Films Recently Watched

Kong Skull Island - I am so thankful this film didn't bother with a slow reveal of Kong tediously drawn out over the first hour. They get to the island, he's there and immediately smashing them out their helicopters. Not a bad film for a lazy Sunday. I fear what Adam Wingard will do with the next one after seeing his past work.

  On 6/19/2017 at 7:50 PM, tec said:

Kong Skull Island - I am so thankful this film didn't bother with a slow reveal of Kong tediously drawn out over the first hour. They get to the island, he's there and immediately smashing them out their helicopters. Not a bad film for a lazy Sunday. I fear what Adam Wingard will do with the next one after seeing his past work.

I actually liked Skull Island. It was just a dumb and loud movie with a sense of humor and it knew what it was doing.

Dressed to Kill (1980) - The Criterion of this comes loaded with cool special features, but I can't say I loved the movie itself. De Palma seems p offended by the Poor Man's Hitchcock thing, but that's exactly what this is. Right down to the Psycho-style labored explanation of the killer's psychology. Still, I appreciate the sleaze.

On to Body Double, I guess.

edit -

De Palma (2015) - I watched about half of this doc hoping for someone, anyone, other than the man himself to get a word in, and to discuss the actual films, but it's almost entirely old man score settling and self-aggrandizement.  

^ mmm Nancy Allen though.

edit. Fucking page break

saw a cast and crew screening of baby driver. was funny seeing all the extras in the crowd after the movie was over. wasn't nearly as good as i hoped it'd be. it's basically 90 minutes of action scenes edited to songs. all of the acting seemed pretty phoned in (except maybe flea?).

i felt kinda bad 'cause my buddy that got us passes and i got there a half hour early and we had like, the best seats. right before the film started the dude playing black panther showed up and he was sitting in like the third row from the front. 

then i realized he's probably like, a millionaire and figure he'll get over it.

that movie looks terrible. i cannot fucking stand kevin spacey. at this point you can predict if a movie will suck simply due to the editing of the tv spot and how frequently they run it.

Blomkamp's latest short film, just released a week ago:

  On 6/20/2017 at 7:28 PM, dr lopez said:

that movie looks terrible. i cannot fucking stand kevin spacey. at this point you can predict if a movie will suck simply due to the editing of the tv spot and how frequently they run it.

maybe. i don't hate spacey and kinda hoped that the trailers were edited in such a way as to simply appeal to the massively stupid american audience (never seen the tv spots since i don't watch tv). i held out hope that the actual film would be a bit more subtle and/or as funny as his stuff w/british casts. 

but no. it's just scene after scene harshly edited to a decent ost. awful pacing. whole thing feels really rushed and not purposefully. like, they just had to fucking shit the movie out ASAP.

Watched two films today. Secrets and Lies, this just needed an appearance by David Thewlis to be Leigh pimping out all his tricks. Cumberbatch the original shits on adoption cliches and alcohol consumption in the burbs gets its paean.

I Saw The Devil - korean mash up black comedy and thriller. The fella from Old Boy antagonises the husband of a police chief's daughter. Scalpelthroughyourachilles/10

Antagonises is downplaying the situation somewhat.

I Saw The Devil is a lovely film

  On 6/20/2017 at 8:29 PM, ambermonk said:

Blomkamp's latest short film, just released a week ago:

I discovered it on Steam yesterday, and just now got done watching it. He's still fucking got it.

got what? storylines for videogames?

https://youtu.be/egJ2qvXXGQQ

an attempt to create an early lynch film (eraserhead or the grandmother) but which very over-the-top attempts at humor mostly based around vulgarity or just plain childish anger ie. "fuck- mutherfucker. that stoooopppid fuck!"

yawn

  On 6/20/2017 at 11:43 PM, doublename said:

I Saw The Devil is a lovely film

Saw War Machine the other day. A pretty damn good exposition on the absurdity of US foreign policy in the middle east.

Also that Neil Blomkamp short is great, I want to see that fleshed out into a TV series. It reminds me of "V" in some ways, but obviously more gruesome, and the alien terror is not so subtle.

https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/06/20/heres-what-the-new-transformers-movie-is-like/

  Quote

 

In the opening scene of Transformers: The Last Knight, we are presented with the spectacle of King Arthur and his knights locked in an existential battle for the survival of human civilization, even though we’re not really told who or what they’re fighting for. No matter, because this after all is a Transformers movie, so soon we’re faced with

 

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Decent review

Snake Eyes - Just like half naked Nancy Allen was the best thing about Dressed to Kill, half naked Carla Gugino is the best thing about this. De Palma serving up more off-brand Hitchcock, right down to the Vertigo-style blonde wig shenanigans. The opening scene v impressive though.

Mission to Mars - De Palma doing off-brand... Kubrick? This is abysmal, and has one of the worst scores I've heard.

I saw Life last night and it was...a movie. It was very predictable (particularly the big twist ending, jesus fuck) with amateur-ish writing and uninspired directing. Cast was all tolerable and could've likely been good; sadly, the best performance was the biologist guy who of course fell in love with Calvin because wow! 

Could've been an interesting movie with a better director, but there was nothing interesting or unique about this at all. No tension whatsoever, the film played out sort of like a video game in that it's rushed to the action: you get 5 minutes of introduction, here's the bad guy, he's going to kill you. Fight the bad guy, lose, learn a little bit, fight him again. Repeat, characters die. Okay it's over. Except twist ending, cool. 

I give this 4 super badass martian wizard creature cells out of wait what was I doing I've already forgotten this movie.

Oh and let me bring up this point while I'm here bitching, can all alien movies stop pretending that a living creature can double/triple/quadruple in size within mere fucking minutes or hours, or at least provide them a reasonable way and means and timeline of doing so? If a creature is growing it is absorbing matter from something else, usually dumb scientists it just killed, but yet we never see this happen except in the most passing fashion, and even then any living entity will require some amount of time to process and form this external food source into its own body? At least this movie tried to show that to more degrees than many others, but it was still pretty ridiculous. 

Just once I want to see an alien shitting and pissing. Just fucking once.

I'm pretty sure there's an alien pissing in District 9

  On 6/22/2017 at 9:11 PM, Gocab said:

I'm pretty sure there's an alien pissing in District 9

Yeah I think you're right. Aliens are just stand-ins for people in that movie though, the fact that they're aliens is unimportant really.

That's true, good point.

We got see Transformers 5 for free today, I want my goddamn money back.

  On 6/23/2017 at 6:48 AM, Rubin Farr said:

We got see Transformers 5 for free today, I want my goddamn money back.

Same here, just got out of a free screening. I've never had a poorer sense of geography within action in my life. And I typically don't care about continuity if character and plot are firing on cylinders, but this is a case of a director with no control over the narrative. 6 editors...?

Domestic attendance is going to be way down on TF5. Bay has made his billion and should retire quietly to commercials. The studio better keep their budget in check for the Bumblebee spinoff because this franchise is the next casualty of sequalitis.

  On 6/23/2017 at 6:48 AM, Rubin Farr said:

We got see Transformers 5 for free today, I want my goddamn money back.

lol