storytelling with visuals that make you remember why you love the art of cinematography in the first place. i can only think of a handful of films that did that for me tbh. e: oh also one of the few movies where the trailer lives up to how good the entire thing is and doesn't really give everything away e2: and i think more should be said that there's no shoehorned love sub plot in this whatsoever. such a refreshing change.. zer0spunk fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Jun 22, 2019 |
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Jun 22, 2019 15:52
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X men dark Phoenix- was alright. Not as funny as Captain Marvel but had more emotional range, and some solid feeling performances through out. Liked Magneto, Nightcrawler and Cyclops, appreciated Ravens brief scenes, felt that Xavier and Blonde Evil were phoning it in. Jean was strictly middle of the road. Hereditary on streaming- what a crock of nonsense. Got bored after the head in the road scene and checked out completely after shouty dinner scene. Nothing landed or felt like a real event for me, just a string of scenes from a pretentious school play.
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Jun 23, 2019 20:21
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The_Other posted:The Dead Don't Die the latest by Jim Jarmusch. Just came back from seeing this film and I have to say I wasn't too impressed. It feels like Jarmusch was throwing a bunch of zombie cliches against the wall and seeing what stuck. It deals with a zombie outbreak in a small town in middle America and the reaction of various individuals to it, but it never really comes together and one group, three inmates at a juvenile detention center, could be cut from the film and you wouldn't lose anything. At times it seems like the film wants to be a parody of zombie films, at other times it wants to use zombies as a metaphor for social ills, and at other times a parody of using zombie films (does what I wrote make any sense?). This movie was seriously weird as gently caress. I liked it, even though it's for sure his worst movie (I also wasn't a fan of broken flowers, but this one beats it) but even bad jim is still kinda rad. I knew I was going into something that was gunna be strange, but the saturday night audience I saw it with sure didn't..lots of "what the gently caress?" at the end. It feels like it had a really weird edit and there's a bunch of things missing, but then again I doubt it would have mattered much. did not see the fourth wall stuff coming whatsoever, has he done that before? It did feel like a huge waste of one of the coolest casts ever..but then again iggy pop coffee zombie
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Jun 23, 2019 22:12
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Yeah we saw it last night and I'll echo all of the above. It didn't know if it wanted to be serious (Tom Waits narration) or complete farce and it ended up somewhere in the middle confused about its own identity. Its most amusing parts were the meta humor jokes Tilda Swinton being an actual alien but its not really a rewatchable movie on any level.
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Jun 23, 2019 23:15
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The Meg (2018): C/C- This is a pretty by-the-numbers summer blockbuster with a smaller scale monster (compared to the Godzillas, Kongs, and Rampage monsters out there), filled with pandering to China in order to get some of that Chinese box office money. It's not good, but I'll be damned if Jason Statham and Cliff Curtis didn't give it their all. It's an entertaining enough watch if you want to put something on to kill some time and you're bored of Jaws and Deep Blue Sea, but there are many better movies out there.
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Jun 24, 2019 07:20
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Bogus Adventure posted:The Meg (2018): C/C- For some reason I can't hear the title of this film and not think of The Duff, a very different movie. --- Ma is a film that is very odd even though it's walking on some well-trodden ground. It's worth seeing for a good Octavia Spencer performance. See Dark Phoenix if you are morbidly curious about what might end up being Fox's last shot at this. For what it's worth this is the First Class film I like the most but that's damning with faint praise. Toy Story 4 is very sweet. See this if you've seen the others. I didn't actually think the series needed a sequel and that 3 was closure enough, but I like the additional step they took with 4. There are at least three shorts worth seeing in Nightmare Cinema. Maybe four (still thinking about that last one)! They're kind of more . . . esoteric . . . . genre shorts than actually scary for the most part but I had a good time with most of the film. Rick fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Jun 24, 2019 |
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Jun 24, 2019 08:44
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Yesterday: 2/5. Yesterday/as a movie it's really just okay/I've got nothing else to say/I just saw Yesterday. (Ed Sheeran and Kate McKinnon are the best parts of the movie.)
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Jun 25, 2019 06:05
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zer0spunk posted:
Let's skate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCZAbp0_pog
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Jun 25, 2019 10:59
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPMZ8kl3_Ys on loop
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Jun 26, 2019 16:26
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I saw the 4K remaster of The Shining tonight.  It’s so beautiful. Every detail seems just right, and the score is reconstructed and sounds like an orchestra. No way this movie could ever lose points, in my book, but this is like walking through a museum of the movie. 10/10
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Jul 1, 2019 04:41
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stratofarius posted:Toy Story 4: 3/5. Not as good as the originals, but still a fairly good movie. There were many bumps in several of the departments- writing, some music choices, character choices (the movie basically does an 180 after a certain point and basically abandons Forky)- but it was still a very fun experience. There's a very particular scene that just got to me (when Gabby meets the lost girl) but other than that it was just good. Just saw this today and I'd give it a B+. The plot was rather flimsy, but hey, it's a Toy Story movie, so it was still cute and had funny moments. Early on the Gabby Gabby character seemed like she was like a retread of the 'villain' from Toy Story 2. Didn't like that the 'supporting cast' didn't have much of a B-Plot, but Ducky and Bunny and Duke Caboom were fun additions. Regardless, it was still a fun movie.
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Jul 1, 2019 07:03
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bort posted:I saw the 4K remaster of The Shining tonight. I saw a remaster (not the current one going around) like 4-5 years ago and it was amazing. This film is so perfect on a very big screen.
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Jul 1, 2019 07:12
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) 8/10 It's been a while since I've seen an animated movie that absolutely reveled in the fact that it's animated rather than simply using animation as a versatile tool. Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre (2015) 3/10 Every fifteen minutes DNA from another movie gets spliced in to keep the film lurching forward. It's stupid, but it's SyFy stupid, which is usually good enough for me. All Girls Weekend (2016) 2.5/10 There's a cool indie movie hiding in here but it's much, much too sloppy. A fun idea wasted. Beware the Lake (2017) 4/10 As amateur as some of the others here but there's some really cool shots and it's overall decently executed. Johnathan Lipnicki cashes a check. Dead Kids/Strange Behavior (1981) 4.5/10 The first half of this movie is a quality 7/10. The second half is a sour 2/10. The payoff is a real letdown after the intrigue of the beginning. Magic Lizard (1985) 2.5/10 I genuinely liked the opening music number. The lizard's voice may well haunt me until the day I die. the cutoff for "I feel like my time was wasted" is if it's below a 3.0, because I know you were wondering
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Jul 1, 2019 17:58
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