Last Movie Watched Thread

Thing is, you don't get to choose whether or not you have a smackable kid. Sure, some behaviors are squarely the fault of parents, but some are just THERE, especially with hyper/imaginative/difficult/precocious/wiggly kids with screechy voices that never shut up and never sit still. Haha, not MY kid, of course not! Anyway, that's one of the things I loved about this film. It goes against every deeply ingrained instinct to not like your child and that shit can fuck you up. 

I just watched There Will Be Blood for the first time. To be honest, Daniel Day-Lewis didn't do a whole lot for me, but Paul Dano knocked it out of the park. The final scene was a little on the nose, but it was a nice parable on the horrors of capitalism, and there's no way I could ever hate that!

The Lego Movie(2014) Everything was..... good, it was a good film. It was simply just a really fun and breezy film that one could enjoy. The ending was a little weird, but nothing that really took away from the rest of the film. I didn't really care for the song though, sorry, I know it is probably an unpopular opinion, but it was more annoyingly catchy than enjoyable to me, though the song(and easily the movie) was still more awesome than Drive(2011) according to the matt review-o meter.

What films, if any, have ranked better than Drive(2011) on the Matt Review-O Meter?

I meant to write worse...but the question was answered nonetheless.

Blackhat - Holy shit, that movie was fucking BORING!

Somehow never seen it before but:
Pet Sematary II. Oh lord.
Look, I'll gladly admit that I enjoyed the heck out of it. It made me laugh harder than any comedy I've seen in recent memory. Clancy Brown looked like he was having a blast. But it was so terrible.

I just got back from Black Sea and it was way better than I was expecting. A very tense thriller that bordered on Horror but the only terror was coming from the men slowly unraveling and turning on one another. Heightening this was the fact no one is exactly a 'good' guy as the perceived protagonist in Jude Law makes several bad choices for his own greed as well. If you can everyone needs to get out and see this movie.

Last night I watched Videodrome, which was, you know, a Cronenberg movie. Creepy atmosphere, social commentary, bizarre fusions of man and machine, and it was all very suggestive. I enjoyed it, naturally, in all of its bizarre, stomach vagina fisting glory. That's another off my Cronenberg list. I've seen that, The Brood, The Fly, and A History of Violence. Where should I go next?

Also, gotta love how Canadian he is, but not in the annoyingly blatant, in your face way a lot of Canadian films are. He's got some noticeable locations and the characters mention Toronto a couple of times, but those are the only signifiers, really.

I saw Xavier Dolan's Mommy today (it shared the Jury prize at the Cannes film festival last year with Godard's Goodbye to Language). Some of the musical choices were too on the nose and one particularly didn't fit with the scene (Dolan picked mostly American pop songs for the movie). Despite that, the movie was pretty freaking great. The acting was just superb. The relationship between mother and troubled teenage son really resonated with me. I know it's cliche, but this movie is a textbook example of an emotional roller coaster. I couldn't stop smiling in some scenes and I openly wept during others. 

The movie uses a 1:1 aspect ratio. I think it worked (especially on a metaphorical level) but I'm still not sure I loved the choice. Still, I really, really loved this movie. 

I ended up rewatching The Last Seduction, and it still remains one of my favorite neo-noirs and black comedies. It's one of the few neo-noirs that captures the spirit of the old film noir classics, without simply feeling like its just aping the superficial markers (billowing white clouds of smoke, atmospheric shadows, etc). Steve Barancik's script is so sharp and witty, while John Dahl's direction eschews the flashy in favor of letting his brilliant cast do what they do best. Linda Fiorentino really is one of the few actresses who can stand alongside the greats like Bacall and Stanwyck. Her Bridget Gregory is a ferocious, wise-crackin' force of nature. She lights up ever scene she's in and makes evil look glamorous as can be. 

In short, you could say I liked it. 

I just watched The Secret of kells. It's a very bizarre movie, with an animation style I'm not crazy about, and I don't know who it's aimed at! It was way too scary for children - those Vikings were more like Orcs.

But I did like it. It was unusual.

"Dead Ringers" is an absolute must.

I'd also suggest "Rabid" with Marilyn Chambers if you can find it. "Scanners" is worth your time if you can see past the dreary performance of the protagonist.

John Wick(2014) Despite having a really tough to get through beginning, it does end up a very fun movie. The actions scenes were all ridiculously good. The humor the script had about itself was pitch perfect and really damn funny. The cinematography at times was gorgeous. The cast is fucking great as well. Just so many good things about this film, and really it is funny because at the end of the day it is just a breezy action film, doesn't try to be more than that. I don't mean that as a knock either, it wanted to be what it was and did just that. My favorite thing about the movie though, it just felt so lived in. It does just kinda drop you into this world and you gotta pick up the nuances and character history as you go on. It does give some exposition that you need, but never in a way that feels clunky though, all of it made sense. The matt review-o does say this is better than Drive(2011) not because the latter really really sucks, but because the former is really really fun.