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Super Mario Bros was a blast. silly and endlessly self-referencing but never in a way that was too awful or weird. loved the soundtrack, minus the 80s needle drops - Koji Kando made some bangers and they're ALL over the movie. The powerups, the world, the characters - it was all good. Even didn't mind Chris Pratt doing his faux Brooklyn accent. Kinda weird that they had Charles Martinet in the movie but he wasn't Mario but was Mario's dad. TONS of NES references and sight-gags in the background that beg for a re-watch, i'm sure I missed most of them. Charlie Day, Anya Taylor Joy and Jack Black were the best parts of it and I even liked the Lumo from Galaxy who was saying super dark stuff but in a cute voice. A love letter to old games and it really works as a classic adventure movie. there were 2 shots in particular that made me laugh the hardest, because they seemed to be directly ripped from Evangelion. A knockout. Loved it.
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Apr 15, 2023 22:41
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Charlie Wilson's War: Very disappointed that there wasn't a dedication at the end to the brave Mujahadeen fighters of Afghanistan. It was nice to see a movie like this where every person is depicted as anywhere close to the scumbag that they probably were in real life. It was also nice to see Tom Hanks portraying someone who's a scumbag instead of a modern saint. Cast was great.
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Apr 15, 2023 22:48
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Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Theives (2023) there were a couple soy bants lines but for the most part they didn’t undercut emotional moments. A couple good set pieces, although the ropy cgi in one of them was disappointing. Good to see a large budget movie that can actually depict a fight in a coherent manner. Not bad
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Apr 16, 2023 01:39
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Renfield basically gave me what I wanted but failed to get from Cocaine bear. Gore, humor, a bipedal mammal chewing up screen time. It wasn't overly bogged down with boring character development I didn't care about. Also lots of cocaine.
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Apr 16, 2023 04:54
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Some friends of mine put together a screening of How To Blow Up a Pipeline tonight with a Q&A with the editor afterwards and I can't recommend the movie enough. Fast, tense, frequently pretty funny, probably the best heist movie in a decade. Just a really good time, and everyone should check it out.
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Apr 16, 2023 05:01
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Furies - Sort of prequel to Furie, the Vietnamese martial arts film from a few years ago. This one has multiple women kicking the rear end of gangsters and human traffickers. It's OK, some of the fight scenes rise to above average and Veronica Ngo tried to give this some visual flair as director, but it's overall generic. I remember liking the first film more than this. Speed Racer - Still couldn't finish it. I know CineD loves this one but the CGI has only gotten uglier with age, and I didn't think it looked good when it came out. I want to love this, the vision the Wachowskis had is compelling and I can imagine a version of this that came out a decade later being a favorite, but it came out in 2008 and it's loving ugly, sorry. The cars move without mass or momentum, the actors blend about as well with their surroundings as a Tim and Eric sketch. It makes one miss the production values of the live action Cat in the Hat film. e: It says something that the most compelling parts of the movie were Speed imagining himself in the world of his drawings and the anime sequence with the chimp - two parts that rely on traditional animation. Mantis42 fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Apr 16, 2023 |
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Apr 16, 2023 08:00
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Super Mario Bros is an A movie. The soundtrack is wretched. As a Gen-Xer, not only were those dated, targeting-my-genration songs nonsensical in context, they collectively lowered the movie a full letter grade. Seriously hoping for an edit to excise them.
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Apr 16, 2023 23:22
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The Ninth Gate When I finished The Club Dumas I commented that I thought the movie was better for cutting out all the Musketeer plot lines. Having seen it again, I felt that the movie lost a lot of it's allure as a story by only playing the satanist cards. I also remembered it being a more serious and interesting spiral into the underworld(literally and metaphorically). I didn't hate it, but it was a bit trite in all honesty. Langella killed it in his few scenes though.
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Apr 16, 2023 23:31
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Mantis42 posted:Speed Racer
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Apr 17, 2023 01:26
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The Passenger Journalist attempting to contact guerillas in Chad is thwarted time and again; exhausted and looking back at what a failure his whole trips is he finds his friend in the hotel has died. Realizing he could die just as easily, and that he's accomplished nothing he rolls the dice on a re do hoping his new life will bring some meaning to him. Turns out the dude was an arms dealer selling to the same guerillas he was trying to contact and now he needs to figure out how willing he is to pursue the freedom his second life has given him. Antonioni doesn't miss, stunningly beautiful and shockingly cerebral. It's both a technical and artistic masterclass in execution.
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Apr 17, 2023 03:38
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I watched half of Nefarious last night, which is actually Christian anti-abortion propaganda, and not a supernatural thriller/horror like the trailer says. I saw The Pope’s Exorcist tonight (I actually booked my ticket for Nefarious thinking it was this film), and that’s some campy fun, verging almost on Hellsing the anime style shenanigans.
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Apr 17, 2023 04:13
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Cheesus posted:Super Mario Bros is an A movie. Yeah considering just how much actual Mario music exists that could be really fun to include, the fact that they chose 80s hits is still baffling to me
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Apr 17, 2023 13:18
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One Cut of the dead (2017). Yes! This is extremely my poo poo. I loved it! I'm really falling in love with low budget/one grand idea films. See also, Two Minutes into the Infinite Beyond. They make me want to grab a few friends for a weekend and just shoot stuff on my phone. Fun, simple, silly, cinema~~~~~~~~ Spoilers for the film first act, I felt something was off. but couldn't quite place it. second act, I was like hmm now they are just showing the backstory for... character development? why? it's so lame! they all die as zombies anyway! third act, be still my beating heart. Go In Blind!! Aren't films that are best going in blind just so neat? 
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Apr 17, 2023 14:25
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Bound: Okay yeah this rules and I'm not sure why I didn't catch it before. All three leads are so good, and I love the elements of comedy in just how desperate things get. Caesar loving moving the carpet over the pool of blood. Also having Gina Gershon play basically the classic rugged film noir protagonist, just as a lesbian, is just powerful as hell.
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Apr 18, 2023 05:06
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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Pretty good! Not a masterpiece by any means, but really fun to see in a theater with your party, if possible. My only complaints are that it’s a little long and Michelle Rodriguez is generally kinda bad, but she did nail a couple of deadpan moments and never really detracts from the movie as a whole. I did appreciate that two crucial moments in combat came down to magic users losing concentration. Shoulda taken War Caster!
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Apr 19, 2023 04:15
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Beau is Afraid: Pretty good retelling of The Trial, if quite obvious at times. Very creative visually, quite funny, and phoenix, lupone, lane, and ryan are all great. Drags in the middle, but I think it would have been worse if he’d cut a bunch of stuff, the bloatedness works. Weirdly I found myself wanting more flashbacks, he’s relatively light with them. Not a huge horror guy and haven’t seen any of aster’s other movies, but this wasn’t particularly scary.
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Apr 19, 2023 04:36
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline is the best movie I've seen this year. Totally thrilling and entertaining without compromising its politics in the slightest. Does the flashing-back-to-characters'-origins-in-the-heat-of-the-action thing that's really common now, but it's like the best version of that, adding depth and motivation without ever bogging down like in the movie Bullet Train. The score was one of my favorite parts of the movie: severe, minimalist tangerine dream/john carpenter-style synths. 5/5
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Apr 19, 2023 06:38
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Rental Sting posted:How to Blow Up a Pipeline is the best movie I've seen this year. Totally thrilling and entertaining without compromising its politics in the slightest. Does the flashing-back-to-characters'-origins-in-the-heat-of-the-action thing that's really common now, but it's like the best version of that, adding depth and motivation without ever bogging down like in the movie Bullet Train. The score was one of my favorite parts of the movie: severe, minimalist tangerine dream/john carpenter-style synths. 5/5 2nd-ed. Also appreciated how this thing moved at the clup of a gaillo (you're in and out at the right time, no bullshit). Really dug the choice to go with whatever film stock made this thing look like it jumped straight out of the late-80's / early-90's (font and grungy attitude & swagger among cast also propelled this feeling).
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Apr 20, 2023 17:42
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Nightmare Cinema posted:2nd-ed. Also appreciated how this thing moved at the clup of a gaillo (you're in and out at the right time, no bullshit). Really dug the choice to go with whatever film stock made this thing look like it jumped straight out of the late-80's / early-90's (font and grungy attitude & swagger among cast also propelled this feeling). Shot on 16mm.
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Apr 20, 2023 20:40
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Renfield feels kind of like a script that got filtered through a lot of studio notes- so much of the cops/gangsters subplot is so drat stock it could have been from 1993- but Hoult and Cage are both really good and there are some fun parts apart from that. Like it may be worth it just to see Cage as Dracula because he so clearly Gets It, with a performance that actually evokes Lugosi without copying it. (Similarly Hoult actually does Dwight Frye’s laugh a couple of times.) I feel like it could have been better but I can appreciate what it manages to do.
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Apr 21, 2023 01:57
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Beau is Afraid is one of the most Three Star movies I've ever seen. The opening part where it's just a man living with his ridiculously heightened anxiety is great. a perfect mix of goofy surrealism with enough edge to keep you on your toes. Second act in the suburbs is also quite good. Staring to peel back the layers of the man's psyche and getting your first hints that something else is going on from comments the Wife, likely one of the mom's employees, and the teen daughter say. Everything with the play however just feels self indulgent and unrewarding to the audience. It's the most technically different and theoretically interesting part of the movie, but it doesn't move anything forward or do anything except give you a recap of the things you just watched in a very goofy and metaphorical way. Seeing Parker Posey show up again was nice; the Trialesque final part doesn't work very well though. At this point you've probably already gotten the idea that most of the poo poo that happened was a set up and you're waiting for the climax. And then the movie just keeps rolling. He fucks Parker Posey to death, confronts his mom, confronts her spying, discovers his brother, finds his father, then the dude breaks in to kill the dad, then he kills his mom and escapes, only to be finally be put on trial. You know what's nice about The Trial despite the fact that it was unfinished it still has a strong ending, and a lot of that is that after Josef K. is trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare for who knows how long it just ends one day with him getting dragged off and beheaded in a chapter. Beau is just exhausting. By the third act you've already got the broad outlines of the plot and his character, and you've got the interiority of the character. The last two chapters are just wheel spinning. Aster needed a strong editor to come in and let him know that he doesn't need to put every thought in his head onto the screen, sometimes the less said the better. I think of Babylon which also had that super self indulgent modern auteur feel. That film however was balancing three leads and multiple side characters. Aster just doesn't have enough to say through Beau to justify the run time. Imagine if they'd tightened up the run time to something resembling After Hours where that sense of tension and anxiety from the beginning doesn't slowly deflate after your second hour of seeing Phoenix murmuring some apologies about poo poo he didn't do. Honestly the worst thing I can say about the film is that in the time it takes to watch you could just read The Trial; it's not very long. Could make a cool double feature with The Master to see Joaquin try and find a Mother figure and a Father figure. Superman (1978) Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeves are such absolutely pitch perfect casting. You can tell Hackman is also just having a hell of a time. It's a movie that plays everything about Superman straight and is better off for it. Amazing what you can do when you aren't trying to turn Superhero's into a soulless franchise or a Christ Allegory. The moral implications of the ending are absolutely bonkers though. Der Rosenkavalier MET 2023 Way funnier than I was expecting. Ochs and his buffoonish over masculinity was the perfect complement to Octavians mixture of impertinence and naivety. The Marschallin's struggle against the passage of time; the futile effort she goes to stopping the clocks of her home still hits you right in the emotions.
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Apr 22, 2023 02:36
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The Birds. I could see how this might be scary for someone with a bird phobia, but otherwise it's very silly. It's a well made film; some of the shots of the town and the boat are especially great. This was probably an influential film at the time, and I can definitely see elements of it in movies like The Mist. The the dynamic between the main guy and his mother was also a bit creepy. But the plot is Birdemic-level dumb. The scene where the lady goes upstairs in the house and gets attacked is hilariously dumb. I almost feel bad at laughing when the children get attacked, but it's so bad. You know those old horror movies where someone rubs a puppet on themself and then falls over dead somehow? Yeah, this is like that but with birds.
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Apr 22, 2023 04:31
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The Black Phone was a solid thriller with some good twists and I really enjoyed Ethan Hawke in this. Better than average kid performers too.
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Apr 23, 2023 03:19
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Touch of Evil Vastly more psychologically complex and nuanced than most noir tales. Vargas is the only person that could be reasonably thought of as a good guy, but even he is positioned to tip into the same level of fabrication and corruption over purist of his justice that Quinlan fell into. The cinematography is also gorgeous, I had to stop the film and check when it was made after seeing that first scene; it's work a decade ahead of its time. Glad to finally get a movie dealing with the dangers of Marijuana as well.
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Apr 23, 2023 03:35
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Gaius Marius posted:Touch of Evil Vastly more psychologically complex and nuanced than most noir tales. Vargas is the only person that could be reasonably thought of as a good guy, but even he is positioned to tip into the same level of fabrication and corruption over purist of his justice that Quinlan fell into. The cinematography is also gorgeous, I had to stop the film and check when it was made after seeing that first scene; it's work a decade ahead of its time. Glad to finally get a movie dealing with the dangers of Marijuana as well. You see the theatrical or reconstructed version? Only seen the latter (probably the only version I need to see tbh) but it goes very hard. Surprised by the open talk of heroin for something from Code-era Hollywood. There's a couple moments with the biker gang that reminds me of Blue Velvet for some reason.
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Apr 23, 2023 16:57
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Nightmare Cinema posted:You see the theatrical or reconstructed version? The Code was in a weird place by then- in ‘52 the Supreme Court had actually ruled that movies were protected by the 1st Amendment, but there was still obscenity law to worry about, and the studios had the HUAC stuff and wanted to look like they were keeping their nose clean. But you see a lot of movies pushing things where they can, Anatomy of a Murder is also a good example of “they wouldn’t have made this ten years earlier.”
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Apr 23, 2023 18:41
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Iron Warrior AKA Ator 3 - I watched this after hearing about it in Cine D when laughing about prior Ator movies. First of all, this is definitely an Ator movie-lots of exposition, legendary items, and incredibly slow fights and pacing. That being said, it's so much more. I can't say that it's good because it's pretty awful, but it's entertaining in how bizarre and beautiful it is. The costumes and makeup are colorful and pop, as opposed to the super drab designs of the first Ator movie I saw (The Blade Master or Cave Dwellers via MST3K). It steals ideas from better movies, like the boulder and cut bridge from Indiana Jones and the "hula hoop prison" from Superman. It almost makes things work, like having the evil witch be more of a trickster who constantly impersonates allies to foil Ator & Co. It's something that isn't seen in many barbarian movies now that CGI makes magic and other special effects easier to toss out. I'm glad I watched it, I don't know if I'll ever watch it again or recommend it, but it was a good way to waste 80 minutes. If you want to see a bad but ambitious sword and sorcery movie, then this is a pretty good pick.
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Apr 24, 2023 07:04
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Body Heat (1981). I loved the shot of the clown. Hurt's character kinda already knows that's him but he's too in the bag to stop
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Apr 24, 2023 08:56
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Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse (2004). It was ridiculous. Very cheesy. Lots of dumb jump scares. I liked the fallen city at night aesthetics. I'm guessing it was influenced by the matrix, black hawk down and the two towers (zombies acted a bit like orcs, lots of evil men staring down from top of walls etc). More fun than world war z. Less fun than the first one. My flatmate is showing me all the r e films so it's cool to finally see what they are about.
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Apr 24, 2023 10:17
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Lampsacus posted:Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse (2004). They’re about over the top action and cheese, and this is increasingly true as they progress. They’re a far cry from the source material, but they end up traversing guilty pleasure territory because they just go so loving hard on slow mo setpieces and pants on head stupidity. In a way, that’s fitting. Some of the latter day RE games definitely approach that same tone. I’ll never go so far as to say that they’re faithful and representative of the games, but some of the spirit is there, and if you want some mindless sci fi post apocalyptic action they scratch that itch in a very particular way.
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Apr 24, 2023 16:40
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Yeah you are so right. And there is something about these 20 year old films that are so kenetic with technology. Everything beeps and zings and whirls. Security cameras clicking and zoom noises. Tech starts to get real quite once smart phones appear for some reason. Also the virus theme is weirdly ahead of its time with COVID poo poo. This is twenty years before a worldwide virus with suspect origins killed tens of millions of people because of globalisation and corporations and I'm watching hot chicks karate kick virus monsters from the lab haha. Ah
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Apr 24, 2023 18:20
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Turns out there's a reason that everyone raves about The Italian Job '69. That was fun as hell. What a loving incredible ending.
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Apr 25, 2023 17:25
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Yeah, it’s such a fun film, and the ending is a special treat. It’s very quotable too.
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Apr 25, 2023 18:36
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Nightmare Cinema posted:You see the theatrical or reconstructed version? Recon version. Yeah the way the Bikers are shot with the camera way down below them gives them such an odd zombie like quality. Speed Way better movie than I thought it would be. Reeve's playing a dumb as rock yet arrogant cop against Hopper's absolutely deranged ex bomb squad is such an odd stand off. Elevator stuff was cool, Bus stuff was cool excepting the dude who thought Keanu jumped onto a moving bus to arrest him, the ending and train stuff was less cool, but I'm glad de Bont could really get out all his pent up aggression towards transportation methods. Covenant Zero expectations going in for how poor his last film was. And it was okay, Jill in Hall was barely showing up which sort of worked given the dude was apparently in Afghanistan for 12 years at that point. Shootouts were good though and used verticality and the environs well. Ending was a bit quick, but they put the emphasis where it needed to be. Blood Simple Can you imagine the absolute shitshow it must of been trying to untangle what happened after everything was over? Gaius Marius fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 26, 2023 03:06
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Speed is an A-tier Big Dumb 90s Action Movie, along with The Rock, Cliffhanger and Face/Off. Its sequel, not so much. (If they'd tried the tiniest bit of rewriting so Alex wasn't a find-and-replace of Jack - even being in the same SWAT team - they could have done more with his character. Also, editing out all the comedy reaction shots and people going "oh poo poo!" from the big ship crash sequence makes it surprisingly more exciting, whaddya know.)
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Apr 27, 2023 08:57
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They also apparently told Sandra Bullock to go big or get the gently caress off the boat because her whole “Repeat the first word of a sentence over and over again” thing from the first one is barely tolerable.
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Apr 27, 2023 10:26
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Sicario - lots of genre conventions tweaked or turned up just enough to give them a new angle. Also really excellent filmmaking. Was kind of unbelievable when the FBI buddy told Emily Blunt's character that she "looked like poo poo", all of the cop/spook/military character's look amazing e: also thought it was really interesting how in the bridge traffic jam scene the mexican dudes were obviously terrified. normally they'd be emotionless mooks distortion park fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 14:33
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Double Indemnity just owns. It's great.
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Apr 27, 2023 17:57
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Being John Malkovich - Holy poo poo how did I miss this movie for so long? One of my top 5 favorite movies of all time
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Apr 27, 2023 19:21
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Game Night Good poo poo. Maybe a little too winking, but they play it right on the line that it's never detrimental to enjoyment like it is in a Marvel movie.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:51
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