Films Recently Watched

watched Weird.. the weird al movie. the firs t30 minutes of it i thought i might die from laughter. it's pretty solid all the way thru. lot's  of cameos.. inside jokes about other movies.. parodies of other movies etc... it's charming and pretty damn funny. his parents are amazing. 

followed it up with Possessor.. proper holiday double feature. i'd seen already but my friends hadn't. was good the 2nd time around too.

  On 11/25/2022 at 5:01 PM, ignatius said:

his parents are amazing

toby huss is one of my favorite actors. as a life long weird al fan (weird al was my first concert  when i was bout 10), i enjoyed the first half a lot more than the 2nd. i thought it was a bit long but still glad it exists and that i saw it.

follow up to mention that toby huss was artie, the strongest man in the world on pete & pete

bunch of renegade biker broads ride into a town that's right next to another town that's full of zombies. it takes forever for the zombies to cross over to the town where the babes are and the by the time they do, they're done causing havoc. somehow, billy bob thornton is also in this and he gets manhandled quite a bit (his preference i'm sure)

approved!

^^ this weekend i went to zombietown (or rather the ghost town where they filmed the above film). it had been temporarily taken over by the ultra MAGA who were there to play in the dirt. the whole thing was like if mad max was filmed on a western movie set

Movie 43

  On 11/27/2022 at 9:31 PM, Nebraska said:

^^ this weekend i went to zombietown (or rather the ghost town where they filmed the above film). it had been temporarily taken over by the ultra MAGA who were there to play in the dirt. the whole thing was like if mad max was filmed on a western movie set

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Good god. They're all... very fat.

d'amato's attempt at making making something similar to paul schrader's hardcore - except your boy joe takes the hardcore part seriously (if you know what i mean)

d'amato out of ten

Dollman - Pyun/10

It seems like Pyun was able to squeeze all that he could out of very small budgets. It was highly entertaining and I was suprised there weren't any "it's not the size that matters"-jokes until the VERY end.

Gremlins 10/10. Quite the unconventional Christmas movie

  On 11/28/2022 at 11:06 PM, YEK said:

Gremlins 10/10. Quite the unconventional Christmas movie

i had never heard of danielle deadwyler but she was phenomenal in this- pretty much carried the entire film, which is already a difficult enough subject. 

Smile - mileage will vary. It's weird, I watched It Follows which carries a similar premise and was mostly bored. Or, maybe, for a horror film, I wasn't very horrified. Some people have called this a It Follows ripoff but other than a central conceit, that's where the comparisons end (for me). 

This movie scared the ever living beejesus put of me. I had to break it up into 25 minutes segments because a)im old and b)it was just too much for me to handle in one sitting. I would have watched this thing through my fingers and probably had a stroke if I saw it in the theater. 

Now, it's not that it does anything completely new. It's just that it does what it does very very well. The tension build before the jump scares are played so expertly that even knowing they were coming didn't detract from the anxiety. It helps that the film makes it clear early on that you absolutely can't trust what you are seeing, and the the main characters break with reality means everything, literally everything could be... dangerous. A face out of focus in the background could reveal itself to be a snarling, malevolent thing or it could just be... a face out of focus. 

There is also some really interesting commentary on trauma and what it does to lives. It gives the film some extra layers that aren't strictly necessary for a horror film, but add a nice sense of depth to the proceedings. 

And, for a film whose previews made me think "wait, didn't Aphex Twin already do this whole big scary smile thing like 20 years ago"? I'm pleased to say that a few scenes near the end make it TOTALLY CLEAR (at least to me) that yes they are aware of the phenomenon -  therr are some visual that seem way yoo close to the Come to Daddy vid to be happenstance.

Knowing what I know now it wouldn't terrify me to watch it again (probably) because I know when the scares ares coming/not. Doesn't matter, much respect for taking a concept and just executing on it over and over. 

9.5 rdj grins out of 10 

  On 11/29/2022 at 9:31 AM, iococoi said:

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Gremlins 3 idea? 

  On 11/29/2022 at 10:21 PM, YEK said:

Gremlins 3 idea? 

computer says

Apparently, Mario never said "Let's go". He said, "that's a car".

finally saw uncut gems

also, i tried watching michael bay's the ambulance. idk why i did this. i had seen some reviews on letterbox that seemed to be recommending it but i think these were pretentious film snobs pretending to like something bad or whatever. my bad.

kind of unbelievable that you can write a movie like this. this movie has been made thousands of times. my family is dying, i can't pay the bills. let me ask my friend if he has some honest work for me. oh he only has crime work, he needs one more guy, i'm done with that shit man i have a wife and kids, ok i'll do it bc i'm desperate. then there's a really annoying drone shot of like, a drone flipping over a building or something. then the actual bank heist takes place almost totally off screen. we see a banker just go "ok guys here it is $35 million go ahead and take it." then the most horrible Not Heat shoot out takes place where dudes with machine guns are just blasting cops in broad daylight. i stopped watching at that point.

  On 11/29/2022 at 10:55 PM, iococoi said:

computer says

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even worse https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9860690/

this was actually funny, he didn't need to do his Jersey accent the entire time, but people expected Gandolfini to actually talk that way. And he was supposed to be Christina Applegate's father, lol. kind of an anti-Christmas Vacation movie

Bones and All - 9/10

Reluctantly I now admit that Timothée Chalamet is actually quite good. *sigh* which I hate because there's alot of stuff about him that annoys me, no least the way he spells his fuckin' name. Aaaaaaanyway, this is a very slow burner with some great performances from Mark Rylance (quietly creepy) Chloe Sevigny (baguettes for arms) and Taylor Russell (making bangs great again) which I feel is sure to be a classic in years to come. Beautiful cinematography from Arseni Khachaturan.

this was worse than that grim face will smith is making on the cover

  On 11/4/2019 at 5:21 PM, Taupe Beats said:

With that, gave a re-watch to Jeanne Dielman over the weekend. This may be the most technically perfect film I've ever seen. Between framing, pacing,  brilliant use of ellipsis, Delphine Seyrig.

  Reveal hidden contents

After seeing it the first time, I watched an interview with Akerman who explained that Dielman really starts to unravel because she has her first orgasm on the 2nd day. At the time this was quite a surprise to me. Upon 2nd viewing it made a bit more sense. After watching again last weekend, now it's painfully obvious and I was quite obtuse for not noticing.

With as much feminist theory as a straight white male can muster, the film is an amazing vision of someone who's humanity has been totally robbed of them to the point where she no longer feels comfortable in her routine of robotic service to her son (and clients), and esp. not when alien and formative human emotions/experiences come into play (arguably a sexual awakening).

I'll stop now but this is def. one of the greatest films I've ever seen, if not the greatest.

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Hey look what just got the Sight & Sound #1! I am pleased by this, obviously. The surrounding discourse has been entertaining.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news/revealed-results-2022-sight-sound-greatest-films-all-time-poll

Synchronic by Benson & Moorhead is now on Netflix UK, so i'm finally watching that. 

Doctor Sleep 

Hmmmph. A bit conflicted on this one. I really enjoyed the novel, and would argue that the Director's Cut of the movie nicely elevates the source material and enhances it in many ways. Flanagan also does an excellent job walking a tightrope between staying true to the spirit of King's vision of the Shining while incorporating callbacks to the Kubrick film that King hates. That deft dance alone is worthy of praise - as is the extremely excellent acting from literally everyone (even minor characters have a depth and groundedness that you often feel in a King novel, but never quite translate to film). 

I think the hard thing here is that Stanley friggin' Kubrick made the Shining. It's a singular vision by an auteur whose style really is inimitable, so any visual callbacks kind of jolt you into remembering, "oh riiiight, the Shining, how fucking bonkers/unreal was that?" Because the rest of the film is decidedly NOT a Kubrick film (that's not a slight - the film doesn't try to be, and that's a good thing), these moments end up inevitably begging comparison which takes you out of the film a bit (or, it did me ... it would have been amazing to never have seen the Shining, watch this, and then watch that). 

I sound pretty dour on this but I'm not - it's one of the best Kind adaptations out there, because a)Flanagan really gets how to take the spirit of King's stuff and translate that into the medium of film, something other people seem to struggle with b)it paces itself out in a way that makes the movie feel like reading/moving through a Kind novel with enough space left for introspection/quieter beats that characterize his work (everyone seems to think it's a mad dash between point a to b to murder in his work but that's not right - it's the spaces in between where you fall in love with his characters that makes the horror stuff so... horrifying). 

Honestly, having done some work as a hospice volunteer, I can't believe how accurate a lot of the early bits are surrounding the way people die. Those conversations are bold and frankly deserve lauding on their own - I can't remember the last time... no, anytime, I saw something in a non-drama that so accurately, directly, realistically, and tenderly addressed the truth of death. Maybe Logan? Anyway, some real truths being thrown down there, and the conversation Danny has about addiction and his trauma's once he gets to the Overlook... another bold move. It's so natural in the moment, but afterwards I can't help but think "how the hell is this in a horror movie?" 

If you watch this, 100% watch the Director's Cut. I think, perhaps, the most exciting thing about this is: Flanagan has basically been making a case his entire career that he should be the person making Stephen King adaptations and now that we know he's been handed the reigns to (more than likely, if it gets funded) make the Dark Tower, I reallllly can't wait to see what he's going to do with that. My guess? Knock it out of the fucking park.  

  On 12/12/2022 at 9:35 PM, Soloman Tump said:

Synchronic by Benson & Moorhead is now on Netflix UK, so i'm finally watching that. 

And after I watched this, I really liked it.  It could have gotten really messy with the time travel stuff but actually it felt quite grounded.  I loved the way the scenes melted during the trips.  Could have been some more weirdness and perhaps more "is this real?" moments but overall I liked it.  They tend to keep their films short and I really like dig that move. Tight editing yet never feels rushed.

Also discovered afterwards they have a brand new film out too and i'm excited to see how this ties into their continuity

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