Films Recently Watched

Possessor (2020)
"Possessor follows an agent who works for a secretive organization that uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people's bodies - ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients."
Pretty good mindfuck by Cronenberg Junior.
I recommend giving it a watch if you like Psy, Sci-Fi, or Cronenberg.

this was great, although i wish the guest narrators weren't almost all in the music biz. 

Wild ride

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

awesome as always, Terry Gilliam

Color Out of Space (2019)
"A secluded farm is struck by a strange meteorite which has apocalyptic consequences for the family living there and possibly the world."
Lovecraftian horror. With Nicolas Cage. Some parts are kind of ok, I dunno.
I like the idea of incomprehensible horrifying things, but it seems near impossible to translate Lovecraftian horror to film.
Maybe imagination itself is the greatest creator of fear. Showing something greatly strips its scariness.
Is that why we're afraid of the dark, the unknown?
If you're into this genre I'd recommend In the Mouth of Madness (1994) by John Carpenter and Michael De Luca, with Sam Neill.

  On 4/19/2021 at 11:00 PM, Nebraska said:

this was great, although i wish the guest narrators weren't almost all in the music biz. 

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For a second, I thought that was Sai Baba

I watched the first half of Sátántangó and I'm extremely frustrated from it.  The first couple of hours were so promising.  I wish the same film could have been made by someone with an artistic vision.  Instead it was just a waste of a great concept (and music).

I watched UHF for the nth time. It's my favorite movie.

 /10

The Oak Room

RJ Mitte is not just cute and cuddly

3 RJ Mittes out of 10 RJ Mittes

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)

i'm not sure what to say about this film. i think one's ability to enjoy it depends on how you discover it, and it just happens that i recently watched a compilation of short films called Cinema 16 and Andersson's film stood out amongst the others.

it seems a lot of people have trouble with the pacing, the use of still shots and the general lack of substance. i feel lucky to have some pre-warning about this (and i usually go into a film with as little info as possible) and i was ready to stop watching if things got too boring.

basically you have a very talented, accomplished director setting up a scene about a couple of minutes in length, then setting up another one, and another one, and placing them all together in a sequence. the scenes don't make much sense, and they are also very mundane such that they don't benefit from surrealism. if you watch the whole thing, there are a few highlights in there which are worth seeing (no spoilers) and i guess it's up to you if you want to spend 1hr 40m getting to them.

tbh i find it frustrating that Andersson uses his talents to this effect - the short film World of Glory takes the same techniques (still shots, slow pacing etc) and uses them to create a very powerful, bleak, disturbing atmosphere. whereas A Pigeon has hardly any atmosphere - whatever feeling it creates is frittered away between scenes, and any that remains is lost to the background music which is deliberately light and airy.

it's one of the only films i've ever watched where the director's story of making the film is more crucial to the experience than the story which is in the film. if you watch it, be sure to watch some trailers and things.

this is a really beautiful piece of filmmaking. i went in with absolutely no knowledge of what i was getting into and immediately put through a serious rollercoaster. 

highly recommended

Tenet (2020) by Nolan.
"Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time."
To put it mildly: I didn't like this movie.
More honestly: A golden diarrhea shower.
I wish I could go back in time and tell myself not to watch it.
Or does that create a paradox? Or not? Because entropy?
Anyway: A totally ridiculous chaotic tedious pretentious plot coated in a thick layer of pretty visuals, crazy action and heavy audio.
 

Battle Royale (2000) (BR) (Batoru Rowaiaru)
"In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary Battle Royale act."
A cult classic. Cheesy and bad acting, but somehow it's still a little bit of a guilty pleasure.
Seems like this Japanese movie / book inspired the The Hunger Games and the whole Battle Royale video game genre quite a bit.

The Invisible Guest (2016) (Contratiempo) A Spanish Drama-Thriller.
"A successful entrepreneur accused of murder and a witness preparation expert have less than three hours to come up with an impregnable defense."
This one caught me off guard. I really liked this movie.
Slow build-up, great narrative, good acting, good cinematography, detailed, captivating, smart, snaking.
I can recommend giving this a watch for sure.

Hey guys I watched the new Mortal Kombat movie I don't know what I was expecting, but I should've seen this coming a mile off. The plot was as good as the plot in the games, so there's no tension, emotional investment, anything, just punching and contrived nonsense. At least there was some cgi gore?! Not really worth it. 

Hey guys I watched the new sci fi movie on netflix called stowaway. Did you wish Gravity was less explosions, more sitting around in a space station and no real ending? Have you never seen a sci fi movie before? If so, this could be your next favourite below average netflix original home cinematic experience.

Very fun with great music

Finally got round to watching Parasite. A foreign film for people who don't watch foreign films. Far longer than necessary and an absolute mess but western cinema critics say that's what makes the film brilliant. Do not believe them. It isn't. 

Marriage story. Kramer vs Kramer for privileged bourgeois wankers. Should have cleaned up at the Oscars 2019. Absolutely excellent. Adam Driver & Scarlet Johannsson are superb. 

  On 4/26/2021 at 10:34 AM, MaartenVC said:

Tenet (2020) by Nolan.
"Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time."
To put it mildly: I didn't like this movie.
More honestly: A golden diarrhea shower.
I wish I could go back in time and tell myself not to watch it.
Or does that create a paradox? Or not? Because entropy?
Anyway: A totally ridiculous chaotic tedious pretentious plot coated in a thick layer of pretty visuals, crazy action and heavy audio.
 

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There were soo many plot holes, even for a Nolan film, like how did that entire boat become inverted? Didn’t everything have to cram thru those dumbass revolving hotel doors?

Yeah, fuck that film, the definition of contrived nonsense.

Christopher Nolan is nonsense

wow this was incredibly silly- from the ridiculous "convincing" of everyone that has to compete in the tournament to the "outworld" being a barren wasteland with the sole purpose of hosting "fighters" from around the universe (?). this is the kind of film that would've been epic had it come out in the 90s, but with most of the target audience in their mid to late 30s, i can't imagine what they were thinking

  On 4/26/2021 at 10:34 AM, MaartenVC said:

Tenet (2020) by Nolan.

the physics is actually pretty well worked out, which is why I liked it better than Inception, sadly for Nolan that Donald Duck comic didn't go into enough details to save his plot. I still find it amusing to watch these megalomaniac Hollywood ridiculous budget blockbusters from time to time, there's something freeing about self-indulging in this wanna-be-bigger-than-god-itself kind of pretention, and you also get to laugh about it afterwards

  On 4/26/2021 at 10:58 AM, MaartenVC said:

Seems like this Japanese movie / book inspired the The Hunger Games and the whole Battle Royale video game genre quite a bit.

Tarantino cited it as one of his top movies of all time, from that moment on it surpassed "cult" status to "hypster" 

  On 4/26/2021 at 12:22 PM, perunamuusi said:

Finally got round to watching Parasite. A foreign film for people who don't watch foreign films. Far longer than necessary and an absolute mess but western cinema critics say that's what makes the film brilliant. Do not believe them. It isn't. 

I beg to differ, sire. it's quite a feat to inject this type of critique into such a mainstream format, and that's something Bong Joon-Ho managed to do with meticulous technique, which is why it got so much attention, otherwise it would've been just another cult highlight. I think it's a very valid commentary, especially for mainstream audiences to watch and be left wondering about. the metaphors are plain and simple, yet accurate, which is one of the movie's biggest strengths, as it doesn't interfere with the plot, only supports it. I thought it was a pretty solid movie.


as for Mortal Kombat, I'm positive it will be bad but I'm gonna try to watch it with my 6 year old self in mind like the first one, that shit was a childhood staple. Christopher Lambert was at the premier, I got to meet fucking Raiden

as i already mentioned itt, parasite has a very dumb, far-fetched plot imo, the metaphor is dumb too. i wouldn't have a problem with the film had it been an anime. it's not though.