|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Oct 13, 2024 16:31:10 GMT -5
Silents Synched: Radiohead x Nosferatu (2024) First in a series by Blue Starlite Cinema of Austin in new synchs of silents with popular rock albums, in this case Amnesiac and Kid A with Murnauās Nosferatu (1923). The next entry is Buster Keaton with R.E.M. and entries with They Might Be Giants and Amon Tobin to come. Itās of course not a new thing to recontextualize great silents with music and Iāve definitely seen Nosferatu with some relatively lousy scores. Noble attempt to introduce a classic film to a new audience, insufferable Millennial pretension, or a cynical cash-grab? All of the above, really. More than once I thought of All This and World War II, the 1976 theatrical release of war footage set to Beatles and other rock songs, presumably made with the belief that āthese kids and stoners will watch anything.ā The albums, Amnesic first then Kid A, are played in order with barely a quarter-second gap between the tracks. The first shot begins simultaneous with the clanging drums of āPackd Like Sardinesā¦ā As you might guess, it would likely be perplexingly dissonant if you donāt, unlike me, know by heart every note, beat, and glitch of these albums. Not all of it is incongruous, though. Somehow, āI Might Be Wrongā synchs damn near perfect with the scenes of Hutter getting a ride from the creepy carriage driver, meeting Orlok, and having dinner with him. The eerieness of āLike Spinning Platesā fits well with the scenes in Professor Sieversā lab and āOptimisticā/āIn Limboā are appropriately hopeless for the plague scenes. Some slight tinkering with the filmās timing happened to make it fit the score but itās never to the detriment of the story or tone. However, Blue Starlite inexplicably decided to add colorized highlighting to occasional images. Itās insulting in its assumption that Murnau, like all the silent masters, didnāt have complete control of the audienceās focus and undermines the producers' supposedly noble intent. Whatever, canāt ultimately undo what an utterly perfect film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror remains.
|
|
ABz Bš¹anaz
Grandfathered In 
This country is (now less of) a shitshow.
Posts: 1,971
|
Post by ABz Bš¹anaz on Oct 14, 2024 12:30:42 GMT -5
Terrifier 2 - It was okay. Cheesy and more gory/gruesome than scary, but that's to be expected from this series. Actually chuckled a couple of times at Art's pantomimes. I heard a lot about this before it came out originally that it had a better story than the earlier films (Art appeared in one film prior to Terrifier 1), but it's still barely there. There's some very vague connections to the main character's father having seen Art in his mind before he died years earlier, and his daughter being destined to defeat him through her dad preparing her, but it was still pretty vague.
Amused that the third film came out this weekend and did way better than Joker 2. Extra amused that the guy who plays Art has also played the Joker in some fan films in the past, and he notes that he was cast as Art and as the Joker in the same week in 2015.
|
|
|
|
Post by ganews on Oct 15, 2024 21:08:12 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
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.
I am of much the same mind.
As welcome as Bellucci is, her whole storyline is an entirely unnecessary distraction serving only as live-action Sally the Ragdoll cosplay. We don't need a newly invented character backstory for Beetlejuice (it isn't the 2000s anymore), and Bellucci showing up at the wedding should have been a 30-second "uh-oh, it's my ex!" cameo. Willem Dafoe, another actor I love, is a character with too much storyline and barely any narrative function. Together all their screentime should have been replaced with either wacky ghost antics or more from the main storyline.
Having said that, the ghost with the most is rather overused in the first act. We never saw him by himself in the original because he's a side character. He's also not really threatening here the way he was in the original movie, it's closer to the characterization of the 90s Saturday morning cartoon (which was great).
I reckon Jeffrey Jones got paid for his likeness. He was in so much good stuff. Too bad he's a freak.
O'Hara and Keaton were both quite good. Winona Ryder, my first on-screen love, was fine (I note how much her real voice in 2024 sounds like her old-lady-voice in Edward Scissorhands.) The real champion of the movie was Justin Theroux who hit just the right notes.
In the end it was fine, certainly as delayed sequels go. It had some clever updates. I'd put it next to Ghostbusters II (which has an unfairly poor reputation). I've been a Tim Burton apologist for like 20 years, and it's hardly his worst. He was making oddly personal dioramas-as-movies way before Wes Anderson.
|
|
ABz Bš¹anaz
Grandfathered In
This country is (now less of) a shitshow.
Posts: 1,971
|
Post by ABz Bš¹anaz on Oct 19, 2024 12:03:01 GMT -5
Salem's Lot (Unnecessary 2024 remake) - By making this a 2-hour movie instead of a two-part miniseries, everything in this entire adaptation felt rushed. It was just decidedly mediocre. Not even an equivalent of the scariest scene of all time of the kid floating outside the window, tapping, in the first-half finale of the original.
When Evil Lurks - This movie was far more effective in instilling a sense of dread through almost the entire thing. Set in Argentina, two brothers in a poor farming community discover that their neighbor's son is "rotten", potentially infected by evil that, if not disposed of properly, will unleash hell upon the area. When the authority who was SUPPOSED to handle this is found dead, the brothers and their friend try to take on the task themselves. It does not go well. Really great film.
Salem's Lot (Original) - Watched this one today again since they're both on Max. As I remembered, this one was much better. Scary despite very little blood and gore. Ralphie Glick floating outside (and inside) the window TWICE was still eerier than anything in the entire remake. (Biggest sin of the remake was using Ralphie as a "sacrifice to consecrate the mansion" for Barlow to live in, so he was just outright murdered, and so his older brother - the kid who plays Homelander's son in The Boys - was the only one floating outside a window and was far less creepy.)
The only thing I can say for the remake is the final in the drive-in theater was a decent idea. But still...it didn't need to be made.
|
|
repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,674 
|
Post by repulsionist on Oct 20, 2024 15:34:38 GMT -5
The Boy and The Heron (2023)
Relevant pull scene from film:
Mahito's school avoidance method was extremely unsettling.
Countering the dour with acerbic notions:
A waggish lad such as myself would seek to retitle this film: Escape from Parakeet House. Between stoic solemnity and phantasmagoric adventure is where I saw this film bounce.
First, the outright praise:
Miyazaki-san clearly a beacon of greatness for his work, and the labour that goes into producing one of his films a catering to perfections that likely move by unseen winds.
Second, the muddled synthesis:
What finding a wellspring of creativity that can easily be destroyed through magical "immorality" means overall wasn't the most distinct artistic explanation of the artist's vision, should that be the expected lesson of this film. I'd rather have a pub natter than try to elucidate disparate thoughts failing to cohere through written language.
Stray observations and subjective "best moments":
Most exotic visuals were in the dream world/other dimension. The interiors of "parakeet kingdom" the most luxurious and leaving me wondering: "How was this done?!?"
The culmination of ruin to the wellspring; the agent that hastily built the puzzle, I mean: was a delicious bitterness from Miyazaki.
|
|
LazBro
Prolific Poster 
Posts: 10,252
|
Post by LazBro on Oct 21, 2024 8:13:58 GMT -5
The Boy and The Heron (2023) Relevant pull scene from film: Mahito's school avoidance method was extremely unsettling. Countering the dour with acerbic notions: A waggish lad such as myself would seek to retitle this film: Escape from Parakeet House. Between stoic solemnity and phantasmagoric adventure is where I saw this film bounce. First, the outright praise: Miyazaki-san clearly a beacon of greatness for his work, and the labour that goes into producing one of his films a catering to perfections that likely move by unseen winds. Second, the muddled synthesis: What finding a wellspring of creativity that can easily be destroyed through magical "immorality" means overall wasn't the most distinct artistic explanation of the artist's vision, should that be the expected lesson of this film. I'd rather have a pub natter than try to elucidate disparate thoughts failing to cohere through written language. Stray observations and subjective "best moments": Most exotic visuals were in the dream world/other dimension. The interiors of "parakeet kingdom" the most luxurious and leaving me wondering: "How was this done?!?" The culmination of ruin to the wellspring; the agent that hastily built the puzzle, I mean: was a delicious bitterness from Miyazaki. I agree, at least if my interpretation is correct. That being: this looked cool as hell, but motherfucker, for what? |
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Oct 21, 2024 11:15:29 GMT -5
Virus (1980)
The Japanese film industry enters with a late (and very expensive, apparently) entry into the Irwin Allen-type Disaster Porn canon. "The Italian Flu" has wiped out virtually everyone on Earth and an adhoc group of scientists and military guys from the various national Antarctic stations now comprise the world's government. But, zoinks!, a big-ass Eastern Seaboard earthquake is going to trigger the former U.S.' nuclear arsenal, leading to a Mutually Assured event with USSR that they probably could've weathered in Antarctica OK. I mean, get used to penguin and seal meat and grow some tomatoes, you'll be fine. Nonetheless, they need to send some internationally handsome men to fix it.
As with all these disaster flicks, a bunch of marquee actors mostly standing around looking concerned. Let's do this: Sonny Chiba and a bunch of presumably famous Japanese actors, Glenn Ford, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Edward James Olmos, Olivia Hussey, Chuck Connors. It is a little impressive just how much they spent on this (shooting locations in at least four continents including Antarctica) relentlessly grim nonsense with a nuclear apocalypse conclusion and a weepy Janis Ian song over the credits. I suppose if anyone gets to be maudlinly dour about nuclear annihilation...
|
|
ABz Bš¹anaz
Grandfathered In
This country is (now less of) a shitshow.
Posts: 1,971
|
Post by ABz Bš¹anaz on Oct 21, 2024 12:27:10 GMT -5
Halloween (2018) - Sequel/retcon of the series where Michael Myers has been institutionalized for 40 years, and Laurie has a daughter and granddaughter, but she's been prepping her entire life for Michael to escape so she can kill him. Not bad, not great.
I liked the SPOILER ALERT fake house/ trap that Laurie built, and the fake out with her daughter to catch Michael and "kill" him for good. I'm sure it didn't stick though, I haven't looked at what sequels might have been made since this.
|
|
LazBro
Prolific Poster
Posts: 10,252
|
Post by LazBro on Oct 21, 2024 16:17:19 GMT -5
LonglegsI'm going to borrow a line that has stayed with me since I first read it twelve years ago, from the late Roger Ebert's review of Paul Thomas Anderson's enigmatic The Master. And it's this: Longlegs is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It does a phenomenal job of establishing and then holding, unrelentingly, its sense of dread and ever creeping ickiness. It's a slow-burn psychological soul suck, upsetting to watch even as you can't help but hang on for more. Comparisons to A24 gems like Hereditary, Midsommar, and The VVitch are appropriate, if a bit generous. But, when that chintzy credits sting plays, and I'm left only able to respond, "...huh", I can't help that I feel empty after watching it. Not devastated, not drained, just kind of nothing. I think this may be the first movie in I can't remember how long (maybe ever?), that I genuinely wish was longer. And I'm not saying I need it tied up with a bow or anything - quite the opposite, the movie overexplains itself, or at least does so sloppily - but I wanted so much more time with the reveals. To feel their impact on the characters. To explore the mechanics of this potentially very fascinating story. It lets me down when it fails, in my opinion, to convey the terror of confronting a truly absolute evil. Not just a bad serial killer dude, but something ... worse. Like, if you're gonna go there, then go there. Longlegs hedges. I still dig it. I'll definitely watch it again, if only because slow creeping horror is so my vibe. But it's not masterpiece material for me. I leave the door open to my opinion changing on this one with re-watch.
|
|
|
|
Post by chalkdevil š on Oct 22, 2024 12:36:06 GMT -5
Talk to Me (2022)
I'd heard this was good but tempered my expectations and was pleasantly surprised. This was a really creepy, contained horror movie. It has a pretty straight forward premise. Some teens are in possession of a mysterious ceramic hand that when you hold it and say "Talk to me" you can see and talk to a ghost. When you say "I let you in" the ghost can possess you but not for more than 90 seconds or bad shit happens. Guys, not to spoil anything, but bad shit happens. It's got a good creepy vibe without an over reliance on jump scares. It has the standard Elevated Horrorā¢ trope where it's really about trauma and drug abuse, but also it doesn't fully wallow in it. And, outside of some lax hospital protocols, characters behave believably. Oh, and it has a satisfying ending that completes the story*. I highly recommend this if it sounds like your vibe (maybe more It Follows than Hereditary). I was genuinely creeped out for a while afterwards while walking though my dark house.
* This movie did pretty well and I saw rumors of a sequel, hopefully that never goes anywhere. No reason for a sequel. There wasn't anything left to say, unless you want to do dumb shit like try and spoil the mystery of the hand by trying to explain shit.
|
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Oct 22, 2024 19:43:50 GMT -5
Pyongyang Nalpharam (2006) - Pyongyang Nalpharam is a 2006 North Korean kick-puncher that had the look and feel of a late 70s or early 80s Hong Kong or Taiwanese kung fu flick. It tells the tale of a taekyeon master named Taek out to stop the Japanese from getting their hands on secret martial arts texts in the early days of the Japanese Colonial period. When dudes were throwing down this movie was very good. This is doubly so if the throw down was soundtracked by a military chorus singing about how dick-fuckinā awesome the titular Nalparam were. When the movie was Taek and his betrothed, a lady taekyeon master named Kyeon, looking longingly at each other and saying each otherās name it was less good. Unfortunately the movie was a lot more of that and a lot less guys doing training montages that involved getting flaming logs broken over their backs so it dragged at times.
Often when I watch movies from north of the DMZ I find myself wondering āHow angry would this make the average cat on the street in Seoul?ā and with this one Iād probably have to say āNot at all.ā The propagandistic messaging more or less boiled down to āJapan fucking suckedā and āpatriots giving their life in defense of their nation is an admirable thing,ā both of which are super common themes in an assload of South Korean movies too. Like hating Japan and still having gripes with them for the colonial period is one of the few things North and South Korea find common ground on and since thatās pretty much all this movie was I think most folks would be cool with it.
|
|
|
|
Post by Prole Hole on Oct 27, 2024 3:22:43 GMT -5
Alien: Romulus (2024)
Despite promising to rage-quit the series after the absolute clusterfuck of Covenant, here I am again. This is probably the best Alien movie since Cubed but that's not exactly saying much. This feels more like a recreation than a movie in its own right - all the familiar beats are here, including lines, references, chestbursters etc and it's all done... fine, I guess, but there's not a lot of reason for this film to actually exist. We get a little glimpse into the world of Alien, with indentured humans working for the Company, but it doesn't ever amount to more than scene-setting. Ash - pardon me, Rook - is around via some shonky CGI bollocks that doesn't really work. The chestburster scene in this is less effectively realised than the one from 1979, which is an achievement of sorts. The cast are all pretty decent - and mostly just pretty - but David Jonsson deserves some amount of praise for the way he plays Andy, it's easily the stand-out performance. There's odd moments that work very well, like the "swimming through the acid" sequence near the end but mostly this is an entirely faithful recreation of something that already exists, but with a prettier cast and little else of note. Decent, then, but incredibly unremarkable.
|
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Oct 28, 2024 10:13:43 GMT -5
Did some short horror anthology-type viewing over the weekend. Zygote (2017) District 9's Neil Blomkamp apparently had a short-lived anthology series called Oats Studio and this is his 22-minute entry. Dakota Fanning plays a Replicant-ish laborer in a corrupt mining facility in the Arctic where something has gone terribly wrong. She's one of two survivors against a mutation that absorbs everyone it attacks--the creature design, basically a malevolent pile of hands and eyeballs is the highlight but it's overall a well made Alien knockoff. Free on Youtube. " The Autopsy" (2022) I haven't been super-impressed with what I've seen of Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities series on Netflix but this one was highly worthwhile. David Prior ( The Empty Man) directs a story by Michael Shea wherein an apparent terrorist explosion in a coal mine leads to extraterrestrial strangeness. A good evoking of the gritty urban cosmic horror that Shea excels at. |
|
ABz Bš¹anaz
Grandfathered In
This country is (now less of) a shitshow.
Posts: 1,971
|
Post by ABz Bš¹anaz on Oct 29, 2024 11:15:30 GMT -5
Blood Red Sky (2021) - Hey, a surprisingly good horror flick that I hadn't heard of before. A woman suffering from a (not very) mysterious illness is attempting to travel with her son from Germany to New York for a cure, when the plane is hijacked over the Atlantic Ocean. Quite a few surprises and some really great performances.
|
|
|
|
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Nov 1, 2024 17:55:41 GMT -5
More French stuff
Mesrine: Public Enemy ā 1. Lacks some of the drive of the first half but brunette Ludivine Sagnier is beyond hot in this one.
Bob le Flambeur. Glad I predicted correctly this would be one of the ultimate feel good after a rough time movies.
The Train. Iāve seen this called the ālast great black-and-white action movieā and āGrand Prix but for steam railroadsā but did not realize that this (English-language film) also fit into the French-movie-rewatching phase as Burt Lancasterās a stationmaster/engineer with a railway-centered French resistance cell. I wish I could have watched this under less fatigueāitās very exciting but I fell asleep a couple of times trying to watch it in the evening, had to finish on a spare afternoonābut itās very good nonetheless, and the decision to put the massive crashes in the middle and the incredible edge-of-your-seat suspense at the end pays off.
Clean. I donāt quite get why this got a mixed reception when it came outāmaybe it was seen as too sentimental and not quite bleak enough? It is called Clean, though, itās about someone cleaning up their life! Itās okay for them to make steps forward. Although Cheung infamously tried her hand at Cantopop a few years later, she really should have gone the art rock route instead.
One for three on cult films
Megalopolis. Just so full of interesting material, the problem is that Coppola didnāt seem to have a good idea of what to prioritize or how to balance everything, particularly the tone (what an ending, though). Itās also too bad that āAuntie Wow!ā happened during such a dirty scene because itās the perfect minced oath. I liked this one.
Head. This was so stream-of-consciousness it was boring for me. I guess the frisson of the Monkees declaring themselves serious artists has faded over time.
The Fall. Went to an IMAX showing of this long-unavailable film Iād heard so much about (in a sense like Clean, also from the mid-aughts and only released on DVD once) and I absolutely I loathed it. There was a lot visually stunning, but you could really tell Singh was a commercial director. I actually like a good, visually striking, maybe counterproductively abstract commercial. Like those commercials many of the really striking scenes are pretty short, and they lose their effect by being slotted into a larger narrative, especially when that narrative is bad.
I can see why The Fall became a cult classic, though. It was really perfect for its time, the era of posting Death Cab for Cutie lyrics on livejournal, and I mean that in the meanest possible way.
|
|
|
|
Post by liebkartoffel on Nov 2, 2024 14:41:57 GMT -5
Phew, it's been a bit.
Pillow Talk (mid-century screwball comedies The Apartment and Monkey Business, noms.): Never seen a Doris Day/Rock Hudson romcom before, so we took the opportunity to fill in that gap. Talk about an un-remake-able premise: Day and Hudson are two strangers (in two different apartment buildings? was that a thing?) sharing a party line. She gets fed up with him monopolizing the line talking to all his various sexual conquests, he thinks she's a kill-joy shrew; hijinks and elaborate deceptions involving fictious Texas oilmen ensue. Mostly just made me want to watch Down with Love again, which has all the charm and fun atomic-era production design without the atomic-era gender politics baggage. Like, there's a solid 15-minute scene where Day's character is relentlessly sexually harassed and it's supposed to be funny but just feels queasy today.
Hocus Pocus (Goonies-ish kids movies Finding 'Ohana and Nightbooks, noms.): Another beloved 80s/90s kid cultural touchstone that the both of us had somehow missed. Kind of a mess, no? At times it feels like a teen sex comedy that was re-written for a younger audience. E.g., the constant jokes about how much of a virgin the main character is, but those sorts of jokes would only land if the character was some sort of boastful wannabe playboy type who needed to be taken down a peg, but he isn't and doesn't, so mostly it just comes across as the movie bullying its own protagonist for no reason. And then there's whatever's going on with that extended Garry and Penny Marshall cameo (you know, for kids!), where he pervs on the witches for a bit while she watches TV. It was fine. The scenery chewing witches--particularly SJP's relentlessly horny imbecile--were fun, and I can see how it filled a niche for millennial tweens in want of something spooky-not-scary to watch at Halloween time. From my perspective as a nostalgia-less non-tween it is...fine.
The Third Man (Hitchcockian thrillers Dial M for Murder and Notorious, noms.): Occasionally, you'll watch a movie and realize "oh, this is a movie" with like, cinematography and shit. Loved this. Prototypical noir--Dutch angles, twisty plot, femme fatale, in-over-his-head alcoholic protagonist, too-charming villain--but with some wry humor and even a little warmth cutting through all the bleakness. Looks incredible, particularly that last scene in the sewer tunnels where everyone is bathed in shadow and the edges of the black bricks are picked out by the harsh white light...again, it's just such a movie. I was a surprised at how effective the understated, all-zither score (oh, so that's where that song is from!) was as well.
Practical Magic: Sister and brother-in-law were visiting, and SIL requested we watch something "from the 90s." This popped up on the Max home screen and seemed vaguely Halloween-ish, so on it went. Well...huh. Maybe it's so bad it's good? There's potentially a decent black comedy somewhere in there--accidental murder! evil abusive zombie ex-boyfriend!--but it's buried beneath an avalanche of mawkish romcom pap, including a truly inane Alan Silvestri score. But the tonal whiplash is itself pretty entertaining. So...I don't know. Sure, so bad it's good. If you're in the mood for it.
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret: This time the MIL was visiting, and C put this on in the face of my and MIL's dogged refusal to tell her what we were in the mood for. I'm glad she did! My only knowledge of the book growing up was that it was a) not really written for me and b) vaguely period-related, so I didn't know what to expect, but the movie is a delight. It's funny, and surprisingly frank, and the tween actors were all competent and not at all insufferable (aside from the ones playing characters who are supposed to be insufferable). Rachel McAdams is underrated.
Nightbooks ("weekend immediately preceding Halloween" movies E.T. and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, noms.): Finally back on the regular movie night schedule after two successive weekends of family visits. "Disposable" would uncharitable. It's fun, but it's pretty clearly A Kids Movie for Kids, in a way that Are You There God? surprisingly wasn't. I, again, didn't hate the child actors, which is always a bonus, and Krysten Ritter's "Wicked Witch by Lisa Frank" costumes were a hoot. Decently spooky-not-scary movie for gen alpha tweens.
|
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Nov 4, 2024 11:25:33 GMT -5
Lemora: A Child's View of the Supernatural (1973) Intriguing early-'70s obscurity seemingly loosely based on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". During the '20s, Lila is the daughter of a gangster who has been taken in by a Baptist church and now, at 13, is unconsciously rebelling against the creepy showcasing of her as the epitome of virgin purity. She gets a mysterious message that her father is in a remote community on his deathbed and summons her to beg forgiveness. She hops a bus and things quickly go awry what with vampires and feral humans. Nicely shot with potent reds and blues that sustains an effectively fairytale-ish eerieness. Free on Youtube in a couple of sharp prints.
|
|
