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Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 7, 2024 0:11:48 GMT -5
Blood Shack a.k.a. The Chooper (1971)
From Ray Dennis Steckler of Incredibly Strange Creaturesā¦, which I claim is one of the few MST3K movies to beā¦kinda good? (Literally no one else agrees with me on this.) Regardless, Creatures looks like Kubrick compared with this one. Still, I have to give a bit of respect to this as it feels like the elemental (and I do mean simple as it's a heavily-padded 55 minutes) slasher movie, in which a Harbinger repeatedly says "The Chooper's gonna get you" and he does.
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 7, 2024 10:41:25 GMT -5
I could not possibly confirm this, but I have been told that the source material for this film is apparently an extremely unsubtle allegory for Scottish nationalism, and that the film adaptation is very much not about that at all. Iāve read the book, and I wonāt pretend to understand Scottish politics well enough to weigh in on author Alasdair Grayās views beyond the fact that apparently his nationalism had a lot to do with the deterioration of the British welfare state and his pessimism re: ever seeing a socialist Britain. That said, I think your characterization is a reductive in that itās about a lot more than just Scottish nationalism. Thereās a lot more going on, particularly insofar as itās also effectively a retelling of Frankenstein thatās reckoning with the fact that itās a retelling of a book by a woman and it has feminist leanings and yet the author of this book is a man. Also a lot about 19th Century political thought that really gets flattened into āsocialists vs. reactionariesā in the film. I liked the movie, even if itās not my favorite Lanthimos film by a long shot, but also the book is very good and very weird in its own way and probably better even though I know very little about Scottish nationalism beyond a vague sense that an independent Scotland would probably(?) be not much likelier to be a socialist country than the UK. Scotland is noticeably more left-wing than the UK in general and hasn't voted majority-Tory since the late 50s and we have plenty of actually-left-wing things that are in public ownership (railway, water). Whether an independent Scotland would be full-fat socialist is an open question but it would probably be soft-left in the way that some Scandinavian countries are or NL/Belgium/Denmark.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Feb 7, 2024 16:28:08 GMT -5
Iāve read the book, and I wonāt pretend to understand Scottish politics well enough to weigh in on author Alasdair Grayās views beyond the fact that apparently his nationalism had a lot to do with the deterioration of the British welfare state and his pessimism re: ever seeing a socialist Britain. That said, I think your characterization is a reductive in that itās about a lot more than just Scottish nationalism. Thereās a lot more going on, particularly insofar as itās also effectively a retelling of Frankenstein thatās reckoning with the fact that itās a retelling of a book by a woman and it has feminist leanings and yet the author of this book is a man. Also a lot about 19th Century political thought that really gets flattened into āsocialists vs. reactionariesā in the film. I liked the movie, even if itās not my favorite Lanthimos film by a long shot, but also the book is very good and very weird in its own way and probably better even though I know very little about Scottish nationalism beyond a vague sense that an independent Scotland would probably(?) be not much likelier to be a socialist country than the UK. Scotland is noticeably more left-wing than the UK in general and hasn't voted majority-Tory since the late 50s and we have plenty of actually-left-wing things that are in public ownership (railway, water). Whether an independent Scotland would be full-fat socialist is an open question but it would probably be soft-left in the way that some Scandinavian countries are or NL/Belgium/Denmark. Waiting for you and Rando to get into it over the particularities of left-wing politics so I can drop in with a "no true Scotsmansocialism" joke.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Feb 7, 2024 22:33:20 GMT -5
Iāve read the book, and I wonāt pretend to understand Scottish politics well enough to weigh in on author Alasdair Grayās views beyond the fact that apparently his nationalism had a lot to do with the deterioration of the British welfare state and his pessimism re: ever seeing a socialist Britain. That said, I think your characterization is a reductive in that itās about a lot more than just Scottish nationalism. Thereās a lot more going on, particularly insofar as itās also effectively a retelling of Frankenstein thatās reckoning with the fact that itās a retelling of a book by a woman and it has feminist leanings and yet the author of this book is a man. Also a lot about 19th Century political thought that really gets flattened into āsocialists vs. reactionariesā in the film. I liked the movie, even if itās not my favorite Lanthimos film by a long shot, but also the book is very good and very weird in its own way and probably better even though I know very little about Scottish nationalism beyond a vague sense that an independent Scotland would probably(?) be not much likelier to be a socialist country than the UK. Scotland is noticeably more left-wing than the UK in general and hasn't voted majority-Tory since the late 50s and we have plenty of actually-left-wing things that are in public ownership (railway, water). Whether an independent Scotland would be full-fat socialist is an open question but it would probably be soft-left in the way that some Scandinavian countries are or NL/Belgium/Denmark. Do you think an Alasdair Gray-esque Scottish nationalism for the sake of creating a socialist Scotland is a fairly respectable political position, or is there often some crank shit in there that most people outside of Scotland would be unaware of?
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Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 11, 2024 9:47:54 GMT -5
Demon Cop (1990)
The worst film-related thing to happen to Aurora, CO before...well, you know. Fred Olen Ray got his hands on a movie originally called The Curse of Something Bestial--it's sort of in the vein of the Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast show though that oversells just how little sense this plot makes. Something about a killer who is possessed by a demon via a blood transfusion and, no, there's no actual demon cop. Features a taser-battle finale that must be seen to be believed. Olen Ray isn't as bad as his reputation (Exhibit A: the perfectly serviceable Nuclear Hurricane) but holy cats did this one not cohere. The final film appearance of Cameron Mitchell during his lifetime in tacked-on wraparound segments.
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Feb 11, 2024 17:11:36 GMT -5
Eagle vs. Shark (2007)
Taika's first feature film. Taika's co-written script with then-partner Loren Horsley. Hermit Kingdom one-offs pursue bespoke relationship. Twee AF. Lotsa Wellington and surrounding suburbs footage.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 12, 2024 7:25:03 GMT -5
The Sisterhood (1988) I suppose if you wanted to take in '80s b-movie genres efficiently, you could do worse than this overstuffed mashup of Mad Max-ripoff, barbarian fantasy, shoot-'em-up, and late Cold War paranoia. Waning star Lynn-Holly Johnson ( For Your Eyes Only, The Watcher In the Woods) plays Mayra, who loses her family/village to marauders in a post-nuclear annihilation world. She links up with the Sisterhood, a tribe of women with powers a.k.a. "gifts" who have deshackled from male oppression (one Sister's laser eyes seem to get the most workout). Not the most leering band-of-Amazons movie, to its slight credit, and an occasionally decent soundtrack. At this point in the '80s trope game, the film makes no effort to explain the rules of its world (not that many of these films ever explain where the gasoline is coming from). Exemplified by the ending, where the Sisterhood's leader, the angelic Reverend Mother, shows up to scold them taking up arms to solve their problems when they had a perfectly good deus ex machina in her.
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 13, 2024 22:48:16 GMT -5
Watched some movies. Here are words.
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984) - You want Yojimbo set on a dying planet akin to Athas from the AD&D campaign setting Dark Sun complete with orcs, water scarcity, slaves, weird lizardmen political advisors and wandering swordsmen? If you do check out The Warrior & The Sorceress a movie where David Carradine lackadaisically battles assholes at a well and the titular (pun very much intended) sorceress always has her tits out. This is grade A schlock! The plot is a total ripoff of a much better movie, the acting is poor and the fight scenes suck but I had a blast watching it.
Ginseng King (1988) - This is some grade A batshit insane freak shit. Itās a childrenās movie in much the same way that mutant films like Child of Peach and Bloody Sword were by which I mean itās a movie for kids but also there are a mess of decapitations. I guess the central thrust of the movie is a kid sets out of a quest to save the 1,000 Year-Old Ginseng King from a Three-Headed Monster in order to heal his sick mother. Filial piety baby!! That description does little to convey just how weird this movie is though. The kidās mom is in bad shape because she was attacked by a Nazi zombie (in spite the movie seemingly being set in China at some point in the far distant past). The aforementioned Ginseng King is a total freak and his design is the stuff of nightmares. Heās not alone in this either as there are multiple foam rubber suited freaks in this that would scar a small child for life. There are decapitations and dismemberments. Cynthia Khan shows up in a leopard skin bikini to do kung fu and stab guys in Spirit Halloween cultist robes. Thereās random nudity. Itās all extremely weird but worth a watch if youāre into weird bullshit.
Princess Iron Fan (1941) - I donāt know how many people there are in the world that will read about an animated adaptation of one of the episodes out of the Chinese classic, Journey to the West (č„æéčØ) done in a similar style to a Max Fleischer cartoon (complete with rotoscope and āfollow the bouncing ballā sing-alongs) and get super excited but whatever their number is I count myself among them. The episode recounted in this particular film is, if the filmās title didnāt make immediately clear, the story of Princess Iron Fan, her husband the Bull Demon King and the Flaming Mountain. Itās one of better known episodes of the novel and the film presents a fairly straightforward adaptation of the source material so people well acquainted with the novel arenāt going be surprised by much here in terms of content but the animation is very good and thereās a weird mix of very cartoony action with noodle arms and slide whistles and junk and scenes that because of the rotoscoping feel more like they were staged for a stage play. As a piece of film history itās pretty fascinating but if you want a film adaptation of Journey to the West I think the Shaw Bros. movies from the 60s do a better job.
Shaolin Devil and Shaolin Angel (1978) - This was honestly kind of a pleasant surprise. Most of the time when I put on a random kung fu movie I've never heard of I know exactly what I'm going to get but this kind of went above and beyond my expectations. The plot was slightly more complex than your standard issue "You bastard! You killed my brother/master/father now you must die!" revenger. Sure it had that going for it too but there was also a bit of a whodunit since the killer in question was some masked man that might have been a ghost so there was some detective stuff going on alongside the training montages. The fights were all pretty good and included some stuff I don't recall ever seeing in another kung fu flick before; namely the fact that one dude used snakes as weapons. These two things along are enough for me to give it a mild recommendation but the fact that the movie was tonally consistent really seals the deal so to speak. Far too often otherwise serious kung fu movies will throw in some scenes where a goofball does xylophone scored slapstick bullshit. This movie pretty avoided that temptation and stays serious from beginning to end. Worth checking out if you're into these kinds of movies.
Yoga and the Kung Fu Girl (1979) - Phoenix Chen plays Phoenix, an orphan who gets taken in to some random lady's troupe of child performers, in this fairly mediocre kick-puncher. An opening training montage with a number of backflips later and these children are now all grown up and, for whatever reason, coming into conflict with some local toughs. The plot's really boilerplate but it honestly doesn't matter because the hook of the movie is the fact that Phoenix Chen seems to have bones made out of rubber. All her fight scenes have her doing contortionist shit to avoid getting punch or to kick a dude in some real wonky way and it kind of rules for the same reason that stuff like Gymkata is at all interesting. When you watch as many martial arts movies as I do you start to appreciate it when someone brings something different to the table and in this movie that meant a lady occasionally putting her legs behind her head mid-fight. Other than the contortionist-fu the only other interesting things in the movie are the fact that Phoenix does not talk at all in it, communicating entirely through sign language (accompanied by vocal overdubs so those of us in the audience who do not know whatever version of sign language they use in Taiwan can understand what she's saying) and the fact that towards the end there's randomly a series of fights when Phoenix and her allies fight a mess of parodies of 70s kung fu movie actors/characters for no good reason. With regards to the sign language, I don't know if Phoenix Chen was actual unable to speak or not as this was seemingly the only movie she ever did and if there's not really any information on her I can find beyond random reviews of this movie. As for the medley of 70s kung fu movie characters that show up at the end I honestly laughed because the final one was I guess supposed to be Jackie Chan. The only reason I knew this was because when he showed up the dub I watched had him bellow, "I'm Jackie Chan!" which was hilarious mostly because the dude looked nothing like Jackie Chan. Overall not terrible but also not really anything amazing either. The plot's nothing you haven't seen a million times already if you watch dozens and dozens of kung fu movies a year and if you aren't that sort of freak there are other movies that do this same sort of thing better. The fights are kind of interesting when Phoenix Chen is involved but the scenes without her are pretty much paint-by-numbers affairs.
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Post by chalkdevil's night š on Feb 14, 2024 9:58:35 GMT -5
Saltburn (2023) Did I like this? I don't know. I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone. I think I liked Promising Young Woman, the writer/director's previous film, but not sure on this one. I find both are hard to figure out. There's clearly a message happening in both that gets undercut pretty late in the films and I'm not sure how well it worked on in this one. Maybe, uh, if I had a better grasp of the British class system? The performances were good. Not entirely sure on Barry Keoghan in this though. He was doing good work, but I don't think I tracked the character arch through is performance. That might be on the director though. I can see why people would absolutely hate it. I think the whole thing is pushing hard for camp but I'm not sure it totally gets there. I think Rosemund Pike and Richard E. Grant got there, but the movie doesn't make it.
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Feb 18, 2024 16:53:38 GMT -5
Turning Red (2022) / Madame Web (2024) It's pretty bizarre how similar these films are: in 2003, a young woman discovers that her distant-and-yet-inevitably-reconciled-with mother has passed down to her the magical powers of an exotic animal, and she goes on a journey with a trio of adorannoying and impeccably diverse teen girls in tow, all to embrace her true self or whatever. And this is all against the backdrop of being technically-not-a-Disney film. Hrm. It won't surprise you to learn Turning Red is the better of the two films, although I don't have too much to say about it, other than that it's definitely kind of weird to see a Pixar film that is not-even-a-metaphor for menstruation, complete with our adorable 13-year-old protagonist having her mom show up at school to give her pads. Madame Web is not quite as entertaining. It's kind of refreshingly low stakes for a film of this genre, which is nice on the one hand, but also, like... at one point the title character just flies to Peru for a week to learn the film's Backstory!, and the other characters just... stay at a friend's house, which really deflates the stakes here. And it takes for-freakin'-ever for Dakota Johnson to realize she's seeing the future, even though this is immediately obvious to us, the viewers, which makes the first thirty minutes or so of the film rather frustrating. Credit where it's due - the fireworks factory at the end of this film is a literal fireworks factory, and that's pretty fun - the only detraction there is that there's a moment where the villain pretty much screams, "nyeh heh heh, you'll never be able to prevail here, because that would require you to SPOILERS, which you can't!" except twenty minutes earlier Dakota Johnson was told by an exposition guy "eventually you will be able to SPOILERS!" and as such it is not really a deus ex machina moment that Dakota Johnson SPOILERS, it's just kind of a lame-o moment that really throws away the fun possibilities (which this film indulged with adequate results) of an action film about a clairvoyant.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 19, 2024 9:41:39 GMT -5
Condor (1985)
The first 5 minutes of this TV movie/failed pilot are all you really need to see. Our villainess, Rachel Hawkins, escapes Future Prison (i.e. 1999) by taking possession of the robot guard using the PKE meter prop from Ghostbusters, dispatches the security system, and flies away on a jetpack that was apparently just lying around. 007 on a network TV budget.
From there, Hawkins links up with her old cohorts, who have acquired the password that used to be universal across the entire worldās computer systems. Most of the governments and militaries have moved on and changed it but LAPD was too busy performing acts of community service to get around to that, so her criminal network now has access to all of their functions. While hacking LAPDās ādronesā (apparently just helicopters) to cause mayhem, Hawkins makes your typical demands (Swiss bank account, etc.), but she also wants vengeance with her nemesis, Chris Proctor of elite crimefighting squad Condor.
A pre-Twin Peaks Ray Wise plays Proctor back when entertainment had no idea what to do with him as an actor whoās effortlessly urbane and subtly sinister. Not that anyone would be served well by this ātoo old for this shitā cop garbage. James Avery from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air also shows up. Only worth a view if you want to see how burnout ā80s TV writers half-ass a Blade Runner sensibility while an aging schlock director (whose first feature was, really, The Mole People) tries his best to keep up.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 19, 2024 12:46:40 GMT -5
The Urge to Kill a.k.a. Attack of the Killer Computer (1989) This one's often compared with Demon Seed (1978) which I've never seen because it seems really gross and misogynistic. Appropriately, I felt like a chemical shower after this hideous softcore masquerading as horror. Scummy record producer Bono Zorro (yes) lives for luring comely young aspiring musicians at his apartment which is controlled by a computer system called S.E.X.Y. (also yes), personified by this actor: The cut I saw on Youtube also had the timestamp and it makes me wonder if this was ever actually released. Probably a fitting end for producer Dick Randall (died the following year), longtime sleaze merchant behind things like Pieces, Pod People, and The Clones of Bruce Lee. He's also responsible for one of the most tasteless moves in film history, ending The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield with footage of Mansfield's fatal car crash. Something tells me he wasn't on Mariska Hargitay's Christmas card list.
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 19, 2024 19:06:22 GMT -5
Watched some random bullshit. Wrote some words about it.
The Fantastic Magic Baby (1975) - I donāt really know how to describe this. Itās a Shaw Bros. movie adaptation of the Red Boy story out of Journey to the West but unlike the other Journey to the West Shaw Bros. adaptations that borrowed elements of Beijing Opera but were otherwise Shaw Bros. movies through and through this one is staged far closer to a proper Beijing Opera performance. Sure there are still a lot of Shaw Bros. cinematic hallmarks here: amazing costuming, artificial looking sets, an assload of fights but even a lot of these feel a little bit off. While sets in Shaw Bros. movies are generally fake looking they are not sparse. These sets were nearly barren. At their most elaborate they looked like something you might have seen on an episode of Star Trek in the 60s (a couple of Styrofoam rock arches and some ramps) but at their most minimal weāre talking a plain blue room with a fog machine going at full speed. The fights too, while numerous (the entire movieās basically an extended fight scene) are not the sort of thing fights one generally gets in a Shaw Bros. joint as there are a lot more elements of dance choreography in them then wild-ass roundhouse kicks and three-part-staves but thereās still enough action to appeal to martial arts movie fans (and even a bit of neon red blood in one scene). The fight between Red Boy (Ting Wa-Chung) and Dragon Girl (Cheung Chuen-Lai) was particular great and Iām bummed that this seems to be Cheung Chuen-Laiās only film because she ruled here. The movie itself is pretty short with a āThe Endā popping up at just past the hour mark but immediately afterwards is a 30 minute documentary/highlight reel that kind of explains what Beijing Opera is and also kind of shines a light on just how much cinema magic was actually involved in the movie that preceded the documentary. Iām kind of glad that it was attached to the film proper instead of just being a DVD extra like something of this ilk would be in the DVD era because I never watched any DVD extras back in the day and in this instance it really helped give some context to what I just saw that I wouldnāt have otherwise had because Iām just a guy that watches low budget movies where people kick and punch each other and this shit is a bit closer to high art and intangible cultural heritage stuff than I generally have to deal with and would probably not have appreciated this half as much without it.
Nimona (2023) - Any movie that uses āAlright Alright (Hereās My Fist Whereās the Fight)ā by the Sahara Hotnights as a needle drop is a-okay in my book. Even without the stellar musical selection this was a pretty decent movie even if it did take me embarrassingly long to come to the realization that Nimona (the character) was a metaphor for queerness. Thatās not on the movie though. There are a fuckton of lines of dialogue that are so on the nose but my dumbass didnāt really register any of them until they all showed back up in flashback form right before the final act and then I was like, āHey! Wait a secondā¦ā Overall this movie had a lot of stuff in it that I dug: knights of the code, giant monsters, found-family shit, early 2000s lady punk bands, regicide, and sci-fi flourishes. Had this come out when I was a 12 year old obsessed with fantasy and sci-fi shit I would have probably thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Hideous! (1997) - Charles Band sure does love his little freaks! This time around theyāre a bunch of pickled punks that come to life for some reason and terrorize a pair of feuding medical oddities collectors and their entourages in a castle. None of it makes any sense but you get some weird little freaks, a topless lady in a gorilla mask robbing a dude, a sword fight, that fucked up Full Moon funhouse music scoring the entire thing, and a private detective who is sick of it all. The cast here was honestly pretty fun and there were some genuinely funny bits. If I had one complaint itās that the little freaks werenāt in it enough. Had there been more little freak mayhem this would have been a five out of five from me.
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Post by chalkdevil's night š on Feb 20, 2024 11:00:42 GMT -5
The Creator (2023)
I had high hopes for this one when I first saw the trailer, even though it stars John David Washington who I find to be pretty boring. It's a movie that, overall, doesn't really hang together. It sort of lightly grazes over it's sci-fi themes with some excellent visuals but never really sinks it's teeth in. I mean, there's a reading where in this is an allegory for the rise of communism (in this movie the communists are AI robots) in Asia. So, if you've created a near future world in which you posit that America is invading Asian countries and operating what seems to be a giant floating laser that is sometimes in space but also can I guess float down into the atmosphere and blow up villages at will, you're going to invite a whole lot of questions about the state of the world that the movie is definitely not going to answer. And the AI isn't really that intelligent, they're just people with holes in their heads. They are not smarter. They are not stronger. There's no hive mind. Most of them only speak one language so you have to translate a robot. It's just, if you're movie is better these things can be glossed over. Or, you know, set it way further in the future. 30 years doesn't seem like enough time unless you make the AI smarter to account for the technology jump.
The Holdovers (2023) I loved this movie. Funny, moving, small stakes, great performances. It's nice this got a theatrical release, since it feels like this is the sort of thing that could have just as easily been released in July direct to streaming and buried in the algorithm when it fails to take hold after a couple days. I'm not an Alexander Payne connoisseur anything, but this certainly feels like the sweetest movie of his I've seen. I mean, not like sickly sweet, but it doesn't have the misanthropic vibes that I usually associate with him.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 20, 2024 12:14:06 GMT -5
The Holdovers (2023)I loved this movie. Funny, moving, small stakes, great performances. It's nice this got a theatrical release, since it feels like this is the sort of thing that could have just as easily been released in July direct to streaming and buried in the algorithm when it fails to take hold after a couple days. I'm not an Alexander Payne connoisseur anything, but this certainly feels like the sweetest movie of his I've seen. I mean, not like sickly sweet, but it doesn't have the misanthropic vibes that I usually associate with him. Your impressions of the humanism of this movie seem to be universal and it may force me to see it after swearing off Alexander Payne (detested Sideways and About Schmidt).
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Feb 21, 2024 23:33:08 GMT -5
Lisa Frankenstein (2024)
On the face of it this movie is discount Tim Burton, and it's tempting to just dismiss it entirely on those grounds rather than probing deeper. Certainly it's weird that "tame" is the among the first adjectives that come to mind when describing a movie where a teen girl stitches a new dong onto her undead boyfriend's body so that they can boink.
But what fascinated/disturbed me here, I think, is that I don't think this film is aimless, or that its decision to have its two leads be essentially walking Pinterest boards titled "Totally '80s Outcasts!" is a bug rather than a feature. As with Barbie, the inhumanity is the point. But unlike Barbie, I think this movie, in its failure to work as a comedy, drama, horror, or even a spectacle, is sufficiently inept that there is nothing to distract from its protagonist's (and by extension the TikTok-addled Zoomer viewer's) central desire - to essentially nope out of all mortal affairs (school, family, ethics) in favor of a (literally!) brain-dead hedonism, dressed up in the countercultural aesthetics of yesteryear.
Also, wtf, even the teen mall goths in this film's target audience must know that REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" is the lamest song ever, right? Why do they play it twelve times in this film?
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Feb 23, 2024 16:03:58 GMT -5
Turning Red (2022) / Madame Web (2024) It won't surprise you to learn Turning Red is the better of the two films, although I don't have too much to say about it, other than that it's definitely kind of weird to see a Pixar film that is not-even-a-metaphor for menstruation, complete with our adorable 13-year-old protagonist having her mom show up at school to give her pads. I couldnāt believe this when I heard this was the case. When dubbing Takahataās Only Yesterday it was seen as kind of a big deal that Disney worked around or excised the (extremely brief) mentions of menstruation. Your impressions of the humanism of this movie seem to be universal and it may force me to see it after swearing off Alexander Payne (detested Sideways and About Schmidt). It probably helps that Payne tried to make this in the style of a classic seventies coming-of-age dramaāIām not sure how much Payne āpersonalityā is in this one. Iāve never seen Sideways though have seen people Giamattiās performance here to his in that filmās, but it read to me as far more a fleshed-out prep school archetypeāthe characterās sympathetically flawed, not cringey (which is the big reason Iāve put off checking out Sideways, seems like a bit too much and, as a guy in his 30s living on his own in Southern California, maybe too close to home).
Anyway my big film event was seeing Army of Shadows in the theater. I was under the impression it was just showing because itās a cool movie to show in the theater. It was actually part of a global celebration commemorating Michel Manouchian, a French-Armenian resistance fighter, and his interment in the PanthĆ©on, complete with readings of his last letter and discussions of the historical significance. It was also full of French and Armenian diplomatic staff, with the French vice-consul and Armenian consul providing joint opening remarks. It was the one time in Los Angeles Iāve actually felt underdressed for the event (and I thought I was dressing appropriately, with my big American flag sweater both as an Allied thing and because Melville was such an Americaphile).
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Post by Desert Dweller on Feb 24, 2024 0:31:50 GMT -5
Your impressions of the humanism of this movie seem to be universal and it may force me to see it after swearing off Alexander Payne (detested Sideways and About Schmidt). It probably helps that Payne tried to make this in the style of a classic seventies coming-of-age dramaāIām not sure how much Payne āpersonalityā is in this one. Iāve never seen Sideways though have seen people Giamattiās performance here to his in that filmās, but it read to me as far more a fleshed-out prep school archetypeāthe characterās sympathetically flawed, not cringey (which is the big reason Iāve put off checking out Sideways, seems like a bit too much and, as a guy in his 30s living on his own in Southern California, maybe too close to home).
For what it is worth, in the interviews I have read, Alexander Payne seems a bit irritated that the audience keeps saying "The Holdovers" is a "cozy, feel-good" film. He doesn't think he made this kind of film. I can see his point. As I said, I wouldn't call the film cozy or feel-good. But I can see why people would.
Giamatti says that Payne thinks "Cozy and feel-good" means "sappy and saccharine", so that is why he is getting annoyed. The film is *definitely* not sappy or saccharine.
But as I said here, I find the film quite warm. I'd call it heartwarming. So, I can see why people are calling it a "feel-good" film. Even though I find the ending to be bittersweet.
Edited to add: Like, I read an interview where the interviewer asked him about the film getting called "cozy and feel-good", and Payne turned this around and asked the interviewer, "What do you think is cozy about it?". The interviewer said it is probably the setting, of being a snowy Christmas in New England, and the characters discovering a found family. Payne seemed to accept this idea, but still didn't seem entirely on board with "cozy" as the proper descriptor.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Feb 24, 2024 11:19:01 GMT -5
Saltburn (2023) Did I like this? I don't know. I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone. I think I liked Promising Young Woman, the writer/director's previous film, but not sure on this one. I find both are hard to figure out. There's clearly a message happening in both that gets undercut pretty late in the films and I'm not sure how well it worked on in this one. Maybe, uh, if I had a better grasp of the British class system? The performances were good. Not entirely sure on Barry Keoghan in this though. He was doing good work, but I don't think I tracked the character arch through is performance. That might be on the director though. I can see why people would absolutely hate it. I think the whole thing is pushing hard for camp but I'm not sure it totally gets there. I think Rosemund Pike and Richard E. Grant got there, but the movie doesn't make it. Keoghan's character is revealed to be a middle class person pretending to be working class - virtually underclass - in order to be pitied and taken on as a novelty by the upper class characters. (Apologies if this was abundantly clear.) Anyway, I didn't like it. I was all set to blame the director, but it turns out my least favourite scene - the one at/on the grave - was Keoghan's idea alone and something he pushed for. I suppose I can blame the director for leaving it in.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Feb 24, 2024 19:16:53 GMT -5
Hard Boiled. Chow Yun-Fat hangs out at a jazz club. Tony Leung doing the Pacific equivalent of Delon in Le SamouraĆÆ. There is no pretension though, not much subtext, and Chow Yun-Fat saves a baby from a building exploding around him. Perfect entertainment.
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Post by Mrs David Tennant on Feb 24, 2024 20:37:58 GMT -5
I'm watching Black Widow and I kind of like it. It's one of the few marvel movies that caught my interest right away - I wasn't even on the computer for the beginning of it.
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ABz Bš¹anaz
Grandfathered In
This country is (now less of) a shitshow.
Posts: 1,945
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Post by ABz Bš¹anaz on Feb 24, 2024 22:36:44 GMT -5
I'm watching Black Widow and I kind of like it. It's one of the few marvel movies that caught my interest right away - I wasn't even on the computer for the beginning of it. Florence Pugh is great in it, and even better in the Hawkeye show.
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Post by Nudeviking on Feb 25, 2024 19:44:13 GMT -5
A heap of movies. Some were good. Some where terrible.
The Invincible Armour (1977) - This kind of ruled. Picture The Fugitive if Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones and Andreas Katsulas all could do sick-ass roundhouse kicks and youāve got a rough idea of the plot. Add to that a metric fuckton of blistering fast fight scenes with some of the best to even throw a kick and youāve got a stew going! Then cap that all off with a final boss fight centered entirely on our hero trying to punch the big bad square in the nards and youāve got one of the greatest movies of all time. Iām not even joking. The hero MUST punch a dude in the cock if he wants to clear his name! Will he succeed? Will he be able to punch a dudeās junk so hard that the dudeās iron armor kung fu ceases to operate? Youāre going to have to check it out for yourself if you want to know the answer to that question!
The Marvels (2023) - I wish I had some dork shit I still cared about. Star Wars and Marvel comics were two of my favorite things as a child back in the 80s and 90s so when Disney started cranking out movies and TV shows based on that shit I was honestly kind of stoked but over these last couple of years my interest has waned to nearly the point of nonexistence. I don't mean to say that Disney was always shitty. I honestly think that they more or less did fine with both franchise for a pretty decent amount of time. Sure, there'd be a mistep here or there but then they'd release a movie or a show and you'd be like, "Oh you guys are still doing alright!" but now they seem content to just toss out some IP slop and act like that's enough. Nothing that happened in this movie mattered: the big bad died like a chump and all their evil machinations were undone with a line of dialogue in the denouement, and everyone who watched it feels like they just wasted two hours of their life but LOOK IT'S BEAST FROM THE X-MEN! YOU LIKED THE X-MEN! THEY'RE IN THE MCU NOW!!! ISN'T THAT GREAT?! Frankly I couldn't give less of a shit. Five years ago Beast showing up in the post credit stinger would have made me lose my goddamn mind but now it just leaves me feeling absolutely nothing. Theyāll make another middling Marvel movie, maybe Jubilee will show up and they'll expect that to be enough...more IP slop for the masses.
Daredevil (2003) - I saw this ages ago on a transpacific flight back in 2003. At the time I kind of thought it sucked but revisiting it all these years later I think I was kind of hard on it. Thatās not to say that itās a great movie or anything but I now kind of respect what itās trying to do. Part of my newfound admiration for it might just because the movie feels so different from the MCU stuff that has come out in the years since (especially when compared to the stuff from the last five years or so). Itās a way darker and more violent movie than anything Disney seems willing to put out now and moreover nothing in the movie is really treated like a joke which was very refreshing. My one minor complaint is how extremely early 2000s the soundtrack was not because itās bad but because it caused me to break out a bunch of nu metal CDs I havenāt listened to since 2001. Itās 2024 and Iām in my 40s. I have no business listened to nu metal. Thanks Daredevilā¦
Killer Rack (2015) - A lady gets breast implants possessed by an Eldritch god with a hunger for human flesh in this wild-ass horror-comedy that stylistically shares a lot of DNA with the Troma movies of the 80s and 90s. I mean if the plot synopsis alone isn't enough to prove that point, Troma impresario, Lloyd Kaufman, even has a cameo in it. Like the Troma movies that influenced it you get a mix of high weirdness, low production values, Borscht Belt comedic sensibilities, and gnarly practical effects. This wasn't great cinema or anything like that but I had a blast watching it and there were multiple scenes that caused me to legitimately laugh out loud.
Baby Oopsie (2021) - When I watch a Full Moon movie all I really expect to get is some weird little puppet freaks, some gore, and maybe some boobs. What I donāt expect are characters that are actually developed at all let alone to the point that you actually care what happens to them and yet thatās what I got with Baby Oopsie. Yes, a movie about a foul mouthed demonic murder doll actually has characters I cared about. The movie actually spent the time necessary to make the main character Sybil (Libbie Higgins) sympathetic so when she finally gets the demonic murder doll and people start dying I felt that same sort of feeling of satisfaction I get when I watch revenge-based kung fu movies. āThose bastards had it coming!ā For that fact alone Baby Oopsie is legitimately worth checking out.
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Post by rjamielanga on Mar 3, 2024 12:51:43 GMT -5
That was exactly the same way I watched it. I remember negotiating with myself: "Okay, I'll watch Phone Booth, but there's no way I'm going to watch Daredevil. I have my pride." As it happened, I didn't. I didn't remember much of it, but I did think the way they visualized his echolocation was pretty damn cool.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Mar 3, 2024 21:53:22 GMT -5
No Blade of Grass (1970) Brit exploitation take on The Population Bomb that resembles a queasy combination of Koyaanisqatsi and Last House on the Left. Thatās not to say there arenāt a handful of good ideas in this mostly artless grinder where a viral plague on grasses causes food systems to collapse and plunges civilization into chaos. Thereās the obligatory "we became the monsters we sought to flee" trope but, more so, I appreciated the sardonic aspect of the band of survivors compulsively taking on more people, quickly and decisively overextending the carrying capacity (a key scene is cleverly shot against Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire). Seemingly, our loneliness always wins over our pragmatic survival.
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Post by Nudeviking on Mar 5, 2024 3:16:00 GMT -5
Movies. Heaped. Words.
Lion King (1994) - The face Nala makes at Simba when sheās lying in the grass during the āCan You See the Love Tonightā scene is one of the horniest things Iāve ever seen in a cartoon.
Born Invincible (1978) - While watching this movie I learned that doing taichi makes you impervious to dick punches but this awesome power comes with two drawbacks. First, whenever you move your arms it will sound like a slide whistle. Second, mastering taichi will make your voice ludicrously high pitched.
The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) - Saw this years ago but only remembered the stuff with Ghost Face Killer and that there was some chess based fight. What I forgot was that like half of it was goofy xylophone scored slapstick nonsense. The Ghost Face Killer fights were good. The slapstick stuff sucked and was not as good. The chess stuff was way less prevalent than I remembered. Not a terrible kick puncher but itās kind of weird how this, of all movies, is such a major part of Wu Tang Clan lore because frankly itās kind of mediocre.
Baby Oopsie 2: Murder Dolls (2022) - The first Baby Oopsie movie was surprisingly good so I went and watched the sequel. While the second one still has a lot of the same stuff I liked about the first one it pulled a Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and spent most of the runtime setting up a final conflict I could only assume would come in the next movie. Because of the incomplete nature of it I canāt really rate this all that highly but itās only like 55 minutes with credits so anyone could easily watch part 2 and part 3 back to back which is exactly what I did.
Baby Oopsie 3: Burn Baby Burn (2022) - Like Part 2 this was just half a movie but there was a bit more going on here so I preferred this one a bit more. Taken together with Part 2 as a single thing I think it was pretty good though not quite as good as the first Baby Oopsie movie. That said if you want a Full Moon movie with some little freaks, gore, one-liners and flashback boobs, this entire series is better than most of their other output.
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LazBro
Prolific Poster
Posts: 10,196
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Post by LazBro on Mar 5, 2024 8:06:07 GMT -5
Not sure if this is your kind of thing, but the often entertaining YouTube channel about horror films, Scaredy Cats, recently completed a series on the Baby Oopsie films. They likewise appreciate the series' scrappy fun. Here's the first:
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Post by Nudeviking on Mar 5, 2024 8:47:28 GMT -5
Not sure if this is your kind of thing, but the often entertaining YouTube channel about horror films, Scaredy Cats, recently completed a series on the Baby Oopsie films. They likewise appreciate the series' scrappy fun. Here's the first:
This cat was spot on with everything I thought about the first movie. The one thing I do kind of wonder is how well the movie works if you have subjected yourself to countless other Full Moon Features. Like a big part of what made it rule (besides Ray-Ray) was the fact that it wasnāt Gingerdead Man or Evil Bong 420 or whatever. Like mutants that watch Full Moon movies are generally going in expecting utter schlock and thatās where the fun comes from so when you fire one up and instead get a competently made slasher with a pretty well defined heroine itās like āWhat is happening?!ā I donāt know if someone that hasnāt seen multiple Femalien movies will really appreciate that aspect of it. Iām going to have to watch other stuff on this dudeās channel because this is very much my shit.
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,650
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Post by repulsionist on Mar 6, 2024 15:11:42 GMT -5
Grown Ups (2010)
Grown Ups 2 (2013)
How glad I am that my oldest (12 yo) is into Adam Sandler films! So much blech and yuck, I'll never recover. These types of Sandler movies are as disruptive as a bout of COVID-19 that takes your sense of smell and taste away, sometimes permanently.
Hindsight Looking Glass Opinion: "Stanley, Judy. Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't have encouraged this kid's desire to entertain."
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Post by chalkdevil's night š on Mar 6, 2024 17:00:00 GMT -5
Wayne's WorldI don't know what to tell you, we were hanging out at my parents house, this movie got referenced and we decided to turn it on because my nephews (15 and 12) had never seen it. I've seen this thing dozens of times. It's still great. Nothing is too problematic except maybe Mike Meyers's thick Canadian accent supposedly coming from a Chicagoan. Reviews from teen boys in 2024: - 12 year old was on his phone the whole time and didn't care.
- 15 year old was only on his phone some, but seemed to like it and laughed a lot at the more random bits (like the Ed O'Neal monologues).
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