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Clipperton posted:Is this about how the first attack in the movie is blowing up a nuclear plant, and the second one is...manipulating soy prices, which (while it arguably could lead to greater immiseration and death worldwide) is a bit of an anticlimax after watching a literal atomic meltdown? Always thought that played a little weird. Yeah, the exchange attack was supposed to be the impetus for Hathaway's release but at the last second Mann got notes that it wasn't exciting enough for an intro. The Arrow release that is coming out soon revises it back to the original version with the Nuclear meltdown happening after they land in China, thus distracting them from what he's actually doing and letting him test his Stuxnet program he's going to use to flood the Tin Mines near Jakarta. It makes a lot more sense in the original version.
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Sep 21, 2023 22:04
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I think there are some other big changes in the director's cut but I've never seen the original, only the director's cut, so I don't really know. I don't think the director's cut is a masterpiece like Miami Vice, Heat, Collateral, etc. but it's definitely a pretty good Mann movie if you want one of those.
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Sep 22, 2023 12:43
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Maxwell Lord posted:Johnny Mnemonic: I'm not sure this movie 100% works- I could follow the basic story but the hectic editing doesn't really draw me in either to the action or the characters, and I can see fragments of subplots and deeper material floating around like they couldn't quite figure out how to make it all fit together. Reeves is uneven too, he has some good moments and the character's supposed to be a little stiff I guess, but he hasn't quite got it down. But still, it's impossible for me to dislike a film like this, full of insane weird moments and so sincere in its attempt to bring cyberpunk to the masses. Also Dolph Lundgren is a violent Jesus freak assassin and Takeshi Kitano also graces us with his presence. Dina Meyer is a cute alt bodyguard! The whole thing's gaudy and garish in a way I kinda miss. You forgot to mention Ice T hooking Keanus brain up to a psychic crack addicted cyber dolphin. "Snatch your brain back zombie"
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Sep 22, 2023 18:05
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Alien 3 watched the assembly cut. This is kind of a weird film. Really the first 45 mins is kind boring in that Ripley is trying to find an alien but we know there’s going to be one based on the opening credits and the fact the movie is called alien. So we get to explore this prison place. But the prison gets boring after we see it’s just brown hallways, a cafeteria, and a furnace. All the prison people are forgettable outside of Charles Dance and Dutton. The alien does eventually show up and there’s some great kills, but yeah it’s a choice to go from Aliens back to one single alien but this time in a less interesting location than the space ship. Oh and no fun weapons or gadgets or creepy androids. Just seems like such a strange script choice after the other 2.
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Sep 23, 2023 01:05
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checkplease posted:All the prison people are forgettable outside of Charles Dance and Dutton. This is "85" erasure
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Sep 23, 2023 02:37
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The reddit movie was very watchable and enjoyable
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Sep 23, 2023 15:07
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i would hope so, it won best picture!!!
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Sep 23, 2023 15:18
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A Haunting in Venice : Yet another Hercule Poirot movie starring Kenneth Branaugh as the supposedly Belgian detective who works through things with Facts and Logic. An interesting take on the Skeptics vs Believers with the formerly retired Poirot coming out of retirement for One Last Job debunking a medium at a séance. A game cast, including a shockingly good Tina Fey, underused but skilled Jamie Dornan and the always excellent Michelle Yeoh. Visually, a fairly simple affair, Branaugh (who directed and starred in this one as well as the last two recent Poirot movies A Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express) keeps things moving and has the light touch of an early Hitchcock. Not the world's best movie but a real solid version of a thriller that hasn't been done as a feature film until now. Don't rush to the theatre or anything, but it's worth a watch for the various excellent performances. A slim 103 minutes, it could have used some slight trims to take it down to a manageable 90, due to an extended denouement and a baffling intro
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Sep 23, 2023 16:04
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checkplease posted:Alien 3 watched the assembly cut. This is kind of a weird film. Really the first 45 mins is kind boring in that Ripley is trying to find an alien but we know there’s going to be one based on the opening credits and the fact the movie is called alien. So we get to explore this prison place. But the prison gets boring after we see it’s just brown hallways, a cafeteria, and a furnace. All the prison people are forgettable outside of Charles Dance and Dutton. If you think THIS script is a strange choice, check out William Gibson's Alien 3. I think this subdued character study was a better call than Ripley and Newt getting sidelined for Hicks and Bishop solving Space Cold War.
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Sep 23, 2023 16:09
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Clipperton posted:This is "85" erasure Lol 85 I guess did more but mostly everyone just told him to shut up. At least he tried at the end.
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Sep 23, 2023 17:42
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Open Range - nice to see an ACAB Western for once
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Sep 23, 2023 23:47
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checkplease posted:Lol 85 I guess did more but mostly everyone just told him to shut up. At least he tried at the end. Also with Paul McGann in there it's a mini-Withnail & I reunion. They should have had Richard E Grant play the Charles Dance role
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Sep 24, 2023 01:45
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Pete Postlethwaite is there too.
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Sep 24, 2023 06:47
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And Brian Glover! I should give it a rewatch.
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Sep 24, 2023 07:43
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Clipperton posted:And Brian Glover! I should give it a rewatch.
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Sep 25, 2023 00:07
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went to see the wonderful story of henry sugar at the only theater playing it in LA couldn't help but have a huge grin on my face for most of it. really whimsical and delightful. it was like watching a movie and reading a book and watching a stage play all at the same time.
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Sep 25, 2023 06:08
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I bounced off Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002) the first time I watched it on Netflix, abandoned it 1/3 of the way through as I was tired and it seemed to be going so slowly. However, on a work trip to London tonight, my train was delayed and I missed my booking for Passages (Ira Sachs, 2023) on 35mm, so I looked for alternative entertainment, and I found it on a pristine 35mm screening of GoNY. Maybe it's because I've seen quite a few films pushing 3 hours in the last couple of years, or because being in a cinema I could really settle down and enjoy it, but yeah it really clicked for me this time. The sets were fantastic (that one crane shot of the inside of the mission early on was one highlight) and it was full of great character actors I love (we really didn't need that flashback of John C. Reilly to remind us it was him). It's a shame there's no 4K release as I bet it would look fantastic.
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Sep 25, 2023 23:07
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Easter Promise's I honestly really just did not vibe with this film at all. The whole Naomi Watt's plotline felt extraneous to the film which is not great considering it is most of the movie, the look into the Russian mob is interesting but not all that fun or exciting. I feel like they changed the players but all the actual acts are the same poo poo we've been seeing in Gangster films for ages. And then they play their hand with the Vor far too early, I should feel an escalating sense of fear and tension around the man when Watt's is on screen. Instead I know that he runs the operation from the start and spend most of her scenes thinking how dull she is, in charisma and in intelligence. Most my enjoyment of the film was found in how the Vor looked like Nabokov, gave me a chuckle at least given how much I like that man and how unlike the film character he was. Skip this and watch Equalizer intstead imo Howl's Moving Castle Such a good looking and interestingly designed film that totally fails to live up to the skills of the artists because of the total incompetence of the Director. Like the titular castle the film lumbers around without any plot, interesting characters, or drama for an hour and a half and then just ends. It's like watching a greatest hits album getting dropped without the band's consent, just a string of "heartwarming" and "whimsy" banded together with spit and prayers. I really and truly cannot express in words how incompetent every aspect of the film making barring animation and sound this film is. The characters somehow have negative depth, the plot leads loving nowhere with constant "war is bad" alarms going off only to end with the most flaccid termination of conflict I've seen. You want an anime telling you war is bad watch a Tomino joint. You want to see beautiful European architecture and fashion look at some painting's from the Belle Époque, do not watch this execrable exercise in tedium.
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Sep 27, 2023 03:40
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Se7en: someone should invent an umbrella in this city and maybe everyone would be a lot happier. Walking around with a wet head all the time in rainy town has to get old. Fincher really hates cities here, but he crafts a wonderfully dark world full of dread. The end tries to enforce some lesson about fighting for good, but it doesn’t really work. Still it’s great to watch for the atmosphere, setting, and Morgan Freeman getting to act. Pitt is quite annoying, but that just makes Freeman all the better.
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Sep 27, 2023 17:43
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A Haunting In Venice - Officially establishes Branagh's Poiroh as WOAT mystery series. Some banging cinematography though (and coincidentally the best looking of the bunch even though it's the only one shot digitally). The Nun II - Better than the 1st one, but that's such a low bar I can't call it a compliment. Dreck. Dumb Money - Formulaic as all hell biopic but I have a very good time with it. Helps that I was sucked into the r/wallsteetbets stuff myself around that time lol. Gaius Marius posted:Howl's Moving Castle Such a good looking and interestingly designed film that totally fails to live up to the skills of the artists because of the total incompetence of the Director. Like the titular castle the film lumbers around without any plot, interesting characters, or drama for an hour and a half and then just ends. It's like watching a greatest hits album getting dropped without the band's consent, just a string of "heartwarming" and "whimsy" banded together with spit and prayers. By the sound of this review you'd think it's a Goro joint.
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Sep 28, 2023 12:04
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The Foreigner (2017) - So, Jackie Chan's character is the villain, right? Well, a villain. Every character is a violent psychotic rear end in a top hat. Even the fight scenes were dull because I didn't want anybody to win.
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Sep 28, 2023 13:43
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Passages (Ira Sachs 2023) Finally caught this before leaving London and loved it, despite how much of it I was watching through my fingers due to the actions of the totally self-absorbed Tomas. Some incredibly cringe-inducing moments because of him, with plenty of nervous muttering (that dinner scene!) and one audience member shouting out "oh my god!" at the realisation in that last scene set in Agathe's school. It wasn't quite the film I was expecting, and not as graphically explicit as some of the publicity and that NC-17 rating would suggest (rated 18 in the UK) but hey, there were some extended shots of Paddington's butt, with Tomas' fingers really close to getting right in there.
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Sep 28, 2023 21:18
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Afire Remember the story about the Goon who carried the printer for that woman, now imagine that dude stuck in a house in the middle of the woods with a beautiful woman and two bisexual men and it's directed by Eric Rohmer. The ending is a little flabby, but goddamn is it good to see a modern movie that is just a couple people talking for an hour and a half and a dude realizing that he's an uninteresting shithead who can't relate to people even when he tries to. Good watch, probably top ten of the year. Unforgiven the fact that the first half of the movie feels like a Viagra commercial makes the script flip at the back half of the film so much more impactful. Big Linklater's Tape vibes of everyone asking everyone but the victim what justice is. Hackman is amazing in the film. Movie is also way funnier than it has any right to be, I was loling when the writer was trying to take down his notes on little bill while his whole roof was coming down with streams of water. Gaius Marius fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 28, 2023 21:39
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One Cut of the Dead (Shinichirou Ueda, 2019) So glad I avoided any spoilers for this one. I picked up the Hollywood edition which includes the 'In Hollywood' film as well. I had an inkling of what it was about, and that there was a tonal shift 40 minutes in. The occasional bits where characters looked at the camera did make me think there was something more going, though I did think the low picture and sound quality was due to the limitations of their budget and that the second half would be a behind the scenes of them making the one shot from, which it sort of was but not in the way I thought - and then we had the behind the scenes of the behind the scenes during the real end credits. Loved it.
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Sep 30, 2023 02:06
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Top Gun: Maverick. I avoided this for a while, not sure why; probably just was in no mood for something that suggested itself to be as ooh-rah as I imagined it to be. And now that I've seen it, I guess I needn't have worried (given how carefully—even comically—they avoided even suggesting who the "enemy" power was), but my bigger question is, okay, and? Like, yeah, it's really well done, and it deserves all the critical praise, and may indeed be better than the original. But that's because it's basically a remake of the original. Like, almost shot-for-shot. Every single character and every single scene has a drop-in replacement, whether Hamm for Skerritt or that smirking guy for Kilmer, or the choice of songs to play around the pool table in the bar, or the motorcycle to the San Diego house or the gauzy sex interlude (its funny middle-aged awkwardness being a welcome bonus in that case). The beach football stand-in for the volleyball scene definitely carefully elides the vaunted homoeroticism of the original, which of course to me just makes it less interesting, and I don't mean it like that lol. Ultimately I just kept finding myself wondering just what it is they were trying to accomplish. It doesn't even try to be a different story than the original, which itself was already a whole thing about fathers and sons and redemption/vindication of a headstrong maverick (lmao) personality in the face of a hidebound by-the-book military bureaucracy. By which it certainly does the job of being a Navy ad appealing to would-be rebels without causes who believe themselves to be the Chosen Ones of their particular hero's journeys and each thinking they'll find purpose as a subversive cog in the military machine, bringing it down from the inside, just like a million others who all believe they're doing exactly the same thing. But I feel like that can't have been its only purpose, in which case what else? Showing off how good Tom Cruise is at aging? Though I suppose even if the only thing it really does accomplish is giving Kilmer a nice poignant send-off, I'll take it.
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Sep 30, 2023 18:31
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The point of Maverick is “what if they filmed cool planes doing cool poo poo in a cool way” and it delivers in spades. (But yes your critique is very valid because the story is very whatever to me.) Last night I saw a 35mm print of Evil Dead II. I saw the first movie and Army of Darkness when I was a teenager 20 years ago, but somehow never caught the second film even though it’s widely considered the best one. I thought it was very clever the way they TL;DR’d the first movie as an intro to II. And frankly, the whole thing was a really fun time. It was weird being in an audience that was 90% goony men — the theater genuinely smelled terrible. But they were hooting and hollering and making it a very fun experience. It was more or less exactly what I expected it to be, which is not a bad thing as I love Raimi. Seeing it in a sold out theater on film was the ideal experience though (smell aside).
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Sep 30, 2023 20:43
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Data Graham posted:Ultimately I just kept finding myself wondering just what it is they were trying to accomplish. Data Graham posted:It doesn't even try to be a different story than the original you answered your own question. i'm tempted to say your analysis of the story is too deep, but it isn't really. it's just that it isn't what the movie was really trying to say so much as its existence is a call back to when movies were "simpler" and to appease an older generation who is fed up with the superhero cgi overdose of recent years. admittedly, i never saw the original, but seeing this in theaters i knew they copied the intro beat for beat and i thought it was cool and, for lack of a better way to put this... "brave." it knows exactly what it wants to be and what its primary audience wants from it. of all the more mainstream movies i see in theaters, this movie had the oldest age in attendance on average. it was mindless, exciting, touching and entertaining in a way that a lot of more recent blockbusters are not.
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Sep 30, 2023 20:45
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It was just hysterical when they would throw in stuff like the shot of Cruise staring wistfully in through the bar windows while Great Balls of Fire plays on the jukebox. Which apparently was an afterthought by the director, as though we didn't get the pervasiveness of the copy-paste enough already, he just had to drive home that "this is perhaps the ur-example of 80s nostalgia pandering to aging Atari 2600-playing, Metallica-tshirt kids wishing the world had never gotten complicated and weird" I started putting together a list a while ago of all the "reboots that are really continuations with the same actors" and gave up when it started getting too drat long - Twin Peaks - Bill & Ted Face the Music - Jay & Silent Bob Reboot - Cobra Kai - Star Wars - Full House - Punky Brewster - Animaniacs - Indiana Jones(?) - Coming 2 America - Roseanne - Murphy Brown - Mad About You - Gilmore Girls - Arrested Development - Rocky - Rambo - Terminator(?) - Blade Runner - Tron - Independence Day - Top Gun - Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday - Wayne’s World / Uber Eats - Melrose Place (2009)
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Sep 30, 2023 21:20
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Data Graham posted:Reboot/continuation stuff  I'm extremely glad I'm not alone in this opinion, and I can't wait for commercialized nostalgia to die the gently caress out. with awful cgi replacements for actors like the Irishman or Indiana Jones, it never will.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:54
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Maverick is more of heist film putting a team together while the original is a sports film complete with locker rooms. There’s lots of parallels of course, but the view is different as cruise is now the instructor. Sure he throws out the rule book, but wants the team to work together and not try to solo everything. Glen Powell plays the og cruise character who is an antagonist of sorts (at least to the cool Miles Teller). And while the volleyball scene in the first is again about competition, here the football is about a team. But ultimately the flight scenes are so good in maverick that they justify the existence alone.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:09
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Data Graham posted:I started putting together a list top gun is mindless, forgettable, popcorn entertainment. i usually can't stand that poo poo but i had a good time in the theater and ill never watch it again blade runner is a visual feast with at least a decent subversion of narrative expectation the rest of your list is on point and a lot of it is definitely shameless cash grab nonsense. i actually bothered to go see jurassic world 2 and ready player one in theaters. real turds lemme tell ya. it at least made me wise up real quick to not bother with that kind of poo poo anymore
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Sep 30, 2023 23:20
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Some of them are pretty drat good and I am glad we have them (Twin Peaks for sure), but at a certain point it’s like, okay that’ll do
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Sep 30, 2023 23:58
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El Conde (2023) on Netflix - I don't know what this was trying to be or to say. It's not a dark comedy because it isn't funny, and I don't know enough about Pinochet or Chile to tell whether this is clever satire. It feels like someone who doesn't understand the concepts of humor or style saw What We Do in the Shadows, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Lighthouse, and decided they know how to make an art film now. There is one scene with some effective wire work, but minus 10 points for having Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the soundtrack. Is this a satire of art films in general? If so then it's still bad, but that would at least make sense.
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Oct 1, 2023 00:01
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Data Graham posted:[spoiler] Wait, when was Twin Peaks touted as a reboot? The 2010's series was always called Season 3 as long as I can remember. Is there a new Twin Peaks I missed?
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Oct 1, 2023 00:13
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One of the worst legacy sequel offenders I’ve seen lately is Hocus Pocus 2. It came and went without any impact at all. It was actually well written, and the cast was still putting effort into it, but the whole thing was shot and edited like a commercial. The first isn’t some classic masterpiece, but it’s a fun movie that’s filmed in real streets and good sets and actually feels like a film. The sequel just looks cheap and every set looks fake and the teenage protagonists have no discernible personalities. Just content for the content machine.
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Oct 1, 2023 00:16
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I was being blurry with my definitions. TP seemed to fit in with the general trend of “guess what, the gang’s all back together, whether you expected it or not”
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Oct 1, 2023 00:16
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im in the age group where ghostbusters is heralded as one of the greatest comedies ever. i never really had that much love for it but i understand the appeal. but when that afterlife movie came out in 2021 i had a lot of toldja-so's to dish out. and i won't even get into the adaptation. didn't see it but im sure the critique is spot on (for both of the "revival" films)
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Oct 1, 2023 00:22
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ShoogaSlim posted:im in the age group where ghostbusters is heralded as one of the greatest comedies ever. i never really had that much love for it but i understand the appeal. Afterlife is one of only a few movies I've seen in theaters since I left my ex-wife in 2018, the others being Zombieland 2 (awful), Aquaman (decent), Top Gun: Maverick (really fun) and Dial of Destiny (fun but not great). But Afterlife ... oh, man. I was expecting a movie packed with nostalgia. I was not expecting an even more soulless, paint-by-numbers remake of the original than Ghostbusters 2 was.
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Oct 1, 2023 00:33
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The Phantom of the Opera (1925) There's something kind of gross about the Parisian Opera playing Faust. Cheney's makeup is great, although I think the mask is creepier than his actual face. Raoul has got to be one of the most useless "heroes" of all time. The Freshman Not my favorite of Lloyd's comedies. Ralston and him have great chemistry as usual and the suit falling apart gag at the party is killer. The opening speech and the ending football gags dragged though. They also just dropped the dean subplot. If you're gonna watch a lloyd Silent Comedy I'd do Safety Last or For Heaven's Sake before this film.
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Oct 1, 2023 00:34
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Dr. Yinz Ljubljana posted:A Haunting in Venice : Yet another Hercule Poirot movie starring Kenneth Branaugh as the supposedly Belgian detective who works through things with Facts and Logic. An interesting take on the Skeptics vs Believers with the formerly retired Poirot coming out of retirement for One Last Job debunking a medium at a séance. A game cast, including a shockingly good Tina Fey, underused but skilled Jamie Dornan and the always excellent Michelle Yeoh. Visually, a fairly simple affair, Branaugh (who directed and starred in this one as well as the last two recent Poirot movies A Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express) keeps things moving and has the light touch of an early Hitchcock. Not the world's best movie but a real solid version of a thriller that hasn't been done as a feature film until now. Don't rush to the theatre or anything, but it's worth a watch for the various excellent performances. A slim 103 minutes, it could have used some slight trims to take it down to a manageable 90, due to an extended denouement and a baffling intro Most of the cast did a great job with what they were given, but once each character had been introduced, they just blended into everyone else.
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Oct 1, 2023 22:05
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