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Pope Corky the IX posted:I think it's already been mentioned but Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is actually really loving good and better than any expectation I had, especially for a DreamWorks movie. And the design of the Big Bad Wolf genuinely terrifying for a kids film. A couple of animated movie studios have really redeemed themselves as of late. Sony brought us the excreable emoji movie but then dropped spider verse out of nowhere and followed up with Mitchells vs the machines, and we watched The Bad Guys last night, and it was just a really enjoyable and fun little movie that got a surprising number of laughs out of me, and had really good art direction.
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Jan 6, 2023 00:55
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As a ~15 year veteran of high end dining industry The Menu was laser targeted at me and it scored a perfect headshot. Grinning ear to ear the entire time. This is revenge porn for chefs and waiters and anyone who's ever had a service industry job.
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Jan 6, 2023 03:11
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Babylon: okay I actually quite liked the movie but I have a lot of negative things to say about it. Positives: the sequence at the big desert film set, and the sequence with Tobey Maguire were both excellent. Diego Calva was quite good, I hope he gets more stuff. And, it takes major self-confidence to make a movie in which Singin’ in the Rain is actually based off of your OCs do not steal, so, credit for taking a big swing. Okay negatives: the movie is way overstuffed and overlong. Too many characters, it’s clear that Chazelle had a list of old Hollywood people he wanted to include and no one told him no. I think it’s noticeable that the worst cases here are the two “minority” characters, Sidney Palmer and Lady Fay. There also wasn’t really anything interesting done with Manny’s being Mexican, either. The big problem with explicitly quoting Singin’ in the Rain, even if it’s to make a point, is that that’s a much better-constructed movie, and it made me wish I was watching that instead. I think I’m in the minority here but I found the party scenes to be pretty lifeless and boring. Overall: flashes of greatness, very, very flawed. Glad I saw it.
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Jan 6, 2023 05:46
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Party Girl, Liked this way more than I thought I did. And primarily for the Library scenes. God I miss when we used to have real loving libraries in this country, loving stacked with books and you could just lose days wandering around finding obscure volumes. Gotta say I've never seen a movie that had outfits that vacillated so far between great and truly horrendous.
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Jan 6, 2023 06:14
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Babylon: Yeah I really wanted to be in this movie's corner and as smug n stuff says, there are some great sequences. (The whole bit where they're filming a talkie for the first time ever is superb.) It just doesn't come together at all and the finale is so drawn out it had me feeling like Tom Servo at the end of the Batwoman episode of MST3K. And yeah Diego Calva is good but Manuel feels sorta undefined or whatever the film needs him to be at times. It feels like this was a pet project and Chazelle just kept adding stuff to it? OTOH with all the poo poo going on in the movie business I feel oddly encouraged that off the basis of one hit Chazelle was able to get hundreds of million dollars for a vomitously excessive R-rated epic about early Hollywood. It ain't all franchise IPs yet folks!
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Jan 6, 2023 07:18
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The Game Sign me up
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Jan 6, 2023 10:07
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First Reformed - Put off watching this for so long because I knew it was bleak, which is paradoxically also why I knew it would be right up my alley. I started posting in this thread and using Letterboxd specifically so I would finally start knocking things off my watchlist and I'm glad I did. This is a much better movie about faith than all those Christian films that flood streaming services every year. True religion is, in part, an answer to despair. As someone who was extremely devout as a child and lost his faith later, I could never get on board with the smug new atheism for the simple fact that that they offered no alternative answer. The secular mirror to the church would be communism or some equivalent, and the emptiness of modern life is a result of living in the opposite. A cruel world barreling towards extinction. An era of unprecedented loneliness. This is the empire of the Antichrist. 10/10
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Jan 7, 2023 00:18
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Sans Soleil If I ever watch this again I'm doing it in a foreign language with the subs off. Marker, you did enough to get across your vision by cutting together all the footage, the psuedo-intelligent voice over you added does nothing but detract from the film.
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Jan 7, 2023 02:43
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Knives Out (the 2019 movie) I just saw this and it was so much better than I expected. It's a murder mystery so I don't want to say too much, but the ending absolutely delivers. It's good enough to make me forgive Daniel Craig's so-called "Southern" accent. The foreshadowing with the knives is just so, so, so good. I'm not sure how much is usually revealed and I don't want to give anything away so I won't say anything else.
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Jan 7, 2023 03:25
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RRR: finally watched this on Netflix and even though I didn’t get the theater experience I was blown away. One of the most satisfying movies I’ve ever seen. I was seriously just grinning like an idiot the entire runtime. The music has been stuck in my head all day. I hope this gets a theatrical rerelease so I can see it in Telugu and with a rowdy crowd. I haven’t seen much Indian cinema but now I want to check out Baahubali.
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Jan 7, 2023 21:45
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Avatar 2 (2022) https://youtu.be/APrBdP0bBJM
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Jan 7, 2023 23:07
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Matilda the Musical: I can’t really articulate what makes one extremely sentimental film like Walter Mitty, which I watched a few weeks back, totally fail for me, but another, like this, work great. But this is just fun! The songs are great, the choreography is crisp, the kids are cute and decent actors, and Emma Thompson is clearly having a ball. Lashana Lynch is also great. Full of kind of classically British gross-out humor, which is, I would say, a downside, but probably a hit with kids. Timbuktu (2014): Pretty good! A little too scattered for my taste, but very cool-looking, very affecting. The imaginary soccer game is great. I wasn’t paying attention to Real movies in 2014, but I see that this movie got kind of wild praise when it came out—NYT put it on a like best films of the 21st century list—I’ll be honest, I don’t see it, and it makes me think it got inflated reviews for being like Relevant to current events. Still enjoyed it quite a bit, and I see the director’s got a new movie coming out this year, so I’ll definitely check that out. smug n stuff fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Jan 8, 2023 |
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Jan 8, 2023 04:18
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weird: the al yankovich story: idk im high but this was p cool. noot as good as walk hard but good 7/10
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Jan 8, 2023 06:07
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Licorice Pizza was a really good vibes movie with more depth and intrigue than Dazed and Confused. Aside from the cringy Japanese voice stuff, everything was great. I’ve recently found myself describing movies as “doing what Men wanted to do but better” and I’d put this in there.
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Jan 8, 2023 07:06
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Avatar 2: aquatic boogaloo: an undeniably pretty film with spectacular visuals and amazing world design, but with paper thin plot and characterisation, and horribly clumsy dialogue, exposition and motivations. Cameron used to be great, but he's disappeared up his own rear end in a top hat and it's a real pity. Exactly what Scorsese would characterise as being a theme park ride rather than an actual movie I'm sad that he's succumbed to late career self indulgence because Cameron used to be my favourite director. Everything everywhere all at once: Tremendous. Went into this completely blind and didn't know what to expect, and then that feeling never left me until the final seconds of the film. I am completely stunned that a film like this could be made, especially for it's comparatively miniscule budget, and the level of creativity on display is awe inspiring. Quite possibly the silliest film to ever deeply move me and a stunning example of tonal dissonance done absolutely right
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Jan 8, 2023 11:01
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A Man Escaped: Just so good. It's so deliberative, and I love how it really focuses on the process of escape, that gaining your freedom isn't just finding a tunnel hidden behind a poster. It's also so claustrophobic, the cell is so small and cramped, the with Jost it feels so untenable. I loved it. It reminded me of Escape From Alcatraz which I saw years ago now. Both escape scenes are so taut and amazing.
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Jan 8, 2023 20:01
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Finished Vanilla Sky earlier tonight, absolutely hated it. Felt it took forever to get to the point, and once it got to the point (more specifically the twist/reveal) I found it to extremely uninteresting and unrewarding. Music choices did not match the scenes well, writing felt very forced at points, and the main character has nothing to draw me in.
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Jan 9, 2023 06:56
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Avatar 2. It was….pretty good I guess. I’m torn between admiring the beautiful visuals, and almost…..hating the beautiful perfect blue people in their beautiful perfect world. It’s too perfect. It’s too beautiful. The beautiful blue cat-elf people living in perfect harmony with their beautiful world make me sick. You’ll never see better visuals though. Nobody does it like James Cameron. Edit: Breetai posted:Avatar 2: aquatic boogaloo: an undeniably pretty film with spectacular visuals and amazing world design, but with paper thin plot and characterisation, and horribly clumsy dialogue, exposition and motivations. Cameron used to be great, but he's disappeared up his own rear end in a top hat and it's a real pity. Exactly what Scorsese would characterise as being a theme park ride rather than an actual movie I'm sad that he's succumbed to late career self indulgence because Cameron used to be my favourite director. I think I agree with this. The attention to detail on the visuals is amazing, there’s absolutely nothing lazy or half-assed anywhere. Even the human environments and machines are amazing. Cameron understands why people go to the movies, and that’s why these films are making a boatload of money. There’s a great deal of care and attention that went into the design of the world. But christ, he should let someone else write the script. Sucrose fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 9, 2023 09:05
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Bardo. I really enjoyed this. Malick Lite, I guess. Reminded me a little bit of Knight of Cups, only with more fun and humour. The one take dance sequence was pretty funny. I love the visuals Inarritu and his team do. It might not click for some, but at least there’s someone pushing film in some new and different ways.
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Jan 9, 2023 10:17
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I watched Pickpocket since it was mentioned here as a major influence on Paul Schrader and I definitely see that specifically with Taxi Driver and probably everything although that's the most direct. Taxi Driver is obviously taking Pickpocket as a starting point and moving on to darker depths. It was cool to watch it from that angle. Super boring, though. There are way better films from France during this time period.
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Jan 9, 2023 10:36
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Glass Onion: it's been a long time since I saw a movie that made me laugh out loud, but this managed it a couple of times. Light, frothy fun done extremely well, making great use of its Rashomon-y extended flashback gimmick. Norton is excellent as the arrogant tech-bro dickhead who isn't nearly as smart as he thinks. I hadn't seen Knives Out before watching this (and didn't need to have), but will correct that. I also now want to visit the Greek islands.
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Jan 9, 2023 12:47
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Rocky. I was not expecting to enjoy a movie about boxing, and only watched it because I figured I ought to do so once in my life just to get all the memes. Turns out I did like it. It's got some real heart to it, and I like movies set in old gritty neighborhoods. I didn't realize Stallone wrote the screenplay too. Reading more about the production, I gotta give some respect to the guy. King Kong (2005). This was a long, dreary slog despite the abundance of protracted, emotionless action scenes. I think it could have been trimmed down a bit with only minor script edits. For example, in the opening* scene where Jack Black's character was getting on the boat, every other character could have stabbed him repeatedly and thrown his body in the harbor. Roll credits. *Wow, it was actually 18 minutes in. I guess that counts as opening for a 3-hour film.
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Jan 10, 2023 04:10
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The Navy vs. The Night Monsters- Basically what if someone tried to make The Thing From Another World but without any of the atmosphere or tension. Everyone is very painfully slow on the uptake that killer trees are on the loose and while that's understandable at first, it does make for a lethargic pace. It does not help that the killer tree costume was apparently immobile and so the action depends on people walking into the drat thing. More importantly at some point the producer decided to rework the entire film and shoot a bunch of extra scenes where some generals in Washington send airplanes to bomb the monsters out of existence, meaning the final scenes take place without the principals entirely and rely mostly on stock footage (plus some much, much worse special effects footage of even stupider looking killer tree stumps.) Also Mamie Van Doren is there. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers- This is such an oddity, released in 1995, a year before Scream revived the slasher genre. Honestly this is probably better than Halloween 5, it's at least nicely shot. There's some really good use of color! But the story's a mess, and on top of it trying to give Michael Meyers a convoluted origin involving Druidic cults, it was cut heavily before release resulting in a pace that's just nonexistent. Like it's not slowly paced, it's not fast paced, things just happen, occasionally Michael kills somebody, and it lurches along to a climax that makes no sense because it was the 90s and quick flashing cuts are the new hotness. Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle does a good job looking creepy but has a very strange accent. Donald Pleasance is, well, you can tell this was his last hurrah. He tries, but he has trouble speaking at times, it's sad. You can tell this is from a point in time where nobody knew what to do with slasher flicks, nobody had any ideas for this franchise in particular, this had no reason to exist. Just a weird nothing of a movie.
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Jan 10, 2023 06:32
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Lesson in Love - bog standard bergman movie about cheating on your wife. this one is supposed to be a comedy but i only spotted like 3 jokes and they weren't funny. give me more stuff about trans harriet andersson, that was far more interesting than the main plot. spotted the director cameo. 5/10 Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell - This one is seasonally appropriate because the final battle is in the snow and Retsudo looks like a deranged Santa Claus on his sleigh. Oh and this is the final movie for the original series but doesn't actually conclude things, which is disappointing. I expect dumb fun gorey poo poo when I watch these and this one delivered more than most. At one point it apparently topped the movie body count by single character record, at least according to some web 1.0 sites I found. There's definitely a wide variety of ninjas being ganked in this one, from the skiing ninja army to the burrowing ninjas and the ninjas who hide in walls. Like seriously, they were plastered in there, what the gently caress was their plan? Could they even breath? That's like a Venture Bros gag. Daigoro looked cute in his winter gear too. 7/10
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Jan 10, 2023 11:17
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Buttchocks posted:Rocky. I was not expecting to enjoy a movie about boxing, and only watched it because I figured I ought to do so once in my life just to get all the memes. Turns out I did like it. It's got some real heart to it, and I like movies set in old gritty neighborhoods. I didn't realize Stallone wrote the screenplay too. Reading more about the production, I gotta give some respect to the guy. The thing about the first Rocky, and the second to a lesser extent, is that it has a lot of that haunted urban decay of the 70's built into it just because of where and when it's set, and the location shooting. When he's out running early in the morning and you can look at the windows that are just totally black, it feels like there are ghost stories happening nearby. People are less moralistic, everybody's down on their luck. I feel like this with a lot of 70's movies and it goes beyond the director, it just seems like that was the mood of the time. I think the perception of Rocky in culture and the first movie which is mostly quiet and melancholy until the ending are pretty different. It became silly quickly, but the first one is a legitimately good movie. The fact that he loses after all his efforts, but was revitalised in this desolate landscape of small time hustlers, derelicts and bums. It's a really tight story. If there had never been another Rocky it would just be a 70's classic, rather than the beginning of a joke.
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Jan 10, 2023 11:18
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Yea 1970s Philly just looked like that. It's actually supposed to be a sentimental Frank Capra kind of story, it was considered almost a throwback when it came out. You should check out the entire series. They get goofy but they never stop being entertaining imo, and then with the more recent ones they loop around to being good again.
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Jan 10, 2023 11:24
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Nope was real good!
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Jan 10, 2023 20:58
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roomtone posted:I watched Pickpocket since it was mentioned here as a major influence on Paul Schrader and I definitely see that specifically with Taxi Driver and probably everything although that's the most direct. Taxi Driver is obviously taking Pickpocket as a starting point and moving on to darker depths. It was cool to watch it from that angle. And Pickpocket is a less dark version of Crime and Punishment, with the protagonist only stealing instead of murdering to gain his wealth, and Dunya and Sonia both combined into Jeanne. https://www.criterionchannel.com/videos/paul-schrader-on-pickpocket Love hearing the man talk about it, you can see how much it fundamentally changed his view of film. T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais This is absolutely one of the short film's I've seen Blue Collar Perfect movie to watch after wrapping up Against the Day, seeing people call poo poo like Glass Onion or The Menu "Searing Criticisms of Capital" or whatever it makes me want to vomit. This a movie that earns that title.
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Jan 11, 2023 02:01
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Saw Shin Ultraman tonight. It was fun but much more straightforward than Shin Godzilla.
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Jan 12, 2023 04:51
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Just saw A Serbian Film and have no idea why it's got the reputation it does but that may say a lot more about my jadedness than the movie
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Jan 12, 2023 05:42
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Tokyo Story saw it at the theatre, great experince. Ozu always has the power to draw you into the most mundane circumstance but seeing it properly really gets you into it. Having a more relatable and dramatic story really sets it ahead of Late Spring. One of those universal stories, the scenes at the end of the funeral were drat near copies of my Grandma's funeral.
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Jan 12, 2023 06:07
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Jealous you got to see it on the big screen. It’s such a simple and powerful movie. The whole dynamic of not forgetting our parents, yet the parents must remember that kids will live their own lives and not to their wishes is a timeless one.
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Jan 12, 2023 06:20
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Ugetsu - Haunting Japanese film about man's vanity and lust, and the suffering of women during war. It's the same story told twice, in one plot as a more realistic tale of a man rising while abandoning his family and in another a man being seduced by a ghost. A classic morality tale, well shot too. 8/10 My Young Auntie - Lighthearted Lau Kar Leung kung fu film that does for generational strife what Heroes Of The East did for marital issues, although not quite as successful. A young woman becomes the matriarch of a traditional Chinese family and as such is to be treated as an elder and authority figure despite her youth. This is all part of an inheritance scheme set up by her late master to pass his fortune on to his deserving grandson and out of the hands of his evil brother. Lau plays the grandson, an impetuous city slicker and Anglophile This is a comedy but not really funny, still I prefer these lighthearted ones when they use the genre shift to get creative with the action scenes.. Really this is just an excuse to put Kara Hui in fun outfits. 6.5/10 e: Oops Lau does not play the grandson, he plays an older family member. Mantis42 fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 12, 2023 11:14
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LLSix posted:Knives Out (the 2019 movie) there's even a throwaway line about one character not being able to tell a real knife from a prop, setting that up in the first few minutes. classic. Caught Glass Onion just now and ... it's not quite on the same level, but a fun romp nonetheless. Love Edward Norton and Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista bouncing off each other. Janelle Monae steals the show just like she did on Homecoming's 2nd season. Hoping to see her getting more leading roles after this
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Jan 12, 2023 14:35
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Putney Swope Mad Men if the whole cast was black and every episode was the one with Dr.Feelgood. Incisive and transgressive the film feels years ahead of it's time.
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Jan 13, 2023 03:14
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Gaius Marius posted:Putney Swope Mad Men if the whole cast was black and every episode was the one with Dr.Feelgood. Incisive and transgressive the film feels years ahead of it's time.
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Jan 13, 2023 04:15
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Yeah, it was a really odd move to read about. And it's justification doesn't feel very convincing. Still worth watching the movie though La Collectionneuse Next to Maud this is the moral tale of Rohmer's I'm going to have to turn around in my head the most. Whereas the first couple had clearly defined "bad" and "good" guys this one has four people all playing fifth dimensional relationship chess trying to avoid/gain Haydee as a lover. Beautifully shot too on the French Riviera. House ??? ??????? ???????????? Gaius Marius fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 04:20
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Hereditary was well constructed and had some great performances but it would have been so much scarier if it were more mundane. I am WAY THE gently caress more afraid of hereditary dementia and schizophrenia than some bitch rear end demon king. "What if the pagans were actually on to something?" is always just such a Catholic-sounding anxiety and I can't relate to it. Once it became clear that Toni Collette wasn't actually going insane I checked out a bit.
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Jan 13, 2023 17:21
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Mercenaries from Hong Kong - This came in Shawscope Vol 2, the box set from Arrow Media. It's what would happen if the Shaw Bros made a Cannon Film. You have Ti Lung leading a group of mercs into Cambodia to take down a baddie. There's car chases, shootouts, explosions and of course kung fu. Idk, I might just not have been in the right mood but while this has a lot of stuff I should really love, made by people whose work I enjoy, it was mostly just OK for me. I was checked out for most of the second half. Though I will say it's funny to see stunts done with the tiny cars they had in 80s Hong Kong. Reminds me of the Tuk Tuk stuff in Ong Bak. 6/10
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Jan 13, 2023 21:45
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Plane - Planes..do not...work THAT WAY.
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