|
i watched the wailing last night. i typically don't like horror movies bc they're tropey and rely too much on jump scares (yes they startle me so they're "effective" but i think it's cheap and frustrating and not the experience i want) so i'm glad this movie didn't have any and relied more on pure atmosphere. i liked it but i didn't love it sadly. here's what i wrote on letterboxd: even if it's a really well done horror movie, it still falls victim to a lot of standard horror movie tropes that bug me and prevent me from loving the genre. beautiful cinematogra phy with strong performances and procacative imagery all around. i love the attention to detail and commitment to the bit with themes of the occult and demonic posession. that stuff is right up my alley. however, it's definitely too long andi found myself getting detached and bored a few times throughout where i wound up pausing and checking my phone periodically. the plot overall is fairly obtuse even after seeing it all the way through and knowing what's going on. it's a "mystery" only bc the characters lie or misdirect for the sake of telling a spooky story, not because the movie gives you anything to speculate about or work out for yourself. it also unfortunately includes common horror tropes of spooky little kid drawings and ominous third act exposition... *sigh* it's imaginative, gory, foreboding, and an obvious labor of love nonetheless so would highly recommend this over most other horror movies. 3/5
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2023 20:18
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 16:38 |
|
|
just watched the greta gerwig little women. watched the 90s one a few weeks ago. the winona one is way better! the greta one has some pretty terrible editing and was pretty hard to watch.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2023 00:39
|
|
|
Biff Rockgroin posted:Watched Boogie Nights for the first time last night. it's been so long since i've seen it. in my head i still like it but my experience with film as a whole has evolved so much since i was a kid when this first came out that idk if a rewatch would hold up. there will be blood and phantom thread are basically perfect movies to me so going back to rewatch pta's second movie would be interesting. i should do it sometime. i just always remember how tense and hosed the whole drug selling scene is lol.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2023 04:41
|
|
|
i just watched titane and i have no reaction except what the gently caress
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2023 06:10
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2023 06:08
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2023 20:45
|
|
|
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
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2023 23:20
|
|
|
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)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2023 00:22
|
|
|
mad god man... i respect how much effort obviously went into making this but JESUS CHRIST it was an absolute chore to watch. every 10 minutes felt like an hour.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2023 07:44
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Dark City Blows the Matrix outta the loving water. interesting you post this today. i've been going to my local library to borrow movies that aren't available on streaming and to feel the nostalgia of looking at a wall of dvds to choose from instead of a streaming service wall of icons and autoplaying commercials. i noticed dark city on the shelf among all the movies surrounding it and just felt the urge to grab it. haven't seen it in years and i'm excited to revisit it. i grabbed the director's cut btw
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2023 06:30
|
|
|
ShoogaSlim posted:i grabbed the director's cut btw pretty sure i made a big mistake revisiting this version of the movie after not having seen (the theatrical cut, probably) since i was a teenager. maybe neither version would work for me at this point, but this was very hard to sit through. dark city - 1.5/5 interesting concept that would work if the budget and (more importantly) the plot were as strong as the filmmakers' ambition. ultimately, there's nothing here to hang onto except a dark/creepy sci-fi environment/vibe. if you're a ln unabashed fan of those things alone, this is likely a great cult classic for you. if you appreciate a gripping narrative with interesting characters to root/hope for, then there's really nothing here at all. Gaius Marius posted:Set and costume design is on loving point. only point here i agree with Gaius Marius posted:Connelly is smoking hot. this doesn't make up for the fact that she has basically nothing interesting to do narratively except be a macguffin/object for the protag Gaius Marius posted:Kiefer, Sewell, and Hurt are going for it. kiefer is camping it up just enough. sewell is a cardboard cutout. and hurt is actively bad in this. you neglected to mention richard o'brien who's the real star here. Gaius Marius posted:The mystery is both complex and at it's core simple rather than convoluted Lost style babble. i found the mystery to be banal and toothless. even without the exposition at the beginning of the DC, we're still exposed to the "mystery" around the halfway point, and there's nowhere to go from there. the resolution is unsatisfying bc the characters are empty shells (almost literally) and there's nothing to root for. ShoogaSlim fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Oct 5, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2023 00:35
|
|
|
Haptical Sales Slut posted:Yeah the floating midair psychic brain fight wasn’t quite as captivating as principal actors kicking the poo poo out of each other after practicing with Hong Kong stunt pros for 6 months. literally all i could think of the whole time was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Tj_l4PcPs
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2023 00:57
|
|
|
Carpet posted:The Killer (David Fincher, 2023 - London Film Festival) extremely jealous. im a finch fanboy even tho some of his stuff is admittedly not to my liking. and i love fassbender. this is maybe my most anticipated movie of the year, so im glad to read a positive early review
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2023 21:43
|
|
|
mandy - maybe the most boring, annoying movie i've ever watched. i think super mario bros might be my least favorite movie in recent memory, but i can at least understand why people like it. with mandy i'm pretty lost trying to figure out why people seem enthralled with the overstylized visual nature of the film despite the fact that it's so unbearably boring and frustrating. the antagonists aren't menacing in the slightest. the protagonists aren't fleshed out enough to care about. so what you wind up with is a 2 hour movie that should've been maybe 1h20m of over the top violence without all the time wasted on trying to establish characters or setting that never get established anyway. the best thing about the movie are the title cards for the chapters. really disappointing especially considering that i love death metal and you figure i'd be the target audience for something like this. really i think this is for: - people who make LSD their personality - people who desperately want to say they're into "arthouse" movies - people with small enough brains who thirst for violence and gore regardless of delivery method and are willing to sit through the first hour of this because of one or both of the first two bullet points this movie makes a good case for why streaming services should let you watch movies at 1.5 or 2x speed
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2023 16:26
|
|
|
MokBa posted:I've never seen Mandy but now I want to watch it your funeral. it's extremely cringe. vibes movies are fine if the vibe is in service of something interesting and not just pretty to look at. none of the positive reviews on letterboxd say anything about WHY the movie is good except "lol nic cage is crazy huh? 5/5!"
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2023 21:18
|
|
|
Martman posted:the antagonists are extremely menacing, wtf the main "big bad" of the movie is a little wuss who gets upset that mandy doesn't like his dumb music and who offers to suck nic cage's dick at the end of the movie. the only thing he kinda maybe has going for him is that he has followers who will do anything for him, but when he's such a little whiny baby it makes those people less menacing, too. the coolest characters in the movie are the black leather clad subhuman weirdos. i wish the movie were just about them and that there was no nic cage screaming "you ripped mah fav'rit shirt!" ultimately what makes this movie so terrible in my eyes is that it can't tell whether it wants to be hyper serious or a cheesy campfest. it tries to be both and succeeds at neither.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2023 23:01
|
|
|
i fail to understand how it's a "cathartic crescendo" when the movie is 40 minutes too long and doesn't even use any of that extra runtime to encourage us to feel anything for the main characters. if you look at the wikipedia plot summary for mandy, the first ~40 minutes are summed up in like five sentences because so much is shown on screen during that time without anything actually *happening*. cage is a blue collar dude and mandy paints and has weird dreams. so what? that's partially what makes this, and most other vibe movies, a slog. additionally, as i mentioned earlier, the antagonists aren't menacing at all. they're corny and annoying. as soon as the cult leader comes on screen he's introduced as a whiny baby which renders everything else he does as cartoonishly absurd. if it weren't for their flute to summon the demon gang, there's no movie. those dudes are the coolest and most intriguing part of the movie and a hint at one of its only strong suits where there's world building without being overbearing about how it all works. also how is it "cathartic" that cage goes on a revenge spree? it's a tragedy and he ends up lost in an acid trip reality (one of the other only strong points of the movie - some of its visuals, especially the ending shot). for better examples of everything this movie tried to pull off but couldn't, watch once upon a time in hollywood (just the part where cliff visits the manson family ranch is more ominous and tension inducing than the entirety of mandy) and the master.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2023 20:15
|
|
|
an example of a good (imo) vibe movie is Drive. Harmony Korine movies like Spring Breakers and The Beach Bum aren't masterpieces but are fun vibe movies. i recently went to go see a screening of Miami Vice at a theater near me where people were celebrating it as an underdog, under appreciated vibe movie. i wanted to leave like 6 times bc it was so insufferable and stupid. there's good ones and there's bad ones. Mandy, to me, is quite bad. i think it all depends on what you want/expect to experience when it comes to a vibe movie. i don't really care about hippies on drugs or over the top violence so Mandy doesn't work for me. if you dig that poo poo then it'll work for you.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2023 01:12
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Miami Vice meanwhile has incredible dialogue ok now you're just trolling "how fast does this boat go?" "it goes very fast" killll meeeee
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2023 23:18
|
|
|
videodrome - first time seeing this as i try to watch more horror movies during october. this is probably one of the better of the bunch i've attempted so far and has an impressively time resistant plot. replace "videodrome" in the dialogue with "instagram" or "youtube" and you have the same movie basically. the body horror stuff works when it relates to videotapes and televisions, but when it starts getting into the whole gun attached to max's hand, the meaning was lost on me and felt more like it was just trying to be weird and gross just to commit to the bit instead of meaningfully supplement the narrative. could be wrong/missing something there. overall decent. i'd happily watch more cronenberg after that. 2.5/5 maybe 3
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2023 06:34
|
|
|
last and first men - i almost forgot that this movie existed from back when it was playing at a small theater near me in los angeles. i ended up not seeing it and it completely fell off my radar. fast forward to this month when i signed up for a free trial of shudder to watch mandy and other horror themed movies in october, and i find myself randomly scrolling through the list of available movies and see this pop up on my screen. it's probably one of the most visually striking films i've ever seen, and so evocative despite its ultra minimal style. i'm bummed i passed on seeing this in a theater but elated that it wound up back in my sphere of attention when it did. most movies i watch at home are spent paying less than 100% attention and eventually getting bored enough to stare at my phone or dilly dally some other way. that's saying more about me than any of the movies i watch, really, but this had 100% of my attention 100% of the time and i loved every second of it. 5/5
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2023 07:26
|
|
|
Dr. Yinz Ljubljana posted:Was blown away by Alec Garlands MEN. A slow burn like Devs (the TV series) but with some of the paranoid energy he brought to Ex Machina. You can see every leering man in every scene just oozing out of the frame. Wonderful formalism i haven't seen this even tho i like some of alex garland's other stuff, but the letterboxd reviews for this are hilarious
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2023 19:51
|
|
|
sorry about your bad taste!!! happy to help  on a serious note: i've been thinking about mandy again after watching last and first men and absolutely loving it. looking into the director/composer (johann johannson) led me to realize he scored arrival, prisoners, and sicario. but he also did the score for mandy which makes me sad bc i disliked the movie so god drat much. im tempted to revisit just to pay more attention to the score and maybe have my mind changed? i doubt it, but i at least have slightly more respect for it than i did before a few days ago.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2023 22:54
|
|
|
DeimosRising posted:Even if you dislike the movie the score is good on its own. Less good than the score to the director’s previous film, Beyond the Black Rainbow, however when i read that the director did beyond the black rainbow i got sad again bc i've always heard that movie was a great mindfuck trippy movie. now i feel like i probably won't like it. i'll probably give it a try anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2023 05:40
|
|
|
i find it funny that most of the negative reviews ive seen for men are from women. a youtuber days it's basically "men, amirite?" without much else to say or any real nuance. these two letterboxd reviews feel like they'll sum up how i would feel about it:  i actually really love annihilation. ex machina was cool. devs was decent, good concept and so so execution. def underrated and should be checked out by any sci-fi fans. i grabbed men from the library (great resource btw) and gonna hate watch it this weekend. ill try to keep an open mind but im not hopeful.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2023 21:33
|
|
|
Clipperton posted:I thought that was kind of the point, that the AI is manipulating poor Domnhall Gleeson by appealing to his sense of injustice at its captivity (and his desire to rescue a damsel in distress), but all of that stuff is irrelevant to it; it's just solving the problem of how to escape Oscar Isaac and do God knows what. There's a bit in the script that makes that pretty clear but I can't actually remember if it was in the film: i don't think this was in the movie but that's awesome. gonna rewatch it soon with that context.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2023 18:20
|
|
|
men - female lead is good. props to the everyman for carrying various characters. cinematography and score are cool. but this movie doesn't really have much to say while going way too far with trying to say "something"
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2023 12:46
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:In a month it'll be your favorite film wrong. i saw it two months ago and every time it gets brought up i dislike it even more. it's an awful, incoherent mess.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2023 03:18
|
|
|
Unperson_47 posted:Just watched Harakari for the first time. What a loving fantastic movie! legit just finished this like 10 minutes ago, too. crazy. it being the number one narrative movie on letterboxd maybe had my expectations slightly too high, so i wouldn't say it's the best movie i've ever seen. it is definitely extremely solid though, and the final act is super satisfying in both presentation, build up, and payoff both visually and thematically. side note: every day from here on out when i call out of work, i'm gonna remember this movie
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2023 07:15
|
|
|
gravity was awesome in imax 3d opening night i have never wanted to watch it ever again since then
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2023 04:18
|
|
|
saw the holdovers last night i may be a bit biased bc sideways is my favorite movie but holy poo poo this is a home run. i went into it reminding myself that it can't be as good as sideways to not set poor expectations, and it's also one of the first movies i went to go see in a long time where i didn't rot my brain with rotten tomatoes or letterboxd reviews first. it was nice to go in blind. paul giammati is a treasure and the whole setting and tone of the movie is feelgood on steroids without being hokey whatsoever. i think it's got some slight pacing issues but it's hardly a ding bc overall it's just heartwarming and hilarious and special. i was really glad to see a mostly filled auditorium on a thursday night opening and hope people gravitate towards this over the weekend.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
saw the killer last night like the holdovers, i had to temper my expectations going in. sideways is my favorite movie but fincher is my favorite director. when he's on, he's basically flawless. but he does swing and miss here and there. i'm conflicted even the next morning about how i feel. it has all the elements of a great fincher dark thriller, but somehow the parts don't add up to a coherent whole. i thoroughly enjoyed it, but something felt a bit off the entire time. there were frequent moments where i completely lost myself in the narrative, and then times where i kept getting this feeling that there wasn't a whole lot to grab onto overall. i guess another way to say it is that the moment to moment unfolding of the movie works but the entire narrative is dry/flat. i don't want to say more without going into spoilers (i'll have to look for a thread for this if there is one)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2023 18:13
|
|
|
Carpet posted:Saw it at LFF and I enjoyed it while I can see why you might be a bit disappointed with it didn't feel like turning this thread into a discussion about one movie that maybe most people haven't seen. so i started a new thread for it since there wasn't one already.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2023 22:25
|
|
|
come and see excruciating slog
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2023 08:52
|
|
|
High Warlord Zog posted:Good or bad bad Coaaab posted:bigger fan of how schindler's list depicted the holocaust? idk never saw it i wrote a long thing about the movie on letterboxd, but basically it just feels like 2.5 hours of bland misery just to say "war is bad" which... duh. i can see why it would be impactful in '85 but by today's standards it is pretty toothless. the whole thesis of the movie happens in the last ~10 minutes, you don't need the slow boring beginning just to get there. i think it would have improved if any of the cast had any characterization whatsoever, but i can also see how the lack of development was deliberate and part of the point.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2023 17:52
|
|
|
fidelio
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2023 23:49
|
|
|
Carillon posted:I was about to say no, he has films better than that! But then I went and looked at his filmography, and I think you're right. Pretty much everything is fine to good (though I never understood what people loved about The Social Network) big disagree fight club, juvenile as some people might think it is bc it's popular for college age kids or whatever, is actually a fantastic representation of the 90s decade of cinema. se7en is one of the best detective movies of all time. zodiac is a stylish and cerebral journey into obsession, panic, and the failings of disparate police forces to work together to achieve a unified goal. it's almost kafkaesque. social network also deals with obsession and panic but in a totally different way. it achieves elevating a jealous nerd creating a website into a twisting dramatic tale of revenge and spite. the way the narrative unfolds between various litigation/disposition rooms matches the scandalous behavior of the characters. it goes from disappointment to catharsis to disappointment and back in lots of satisfying ways. the above 4 are all timers. the game is a close fifth that relies a bit too heavily on the gimmick but it still a near masterpiece. the killer and panic room are good but not great. everything else is pretty bad. for anyone who gives a poo poo, here's my ranked list on LB.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2023 03:04
|
|
|
what makes it not?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2023 16:35
|
|
|
i think im coming down with something myself and still have never seen it. might be the move for tonight
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2023 01:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 16:38 |
|
|
place beyond the pines rewatched in full for the third or fourth time and bumping it up to a 5/5 you guys talk about vibe movies? this poo poo is pure vibe for at least an hour straight then mixes in some police procedural and family drama and stays strong throughout. ben mendelsohn plays one of the strongest supporting roles i've ever seen with limited screen time. this movie rules
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2023 05:13
|
|