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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Sept 15, 2024 16:33:47 GMT -5
Friday the 13th (1980) Every so often I'll humor Ms. Goblin in seeing the slasher movies--which I almost never like--that her arty family wouldn't allow her to watch as a kid (same with Child's Play). Not bad for one of these. To paraphrase a favorite line from the critic Bill Wyman, slashers were always a dumb idea but it was their dumb idea, so credit where it's due. John Carpenter might have a thought or two about that. |
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Post by pantsgoblin on Sept 15, 2024 16:46:36 GMT -5
Friday the 13th (1980) Every so often I'll humor Ms. Goblin in seeing the slasher movies--which I almost never like--that her arty family wouldn't allow her to watch as a kid (same with Child's Play). Not bad for one of these. To paraphrase a favorite line from the critic Bill Wyman, slashers were always a dumb idea but it was their dumb idea, so credit where it's due. John Carpenter might have a thought or two about that. You're not wrong and I realize many consider Halloween the original slasher but, for me, that film's its own beast. If you haven't seen it in a while, it's remarkable how little gore there is and how much the kills are implied. I think Friday the 13th is really where they set the template. |
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Sept 15, 2024 16:53:19 GMT -5
1986 Weekend at Repulsionist's!
Jewel of the Nile (1986)
Wow! Kathleen Turner at near peak sexy (Body Heat being peak). Michael Douglas at peak, middle-aged man sexiness. Oh the water skiing! The remaining hour and 40 after those scenes beat the rhythm of the previous feature. Hapless DeVito was fun. Excellent location shoots.
Stand by Me (1986)
Watched Meathead's third feature. Meathead did alright, but he's never good enough for my Gloria. My 12 yo thought it slow, shirked the cuff of emotional intensity when each character clearly states how difficult their life is, but he got on board with the kinship all felt in that "last" summer trip. Great central-to-western Oregon on display there. Phoenix really had some acting chops at 14-15 yo. Kudos!
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Post by Lt. Broccoli on Sept 16, 2024 17:43:36 GMT -5
We actually went out to the actual movie theatre and watched the new Beetlejuice.
I'm no film critic and I don't have the vocabulary to talk about it, but my theory is that while the original movie is a comedy for the audience, the characters don't know that. As far as they know they're in a horror movie. Beetlejuice 2 is also supposed to be a comedy for the audience, but the characters do know that, and they also act as if they're in a comedy.
Maybe the original Beetlejuice isn't very good? It falls in the category of "things that I watched hundreds of times between the ages of 8 and 11" so maybe I only think it's good because of childhood nostalgia, I don't know.
In any case the new Beetlejuice sucks. It's not fun, or funny, or scary. It feels like 3 different movies jumbled together. I was shocked that it's only 100 minutes long, I felt like I was sitting there for 3 hours.
Jenna Ortega was good, at least.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Sept 17, 2024 16:56:44 GMT -5
Abigail (2024)
This had a reputation of being a fun B movie with a twist that was totally ruined by it's marketing materials. I'm going to go on record here by saying that it is a mediocre B movie that is in no way compelling enough to make it all the way to it's twist and keep people interested. The screenplay so by-the-numbers as far as character introductions and back story reveals that it can't be saved by actors trying to put in fun performances. Plus the lead is humorless with a tragic backstory that I couldn't possibly care less. So anyway, a rag tag group of criminals are hired to kidnap the young daughter of an unknown rich guy. They take her to a safe house while their fixer works to get the ransom. Backstories are implied in a clunky getting to know you scene. Then, you know, eventually a horror movie happens. A horror movie with nothing original going on. Anyway, kinda disappointed - not sure what the mild fuss was about. I think maybe people are just still excited about Dan Stevens after he was good in The Guest 10 years ago and are always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's fine here. Really, this movie needed to be more. More of something. More gore? More camp? More interesting characters?
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Post by liebkartoffel on Sept 18, 2024 17:00:31 GMT -5
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World ("dad movies" Ford v Ferrari and The Magnificent Seven, noms.): Man, I'd forgotten how good this movie is. Admirably faithful to the books, too, with only a few Hollywood-friendly tweaks, like replacing the Americans with the French as the primary antagonists. Crowe!Aubrey is a little too Captain Kirk-y for my tastes. Jack Aubrey doesn't ruminate on the nature of command--he just is a good leader, and would be (politely) baffled by someone else doing it differently. He's also more of a (good-natured) buffoon who loves puns and says stupid shit like "they have chosen their cake, and must lie in it." But, again, Hollywood, so I get it. No notes for Bettany!Maturin--pretty pitch perfect. I still maintain that the Aubrey-Maturin books have the potential to be the next great HBO must-watch series, if the cowards would just have the courage (and the enormous budget) to adapt them.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Superman '78, noms.): I had a few "just repeat to yourself it's just a genre-defying media spectacle" moments, like how they were often able to summon(?) create(?) material objects at will, but I get the hype. Of course, the secret is it's really an intimate family drama disguised as a genre-defying media spectacle. Still absolutely wild that this movie won all the Oscars, though, what with the...gestures vaguely at that fight scene.
Tokyo Drifter ("Japanese cinematic landmarks" Seven Samurai and Your Name, noms.): Extremely stylish Japanese yakuza flick...and not much else to say beyond that. It's nigh-incomprehensible in spots and the editing is, uh, creative, but it's just fun to look at and fun to watch, like all the best parts of a Connery-era Bond movie smashed together.
The Goonies ("seminal 80s kids/teen movies we still haven't seen yet" The Outsiders and Stand by Me, noms.): It's cute! I don't think I got as much out of it as a 37-year-old adult as I would have if I had seen as a kid. It's a very loud movie, to the extent that the various children were often shouting over what seemed like important plot points, and the plot takes way too long to get going, but the energy is pretty infectious. Why is the Corey Feldman character such a random asshole to the Mexican housekeeper lady? Why didn't the Josh Brolin Character die when he was flung off a cliff in a children's bike? Why do the children keep referring to treasure as "the rich stuff"? Who knows.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Sept 20, 2024 20:51:42 GMT -5
The 400 Blows, “Antoine & Colette,” Stolen Kisses. It was time for another rewatch of the Doinel cycle anyway, spacing them out a bit. As I watch these the ratio of positive:negative aspects of Doinel’s relatability keeps getting smaller.
The came some stuff by Éric Rohmer. He’s kind of king of the, if not summer movie, movie that takes place in the summer. First was The Green Ray, which I’d never seen before. This one’s really centered on one Delphine (played by Marie Rivière, who gets co-credit writing because she contributed so much to the character during filming) who wants a summer romance but doesn’t want to play the games around vacation hookups. It’s one of those films where your reaction to the film will be based on how you react to the lead character. Even though I found Delphine kind of relatable, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, though, because I think she could provoke a reaction in the other direction.
A Tale of Summer and Pauline on the Beach kind of form a pair in my head but they’re really not much alike beyond setting. Pauline’s kind of a dark farce full of various shades of (still watchable/entertaining) awful/pathetic. Summer, though, is one of my favorites: bright, inhabited by people who are realistically cool (interesting work and hobbies but more in the sense of self-fulfilling, no one’s ever going to be really notable), the whole entanglement of missed chances and real friendship, and way it really takes advantage of its setting both visually and culturally, highlight of these rewatches.
Breathless. Forgot how good a noir this was, and how in its infancy the New Wave still was.
Week-end. A lot of old Dutch paintings look fairly mysterious today, full of symbolism we that give us a sense of what’s happening but no certainty. It’s disappointed to look into an art history book and find out that many were probably pretty straightforward to the 17th century Dutch viewer, with clear moral messages about vanity (in both the narrow and broad senses), adultery, avarice, the various vices of the bourgeoisie. In contrast with the complex, uncertain, humanistic psychology we read into these paintings those paintings (plus selective memory of Dutch Golden Age’s tolerant and humanist side) can seem haranguing.
Godard was a leftist (or had at least ended up one by this point), but he has the same religious, moralizing streak as those Dutch Calvinists (Godard came from a Protestant background too). He makes sure there’s no mystery for the first two-thirds, and for a modern audience there really shouldn’t be. Given the rise in traffic deaths we need the lecture. It’s also a sign of Godard’s skill as a filmmaker that he was able to make a movie whose main modes of communication are honking and yelling watchable and funny. It’s also a testament to Godard’s skill given that our leads are the absolute worst of the bourgeoisie, selfish, murderous, materialistic, and with severe status anxiety to boot (they drive a “clapped out” Facel-Vega—a car they used to be able to afford but can’t afford to keep going, or the least-bad used example they could buy?).
At about the two-thirds point, though, after a dull and didactic third worldist lecture (I was expecting some kind of irony to drop but Godard’s idea, as best as I could imagine, is to tell the audience that if you aren’t convinced, or at least not bored, you’re as bad as the protagonists) and the movie shifts from the road to the forest as the couple joins a group of countercultural and cannabilistic revolutionaries. There’s an unintentional link to Godard’s later Maoism, as during the Cultural Revolution there was a faction that engaged in ideological Communism (though this was largely unknown until the beginning of the 1980s). There’s no lesson here, though—Godard doesn’t necessarily approve but doesn’t judge either. The message film becomes unsure. There are a number of Renaissance/early modern European paintings of wild men or satyrs and their women, and to me these are more opaque in meaning, there’s no moral roadmap. Godard’s countercultural warriors fill the same space.
There is one actual nice, sympathetic guy in the movie, though, and he’s played by none other than Jean-Pierre Leaud. He drives a little red Japanese convertible.
Mesrine: L’instinct de mort. They shouldn’t have translated it to Killer Instinct for the American release, L’instinct de mort just goes so hard, as does this film, maxing out the cool stuff-to-terrible guy ratio.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Sept 20, 2024 23:43:29 GMT -5
The 400 Blows, “Antoine & Colette,” Stolen Kisses. It was time for another rewatch of the Doinel cycle anyway, spacing them out a bit. As I watch these the ratio of positive:negative aspects of Doinel’s relatability keeps getting smaller. The came some stuff by Éric Rohmer. He’s kind of king of the, if not summer movie, movie that takes place in the summer. First was The Green Ray, which I’d never seen before. This one’s really centered on one Delphine (played by Marie Rivière, who gets co-credit writing because she contributed so much to the character during filming) who wants a summer romance but doesn’t want to play the games around vacation hookups. It’s one of those films where your reaction to the film will be based on how you react to the lead character. Even though I found Delphine kind of relatable, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, though, because I think she could provoke a reaction in the other direction. A Tale of Summer and Pauline on the Beach kind of form a pair in my head but they’re really not much alike beyond setting. Pauline’s kind of a dark farce full of various shades of (still watchable/entertaining) awful/pathetic. Summer, though, is one of my favorites: bright, inhabited by people who are realistically cool (interesting work and hobbies but more in the sense of self-fulfilling, no one’s ever going to be really notable), the whole entanglement of missed chances and real friendship, and way it really takes advantage of its setting both visually and culturally, highlight of these rewatches. Breathless. Forgot how good a noir this was, and how in its infancy the New Wave still was. Week-end. A lot of old Dutch paintings look fairly mysterious today, full of symbolism we that give us a sense of what’s happening but no certainty. It’s disappointed to look into an art history book and find out that many were probably pretty straightforward to the 17th century Dutch viewer, with clear moral messages about vanity (in both the narrow and broad senses), adultery, avarice, the various vices of the bourgeoisie. In contrast with the complex, uncertain, humanistic psychology we read into these paintings those paintings (plus selective memory of Dutch Golden Age’s tolerant and humanist side) can seem haranguing. Godard was a leftist (or had at least ended up one by this point), but he has the same religious, moralizing streak as those Dutch Calvinists (Godard came from a Protestant background too). He makes sure there’s no mystery for the first two-thirds, and for a modern audience there really shouldn’t be. Given the rise in traffic deaths we need the lecture. It’s also a sign of Godard’s skill as a filmmaker that he was able to make a movie whose main modes of communication are honking and yelling watchable and funny. It’s also a testament to Godard’s skill given that our leads are the absolute worst of the bourgeoisie, selfish, murderous, materialistic, and with severe status anxiety to boot (they drive a “clapped out” Facel-Vega—a car they used to be able to afford but can’t afford to keep going, or the least-bad used example they could buy?). At about the two-thirds point, though, after a dull and didactic third worldist lecture (I was expecting some kind of irony to drop but Godard’s idea, as best as I could imagine, is to tell the audience that if you aren’t convinced, or at least not bored, you’re as bad as the protagonists) and the movie shifts from the road to the forest as the couple joins a group of countercultural and cannabilistic revolutionaries. There’s an unintentional link to Godard’s later Maoism, as during the Cultural Revolution there was a faction that engaged in ideological Communism (though this was largely unknown until the beginning of the 1980s). There’s no lesson here, though—Godard doesn’t necessarily approve but doesn’t judge either. The message film becomes unsure. There are a number of Renaissance/early modern European paintings of wild men or satyrs and their women, and to me these are more opaque in meaning, there’s no moral roadmap. Godard’s countercultural warriors fill the same space. There is one actual nice, sympathetic guy in the movie, though, and he’s played by none other than Jean-Pierre Leaud. He drives a little red Japanese convertible. Mesrine: L’instinct de mort. They shouldn’t have translated it to Killer Instinct for the American release, L’instinct de mort just goes so hard, as does this film, maxing out the cool stuff-to-terrible guy ratio. Speaking of Godard’s divisive engagement with politics in his films, what are your thoughts on Tout va bien? |
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ABz B👹anaz
Grandfathered In 
This country is (now less of) a shitshow.
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Sept 21, 2024 1:54:19 GMT -5
Mrs B, BGirl and I watched the original Beetlejuice two weeks ago, and they liked it okay. Mrs B said it was stupid, which, she's not wrong, but it was also entertaining.
So while BGirl was on a school field trip this week, Mrs B and I saw Beetlejuice x2. In contrast to Broc, We enjoyed it. I consider it on par with the original, she liked it better than the original.
One thing I liked was realizing that in both movies, Beetlejuice DOES do what he's asked to even if he's an asshole about it.
Jenna Ortega is great. Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara were great. Michael Keaton was fantastic.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Sept 21, 2024 16:44:32 GMT -5
The Endless (2017) Despite opening with a Lovecraft quote, the premise on this sci-fi more resembles early Weird Fiction writer (and key Lovecraft influence) Algernon Blackwood, specifically “The Willows”. Indie filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead direct and play characters with the same names, a pair of brothers who were raised by a culty commune but who fled at some point. A decade later, they temporarily return to the farm based on their unsatisfying lives in the big city and find some time-loop based strangeness afoot. While a bit overlong and stodgy-paced, there’s a refreshing lack of villainy in any character and the dynamic of the brothers (the neurotic control-freak Justin and the sweetly childlike Aaron) feels lived-in. Worth a view. This got me curious, so I looked it up, and saw this was a semi-sequel to an earlier movie they did, Resolution. We watched both of them, and enjoyed both, but I'd add that watching Resolution first adds some context to a few scenes in The Endless. I'd call both worth watching. There's a third movie that's likewise a semi-sequel to these two called Synchronic that we'll watch next, I imagine. |
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Sept 22, 2024 15:13:58 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
May be mad spoilerish, so read at your peril.
Brocc, your lack of enjoyment was not mine watching this film. You didn't chuckle at the Geffen logo to start? The titles being a precise emulation of the 1988 release? And you say you watched the film innumerable times between ages 8 - 11?
Took my 12 yo to see it. He had not seen the original. That said, I got a lot out of the film. Dafoe doing his best hammy Charlton Heston (that cuppa coffee gag was a treat, too). Keaton doing a superb channeling of Nicholson. Ryder looking and acting like a mature Lydia (that fringe! [aka "bangs"]). O'Hara kills all her scenes (house shroud and primal screaming being my faves). Theroux does wonders as the cad. Belluci's re-assembly had to hit some kink/perv buttons for people; I mean, I felt tingling. Ortega did the relevant heavy lifting easily. Bob and the other shrinkers were all excellent. Sandworms looked better as CGI, but the practical effects were noted and valuable.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Italian Horror Film backstory intertwining Beetlejuice and Delores. The scene for scene emulation of Black Sunday just a squee for me. Throwaway gags like Gorman (the priest) picking up Theroux with a bag full of alcohol were aplenty and welcome at each appearance (see also Lydia's breathwork). Oh yeah, Lydia and Astrid looking at the pre-Astrid photos of Lydia and Astrid's dad had the great Mario Bava gag, too. It had to be explained for full punch effect, but still - pretty great.
The stop-motion bit explaining Charles's demise was unexpected and welcome. Charles's navigation through the stages of the underworld gruesome but humourous.
The musical numbers: Soul Train (parts 1 and 2), "MacArthur Park" (that cake!), Beetlejuice's hair metal ballad serenade from the model of Wintry Creek. All of it was appreciated. Mature Burton is good Burton, in my opinion. Maybe working through Wednesday episodes and production issues honed a maturity?
Honestly, I don't remember having this much fun at a Burton film since Ed Wood.
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ABz B👹anaz
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Sept 22, 2024 18:00:45 GMT -5
The Substance - Oh man. Mrs B actually picked this one out by the trailer. I too had only seen the trailer. I agreed to see it, then briefly looked it up on IMDb and saw an 8.0 rating and mentions of body horror and graphic violence... So of course the perfect movie to see at the theater that also served food!  Yeah, I liked it a lot, but it was completely batshit insane. Like, most of the movie was pretty good, but the last 20-30 minutes were just way over the top. Mrs B did not like it at all, said it was about the stupidest thing she'd ever seen.  I'm pretty sure she liked it right up until the aformentioned last 20-30 minutes.
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Post by The Stuffingtacular She-Hulk on Sept 23, 2024 8:35:00 GMT -5
I watched Doctor Sleep (2019) on Saturday night because it popped up while I was surfing Mr. BFF's Vudu account and I realized I had never seen it before, and Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson are nice to look at for 2.5 hours. I think the "steam" thing probably works better in the novel, which I have requested as a hold from the library, and it could have used some of that runtime more effectively, but overall it was an interesting direction for a sequel to The Shining to take. I thought it would involve much more direct confrontation of Dan's powers, like have him followed around for his whole life by those angry ghosts or just dead people in general asking him for help.
It definitely wasn't scary. Not even a single jump-scare, and the lady from 237 was rendered way less terrifying by her frequent appearances. But I enjoyed the movie overall and don't feel it was a waste of my time. Carl Lumbly as Dick Hallorann was a really nice touch, as was the lady who played Wendy, who made me cry at the end. I do appreciate that nobody was trying to do a 1:1 impression of anybody else, because it would have fallen incredibly flat.
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ABz B👹anaz
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Sept 28, 2024 2:00:37 GMT -5
The Wild Robot - This was a fantastic movie! Full of humor and heart, beautiful animation similar to the "painterly" style Dreamworks previously used in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Stellar 3D. Basically "what if The Iron Giant befriended animals instead of a kid from Maine", but really well done. Lupita Nyong'o really is a great actor, even in voice roles like this. 
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Sept 29, 2024 13:37:23 GMT -5
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (2023)
The High Evolutionary was a creep. Adam Warlock and his "mum" were funny. Gunn definitely studied comics' layouts from the 80s and 90s. Excellent work with the casual deaths. Story beats of pathos familiar. Not a bad corporate dividend from the Marvel Studios/Disney Investment Fund.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Sept 30, 2024 13:42:52 GMT -5
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) Mostly a slog. It seems very little of this project ever made much conceptual sense when these old episodes being remade have never really been out of rerun circulation. I suppose the timing might have felt advantageous during the rise of HBO and Cinemax in an anthology film's appeal to short-attention channel flippers, but Creepshow this ain't. "Time Out" - Director: John Landis This section, the only one written original for the film, will of course always have a pall cast by the avoidable deaths of Vic Morrow and the 2 child actors being employed illegally by the production. Some people read Jurassic Park as Spielberg's processing of his guilt over those deaths in his role as Executive Producer of this film. I wish I could say the chintzy-looking, thunderingly obvious filmmaking was ever able to take your mind off the tragedy. Landis would go on to produce, in the 2010s, movies titled (I'm not making this up) Some Guy Who Kills People and I Hate Kids. "Kick The Can" - Director: Steven Spielberg Exhibit A when people describe Spielberg Schmaltz (not that the original TZ episode was any less mawkish). "It's a Good Life" - Director: Joe Dante Dante is a director I always wanted to like being a fellow monster guy. But with few exceptions ( Piranha, Matinee), I find his films mostly stupid. Still, his manic sensibility can't help but kick the second half into some sort of gear after the previous 2 disasters. Some good creature design from Rob Bottin ( The Thing), entertainingly sweaty performances, and even a bit more psychological complexity at the end than the original Matheson-penned episode. "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" - Director: George Miller As a recent Blu-Ray review of Furiosa noted, Miller tends to single-mindedly fixate on one physical aspect of his actors, meaning it was some sort of masterstroke to cast the face of Mr. '80s Neurosis himself, John Lithgow, in the Shatner part. Brilliantly visual, economical storytelling.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Oct 1, 2024 14:39:53 GMT -5
In memoriam Klute & Invasion of the body snatchers for Donald Sutherland. I’d seen Klute earlier this summer but it’s one of those movies good enough to see again in short order, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers is basically perfect entertainment too. Loves Streams for Gena Rowlands. This is big, sprawling, and I didn’t know quite where it was going at times (Cassavetes plays an incredibly unsympathetic character for most of the film, it took me a while to recognize that he and Rowlands played brother-and-sister in this movie). Worth it in the end, though, and Jim is one of the all-time greatest cinematic dogs (and there’s one scene where he and Cassavetes are on the couch which is incredibly funny, just a favorite moment in how dog ownership is depicted in film). Jason & the Argonauts for Honor Blackman. I saw this tons of times with my dad as a kid so I’m biased, but i think this is the best adaptation of the ancient Greek myths, where the treatment of doubt and agency allow us to enter the heroic phase of an ancient story told by people with a very different worldview. That really pays off when it comes to the relationship between men and the Olympians—it’s an adaptation of the Greek stories, of course, but it does capture the fun of them. That’s also where Honor Blackman comes in—she’s the Queen of the Gods to me. Some of the supporting characters also get subtle characterization. Nigel Green is the best cinematic Hercules, imo: older, confident, but not so full of himself that he can’t respect Hylas’s ingenuity. When his hubris gets punished we really feel sad with him, knowing he has to bear his punishment but wishing he didn’t have to. There’s a similar dynamic with Patrick Troughton’s Phineas, where his more (surprising) working-class accent hints that he was really squandered an extraordinary favor from the Gods but was probably given less slack than the royals and demigods of most of Greek myths (plus his delivery of “I was a sinner, but I didn’t sin every day is great). Everyone always talks about Harryhousen’s effects—and they’re great—but like any other special effects-heavy movie they only work because they’re built on a solid foundation. Really stretching it, really I just recently saw a 20th anniversary screening of Repo Man for Harry Dean Stanton [/i][/b]. Like nothing else—well in some ways it lives in the same dirty 80s sci-fi ambience as Terminator (or to a lesser degree the more suburban Night of the Comet), but it’s really its own thing in surprising ways. I can’t believe it took me until this year to see this (especially since it turns out it’s one of my mother’s favorite movies).[/div]
Missed an opportunity to see Paris, Texas on the big screen a couple weeks ago but really wasn’t in the mood based on the summary
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ABz B👹anaz
Grandfathered In
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Post by ABz B👹anaz on Oct 1, 2024 15:23:24 GMT -5
Transformers One - Saw this because I was bored, it was in 3D, and it was something fun(ish) to do with my daughter.
Surprisingly really good! Way better than the live-action Michael Bay films. Not a bad origin story even knowing eventually that the two main characters are going to be bitter enemies...and hey, having it all hinge on how the two of them process the betrayal of their entire planet was pretty well done.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Oct 1, 2024 18:50:05 GMT -5
John Carpenter might have a thought or two about that. You're not wrong and I realize many consider Halloween the original slasher but, for me, that film's its own beast. If you haven't seen it in a while, it's remarkable how little gore there is and how much the kills are implied. I think Friday the 13th is really where they set the template. What of the Texas Chainsaw Massacres? Or the Psycho franchise? |
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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Oct 1, 2024 22:03:54 GMT -5
Just watched Night of the Living Dead a couple of hours ago, unaware until later that today is the 56th anniversary of it's release. I've seen it often enough by now that I have a few minor plot points that irritate me just a bit, but overall, I was reminded again of just how tight and well written a movie it really is. There isn't a wasted moment, and the cast is all pretty damn good, especially for a bunch of ad agency office workers moonlighting as actors.
It's a classic for a reason.
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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Oct 2, 2024 23:15:57 GMT -5
One of our area theaters shows these "Flashback Cinema" movies every week, and this time it was The Shining. It really is a classic, but also really is not the story King wrote. Each is wonderful in it's own way. As I watched this time, I kept thinking of ways this could have diverged into different, and I think possibly awesome, movies at different points. For example, if Wendy had just given Jack a few more whacks on the head with that baseball bat, she would suddenly have had a completely different set of problems. Plugging my own post, I will go deeper into this over in Your Dream Movies - Pick a movie, director, and star. Stand by. Also, it is now my head cannon that Jack Torrence somehow survived, escaped, disappeared, and surfaced some years later in Gotham City as Jack Napier. The Shining is The Joker's origin, just as Romeo is Bleeding is the origin story of how Jack Grimaldi became Jim Gordon. |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Oct 7, 2024 10:08:15 GMT -5
Mad God
Man, that was FUCKED.
If you don't know what it is, it's the (mostly) stop-motion movie that Phil Tippet was working on, on and off, from like 1987-2021. It's what the Nick Nolte episode of Pokerface was based on. The plot, to the degree it has one, is dream-logic, and not exactly coherent, not that it was trying to be. It's a dystopian story about an assassin delivering a bomb and then the things that spin out of it. It's filled with some genuinely disturbing and disgusting imagery, and some of the most elaborate and well-done stop motion animation I've ever seen. Some kid is going to see this on accident and be scarred for life.
Recommended. Probably just once, though.
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LazBro
Prolific Poster 
Posts: 10,281
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Post by LazBro on Oct 7, 2024 11:11:42 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The Mrs. and I had a rare opportunity to see a movie in a theater, and while we didn't have a strong need to see this one at the cinema, we're both big fans of the original and it was the best option available. Honestly it was mostly just an excuse to visit the newly reopened Alamo Drafthouse nearest our house.
It's okay. It's a degree below fine. Some great visuals, some funny bits, and of course really solid performances by Keaton, O'Hara, Ryder, and Ortega. It's perfectly watchable. But the story is a mess. I've heard it described as confusing, but that doesn't feel right. Nothing here is confusing, it's just poorly constructed and under-baked.
*mild spoilers*
The ostensible "villain" is in all of three scenes and hardly says anything, and the other villain dies literal seconds after their face-heel turn. Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe are wasted on this movie. Dafoe's character is fun, but his plot is so completely sidelined such that there are no stakes to what he's doing, and despite being there, he doesn't play much of a role in the finale. Unfortunately, his whole thing should have been cut, along with Bellucci. Betelgeuse doesn't need an external motivation to marry Lydia. He's a demon, and the only motivation he needs is wanting to do it. So lose all of that and focus on Astrid and Jeremy. You'll have a tighter script with more space to tell the story and still the exact same reason for having Betelgeuse in this thing at all.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Oct 7, 2024 11:52:12 GMT -5
Ben Grimm It sounds like it makes a lot of sense as a product of the Reagan era (I think it comes from a similar emotional place as Kurosawa’s Ran, of all things), but I was surprised to learn animal-motion-expert famed-Dinosaur-animator Phil Tippet’s passion project was not something more…delightful?
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Post by Celebith on Oct 8, 2024 1:56:18 GMT -5
Everything Everywhere All at Once ( Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Superman '78, noms.): I had a few "just repeat to yourself it's just a genre-defying media spectacle" moments, like how they were often able to summon(?) create(?) material objects at will, but I get the hype. Of course, the secret is it's really an intimate family drama disguised as a genre-defying media spectacle. Still absolutely wild that this movie won all the Oscars, though, what with the...gestures vaguely at that fight scene. I'm glad you finally got around to this because it's absolutely my favorite movie. A really raunchy A Wrinkle In Time, right down to end. And while I was happy to see Curtis get the Oscar, Stephanie Hsu was robbed. |
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Post by Celebith on Oct 8, 2024 2:08:58 GMT -5
Despite having no desire to see The Joker, the more people complain about it, the more I want to see Joker 2: Eclectic Boogaloo.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Oct 8, 2024 8:54:05 GMT -5
Everything Everywhere All at Once ( Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Superman '78, noms.): I had a few "just repeat to yourself it's just a genre-defying media spectacle" moments, like how they were often able to summon(?) create(?) material objects at will, but I get the hype. Of course, the secret is it's really an intimate family drama disguised as a genre-defying media spectacle. Still absolutely wild that this movie won all the Oscars, though, what with the...gestures vaguely at that fight scene. I'm glad you finally got around to this because it's absolutely my favorite movie. A really raunchy A Wrinkle In Time, right down to end. And while I was happy to see Curtis get the Oscar, Stephanie Hsu was robbed. Stephanie Hsu held that contraption of a movie together. Nevermind the Oscars, she's a lifer for that one. |
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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Oct 11, 2024 22:02:29 GMT -5
In honor of Creepy Month, I have been re-watching some horror movies. A couple days ago I watched Nosferatu the Vampyre -1979. and Dracula -1931. I have mentioned before how much I enjoyed the Herzog take on vampires, it has absolutely gorgeous cinematography, has a great sense of time and place (not London) and the moody, creepy Kinski somehow, in a few lines, managed to create a few moments of sympathy for the undead, eternal being's plight. Tod Browning's classic is still the standard, but , not having seen it for many years, I was surprised how few actual scares were in it. Lugosi oozes charisma and Dwight Frye is truly unhinged as Renfield, but some details of the plot I had completely forgotten.
What I really want to see now is Ian McShane as Count Dracula and William Sanderson as Renfield.
Hooplehead bloodsuckers!
Full Disclosure: there are very few movies I think could not have been remade, and often better, with the cast of Deadwood in it's prime. I sometimes wile away my time recasting movies like that in my head.
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Post by ganews on Oct 11, 2024 22:07:45 GMT -5
What a year 1931 was - also released were Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. |
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,689
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Post by repulsionist on Oct 13, 2024 15:01:21 GMT -5
Unable To Assert Will And Choose Own Preference Viewing List
The Garfield Movie (2024)
Sweet daddy issues' Jesus, please absolve us of our sins. You made us do it, so now we're using you as justified cause for our absurdity.
Monster High (2022)
Good God of Sellable IP, please keep doing your moral-good works to deliver musical forms of tepid drama in order to orient ourselves to higher purpose. Luck would have it that I will soon watch Monster High 2.
Pleasant Rubbish Of My Own Choosing
Invitation to Hell (1984)
Just a short 6 months before Freddy's evening wear became prêt-à-porter, journeyman director of pointed social commentary, Wes Craven, and established lensman Dean Cundey, recently finishing a stint at D.C. Cab and Romancing the Stone, put their heads together like Carpenter's The Thing to make a beautiful daytime soap movie of the week. Previous appeals to the gods (or clouds; could be either) sound again as I shout high praises of Susan Lucci. Dude, so hot! Furthermore, this Jezebel scorched a few others in the running time of this film. Meh-commended as lower-tier Halloween fare. But, for daytime soap fans of the GenX, early Millennials' variety, this is some black gold.
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I'm pretty sure she liked it right up until the aformentioned last 20-30 minutes.
