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Monuments - been a while since I’ve seen a movie this unfocused and flat. All over the place tonally but you end up dreading the comedy bits. It was cool seeing both Marguerite Moreau and David Sullivan in lead roles though
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Jun 12, 2021 05:39
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The new Soderbergh rips
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Jul 3, 2021 02:20
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Pig — really wanted to like this one, but it’s just unbearably somber and puts that across mostly through every character whispering hesitantly. Hard to have any sort of genuine reaction when there’s nothing recognizably human on screen. Cage is good though Old — don’t know if it was just a real quick shoot or what but the dialogue and acting is incredibly wooden. Night used to be able to get pretty good performances out of people and I’m not sure where that’s gone. Still well-shot and pretty fun, with at least one killer set-piece that will stick with me a long time.
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Jul 25, 2021 15:07
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Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love and Rage — a The Ringer production and it definitely feels like it. Pretty decent lineup of interviews but very surface level, a lot of mid-level music writers (and Moby) going on at length about What It Says About Us. The novelty of the non-stop nudity wears off after about a half hour
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Jul 26, 2021 22:39
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I think The Fog is the last Carpenter I hadn’t seen and I always got the impression from people that it wasn’t worth tracking down. It absolutely rules though, I’d have watched it sooner if I knew that it was Carpenter’s Jaws but the shark is ghosts. Even when it drags a bit every shot is gorgeous
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Aug 14, 2021 01:32
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I enjoyed Annette quite a bit while not enjoying like 90% of the music. I’m not opposed to musicals in general but that kind of tuneless exposition sing-talking is tough for me. The back half of the movie is such a knockout, though, and wouldn’t work without the cumulative effect of all of it. Can’t really stand much anime, either, though I watched and liked NGE when it posted to Netflix a few years ago. I bailed partway through the second movie. The pacing and editing is so choppy it feels like a highlight reel in a bad way. That get better as they start telling their own story?
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Aug 24, 2021 15:03
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Dune feels like someone took a season of the best-looking, most expensive TV drama of all time and edited it down to just the plot beats. Then they added some b roll of characters standing dramatically to transition between scenes 3 out of 4
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Oct 22, 2021 06:50
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Ready Player One — avoided this like the plague when it came out despite otherwise liking a lot of Spielberg’s late-career work. Feels like it’s been getting at least a whiff of a re-evaluation lately, and good reviews for West Side Story made me want to fill in the gap. It doesn’t hang together at all as a movie but in the middle of a dumb crypto, NFT and Metaverse gold rush it at least feels pretty accurate. It’s easy to read as an extremely bleak satire of the entertainment industry right now — and I don’t think that’s completely unintentional. Mark Rylance helps sell that take with a great performance as a barely functional autistic tech God. Ben Mendelsohn’s also good in a Ben Mendelsohn type role. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is awful and all the mocap is terrible compared to what Spielberg did a few years earlier in TinTin. By the end any juice the concept has is gone and you just want it to stop. That feels timely, too
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Dec 13, 2021 08:41
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Val - not sure why I haven’t heard more about this but I’m guessing it’s because Amazon buries everything it buys. Basically Val Kilmer’s Tarnation, and it’s as weird and embarrassing and genuinely touching as you’d hope for. It’s seriously brave in how much it shares about Val’s personal life, but the details of that life are usually thrown-out Zoolander gags. Self-serving and cloying in a way that makes it more interesting rather than less. Just a strange unique thing.
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Dec 27, 2021 03:34
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Leto is the best part honestly, without the cartoon Italian accents there’s not a ton of movie
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Dec 29, 2021 04:08
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Drive My Car is the best movie I've seen in a good long while. Long at three hours but nearly every scene is electric. Intricately structured, beautiful performances, and some really gorgeous photography. Felt like sitting down with a really satisfying novel. Only bum note is a few plot elements that get introduced and dealt with a little too quickly, but that's a pretty minor complaint.
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Dec 31, 2021 07:12
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Coaaab posted:I think a film that's viciously cynical about space exploration, the bodies that both exploit & are exploited in the name of it & God, a future of still rampant corporatization as capitalism continues being elevated to the sacrosanct, and the primal fear of no one being out there to answer our calls for loneliness has worth, it's just that Ad Astra ends up only just remaining on this side of the threshold of "good" Yeah, I think this is the take. Plus I like how unhinged the final act is
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Jan 27, 2022 17:31
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I thought I was out on GDT, but Nightmare Alley was mostly great. Feels a lot like Shape of Water in tone but it’s automatically way better because of all the carny stuff. Puts a little too much mustard on at the end but I mostly liked that too Also I’m glad someone finally gave Holt McCallany a halfway decent part, I thought that guy was gonna be everywhere after Mindhunters morestuff fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 05:48
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The teacher character is so bizarrely pitched it feels like a parody. The home life stuff is interesting and I think all the family turn in good performances but the entire singing plot is beyond cheesy
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Feb 19, 2022 06:07
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The Batman — thought I was maybe in the mood for a superhero movie after a half-decade break but I apparently was not. Slick with some decent scenes and performances but zero new ideas. Paul Dano and the movie’s conception of that character are terrible. Fan service at the end is a huge wet fart. Better as a trailer than a three-hour movie.
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Mar 4, 2022 20:33
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Prey is really excellent until it gets a little on-rails toward the end. I’d call it the best Predator movie but the first one finishes so strong it leaves a better taste. I’d love to see Trachtenberg try something more character-driven without needing the big sci-fi set pieces but that’s obviously what gets made these days
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Aug 12, 2022 17:40
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TÁR is great and very funny. Felt like a very self-aware satire to me but opinions seem mixed on that. Blanchett is as good as you’d expect. Definitely feels its length but mostly earns it
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Oct 30, 2022 07:37
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Sad to report that Glass Onion stinks out loud
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Nov 28, 2022 03:50
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I'd love to hear more. Genuinely love the first one, which is stacked top to bottom with ringers that can play both the serious and comedy sides incredibly well. You're in good hands with folks like Jamie Lee and Michael Shannon who can go big without flailing too hard. Glass Onion is all flailing. Every character is a one-dimensional cartoon character played to the rafters, and most of the cast is unfortunately way out of its depth. I've liked Bautista and Monae in other stuff but you can really feel them straining. Hahn and Odom weirdly barely make an impression, and Hudson unsurprisingly comes out looking the worst. Johnson's script is a big part of the problem, which cranks up some insanely broad satire (Edward Norton plays a name-dropping Elon Zuckerberg that buys the Mona Lisa) and randomly throws in some clumsy sci-fi elements (a plot point revolves around a magical new energy source). It's structurally pretty lumpy too, with an hour+ up front of SNL-level bits, a late-developing mystery and a key reveal that's bogged down by a half-hour flashback. It finally manages some juice once Craig starts laying out the solution, but the road there is really rough, and the kicker isn't particularly satisfying either. Just a real bummer morestuff fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 17:48
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Didn’t know The Relic was a Peter Hyams movie so no surprise that it’s a really good looking and competent version of what’s a pretty dumb script
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Dec 4, 2022 05:20
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The Fabelmans: I’m not sure why I thought Spielberg was a tall guy
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Dec 14, 2022 08:48
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The Menu: the satire is kind of toothless and it’s 30 minutes too long but it’s genuinely got some laughs and the casting director deserves a raise. Nic Hoult is so incredibly good at his specific thing, he and Fiennes could have killed it in a much more overt comedy
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Dec 18, 2022 07:36
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Bottom Liner posted:.5s in a 5 point scale are for cowards Totally disagree, don’t be a coward and tell me if a movie is worth seeing or not. Why the 4-star scale is > > >
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Mar 13, 2023 19:50
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Terms of Endearment is great and it’s really only the very end that gets weepy, but that was the part that had a cultural legacy for whatever reason. Check out Broadcast News if you haven’t seen it, same vein also great
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Mar 19, 2023 13:47
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M:I Dead Reckoning: I think this is pretty easily the worst of the Mission Impossible movies despite having its fair share of fun stuff. Stretching things out to two movies puts way too much focus on the Macguffin and set-up. Kind of surprised I didn't hear more about where the plot goes, which basically boils down to "Ethan Hunt, who is Jesus Christ, must find and kill God". That isn't even like half-jokey internet film analysis, the whole thing is draped in Christian allegory and they make the direct comparison several times. Weird movie!
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Jul 25, 2023 15:20
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General Dog posted:I thought 2:45 was a pretty bulky package for two B+ action setpieces, but I think said setpieces still delivered the goods. Yeah, they still worked for me even if nothing was as inspired as the opera scene in 5 or the bathroom fight in 6
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Jul 26, 2023 15:53
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I think it’s ultimately a good thing that Dream Scenario refuses to make a bigger point and just wallows in its absurdity, it can focus on the jokes and nothing ends up feeling forced. It’s the first Cage performance during his late-period renaissance that I think stands up to his best work, mostly because the movie meets him at his level. Just great casting top to bottom, with Julianne Nicholson and Michael Cera also doing incredible stuff. Hardest I’ve laughed in a theater in years.
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Dec 13, 2023 05:21
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SCheeseman posted:The enemy in LTWB are the super rich, who are architecting the collapse of societal order to create a power vacuum. The main characters all get along in the end because they realize they're being manipulated, the contradiction in the information the dropped propaganda flyers are conveying leading them to believe they're just a tool to rile them up. The characters discuss this on screen. The ending also isn't quite as bleak as it appears given that the event seems to happen during the ending episodes of Mr Robot and that implies that there is still some societal stability, hospitals are working. All the characters in the movie fall into the 2-5% and are ultimately just kind of inconvenienced by the collapse of society, which would feel like good satire except the rest of the movie is so tone deaf and poorly executed that its hard to give it a charitable read Edit: or rather, this seems to be the point but then you’re left with a shoddily made movie about miserable people you’re rooting against going through largely stakes-free trials morestuff fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Dec 30, 2023 |
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Dec 30, 2023 17:22
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Poor Things - Yorgos with a Tim Burton / Terry Gilliam riff that works better for me than nearly anything those guys ever put out
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Dec 31, 2023 08:45
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 16:17 |
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I like Iron Claw a lot but it’s not particularly interested in the wrestling angle of the story
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Jan 6, 2024 06:18
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